On that word, I dropped that armload of bread. As they scrambled to pick up the fallen goods, I took a step back. Margherita had brought me to meet her father.

Oh no. It was my teasing about marrying that cardinal’s niece that had brought this on, hadn’t it? She was going to bring it up— wasn’t she? Marriage. And I was going to have to break her heart. Everyone at the Vatican knew she was one of Imperia’s ladies, and I’d lose my job and my position at court, but if I didn’t marry her . . . Uffa, to see that look on her face, to hear her voice shake—“It’s time to stop hiding me behind painter’s tarps, Raphael Santi”—and inside of her father’s shop, no less, in front of him. I took out my sketchbook. Pull up sleeves, roll wrist, uno, due, tre, quattro, capture the faces of those two boys leaning in the window, watching the bread rise: chubby cheeks, disheveled hair, eyes turned up in awe.

In the background, her father exclaimed, “He’s an artist?”

And Margherita pled, “Father, no, not that.”

Her father was beside me, holding a round board. “You’re a painter?”

I pulled my nose out of my drawing and nodded.

He shoved the board into my hands. “My daughter saved a monk from a pack of wolves.”

I looked down at the round board. On one side, there was a sketch done in chalk; I recognized the author, as it was done in my own hand. I looked closer at that sketched face: it was Margherita Luti. I’d almost forgotten about drawing her on the end of that old wine barrel the night we’d met in the Pantheon. I’d certainly forgotten that she’d saved it.

“That monk drew this of her.” Signor Luti kissed the tips of his fingers: excellent.

“A monk drew this? Really?” I asked, raising eyebrows.

“Raphael doesn’t want to hear this, Papà,” she said, trying to take the board from me.

“He most certainly does want to hear it,” I said, pulling the board back. She gave me a pleading look, but I said, “Go on, signor Luti.” Margherita closed her eyes and looked as if she’d like to crawl into one of those ovens alongside the bread.

“My Margherita had been outside the gates tending to the sick—she does that often—when she saw a monk, hiding up a tree, and a pack of wolves circling that tree, snarling and barking. So, what did my Margherita do? She picked up this board and used it to chase off those wolves. Grateful that she saved his life, that monk sketched her face right on this board. Then, that holy man blessed her and the wood, promising that this painting would make her and the board that had protected him immortal. He said that my daughter is destined for greatness.”

“That I do not doubt, signore,” I said.