That night, after the pope’s coughing subsided and the apartments settled into their nighttime quiet, I made a show of leaving—“I have an appetite that needs feeding. I’m off to the tavern to gorge”—but I hid among my stack of supplies. It was barely dark—I hadn’t even become sleepy yet—when I heard those familiar boots clump down that hallway. The orange light of his torch flickered against the darkening walls. A man’s ego is so predictable, isn’t it?

Michelangelo found the figure of Heraclitus quickly and pulled his torch up to look. I was positioned behind him so I couldn’t see his features, but he sunk to his knees and muttered something like “son of Bathsheba.” He fumbled through his satchel. I sat up straight in case he pulled out a marble hammer and I needed to jump up and stop him from attacking. He bent over toward the floor. Then, he looked back up at the painting, back down, back up, back down . . .

Wait, he wasn’t . . . Was he?

I silently rose to a crouch to get a better look.

Naomi and Ruth! My hand came to my lips. Yes. Yes. Michelangelo was copying my painting. And that’s the moment when I realized that maybe Michelangelo and Felice were right and miracles did exist; it’s only that I had to make them for myself.

Chapter XLII

Chapter XLII

August 1511

Felice’s right,” the pope said, after yet another coughing fit. Felice pressed a white kerchief to the holy lips, and it came away splattered scarlet. “I want you to decorate the next room of my apartments with miracles. Perhaps by painting them, you shall summon them, too.”

I shot Felice a glare but kissed the holy ring as offered. “Yes, Your Holiness.” When the pope asks you for something on what may very well be his deathbed, you don’t demur, do you? Still, I kept my foot tapping. Uno, due, tre, quattro . . .

“Paint the Liberation of St. Peter on one wall.” He sat back against his pillow, his holy forehead beading with sweat. “And the Mass at Bolsena miracle is also a favorite of mine.”

“Inspired choices, Your Holiness.”

“But begin with the Expulsion of Heliodorus. Second Maccabees, chapter three,” he said, as a priest took out a box of leeches. “When the King of Syria sent his servant Heliodorus to rob the Temple of Jerusalem of money reserved to help widows and orphaned children, God sent a horseman and two angels to expel that thief from His Temple. I want you to paint those angels driving out Heliodorus, same as I’m going to drive those damnable French off our land. And as you paint it on that wall, let it be so on this Earth.” He doubled over coughing but still managed to swat that box of leeches out of the priest’s hand.