He snorted again but resumed painting without argument. He was no longer humming, but his shadow worked his brush in quick, short strokes. He must be coming to the end of the giornata’s drying time. I waited until his arm dropped, and his shadow slumped down with the look of a man spent. He dropped his torch in a bucket. It went out. After a long giornata, my defenses are always down, so . . . “Do you hear something?” I whispered.

“What? No.”

I moved a bucket to make a screeching sound.

“Stop making noise,” he said.

“That wasn’t me.”

There came a creaking, and a few moments later, he was down on the bottom tier of the scaffolding, peering over the edge. “Do you still hear them?”

“Not anymore. But I assume they’ll keep looking until they find the pope. Do you think I look like a pile of paints?”

He grunted, and then came the most wonderful sound: the groan of a ladder lowering and landing on the floor. “If you’re coming, come on.”

I scrambled across the floor and up that ladder, glancing behind me, trying to appear as frightened as possible. At the top, I helped him pull up the ladder—“dai, dai, dai”—our hands working together. (Don’t ask me why, even though he was only painting in those days, his hands were always covered in marble dust.)

In the moonlight, I could see that there were tarps hanging everywhere along that scaffolding: around every platform, every interconnected footbridge, dividing each turn, each railing, each stair. He didn’t let anyone else up there, so from whom was he trying to hide his paintings? Himself? It stank up there, too: rotting fruit, stale wine, chamber pots; when was the last time he’d emptied them? “If you’re in the middle of a patch of plaster, you can go work if you need,” I said, making a show of sitting down. “I’ll stay here.”

He sat down on a set of curved stairs leading up. “I’ve finished for the night.”

I looked over the edge. The floor was far below. If I said the wrong thing, he could toss me over. I smoothed my breeches and waited for him to speak first.

Eventually, he did. “I finished a new panel tonight. A creation scene.”

“Congratulations,” I said without looking at him. I didn’t want to look at him the wrong way, either. “There are—what? Only nine panels on the ceiling?”

He grunted. I took it as assent.

“How many giornate did it take?” I asked.

“One.”

I looked up. His features were obscured in shadow, but he sat there, elbows on his knees, presumably glaring at me. My mouth went dry. Considering their size, I would’ve thought each of those panels would take a week or two—at least—depending upon complexity. “You finished an entire panel in a single day?”