“Oh, my young Sparrow, what patrons want most is to support the best artists,” said Leonardo da Vinci standing on the other side of me. Pope Leo—determined to play host to every great artist on the peninsula—had lured the Master from Vinci down to Rome with a heavy purse. Leonardo might not care much for the demands of papal painting, but he did enjoy the bounty of the papal treasury. (He didn’t stay in Rome for long, though. Soon after this period, Leonardo left the Vatican, left Rome, left the peninsula, and then left this Earth. I still regret not making it up to France for his funeral.) That day, Leonardo added, “If the pope anoints you as best, it proves Chigi’s impeccable taste.”

“Can I quote you on that, maestro?” Chigi said. “Leonardo from Vinci says, ‘Chigi has impeccable taste.’”

Leonardo nudged me. “It also doesn’t hurt that you being named papal architect would increase the value of your work at his villa by tenfold.”

Chigi bounced his eyebrows. “At least.”

We crossed ourselves as Bramante’s body passed. Bramante had walked the Earth for seventy years; he had no children, no widow, the only thing he left behind was the construction of new St. Peter’s, which everyone knew would take centuries to finish. And yet, although it wasn’t a tragic, youthful kind of death, it was still devastating for me. My countryman and my protector was gone.

“But I don’t want you to rise only for my sake, Rafa,” Chigi told me as we sat down for service. “I want you to rise for your own.”

“For once man has tasted flight”—Leonardo spoke in a similar rhythm to the pope reading The Word—“his eyes will always turn toward the skies, for there he shall long to return. And you, Sparrow, have flown in the clouds for a very long time now.”

“I’ll get used to toiling the soil again, maestro,” I said, between recitations. “It won’t be all bad. At least after I’m fired, I’ll be free to tell the world that Margherita is mine.” Yes, I’d told Leonardo about our union. The maestro may be garrulous at times, but he knows how to keep a secret. “No more hiding in the dark. I can love her and paint her openly.” Over the past year, Bramante had helped me salvage Pope Julius’s final commission, the Sistine altar-piece. I’d used Margherita’s face for the Madonna. Would it be enough to make her immortal? I didn’t know—perhaps I’d never know—but at least I’d had a papal commission with which to try.

“Let me see the summons again,” Leonardo whispered while everyone else’s head was lowered in a moment of silence.