“Oh, Raphael,” called the pope.

I stopped and turned back.

“The papal apartments are that way.” Pope Leo pointed down the hall in the direction of my Disputa, my Philosophy, my Heliodorus . . .

“I know, Your Holiness, but I already said that’s not where I want to take you today.”

“It’s not?” The surprise in the pope’s tone was echoed by the murmurs of cardinals.

“Not unless you’ll allow me to keep two apartments worth of paintings?”

The pope smiled. “One apartment is quite enough.”

“In that case, Your Holiness,” I said, “while I dearly hope that you decide to keep those paintings for your own pleasure, there are others that are more important to save.”

His Holiness and Michelangelo exchanged looks, but the pope turned to me and, with a tone of curiosity, said, “Then by all means, young man, lead the way.”

Chapter LXIII

Chapter LXIII

As I led them downstairs and into a dim, stone hallway, the pope sneezed from all the dust. “You realize that if your paintings are stored down here in secret, Santi, Michelangelo might not have known to destroy them?”

The coterie of cardinals chuckled. My mouth was too dry to swallow. I felt slow, as if wading through a bucket of plaster, but when I put my hand on the bronze door handle, crusted with teal, the color of Botticelli’s sea in his Birth of Venus, the thought of my old hero gave me the courage to push open that door. Margherita and I had snuck in the day before to prepare those rooms: we’d removed all the tarps; dusted floorboards, moldings, furniture, ceiling, walls; and opened the windows wide. Daylight slathered the room in a thick glaze, making the frescoes on those walls dazzle brighter than polished plates at a Chigi feast.

At the sight of those walls, one cardinal stopped short. Others piled up behind him. Lips parted. Fingers pointed. Necks craned. I wondered how many of those men—working and politicking in the halls of that very palace—had never laid eyes on those frescoes. Pope Leo, who’d been made cardinal when he was only thirteen years old, had no doubt seen them going up on those walls. His eyes widened with recollection as he walked from wall to wall, room to room, drinking in Pinturicchio’s masterpieces in the old Borgia apartments.