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Priceless
Prologue
In a small village near on the northeast Mediterranean coast of Italy, in a room with windows that opened out right onto the sea, an artist was painting a portrait of a young girl. The girl was positioned at a table by an open window with a fig in her hand. The sunlight fell on her hair, turning it from plain yellow to sheet of glittering gold. Her face was smooth and flawless, pink-cheeked and red-lipped without any need for artifice. Her expression was sweet and calm as an angel’s as she looked out onto the waves. Her name was Maria and she was modelling for a portrait of her namesake, the Virgin Mary herself, captured in a moment of quiet reflection before the annunciation.
But the thoughts that were running through the lovely Maria’s mind were more than a little at odds with the subject of the painting. Our Maria was thinking about the man behind the canvas, Giancarlo Ricasoli, the artist who was recording this moment for posterity. They hadn’t spoken much. He told her he preferred to work in silence. But she had heard quite a bit about him and what she knew of his reputation made her shy.
‘How much longer will I have to sit like this?’ she chanced to disturb him as she saw her father’s boat come into the harbour.
‘Are you uncomfortable?’ Ricasoli asked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘But I will have to go to mass. It isn’t long now.’
‘Ah, church,’ said the artist, with a smile. ‘Of course.’
Maria had heard that Giancarlo Ricasoli didn’t go to mass. Apparently the priest had given him a special dispensation on the grounds that he’d already spent as much time in the church as ordinary member of the flock might spend there in a lifetime while he was painting the fresco on the ceiling. Having promised that he would provide a beautiful Madonna and Child for the priest’s private residence as soon as he had finished this annunciation for which Maria now posed, Ricasoli had been assured that no more would be said about the matter. At least not officially.
Maria wished she had a talent that could allow her to be excused another hour in that dark old church. But dodging mass was the least of it. She’d heard other things about the artist too. She’d heard that in Florence he had been responsible for the ruination of not one but five young women. All had been models for his interpretation of the meeting of Christ and Mary Magdalene. All of them were virgins when they were first summoned to his studio and fallen women by the time they left.
And so Maria was horrified when it was first suggested that she sit for this painting of the Virgin Mary before the Annunciation, as were her parents. They too had heard the artist’s reputation. Hadn’t five angry fathers chased out Ricasoli of Florence? But then the artist told Maria’s father how much he would be willing to pay for the privilege of painting his daughter. It was more than her father could hope to make in a year. And the priest had vouched for the artist, saying that he was a changed man since he’d come to their little village by the sea. ‘I believe he is a good and proper man at heart,’ the priest said after beating Ricasoli at cards. So it was agreed that Maria would sit for the painting that was destined for the walls of a church in Rome itself. Her aunt Stefania, her father’s sister, would chaperone.
Right then, however, Maria’s aunt was doing a pretty bad job. Ricasoli had offered the older woman a glass of wine with their simple lunch and she had taken it. And another. Now Stefania was snoring lightly on a couch at the other end of the studio, in a most undignified position, shoes off, bare legs akimbo and her skirts hiked up to her thighs.
‘I should make a sketch,’ Ricasoli joked. ‘I need someone posed like that for my depiction of the fallen in purgatory.’
‘Don’t you dare,’ said Maria. ‘She would be so upset.’
‘Ah, sweet Maria,’ Ricasoli sighed. ‘Always thinking of other people. I hope that I can capture your good pure heart in this painting of mine.’
The way he said ‘good pure heart’ made Maria wonder if Ricasoli really thought such a thing was an asset.
While he dabbed away at something on the canvas; a crooked line or a smudge of colour gone awry, Maria regarded him closely, grabbing the chance to stare as closely as he had stared at her.
She could see that he was handsome. And he had a sophistication that was rarely seen in the local men folk of her little fishing town. When he wasn’t dressed in his artist’s smock, grubbily colourful where he’d wiped his brushes clean, he was adorned in the finest silks. He wore the latest fashions from Florence and Rome. Maria had often spied on him from her bedroom window, which had a good view of the road down to the harbour where he took his evening promenade. Of course it hadn’t occurred to her that was how he had first noticed her with her shining blonde hair and chosen her for his innocent Mary.
What was it like to be ruined, Maria wondered. How did it happen? As Ricasoli turned his back to her while he mixed some more pigment, Maria regarded the artist again. He was a surprisingly big man. He had a way of carrying himself that made him seem lithe and slim, but she could see now as he bent over the pot of ground lapis with which he was to paint her robes that his shoulders were wide and strong. His buttocks, in their tight buckskin trousers, were square and powerful. Utterly masculine. Maria had a sudden flashing vision of what they might look like naked. Pumping. She had seen two people making love once, in a field behind the village. The woman’s small heels pressed into the man’s buttocks as he thrust into her. Suddenly Maria found herself imagining her own feet against the artist’s flesh.
He had finished mixing his paints. On the couch, her aunt was still fast asleep.
‘Are you ready to continue?’ he asked.
Maria nodded as she gave one last stretch to get the blood back into her limbs. Ricasoli’s eyes travelled the length of her body as she did so and Maria luxuriated in his look for as long as it took her to remember that such vanity was almost certainly a sin. She sat back down at the table and picked up the fig she had held in her hand for the last three days. The fruit was so warm and sticky. Its ripe skin was stretched tight and ready to burst. Maria assumed the position as closely as she remembered it.
‘Not quite,’ said Ricasoli. He stepped up onto the podium on which the table had been placed to make the best of the light coming through the window and the shadows and shards of brilliance it cast upon Maria’s face. ‘A little more to your left,’ he told her. Maria shifted in her seat. ‘No. Too far. Wait. Maybe. You were here. More like this.’
Very gently, he took her chin in his hand and tilted her face towards him. But when he had her where he thought she should be, he did not immediately let go of her. She looked at him with huge unblinking eyes. He had never before laid a hand on her to physically help her into her pose. Ordinarily, her aunt Stefania would be standing right beside him, ensuring that such a thing didn’t happen. From the back of the studio, the sleeping chaperone let out an enormous snort.
Maria and the artist jumped apart. Was that snore enough to have woken her up? It seemed not.
‘You moved,’ Ricasoli said to Maria. ‘Now I will have to put you into position all over again.’ Once more he took her chin in his hand and tilted her face towards the light. But this time he did not stop when she was in the perfect position for the painting. He kept on tilting her face until they were almost nose-to-nose. She let out a small gasp of surprise as he told her.
‘I’m going to do it.’
‘Do what?’ she asked in a squeak.
‘This.’
He kissed her.
Maria had never been kissed before. She had wondered if she ever would be and, if she was, whether she would be good at it. It turned out that her older sister was right. It came to her as though she had always been kissing. Maria let herself fall into the tender trap.
The artist’s lips were so warm and gentle. As he kissed her, his fingers explored her long, fine neck too, her bare shoulders, her soft décolletage.
Maria felt a blush rise on her skin. Her heart beat faster. Her head and stomach felt light. As Ricasoli continued to touch her, she realised she wanted to throw her clothes off and feel his hands over every part of her. She trembled as she felt her body begin to unfurl for love. At the same time she squeezed the fig so hard it split open in her palm.
On the couch in the corner, her aunt slept on. Ricasoli held out his hand and invited Maria to step behind the screen where she changed out of her own clothes and into the Virgin’s robes each morning.
‘What if she wakes up?’
‘We’ll say you were washing your hands,’ said Ricasoli, as he sucked fig juice from her forefinger.
‘I’m going to be ruined,’ thought Maria.
And it was wonderful.
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