David (12 page)

Angelo had nearly finished the statue. We had turned it again so that he could work in more detail on the front.

‘I am going to leave the top of his head unfinished,’ he said.

I climbed up to have a look. There, at the crest of this David’s curls, was a rough patch of unchiselled marble. My hand went unconsciously to my own hair and Angelo laughed his harsh, grating laugh like a key turning in a rusty lock.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘It marks the extreme limit of the original block,’ he said. ‘That way the Operai will see that I have used every bit of it and added nothing.’

It was a matter of pride with him that he had looked at the botched slab of marble and found a way of creating a figure in the round that had been buried exactly within its confines.

‘You have such genius,’ I said. And I meant it. Who but my brother could have pulled off a commission like this? That was why he had accepted, of course. It was the challenge of working within prescribed limits that excited him. He didn’t want just to make a passable statue out of a discarded block, but to turn that overlooked and ignored slab of marble into a work of art that would make people gasp.

It made me gasp and I had posed for it and seen it grow out of the stone day by day. Apart from the Sangallo brothers, no one else had had that privilege. I could just imagine how it was going to shock the citizens of Florence once the public were allowed to see it. At least some of them. The
frateschi
were going to love it but not the de’ Medici supporters.

It said as clearly as if it were chiselled into a stone scroll in the shepherd boy’s hand that here was defiance: the ordinary working man from the fields going out against a giant clad in armour, with only a slingshot and stone. And we all knew the outcome of that story. Angelo didn’t have to show it. There would be no head of Goliath in his helmet lying bloodily under this David’s foot.

The determination in his eye and the concentration of his frown meant that the stone would land squarely between the brows of the Philistine giant and fell him at a blow. I know that this David looked like me but for the first time I felt like him. Armed only with a little knowledge and a lot of idealistic feelings about the Republic, I was daring to pit myself against the most powerful family the city had ever known.

No wonder Angelo had wanted to show the hero naked; when you were faced with a seemingly impossible task, that’s how you did feel. I climbed down from the scaffolding and found him waiting for me, smiling.

‘I saw you with another pretty girl the other day,’ he said. ‘I wonder if you are following my advice, as you said you would?’

I didn’t know what to reply. The consequences of going to Grazia’s room to talk about the pro-Medici conspiracy had been inevitable. But I had thrust down my guilty feelings about Rosalia – whose very existence Grazia was still unaware of, thanks to my cowardice – by telling myself that what I learned from Grazia was vital in order to foil their plots.

It was some weeks since this arrangement had begun and I had passed on much useful information to the
frateschi
. It appeared that this time the
compagnacci
were taking it much more slowly. Neither Piero nor any other de’ Medici prince would appear suddenly at the gates at the head of a hastily assembled army. These conspirators would take every precaution to make sure their own followers were safe before letting the hated tyrants back in.

At the end of February, Altobiondi was again at Visdomini’s house, according to Grazia, but this time on his own.

‘They were drinking to celebrate the birth of his son,’ she told me, as we lay contented in each other’s arms.

‘His son?’ I said stupidly.

‘Yes, his new wife – the widow Buonvicini – has given him an heir,’ she said.

I was glad she was not looking at my face when she told me. I had a son! A son who would grow up to be a rich man, one of the
compagnacci
probably. He would never know that his true blood father was a commoner who worked with his hands and a republican. I had so many conflicting feelings about this that I could hardly make myself lie still. But I didn’t want Grazia to know about my relations with Clarice; she didn’t even know about Rosalia.

I know. This makes me a coward as well as a villain. But that was how it was.

‘Did they say the boy’s name?’ I asked as casually as I could.

‘Why, yes,’ said Grazia, though she sounded surprised that I was interested. ‘They were toasting the name Davide.’

Davide! So Clarice hadn’t forgotten me! That was her secret code to let me know she would not forget her first son was the child of someone whose portrait she had to keep buried at the bottom of a chest.

Chapter Eight

Threats and Rumours

I can’t remember much about the next few months. It’s odd, when so much is vivid in my memory about the time before and after, but in those first few months after the boy was born that the world would call Davide di Antonello de’ Altobiondi I lost all sense of myself.

I was the stonecutter who went to work in the
bottega
every day. I was the artist’s model who posed, first as Hercules and then as Bacchus for Leone the painter two nights a week. I was a
fratesco
spy who met his friends on other evenings. And I was a lover with two beloveds – and that was without counting Clarice.

But of Gabriele himself I have no memory; I think I stumbled through spring and the beginning of summer as if I were in a dream or like a man intoxicated by a powerful brew. I was a figure trapped in an invisible block of marble – without feelings and unable to escape or even to want to escape.

And yet it was a time of great terror in the city; Florence had some implacable enemies, who had nothing to do with the de’ Medici or Savonarola.

‘Cesare Borgia,’ said Gandini the baker. ‘That’s the man we’ve got to worry about.’

I scarcely knew the name, but the most important thing about this Borgia was that he was the son of the Pope. The gossip in Florence made him seem like a monster and hero rolled into one – someone no one could defeat or cheat. He was supposed to have ordered the murder of many victims and gained the love of as many women. And everyone in the city was talking about him.

‘He was a cardinal, you know,’ Grazia told me. ‘And born to a cardinal too – the one who is now Pope – but Cesare gave up his red hat.’

‘Why?’ I asked listlessly. It didn’t seem to matter much to me at the time.

‘They do say,’ said Grazia, ‘that he poisoned his older brother. They were both lovers of a third brother’s wife. Can you believe such a thing?’

I didn’t feel I could judge anyone else’s sexual adventures when I considered my own situation, but I expressed suitable horror at such behaviour in a man of the Church.

‘The French king made him a duke and he became a soldier,’ said Grazia. ‘He leads the Pope’s armies with five
condottieri
underneath his command.’

‘Why does that matter to us, Grazia?’ I asked. ‘What has an army in Rome to do with Florence?’

‘Don’t you listen to any of the rumours in the city?’ she scolded me. ‘One of those
condottieri
is Vitellozzo Vitelli!’

It meant nothing to me and I could see my ignorance was exasperating her.

‘Vitelli fought with Florence against Pisa,’ she said.

‘So he’s an ally?’

She snorted. ‘Not any more! His brother Paolo was put to death for treachery a few years ago and Vitellozzo vowed to avenge him. He and Cesare are out roaming the countryside, getting nearer to the city all the time. Heaven help us if their armies combine and march on Florence!’

It wasn’t long before Grazia’s fears seemed to be coming true. A message reached the city that Vitelli had captured Arezzo, which was much too close for comfort.

There were rumours in Lodovico’s house that Florence had sent ambassadors to Rome to get Pope Alexander to intervene. And while the tension in the city grew as Florentines waited for the reply, a new and more alarming rumour began to circulate.

‘Pisa has declared for Borgia,’ said Sigismondo. They called him Gismondo in the family. He was the one who wanted to be a soldier and always had his ear to the ground about military matters. ‘The Pisans are already flying the Duke’s banners from their turrets.’

This was seriously worrying. Pisa and Florence had been at odds for a long time and the Florentines were incensed that their rival city had gone over to Cesare Borgia instead of coming back into the fold of their old relations with the city.

‘Borgia won’t have them, though,’ said Gandini the baker, my other source of information. He picked up a lot of gossip in his shop. ‘He’s gone off to take Camerino.’

My knowledge of geography was no better than of history but it sounded further away than Pisa. But I had heard of Urbino – who hadn’t? – and it wasn’t long before news came that Cesare Borgia had deposed the legitimate Duke of that fine city, Guidobaldo Montefeltro. This he had done himself, sending just a portion of his army to besiege Camerino.

Soon there came a message to Florence from Cesare Borgia that the city should send an ambassador to him in Urbino.

‘They’re sending Soderini,’ said Gismondo.

‘The
gonfaloniere
?’ I asked.

‘No. His brother, Bishop Francesco. And they’re sending Machiavelli with him.’

I didn’t recognise the name but not many people had heard of Niccolò Machiavelli at that time. Later, he became famous throughout Italy for his intelligence and diplomatic skills.

Soderini sent back a message that Cesare Borgia was an extraordinary man – magnificent and formidable were just two of the words used – and that if Florence would not declare itself his friend, Cesare would regard the city as his enemy.

Well, no one in Florence wanted such a powerful and seemingly unconquerable enemy. But it was a proud city, which had got rid of one family of tyrants and was in no hurry to replace it with another. There were rumours that a huge French army was on its way, which would be a protection for Florence, so the Signoria played for time.

‘Ha,’ said Gismondo, hurrying back from the Piazza della Signoria with fresh news. ‘It seems that Cesare Borgia has heard about the French army too! He has ordered Vitelli to withdraw from Arezzo.’

While all this was going on outside the city, it was Grazia who told me about the secret information network that operated between Florentine women, the grand ladies and their servants. At first it seemed to me that it was just to help aristocratic ladies find good-looking lovers. But gradually I realised it could be helpful in finding out more about the pro-Medicean conspiracy.