David (20 page)

‘I think I know who did this,’ I said. ‘And I’m going to make sure he pays for it.’

Chapter Thirteen

The Beast in the Labyrinth

Anyone could put an accusation in the Mouth of Truth. They didn’t even have to sign it. So there was as much gossip as genuine discovery of crime. Neighbours’ tittle-tattle about adultery or suspect business practices, like bribes, formed the majority of the denunciations.

Though common, sex between men was officially a crime in Florence and had to be investigated. And, although I hadn’t known it, ‘artist’s model’ was at the time almost synonymous with ‘prostitute’ of either sex.

I had posed only for Angelo and Leone; the one my milk-brother and the other, as I had swiftly found out, not interested in my nakedness except where it served his work. I felt hot to realise that I had told Angelo I would be willing to work in the city as a model for unknown painters. What had he thought I was saying? But surely he knew me better than that.

It also made me very uncomfortable to realise that anyone – like Vanna or the haughty manservant – could put a note about my relations with Clarice into the Mouth of Truth. And there would be the unfortunate complication that those accusations would be true.

But I wrenched my mind away from these worrying thoughts. I would have to cope with that if it happened. What mattered now was the false denunciation of my brother.

I was absolutely sure who had made the denunciation; it had devilry written all over it. It wasn’t hard to find out where Leonardo was lodging; the difficulty would be in getting Salai on his own, and in getting to either of them before Angelo had carried out his threat. It had taken too long to persuade Gismondo to tell me what had happened.

I went to Angelo and told him I knew. He was gruff with embarrassment.

‘Can I go to the magistrates and tell them that it is all lies?’ I asked him.

‘No, it would make it worse,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘Because then they would see how beautiful you are,’ he said simply.

I was now more embarrassed than Angelo. I knew he didn’t think of me in that way and yet he had warned me on my very first day of unwanted attentions from rich men who preferred their own sex to women. I knew that Visdomini had lustful thoughts towards me. I didn’t mind that, as long as he never acted on them. And as far as I was concerned, what two men did together in private, although it wouldn’t be my preference, was their own business.

‘You’re not really going to confront Leonardo, are you?’ I asked, to cover my confusion.

‘Well, I haven’t yet,’ he conceded, ‘but he’d better watch out the next time he crosses my path. I think I convinced the Officers of the Night that it was a malicious and untrue accusation.’

‘I don’t think it was him,’ I said.

‘Who else in the city has reason to hate me? You heard what he said when he came here – he wanted the David block himself. Though he would have made an awful mess of it.’

‘It might have been someone acting on his behalf – without his knowledge,’ I said.

‘He could never have cast that bronze horse that he tried to make for Sforza in Milan,’ said Angelo, still musing on motives for Leonardo’s malice towards him. ‘He’s just not a sculptor.’

I could see I wasn’t going to convince him of the Painter’s innocence but I was glad that his eruption of anger towards the older artist had subsided to a low rumble.

I couldn’t get away till the next Sunday but I went to seek Leonardo out then. The door was answered by one of his acolytes – not Salai – who said his master was resting after coming back from church. He eyed me curiously as if trying to remember where he had seen me before. Then light dawned.

‘Ah, you are the model for Michelangelo!’ he said.

At that point, Salai came out. He had the face of a ruined angel, framed by those amazing golden curls. But I was taller than him and could see that his hair was beginning to thin on top. If he lost that distinguishing feature of his, he would look very like a devil, I thought.

‘Well, look who’s here,’ he drawled. ‘The sculptor’s boy.’

‘If one is still a boy at twenty,’ I said. It was not my plan to rile him.

‘Some of us are boys for ever,’ he said and I felt a flash of sympathy for him.

He had nothing but his looks and his youth, which were both rapidly receding. He might be Leonardo’s apprentice but he had none of his genius. I hoped that his master would continue to love him for the beauty he had seen in him as a boy; the man was certainly not attractive.

‘Were you looking for the
maestro
?’ he asked.

‘It was you I hoped to talk to,’ I said.

‘Then let us take a walk,’ he said.

We strolled through the Piazza Santa Croce, attracting plenty of attention as we walked. Salai seemed to relish this. He positively preened. I was rather amused by his vanity and wondered if he would have lorded it over me quite as much if I had been dressed in my Medici finery.

‘Let’s go down to the river,’ he said. ‘It’s such a warm day maybe we will see the boys swimming.’

‘A bit cold for that yet I fear,’ I said but turned my steps to follow his.

‘I can guess why you came,’ he said abruptly.

‘Really?’

‘Yes. It’s about the denunciation,’ he said.

‘It’s not true, you know,’ I said. ‘I like girls.’

‘Pity,’ he said straight-faced. ‘What about the sculptor?’

‘His preferences are his own business,’ I said. ‘But let us be clear that they have nothing to do with me. You have missed the mark there.’

‘I have?’ He looked at me with exaggerated innocence. ‘What does it have to do with me?’

‘We are milk-brothers,’ I said. ‘I live in his father’s house because he entrusted his son to my mother as a baby.’

Salai’s face fell but he was soon blustering confidently again.

‘My master is a bit short of money,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘He needs a new commission.’

‘What has that to do with the sculptor?’

‘Nothing. I just hope the next big commission doesn’t go to him.’

It was as close as he was ever going to come to admitting his guilt.

‘Michelangelo has quite enough work,’ I said. ‘He is not seeking more. But even if he were, this city is big enough to house two great artists, don’t you agree?’

He tried his most flirtatious smile on me but it didn’t reach his heavy-lidded eyes. He understood what I was saying.

After the Mouth of Truth incident, I took up Angelo’s offer to teach me to sculpt. He even let me do some work on my own toenails – at least the toenails of his giant David! Once I had got over my fear of chiselling one of the statue’s toes off, it was enjoyable. And it was a great honour to work on the statue that was going to cause a sensation in the city.

I don’t know how I knew then that it would – but I was right.

‘You can help me polish the legs too,’ he said, handing me a piece of very fine emery stone.

I approached the task as cautiously as if I were sandpapering my own bare legs. Angelo looked on approvingly.

‘It’s good to be slow and careful at this stage. So much can go wrong.’

The idea of damaging this magnificent statue made me sweat with fear.

He laughed. ‘Don’t be afraid. It has to be done – all of it.’

Yet he seemed to be working more on the bronze than on the marble David.

I was musing as I worked that I had now been David (twice), Hercules, Bacchus and Mars. And now Leone was designing an ambitious new scheme for Theseus and the Minotaur. Visdomini never seemed to tire of subjects which could depict me as a muscular hero or god, preferably naked or at least wearing minimal covering.

While I was working, the younger Sangallo brother came to visit.

‘Guess what,’ he said. ‘The Signoria are going to give Leonardo a commission!’

‘Soderini will, you mean, I suppose,’ said Angelo. ‘What is it?’

‘To paint a mural in the Palazzo,’ said Sangallo. ‘In the Sala del Gran Consiglio, to be precise. But it’s only a rumour so far – nothing’s been signed.’

I smiled to myself. I didn’t know if Salai’s malicious ruse had been the cause, but his master had got his commission and the fee would keep the little devil in rose-coloured stockings a while longer. But would Angelo have been given this commission if he hadn’t been slandered? I wasn’t to find that out yet.

It was enough for me that he wasn’t troubled by Sangallo’s news.

The next time I saw Gandini the baker, he was so cross he was practically foaming at the mouth.

‘Have you heard the news?’ he asked.

I was so used to his telling me all the gossip about Cesare Borgia and the other threats to the city that I expected some new nugget of military news but I was quite wrong.

‘He’s only taken another commission!’ he fumed.

‘Who?’

‘The Painter, Leonardo from Vinci!’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said carelessly. ‘The mural for the Palazzo.’

‘Mural? What mural? No, he has agreed to paint Giocondo’s wife! And haven’t I been asking him for years to make my wife’s portrait.’

‘Giocondo? The silk merchant?’

I knew him slightly; Clarice had ordered the material for dresses from him and Buonarroto, Angelo’s brother, sometimes did business with him. I seemed to recall he had married a much younger woman, after losing two earlier wives in childbirth.

‘That’s him,’ said Gandini. ‘Is my money not as good as his? People need bread more than they need silk, don’t they? You try eating silk in a famine and see how it agrees with you!’

I suspected that Francesco di Bartolomeo del Giocondo might have offered Leonardo more money than the baker had and that his ‘little devil’ would have encouraged him to take the richer commission. With that and the possibility of the Signoria’s mural, the court around the painter would be safe for quite a time. But I could see that Gandini was genuinely upset.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s probably political.’ It was the first thing that came into my head.

‘Political?’ he asked, stopped at last in his tirade.

‘Yes, you know, she’s probably distantly related to a de’ Medici or a Tornabuoni or something,’ I said, making it up as I went along. ‘And Leonardo used to work for Lorenzo, just like the sculptor. Perhaps that’s the reason.’

Gandini, though he was republican through and through, liked the reason, because it cast no bad reflection on him or his beautiful wife. He was so mollified he gave me a sweet pastry for free.

As I walked away from his shop, I mused on this new work of Leonardo’s. I had made up the explanation to soothe a friend’s hurt but maybe it was true. He had said it would take more than just beauty in a woman to make him want to paint her. What did Giocondo’s wife have that Gandini’s didn’t?