David (27 page)

‘It was before you were born,’ said Angelo. ‘I was only a baby. Perhaps Florentines have become more civilised since then.’

But I could see he didn’t believe this.

People were now going up to the altar to receive the Host. As they shuffled slowly forwards, I could see some jostling. And the
frateschi
were ostentatiously keeping their seats. They would not join in a Mass to commemorate a man they despised as an unelected tyrant; they just wanted to be there to crow over his disappointed supporters.

But Angelo and I went up. As we came down and stopped to light candles, Gianbattista hissed at me, ‘You are prepared to go to some lengths to keep up your pretence as a Medicean, I see.’

I looked at him coldly, feeling the eyes of the
compagnacci
on us and threw back my cloak just enough to rest my hand on my own dagger. Yes, it was a pretence, since I was a spy for his group but during the Mass I had felt no hate for the de’ Medici – just sadness at the passing of someone who had not been able to live up to his city’s expectations of him.

I felt a hand on my arm; it was Angelo.

‘No weapons,’ he said. ‘We are not Pazzi, to shed blood in God’s house. Let the dead rest in peace. If you have arguments to settle, do it somewhere else. This is hallowed ground.’

Gianbattista continued to glare at both of us but the moment passed.

On the cathedral steps, Altobiondi came up to us and put his arm around my shoulder, though he had to stand on tiptoe to do it.

‘Good fellow, Gabriele,’ he said. ‘We must get you some black clothes – Visdomini will organise it.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, trying not to flinch from his touch.

‘I saw the way you faced down that fellow in red. I was proud of you.’

When Epiphany came and went, Christmas was truly over and I returned to work.

‘I didn’t tell you,’ said Angelo. ‘I have a new commission.’

‘Another one?’

I was beginning to worry. Of all the works that had been commissioned since I came to Florence, he had completed only the Pitti Tondo and – almost – the marble David. The bronze for the French
maréchal
had not been cast; of the fifteen statues for Siena, only a handful had been made; and there were the twelve apostles whose marble blocks would be arriving soon.

‘It is a Madonna and Child in marble,’ said Angelo. He had a dreamy expression on his face, the way I remember him looking when he was sketching me for the Davids. I suppose it signalled the beginning of a new conception.

‘For the Signoria?’ I asked.

‘No, this one is for Bruges,’ he said. ‘Two wool merchants came to see my father and one of them – Alexandre – asked for me to sculpt this piece.’

‘Well, you have carved Our Lady before,’ I said, wondering if this one would also be a memory of his mother or might, as the one for Pitti had, bear my face.

‘I think it will be a sort of companion to the Rome Pietà,’ he said. ‘With the child not in her lap but standing in front of her – about to take his first steps into the world and his terrible future. It will be a vertical composition, just as the Rome one was horizontal.’

I loved to hear him talk about his work. I knew he was imagining the new statue in his mind’s eye, even as he described it, and the next stage would be feverish sketching. It was a good thing the marble David was finished.

I wondered when it would be moved out of the workshop; life was going to get a bit cramped there until the house and studio on Borgo Pinti were finished, if we had to accommodate a new full-sized marble too.

‘They’ve set the date of the inquiry for the twenty-fifth of this month,’ said Angelo, as if he had read my mind. ‘Then we will know where David is going and when we can get him there.’

‘The Signoria will not mind that you are starting something else?’ I asked.

‘Not when they see the reaction to my David,’ he said.

He was like that: not boastful but well aware of his powers. And though he didn’t like being observed while he was working, he accepted his due when the sculptures were on public view. He was at that stage when he wanted to put the marble giant behind him and reclassify it as one of the things he had already made and could feel proud of, like the Rome Pietà. But his heart was with the new work.

I worked that day on my own small marble piece: a sleeping child. I had sketched it from memory of my nephews but given it the face of little Davide. Angelo had corrected the drawings to make a shape easier for me to carve and gave me my first block of marble, on which I had drawn the lines of the child’s body.

‘I made a cupid like that once,’ he had said, showing me how to get the curving lines to flow to make the statue more lifelike.

I would dearly have loved to sketch my own son or at least see him but all that had stopped when I had become a false Medicean. Antonello de’ Altobiondi regarded me as his friend now but I never saw Davide, who would be two next month.

I started my first tentative blows with the chisel. I knew that Clarice had become pregnant with another child that she had lost: Altobiondi had worn a black rosette for a few months at that time. And now I knew, through Grazia and the women’s network, that she was about to have another. Davide would have a little sister or brother in time for his birthday. I hoped it would be another boy for him to grow up with and that it would look just like his father so that Altobiondi would transfer his affections to the new child and not caress my son so much, but I knew that was wicked of me.

The first time I went back to the
frateschi
after Piero’s Mass in the cathedral, Gianbattista came up and shook my hand.

‘I am sorry for what I said,’ he began. ‘I realise that you were doing what you had to, to deceive the pro-Mediceans. Daniele tells me that I was mistaken not to trust you.’

I bowed stiffly. I didn’t have to tell him that I had found all his behaviour objectionable, especially his scarlet clothes at what had been almost like a funeral.

‘Say that you forgive me and we can be friends again,’ he said.

‘We have never stopped being friends as far as I am concerned,’ I said.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Simonetta would never forgive me if I drove you away from our house.’

I hid my surprise; the lovely Simonetta had spoken to her brother about me?

‘But tell us what the
compagnacci
are saying about Piero’s death,’ he went on. ‘They must be putting their faith in the family members in Rome now.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They were already in contact with the Cardinal and Giulio. And I think in a strange way the death of Piero frees them to deal with his brother and cousin. They know how unpopular Piero was in the city and can make a fresh start with their new candidates for ruler.’

‘The Cardinal will never be ruler in Florence,’ said Daniele. ‘Not now we have a permanent gonfaloniere. The Republic wouldn’t stand for it.’

‘You and I know that,’ I said, ‘but the Medicean party will never believe it. Not until all the family are in their graves.’

‘Maybe we should make that the case,’ said Daniele.

He had always seemed the most bloodthirsty among us but I couldn’t believe he meant that.

‘Piero left a young son and daughter,’ I said quietly.

‘Sometimes the only way to secure peace is to get rid of the causes of war,’ he said.

I didn’t want to think of two little children as a ‘cause of war’. And it still left the Cardinal, his brother in Venice, his cousin Giulio and a whole other second branch of the family descended from Lorenzo’s great-uncle, for whom he was named. (I had become a bit of an expert on the de’ Medici family tree through my connection with de’ Altobiondi.)

‘Well, we don’t have to think about assassinating the whole family,’ said Gianbattista. ‘It will be sufficient to stop any plot to bring the Cardinal or any other de’ Medici back into the city. And Gabriele’s our man for that. This time we’ll know well in advance and our men will be in place. No one is ever going to open a gate to that family again.’

At that moment I just wished that someone would and that the coming battle would be over. I was tired of waiting for it to happen and weary of my life as a spy. But until that moment I had never wondered what would happen to me afterwards. For the first time, I realised that the danger I was in now would be much worse when my disguise was revealed – whether the de’ Medici won or not.

Chapter Eighteen

The City Decides

The flower of Florentine artists was assembled in the Opera del Duomo – and a fair few weeds in my opinion. As Angelo had told me, he wasn’t invited to be part of this grand
practica
to decide where his statue would be placed in the city and, of course, I couldn’t be expected to be one of the people who decided its location, as a lowly artist’s model, even though it was my face and figure that would soon be displayed for every citizen to see.

But we were not without friends to be part of the discussion. The Sangallo brothers were there and Angelo’s old friend the painter, Francesco Granacci, and since it was a public hearing we could be present in the chamber. Very little work was done in the workshop coming up to that chilly grey day, as the fate of the statue which had been part of our lives for two and a half years was to be decided.

‘And why should da Vinci have any say in the matter?’ Angelo fretted, unnecessarily polishing David’s toes for the umpteenth time. ‘Or Ghirlandaio’s brother for that matter?’

It was true that both Leonardo da Vinci and Davide Ghirlandaio, the brother of Angelo’s first master, had been invited to take part in the deliberations.

January 25th, a whole month after Christmas Day, dawned at last and Angelo was up even earlier than usual. There was time for no more than a quick splash under the water pump and for me a crust of bread grabbed from the kitchen. But I knew we would be much too early and made my brother stop at Gandini’s, where I got a much tastier pastry.

I tucked another in reserve inside my finest Medicean jerkin of black velvet.

‘How can you think of food on a day like this?’ demanded Angelo, looking at me with distaste.

‘Because I know I will be hungry if I don’t,’ I said.

He barked with laughter. ‘You do me good, Gabriele,’ he said. ‘You remind me of my younger, better, self.’

Though I knew he had never had an appetite like mine – not for anything. He was abstemious about everything except work, for which he was a glutton.

It was strange to go to the Opera del Duomo and not into our workshop but into a large formal room where I had never been. Early as the hour was, there were some people already present, but we were in good enough time to get front row seats.

The Herald led the others in – nearly thirty of them – and, when everyone had settled down, two of the Operai read out a list of rules for making contributions to the debate.

At last the Herald – Francesco Filareti – set out what he saw as the two options. (‘As if it was up to him,’ whispered Angelo. ‘Pompous ass.’)

‘As I see it,’ said Francesco, ‘we can put the David either where the Judith is now, outside the Palazzo della Signoria, or we can put it in the courtyard where Donatello’s David stands. The backward-thrusting leg of that bronze is faulty and the new David is better but myself I favour Judith’s position.’