David (33 page)

What I had seen and done and heard that night would stay with me for ever. But somehow or other, the terrible fate in store for Clarice and her sons had been avoided. Suddenly, I was shaking in all my limbs. My throat was sore and my whole body ached. I felt like an ancient man with the ague (and, of course, now I know what that feels like!).

It took me some minutes to steady my breathing and to be capable of walking again. Only a few hundred yards behind me, the officials would be examining Altobiondi’s corpse.

What could the future possibly hold for me or for any of the people who had been in Clarice’s chamber that night? I couldn’t think beyond getting to Leone’s house. Wearily, I heaved myself off the parapet and staggered onward into the Borgo Santo Spirito. I was glad that the streets were empty and no one greeted me by calling out the name of the statue that night.

I made my way towards the bulk of the great church where my brother had once cut up dead bodies. It seemed eerily appropriate on that night of carnage.

Leone’s house was in an alley near the church; I rapped on his door and was never so pleased to see anyone as when he opened it himself. He looked appalled at the sight of me – in fact, it took him a few moments to recognise me.

‘Gabriele, is that you?’

‘More or less,’ I said. ‘Can I come in?’

I almost fell through the doorway and just managed to get myself into a chair before I collapsed. Leone bolted the door and fetched some wine and a bowl of warm water.

‘Do you want something to eat?’ he asked, bathing my cuts and bruises.

I drank eagerly but the wine stung my throat.

‘I’m very hungry,’ I said,  ‘but I’ve been half strangled. I don’t know how much I could manage.’

‘Who nearly strangled you?’ he asked, bustling about sousing bread in some milk.

I supped it down like a two-year-old.

‘Altobiondi,’ I said.

The city was in chaos for several days while I lay low at Leone’s. When I first woke up in his house, I had lost an entire day. The physical injuries and the shock of seeing Clarice kill her husband in front of our son combined to shut my senses down into a deep sleep that lasted twenty-four hours.

I awoke still stiff and sore but rested in my body. I was anxious to know what had been happening and went in search of news and food. Leone was in his kitchen.

‘Ah, at last,’ he said when he saw me. ‘I thought you would never wake!’

‘Is there anything to eat?’ I said.

‘Your throat is better then?’ he asked, fetching bread and honey and a cup of wine.

‘Still a bit tender,’ I said, massaging my neck. ‘But I’ll manage. I feel as hollow as a cast bronze.’

‘Not a man of marble, then.’

‘All too mortal, I’m afraid.’

‘Can you tell me now what happened?’ he asked. ‘I could make very little of that jumble of words when you turned up the night before last.’

That was when I knew I had lost a day.

I told him everything I could remember, even though it meant admitting my relation to Clarice and the boy.

‘It was good of Grazia to warn you,’ he said.

‘How is she?’ I asked. ‘Have you seen her? I am confused about the days. Did you go to your studio yesterday?’

‘Yes, though it was not easy getting through the city. The piazza is stained with blood and there are armed men on every street corner.’

‘Did you see the statue? Is it safe? And was there any sign of Michelangelo?’

He held up his hands. ‘I haven’t answered you about Grazia yet,’ he said. ‘I did eventually get to the Visdomini house and it was in an uproar. Ser Visdomini had been arrested for causing an affray. His wife was in a terrible state. Grazia was trying to calm everything down and keep the household running.’

‘Did she ask about me?’

‘I told her you were with me and she was relieved. You are lucky that she cares so much.’

I sensed rebuke in his words. I knew Leone did not think I had treated Grazia well; and privately I agreed with him.

‘I’m glad she is all right. What is the rest of the news in the city?’

‘Well, the statue is unharmed. It is being guarded again. And Michelangelo is there with it – he doesn’t leave it night or day, they say.’

‘He must be worried about me too. Could you take him a message from me?’

Leone nodded.

‘What are they saying about Altobiondi?’

‘That he was badly wounded in the piazza and just managed to reach home before he died.’

‘Is there any news about Clarice or little Davide?’

He shook his head.

But it wasn’t long before I heard about them. I had a visitor after Leone left. I was at first scared to open the door but the knock had been so faint that I did not think it would be an officer I saw when I lifted the latch.

It was Simonetta; she had come across the river on her own, in spite of all the dangers in the city, to find me at the painter’s house.

I clasped her hand, really pleased to see her.

‘Tell me what’s been going on, please. I’ve been going mad, hiding out here and not knowing. How is Clarice? And the boy?’

‘She was still frantic when the Watch came but they understood that to be only natural,’ she said. ‘They took the body away and the funeral will be tomorrow. Since then she has been calmer – her women tell me she has been sleeping a lot.’

‘Me too,’ I said. ‘And Davide?’

‘I have been each day to see him,’ she said. ‘He is recovering well. I think perhaps small children don’t always remember the thing that has frightened them.’

‘I do hope so,’ I said. ‘It was a thing of nightmare.’

‘Remember he didn’t see his mother strike the blow,’ said Simonetta softly. ‘Perhaps in time he will believe what everyone else does – that his father was killed in a fight in the piazza.’

Hadn’t she heard Altobiondi say he was not Davide’s father? Or was she just being tactful?

‘It is good of you to go and see them,’ I said. ‘Will you let Clarice know where I am? I dare not go near the Palazzo Altobiondi until after its master is in the ground.’

‘You need clean clothes,’ she said, looking at me. ‘Yours are all stained with blood.’

‘I have nothing to change into here,’ I said, shuddering as I remembered the fountain of blood pulsing from Altobiondi’s neck. ‘But Leone is going to see my brother the sculptor today. He will bring me some.’

‘It’s best not to be seen in the street till you can burn these,’ she said, touching my sleeve.

Then she sat in a chair and put her face in her hands. I realised how much she had been through in these last days and she probably hadn’t slept. Davide might forget what had happened that night, but she had seen it all.

Leone did bring me fresh clothes but they were the now hated livery of the pro-Mediceans. Still, Angelo had chosen the black suit given to me after Piero’s death so I looked sober enough. But I did not dare attend Altobiondi’s funeral in the cathedral.

Suppose he had told his friends – those that weren’t still in the Stinche – about me and Clarice? They might take revenge on me for that even if they didn’t suspect me of any involvement in his death.

But I did go to the square and see my likeness peering out from his wooden castle.

The worst of the bloodstains had been scrubbed from the terracotta tiles of the piazza, but to me the square still rang with screams and the clash of steel on steel. More than before I wanted to leave the city. Yet I still had so much unfinished business there.

The guards didn’t recognise me in my black velvet but Angelo poked his head out from the scaffolding when he heard my voice.

‘Gabriele!’

He jumped down and hugged me to his chest.

‘I am glad to see you well,’ he said. ‘Come up.’

I was too finely dressed to work on the statue but I could see he had managed to make some progress on his own. No one knew the details of that marble as well as my brother and I did.

‘I see you can use your arm again,’ I said.

He held it out and flexed the muscles in his forearm.

‘You and Antonio did a good job,’ he said. ‘And no one ever knew I had been hurt. I shall always be grateful for that.’

‘I’m sorry I left you when the battle broke out,’ I said, suddenly feeling tears building up in my eyes.

‘Don’t worry. Leone explained it all to me. He’s a good man, that painter.’ Angelo patted my arm. ‘You have nothing to reproach yourself with.’

‘If only that were true. But I see you are not at the funeral.’

‘I had no reason to go,’ he said.  ‘Altobiondi was no friend of mine. From everything you have told me the world is well rid of him. It was you I was worried about.’

‘I seem to have got away with it,’ I said.

‘Got away with what? From what I heard you did nothing except defend yourself and that is not a crime, even in this lawless city.’

‘No one must ever know it was Clarice,’ I said quietly. ‘I would take the blame if anyone ever said she had done it.’

‘Well, let’s hope it never comes to that,’ said Angelo.

But we had reckoned without Andrea Visdomini.

Chapter Twenty-two

I Once Was What You Are

I was once again staying at Lodovico’s house now that the city was calming down. Even Angelo came back to sleep there since the statue was under constant guard. I hadn’t dared to be seen at Clarice’s house and nor did I show my face at Visdomini’s. He could think me dead in the fray if he liked. I knew he had been released from prison but I never expected to see him again.

I was very careful about being seen in the city. Angelo had given me some time off and the only time I went out in public was to Donato’s funeral, which took place the day after Altobiondi’s, in the church of Santa Maria Novella.

It was Angelo’s favourite church in the city and yet I had never been in it. I knelt, feeling full of remorse as the coffin was borne in. Donato’s parents and brother followed behind, Giulio with his arm in a sling.

If I hadn’t been fighting with Altobiondi, the brothers would not have come to my rescue. But who was to say they would have survived that night unscathed without my involvement?

My eyes were drawn back again and again to the fresco of the Trinity on the left-hand wall of the nave. My neighbour in the pew told me it was by that same ‘Big Tom’ who painted the Adam and Eve I had so admired in the church south of the river. That was the day Angelo had talked to me about being republican and the importance in this city of knowing what side you were on. Those days seemed impossibly lost and far away now.

Under this painting was another of a skeleton lying in its grave, with the inscription:
I once was what you are and what I am you also will be
. It made me shiver. Donato was well on his way to becoming what the skeleton was. I was aware of my strong bones inside my limbs and the shape of my own skull. Big Tom was right and he too had been long in his grave and was like the painted skeleton now.

After the funeral, Giulio came up to speak to me.

‘I’m glad Altobiondi got what he deserved,’ he said. ‘You saved me a job. He was the one who killed my brother and cut my arm to the bone.’