David (34 page)

‘Not me,’ I said, but Giulio just patted me on the elbow.

Those days I constantly took out my hoard of money from under my mattress and counted it. By the time the David would be ready to shed its wooden castle, I wanted to be ready to go home.

It was Gismondo who alerted me to the new danger I was in.

He came home out of breath. ‘Quick, Gabriele, you’d better hide yourself. The Watch are coming to arrest you.’

‘What for?’ I asked. I couldn’t believe they were catching up with me so many days after the battle.

‘The murder of Antonello de’ Altobiondi,’ said Gismondo.

I didn’t stop to find out more. I took my money, bundled up some clothes and made my escape through the back yard, with Gismondo hurrying me the whole time.

‘Tell Angelo I’ve gone back to Leone’s,’ I told him.

I took a long detour through the maze of little streets in Santa Croce and crossed the river by the Ponte alle Grazie. There was no sound of running feet behind me.

My heart was heavy at the thought of having to go back into hiding. I was sick of this hot and sticky city, with its violence and its secrets, its factions and its vendettas.

I wanted to be up in the clean air of my hilltop village, cutting stone by day and cuddling my girl at night. But if I was to survive to live that life I had to lie low now.

Leone was shocked to see me again so soon and – something else – he seemed . . . embarrassed. I couldn’t think why. But he welcomed me warmly enough, especially when I told him I was on the run from the city Watch. I used some of my money to send out for a roast chicken and a big carafe of wine. I didn’t want to abuse the painter’s hospitality.

We were picking over the chicken bones when there came a thunderous knocking at the door.

Leone looked at me in alarm. I gathered up my things and was about to make a run for it when I heard a familiar voice calling Leone’s name.

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘It’s my brother.’

Angelo came in like a bear; he had run all the way from the piazza as soon as he heard the news. Leone poured him a cup of wine and he tossed it back in one gulp.

‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘You heard what’s happened?’

‘Only that the Watch want me for Altobiondi’s murder,’ I said. ‘Gismondo told me.’

‘Well, it seems Visdomini was not happy with the explanation given out for his friend’s death. He has witnesses who saw you fighting in the square and another who will swear you were in Altobiondi’s palazzo the moment he died.’

I groaned. Who could have seen me there? One of the women? I couldn’t have told anyone who had been there that night apart from Clarice and Simonetta.

‘But the worst thing is that Visdomini is saying there is no way a man, however devoted to his wife, can struggle back to die in his own house when his throat has been cut. He is having the body dug up.’

We were silent. The game was up. Once it was general knowledge how Altobiondi had died, the suspects would be those people who were in the chamber at the time. Better they should think it was me than know it was Clarice. Davide could not lose another parent.

Angelo could see what I intended to do.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I won’t have it.’

‘What else can I do?’ I said. But I felt sick. I had been so close to escaping the city.

‘We shall get you out,’ said Angelo. ‘And we’ll say you died of your wounds. Your reputation will be damaged but you will survive.’

At least he hadn’t told me to betray Clarice to the authorities.

There was another pounding at the door. This time Leone cautiously lifted the latch and peered out. He opened the door wide and let in Gismondo.

‘You’re still here,’ Angelo’s warlike brother said to me. ‘I hoped you might have left by now. They’ve put a guard on every city gate. Everyone’s been told to stop Gabriele from escaping.’

‘And everyone knows what he looks like,’ said Leone. ‘Everyone in the city has seen his likeness.’

‘Then we must change it,’ said Angelo.

He looked at me very seriously. I didn’t know what he was going to do, at least not straight away, but I trusted him with my life.

And then he smashed his fist into my face.

When I came to, I could hardly see. Angelo was sitting with his head in his hands and Leone was soaking strips of linen in cold water and laying them over my face. It eased the pain a little but I knew I would soon have two dramatic black eyes. My nose throbbed. I had felt it break and I guessed it had swollen to twice its usual size – I must look a sight.

Gismondo was bouncing about the room in a state of high excitement.

‘You certainly don’t look like the statue any more,’ he said. ‘This might work.’

Angelo groaned. ‘I’m sorry, Gabriele,’ he said coming and putting his arm round my shoulder. ‘It was the only way. But I know how much pain you are in – it was what Torrigiani did to me all those years ago.’

I couldn’t speak at first for the shock and the pain. I looked into Angelo’s worried face and saw his own broken nose.

‘Now we really shall look like brothers,’ I mumbled.

‘My brave boy,’ he said. ‘It hurts me to destroy something beautiful. I am in the business of making such things – not breaking them.’

‘What’s the plan?’ asked Leone. ‘He is not fit to travel like this.’

‘No,’ said Angelo. ‘Will you keep him safe here? We’ll go back and spread the rumour that Gabriele died of his wounds sustained in the piazza a week ago.’

I tried to think how many people had seen me since then.

‘I went to Donato’s funeral,’ I managed to say.

‘I shall visit his family,’ said Angelo, ‘and ask them to keep quiet about that.’

‘His brother Giulio thinks I did it anyway,’ I said. ‘He sort of congratulated me. I don’t think he’ll hand me over to the Watch.’

‘You will stay here till your new injuries have healed,’ said Angelo. ‘And then we’ll get you out of the city with my father’s carter.’

And that’s what happened. I still remember the pain of my broken nose – the difficulty in breathing which remains with me to this day. They hacked at my hair with a kitchen knife till all my curls were shorn and I didn’t shave for nearly two weeks.

So it was a wretched figure who climbed into the cart the day I left Florence for good. I looked like a prizefighter with my battered nose, the yellowish green remains of the bruising round my eyes, my shorn head and my bristly face. I wore a working man’s clothes, after a lot of deliberation. Was Gabriele better known in the city as Angelo’s stone-carver assistant or as a pro-Medicean dandy?

They decided that it was the association with the
compagnacci
that I had better avoid and they took all my fine clothing away to burn it. I let it go without regret.

During my period of convalescence, Grazia had come to sit with me several times and Simonetta once or twice. They both wept over my changed appearance.

I begged them both, separately, to forgive me for any trouble I had got them into. I shall never forget that the grave and composed Simonetta had felled Altobiondi with one of his own chairs. And Grazia had come to warn me that the man knew of my past with Clarice.

As I got ready to leave the city, I remembered how I had arrived in it three and a half years ago. I had been so innocent and callow; that very first night I had ended up in Clarice’s bed. How little I had understood about the ways of the world then. And I had no idea of what the consequences of that first night would be.

‘Ready?’ asked Leone.

‘As ready as I’ll ever be,’ I said. My voice had changed since Angelo’s assault; it now sounded a bit nasal, even to me.

Angelo had already come to say goodbye. He thought it better not to accompany me because of our well-known association.

Since the day he had broken my nose, he had worn black, not because he mourned my lost looks, but in support of the rumour that I had died. I believe the whole of Lodovico’s household did it and so high was my brother’s reputation in the city, because of the marble Giant, that his feigned grief was believed.

It was weird to think that people believed I was dead. And in a way I was. My old self had died anyway – the Gabriele who was so carefree and unworldly.

I climbed aboard the cart, which had come into the city with a load of fresh vegetables from Lodovico’s farm. As well as me, it was taking back some cooking pots and lengths of cloth from the Buonarrotis’ shop. I settled myself down as comfortably as I could and faced the journey to the gate in the north-east of the city.

As far as the carter was concerned, I was a farmhand from the country near Pisa, who was seeking work away from the troubles in that region; Lodovico had hired me to work on his own farm in Settignano and my name was Michele. That was all he needed to know and I wasn’t inclined to chat to him on the journey.

‘Halt!’ cried the guards on the gate.

I could feel my heart thudding against my chest. If they stopped us now and recognised me, I would be taken back into the city and thrown into the Stinche. If found guilty of  Altobiondi’s death – as I had no doubt I would be – they would take me into the courtyard of the Bargello and cut off my head with no more hesitation than if I were a chicken destined for the dining-table.

My mouth was dry. Vanni, the carter, let them examine the sacks containing cloth and pots. I stayed sitting hunched up, an old sack over my shoulders, so that my real height could not be guessed.

‘Who’s this?’ asked one of the guards.

‘Michele,’ said the carter.

‘Michele what?’

The carter looked at me and shrugged.

‘Michele Poggi,’ I croaked.

‘He’s hired to work on a farm in Settignano,’ said Vanni. ‘I’ve to take him to the Buonarroti place.’

The guard raised his torch to look at my face.

‘Ugly brute, isn’t he?’ he said and waved us through.

And so I left the city I had had such high hopes of – to be a virtual exile for the rest of my life.

1564

I got the bundle of letters out of my chest and spread them on the table. Angelo was a great letter writer. The most recent had been written only a few months ago. The oldest one that had survived came to me in October, three months after I had left the city.

My dear Gabriele,