The Medici Boy (13 page)

Di Jacopo was dragged from the ass but he immediately collapsed. The two guards got him to his feet and shook him till he came around and then held him up by main force. They seemed uncertain what to do next, so one of them went to consult Buondelmonti.

Buondelmonti left his body of officials and went to consult with the Prior and after a long moment the matter was decided. It was time for the central event. One guard trussed di Jacopo’s arms behind his back and the other guard placed a halter around his neck. They dragged him up the stairs to the platform and stood on either side of him and waited while once again, though in shorter form, Buondelmonti read out the charges. No one listened. All attention was fixed upon di Jacopo, who stood on the black box beneath the gibbet, his head bowed, his lips moving.

The drum rolled. A guard adjusted the noose, tightened it, and then stood down. And—a great wonder—the sun dipped behind a cloud and then slowly reemerged.

The crowd pressed forward. Di Jacopo lifted his head and tried to say something but his voice was lost in the general noise. He struggled against the ropes around his hands. The drum roll ceased and there was a keen silence.

Some one of the watchers shouted “Jesus! Jesus!” and the cry was taken up by others and the Savior’s name rang along the city walls and echoed off across the Arno. It was as if they were calling out for Jesus because di Jacopo could not. No one knew why this was happening.

The shouting stopped and, in the silence that followed, the signal was given, the drum rolled again, and all at once the black box was jerked from beneath his feet. There was a short barking sound and di Jacopo’s body plunged forward and down. His head snapped back and his legs flailed out wildly. How could there be any life left in him? Finally his legs stopped flailing and his body twitched and his head hung to the side at an impossible angle. Still, he appeared to be breathing. A man nearby, deep in his wine, shouted out, “Die! Die!” but the cry was not taken up. Everyone was concentrated, waiting for the precise moment of death, as if the devil himself might appear to lead off a new soul to hell. The moment was long in coming.

At last it seemed he was dead. A guard stepped forward and hooked an iron collar about di Jacopo’s neck and attached it to the gibbet. This was a precaution to ensure that when the fire took the body it would not fall among the ashes before it was thoroughly burned. The iron collar would hold him upright, more or less, until what remained of him fell to pieces. As the collar was attached the hanging body twitched and the crowd gasped. Di Jacopo was not yet dead. Still, he was dead enough to proceed.

There was the roll of drums and the guards lit their torches. Everyone tensed with anticipation. At four different corners the torches were touched to the straw and wood and at once the flames shot high about the platform. At last, after all this calling on Jesus and the high solemnity of the hanging, here was what they had come to see: the sodomite burning at the stake, justice done, and virtue restored to the Christian community of souls.

A cheer went up from the crowd. “Death to all sodomites,” someone shouted and the cry was repeated amid much laughter and cheering.

Off to the side I could see the little boy in red with his face buried in the guard’s tunic. He was weeping uncontrollably and the guard, pretending not to notice, nonetheless patted the boy’s back in a show of comfort.

After its first flaring the fire burned slowly, but a sudden wind came up and turned the fire away from the body. The crowd groaned, but then the wind shifted and the straw at di Jacopo’s feet caught fire, and then his hair, and he stood chained to the pillar like a human torch.

I turned away, sick at my stomach, and fought a passage through the crowd. I thought then, yes, the thing most feared in secret always comes to pass, though I did not know what that might mean for me.

The body was a living flame. They laughed. They shouted. They heaped fresh wood upon the fire and stoked it well so he would burn and burn. I stood and watched. When the flesh of his face began to peel away, they threw stones to see if they could dislodge the head. But the head would not give way and so they let fly chunks of wood to make the arms fall off. Bit by bit the right arm gave way and fell into the fire. A cheer went up and they doubled their efforts until the left arm too gave way. It was a merry game.

They shouted and they danced and they cheered until the body was ashes and they carted it off to the Arno.

The joy of it all. The stink of it. It was a vision of hell.

* * *

D
O YOU WONDER
that I feared for Donatello?

Attenzione
! It is ill done to think that in the middle of my life—a married man with children—I suddenly became a sodomite. I did at certain times think it myself, because I loved him at those times more than I loved my wife and my sons and it hurts even now to say it. But here is the hard truth: I loved him with a cold, keen love. It was of the heart and head only. In time you yourself may judge with what honesty I speak.

1430

CHAPTER
15

I
T WAS ONE
of those sweltering days in June when the young Agnolo—then in his sixteenth year—first entered the life of my master Donatello.

The sky was a hard blue, the sunlight so relentless that it struck the marble and dazzled the eye and left you for the moment blind. The birds were silent, the cats had disappeared, the whole city seemed to be at sleep. It was hot, it was sweltering, and we had been at work since dawn. Both of the great doors stood full open—the delivery door from the Via Santa Reparata and the door to the workyard—but dust hung heavy in the air and not the slighest breeze stirred. No one spoke. We worked in our undershirts, barefoot, with no stockings, tired in the heat and ill disposed one to another. We were all nervous at our work because Donatello was expecting a visit from my lord Cosimo.

Cosimo de’ Medici was a man of great and unfathomable mystery. He spoke little and listened much, he was a man of enormous wealth who lived—in public, at least—with notable modesty. He was open handed and even profligate with his gold but he could be frugal as well, and even mean. I had observed him closely over the years. He studied politeness and generosity and, apart from his magnificent clothes, he was without ostentation. He preferred a donkey to a horse for daily use and he went about with but a single servant. He loved the busy traffic of florins and was known to have said, “Even if I could wave a magic wand and create money, I would continue to be a banker.” So it was not just the money he loved. He was a man of middle age—younger than Donatello, who was forty-four—but he looked older, perhaps because his mind was much on death. Donatello told me once that Cosimo had had a twin brother Damiano who died at birth and thus they were truly Cosmas and Damian, united in life and death, as in the Litany of the Saints. For this reason—the lost brother—he was ever mindful of dying and of the life to come. He belonged to a pious confraternity that met together for prayer and penance, and later in his life, for the sake of his soul, he would spend a vast fortune on the monastery of San Marco. And yet in every other way he was the most worldly of men. He had a particular love for Donatello who loved him much in return.

My master Donato was at this time at work on the Santa Croce tabernacle that shows the angel Gabriel announcing to the Virgin that she is to be the Mother of God. It is a relief in sandstone, generously gilded, and has the look of two fully rounded statues. In truth it seems not so much two statues as the living presence of the angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary. She is a creature of supreme beauty and intelligence and, despite her initial fright, she accepts what must be. Caterina Bardi, Donatello’s niece, posed for the Virgin Mary, and—let me say it once again—at the top of the tabernacle and teetering above it on the right and left are my two boys, Donato Michele and Franco Alessandro, holding one another in fear of the height.

Agnolo had once again come to the
bottega
to ask for money, not because his soldier had thrown him over but because he got bored during the day and found pleasure in causing me discomfort. In truth he had called here several times before and on this day chance alone brought him to Donatello’s notice.

Agnolo appeared at the open door of the
bottega
, leaned in—shy—and called to Pagno di Lapo who was sharpening chisels near the door, asking that he call me away from work for only a moment.

“Tell him his brother has a message for him,” he said.

Pagno came and stood by me where I attended Donatello as he cut in details of the angel’s wings for his Annunciation. When at last Donatello stood back and studied the effect of his chisel work, Pagno took that as permission to speak to me.

“Your brother is here,” he said softly. “He has a message.”

I looked across the room at Agnolo, who stood at the doorpost, smiling, his straw hat clutched in his hands. He looked up at me and scuffed one foot against the other. He was wearing only a shirt and those strapped boots the soldier had given him. I made a sign that he should wait there.

“I thought you said you didn’t have a brother,” Donatello said and continued to study his work.

“He’s not my brother.”

Donatello looked from his angel to me, and seeing I was uneasy, he cast a glance at the door where Agnolo continued to wait. His glance lasted for some time.

“He doesn’t look like you.”

“He’s not my brother.”

He looked at me again, comparing us. “He has yellow hair and a broad forehead and eyes that . . . he is very comely.”

I said nothing. My master Donatello was forty-four years old and was still taken with comely youths. There was nothing I could say.

He put down his chisel and gave me all his attention.

“What is he called?”

“Agnolo. Agnolo Mattei.”

“So he is your half-brother?”

“He is no brother of mine at all. Neither his father nor his mother was my father or mother.” I spoke with some heat. “My father was a merchant. My mother was the merchant’s slave. She died at my birth and I was forced to live my early years with Matteo and his wife. This Agnolo is their son. He is not my brother.”

Donatello had rarely heard me speak with passion and never with such anger.

“He only wants money,” I said.

“Then we must give him some.”

He put down his chisel and went to the rope that hung from the ceiling and lowered the basket with the money in it. There was a scattering of
piccioli
, some silver florins, and a single gold florin. He took out several
piccioli
, hesitated a moment, and then put them back and took out a silver florin, a large sum, enough for a man to live on for weeks.

“No,” I said. I spoke in anger still.

Donatello paused, thinking, and then he raised the basket and tied off the rope. “I think so,” he said.

As Donatello approached him Agnolo bowed his head, a quick jerky movement, and then bowed once more, solemnly. Donatello smiled at him and Agnolo returned the smile, his white teeth flashing, his eyes darting from Donatello’s face to my own and then back to Donatello.

“You are called Agnolo Mattei?”

“I am Luca’s brother.”

“Then you’re mine as well.”

“He’s not my brother,” I said.

“Peace, peace,” Donatello said. And to Agnolo he said, “Have you been in the city long?”

“A year, almost.”

“Then you have a place to live.”

Agnolo simpered and said nothing.

“And friends.”

Agnolo looked down at his boots.

“Those are very handsome boots.”

“They were a gift.”

“A handsome gift.”

There was a silence then and I did nothing to make it easier.

“I came to see Luca,” Agnolo said.

“I could not run my shop without Luca. He is greatly valued here.”

There was another silence.

“I’ve seen you before,” Agnolo said. “In the Mercato.”

“Yes.”

“And on the Ponte Vecchio. On the far side.”

“I live there. With Michele di Bartolomeo.”

“Yes.”

“Have you seen him as well?”

What were they playing at, I wondered? This seemed less a first meeting than a deliberate flirtation. It was clear that Agnolo was prepared to spend the afternoon in this way and I worried that Donatello was also.

“He only wants money,” I said.

“Then you must give him some,” Donatello said and handed me the silver florin. He nodded to Agnolo and went back to his work.

I gave Agnolo the coin and a hard look along with it. I waited until I thought Donatello could not hear me.

“You have no shame,” I said.

“He likes me. I can tell.”

“He only gave you the money because of me.”

“But he gave it.”

“You must never come here again. This is where I work. Don’t come here!” My voice had risen in anger and the others had begun to cast glances at me.

Pagno laughed silently and shook his head.

I turned back to Agnolo but he had disappeared. I stepped out into the street and there he was on his way to the Mercato, tossing his coin in the air and catching it, careless, defiant.