The Medici Boy (22 page)

T
HE NEW YEAR
came on cold, there was ice in the street, and for a few days snow pushed hard against every door. The
bottega
was freezing. The smell of wet wool and wet stone mingled with the smell of burning wood so that the air tasted of vinegar and the smoke stung our eyes. It was a relief to duck out into the snow and draw a breath of fresh air.

Donatello and Agnolo huddled by a brazier in the posing section. Agnolo posed for him without clothes and without complaint and Donatello worked rapidly and surely, sketching him in the pose of the destroyed
bozzetto
, his left hand on his hip, his right hand clutching the sword and his left foot resting on Goliath’s severed head, and all of it saying, Look at me.

“You can rest in a minute,” Donatello said. “Don’t move until I tell you.”

But Agnolo needed no indulgence. He was present in mind as well as body and he assumed the pose Donatello asked and held it as long as there was need. He had become a good model.

Donatello moved on to the
bozzetto
and in less time than seemed possible he constructed a wooden core and, with wires and rods and clay, he roughed out a scale model of David triumphing over the fallen Goliath. He worked with economy and speed and great satisfaction.

He was pleased with Agnolo and he had good reason. At first light each morning Agnolo was at the
bottega
and ready for work. He never complained. He expressed gratitude for the small gifts Donatello gave him—a cap of rabbit fur, a set of woolen gloves—and he never asked for extra money. He got on well with the apprentices whose room he shared and at the end of each day he offered to tidy Donatello’s work space, though he knew that was my job and I would relinquish it to no one. It appeared that Agnolo had given over the whim of becoming a sculptor and had resigned himself to the glory of living forever in Donatello’s bronze.

“I could be of help,” he said.

“You help by posing well,” Donatello said.

“But there are many other things I could do.” He was clever enough to pretend he meant no more than the words he said.

“You do enough,” Donatello said. “We have an agreement. We must not go outside its limits.”

“But I . . .”

“Enough,” Donatello said, and I could see that Agnolo would have to work very hard to break down this new unyielding attitude.

At the end of January the weather broke momentarily and our spirits rose. Work was proceeding well for all of us and there was the false feeling that the hardships of winter were past. At just this time I discovered that Agnolo’s thoughts had been inclined toward Caterina, and his thoughts—as always—had led to action and thus, to my horror, he had lain with her. I learned this from Michelozzo who had learned it from Pagno di Lapo.

“I have spoken to her, firmly,” Michelozzo said, “and you must speak to Agnolo.”

I thought of Caterina and that boy at play with her. I hoped she knew of the
daucus carota
and its preventive powers, since a child by Agnolo was not to be thought upon.

“Do you hear?”

“Agnolo is a fool,” I said. “And so is Pagno.”

“But Donatello must not know of this. For his own sake. And for Agnolo’s as well.” Michelozzo thought for a minute. “You have never seen him in anger.”

I could not believe he was serious. I had seen Donatello crush the wax head of Saint Louis against his chest and I had watched as he took the hammer to the David
bozzetto
. “I have seen him in anger.”

“He will not suffer betrayal,” Michelozzo said. “Not again.”

I said I would speak to Agnolo as he would have me do. “In a brotherly way.”

Michelozzo smiled his sad, knowing smile.

He was leaving, he said, for Trebbio. Cosimo had appointed him as his official architect and the first order of business was a design for a new villa, indeed for a castello. He was eager to begin work. He would keep me in his heart, he said, along with my master Donatello.

* * *

“I
T WAS BUT
a single time with Caterina,” Agnolo said, looking penitent but then, incapable of restraint, he offered me a huge smile, “and excellent too!”

This is how it was to deal with Agnolo. He lived for the moment. He had no care for the consequences of his actions. He was incapable of understanding danger. It was as if he lacked all sense of right and wrong, of sin and forgiveness, of love and betrayal . . . although, to be sure, he was able to imitate any emotion that was asked or desired. He had the charm of innocent wickedness.

Donatello, I told him, would be enraged. Donatello would throw you out, forever. He listened and nodded. Donatello would be hurt beyond remedy by your betrayal. Here he lowered his eyes and put on the mask of sorrow and penance, as if he understood what it meant to be hurt. He should be a traveling player, I thought, taking on a new character with a new cloak, feigning emotions he did not feel, moving his audience to false tears and vows of repentance. I could find no way through to him.

“Donatello loves you,” I said in anger and frustration. Agnolo smiled. “He should not, but he does. And I will not see him injured in this way.” He listened, wanting more. “Caterina is his niece—not that that matters—what matters is that you have betrayed him.”

He was astonished. “How have I betrayed him?”

I saw for that instant he was sincere. In truth, he did not understand.

“I’ve promised to be here each daybreak and to pose without complaint. I did not take a vow of chastity.”

“You refuse to understand. You’re like a child.”

He gave me a wide smile. “I am a child. Until eighteen.”

He was referring to the laws of the Ufficiali di Onestà who arrested but only rarely prosecuted sodomites beneath the age of eighteen years.

“One day your age will not protect you,” I said, and gave over. It was not possible to make him hear what he did not want to hear.

* * *

F
EBRUARY HAD BEGUN
with a week of fair weather—the snow disappeared, a warm wind blew from the west—and it seemed almost as if spring was about to bloom. We cast off our heavy cloaks and drank deep of the fresh air. Even Donatello seemed to relax. He was well advanced on the core of the life-sized statue. On the next morning he would begin the actual sculpting of the head, but this night when we finished work, and after I had tidied away his tools, Donatello said he would stand us to a tankard of wine. Everyone had left for the day excepting me and Agnolo—and of course Pagno di Lapo who lived in fear he would miss something Donatello might say or do—and we went to the San Giovanni tavern in the Piazza della Signoria. We drank a flagon of wine, watery but sweet, and in good cheer we departed each for home. Agnolo went back to the room he shared with the apprentices but later that night, goaded by the sting of the flesh or perhaps only by the need for excitement, he wandered off to the Via tra Pellicciai—the ill-famed Street of the Furriers—to see what might happen.

The next morning Donatello was early at his sculpting stand. He was in good spirits, ready to work.

“Have you seen the boy?”

I feared to answer and my heart tightened at the thought that of all mornings Agnolo had chosen this one to stay late abed.

Donatello patted the clay with his wet fingers and looked about the
bottega
impatiently.

I looked about as well and saw that the three apprentices who shared the room with Agnolo were all at their tasks. I approached the youngest, Antonio Carpacci, and asked if he knew where Agnolo might be, but Antonio had not seen him that morning. Or the previous night. I dared not tell Donatello this. Caterina, too, knew nothing of him.

The rest of the morning was long and slow and at mid-day Donatello told me to come along, and we walked together in silence down the Via Larga to the Ponte Vecchio and across the bridge to the apartment houses where Donatello’s assistants had their rooms in the Via del Gufo. No one was there, of course, and it was too early in the day to try the Buco and there seemed nothing further we could do.

“Where could he have gone?”

“It may be Pagno would know.”

Donatello shot me a quick look. “Always Pagno,” he said.

“They share confidences,” I said, to defend myself.

“Agnolo does not share,” he said.

We returned to the
bottega
and Donatello approached Pagno at once. I could not hear what they said, but it was clear that Pagno had no idea where Agnolo might be.

The rest of the day was marked by my careful silence and Donatello’s self-control. He left the
bottega
early with orders for me to lock up.

Everyone had finished for the day and I was putting the lock to the door when Agnolo, looking white and exhausted, appeared behind me.

“Let me go in,” he said. “I need to use the privy.”

I unlocked the doors and waited for him outside the privy and after a few moments there he was standing beside me, full of sudden energy and bravado.

“I was arrested,” he said, as if this were some new and wonderful adventure. “I was brought before the clerk of the Onestà.”

I stared at him in disbelief.

“I was in prison for the whole night.”

“In truth, you stink of it,” I said. “You should be proud.”

“They let me go with only a caution.”

“First,” I said, “Donatello must never know of this. “Next, sit down and tell me what happened. In the end, I will tell you what you must do. Now sit.”

Insensible creature that he was, he sat down and poured out his story. He had left the San Giovanni Tavern and returned to his room in the Via del Gufo but none of the apprentices was there and he was bored and feeling lusty and in need of some liveliness, so he went back across the bridge to the Sant’ Andrea Tavern near the Via tra Pellicciai. There an older man of good quality—he had a fur-lined cloak—snatched off his cap and said he would not return it unless Agnolo agreed to service him. My cap and a silver florin, Agnolo had said, and the man responded, the cap now and the florin afterward. They went together down a narrow alley and the man at first fondled Agnolo’s privy parts, and then worked at his own, and when at last he was ready he lowered the flap on the front of his stockings and was scrabbling at Agnolo’s rear, roughly too . . . “Enough,” I said, “so they arrested you.” But he went on and, in short, what happened was this: two police appeared suddenly out of the dark and arrested them—
in actu
, or nearly so. At once the man in the fur-lined cloak claimed it was all a misunderstanding, that he had gone into the alley to relieve himself and this boy, whom he had never seen before, was there relieving himself as well, and the boy had propositioned him while he was making water and he had said no, but the boy had said he would service him for a silver florin, so it was the boy who was at fault. The police led them off to the Bargello and turned them over to the guard at the Onestà who put them in the holding cell until the morning when they went before the clerk to be charged, separately, as sodomites.

I listened fascinated, I confess, but in horror of what would follow.

The clerk of the Onestà, he said, wrote down his name, his age, his home address, his place of work, the name of his parents—“I gave your name, as you are my brother”—and then he asked Agnolo if he wished to confess.

“Was he a fat, fat man?” I asked, “with no chin and white skin all sickly?”

Agnolo thought a moment and said, “He smelled of ginger and ink . . . and piss especially.”

So it was the same clerk, and now he had my name and my true place of employment and my connection to a confessed sodomite. My mind clouded and for a second I thought I would go unconscious. How long was it since I had had a falling fit?

“So I told him this was my first time. And he let me go. With only a warning.”

“Because you are under eighteen.”

“I told him I was fifteen.”

“And you gave them my name. And Donatello’s?”

“They asked where I was employed. I had no choice.”

So it was disaster, worse than I could have guessed. I sat across from Agnolo, my head in my hands, thinking they have my name, they have my name, and this is only the start, this will follow me the rest of my life.

“But I did not name names.”

I looked up at him.

“I did not name Donatello. As a partner.”

“What are you saying?”

“Or you.”

I truly did not understand.

“They want names. They want you to name all your partners in sodomy. You don’t have to tell the truth. You only have to give a name.”

“But you did not mention the name of Donatello.”

“I would never mention Donatello. And besides, he has lost interest in me . . . in that way.”

“You must tell no one you were arrested. Not Donatello, not Pagno, no one.”

“Not even Caterina?”

He was impossible. “No one,” I said.

* * *

T
WO DAYS LATER
the warm weather ended abruptly. Heavy rains blew down from the mountains and cold settled hard upon the city, freezing the mud in the streets and making it a penance to walk from our rooms to the
bottega
. Everyone was impatient. Carving marble outside became impossible, even with the small comfort of a brazier and the limited shelter of the canopy. Everything was damp. Everything smelled of wet stone. Inside, the
bottega
was airless and dark. We worked by rushlights that flickered and went out and so needed constant attention. The
garzoni
complained—softly—that they could not see and they could not breathe and the apprentices went about looking aggrieved and put upon. Caterina and Pagno labored together on the unfinished
tondi
of the Virgin and Child. Only Donatello and Agnolo were in high good spirits.

After his day’s absence in the holding cells of the Bargello, Agnolo returned to the
bottega
and to the posing stand without a word of explanation. He was standing in position when Donatello arrived the next morning. Donatello was startled and pleased, and he offered no rebuke nor any comment whatsoever on Agnolo’s absence. He fell to sculpting the clay head at once.