The Medici Boy (36 page)

“He is in prison. And he is thirty-three.”

“He was uncommonly fair at sixteen,” he said.

“I thought at that time that he was . . . special to you. You seemed always to have a smile and a good word for him and more than once I saw you giving him money.”

He said nothing for a while, merely toying with the spoon in his empty bowl. “Yes, I purchased him. More than once. I was but twenty-two years of age, and curious. And as I said, he was very fair at sixteen.” There came into his face the flicker of a smile.

I was astounded. Here was Pagno who was so concerned about sin when we went whoring and yet now he calmly admitted to having purchased the sad favors of a wanton boy and seemed to think it a small thing and no sin at all.

“And was that not sin?”

“Oh yes. And I knew it at the time. But it is a common sin among men our age who cannot afford to marry and whose blood is up and who do not frequent the brothels.”

“But it is a better sin, and more wholesome, to fuck a woman.”

He turned away from the raw edge of my language.

“It is what God intended,” I said.

“God intended charity and justice, only that. But he understands our weakness, as you yourself say.”

For some reason I was deeply moved by what he said—only charity and justice—and so I made light of his words. I pushed back my bowl and emptied my tankard of wine. Deliberately raw, I said, “It is time for me to get some charity and justice of my own,” and I touched myself there where I had already begun to get hard.

Pagno shook his head in disgust and got up from the table.

“We leave at first light tomorrow,” he said.

I set off to find Marguerita, which was quickly done for she was waiting outside the
taverna
and the evening, though brief, was highly satisfying.

The next morning at first light Pagno and I set off for Florence.

* * *

P
AGNO HAD PRIVATE
audience with Cosimo de’ Medici while I waited in an anteroom so dim they had lit candles. When they finished talking, Cosimo escorted him out and greeted me warmly. He promised to do all that was possible, he said, but laws must be observed and must be seen to be observed. But for Donatello’s sake and to honor that bronze statue in his garden he would do all he could to assure that Agnolo suffered no permanent harm.

He did not say that he would intervene in the local justice system of Prato so that in the end Agnolo would walk free—exiled but free—and ready once more to become the central burden of our lives. But it was so.

A
S FOR ME
, I had taken to heart Pagno’s talk of charity and justice and, mindful of Alessandra’s long patient love, I had decided I must sign the papers that would set her free.

“We have done well,” I said. “It has been a good marriage.”

“We had four sons,” she said.

“And Donato Michele will be a priest.”

She began to cry softly. I knew why.

“You cannot blame yourself . . .”

“I cry for the two babies,” she said. “And for Franco Alessandro.”

She had loved them well, all of them, I told her.

“And you,” she said.

She put her hand in mine, but kept me at a little distance.

“And now that he is gone—my Franco Alessandro—I have an ill life. Only think, Luca. You will have such a busy life away in Padua, a good life, you will have Donato and Pagno and Michelozzo and . . .”

“And Agnolo,” I said with a grimace. “Always Agnolo.”

“I ask only that you set me free to be a nun,” she said.

“It is what I want and need,” she said.

“Is it so much to ask?” she said.

I looked at her with longing.

“It is God’s will,” she said finally and her voice was sad and bitter.

In her words I heard the words of Franco Alessandro and for a moment I knew and understood. I kissed her softly and told her that God desired charity and justice and so I would set her free. That night we slept close, touching, and I did not lay hands on her.

It was a bright, clear morning with no cloud in the sky when I said good-bye to Alessandra and left for Padua. The year was 1447.

CHAPTER
37

C
OSIMO DE
’ M
EDICI
knew the true cost to Donatello of his great works and it was on his behalf that Agnolo was freed from prison.

Donatello could not work—Cosimo understood this—while Agnolo was shut up from the light, languishing in a dark cell. And so through his quiet intervention Agnolo was spared a flogging—he would not have survived it—and was sent from the Prato prison directly into exile in Padua. Donatello accepted legal responsibility for Agnolo’s behavior while in the first year of exile and he welcomed him into his little house. Indeed, he assigned him my room and in great discomfort I shared my bed with Agnolo until the feast of the Epiphany on 8 January when, complaining of my restlessness and my snoring, Agnolo moved from my bed to Donatello’s where he could sleep in peace. Or so he claimed.

Ever the spy, I studied Donatello with a sharp eye for changes in his behavior, but there were none that I could see. He was every day caught up in some detail of the chasing and polishing of the bronze panels and the seven statues for the altar. He seemed to take Agnolo’s presence as a given, as if fate had bestowed him on us and our only task was to see that he ate and slept and put some flesh on his skeletal body. Agnolo came to us truly ill. He was so thin I could count the ribs in his chest. Now that he was clean and no longer dressed in rags, I would have expected him to look more like his old self. He was lazy, of course, and much given to lying in bed, but I could see in him unfeigned exhaustion, the way he doubled in two during his coughing spells and the way he dragged himself to the table and forced himself to eat. He ate but little. And he slept only in fits. His hair was lank and stringy and, though his tunic and stockings were clean, they were never neat. He seemed not to care any longer how he looked. At thirty-three years he appeared to be dying.

Meanwhile all around us things were happening that would come to shape our lives and we remained unknowing.

* * *

I
N 1447
V
ENICE
broke off its alliance with Florence when the condottiere Galleazo Maria Sforza, a friend of Cosimo de’ Medici, declared himself Duke of Milan and took the throne by force. Sforza was an old enemy of Venice. The new alliance of Florence and Milan was good for the merchants of Florence but suddenly the Medici banks in Venice were forced to close and Florentine citizens were expelled from Venice and its provinces. An undeclared war existed now between the two great republics of Florence and Venice.

For more than forty years Padua had been under Venetian rule and Padua had become, by association, a Venetian city. Suddenly Padua welcomed the Albizzi, the Peruzzi, the Strozzi, and other noble families exiled by Cosimo de’ Medici after his return from exile. These families, gathered together, began to realize the force of their numbers. They appealed to the Holy Roman emperor to dissolve the new union between Florence and Milan. They agitated for open war against Florence.

They would do anything in their power to destroy the Medici, even to the gradual picking away at the integrity of old friends. Even so eminent a friend as Donatello di Betto Bardi,
orafo e scharpellatore straordinario
. And sodomite.

The friend of my enemy is my enemy as well.

B
Y 1447 OUR
bottega
in Padua had become a world of its own and it existed for one purpose only: to present to the city a completely new altar, with panels of bronze and marble and seven bronze statues, all complete and flawlessly finished . . . and this to be accomplished by 13 June 1448, the Feast of Sant’ Antonio. It was impossible of course but it was the genius of Donatello to accomplish the impossible. Our specialized workers now included five principal assistants and at times as many as eighteen people were at work in the
bottega
and the foundry.

The rush to completion left everyone exhausted—even Ria Scarpetti, with her Amazonian strength—and it became clear that the altar itself would have to be a temporary structure. The bronze panels had been cleaned and polished and enhanced with gold, but none of the seven statues had been properly chased and Donatello was displeased to be revealing this uncompleted masterwork to the public. Nonetheless 13 June was the feast of Sant’ Antonio, the day agreed upon, so in early June all the statues and the panels and the marble carvings were mounted on a provisional altar and the basilica was thrown open to the public. The effect was overwhelming to everyone except Donatello. He could see at once that the mad rush to completion had left his great design unrealized.

Now a stone framework for the altar became the focus of his attention. He hired the expert stoneworker Niccolò da Firenze and his two young assistants Meo and Pippo to replace the altar’s eight wooden columns with marble ones, four of them fluted and the other four pilasters. He ordered steps for the altar in red and white marble with terracotta ornaments on the risers and he had these painted and gilded. By 13 June 1450, again the feast of Sant’ Antonio, the finished statues had been mounted on the new and permanent altar and the Basilica was once more thrown open to the public. It was the wonder of the age.

T
HE GREAT
F
LORENTINE
families exiled to Padua did everything they could to encourage war between Venice and Florence. The Peruzzi, the Strozzi, and in particular the Albizzi invested what was left of their fortunes in pitting Venice against Florence, the Doge against Cosimo. Venice, however, was troubled by its ever precarious hold on trade with Constantinople and, like Naples in the south, chose to threaten war while holding on to the tenuous peace that made continued trade within Italy possible.

Meanwhile just as England longed to possess France, France began to measure its territorial ambitions in Italy. It had long desired to possess the Kingdom of Naples and now the undeclared war between Venice and Florence opened the possibility for King Charles of France to lay claim to the throne of Naples. At this moment Cosimo appealed to Charles for protection. No good could come of this.

* * *

B
Y 1450 THE
major work for the Basilica was behind him and the great bronze Gatamellata lay ahead. He paused to draw breath and look around him. How could so much work have been accomplished in so short a time? It should not have been possible of course and it would not have been possible to any artisan save Donatello. He was at this time sixty-four years of age, a small man of immense strength of mind and body, and though his eyesight had begun to fail a little, his hands remained strong and certain and he could carve better in this his old age than most sculptors at the peak of their powers. Also he had chosen his assistants with care and wisdom. And he was happy.

He was happy because his work had gone well and because he was surrounded by artisans he loved and respected and because at his little house off the Piazza Sant’ Antonio were the men he most trusted, Pagno di Lapo and myself. There too was the great burden of his life, the other half of his soul, the unremitting source of his joy and his grief, Agnolo Mattei, once the young bronze Medici boy and now a man well advanced in the process of decay.

CHAPTER
38

F
ROM THE START
Agnolo complained that he could not sleep. He would lie on his back all night staring into the dark in a waking dream of horror and abandonment. These were dreams of prison in which he was made cruel sport. He was threatened with the rack and the strappado. He was put to the water torture until he could no longer breathe. He was beaten and raped. He knew he was awake but these horrors visited him nonetheless and in the morning he was sore and exhausted and, though starving, could not bring himself to eat.

During that time when I was forced to share his bed—
my
bed long before it was his—he complained that I kept him awake with my snoring, that I tossed and turned all night, that I took up too much space. To be sure, I took up more space than he since he was no more than a skeleton. We were both given respite when Donatello said, “Enough,” and took him to his own room and his own bed.

Agnolo began to sleep a little and, with sleep, he managed to eat something at each meal. Over the next months he put on weight and his bones no longer seemed about to pierce the skin. He was clean and well-dressed. He coughed less. He was still very thin but he had regained some strength and talked of returning to his craft of wool-carding. Donatello urged him to stay at home and regain his strength. There would always be time for wool-carding.

* * *

A
GNOLO BEGAN TO
appear at the
bottega
late each afternoon to see how our work progressed. He was greatly intrigued by the stone-worker specialists, Niccolò da Firenze and his two comically-named assistants Meo and Pippo. Meo and Pippo were scarcely more than boys, and they responded with warmth to Agnolo’s interest in them. He was known as Donatello’s favorite, after all. They struck up a friendship—Meo and Pippo and Agnolo—and their common jest was who would be first to bed the giantess Ria Scarpetti. Or to scale the Alps, as they called it. Ria Scarpetti knew of this because Agnolo made a point of telling her so and in truth she found them amusing. She fell into an odd companionship with Agnolo. He possessed this incomprehensible ability to interest men and to charm women. In an earlier age, they would say he was possessed by the devil.

* * *

M
Y ROOM WAS
separated from Donatello’s by a thin wall. I had trouble falling asleep nights as I listened for sounds from next door. I could almost hear them breathing. And then the crickets would begin their metallic rubbing and the frogs would croak and go on croaking and I would fall asleep. Sometimes in the night I would wake up to the sound of murmured conversation, light laughter, a sigh or a groan. I listened. I strained to hear their words but I could never make out more than the edge of a word here or there, uncompromising but disturbing nonetheless. The words exchanged in bed are always true.