David (21 page)

At this time, Angelo seemed to abandon both Davids and was working on something very different – a relief in the shape of a tondo. It was a Madonna and Child, the first he had attempted since that marble he had shown me of the Virgin sitting on the stairs, nursing her baby like a common working woman.

I like to think that had been a sort of portrait of my mother, just as the face of the Virgin in the Rome Pietà had been – so he told me – a tribute to his own birth mother.

This new one was nothing like either. He was working so fast on it that you could see the figures emerging from the stone, the Madonna with her head turned to look over her right shoulder and the Child standing beside her lap, leaning on his arm and an open book. Another child was beginning to peep out from behind the Holy Mother’s back and the whole had a quiet, domestic quality, unlike anything of his I had seen before.

‘It’s beautiful,’ I said, feeling the word was inadequate. It reminded me of Clarice and our boy, Davide, whom I had not seen once since I started visiting their palazzo as a spy. He was more than a year old now and must be able to stand like that sturdy little Christ, if supported by his mother’s arm.

‘You like it?’ Angelo asked. ‘It is for Bartolommeo Pitti.’

I couldn’t do more than nod.

‘Is that John the Baptist peeping out from behind?’ I asked when I could say more.

‘Yes, but he is a minor figure in the composition,’ said Angelo. ‘Not like that one of Leonardo’s.’

Still thinking of his rival!

‘Do you see how I’m working the relief?’ he asked. ‘It’s quite different from carving something in the round.’

I saw what he meant. He had to keep a part of the figures standing out proud from their background so that you believed in their solidity but he was not cutting away so much that there was any danger of their breaking away from the marble that held them.

It gave me the strangest feeling – as if I had moved from being a figure in the round, to one bound by his background never to be free. I suppose it was the thought of Davide that made me so pensive. I was sure in a way that I would never be free of him and his mother.

And then I noticed something even stranger; it was not the Child that had a face like mine – which would have made me think that my brother practised witchcraft and could see into my heart. It was the Virgin herself that had my features, at least she had features like a softened version of the face of the marble David and that had been based on mine.

I wondered whether to mention it. Then decided against it. It was bad enough what had happened with the Mouth of Truth, without wondering if the man I saw as my brother really did admire my appearance so much he would recreate it even without realising it. I just hoped Leonardo and his Salai would not see it and make something of it.

I posed for Leone that night, though I was so unsettled I would have made a better Minotaur than Theseus. Half man, half beast and no part of me a god.

‘You can’t stand still tonight, Gabriele,’ said the painter. ‘Do you need to go and relieve yourself?’

‘No. I’m sorry. I am agitated in my mind, not my body,’ I said.

‘Well, the one has influence on the other,’ he said, very reasonably, considering I was spoiling his work.

‘Leone,’ I asked, ‘are you married?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Can’t afford it. But if I continue in my lord’s service, I should save enough money to marry in a year or so. There’s a girl I have my eye on.’

‘Me too,’ I said without thinking. He looked at me oddly.

‘You don’t mean Grazia, I take it?’

That was not likely to make me feel any more tranquil!

‘Look, why don’t you sit for five minutes and tell me what’s on your mind?’ he said. ‘You’re no good to me like this.’

He sent the little apprentice away and I sat on the stool, wrapped in a cloth that was going to be transformed into Theseus’s cloak and tunic.

‘You know what this hero did?’ Leone asked, gesturing at the canvas.

‘Killed the beast in the Labyrinth,’ I said.

‘And afterwards?’

I shrugged. I had never thought about ‘afterwards’; I never did. That was part of my problem.

‘He abandoned Ariadne, who was the one who helped him kill the Minotaur,’ said the painter. ‘He accepted her ideas and her help . . .’

‘The string?’ I remembered.

‘The string and everything else. Took her to an island and then left her. Sailed away without her.’

‘Is Grazia posing for your Ariadne, as she did for Venus and Leda?’ I asked.

‘Are you planning to abandon her?’ he said in return. ‘I think she has given you help with your spying.’

‘What happened to Ariadne?’ I asked.

‘She was rescued by Bacchus,’ said Leone. ‘He married her and took her to live on Mount Olympus.’

‘Well, I was Bacchus too,’ I said. ‘So she ends up with me anyway.’

‘I think all of us are part Theseus, part Bacchus,’ he said.

‘And part Minotaur?’ I asked. ‘That’s what I’ve been thinking.’

‘You are very young, Gabriele,’ he said. ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself. We all make some mistakes as we are growing up.’

‘I wonder when I shall be a grown man,’ I said. ‘I can’t imagine I am going to get much bigger but I still need to be a lot wiser.’

He laughed but not unkindly.

‘I don’t think wisdom comes with height,’ he said. ‘But it will with a few more years. I don’t think you should agonise over what can’t be changed. Just try to do better in future.’

He was absolutely right. I resolved there and then to tell Grazia about Rosalia that night. What happened after that was up to her.

Chapter Fourteen

A Glimpse of the Moon

The next time I saw Angelo, he was rubbing his hands in glee.

‘A new commission!’ he said. ‘All twelve apostles!’

‘Wonderful!’ I said, since he was expecting enthusiasm. But secretly I thought,
How can he manage that, together with the two Davids and the tondo? Not to mention the statues for Siena.

‘We are going to choose the marble,’ he said.

‘We?’

‘You’re coming with me, I hope,’ said Angelo. ‘I’ve spoken to your
maestro
. The Operai will pay for me and an assistant to go to Carrara and choose twelve blocks.’

I was thrilled. I hadn’t been in a quarry since I left Settignano two years before. I hadn’t realised till then just how much I had been missing them.

‘And even better,’ said Angelo, more animated than I had seen him for ages, ‘the Operai are going to build me a house and a studio in the city!’

‘They must be very pleased with what you are doing here,’ I said. But I was thinking,
Will Lodovico want me to stay at his house if Angelo moves out?

‘You must come and live there with me,’ said Angelo. ‘It’s going to be on the corner of Borgo Pinti and Via della Colonna.’

It was as if he read my mind! I suppose he was thinking that it would be good for him to get away from his father and brothers and strike out on his own in the world. In spite of having lived in Rome for five years, he was still treated very much as a son of the house in his father’s home. And to think he was to be given this honour just because of his great skill!

‘Of course, it will take a while to build,’ he said, his face falling a bit.

I suppose mine did too because I had a vision like his of us two bachelors living on the Borgo Pinti, with perhaps a middle-aged woman to look after us. We could be like a pair of hermits, keeping what hours we pleased and maybe working together in his new studio without distraction. After my last meeting with Grazia, it really appealed to me.

We didn’t know then that neither of us would live in this house or that the Apostles would not be made.

‘When do we go to Carrara?’ I asked.

‘At the beginning of next month, if you’re willing,’ he said.

So, on the first day of May, we set out in some style. That is to say, we travelled by cart all the way to the marble mountains of Carrara. I had never been so far from home and was in high spirits.

Grazia hadn’t exactly finished with me but she had wept when I told her about Rosalia.

‘So you have a
fidanzata
in the country already?’ she said. ‘As well as a grand lady in the city. How many others are there?’

‘None,’ I had promised her. ‘I told you before.’ But I must have looked uneasy because she pounced on me and pursued her questions.

‘Are you sure?’ she asked. ‘No other women in Florence you have looked on with desire – or who have looked on you in that way?’

She was without mercy or pity.

‘There is another woman I find attractive,’ I admitted. ‘But I would never do anything about it. Her brother is a friend of mine and he would be horrified if she attached herself to a humble stonecutter.’

‘So – another grand lady,’ Grazia said.

‘And you said yourself that you thought your lady cast amorous looks at me,’ I said, determined to excavate every last piece of incriminating evidence against myself so that there should be no more misunderstanding between us.

‘Well, it’s not your fault if women look at you with lust, I suppose,’ she conceded. ‘As long as you do nothing to encourage them.’

I honestly didn’t think that I did but was just wise enough not to say anything about it.

‘And you don’t see the lady Altobiondi any more?’ she asked in a small voice.

‘Only sometimes in passing,’ I said. ‘When I go to her house, it is to spy for the
frateschi
.’

‘So it is just between me and your first love?’ she asked.

‘Don’t say it like that,’ I said. ‘I haven’t seen Rosalia for a year and a half. I don’t even know if she will wait for me.’ (You see, I had grown up a little.)

‘But you definitely will leave the city and go back to Settignano to marry her?’

‘If she’ll have me,’ I said.

‘But what is there about her that is better than me? Is she prettier? Younger? More . . . adept in the bedchamber?’

What can a man say when a woman asks him these things? I had made a very bad fist of answering Grazia. So much so that when I left her I had more or less admitted that the only advantage Rosalia had over her was that I had met her first.

‘You are quiet today,’ said Angelo. ‘What are you thinking?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, pulling myself together. ‘I am glad to be leaving the city.’

‘Is it love or politics this time?’ he asked.

‘Am I so transparent? Well then, love I suppose. There is nothing much happening on the political front – at least not to me.’

‘And all too much happening with your complicated romantic life?’ he guessed.

‘I don’t see how I can follow your advice when women keep throwing themselves at me,’ I grumbled.

He laughed. ‘Some men would be very grateful to have your problems!’ he said. ‘It has never been an issue for me. I suppose I should be grateful to Torrigiani for that.’

‘It would almost be worth getting my nose broken,’ I said. ‘But I’m sorry – I don’t want to think about women at all. Let’s concentrate on stone for the next few days.’