David (5 page)

It was not long after this conversation that Angelo decided to change the stance of the David and I had to pose for a whole lot of new sketches. We had got through a lot of cabbages and cauliflowers, much to the housekeeper’s annoyance, before my brother suddenly said one night that he had changed his mind.

‘Everyone shows David when the fight is over,’ he said. ‘But wouldn’t it be more interesting to depict the young shepherd before he knows he’s going to win?’

I hadn’t thought about this. In fact, I hadn’t thought about the subject of the statue at all. I knew that in the Bible, David was a young boy who looked after his father’s sheep and had lots of older brothers. I knew lots of youths like him in my village home. But the one in the Bible killed a massive Philistine called Goliath with a shot from his sling, even though the enemy giant was armed to the teeth.

‘I see what you mean, I think,’ I said. ‘He goes out armed only with the slingshot he’d normally use on wolves and suchlike.’

‘And the Philistine is a huge monster of a man in full armour,’ said Angelo, ‘while David has no more than a rough loincloth to protect him. Not even a shield.’

‘Oh, he will have a loincloth?’ I asked.

‘No, not in my statue,’ said Angelo. ‘I shall show him naked to emphasise his vulnerability. I must get into his face – your face – all his determination and strength together with his nervousness and fear.’

‘That’s a tall order to put in one statue,’ I said.

‘It is. And it must send other messages too. This is a work to please the Republic. It must represent how Florence herself, even when seeming vulnerable to attack, is determined to beat any superior force, with the power of her proud history.’

If anyone could do all that, it would be my brother.

We abandoned the vegetables and I stood with all the weight on my right leg and my left leg lightly bent. I tried to look warlike and apprehensive at the same time, which caused my brother to laugh so much that he begged me just to concentrate and leave the expression to him.

I’d stopped going to see Clarice but I hadn’t stopped thinking about her. I didn’t love her but I was fond of her and it irked me that she was carrying my first child and had so casually decided to give it a different father. I decided I would find out everything I could about this usurper Altobiondi.

Antonello de’ Altobiondi was a dyed-in-the-wool Medici supporter and I got my information from an unexpected quarter: my brother’s father, Lodovico.

Lodovico didn’t approve of Angelo’s profession, thinking sculpture only one small step up from painting, which he saw as an artisan’s work, like dyeing or tanning. His oldest son, Lionardo, was a Dominican friar and had been a fanatical follower of Savonarola, that friar who had endured the same fate as all the fripperies he disapproved of – burned on a bonfire in the piazza before the government building.

The three younger boys were still at home though and Lodovico’s second wife, Lucrezia, had been dead a few years; it was a very male household, with no one minding too much about washing or changing their clothes very often. The old housekeeper did the best she could to put food on the table with the stingy amount Lodovico gave her but it was a struggle, with four hungry young men in the house. And now five, with me there.

Now that I couldn’t supplement my diet with trips to Clarice’s better-provisioned table, I was famished most of the time. Lodovico wouldn’t accept any of my wages, though I’d offered straight away. His pride was too great to take money from the child of his son’s wet nurse!

But he seemed to like having me there.

‘You bring a flavour of the country to my house,’ he had said graciously when I first arrived. ‘Tell me what news of my farm in Settignano. I don’t get there as often as I should – has the harvest been good?’

And in return for news of the countryside he enjoyed telling me about life in the city. After I’d had that conversation about politics with my brother, I began cautiously to pump old Lodovico for information about the rival factions in Florence.

I didn’t even have to raise the name Altobiondi before he mentioned it.

‘No one understands my position,’ he said. ‘We are distantly related to the de’ Medici – through my first wife, you know. She was a Rucellai through her mother and a Tornabuoni through other connections. Lorenzo the Magnificent’s mother was a Tornabuoni, of course. Yes, a fine woman of a noble family.’ He seemed to be drifting off into reminiscence.

‘So some people assume,’ he continued, ‘that I and all my family are Medici men! And yet at least three of my boys were followers of Savonarola and he was a bitter enemy of the de’ Medici, even though he visited Lorenzo on his deathbed.’

‘Three?’ I said. I had known only about Lionardo.

‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Lionardo, who lives as a religious in San Marco to this day. But not just him. Michelangelo and Buonarroto too. And I wouldn’t wonder if the others weren’t followers, except that they were a bit young to be influenced by his preaching.’

Lodovico never called my brother Angelo, as he was known in our family; he always gave him the full name of the archangel: Michelangelo. Angelo hadn’t told me he had been a follower of the Friar’s. I’d have to ask him about it. Certainly, you couldn’t be a Medici man and a Savonarola man at the same time.

‘So the
arrabbiati
expect me to side with them and yet I have at least three
piagnoni
in my family!’ said Lodovico.

Lodovico explained that the
arrabbiati
were the ‘enraged ones’ who were violently opposed to Savonarola, the fanatical friar. And the
piagnoni
were sneeringly called the ‘weepers’, people who had been moved to tears by the preaching of Savonarola, though they themselves preferred to be called
frateschi
he told me, which meant ‘followers of the Friar’.

‘The
arrabbiati
have gone underground now we have the Republic,’ Lodovico said, ‘but they are still active and dangerous. And then there are the
compagnacci
. There are only about a hundred and fifty of them but they are even fiercer than the
arrabbiati
and are at daggers drawn with the
frateschi
.’

All these words made my head reel and I decided to make a note of them. Politics in Florence was a much more complicated thing than even my conversation with Angelo had taught me.

‘Men like Antonello de’ Altobiondi won’t stay quiet for long,’ Lodovico was saying. I pricked up my ears at my rival’s name. ‘I shouldn’t like to be in Gonfaloniere Soderini’s shoes when they rise up against him.’

‘Altobiondi?’ I prompted him.

‘Yes, Antonello. He’s the current head of his family and leader of the
compagnacci
– they are all Medici supporters, of course. They’ve decided we are not, because of my sons, so we are in danger from them. You must watch your step. Don’t talk politics in public.’

I wondered if he knew about Angelo’s advice.

‘What’s this Antonello like?’ I asked.

‘Oh, he’s a bit of a blusterer. Proud of his family’s connections but there’s nothing wrong with that.’

‘What sort of age and appearance?’ I asked as casually as I could. ‘So that I know how to avoid him.’

‘Well, he’s about thirty,’ said Lodovico, frowning. ‘And pleasant-looking enough.’

I was disappointed. I was hoping he’d be at least fifty with a wart on his nose.

‘Well-made but a bit short.’ Lodovico was warming to his theme. ‘Dark hair, big nose. Oh, and here’s another thing, he’s going to marry the widow Buonvicini. Very hastily. There’s gossip that he’s got her with child already, because the wedding ceremony is being held very soon.’

It hurt to hear it, even though I already knew. What would old Lodovico say if he knew the baby the widow Buonvicini was carrying was mine? He clearly had no idea of my connection with her.

‘Purple and green,’ Lodovico was saying.

‘Sorry?’

‘The colours of his house – the de’ Altobiondi,’ he said. ‘His followers and a lot of the other
arrabbiati
have adopted purple and green as their colours.’

That should make them easier to avoid.

‘But isn’t it dangerous for them to display their affiliations publicly like that?’

‘Ha, my boy!’ said Lodovico. ‘You can tell you haven’t spent much time in the city! When have Florentines ever been sensible about their affiliations?’

‘And the others, the
frateschi
?’

‘Black,’ said Lodovico. ‘Always in black.’

So I was now armed with a lot of useful information, even though I couldn’t quite believe that all the warring factions in Florence would wear identifying colours. But thinking back to my first night when I was robbed and the feeling of danger in the air when I walked to the San Procolo district to find my brother, I did remember that some of the groups of young men were dressed alike. I hadn’t noticed the colours then – only the air of hostility between them.

And the very next day, I saw Antonello de’ Altobiondi for the first time. I was walking from my
bottega
to Angelo’s workshop at lunchtime, so I could eat my bread and cheese with him, when I saw a short, big-nosed man with black hair, dressed in purple and green velvet, coming out of Clarice’s house.

I can’t tell you how it hurt to see him. My mind immediately put him between the sheets with Clarice and a burning jealousy started to eat at my insides.

He didn’t see me at all. He walked right past me and I, all dusty in my stonecutter’s clothes, made no more impression on him than if he’d walked past a horse. Less perhaps, since he might have been more interested in a bit of horseflesh.

I suppose I should have been grateful that he didn’t register me; it meant he didn’t share the widespread Florentine preference of men for men. But that meant he was as keen a lover of women as I was.

The day would come when he knew well enough what I looked like and who I was. But that was still in the future. For now the only comfort I could hug to myself was that it was my picture Clarice had hanging in her chamber. Or perhaps hidden under clothes in her
cassone
now that Antonello might be sharing her bed.

‘What’s the matter?’ my brother asked when I walked into his workshop with a face like thunder.