David (10 page)

‘My master sends you this,’ said Grazia, handing me a purse.

She sat down on the apprentice’s stool and even accepted a little wine.

‘Gabriele is the perfect model,’ said Leone and I was glad he had used my name in front of her, just in case she had forgotten it.

‘Can I see?’ she asked, putting out her hand for the sketches.

This was another good move, because it meant she looked from the papers to me and back again. Leone had drawn me from at least three angles.

‘Who is he supposed to be?’ she asked. She seemed very friendly tonight.

‘Hercules,’ said the painter. ‘He has the physique for it, don’t you think?’

Grazia was admiring my figure, which was very pleasant, when we had an unexpected visitor. I knew it only because Grazia jumped up, spilling her drink.

‘My lady!’ she said.

‘It’s all right, Grazia,’ said Signora Visdomini. ‘I just came to see that everything had gone well. My husband wanted me to make sure that Gabriele had been paid and given his supper. He has had to go out.’

‘Thank you, my lady,’ I said. ‘Your servant has been looking after me well.’

Then she asked to see the drawings, just as Grazia had. I wondered if she had really been asked to come and check on me or was just curious. But I didn’t mind at all that a second nice-looking woman was appraising my features.

I went home well pleased with my evening’s work and hid my money under my mattress. Being an artist’s model was much easier work than squaring and dressing stone.

Saint Nicholas’s Day was on a Monday and so I had two days off work in a row. I had to go and pose for Leone that night but I was pleased when Angelo asked if I would like to go to church with him; we didn’t spend much time together when he wasn’t working.

Santa Croce was the nearest big church to Lodovico’s home and the one his family most often attended, but after the service I found there was another reason to go there on this day. All the brothers were there, with their widowed father, and went to the graveyard to stand by a simple headstone.

FRANCESCA DI NERI DEL MINIATO DI SIENA

was the name on the stone.

1455–1481

MOGLIE BEN AMATA DI

LODOVICO DI LIONARDO DI

BUONARROTI SIMONI

We were here to pay our respects to Angelo’s mother.

‘Twenty years ago today,’ he said to me under his breath. ‘That’s when she died.’

The date soon after which I had been conceived according to my own mother. That thought made me feel so peculiar that I studied the dates on the stone to take my mind off it.

‘She was only twenty-six?’ I asked,
sotto voce
, because Lodovico was within earshot. He seemed so old to have had such a wife.

‘That’s right,’ said Angelo. ‘The same age I am now. Only she will be just twenty-six years old for ever.’

I didn’t know what to say; I had never seen Francesca but Angelo had often talked about her. He had spent too little of his six years with her before she died, he said, but I knew she was his ideal woman. He told me once that the Madonna in the statue in Rome, that had brought him so much fame, had his own mother’s face. If that were true, Francesca di Neri had a far finer monument than the one in Santa Croce’s churchyard.

‘She was worn out by bearing children,’ he whispered fiercely. ‘Five sons in eight years! And that’s just the ones that lived. It was having Gismondo that killed her in the end.’

He was looking at his father with a sort of bitterness.

‘Animal lusts,’ he growled. ‘I told you – best to steer clear.’

‘But if we all did that, the world would soon be empty,’ I dared to say. ‘Besides, you told me to marry.’

He rubbed his hands over his eyes. ‘You’re right. Don’t take any notice of me. I just wish she had lived longer – to see what I could do.’

Lodovico and his other sons were moving away from the graveside so I thought I’d leave Angelo on his own to pay his respects. But he didn’t want that.

Instead, he took my arm and said, ‘Come on. We’ll go and see a living mother now.’

I realised he intended us to walk to Settignano and my heart leapt.

My home village had never looked more lovely to me as I tramped into it along the dusty road with my milk-brother. It was a cold, crisp day and I knew we would be chilled to the bone walking back after dark but it felt so good to see my childhood home, modest as it was.

My mother did not know what to do with herself and which of us to kiss first. My father clapped us both on the shoulders. My sisters were sent for and arrived in a bustle of giggles, shrieks and young children, my little nephews and nieces.

After the first flurry of welcome, my mother was concerned about having enough food to give us all a sufficient Saint Nicholas’s Day dinner. I was mortified to have brought no presents for anyone but Angelo’s suggestion had been so sudden and there had been no time to go back to his house for money.

He, however, had brought a bag of silver coins, which he passed to my father and then he set to whittling wooden toys for the children, something I could help with. I wonder if they still have those wolves and bears and lions and dogs, original woodcarvings by the hand of Michelangelo? I’ve never asked but they would be worth a fortune now.

After the feast my mother provided, restlessness took me out of the house and off to find Rosalia. Now that the moment had come I felt very unsure of my welcome but I needn’t have worried.

As soon as she saw me through the window, she squealed and ran out to meet me. We had both had birthdays in the nine months I had been away and she was now a sixteen-year-old in full bloom. How I longed to be alone with her, but her family were all around her on this saint’s day and very interested to hear about my adventures in the city.

I had to give them all an expurgated version, of course, and all too soon it was dusk and I had to start the long walk back. Rosalia came with me to my parents’ house.

‘It’s too cruel,’ she said, ‘to see you for only one hour after you’ve been away so long.’ There were tears and I think disappointment that I had brought her no Saint Nicholas’s Day present. I felt that I was a very poor lover.

And holding Rosalia in my arms to kiss her goodbye I felt worse than that – a rat and a worm, who had betrayed her simple and honest love.

When we set off back to the city, I was in a whirl of emotions. Angelo by contrast seemed almost serene.

‘You have a good family,’ he said.

I just grunted.

‘And if that pretty girl is your sweetheart, you are a lucky devil,’ he added. ‘Are you serious about her?’

‘I am,’ I said, though I felt pretty miserable about Rosalia at that precise moment.

He looked sideways at me. We were striding out with our cloaks over our faces, walking into the wind, but I knew he was assessing my sincerity.

‘Don’t agonise about it,’ he said kindly. ‘I know you’ve been up to some unwise games in Florence but your Settignano girl need never know. Save your money, come back and marry her and be true to her ever after and there will be no great harm done.’

He was right. If only I could have taken his advice sooner.

There was time for only the briefest of bites to eat at Lodovico’s house. The older Buonarroti was in a foul mood because he had wanted to spend the whole day with all his sons, remembering their mother; he was angry that Angelo had deserted them without a word.

I escaped to Visdomini’s house as soon as I could and was a little late.

My head was full of images of mothers – my own living one and Angelo’s dead one. And of Rosalia, who I wanted to be the mother of my own children. And that sent me back to thinking of Clarice, who must be big with my child by now. It seemed to me that I had made an awful mess of my life in just nine months.

Grazia let me into Leone’s studio and gave me a nice smile. I smiled back. Maybe life was not so bad after all.

Leone wanted me to pose without my clothes and to hold a piece of cloth that he would transform into a lion’s skin in his painting. There was a fire in a small brazier and a stack of wood beside it and the little apprentice was staying awake to feed it so that I should not catch cold.

The painter had not got far with his sketch when the door opened behind me. I longed to snatch the cloth around my loins but did not dare move. There was a swish of some rich cloth on the stone flags of the floor and Andrea Visdomini came into view. He circled me and then went to look at what Leone was doing.

I was glad of the candlelight and firelight so that the lord would not see the colour of my face. He was examining me and the drawing as if he would like to buy me. I suppose in a sense he had.

I was just wondering if I should stop coming to this house when I heard the door open again. A muffled noise told me that the newcomer was female. This time I covered my nakedness with the cloth and turned to see Grazia in the doorway, her hand to her mouth. Visdomini looked highly amused.

‘What is it, girl?’ he asked. ‘Can’t you see I am busy?’

‘I’m sorry, my lord,’ she stammered. ‘But you have visitors. Ser Altobiondi and his friends are here.’

I grabbed my clothes and ran. Tonight I would go without payment or any supper.

Chapter Seven

Beginnings and Endings

I
thought I had burned all my boats at Visdomini’s but there was no way I could have borne any more evenings of people walking in on my nakedness without warning. I cursed my prudishness as I walked to work next day, not only because of the money and the extra food, but because Grazia’s announcement of the visitors confirmed my suspicions that Visdomini was in deep with the pro-Medici plotters. I might have lost my best chance to help the
frateschi
.

But I need not have worried. Visdomini himself was waiting outside my
bottega
, early though it was. He came towards me with both hands open and a penitent expression.

‘Gabriele!’ he said. ‘I am so sorry about last night. Please forgive us and come back to Leone for your next sitting.’

It was a strange new experience having a rich man humble himself to me and I wasn’t sure if I liked it.

Visdomini fished out a bag of money, larger than my usual fee and thrust it into my hand, continuing to apologise.