David (25 page)

‘Ser Leonardo likes her to stay entertained while he paints,’ said the young man. ‘I am her cousin.’ He looked at me curiously and I could tell he was wondering why I appeared so well dressed now when I had come to the house on the Via della Stufa dressed as a working man. But he was too well bred to mention it.

Instead he introduced me to his young friends, Vincenzo, Filippo and Raffaello. It turned out that they had all been to see the statue at the public viewing so they joined in the good-natured mockery.

‘That is all very well, boys,’ said Altobiondi. ‘But which of
you
has ever been asked to model for a hero?’

‘Perhaps the day is coming when we can
be
heroes, not imitate them,’ answered Vincenzo, who was a Martelli and had a warlike air.

I pricked up my ears. I was beginning to think that this bunch were all words and no action; their ‘plot’ to return the de’ Medici didn’t seem to have advanced at all since I had last been in their midst.

‘Perhaps it is,’ said Altobiondi. ‘We have heard from Cardinal Giovanni and from Giulio. They want to know more about the loyalty of their followers in the city before they come back. After Piero’s last effort . . . well.’

‘What do we have to do to prove ourselves to them?’ demanded Filippo. It was clear that these new recruits were hotheads, desperate to be put to the test. I thought that it would not be long before their enthusiasm boiled over into action.

It was strange to be working alongside Angelo every day now. He had finished the tondo for Bartolommeo Pitti, who had been appointed one of the Operai of the Duomo, but it was still in the workshop. But he had not finished the bronze David. He seemed to be in a kind of limbo. We still worked at refining the marble giant but Angelo seemed more interested in teaching me skills.

We worked side by side on small blocks and he tried to teach me to see what might be inside them. And, while we worked, sometimes we talked.

‘Are you being careful?’ he asked me suddenly one day in August.

‘In what way?’ I answered cautiously, not sure if we were talking about Grazia or something else.

‘Those are dangerous friends you are seeing now,’ he said.

But I still didn’t know if he meant the
frateschi
or the
compagnacci
.

‘Which ones?’ I asked.

‘The fancily dressed ones,’ he said. ‘The ones with the long names and high pedigrees. The ones who didn’t like your posing for a symbol of the Republic.’

‘Altobiondi and his friends,’ I said.

‘And Visdomini,’ Angelo said.

‘He is one of the friends,’ I agreed.

‘But
why
are you friends with them?’ he asked. ‘I would have thought they would repel you.’

‘They do,’ I said. ‘You would find no new Lorenzo among them. I am there in their midst only as a spy.’

He sat back on his heels. ‘I thought so. That’s why I said you should be careful. It is a dangerous game you are playing. In fact, it isn’t a game at all, although you seem to think it is.’

‘What makes you say so?’

‘You dress up in their fancy silks and velvets and plumed hats and doubtless drink their wine and eat their rich food. But if they find out you are really a republican, you will find that those daggers they carry at their belts are not worn as ornaments.’

‘I
am
careful,’ I said. ‘Really. I don’t care about the life they lead. I just want the
frateschi
to be ready when they try to let another de’ Medici into the city.’

Angelo looked at me in some horror. ‘Another de’ Medici?’

‘Yes. If not Piero then the Cardinal or his cousin.’

‘You forget – I know these people. At least I knew them. You had better be very sure that the
frateschi
will win before you are identified as a traitor.’

‘Guess what!’ said Gismondo. ‘The Pope has died!’

After last year, when the rumours had us all expecting it, it came as a surprise.

‘So Cesare Borgia has lost the protection of his papa?’ I said.

‘Who was also the Papa of us all,’ said Gismondo. He seemed very cheerful about it. ‘But everyone expects the new Pope to be Cardinal Piccolomini and he is favourable to Cesare too.’

I remembered that I had heard that at Altobiondi’s.

‘He has been levying troops in Rome, you know,’ said Gismondo.

‘The Cardinal?’

‘No, idiot, Cesare Borgia! He has given them a livery of red and yellow with ‘CESARE’ lettered back and front.’

‘His own private army?’

‘He will be invincible,’ said Gismondo. ‘He was supposed to be going to take his men to fight for the King of France in Naples but then his father got sick.’

‘What did he die of?’ I asked.

Gismondo shrugged. ‘A fever. Rome is full of the pestilence this summer.’

‘So he wasn’t poisoned?’ I asked. One never knew with the people around the Borgias. It was rumoured that at least one cardinal had been poisoned by Cesare.

‘No, it seems it really was a fever. Cesare had it too.’

‘Why didn’t he die as well?’ I asked.

‘Well, he’s much younger, of course,’ said Gismondo. ‘But I heard he had himself put into a jar of ice-cold water up to the neck to bring the fever down.’

‘And it worked?’

‘It worked,’ he said, ‘but all Cesare’s skin sloughed off like a snake’s.’

I thought about this newborn pink hero with his fresh skin hearing that his father and protector had died. It made him seem vulnerable for the first time.

‘It’s the bad air in Rome,’ said Gismondo. ‘It seems Cardinal Soderini had the fever too but he is expected to recover. But they say the Pope never once asked to see his children when he was dying.’

I wondered if Cesare Borgia knew that; truly his father had abandoned him at the last and thought only of his own end.

‘There are all kinds of rumours flying around that the Devil himself came to collect Pope Alexander, so great were his sins in this life,’ said Gismondo.

‘There are always wild rumours when a Pope dies, I suppose,’ I said.

‘But they say he was in the room, in the shape of a baboon, and flew out of the window with Alexander’s soul.’

I marvelled at the man’s credulity.

‘Do you believe that?’ I asked.

‘Well, no, probably not,’ he said. ‘But there are other stories that both Alexander and Cesare really were poisoned – by wine they had put the deadly powder in themselves, to poison a cardinal. Then there was a mix-up about the jugs.’

‘Well, there have been so many stories about Borgia poison, it’s hardly surprising. Still, if Cardinal Soderini is also ill with fever – they can’t all have been poisoned.’

‘True,’ said Gismondo. ‘And some of the rumours really are incredible. Some people are saying it wasn’t a jar of water that Cesare had himself plunged into but the body of a freshly slain bull. I ask you!’

‘That’s because his family symbol is a bull, surely? That’s how legends begin.’

It was a few weeks later that we heard we had a new Pope – Pius the Third, who had been Cardinal Piccolomini. So the de’ Medici had been right and Cesare Borgia’s rise would continue. But gradually further rumours filtered through – that Cesare was a man ruined in body and strength and might never live to see another victory.

And the Pope was over eighty years old! I couldn’t imagine then that such an ancient being could even walk and talk, let alone be the most powerful man in the Church and in the country. I’m older now than Pope Pius was then and I suppose all the young bloods think of me as a doddery old fool teetering on the edge of the grave.

But about Pope Pius, they would have been right. Hardly had we heard of his election in the city, before new messages came to say that he too had died; he had been Pope for less than a month. Poor man! He never got more than four of his fifteen statues from my wayward brother.

‘Now they will elect della Rovere – you mark my words,’ said Gandini the baker. ‘It was a close thing last time but they need a strong man on Saint Peter’s Chair in Rome and Piccolomini was never going to be that.’

I had got over my shyness about buying pastries from Gandini’s after his wife had seen the Giant in his nakedness at the public viewing. But ever after the viewing I was known just as ‘David’ at the baker’s. It was getting late into October now and I could breathe again now the days were cooler but I craved crumbly
pasticcerie
still warm from his oven.

Angelo was not particularly interested in the news when I bore it to him along with one of Gandini’s pastries. He had news of his own.

‘Da Vinci has got that commission he was boasting of,’ he said, eating his pastry in three bites, too fast to taste it.

‘Monna Lisa’s portrait?’

‘No, the fresco in the Palazzo della Signoria.’

‘Oh.’ I didn’t really know what to say to that. And I didn’t see why Angelo should be so agitated about it.

‘I’d wager he won’t complete it,’ said the sculptor. ‘He’s a great one for accepting commissions he doesn’t complete.’

I tried very hard not to look at the model for the bronze David that the Maréchal de Rohan was still waiting for.

‘He’s still painting del Giocondo’s wife, I believe,’ I said. Her cousin sometimes mentioned it when I saw him at Altobiondi’s and in fact the portrait was beginning to be well known in the city.

‘If del Giocondo ever gets that, I’ll eat my boots,’ said Angelo. He was thoroughly out of sorts that day.