David (7 page)

‘I’ve just seen Clarice and her new husband,’ I managed to say.

‘Well, you knew it was going to happen,’ he said.

‘But she’s carrying my child,’ I said. I couldn’t keep the burden of it to myself any longer.

My brother gave a great breath out, making a noise like a bellows. Then he put his hand, all dusty as usual, on my arm.

‘Gabriele,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry.’ He paused for a long while, looking into my eyes. ‘Can I give you some advice?’

He had never offered to do so before. I was surprised and nodded. I could feel tears building up behind my eyelids and I didn’t want to weep, not in front of my brother.

‘It’s not a good idea to waste your energy on physical love,’ he said eventually. ‘It saps your strength and distracts you from your purpose.’

‘That’s all very well for you,’ I said and I could hear myself sounding truculent, like a child. ‘You have a purpose – you’re a great artist. What do I have to save my strength for? I’m just a stonecutter.’

I felt the full force of this truth overwhelm me even as I said it. What was my purpose in life?

‘Then marry,’ said my brother. ‘Find a nice healthy girl and settle down.’

I thought of Rosalia waiting for me back in Settignano. How long would she wait? And was I supposed to live like a monk until I returned home? I was a
fratesco
in name only.

‘You see,’ said my brother. ‘All this has just made you unhappy.’

‘Do you follow your own advice, brother?’ I dared to ask.

He frowned and I wondered if I had gone too far and roused his famous temper. But he did give me my answer.

‘A long time ago,’ he said, ‘I decided there was too much pain in love. Since then I’ve put everything I feel into my work.’

I could see he was telling the truth; something very bad must have happened to him at some time in the past, something he wouldn’t have told his family in Settignano or Florence.

‘So you will not do what you advise me and take a wife?’

He gave me a very strange look then, half frown and half grin.

‘No, Gabriele, I shall not take a wife.’

I had reason to think of this conversation many times in the coming years. But for now I was comforted to know that he too had been unhappy in love. I sat and ate my lunch with him in silence but it was a companionable silence. Gradually, the ache I had been feeling round my heart started to subside.

I didn’t blame Clarice for her decision; it was just the way she had made it without me. And I had never before experienced physical jealousy the way I did towards her new husband. Now I felt as if I were growing up: no longer the baby of the family but a man – with a man’s problems. I decided to do my best to forget about Clarice and to concentrate on my work and save the money to go home and marry Rosalia – if she’d still have me.

To keep my mind off women, I spent more and more of my evenings with Daniele and the other
frateschi
. We usually met at Gianbattista’s house near San Marco and as time went by I met more of their associates. After that first night, the wine was brought by a young woman, who turned out to be Gianbattista’s sister. I wondered why she would demean herself to wait on a group of young men but gradually I learned that she had been a follower of Savonarola’s too.

‘We like to keep our meetings secret,’ Gianbattista told me. ‘It’s better not to have servants gossiping about us. And we can trust Simonetta – she is one of us.’

Simonetta was as different from Clarice as you could imagine. She kept her luxuriant dark hair fiercely constrained in the plainest of snoods and wore dark austere dresses with no ornament. But she was a beauty for all that. Nothing could conceal her luminous pale skin and her huge dark eyes. I shouldn’t have noticed, with my new decision to avoid women, but I did.

I was noticing altogether too much. It was clear from the house they lived in that Gianbattista and Simonetta were from a noble family but I never saw their parents or learned their surname. But I did wonder what they and their friends expected of me; I was the only working man among them.

All the men wore black, as I’d noticed before, and they wore their hair cut short. I stood out among them in my working clothes with my unruly curls unshorn. But they didn’t ask me to change how I looked.

‘We could use muscles like yours,’ Daniele had said at our first meeting and it seemed that was what they prized – my youth and strength.

It was weeks before I felt comfortable enough to ask what had bothered me after that first meeting.

‘Who were the people who got rid of your leader? I thought the city was republican by then so why would the government be against someone who spoke out against the Medici?’

‘You have much to learn,’ said Fra Paolo sternly.

But Gianbattista defended my ignorance.

‘We are so sensitive to all the factions here in Florence,’ he said. ‘But you can’t expect a country boy to know about that. His question is quite reasonable. And if you are to be one of us, Gabriele, we need to answer you.’

‘Savonarola had angered the Pope by his preaching,’ said Daniele. ‘His Holiness thought our leader had too much power in the city. And there were citizens who were against him too. Not just the
arrabbiati
, but all those who loved luxury and display.’

‘The
compagnacci
was what they were called!’ said Gianbattista. ‘It means “rude companions”. They were young men like us, of noble birth, who conspired against him. The ones who call de’ Altobiondi their leader.’

Altobiondi again!

‘And they are republicans?’ I asked, trying to remember my conversation with Lodovico but still confused.

‘No, they are pro-Medici all right,’ said Daniele. ‘They live lives of luxury and indulge themselves in the dining room and the bedchamber. They didn’t want to give up their velvets and laces and perfumes and rich food.’

‘You can tell them by their purple and green livery,’ said Donato. ‘They have adopted the heraldic colours of the Altobiondi family to show their allegiance.’

As I had thought before, if everyone was going to show what they believed by wearing distinctive colours, I would be all right! I wondered if I’d have to start wearing pure black.

Chapter Five

The Furious Ones

In September I had my first birthday ever away from home. There wasn’t a great deal of fuss but I was sure that being nineteen years old meant I was much more grown up than when I was a mere boy of eighteen.

My brother had made the first cut in the block of marble in the middle of the month. This was a significant moment. Before that, all he had done was knock off a sort of lump in the region of where the Giant’s chest would be.

‘Some sort of knot or clasp on the shepherd’s cloak, probably,’ he said. When it came to sculpture, he had a fine disdain for other people’s ideas.

But now he had stopped squaring and walking round the model roughing out the outline with charcoal on the stone, and was really sculpting, in a hail of marble chips. I was still the only one allowed into his improvised workshop and that made me proud. Though there was not much to see yet.

There was a big old sink in the corner of the workshop and I wondered about it at first, since my brother was not a great one for washing. Then one day he asked me to lower the gesso model into the sink! At first I was astonished, but after we laid it on its back, he filled the sink from the pump until the whole of the body was submerged.

I felt sorry for myself, lying there on my back with the water above my face. I was a drowned man.

The sink had a hole in it and Angelo released the plug so that just a little water ran out of it into a channel that led out into a drain.

‘You see?’ asked Angelo.

What I saw was a knee.

It was my left leg, sticking up out of the water.

‘It shows me how much to cut away from the block,’ he explained. ‘I’ll let out a little water every day, as I work on the block, then I can check all the angles and details on the statue.’

And that was the last I heard from him for some time.

He never talked much and he said even less when he was in the thick of his work. This was the first time I had been with him while he was working in marble and I soon learned to slip in and munch my bread and cheese quietly while he worked.

I had a lot to think about. I was worried that at the rate I was earning in the stonemasons’
bottega
, it would be years before I could save up enough to go home and marry Rosalia. I’m now ashamed to admit that it never once crossed my mind that she might not wait for me. After my humiliation over Clarice’s marriage, once I made up my mind to return to Rosalia, I just assumed that I would be able to take up my first love where I had left off.

But that didn’t mean I had no eyes for other women.

Early one morning, crossing the great square in front of the government building, I saw a group of women behaving strangely. They were glancing all around them and then moving swiftly away from the spot where they had been standing, as if running away. I saw they had dropped flowers on the spot which I guessed was the place where Savonarola had died. One of the women was Simonetta.

There was a shout and a city official rushed over to snatch up the flowers and looked about him. I hurried over to the group of women and gave Simonetta my arm; the other two seemed to melt away. She was trembling and leaning so heavily on me for support that I felt the weight of her breast pressing against my arm.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked and she could only nod. ‘That was a risky thing to do,’ I whispered.

‘You saw me?’ she asked, her big brown eyes full of alarm.

‘Well, yes. It is broad daylight.’

I was horrified to see that she was quietly weeping. Two big tears spilled out of her eyes and she let them splash on the red tiles of the piazza without wiping her face.

‘We cannot go out after dark when we might be safer from the officials,’ she said. ‘It is scarcely safe to be out on our own in the daytime. But we grieve so for our leader that we take the risk.’

‘Let me escort you home,’ I said. ‘You are upset and have been in some danger.’

I knew it was strictly against the laws of the city to show any reverence for the place of Savonarola’s death or anything associated with him. I would be late for work but there was pleasure to be had in seeing Simonetta safely home, as well as following my conscience.

At their house, which was quite out of my way, Simonetta offered me wine and I took it. I thought again of how different she was from Clarice, as she poured my drink for me. My lady was always exquisitely dressed and her elegance and style made up for the fact that her features were quite unremarkable. But Simonetta always wore the plain, dark colours recommended by her leader, without lace or frills or any other ornament and yet she was lovely in her simplicity.

I had some very unworthy thoughts as her hand brushed mine when she passed me the cup.

‘Wait here a minute,’ she said and left the room. When she returned, she was carrying a plain wooden casket.

She opened the lid and showed me a sort of greasy dust inside. I was too stupid to guess what it was.

‘They hanged him and burned him,’ she said, ‘and then they took the ashes away and threw them in the river.’

I didn’t like to say that there must have been wood ash and the grisly remnants of the other two executed friars mixed in with Savonarola’s remains. She was clearly showing me what she considered to be a sacred relic.

‘But some of our people waded into the river further down and rescued what they could,’ she continued. ‘Only the most loyal
frateschi
have any.’

I suppose I was a loyal
fratesco
by then. I was certainly falling under the spell of this devout young woman, even though I couldn’t really share her veneration for the dead man whose ashes she believed she was holding. She was like a nun – someone who should have been out of the reach of human passions – but I couldn’t help imagining her naked in my arms. I had to get out of that house quickly, before I did something that would set her brother and the other
frateschi
against me.