For the next three weeks, Angelo and I carried out my plan and virtually lived with the Giant. He was at last hoisted into his final place on the eighth day of June. He was still surrounded by a wooden castle, remade from the frame he was carried in, and all you could see of him was the top of his head.
In the midst of it all, a message came from the Signoria that they wanted Angelo to paint a fresco in the same room as Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari. It was to be a study of another Florentine victory, the Battle of Cascina.
‘I know why they’re asking me,’ he grunted. ‘They want to put some ginger up Leonardo’s backside. They think if he knows he has some competition he’ll get on faster with his own painting.’
I couldn’t see how my brother could possibly take this on in addition to all his other work but I kept silent. For the time being, we had enough to keep us busy with David.
The ‘castle’ was roomy enough for two men to walk around inside on the scaffolding platforms at several levels and there we ate and slept. I even emptied my brother’s slop bucket; the whole enterprise was designed to keep it secret that the Medici supporters had injured the city’s greatest sculptor.
His arm was mending well and, under his supervision I began to gild the sling that travelled behind the statue’s back – from his left shoulder down to his massive right hand. I also had to gild the tree stump that acted as a prop to the right leg.
Not large areas, I know, but I had never done it before and worked slowly, so as not to make any mistakes.
Maybe it was cowardly, but I knew I was burying myself in the work, trying to avoid seeing anyone – Grazia, the compagnacci or the frateschi. And as I worked, I thought about going home.
But in the end Grazia came and found me.
I hadn’t seen her for some time and it felt to me as if our passionate affair had nearly run its course. Not that I didn’t feel affection for her – I did. But I had so much to think about and involve me lately that romance was far from my mind.
And she was an unwanted distraction now. I felt my brow knit into a frown much like the larger one on the statue behind me.
‘What is it?’ I asked, probably rather abruptly.
She looked hurt. ‘I came to warn you,’ she said. ‘Your secret is discovered. Altobiondi has found drawings of you naked in his wife’s chest.’
The women’s network! I was glad of the warning but now I dared not go back to the Medici supporters’ meetings. I had always feared that I might be revealed as a fratesco spy but I hadn’t given enough thought to the possibility of being found to be Clarice’s former lover.
I was immediately penitent about my treatment of Grazia; it must have cost her something to tell me what she knew.
‘Thank you,’ I said, clasping her hand. ‘It was good of you to tell me. Do you know any more? How . . . how is the boy?’
‘I don’t know. Altobiondi is very angry with his wife and with you. I don’t know how he feels about the little boy but the child is innocent. Surely he wouldn’t do anything to hurt him?’
I wished I could believe that. I had seen Altobiondi when his temper was aroused. I wondered which servant had betrayed my secret. It was another unwanted complication now, when there was still so much to complete on the statue, and Angelo was injured.
There had been no further disturbance since the attack on the first night of the Giant’s progress, so when the violence erupted in the square that hot night in July, I was no longer on my guard. I was thinking only of what Grazia had told me. And that was my undoing.
It was past midnight and Angelo and I were sleeping on the hard platforms. His splint had come off and his arm had mended but it was still not strong and looked as white and wrinkled as if it had been soaked in a bath for weeks. Grazia had gone, slipping away as quietly as she had come, back to the palazzo on Via dei Servi.
The guard on the statue had been relaxed and when the first small stones fell I woke up groggily wondering if it was raining!
‘Devil take them!’ said Angelo, struggling awake. ‘Why now, after all this time?’
‘Stay down,’ I said. ‘And wrap your cloak around your head.’
I peered out from between the wooden bars and my blood froze.
The square was full of compagnacci!
Not a handful of boys with stones like last time but something more like a small private army, armed with swords and daggers and muskets. If they stormed the unguarded statue, it would be the end for David and for Angelo and me.
And then a kind of miracle happened.
Another body of men entered the square from all the roads around it, surrounding the compagnacci. The frateschi! I could see several of my republican friends among them. There was a moment of complete stillness while the two sides glared at each other.
And then the battle erupted like a thunderstorm in the summer night.
I did not want to cower inside the wooden castle like a craven. I had my daggers and my fists and my blood was hot. I was tired of all the months of pretending. I would protect the statue with my life and fight shoulder to shoulder with the other republicans.
‘Palle! Palle!?’ shouted the compagnacci, hurling themselves on their opponents.
‘Marzocco, Marzocco!’ roared the frateschi back at them, invoking the name of Florence’s lion, another potent symbol of the Republic.
It was a pitched battle.
Casting a last regretful look at my image and my brother, I leapt from the scaffolding, landing in the middle of the fray.
‘Marzocco!’ I screamed till my throat hurt and threw myself at the nearest man in purple and green.
Chapter Twenty-one
A Sweet Room in Hell
The first man went down without my drawing my dagger; my fists were enough. But my blood was up and I didn’t really care what I did to defend the statue and the man who had made it. All those years of work and the final exhausting stages of getting it here from the workshop and up on the plinth were not going to be lost at the last minute to a mob of compagnacci – not if I could help it!
Looking up to check on the ‘castle’ I saw several pro-Mediceans climbing the wooden structure.
Roaring, I plucked them off like bits of fluff from a velvet jerkin, hurling them on to the tiles of the piazza. I had never felt such strength as coursed through me now. And then I felt a hand grip at my leg: someone had hold of it and was dragging me down from the scaffolding with a strength to match my own.
It was Antonello de’ Altobiondi.
‘Serpent!’ he hissed, putting his hands around my neck as he forced me to my knees. ‘You were a guest in my house!’
It would have been useless to tell him that my affair with his wife had been over before she married him – even if I could have spoken. When men are jealous of each other in that way, they take no notice of times and dates.
And I knew what he was feeling. Hadn’t I felt the same way about him when he married Clarice?
‘You needn’t think your bastard will get anything more from me,’ he went on, his face as purple as if he were the one being deprived of breath. ‘I’m sending him to a convent to be looked after by nuns. There he can learn that the only way to keep a woman chaste is to lock her up.’
The pressure was intolerable and only the thought of Davide being wrenched away from his mother kept me from succumbing to the dark. He released his grasp just a little, enough for me to get a bit of air. He wanted me to hear more.
‘As for his mother, she will go to a convent too but another one. Clarice will never see either of her sons again. Cipriano will be brought up by nurses. He shall inherit my name and my estate – not that little mongrel you got on his mother!’
This was too cruel. Not only were innocent children to be punished by being wrenched away from their mother. The mother herself, who had never swerved from her husband’s bed, would lose both boys at a stroke, one of them still a baby. Not to mention her two little daughters by her first marriage. It didn’t bear th
inking of.
I flexed my thigh muscles and heaved with all my might, throwing Altobiondi to the ground. Air rushed into my chest, causing me to choke and cough, but I whipped my dagger out of my belt and would have finished him off on the spot.
But just then two figures hurled themselves on us.
It was the brothers Donato and Giulio. I left Altobiondi to them, not caring if he lived or died. I had something more urgent to do even than fighting Mediceans.
He had talked in the future tense, as if his sentence of exile hadn’t yet been carried out on Davide and his mother, so I ran from the battle in the square, dodging blows and curses and feeling torn in two. If I found he had hurt the boy in any way, I would return to the fray and run him through the heart.
Silently I begged forgiveness of my brother for deserting him, as I ran down the Via Porta Rossa towards Via Tornabuoni. I knew that what he had made should endure longer than both our lifetimes. Knew too that if he lost his life tonight the world would be deprived of many more masterpieces.
But I couldn’t help it. Flesh and blood might not endure like marble but Davide’s flesh and blood was made of mine. He was my masterpiece and I had to save him first. He should not go to the grey sisters if I could stop it.
I reached the Palazzo Altobiondi out of breath and still coughing from the assault on my windpipe. I rested for a moment at the doorway and saw that the big oak door was ajar. The house was in confusion, with no servants on duty. I could hear the sound of women wailing on a higher floor.
I took the stairs two at a time and burst into Clarice’s chamber. She was sobbing with a frightened Davide in her arms, Cipriano whimpering in a crib at her side. And she was surrounded by weeping women. But when she saw me she cried out.
‘Gabriele! My husband knows everything.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘He found me in the piazza.’
‘He found you and you live?’ she asked, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.
‘As you see. But I don’t know whether he lives or not,’ I said. ‘I left him in the hands of two frateschi. I don’t care whether he lives or dies. I would have finished him if my friends hadn’t come along.’
I knelt by her side and tried to soothe little Davide, who was terrified by all the uproar and had no idea what was going on. I stroked his hair.
‘There, there,’ I said clumsily. ‘Clarice, let me take him. I can take him to my parents in Settignano and they will look after him. Then you may be able to see him again.’
‘Oh, take me too,’ she begged. ‘Don’t let me be sent away.’
What could I do? I was sure my parents would welcome and look after my child but what could they do for a gentlewoman like Clarice de’ Altobiondi? And what of her new baby? Or her little daughters? It was all hopeless.
She saw that in my face and began sobbing afresh. She saw that I would take my son but she would still be separated from both her boys and her girls.
I had arrived in a white-hot rage but now that feeling of power was ebbing away from me and being replaced by an overwhelming sadness. Whatever I did would lead to more sorrow, but I had to do what little I could in such a desperate situation.
Now that I was calmer, I took in more of Clarice’s situation and saw that the women who had been trying to comfort her with their sympathetic tears were not all servants; some were well-dressed and obviously of her social class. I was seeing some of the women’s network in action.
To my amazement, I suddenly realised that one of them was Simonetta!
Seeing that I had recognised her, she managed a damp smile. Of course, the women’s network wasn’t based on political allegiance; a supporter of Savonarola would put her shared womanhood before her republican views when it came to helping a sister who was pro-Medici.
But that meant that Simonetta knew about my relations with Clarice and I could have wished she had not. Still, I couldn’t worry about that now. When I looked up again, she was not there. Perhaps I had imagined her?
I took Clarice’s hand.
‘Let your women bundle up some clothes and his favourite possessions,’ I said. ‘Time is short. If I’m to save Davide from the nunnery, I must take him away tonight.’
There was a sound behind me. I knew from the expression on Clarice’s face what this meant but I turned round anyway.
‘You are taking him nowhere!’ said the figure of nightmare in the doorway.
Altobiondi was covered in blood; it streaked his face, hair and clothes. But he was on his feet and holding a sword towards me.
‘I will kill him rather,’ he said. ‘After I have dispatched his father.’
He lunged towards me but I jumped back and as I did, someone hit him over the head with a chair. Before I could do more, Clarice had in one swift movement put the child aside, taken the dagger from my boot and fallen on her husband.
There was a horrible gurgling sound as she slit his throat.
And then an even more terrible silence in the room. I noted that it was Simonetta standing behind the body, the wrecked remains of a chair in her hands.
Altobiondi was dead. But I couldn’t begin to count the ways in which we were still in danger.
Clarice sank to the floor, almost insensible, the dagger dropping from her fingers. At that moment, Davide began to scream.
The battle in the piazza raged all night before the Watch got the combatants under control. But it was a while before I heard the full story of what had happened after I left. And then the news was very bad.
Donato was dead, killed by Altobiondi, and his brother wounded. There were losses on both sides, several dead and injured, but although the frateschi had lost one of their best men, the compagnacci had lost their leader.
The story was that Altobiondi, fatally wounded in the square, had managed to stagger home to die in his wife’s arms; it was considered very romantic. I believe ballads were written about Clarice’s tragedy.
I didn’t care about that. But all the women in the room were prepared to swear that his death had happened in this way. I, of course, had not been there.
Simonetta had seen to that, taking charge of a situation that none of the rest of us could handle. She organised servants to take Davide away and make him a drink of warm milk and honey, with nutmeg grated on the top. Others were to take Clarice and wash her hands and the dagger; her dress could remain stained.
Only when this had been done and the knife returned to me, was another servant sent to call the Watch. Meanwhile, Simonetta smuggled me out of the house.
‘Where can you go?’ she asked. ‘They may look for you at your brother’s – or at my house.’
We didn’t know then how things had gone in the square. It was possible that all the houses of known faction leaders would be searched.
‘But I did nothing to him,’ I objected. ‘He was the one who nearly throttled me.’
‘Your clothes are stained with his blood,’ said Simonetta. ‘And someone might have seen you fighting in the square. It would be best for you to lie low for a while.’
She was right. For a moment I couldn’t think where it would be safe to go but then I thought about Leone. I couldn’t go to Visdomini’s house, since he was another prominent compagnaccio, but there was no reason I shouldn’t shelter with his pet painter.
Leone lived on the other side of the river. I ran quickly down to the end of the Via Tornabuoni and across the Santa Trinita bridge. I stopped halfway and leaned against the wooden parapet, overlooking the peaceful waters of the Arno. My head was throbbing.
What I had seen and done and heard that night would stay with me for ever. But somehow or other, the terrible fate in store for Clarice and her sons had been avoided. Suddenly, I was shaking in all my limbs. My throat was sore and my whole body ached. I felt like an ancient man with the ague (and, of course, now I know what that feels like!).
It took me some minutes to steady my breathing and to be capable of walking again. Only a few hundred yards behind me, the officials woul
d be examining Altobiondi’s corpse.
What could the future possibly hold for me or for any of the people who had been in Clarice’s chamber that night? I couldn’t think beyond getting to Leone’s house. Wearily, I heaved myself off the parapet and staggered onward into the Borgo Santo Spirito. I was glad that the streets were empty and no one greeted me by calling out the name of the statue that night.
I made my way towards the bulk of the great church where my brother had once cut up dead bodies. It seemed eerily appropriate on that night of carnage.
Leone’s house was in an alley near the church; I rapped on his door and was never so pleased to see anyone as when he opened it himself. He looked appalled at the sight of me – in fact, it took him a few moments to recognise me.
‘Gabriele, is that you?’
‘More or less,’ I said. ‘Can I come in?’
I almost fell through the doorway and just managed to get myself into a chair before I collapsed. Leone bolted the door and fetched some wine and a bowl of warm water.
‘Do you want something to eat?’ he asked, bathing my cuts and bruises.
I drank eagerly but the wine stung my throat.
‘I’m very hungry,’ I said, ‘but I’ve been half strangled. I don’t know how much I could manage.’
‘Who nearly strangled you?’ he asked, bustling about sousing bread in some milk.
I supped it down like a two-year-old.
‘Altobiondi,’ I said.
The city was in chaos for several days while I lay low at Leone’s. When I first woke up in his house, I had lost an entire day. The physical injuries and the shock of seeing Clarice kill her husband in front of our son combined to shut my senses down into a deep sleep that lasted twenty-four hours.
I awoke still stiff and sore but rested in my body. I was anxious to know what had been happening and went in search of news and food. Leone was in his kitchen.