The Medici Boy

by John L'Heureux

  Michelozzo smiled his sad, knowing smile.

  He was leaving, he said, for Trebbio. Cosimo had appointed him as his official architect and the first order of business was a design for a new villa, indeed for a castello. He was eager to begin work. He would keep me in his heart, he said, along with my master Donatello.

  * * *

  “IT WAS BUT a single time with Caterina,” Agnolo said, looking penitent but then, incapable of restraint, he offered me a huge smile, “and excellent too!”

  This is how it was to deal with Agnolo. He lived for the moment. He had no care for the consequences of his actions. He was incapable of understanding danger. It was as if he lacked all sense of right and wrong, of sin and forgiveness, of love and betrayal . . . although, to be sure, he was able to imitate any emotion that was asked or desired. He had the charm of innocent wickedness.

  Donatello, I told him, would be enraged. Donatello would throw you out, forever. He listened and nodded. Donatello would be hurt beyond remedy by your betrayal. Here he lowered his eyes and put on the mask of sorrow and penance, as if he understood what it meant to be hurt. He should be a traveling player, I thought, taking on a new character with a new cloak, feigning emotions he did not feel, moving his audience to false tears and vows of repentance. I could find no way through to him.

  “Donatello loves you,” I said in anger and frustration. Agnolo smiled. “He should not, but he does. And I will not see him injured in this way.” He listened, wanting more. “Caterina is his niece—not that that matters—what matters is that you have betrayed him.”

  He was astonished. “How have I betrayed him?”

  I saw for that instant he was sincere. In truth, he did not understand.

  “I’ve promised to be here each daybreak and to pose without complaint. I did not take a vow of chastity.”

  “You refuse to understand. You’re like a child.”

  He gave me a wide smile. “I am a child. Until eighteen.”

  He was referring to the laws of the Ufficiali di Onestà who arrested but only rarely prosecuted sodomites beneath the age of eighteen years.

  “One day your age will not protect you,” I said, and gave over. It was not possible to make him hear what he did not want to hear.

  * * *

  FEBRUARY HAD BEGUN with a week of fair weather—the snow disappeared, a warm wind blew from the west—and it seemed almost as if spring was about to bloom. We cast off our heavy cloaks and drank deep of the fresh air. Even Donatello seemed to relax. He was well advanced on the core of the life-sized statue. On the next morning he would begin the actual sculpting of the head, but this night when we finished work, and after I had tidied away his tools, Donatello said he would stand us to a tankard of wine. Everyone had left for the day excepting me and Agnolo—and of course Pagno di Lapo who lived in fear he would miss something Donatello might say or do—and we went to the San Giovanni tavern in the Piazza della Signoria. We drank a flagon of wine, watery but sweet, and in good cheer we departed each for home. Agnolo went back to the room he shared with the apprentices but later that night, goaded by the sting of the flesh or perhaps only by the need for excitement, he wandered off to the Via tra Pellicciai—the ill-famed Street of the Furriers—to see what might happen.

  The next morning Donatello was early at his sculpting stand. He was in good spirits, ready to work.

  “Have you seen the boy?”

  I feared to answer and my heart tightened at the thought that of all mornings Agnolo had chosen this one to stay late abed.

  Donatello patted the clay with his wet fingers and looked about the bottega impatiently.

  I looked about as well and saw that the three apprentices who shared the room with Agnolo were all at their tasks. I approached the youngest, Antonio Carpacci, and asked if he knew where Agnolo might be, but Antonio had not seen him that morning. Or the previous night. I dared not tell Donatello this. Caterina, too, knew nothing of him.

  The rest of the morning was long and slow and at mid-day Donatello told me to come along, and we walked together in silence down the Via Larga to the Ponte Vecchio and across the bridge to the apartment houses where Donatello’s assistants had their rooms in the Via del Gufo. No one was there, of course, and it was too early in the day to try the Buco and there seemed nothing further we could do.

  “Where could he have gone?”

  “It may be Pagno would know.”

  Donatello shot me a quick look. “Always Pagno,” he said.

  “They share confidences,” I said, to defend myself.

  “Agnolo does not share,” he said.

  We returned to the bottega and Donatello approached Pagno at once. I could not hear what they said, but it was clear that Pagno had no idea where Agnolo might be.

  The rest of the day was marked by my careful silence and Donatello’s self-control. He left the bottega early with orders for me to lock up.

  Everyone had finished for the day and I was putting the lock to the door when Agnolo, looking white and exhausted, appeared behind me.

  “Let me go in,” he said. “I need to use the privy.”

  I unlocked the doors and waited for him outside the privy and after a few moments there he was standing beside me, full of sudden energy and bravado.

  “I was arrested,” he said, as if this were some new and wonderful adventure. “I was brought before the clerk of the Onestà.”

  I stared at him in disbelief.

  “I was in prison for the whole night.”

  “In truth, you stink of it,” I said. “You should be proud.”

  “They let me go with only a caution.”

  “First,” I said, “Donatello must never know of this. “Next, sit down and tell me what happened. In the end, I will tell you what you must do. Now sit.”

  Insensible creature that he was, he sat down and poured out his story. He had left the San Giovanni Tavern and returned to his room in the Via del Gufo but none of the apprentices was there and he was bored and feeling lusty and in need of some liveliness, so he went back across the bridge to the Sant’ Andrea Tavern near the Via tra Pellicciai. There an older man of good quality—he had a fur-lined cloak—snatched off his cap and said he would not return it unless Agnolo agreed to service him. My cap and a silver florin, Agnolo had said, and the man responded, the cap now and the florin afterward. They went together down a narrow alley and the man at first fondled Agnolo’s privy parts, and then worked at his own, and when at last he was ready he lowered the flap on the front of his stockings and was scrabbling at Agnolo’s rear, roughly too . . . “Enough,” I said, “so they arrested you.” But he went on and, in short, what happened was this: two police appeared suddenly out of the dark and arrested them—in actu, or nearly so. At once the man in the fur-lined cloak claimed it was all a misunderstanding, that he had gone into the alley to relieve himself and this boy, whom he had never seen before, was there relieving himself as well, and the boy had propositioned him while he was making water and he had said no, but the boy had said he would service him for a silver florin, so it was the boy who was at fault. The police led them off to the Bargello and turned them over to the guard at the Onestà who put them in the holding cell until the morning when they went before the clerk to be charged, separately, as sodomites.

  I listened fascinated, I confess, but in horror of what would follow.

  The clerk of the Onestà, he said, wrote down his name, his age, his home address, his place of work, the name of his parents—“I gave your name, as you are my brother”—and then he asked Agnolo if he wished to confess.

  “Was he a fat, fat man?” I asked, “with no chin and white skin all sickly?”

  Agnolo thought a moment and said, “He smelled of ginger and ink . . . and piss especially.”

  So it was the same clerk, and now he had my name and my true place of employment and my connection to a confessed sodomite. My mind clouded and for a second I thought I would go unconscious. How long was it since I had had a
falling fit?

  “So I told him this was my first time. And he let me go. With only a warning.”

  “Because you are under eighteen.”

  “I told him I was fifteen.”

  “And you gave them my name. And Donatello’s?”

  “They asked where I was employed. I had no choice.”

  So it was disaster, worse than I could have guessed. I sat across from Agnolo, my head in my hands, thinking they have my name, they have my name, and this is only the start, this will follow me the rest of my life.

  “But I did not name names.”

  I looked up at him.

  “I did not name Donatello. As a partner.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Or you.”

  I truly did not understand.

  “They want names. They want you to name all your partners in sodomy. You don’t have to tell the truth. You only have to give a name.”

  “But you did not mention the name of Donatello.”

  “I would never mention Donatello. And besides, he has lost interest in me . . . in that way.”

  “You must tell no one you were arrested. Not Donatello, not Pagno, no one.”

  “Not even Caterina?”

  He was impossible. “No one,” I said.

  * * *

  TWO DAYS LATER the warm weather ended abruptly. Heavy rains blew down from the mountains and cold settled hard upon the city, freezing the mud in the streets and making it a penance to walk from our rooms to the bottega. Everyone was impatient. Carving marble outside became impossible, even with the small comfort of a brazier and the limited shelter of the canopy. Everything was damp. Everything smelled of wet stone. Inside, the bottega was airless and dark. We worked by rushlights that flickered and went out and so needed constant attention. The garzoni complained—softly—that they could not see and they could not breathe and the apprentices went about looking aggrieved and put upon. Caterina and Pagno labored together on the unfinished tondi of the Virgin and Child. Only Donatello and Agnolo were in high good spirits.

  After his day’s absence in the holding cells of the Bargello, Agnolo returned to the bottega and to the posing stand without a word of explanation. He was standing in position when Donatello arrived the next morning. Donatello was startled and pleased, and he offered no rebuke nor any comment whatsoever on Agnolo’s absence. He fell to sculpting the clay head at once.

  * * *

  I LEFT MY account books and, seeing Caterina alone at work, I went to her and said, “He’s back. And all is forgiven, it would seem.”

  “He was in jail. He was arrested,” she said.

  “It appears he is irresistible, our Agnolo,” and when she offered me a hard look, I said, “Even to you.”

  “A single time,” she said. “An experiment.”

  “I would think you’d blush for shame. A woman of thirty years, a boy of sixteen.”

  “Do you think women have no curiosity? Do you think we do not desire loveliness in our beds?”

  I was shamed by this talk and could think of no response, because in truth I knew that women feel the same needs as men, at least such needs of the body, but I did not want to imagine Caterina with that boy.

  “And he is very lovely.”

  “He is a . . .” I was about to say, “He is a whore,” but I recoiled from the word just in time, as Caterina drew herself up and looked at me with disdain.

  “I had thought better of you,” she said.

  At that moment Pagno joined us. “Donatello does not know,” Pagno said. “You must not mention about Agnolo’s arrest.”

  “Is there anyone who does not know!” I said.

  “Only Donatello,” he said. “And if you care for him, you will protect him.”

  Enraged, I went back to my work table.

  * * *

  DURING HIS BREAK from posing, Agnolo approached Donatello and whispered, “I have failed you, my lord.” He was the very image of penitence and I wondered would he confess to Donatello now that he had played the whore, that he had been arrested, that he had involved me—and the bottega—in his disgrace.

  “You are posing well today,” Donatello said. “It is no easy thing.”

  “I drank too much and . . .”

  “You are here now.” He placed his hand gently on Agnolo’s shoulder. “Only be here.”

  MICHELOZZO MOVED OUT of the house he shared with Donatello and three days later Agnolo moved in.

  “It is easier this way,” Michelozzo said to me.

  “And you?” I asked.

  Michelozzo shrugged and gave me that sad, understanding smile. He thought well of me and I felt guilty for his trust and his approval.

  I went back to my work but I could not concentrate. That it should come to this! That Michelozzo should move out and Agnolo move in. To his very house. To his bed? Agnolo must have seduced him beyond his reason. I thought, I will go mad. I will not endure it. I felt myself falling, my arm went numb, there was that roaring in my brain.

  I told Donatello I was ill and must go home. At once.

  “Lie down in my little room,” he said. “You work too hard. You must have a rest.”

  But I would not lie down in his little room. I would not stay and listen to the loving words passed back and forth between this old man—however much a genius—and this wanton boy, no better than a whore. I had suffered enough outrage for this day. I was going home. Let them lock up the bottega and do filthy things in that little room and, only see, they would find themselves in prison and rot there for the rest of their lives. I did not care. I went home.

  CHAPTER 23

  DIZZY AND CONFUSED, I took to bed and fell asleep at once. I woke some time later with a pain in the right side of my head and, when Alessandra asked how I felt, I found that I could not speak. My mouth seemed full of wool, my tongue stumbled, and my words came out a muddled, shushing sound. I felt as if someone was driving a small nail into my skull. I tried to get up—I had to get back to the bottega—but I found I could not move my left side. I had no feeling there, not in my arm, not in my leg, and I lacked all strength. I tried to explain this to Alessandra, but I could not make myself understood, so I picked up my left wrist with my right hand and let the arm fall. “It’s dead,” I said, though the sounds I made were unintelligible. For some reason, I found this funny and began to laugh. Alessandra, who remained always sensible in any crisis, got a bowl of cool water and placed a wet cloth on my forehead.

  “Stay,” she said, “only rest,” and to assure me a little quiet, she sent the boys out to play.

  I fell asleep and when I woke it was night and the pain was gone. Alessandra was leaning over me, asking if I felt any better and I said in my normal voice, “Yes,” and she smiled and kissed me softly on the mouth. She slipped out of bed then and went to heat the broth of a chicken, but when she returned I was again asleep and could not be wakened. In the morning I could move my left arm and I could speak a little but I could not manage to stay awake. I drifted off, only half-conscious and, it seemed to me, only half alive.

  Alessandra sent to Donatello to say that I was ill. Though the weather remained foul, he came through a blizzard of sleet and rain and sat by my side. I slept through his visit like one who was dead. “A good sign,” he said. “The sleep will heal him.” He said a prayer to the Virgin and left me to continue sleeping.

  A day later he sent a doctor referred to him by Cosimo de’ Medici. The doctor prescribed bleeding and cupping, but after they drew my blood I was weaker and more light-headed than before. The doctor promised that in time I would recover, but he did not say when that time would be.

  Cosimo, hearing of this, asked his favorite priest to visit. This was Antonio Pierozzi, Prior of the Dominican monastery, a most learned and spiritual man who would years later become Archbishop of Florence. He came to our small cottage and sat by my bed and, when I could not speak to make my confession, asked instead a few simple spiritual questions: Who made you? Why did God m
ake you? Do you believe in the saving blood of Christ? I heard him ask these questions, and I was eager to respond, but my tongue could make no sense of my words, and I nodded merely. Donatello stood beside him and waited for his advice.

  “Acedia,” the Prior said. “If this Luca were a monk and this cottage a monastery, I would say he suffers from acedia: tristitia de bono spirituali. He is alive in body but not in spirit. He is fatigued in the face of God’s omnipotence. He can do nothing to save himself. We must pray for him.” He loved to teach and he warmed now to his topic. “Acedia is a refusal of Christian joy. It is a condition, not a sin, though it can become a sin when it embraces the luxury of despair. I have observed this sometimes in the Brothers of Saint Dominic, I have recognized it in myself, but I have never seen it in a layman.” He paused for a long moment. “Does he pray much, this Luca? Is he greatly given to the spiritual life?”

  Donatello responded that I had once been a Franciscan Brother, that I had left the Order following a bout of the Black Pest, that I was a good husband and father but beyond that he could not answer for any man’s spiritual life.

  “The Pest,” the Prior said. “Could it be the effects of the Pest, I wonder.”

  “He has been known to have spells,” Donatello said, and when the Prior merely looked at him, he went on. “A trembling of the limbs and I believe severe pains in the head and a kind of violence of feeling. I do not say madness, not that, but a leaving of himself and the sudden need to destroy.”

  I listened in disbelief. Madness? The need to destroy. Could Donatello be right?

  The Prior nodded. “A contagion of evil,” he said, “from the Black Pest. Those who survive are never the same again.”

  He continued to sit beside my bed while Donatello stood beside him and I lay there saying nothing, no longer sure if I was unable or merely unwilling to speak. I had not thought of any need to destroy. I had not thought to blame the Black Pest. I had never heard of the contagion of evil.

  “I will pray for him,” the Prior said, and he blessed me with the holy oils on my hands and feet and on my brow and on my lips.