by Mary Hoffman
And yet it was a time of great terror in the city; Florence had some implacable enemies, who had nothing to do with the de’ Medici or Savonarola.
‘Cesare Borgia,’ said Gandini the baker. ‘That’s the man we’ve got to worry about.’
I scarcely knew the name, but the most important thing about this Borgia was that he was the son of the Pope. The gossip in Florence made him seem like a monster and hero rolled into one – someone no one could defeat or cheat. He was supposed to have ordered the murder of many victims and gained the love of as many women. And everyone in the city was talking about him.
‘He was a cardinal, you know,’ Grazia told me. ‘And born to a cardinal too – the one who is now Pope – but Cesare gave up his red hat.’
‘Why?’ I asked listlessly. It didn’t seem to matter much to me at the time.
‘They do say,’ said Grazia, ‘that he poisoned his older brother. They were both lovers of a third brother’s wife. Can you believe such a thing?’
I didn’t feel I could judge anyone else’s sexual adventures when I considered my own situation, but I expressed suitable horror at such behaviour in a man of the Church.
‘The French king made him a duke and he became a soldier,’ said Grazia. ‘He leads the Pope’s armies with five condottieri underneath his command.’
‘Why does that matter to us, Grazia?’ I asked. ‘What has an army in Rome to do with Florence?’
‘Don’t you listen to any of the rumours in the city?’ she scolded me. ‘One of those condottieri is Vitellozzo Vitelli!’
It meant nothing to me and I could see my ignorance was exasperating her.
‘Vitelli fought with Florence against Pisa,’ she said.
‘So he’s an ally?’
She snorted. ‘Not any more! His brother Paolo was put to death for treachery a few years ago and Vitellozzo vowed to avenge him. He and Cesare are out roaming the countryside, getting nearer to the city all the time. Heaven help us if their armies combine and march on Florence!’
It wasn’t long before Grazia’s fears seemed to be coming true. A message reached the city that Vitelli had captured Arezzo, which was much too close for comfort.
There were rumours in Lodovico’s house that Florence had sent ambassadors to Rome to get Pope Alexander to intervene. And while the tension in the city grew as Florentines waited for the reply, a new and more alarming rumour began to circulate.
‘Pisa has declared for Borgia,’ said Sigismondo. They called him Gismondo in the family. He was the one who wanted to be a soldier and always had his ear to the ground about military matters. ‘The Pisans are already flying the Duke’s banners from their turrets.’
This was seriously worrying. Pisa and Florence had been at odds for a long time and the Florentines were incensed that their rival city had gone over to Cesare Borgia instead of coming back into the fold of their old relations with the city.
‘Borgia won’t have them, though,’ said Gandini the baker, my other source of information. He picked up a lot of gossip in his shop. ‘He’s gone off to take Camerino.’
My knowledge of geography was no better than of history but it sounded further away than Pisa. But I had heard of Urbino – who hadn’t? – and it wasn’t long before news came that Cesare Borgia had deposed the legitimate Duke of that fine city, Guidobaldo Montefeltro. This he had done himself, sending just a portion of his army to besiege Camerino.
Soon there came a message to Florence from Cesare Borgia that the city should send an ambassador to him in Urbino.
‘They’re sending Soderini,’ said Gismondo.
‘The gonfaloniere?’ I asked.
‘No. His brother, Bishop Francesco. And they’re sending Machiavelli with him.’
I didn’t recognise the name but not many people had heard of Niccolò Machiavelli at that time. Later, he became famous throughout Italy for his intelligence and diplomatic skills.
Soderini sent back a message that Cesare Borgia was an extraordinary man – magnificent and formidable were just two of the words used – and that if Florence would not declare itself his friend, Cesare would regard the city as his enemy.
Well, no one in Florence wanted such a powerful and seemingly unconquerable enemy. But it was a proud city, which had got rid of one family of tyrants and was in no hurry to replace it with another. There were rumours that a huge French army was on its way, which would be a protection for Florence, so the Signoria played for time.
‘Ha,’ said Gismondo, hurrying back from the Piazza della Signoria with fresh news. ‘It seems that Cesare Borgia has heard about the French army too! He has ordered Vitelli to withdraw from Arezzo.’
While all this was going on outside the city, it was Grazia who told me about the secret information network that operated between Florentine women, the grand ladies and their servants. At first it seemed to me that it was just to help aristocratic ladies find good-looking lovers. But gradually I realised it could be helpful in finding out more about the pro-Medicean conspiracy.
‘Antonello de’ Altobiondi is their leader,’ said Grazia, confirming what Lodovico had told me a year earlier. ‘His wife and my lady are friends.’
This was news to me. And as the weather grew warmer, it seemed that Florentine ladies liked to visit one another.
The evenings were getting lighter too and Leone took down the shutters and painted by natural light. I was still posing as Bacchus with a leopard skin – another length of ordinary cloth that the painter would transform – and holding a wine cup which would look far richer on his canvas than the ordinary pewter goblet I held.
I suppose I should have expected what happened one warm July evening but, as I said, I was sleepwalking through my days. There was a knock at the door and I hardly bothered with much dressing since I was sure it was Grazia and she had seen everything many times by then.
And Grazia it was but followed by Monna Visdomini and . . . Clarice. Worse still, my lady was carrying a sturdy curly-haired baby of a few months old. My son. Davide.
‘Oh, you were right, Maddalena,’ said Clarice. ‘Your husband’s model is indeed like a Greek god.’
Imagine how I felt! Clarice and my child in the same room as Grazia, and indeed my patron’s wife! It would have taken a much older and wiser man than I was then to carry the situation off.
Maddalena Visdomini introduced Leone and myself to her friend, clearly blissfully unaware of the tension in the room, but Grazia was looking daggers at me. Still, I couldn’t miss what might be my only chance.
‘May we offer you a seat, my ladies?’ I said. ‘And shall I take the child? He must be heavy.’
Without a word, Clarice handed Davide to me. I could not say anything myself. Brought up as the youngest among a large family of sisters, the only babies I had ever known anything about were my little nieces and nephews. And to be honest, I had never found them very interesting until they could walk and talk.
But this was different – my own firstborn. He looked up at me with a solemn dark blue gaze and in that moment I would have given my life to protect him. Even though I didn’t know from what.
Fortunately for me, Leone was keeping up a polite conversation with the ladies, showing them his finished Hercules, which was still in the studio waiting to be framed. They looked with discernment at his work in progress too. I must have held little Davide for about ten minutes, unconsciously rocking him until his eyes closed and his little body relaxed.
Then his mother reached for him and I handed him back. I felt as if a part of my own flesh was being ripped out of my chest, but still could say nothing.
That night in her room Grazia quizzed me about Clarice.
‘You know her, don’t you?’ she asked.
‘I knew her,’ I admitted. I was not going to lie to this good woman.
‘They say you were her lover,’ said Grazia in a very small voice.
I did not need to ask who ‘they’ were. I was surprised only that it had taken so long for this
information to travel to Grazia’s ears via the women’s network.
She took my silence as agreement. ‘And the child . . . ?’ she asked.
I turned my face away from her. I could not talk about the child.
I had a few days to myself after that because I was not due at Visdomini’s house till the following week. The day after my unsettling encounter with Clarice, I was with the frateschi and they were in an excitable mood. I hadn’t given them all that much information but they had followed up various leads and were now sure that the compagnacci were in active contact with Piero de’ Medici and planning a restoration of the family as de facto rulers of the city.
‘They will have us to contend with if they try it,’ said Gianbattista, who was as fiery as he was short.
‘How many of “us” are there?’ I asked. I hadn’t wondered about that before but surely six or seven of us meeting in one house could make no difference?
‘More than you’d think,’ answered Daniele. ‘There are groups like ours meeting in many houses all over Florence. And we can count on public support too. There are many, many people who have not forgiven the Signoria for killing our leader.’
‘And how will we come together to halt the compagnacci?’
‘We have a good network,’ said Fra Paolo. I was sure he didn’t want me to know the details. He had never trusted me. I thought of the women’s network and wondered if the republicans would have such a good system.
‘Don’t worry, Gabriele,’ said Gianbattista. ‘Just be ready when the call comes. We will need to make sure the compagnacci inside the city can’t let Piero and his army in.’
So I would be kidnapping nobles or defending the city gates?
‘What are you smiling about, Gabriele?’ said Fra Paolo. ‘This is not a boys’ game.’
I was thinking about kidnapping Antonello de’ Altobiondi and administering to him the punishment due to a traitor to the Republic. And yet, as far as he knew, the man had never done me any harm.
‘I wish there was some action I could take,’ I said honestly.
‘It will come soon enough,’ said Donato. ‘And then you will wish otherwise.’
I walked back a little way with Donato and his brother Giulio that night. It was still light because we were close to the longest day of the year and the moon and sun could be seen at the same time in the sky above Piazza Santa Croce.
‘How did you two become followers of the Friar?’ I asked. I had never been alone with them before.
‘We were among his fanciulli,’ said Giulio.
I had heard a bit about these groups of boys that roamed unchecked round the city about five years ago. These two would have been just boys then; they were close to me in age.
‘What was it like?’
‘It was the best two years we ever had,’ said Donato and his brother nodded his agreement.
‘We went round to the houses of the compagnacci,’ said Giulio, ‘and got them to give us their fripperies.’
‘You burned them, I think?’ I said.
‘We had huge bonfires outside the Palazzo della Signoria,’ said Donato, ‘piling on combs and masks and wigs and paintings and laces – how they burned!’
‘You kept nothing for yourselves?’ I asked. ‘It must have been a temptation.’
They exchanged uneasy glances.
‘Of course not,’ said Donato. ‘There were thousands of us – the Friar trusted us all.’
I tried to imagine thousands of young boys roaming through the city in their black robes, olive leaves in their hair, cajoling and bullying people into giving up the pretty things that meant so much to them. I somehow didn’t believe that every one of those angelic youths put everything he collected on to a bonfire.
And were the women who took pleasure in jewels and combs and laces, like Clarice and Monna Visdomini, terrible sinners compared with the grave and devout Simonetta? I couldn’t see the harm in it. Even Rosalia liked pretty things – though she didn’t have many of them – and she would not have been allowed to keep my cameo ring in the days of Savonarola. I was beginning to wonder if I was such a follower of his after all.
The next Sunday Angelo took me with him to visit his oldest brother, Lionardo. We walked up to San Marco, a route now familiar to me from my sessions with the frateschi in Gianbattista’s house. But Angelo didn’t know where I went of an evening when not at Visdomini’s house.
‘This is where I used to work for Lorenzo,’ he said unexpectedly.
‘At the monastery?’ I asked.
‘No. In the sculpture garden,’ he said. ‘It’s right opposite.’
‘Is it still there?’ I hadn’t realised that this was where it had been, Angelo’s first proper school of art.
‘Let’s look,’ he said and led me over to an iron gate in the road that ran up beside the Piazza San Marco.
It was such a quiet part of the city – hard to believe that only a few years ago it had rung with the sounds of rioting as Savonarola had been besieged in the monastery. After that the monastery’s bell had been silenced, as Fra Paolo had told me, taken away from the friars for fifty years.
‘Look through there,’ said Angelo. ‘It used to be full of Roman statues – some complete and some fragments. They were part of Lorenzo’s collection.’
‘Where are they now?’ I asked. The garden was quiet and still. No statues and no young sculptors ringing out with hammers and chisels on blocks of marble from quarries like the ones near my home. It was easy to imagine them, though. In this peaceful setting it was easier than summoning up images of men with torches and muskets.
‘I imagine they were taken – or maybe even broken up – when Piero was chased out of Florence,’ said Angelo. ‘The state took all the statues from the Medici palazzo and put them in the government palace. The bronzes are there now but I don’t know what happened to the marble statues that were here.’
So if Piero ever did come back to Florence, he’d find his father’s treasures scattered all over the city. I wondered if my brother was thinking about that, but in fact his mind had gone along another track.
‘What we make is so fragile,’ he said. ‘As transitory as human life.’
‘But works of art can live on long after the people who made them have gone,’ I said. ‘Remember those frescoes by Big Tom you showed me? And didn’t you say he was long dead?’
‘Yes, but take a big hammer to a statue or cast a canvas into the flames and it will not survive, any more than a human being would,’ he said. ‘That’s where I couldn’t follow Savonarola. He had no time for things that are beautiful in their own right. You know that even Il Botticello threw canvases on to his bonfires, at least so it is said?’
I had met this Botticello, the little barrel, once with my brother. He had been a great painter, according to Angelo, and a favourite of Lorenzo de’ Medici, but had fallen under the sway of the fanatical friar and, although he had survived the upheavals and the overthrow of his leader, had lost a lot of his standing as one of Florence’s great artists.
I could see that it pained Angelo to think of the destruction of works of art, more perhaps than the fate of the three men who had been executed in the square outside the government building. Of course, he wouldn’t have agreed with Savonarola about paintings and sculptures; that’s where he would have had to part company with the Friar.
Although so careless about his own appearance and belongings – apart from his tools – Angelo celebrated and revered beauty. He would never have thrown any work of his own on to the flames.
‘I was just a boy when I worked in that garden,’ said Angelo, turning away from the gate with a sigh. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been happier. It was half my lifetime ago.’
As we walked back towards the monastery, I saw Simonetta on the other side of the street. She was accompanied by her brother, but she was the one that caught my eye. As luck would have it, Angelo crossed the road at that point and we were forced to step back into the road to let th
em pass. Gianbattista gave me a curt nod and Simonetta acknowledged me with a glance.
I wondered whether to introduce them to Angelo but the encounter was over in a flash and the opportunity passed.
‘Do you know that lovely young woman?’ my brother asked.
I admitted that I did. He laughed softly.
‘Gabriele, what are we to do with you? How many women have succumbed to your charms since you arrived in the city?’
I fought hard not to blush. ‘Simonetta has not “succumbed”, as you put it,’ I defended myself. ‘It is her brother who is my friend. They are both frateschi.’
‘Really? Ah well, never mind. She must be one of the few Florentine women you have not impressed then.’
We walked on and into the monastery.
The atmosphere was cool and refreshing after the hot summer afternoon. The tiled floor rang with our footsteps which sounded loudly in the still quiet of the friars’ home. We walked towards the stone staircase to the brothers’ cells and as we ascended it I gasped with surprise.
The whole of the wall at the top of the stairs was filled with a huge painting of the Annunciation. The angel, just alighted on the left was delivering his eternal message to the Mother of Our Lord, who was sitting on a humble wooden stool on the right. Each had their arms loosely crossed at the chest, as if unconsciously imitating the other.
‘The archangel you were named for,’ said Angelo.
I thought again of my mother’s story of the night of my conception. My brother and I had both been named after archangels. But my namesake was a messenger of hope and joy, his a forbidding guardian with a flaming sword. I had never been more aware of the differences between us.
‘You like it?’
‘It’s magnificent,’ I said, my breath quite taken away.
‘Then you are in for a treat,’ he said, smiling.
When I had finished gazing at the fresco, he led me down a corridor to the side of it and knocked at the door of the first cell on the left. In fact, the door wasn’t fully shut; it was the practice of the friars to leave them ajar except at night. And this was evidently Lionardo’s cell. It was tiny and as he came to the door to greet us I caught a glimpse of the painted wall behind him.