David
Authors: Mary Hoffman
For Toby Sharp, a Giant fan
‘David with his sling, I with my bow.’
Michelangelo (fragment)
Contents
15 The Best-known Face in Florence
Chapter One
My brother died last month. No one bothered to tell me. But then, there is no one left alive who knows my real relationship with him. Of those who remember me in Florence, some say he was my master – which he was for a while, even though he didn’t normally take apprentices. Others think I was his paramour, which is another way of saying they never knew him or us.
But when his nephew brought his body back to Florence, word reached me here in Settignano.
My dear brother was nearly eighty-nine. It would have been his birthday last week. So eighty-one and a half years since I came into the world and he was waiting to greet me. And to look after me.
And sixty years since that time when everyone in Florence knew who I was.
‘David!’ they would call, from every street corner and tavern. But that was not my real name.
Those three and a half years were the only ones in my life when I had what you might call adventures. It wasn’t what I was expecting when I left our home in Settignano to find my brother and make my fortune in Florence.
I knew nothing of politics or the fads and fancies of great people like dukes and princes. Nothing about life at court or the ways of grand ladies. But I was a quick learner and I soon found myself at the heart of conspiracies, plots and murders.
Now that he’s gone, I can tell my story and I’ll tell it like a proper story, even though there will be no ‘once upon a time’ and not exactly a ‘happy ever after’ either. But it’s my story and no one else can tell it.
The first thing I knew about life in the city was a knife at my throat and three ruffians at my back. I was tall and well-made then and could easily have fought them off if it hadn’t been for the knife. First the prick of it drawing blood from my Adam’s apple and then a swift slash that separated the pouch containing my small store of money from my belt. Then the three ran off laughing, leaving me like the stupid country boy I was, standing gawping down at the dangling leather purse strings.
‘Welcome to the city, bumpkin!’ one of them shouted and then they were far away.
I had set out on foot from Settignano later than I had meant. First there was my mother, with her endless messages and packages for my brother, then my five big sisters all smothering me with kisses and wailing that the family’s baby was leaving home.
Baby! I was eighteen and a half years old and I had a girl waiting to waylay me on the dusty southern road out of the village. It took longer to disentangle myself from Rosalia than from any of the women in my family. And, truth to tell, I didn’t really want to disentangle myself all that quickly. Rosalia was fifteen, plump and as rosy as her name, even though her hair and eyes were dark.
‘Don’t leave me, Gabriele,’ she murmured when I eventually sat up and brushed the grass from my hair. ‘I shall miss you so.’ (I told you my name wasn’t David.)
‘I’m not leaving you,’ I protested. ‘I am going to the city to make my fortune. I’ll be back in a year or so and then we can be married.’
‘You’ll forget me,’ she said, sniffing a bit, ‘once you’ve seen those grand ladies in the city, with their silks and velvets and precious jewels.’
‘Not many of those left after the Mad Monk had his way,’ I told her but she didn’t really understand. She’d been a little girl of twelve when Savonarola built his bonfire of all the rich and luxurious goods he could make people yield up in the city. And only a year older when the Friar himself had burned in the same place.
If I knew little of city politics, Rosalia grasped even less.
She was so sure that I would meet a rich woman who would want to steal me from her that I felt touched. Before her, the only females who had told me I was handsome were my mother and sisters and I had no idea what was waiting for me in the big city. Rosalia turned out to be right in a way, but I didn’t forget her completely – even though there were many temptations.
I thought about Rosalia, as I stood destitute in the shadow of the great cathedral that first night. There was nothing I could do except try to find my brother and I didn’t even know if he would be there.
I had been to the city only a few times in my life and I wasn’t sure how to get to where my brother lived. There hadn’t really been a proper plan in my head when I set out and I was beginning to realise how foolish this had been. I had made for the cathedral as the one landmark I remembered; you could see it from anywhere in the city.
That was another mistake because I had been gazing up at the huge cupola when those three villains jumped me. Now I trailed round to the front of the building and sat on the steps with my back to the rough facade. There was some bread and cheese in my bag and a leather bottle with a bit of wine left in it. At least I still had my bag. As well as a few changes of underwear and a spare shirt, it held my stonecutting tools and without them I wouldn’t have a chance of earning any money.
But the plan, such as it was, had been to pay for a few nights’ lodging to give me time to find news of my brother. And now I had nothing but a meagre supper and no money. So I sat on the steps and munched on my crust and watched the fashionable people parading between the Duomo and the Baptistery, cursing my stupidity and ill luck.
Gradually, I noticed that people were staring at me, both men and women. I supposed I looked a comical rustic figure sitting eating my humble meal in front of the grandest building in Europe. I began to blush and feel uncomfortable. Hastily, I stood up and brushed the crumbs off my jerkin, feeling I must move on, even though I had no idea where I might go to spend the night.
And then a young girl – a servant I supposed even though my Rosalia would have died to wear clothes of that quality – came up to me and whispered that I was sent for.
‘Sent for?’ I said. My first thought was that she bore a message from my brother but how would he have known I was there?
‘My mistress sent me,’ said the girl, pointing to a palazzo overlooking the cathedral square. There was a veiled figure at a window on the first floor, from which she would have been able to watch me eating my bread and cheese.
‘But what does she want with me?’ I asked.
The girl smirked even though she was hardly more than a child. I felt myself blushing even more than before; Rosalia had been right. The women of the city were clearly without shame.
On the other hand, if this girl’s mistress had taken a fancy to me, I would at least get shelter for the night – maybe even a little money to tide me over till I could find my brother.
I was innocent but not so innocent as not to understand what would be required of me in return. I followed the girl and let her lead me through in the grand wooden doors that formed the entrance to her mistress’s palazzo.