The Medici Boy (23 page)

* * *

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.

* * *

D
URING 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.”

M
ICHELOZZO 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

D
IZZY 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 make 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.

I fell comfortably asleep and dreamed that I was an apprentice again in Donatello’s
bottega
and I had only now completed the sculpting of the
putti
for the base of the Saint Louis statue. I was pleased and proud of my work—it was honest and honorable like my lord Donatello himself—and then for one terrible moment I saw my work through Donatello’s eyes and the roaring in my brain began and the pain and the blindness and I snatched up a chisel and struck out with it and suddenly I was falling, falling. “
Mio figlio
,” I heard him say, and “
mio tesoro
.” His hand was on my shoulder, comforting, consoling, and at his touch I was calm again, at peace in a green meadow, and all my terror fell away. The dream faded and returned once more. And faded. And returned.

I went on like this, half living, half dead. In the end it was Donatello who cured me, though that was not his intention. He cured me by accident. Out of his own terrible silence and out of his need to share his worry and his grief, he made me his confidante.

It came about in this way. The boys were playing outside in the neighbor courtyard, Alessandra was spinning fine wool at the front door, and Donatello, who had tried without success to engage me in conversation, sat quietly by the side of my bed. “You need a cat,” he muttered, “A cat can be a great consolation.” After a long while he cast me a sidelong glance and said softly, “I am not a bad man, you know. It is not such a case with me.” He fell silent and then began once more, scarcely audible, as if he were talking to himself. “I am foolish, I am an old man who should know better, but I am good to him. And I make no demands.” He wrung his long hands together. “No demands of the kind you think.”

He shifted uncomfortably on the stool by the bed. In a voice so soft I could barely make out the words, he said, “I need him.” He muttered something else. “He breaks my heart.”

I would not hear such things with my eyes open. I closed them.

“I know about him, you can be sure. I know he was arrested on the Pellicciai and I know why. But what does it matter? I have always known him for what he is. He is not going to change.”

I tried to speak, to warn him against Agnolo, but I could not get my tongue around the words.

He leaned against the bed and whispered in my ear. “I love him. What can I do?”

“Let him go,” I said, and these were the first understandable words I uttered since that day two weeks earlier when I had left them together, cooing, at the
bottega
.

He showed no surprise at hearing me speak and answered simply, “I cannot. I will not.”

He rose and left, saying goodbye to Alessandra. She brought me wine mixed with water and I slept, at peace now, and when I woke she found me able once again to speak, and hungry, and alive. And, most strange to say, happy.

I lay in bed for a week and then another, strengthened by the good care of Alessandra and the shy visits of Donatello, and then the weather turned mild—it was the beginning of March—and I returned to the
bottega
.

I was eager to work and eager to play out my new role as confidante to the master Donatello.

CHAPTER
24

A
T THE
BOTTEGA
they took it as natural that I had been ill and was ill no longer. Caterina smiled at me and Pagno said, “Well done”—whatever he meant by that—but Donatello and Agnolo acted as if I had never been gone. I wanted to tell them what a narrow reckoning I had had but they were greatly pleased with each other and had no need to know. Michelozzo alone seemed moved to see me. He gave me a great embrace and said how happy he was at my return.

I was happy too. Donatello had confided in me unseemly things he had not told others. He was in love with Agnolo. “He breaks my heart.” The thought itself was unworthy, degrading. Here he was, a man of eminence, the most accomplished craftsman in Florence—I place him ahead of Brunelleschi and Ghiberti and, in truth, all others—and this artisan without peer was brought low by desire for this nobody, this Agnolo, brought so low that he was moved to confess to me that he asked no sexual favors from the boy. Still, and this was the great thing, he had chosen me to share his secrets. Me only. I was shamed that he should tell me these things, as if he were some ordinary man who had never sculpted the Saint George or the Louis of Tolosa or the bronze David that was even now coming alive beneath his hands. “He breaks my heart.” In this weakness and pitiless need Donatello was no different than me and he had confessed as much. I was his confidante.

I could tell at once that something had changed since that evening when I had watched Donatello take Agnolo by the hand and lead him to his privy chamber. Things were different between them now. Work on the statue was well advanced and there was no longer any need for Agnolo to pose. In truth, there was no need for Agnolo at all and yet he continued to hang about. He could not understand that Donatello had moved into his own mind and heart, that he was bent now on one thing only: the making of this statue. The unformed David had become more real to him than Agnolo in the flesh.

“Go ask Caterina for a task,” he said, and Agnolo went away to bother Caterina.

It was a joy to see the master wield his shaping tools. The clay had been brought to the necessary finish and the wax had been laid on thinly, then thicker, until it was exactly the right depth for carving. Donatello had roughed in the features of the face and now, with a sharp knife, was bringing them to a keen perfection. I watched him as he disappeared into his work.

Agnolo returned. “She has nothing for me to do.”

“Grind colors for her.”

“She says I do not grind fine enough.”

“Go ask Pagno for something to do.”

“Pagno says I should pose for you.”

Donatello sighed. “In a while,” he said. “Sit there and wait and after a time I will need you to pose again.”

Agnolo stood by, watching him as he worked.

But, watched in this way, Donatello was no longer with the statue. He found himself half at work and half in love. He made a gash in the wax lip and threw down the knife. “Go!” he shouted. “Go home and let me work!”

We all pretended to be busy while Agnolo put on his cloak and hat and, without a word, left the
bottega
.