Free David by Mary Hoffman

much time together when he wasn’t working.
    Santa Croce was the nearest big church to Lodovico’s home and the one his family most often attended, but after the service I found there was another reason to go there on this day. All the brothers were there, with their widowed father, and went to the graveyard to stand by a simple headstone.
     
    FRANCESCA DI NERI DEL MINIATO DI SIENA
     
    was the name on the stone.
     
    1455–1481
    MOGLIE BEN AMATA DI
    LODOVICO DI LIONARDO DI
    BUONARROTI SIMONI
     
    We were here to pay our respects to Angelo’s mother.
    ‘Twenty years ago today,’ he said to me under his breath. ‘That’s when she died.’
    The date soon after which I had been conceived according to my own mother. That thought made me feel so peculiar that I studied the dates on the stone to take my mind off it.
    ‘She was only twenty-six?’ I asked, sotto voce , because Lodovico was within earshot. He seemed so old to have had such a wife.
    ‘That’s right,’ said Angelo. ‘The same age I am now. Only she will be just twenty-six years old for ever.’
    I didn’t know what to say; I had never seen Francesca but Angelo had often talked about her. He had spent too little of his six years with her before she died, he said, but I knew she was his ideal woman. He told me once that the Madonna in the statue in Rome, that had brought him so much fame, had his own mother’s face. If that were true, Francesca di Neri had a far finer monument than the one in Santa Croce’s churchyard.
    ‘She was worn out by bearing children,’ he whispered fiercely. ‘Five sons in eight years! And that’s just the ones that lived. It was having Gismondo that killed her in the end.’
    He was looking at his father with a sort of bitterness.
    ‘Animal lusts,’ he growled. ‘I told you – best to steer clear.’
    ‘But if we all did that, the world would soon be empty,’ I dared to say. ‘Besides, you told me to marry.’
    He rubbed his hands over his eyes. ‘You’re right. Don’t take any notice of me. I just wish she had lived longer – to see what I could do.’
    Lodovico and his other sons were moving away from the graveside so I thought I’d leave Angelo on his own to pay his respects. But he didn’t want that.
    Instead, he took my arm and said, ‘Come on. We’ll go and see a living mother now.’
    I realised he intended us to walk to Settignano and my heart leapt.

    My home village had never looked more lovely to me as I tramped into it along the dusty road with my milk-brother. It was a cold, crisp day and I knew we would be chilled to the bone walking back after dark but it felt so good to see my childhood home, modest as it was.
    My mother did not know what to do with herself and which of us to kiss first. My father clapped us both on the shoulders. My sisters were sent for and arrived in a bustle of giggles, shrieks and young children, my little nephews and nieces.
    After the first flurry of welcome, my mother was concerned about having enough food to give us all a sufficient Saint Nicholas’s Day dinner. I was mortified to have brought no presents for anyone but Angelo’s suggestion had been so sudden and there had been no time to go back to his house for money.
    He, however, had brought a bag of silver coins, which he passed to my father and then he set to whittling wooden toys for the children, something I could help with. I wonder if they still have those wolves and bears and lions and dogs, original woodcarvings by the hand of Michelangelo? I’ve never asked but they would be worth a fortune now.
    After the feast my mother provided, restlessness took me out of the house and off to find Rosalia. Now that the moment had come I felt very unsure of my welcome but I needn’t have worried.
    As soon as she saw me through the window, she squealed and ran out to meet me. We had both had birthdays in the nine months I had been away and she was now a sixteen-year-old in full bloom. How I longed to be alone with