Free David by Mary Hoffman Page B

visitors confirmed my suspicions that Visdomini was in deep with the pro-Medici plotters. I might have lost my best chance to help the frateschi .
    But I need not have worried. Visdomini himself was waiting outside my bottega , early though it was. He came towards me with both hands open and a penitent expression.
    ‘Gabriele!’ he said. ‘I am so sorry about last night. Please forgive us and come back to Leone for your next sitting.’
    It was a strange new experience having a rich man humble himself to me and I wasn’t sure if I liked it.
    Visdomini fished out a bag of money, larger than my usual fee and thrust it into my hand, continuing to apologise.
    ‘I am having a bolt installed on the inside of Leone’s studio door,’ he said. ‘Everyone who comes when you are there – including me – must knock and wait for admittance while you make yourself, er, comfortable.’
    He did seem genuinely sorry and yet I was the one who had broken our agreement and run away.
    ‘It is I who must apologise, my lord,’ I said. ‘I should not have left with my work undone. I was merely startled.’
    ‘Understandably, and I promise it will not happen again. Please say you will come back. Leone is fearful that his Hercules will not be finished.’
    What could I say? Visdomini insisted on my taking the money, even though I hadn’t earned it, and as soon as I had finished work, I went and bought a little cameo ring for Rosalia, which used all he had given me. Later that week, I entrusted it to a carter in a little packet addressed to my sweetheart. And before Our Lord’s birthday, I was rewarded with a letter written by a scribe in Settignano, in which she thanked me so artlessly and with such joy at having a memento from me, that I forgot my new patron’s eyes assessing the body of his Hercules.
    He had been as good as his word and from then on, Grazia would knock at the door when she brought my payment and supper, and Leone would make her wait while I hurriedly dressed myself. He and I fell into the habit of eating our supper together. Sometimes Grazia stayed and drank with us; sometimes if she had urgent duties to attend to she left the two of us together.
    Leone was painting now and his Hercules was emerging out of a greenish-brown background, his muscles glowing bronze, like the tawny lion’s skin.
    The evenings that I was not posing, I was with the frateschi up near San Marco. I told them that I was now practically a member of the household of a prominent pro-Medicean and they didn’t again suggest that I should infiltrate de’ Altobiondi’s circle.
    But after the night of my embarrassment, when I knew there had been conspirators at Visdomini’s house, I hadn’t heard any more about them. I was beginning to feel that although I was in one way an insider, in another I was further from finding out what was going on in his salone than if I spent my evenings in the street watching the comings and goings at his front door.
    My chance to find out more didn’t come until the year had turned and then I am afraid it was baser instincts that led to my greater knowledge.
    One evening, when I had been posing less than half an hour, there came an urgent knocking at the studio door.
    ‘Curses!’ said Leone. ‘Who is this interrupting my work now?’
    I scrambled into my clothes.
    It was much too early for our supper but it was Grazia, with an urgent message from her master.
    ‘He wants to bring his friends in to see the painting,’ she explained. ‘They are on their way down.’
    Leone grumbled a bit; like most painters he didn’t want people to see his work before it was finished but what could he do about it? His patron housed, fed and clothed him and paid for all his materials and would buy the painting from him at the end. That left Leone no rights in the matter. And I had the strongest feeling that Visdomini had commissioned his Hercules because he wanted me to be the subject, rather than having searched for an