David Read Online Free Page B

had been a women’s issue and I – or even Altobiondi – just pawns in a game where she was queen.
    But my brother was pointing out another picture to me. Saint Peter was baptising some new converts – some of the first Christians ever – and there was a queue waiting to be initiated into the new religion.
    ‘That’s the one that got me my new nose,’ he said. ‘See that young man waiting to be baptised?’
    Indeed my eyes had already been drawn to this figure. He stood stripped to his underwear, hugging himself with his arms to stop from shivering, just waiting to step into the river and be born anew. You could feel how cold and nervous he was.
    ‘Torrigiani started moaning about how Big Tom was an incompetent draughtsman,’ my brother continued. ‘The arms were “too small”, the anatomy “not accurate”, he said.’
    I thought I could see where this was going but I had never heard the full story of the broken nose before.
    ‘What did you do?’ I asked.
    ‘Nothing,’ he said innocently. ‘I just told him he was wrong. In a certain amount of detail.’ He was grinning as if the incident were taking place right now before his eyes.
    ‘And Torrigiani didn’t like being wrong so he hit me – a great single punch in the face. We both heard my nose break. And the blood was pouring out in a flood – ruined the drawing I’d just made.’
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘Well, Torrigiani legged it and I went back to the sculpture garden.’
    ‘What did Lorenzo de’ Medici say?’ I asked, though I felt shy at even mentioning the great man’s name. I knew that my brother had caught the eye of this illustrious patron when he was just a boy. Lorenzo de’ Medici had taken him to live in his house and eat at his table alongside his own children. And put him to study in the sculpture garden up by San Marco. This was ten years ago or more and it didn’t last long; Lorenzo had died in 1492.
    ‘He was very angry with Torrigiani,’ said my brother, his strange horn-coloured eyes looking into the distance as if he could still see the remembered scene. ‘It must have looked worse than it was – me all covered in blood. Lorenzo called me in to give an account of what happened. I think he was pleased I had defended a great artist against a piffling student like Pietro Torrigiani.’
    ‘What happened to Pietro?’
    ‘Oh, he left town soon after,’ said my brother, smiling. ‘It taught him not to show disrespect of his betters.’
    ‘What was he like?’ I asked.
    ‘Torrigiani?’
    ‘No. Lorenzo.’
    He looked round as if there might be listeners behind every pillar.
    ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘There’s a tavern nearby. Looking at great art always makes me thirsty.’
    We left the chapel and were soon sitting with two generous flagons of vernaccia . It was a warm August evening and I’d been in the city nearly five months but I still felt there was so much about it I didn’t know or understand.
    ‘You said you weren’t on anyone’s side when you arrived,’ said my brother. ‘Do you still feel the same?’
    ‘I don’t want to have anything to do with politics,’ I said quickly.
    He snorted over his wine. ‘That’s what people say who don’t understand what the word means. And it’s very dangerous to stay ignorant in Florence – you might not stay alive very long.’
    ‘But what has a stonecutter to do with politics? How can I affect anything that goes on in government rooms and grand buildings?’
    ‘I might have thought that once, but I lived among the great men of the city when I was just a boy and that shaped my thinking.’
    ‘So you are a Medici man through and through?’
    Again, he looked round cautiously as if the very walls might have ears.
    ‘I was ,’ he said. ‘I was Lorenzo’s man, heart and soul. There was never anyone to touch him. But when he died and his son Piero took over, he was a bitter disappointment – nothing like his father.’
    He seemed lost in thought.
    ‘Lorenzo