O, Juliet (2 page)

 

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE from
Romeo and Juliet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

S
tone? Room? Might there be a better rhyme? Perhaps. There was always a better rhyme. Yet the sentiment was perfect. This balcony and walled garden were my private heaven. My room as well. Together they were an incomparable refuge for a Florentine girl.

Well, no longer a girl at eighteen, but a woman ripe for marriage and motherhood. Oh, but I
did
feel girlish in ways. Gazing down at the wild green of the square garden, I recalled the times when my brothers chased me, a giggling child, along the broad path that wound between trees and flowering bushes, the three of them flicking me with water from the pretty central fountain, Mama looking up all smiles from her embroidery, warning her boys to take care of their little sister.

The path was overgrown now, the fountain dry. My mother and father had let the garden fall to ruin when their sons died. I always believed its demise was a kind of penance they chose to pay for sins they were sure they had committed. Sins so vile that God would take from them all their male children.

My heart had broken, too, when they died. Though it was small consolation, their deaths had meant the bestowing of my eldest brother’s room to me—the sweetest bedchamber in the house, for with its gracious balcony, it looked down upon the garden. And while I missed the burbling fountain and the ease of walking well-tended paths, I saw something wonderful in the green overgrowth. The
wildness
of it, the secrets hidden beneath the thick vines and roots and bushes. And how birds and small animals had more made it their home since its desertion. That garden sent me into flights of fancy and imaginings. Every day I would stand at the balcony rail and ponder its mysteries, let the sight of it drive me to visions of small worlds and great worlds and exotic, faraway lands.

The balcony was ten feet by ten, the half near the bedroom door and proper Venetian glass window a covered loggia, the other jutting like the prow of a ship over the garden. Through a wooden door was my room, quite large, high-ceilinged, and gracious in proportion. There was a second window, this one overlooking Via della Colonna, the street upon which our house fronted. The furnishings were those that were found in all wealthy merchants’ homes—a fine canopied and curtained bed—though mine, I thought, was hung more beautifully than most, my father the city’s finest seller of silk.

There were the requisite chests that surrounded the bed and lined the walls, in which all belongings were stored. I had one unusual piece—a high cabinet in red lacquer that Papa had had brought from China, one in which the pieces of my gowns could be hung and not folded.

But of all my furnishings, those that I most cherished were my wooden desk and chair. Unremarkable as they were, they were sacred to me. Some girls took great pleasure in their prettily painted marriage chests that grew fuller every year with linen and baby clothes, gold plate, and fine pieces of glass they would one day take with them into their husband’s house. Some loved their beds, their cushions and coverlets so cozy, pulling down the curtains to find comfort, like animals in their dens.

But for me the center of the world, the universe itself, was my desk. For here it was that I read and I wrote, and more than in my bed and sleep, did here I dream. I had with the privacy of my room and balcony and inspiration of that walled garden all that I needed to travel unhindered in the Kingdom of Words.

Ah, precious words! While reading was my joy, writing was—dare I say under threat of blasphemy—my religion.

It was time to leave for Lucrezia’s ball, but I stayed one moment more to enjoy the garden. Happy thoughts of this night and my dearest friend’s betrothal warred with unhappy ones, for her marriage meant that mine was also ahead. And that would mean losing the garden, the balcony, the room, the desk. I would go to my husband’s house, and this would prove an end to my private joys.

Growing up, I had always been a girl like any other, good and obedient and loving God. I wished, as all young ladies did, for a wealthy husband and many healthy children. I’d been betrothed at the age of five to the son of my father’s best friend, but then the fever had come and claimed him along with my brothers. There had been such mourning in both our houses that all talk of my marriage ceased. I was moved from the nursery down the long upper hall to my new room, and began to watch the garden where we’d all played grow wild.

Only in the past year, when Papa had found the need of a partner to fill his sons’ place in the silk works, had plans for my marriage been placed once more on the table. This partner, Jacopo Strozzi, whose family’s standing and wealth was in Florence second only to the Medici’s, had made it known that he would consider me for a wife.

Jacopo.
I cringed at the thought of him. The occasions we had met at my father’s house had been grating in every way. His pinched mouth and furrowed forehead bespoke a constipated soul. The air that blew from between his dark ivory teeth onto my face as we conversed was faintly putrid, and his voice—oh, of all his attributes, that was the most distasteful. It was high-pitched and nasal, and his words were spoken with a whine, an affectation I think he believed a sign of nobility. It made me want to slap him silent. Then I curbed my thoughts, tearing my eyes away from the garden, and walked into my room.

This was Lucrezia’s day, a celebration of her marriage to come—a happy occasion of the rarest match. She and Piero de’ Medici, betrothed since childhood, were fond of each other, and as friendly as a boy and girl were allowed by convention to be. There was more than a fair chance that Lucrezia and Piero’s arranged marriage would blossom over the years into love. Perhaps not the kind of love of which I secretly dreamed. Not Guinevere and Lancelot, nor Tristan and Isolde, nor Dante and Beatrice. But good and strong, and as enduring as we in our society did allow.

I peered at myself in the glass for the briefest moment, knowing my curled and braided hair was in place, Mama’s jewels glistened at my neck, and my gown of Papa’s finest silk was perfectly beautiful, and left my sanctuary.

I walked the long hall, dark even now in the afternoon, and several doors closed on rooms that mocked our family with their emptiness. My brothers’ rooms. At the hall’s end near the stairs was my parents’ bedchamber.

The door was ajar. From inside I could hear the irritation in Mama’s voice, chiding a servant. “Must you slop water all over the floor? Look at that, you’ve spotted my dress!”

I hurried past, not wishing to engage with Mama in one of her moods, and saw a glimpse of poor Viola, a young kitchen maid who had carried many pails of hot water up the stairs for her mistress’s bath. Now she was worriedly examining the skirt of my mother’s ball gown set upon a headless dressmaker’s form, searching for the water stains she had been accused of making.

I hurried down the steps, but halfway to the ground floor began hearing a heated conversation echoing out from Papa’s study.

“But why, Jacopo? Why would this family—one whose name I barely recognize—have done such a thing to me? To sink an entire cargo of silk . . .”

“And vandalize the factory.”

“You have evidence of that as well?”

I had come to one side of the open study door and again did not wish to converse with my parent, clearly in the throes of unpleasantness. So I stopped and stood still, waiting for a moment to pass by without being seen.

Jacopo Strozzi spoke with a strident tone. “Proof positive. The Monticecco, for some unnameable reason, have become the avowed enemies of the Capelletti.” Suddenly his voice grew smooth and oiled. “And now, Capello, any enemy of yours is an enemy of mine.”

“What can be done?”

“What is always done to saboteurs, wretched criminals. They will be exposed and they will pay for their crimes. In blood, if need be. Monticecco blood.”

I chanced a peek around the doorframe to see the men’s eyes locked in a fierce brothers-in-battle gaze, and scurried past. I was out the front door in a moment and found waiting outside it the family litter, its four bearers snapping to attention at the sight of me. As one of them helped me in, I told him my destination and pressed a lavender-scented cloth to my nose to block the mild stench rising from the summer street and settled into the cushioned compartment. We were off.

It was a short distance across the city of Florence from our house to Via Bardi, but one affording me sufficient time to clear my head of the dark furies of home, and begin contemplating what would surely be a pleasurable evening ahead.

“J
uliet Capelletti, here to see Lucrezia Tornabuoni.”

The smile of the Palazzo Bardi’s doorman spread so wide I felt myself instantly welcomed into the rarefied world of the Medici. He stepped aside and bade me enter the pale green marble vestibule, pushing me back with a protective arm as a servant rushed past, half-blinded by a huge urn bursting with fresh flowers.

“You must forgive us, signorina. We have never had such excitement in the house before. I will take you to the lady . . . our lady. . . .” He chuckled with embarrassed delight. “Soon-to-be our lady.”

As the doorman led me toward a grand stairway, we passed a long snaking line of men assembled before a closed door. Each of them was splendidly dressed, their heads crowned with huge flared turbans in brilliant hues of silk and satin and brocade. The grouping seemed strange to me, their demeanor more reserved than their fashionable costumes. Indeed, they were remarkably silent and inward for a gang of Florentine men, who, by their very nature, talked and laughed loudly and with generous gesticulation, conducted business and deal-making at every turn.

They barely took notice of me, for as we approached the door, it opened and everyone came to attention. The first man in line went in, passing one coming out, and I could see inside the room, which appeared to be a fine study with many shelves lined with books and scrolls. In a chair, sitting comfortably, was a bareheaded Cosimo de’ Medici, his kindly face wreathed in a smile. He put out his hand to the newly admitted Florentine, clearly a supplicant, who knelt to kiss the offered hand, murmuring, “Don Cosimo.” Then the door shut on the odd tableau.

“Juliet!” I heard the rich, throaty voice of my friend calling from above. At the top of the stairs was Lucrezia, holding around her a dressing gown and excitedly beckoning me up to her.

As I ascended, I passed two chattering maids, one in front of the other, carrying between their shoulders a long folded tapestry, and a liveried manservant, his arms full of unlit torches. Arrived at the landing of the noble floor, I felt myself instantly embraced, the warm fragrance of Lucrezia’s jasmine oil enveloping me.

“Oh let me look at you, friend!” she cried, and held me at arm’s length. But as she gazed at me, I was also gifted with the sight of her. She, too, was eighteen, and, like a rare flower just opening for the first time, at the freshest peak of her beauty. She had delicately wrought cheeks and chin and nose, a generous mouth. Her hair was a thick flax, this evening arrayed in intricate twisted braids and soft curling tendrils. The green of her sparkling eyes was wonderful.

“You are lovely! Turn, turn,” she ordered me, and I obeyed. “A gown I’ve never seen.The dusty rose suits you. And the necklace. Let me see. Juliet! These are diamonds and rubies. What is your father thinking?”

“I’m meant to make an impression tonight,” I said with a dolorous sigh.

Lucrezia took me by the hand and pulled me down the hall past a massive, dome-ceilinged ballroom where, by the look of its decoration—velvet and gold-shot draperies, hundreds of yet-unlit tapers in their candelabrum, flowers, and festoons of greenery—much of this evening’s festivities would take place. I could see Maestro Donatello, the city’s finest artisan, flinging his fingers to the left and right, sending his apprentices to their various tasks. “More torches to the garden!” he cried. “Pull up the hem of that curtain!”

Farther on was a carved door through which Lucrezia led me into a bedroom, large, though not as sumptuously appointed as I might have imagined a Medici sleeping chamber to be. Two maids were emptying a steel tub, sending pailfuls of used bath-water down a well shaft. I had never seen such a thing before.

Plumbing of the rich,
I thought.

When Lucrezia closed the door, she turned to me. “So you’re to make an impression? On your betrothed, I assume?”

“Jacopo Strozzi is not my betrothed,” I insisted, my voice sulky. “Not yet. He hasn’t even signed the partnership papers with my father.”

I looked around me.The bed upon which Lucrezia’s clothing and two fabulous feathered masks were laid out was enormous and gorgeously curtained, with wine-colored velvet brocade and ermine trim. I realized with quiet delight that it was draped with my papa’s wares. And while the headboard was high and painted with fantastical birds, and great wooden chests surrounded it on every side, no colorful frescoes decorated the walls, just sections of painted patterns in dark, muted colors. The only furnishings were a single cushioned chair, a plain writing desk, and a small altar to the Virgin.

“This is the conjugal bedroom?” I asked.

“Not Don Cosimo’s. Only Mona Contessina’s.”

I was surprised. I’d not heard of married couples with separate bedchambers. Rudely, I nosed about the room. “No books,” I said. “Your mother-in-law-to-be does not read?”

“Her husband doesn’t expect it of her.They’re old-fashioned in that way. Come, help me on with my things.”