O, Juliet (3 page)

We went to the bed and I picked up the long-sleeved white silk
camicia
that had been embroidered with pomegranates and posies. Lucrezia laid aside her dressing gown to reveal a body of the sweetest feminine form—small breasts high and rounded, waist narrow, and hips flaring with womanly curves. I could hear the maids tittering as they carried the tub from the room, leaving my friend and me to our private conversation. She raised her arms and I slipped the garment over her head, careful to leave the hairdresser’s every curl and tendril in place.

“Have you seen Piero today?” I asked her.

“No. My father-in-law insists it will be bad luck.”

“This is your betrothal ball, not your wedding day,” I told her.

“Don Cosimo had my horoscope drawn.”

“And that is where he derived such superstition?”

“Yes, but also that I’m to have an extraordinary life.”

“You’re becoming a Medici, Lucrezia. One doesn’t need an astrologer to deduce a brilliant future.” I picked up the yellow silk brocaded
guarnacca
studded with gold stars. The gown was ungainly for its weight, and the bodice and sleeves hung down limp over the front of its skirt. “Raise your arms,” I commanded, and dropped it on from above. “What were you thinking just then? You were somewhere else.”

“I was thinking I would rather be marrying Don Cosimo.”

I barked a laugh as I tightened the laces in back, cinching in Lucrezia’s already waspish waist. “And you call
me
outrageous,” I said.

“He’s a true gentleman. Polite. Affectionate. And such a scholar.”

Lucrezia was right. Five years before he had single-handedly set all of Florence afire with
Rinascimento
—a rebirth of the antiquities. Afterward, any man who counted himself a member of the Medici Faction educated his sons in the classics.

It had taken hardly any convincing of Lucrezia Tornabuoni’s father by Cosimo to hire for his heir’s thirteen-year-old wife-to-be both Greek and Latin tutors, and even one for mathematics. He wished for her to be a very great lady, he’d said. And while such an education for girls was not yet the fashion, Lucrezia had wished—and asked very sweetly—for her dearest friend, Juliet Capelletti, to receive the same benefit.

“He has the most wonderful library in his study,” she said.

“I saw a glimpse of it when I came in.”

“He owns some of the rarest Greek codices that exist.”

“
Your
fancy,” I observed. Lucrezia had taken to that ancient language like a bird to flight, delighting in its myths and pantheon of gods and goddesses. No one but me and her tutor knew how enamored she was of it all, as her parents believed her devoutly and altogether Christian. Those pagan leanings would have appalled them.

I plucked the silk undergarment through the slashed shoulders and sleeves of the
guarnacca
, blousing them prettily.

“There’s something in that library that would set
your
heart fluttering,” Lucrezia teased.

“And what would that be?” I said with more than a touch of skepticism. I had enjoyed my education, but the Greek language had strained my intellect. I much preferred Italian.

“A manuscript of
Vita Nuova
. . . from the time of Dante himself.”

My arms fell uselessly to my sides. Lucrezia had known very well the effect of her words. The poet Dante Alighieri was like a god to me, and
Vita Nuova
—the story of his boyhood love for Beatrice—the stuff of my dreams.

Lucrezia turned to face me, smiling like a cat. “When I am a lady of this household, I’ll take you in to see it. You can pore over it. Weep over it. Allow it to inspire you.”

I hugged her and kissed her fragrant cheek. “Thank you!” I whispered passionately. “Thank you.” In her reciprocal embrace I felt Lucrezia’s joy in the simple art of giving. I had much to learn from the lady’s generous nature.

I sought to regain my composure. “Guests will be arriving soon. We should see to your jewelry.”

“No jewels tonight,” she demurred.

“For what reason?” I demanded.

“Because I am marrying into a great but altogether unostentatious family. I wish to show them I am one with them in this.” She saw my disappointment. “But I have not decided on my shoes yet.” Lucrezia seated herself on the bed and opened a chest displaying half a dozen pairs of varying colors, styles, and heels. She stuck out a foot in my direction and I fitted it with a sheath of gold velvet raised on a high platform.

“I’ll just say no to marrying Jacopo,” I said with firm defiance.

“And what will you do with the rest of your life? Take to a nunnery—a hopeless romantic like yourself?” Lucrezia was altogether unperturbed, knowing well it was idle talk.

We both knew as surely as we breathed that a woman was bound to do what best benefited her parents, her husband, her children, and her church. “Her own desires”—well, no woman I knew allowed herself that luxury, nor even wasted a moment of rumination on such devilish indulgences. Lucrezia turned her foot this way and that. “This one is too high. I’ll stand as tall as Piero.”

I next chose a soft flat slipper with a Turkish curl to the toe in pale yellow that matched her overdress.

“Perhaps I’ll go the way of Saint Margaret of Cortona and spend my youth in fornication,” I said.

“I don’t suppose you’ll be ‘touched by Grace’ as she was, and spend the rest of your life in your bedroom crying for your sins.”

“Ha!”

I put the second yellow slipper on Lucrezia’s other foot.

“These are pretty,” she said.

“I hate Jacopo Strozzi,” I announced, knowing that my flippancy sometimes bordered on the ridiculous.

“It is your mother-in-law you will need fortitude to tolerate,” Lucrezia said.

I groaned loudly at the thought. Allessandra Strozzi was famously harsh and renowned in all of Florence for the ruthlessness of her matchmaking. No one was good enough for her sons.

“Besides, you barely know Jacopo Strozzi,” she added. “I’m sure you’ll grow to love him, like I’ll grow to love Piero.”

“I thought you said you did love him already.”

“I do.” She looked suddenly pensive. “But he is so . . . so . . .”

“What?”

“Unwell. Barely twenty-five and he is already called ‘Piero the Gouty.’ ”

“Surely the most important of his limbs does not have gout.”

“Juliet!”

I picked up a pair of scarlet shoes that matched the pomegranates on Lucrezia’s
camicia
, but when I moved to place them on her feet, she stayed my hand. “Juliet . . . ,” she repeated, this time her voice pleading.

All the jesting had gone out of me. “My father told me, ‘Even if it breaks your heart, you will marry this man.’ ” I sniffed back emotion. “But that is the way we live, I suppose. At least it will make an end to my father’s nagging and my mother’s harping at me for grandchildren.”

“You’re not going to say you don’t want children now.”

“Of course I want children,” I said, “as long as they don’t kill me on the way out.”

“Childbirth kill
you
? Never! You’re strong as Don Cosimo’s mule . . . and twice as stubborn. And here’s the best reason to marry. We’ll be matrons together—the queens of Florentine society.” She picked up the two feathered fans and handed me one. “We’ll rule with exquisite grace and style,” she said, playfully putting the hawk’s face before her own. “Raise large and beautiful families. Our feasts will be the most splendid, our patronage to hospitals and orphanages and artists legendary. We will have private rooms of our own. You will write your poetry.”

I began to smile. “In secret,” I said, holding up my own mask. “I think Jacopo would forbid me writing.” I handed Lucrezia a small looking glass, and she regarded her feathered visage.

“It’s good to have some secrets from your husband. And you will always have me to read your verses.”

I was overcome with gratitude. Tears were threatening. “No one has ever had a better friend than I do.”

We removed our masks and gazed at each other.

“You’re wrong,” Lucrezia said. “
I
have.”

“The red or the yellow?” I said quickly, not wishing for sentiment to overwhelm us on this night of celebration.

Sniffing loudly, she said, “Let me see the high gold ones again. I’m thinking that Piero de’ Medici may need a wife who is his equal.”

I
was avoiding my parents, very easy to do in so large and loud a crush of celebrating people, with musicians playing. And I was masked, my feathered face a happy disguise. I caught glimpses of them—my mother, Mona Simonetta, short and plump as a partridge, and Papa, Capello Capelletti, a rangy beanstalk. To confer as they were now doing—looking this way and that, no doubt wondering at my whereabouts—Papa needed bending at the waist and Mama craning her neck to give him an ear.

I sidestepped behind a marble pillar and leaned back, sighing. This night of Lucrezia and Piero’s betrothal, one that I wished to celebrate joyfully, was sure to be spent either cat-and-mousing with my parents, or trapped in a corner with Jacopo Strozzi, me pretending his conversation scintillating, his breath sweet, and his manner delightful. And several times this night I had noticed Allessandra Strozzi, dark complexioned and severe in countenance, peering with great intensity into the crowd, probably looking for me.

Rein yourself in,
I ordered myself. Jacopo had never been unkind, and Mama said he often asked after my likes and dislikes. He plied me with compliments, though I always felt they would have been the same for any and every other girl in Florence he might be courting. He brought me small gifts—a silver crucifix, jade rosary beads, and a Book of Hours—all, I supposed, to remind me of the pious woman I was expected to be. Well, I told myself, I had best come to grips with my future husband. I must find a way to make the thought of sharing Jacopo’s home and bed and bearing his children somehow less revolting. Lucrezia was right. Nothing could be done to change it.

“Cosimo and Contessina de’ Medici!” I heard announced as the music died. There was great shuffling of feet and rustling of fine fabric as everyone turned to the front of the ballroom. Guests pulled the masks from their faces in a respectful gesture and fell silent as the smiling Godfather of Florence, his wife on his arm, waved beneficently over the crowd.

“Good friends!” he cried, and everyone crowed back at him—“Don Cosimo!” He laughed, delighted at the warmth and fellowship flowing forward and back. “What a day of glad tidings this is,” he continued. Now there was hardly a sound that could be heard. “Our son Piero has not only made a match in the beautiful Lucrezia Tornabuoni. He has
met
his match!”

Everyone roared their approval, and I thought how overbrimming with pride my friend must be, honored so by so honorable a man.

Lucrezia and Piero appeared then, he looking darkly handsome and quite elegant in a black velvet tunic piped in silver and, eschewing a dramatic turban, wearing instead a flat cap with a long, upward-curving white feather. Lucrezia, clutching his hand, eyes fastened on her betrothed, glowed with a look that proclaimed, “I am the luckiest girl in the world!”

“May the joining of our two houses, and the heirs that spring fat and healthy from her womb, prove a blessing to Florence,” Cosimo intoned, “and all the citizens of the Republic!”

The cheering at that was loud and raucous. I watched as Cosimo gently herded the now shy couple onto the floor that had cleared for them. Musicians struck the first chords of the
pima
, and Lucrezia and Piero took their poses. At the precise moment they swooped into motion, their gazes locked, and all could see that Cosimo’s words were not the empty praise and platitudes of any proud father. These two on the dance floor were something marvelous. Important. Radiating a glorious destiny. And we were the fortunate witnesses.

“Well, there you are,” I heard my mother say inches behind my ear, and cringed. I had been caught. “Let me see the mask Lucrezia gifted you.”

I turned and, pulling the feathered creation that hung on a ribbon from my waist, dutifully held it up to my face.

“Oh, it is very fine. It must have been expensive.”

Through the eyeholes I saw my mother appraising me from foot to head. She fluffed out a slashed sleeve and smoothed my skirt. Then her eyes fell disapprovingly on my bodice. “Much too low,” she muttered.

“It is the fashion,” I said. “You saw the dress before I left the house.”

Undeterred, she took a fine silk handkerchief from her sleeve and began tucking it between my breasts.

“Mother!” I pulled back farther behind the pillar. “Do you wish me to die of embarrassment in the middle of the Medici ballroom?” I wanted to resist her ministrations but knew it would create more of a scene.

“I will not have you meeting your husband-to-be looking like a prostitute.”

“Don’t be horrible!”

“There, that’s better.”

I looked down. The pretty curve of my bosom was now concealed under poufs of silk. It looked quite ridiculous.

“Come with me,” my mother said.

“May I not even watch my friend dance the first dance with her betrothed?” I was ashamed of the petulance in my voice, but it caused my mother to relent.

“You see where your father is?” She nodded across the room to where he now stood with his future business partner. His face was red and angry.

“Can Papa not enjoy the evening?”

“Not with all the trouble brewing at the factory. The Monticecco . . . ,” she began, but her voice trailed off. “But that is none of our affair.You just meet us over there in a quarter of an hour.”

“Yes, Mama.”

She gave the silk handkerchief another upward tug.

“Will you
leave
it?” I moaned.