O, Juliet (12 page)

We stopped at the base of a mammoth specimen, forty feet in height and too large if six of us had all joined hands to ring its trunk.

“This one begs to be climbed,” Marco announced.

“That is so, my friend,” said Romeo, smiling broadly. “I have done it a hundred times. Let me show you the first foothold.”

They went to the other side, disappearing, their voices growing faint. Romeo returned alone and in moments Marco called down from a limb above our heads. He looked pleased with himself.

“Don’t get lost!” Romeo called.

But Marco had already disappeared, the clutch of jittering leaves the only evidence of his presence a moment before.

Romeo turned to me and held me warm in his gaze.
“ ‘This is no woman,’ ”
he said,
“ ‘but one of heaven’s most beautiful angels.’ ”

They were Dante’s words, but spoken as if from my lover’s own heart.

“I’ve missed you,” I said. “Waited every night for you to come.”

“Did you think I’d forgotten you?”

“Sometimes.”

His smile was self-satisfied. “Will you ever doubt me again?”

“Never.” I turned and faced the tree trunk, scraping a bit of the bark with my fingernail. “I was there, you know.”

“Where?”

“The Palazzo Bardi. The day you brought our families together. I heard you speak, bringing our fathers to terms.”

“With no small help from Don Cosimo.” Then incredulously, “You were
there
?”

“Outside the door. Eavesdropping.”

He laughed. “You never fail to amaze me.”

“And you were brilliant,” I said. “You achieved the impossible.”

He placed a hand on my waist. “Then you heard what Jacopo Strozzi said to me.”

“About becoming my courtly lover, and the life I can expect as his wife?” I said, looking back over my shoulder at him. “Oh yes.”

“He did not come today,” Romeo drily observed.

“He called your father’s invitation ‘cynical,’ the gesture of peace a sham. He refused on principle, he said, and it gave my father pause. For a time, Papa considered refusing to come as well.” I couldn’t help smiling. “But my mother won the day. She pleaded and reminded Papa he could not risk Don Cosimo’s displeasure.”

“But I wonder at Jacopo,” Romeo said with all seriousness. “He must not believe a chance exists that you and I . . .” He did not finish his thought.

“Would it satisfy you,” I asked him carefully, “to merely become my courtly lover?”

Romeo placed his hands on my shoulders and began to answer.

“How do I get down from here?” Marco cried from above. Legs straddling a thick branch, he could clearly see Romeo touching me—possessively—I, soon to be betrothed to another. Marco seemed unperturbed.

“The ‘Y’ behind you—step through it,” Romeo called up to him. “A series of limbs like a stairway will bring you to ten feet from the ground. Hang from the branch by your hands and the distance is halved. Then a graceful, bent-kneed drop, and you’re home.”

“Thank you. And unhand my cousin or I’ll be pilloried for a bad chaperone.” He disappeared in a profusion of rustling silver leaves.

Romeo and I parted, taking up a formal stance, one that might now fool all but Marco. But, I thought, if my features betrayed a fraction of what I felt for this man, then I would fool no one, and tempt the Fates with all manner of terrifying outcomes.

Romeo read my thoughts.

“Strength and resolve,” he said.

I smiled. “Strength and resolve.”

Romeo led us into the villa through a back door and down a hall passing the kitchen, where the cooks were busily preparing our meal. He put a finger to his lips as we came upon the dining room, where our mothers sat side by side at the table with their backs to us. We paused silently, long enough to hear fragments of their conversation, more intimate and rich with compassion than their time together should have allowed.

“My sons to the plague. My daughters in childbirth,” murmured Mona Sophia.

Mama nodded her head. “Mine to fever.” I saw her clutch Sophia’s hand. Romeo’s mother turned and smiled with tears in her eyes. “We are tied to life by so slender a thread.”

Now we understood how our mothers had come so quickly to tender accord. They had both lost all their children to death—all but Romeo and me.

Romeo beckoned us past the dining room to a small chamber, his father’s study by the looks of it. A desk was piled high with ledgers, and some manuscripts, and scrolls tied with leather thongs sat on wooden shelves. But on one wall was displayed an unexpected and astonishing array of weaponry—shields, swords, and daggers.

Marco came immediately alive and went straight to the wall. “May I?” he asked Romeo, and received consent to handle the arms. He took down a stiletto first and touched his finger to its tip. “This is fine workmanship,” Marco said, “but very old.”

“The Monticecco were not always growers,” Romeo said. “For two centuries we were smiths.”

Now Romeo pulled a gleaming broadsword down from the wall. I marveled at how easily he held the weighty sword, his arms more sinewy than heavily muscled.

As Marco replaced the stiletto on the wall, Romeo uttered, “Marco, attend me!” and my cousin turned with fine-toned reflex in time to receive the broadsword that Romeo had tossed him.

Marco grinned as Romeo took down from the wall another sword, and they assumed the bent-leg stance of warriors, face-to-face.

I think my mouth had dropped open, though not a sound came out of it, for who was a woman to tell two men they should not fight, even as this was sure to be a mock battle?

Marco, challenge sparkling in his eyes, struck first, but Romeo was quick with his parry and caught the blow with the side of his sword. The sound of metal on metal, so foreign to my ears, made me gasp.

Then Romeo’s sword came in a wide arc, but was stopped cold by Marco’s own prowess with a weapon—one I had never known he possessed.

Both were afire now, but the room was small. With a series of quick reciprocal blows Marco backed out the study door and Romeo came after. I followed, helpless and unsure whether to be amused or frightened.

Now they were fighting in the long hallway, the clanking swords making a fine racket. Mama and Mona Sophia rushed to the dining room archway and watched, clutching each other with only mild terror, for it was clear from the young men’s expressions that they meant each other no harm. Still, an accidental cut, infection . . .

Playful as the fight was, and evenly matched, it was mightily spirited, and with every blow came grievous cries and guttural groans. Then Marco, with one knee bent, lunged deeply, and only Romeo’s swift and graceful retreat kept the tip of the blade from meeting his chest.

With a loud, barbaric shout, Romeo swung his sword in a wide circle above his head and with a great crashing sound knocked the blade from Marco’s hands. It went clattering down the hall and landed at our mothers’ feet.

Marco and Romeo, beaming with manly pleasure, embraced each other like brothers.

Wordlessly, Mama and Mona Sophia retreated back into the dining room.

Marco went to retrieve his weapon. I watched from the study doorway as Romeo returned to the room and replaced his sword on the wall. I said nothing to Marco, panting as he passed me and went in, and moved to place the sword back on its hooks.

Romeo stayed his hand. “It is yours, Marco.”

“Mine?”

Romeo smiled, wiping the sweat from his brow with his sleeve. “That was an honorable fight. And you admire the weapon.”

“It is too generous,” Marco said, serious for once, and I thought deeply moved.

“Do you refuse my gift?”

“No! I accept it with all gratitude, Romeo.” Marco placed his first friendly arm around a Monticecco shoulder and beamed with pleasure.

Romeo fixed me in his gaze then, quietly triumphant.

Here, I thought, was a very determined man.

"M
y parents’ marriage was arranged,” I said. “Altogether traditional.”

Romeo and I were finally, blissfully alone, lying side by side on our backs on a rug beneath an ancient grape arbor. Marco, our less-than-diligent chaperone, delighted with his gift, had taken the broadsword out of our sight to do battle with his shadow.

“She was very pretty, my mother. Simonetta Visconte brought a fine dowry to the Capelletti coffers, one that allowed Papa’s business to grow, and his prospects as a Florentine merchant to soar. She provided him with three healthy sons and a daughter. What more reason did they need for their affections to grow?”

Romeo’s eyes never left my face as I spoke.

“Then, in the year I was ten, Papa’s silks came to the attention of Don Cosimo. Contessina had decided that all the beds in every one of their houses—both city and country—were ancient and musty and needed refurbishing. To his great delight Papa was awarded the commission. He went mad scouring the known world for the finest fabrics that existed—silks, brocades, velvets, damasks—and brought them before the pair of them, laying out the bolts with terrific pride.

“It was a textile spectacle the likes of which even the Medici had never before seen, and Contessina, modest and unassuming as she was, found herself reveling in the beauty of the wares. ‘May I have this one for my bed, Cosimo, and that one for Lorenzo’s? . . . And the villa at Careggi?’ When all were chosen with care for each and every bedstead and canopy, Papa revealed the greatest surprise of all—the yardage was to be a gift, every inch of it. There would be no charge whatsoever. All that he required was the friendship and goodwill of the Medici from that day forward.”

Romeo smiled. “A true Florentine businessman, your father. Everyone wishes for Don Cosimo as a patron.”

“It was not the only reward,” I said, remembering. “The next year Don Cosimo hosted the great Convocation in Florence—popes and emperors from the Eastern Church and from Rome, statesmen, authors, philosophers, scribes. . . .”

“And the Greeks,” Romeo added.

“Yes, the Greeks. Of all of them, their influence was most profound. They spoke so lovingly of their great sage, Plato, and his ancient wisdom, that when all the men had gone home and most Florentines had forgotten the debates, Don Cosimo was still afire. That was when he sent his man as a scout who scoured the whole world for the great books lost to the Barbarian invasion. . . .”

“Poggio Bracciolini,” Romeo said. “Those adventures made him a famous man.”

“They did. He brought back the works of Hermes and Solon and Aristotle. But most of all Plato. Don Cosimo immersed himself in Plato. All his sons, Piero, Lorenzo and Carlo, he had tutored by Greek scholars.”

“Where is this story leading?” asked Romeo, amused.

“Be patient,” I gently scolded. “It comes to a fine conclusion.”

“So,” said Romeo, “the Medici sons were tutored by the Greeks.”

“Yes. And then the boys were betrothed.”

Romeo’s brow furrowed.

“Piero to Lucrezia Tornabuoni,” I said.

“Aha! And through Don Cosimo’s patronage of your father, you and she met?”

“And became friends at once. We loved each other like sisters. But the Fates were not done with us yet. In his study of Plato, Don Cosimo learned that ‘the Great Man of the Greeks’ believed that highborn women should be provided the same education as men. They could enter the public sphere and even become leaders. They were guardians of children and therefore important in society and family both. If Lucrezia was to be the mother of his grandchildren, then Lucrezia must have the finest of educations.”

The ending of my story was dawning on Romeo. He began to smile. “And so she decided that if she was to receive this splendid education, her friend—her sister—must receive it, too.”

“Just so!”

Romeo shook his head admiringly. “You are quite a pair, you and Lucrezia. Plato would have had women like you in mind when he spoke so glowingly of the female gender.”

“I have never told that story before,” I said. “No one was a bit interested.”

“It’s just as well.” Romeo became uncommonly shy when he said, “I don’t want everyone to know you as well as I do.”

“No one ever will.” I took his hand. “You must tell me something of yourself now.”

He shook his head modestly. “There is nothing much to know. At least not of me.” He thought for a moment. “The great story of our family is that of my mother’s and father’s love.”

“I want to hear!”

Romeo smiled, remembering, and paused to collect his thoughts for its reciting. Finally he began. “Their marriage, too, was arranged. Like so many couples, they had never met until their wedding day. She worried he’d be a toothless old widower who belched and farted all day long, and he that she would be overpious and frigid. But that was not the case.

“They were both sixteen. Sophia was exquisite, all peaches and cream and filled with a love of life and a soft, sweet nature. Roberto was a handsome, strapping youth owning an appreciation of everything beautiful, and horny as a stallion.”

I laughed at that and Romeo, encouraged, went on.

“The moment they clapped eyes on one another they were smitten. Hopelessly and passionately in love, and grateful for their good fortune. But the wedding day was a long, drawn-out affair, with ceremony and contracts, benedictions, dancing, and feasting—endless feasting. The few moments they were allowed near to each other—when the rings were given, or partnering in a dance—their touch was like fire burning the skin. They spoke to each other with their eyes, silently mingling their souls and their minds . . . until they were pulled away to greet a family client, receive a gift, taste a delicacy.

“Finally,
finally
came the procession to my grandfather’s house—this villa. They wished so desperately to be alone, but the revelers had followed them into their chamber and put them to bed. Everyone stood expectantly around them waiting, as tradition demanded, for copulation to begin.