O, Juliet (18 page)

“There is no other way, Juliet.” He sat up, suddenly sober, and gently helped me off him. We sat side by side, our backs to the rail.

“What about our parents’ blessings?” I demanded.

“We have mine, but we shall never have yours.”

“But my mother loves you. She would speak to my father. . . .”

“Your father will not agree. He is more tightly bound to Jacopo Strozzi than it seems.”

“How do you know this?”

“I have made it my business to know.” Romeo took my hand and held it to his lips, then brushed his cheek along its back. “His silk business was foundering even before my father’s saboteurs sank his cargo. The Strozzi wealth and Jacopo’s partnership are necessary to keep the silk works solvent. The promise of your hand in marriage was your father’s way of sweetening the contract, keeping his new partner happy in the early days of their dealings.

“And Jacopo is a determined man. He is a third son with brothers who have healthy male heirs. The bulk of the Strozzi wealth will never be his. This has made him bitter. He realized a need to partner in a well-established concern, for his money is limited. What he did have to invest in Capelletti Silks was just enough. He and your father are a perfect fit. That is why when he learned of my father’s sabotage on yours, he grew so angry. It threatened Jacopo’s own interests, for if Capelletti Silks foundered, so, too, did all of Jacopo’s best-laid plans. The humiliation before his mother’s eyes would have been unspeakable.”

I felt my face begin to burn. “Then how can you and I possibly marry?”

“Without anyone’s knowledge or permission. While it will certainly infuriate Jacopo, he will not feel betrayed by his business partner. At worst it can only be seen as an appalling act of rebelliousness by his daughter, who is, after all, only a brainless woman. Jacopo can thereby save face—a necessity. Of course we will have to endure your parents’ wrath.”

“Papa will never forgive me.”

Romeo took my face in both his hands. “The scandal is sure to rock Florence. We will be shunned, unwelcome in the best homes.” A smile cracked his features. “But we will be
married
, Juliet. We’ll always have a place with my parents. We’ll make a very happy foursome.”

“Until our ‘many strong children’ come?” I said. Jest though it was, I must have looked unconvinced.

“Oh, love, how can we not be together?” Romeo cried. “Without the sight of you every day, the smell, the taste of you, I would wither away. My blood would turn to powder in my veins. And you? Have you not found in me a mirror for your soul? When you look at me, when we speak, touch, do you not see who you really are? I dare you to deny that in my presence you love yourself better. I
know
this is true, for I love myself better in yours.”

Worry still creased my face.

“Juliet, do you trust me?”

“I should not—this is such a lunatic scheme. But I do, Romeo. With all my heart.” I kissed his hand. “But how shall we be married here and now?”

He stood and offered me his arms and pulled me up. “By a priest . . . and a friend of Dante’s.”

J
ust moments from the cathedral up the Via Ricasoli was the Monastery of San Marco. I had passed it countless times in my life, never giving it a second thought. The Dominican friars who lived within were known to live calm and tranquil lives.

Now having traversed the arched cloisters overhung with elegant frescoes, up a flight of stairs and down the dim inner hallway lit only by feeble flickering candlelight, we stood still as statues and hardly breathing, outside the plainest of wooden doors, waiting for it to be opened. My long hair, without the cap to hide it, we had tucked inside my collar.

“Knock again,” I whispered. “Perhaps he didn’t hear. Or forgot we were coming. Might he have forgotten?”

Romeo shook his head, but his worried eyes were fixed on the door. Finally, with a creaking loud enough to echo alarmingly down the tomb-silent hall, it opened. There before us, a bit bleary-eyed and still straightening his brown robe, was Friar Bartolomo. He peered out, looking both ways, and quickly ushered us in, muttering, “Pray God you were not seen. Pray God, pray God.”

“Have no fear, Father,” said Romeo in hushed tones. “We were very careful.”

The cell was bare stone on all but one wall, upon which was painted a most fabulous fresco in jewel-toned colors, of Saint Dominic in the act of reading. I had heard rumors that Don Cosimo, claiming San Marco as his spiritual home, a place to which he retreated regularly to pray, had had frescoes painted by Fra Angelico in all the public rooms, and in every one of the monks’ tiny cells.

The cot and desk and chair, I saw, were of the rudest materials and design, and the crucifix on the wall no more than two unadorned pieces of crossed iron. A few volumes of Dante’s works were piled one upon the other on the desk. Dried flowers hung heads-down from the ceiling, and a long shelf crammed with bottles and vials of potions, and parchment envelopes I assumed to be medicinal powders, were, save the frescoes, the room’s only luxury. On a hook hung a simple white robe of nubby linen, perhaps for sleeping.

“Let me look at you both,” the friar said, his voice urgent.

Romeo turned to me then and with gentle hands pulled the hair from under my doublet’s neck, settling it over my shoulders. It seemed such an odd thing to do and was yet so natural, as if I were already his, and so intimate an act his right. This made me smile. I tried to stifle it, and found Friar Bartolomo amused by our little performance.

Finally Romeo stepped to my side as if presenting me.

“Ah, I remember this lady,” said the monk. “A student of the Poet, and overly bold for a woman.”

“She is a poet herself, Father. You should hear her verse. It’s very good.”

His eyebrows rose in two round arches.

“You are a poet, too, Romeo,” I said. “You began a pretty one on the Duomo roof.”

“You took her to the top?” The friar looked scandalized.

Romeo smiled proudly. “That is where I proposed marriage.”

Friar Bartolomo was staring at me, a look of dismay creasing his features. “I cannot marry you like this,” he said.

“What?” Romeo was aghast. “But you told me . . .”

“The male garb. It is a sacrilege, my son. Blasphemy.”

“But you must. As I told you, this is the only chance for us to wed.”

The monk was sadly shaking his head.

“Is all that I need a skirt?” I asked.

“Well, ah ... a skirt. Yes.”

I was trembling as I said to the priest, “Will you lend me your robe? That one there.” I lifted a finger to the white garment on its hook.

“Ach . . .”
He was quite at a loss for words. A strange woman asking to don his personal apparel.

“Yes,
please
, Father.” Romeo had assumed the tone of a penitent, as if pleading for God’s mercy. I worried that he might fall to his knees, and perhaps so did Friar Bartolomo, for all at once the monk turned and snatched the linen robe from its hook and thrust it at me.

“What we do for love,” he whispered, and pushed Romeo from the room, pulling the door closed behind them.

There I was, all alone and needing to make myself a bride. I stripped quickly and stood there shivering in my nakedness, nipples so hard they were painful. I threw the robe over my head, happy that the friar was a short man and the garment clean, smelling of starch and lavender. I took up the doublet again and slipped it on over the linen dress, pulling the laces tight, approximating a lady’s bodice. I stepped back into the shoes, which, with the outfit, looked comically large. I tried to arrange my hair prettily, but without a mirror I was stymied.

All at once I thought,
Here I stand in the moments before I become a bride—all alone.
I had always envisioned Lucrezia dressing me for that occasion, as I would do for her, the feel of Papa’s precious silk against my skin, studded with a thousand seed pearls, fresh flowers woven into my hair....

Well, it was not to be so. This was different. Romantic and unique. Something we would someday tell our children
. Your mama wore a priest’s nightgown and floppy shoes to her wedding.
The thought made me chuckle.

It was then I spied a dried nosegay hanging on a string. I could not make out the particular flowers in their desiccated condition, but they would do. Carefully, so as not to crush them, I separated a half dozen from the bouquet and wove them through my hair.

With a single fortifying breath, I opened the door. Romeo was all smiles at the sight of me. The friar was bemused. But he wasted no time.

“Hurry,” he said. “Follow quietly after me, and pray God we meet no one. Wait!” He rushed back into his cell and collected two books.

Then with Romeo’s arm about my waist we made haste behind the friar and presently found ourselves in the Chapel of San Marco under Fra Angelico’s altarpiece of the Virgin Mary and Christ among the saints. When Friar Bartolomo turned to face us, we fell quickly to our knees and made the sign of the holy cross on our bodies.

Suddenly I felt all apprehensions lift from the priest’s mien. He placed one hand on my head, one on Romeo’s. Though my eyes were lowered, I was sure he was smiling.

“Dante and his Beatrice,” he murmured. “In a perfect world she would not have died and the two would have married.”

Friar Bartolomo read passages from the Bible, all in the Latin tongue, and several benedictions.

“Romeo Monticecco,” he said. “Do you wish to marry this woman?”

“I do,” Romeo answered, smiling broadly.

“Juliet Capelletti, do you wish to marry this man?”

“Yes!”

When the friar paused then, I thought the ceremony over and sought my husband’s eyes. But they were impish, as though he and Bartolomo possessed a secret. When Bartolomo began to speak, again in Italian, the secret was revealed.

“ ‘She is a creature come from Heaven to earth, a miracle manifest in reality.’ ”
He was quoting Dante!
“ ‘Ever since you were a boy you have belonged to her.’ ”

Now Romeo quoted, passion thickening his voice.
“ ‘This is no woman, but rather one of heaven’s most beautiful angels. A lady, refined and sensitive in love.’ ”

I groped for only a moment before I responded, speaking Dante’s words with quiet reverence.
“ ‘Now my bliss has appeared. I am clothed in happiness.’”

Romeo clutched my hands and tears sprang to his eyes.
“ ‘As this battle of love rages within me, I am more humble than my words can tell, for here is a God stronger than I, who shall come to rule over me.’ ”

I found myself speechless, at a loss for all but emotion.

“ ‘Love governs your souls,’ ”
the friar intoned, again quoting the poet.

“I will cherish and adore you,” Romeo said. “I will have no other.”

These words were not Dante’s. They were Romeo’s own vows.

“I will cherish and adore you,” I repeated. “I will have no other,” and added, “For all days and all eternity. For you are my lover and my friend.”

He took my face in his hands and kissed me then, with a passion perhaps unseemly for the Chapel of San Marco. We were utterly lost in the kiss, that sweet collision of flesh and mingled breath—so that when the friar spoke, we were startled.

“Have you the rings, my son?”

“Yes, yes,” said Romeo, and produced three of them—pretty bands of braided gold.

Bartolomo signaled that they should be given and with shaking hands, as custom demanded, he placed two on my fingers and one on his own.

“Romeo. Juliet.You are married, my children. In the eyes of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost”—the friar flushed—“and blessed by the spirit of Dante!”

I took Bartolomo’s hand and kissed it with gratitude.

“You should go now,” he whispered with terrible urgency.

“I’ll have your robe returned to you,” I told him as Romeo helped me to my feet.

“No need,” he said, smiling. “I will get another. That is your wedding dress.”

Romeo pulled him into an impulsive hug. “I will never forget this!” Then taking my hand, he led me from the chapel.

I cannot say I remember making our way back to my father’s house. It was dark, and Romeo, holding me close by him, hid my eccentric wedding gown under his cloak. It was a dangerous walk, but I felt nothing that could not be likened to joy. I was a married woman, married to a man I loved.

My dream had come true.

I came to my senses as I climbed over the wall to my balcony.

“Dawn is breaking,” Romeo said. “Into your bed.”

“Our bed,” I teased. “When will you come to it and make me a complete wife?”

Romeo graced me with a slow smile. “I’ll surprise you.” Then he grew more serious. “And when we’ve bedded, we’ll tell the world of our marriage.”

“Let it be soon, my love. My husband.” I liked the sound of the word on my tongue.

There were noises at my bedroom door. “Go!” I said.

He kissed me quickly and descended the ladder. I watched his shadowy form in the last dark moments before first light, and then throwing off his doublet and shoes and the friar’s robe, I leapt naked into bed, pulling the covers up to my neck. There would be no sleep for me now, only repetition in my mind of the great adventure of the night past. Some trembling thoughts of my angry father and an outraged Jacopo. My mother, despite her words, would be happy in her secret soul for me. I was sure of it.

But most of all there were visions of my love as husband, father of my children, sweet companion of my life, for all my life.

W
ith the harvest upon the countryside he did not come to me. A week, two, passed since our marriage with nary a letter, but my heart was calm. He was mine, I was his, embraced by the God of Love and sanctified by the church. It had grieved me to remove my wedding rings and, placing them in a tiny satin pouch, hide them in a hole I had torn in my mattress. But our secrecy would not be long-lived. As soon as Romeo and I had bedded, we would promptly announce our joining to the world.