O, Juliet (7 page)

“Was he?” I said, pretending ignorance. “You must not have caught him, for he seemed unscathed.”

“If he comes close to any of us again, I promise you he will be very scathed.” He eyed my high-necked gown. “Who is dressing you these days? The Sisters of Mercy? My aunt must believe you’re in danger of becoming a fallen woman.”

Marco was too close to the truth for comfort.

“I have to find Lucrezia,” I said, and left him. Making my way through the crush, I was suddenly, delightfully confronted by Romeo, his gaze warm and enveloping.

“You are magnificent,” he said, and without flourish slipped something into my hand. I briefly looked down, only to find, when I had lifted my eyes again, that he had disappeared into the crowd.

It was a rolled paper I now held in my hand, which I surreptitiously and quickly unfurled. Its written title was “Dante’s God of Love,” and the well-drawn sketch of colored chalks above it showed the virile, handsome God of Love holding in his arms a woman, naked except for a filmy red robe trailing to the ground.

I quickly rerolled it and tucked this most subversive drawing into my sleeve before hurrying after Lucrezia, all the while my heart threatening to burst the confines of my breast.

I
ndeed, Juliet had been magnificent. Like no other woman I had ever had chance to know. I stood, invisible at the cathedral door, rendered still and stunned by the memory of this great lady’s being.

She had proven bold at the Medici ball, conversing unabashedly and alone in the garden for far longer than was seemly, and then cleverly held off those ruffians at the door. As I’d ridden away, my pursuers shouting curses after me, the clatter of furious hooves on empty cobble streets, the cool wind stinging my flushed cheeks, the feel of racing blood and tensed sinews that had powered my dangerous escape, all fell away. Sounds grew muted.Vision blurred. My mind stilled even as I crossed the river and my mount took us up into the southern hills.

This girl I had met, this woman, daughter of my enemy—Juliet—it was memory of her in the Medici courtyard that had silenced the city sounds, disappeared the world around me, rendered me empty, yet filled to overflowing. Blissful and terror-struck all at once.

Juliet. Those eyes that had steady held my gaze, never shy, never downcast. Unflinching. The curve of her rosy lips as she spoke, no
bantered
—audacious as a university boy. Her throat, long and pale in the moonlight. The round pillows of her breasts that heaved so gently as she laughed.

I had known girls before. Some beautiful. Some plain. But all ordinary. They simpered. They giggled. They failed to excite. But this Juliet, standing there so bold in that garden, was infinitely thrilling, brighter than the brightest star in the blackness of heaven.

Then I remembered my own stars. The woman they’d foretold for me. Is it possible?
This, my family’s enemy, my wife-to-be?
All of a sudden like a dam bursting, blood came rushing through my veins in a great torrent, roaring in my ears.
Juliet, my fated one
.

Then in a mysterious passage of time I was home, my horse groomed and stabled for the night. I had walked through the door, my mother smiling a welcome, her long hair loose about the shoulders of her night shift. The sight of her shocked me. She was the only woman I had, in my life, ever loved.

“Mama,” I’d whispered and kissed her cheeks, blushing behind her sight, strangely mortified.
Am I worthy of Juliet
, I wondered,
worthy as my father was of my mother?

Now as I stood in the shadow of the cathedral door I recalled the sight of Juliet Capelletti under the great dome amid all of Dante’s devotees, so brave she would shout aloud, replying to my plaintive calls. She shocked me. Truly rocked the ground beneath my feet. Made the air shimmer with her power and grace. This woman had slipped free the prison of rules that governed us all and met me halfway to paradise.

I am in love,
I thought.
For the first time, in love
!

Then I saw him—Jacopo Strozzi—exiting the church with the last of the Dante crowd. He moved within it, but his eyes said
he was unmoved
—that our poet had made no mark on his soul. Why was he here? Surely he could not have known of Juliet’s unplanned attendance. Had he come to win her affection? Perhaps he knew of her love for Dante and wished to make his bride happy by teaching himself the words of love.

Then I grew cold. He had not expected her to be at the symposium.Yet she
was
there. And she had proven herself a public shame, exchanging loving barbs with a stranger. Had he also seen me running like a fugitive from the ball? Certainly he must have heard later that the fleeing man had been a Monticecco. His partner’s enemy.

And yes, now I saw his eyes were black with fury.
He did know.
What a danger to Juliet! The Strozzi claimed nearly the strength and riches of the Medici but unlike Don Cosimo’s family, it was infamous for its ruthlessness, even brutality. Now I could see in this Strozzi’s face a terrible choler, one that my beloved lady and I had, by our actions, unknowingly provoked.

Then all of a sudden that expression changed—anger to fear, almost cowering. And I saw its cause.

A matron in the finest somber brown silk, her face shades lighter but still muddy, approaching him.

“Mama,” Jacopo said, and kissed her hand. “Coming to confession?”

I hid myself half behind the great door with one ear to the conversation.

“What is wrong with you, Jacopo?” Allessandra Strozzi demanded. Her voice lacked any of what I knew to be maternal warmth. “You look as though you’ve swallowed a melon whole.”

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“I saw your ‘bride’ leaving.” She said the word with unaccountable disdain. “With the Tornabuoni girl. Now,
that
one would have been a wife worth having.”

Jacopo sighed, then set his face in a stony grimace.

“I hear the dowry is enormous. Oh, if I had just moved more quickly, more cleverly . . .”

“Mama, please . . .”

“Your brothers wish you to attend them at their office this afternoon.”

“I cannot. I meet with Capello within the hour.”

This time her look was closer to disgust. She sighed dramatically. “I fear you have chosen your new partner as badly as you’ve chosen your wife. But who am I to say?” She turned to the cathedral doors. “Your brothers will be disappointed.”

She disappeared into the church, leaving Jacopo shaken, and I thought near tears. Humiliated twice in the space of an hour, he managed to compose himself, and his trembling reasserted itself into bitter black.

“Women,” he cursed, and strode away.

Danger, Juliet!
I silently cried.
This man is poison.

Then I cringed, thinking of my family’s hatred of hers. Was I any less lethal to her well-being than Jacopo?

Emerging from behind the door, I let the sun beat down on my head, praying for its power to gift me with intelligence, a way to win Juliet and live with her in the light, blessed by all, cursed by none.

I would find a way. I would.

“H
ave you any idea what a spectacle you made of yourself?” Lucrezia was bristling as we put distance between ourselves and our chaperone, walking down to the Arno as our bearers set a simple picnic on the riverbank. On a normal day my friend and I would be strolling arm in arm, our heads together, sharing a story or a laugh. But this was no ordinary day.

And I was in no ordinary state of mind.

“What harm have I done?” I replied, more a retort than a question. “I spoke with intelligence of Dante in a Dante symposium.”

“No, Juliet. Before a huge crowd of Florentines, you engaged quite passionately in a dialogue with a stranger . . . about love.”

To this I had neither answer nor retort, for it was altogether true.

“He
was
a stranger, was he not?” Lucrezia asked, prescient distrust creeping into her voice.

The moment of truth had arrived.

“No, not precisely.”

“O, sweet Jesu.” She turned me to face her. “Friend, what have you done?”

“Nothing.
Nothing.
Honestly, Lucrezia, there have been no improprieties.” I couldn’t help smiling to myself. “At least not yet.”

“Juliet!”

“You asked for the truth. Now you have it.”

“Who is he?”

I was rendered silent again, anticipating a further explosion at my answer, but there was no avoiding it. Lucrezia was searing me with her eyes.

“His name is Romeo.”

“I know no Romeos. Is he Florentine?”

“His family is. He’s been away at university. In Padua. Before that, he lived in Verona with his uncles.”

“I cannot believe this. Next you will be telling me the size of his foot. How do you know this man?”

I swallowed hard. “I met him at your betrothal ball.We spoke for a time in the garden.”

“Unchaperoned?”

“Yes, unchaperoned. But all we did was talk. Nothing untoward happened.”

“How could ‘nothing untoward’ have happened that night if its consequence was your outrageous display this afternoon?”

“There is something . . . ,” I said very softly.

“What?”

“There is something you should know about Romeo.” Then I went quiet, paralyzed with trepidation.

“Tell me, Juliet.”

“He is Romeo Monticecco.”

Lucrezia grew suddenly flushed. She said nothing, but I knew her mind was working furiously. Then she said, “That disturbance at the ball. I heard it was a Monticecco whom our kinsman chased from the house.”

“That was he.”

“
After
you and he spent time alone, unchaperoned, in the Medici garden ‘simply talking’!”

Defiance suddenly flared in me. “If you want the whole truth . . . something more did happen.” I held Lucrezia’s searching gaze. “Love happened.”

My friend turned away then, confused and overcome. I gathered my thoughts, for I knew there must be further explanation.

“Oh, Lucrezia, I did not go seeking for this. It found
me
.” I went around to face her. She looked ill with worry.

“You laid yourself open for this disaster,” she said, “refusing to be satisfied with the marriage your family arranged. Seeking private conversation with a stranger in a dark garden . . .”

“I stumbled in the
bassadanza
. He took me out for air”—I was grasping for explanations—“but when we unmasked—”

Lucrezia groaned.

“When we unmasked, I discovered before me the most beautiful man, not only of face and form, but of mind. Oh, my friend, there was such . . . concordance between us. He seemed to
know
me, and I him.” I was lost in remembering that scented evening and spoke as if in a dream. “We met on the common ground of
Vita Nuova
and danced the sweetest dance there.”

“Until you learned his name.”

“He’d come that night to seek audience with Don Cosimo,” I said, trying to make sense of things.

“And what could his business have possibly been? His house is deeply mistrusted by the Medici, and despised by yours.”

“He came to make peace on his family’s behalf.”

“He was sent by his father?”

“I think he came of his own accord.”

Lucrezia sighed heavily. I took both her hands in mine.

“Please, please do not judge me harshly.”

Her eyes flashed with hurt and anger. “Should I not judge you for using me without my knowledge today to help you meet your lover? You made me your fool.”

“I’m sorry for that, truly I am! I’ve been wild with such longings since I met him. I have not slept except fitfully, and then I dream of him. And I dream in verse, words flowing into words, streams and rivers of them, and all with the theme of love. When I wake, I try to remember the poems, but they’re gone, disappeared. And all I have left are memories of the feel of his hand, the sound of his voice, the shape of his lips. I remember every word spoken in the garden. Every syllable. And when I am not lost in memory, I’m raging against the Fates for having placed before me the perfect man, the ideal lover—and he is my father’s greatest enemy!”

Lucrezia regarded me with a steady eye. “Juliet, forgive me. I have been hard on you when, indeed, the Fates have dealt unfairly with your happiness and future.”

I felt tears welling with her words of sympathy.

“But you must think seriously about what you must do . . . and what you must not do. The more your father feels your rebelliousness, the harder he will make it for you.”

Signora Munao called to us to come back to the blanket on the ground, now laid with our meal. Lucrezia waved her away.

“But”—I was growing agitated—“I desire Romeo. I want him in my bed!”

“Shhh!”

Signora Munao was staring at the pair of us, wondering about the commotion.

I tried to calm myself as I said, “Everyone knows that for a woman to conceive in the act of coition she, as well as the man, must be satisfied. Is that not true?”

“Of course it’s true.”

“I know that I will never be satisfied with Jacopo Strozzi. I can barely stand to have him touch my hand. So he will not give me children, and what is a marriage without children?”

“Juliet,” she pleaded.

“So why marry him at all?”

“And what do you propose instead? Disown your family? Forget your blood? Run away with your lover? Live in poverty and disgrace?”

“Do you think I am not haunted every moment by those thoughts?”

Signora Munao was almost upon us, looking very cross.

“Just promise me you will not see him again before you marry. Please, I am your true friend, and I know that what you most desperately wish for will only bring tragedy down on your house. Promise me.”