O, Juliet - Softcover

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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 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 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.

She tottered away on her high platform shoes with an alarming lack of grace. A stiff breeze would have knocked her over.

I made a slow circle around the dance floor behind the crowd. I could see that all the girls and women had their eyes fixed on the happy couple.

Maria Cantorre appeared the saddest. At fourteen she was about to be married to a wealthy Roman wool merchant fifty years her senior. His last wife and every one of his children had died in the plague of 1438, and poor Maria had been chosen among all the marriageable females in Florence for the fertility of her family's women to provide a new parade of heirs for the old man.

Chaterina Valenti, a pretty but dull-witted girl of my age, had just married below her rank, as her father's intemperate business dealings had left her with a pitiful dowry. She was so openly seething with jealousy over Lucrezia's good fortune I was tempted to tap her on the shoulder and advise her to perhaps hide her envy for fear of shaming herself, her husband, and her family.

Constanza Marello, a wisp of a woman with a sharp beaky nose, was the infamous Spinster of Florence. Despite an immense dowry, the Fates had continually mocked her, killing off one after another of Constanza's prospective bridegrooms, so that now, at almost thirty, she was too old to begin childbearing. No one would wish to marry such a woman. I had recently heard gossip that she was headed for a nunnery, her dowry used to endow the holy house of San Lorenzo. If Constanza's family could not raise its worth through her marriage to a wealthy man, it could nevertheless reap spiritual riches and great respect by its generous patronage of the church.

With the final chords of the first dance played out, the virgins of Florence were called to the floor. As we formed a circle, bracelets of tiny cymbals were thrust into our hands. How many times I had joined this roundele I could not count, but as I took the hands of the girls to the left and right of me, I tried to forget it was bound to be my last. It was a joyous dance, very sprightly, with steps and snakelike weaves and swift turns that made the most of a young lady's grace and lightness. Eyes sparkled with promise. Arms raised above our heads, wrists twisted with delicate flicks that jangled our cymbal bracelets in fetching rhythm.

The...