“She said she’d paint thinner, more delicate eyebrows with tar.”
Tar and goat paste — all that on a person’s face. And to what purpose? Domenica’s natural eyebrows were perfectly fine. “That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “Taking something off to put it on again.”
“Easy for you to say.” She was growing surly now. “Mamma never pays any attention to you.”
I frowned. “Excellent point, Domenica,” I said.
At least the crying from the other side of the room had stopped. Not slowed — stopped entirely. It was as though she had blown out her feelings the way she’d blown out her candle. “That woman keeps finding flaws,” she said, talking more to herself now than to me. “Nothing is ever good enough. If I stay there’ll be nothing left of me. She’ll pluck me into oblivion.”
With her words I thought I began to understand a little of my sister. Perhaps we were not so uncommon, she and I. She wanted to stay here, in the garden. But the garden was gone, and like me, her path wasn’t clear. Others were constantly telling her what her path should be. Perhaps, for all her bluster about having both a husband and a lover, she was scared.
“Domenica,” I said. “Take it from someone who’s been around a lot of raw chickens. You look nothing like that. You will never look anything like that. No matter what Mamma does to you, she cannot make you less beautiful. You have something underneath the face paint and gowns. Signor Botticelli sees it, I see it, Captain Umberto sees it. Why can’t you?”
In the silence that followed, I realized I’d gone too far in mentioning Captain Umberto’s name. It was as though I had opened a wound.
Domenica just sighed. “I’ve got a long day tomorrow.”
And that was all. She didn’t say she’d try to get some sleep; I knew she couldn’t. She didn’t call me sister; I knew somehow she couldn’t do that either. All we exchanged were a few whispered words in the dark.
That night, no matter how much I smoothed down my pillow, the lumps of my fourteen diamonds conspired to bite me in the cheek.
Tomorrow would be a long day for both of us.
Chapter Thirteen
When I woke the next morning Domenica was already awake. Not only awake — awake and humming.
She threw open the shutters and twirled in the morning sun. I saw what Mamma had wrought yesterday. Yes, her eyebrows were indeed gone. Not only that, Mamma had plucked the hairs off her forehead so high she looked like half an egg.
Whatever had happened to her yesterday seemed to make no difference to her disposition today. “Come on, lazy,” she said. “Get up and get me some strawberries.”
I threw off the bedcovers and reached for my shift. I wasn’t upset Domenica had become herself again. I needed to get to the kitchen anyway. There was much work to be done. Fifty live eels were to be delivered this morning, along with cages and cages of squawking pheasants, barrels of olive oil, and pounds of goose liver for a thick sauce. I thought we should just slaughter a pig and be done with it, but Nonna said the Medici prefer lighter, squirmier fare. Guess who got to hack the heads off our dinner?
I walked out the door and down the hall, my thin slippers making no noise on the wooden floor.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Mamma stood in the hallway, clapping her hands to get my attention. She was uncoiffed, her dark hair falling around her waist.
“To the kitchen?” I said. It was more a question than an answer.
“Nonsense,” Mamma said, taking me by the arm. “You’re a part of this family and it’s time you start behaving that way instead of scurrying below like a rat. Now get back in your room and wait for the ladies’ maids. I’ll have your grandmother bring you and your sister up a tray with something to eat. But don’t eat too much. You need to fit into a tight gown tonight.”
She noticed the bandage on my arm. “You’ll need long sleeves,” she said.
This was the first I’d heard about dining in the great hall with the others. I thought I was going to serve. I wasn’t pleased. Neither, apparently, was Mamma.
I plunked myself back on my bed in our room. “Couldn’t you just tell the guests I’m a kitchen wench?”
“I thought of that,” Mamma said. “But your father already told Il Magnifico that we have two unmarried daughters. I don’t know what possessed him.”
I caught myself thinking: for profit, why else? He probably wanted to trot me out this once and see how much money he could get if he married me off. I was a resource, a flawed diamond.
Domenica and I spent the whole day seated in our room in front of the glass. Four maids bustled between us while Mamma hovered behind and barked suggestions. “A little more under the eyes.” One maid brushed my hair off my face and was about to start plucking when Mamma stopped her. “Don’t spend too much time on this one,” she said, looking over my shoulder. “All she has to do is curtsy and she’s done. Right, Flora? You won’t actually say anything tonight, will you?”
“Not if I don’t have to.” As far as I was concerned, I was going to say as little as possible and then skulk in some corner, a fake smile masking my face.
At the end of a long afternoon, one of the maids trussed me into a simple gown (simple meaning there are only four rubies on the sleeves instead of a whole vault) and Mamma shooed me down to greet our guests, although how she expected me to do this without talking, I didn’t know. Domenica was still in her shift, humming a tune and admiring her reflection when I left.
I didn’t bother to look at my reflection. I was ill-suited for dresses and I knew it. If Emilio saw me he would probably laugh and call me a sissy.
It was early evening when I stood on the threshold to the great hall, admiring Mamma’s handiwork. The place was certainly festive tonight — lovely with the soft light of the lamps all around, the rich brocades of the ladies, and lively music from minstrels. Most of the guests had already arrived. I saw Renato and his wife, then my eldest sister Beatrice and her toad-faced husband, Paolo, all the way from Naples. Over by the balcony, Andrea was engaged in earnest conversation with a philosopher from Pisa.
Il Magnifico himself was wedged in a corner. He was a dark man with a brooding face and lean build. His tunic was wine red; his leggings were black. He was talking to another man — one of Papa’s colleagues from the Signoria. He pressed his forehead against the other man and whispered to him and patted him on the cheek. I imagined he used words like love and ally, but the word he was thinking was control.
“So, we’re not good enough for you anymore, eh?”
I turned around to see Graziella, the kitchen maid, red-faced from either drink or strain, holding trays of cooked eel in sage and oil. Madonna! Did this woman have to make every exchange an insult? She was wearing a new velvet tunic over her dress. The symbol of the Medici palle was on the front; the delphine from our coat of arms was on the back. Mamma must have had them made special for tonight. She was sparing no expense. If Mamma would have listened to me, I would have told her that it seemed too presumptuous, that wearing the Medici coat of arms does not make us Medici.
“You might be interested to know that since your ladyship deserted us there is twice as much work for the rest of us,” Graziella said.
I frowned at her. “Mamma’s not ready for the main course to be served yet.”
She slapped the dishes down on a stand in the hallway. The eels jumped from the plates as though they were alive. She stood back and put her hands on her hips. “I hope your guests like their food cold, then. Because I’m not taking that back to the kitchen for warming. It’s too heavy. Your nonna expects too much from me.”
I shrugged. Suit yourself. It didn’t bother me if the eels went cold. It wasn’t my party.
I thought she’d go back to the kitchen, but Graziella came and stood next to me. I didn’t like being shoulder to shoulder with this woman. I didn’t even like being in the same room with her. She was lazy. I wished she would leave.
But she didn’t. She wasn’t done taunting me. “Lo
vely night,” she said. “Everyone in Florence must be here. But I can tell you who isn’t here. Father Alberto.”
I forced myself to breathe. Not Father Alberto. I liked Father Alberto. A fact she knew and was using to her advantage. The best I could hope was that she would be done insulting me quickly.
“He stopped by the kitchen earlier. Said it wasn’t becoming for clergy to attend such a feast the night before Easter. He said Christ is still dead and He doesn’t rise until tomorrow and that the town should still be in mourning until then. He said Satan would roast him like a pig on a spit if he crossed your threshold tonight.”
I was afraid I would redden with shame. I didn’t know if Father Alberto had really said that, but he would have been right. I thought back to the first day Emilio came to the palazzo, and how the two of us had been listening through a half-open door when Mamma compared Domenica with the Queen of Heaven. Even then she had been setting us too high. And tonight, looking at the spectacle and the two coats of arms on the servants’ tunics, it felt to me as though our fortunes were a tender babe she’d carried to the top of the leaning tower and was holding over the railing. All I could do was watch it drop.
I told Graziella none of this. “Twice as much of no work is still no work,” I said, drawing myself up. “I suggest you get back to the kitchen before Nonna finds out and allows you to not work in the streets.”
Graziella walked away muttering. “You just wait, Flora. God will strike you all down.”
Fine, I thought. Let her mumble; let her threaten. She was not clergy. She had no right to speak for God.
I looked back to the great hall. I thought to myself: one unpleasant encounter over with. Surely the rest of the evening couldn’t be much worse?
Then I heard a swish of skirts, and my sister came to join me.
She stood next to me on the threshold while four maids fussed with her skirts. Now properly done up, she looked luminous. Her eyebrows had been expertly painted; she wore a delicate gold headband that looked like a halo; her dress was pale pink — almost white. There were gems sewn into the sleeves of her gown, little lights winking here and there from her wrist to her shoulder. On closer look those gems seemed puny for the lavish effect she was trying to create. I even spotted a flaw in one. A very familiar-looking, rabbit-shaped flaw.
She stood by me and her smile became a smirk.
Suddenly, I understood.
She had cloaked herself in my future.
I felt the heat rise to my face. I was so furious I shook from head to toe. I wanted to throw her over the balcony and have her land in the muck. I wanted to smear her face down in horse poop until the fake eyebrows came off and then parade her in front of the guests. See? Under all that goop she’s just half a rotten egg.
But I thought of Nonna and Captain Umberto and held back. Good people, not Domenica, wanted this marriage. I resolved to keep calm. Tonight I would behave like a daughter of the House of Pazzi. As soon as the party was over I would go straight up to her room and throw her brush in the chamber pot.
“Let me attend my sister,” I said to the maids, my smile growing more practiced by the moment.
When they were gone I pretended to busy myself with a loose thread on Domenica’s train.
“Why?” I whispered through clenched teeth. “Why did you need these stones?”
“You should thank me,” she said. “I won’t tell anyone you’ve been stealing.”
“You have no idea what you’ve done.”
“Lower your voice, sister,” she said, hiding her mouth behind a sachet. “I have every idea.”
Domenica fluttered her eyelashes and looked demure. I felt as though I would explode like cannon fire in a moment. And yet I kept pretend-plucking at the back of her dress, hoping to find the one thread that would unravel her completely.
“I am fifteen years old, sister,” she continued. “I should have been married at twelve. I’ve heard noblemen whisper at dinner. They say I must have something wrong with me that holds suitors back. One even said that I’ve had congress with the devil, and under my skirts I have the legs of a goat.”
I produced a laugh that wasn’t so forced. Half devil indeed.
“Mamma has worked on me day and night, picking me into nothingness. And what have you done? You’ve been running around free. You came and went as you pleased. You called me names behind my back. Don’t think I haven’t heard. If I had had just one kind word from you or Nonna in all this time . . .”
For an instant I looked up, and her face was not a mask. Then it was again. “Besides,” she whispered. “What need do you have of pretty things? They would only make you seem plainer than you already are.”
Mamma approached; her hair also woven into plaits; her gown the color of rich red wine. “Ah, here they are,” she said. “My two blessings.” She held her hands out as though to embrace the two of us, but kissed the air around Domenica’s head and not Domenica herself. Me she left alone.
She locked her arm in Domenica’s and turned her back to me. Just as well. Tonight I didn’t mind being discarded. Mamma steered Domenica to a fine lady with white skin and a straight nose (no lower-class ridges like on Mamma’s). Her gown was woven throughout with gold thread.
This must have been Lucrezia de Medici, mother to Lorenzo and Giuliano.
Signor Botticelli bustled about Signora de Medici, fetching her more wine, more mushroom tarts. “Toady,” I muttered under my breath. Signor Botticelli had spent every evening with us for the past week in the kitchen. I’d grown fond of him. He was a strange man, arranging even broken dishes so they made a pleasant scene. Tonight I was beginning to see that it didn’t matter. Up here he was the same as all the rest.
Domenica stood in front of Signora de Medici, her hands clasped chastely in front, her eyes on the floor. Even while I hated her I knew she was beautiful.
Signora de Medici didn’t agree. “She is a fine girl, of course,” I heard her say, “though I fancy not so fine as my own Bianca. Her posture is fair, her hair is tolerable. . . .”
Pick pick pick. Domenica was right. She was being plucked into nothing. That didn’t excuse her, but it helped me understand her a little.
And then, like Signor Botticelli, I grew dizzy from an overabundance of beauty. It seemed to me everyone’s smile was too tight, everyone’s gown too elaborate. I made my way to the balcony, closing the door behind me.
I leaned over the rail. Tranquilla, I urged myself as I gasped.
“Are you all right, signorina?” a man said.
I wheeled around. There stood a young man in a fine black velvet doublet and cape, carrying a goblet. I only saw half his features in the lamplight, but they seemed more polished than handsome. His chin was smooth; his hands uncalloused. A heavily jeweled cross hung from his neck.
I didn’t know who this man was, but he was clearly a nobleman. I had to behave.
I curtsied. “I’m fine, thank you. It’s just a bit crowded in there.”
I looked at the marble-tile floor and clasped my hands in front of me the way I’d seen Domenica do.
“You’re not . . . are you Domenica?”
“No,” I said. “I’m her younger sister, Flora.” I should have given him my real name, Lorenza. But I was unused to pandering.
“Flora?” the man asked. “The one they treat like a servant?”
I looked up and stared him in the face. “How did you know?” I blurted.
The man shrugged. “My brother has spies all over the city. He probably even knows what you ate for breakfast.”
“Your brother,” I repeated. “Are you Giuliano?”
He nodded once, then leaned on the railing. He handed me his goblet of wine. I drank deeply before handing it back. Behind us came the sounds of forced laughter. Neither of us made a move to go back inside. We stood together, watching the festive lamplight below. Someone had made the fountain work again, and it made a pleasant gurgling sound.
“You don’t seem disappointed t
hat I’m not someone else,” Giuliano said.
“Neither do you,” I replied.
“My brother is the darling of the family. I’ve never been as quick or intelligent as he. Mamma calls me a wastrel.”
“My mamma calls me a rat. She says I’m always scurrying.”
It was a quiet moment. I wished I could spend the evening out here forever, not talking, not saying the wrong thing, not being inspected, and most of all not thinking about what I was going to do tomorrow.
Then I ruined it. “Are you going to marry my sister?”
Giuliano didn’t look at me. He didn’t seem offended, but neither did he seem surprised. It was as though he had been expecting me to ask. “Your sister is indeed beautiful. But not as beautiful as my . . . ,” he trailed off.
“As your what?”
“That’s the problem. I don’t know what to call her. I would like to say my wife but she is not. Nor can she ever be. Carolina, the woman I love, is not one of us, as my mother daily reminds me. She is the daughter of the man who manufactures cannons. He has a shop on the other side of the Arno by Fort Belvedere. She tends his customers. I think her the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“Ah,” I said. I understood this was the moment my family feared. Giuliano was trying to tell me politely there would be no marriage.
I shivered a little in the night air. It was only April still.
“Mamma says I don’t love Carolina,” Giuliano continued. “She says I’m just dallying with her and that’s to be expected. But I know what I feel.”
“Your mamma can’t know everything,” I said. “Has she ever been in love?”
Giuliano pursed his lips. “I doubt it. Her marriage was a political alliance.”
I nudged his arm and pointed to the revelers inside. Their smiles looked like frescoes — something plastered on. “Look at this crowd. Does anyone look like they’ve ever loved someone else? Or are they just amusing themselves? If you ask me, they’re the wastrels.”
This thought seemed to amuse him. “I am indeed grieved to cause your sister disappointment,” he said. “At one time she was a true candidate for my wife. But it wouldn’t have been the same, you know. She would have had my money but not my heart. Then my mother decided she wasn’t good enough and that was that.”
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