I was uncomfortable in this role I had been cast in, a role I had not asked for and in which I did not know what was required of me. I was glad when it came time to adjourn to the Medici palazzo for the banquet. I looked forward to seeing Marco, as well; for as strained as our marriage had been of late, at least when I stood by his side I knew what my place was. I knew what was expected of me, even if I did not always like it.
I went to the palazzo in the company of Lorenzo, Clarice, and Lucrezia; Marco would meet us there, with the rest of Giuliano’s entourage. Upon entering, one of the servants took my heavy cloak; I almost wished I could keep it on, as the chill that had settled into my bones at the jousting field had yet to leave me.
I was then shown into the now-familiar receiving room, where a veritable army of servants waited to tend to the needs of the exalted guests who would soon be arriving. I was handed a glass of mulled wine as soon as I entered, and Lorenzo and Clarice immediately drew me into their circle.
“Did you enjoy the day, Simonetta?” Lorenzo asked me.
The smile that stretched across my face felt false. “Very much,” I said, hoping the words did not sound as stiff as they felt.
“Good,” he said. “I know it will mean much to Giuliano that you should say so. I did not know what he had planned—he managed to keep it a secret even from me!” He chuckled and shook his head. “And I must commend Sandro Botticelli on his painting of you—what a perfect choice, to depict you as Pallas Athena! Beautiful and wise and fierce—just like our Simonetta.”
“You do flatter me, signore, as always,” I said.
“It is no flattery to speak the truth,” Lorenzo said. “But you must excuse us now, amica mia—we must begin to greet the rest of the guests.” With that, he and Clarice stepped away toward the door, where the rest of the guests had begun to enter. One of the first among them, I noted, was Lucrezia Donati Ardenghelli and her husband. I could see the stiffness in Clarice’s spine as she greeted the pair. Lorenzo’s affair with Lucrezia had continued unabated for the past few years—when his duties in the bank and government permitted him to spend time with her, in any case. Clarice had become more accustomed to it, even if she did not like it and never would.
Lucrezia dei Tornabuoni soon engaged me in conversation. “I always knew Giuliano was quite taken with you, but I had not expected such a grand, courtly gesture,” she said. “He is a true romantic, my son, and a truly chivalrous gentleman.”
I had to bite back a sardonic smile, remembering his crude words the night he had stumbled drunkenly into my house. “Indeed he is,” I said aloud. “I was not expecting so much to be made of me, this day or any other.”
Lucrezia smiled. “A woman as beautiful as you shall always have much made of her,” she said. “Indeed, I wonder that you do not expect it yet.”
I returned her smile, though irritation was pricking at me. Is this what everyone thinks of me? I wondered. Even the people who know me well? That because I am beautiful, I expect to be the center of everyone’s attention, at all times?
Or perhaps it does not matter what I do, what I say or how I act. Perhaps people see what they expect to see, what they wish to see when they look at me, and that is all. That is all they have ever seen.
Just then, a commotion drew my attention to the doorway of the now-crowded room as Giuliano and his entourage burst in triumphantly. Everyone present ceased their conversations and began to applaud. Giuliano and the young men with him bowed in appreciation, all of them smiling widely, all of them looking as though this was the happiest moment of their lives.
Their ovation ended, the youths began to mingle through the crowd, finding their wives, parents, friends, and being given glasses of wine.
Marco drifted rather aimlessly through the room, until he saw me. I excused myself from Lucrezia and went to his side at once. “Marco, marito,” I said, kissing him on the cheek. “I am glad to see you.”
He smiled. “And I you, Simonetta. Did you enjoy yourself?”
Here, at last, was one person I could be honest with. “Well enough,” I said. I rolled my eyes. “The whole thing was rather overwrought. And I did not expect so much to be made of me.”
There it was again—the same glance at the floor, the same avoidance of my eyes. “Giuliano thought only to please you,” he mumbled.
“It was a lovely gesture, but I wish I had known, so that I might not have been so taken aback,” I said. “Why did you not warn me, Marco?”
He shrugged, still not looking at me. “Giuliano told me not to,” he said. “He wished it to be a surprise.”
That same uncomfortable feeling that had come upon me when I first beheld the banner with my likeness slithered through my stomach once again. Something was wrong here, and no one would tell me what it was. “Does he not know there are no secrets between husband and wife?” I asked lightly.
Yet I knew by the look Marco gave me that this was the wrong thing to say. He finally met my eyes again, his expression heavy with warning and reproach and guilt—for the secrets he had kept from me in the past, for the ones he seemed to know I was keeping, and for whatever this was, now, in the air between us.
I should no doubt have apologized for not choosing my words more carefully, but I could not just then. “What is it, Marco?” I whispered. “What is wrong?”
He shook his head and pasted a false smile on his face. “Nothing at all,” he said. “This is naught but a joyous day, Simonetta. All is well.” He took a glass of wine from the tray of a passing servant and downed half of it in one gulp.
I decided not to press the issue. Whatever was troubling Marco was not something he was going to speak of just then, if ever, and it would do me no good to beg my own husband to confide in me.
Despite the celebratory feel of the whole day, I found that I could not wait for it to be over. Once dinner commenced, I was seated beside Giuliano, as though I were the guest of honor, and before the meal began he proposed a toast to me, saying that my beauty and grace had blessed his joust that day. I smiled as though I was pleased beyond anything to accept such a tribute, but my sense of discomfort and wariness only increased.
When finally—finally—dinner was at an end, everyone adjourned back to the receiving room, and I began to look about for Marco, to let him know that I was ready to leave. Somehow we had become separated in the short trip from the dining room to the receiving room, and I could not see him.
As I was peering about for him, I heard a familiar deep voice speak my name. “Simonetta.”
I turned to see Giuliano, still wearing the costume he had worn beneath his armor, similar to those his entourage had worn, but with a different brocade pattern still, to set him apart. “Giuliano,” I said, smiling. “My congratulations on your triumph this day.”
“Ahh, but it was all due to your favor, dear lady,” he said.
I laughed, warming up slightly as I always did when he and I spoke—and were not observed by a crowd of thousands, anyway. “I think your own skill in the lists was of more use to you than my favor.”
He smiled but did not respond. “I crave a word with you,” he said.
“You are having one now.”
He laughed. “As witty as you are beautiful. I meant a private word.” He lowered his voice slightly. “Alone.”
“Now?” I asked. My wariness returned.
“I insist, mia bella donna.”
“Very well,” I said. If he heard the reluctance in my voice, it did not deter him. He led me from the receiving room and down the hall, to a small, private parlor where I had visited with Clarice and Lucrezia many times in the past.
“Please, be seated,” he said, closing the door behind us.
I did as he said, albeit uneasily. “This is most irregular,” I said. “And, dare I say, improper.”
He laughed, and in one bound had crossed the room to me, kneeling at my feet and taking my hand in his. “Ahh, but it need not be, Simonetta mia,” he said. “It need be neither of th
ose things.”
I remained motionless, neither pulling my hand away from his nor clasping it in return. “Whatever do you mean?”
“It is why I wished to speak to you,” he said. “Why I have arranged this day so much in your honor. That you might know the high esteem and regard in which I hold you.”
“You are too kind, signore,” I said. “And you know that I hold you in the utmost regard as well, as a friend of mine and of my husband’s. But this, surely, you could have said to me in the presence of others.”
“Indeed I could have,” he said. “But that is not all that I wish to say.” His fingers tightened around mine.
“Then what more do you wish to say?” I said, unable to disguise the nervousness in my voice. “Speak plainly, I beg of you.”
“Your wish is my command, mia donna dell’amore,” he said.
His words caused an unpleasant twist in my stomach. My lady love.
“My feelings for you can come as no surprise,” he said. “You know that my love for you has only blossomed over these past years of our acquaintance. And so the time has come when I must ask you—nay, beg you—to allow that love to be consummated.”
A part of me had managed to remain in denial as to what he was really asking until that last word. Consummated.
This, then, was what it had all been about. He had created an entire spectacle—beginning with the banner with my image and ending here, in this room—to seduce me. And while a part of me could only be astonished at the lengths to which he had gone, the rest of me was disgusted.
He had planned all along to seduce me. And Sandro had helped him.
“You…” I found that I could barely speak from shock and betrayal. Shock that he had the gall to ask for it so plainly, so unashamedly. And the betrayal, ah, God, it was as great as when I had learned of Marco’s whore. Greater. “You wish for me to be your mistress.”
He looked somewhat uncomfortable now—at my choice of words or at my tone, or both. “I ask for you to be my one and only love,” he said, recovering somewhat and retreating again into the language of courtly love. Flowery language that I had once thought masked a lack of meaning. A courtship I had always believed was a game.
Yet it appeared that neither of those things was true where Giuliano de’ Medici and I were concerned.
“I beg you,” he went on, “to end my torment, and to allow us to be together. I beg you to allow me to worship you as a goddess should be worshipped.”
“You flatter me,” I said—and indeed, a small, disgraceful part of me was flattered, that Giuliano should have gone to so much trouble to please me this day, that he desired me enough to make a cuckold of one of his friends. I did not like this part of myself, but it was there all the same. “But, as you well know, I am a married woman.”
“I do know it well,” he said. “Otherwise this would be a very different kind of proposal.”
“So because you cannot have me honorably, you would have me dishonorably?” I asked. “Perhaps it is all the same to you, signore, but what of my honor?”
He did not speak, yet I could hear the words as loudly as if he had spoken them: A woman has no honor.
Perhaps not. Perhaps not in the way that men did, but I would be damned if I would not live my life as seemed best to me, to the extent that I could. If that was not honor, then I did not know what to call it.
“You … flatter me with your offer,” I said again, trying not to let anger seep into my tone. “But I could not cast aside my marriage in such a way, not when my vows were sworn before God.” I paused. “And not when my husband is a good friend of yours, signore—or so I thought. It would be wrong.”
His grip on my hand tightened further. “Is not love the holiest of gifts God can give us?” he asked. “God forgives worse sinners all the time, and when a couple loves one another…”
I wrenched my hand from his grasp. “You presume too much, signore,” I said. “I have not spoken words of love to you, nor will I. I do not speak what I do not feel.”
“Simonetta,” he said, and there was a touch of a whine in his wheedling tone—that of a spoiled young man who had never been denied anything he asked for. “Please. I am besotted with you. My every thought is of you. My loins ache for you. I can make love to you such as—”
I rose from my chair. “This interview is at an end,” I said. “I do not wish to cause you pain, Giuliano. Truly. As I said, I consider you a friend, and a fine man, but that is all. That is all that can be between us.”
He remained motionless on his knees, then slowly rose to face me. He gave a half-hearted smile. “You are loyal to your husband, I see,” he said. “I suppose I cannot fault you for that, though you will rip out my heart.” He stepped closer to me and kissed me on the lips; I moved neither to encourage nor dissuade him. “Farewell, Simonetta,” he said. He went to the door, but stopped, his hand on the latch, and looked back at me. “Will you not even consider it?”
Inwardly I laughed at his persistence, even as I shook my head. “My answer will not change, I am afraid.”
“Would that it might, someday,” he said. “Ah, God!” he burst out. “Would that I had found you before that fool Marco Vespucci!” With that, he left the room, shutting the door behind him.
I stayed where I was for a moment, standing alone in the now empty room. I let out a sound that was half sob, half laugh.
Yet the truth was, my refusal had less to do with my marriage vows and more to do with the fact that I did not wish to lie with any man but the one I loved. Even my husband, God forgive me. My illness had meant that Marco came far less often to my bed, and, sinful as it was, I could not help but be relieved. Even if it meant he found his pleasure with some French whore.
Collecting myself, I left the room and meant to return to the party, to find Marco and bid him take me home at once. Yet before I reached it, I encountered in the—blessedly empty—hallway the one man for whom I would betray my marriage vows. And the very sight of him threw me into a blinding rage.
“You!” I hissed, slamming my hands against Sandro’s shoulders.
He grasped my wrists in his hands, gently. “Simonetta! Whatever is the matter?”
“How could you?” I all but shrieked.
“Simonetta, what has happened?”
I pulled away from him, beginning to laugh. “You know what has happened. You helped him in the whole sordid scheme.”
His body tensed. “Dio mio,” he whispered. “Giuliano. What has he done?”
“What he has done,” I spat, “is ask me to become his mistress. To cast aside my marriage and my reputation and … and fornicate with him.” I glared at him. “And you assisted him in his attempts to seduce me. You painted that banner he carried today with my likeness upon it. Why, my God…” I could feel the color drain from my face as a new thought occurred to me. “No doubt all of Florence thinks I am already his mistress, after that spectacle today.”
“So you … you refused him?” Sandro asked hesitantly.
I wanted to slap him. “Of course I refused him!” I cried. “What do I look like to you? A common harlot who can be bought with poetry and pretty words and a painted banner? Am I thought to have no more virtue than—”
Sandro drew me into his arms, holding me against his chest as I shook in sorrow, in fear, in rage at this world that sought to use me as it saw fit. “Oh, Simonetta,” he murmured. “I am so sorry. He asked—commanded—me to paint the banner for him. His family are my greatest patrons; I could not refuse, even though I wanted to. I had feared that he would want something like this. I know he has loved you long.”
I drew back so that Sandro could see my face, now stained with tears. “I do not love him,” I said quickly. I needed him to know that, more than anything. “I do not love him, Sandro. Not at all. Not in the least.”
“I … I did not think you did,” he said. I could hear the relief in his voice, and it was a balm to my worn and battered heart.
“I would not
lie with a man I do not love,” I said, lying my head against his shoulder again.
Sandro was silent, likely puzzling through my words. I, too, was puzzling through them. What, exactly, was I saying to him?
I drew away, suddenly cognizant of what this scene would look like if we were happened upon by anyone else—especially after I had just spurned the advances of a member of the ruling family of Florence.
If someone had happened upon us like that, they would have seen the truth. And that was the one thing that could not be known.
“I … I must go,” I said. I was certain I looked a fright, but there was no help for it just then. “I must find Marco and have him take me home. I cannot bear to stay here any longer.”
Sandro nodded, but then he caught my arm. “Wait, Simonetta. First I … I must know that you forgive me. For my role in this whole plot. Believe me when I say I am the last person who wanted any part in it.”
“Of course,” I said quickly, glad to be able to speak the words—for his sake and my own. “You, I think I could forgive anything.”
And with that, I turned and left him, went back into the receiving room where a great number of guests still milled about.
I pushed my way through the crowd, craning my neck, trying to find Marco. When I did not see him, I left the room and made my way down the staircase to the courtyard, thinking that perhaps he was awaiting me there, but the courtyard was empty in the winter cold. I stepped past the statue of David and peered into the garden, only to find it empty as well, save for Judith with her sword forever raised, ready to strike down the evil in men. I might wish for such a sword, and for such courage, myself.
Feeling unspeakably weary by this time, I climbed the stairs again to the receiving room, still thronged with guests. Again, I did not see Marco. “Excuse me,” I said, cornering a passing servant. “I am looking for my husband, Signor Marco Vespucci. Have you seen him?”
The Most Beautiful Woman in Florence Page 22
