Nerves got the best of me when I reached Sandro’s door.
How do I respond to his profession of love?
I was well-versed in his legendary affection for Simonetta, but still it blindsided me. And even though I felt love for him in return, raw emotion had never been my strong suit. I took a deep breath and knocked, while my heart pounded and the blood rushed to my face. When there was no immediate answer, I pounded harder, now anxiously ready to pounce on him the moment he opened the door. I decided to bear my soul, and couldn’t wait another minute to do it. Heavy footsteps moved towards the door, and when it swung open, I blindly threw my arms around him and squeezed tight—my embrace immediately reciprocated.
I closed my eyes and held him close for a moment, before I noticed the weathered hands that clutched my back, and the gray hair tickling my face.
“Mariano Filipepi!” A ratchety female voice chided. “What are you doing?”
I pushed back when I realized it was Mariano I was hugging, and when our gaze met, I was shocked to see the amorous intentions pooled in his gray eyes. Then I caught sight of a woman who appeared so haggard, it was as though she had just dismounted a broomstick. Gray, frizzy hair framed her gnarled, weathered face, complete with a bump on her nose.
“Smeralda,” Mariano answered, in a jolt of realization, “This is Simonetta Vespucci.”
Smeralda?
Mariano had always spoken of how lovely his wife was, and how kind.
She pummeled Mariano with a rolled-up scroll of paper, “Do not lie to me, husband! Everyone knows Simonetta Vespucci is at the house of the Medici fucking that blue blood! This must be some whore from the tavern in her best dress!”
“I’m so sorry,” I muttered to Mariano. “I thought you were Sandro.”
“Sandro is not here, Jezebel!” Smeralda shrieked. “Take yourself back to the brothel where you belong!” She pushed past Mariano and slammed the door in my face.
Stunned, I slowly backed up from Mariano’s house, then raced away from the weird scene. Even if she had seen me before that day, my face was surely unrecognizable after an entire days’ worth of crying.
But why did Mariano look at me like that?
I refocused on my mission to find Sandro, and headed for the only spot I could think to look; the place I dreaded the most—the Church of Ognissanti. With the handkerchief covering my face once again, I darted down the Borgo Ognissanti. Done with the charade, I burst through the church’s doors.
“Anastasia,” I heard the Abbess call, as I whizzed past her through the nave.
“Not now!” I screamed and continued on, completely disrespecting the house of worship. I reached the choir, out of breath, and pushed open the door, only to find an empty room. Even Ghirlandaio had taken the day off to join the festivities. I stared blankly at Sandro’s incomplete fresco, as the Abbess quietly approached me.
“We must talk, Anastasia.” Her voice was soothing. “He’s not here. You have missed him, dear child.”
“But I know where he is!” Only the upper right-hand corner of Sandro’s Saint Augustine had been frescoed, but it was enough. I recognized the twenty-four hour Italian clock as the one that graced my nightstand, and behind it was the open book. The clear words jumped out at me from the garbled text, and this time I knew exactly what they meant.
Where is Brother Martino?
He fled.
And where did he go?
He is outside the Porta al Prato.
It couldn’t be a coincidence. It was a message to me from Sandro—one that would last hundreds of years into the future—with no one to interpret it but me. He wanted me to find him. He knew I would come. I turned from the Abbess, who was now smiling a toothless grin, then ran as fast as my throbbing feet would take me down the Borgo Ognissanti towards the city gate.
The guard stepped aside, allowing me to pass easily through the Porto al Prato, as if he expected me. I veered to the left, and quickly reached the sprawling meadow with the lone olive tree. Pondering what to say once I found him, I agonized over how to express the multitude of emotions that barraged me all at once. But there was no need. No words were exchanged, as Sandro stepped out from behind the sprawling tree, and with a rapid gait, marched over to me and pressed his lips onto mine. It was the first time he came to me without inhibitions.
He kissed me deep and hard, stimulating every nerve of my being. He caressed my hair, shoulders, and arms, as he whispered in my ear, “I love you, Simonetta.”
“I have always loved you,” I admitted, and at that moment I realized that was precisely what I was put back on this Earth to do. To say the one thing she had never been able to say. Not because she didn’t feel it, but because she didn’t act on it.
Sandro looked into my eyes as if he had never seen my face before. He kissed me again, softly this time, his hands running all over me with delightful gentleness. He unlaced my gown, as he had done so many times before, but I could tell that tonight it was for a different, more fateful purpose. Tonight it wasn’t about the painting. He slipped Fioretta’s dress down my shoulders, and after he guided me to step out of it, he spread the endless fabric onto the soft grass. He stood frozen, and a blush came over his face as I went to remove his tunic, my hands caressing his warm flesh as I pulled it over his head.
His chest was not a mass of rippling muscles, but firm, with the soft skin of a young man. The warm night air rushed past, and Sandro trembled as I crouched and slowly slid his hose down his legs. He hesitated before removing my shift. I could see in his eyes that he felt he should not fully disrobe me, that it would be a dishonor. So I removed the shift myself, and stood there as the warm breeze kissed both of our naked forms.
“Make love to me,” I insisted.
“I just want to look at you for a while. I want to remember you, in this moment, always.”
“You will.” I assured him, knowing he’d paint Simonetta’s face forever. Then I rubbed my hand against the side of his precious cheek, and kissed his lips once more, before he gently laid me down onto my dress, and explored my body with kisses.
My breasts tingled in anticipation of his mouth, my hands clinging to the soft waves of his hair. I had longed to feel his touch every moment since we first met, and I couldn’t wait any longer for him to be inside of me. I pulled him up to my mouth again, and kissed him deeply as I guided him between my yearning thighs. He let out a startled moan, as I clutched his hips and pulled him further into me. And as I did, an unexpected pain shocked me briefly, before the intense pleasure set in. Sandro had devirginized me.
We were no longer a married noblewoman and a lowly painter, but merely two young people in the act of love. Our rocking motion was quiet and gentle at first, and I was careful not to let my experience show through. But the intensity and heat of the moment took over, and we both moved more quickly and furiously. Cries of pleasure emanated through the meadow, with nothing and no one to separate us. He continued to kiss me throughout, taking my breath away in every sense.
Even when it was over, I refused to let him go. I never wanted the night to end.
Chapter 39
I stood in the meadow in the contrapposto position at Sandro’s request, with nothing but my hands and long hair to cover my otherwise nude form—his focus now on my lips, neck, breasts, and long legs. As he lovingly sketched the way every hair blew in the breeze, my mind drifted to the prior night we had spent under the stars, wrapped naked in each other’s arms.
We delayed the inevitable as long as possible, but the morning begged the question, what do we do now? Though deep down, I knew the answer all along. I had to return to the Palazzo Vespucci and face my fate, if for no other reason than to ensure Antonella’s safety. And Sandro had to somehow smooth things over with the Medici and maintain their approval, or starve from a lack of future commissions. But we both agreed to find a way to be together. Somehow.
I meandered back to the palazzo in Fioretta’s grass stained, wrinkled dress, while Sandro
followed several yards behind so no one would report we had been together. When I arrived on the Via Nuova, Mariano was pacing in the street outside my house. He laid an icy stare on Sandro when he caught sight of him at the end of the street, but quickly turned his attention back to me.
“Jacopo says he should have listened to you, Simonetta,” Mariano spouted.
“What?” I asked in confusion.
“My brother is in grave condition. Will you go to him? He has spoken of your comfort before the physician came.”
I hesitated for a moment, worried for Antonella, then quickly shook it off. “Of course,” I agreed. How could I refuse? And even though I feared for Antonella, I had no issue with delaying the inevitable ugly encounter with Marco and Piero a bit longer.
Sandro silently joined us as we rushed to the Santa Maria Novella district. Jacopo’s servant girl ushered us in, and led the three of us up to Jacopo’s room, where he lay gasping. His once pale skin was now dusky skin and mottled, and the death-rattle emanated from his chest.
“Prop him up!” I insisted, as I entered the room. “He can’t breathe!” The timid servant girl quickly complied, placing pillows behind his torso and head.
Jacopo could no longer speak, as the shortness of breath had obviously overwhelmed him. I looked to the side of his bed and spotted the red-streaked bowl the “doctor” must have used to drain the blood from his veins. My brain worked overtime, searching for some MacGyver move I could undertake with the items at hand, but there was no substitute for oxygen and blood. Before I could invent a solution, Jacopo stopped breathing entirely.
The situation was too dire to worry about precautions. I felt his carotid artery for a pulse, and found only a weak, bradycardic one—not enough to sustain his life. I tore the newly placed pillows out from behind him, grabbed a wooden serving tray from his nightstand, and crammed it under his back. I laced my fingers together and compressed his sternum a hundred times—maybe two—to circulate the last bit of oxygenated blood through his heart. Grasping for what I’d learned in my biennial training, I knew I’d have to do mouth-to-mouth, and wished when I had breached the time-warp, I’d brought a face shield.
Sandro held Jacopo’s hand, and I pushed aside my inevitable demise for a moment. I pinched his nose, lifted his jaw, and forced my vital air into his mouth. I had never breathed into a live being before, since sterile equipment had taken the human element out of airway resuscitation in a hospital setting. It felt exhilarating to exhale life into Jacopo’s lungs, and after only a few breaths, he sat up with a start.
“I have seen the light,” Jacopo announced with wonder. Then he coughed, and his eyes blinked open. “It is so grand.”
Everyone stood motionless as his eyes closed again, and he drifted back into a reclining position. Calm washed over his face as he took his last breath a second time. I felt his neck again. Now, there was no pulse whatsoever, and I realized the futility of continuing my effort. Even if I could make his heart beat once again, I couldn’t put him on a ventilator in the ICU with Dopamine and Amiodarone drips. Jacopo was doomed to die.
Mariano rushed to his side opposite Sandro, where he crossed Jacopo’s arms over his chest as the last bit of blood faded from under his pale skin.
“You brought him back to life for a moment,” Mariano gushed. “How did you do that?”
I decided not to answer. What could I possibly say? Mariano stared at me with enamored awe, before stroking the hair of his deceased brother.
“The light he found…I have never seen such a contented look on a man’s face,” Mariano continued. “You did that for him.”
“No I just…”
I just did what? CPR?
“I want to know what he felt. I want to see the light as Jacopo did.”
No Mariano, you really don’t, I said to myself, having a Poltergeist flashback. But now it made sense to me: Mariano’s obsession in the Ognissanti with the light—the one that never came.
I sat between the still-living Filipepi for a long while, silently caressing and comforting both father and son. The servant girl methodically cleaned and prepared Jacopo’s body for burial, as if death were an everyday occurrence in her life. Mariano couldn’t take his eyes off of his dead brother who bore a smiling post-mortem countenance.
Mariano stayed at Jacopo’s house while Sandro escorted me back to my palazzo. Overcome with grief, both of us forgot to hide our companionship, though the streets were mercifully empty after the prior night’s celebrations. I was never good at producing comforting words in situations such as these, so instead, I pulled Sandro into an alley and gave him a loving embrace, as he shed tears for his lost uncle, and I shed tears for Sandro’s pain.
Chapter 40
I was under house arrest from the moment I entered the palazzo. Antonella had spent an hour waiting for me in the alley so we made our entrance together, hoping nothing would appear amiss. But a downtrodden Marco, and a furious Piero were already looming in the entryway. Without a word, Piero grabbed me by the arm, dragged me up the stairs, and tossed me into my bedchamber before locking the door behind me while Marco did nothing to intervene. Piero completely disregarded Antonella, who just barely snuck into my chamber before he sealed me in.
“Are you all right?” Antonella asked, as she helped me up from the floor.
“Yes, I’m fine. Are you okay?” I shot back to Antonella, who was visibly shaken.
“Yes, perfectly. Giuliano dismissed me in the morn because he did not want Lorenzo to know you were not given to him. He did not appear cross, but instead, seemed pleased with our arrangement.”
“Really?” I puzzled. “That’s crazy.”
“He and Fioretta have been secret lovers since the ball, but Giuliano fears Lorenzo would not approve of the coupling because of Fioretta’s family’s political standing. Or lack thereof. I think he is quite smitten with her, actually. He promised in exchange for my silence, he would ensure the Priorate is given to Piero despite all that happened.”
“That’s awesome!” I cleared my throat after my modern exclamation, “But then why is Piero so angry with me?”
“I am uncertain. I shall go to Amerigo to see what I can discover.”
Antonella traipsed swiftly through her chamber into the dark, narrow stairway leading to Amerigo. I paced the room, wanting to escape this madhouse. I already yearned for Sandro, and was exhausted and stressed from the highs and lows of the last twenty-four hours. Thankfully, it was only a short while before Antonella reappeared and divulged what she had learned.
“Last night Piero discovered Luciana’s relationship with Marco when he went to Marco’s chamber to inquire on his spirits. Apparently, Piero felt some guilt for having given his son’s wife to Giuliano.”
“Doubtful,” I interjected.
“But when he entered Marco’s room, he found them in the act of coitus, just as you had.”
“Oh!” I laughed. “So what’s the big deal? Marco claims all noblemen take a lover.”
“Marco professed his love for Luciana to Piero.”
“Oh…yeah…” I cringed. “That may have been a teensy-weensy bit my fault,” I admitted.
“It did not go over well.”
“No, I imagine it didn’t. But I still don’t get why I’m getting locked up again.”
“The scene became quite heated, so in order for Luciana to defend herself, she told Piero you are enamored with the painter, and that you refuse to bed your husband.”
I sighed. “Yeah, that sounds like her.”
Bitch threw me under the carriage.
Antonella sat down on my bed and patted the spot beside her. “Since we have nothing but time to waste today, tell me of your night,” she urged with a smile.
I held back nothing. I told her every detail of what we did, and how I felt, so she’d know our deception was well worth the trouble. Then I told her about Jacopo, and how he suffered and died in front of Sandro and Mariano.
My story reminded me of how
I’d attempted the kiss of life on Jacopo, and that I should take some precautions, though I didn’t really know how. He probably had a simple cold that turned into pneumonia, but it still killed him, nonetheless. The only things I could think to do were gargle with salt water, and have Antonella scrub me from head to toe.
Antonella pounded on the door in order to request water and salt in our confinement, and surprisingly Carlo allowed her to freely exit with little discussion. Apparently, she wasn’t in the doghouse yet.
After doing my best to decontaminate, there really wasn’t much to occupy my time. Always somewhat of a hyper person, I found the incarceration of my cell excruciating. It was the first time I missed modern conveniences. I longed to send a quick text message to Sandro to tell him I love him. Thanks for last night. LOL, or some other acronym. With no television or internet, there were just the four frescoed walls that were a constant reminder of Sandro. I passed the time by reenacting our lovemaking in my mind a hundred times over, until I finally fell into a deep sleep.
My dreams were filled with dark images of Simonetta’s grave, the coyote, and Piero’s face as he threw me into my room. My first husband, Evan, even made an appearance. I had always felt imprisoned by him, but now my captivity was real rather than metaphoric.
When evening came, Antonella fetched us some supper, and we planned our temporary escape. My heart raced at the possibility of seeing Sandro again. I fantasized of him taking me back to the meadow, and how we might pull that off.
After the other members of the household retired for the night, I donned the servant’s dress, and we met up with Amerigo to make our way for the outside.
This isn’t so bad. I could still see Sandro every night if I was careful.
What Remains of the Fair Simonetta Page 21
