O, Juliet

by Robin Maxwell

  “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 brewing 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 Virgins’ Dance made everyone smile, and as we circled and twirled, I found myself laughing, felt my soul soaring and free from care, as though music—not blood—was coursing through my veins. All around us revelers clapped to the beat that quickened, our feet skipping faster, faster, faster, the cymbals, the drums, CRESCENDO!

  We fell together, arms about one another, gasping happily. But there was no respite. Another dance had already begun. The gentlemen joined in now, and the rest of the ladies, too. We were circle-within-circle—the men without, women within. In this way, in the space of a quadernaria, we would come face-to-face with every person of the other sex at the ball, politely touching hands, smiling, nodding, bowing, and turning.

  We had danced thus for only a moment before I stood opposite my father. His sour mood had not lightened even a fraction, and I was further assailed by a disapproving look that said, “Why did you not come to me when I called?” I replied with the downcast eyes of a chastised daughter and was much relieved when the stanza moved him on, putting in his place the city’s current gonfaloniere, a fat and jolly guildsman who, with a delighted belly laugh, gave me an extra twirl that nearly undid the perfect symmetry of the double-circle dance.

  Coming back to my place in the circle, I found myself before another friendly face, though this one my age. My father’s nephew Marco was a happy, boisterous young man known and loved for his clownishness.

  “What’s that stuck between your bosoms, good cousin?” he demanded, improvising an extra hop and a spin. As he bowed, he reached out and gave my mother’s silk kerchief a tug.

  “Marco,” I whispered threateningly.

  “It looks very silly,” he said in a loud voice. “Poufs on your poufs!”

  Before I could bean the boy, he had danced away, and to my dismay I now stood before Signor Strozzi. My husband-to-be, clutching my hand with the long, tapering fingers of his own cold, clammy one, was silent and stultifyingly formal. His steps were stiff, as though a pole were lodged in his ano. I nearly laughed aloud at that thought. But what he did next stifled the sound in my throat.

  He smiled. Smugly. Possessively. With long yellowing teeth.

  I thought I might faint.

  Never had I been gladder for a cast-off to a new partner than I was when the stanza changed, and no more delightful a partner could I have wished for. It was our host. Cosimo de’ Medici’s eyes sparkled so impishly and his feet stepped so lightly that he seemed a much younger man. I suddenly understood why Lucrezia loved him so.

  “Ah, Juliet,” he said, beaming, “what a joyful occasion. Tell me, is your friend happy?”

  I executed the slight swivel of a campegiarre and gazed back at him over my shoulder.

  “Only walking on air. How could she feel otherwise?”

  With the quadernaria drawing to a close, we made our final bows, but as before, the musicians had barely finished with one tune before striking up another. These were the chords we all recognized as a bassadanza, a slow and stately procession of couples. Everyone took a moment to place their masks on their faces.

  Don Cosimo had moved forward to partner with the lady next to me. Suddenly I felt my hand grasped by strong, warm fingers and turned to greet my partner. All I could see of him behind his sleek wolf ’s mask were his eyes, deep brown and soulful, a firm angled chin, and lush lips.

  Facing one another, broken into two lines—men and women—we began the graceful rising and falling motion of the undagiarre, but I found myself quite unnerved.

  My partner’s eyes would not leave mine.

  There I found myself, imprisoned by a stranger’s gaze and oddly longing for the moment he would grasp my hand again. His lips parted. Revealed was an even line of pearl white teeth. We came together, palms touching palms, and then he spoke.

  “ ‘Such sweet decorum and
such gentle graces attend my lady as she dances.’ ”

  “What did you say?”

  We separated again. My mind reeled.The voice itself was rich and mellifluous, a kind of music unto itself. But it was the words that had rocked me. Now I took his arm, and facing front, we promenaded forward, stepped and pivoted, stepped and pivoted.

  I could not contain myself, but I kept my voice low as I said, “The line reads, ‘Such sweet decorum and such gentle graces attend my lady’s greeting as she walks.’ ”

  “Yes, but you are dancing.”

  “You dare amend Dante?”

  “When it suits me,” he said, his tone simple and sincere. But I was flummoxed.

  “You are outrageous, my lord!” I cried, losing my step and my footing. Then to my horror I stumbled. I saw myself careening into the back of Cosimo’s partner, but in the moment before I collapsed the entire procession, those strong hands cinched my waist and gracefully propelled me out of harm’s and humiliation’s way.

  The dance went on without us, and in moments I’d been guided from the ballroom floor down the stairs to the vestibule and into the palazzo’s scented garden.

  It was torch and moonlit, deserted but for my wolfman and me.

  I was strangely light-headed and clearheaded all at once.

  “Will you unmask?” he said in a low, husky tone. The way my body felt, he might have uttered, “Will you undress?” I wondered if he knew I ached to see the face that matched that voice.

  “Will you?” I whispered.

  “For my dancing lady?” he teased. “Anything she pleases.”

  “Then on the count of three,” I said, sounding, I thought, like a mathematics tutor, and, closing my eyes, nodded thrice.

  The cool night air tingled my damp cheeks as the mask came off. A vein thumped in my neck. Slowly I raised my eyelids.

  He was right before me, having moved closer, this audacious young man, he who took liberties with Dante Alighieri.

  Oh, he was beautiful! The hair that flowed to his shoulders was chestnut and thick with waves. The dark windows of his wide-set eyes dared me to enter at my own risk. His cheekbones were broad but finely chiseled, and the nose was straight and perfectly shaped—more Circassian than Italian, I thought.

  Then I smiled, thinking, I am no stranger to that mouth. Instantly I quashed the thought.

  Too late.

  “Why do you smile that way?” he asked.

  I stood speechless, as I did not wish to lie to him. Yet the truth was deeply mortifying. He was a stranger! One whose impudence had made me stumble in the promenade.

  “What? Suddenly mute?” he prodded. “Inside, you chastised me. Now you refuse to speak.”

  “I do not refuse,” I finally said. “I simply wish to choose my words more carefully.”

  “You needn’t be careful with me,” he said with unexpected gentleness. “I lived with sisters. I’m used to teasing them.” Then he went silent, his head tilting slightly, examining my face. He was quiet for a long while.

  “Now you’re the mute,” I accused.

  He laughed, and the sound of it fluttered my heart. So sweet was it, I silently determined, that I must make this young man laugh again and again. Those eyes refused to release me from their locked grip. I wished desperately that my mother’s handkerchief was not stuffed in my bodice.

  The full lips moved and he said softly, “ ‘I found her so full of natural dignity and admirable bearing she did not seem the daughter of an ordinary man, but rather a god.’ ”

  I was awed at his grasp of our favorite poet, indeed, my favorite of his books—Vita Nuova—and I wished with all desperation to reply in kind, though without revealing my soul too deeply.

  “Good sir,” I finally said, “ ‘you speak without the trusted counsel of reason.’ ”

  He was delighted at my choice of quotes.

  “Now it is you who is guilty of changing Dante’s words,” he said, “and, moreover, changing his meaning.”

  “Not so!” I cried. “I simply chose a phrase, a part of a phrase. One that follows your own in chapter two.”

  “And what is the rest of that phrase?” he probed, taking half a step closer. We were in dangerous proximity now.

  I could hardly breathe. I closed my eyes to recall the words as they stood on the page. “ ‘And though her image,’ ” I recited, “ ‘which remained constantly with me, was Love’s assurance of holding me, it was of such pure quality that never did it permit to be ruled by Love without the trusted counsel of reason.’ ” I opened my eyes, mortified that I had been the first to speak of that most poignant of emotions.

  “You see, you did change the meaning,” he insisted. “Dante was saying that in his love for Beatrice he was always blessed by reason.” His face fixed itself in a noncommittal expression. “Though when it comes to the love I feel, I might not be so blessed.”

  I thought I might swoon and had to take a step backward. But with a small smile, the gentleman took one forward.

  It was a bold challenge and though he had not touched me, a strong but pleasant shock reverberated through my body. I strove to remain calm.

  “Who are you?” I said. “Why do I not know you?”

  “I have been in Padua. At university. Before that, I lived with my uncles in Verona for several years.” Pain flickered across his features then. “There were many deaths in my family—all my elder brothers, and my sisters. . . .” He shook his head. “The family business here in Florence will one day be mine.”

  “I lost all my brothers, too,” I said.

  Both of us looked down at our feet, yet too unfamiliar to share that black misery.

  “And your name?” I did ask.

  He grinned, then closed his eyes, as though trying to remember a particular line. “ ‘Names follow from the things they name, as the saying goes. . . .’” He hesitated and I jumped in, so we spoke together in unison, from chapter thirteen:

  “ ‘Names are the consequences of things.’ ”

  We both smiled, utterly pleased with ourselves.

  “So I am the consequence of my father’s and mother’s ‘thing’?” I asked.

  His laugh was bawdy this time. “I imagine your father would not approve of your speaking of his ‘thing.’ ”

  “Come, tell me your name,” I begged.

  “Romeo,” he said. “And yours?”

  “Juliet.”

  “Ju-li-et. It lies gently on the tongue.”

  “And your family’s name?”

  He spun suddenly on his heel and with a flourish bowed low before me.

  What matter is my name if my mind has shattered

  in a thousand pieces and my heart,

  where the soul resides, has grown

  to the size of the sun?

  My brow furrowed. “That is not Dante. Or if it is, I cannot place it.”

  He pressed his lips tightly together, then spoke. “It is my own verse.”

  “You’re a poet!”

  “That I would never claim.”

  “Why? They were pretty words, carefully composed. I had to think a moment. They could have been Dante’s.”

  “You are far too kind, Lady Juliet.” His eyes narrowed. “Indeed, I think you mock me.”

  “No, no! Romeo, I am an honest woman. There is much I cannot claim for myself. But straight talking is one that I proudly do. And when it comes to poetry, sir, I fancy myself of strong and fair opinion. And I tell you your verse was pleasant to the ear.”

  He sighed happily.

  “Here, listen to mine,” I said.

  Am I mad to judge a man by the shape of his hand,

  square and strong, the way he holds my face so tender in his

  palm.

  Warm, enchanted fingertips that magic make upon my soul,

  All of that, all of that, in the shape of a hand.

  Romeo fixed me with a blank gaze.

  “You wrote that?”

  “I did. What’s wrong with it?”
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  “Nothing.”

  “Then why do you stand there like a stag just struck by an arrow?”

  “Women . . . ,” he began, but could not finish.

  “Women do not write poetry?” I finished for him. I bristled, insulted, and started turning away.

  “No, please, Juliet!”

  He grasped my hand in both of his, not unaware of his presumptuousness. I could not deny that despite my strong words, his touch had, alarmingly, turned me soft inside. Yielding.

  “Forgive me. I have never known a woman poet. The verse was . . . brilliant. And the verse was yours.”

  “Brilliant?”

  “I thought it so. Dante, were he here in this garden, would agree.”

  I gently released myself from his grip, aware that pulling away was what I wished least to do. “You teased me before,” I said, surprised to hear my voice grow low and husky. “You tease me again.”

  He shook his head. “Who has read your poems?”

  “Only my friend Lucrezia.”

  “Others should read your work.”

  “Oh no.That would cause a world of unhappiness.” I fell silent, suddenly miserable. “My future husband would never approve.”

  Romeo’s features crumpled, and a certain light faded from his eyes. I understood his disappointment.

  As much from my own anger at the Fates as his, I lashed out at him with as much sense as a hedgehog. “What, did you not expect a woman of my age to be betrothed? Do I look like a spinster to you? Am I so hideous?”

  He was amused at my intemperance, refusing—like a stubborn fish—to take my bait.

  “Ah, I see.You test me,” he said. “You wish me to versify on the subject of your beauty.”

  “That was not my intention,” I insisted. He nevertheless said: