CHAPTER SEVEN
Before I could lift the heavy iron pizzle on the door (the knocker was aptly shaped) and slam it into the waiting iron gnocca which gave the house its name, Madame Culatello opened and said, “Greetings, Rosie!”
The second person to easily penetrate my camouflage! I stopped on the doorstep and asked in chagrin, “How did you know it was me?”
Madame Culatello guffawed. “Those eyebrows, my dear. Satan’s eyebrows!”
“Ah.” I had inherited my father’s eyebrows, which rose almost without curve toward my hairline. No wonder Guglielmo had recognized me. How many others on the square had suspected and speculated about my connection to the Montagues?
I experienced a moment of petulance; could I not get away with anything?
Madame Culatello gestured me in.
I entered to lights and scents, soft calls of welcome from the workers and fond embraces offered by women whose skin colors matched all the peoples north and south. There was laughter at my outfit and teasing about my snobbishness. “Rosie, it’s been too long since you’ve visited us,” they said. “We thought you didn’t love us anymore!”
Not true, of course; I hadn’t visited La Gnocca since my own first dressed-as-a-youth foray into Verona’s night streets, but I saw the women in the daylight hours when they shopped in the market or called on Friar Laurence’s apothecary shop and we always greeted each other fondly.
Naturally, I suffered from the same need that Isabella and Katherina had had for a chamber pot.
Madame Culatello ushered me into that room and left me alone.
I proceeded as planned, then, like Isabella and Katherina, I reclined on one of the half couches.
For most of my life, I’d been profoundly uninterested in sexual sport; my parents, with their loud, exuberant celebrations of life, had led me to the jaundiced view that the bassa danza was a pastime to be enjoyed while your children blocked their ears with their pillows.
The events of recent months: falling instantly in love with Lysander, an unhappy betrothal to Duke Stephano, one that ended in death for him and almost for me, Prince Escalus and his deceitful game that led to an entrapment that seemed unlikely to vanish no matter how I finagled...
Of necessity, my world view was changing.
Bitterly I contemplated the infamous truth; love teaches even asses to dance.
I didn’t feel love, but I would soon dance. Ergo, I studied the ceiling with an intent to gain knowledge.
As Isabella said, the men’s pizzles were assuredly—most hopefully—exaggerated in size, for I’d not observed men walking like lumbering oxen tied to a plow. Certainly my bower of bliss would not easily welcome such an intruder. The contortions shown seemed likely to put out one’s back, and except for the satyrs, everyone looked ill at ease and—dare I say it?—silly.
I closed my eyes to shut out the sights and...
Gentle reader, I hear you shouting at the page.
Rosie! Get up, girl! You’ve been ill, it’s night, you’re on a mission and you have no time to fall asleep!
I hang my head in shame, for you’re right, and with the suddenness of a baby or a recent convalescent (which I was), I did indeed fall asleep.
For how long, you ask?
I have no idea. Time doesn’t exist in a house of service, but I woke with a start to find Uria, a lady of lush and generous bosoms, in floaty material that draped her ample curves in ways designed to ensnare the viewer. As close as she was hovering, I felt ensnared. Also, her lips had been stained the color of red of the ceiling women’s...um, lips.
“Belleza.” She knelt beside the couch and stroked my hair. “When you didn’t come out, we were worried about you.”
I blinked the sleep out of my eyes. “I’m well. I...I need to get up and...I need to find the ring.” Which I should not have said. Yes, I was groggy, and yes, I can’t keep my mouth shut, but that’s no excuse for stupidity. I knew Uria only vaguely, and right now she was too intimate, too affectionate, too smiley. I edged away and stood. “I need to speak with Madame Culatello.”
“I know, belleza, she sent me to check on you and give you this.” She held out a cat mask made of stiff black silk with a single sparkling jewel in the pointed left ear. When I simply stared, she eagerly shared, “For tonight’s masquerade. Count Prospero has returned!”
“Oh.” I stepped back, away from temptation.
Count Prospero stank of money and the respectability it bought, used garbs of dark velvet, satin, and fine linen to frame his powerful body, rode the roads between Padua and Florence, Venice and Verona untouched by brigands and murderers. It seemed he knew everyone, rich and poor, along the length and breadth of the Italian peninsula, and all feared him. No one knew from whence his claims to aristocracy sprang, nor how he had earned his fortune, yet everyone knew he owned the sumptuous dwelling on the narrow street off Verona’s square, and one afforded him respect if one knew what was good for one.
Always when he returned to Verona from his travels, he opened his home to all, hosted a masquerade, and in among the music, the drinking, the banqueting and the laughter, deals were brokered, morals abandoned, respectability vanquished...all instigated by Count Prospero, the man in the red satyr mask. A mask such as Katherina and Isabella had described.
“You remember the masquerade, don’t you?” Uria asked.
I did indeed remember.
“Last time, you loved that carouse!” Uria reminded me, and pressed the mask into my hands.
Last time. She meant when at thirteen I dressed as a lad and visited La Gnocca and then had been drawn by the light and laughter and freedom to join the masquerade. She was right; I had loved it, right up to the time the whisper spread that a girl dressed as a boy had crashed the party, and Count Prospero proclaimed all should strip and dance until the culprit was revealed. I escaped unscathed, if slightly scraped, but that put an end to any other masculine expeditions I had planned.
“I will not deliberately go too close to Count Prospero and his masquerade again,” I declared, and returned the mask.
She, no respecter of personal space, opened the leather purse at my belt and thrust the mask within. “In case you change your mind,” she said in mocking tones.
The next time, I intended to be more forceful, but Madame Culatello opened the door in a sweeping movement both dramatic and vexed.
Uria used the leather strap to cinch down my purse and hurried past Madame Culatello, who gave her a hard slap on her bottom. Stepping into the room, Madame Culatello shut the door behind her. “What did she tell you?”
I found myself disliking the way she demanded information, as if I were one of her ladies. “Nothing. Merely that tonight Count Prospero hosts a masquerade. You’ll be pleased to know I’m not going. All I need now is the ring which you have in your possession.”
“Ah. Rosie.” She looked unnerved. “Such restraint might not be possible.”
“What? You mean...you think it’s good for me to go to the masquerade? I thought you’d approve that I do not!”
“I’d rather you didn’t, but”—she lifted a long, straight, blue satin ribbon from her capacious pocket—“I no longer have the ring.”