CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Madame Culatello stared at me, absorbing my message.
You have to admit, as befitting me, it wasn’t subtle.
She straightened her skinny shoulders. “Lady Rosaline, I would be honored.” She didn’t say “I won’t fail you” or any of the assurances she might have spoken. She understood my message, and the message I sent to the prince. La Gnocca would continue to operate in Verona under his protection, and mine. She knotted the ring into the lace around her neck and thrust it into her cleavage. “There’s no safer place in Verona,” she told me with fake solemnity.
“This evening I’ll send a cask of the Montagues’ best red wine to La Gnocca.” I absorbed the upwelling of gratitude I felt for the help of La Gnocca’s ladies. “You and all of your family should drink it with my gratitude.”
Madame Culatello’s concerns visibly fell away. “That will indeed lighten the evening workload.”
At the sound of a knock on the door, I rose and tried not to shout, Who the hell? But I must have said it with my expression, she chuckled and rose also. “I leave you to your next visitor.” Taking my hand, she leaned over it and kissed my fingers in a courtly gesture. “You’ll make the prince a fine wife, and Verona a grand princess.”
Tommaso appeared. “Lady Rosaline, it’s a foreign fellow.” He lowered his voice. “Rather scruffy.”
“Show him in.” I smiled to see Madame Culatello and Guglielmo view each other as they passed, each clearly convinced the other was odd and inappropriate.
Tommaso bowed Madame Culatello out and pointed toward the wine goblets. I nodded and considered how lovely it was that this youth from the streets had so easily grown into his position.
To me, Guglielmo bowed in courtly grace and said, “I bring the promised sonnet.”
“So soon!” Surely he must have dusted off an old one rather than written one afresh.
His shining eyes, his eagerness to wave the roll of parchment he clutched in his fist disabused me of that notion. “The idea of this play has possessed me. The glorious tale of Romeo and Juliet as a love story and a tragedy has kept me up long hours of feverish scribbling.” He showed his ink-stained fingers. “Forgive me my early intrusion, Lady Rosaline, but I couldn’t wait to read this sonnet to you. It’s a part of the scene when Romeo and Juliet first meet at the Capulet party. If I may?”
I gestured to him to continue.
“I play both parts.” He took his place in the atrium where the sun shone behind him and placed him in silhouette, and he proved he was an actor as he performed first as Mamma, then as Papà. He became each of them, male and female, lover and beloved, engaged in witty courtship banter.
Mamma:
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this:
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.
Papà:
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
Mamma:
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in pray’r.
Papà:
O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do,
They pray—grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
Mamma:
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.
Papà:
Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take.
(Guglielmo pressed a kiss on the parchment)
Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purg’d.
Mamma:
Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
Papà:
Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urg’d!
Give me my sin again!
Gentle reader, as you know, I’m neither sentimental nor poetic, but this sounded so much like my parents when they were adoring each other—as always they did—that I pressed my hand over my heart to contain the delight.
From the gallery above and behind, slow applause began from the very hands Guglielmo immortalized in his sonnet.
He swung around to see Papà and Mamma smiling down at him, clad in robes, both gloriously beautiful as befitting this legendary couple.
Of course Guglielmo recognized them, and executed a grand obeisance, and threw a kiss to Mamma, which caused Papà to frown and me to hastily intervene. Taking Guglielmo’s arm, I said to them, “This night, I commissioned a sonnet to celebrate your long love affair and this young playwright from Inghilterra has captured the essence of your hearts. I do thank you, Guglielmo, and here’s the other gold piece I promised you.”
Guglielmo still stood, staring up at Mamma with a dazzled expression.
Papà’s frown grew more ominous and I didn’t know whether Papà’s tendency to skewer men who fell in love with Mamma hadn’t reached Guglielmo’s ears or he was so bedazzled with Mamma’s celebrated beauty it never occurred to him to cower in prudent apprehension.
Personally, I’m not in favor of blood on the flagstones of our atrium. It’s a bitch to clean off and our staff rightfully objected, so I signaled Tommaso, shoved the promised gold piece into Guglielmo’s one hand, took the scroll from the other, and said, “Thank you, Guglielmo, for your talent, it’s time to exit the stage. Our footman will see you out, go forth and write your play!” I watched as Tommaso firmly marched the sputtering fool toward the entry. When I heard the front door shut firmly behind him, I changed my mien and smiled up at my parents. “Buongiorno, i miei genitori. I trust this sunrise finds you well.”
“Do you indeed, Lady Rosaline?” Mamma had blossomed with the advance of her pregnancy, and tonight I realized she’d reached the stage of, shall we say, irritability, for in her large, doe-like eyes I saw not a hint of warmth toward her wayward daughter. That is to say, me.
One couldn’t blame her, of course. She was also at the stage of needing more sleep, and I was depriving her. In a miffed tone she said, “Daughter, it would seem from your attire and that recitation, we slept too well.”
Papà focused on me, observed my masquerade in boy’s clothing, patted my mother on the shoulder and said, “Amate Juliet, I present the opportunity to speak to Rosie about her betrothal, as you wished. She’s all yours.” He left as if a charging bull was after him. When it came to disciplining his daughters, he was a rampant coward.
She glared after him, then turned her glower onto me and tapped her foot.
I advanced across the atrium to stand below her. I curtsied, an awkward motion when done in tights. “Mamma, ’tis true, I have been on an adventure which you in all parental wisdom should chide and scold. Yet I beg you to shrug it aside, for I’ve righted a wrong and saved a friend, and”—I lifted the scroll that contained the imagined dialogue between Romeo and Juliet—“paid honor to the love between you and Papà with all the gratitude of a child who recognizes the happiness of the home you’ve built together against all odds.”
I knew I’d said the right thing when she asked without rancor, “What if the prince should discover your exploits?”
“He already has.” I wished to clarify before I said too much. “I suppose Papà told you all that happened last evening in the garden between Prince Escalus and me? That we were caught and now I must marry...him?”
“He did, and your Papà is dazzled by your cleverness in catching the prince.” She gave me a wise smile that bonded us in knowing. “He believes you did it on purpose.”
At this juncture, I thought it wise not to commit myself.
“It is true, isn’t it, Rosie? That you were in the garden on purpose? To meet Lysander?”
I nodded, thin-lipped.
“Somehow the manipulator was manipulated?”
I nodded again. The night’s exploits had managed to push the mortification to the back of my mind, but Mamma recapped the events ruthlessly and, I knew, deliberately.
“And? What have you gleaned from your adventures you so blithely tell me to ignore?”
“Prince Escalus continues to favor me with his intentions.” I chose my words meticulously, for because while Mamma had been impetuous in her early passion for Papà, she cast an all the more vigilant eye upon her daughters’ virtue.
“Despite your wild adventures—”
“Not so wild, Mamma!” Although some might believe visiting a theater, a house of pleasure and a masquerade all in one night constitutes wild. (Let us not discuss the fountain courtyard and garden intervals.)
“—Prince Escalus will have you. Do you understand exactly what that signifies for you?”
I wasn’t sure what she sought in the way of an answer, so I shook my head.
“You’ll be our princess and will deal well with your new position.”
“Yes, Mamma. I will, Mamma.” Whether or not I like it, Mamma. I promptly quashed the thought. One did not sass Lady Juliet with any expectation of surviving with character intact.
“But you’re a woman who has sought the passions your Papà and I have shown every day of your life.”
“I wouldn’t say that!” I’d spent my life attempting to remain a spinster.
“You set eyes on handsome, clever Lysander and fell in love.”
Sturdily I said, “That’s of no moment now.”
“No, and sadly, the prince is as cool and temperate as a breeze off the Adriatic.”
When I thought of the scene in the fountain courtyard, of Prince Escalus and his abrupt display of fury and desire, I could only be glad that the sun hadn’t risen enough to pierce the shadows beneath the gallery, for I blushed hard enough to break a sweat.
Mamma must have perceived too much in my expression, for she used her shrewd parent voice to say, “Someday, my Rosaline, you’ll advise me of the details of this night.”
“Yes, Mamma.” I bowed my head in obedience and possibly exhaustion. “Now, with your permission, I would seek the sleep of the righteous.”
“Are you? Righteous?”
“Mostly. Probably the telling of the night should wait until after I’m bound to the prince in holy matrimony.” I started toward the stairs, then I thought of the details and paused with one foot on the first tread. “Or even better, after the birth of our eighth child.” I meaningfully viewed her baby bump.
“Will I laugh then?” She seemed to be in doubt.
Justifiably. “Maybe our tenth child.” I climbed the stairs and took my mother’s hand and kissed it fondly.
She rested her hand on my head. “This marriage is not the fate I ever imagined for you, my darling Rosie.” She tilted my chin toward her. “You choose your own path.”
“Always I’ve chosen my own path. No one cared or paid particular attention. I’m not maligning you, Mamma, but you have other children and I am, as we know, quite competent and a sturdy plant that needs little support.”
Mamma nodded in agreement. “You were ever frighteningly competent.”
“On the day I met Lysander, my flat, stable world shivered and I staggered. Yet I kept my feet until last night, when the earth quaked and rolled and all I knew was overturned and I...am not the same.” My eyes drooped and I yawned. “If I may, I’ll sleep now. I don’t know what dreams may come. Perhaps a vision of a heady future.” Wait. I frowned. That sounded familiar.
“Go to bed, Rosie. Things will look better after you’ve slept.” Mamma kissed me and returned to the bedroom she shared with Papà.
I returned to my bedroom (at last!) where Nurse still snored with magnificent warbling tones.
My parents’ passion had subsided, at least for as long as it would take Mamma to give Papà the Rosie report.
The neighbors’ raucous party had fallen silent.
Our old dog did wake and pad over to greet me, enveloping me in a cloud of welcome-home gaseous emissions that convinced me to send him to sleep with my little brother Cesario.
That little boy reveled in a rancid fart, his own or others.
I petted the dog, put him out of the room, and stripped out of my boy clothes.
With my knife, I cut them into rags, removing temptation from any other little sister who sought adventure.
I donned a clean nightgown and wearily sank down on the bed.
I winced when my bottom hit the mattress; amazing how three spanks from a firm hand could so promptly remind me of the prince’s reprimand.
I suppose that was his intention.
I pulled the pillow over my eyes to close out the brightening rays of the sun, closed my eyes and drifted to sleep...then promptly came awake for a single thought.