Chapter 1 #2
“How do you learn such things and I am barely back in the house?” Bianca asked.
Francesca giggled. “Whenever they know you are returning from church, a bunch of the housemaids run to the top of the house and the windows overlooking the square to watch your passage back across the piazza. Ohh, I wish I could be with you. Did you keep your swain’s bouquet? Let me see it!”
“I would not take any kind of gift from a stranger, or any man for that matter, but our father and brothers,” Bianca replied primly.
“Such a query tells me that you are far too young to be allowed out, Francesca. You have only just turned ten. I was not permitted to accompany our mother until I had celebrated my thirteenth birthday last year. Remember, you are the daughter of an important man of business from Florence and of a Venetian principessa, Francesca.”
“Oh pooh,” came the airy reply. “You have become so stuck-up of late. Well, you’ll be gone soon enough, for our father is even now arranging a marriage for you. By summer you will be wed, and mistress of your own house. Then our mother will take me across the piazza to Mass with her.”
“What do you mean our father negotiates a marriage for me? What have you heard, little ficcanaso?” She grasped a lock of her sister’s hair and yanked it hard.
“Tell me at once! Who is it? Do you know? Is he handsome? Has he come with his father to negotiate with our father? Speak, or I will snatch you bald!”
“Ouch!” Francesca protested, retrieving her hair from Bianca’s grip. “I only overheard a little by chance. I was passing by our father’s library yesterday when I heard voices coming from the chamber, and the doors were closed.”
“You eavesdropped!”
“Of course I did,” Francesca said. “How else would I learn anything that goes on in this house? I put my ear to the door and heard our papa say that our mama did not wish their daughters to marry within the Florentine community. That he agreed, and planned for our marriages to benefit the Pietro d’Angelo family to the maximum.
Papa said he had all the influence he sought or needed in Florence.
“The man, his voice was hard, and he told Papa that a marriage to him would ensure the security of the Pietro d’Angelo family.
He reminded our father that a debt was owed to him.
It would be paid in full when his marriage to you was celebrated.
Father asked that he request anything else of him but such a union.
The man laughed. Oh, Bianca, I did not like his laugh.
It was cruel.” Francesca shivered with the memory.
“Madre di Dios,” the older girl whispered almost to herself. Then she said, “What else, Francesca? What else did you hear?”
“Nothing. I heard someone coming. I didn’t want anyone catching me. You know Papa would have whipped me for it. I didn’t dare stay,” was the regretful reply.
Bianca nodded. “I will speak with our mother,” she told her sister.
“Ohh, please don’t tell that I eavesdropped!” Francesca begged.
“I won’t,” Bianca promised. “I’ll say I heard the servants gossiping. Mama will tell me if any such arrangements for my future have been made. She will know.”
“I don’t want you to marry and leave us,” the younger girl admitted. “I didn’t mean it when I said I’d be glad to have you gone.”
“I know that, little ficcanaso,” Bianca assured her sibling with a small smile. Then she went off to find their mother and learn the truth of what her sister had heard.
“Your mother is closeted with the master,” Fabia, her mother’s servingwoman, told Bianca. Then she lowered her voice to speak in a more confidential tone. “It is something serious, for I heard your mother raising her voice, which is most unlike her.”
“I have heard rumors regarding a marriage for me,” Bianca said softly.
Suddenly the door to her mother’s privy chamber was flung open, and her father, his face dark with anger, strode out and past them, exiting Lady Orianna’s apartments.
“I will never forgive you for this, Gio!” her mother shouted after him. “Never!” Then, seeing Bianca, she burst into tears, turned, and slammed the door shut behind her.
“I must go to her,” Fabia said.
Bianca nodded, and left her mother’s rooms. Her mother had shouted.
Orianna never shouted. And she had looked positively distraught.
Orianna Rafaela Maria Theresa Venier, a principessa of the great Venetian Republic, never raised her voice, never allowed her emotions to show, and yet she had done both within hearing of not only her eldest daughter but a servant as well.
Whatever was happening was not a good thing.
Francesca awaited Bianca in her elder sister’s bedchamber. “What did you learn?” she demanded.
Bianca told her of the scene that she and Fabia had just witnessed.
Francesca’s blue-green eyes grew round. “Our mother never shouts like some common fishwife,” she said. “And to tell our father she would never forgive him . . . what has he done to incur such wrath from her?”
“I do not know,” Bianca said, “but I suspect if we are to learn, it will be sooner than later.” A rap sounded on the closed bedchamber door. “Come!” Bianca called out.
The door opened to reveal their eldest brother, Marco. He stepped quickly into the room, closing the door behind him. “This is all my fault,” he said, taking her two hands in his own. “I must beg your forgiveness, Bianca.” He looked genuinely shamefaced and sorrowful at the same time.
Both of his sisters looked totally confused.
Finally Bianca said, “Why must you ask for my pardon, Marco? You have done nothing of which I am aware that would require it.”
“Sit down,” Marco invited. “Not you, Francesca. You must leave. What I have to say is for Bianca’s ears only, not yours, bambina. Go now.” He pointed to the door.
“I am not a baby. Giulia is the baby. I am ten going on eleven, Marco.”
He smiled, and gently tugged on the thick golden braid into which her hair was now fashioned. “Don’t listen at the door,” he cautioned her with a mischievous grin.
“Oh! You!” Francesca huffed as she left the bedchamber.
Marco watched her go down the wide corridor and around the corner.
She turned to stick her tongue out at him before she disappeared, which caused him to chuckle as he turned back to Bianca and shut the door to the room firmly.
“Come,” he said, taking her arm by the elbow.
“By the window, where the little ficcanaso can’t hear us when she sneaks back to listen, which she will.
” His face grew serious once again. He looked like a younger version of their father, with curly black hair and bright blue eyes.
Bianca smiled, amused. “Yes, she will.” They moved to the window, and Bianca said, “What disturbs you, Marco?”
“My actions have put your future in jeopardy, I fear.” Then he began to explain in low, measured tones.
“I apologize for what I must tell you, for I know how sheltered you are, and a virgin of good family should not hear things like this, but I have no choice, Bianca. Several months ago my friend Stefano Rovere and I were visiting a certain lady known for her amorous skills, who willingly shares them with young men just beginning to explore such masculine delights,” Marco explained.
He actually blushed as he spoke, for he was fifteen and did not discuss such things with respectable women.
“You visited a courtesan,” Bianca remarked calmly. “Our mother has mentioned such women to me. She and I pray for them. It is not an easy life, I am told.”
“The woman died as Stefano vigorously rode her,” Marco said bluntly, for he could not think of any way to put it more delicately.
“Madre di Dios!” Bianca exclaimed, crossing herself.
“It was then that Stefano and I did a foolish thing,” Marco continued.
“The woman’s house was empty of servants the night we visited.
I wanted to call the authorities and report the woman’s death, but Stefano did not wish to do it.
He feared the scandal, should we be accused of killing her.
He feared his father’s anger over such a disgraceful situation, that his father should be forced to pay a bribe to keep the watch silent.
He feared that someone connected with the woman would know it was Stefano Rovere, son of Florence’s most famed lawyer, and Marco Pietro d’Angelo, son of the head of the Arte di Por Santa Maria who had been the last to be with this courtesan. ”
“What did you do?” Bianca asked almost fearfully.
“We wrapped her naked body in a Turkish carpet, weighed it with several heavy stones, bound it, and then carried it to the river,” Marco said. “We rowed the body into the center of the Arno near the Ponte Vecchio and dumped it into the water. The stones assured that it sank to the bottom.”
“God have mercy on the poor woman’s soul,” Bianca murmured. She was pale with shock over her brother’s confession. “But why should this unfortunate courtesan’s death affect what will happen to me, Brother?”
“My tale is not yet completed,” he responded.
Then he continued. “Stefano then decided we should go to his father and tell him what had happened. He said his father was always accusing him of being an idiot. He wanted to show his father that he had been able to extricate himself from a nasty situation without his help. I did not think it wise. I thought, having disposed of the body, we should keep silent. No one would have known, as there were no witnesses to the deed.”
“And was Master Rovere pleased with Stefano?” Bianca asked quietly. How did a father react to a son who had just disposed of the dead body of a courtesan in secret?