Chapter 4
“He’s your great-uncle, your grandfather’s middle brother,” Mamma said gently.
I gestured as if I needed vigorous sign language as well as rude words. “I know who he is, and I didn’t invite him!”
“Probably one of the other relatives did.” Mamma frowned in thought. “Possibly Great-aunt Vendrimina. She’s a stickler for doing what’s right and proper. She probably thought his lack of invitation was a reprehensible oversight, which she moved to correct.”
“It was not an oversight.” Great-aunt Vendrimina was a martinet, probably the guilty party, and never before had I wanted to strangle her. “It was quite deliberate!”
“I’ve found Magno much improved since I lost my hearing,” Nonna Ursula said amiably.
“Is he as awful as ever?” It was a sincere inquiry based on Lady Pulissena’s time in exile.
Nonna and I snorted in unison.
“He’s a swine,” I said.
“So he’s a swine. Most men are. He’s a boring swine.” Clearly, that was Nonna Ursula’s ultimate condemnation. “He’s a self-important swine.”
“Then he hasn’t changed.” Lady Pulissena bobbled her graying head.
“No. Mamma, no!” I moved from denial to pleading. “Magno cannot remain. You know what he’s like. Except the sycophants who hang close, wanting his snobbery to rub off on them, everyone despises him.”
Princess Isabella glanced between Mamma and me. “What’s he a snob about?”
“He’s a professor at the university at Padua and an ampelographic specialist,” I told her.
She looked to Mamma inquiringly.
“Wine,” Mamma said.
“That’s what I said. An ampelographic specialist.” I poured on the scorn. “Give him five minutes and he’ll lay that on you in the hopes you ask him what it means so he can explain ampelographic comes from the Greek root word ampel, meaning large, and ographic, meaning pain in the—”
Before I could get too wound up, Princess Isabella cut me off.
“He’s a Montague. Of course he knows a lot about wine.
Everyone in your family knows about wine.
Cesario just turned eight, and he knows a lot about wine.
” For an adolescent, she was eminently sensible and clear thinking about …
some stuff. Most stuff. Although she had shown an unexpected taste for adventure, which had one night caused no end of problems for me. (See What Dreams May Come.)
Mamma sat and patted the chair opposite, and when Princess Isabella joined her, Mamma began reciting the Montague family lineage. “My father-in-law is one of four children. Born first is Great-aunt Vendrimina. She is …”
Mamma groped for tact.
Not bound by such a need, I pulled a chair close and explained, “Great-aunt Vendrimina is a bossy know-it-all.”
Mamma is too serene to smirk, but her lips did quiver. “Some say Rosie resembles her.”
“Some do not live to see the dawn,” I pronounced.
“She’s the one you suspect told Magno about the wedding, in the belief that he’d been omitted in a reprehensible oversight,” Princess Isabella recalled.
“That’s right.” Mamma had been giving the Leonardis, especially the pretty young princess, a road map of the Montagues and the Capulets: whom to trust, whom to avoid, who drank too much, who pontificated most drearily, and which swaggering festering flesh-lumps to stay well away from with their lecherous, groping hands and, most important, never ever let them catch you alone.
Of the last two issues, Magno was the worst offender.
Now my lady mother beamed at Princess Isabella, who had proved herself a quick study in all manner of social correctness.
Cal came around behind Mamma and stood, arms crossed, observing me intently and almost critically. Was he changing his mind about the match?
God forbid, after all the hours I’d put in on the meals and the organization and the games and the …
Not that I wouldn’t rather wed Lysander.
I don’t mean that. Yet think what would happen if, after summoning every relative on the Italian peninsula (with the exception of Magno) to this grand and glorious marriage between the prince of Verona and Rosaline Montague, aging virgin, the prince called off the ceremony?
Talk about uniting the Montagues and the Capulets under one banner, and that would be to wipe the floor with Prince Escalus.
“Will Vendrimina be at the wedding?” Nonna Ursula asked.
“Alas, she sends word that if Rosie wanted her at the wedding, she should have taken the first match we made for her, when Vendrimina had lived a mere seventy-six years. She refuses to travel now, and further”—Mamma got that puckered look around her mouth that meant she was subduing a smile—“she suggests that in lieu of a gift for this marriage, Rosie view the earlier gifts she sent for the previously announced matches.”
After a general burst of laughter, Nonna Ursula said approvingly, “I always did like Vendrimina, and actually the last time I met her, I thought she’d mellowed.”
“Insooth, age had softened some sharp edges,” Mamma conceded.
“Too bad age hasn’t worked that way on Ursula.” Lady Pulissena grinned at her cohort.
“You wouldn’t know me if I was sweet and gentle,” Nonna Ursula retorted.
“I still contend that bang on the head you suffered has softened your skull,” Lady Pulissena retorted in return.
Cal’s attention left me and returned to the Silvers, so called for their abundance of silver hair, and I loudly interrupted before this could turn into a major old lady pissing match. “Princess Isabella, if I could have your attention!”
She stopped looking between Nonna and Lady Pulissena and focused on me.
In a calming tone, I continued the systematic outline of the family.
“My grandfather, Lord Montague, is the second child, the oldest son, heir to the vineyards and the title. Like my father, Nonno can fight and fight well, but as he’s aged, he’s more likely to settle arguments over a glass of wine.
Nonno has always been secure in his position in the family and in the world.
Great-uncle Magno is always scrambling to be important, and he—” I looked at Mamma, mutely questioning how far I should go.
She nodded, so I said, “And he constantly deserves the middle finger.”
Which, if you don’t know, gentle reader, is an offensive and obscene gesture of ancient origins, going even so far back as the Roman Empire, although the Greeks also proudly laid claim to it as a symbol of an erect male member. Why should that be offensive, you ask?
I don’t know. I only know it’s preferable to seeing a man drop his pants and display his hairy culo. Now that was an ancient gesture we all understood.
Whatever was the truth, Mamma looked pained. “Dear Rosie, that is perhaps too blunt.”
“I don’t think so. Do you think so, Pulissena?” Nonna clearly expected to be supported.
Lady Pulissena had other ideas. “Ursula, she’s going to be the princess. She’s going to have to learn to watch her tongue at some point.”
“We’re private here!” Nonna said.
“It’s a palace. The walls have ears, and you know it.”
Nonna sighed. “You’re right. Yet I do hate to muffle the child. She makes me laugh.”
Without inflection, Cal said, “As her husband, I won’t allow Rosie to be muffled. Everyone in society will learn to be charmed by her blunt opinions.”
Startled by his stern defense, I smiled at Cal. “Really?”
He crossed his arms again, and he scowled.
Not unnaturally, I was confused. Was he charmed? Was he annoyed? Was he dealing with any possible challenge to his sovereignty with princely pronouncements? He had previously shown that tendency.
In any case, Nonna Ursula announced, “Ha!” in triumphant tones, and Mamma said, “Rosie, do show some sense.” As I gurgled with indignation—for I not only pride myself on my good sense but in fact have also been criticized for being excessively sensible—she said to Princess Isabella, “The Montagues are grand in-laws and good parents, but Magno was born ten months after the heir to the title and fortune. Magno constantly overcompensates for being the lesser son.”
“How lesser?” Princess Isabella asked.
It was an honest question from a girl of her age, yet Mamma and I exchanged pained glances, and right on cue, both the old women cackled.
Lady Pulissena pronounced, “He’s shorter in height, too.”
More cackling.
Cal closed his eyes, as if he couldn’t stand to view his grandmother chuckling about such earthy matters.
At first, Princess Isabella looked confused, then so shocked I patted her arm.
“My father-in-law is a man of many talents and kindnesses. He sings well. He is learned, handsome of face, and charming of manner.” My lady mother seemed to think that addressed Magno’s issues.
“Last in the family is Great-uncle Martin, who went on a crusade to the Holy Land and came back—” She hesitated.
“Charming and funny.” And broken. “Is he coming, Mamma?”
“No, he begs that we forgive him. He has other duties he must perform.” Mamma was clearly reciting his excuse, and she didn’t believe it.
I could see Isabella memorizing the names and information.
She understood that her task as princess was to know all the guests, greet all the guests, make all the guests feel welcome.
And because she’d already grasped the intricacies of the Montague/ Capulet balance of power, she comprehended that she, too, might be called on to mop up blood.
She seemed to enjoy her new circumstances, and for that reason, I felt the need to give more warnings.
“About Magno … He’s an aging roué who imagines himself to be an irresistible lover.
Irresistible, he is not, and according to rumor, as a lover, he would make a good rabbit. ”
Lady Pulissena nodded. “It’s true.”
Everyone looked at her.
“According to my source, who is reliable and quite scathing.” To Nonna Ursula, she said, “Tell you later.”
Nonna Ursula grinned in anticipation.
I continued. “He’s a man of distinguished learning, handsome demeanor, and many big words, which he uses to impress and diminish.
He dominates every conversation, weighing it down with his constant parade of unnecessary knowledge.
He lectures about wines until we’re ready to drink ourselves into a stupor so we can’t hear him anymore. But he tells us we must wait to taste.”
“Wait for what?” Cal asked.
“For him to finish his lecture. He is the ultimate wine snot.”
“Snob, dear.” Mamma rebuked me, but a smile played around her mouth. “The word is snob.”
In a tone of amiable curiosity that ill masked his impatience for the wedding bed, Cal asked, “Explain again why we had to delay the wedding to allow your relatives to arrive?”