Chapter 37
As if he was part of the performance, the audience filed back to their seats.
I could see why. He was so ruffled up, he looked like a roasted peacock with his tail feathers standing high and reattached backward.
I, being the Montague of not so dramatic a nature, thought he was indignant because he had been portrayed as a whiny coward.
Makes sense, right? In a society where my father is worshipped for his sword skill?
But noooo.
“I am a respected professor! I’m an ampelographic specialist!
I’ve got a superior nose.” He raced up the aisle, cape fluttering, and stomped up the first two steps onto the stage, and in full view of everyone and the potted plants, he pointed to his droopy, quivering nose.
“And tongue!” He stuck it out and pointed to it, too.
The silly man was offended because the family had maligned his wine-tasting abilities, which led me to concede that the audience had made a wise choice. This was Entertainment.
I settled back and prepared to enjoy myself.
“I can tell you what kind of soil cradled the vine, what kind of vine produced the grape, where it was produced. I’m the best of any Montague ever born.
” Considering who was in the audience—Nonno Montague and the other siblings; my father, Lord Romeo; all the great multitude of my cousins; and my own siblings and me—he had a lot of nerve.
A glance at Nonna’s flush of rage, at Nonno patting her hand comfortingly … She was livid at Magno’s claim to superiority, ready to fling her tiny body into a fight with her brother-in-law.
“To insinuate—nay, to claim—that a mere babe could beat me in a competition is laughable, but worse …” He lifted a finger.
“Worse is the concept that a female, a being responsible for the fall from God’s grace, one cursed to suffer the agonies of childbirth and inflict her monthly megrims on every man in the vicinity. That is blasphemy!”
I threw off my lapful of blankets with a flourish to equal his. I jumped to my feet. I shouted, “Great-uncle Magno, I challenge you!”
I shouldn’t have done that. I should not have done that. I knew it as soon as the words were out of my mouth. At the same time … Magno’s eyes bulged, and his cheeks puffed and deflated. He looked as if he had swallowed a live frog and was having trouble keeping it down.
The sight did my heart good, as did the sight of my nonno beaming at me, my papà grinning, my siblings chortling in unison. …
Mamma closing her eyes at my unmaidenly behavior, Lady Capulet pressing her lips into a tight white line … and Cal, who, when he caught my eye, used his fingers to pantomime running.
I got the message. He claimed I ran to embrace trouble.
In this case, he was right.
I tilted my head ever so slightly toward Magno, and Cal inclined his head ever so slightly in agreement. Magno deserved any snub to his monstrous self-esteem I could hand him.
The voices in the atrium had quieted. I glanced around to see the guests watching Cal and me with approval or disapproval or surprise or surreptitious jabs at their neighbors’ ribs or, in Lysander’s case, with a refill of wine.
And why? Because Cal and I were communicating without words. Like Papà and Mamma in their rare quiet moments. Once again, the thought occurred to me. Was there more than one way to be legendary lovers?
With a theatrical shout, Magno leaped the rest of the way onto the stage and landed with a loud thump meant to pull the attention back to him. “I am paid great sums to consult with winemakers about the quality of their wines. I make a decision, and my word is law. I never make a mistake—”
In his driest tone, Nonno Montague interrupted, “Tell me, Magno, do you ever start a sentence with a different word?”
Magno stared at his brother, not comprehending. When he did, he flushed an ugly red that clashed with his cape.
“Please, Mamma, let me show him. Please let me destroy him,” I whispered, but gentle reader, you know who conceived me and what my credentials are. Everyone heard me.
“Really, Juliet, I see no choice. You really must.”
At first, I didn’t know what woman spoke in such firm, ringing tones.
Then I realized it was Lady Capulet. That is to say, my mother’s mother.
My grandmother, who had been bound by such rigid views of duty and propriety, she’d rejected her own daughter, my own dear mamma, when Mamma had refused to marry a guy her father had chosen for her, because she was already secretly married to Papà.
If you don’t know the play, don’t try to figure it out. It’s too complicated. Just trust me, Lady Capulet is a paragon of propriety, and that did not include young women publicly exposing a man’s failings.
Yet here she was, advising Mamma to let me climb onstage with Great-uncle Magno for an unmaidenly and indecorous wine competition.
I glanced at the sky to see if it had changed from the black of night to a vivid green, for surely, I had slipped into a phantom world not unlike the poisonous one that had held me in thrall at my bridal revel.
Yet the sky remained black, and I saw no sign of the satyr with the pitchfork, so one conclusion must be drawn.
Lady Capulet despised Great-uncle Magno so much, she was willing to break every rule to see him brought to his knees. Makes you wonder about their history, does it not, dear reader?
When Mamma said, “Rosaline, you have my permission,” with a thump, I leaped onto the stage and bowed, accepting the cheering that erupted.
Not surprisingly, my family rose to the occasion.
My own dear papà disappeared in the direction of our wine cellar.
The long square table used as a prop for onstage wine tasting returned, as did two of the chairs, which were placed facing the audience.
Goblets and cups of pewter and horn and even glass were assembled, one for each kind of wine, and Magno and I would use the same kind of cup for the same wine, for wine pomposity aside, we had to drink out of the same kind of container so we’d inhale and taste the same flavors. Only then would the contest be fair.
Papà returned, leading our servers, who bore unmarked glass bottles of wine, one per tray.
Cal escorted him to the stage as a kind of official whose seal of approval was required to sanction the challenge.
Magno ignored us while Cal held my chair.
I seated myself as far as possible from Magno and beamed at the audience, who hooted their encouragement.
We were not so much an aristocratic gathering of Verona as a raucous circus of ancient Rome.
It wasn’t making love under fur blankets, but it beat pacing the floor and tearing at my lacy collar in frustration.
Cal signaled for the group to settle down, and at once silence descended while Papà poured one wine at a time, a measured amount from each bottle, into the like cups, and Magno and I sniffed and tasted.
With the first three, I tasted only for show, for I knew them at once by their scents: Montague wines, the tastings of my childhood.
And his. Both Magno and I softly spoke our conclusions into Papà’s ear, and he announced each time that we were in accord and correct.
Then Papà poured wines from other winemakers, vintners from other parts of Italy, where different grapes grew in different soils in different climates, and those were not so easy.
Yet still we tasted and analyzed and came to the same conclusions.
At last, only one bottle remained, a complex blend of red grapes from Puglia.
Magno inhaled and tasted and smirked, as if this was only too easy.
With great assurance, he gave Papà his conclusion.
As I took my time to sniff and sip, allow the wine to open, and sniff and sip again, he heckled me mercilessly, trying to rush me.
Dear reader, when you’re right and your deadliest enemy is wrong? Wrong, wrong, wrong. Not, I add hastily, that I exalt in the result.
But wrong, wrong, wrong, Magno was wrong, and when Papà announced the results, the atrium exploded in cheers that rose like smoke on the cold air.
Of course, dear reader, you know what happened next. As I rose to my feet to pretend modesty amid the massive congratulations, Magno, who had stood up a moment ahead of me, announced, “I demand a rematch! This was a setup! Romeo helped his favorite daughter. They cheated!”