With a chapel for our marriage ceremony and a villa for the reception, the wedding plans began to move forward at a much more rapid pace, and I, for one, was glad. I had come to Florence to make a marriage, and I was eager for it to take place so I could step into the new life I was building for myself.
I had virtually nothing to do with the arrangements. My father selected the fabric from which my gown would be made—something rich and fine enough to show off our family’s status, but nothing too outrageously expensive. I met with the dressmaker for my fittings, and took her recommendation as to the cut and style, so that the gown would be as fashionable as possible while also setting off my beauty to its greatest advantage.
My father and Marco’s also met to devise a guest list. I did not see it myself, but no doubt it was full of mostly Florentine dignitaries, from government officials to important and wealthy businessmen. Invitations were likely also sent back to our friends and acquaintances in Genoa, though how many of them would make the journey for the wedding remained to be seen.
Marco also sent me a trunk full of carefully selected fabrics, some sumptuous for formal occasions, and some plainer for everyday wear. My wife must be well outfitted as befits our station, in the finest cloth that Florence has to offer, his accompanying note said. Have these fashioned in whatever styles you please—no doubt Clarice Orsini de’ Medici can advise you. These fabrics shall be as the petals on a flower, and only serve to make you even more beautiful than you already are. He signed it Yours, Marco.
I took his advice and, in the days leading up to the wedding (set for the beginning of August), I sent Clarice a note begging her to call on me, that she might help me make some fashion decisions.
“My goodness,” she said, as I opened the trunk containing the fabrics, which had been carried up to my dressing room. “Dear Marco certainly thinks much of you.” She raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps he fears that if he does not lavish you with gifts, you will cast him aside for some wealthier, more attentive suitor.”
I straightened up and turned to face her, offended—did I seem like the sort of woman who would go back on my word, on my honor? Who cared for nothing more than money and gifts? But I saw from the sparkle in her eye that she was simply jesting with me. “I do not know that I could find a more attentive suitor than Marco,” I said, relaxing. “And, indeed, I find my heart is quite set on him.”
Clarice studied me carefully as I spoke. “You do love him,” she said. “I can see it.”
“All that I know of love is what I have read in poetry and stories,” I confessed. “But I find that I can no longer imagine my life without Marco, nor do I wish to.”
She smiled. “That rings of love enough to my ears. But, as to a more attentive suitor,” she said, “I think you do not give my brother-in-law enough credit.”
“Giuliano?” I said, surprised and diverted from the riches in the trunk. “Whatever do you mean?”
She drew a folded piece of parchment out of her sleeve and handed it to me, her eyes bright with mischief. “When he learned that I was coming to visit you, he bade me give you this. He has not ceased speaking of you since you dined with us.”
“Indeed?” I said. I unfolded the paper and read through it. It was an elegantly penned love poem, though Giuliano was certainly no Dante. “Flattering, to be sure,” I murmured. “But what am I to make of this?” I brandished the paper at Clarice, and she took it and read it as well.
“Why, nothing,” she said. “It is courtly love, nothing more. It is all the rage amongst my husband and his set. They write words of love and worship to the most beautiful women they can find. It is chaste enough—” She paused, then took a deep breath. “Usually, that is.”
“And so what is my role in all this?” I asked her, feeling like a gauche, unsophisticated child. “Am I to write back, to respond? Should I tell Marco?”
Clarice laughed. “Dear Simonetta, your role—as near as I have been able to tell in observing such games—is to simply be adored, and to enjoy yourself. Revel in it!” She grinned. “Indeed, you had best ready yourself to be so adored by every man in Florence.”
“Away with you,” I said lightly to Clarice, casting Giuliano’s poem to my dressing table, ready to forget it. “Now, back to these fabrics. I quite like the cut of the gown you are wearing. Would you permit me to have a copy made?”
“Indeed I shall,” she said, “though low necklines are coming back into fashion, so keep that in mind. It is a style that shall flatter you particularly well, I think.”
And so we spent a happy afternoon sorting through Marco’s gift to me. Clarice accepted my invitation to stay for dinner, and she was her perfectly charming and gracious self toward my parents, making for a merry evening for all.
*
In those days preceding my wedding, it also fell to my mother to explain what would occur on the wedding night, and what would be expected of me in the marriage bed. I could not conceal my shock and horror when she first outlined the details of the marriage act.
“But that is disgusting,” I said. “How can I—”
“Simonetta,” my mother interrupted, covering my hands with her own. “I can see how it might seem so, but it is your duty. It is your duty as a wife to bear children, and to give your husband pleasure so that he need not seek it elsewhere and fall into sin.”
I was silent. For a young woman with such a thirst for love poetry, I could not believe that the knowledge of such things had completely eluded me for so long.
“In time,” my mother said, hesitantly, “you may come to enjoy it. Some women do.”
I blushed at the thought.
“But your pleasure is of no consequence,” my mother said quickly. “Your only objective must be to please your husband. And so, on your wedding night, when he comes to your bed, you will still be dressed in your shift, and you will simply lie back and let him complete the act.”
I mulled this over, trying to picture myself and Marco engaging in such an animalistic act, yet unable to do so. My breath hitched.
My mother patted my hand, noticing my distress. “You shall get used to it in time,” she said. “And you have a few days yet to prepare yourself, and to get accustomed to the idea. It is necessary, I am afraid. God in His wisdom has decreed that this is how children must be brought into the world, and so we women must endure.”
With that, my mother left me alone in my bedchamber, to contemplate this new and heretofore forbidden knowledge I now possessed.