Shifting to my other side, he carefully gathered the rest of my hair in his hand as though it were something precious; truly made of gold, perhaps. “Now,” he said, “if you would take your hair and bring it around your body, as though you are using it to cover…” For a moment his professional demeanor slipped, and he gestured silently, his mouth opening and closing as he tried to find the most delicate word.
My own blush deepening, I took pity on him and pulled my long hair from his grasp, using it to cover the area between my legs.
“Yes,” he said, clearly relieved. “Just so. And now, with your other hand, partially cover your breasts—yes,” he said excitedly. He reached up and moved my right hand, guiding it more precisely into the position he desired. I wondered if he could feel the heat radiating from my body as he touched me. Surely he could. What would he think it meant?
What did I think it meant?
He stepped back, his eyes once again critical as he studied me. “Yes,” he said. “Just relax that right hand slightly—relax your whole body. Yes!” he said. “Remember, you are Venus as she is first being born from the sea. You cover yourself because you are unsure of this world you have come into, not because you are ashamed. You are never ashamed.”
I tried to embody his words as best I could. I straightened my spine, let my hands rest casually against my body as they—and my hair—partially covered me. I felt a small hint of a smile touch my lips as I tried to become the goddess he had described. Venus was not ashamed of being nude—it was natural to her. It gave her power over those who beheld her, power over their dreams and desires. She was not exposed—she would expose those who laid eyes on her.
“Dio mio, yes. Yes. Perfect.” Sandro scrambled for his parchment and pencil and began furiously sketching.
My lips were dry, so I licked them once before speaking. “I remember hearing a tale when I was a girl,” I said, “that when Venus was born from the waves, she came ashore in Genoa.”
Sandro stopped drawing and looked up at me. “You come from Genoa, si?”
“I do.”
“Then the tale is true. Venus was indeed born in Genoa.” With that, he turned his attention back to his sketching.
*
That evening, when I returned home, Marco was already there, and waiting for me.
“There you are, Simonetta,” he said, an edge of annoyance in his tone as I entered the sitting room.
I made sure my cloak was drawn securely around me so that he could not see the simple garments I was wearing. Thank God I remembered to bind my hair up again before leaving the workshop, I thought. I had forgotten the last time. “Buona sera, marito,” I said.
“Buona sera,” he said, frowning. “Where have you been? I asked Chiara when I did not find you home, and she said she did not know.”
“Did she?” I asked. “I am certain that I told her. But it is of no consequence. I was at Maestro Botticelli’s workshop. I have been posing for him again.” I had said that I would not hide my doings from Marco, and so I would not. The one detail I would omit, however, was the exact nature of my posing.
Marco’s eyebrows lifted nearly into his hairline. “Oh, you have been, have you?”
“Si.”
“I do not remember discussing this,” he said, “much less you asking my permission.”
“I was not aware that I needed your permission. Maestro Botticelli asked for my help in posing for a new work, and I agreed.” I was struggling to maintain my light, indifferent tone. “I see no reason why we both should not do what pleases us. I thought that was what you wanted.”
“Oh, you did?” Marco said, tossing aside the book he’d been reading and rising from his chair. “I had thought that we understood each other, Simonetta. Need I remind you that you are my wife? No one else’s. Certainly not that painter’s. That means you ask my permission before you go off and do as you please.”
“I am your wife, yes, but you do not own me,” I said, letting the steel behind my words show through.
Marco laughed, a harsh sound. “That is what marriage is, you beautiful fool.”
His words bit into me. In the eyes of the law, and of society, yes, he was right. But were there not other types of ownership over a person?
I thought about my parents’ marriage: my loquacious, vain mother and my sober, taciturn father. It had certainly never seemed to me that he owned her. And yet, their marriage was no great love affair, either.
Was that what love was? To own, or desire to own, another person? Did his love give him ownership over me whether I consented or not? Whether I loved him or not?
And he does not love me, not in the real sense of the word, I realized. He loves me in his way; he loves me as he understands love. But if he really loved me, he would never go off to spend his nights in the arms of some whore, the “way the world works” be damned.
“I am my own person, wife or no,” I said at last. “Our marriage vows may give you dominion over my body, yes, but not my mind.”
“You read too much, Simonetta,” he said, frustrated, dropping back into his chair.
“I thought that was one of the things you loved about me.”
He had no answer for that; no doubt he was remembering the early days of our courtship, and of our marriage as well, when we would read love poetry in bed, whisper verses in each other’s ear as we made love. Perhaps he had believed that my devotion to poetry and reading would be transferred to him when he became my husband. Yet my intelligence had made me an asset to him among the Medici circle, and he could not deny that.
Suddenly it began to come clear. He had brought me to Florence intending for me to be the jewel in his crown; hoping that I would charm and delight his friends and acquaintances and help him to rise in the world—and that I would give him a son. I instead had become the one they all flocked to. I was the one Lorenzo spent his time in discussion with, the one sought out by poets and painters, even as Marco faded into the background. Even as I remained barren, or so it seemed.
And, even as I felt disgusted with him, I pitied him, and myself, too—that a marriage that had started out with such hope could come to such disappointment. Yet was I to apologize that I had become happy in this city to which he had brought me?
In his eyes, I supposed, I should do just that. And even as I remembered fondly that handsome, somewhat na?ve young man who had come, quoting poetry, to woo me, I was now able to admit to myself that what had most enthralled me about him was the glittering new life he had promised me in Florence.
I had gotten what I wanted, for the most part. He, it seemed, had not.
I felt as though I was about to cry, yet that was the last thing I could allow myself to do. I drew a deep breath and pulled myself up to my full height. “And so?” I asked, breaking the silence. “Are you to forbid me from posing further for Maestro Botticelli, then? Even though I have already given my word?”