“Of course. I’ll be miserable to lose you.”
“Oh, Signora, you are the most wonderful mistress imaginable,” Clara exclaimed, and she embraced me, her bulk awkward between us.
As she pulled away I caught a glimpse of the steam rising invitingly from the bath into the chilly air. A small fire was lit in the hearth but could only do so much to temper the February wind seeping through the shutters.
“Will you bathe with me, Clara? I hate to waste all that hot water on only myself.”
“Me? You want to bathe with me?”
“Yes, please.” She smiled broadly, and didn’t argue.
When we undressed together in the cold room I couldn’t help staring at her. Her swollen belly and breasts gathered the candlelight, shining as if they had light of their own.
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to stare. You’re beautiful.”
“Thank you for saying so,” she said, dipping her head shyly. “My Provenzano tells me the same, but I don’t see the beauty in all this bigness.”
“Your beauty is in the bigness,” I said, and held her hand to steady her while she stepped into the high-sided tub. We both sank into the warm water, sighing in unison as the scent of thyme and verbena rose into the steam. I closed my eyes and into the silent warmth came an unexpected sound, the sound of a beating heart, and with it a rush of foreign consciousness—bright, quivering, and alert. It must be coming from Clara, I realized, as my head spun with the knowledge that I was sensing a life nearly ready to emerge into the world. We sat and bathed, two of us luxuriating in the warmth of the water and the third in the warmth of its mother-to-be, preparing for the days ahead.
* * *
On the day of the ductio ad maritum, I woke up feeling not entirely normal—as if I were looking through a kaleidoscope, the images fractured and glittering. The chitter of a winter sparrow outside my window made my throat catch, and the smell of oranges filled the air like a hallucination. I felt I was everywhere at once, still in the bath with the sound of a heart beating in my ears, looking through an open window at the spinning stars, and living through this day in Siena, in late February of 1349. After saying our vows in the Ospedale chapel, Gabriele and I walked out into the courtyard to the sound of trumpets, the horns fluttering with forked pennants in Siena’s black and white.
“Sono onorato di presentarvi Beatrice Alessandra Trovato è Gabriele Beltrano Accorsi . . .”
I imagined the words spinning far and fast through the city, to the walls that should have kept us safe, past the gates to the winter gray and brown of Siena’s contado, and beyond—to the wild continent that would one day become the home I used to call mine. But Siena was my home now.
It was warm enough to celebrate outside, one of those perfect days that happen in late February, a promise of relief from winter. The Ospedale’s courtyard streamed with colored ribbons; banners and tapestries hung from the windows and high stone walls. Everything moved around me except Gabriele himself, steady at my side, his hair bright against the deep blue and red of his tunic and robe. When the horns stopped, there was music—pipes and a drum—and dancing. Across the circle I spotted Bianca, and in her arms a little girl with a head of brown curls—little Gabriella, I thought, remembering her harrowing entrance into the world—she looked old enough to walk but maybe not to dance, so her mother held her, laughing, as we moved across the flagstones.
Someone handed me a cup of clarée and I drank the spiced white wine, feeling the heat of cloves and ginger. I sat at a table with Gabriele at my side again, tall and straight in his chair. A servant passed us a bowl of tiny oranges; the sections burst sweet and tart in my mouth, and Gabriele leaned over to brush a drop from my chin. Trays of roast pheasant appeared, decorated as if still alive with their magnificent plumage, and acrobats in red and black made everyone gasp. We began dancing again to the music of lutes and singers rising in the darkening air.
We headed out of the courtyard. The guests followed behind, cheering and singing, holding torches and candles against the gathering night. We stopped at the doorway of Martellino’s house; the house that had once been Ben’s—and mine—would be my home again. The missing scent of baking bread was a void of sorrow where there used to be a sweet, yeasty comfort. But we crossed the threshold, arm in arm. When the crowds followed us through the bakery and up the stairs, I gripped Gabriele’s arm and put my mouth to his ear.
“Gabriele, are these people going to leave soon? I hope to God it isn’t part of your tradition to have the consummation of a marriage witnessed by a cheering crowd.”
He laughed once, and the sound warmed the house the way the cold oven no longer did. He leaned down to whisper back. “They will leave as soon as they are assured we are settled. Then we can indulge in the pleasure of our seclusion.” Pleasure of our seclusion. I liked the sound of that very much.
*
After his meeting with the Medici boy, Baldi assembled the supplies to carry out his task. The carpenter he hired, happy to have any commission at all in such sparse times, had worked quickly, fashioning a ladder that could reach a second-floor loggia, and Baldi found a blacksmith outside the city walls and purchased a small dagger, easily hidden.
From an alley across the via, Baldi watched the wedding party approach the newlyweds’ home—just as he’d predicted, with the guests drunk on the Ospedale’s fine clarée. He moved into the shadow of the alleyway and sat down to wait until moonset, wrapping his cloak around him.
PART XIII
NOS MODERNI
The guests finally filed out, calling out good wishes and bawdy suggestions. But when they had left we were still not alone. Clara had insisted on attending me this one last time. She removed my cloak, then began to unlace the back of my overgown. Gabriele strewed fresh rushes on the floor and added wood to the fire until it crackled and gave off a wave of heat. What if Clara’s presence wouldn’t be considered company, from the medieval point of view? I hoped the wedding night would not include her settling in for the evening.
Gabriele lit candles and placed them in the wall sconces. In the wavering light, I could see the faint outlines of the sketches Gabriele had made, the ones I’d found in my kichen. The bed loomed ominously large, draped with a heavy dark red canopy. Clara removed my overgown, leaving me in the long-sleeved dress beneath it. Finally, she curtsied, and left with a small smile dimpling her cheek.
I moved against the wall, conscious of the cold plaster against my back. Beneath the dress I had a long linen chemise, the sort of thing I once would have walked around in unabashedly—but now, even in two garments, I felt undressed.
“You are shivering,” Gabriele said.
“The wall is cold.”