“Come away from it, then, and to the fire.”
I heard sounds from the kitchen below—Gabriella laughing, Bianca, quieting her daughter in a tone that sounded like bedtime. I couldn’t quite make out the words.
“Do I live here now?”
“Indeed you do. With us. With me.”
“Just like that—boom—this is my house, and I’m your wife?”
“Boom? Does that mean all at once?”
“Basically.” My new ring pinched the flesh between my fingers.
Gabriele smiled gently.“Just a few weeks ago you bemoaned the slowness of our many-stage betrothal process, did you not?”
“It’s just strange—one minute I live in the Ospedale, the next minute I’m standing here married to you.”
“There must always be a moment when before changes to after; just as there is a division between unborn and born, or life and death.”
I was finding it a bit hard to breathe. “It’s kind of stuffy in here, can we open the window?” I could see from the look on Gabriele’s face that I’d made an outrageous suggestion, to open up the tightly sealed window of a medieval bedroom in February. But before I could retract it, he had pulled over a chair to stand on, and was opening the shutters to remove the parchment.
“I am here to serve your wishes, my lady and wife,” he said, “though I begin to wonder whether that will prove difficult.”
I felt my face get hot and welcomed the breeze from the open window. “I’m nervous.”
“Do you think you are alone in that? Beatrice, look at my hands.”
I stared at his long fingers, the gentle curve of his knuckles, the surprisingly delicate bones of his wrists. I wanted to reach out and touch him, but couldn’t. I’d just married a man centuries older than me and committed myself to his place and time. Had I really once held that hand?
“Gabriele, you’re shaking.”
“How could I not? It is incredible that we have bridged the centuries that separated us.” He put his hands down.
“Maybe we should just talk for a while,” I said. He nodded his assent. There were two chairs by the fire, and we sat. “Why don’t you start?”
Gabriele drew his lower lip into his mouth to consider his answer. “Would you care to tell me of those you have left behind?”
“What, you mean my friends?”
“Famiglia, amici, consorterie—in whatever order pleases you.”
“I don’t have family.” It sounded harsher than I’d intended.
“Would you like to speak of the family you once had?”
“I might get upset.”
“What is a husband for, if not to comfort you?” I smiled for the first time since the door had closed behind us. But I wasn’t ready to talk about Ben. A few seconds passed while we listened to the crackling of the fire in the hearth. “Beatrice, I have never known you to be so hesitant to speak.”
“Sorry. I’m not quite myself.”
“You are your new self.”
“You’re always so gracious, no matter how difficult I am. That’s a nice quality.”
“It bodes well for our marriage,” he said.
“Don’t you ever get upset?”
“When necessary.”
“Efficient of you.”
“I prefer to reserve my energy for what is to come. The night is long.”
My face got hot again. “I’ll tell you about Nathaniel.”
“Please.” Gabriele looked at me expectantly.
“Nathaniel owns—or will own—a bookstore in New York City—it doesn’t exist yet, of course. Across the ocean from here.”
“What is the basis for your friendship with this . . . gentleman?” Gabriele’s tone of voice had changed—more formal.
“Gentleman? I guess he’s a gentleman. He does have excellent manners. And he takes, I mean took, good care of me.”
“Good care, you say?”
“Oh, not that kind of care, he wasn’t my boyfriend or anything.”
“BoyFriend?” We were on different planets. This was not going to be easy.
“Er . . . lover? Is that what you are thinking? No, he was just a great loving friend.”
“Such friends are good to have.”
“He’s gay, anyway, and basically married.”
“I see,” Gabriele said stiffly, but clearly he didn’t see.
“Gay means . . . he loves a man named Charles. Charles is a doctor, but he deals mostly with dead people.”
“Beatrice, I do not mean to judge you and your time ill, but your closest friend is a sodomite who loves a man who deals in dead bodies?”
Things were not going well. I felt my patience ebb, strained by the demands of cross-century transplantation and marriage coming to a head all at once—over Nathaniel. My Nathaniel, who understood me without explanation and would never recommend a book to me again.
“Who are you to criticize my friends for being ‘unsavory’? In your world they hang criminals by the neck while a crowd cheers the hangman on.” I glared at him.
“No criminals die at the hand of the government, in your time?”
“Well, no, they do sometimes. Just not visibly.”
“Then your government does it in secret, so the people can have no part in their communal justice?”
“It isn’t the way you make it sound.”
“How then do you kill your criminals?”
“This is an even less romantic subject than Nathaniel,” I said, and then unexpectedly I was crying.
“Beatrice, I am sorry. I should not press you thus.” Gabriele produced a handkerchief from somewhere in his tunic. “May I dry your tears?” I leaned forward, and from his seat he reached out to touch my cheek. It was such a relief to feel his hand on my face, breaking through the centuries that divided us, that I started to cry harder.
“Sweet Beatrice, is there a safer topic? We seem to be traveling the chasm between our worlds quite perilously.”
“Tell me about your wife.”
“That is not a particularly safe topic either.”
“This time I’ll listen while you explain.”
“You are a challenging woman, Beatrice.”
“You didn’t know that? You’ll be in for nasty surprises over the next few decades, then.”
“I hope to be surprised for decades, as you say. Boredom is a poor reward for fidelity.”
I had to smile. “I still want to hear about your late wife, if you are willing to talk.”
He sighed. “What do you want to know?”
“Did you love her?”
“That is a difficult question to answer.”
“Is that what you would say about me to your next wife, if I died?”
“No.” He answered simply.
“What would you say, then?”
“I would say that I loved you more than painting, more than the air I breathe, more than my own life. I would say that the void created by your parting was so great as to be unfathomable, and that I feared I might fall into its bottomless abyss, from which I would never find the light again.”
It was almost a minute before I could speak. “I shouldn’t have made you answer that question.”