The Marriage Portrait(33)

Lucrezia knows there was a series of masques at the palazzo last night, in honour of the new Duke, with the players dressed in embroidered velvet. There were twelve Indians and twelve Greeks, accompanied by heavenly music. The Florentine ladies danced and course after course of delicacies were served on the salon’s long tables. This may also be why the servants are tired and tetchy: they will have been up most of the night. Across the city, there have been feasts, with pigs roasted above fires, and citizens carousing through the night. Her father arranged for a game of calcio to be played in front of Santa Croce, which was attended by thousands, and a young man from the eastern quarter has been grievously injured while defending his team’s goal. Her father has dispatched a purse of scudi to his family, in honour of his bravery and grit.

She knows all this not because she was there but because she has overheard the servants talking of it all—the masques, the candles, the pig-roasts, the calcio, the scudi. She longed to see it, to stand in the rooms, or perhaps even the gallery above, and watch the dancing, to see all those faces. She begged and begged her father and mother, but they refused. She had stamped her foot and cried, why can’t I, why? But her parents turned away, shaking their heads, saying that she, Lucrezia, must remain here, in her chamber. It is not right for young brides to be seen before the wedding.

The mirror gives back to her a face with cheeks high in colour, eyes glittering, hair held away in looping ropes by the six hands of servants, who are combing and plaiting it, and this gives her an unearthly look, as if she is floating up and into the sky.

The wedding gown waits; she can sense it behind her, biding its time, its empty shape poised to encase her body.

There comes into the air around them the sound of the bell in the campanile. It strikes five, it strikes six, then seven. Behind it, by just a fraction, come Florence’s other bells, as if the city is an echo chamber, calling and responding to itself. As the final tolls still shiver against the walls of the room, the maids begin to panic. They dart from door to window, from coffer to bed, calling to each other to hurry, quick, hurry. The woman still holding the dress sleeve begins to castigate the ones still plaiting her hair, saying, Why aren’t you finished yet, you’re so slow, you’re going to get us all into trouble. The older maid, who is beginning to coil the long plaits around and around and pin them to Lucrezia’s scalp, tells the woman to shut her mouth or she’ll shut it for her.

Lucrezia’s hair has never been cut, not since the day she was born: if unbound, it reaches to her ankles, a burnished copper river that falls from her head to the ground. She can wear it around herself like a shroud. It can conceal much: her whole self, if loose, or flowers, seeds, even small pets, if piled up. Brushed, it comes to life, transforming and separating into sinuous tendrils, the edges of which crackle and rise into the air, like severed spider weave. If dressed, like this, by the hands of expert servants, it can be pinned and woven into a crown or a halo.

The plaits are arranged, criss-crossing her head, looping over her ears and the jewels there, up the curve of her neck, and secured at the crown of her head. The veil is brought down around her while they affix the golden diadem, brought by Vitelli himself, from the iron-lined strongroom.

The maids are still squabbling among themselves. One makes a slightly bawdy remark about husbands, another titters, and the older one tells them sharply to hush. The diadem suddenly feels too tight around Lucrezia’s head: she can feel it pressing upon her skull, along with a hundred bristling brass pins, keeping her hair in place. She curls up her toes inside her slippers and repeats to herself Sofia’s advice on the matter of her wedding night: let the man do what he will, don’t fight or struggle, breathe deeply, and it will soon be over. But it is not, she had wanted to say to Sofia, in my nature to acquiesce, to submit.

Then the veil is lifted back and she sees that the maidservant with the gentle hands and the scarred face is motioning to Lucrezia to stand up.

Lucrezia turns and faces the dress.

Here it comes now, cradled in the arms of the two servants. It travels, like a full sail, to where she stands, made ready in her shift and veil. Its fabric ripples like running water; the silk carries in itself myriad blues, from the light cerulean of a clear sky to a dark, inscrutable ink. The gold organza divides the blue down the centre, a glinting, shining road.

It opens, the dress, in the many deft hands of the maids, unfolding like a map, and it hovers—flat and unreadable—for a moment. Then they pass it in front of her and it is wrapped around her. The bodice is laced, one maid pulling on the ties, the other holding the fabric together; the sleeves, stiff and voluminous, are eased on to her arms and the scarred girl stands at her shoulder, fastening them with quick movements. Lucrezia finds herself wondering about this girl who treats her with such kindness. She is perhaps not much older than Lucrezia; she has light hair, not dissimilar to Lucrezia’s in colour, curling out from under her cap. Patches of sweat mark her gown under the arms and along the collar. The crescent-shaped scar curves from the corner of her mouth to her neck and this throws her beauty into relief, making it somehow more apparent.

Lucrezia can feel the bodice drawing together at her waist in the small of her back. She feels the colour rise to her cheeks and neck, and a dangerous pricking at her eyelids. The girl lacing the sleeves, who is in front of her now, tying the threads under her armpits, glances quickly at her, then away, and is it Lucrezia’s imagination but does the girl look at her, once more, with pity and sympathy? How can such a girl, maimed like this and living as a servant, feel sorry for her?