The Marriage Portrait(35)

Eleonora sits in a nimbus of cross-hatched fabric, one hand supporting her chin, the other hooked through Cosimo’s arm. She considers her daughter with thick-lashed eyes.

“Yes,” she murmurs, as if they are continuing a conversation from earlier, “the colour does suit. It complements your eyes, your hair. I thought as much, although some of my ladies warned it might emphasise your pallor, but I was right, after all.” She continues to examine the dress, from the bodice, all the way down to the hem and back again, leaning forward to scrutinise the sleeves.

Then Eleonora puts her head on one side. “Don’t you have a kiss for your mamma, on a day such as this?”

“Yes,” Lucrezia says. “Sorry, Mamma.” She gets cautiously to her feet, clutching the lilies. She struggles for a moment to find her balance—the dress is so enormous, so burdensome—and leans forward carefully to plant a kiss on her mother’s face.

The cheek is cool and soft, the texture of an overripe apricot, with that same slackness and deliquescent give. Her mother’s scent is always the same: hair pomade, violet oil, cloves.

At the sight of this kiss between mother and daughter, the crowd gives up a great cheer, which bounces over them and back. It is as if someone is tossing a bright golden ball from one side of the carriage to the other.

The horses, at the touch of the whip, jolt forward and Lucrezia is shunted back to the opposite seat.

“Do you see,” Eleonora says, “these people, Lucrezia? How they love us.”

Lucrezia looks at her mother, who holds a handkerchief aloft; its lace edges flutter prettily in the warm air; Eleonora smiles out of the carriage. Cosimo sits with a straight spine, his head high; he doesn’t smile but every now and again inclines his chin in a regal nod. Lucrezia sees a metallic glint at the neck of his camicia and realises that even today he is wearing chainmail beneath his clothes: she has heard he never leaves the palazzo without it, so sure is he that an attempt will be made on his life. She turns her head one way, then the other, fearing an assassin might burst from the crowd. But the faces of the Florentines lining the street are blurred by motion, daubs of paint dissolving in water.

“They do, Mamma,” Lucrezia says.

The carriage swings left then right, the horses straining against their harnesses, and Lucrezia is thrown one way, then the other. She holds up the lilies so their petals won’t bruise. Her parents, she sees, are buttressed against each other and barely move. They continue to gaze out into the crowds, Eleonora waving with a vague smile.

“Mamma?” Lucrezia says, leaning forward and clutching at her mother’s hand, pulling it towards her, as if closing this gap might rescind and rewrite all that has happened between them since Lucrezia’s birth. It seems suddenly clear to Lucrezia, as their carriage moves through the city, on their way to her wedding, that the bond between her and her mother is fraught and frayed, with knots and kinks she will never understand, and always has been thus. Why, she wants to say to Eleonora, as they sit opposite each other, why must it be like this with us? Do you not remember the animaletti? How I loved them, how surprised I was by you bringing them to me. How inconsolable I was when my brothers knocked them off the windowsill. Do you remember when you arranged for me to have art tuition?

“Mamma?” she whispers again, gripping her mother’s fingers, wanting more than anything to smooth the invisible rope that tethers them so uncomfortably to each other, to make it right somehow.

The noise of the wheels, the crowds, the air rushing past, whisk away the word. Lucrezia can see that they are nearing Santa Maria Novella; there isn’t much time. These are the last moments of her girlhood—with every passing second, her time with her family is ebbing away. Very soon, she will be married. The feasting, the dancing and the gaming have already taken place—the celebrations have been going on for days—and by the end of the day, she will be gone.

Lucrezia places her other hand on her mother’s knee. Her fingertips tap the cloth, as if seeking entry.

Eleonora looks down, surprised, then up at Lucrezia. Her perfect arched brows lift, and her mother looks at her, properly and for the first time that day, and something flickers across Eleonora’s face, softening her features, as if her youngest daughter’s voice is piercing some central part of her, activating a flow of sympathy within her.

“Yes?” Eleonora says.

“Mamma, I…” Lucrezia tries to find the words, tries to locate what she wants to say. She cannot talk about the complex, snarled thread between them, not now, with the cathedral around the corner, cannot say that she is scared, that her fear of marriage and what lies ahead is so consuming that it fills the vacant space beside her in the carriage, travels along with them, its clawed feet hooked into the seat. There is no time to say all this, the moment to speak it has passed, so instead she returns to a topic that has always been safe between them, and says: “When you…when you…first saw Papa, on the road from Livorno…did you…how did you…”

Eleonora looks at her youngest daughter, perplexed. Lucrezia gazes back, willing her to understand what she herself cannot say.

“How did I what?” Eleonora says.

“Was it…did you feel love for him then…straight away…or was it later?”

Eleonora considers this, then gives a minuscule shrug. “I saw him first at the viceroy’s house in Naples so—”