The Quiet Between Them - 3. Chapter Three

The gran salone of the Tornabuoni palace shimmered with restrained magnificence. Sunlight filtered through high windows, touching the gilded ceiling and the marble busts of long-dead ancestors whose sightless eyes seemed to pass judgement over every negotiation. The long walnut table gleamed like still water, weighted with parchments and silver inkstands. Servants moved soundlessly along the walls, pouring wine no one drank.

On one side sat the Rossi men... Giovanni in the middle, somber and implacable, flanked by Ludovico and Tommaso, each armored in the gravity of purpose. Behind them waited a small cohort of clerks and notaries, their quills poised like weapons. Matteo took his seat a step behind his father, the ceremonial position of the son under scrutiny, though the air in the room was thick enough to smother any spark of independence.

Across the table sat the Tornabuoni: Messer Bartolomeo, heavy-jowled and self-satisfied, his hands spread over the ledgers as if blessing them; beside him his wife, Monna Clara, regal in crimson velvet; and at her right, Lauretta... the intended... still more girl than woman, pale as uncooked dough, her downcast eyes fixed on her folded hands. A priest hovered on the Tornabuoni side, rosary in hand, his expression the polished neutrality of one long accustomed to delicate sins dressed as virtue.

Danilo stood just behind Matteo’s chair, ostensibly as attendant, though the irreverence in his gaze made the title feel generous. He leaned in, murmuring sotto voce, “She looks as though she’s been fasting since Epiphany, poor dove. Do you think she’s ever smiled, signore?”

Matteo bit back a laugh. “Peace,” he whispered. “This is diplomacy.”

“She’s pious enough to make the Virgin blush,” Danilo continued. “And that face... saints preserve us, it’s as though she’s spent her life staring at the wall of a convent.”

“Out,” Matteo hissed, not unkindly. “Wait in the corridor before you damn us both.”

Danilo inclined his head, retreating with a grin that vanished as the heavy doors closed behind him. Silence settled again, punctuated only by the scratch of a clerk’s quill.

Giovanni inclined his head toward Bartolomeo. “Let us begin.”

At once the lawyers stirred to life. One from the Tornabuoni side unfurled a scroll and began to recite in the sonorous tones of the legally devout: *The dowry shall consist of so many florins in gold to be determined, three trunks of household linens, and... *

Giovanni’s lawyer interrupted smoothly, “... and a property to be agreed upon, commensurate with the bride’s station and the groom’s prospects.”

The Tornabuoni attorney adjusted his spectacles. “Indeed. Our lady’s portion shall be accompanied by the choice of either a small palazzo near the Via de’ Servi, newly restored and most fashionable... ”

Ludovico’s brows rose. “A small one, you say.”

“Or,” the man continued with emphasis, “a larger residence in the Via del Cocomero. Less fashionable, perhaps, but ample.”

Tommaso murmured, “In other words, elegant penury or expansive obscurity.”

The Tornabuoni lawyer coughed. “Alternatively to escape the perilous summer air in the city, a villa near Fiesole... modest in size, with a view of Florence... or a more commodious property toward Peretola, though," he coughed again, "without the view.”

Matteo, hearing this endless litany of trade-offs, felt a vast weariness descend. He imagined the satisfaction, however brief, with the chaos, however destructive to his prospects, if he were to erupt in a stormy denunciation of the process. He sighed and let his gaze drift to Lauretta, who had not moved since the proceedings began. He wondered if she had even blinked.

He tried, from a sense of duty more than curiosity, to speak to her. “Madonna,” he ventured quietly, “do you read? Virgil, perhaps? Or Petrarch?”

She looked up, startled, her eyes the pale gray of a dove’s wing. Her fingers tightened on her mother’s sleeve. “I read the Lives of the Saints, sir. And the Gospels, when Father allows.”

“Not the poets?”

Her lips pressed together in horror. “The poets are… pagan.”

“Some of them,” Matteo allowed, smiling faintly. “But there is beauty even in the old gods.”

“Beauty tempts,” she said simply, and lowered her eyes again to her folded hands.

Tommaso’s elbow brushed Matteo’s. “Do not distract her,” he murmured. “Let the men handle the business.”

Matteo bit the inside of his cheek, wishing himself anywhere else... back on horseback, back in the Arno, back in Gianluca’s arms... anywhere but here beneath the painted saints and the droning voices of law.

At last, after much arithmetic and circumlocution, Giovanni and Bartolomeo exchanged curt nods. Servants brought trays of watered wine, which the men sipped with grave formality.

Then Bartolomeo gestured. “If the ladies would excuse us for a moment... there is a matter best discussed among men.”

Madonna Clara rose with unhurried grace, her daughter trailing in her wake like a pale shadow. The great doors closed behind them.

The priest, until then silent, cleared his throat. “There remains,” he said, “a question of… propriety.”

Giovanni inclined his head. “Speak plainly, Father.”

“It is only right,” said the priest, his voice as smooth as oil, “that certain expectations of married life be agreed upon in advance. The Lady Lauretta is a virtuous and devout young woman. Her conscience is tender. She would wish assurance that her husband shall not... ah... tempt her from the path of righteousness.”

Matteo looked up, startled. “Tempt her? I am not sure I understand.”

The priest smiled gently, as one correcting a child. “The Church, in her wisdom, has long decreed the proper seasons for conjugal union. To disregard them invites sin... and, it must be said, misfortune.”

Ludovico arched a brow. “Misfortune?”

“In the form of malformed offspring,” said the priest solemnly, “and the taint of carnal excess. Therefore, it is fitting that the couple observe the holy calendar.”

He drew from his sleeve a folded parchment and began to read in a drone that rivaled the lawyers. “Marital relations shall be abstained from upon all Sundays, all major feasts of the Church, every day of Lent and Advent, the vigils of saints, the octave of Easter, and the week of Pentecost…”

Tommaso’s quill stilled halfway through a note. Ludovico blinked slowly. Giovanni said nothing.

The priest continued, unmoved. “Further abstinence is expected during the lady’s courses, naturally, and... once the Lord blesses the union with a male heir... for forty days following his birth.”

He paused, glanced up with satisfaction. “Allowing, by most reckonings, approximately ninety-seven days of suitable temperance in the year. Surely ample, for such purposes as Heaven intends.”

Matteo stared at him, robbed of speech. “Ample,” he repeated at last, his tone flat. “Indeed.”

Giovanni inclined his head gravely, though Matteo saw the flicker of amusement ghost his father’s eyes. “The Rossi family,” Giovanni said, “are ever obedient to the guidance of Holy Church.”

“Then we are agreed,” said Bartolomeo Tornabuoni, relief softening his heavy face.

The priest crossed himself. “May the union be fruitful and chaste.”

Matteo bowed his head in formal assent. Inside, he thought only of Gianluca’s mouth, of warmth and laughter and life unmeasured by calendars or saints’ days.

When the parchment was passed his signature as a witness, his hand did not tremble, though his heart did. When the parchment dried and the ink sealed his fate, Matteo wondered if signatures could bleed.