Marvelous, p.35
Marvelous, page 35
She had to explain death to him, then; and what words existed to convey the well of misery and mystery? They did not exist; or if they did, Catherine could not find them. Death, to her, was still entirely sewn of wrongness. Priests and scholars might go on about its natural cycle; its ultimate beauty. But she could not see it.
So she did the only thing she could do, and wrapped her arms tight about her son as he wept.
“Will you die?” he cried.
“Yes, sweet boy.” Smoothing his hair; heart splitting like the shell of an egg. And then, with a silent prayer that she would not be made a liar: “But not for a very, very long time.”
This calmed him, but only briefly.
“Will I die?” he said, the horror of the thought writ large upon his face; and then he shook his head before she could answer, as if the idea were simply too big to keep.
“But what if you do die?” he said then. “Who will play with me?”
“I have no intention of dying until you are a grown man, my sweet,” she said; but his brow furrowed, as if she were being stupid.
“But who will play with me then?” And then, narrow back heaving with his sobs, “What if you die and I want you to sing to me?”
She wants to plead with this woman who has given her a grandson to see the sweet boy under Henri’s arrogant facade. But then she thinks of Papa—how he released her to Petrus, how he did not say goodbye—and of the amethysts that hung so heavy from her ears. The terror of being thrust into a life she had never once wished for, or even imagined. Of her daughter taken from her, and no word, none at all—Petrus has written to the duke, has asked for news, and always the same reply, that the marchesa has not corresponded, that his wife attended one of her famous gatherings and there was no sign of a little hairy girl. The frantic scratch of it in Catherine’s chest, the clawing of it, of not knowing where her child is, what she is doing, if she is well and whole and happy. The rending of it, and how, too, it has rent great tatters in the cloth of her marriage. She can see through them, as if her marriage is a sheet on a line, and all the sparkling sunlight winking through the holes as it does through tree boughs in summer. In her head, they both try to sew the tatters closed again, little patient stitches; but she is not certain they will ever quite succeed.
And then she wants to shout at her son; to grasp his wife’s hands and beg forgiveness on his behalf.
Chapter 77
Capodimonte, Italy
1608
Pedro
They bend together over a hornbook lent to them by Madeleine, whose daughters no longer use it. Bible verses, familiar and comforting to Catherine; these, he thinks, will make the learning easier for her.
He is teaching her to read.
It is a slow and laborious progress. She stumbles and curses over how this letter is so like that one; how stupid, she says, to make them so alike. But she comes back to it every night, the candlelight showing the threads of silver in her pale hair, their fingers tracking each sentence in unison.
These last years have been strange ones. Strained ones. She has not wanted his company as she used to; except in those rare moments when she seemed to forget his part in their daughter’s leaving. When she smiled at him and it was a true smile, warming, soft. When her neck bent, showing the tender spot where it met the shoulder; and she glanced at him over the curve of it, as she used to, when she loved him unreservedly.
And then, sometimes, she beckons him closer. Murmurs the words in her hornbook aloud in his ear, breath warmer than the air around it. Smiles that true smile, as if she cares what he thinks of her progress. Cups his palm against her own when she reads an entire page without stumbling, the give of flesh against flesh, the young and giddy feeling of rightness in the world. And he wonders if, despite this thing that he did, this thing for which he has long thought she might never forgive him—for which he still struggles to forgive himself—if time has at last allowed them to find each other again.
After their youngest daughter left, Petrus woke almost nightly to the soft shaking of his wife’s back as she cried. But this has not happened in a long time, longer than he can think to count. This morning, she dropped a casual kiss upon the top his head when she passed him sitting at the table.
She writes, now, a looped and childish hand. Forms the letters again and again until she has the feel of each one, just as she learned their sounds. One night she cups her hand around the paper so that Petrus cannot see the words her pen is forming; when at last she shows him, the quavering letters, the slanting list of names, he finds himself robbed of speech, of breath. He takes her hand in one of his and presses the base of her thumb as he reads:
Catherine
Petrus
Madeleine
Henri
Antoinette
Ercole
Part Seven
Forever After
Chapter 78
Capodimonte, Italy
1619
Catherine
She hurts in all of her parts, but she does not want to go inside her house. After church, she decided to take a walk, and without intending to—as has happened so often, of late—found herself continuing, when she reached the edges of the town, down the road as it curved away from the lake. She walked until her knees protested, and only then did she turn back, her right knee clicking all the way in time to her asymmetrical rhythm. When the pretty, jumbled roofs of the town came into view, she had the strangest feeling, as if she were pressing onward through swamp water, which caught at her skirts and dragged her back, each step forward a struggle. And now she has reached her own door, she stands staring at it, unwilling to open it and step inside.
A voice from behind her says, “Signora!” Catherine turns, trying to keep her weariness from her expression.
“Oh, Signora, I’ve been meaning to come by and see how you have been,” says the women standing behind Catherine in the street. She is a short, round woman, her dark hair white-streaked down one side, as if touched by a painter’s brush. Signora Ricci, who, with her husband, owns a little farm where they make the hard, salty cheese that used to be Petrus’s favorite. He ate it with bread and olive oil and a little salt; he claimed, whenever Catherine served it to him, that this was the best meal he had ever eaten. “We don’t see you so much now.”
Catherine tries to smile. “I don’t go through so much of your delicious cheese as I used to, I’m afraid.”
The other woman’s mouth pulls down, an exaggerated expression of concern. “Yes, I imagine it has been difficult, adjusting.” A pause. “But there is something of a . . . well, I would never say blessing, of course. But still—I imagine there is a . . . relief, perhaps?”
Catherine stares at her. “Relief?”
Signora Ricci puts a hand on Catherine’s wrist. “Marriage can so often be a trial, even under ordinary circumstances. And yours was anything but ordinary.” She gives a little nod. “We all of us have said it at one time or another—you have borne up astonishingly well. No one, I think, could have endured what you have with more grace, and you have earned a little peace, a little happiness.” She pats Catherine’s wrist, as if it were a cat.
Catherine’s step backward is almost a shudder, a wrenching away from the other woman’s touch. Her words. She thinks of Petrus, praising this woman’s cheese for years—years—and wants to weep, to scream.
“By endure,” she says, “I suppose you mean my husband’s presence, rather than the loss of it?”
Signora Ricci’s eyes widen; her hands flutter like frightened hens. “That is,” she says, but Catherine steps away again.
“Excuse me,” she says, and enters her house, closing the door behind her with a sound of finality.
The house’s thick walls keep much of the day’s heat at bay and muffle the noises of all the life outside. Catherine stands, the sudden silence all around her like shoving hands, and folds in upon herself, a crumbling tower, down and down until her brow touches the floor. When she begins crying, the tears are hot and startling, and she has the abrupt, disorienting sensation that she has fallen here before, cried here like this before.
But no—it was the fine tile of their home at the Palazzo Farnese upon which she once wept. With Petrus behind her, and the specter of Antoinette’s arms about her neck. She feels, now, that same anger tear through her like a gale; but this time it is not focused solely upon her husband. A little, yes, for Petrus has left her to endure the stares and whispers all on her own, whispers that will likely never cease entirely while she lives in this village, where she was, and always will be, the hairy man’s wife; the mother of hairy children. That they are nothing to what Petrus endured all his life—well, that does not dampen her anger at his leaving.
But nearly all of her sudden fury swirls about the figures in the village who think—who dare to think—
The road she walks so often now curves away from the lake, away from the village, curling itself like a sun-washed snake away, away, away. Petrus made a feeble jest once, near the end, about leaving her free to wander, to adventure, to claim the life she dreamed of as a girl.
Unencumbered, he said, all self-deprecation; and at the time Catherine had thought he meant by his age, his illness. But now she knows, and thinks how stupid she was to misunderstand him. And all the village, it seems, is thinking exactly as he did: that she is fortunate to be burdened by his hair no longer.
Sometimes, she does not mind her house’s silence. Does not mind eating exactly when and what she wishes to eat, with no thought for the whims and tastes of others. Does not mind always having the most comfortable chair to herself, the one that long ago molded itself to the shape and weight of her husband’s body.
But other times, like earlier today, it is difficult to face the silence and stillness of his absence. And so she walks—not to escape his memory, or others’ memories of them together, but to escape the lack of him.
The anger simmers as she chops onions, the heat of them stinging her eyes until her vision is blurred by a wash of tears, and as she removes the delicate bones of a fish and cooks the flesh with the onions and fragrant parsley. As she chews and swallows, though, the anger changes. It does not fade but bleeds itself into something else, something quieter.
It is a heavy sadness, the thought that no one else understands what she and Petrus shared. All marriages endure their trials—children born and dead again; sickness; poverty; inconstancy—but to come through, so many decades later, and still want to turn to one’s partner in life, to speak to him about your day, about the dreams that wake you in the night—it is a miracle of sorts, she thinks. A miracle, a marvel, a wonder; but not one that anyone around her seems to recognize. She thinks of the kings and queens she has known, and all the kings’ mistresses and other lovers; of so many couples at court who spent enough time together to get an heir in the wife’s belly, but who otherwise lived their lives entirely apart.
She thinks, too, of Agnes, of her friend, and the song she once told Catherine she would write—about the wild, hairy man and his beautiful bride. Perhaps she wrote it after all; perhaps it is widely sung where she now lives. Perhaps she is hailed for her brilliance with words.
As far as Catherine knows, Agnes never did let anyone read her scribblings, as she called them, and she wishes now that she had begged her friend to read them out to her. A single song, even. Wishes even harder that, now she can read and write, herself, she knows what became of Agnes, that she might send a letter across whatever distance lies between them.
The thought stirs something in her, and she rises, finds pen and ink and paper, and then she sits at her table, curled over her work as Agnes once curled over her own, and writes and writes until her fingers are numb and her eyes ache. She crouches at the hearth when she is finished, poking at the fire. A small flare; she puts her papers to it, ignoring the wastefulness. One directed to Agnes, and the other to Antoinette. She watches them catch, bright and true; watches them burn away to ash.
And then she returns to her chair, to what is left of the day, to the thickets of her thoughts. She sits and listens to the quiet of the house, and her memories tinged with blue but also with pink and orange and the green of growth. Her husband’s stiff reserve at their wedding, which gave way at last, under gentle, patient pressure from their twining lives, to his beautiful smile. To romps with their children, and arguments in hushed voices at night, and kisses from his warm mouth. That so few others knew how deeply human Petrus was—it is an ache. But she knew. She knows.
The urge to flee from her solitude has passed. Now, she sits with a glass of wine from the bottles she and Petrus stored in the cellar, bottles from the vineyards they oversaw. It is enough, in this moment, to remember his imperfect beauty, and theirs together. Almost, she pities those who cannot understand.
Chapter 79
Capodimonte, Italy
1618
Pedro
His children come to see him one by one. The illness that plagued him all winter has not eased with the spring. It is a tiredness that lingers no matter how much he sleeps; a pain in his bones that makes tears leak from the corners of his eyes. He who once carried each of them in his arms now cannot even rise to greet them. Old age has arrived like a storm and blown him all off course.
Madeleine comes and stays by his side as often as Catherine will allow. She spoons broth, boiled from bones and rich with golden circles of fat, into his mouth, patting his beard with a cloth when a little trickles from the corners of his lips. She must be more than forty now—so hard to fathom—and wears her thick hair pinned back severely. Her lips seem thinner, with age or sadness; they look like flowers pressed between the pages of a heavy book until all the life has been squeezed from their petals. Petrus looks away from them, blinking hard.
He tries to push himself upright whenever Henri comes. His son always arrives with little gifts of wine or cheese, kissing his mother’s cheek and letting his sister lean her head against his shoulder. He speaks briskly of his business matters, asks them all brief, polite questions about their days, and then departs. Once or twice he repeats his tired old complaint, that despite having lived in the village for so long, no one except his wife, Girolama, will call him by the name he was given at birth.
“Enrico!” he says, exaggerating the Italian curl of the word.
Petrus does not even reply. He looks up at the ceiling, turned brown at the edge where a little water must have seeped during the last big rain. Since they came to Italy nearly thirty years ago, he has been Pietro to almost everyone but his family; Catherine, Caterina. Madeleine was known affectionately at the Farnese court as Hairy Maddalena. When Antoinette lived in Rome, she was Antonietta; and still is, he suspects—hopes, prays—if she remained with the marchesa.
But this son of his—so adept at kneading people into the shapes that best benefit him—cannot accept that in some things, people will always do as they themselves wish. Made more comfortable by a name they recognize, a name they can easily pronounce, they will use it. Henri has changed his life—his wife’s life, too—without ever once wondering whether it was his right to do so. But he rages against anything he cannot change.
At least they know where Ercole’s bones lie. Small as they were; little as they knew of the person he was. There is comfort in knowing where someone rests.
Petrus sent Ludovico’s coach and horses back to France, and sent letters galloping there as well, many letters over the years, and received Ludovico’s replies months later, crumpled and travel-stained from their journey to Rome.
His friend’s letters stopped coming entirely six years after they parted, and there was always such a long wait between sending a message and receiving an answer that Petrus did not at first realize that anything was amiss. The news of his death came from a most unlikely source—his wife, Henriette, who found a half-penned letter in her husband’s room and sent it off with a note of her own, a single line: My husband fell ill several weeks ago, and has died.
Catherine found him weeping, wrapped her arms about his shoulders, held on through the tremors. When the tears finally stopped, Petrus tucked his sorrow away, along with his friend’s final, unfinished letter. The thought of Ludovico’s bright-dark eyes closing, his sturdy heart ceasing to beat, after only fifty-nine years in the world, seemed impossible; a sadness so thick that Petrus could not entirely take it in, could only sip at it a little, here, there. Easier, by far, to keep most of it plugged away, poison in a stoppered bottle.
I think of you often, old friend, Ludovico wrote. I think of your happiness, hold it tight as my own in my thoughts, and my own shall only be complete when we are able to see each other again.
He remembers Ludovico often now, more often than he has allowed himself in years; but only when Catherine is gone from the room. Now that he is old, it is easier to let the fog of his memories close over the things that he would rather forget, and so he thinks now of his friend only softly, letting the fog conceal all memories of the terrible things Ludovico and his schemes helped to set in motion. Petrus thinks of him, and all the others who have also journeyed onward. Whispers their names, each a drop of vinegar and sugar together on his tongue. Isabel, surely; Manuel, almost certainly, for he would be nearly a century old, if he still lived. King Henri, Queen Caterina. Ercole.
