Page 6 of What Dreams May Come
Theandhung on the air.
“You can’t stop now,” I told her gently.
“Madame Culatello grabbed at my cap. My braid tumbled down. I heard the ladies laughing and the madame chuckled...she sounded like a man!” Isabella’s blue eyes fluttered with confusion. “Rosie,is she a man?”
“Gender is quite fluid where pleasure is served.” Which was all the answer she was getting from little ol’ virgin me. Right now we had to concentrate on this looming catastrophe. “You lost your cap. You were exposed and recognized? Someone calledout your name?”
“No. At least, I don’t think so. I didn’t hear anything.” Isabella turned to Katherina. “Did you?”
“No! As soon as Isabella was out the door, I grabbed her arm and we ran out of the square and home.”
I didn’t yet have a clear picture of the disaster. “All this panic is because you lost your cap and thinkperhapsyou were recognized?” I began to relax. “Because we can deny—”
Isabella clutched my arms and shouted into my face, “I lost my ring! My mother’s ring, set with diamonds. Lots of diamonds. And a priceless Indian diamond in the center! Big, polished...” Words failed when she tried to describe it. “I wore the ring on a ribbon around my neck. When she grabbed at me, I felt the tug at my throat, but I didn’t realize what it signified until I got back here. Madame Culatello has the ribbon, and she has the ring, and I am a gull, a dolt, a knotty-pated fool!”
CHAPTER FIVE
Katherina and I jumped on Princess Isabella, placed our hands over her mouth, looked at each other in wide-eyed dread. The walls weren’t thick enough for that kind of volume. After a moment, I tiptoed over, eased open the door to the balcony and listened.
As Nurse woke, she snorted and called, “Lady Rosaline? Is all well?” Her usually bold voice was tentative, for she feared after the early evening’s events, I was displeased with her.
I had been, it was true, unjustly displeased, but right now, it suited me to let her think my annoyance lingered. I stepped out and called in a commanding tone, “I’m on the balcony, Nurse, and I wish to be alone.”
“May I bring you some wine? A drink to ease your mind?”
With even more simulated irritation, I snapped, “No! Nothing will help except a few minutes alone while I read my future in the mocking lightof the stars.”
“Yes, Lady Rosaline. As you wish, Lady Rosaline.” Nurse sounded as if she wanted to be huffy, but her guiltgot in the way.
I truly wanted to tell her to rest at ease, that my personality was such I could not long hold a grudge for something not her fault, but more important at the moment was that shenotcome out and find me on the wrong balcony, and my sister and the princess in lads’ garbs. “Thank you, Nurse, for your understanding. If you have wine beside your bed”—as we all do—“drink deep and sleep. Tomorrow will bea better day.”
I deeply doubted that truth, but she thanked me and drank, and settled back. The wine would ease her into oblivion, and I didn’t havetime to waste.
I returned to the bedchamber where Katherina and Isabella paced. In a low voice, I said to the distraught young princess, “Tell me about the ring.”
“It was my mother’s!”
I took a breath to ease my impatience. “So you said, but it would help if you’d describe the ring.”
“Oh.” Her voice quavered. “After my mother gave birth to Escalus, they could no longer...she had difficulty...they couldn’t...”
“Your mother couldn’t have more children?” Katherina suggested to ease Isabella’s distress. Katherina might be my younger sister, but she was intuitive and generous and kind in ways I couldn’tbegin to match.
“Yes.” Isabella nodded. “Yes. My father, Prince Escalus the Elder, loved her and wanted Mamma, but celibacy was forced upon them. To show his true and constant love, he sought a ring of brilliance and beauty to match his feelings for her, and in Venice he found it. An Indian ring of unmatchable brilliant diamonds, polished in the new way and set in figured gold, and in the midst one large diamond shaped by nature, so they said. The dealer told him a maharaja had given it to his wife to protect her from illness and misfortune, and when she died in a plague, he cast it aside, wanting never to see it again. Thus it came into the hands of a Venetian merchant, who sold it to my father in exchange for the exclusive right to exportVerona’s rice.”
The area around Verona had proved to be a fertile place to grow rice, a new crop which, when placed on the tables of the wealthy, had proved to be as coveted as cinnamon, cloves, and pepper. I said, “Your father paid a kingly price for the ring.” I did not say,And you wore it on a ribbon around your neck?I bit my tongue, for the princess’s distress could be seen in the way she shredded her cuffs with her fingernails.
“My parents couldn’t resist each other.”
Katherina and I exchanged glances. We knew about that kind of bond in our own parents.
Isabella’s eyes filled with tears. “When Papà discovered Mamma carried a child—me—he sent her away to a convent, for at that moment, the Acquasasso family fought to overthrow him and take control of the city.”
I knew this, for I’d been nine during that unsettled time, but to Katherina it was unknown and ancient history, and she breathed, “Oh, no. Your poor mamma!”
“I don’t remember my parents. I was not yet born when my father was assassinated, and I was a baby when Mamma died. All I have of her is her ring.” Isabella’s voice quavered and broke.
“Gold and diamonds...it would be safer on your finger,” I pointed out gently.
