Giulietta was having one of her tantrums. “I don’t want to have a ball anymore,” she said. “I want you to cancel it. I want to stay up here in my room and I never want to talk to you again. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you!”
Her father, Signor Montecchi, sighed heavily, as his daughter thrust her head under her silken pillow. He was one of the most powerful men in the Floating City, a member of the Council of Ten, a wealthy merchant and had dozens of servants to do his every bidding, but his three daughters were beyond his ability to control. On days like this he wished they were young girls again. They had been so easy then. Or perhaps he just liked to think so. They had been adopted when he and his wife discovered they could not have children of their own, but they had always been raised as if they were their own. And they certainly had their own strong wills.
First it was Disdemona insisting she marry that Moorish soldier. Then Isabella insisting she marry that aloof merchant Bassanio – who died at sea soon after, leaving her a widow, albeit a very rich one. And now Giulietta, behaving like she was still a child, although she was about to celebrate her coming of age. At least she wasn’t making demands of whom she was going to marry. He and his wife might have some success in matchmaking for at least one of his children, he hoped.
“Giulietta,” he said sternly. “Enough of this. The ball is going to happen. Hundreds of guests are going to attend and if you do not attend I will put a mask onto your handmaiden and tell everyone it is you!”
Giulietta lifted the pillow from her head and stared at her father in outrage. “You cannot!” she said. And then she hissed, “Maria has fat ankles! You cannot tell people she is me.”
“Then if you do not agree to attend the ball everyone in the Floating City will believe that you have fat ankles,” he said.
She moaned as if he had driven a spike into her chest and fell back to the bed in a faint at the thought of having fat ankles. “I will go, but only on one condition,” she said at last.
“Of course,” he said.
“Promise me?”
“Yes, I promise you.”
“I want a new dress for the ball. Something special.”
“Oh,” he said. “I see.” The one thing his wife had expressly forbidden him to agree to was if Giulietta asked him for another expensive dress, as she had a whole wardrobe full of them that had hardly been worn. She sensed his hesitation and threw her pillow over her face. “If I can’t have a new dress I’m going to lay here and suffocate myself, and then what kind of a ball will you have? It will be a funeral and everyone will have to leave their fancy masks and gowns behind and come in plain black.”
“I don’t believe it’s actually possible to suffocate yourself,” her father said. “Like trying to hold your breath until you pass out. You just can’t do it.”
“I’ll be the first,” she said with a determination that unsettled him.
“You know these are not good times to be having new dresses made,” he said, hoping at least to be able to tell his wife that he had made some attempt to talk her out of it. “The Othmen and their pirates are attacking merchant ships so that they come back empty.”
“One small dress won’t make any difference,” she said.
Her father narrowed his eyes. How small? he wondered.
“Just one dress isn’t too much to ask for, is it?” she asked, peeping out from her pillow, and giving him her sad eyes.
He shook his head a little. The Council of Ten should put his daughter in charge of the city’s defences. She was a genius with tactics and probing for weaknesses to get what she wanted.
“I’ll be the best behaved daughter ever and do whatever you want of me.”
“Whatever I want?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “All evening at the ball, whatever you ask me to do, I will do it.”
Her father tried to keep the smile off his face. This might just turn out better than he had expected. He would be able to go back to his wife and report that he had conceded ground in order to gain a major victory.
“I will have to think about it,” he said. “And I should discuss it with your mother too, you know.”
She sat up again quickly. “No,” she said. “You don’t need to discuss it with mother. You’re the lord of the house, aren’t you? And you’re a councillor. Whatever you say becomes law, doesn’t it?”
“Well, it’s not quite as simple as that,” he said.
“But you have the power to say yes to a dress though, don’t you?”
“Well…” He was starting to enjoy this, he found. Baiting his own daughter into a trap she didn’t know she was creating for herself. “Perhaps if your mother agrees.”
“But she doesn’t understand me like you do,” she said.
He really should start grooming her for a life in politics of some kind, he thought. Well, as much as a woman was ever allowed to be involved in politics in this city. “On one condition then,” he said, trying to sound doubtful.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I will do whatever it is you ask of me. I promise.”
He turned his head this way and that, as if considering a very weighty topic, and said, “All right then. But let’s not let your mother know straight away.”
“Oh, I love you, I love you, I love you,” she said, springing from the bed and wrapping her arms around his neck. He smiled and patted her on the back, each thinking they had outmanoeuvred the other.
“It will be a very memorable ball,” he said. “Did I mention that the Seers will be coming?”