As soon as I heard the first notes of the music, I knew it was his. My steps slowed as I tried to catch the breath of which the music had robbed me. My father turned his head ever so slightly to glare at me, as though he thought I had some dramatic notion of releasing his arm and running away. As if I could move at any but the slowest of paces, weighed down as I was by the senator’s diamond necklace and this gown with its stiff bodice and ten-foot train.
Thank God that, at just that moment, I caught sight of a familiar face in one of the back pews: Giuseppe, grinning at me like a boy who had just succeeded in playing a trick on his nursemaid. I smiled back. Now I knew there was one person, at least, in the church who loved me for myself and truly wished me well.
I collected myself, gave my father a reassuring smile, and we continued our procession to the altar.
The music played by the orchestra, which was soon joined by the choir, was a joyous, vibrant piece, glorifying God. He may as well have written me a requiem Mass, I thought, for I am only twenty years old, and already my life is over.
Yet as I reached the altar, the music changed, so drastically I thought my own thoughts had summoned what I was hearing. It was in B minor—of course. Urgently tolling strings climbed higher and higher before the choir came in, each voice part layering on top of the next, moving upward by half steps. Tears filled my eyes even as I quelled the urge to laugh.
I took my place before the priest, and beside Senator Baldovino, looking as old as ever. My father released me and went to his place in the front pew beside Claudio, come from Florence for the wedding, with what I fancied was a rather self-satisfied smirk on his face.
The priest waited for the music to finish before commencing, and I could not help but notice that this movement was longer than the one before. A reprieve. I closed my eyes and let each chord wash over me, tears streaming freely down my face. If either the priest or my intended noticed, no doubt they simply attributed it to happiness.
Once the music—both gift and cruel reminder of what I could not have—ended, the priest began. I scarcely listened to what he was saying, my eyes and attention drawn to the choir loft above and to the left of us, obscured from view by a high metal grille that served to protect the figlie di coro, as they were called, from the eyes of outsiders. I could just make out the red of the robes they wore to perform, or on the extremely rare occasions they went out in public. My mother had told me this, I realized; I had only just now remembered.
Was he there, as well? Was he watching? Surely he was, directing the orchestra and choir in his work. Perhaps it was merely my imagination wishing to at once torture and soothe me, but I was sure I could feel his eyes on me from somewhere in the sanctuary.
I hope you are seeing this, I thought, as though he could hear me. I hope you are seeing the wreck you have made of my life. I hope it was worth it, Antonio. I do.
“I do,” Baldovino suddenly declared, tearing me from my reverie.
“And do you, Adriana d’Amato, take Giacomo Piero Baldovino to be your husband?”
“I do,” I said dully.
More joyous music rang out as my new husband led me away from the altar, though this time I scarcely heard it, nor did I hear the good wishes being shouted to us by the smattering of people in the pews. I blinked as we stepped outside into the mocking sunlight and into the decorated gondola that would carry us back to the senator’s—and now my—palazzo for the wedding feast. I felt heavy with the weight of this new life, of all the lives I had lived before, and all the ones I might have lived; so heavy that it was a wonder I did not sink the gondola straight to the bottom of the lagoon.
* * *
Our wedding night, after I suffered through the banquet in stony silence, was rather what I had anticipated. In the master bedchamber, mio marito clumsily removed my cream-colored, lace-trimmed shift—created especially for this night—then gestured for me to get into the bed, where he nearly crushed me with his weight as he pushed himself roughly inside me. I could not even draw breath to cry out in pain. I simply lay there, unmoving, enduring his short, jerky thrusts until he finally moaned aloud in his release and then rolled off me. I curled myself into a ball, facing away from him, trying and failing to hold back the tears that stung my eyes.
Once he had regained his breath, my husband placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. “You are doubtless weary from the excitement of the day, and perhaps a bit nervous and anxious about this first bedding, as well,” he said, in what he no doubt believed was a reassuring tone. “So I will make allowances. But for the love of God, Adriana, surely you know that a man wants a woman to do what she can to please him?”
I would have murdered him right there in our marriage bed had I been in possession of a weapon. I wanted to scream at him. There are only two kinds of women who seek to please men in bed: whores and women who are in love. I have been both, but now I am neither.
Instead I closed my eyes and prayed for sleep to come as quickly as possible.
Yet before I could retreat into the security of slumber, the gypsy’s words whispered themselves across my mind again: You already know your fate, although it will not come about in quite the way you think … you will bear the child of the man you love.
It had come true, all of it, every word. I laughed silently at the foolish, naïve girl who had first interpreted these words as a blessing, a benediction, a sign that she was going to get everything she had ever wanted; the girl who had then told herself that it was all silliness and superstition.
If only she had believed that tragedy could actually befall her.