Free O, Juliet by Robin Maxwell

would kiss me, to this way prove the fifth sensation. Instead he turned and, searching the fruit-heavy branch, snapped from it a fat ripe fig. When he faced me again, he held in his hands its two halves.
    “Were there more light,” he said, “we would see the luscious . . . pink . . . flesh.” His voice caressed the words.Then holding my eyes with his, he took a half in his palm and brought it to his mouth. I grew suddenly alarmed as he buried his lips in the soft fig’s center and closed his eyes, ecstatic.
    “My lord!” I cried, breaking the spell.
    His eyes sprang open and he gazed without apology into mine. “I think I should go. I’ve overstayed my welcome.”
    “No, no.”
    But he had leapt to the balcony wall and swung his body up into the tree. Hanging loose from the branch by one arm, he leaned down and held out his hand to me. The fig’s other half was cupped in his palm. “For you, my lady—the final sense.”
    I took it, words failing me once again.
    “When you taste it,” he said, “think of me.”
    Then he was gone, all rustling leaves and shadows.
    I stood stupidly, staring at the half fruit, and, smiling, brought it to my lips.

Chapter Seven
    I t was the custom that all women friends of a bride should keep her company during the first meal at the house of the bridegroom. In the case of Chaterina Valenti, this was the house of her bridegroom’s father, where the couple had taken up residence.
    It was a run-down house, dark and badly furnished, the faint smell of mold and rot pervading all. As we silently ate our meal at the long wooden table, Chaterina’s father-in-law, grunting as he chewed, threw bits of meat and whole bones to two mange-ridden dogs lounging in the straw at his feet. Her husband, Antonio, who had clearly learned manners from his loutish father, smiled at the poor girl with bits of food stuck between his teeth.
    His mother, Mona Ginetta, to which neither man paid the slightest attention, was a grim harridan who regarded all her guests with equal disdain. Her house was poor and her men coarse, and I guessed she wished that they were not so embarrassingly on display to the gentlewomen of Florence.
    Making the occasion bleaker still was the dour priest who had been invited to share the meal—another custom recently popular—as though a man of religion at a family’s table made them pious. This cleric, after he had spoken the blessing, never said another word. He did not bother to hide his boredom, nor had he bothered to wash. He was rank with perspiration and smelled as though he had stepped in excrement in the street.
    Chaterina was much relieved when Antonio and his father, trailed by the dogs and the priest, left the table with barely a “ Buona sera ,” but I watched her face crumple with disappointment when her mother-in-law stayed firm in her chair. The sour-faced woman had, for the first time, been given leave to assert her dominion in the household. Chaterina was, from this moment on, the dominated.
    “Has everyone had enough to eat?” our friend asked us, the first words she had spoken the whole meal through, and reached for a slice of bread. In a flash her hand was slapped away by Mona Ginetta, who fixed the girl with a withering glare, silencing all of us before we could answer.
    “You’ve had two pieces already,” she accused. “And a double portion of macaroni. My son will not look kindly on a wife going to fat.” Then she looked around the table, wondering, I supposed, if she dared insult any of the rest of us.
    “Sorry, Mona Ginetta, sorry,” the daughter-in-law said. “I’ll be more attentive to what I eat.”
    “It’s funny,” I said lightly but pointedly, “Chaterina is always the one we worry is too thin.”
    “That is true,” Lucrezia piped in with an encouraging smile at our beleaguered friend. “She’s got the tiniest waist. We’re all jealous of her.”
    As everyone else chimed in with their agreement, Mona Ginetta began to