Betrayed by His Kiss. Amanda McCabe

Caterina left the Strozzi palazzo. The afternoon was on the wane, the siesta of the city just breaking. Shops were opening again, people emerging from their homes to seek out food for supper, amusement for the evening. Young men in bright, fashionable garments and elaborately plumed caps still lounged on the street corners, yet Isabella noticed that they did not stare so insolently as Caterina drifted by. Rather, these noisy youths watched her with wide eyes and mouths agape, as if a goddess suddenly floated into their prosaic midst. The danger she had faced earlier seemed absurdly far away.

      And, though she looked most carefully, she did not see the man who had saved her in that deserted courtyard. She began to wonder if he had been a mere dream after all. If this glittering surface was all there really was to the city after all.

      Caterina wore blue again, a narrowly cut gown of deep-sapphire velvet slashed with white satin, the sleeves tied with fluttering gold-and-silver ribbons. She sported no jewels, no sparkling diamonds or soft gleam of pearls to compete with the glow of her skin and eyes.

      She had loaned Isabella a gown of bronze-coloured silk, trimmed with red ribbons and embroidery on the high-waisted bodice. It was a beautiful garment, crafted in the very latest style, yet still Isabella felt like nothing so much as a country mouse, clad in city finery that fooled no one. She almost laughed aloud at this hazy unreality, the dreamlike state of it all.

      Caterina linked her arm with Isabella’s, drawing her closer as they made their dignified progress along the street. ‘It is not far now, cousin. I go here every day. Sometimes I do not even return home until long after dark.’

      Isabella was mystified. Caterina had told her nothing of their destination, merely shaking her head with a small smile on her lips when asked. Was it some very fine shop, a cathedral or gallery? Isabella was not at all sure she cared for this uncertainty, not on top of everything else that was so odd about this day. ‘Caterina, will you not tell me where we are going?’ she tried asking again.

      ‘I told you, it is a surprise. But I promise you, Isabella, that you will like it very much indeed.’

      They finally stopped before a building, much like the Strozzi house in size and solid stone structure. The outer windows were shuttered and there were no signs or coat of arms to indicate what lay inside.

      One of Caterina’s pages raised the brass door ring, bringing it down on the stout wooden door. After only a moment, the portal swung open.

      Rather than another liveried servant, there stood a young man in a paint-stained smock, a smear of dark charcoal along one cheek. He blinked for a second in the fading sunlight, as if startled by the day, before a wide, delighted smile spread across his face.

      ‘Signorina Strozzi!’ he cried happily. ‘You are here. We have been wondering what was keeping you away this day.’

      ‘Only the happiest of events, Jacopo,’ Caterina answered. ‘My cousin, Signorina Spinola, has come to stay with me. She is another great lover of art.’

      ‘The master will be so very pleased.’ The young man swung the door open wider and Caterina led them through. Rather than an open, classical courtyard, as at the Strozzi palazzo, they stepped into utter chaos.

      But chaos of the most wondrous sort. The sort Isabella so often lay awake at night fantasising about. Longing for. The chaos of an artist’s studio.

      The high ceiling was enclosed in a thick glass skylight, pouring down sunshine on the activity below. Paintings were stacked along the walls, propped on easels, in all stages of readiness from just barely gessoed to completed scenes. People in stained smocks clustered around them, as bees in a summer hive, wielding bright brushes, arguing. The smell of turpentine and tempera paint was thick in her nostrils, heavy and acrid, as welcome as sweet springtime flowers.