O, Juliet Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  HISTORICAL NOTES

  Acknowledgements

  Teaser chapter

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  Signora da Vinci

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF ROBIN MAXWELL

  O, Juliet

  “I love this novel! A reigning queen of historical fiction takes on the treasured tale of Romeo and Juliet.”

  —Michelle Moran, national bestselling author of Cleopatra’s Daughter

  “An intimate historical retelling of the timeless classic.”

  —C. W. Gortner, author of The Last Queen

  “Robin Maxwell turns her talents toward Shakespeare’s ultimate heroine of romantic love, but Maxwell’s Juliet emerges as a clever young woman and poetess from Florence, betrothed to her father’s diabolical business partner. Maxwell takes a well-known story and introduces her own set of twists, using historical detail, her vivid imagination and real people to great effect.”

  —New York Times bestseller Lalita Tademy, author of Cane River and Red River

  “Not many writers would dare to compete with William Shakespeare but Robin Maxwell pulls it off. Her star-crossed young lovers are just as unforgettable as the bard’s, and now readers get to see what happened offstage.”

  —New York Times bestseller Sharon Kay Penman, author of Devil’s Brood

  Signora da Vinci

  “A glorious novel of fifteenth-century Florence, utterly engrossing and glittering with color. Lorenzo the Magnificent, Leonardo da Vinci, and his courageous, passionate mother, Caterina, walk through the pages of this book, radiating life and touching the heart. I will never see the Mona Lisa with the same eyes again. Robin Maxwell has a stunning achievement in Signora da Vinci.”

  —Sandra Worth, author of The King’s Daughter

  “Robin Maxwell is an extraordinary historical novelist. If you are one of the millions of readers who got into the meat of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, Signora da Vinci is going to be like a hot-fudge sundae for dessert. It’s sinfully good and you will be very sorry when you’ve finished it. Maxwell’s protagonist, Caterina da Vinci, embodies the absolute female rebel and outcast of her era. Her story involves illicit love and sex, betrayal, defeat, redemption . . . in other words, ALL OF IT, everything that great historical drama entails. ”

  —Pasadena Weekly, Ellen Snortland, author of Beauty Bites Beast

  “A masterpiece . . . Signora da Vinci is an adventure from beginning to end. . . . Maxwell is one of the queens of historical fiction.”

  —Swapna Krishna, skrishna.com

  “Taking what little is known about Leonardo da Vinci’s mother, Maxwell has cleverly and believably reimagined the woman who gave birth to the ultimate ‘Renaissance’ man. Lush and lusty, fascinating and smart, this fictionalized biography is a stroke of genius crafted by a gifted historian.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Maxwell provides an adoring mother’s eye view of Leonardo’s life and inventions as well as [the] Florentines’ rediscovering ancient wisdom and the joy of their own expression. . . . Caterina is both a witness to and participant in history. . . . Great fun!”

  —The Historical Novels Review

  “Ms. Maxwell has again shown her adeptness with the historical fiction genre. She takes a woman whom history has forgotten and not only gives her a voice, but gives her life. . . . [She] pulls her readers into the Italy of the 1400s. . . . [Her] appreciation and passion for this story radiate from every page”

  —Eye on Romance

  Mademoiselle Boleyn

  “Robin Maxwell offers a fascinating glimpse at the ambitious girl who will grow into the infamous queen.”

  —Susan Holloway Scott

  “Reading Maxwell’s brilliant new novel, it’s easy to see why Anne is the ‘Boleyn girl’ who changed the course of history, and why she is the source of never-ending fascination. We are finally able to catch a glimpse of Anne Boleyn before her enemies vilified her, while she was still just a young woman looking for true love. I couldn’t put it down.”

  —Michelle Moran

  “Anne Boleyn fans will cry ‘Huzzah!’ when they learn that novelist Robin Maxwell has returned to her Tudor roots. In this saucy romp, a prequel to her Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn, Maxwell writes in the remembered voice of a child—a tricky feat indeed. Readers will find much to delight in, from finely drawn secondary characters like Leonardo da Vinci to scintillating descriptions of the French glitterati and the royal court. Frothy and French in its main setting, Maxwell’s work nevertheless conveys a gravitas that foretells Mademoiselle Boleyn’s eventual fate.”

  —Vicki León, author of Uppity Women of the Renaissance

  “Historically plausible account of Anne Boleyn’s adolescence in France as a courtier of King François . . . lavishly imagined . . . [an] accomplished rehabilitation of the much-maligned Anne as an empowered woman.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  PRAISE FOR THE OTHER NOVELS OF

  Robin Maxwell

  “The powerfully lascivious intersections of sexual and international politics, combined with Maxwell’s electrifying prose, make for enthralling historical fiction.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “History doesn’t come more fascinating . . . than the wife-felling reign of Henry VIII.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “Another satisfying historical epic from Maxwell, [who provides] a sweep of powerful emotion.”

  —Irish American Magazine

  A compelling, exhilarating, and thought-provoking account. . . . All of the characters are richly drawn, and the saga of Grace O’Malley sears the imagination.”

  —Boston Irish Reporter

  “Maxwell brings all of bloody Tudor England vividly to life.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  NOVELS BY ROBIN MAXWELL

  Mademoiselle Boleyn

  Signora da Vinci

  To the Tower Born: A Novel of the Lost Princes

  The Wild Irish: A Novel of Elizabeth I and the Pirate O’Malley

  Virgin: Prelude to the Throne

  The Queen’s Bastard: A Novel

  The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn

  NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

  Published by New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

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  First published by New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, February 2010

  Copyright © Robin Maxwell, 2010

  Readers Guide copyright © Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2010

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

  Maxwell, Robin, 1948-

  O, Juliet/Robin Maxwell.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-18502-5

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

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  For Max

  My bounty is as boundless as the sea My love as deep; the more I give to thee The more I have, for both are infinite.

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE from Romeo and Juliet

  Chapter One

  Golden light of afternoon on honey-colored stone, enclosing Eden down below my balcony and room.

  Stone? Room? Might there be a better rhyme? Perhaps. There was always a better rhyme. Yet the sentiment was perfect. This balcony and walled garden were my private heaven. My room as well. Together they were an incomparable refuge for a Florentine girl.

  Well, no longer a girl at eighteen, but a woman ripe for marriage and motherhood. Oh, but I did feel girlish in ways. Gazing down at the wild green of the square garden, I recalled the times when my brothers chased me, a giggling child, along the broad path that wound between trees and flowering bushes, the three of them flicking me with water from the pretty central fountain, Mama looking up all smiles from her embroidery, warning her boys to take care of their little sister.

  The path was overgrown now, the fountain dry. My mother and father had let the garden fall to ruin when their sons died. I always believed its demise was a kind of penance they chose to pay for sins they were sure they had committed. Sins so vile that God would take from them all their male children.

  My heart had broken, too, when they died. Though it was small consolation, their deaths had meant the bestowing of my eldest brother’s room to me—the sweetest bedchamber in the house, for with its gracious balcony, it looked down upon the garden. And while I missed the burbling fountain and the ease of walking well-tended paths, I saw something wonderful in the green overgrowth. The wildness of it, the secrets hidden beneath the thick vines and roots and bushes. And how birds and small animals had more made it their home since its desertion. That garden sent me into flights of fancy and imaginings. Every day I would stand at the balcony rail and ponder its mysteries, let the sight of it drive me to visions of small worlds and great worlds and exotic, faraway lands.

  The balcony was ten feet by ten, the half near the bedroom door and proper Venetian glass window a covered loggia, the other jutting like the prow of a ship over the garden. Through a wooden door was my room, quite large, high-ceilinged, and gracious in proportion. There was a second window, this one overlooking Via della Colonna, the street upon which our house fronted. The furnishings were those that were found in all wealthy merchants’ homes—a fine canopied and curtained bed—though mine, I thought, was hung more beautifully than most, my father the city’s finest seller of silk.

  There were the requisite chests that surrounded the bed and lined the walls, in which all belongings were stored. I had one unusual piece—a high cabinet in red lacquer that Papa had had brought from China, one in which the pieces of my gowns could be hung and not folded.

  But of all my furnishings, those that I most cherished were my wooden desk and chair. Unremarkable as they were, they were sacred to me. Some girls took great pleasure in their prettily painted marriage chests that grew fuller every year with linen and baby clothes, gold plate, and fine pieces of glass they would one day take with them into their husband’s house. Some loved their beds, their cushions and coverlets so cozy, pulling down the curtains to find comfort, like animals in their dens.

  But for me the center of the world, the universe itself, was my desk. For here it was that I read and I wrote, and more than in my bed and sleep, did here I dream. I had with the privacy of my room and balcony and inspiration of that walled garden all that I needed to travel unhindered in the Kingdom of Words.

  Ah, precious words! While reading was my joy, writing was—dare I say under threat of blasphemy—my religion.

  It was time to leave for Lucrezia’s ball, but I stayed one moment more to enjoy the garden. Happy thoughts of this night and my dearest friend’s betrothal warred with unhappy ones, for her marriage meant that mine was also ahead. And that would mean losing the garden, the balcony, the room, the desk. I would go to my husband’s house, and this would prove an end to my private joys.

  Growing up, I had always been a girl like any other, good and obedient and loving God. I wished, as all young ladies did, for a wealthy husband and many healthy children. I’d been betrothed at the age of five to the son of my father’s best friend, but then the fever had come and claimed him along with my brothers. There had been such mourning in both our houses that all talk of my marriage ceased. I was moved from the nursery down the long upper hall to my new room, and began to watch the garden where we’d all played grow wild.

  Only in the past year, when Papa had found the need of a partner to fill his sons’ place in the silk works, had plans for my marriage been placed once more on the table. This partner, Jacopo Strozzi, whose family’s standing and wealth was in Florence second only to the Medici’s, had made it known that he would consider me for a wife.

  Jacopo. I cringed at the thought of him. The occasions we had met at my father’s house had been grating in every way. His pinched mouth and furrowed forehead bespoke a constipated soul. The air that blew from between his dark ivory teeth onto my face as we conversed was faintly putrid, and his voice—oh, of all his attributes, that was the most distasteful. It was high-pitched and nasal, and his words were spoken with a whine, an affectation I think he believed a sign of nobility. It made me want to slap him silent. Then I curbed my thoughts, tearing my eyes away from the garden, and walked into my room.

  This was Lucrezia’s day, a celebration of her marriage to come—a happy occasion of the rarest match. She and Piero de’ Medici, betrothed since childh
ood, were fond of each other, and as friendly as a boy and girl were allowed by convention to be. There was more than a fair chance that Lucrezia and Piero’s arranged marriage would blossom over the years into love. Perhaps not the kind of love of which I secretly dreamed. Not Guinevere and Lancelot, nor Tristan and Isolde, nor Dante and Beatrice. But good and strong, and as enduring as we in our society did allow.

  I peered at myself in the glass for the briefest moment, knowing my curled and braided hair was in place, Mama’s jewels glistened at my neck, and my gown of Papa’s finest silk was perfectly beautiful, and left my sanctuary.

  I walked the long hall, dark even now in the afternoon, and several doors closed on rooms that mocked our family with their emptiness. My brothers’ rooms. At the hall’s end near the stairs was my parents’ bedchamber.

  The door was ajar. From inside I could hear the irritation in Mama’s voice, chiding a servant. “Must you slop water all over the floor? Look at that, you’ve spotted my dress!”

  I hurried past, not wishing to engage with Mama in one of her moods, and saw a glimpse of poor Viola, a young kitchen maid who had carried many pails of hot water up the stairs for her mistress’s bath. Now she was worriedly examining the skirt of my mother’s ball gown set upon a headless dressmaker’s form, searching for the water stains she had been accused of making.

  I hurried down the steps, but halfway to the ground floor began hearing a heated conversation echoing out from Papa’s study.