Page 218 - The Grotesque Children's Book

Chapter 23.

The fleckless life

Summer, 1572.

To her surprise, Bianca actually enjoyed being a mistress. All the trappings without any
of the horrid burdens of being a duchess! Gowns, jewels, food, wine, fancy balls, plenty of
evenings in the theatre, all that...but no insufferably dull state dinners and entertaining of foreign
dignitaries, and no political pressure to bear sons to Francesco. It's true that she couldn't have
Francesco whenever she wanted, but often enough, often enough. And sweeping? Yes, she
continued to enjoy sweeping and washing and cleaning, long after Francesco had set her and
Pietro up in a household with all the servants she could want. Mamma Buonaventuri died soon
after Bianca and Pietro moved in with her, and it was years before Bianca would allow anyone
else to do any cleaning. She actually preferred to do it herself. She enjoyed the feel of hot water
on her hands. She took pride in a life without flecks. She liked the smells of a clean household.
She had Pietro leave his boots out of doors, so as to bring a minimum of dirt into the house. At
first, having to be shoeless inside his own home was mildly irritating, but soon became the first
point of tension in their young marriage. He wanted to wear boots inside the house. She would
have none of it. “All the filth! Dirt! Do you want that in our food? Do you want to be eating
the dust you picked up from the streets?”

“I didn't realize you were going to cook my boots. Is that what we're having for supper
this evening?” It made for an occasionally silent mealtime together. On the other hand, it made
Bianca scrub the floors all the more vigorously. Cleanliness became an act of defiance for her;
an assertion of her control over the universe. Whenever she and Pietro argued, or he did not
come home at night, she cleaned. Whenever she was denied access to Francesco due to his
official state functions, she took out her frustration with a scrub brush. She bathed more often
than anyone in all of Italy.

Pietro began to stay out more nights than he was home. Intellectually, Bianca understood
this. It was the devil's bargain she and Pietro had made with Francesco. She was to belong to
Francesco and Francesco alone; she was not to sleep with her own husband. This in and of itself
was no great physical sacrifice. Emotionally, however, this began to gnaw at Bianca. She never
questioned Pietro, of course. He was free to come or go as he pleased, but on the evenings when
he didn't come home, increasing in number as the years went on, she began to feel an undeserved
sense of betrayal.

“It's not as if I love him,” she confided in Francesco. “I don't. Oh, he's a perfectly
pleasant husband, and if it weren't for the rapture I experience with you, Francesco, I think I
could imagine a life in which he and I would have learned to be content together. But as it is, I
don't know, it somehow hurts to see him. It hurts when he’s with me because I can't have him,
but it also hurts when he's not with me because, because, oh, I'm selfish to want him not to be

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