Page 372 - The Grotesque Children's Book

Bianca clasped her hand over Francesco’s mouth, her eyes bulging with fear. But
Francesco wriggled free of her. “I’m not going to be frightened in my own --”

“Shh!” She whispered. “They’ll know we’re here.”

“Everyone knows we’re here. We’re the Duke and Duchess. This is our bedchamber.
Thirty servants alone watched us go in here together. Our whispering is not going to change
that.”

Bianca suddenly smiled at her husband. “No, I don’t suppose it is. Silly of me.
Whispering! Thinking, what, if they couldn’t hear any noise coming through the door that
they’d assume we weren’t in here anymore? Would they say amongst themselves, ‘Vanished!
Out the window! Come boys, let’s all run outside and catch them before they land, hurry, hurry,
lads. Oh, too late. They’ve leapt and broken their necks and now they’re dead, all without
making a sound!’”

Francesco looked at his amazing wife. When the fever lifted, as it clearly was doing
now, there she was, still funny, still vibrant. “What a delight you are!” he said to her.

“Me? No, I’m not here. I leapt out the window. You didn’t notice because I was
whispering.”

He laughed. “That’s my Bianca. That’s the girl who spat on my head from the
window.”

She nestled into his arms. “I’m still here, Francesco. When the shivering goes away,
that’s when I think things are actually going to be all right.”

“I think they will, too.”

“But we must be careful, still. I’ll get better. And things will be as they were before.
Let’s go to Villa a Caiano, can’t we?”

“Yes,” he said suddenly, “Let’s! I want to go. I want to be alone with you.”

“Yes. Alone. No one must see us leave.” Bianca looked fretful. “But how do we get
there without thirty servants seeing us?”

Francesco put on a mock-serious face. “We’ll disguise ourselves as religious pilgrims,
and we’ll walk.”

“It’s twenty kilometers from here!”

“Then we’ll walk as far as the edge of Florence and from there, we’ll get ourselves a
wagon.”

“A wagon!” shouted Bianca, then she clamped her hand over her mouth and whispered,
“A wagon! Where will we get a wagon without someone seeing us?”

“We’ll get a small wagon,” conspired Francesco. “We’ll get a cart.”

“What, like a little cart which goats pull?”

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