For Love And Magic People

FOR LOVE AND MAGIC PEOPLE

By

Isabella De Vinci

CHAPTER I

Once upon a time in the year 1500, just at the turn of the century, in the magnificent city of Rome there lived a beautiful young noble lady in a splendid ancient palace. Her name was Angelica. She was a princess, an Italian princess, and she loved being one. Her family was like most other noble families in the city, almost like most other noble families in the city. There was her mother, who at times could be a royal pain in the rear, a father who could be a bit of a snob at times, a married sister and no brothers. The family had a chamberlain who never lost his composure and the father had a mistress who was a nasty know-it-all courtesan. Her name was Imperia and she meant it!

I said almost like most other noble families in the city. The one minor difference was that the lovely young princess in this family was a great lover of verse. She loved poetry so much that she turned it into her everyday language. She spoke always in verse and she spoke it to every person she spoke to. To her father, whom everyone called Don Carlo, to her mother, called Victoria by her father, to the chamberlain who was called the chamberlain, and even to Imperia, the evil courtesan, who was called a nasty name by all.

And the funny thing was that Angelica expected everyone to answer her in verse. And if they could get some rhyming into their verse, she loved it even more!  In poetry they were to answer or forever hold their peace. Angelica insisted on this and both family and friends tried their damnedest to please her. Some became quite good at it and even began to enjoy it. Others came to like it so much that they began speaking it to one another and not just to the princess. And there were those who were not so good at it and, therefore, had little to say to the princess. One of them, the chamberlain, to be precise, was truly lousy at it! He said as little as he possibly could.

The sweet and lovely Angelica was a free-spirited girl with a definite mind of her own and a firm belief in true love. She was seventeen years old and still not married. Don Carlo found this upsetting, since his other daughter, who was less than a year older than Angelica, had been married now for a number of years. She, however, has no role to play in our story, so we shall just leave her where she is with her husband at his and her own court and allow her to live happily ever after! On the other hand she might well play a role in another, future story since one of her many descendants some three hundred and fifty years later was listed as a passenger on the Titanic. But that is a horse of a different colour.

One splendid spring morning Angelica skipped into the great hall of the palace to say good morning to her beloved parents and noticed a rather large object on prominent display at the centre of the room. She stopped her skipping and slowly approached what she soon discovered to be a portrait of a strange looking nobleman dressed in elaborate hunting gear with many a dead duck and an abundant amount of ripe fruit hanging down from nowhere on both sides of him. As she stood in front of the portrait and began to examine it with care, the cheerful expression on her face slowly changed to one of disdain when she heard her father say:

   Behold your future husband, dearest daughter!

She hated looking at him. The idea of marriage to such a fruit-and-duck- man- nobleman disgusted her. She did not try to hide her feelings from her father. As was her wont, the young, free spirited princess expressed herself with no qualms whatsoever:  

   "Oh father, thou hast given me cause to wonder!

   Did it suffice thee not to keep me locked

   within the confines of a nunnery?

   Now thou woulds’t have me joined in wedlock

   to this baboon, this duck and fruity man,

   this nobleman, this loon I see before me!

   Woulds’t thou reduce my fate unto the level

   of a painting hung upon a stranger's wall

   in unknown court and thereupon forgotten?"

Don Carlo was shocked to hear his daughter speak to him in such a manner. He thought it time to put an end to her smart verse and stubbornness and he certainly had no intentions of giving in to her demands for versified conversation. He would tell her off in downright, manly prose:

Daughter, I'm sick and tired of your complaining and that goes for your verse as well! And besides, what you say offends your noble lineage which most certainly merits more honour than you afford it! It is my wish that you marry this fine and handsome nobleman you see here in this painting. He is my choice for you!

But his lovely daughter was so offended by her father's insistence that she had no trouble finding even more words in her heart that she could use to wound him:

   "Alas, the defect found in many fathers:

   they make of daughters passports of importance!

   The marriage wound inflicted on my sister

   I never shall allow to injure me."

As his daughter's words flowed from her lips with such little effort yet with such great force, don Carlo became more and more enraged, not so much by what he heard her say to him but rather by the way in which she phrased her remarks.. What is all this 'passports of importance' bull-bilch you are spewing? he said. Your words are drenched in disrespect, daughter. Your sister's wedding bore great significance for our family. It was a very important one indeed.. She reaps great pleasure living at the court of...

But Angelica would have no more of it! She did not allow him to finish what he had to say. She was determined to win the game of words in which they were engaged. Using a poetic technique so dear to the poets of Provence whose difficult verse she was so very fond of, she picked up on her father's use of the word reaps and said: 

   "Inquire of her if, in truth, she reaps

   such pleasure! Her name is misery!

   What thou hast done is bury her alive."

Lady Victoria, who was known throughout the city for her patience and silence - so renowned was she for these qualities that the people called her Griselda (even those who did not know the meaning of the name called her Griselda) did not dare raise her eyes to look at her husband in an attempt to calm his wrath but kept them fixed on the glistening white marble floor of the great hall as if it were some rare manuscript with exquisite illuminations that she were examining. Nonetheless, the words her daughter spoke continued to reach her unfortunate ears:

   "My wish is for a husband born of love,

          not just one who serves to please your pleasure!

   Concerning this my mind is fixed in stone,

   resistant more than rock to rushing water.

Don Carlo now attempted to ignore what his daughter was telling him as he mumbled to himself She says 'please your pleasure', and I am supposed to be impressed, It's bird shit, all of it! Why must she talk this way all the time? He had had enough by now and decided to put an end to this play of words. He called for the chamberlain and ordered him to bring in the portrait of his daughter, the one he intended to send the Duke.

The chamberlain, a stout, subservient little fellow was a bundle of nerves. He carried a long ornate stick that shook in his hand every time he tapped it on the marble floor in accompaniment to a formal announcement. He responded quickly to his lord's request. He placed with trembling hand a painting covered by a cloth on the easel alongside the husband-to-be (who happened to be already too crowded in on both sides by fruit and game). Then, by permission of a quick glance from Don Carlo, the chamberlain, with a flourish, removed the cloth covering from the painting revealing a splendid resemblance of Angelica in all her fresh, young beauty. Don Carlo felt a comment was in order: It is a work of art, a perfect copy of perfection! The only thing it lacks is the ability to speak! And perhaps such lack of ability is in itself a worthy quality! Indeed, a most definite possibility!

Having said this, he called for the duke's man to be brought before him. No sooner had the chamberlain left to fetch the messenger than Angelica, pointing to the portrait of the duke, said to her mother:

   "In Heaven's name, who is this person here?

   Better to cut my veins and bleed to death

   than join in wedlock to this horse's rear!"

But her mother, who was about to provide her daughter with an appropriate answer, was cut short by her insistent husband who felt he had not said enough. He began by telling her that the palace she lived in had sheltered her all these years the way a convent does a nun and that she has turned down more than seven proposals of marriage during the past eighteen months from some of the most distinguished noblemen of Rome not to mention  the surrounding cities. You have rejected, he said, the finest families and turned down men who were madly in love with you! You give all your time and thought to reading books and writing poetry instead of to important matters. And if you had your way, you would have everyone converse with you in verse. There has not been a day I can recall that I have not heard but verse pour from your mouth!

Angelica, who was never lost for words, took no more than a second to respond:

   "Father, I slake my thirst at poetry's oasis.

   I study books so that I may escape

   life's desert filled with many arid hearts."

It was clear to Don Carlo that he was getting nowhere fast. He decided to take a different approach. It has of late been brought to my attention that you wander through the countryside collecting plants and herbs and other strange things. There has been talk of your dabbling in the art of the occult. Could this be true my daughter?                                                  

Angelica answered with a question:

   "Could there be any harm in my compiling

   the facts hiding in the goodness of an herb?"

Her father pursued the argument. I hope you have not taken to telling fortunes as well as wandering through the woods collecting strange things. Such blasphemy might well enrage the church and bring the wrath of God down on our household. Angelica drew closer to her father, boldly looked straight into his eyes and said:

   "No thing need I repent of to my God

   Who filled His gift to us of earth and heaven

   with wondrous things to search for and regard."

Then Don Carlo asked her about a certain book he had heard was in her possession: I have also heard talk of a certain manuscript that you have in your possession. If true, then I shall have to burn that book.

Angelica knew exactly what her father was referring to. It was a manuscript she had been composing for more than a year now. She had employed a trustworthy scribe, a monk friend of hers, to transcribe her writings. He was, in fact, at that very moment in her room busy copying the treatise for her. She did not wish to discuss the matter or even admit to her father of its existence. The only thing she thought of saying was:

   "Well then in such a case, my dearest father,

   the world is made more bright by such a burning!"

Don Carlo at that point could not find the words necessary to combat his daughter's barrage of verse. He raised his hand to strike her, but his violent reaction to her last comment was interrupted by the voice of the chamberlain announcing the arrival of the duke's messenger. His hand shook, his stick trembled and his voice broke when he tried his very best to announce in verse:

   "Announcing, that is I announce. . . I mean

   by order of  Piacenza's duke... I mean...

   the presence of Giovanni Grancoglione."

As the chamberlain spun around to encourage the messenger into the great hall, his foot struck the end of his stick which had just completed its tapping and sent it flying into the air. On its way down it hit the duke's messenger squarely on his head just as he took his first step through the impressive doors leading into the great hall. Ignoring with diplomatic elegance this unusual welcome from above, he bowed with much reverence to don Carlo as he approached the painting of Angelica. The lovely princess, who was standing by the side of her portrait, turned to face the messenger, and looking straight at him, she crossed her eyes with all her might, straining the blueness of her pupils to look intensely at her nose! Since her back was to her parents, they could not see her distorted eyes. What they saw, however, was the stunned expression on the messenger's face as his eyes and head moved back and forth several times from Angelica to her portrait, from portrait to Angelica and back and forth. The more the princess smiled the more she forced her eyes to look in crossed position at her nose.

Don Carlo was not one to waste words or time. He addressed the messenger saying: Behold the portrait; see my daughter here. Is she not more beautiful than paintingcan portray? Are not her eyes exquisite? Turn and face us my sweet Angelica. The Duke of Piacenza's messenger was left with little choice as of what to say, so he said it: Such stunning and unusual eyes they are!

Don Carlo, somewhat confused by the messenger's comment, said to him: What is it now that bothers you, good man?  A perfect likeness of my daughter, is it not? Quickly Angelica straightened out her eyes, turned around, and bowing to her father and mother, left the great hall as the duke's messenger began saying to don Carlo: Most Roman of all princes, I only wish to express  my admiration for her eyes. They are morelovely than the portrait here displays.

Don Carlo, who had just noticed that even this messenger from a distant city was beginning to speak the way they did whenever they were speaking with their daughter, said to him in plain and simple prose:  When you return to court and report to the duke, tell him what you just told me. Then turning to the chamberlain, he said:  Have this man select a falcon to take as my gift for his noble lord.

Angelica, who had run so quickly from the great hall, was now in her bedroom pacing up and down. Her room was not like any other room in the palace. It lacked the severity and formality which filled the rest of the huge edifice. It was packed full of unusual furniture resting on exquisite Persian carpets of many different colours. There were bound manuscripts everywhere, even on the carpets. Paintings hung on all four walls reaching as high as where the frescoed ceiling began. Figurines of porcelain and glass, small statues cast in bronze and gold adorned every piece of finely sculptured furniture.

In the corner of the room tucked away behind a tall and narrow writing table was a little man on a high, thin, fragile looking chair writing on parchment. Totally absorbed in his occupation, he raised his head from his work when Angelica addressed him for the first time telling him that he must leave the room immediately!

The small monk asked her what was wrong and told her that he had just begun working for the day, that he had begun copying her manuscript less than a half hour ago. She interrupted him:

   "I fear our work must now be done in secret;

   they know about the treatise I am writing.

                Follow me, friend, we do not have much time

CHAPTER II

As Angelica and her scribe were preparing to leave her bedroom for other parts, downstairs in the great hall the chamberlain was just about to make an announcement by stick and mouth: "The lady Imperia requests to visit his