Pulchritude

by Ana Mardoll

  Bella grinned in relief and rushed out of the bedroom as though afraid her stepsister might change her mind. Marchetta tromped back downstairs and patrolled the kitchen slowly, gathering up her list and shopping basket, hanging up her apron on its hook, and racking her brain to think of any instructions she might need to give the cook before she left. She couldn't think of anything, but supposed it wouldn't matter too much if she had forgotten something; the village was a short walk away and they wouldn't be gone long on a simple shopping trip.

  In the front yard, she was surprised to see Bella still wearing the flimsy blue frock and matching slippers that she'd been wearing a few minutes before instead of the work gown and shoes that Marchetta had expected Bella to change into before their walk. "Are you ready?" she asked doubtfully, but Bella nodded enthusiastically and set off towards the road at a brisk pace.

  They weren't far from the house when Marchetta saw that her misgivings were correct: as soon as they reached the main road, Bella had openly despaired of sullying her delicate clothes with mud, and she picked her way so slowly and carefully around the mud puddles that their pace slowed to a tortuous crawl. Marchetta struggled to hide her annoyance. If it had been Fiorita, she would have sent the younger girl home immediately to change into something more sensible, but she supposed she didn't yet have that kind of relationship with her stepsister. "Least said, soonest mended," Marchetta reminded herself, but she couldn't help but enjoy the occasional fantasy of 'accidentally' stepping firmly enough into a puddle to splash her fussy stepsister.

  It was mid-morning when they finally reached the village, and Marchetta had long since noticed that Bella was carrying only a small handbag and not a proper shopping basket. Marchetta put this down to the same flightiness that would cause the younger girl to wear blue silk the morning after a rainstorm had turned the world to mud, and assumed that they would share her own basket. The girls strolled quietly through the marketplace going down the first few items on Marchetta's list with some difficulty, as Marchetta was not yet used to the layout of the small village with its twisty streets and dark buildings. "I miss the open market back home," she thought wistfully, remembering the sound of the sea and the deep smell of salt. She also missed shopkeepers who didn't stare at her dark skin. Her color was not unusual in the city and many of the shopkeepers were as dark as she.

  She knew that Mama loved Cienzo, so she didn't begrudge Mama moving them down here to this provincial village to live with her new husband. Still, she sometimes wished that she could have stayed in their old house in the city; at twenty years old, Marchetta was perfectly competent to be mistress of her own home. Even that was not a perfect solution, though, since she knew that she would have missed Mama and Fiorita dreadfully had she stayed behind. "If Mama had to set her heart on a man, I wish she'd found one who lived in the city instead of way out here in the middle of nowhere," she thought wryly. Still, maybe their new home was part of Cienzo's appeal: though Venizia tried to put a brave face on it, Marchetta was observant enough to recognize that quite a few places in her home city held painfully sweet memories for her widowed mother.

  Marchetta was so lost in her thoughts that she almost missed it when Bella's hand shot quickly out and grabbed a handful of long ribbons from the dressmaker's stall and tucked them into a bolt of muslin that Marchetta had folded into her basket for purchase. As soon as the movement was done, Bella strode quickly off to another corner of the stall to gaze intently at the bolts of silk on display. Marchetta didn't know whether to believe her eyes, but when she shook out the bolt of cloth for the woman to measure and price, the ribbons lay there in the folds of the muslin, red and blue in the morning sun. "What on earth ...? Am I supposed to buy these?" Marchetta wondered. She looked up quizzically at Bella, but the younger girl either didn't see her or refused to meet her gaze.

  She decided to err on the side of caution: silently, she drew the ribbons out of the cloth and laid them out for the shopkeeper to include in her bill, trying to ignore the curious stare she was drawing. "Is it my skin, my accent, or my bizarre stepsister that interests you so?" Marchetta thought, forcing herself to smile politely. Once the bill was paid, she folded the ribbons back into the muslin, and gently laid the bundle in the bottom of her basket.

  As they moved from shop to shop, working their way down Marchetta's list, she watched Bella carefully from the corner of her eye. At almost a dozen stalls, Bella repeated her strange behavior of quickly grabbing an item and pushing it quietly into Marchetta's basket. "What is she doing?" Marchetta thought, amazed. The girl always moved before Marchetta paid, and never after, leaving Marchetta each time to quietly draw the item to the attention of the shopkeeper and pay the difference. Bella watched the transactions in silence, but with her head studiously tilted away to seem as though she wasn't looking.

  "Does she think she's pulling the wool over my eyes?" Marchetta wondered. "Does she think I just pay for whatever is in the basket whether it's on my list or not?" Marchetta didn't know whether to be insulted by this assessment of her mental faculties or simply concerned about Bella's mental health.

  What puzzled her most of all was that the items being grabbed were the most trivial of luxuries: colored ribbons, a polished hair comb, cosmetic powders and creams, and the sorts of baubles that would have caught Fiorita's eye if she had come along. The price of the additions came to a fraction of her overall list, and Marchetta would have bought them as gifts if Bella had simply asked. But if Bella didn't think she needed to bother with the niceties of asking her stepsister to pay for her things, Marchetta was going to have an increasingly hard time keeping the lid on her temper.

  On the way to the final stop on her list, the apothecary's shop, she peered quizzically at the nervous, pale girl walking beside her and wondered if it was pride that caused her to behave in such an odd way. Mama had told her daughters that Cienzo had been quite poor before she married him, but she had stressed that there was no shame in that. Maybe Bella felt differently from Venizia on that matter. "Does she feel too embarrassed to ask me to pay for her shopping?" Marchetta felt sorry for the girl, but she wasn't going to go through this charade ever again, not even for Mama's sake. The sooner they went home, the better.

  There was another customer ahead of them inside the dim apothecary shop: an attractive woman about Marchetta's age was asking the old proprietor for an elixir to cure chronic headaches. Beside her, Bella jumped and grew quite animated. "Agata!" she cried with pleasure. "How are you?"

  The other girl squealed in obvious delight and she and Bella immediately lapsed into a friendly conversation. The old apothecary continued to putter about the store, pulling out various bottles and placing them on the mixing table for his client to consider once she was no longer occupied. Marchetta sighed and tried not to cross her arms over her chest in annoyance. She would happily have been introduced to the stunning young woman or been waited on by the apothecary, but being ignored by both was the height of vexation. "I've waited on Fiorita enough times when she's become lost in conversation with one of her friends," she reminded herself, reaching for patience, but Fiorita was a good four years younger than Bella; Bella was old enough to know better.

  Marchetta pushed her way around the two chattering girls and fixed her gaze on the old man. "Excuse me," she said as politely as she could, "If I could trouble you for a small vial of rat poison, I can be out of your way and you can focus on this young lady."

  The shopkeeper boggled at her and eyed her suspiciously. "What do you need rat poison for, girl?" he demanded querulously.

  His local accent was thick and Marchetta had to strain to understand him; she bit back a sarcastic retort that she had tired of her dreary lot in life and had decided to end it all. "To poison rats," she said acidly, biting back her opinions on her new relatives and their liberal attitude towards cleanliness in general and vermin in particular. The old man frowned at her but wandered unhurriedly into the back room. When he finally came back clutching the small vi
al, he suspiciously counted out her money three times before handing the bottle over to her. She checked that the stopper was secure and dropped the vial into the top of her basket before turning to Bella.

  "We're going home," she said to her stepsister firmly. She felt a twinge of regret at having so abruptly inserted herself in the conversation between Bella and the lovely stranger, who would no doubt take away a lasting impression of Marchetta's inexcusable rudeness, but she was nearing the limits of her patience and just wanted to get home as quickly as possible.

  Bella looked up from her animated conversation and Marchetta saw panic flash across her pale face. "Oh, already? I ... I'm not finished shopping," she said, nervously.

  "Shopping?" Marchetta tried not to let her skepticism spill over into the word.

  "Yes!" Bella suddenly brightened. "I need some, ah, headache medicine as well." Before Marchetta could stop her, the girl reached out and grabbed the shopping basket from Marchetta's arm. "It will just take me a moment," she gushed cheerfully, "and you can wait outside where the air isn't so stuffy! I'll even hold the shopping basket for you."

  Marchetta pursed her lips and studied her stepsister. Briefly she flirted with ending the whole silly charade right there, but she decided it would be easier to just play along. "All right," she said tersely, and stepped outside into the cool air.

  When Bella emerged a few minutes later, Marchetta was not surprised to see that the basket's contents were awry and Bella's small purse was suddenly bulging. "And not with headache medicines, I'll wager," Marchetta thought with annoyance. Before she could say anything, Bella smiled sweetly and chirruped a sugary, "Ready to go home?" before taking off down the road without bothering to see if Marchetta was following her.

  The shopping trip had taken much longer than Marchetta had planned, and it was already mid-afternoon when they arrived at the house. The journey home had been significantly more pleasant than the walk to the village had been, since Bella had lapsed into a nervous silence and was additionally burdened with the full shopping basket that she had 'offered' to carry and which Marchetta had not requested back. The mud puddles on the road had dried considerably since their morning trip, but there were still a few slick spots on the road and Bella had accidentally stepped in one and ruined a shoe. This had sent the girl into a sustained sulk, for which Marchetta was privately grateful. She wondered how Bella would replace or repair the delicate shoe, but she didn't bother to ask. "Don't make it your problem," she thought tiredly.

  As they rounded the bend in the road that brought the house into view, she saw Mama in the front yard, looking anxious. Marchetta felt a pang of guilt; she hadn't bothered to tell Mama she was going since she hadn't expected to be gone all day. She waved to Mama, who smiled back at her in relief. "There you girls are!" she called cheerfully. "Cienzo is home early. Dinner will be served just as soon as you two clean up and come down to the dining room."

  She disappeared back into the house and Marchetta quickened her pace. "Marchetta ..." Bella said quietly, and Marchetta looked back at the girl in surprise. It was the first time she'd spoken since they left the village.

  "Yes?"

  Bella hesitated and for a moment Marchetta thought the girl was about to ... what? "Thank me? Apologize?" Marchetta wasn't sure, but then the girl seemed to shake off whatever she was feeling. Instead of apologizing, she roughly pushed the basket towards her. "Don't forget your things," she said briskly. "I didn't mind carrying them for you, but now I have to go change for dinner." She shoved the basket into Marchetta's hands and strode quickly off into the house.

  Marchetta simmered with anger, and briefly considered calling a taunt to the haughty girl -- "Bella, I don't see my new hair ribbons in here. Did you drop them on the road, perhaps?" would be a particularly nice barb to hurl at her -- but she reined in her temper and hurried into the house to clean up as Mama had suggested.

  Dinner was as awkward as their few shared breakfasts had led her to expect. Cienzo guffawed and hooted his way through dinner, regaling them with tales of people Marchetta didn't know while Fiorita giggled politely during his pauses and Mama smiled serenely at them both. Bella had arrived at the table extremely subdued and had spoken only a few words all evening; she had changed into a red velvet gown and had brushed her hair back and pinned it away from her face. In the candlelight, Marchetta thought the style made her look younger, more vulnerable.

  As the plates were being cleared away by the kitchen servant, Cienzo struggled to his feet and eyed them all with an air of somber intensity. "My family," he said in a serious tone, "I have received word this week that one of my merchant vessels thought lost at sea last year has come in to port after all this time."

  He grinned at them, but his smile faded a little as the moment passed in silence. Mama was smiling at him encouragingly, but Marchetta doubted the announcement was a surprise to her. Bella was looking at him with a surprised frown, and Fiorita was smiling her perpetual smile. As for herself, Marchetta didn't know what to make of the announcement, and imagined that her face was as blank as her understanding.

  "This means," Cienzo continued, a little deflated by the lack of response from his audience, "that I will be taking a trip to recover my goods and profit from the ship. I will be gone for at least a week, during which time I want you all to be very good for your mother. When I return," his voice was building to a cheerful crescendo, "I will be bringing presents!"

  At last Marchetta understood what response was expected of her and she beamed a broad smile at him. She didn't have to fake her enthusiasm: it would be lovely for the household to return to just her and Mama and Fiorita for a while. "Although I suppose we'll still have Bella in the house," she realized with disappointment. "Maybe she'll stay in her room for the entire week." It was a possibility well worth hoping for.

  "Fiorita," Cienzo said graciously, "You are the youngest, so why don't you be the first to tell me what present I should bring back for you?"

  Fiorita smiled at him, but Marchetta recognized it as her reflexive, nervous smile. It was obvious that Cienzo wanted to make a pleasing gesture by bringing her back some gift, but Marchetta imagined that Fiorita was anxious about being put on the spot: what if her request was too large or too expensive?

  Mama smoothly came to her rescue. "My dear, weren't you just saying to me today how you would like some fine yellow velvet for a new dress?" she prompted.

  Fiorita grinned in relief and excitement. "Oh, yes, Papa," she gushed, "I would like a yellow gown very much! Something bright and festive, please, that I can wear to special occasions," she added with enthusiasm.

  Cienzo grinned paternally at her. "A bolt of yellow velvet for my pretty bumblebee," he announced with mock seriousness. "I better make it two, for my chubby chipmunk," he added with an indulgent smile. Fiorita blinked, but held her smile gamely in place while Marchetta struggled not to frown. "And some yellow hair ribbons to match," he stage-whispered loudly to Fiorita with a conspiratorial wink. He turned to Marchetta and beamed his smile at her. "And what about you, Marchetta? As the oldest, you should choose next, I think."

  Marchetta hesitated. What she really wanted were the necessities that hadn't been available in the local marketplace today, but she wasn't certain those were the sorts of 'presents' her stepfather had in mind. "Well," she said honestly, "I could very much use some more blank ledger books, and some ink ..." Her voice trailed off as she saw Cienzo frowning.

  "That wasn't quite what I meant," he said doubtfully. "I want to get you girls something nice, as a gift. Not everyday things."

  Marchetta tried not to sigh in frustration. "I suppose it's useless to try to convince him that I know what I want for a gift better than he does," she thought with resignation. "Well, in that case," she said, trying to force a note of cheeriness into her voice, "Will you please bring me some new hairpins?" He started to frown again, and she added brazenly, "Maybe some with pearls."

  His grin returned in full force and he laughed in that g
uffawing way of his. "Pearls for my black pearl?" he teased, and Marchetta flashed him a tight smile, but his attention had already wandered to Bella, who sat with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes fixed firmly on the table.

  "And for my sweet middle child," he said graciously, "Last but not least: what can I bring back for my dear little princess?" he asked.

  Bella looked up at him with a wistful expression. Marchetta wondered if she would ask for shoes to replace the ones she'd ruined on their outing, or maybe for some pocket money so that she would be able to buy her own things next time. Instead, when Bella spoke, she sounded almost worshipful. "Father," she said sweetly, "All I could ever wish for is your safe return."

  She smiled sadly at Cienzo, and Marchetta was surprised to see him looking rather startled. "That's very sweet of you," he said with an embarrassed smile, "but I'm sure a young lady must want more than an old man's safe return." He laughed at his joke and then said firmly, "Come now, Bella, tell me what gifts I can bring you so that I can make you happy."

  Marchetta watched Bella drop her gaze to the table as if in thought, before bringing her chin back up a moment later to level her gaze with her father's. Her eyes glistened wetly in the candlelight and she smiled that sad smile again. "In that case, Father," she said smoothly, "please will you bring me a single red rose?" She gestured to her red dress and explained, "I'll weave it through my hair when you return and we gather again for a family dinner."

  Cienzo seemed stunned by her request. He stared frowningly at the girl, but she met his gaze with that steady, calm expression. "Well, Bella," he said doubtfully, "if that's really all you want ..." His voice trailed off doubtfully, before his expression lit up again and became all animated enthusiasm. "I will bring a bouquet of roses for my beautiful rose princess!"

  He left his spot at the table and strode over to Bella's seat where he all but hauled her out of her chair to embrace her in a tight bear hug. Marchetta pursed her lips as she eyed the pale girl beaming triumphantly in her father's approving embrace. "Maybe I've misjudged her," she mused dryly. Her little stepsister may have seemed an artless thief, but she certainly knew precisely how to steal her father's heart.