The Ornaments of Love

by G A Dazio

  “He resisted, Papá, he is honorable. He would never do anything to hurt me.”

  At this, her father unraveled himself from their embrace and stood up to look down at her.

  “Honorable?” he said, stricken, his voice rising from pain. “What of his actions here are honorable? He has brought havoc to my house in a manner that is irreversible! He has taken your virtue from this house like a thief, committed this offense against my family, and you dare say he is honorable? He has done this, and what is most unforgivable is that he is not the fool stable boy who hadn’t the opportunity to know better! He has sat in your classroom for years, against the advice of my counsel, in defiance of your mother’s disapproval, and he has received the education that I provided him with in great charity. All that he might one day have greater opportunities than his father, whose family I love as my own. And you have the insolence to defend what he has done?”

  He moved now like a caged panther, his eyes fixed upon the floor as he paced back and forth in front of her. She felt some of her courage return and spoke quietly, as intimately as she could make her voice sound.

  “Papá, you do not understand him. As you say, he is not the foolish stable boy. He’s a boy who has been taught to think like a gentleman, Papá. This is the charity you have given him, this is the useless charity you have burdened him with.”

  “The charity I have given him was so that he might one day achieve a higher degree of honor, not so that he could claim your virtue as his prize! As if I would raise the stable master’s son that he might one day be suitable for my own daughter. This is madness! There is nothing I can do for him now. Even his mother sat here and told me it was only right that he be punished to the highest extent of the law. His own mother knows I have no choice but to seek his death, there is nothing else I can do.”

  She was horrified by those words. She had not believed that such a thing might be true until she heard him say them aloud.

  “My only concern is that, even with my seeking the law to punish him, there will be no remedy for the scandal that will spark, no way to save us from becoming disgraced. Your mother is outraged that I have not done this yet, but I cannot find the courage to sentence you both. My love for the both of you does not permit me to even think upon the truth of my situation! Do you see what has been done to me?”

  Papá was spent now. His pacing had ended, and he fell to the sofa slowly, bringing his head to rest in his hands. “My God, what have you both done?” he said to himself in a quiet whisper.

  Marcelina was without words. The stress in her chest was unrelenting and she could no more bear to look at him than to look away.

  And after a beat, he raised his head to slouch back in the sofa, his head falling to rest in his daughter’s direction. He smiled weakly at her and she was now strong enough to hold his glance. She felt she owed him at least that much.

  “I don’t care in the slightest that you have fallen in love. Don’t misunderstand me, I have a love for all lovers, and it falls from the belief that there can be no sin in what you have done. It is not that I hate him for loving you, precious. Do not think for a moment I could do anything but adore him for loving you. I would give anything that he might be my son. My anger toward him did not survive a moment after what I heard him tell his father. He stood there like a man, I tell you... like a man he defied his father to pronounce that he loved you, above all things, and that he would not live without you.” Papá closed his eyes and smiled. “Like some fool in an opera, he practically sang this. I was so proud of him, for loving you, for loving anyone so honestly, so bravely.”

  She was astonished by her father’s words. The tears came again, burning in her eyes, and after his admission settled in her mind, she heard his words begin again, darkened from the most terrible pain.

  “His crime is that he has known all his life, and I had seen to it that he knew, that he could not ever be your husband. He knew it, and he still chose to defy me, which is what I find unforgivable. That he would disrespect all I have given him, that he would attempt to claim you as his own, it is something I cannot ever allow him to amend. I have no choice, what I must do is clear to everyone.”

  She was defeated as every word he had said was undeniable, and all she said to him then came in random fragments that she could not control.

  “Papá, you cannot let this happen. How can you ask me to live the rest of my life carrying the burden of his death? This is as much my responsibility as it is his. I know you are a great man. There must be a way you can think of to make all of this just go away. The servants will never speak, not if you tell them that their futures hang in the balance of our house not falling.”

  “No, my love,” he smiled weakly, “you know very well the servants’ gossip, even if it could be contained, is not the problem. It is that everyone in our family knows, not to mention my associates, to whom my honor is as vital as are their positions. No, there is no choice in this matter. Even if I were to send him to the other side of the world, it would not help matters any. His name alone will now be infamous, a constant reminder of his offense, and you will be dishonored among the houses of Spain, no matter how much my influence could temper their knowledge of your culpability.”

  She knew that all he said was true, that there was no other choice. Antonio’s name alone would threaten them forever. It was over, really. Everyone’s mind had been made up on the matter. She saw it was only her father’s abhorrence toward the idea of sending this boy to be slaughtered that had spared him this long. Her mind wandered relentlessly through all of these truths.

  Her Papá exhaled his most defeated consent to what lie ahead, and after a short while she felt herself give over to speak about Antonio as if he were already dead.

  “I would give all if in death he could be reborn a gentleman,” she said, closing her eyes. “I have dreamt my whole life that he might one day have become a man of status, someone I might meet anonymously in a house far off, a well-to-do young gentleman on leave from his studies at the finest Parisian university, traveling abroad around the world for the first time.”

  The man smiled, puzzling over her words for a moment. “The university? Is that where you saw him? I always saw him in the stable, saw him there under my own design, perhaps.” His sadness weighed down on him now, it was a miserable sight look upon. He continued in a lifeless ramble. “I wonder where he might have seen himself had he been permitted to live longer. I wish that I knew him better. I wish I had not let him listen too closely to stories of gentlemen in London, fables your tutors educated the three of you about. I wish I had made a point to understand him as the young man he’s become.”

  “That’s what changed him more than anything, Papá. He came to understand his place after years of boyhood fancy. He cried in my arms because he knew that the world outside this place would never be his.” She spoke now to herself, her hands in an endless fidget. “If you could’ve seen his eyes as he gazed at the drawings of the National College of Rome in the books our tutors imported for us. So full of happiness, then instantly so full of despair. His eyes couldn’t hide the sadness.” She began to cry again, silently this time, a private moment she kept to herself for Antonio.

  Her father stood up again from the sofa and left her to walk about the room. She could hear him moving behind her and turned to see him sitting at the desk with his eyes fixed upon the ceiling in the way that she had observed all her life. It was the expression he exuded as he contemplated their futures. She thought to herself how beautiful he looked when he did this. It was at these moments when anyone could see most clearly how intelligent he was.

  The sharp sound of his chair scraping across the floor gave her cause to start as he sprang from the chair like he had seen a vision. He almost ran in his fervor, grabbing his daughter’s hand to pull her after him, racing out of the room and through the house like there was a fire somewhere. They ran downstairs, past his advisors who were lounging in the main parlor, her father holding up h
is hand to keep them in their seats. He moved her through the hallways and downstairs to the room where they were keeping Antonio.

  He opened the door with much commotion, pulled her inside and locked the door behind them before giving Antonio the chance to sit up from his bed. Before she could even see his eyes, she saw the many scars of his wounds. The maids had seen to bandaging him thoroughly with care.

  “My lord,” the boy said feebly, standing as quickly as possible, faltering with the pain of his swift movements.

  “Sit down, Antonio, I have come to talk with you over what has happened.”

  Marcelina was desperately frightened now. She had rarely seen her father in this type of frenzied commotion. She feared his excitement was the result of his anger and that he had come here to relieve it.

  “I can offer you nothing to pay for the sins I have committed against you, my lord. I offer my life to you and I ask that you not take mercy upon me. What I have done is unforgivable.” The boy said this with such dire conviction that what was left of her heart sank in desperation. But this statement faltered her father’s focus and he hesitated before speaking, staring at the boy with wonder now, trying to collect his thoughts before he began.

  “Very right, you are. You have done something that all my house says I cannot show you mercy for. And it brings me some comfort that you have the honor about you to speak to me now and admit this.”

  He studied the boy then with a compassion she did not understand. The truths he spoke were intoned without the slightest hint of anger.

  “It is now, by all of my people’s will, as well as the will of your family, out of my hands.”

  And at these words, her father witnessed a final defeat in Antonio’s eyes. The young man’s back stooped, his physical presentation collapsing, and he let his head fall down to look upon the floor.

  “It is better this way, my lord, for everyone involved. I would not wish to live on with this shadow over our lives.”

  At this, her father held his breath, and it seemed he would burst out some curse or condemnation at the boy. But he did not do this.

  “Is it really this shadow, as you call it, which gives you cause now to offer up your life?” he asked, little of his own life left in his eyes.

  “My lord?”

  “It sounds all very romantic to me, your submission. I think perhaps you do not say to me all that you feel.”

  Antonio was at a loss and could only stare for several beats.

  “I don’t understand you, my lord. I only wish to surrender my life to you for the suffering I have caused. It is the only honorable choice I can make.”

  Her father turned his head to walk about the small room, which was a minor storage closet near the kitchens and hardly large enough to accommodate many steps. “Touching,” he said dryly, keeping his face turned from the boy.

  “My lord?”

  He waved the back of his head at Antonio. “My daughter has told me many things about you.” With this, Antonio turned his face to Marcelina, uncertain what this might mean. “She tells me you are not the stable boy everyone believes you are. She tells me you’re a different man, and I wonder if I might have failed to judge you fairly. She tells me you are not a man of horses but a man of knowledge, one who would not ever, by sheer will, do anything to hurt her. It makes little sense to me. Would a man of knowledge ever do such a thing?”

  “My lord, you have been far too generous to me. It is with the greatest sorrow that I have failed to show my gratitude for the charity you have provided. I have betrayed your trust and generosity, and for this I can only beg your forgiveness and throw my life into your hands.”

  “In my hands, yes, that has been the problem all this time. The inadequacies of my visions and judgments have allowed me to selfishly ease the burden of my conscience, committing these vile little acts of charity. But I see now that these acts have been my greatest sin. They have suffered from my shortsightedness with an abundance of fault.”

  “I don’t understand you, my lord,” the boy answered.

  Papá waved the boy’s voice away. “Tell me, what do you think your life might have been here in my house, living in my family’s service?”

  Antonio was devastated by the question and could hardly draw himself up to answer. “My lord, it was my great honor to live under your roof, I have only ever wanted that I might live my life in the peace that your house has bestowed upon my family so generously.”

  “Peace, yes, I see. So, you have not spoken for years of what your life would be outside this place, as my daughter says? She has told me you have spoken widely of your desires to do anything else but live in succession to your father.”

  Antonio was slow in his response. “My lord, the things I have shared with your daughter have never been anything but the foolishness of a boy’s fancy. I have never wished for anything but to please and honor your family. I should have never dishonored you by saying those things to her.”

  It was with this confession that tears came from her, yet again, for she knew the great pain by which he had suffered over this. She could see it in his eyes when his illusions were shattered once again, leaving him with the ultimate realization of what his foolish dreams had brought them to.

  Her father turned to face him now with an equal sadness in his eyes. “Well, it disappoints me to hear you say that, for I am afraid it will not do. Not for what I intend for you.”

  Chapter Ten

  The moonlight over Barcelona was now at its strongest, and the Marquesa stood staring through the glass doors at its reflection on the finely cut and polished stonework that made up the walls of her balcony. She had not realized she had stopped speaking as her story had played out in her mind, or that Veronica was now so aggressively fixed upon her memories.

  “What happened?” she asked her aunt again.

  The woman turned back and smiled at her niece’s funny little face, so full of anticipation, the wide-eyed insistence over something she now found to be so distant. It was ridiculous, really, that she remembered so much of it.

  “It was a very simple decision that my father made, and the only real thing he could do, though the idea had never crossed my mind the entire time. My father was no murderer, and though I believed this at the time, I truly did not come to understand this truth until after he was forced to deal with Antonio.

  “Very quietly, and with an abundance of skill in his timing, my father sent Antonio off to Paris as the nephew of a distant but wealthy Spanish aristocrat. He became a boy of status delivered into the City of Light by his only living relative and sole benefactor. He was sent there in a private carriage, no less, to an apartment located in a respectable building near the Latin quarter, purchased outright for him, where he would stay indefinitely as he continued his education. Antonio was enrolled at the Sorbonne and went on to pursue the field of his choice, all of this under the agreement that he could never return to Spain again. I promised Papá that I would never pursue him, even if just to know anything about his life after me. He would only communicate with his mother privately by letter through my father, a courtesy that she kept secret to her grave. As far as his father, our family, and his associates would ever know, Antonio had been privately executed by men who were, of course, paid handsomely for their cooperation in the charade. My father constructed the whole enterprise in one day and saw to its accomplishment without arousing the suspicions of anyone, aside from his secretary, whose name he used as Antonio’s pseudonym in the affair.

  “There is a great deal about the memory of my father which I cherish, but nothing so much as what he did for Antonio, for all of us during that time. He proved to me that a man could be greater than his society would allow, and he taught me the worth of standing for one’s principles even if it must become the strictest of secrets. As for me, he made it understood to all that, after examination by a doctor, my virtue had not been stolen by the boy, but only attempted. There was, of course, a tremendous scandal in Madrid over the sordid
ness of this entire affair. But a year later, when my father had found a Barcelonan suitor to accept a seventeen-year-old virgin from a wealthy Madrilenian house, who could give him sons, what threads of scandal remained unraveled forever. Don Augustí simply presumed I was a virgin on our wedding night, and, I presume he wouldn’t have truly known if I weren’t.

  “But you see how you have let me ramble on about my father when his tale is not the one that I intended to tell you tonight? The real story behind all of this was my first experiences with Antonio. Forgive me for traveling so far in my narrative only to come to a simple story that needed only a few sentences to be told properly.

  “What was important to me was that I gave myself to Antonio because I loved him and I wanted him to be happy at any price. At the time, I thought that giving my body to him was the ultimate expression of this love. I surrendered to this conviction completely. In time, I would come to understand that there was a great deal more I could have done for him, had I taken a moment to truly think out his situation. I came to learn that sex, for all its taboo and acclaim, particularly its heralding by men, is not as important a gift as it is a possession. One could choose to use it as a momentary prize or as part of a dowry, and by this manner, one could take advantage of the tremendous value of sex to use it as a tool or a weapon. I have found that any one of several uses can prove to be invaluable under both the most common or unusual of circumstances. Understand, what makes sex such a powerful commodity for women is that only women can use it in any of these ways.

  “Men do not have such abilities, you shall find. For men, sex is only something to be sought after and enjoyed. The idea that he might ever use sex to control a woman, other than to produce a child, is inconceivable to a man. He is not capable of detaching the obsession of his own physical desire long enough to construct the slightest plan of ulterior gain, nor can he alter the simple fact that a woman must choose to feel the pleasures of sex, while a man has no choice but to feel pleasure. And it is because of this that women alone wield the power of using sex and all of its temptation and irresistible allure. We can use it to seek from men whatever is theirs to give.”