He knocked on her door.
"Yes?" a voice called from inside. The wood door squeaked as Cosimo pushed it open. Emilia was at his wife's back, pulling at the top laces of her dinner dress. Contessina caught sight of him in the mirror.
"If you wish to share a bed, Cosimo, I'm sure your slave girl is more than eager to let you warm hers." Cosimo bit his tongue. Emilia's gaze darted between the pair, catching Cosimo's on her second glance. Her face was emotionless, but her eyes were wide with unsure anticipation.
"That's not why I'm here."
Contessina turned to Emilia, taking the woman's hand and squeezing it and speaking a silent message with a subtle brow twitch. She left without another word, closing the door hard behind her.
"What is it you want, then, if you're not here for marital duties?" Contessina pulled at the strings Emilia had left, unlacing her dress herself. The contortion of her arms strained the pitch of sarcasm in her voice.
"I just wanted to talk." Cosimo hooked the laces in his fingers, pulling them out two at a time. Contessina allowed him to continue with no protest.
"What have we to talk about?"
"We've been apart over a year, I'm sure we can manage a thing or two." Cosimo loosened the lower strings, leaving them in the dress as he'd seen Emilia do hundreds of times.
"Leave the laces in—"
"I am," Cosimo assured his wife. Something came over him, an instinct or a desire he'd forced himself to repress. He slid his hands up his wife's back to her shoulders and kissed the back of her neck. She tensed, her breaths becoming sporadic and shallow.
"Contessina?" The woman took a handful of steps away.
"It's nothing." She was flustered, her face red and her hands in white-knuckled fists. "I'll call for Emilia, you may go." Cosimo was driven out of the room before he could argue.
Down the hall, as though she knew she'd be called, stood Emilia. Cosimo strode towards her, his arms outstretched in question.
"What is—"
"She's been having them for months," the woman started, unsure if she was allowed to speak freely. "Nightmares, panics, moments of deep, unwarranted fear."
"Why?" Cosimo's voice glistened, gilded with condescension to cover his concern. Emilia stared at her feet.
"Tell me, woman, or I will have you out on the streets by nightfall."
"You left, messer, and left her here alone. Your return hurts her, and, at the same time, she is more fearful you may leave again and not return. Solitude and the state of Florence and the household's safety have taken their toll."
"That cannot be all," Cosimo scoffed.
"It is not my place to…" Before Emilia could finish, Cosimo was bounding back to Contessina's chamber.
He knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again, harder. Silence
Without a third knock, Cosimo barged into his wife's chamber. She sat before her mirror, just as she had done every night of their marriage. The back of her dress unlaced and the waves of her now undone hair cascaded down her back. She looked at him through the mirror.
"What is going on?" Cosimo roared. Contessina's reflection simply stared at him.
"Why have you changed suddenly?" he asked, quieter.
"I've not changed, husband. Nothing here has changed for nearly a year." Contessina's voice was stone. "You cannot expect things to remain the same as you left them, Cosimo. Not when it is you have brought so much change."
"So this is my doing, is it?" Cosimo expected his response to give life to the fire burning deep in his wife. He wanted to feel the sting of her words. He was met with a cold hearth.
"I've done all that was expected of me," she said blandly. "Your mother instructed me to give you time—I've given you decades. I've been loyal and dutiful. There is nothing more I can do for you, Cosimo."
The man scoffed. "Always with the theatrics, Contessina."
"I expect you'll be leaving again in a few months. Or maybe you'll send me to the countryside. A change of scenery would be nice. That's what happens to the wives that are cast aside, isn't it? They're sent away." Cosimo couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"Why are you saying this?"
The man's wife turned to him. "I cannot bear this weight any longer, Cosimo. I've always put you, your family, and the bank before myself. I'm protecting myself first now. I can no longer sit in my own home while I am humiliated. You've cast me from your heart so now I'm taking myself back."
"What is—"
"I never understood your mother while she was alive. Her unnecessary lashes. The sharp, raw sting of her words. I understand her now, I think. One cannot love a Medici man and be free from the hurt of it." Contessina broke the stare she shared with her husband and looked to her hands in her lap. "To be a Medici wife is to only know this…solitude."
Cosimo stood in the doorway; every muscle tensed. Words evaded his thoughts.
"I've come to terms with my isolation," Contessina said, waiting a moment for a response that never came. "Allow me to have it peacefully."
There was no fight left in the man. Her words had shocked him silent. He exited the room, leaving the door ajar behind him.
Night came quickly but Cosimo did not sleep. A month ago he would have called for Maddalena to distract his racing mind. This night, though, there was only one person he wished to see but he knew it would be impossible to convince his wife to even exchange pleasantries with him.
He took a stroll. The house fires kept the passageways well-lit but Cosimo wished they'd have been extinguished. Had it been a different night, a different time, he would have wandered the streets of Florence. He knew them like the back of his hand. With thugs still ruling the streets, it wasn't safe for anyone, especially the financially well-off.
Stepping down into the kitchen, he took an apple from a basket and stepped into the gardens. They were rich with scent. Contessina had been put in charge of them the day after their wedding, her first household task, and not even Piccarda complained about the state of it after that.
The air was warm yet Cosimo could not shake away the goosebumps that prickled his arms and legs.
"Messer," a guard said, cautiously approaching. His footfalls were loud on the gravel path. "Is everything alright? It is not safe to be walking this late at night these days, even in your own gardens."
"It is alright," Cosimo muttered half in a rage and half defeated. "I am returning now. Thank you."
What state had his Florence come to that he could not even walk in his own gardens? Turning back towards the house, Cosimo noticed brighter flickering lights in both the windows of his wife's chamber and his son and daughter-in-law's room. Piero and Lucrezia often turned in early if there was not a party to attend.
Cosimo took the stairs two at a time. If a family meeting had been called, he would be attending whether he was invited to or not. When he reached Piero's chamber, the door was open, and the sheets were wrinkled and unmade but the young lovers were not inside. Huffing, he strode towards Contessina's chamber at the other end of the house.
Nearly there, he watched as Lucrezia quietly exited the room, softly closing the door behind her. Cosimo nodded at his daughter-in-law in acknowledgment but before she could speak to him he pushed into the room.
Contessina sat on the edge of the bed as Piero and Emilia fussed over her.
"I'm fine, really," she said as she held a cloth to her nose.
"Mother, you're not though. You fainted." Piero handed her a clean cloth despite the cloth she held not needing changing.
"You're exhausted, Madonna," Emilia said. "Please, rest for a few days. This is the third time in just as many months."
"The bleeding is back?" Cosimo asked, startling the trio. Contessina avoided eye contact while Emilia and Piero both nodded.
"I'm fine, Cosimo," Contessina said looking toward the window. "You know that just as well as I do." She took the cloth from her nose and looked at it. The blood was dark and dried.
"See," she said, handing the cloth back to her son. "Finished. You may go."
Piero began protesting but silenced himself when Cosimo gave him a glaring look.
"Goodnight, Mother," he said, kissing Contessina on the cheek. "Goodnight, Father."
Emilia took a damp rag and handed it to Contessina.
"Ring if you need," she said to her mistress and followed Piero out of the room, closing the door behind her. Contessina wiped her face with the rag and ran it up and down the back of her neck a few times.
"I'll call the physician tomorrow," Cosimo said.
"I've already seen him," Contessina replied. "It is nothing new. He told me to rest just as every other physician has."
"And why aren't you doing so?" Cosimo took the rag from his wife and laid it on the edge of the basin to dry.
"I have been busy," Contessina replied with a tone that suggested an eye-roll without producing one.
"Too busy to take care of yourself? Really, Contessina."
"I needed to put my family first, remember?" Contessina stared daggers at her husband with tired eyes. "That was what I was instructed to do."
Cosimo took a deep inhale of breath and pushed the knuckle of his thumb into his forehead.
"I'm not in the mood for such arguments tonight."
"Neither am I," Contessina said, using the footboard of the bed as a crutch to stand up. "Goodnight, Cosimo." Walking to the vanity, Contessina blew out the extra candles that illuminated the room, plunging the duo into twilight.
"Send Emilia to bed on your way out," she continued, pulling back the blankets of her bed. "She's probably waiting in the hall." The woman's face, illuminated by the candlelight of the single flame on the bedside table, appeared both youthful and aged. Invisible wrinkles were both erased and exaggerated.
Without speaking, Cosimo plopped down on the bed next to his wife. He crossed his ankles and lay his hands on his stomach like he used to when he'd pretend to sleep next to Piero when the boy complained of demons standing in the curtains of his chambers at night.
"Are your chambers not satisfactory, Messer Medici?" Contessina scorned.
"They're quite satisfactory, Madonna Medici," Cosimo replied.
"Then would you like an escort back across the hall to your chamber, Messer Medici? I can call a servant." Contessina's voice grew with sarcasm.
"No, Madonna, I know the way well." Cosimo's response rivaled his wife's tone.
"Will you not go, then?" Contessina's sarcasm dipped into frustration tainted with anger. "Surely after tonight, you will allow me reprieve of any marital duties expected from a loyal wife."
Cosimo turned onto his side. As he turned, he imagined meeting his wife's eyes and showing her the sincerity of his following statement with his own. What he found was his wife's back, her hair cascading onto the pillow behind her. Her body was curled in a way that made her seem like a small child.
"I didn't come here to lie with you, Contessina." Cosimo placed his hand on his wife's arm and rubbed the fabric of her nightgown with his thumb. "I simply want to ensure your health."
Contessina did not respond. She did not ask him to go, though, so Cosimo stayed.