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[mansuetus]

Tranquility!

[ Guess who is back in her high spirits. Lucrezia is wearing red silks and is evidently strolling the gardens this morning ]

It is my birthday today, I have decided.

[ a pause in which she just looks pleased with herself and then she explains ]

As I do not know how to count the days here when compared with the count common in Rome, I have chosen today for my birthday. I shall accept my greetings at the garden.

[ prim and proper but those who know her by now can see the jest in her words. ]

And I have decided what I wish as my gift, if you would hear it!

[ wait for it. ]

For the birthday of the one called the illustrious Lucrezia Borgia, me and garden both require - a swing!

[ a beat. ]

And cake.

[ that would actually be all. Lucrezia Borgia, ladies and gentleman. She would be sitting in the garden, reading a book, for those who wish to find her. ]

Comments

[assumedposition]

She did. But alas-- half way through the encore performance, her father found the young boy backstage and had him thrown out of the Opera Hall once more. For you see, he wanted his daughter to have a radiant future, away from any scandal that might befall her for associating with the young man who was no longer her fiancé.

But you see, fortune was not in her father's favour. Some weeks later, every single one of his stocks crashed. All the money he had tied up in investments suddenly amounted to naught. Where before he had been content to let his daughter and her new fiancé take things slow, now his only chance to save his family from ruin was to rush the wedding, for the new fiancé was of course rich beyond words. The young girl tried to refuse, but she was not really given the choice-- unless she wanted her family to die penniless in the gutter, her father said. So, reluctantly, she agreed.

But come the day of the wedding ceremony, she was still reluctant go through with it. As she leant over the legal document about to sign herself away to a man she didn't love forever, she paused, frozen with indecision. At that moment... suddenly! All the lights in the room went out!

[mansuetus]

[ Albert she is about to kill you. ]

And then? Stop again and I shall hit you!!

[assumedposition]

[He laughs] Sorry, I'm sorry! I won't stop again, I promise. No need for violence, I'm almost at the end.

So when the lights came back on again, everyone in the room could see that there was one small difference. The bride was still frozen in place, but... in place of where her signature should have been on the parchment, there was a large, ugly ink splotch! She had hesitated above it with her quill too long, you see. Right then, a maid called out: "That's a bad omen, for sure! You should reconsider this marriage!" And she walked up to the podium, past the shocked couple-to-be, tore the parchment from its' binding, scrunched it up and threw it in the bin! Quick as you please.

This was the moment our young man had been waiting for! The maid was in fact a friend of his, and they had snuck into the wedding disguised as serving maids together. While all the attention was on his friend, he snuck up to his beloved and took her gently by the hand, as a maid might take her lady away from the scene of a scandal. Our young lady had not recognised him in the room earlier, dressed as he was, but the instant he appeared by her side she realised what was happening. So they fled. The guards gave chase moments later, but they were too slow! The young man had come prepared this time. He had planned an escape route and arranged to have a friend waiting at the gates with a car, ready to go. And so they made good their escape.

The happy ending to this story, however, is not that they escaped from the wedding. It is that, on the night at the opera house, the young man had not been the only person to be enchanted with the young lady's performance. In the audience had also been a very important man-- the head of a well-known music school in another country across the sea, famous for producing talented musicians. A few days before her wedding, the young lady received a letter from him, in which he wrote that he would like to offer her a place at his music school-- and a scholarship. All expenses paid. At long last, her talent had been recognised by the world.

The young man encouraged her to go-- after all, he said, he would wait, but dreams did not. So they parted at the airport that same day, but not before finally sharing love's first kiss and exchanging a promise that until they could meet again and be married, they would always be in each other's hearts.

[mansuetus]

But then, why did he not marry the girl and went with her signore Albert? It is only a half of a very good ending -

[assumedposition]

... As much as he would have liked to, he could not. There were other things back in the city he had to take care of that only he could do. A war, started by his father, that he had to set to rights. If he had gone with her, he would simply have been running away. But ... that's another story entirely, one much more sad.

[mansuetus]

[ she looks at him for a moment, smiles a moment after. ]

Give me your hand.

[assumedposition]

What-- my hand? ... Of course, madame ...

[He does so, though confused.]

[mansuetus]

[ she presses her own to his. ]

I pray that when the war ceases and all is done, that the boy would find the girl he loves and remain with her until the end of their days.

[ a smile. ]

[assumedposition]

Huh? Oh! ... Oh. Um. Thank you, madame. I-- I do too.

[Well now you've gone and made him blush.]

[mansuetus]

Lucrezia.

Call me that and consider it my birthday wish.

[assumedposition]

[Blinking in surprise... but it's not for him to tell a lady how she should be addressed, so eventually he nods.]

Of course, m-- Lucrezia. It would be an honour.