He sang a song, evidently in Italian, full of words I didn’t know but which Will guessed meant things like sweet and love—dolce and amore, I remember that well. I mouthed those sounds silently, thrilled I now knew words in my mother’s language.
“Look! Look, he’s coming off the bridge this way!” I cried to Will when the queen’s retinue went back inside and the bankside audience drifted away to other pursuits. “Will, please, hold the horses for a moment. I must try to speak with him, to see if he knew my mother, if he could be kin to her and me.”
“Bring him back over here,” Will insisted as I thrust my reins at him and darted off through the thinning crowd.
“Master Tumbler, do you speak English?” I cried as I caught up with the Italian. I sounded breathless. He had seemed so tall and robust balancing above, but now I saw he was quite short and thin. Up close, his costume looked gaudy and worn.
“Aye, lad, what is it then, ’less you’ve come from your master to beg a show.” Though he sounded weary and vexed, he spoke in a lovely, lilting way, pronouncing little words like it or is as if they were eet or eez.
Still perspiring from his exertions, he seemed to gleam. Such a handsome face with bronze skin, dark eyes and sleek eyebrows framed by hair so black it shown blue in the sun. My heart went out to him, for he had like coloring to me. He had evidently noted that well too, for he said, “Or do you ask, because you are Italiano too, my boy?”
“I’m part Italian because my mother was, but she died years ago. Her name was Anna Rosalina de Verona, and her family were tumblers. She could walk a taut rope, even at St. Paul’s in London. That’s where my father first saw her. He’s there now on a trip, but he’s missed her horribly too.”
He smiled as his eyes flickered over me. He motioned me away from the little rabble of children who had followed. I was about to tell him my friend Will wanted to meet him too, but all that flew right out of my head when he said, “Ah, but you resemble her greatly, our Anna Rosalina. Had she not told you of me, her cousin Bruno de Verona? And, do I not detect a beautiful young woman in that lad’s shirt and hose and breeches, si?” he asked with a light pat on my hip.
I nodded so hard my pinned-up hair bounced loose from my cap. He spoke good enough English and was kin to my mother. His very voice haunted me with long-buried memories of how she spoke. I began to cry.
“Ah, bellissima, a woman indeed, so slender, so light and lovely with her feelings brimming over, si? Come, come with me and let us talk of her, our poor, departed Anna Rosalina. Ah, her loss is such a shock to me also, but did you ever think to learn her craft then, cara bella?”
“Of tumbling or ropedancing?” I asked as I swiped at my wet cheeks with Will’s shirtsleeve and followed him away from the lake. “I had thought of it, dreamed it,” I admitted.
I felt I danced with Bruno de Verona even now upon the bridge railing in the sky with the queen’s courtiers clapping in approval and awe. Once I glanced back, hoping to see Will, to gesture him to follow, but I saw him or the horses nowhere. I could not let Bruno go, not someone who had known the beautiful cloud dancer who had left such a hole in my heart. I had to know everything about her.
We walked into a field, set off by trees but not far from the castle where many small tents were staked and roped in the ground, perhaps the temporary abodes of the queen’s carters and servants who could not fit within the bursting castle walls. At this close range, I saw the tents were muddied and tattered.
“You make a very pretty boy, but I could use an Italian-looking maid to train to my talents, to know and respond to my arts,” Bruno said with a wink. “Come, sit within.” He swept his arm gracefully toward one tent staked a bit off to the side. “We shall share some sweet ale and talk of the queen of England and your queen of a mother. Families should keep