Donatello was still fastened snugly into his wedding gown as he contemplated the vagaries of his future sitting on the terrace below his bridal suite. He craved a cigarette and even in his turmoil he could appreciate the cliché of it. The incense still wafted from the nearby cathedral like an unwanted reminder working in tandem with the lace of his elegant gown that both hugged and scratched his back. At daybreak he had squeezed into it as a sacrifice..,as a ruler, and in spite of everything that had since come to pass, had that changed?
In the suite above, the bed loomed, vast and ceremonial. On it lay the Padre, slack-jawed and purpled, undone not by poison or dagger but by his own desire. For years Donatello had lived in fear of this man. The Padre had decreed that no men might live within his walls. A mother’s love had hidden him from that decree: he had grown in shadows, schooled in silence, told always that escape would come. Yet when the day arrived his mother bound him into silk and offered him in place of bread and fruit.
Even his own greed driven mother could not have foreseen how well she had feminised her son. For the Padre after claiming the offering from the humble townswoman, quickly came to desire the girl she had crafted from Donatello. Desire became lust, and when Donatello rejected the Padre's advances to protect his Catholic chaste, lust became an urgent mission to marry the beautiful young offering so he may bed her.
The Padre had demanded Donatello as his wife, and Femini had demanded him as their queen. Knowing that rejecting the town's leader outright was not option for the well-being of both himself and the locals, Donatello delayed the inevitable as long as he could but the day eventually came. He had hidden his sex expertly as a team of handmaids painted and pampered him before sewing him into the exquisite wedding gown he still wore.
He had walked the aisle as a daughter, heard the cheers of the women, seen them weep as though salvation had come. He had felt the Padre’s eyes burn through the veil, had heard the vows spoken over him, had felt the ring bite cold around his finger. And in the bedchamber he had no more cards to play. He had started to slowly undress. Yet it had driven the Padre into frenzy, into wheezing ecstasy, until his heart burst and left him sprawled across the marriage bed.
Donatello sat with only silence for company. Each of the town's windows sheltering women who still believed their master lived. They did not know the tyrant’s corpse was cooling only a few steps away. They did not know that their freedom—if freedom it was—now rested in the painted hands of his bride. Widow, he thought. Heiress. Prisoner. If he stripped away the gown, if he shouted the truth, he would lose everything—perhaps his life. But if he remained her, the widow of the Padre, the house and wealth and throne would be his. And what of the women of Femini? To free them, he must remain bound. To lead them, he must remain a lie. He pushed his ring tightly onto his finger and once more wished for a cigarette.
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