Page 40 of Palazzo
It was a spectacular wedding, and a jubilant celebration. The guests danced until five in the morning to an orchestra Cosima had had sent from Rome. Basile held Allegra in his arms and spun her around the dance floor. And there was a wedding breakfast at six in the morning, which lasted until seven. When the sun was well up in the sky, the guests repaired to their various hotels and yachts to recover from the celebration. The wedding feast had been one of the best Cosima had ever tasted, and the wedding cake a white spun-sugar fantasy flecked with gold. There was caviar in abundant quantities at the wedding breakfast. Olivier had selected all the best French wines.
Every moment of the wedding was perfection, and best of all was the obvious love between Basile and Allegra. They stayed at the palazzo that night and left on their honeymoon the next morning, with Olivier and Cosima and a few lingering friends who had stayed at the palazzo throwing rose petals at them. It was everything Allegra had said she wanted and that Cosima had hoped it would be. It was yet another memory for all of them to cherish forever. The sacred union of Allegra and Basile.
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On New Year’s Day, a hundred of the same people came together again. The ceremony was at Santa Maria dei Miracoli Church near the Rialto Bridge. Its interior and exterior were decorated with magnificent colored marble, with a gilded ceiling. The church was filled with light. Olivier and Cosima wanted a smaller wedding, but it was just as beautiful as Allegra’s and more intimate. The choir sang, and they both cried when they exchanged their vows. The gondolas took them all from the church on the “Rio dei Miracoli” canal to the Grand Canal and to the Palazzo Saverio with the bridal gondola leading. Cosima was wearing her mother’s wedding gown, which they had found in a trunk in storage, perfectly preserved, with the original lace veil, and the pearl tiara Allegra had worn, and generations of Saverio women before her. Even her mother’s embroidered handmade white satin shoes in a Renaissance style fit her.
When they joined their guests, Cosima and Olivier came down the grand staircase arm in arm just as Cosima’s parents had at their wedding. The wedding dinner was sumptuous, the wines perfect again. They danced all night, and the wedding ended at four in the morning. It was snowing as the guests left, light flurries like tiny angels blessing them. Every moment of the night had been perfect and exactly what Cosima and Olivier wanted. The people they loved most had come. Allegra was six months pregnant, with a son. Cosima and Olivier had agreed to see what would happen without trying, after they married, and would be fine either way.
When the last guest had left, they stood together in the immense doorway of the palazzo, watching the snow. It was the perfectbeginning to a new day, a new year, a new life. Olivier handed Cosima a small, neat box wrapped in silver paper.
“What’s that?” she asked him. He had given her a diamond bracelet as a wedding present, which she had worn to the wedding. She unwrapped the box carefully, and there was a large heavy metal key in it, ornate and partially rusted. She looked at him, puzzled, and then realized what it was. It was the original key to the palazzo. He had found it when he was renovating the house after he bought it. And folded into the box was the deed to the palazzo. It was hers now. He was returning it to her. It was her history and her heritage.
“It was always meant to be yours,” he said simply. “I just borrowed it for a while as gatekeeper to return it to you in good order.” He kissed her and she smiled up at him, and together they closed the heavy door of the palazzo and walked up the grand staircase to their bedroom, with the train of her wedding dress trailing behind her down the stairs. They had made memories that night, and history in the life of Palazzo Saverio as six centuries of her ancestors blessed them. As man and wife, they were the guardians of the palazzo now, and its history. They were part of Venice, with all its magic and mystery, as he kissed her. Their adventure together, their own history, and the memories they would share, had only just begun.
