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tanarillMy room has this horrible habit of not being able to retain temperature. I mean, the temperature the internal themostat gives it. In winter, it's always a bit colder in summer, it's a few degrees warmer. Which would not be a big deal but a few degrees warmer that seventy-six, which is what the thermostat is set at in summer, is nearly eighty. And I am hot.
Title: Maru-Raba
Fandom: Taming of the Shrew
Rating: G
Warnings: Snipyness
Katharina spent most of Friday at the tailor's. The dress was fine-she'd chosen this particular tailor because he could follow instructions and nearly always got it right the first time around-but while he had her measurements and a mannequin of her, there were finer adjustments to be made.
Saturday, Petruchio came by again, kissing her gently on the cheek.
"What, tired of your diversions?" she asked.
"Low, my love. Very low. There was a matter I would have brought to your consideration, but now it seems to have slipped my mind-"
"Petruchio."
"Now what was it?"
"Juliano."
"Ah, right. There is the matter of our departure from the feast."
"What of it?" asked Katharina.
"Well, it fully depends on your desires."
"Explain."
"Should you desire a mad feast to our mad fortune, and be borne to our nuptial rest by you father, and have that selfsame bed be in this very house-well, then all is well."
That was an aspect of the marriage that Katharina was not looking forward to at all. The whole wedding crowd would see her to bed, and expect bloody sheets in the morning. She had a small bottle of chicken blood already prepared for the purpose, but avoiding the humiliation of the thing altogether . . . Still.
"Flee my wedding for your villa? Is it removed so far?"
"No, but I know a good inn on the road. The fare may not be quite so grand, but the company's better."
"What, rats and fleas?"
"Juliano's mother," said Petruchio sharply, and Katharina shut up. Her own mother had died shortly after Bianca's birth, and the closest thing she'd had to one after that was the woman who nursed her infant sibling. She knew for a fact that Juliano's father was dead, but it had never occurred to her that his mother lived. And of course, she'd never be able to come to the wedding feast properly, because . . .
Because Juliano had to protect her, so Petruchio's mother was dead.
"Oh," she said, very quietly, and then more loudly, "And how shall we rid ourselves of your man Grumio?"
"That's what I meant to ask of you."
"Hmm. Well, how do you plan to leave straight from the wedding?"
"With you at my side?"
Katharina felt her lips twitch. "Yes. I mean, how shall we escape such a crowd?"
"By your temper," said Petruchio.
"By my-what?" gasped Katharina, insulted in that way that made her blood sing.
"We'll put on a kind of a . . . play," said Petruchio, slowly and contemplatively. "We are in accord, my Kate-we are in accord?"
Kate nodded, curious now. They'd have blazing rows nearly all the time, she thought dazedly, and it wouldn't matter because he understood that it was just fun.
"But we will not seem it. It will not look unusual, in any case, because none expect us to be in accord. And so I will drag you from the wedding, you all protesting, as loud as you like, and leave them standing behind dumbfounded at my haste to get you hence."
"And then we ride for this inn of yours?"
"There is still the matter of Grumio."
Ah, thought Katherine. Grumio followed him, and still does, but there are some secrets Petruchio still keeps. "Mayhap some highwaymen will layway us and bear him off," said Kate out loud, not quite joking.
"They are no jest, merry Kate."
"What, are they so terrible?"
"Worse. Kate, I do not lie to you."
He wasn't. She could tell because when he was telling the truth, his ever-present half-smirk vanished. He looked better with it, too sober by half without. And, she thought, he would know.
"Then we'll just have to do without. Mayhap another play . . . "
"Should we spend our whole lives in plays, then?"
"It was your idea first," Katharina reminded him primly. "And this will be a good one. My dress shall spoiled."
"Is it a bad dress?" asked Petruchio, sounding actually curious.
"No, but if still exists they'll try to bury me in it."
"Ah. Your plan, Kate?"
She told him. It relied heavily on the fact that Stallion was Stallion, that Katharina was a better rider than Petruchio, and that Grumio knew his master well enough to know Petruchio could protect his wife without a second blade. After she'd finished explaining, Petruchio kissed her again and said, "Wonderful!" and clapped her on the back, exactly as if she were his partner in a particularly well-managed deception.
III.
Katharina waited in full wedding relgaia and tried not to think about what she'd do if Petruchio didn't show up. She actually liked him. He wasn't as smart as she was, but no one was; the point was he didn't try to curb it-was willing to use it to his advantage. Maybe she should not have set his challenge so high? But she'd made a promise to remain an old maid before wedding someone who couldn't match.
She'd gotten angry and made a speech and come inside; she had half been expecting him to carry her off on a horse, and she was determined to make it difficult for him.
What she did not expect was Petruchio-Juliano-to come dressed as himself and sweep her, in his madcap way, to the church for a real wedding. Well, as real as it can get when her groom kept swearing and acting like the man he no longer was and never for a moment letting her forgot that he was humiliating himself in front of the entire church because she'd asked him to.
She was fighting laughter at the end, right up until the part where the vicar said, "You may now kiss the bride," and he did in a way that probably wasn't decent in public and when he pulled back he whispered in her ear, "Are you satisfied, my Kate?"
She smiled at him, which caused him to kiss her again.
The getting-out-of-the-wedding-feast ruse went off without a hitch. No one expected Petruchio to listen to reason, mad as he was, and no one expected Katharina to want to leave her own wedding feast, and no one seemed to be paying the least bit of attention to the fact that Katharina had, actually, said "I do." Stupid, idiotic . . .
No one seemed to notice that Kate was riding Stallion, either. Of course, her father hadn't expressly given him to her, but she'd written up her own dowery, and all things considered, the fact that the prize Minola stallion would no longer be living in the Minola stables was not a problem since he would still be the Minola stud. And Grumio was on this tiny mare. Petruchio's horse was with foal by Stallion.
This time, Katharina had to wait until they got to a point where the road was low and muddy before giving Stallion is own reign and letting the inevitable happen. She had the easy job, in any case: "fall" off Stallion when he suddenly lunched for Grumio's mare, sit in the mud for a while while Petruchio nearly took Grumio's ear off with cursing, and then suggest that the servant be sent on ahead to get the house ready.
And then sit there laughing until she cried once Grumio was out of sight and earshot. Petruchio joined her shortly thereafter. "Kate, dearest. I think we neglected a part of the plan. How are we supposed to get them apart?"
That set Kate off again. When she calmed down, she managed to gasp out, "She's not in heat. She was earlier this year. And she's a sweet mare, but if my Stallion tries anything, he's sure to be bitten."
Petruchio appeared to think about this, and then said, "I'd really rather my mare not bite me."
That set Kate off again, until she gradually quieted under Petruchio's gaze. His half-smirk was still there, but there as something else, something indefinable, as well. "What?" she asked.
"I was just thinking that we really are married," he said quietly.
Katharina-stopped. It had been such a long, unusual day already and it probably wasn't more than half over. She hadn't been thinking about it. In fact, she realized with a start, she had been avoiding thinking about it. "Yes," she said, catching his eye. "We're stuck with each other now. Help me up."
He did. Katharina knew that she was fairly shapely, as women went, but where Bianca ate like a bird, she-did not. And the entire dress was sopping went with mud, too. Petruchio exerted no visible effort in lifting her. Once she was standing, she started explaining how to get the thing off.
"What, here in this field?" asked Petruchio. "I didn't mean that literally."
Katharina shot him a glare over his shoulder. "I'm soaking wet and covered in mud, and there's a simple riding dress in your saddlebag. I planned ahead, you see."
Once she was in dry clothing and wearing boots, she she went and caught Stallion's bridle. Stallion stood stoically as she clambered on, and Petruchio packed the wet dress on the other mare. Once they'd tied a lead to her, they set off again.
It was nowhere near dark when they arrived at the inn, but they did have to give Grumio plenty of time to get home and spread wild tales before they arrived. It was dim and warm inside, full of activity. But the wenches all knew Petruchio's face, for all they called him Juliano, and sent him straight to he kitchen, trailing his bride.
The first time Katharina ever met her, Juliano's mother Franca had her arm in a goose that she was divesting of entrails. She didn't stop cooking during the entire conversation, either.
Of course, she was the cook for this big and busy inn a few hours' from the walls of Padua, so cooking was what she did. Judging by the aromas, she did it quite well, everything from baking to butchering in the long, low kitchen.
"Mother," said Petruchio, smiling as he approached her, "I kept my promise and married the most impossible woman in Christendom."
"I am not!" gasped Katharina, and then realized that she had just said that to her mother-in-law.
Petruchio laughed, and reached out with a lazy arm to draw her close. "Yes you are," he kissed her on the nose, "and I wouldn't have you any other way. Mother, this is Katharina, daughter of Baptista Minola. Kate, this is my mother." He said this with such pride in her and quiet reverence for his mother that Katharina automatically dropped a curtsy.
The woman, who had finished emptying entrails into a bucket, asked, "That Katharina they call the Shrew?" She looked thoughtful, and then added, "I don't see it. You're too smart to have married my boy without knowing what he is, and he's too smart to marry anyone really and truly a shrew. So let's have it."
"Have what?" asked Katharina, taken aback.
"Have your story, of course," replied the Franca. "Have you ever shelled peas? No, nevermind, a noblewoman like yourself wouldn't have. Still, there's first time for everything, and I'll have no idle hands in this kitchen. Pull up a stool. Juliano, go find some meat rolls."
Katharina, for perhaps the first time in her life, did as she was told. It was hard not to, with this tiny, tough old lady, who just happened to be holding a very sharp knife and carving up a chicken, ordering her around.
It took her about the same time it took Juliano to go find a plain wooden plate and fill it with food for her to learn how to shell peas. And then he sat down and started to work with her, as they told her about Petruchio's courtship and their wedding. He kept handing her bits of food and telling her to eat. Her eyes widened at the first bite; simple fare, true, but tastier than half the food at her own father's table. Franca proved to be a good audience, too, laughing at the right times, asking the right questions, and periodically taking over and telling Katharina stories about Juliano's reckless youth. All the while, she shelled peas.
At about the time Katharina was staring to feel full, Franca asked them both, "How do you plan to go about your play?" And, to their looks, "Look, your Kate cannot merely and suddenly submit to you, who has never submitted even to her own father. You're going to have to make a show of that, too."
Petruchio began with, "What?"
At the same time, Katharina sighed, "I know."
"You do?" asked Petruchio.
"I do. After you made such a big announcement of taming me, you're going to have to do it. Although not," she added, to make sure it was understood, "for sooth."
"Oh," said Petruchio, while Katherina sighed again and Franca rolled her eyes.
"Well, children," said Franca, "I've a plan. It was story my grandmother told me when I was little. Maybe you can use it now."
She told them. They listened. They talked it over between the three of them, unraveling the knots and planning for contingencies, and then when the whole plan was just about plotted-Katherina especially liked the public kiss right in front of her father's home-Franca advised them that they ought to head home before it got too much on toward sunset. Petruchio went off to get the horses.
"It's good that he found you," said Franca, looking up at her daughter-in-law. "He needs a strong-minded woman to curb his recklessness. He's a good boy, you understand. Just reckless. Not as wise as one might wish, and a little to endeared of that Petruchio name. Still, he saw to it, after it all happened, that I got a good job working here, as a freewoman with no stink of nobility. Yourself excepted, of course," she added, remembering who Katharina was.
"I-what exactly did happen?" asked Katharina. "I know in general, but not-"
"Ask him yourself," said Franca, and then more softly, "It's not really my secret to tell."
"You love him very much," said Katharina.
"I'm his mother. Of course I love him. Kate, take care of him."
Katharina felt, for a moment, the depth of a mother's love, which was something that picked her up and bowled her over and drowned her completely. Then she said, quite firmly, "I will."
Franca gave her a hug and a kiss on both cheeks and the same for her son, and sent them off with a packet full of her food.
And then they left, riding on toward home while the shadows lengthened and deepened. Katherina reached up to the tingle on her cheeks where Franca had kissed her and thought about what it meant to be a shrew and how tough a woman would have to be to raise a Juliano, much less a Petruchio. She cried a little because she had been lucky enough to find a mother who wouldn't have to be worthy of her; who she would have to work of to be worthy of. And then she dried her tears and smiled at her husband.
If he had noticed, he didn't say anything, but he did smile back.
Wow, long bit. But Franca really wanted to show up, and you can't just say no to her, so. That was Franca. If she'd been nobly born, she would also have been called a shrew because she's at least as intelligent as Katharina and she's got a lot more life experience to boot.
Title: Maru-Raba
Fandom: Taming of the Shrew
Rating: G
Warnings: Snipyness
Katharina spent most of Friday at the tailor's. The dress was fine-she'd chosen this particular tailor because he could follow instructions and nearly always got it right the first time around-but while he had her measurements and a mannequin of her, there were finer adjustments to be made.
Saturday, Petruchio came by again, kissing her gently on the cheek.
"What, tired of your diversions?" she asked.
"Low, my love. Very low. There was a matter I would have brought to your consideration, but now it seems to have slipped my mind-"
"Petruchio."
"Now what was it?"
"Juliano."
"Ah, right. There is the matter of our departure from the feast."
"What of it?" asked Katharina.
"Well, it fully depends on your desires."
"Explain."
"Should you desire a mad feast to our mad fortune, and be borne to our nuptial rest by you father, and have that selfsame bed be in this very house-well, then all is well."
That was an aspect of the marriage that Katharina was not looking forward to at all. The whole wedding crowd would see her to bed, and expect bloody sheets in the morning. She had a small bottle of chicken blood already prepared for the purpose, but avoiding the humiliation of the thing altogether . . . Still.
"Flee my wedding for your villa? Is it removed so far?"
"No, but I know a good inn on the road. The fare may not be quite so grand, but the company's better."
"What, rats and fleas?"
"Juliano's mother," said Petruchio sharply, and Katharina shut up. Her own mother had died shortly after Bianca's birth, and the closest thing she'd had to one after that was the woman who nursed her infant sibling. She knew for a fact that Juliano's father was dead, but it had never occurred to her that his mother lived. And of course, she'd never be able to come to the wedding feast properly, because . . .
Because Juliano had to protect her, so Petruchio's mother was dead.
"Oh," she said, very quietly, and then more loudly, "And how shall we rid ourselves of your man Grumio?"
"That's what I meant to ask of you."
"Hmm. Well, how do you plan to leave straight from the wedding?"
"With you at my side?"
Katharina felt her lips twitch. "Yes. I mean, how shall we escape such a crowd?"
"By your temper," said Petruchio.
"By my-what?" gasped Katharina, insulted in that way that made her blood sing.
"We'll put on a kind of a . . . play," said Petruchio, slowly and contemplatively. "We are in accord, my Kate-we are in accord?"
Kate nodded, curious now. They'd have blazing rows nearly all the time, she thought dazedly, and it wouldn't matter because he understood that it was just fun.
"But we will not seem it. It will not look unusual, in any case, because none expect us to be in accord. And so I will drag you from the wedding, you all protesting, as loud as you like, and leave them standing behind dumbfounded at my haste to get you hence."
"And then we ride for this inn of yours?"
"There is still the matter of Grumio."
Ah, thought Katherine. Grumio followed him, and still does, but there are some secrets Petruchio still keeps. "Mayhap some highwaymen will layway us and bear him off," said Kate out loud, not quite joking.
"They are no jest, merry Kate."
"What, are they so terrible?"
"Worse. Kate, I do not lie to you."
He wasn't. She could tell because when he was telling the truth, his ever-present half-smirk vanished. He looked better with it, too sober by half without. And, she thought, he would know.
"Then we'll just have to do without. Mayhap another play . . . "
"Should we spend our whole lives in plays, then?"
"It was your idea first," Katharina reminded him primly. "And this will be a good one. My dress shall spoiled."
"Is it a bad dress?" asked Petruchio, sounding actually curious.
"No, but if still exists they'll try to bury me in it."
"Ah. Your plan, Kate?"
She told him. It relied heavily on the fact that Stallion was Stallion, that Katharina was a better rider than Petruchio, and that Grumio knew his master well enough to know Petruchio could protect his wife without a second blade. After she'd finished explaining, Petruchio kissed her again and said, "Wonderful!" and clapped her on the back, exactly as if she were his partner in a particularly well-managed deception.
III.
Katharina waited in full wedding relgaia and tried not to think about what she'd do if Petruchio didn't show up. She actually liked him. He wasn't as smart as she was, but no one was; the point was he didn't try to curb it-was willing to use it to his advantage. Maybe she should not have set his challenge so high? But she'd made a promise to remain an old maid before wedding someone who couldn't match.
She'd gotten angry and made a speech and come inside; she had half been expecting him to carry her off on a horse, and she was determined to make it difficult for him.
What she did not expect was Petruchio-Juliano-to come dressed as himself and sweep her, in his madcap way, to the church for a real wedding. Well, as real as it can get when her groom kept swearing and acting like the man he no longer was and never for a moment letting her forgot that he was humiliating himself in front of the entire church because she'd asked him to.
She was fighting laughter at the end, right up until the part where the vicar said, "You may now kiss the bride," and he did in a way that probably wasn't decent in public and when he pulled back he whispered in her ear, "Are you satisfied, my Kate?"
She smiled at him, which caused him to kiss her again.
The getting-out-of-the-wedding-feast ruse went off without a hitch. No one expected Petruchio to listen to reason, mad as he was, and no one expected Katharina to want to leave her own wedding feast, and no one seemed to be paying the least bit of attention to the fact that Katharina had, actually, said "I do." Stupid, idiotic . . .
No one seemed to notice that Kate was riding Stallion, either. Of course, her father hadn't expressly given him to her, but she'd written up her own dowery, and all things considered, the fact that the prize Minola stallion would no longer be living in the Minola stables was not a problem since he would still be the Minola stud. And Grumio was on this tiny mare. Petruchio's horse was with foal by Stallion.
This time, Katharina had to wait until they got to a point where the road was low and muddy before giving Stallion is own reign and letting the inevitable happen. She had the easy job, in any case: "fall" off Stallion when he suddenly lunched for Grumio's mare, sit in the mud for a while while Petruchio nearly took Grumio's ear off with cursing, and then suggest that the servant be sent on ahead to get the house ready.
And then sit there laughing until she cried once Grumio was out of sight and earshot. Petruchio joined her shortly thereafter. "Kate, dearest. I think we neglected a part of the plan. How are we supposed to get them apart?"
That set Kate off again. When she calmed down, she managed to gasp out, "She's not in heat. She was earlier this year. And she's a sweet mare, but if my Stallion tries anything, he's sure to be bitten."
Petruchio appeared to think about this, and then said, "I'd really rather my mare not bite me."
That set Kate off again, until she gradually quieted under Petruchio's gaze. His half-smirk was still there, but there as something else, something indefinable, as well. "What?" she asked.
"I was just thinking that we really are married," he said quietly.
Katharina-stopped. It had been such a long, unusual day already and it probably wasn't more than half over. She hadn't been thinking about it. In fact, she realized with a start, she had been avoiding thinking about it. "Yes," she said, catching his eye. "We're stuck with each other now. Help me up."
He did. Katharina knew that she was fairly shapely, as women went, but where Bianca ate like a bird, she-did not. And the entire dress was sopping went with mud, too. Petruchio exerted no visible effort in lifting her. Once she was standing, she started explaining how to get the thing off.
"What, here in this field?" asked Petruchio. "I didn't mean that literally."
Katharina shot him a glare over his shoulder. "I'm soaking wet and covered in mud, and there's a simple riding dress in your saddlebag. I planned ahead, you see."
Once she was in dry clothing and wearing boots, she she went and caught Stallion's bridle. Stallion stood stoically as she clambered on, and Petruchio packed the wet dress on the other mare. Once they'd tied a lead to her, they set off again.
It was nowhere near dark when they arrived at the inn, but they did have to give Grumio plenty of time to get home and spread wild tales before they arrived. It was dim and warm inside, full of activity. But the wenches all knew Petruchio's face, for all they called him Juliano, and sent him straight to he kitchen, trailing his bride.
The first time Katharina ever met her, Juliano's mother Franca had her arm in a goose that she was divesting of entrails. She didn't stop cooking during the entire conversation, either.
Of course, she was the cook for this big and busy inn a few hours' from the walls of Padua, so cooking was what she did. Judging by the aromas, she did it quite well, everything from baking to butchering in the long, low kitchen.
"Mother," said Petruchio, smiling as he approached her, "I kept my promise and married the most impossible woman in Christendom."
"I am not!" gasped Katharina, and then realized that she had just said that to her mother-in-law.
Petruchio laughed, and reached out with a lazy arm to draw her close. "Yes you are," he kissed her on the nose, "and I wouldn't have you any other way. Mother, this is Katharina, daughter of Baptista Minola. Kate, this is my mother." He said this with such pride in her and quiet reverence for his mother that Katharina automatically dropped a curtsy.
The woman, who had finished emptying entrails into a bucket, asked, "That Katharina they call the Shrew?" She looked thoughtful, and then added, "I don't see it. You're too smart to have married my boy without knowing what he is, and he's too smart to marry anyone really and truly a shrew. So let's have it."
"Have what?" asked Katharina, taken aback.
"Have your story, of course," replied the Franca. "Have you ever shelled peas? No, nevermind, a noblewoman like yourself wouldn't have. Still, there's first time for everything, and I'll have no idle hands in this kitchen. Pull up a stool. Juliano, go find some meat rolls."
Katharina, for perhaps the first time in her life, did as she was told. It was hard not to, with this tiny, tough old lady, who just happened to be holding a very sharp knife and carving up a chicken, ordering her around.
It took her about the same time it took Juliano to go find a plain wooden plate and fill it with food for her to learn how to shell peas. And then he sat down and started to work with her, as they told her about Petruchio's courtship and their wedding. He kept handing her bits of food and telling her to eat. Her eyes widened at the first bite; simple fare, true, but tastier than half the food at her own father's table. Franca proved to be a good audience, too, laughing at the right times, asking the right questions, and periodically taking over and telling Katharina stories about Juliano's reckless youth. All the while, she shelled peas.
At about the time Katharina was staring to feel full, Franca asked them both, "How do you plan to go about your play?" And, to their looks, "Look, your Kate cannot merely and suddenly submit to you, who has never submitted even to her own father. You're going to have to make a show of that, too."
Petruchio began with, "What?"
At the same time, Katharina sighed, "I know."
"You do?" asked Petruchio.
"I do. After you made such a big announcement of taming me, you're going to have to do it. Although not," she added, to make sure it was understood, "for sooth."
"Oh," said Petruchio, while Katherina sighed again and Franca rolled her eyes.
"Well, children," said Franca, "I've a plan. It was story my grandmother told me when I was little. Maybe you can use it now."
She told them. They listened. They talked it over between the three of them, unraveling the knots and planning for contingencies, and then when the whole plan was just about plotted-Katherina especially liked the public kiss right in front of her father's home-Franca advised them that they ought to head home before it got too much on toward sunset. Petruchio went off to get the horses.
"It's good that he found you," said Franca, looking up at her daughter-in-law. "He needs a strong-minded woman to curb his recklessness. He's a good boy, you understand. Just reckless. Not as wise as one might wish, and a little to endeared of that Petruchio name. Still, he saw to it, after it all happened, that I got a good job working here, as a freewoman with no stink of nobility. Yourself excepted, of course," she added, remembering who Katharina was.
"I-what exactly did happen?" asked Katharina. "I know in general, but not-"
"Ask him yourself," said Franca, and then more softly, "It's not really my secret to tell."
"You love him very much," said Katharina.
"I'm his mother. Of course I love him. Kate, take care of him."
Katharina felt, for a moment, the depth of a mother's love, which was something that picked her up and bowled her over and drowned her completely. Then she said, quite firmly, "I will."
Franca gave her a hug and a kiss on both cheeks and the same for her son, and sent them off with a packet full of her food.
And then they left, riding on toward home while the shadows lengthened and deepened. Katherina reached up to the tingle on her cheeks where Franca had kissed her and thought about what it meant to be a shrew and how tough a woman would have to be to raise a Juliano, much less a Petruchio. She cried a little because she had been lucky enough to find a mother who wouldn't have to be worthy of her; who she would have to work of to be worthy of. And then she dried her tears and smiled at her husband.
If he had noticed, he didn't say anything, but he did smile back.
Wow, long bit. But Franca really wanted to show up, and you can't just say no to her, so. That was Franca. If she'd been nobly born, she would also have been called a shrew because she's at least as intelligent as Katharina and she's got a lot more life experience to boot.
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Date: 2008-07-13 04:24 am (UTC)