“Here”—Malèna placed an espresso in front of me and added a biscotto with a little wink—“eat more. It gives you … you know, character.”
“Fierce-looking creature,” I said, referring to the fountain outside.
“What kind of bird is it?”
“It is our eagle, aquila in Italian. The fountain is our … oh, what is it?” She bit her lip, searching for the word. “Fonte battesimale … our font for baptism? Yes! This is where we bring our babies so they become aquilini, little eagles.”
“This is the Eagle contrada?” I glanced around at the other customers, suddenly all goose-bumpy. “Is it true that the eagle symbol originally came from the Marescotti family?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding, “but we didn’t invent it, of course. The eagle came originally from the Romans, and then Carlomagno took it over, and since the Marescottis were in his army, we had the right to use this imperial symbol. But nobody knows that anymore.”
I stared at her, almost certain she had referred to the Marescottis as if she was, in fact, one of them. But just as I opened my mouth to ask the question, the grinning face of a waiter came between us. “Only the people who are lucky enough to work here. We know everything about her big bird.”
“Just ignore him,” said Malèna, pretending to hit him over the head with a tray. “He is from Contrada della Torre—the Tower, you know.” She grimaced. “Always being funny.”
Just then, in the middle of the general amusement, something outside caught my eye. It was a black motorcycle and rider, visor closed, pausing briefly to look through the glass door before speeding up with a roar and disappearing.
“Ducati Monster S4,” the waiter recited, as if he had memorized the ad from a magazine, “a real street fighter. Liquid-cooled motor. She makes men dream of blood, and they wake up in a sweat and try to catch her. But she has no grab rails. So”—he patted his belly suggestively—“don’t invite a girl on board if you don’t have a six-pack antilock braking system.”
“Basta, basta, Dario!” scolded Malèna. “Tu parli di niente!”
“Do you know that guy?” I asked, trying to sound casual while feeling everything but.
“That guy?” She rolled her eyes, not impressed. “You know what they say … those who make a lot of noise, they are missing something down there.”
“I don’t make a lot of noise!” protested Dario.
“I was not talking about you, stupido! I was talking about the moscerino on the motorcycle.”
“Do you know who he is?” I asked again.
She shrugged. “I like men with cars. Men on motorcycles … they are playboys. You can put a girlfriend on a motorcycle, yes, but what about your children and your bridesmaids, and your mother-in-law?”
“Exactly my point,” said Dario, wiggling his eyebrows. “I am saving up for one.”
By now, several other customers were getting audibly impatient in the queue behind me, and although Malèna seemed quite comfortable ignoring them all for as long as she damn well wanted, I decided to postpone my questions about the Marescottis and their possible present-day descendants to some other time.
As I walked away from the bar, I kept looking around for the motorcycle, but it was nowhere to be seen. Of course, I could not be sure, but my intuition told me this was the same guy who had bullied me the night before, and, honestly, if he really was a playboy looking for someone to hug his abs, I could think of better ways to start that conversation.
WHEN THE OWNER of the bookstore finally came back from lunch, I was sitting on her front step, leaning against the door, very close to giving up on the whole thing. But my patience was rewarded, for the woman—a sweet old lady whose spindly frame seemed to be propelled into motion by little more than an enormous curiosity—took one look at the index card and nodded right away.
“Ah, yes,” she said in fluent English, not the least bit surprised, “this is from the university archive. The history collection. I think they still use the old catalogue. Let me see now—yes, see, this stands for Late Middle Ages. And this means local. And look”—she showed me the codes on the card—“this is the letter of the shelf, K, and this is the number of the drawer, 3-17b. But it doesn’t say what is in it. Anyway, that is what the code means.” Having solved the mystery so quickly, she looked up at me, hoping for another. “How did you get this card?”
“My mother—or rather, my father—I think he was a professor at the university. Professor Tolomei?”
The old woman lit up like a Christmas tree. “I remember him! I was his student! You know, he was the one who organized that whole collection. It was a mess. I spent two summers gluing numbers on drawers. But … I wonder why he took out this card. He was always so upset when people left the index cards lying around.”
THE UNIVERSITY OF SIENA was scattered all over town, but the history archive was no more than a brisk walk away, out towards the city gate called Porta Tufi. It took me a while to find the right building among the inconspicuous façades lining the road; in the end what gave it away as a place for education was the patchwork of socialist posters on the fence outside.
Hoping very much to blend in with the general student population, I entered through the door that the bookseller had described to me, and headed straight for the basement. Perhaps because it was still siesta—or perhaps because no one was around during the summer—I was able to get downstairs without meeting a single person; the whole place was blissfully cool and quiet. It was almost too easy.
With nothing but the index card to guide me, I walked through the archive several times, trying in vain to find the appropriate shelves. It was a separate collection, the bookseller had explained, and even back then, people had rarely used it. I had to find the remotest part of the archive, but this instruction was complicated by the fact that every part of the archive seemed remote to me. Furthermore, the shelves I was looking at did not have drawers; they were regular shelves with books, not artifacts. And there was no book labeled K 3-17b.
After walking around for at least twenty minutes, it finally occurred to me to try a door at the far end of the room. It was a sealed metal door, almost like the door to a bank vault, but it opened without a problem, revealing yet another—smaller—room with some sort of climate control that made the air smell very different, like chocolate chip mothballs.
Now, finally, my index card made sense. These shelves were indeed full of drawers, exactly the way the bookseller had described. And the collection was organized chronologically, starting in Etruscan times and ending—I guessed—at the year my father died. It was quite obvious that nobody ever used it, for there was a thick layer of dust everywhere, and when I tried to move the rolling ladder it resisted at first, because the metal wheels had rusted to the floor. When it finally moved, squealing in protest, it left behind little brown imprints on the gray linoleum.
I positioned the ladder by the shelf labeled K, and climbed up to take a closer look at row number 3, which consisted of a couple dozen medium-size drawers, all perfectly out of reach and out of mind, unless you had a ladder and knew precisely what you were looking for. At first, it felt as if drawer number 17b was locked, and only after I knocked on it with my fist several times did it come loose and allow me to pull it open. In all likelihood, no one else had opened that drawer since my father closed it decades ago.
Inside, I found a large package wrapped in airtight, brown plastic. Poking gently at it, I could feel that it contained some kind of spongy fabric, almost like a bag of foam from a textile store. Mystified, I took the package out of the drawer, climbed back down the ladder, and sat down on the bottom step to inspect my findings.
Rather than ripping open the whole thing, I stuck a fingernail into the plastic and made a small hole. As soon as the air seal was broken, the bag seemed to take a deep breath, and a corner of faded blue fabric peeked out. Making the hole a little bigger, I felt the fabric with my fingers. I was no expert, but I suspected it was silk and—despite its fi
ne condition—very, very old.
Knowing full well that I was exposing something delicate to air and light at once, I eased the fabric out of the plastic and began unfolding it in my lap. When I did so, an object fell out and hit the linoleum floor with a metallic clang.
It was a large knife in a golden sheath, which had been hidden within the folds of the silk. As I picked it up, I noticed it had an eagle engraved on the hilt.
Sitting there, weighing this unexpected treasure in my hand, I suddenly heard a noise from the other part of the archive. Only too aware that I was trespassing in a facility that undoubtedly held many irreplaceable treasures, I rose with a guilty gasp and bundled up my loot as best I could. The last thing I wanted was to be discovered in the fancy, climate-controlled vault with canary feathers sticking out of my mouth.
As silently as possible, I slipped back into the main library, pulling the metal door almost shut behind me. Crouching behind the last row of bookcases, I listened intently. But the only sound I could hear was my own unsteady breath. All I had to do was to walk over to those stairs and leave the building as casually as I had entered it.
I was wrong. No sooner had I made the decision to move than I heard the sound of footsteps; not the footsteps of a librarian returning from siesta or a student looking for a book, but the ominous footsteps of someone who did not want me to hear him coming, someone whose errand in the archive was even more dubious than mine. Peeking out through the shelves I saw him coming my way—and yes, it was the same old scum who had followed me the night before—slithering from bookcase to bookcase, his eyes fixed on the metal door to the vault. But this time, he was carrying a gun.
It was only a matter of seconds before he would come to the place where I was hiding. Almost sick with fear, I wormed my way along the bookcase until I reached the far end of it. Here, a narrow aisle went along the wall all the way up to the librarian’s desk, and I tiptoed as far as I dared before drawing in my stomach and leaning against the narrow end piece of a bookcase, hoping very much to be exactly out of sight when the thug walked past me in the aisle at the other end.
As I stood there, too afraid to breathe, I had to fight the urge to run like hell. Forcing myself to stay absolutely still, I waited for a few extra seconds before I finally dared to stretch and look, and saw him slipping silently into the vault.
Peeling off my shoes with trembling fingers, I scurried all the way up the aisle, turned the corner by the librarian’s desk, and continued up the stairs three steps at a time without even pausing to look behind me.
Not until I was far away from the university premises and safely up some obscure little street did I dare to slow down and feel a kind of relief. But it was not a lasting feeling. In all likelihood, this was the guy who had trashed my hotel room, and the only upside to that was that I had not been asleep in my bed when he came.
PEPPO TOLOMEI WAS almost as surprised to see me as I was to find myself back so soon at the Owl Museum. “Giulietta!” he exclaimed, putting down a trophy and rag, “What is wrong? And what is that?”
We both looked at the messy bundle in my arms. “I have no idea,” I confessed. “But I think it belonged to my father.”
“Here—” He cleared a space on the table for me, and I put down the blue silk very gently, thus revealing the knife nested within.
“Do you have any idea,” I said, picking up the knife, “where this came from?”
But Peppo was not looking at the knife. Instead, he began unfolding the silk with reverent hands. Once it was spread out in its entirety, he took a step backwards, overwhelmed, and crossed himself. “Where on earth,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper, “did you find this?”
“Um … it was in my father’s collection at the university. It was wrapped around the knife. I didn’t realize it was something special.”
Peppo looked at me in surprise. “You don’t know what this is?”
I looked more closely at the blue silk. It was much longer than it was wide, almost like a banner, and a female figure had been painted on it, her hair bound by a halo and her hands raised in a blessing. Time had faded her colors, but the enchantment was still there. Even a philistine like myself could see that it was a picture of the Virgin Mary. “It’s a religious flag?”
“This,” said Peppo, straightening in respect, “is a cencio, the grand prize of the Palio. But it is very old. See the Roman numbers down in the corner? That is the year.” He leaned in once again to verify the numerals. “Yes! Santa Maria!” He turned towards me, eyes glowing. “Not only is this an antique cencio, it is the most legendary cencio there ever was! Everyone thought it was lost forever. But here it is! It is the cencio from the Palio of 1340. A great treasure! It was lined with little tails of … I don’t know the word in English. Look”—he pointed at the ragged edges of the fabric—“they were here and here. Not squirrels. Special squirrels. But now they are gone.”
“So,” I said, “what would this kind of thing be worth? In terms of money?”
“Money?” The concept was foreign to Peppo, who looked at me as if I had asked what Jesus charged per hour. “But this is the prize! It is very special … a great honor. Ever since the Middle Ages, the winner of the Palio would get a beautiful silk banner lined with expensive fur; the Romans called it a pallium, and this is why our race is called the Palio. Look”—he pointed his cane at some of the banners hanging on the walls around us—“every time our contrada wins the Palio, we get a new cencio for our collection. The oldest ones we have are two hundred years old.”
“So, you don’t have any other cencios from the fourteenth century?”
“Oh, no!” Peppo shook his head vigorously. “This is very, very special. You see, in the old days, the man who won the Palio would take the cencio and turn it into clothes and wear it on his body in triumph. That is why they are all lost.”
“Then it must be worth something,” I insisted. “If it’s so rare, I mean.”
“Money-money-money!” he gibed. “Money is not everything. Don’t you understand? This is about Siena history!”
My cousin’s enthusiasm stood in sharp contrast to my own state of mind. Apparently, this morning, I had risked my life for a rusty old knife and a faded flag. Yes, it was a cencio, and as such it was an invaluable, almost magical artifact to the Sienese, but, unless I was mistaken, a completely worthless old rag if I ever took it beyond the walls of Siena.
“What about the knife?” I said. “Have you ever seen that before?”
Peppo turned back to the table and picked up the knife. “This,” he said, pulling the rusty blade out of the sheath and examining it underneath the chandelier, “is a dagger. A very handy weapon.” He inspected the engraving very closely, nodding to himself as the whole thing—apparently—began to make sense. “An eagle. Of course. And it was hidden together with the cencio from 1340. To think I should live to see this. Why did he never show me? I suppose he knew what I would say. These are treasures that belong to all of Siena, not just to the Tolomeis.”
“Peppo,” I said, rubbing my forehead, “what am I supposed to do with this?”
He looked at me, his eyes oddly distant, as if he was partly present, partly in 1340. “Remember I told you that your parents believed Romeo and Juliet lived here, in Siena? Well, in 1340 there was a much-disputed Palio. They say the cencio disappeared—this cencio right here—and that a rider died during the race. They also say that Romeo rode in that Palio, and I think this is his dagger.”
Now, finally, my curiosity got the better of my disappointment. “Did he win?”
“I am not sure. Some say he was the one who died. But mark my words”—Peppo looked at me with narrow eyes—“the Marescottis would do anything to get their hands on this.”
“You mean, the Marescottis living in Siena now?”
Peppo shrugged. “Whatever you believe about the cencio, the dagger belonged to Romeo. See the engraving of the eagle right here on the hilt? Can you imagine what a treasure t
his would be to them?”
“I suppose I could return it—”
“No!” The giddy glee in my cousin’s eyes now gave way to other emotions, far less charming. “You must leave it here! This is a treasure that now belongs to all of Siena, not just to the aquilini or the Marescottis. You did very well to bring it here. We must discuss it with all the magistrates of all the contrade. They know best. And meanwhile, I will put it in our safe, away from light and air.” He began eagerly folding up the cencio. “I promise you, I will take very good care of it. Our safe is very safe.”
“But my parents left it for me—” I dared to object.
“Yes-yes-yes, but this is not something that should belong to any one person. Don’t worry, the magistrates will know what to do.”
“How about—”
Peppo looked at me sternly. “I am your godfather. Do you not trust me?”
[ IV.II ]
What say you, can you love the gentleman?
This night you shall behold him at our feast
…
Siena, A.D. 1340
TO MAESTRO AMBROGIO THE NIGHT before Madonna Assunta was as holy as Christmas Eve. Over the course of the evening vigil, the otherwise dark Siena Cathedral would be filled with hundreds of colossal votive candles—some weighing more than fifty pounds—as a long procession of representatives from every contrada made their way up the nave towards the golden altar, to honor Siena’s protectress, the Virgin Mary, and celebrate her assumption into Heaven.
Tomorrow, on Madonna Assunta proper, the majestic cathedral would thus be illuminated by a forest of flickering flames when vassals from surrounding towns and villages arrived to pay their tributes. Every year on this day, August 15, they were required by law to donate a carefully calculated quantity of wax candles to the divine queen of Siena, and stern city officials would be posted inside the cathedral to ensure that each subordinate town and village paid their dues. The fact that the cathedral was already illuminated with an abundance of holy lights only confirmed what the foreigners knew well: that Siena was a glorious place, blessed by an all-powerful goddess, and that membership was well worth the price.