After this outburst of emotion, Monna Antonia fell back into the arms of her brothers, and there she hung, limp and miserable, while the procession continued down the stone stairs into the underground sepulchre. Once everyone was gathered below, Tebaldo’s shrouded body was placed in the sarcophagus, and the last rites performed.
Throughout the funeral, Giulietta looked stealthily around at every nook and cranny of the tenebrous receptacle, trying to decide on a convenient hiding place. For Friar Lorenzo’s plan demanded that she stay behind in the burial chamber after the ceremony, undetected by all the people leaving, and that she wait there in solitude until nightfall, when it would be safe for Romeo to come and retrieve her. It was, the monk had explained, the only place where the Tolomei guards would not be vigilant in herding the family members, and because the cemetery was outside the city walls, Romeo’s movements would not be constrained by constant fear of discovery and arrest.
Once delivered from the sepulchre, Giulietta would accompany Romeo into banishment, and as soon as they were safely settled in foreign lands, they would write a secret letter to Friar Lorenzo, telling him a long tale of health and happiness and encouraging him to join them at his earliest convenience.
Such was the plan on which they had all hastily agreed in San Cristoforo the night before, and it did not occur to Giulietta to question its particulars until the very moment when she herself had to act. Sickness rising in her throat, she eyed the sealed sarcophagi surrounding her to all sides—giant vessels of death that they were—wondering how she could possibly steal away and hide among them unseen and unheard.
Not until the very end of the ceremony, when the priest gathered everyone in head-bent prayer, did Giulietta see her chance to silently back away from her oblivious family and crouch down behind the nearest sarcophagus. And when the priest engaged them in a long-drawn, melodious amen to end the ceremony, she seized the opportunity to crawl farther into the shadows on her hands and knees, her arms already trembling from the contact with the cool, damp earth.
As she sat there, leaning against the rough stone of a coffin and trying not to breathe, the members of the funeral party left the burial chamber one by one, placed their candles on the small altar beneath the feet of Christ Crucified, and embarked upon the long, tearful walk home. Few had slept since the Palio on the previous day, and—as Friar Lorenzo had anticipated—no one had the presence of mind to ascertain that the number of people leaving the sepulchre was equal to the number originally entering. After all, what living person would choose to stay behind in a vault of terror and loathsome smells, trapped behind a heavy door that could not be opened from the inside?
When they had all left, the door to the sepulchre fell shut with a hollow thud. Although the candles were still flickering on the altar by the entrance, the darkness that now enfolded Giulietta as she sat panting between the tombs of her ancestors seemed, in every way, complete.
SITTING THERE, WITH NO sense of time, Giulietta slowly began to comprehend that death was, more than anything, a matter of waiting. Here they lay, all her illustrious forebears, patiently anticipating that divine tap on the lid of their coffins that would rouse their spirits once again to an existence they could never have imagined when they were still alive.
Some would come out wearing a knight’s armor, perhaps missing an eye or a limb, and others would appear in their nightclothes, looking sickly and full of boils; some would be mere wailing infants, and others would be their young mothers, drenched in blood and gore …
While Giulietta did not doubt that, one day, there would be such a tap on the lid for everyone deserving, the sight of all these ancient sarcophagi and the thought of all those dormant centuries filled her with horror. But shame on her, she thought, for being afraid and restless while waiting for Romeo amongst the immovable stone coffins; what were a few anxious hours in the face of such eternity?
When the door to the sepulchre finally opened, most of the candles on the altar had burned out, and the few that were still going cast frightful, contorted shadows that were almost worse than darkness. Not even pausing to see if it might be someone other than Romeo who had arrived, Giulietta ran eagerly towards her savior, hungry for his living touch and thirsty for a breath of wholesome air.
“Romeo!” she cried, only now giving in to weakness. “Thank Heaven—!”
But it was not Romeo who stood in the door, torch in hand, regarding her with a cryptic smile; it was Messer Salimbeni.
“It would seem,” he said, his strained voice at odds with his mirthful air, “you weep immoderately for your cousin’s death, staying behind at his grave like this. But then, I see no sign of tears on those rosy cheeks. Could it be”—he took a few steps down the stairs, but stopped in disgust at the smell of rot—“that my honey bride has gone distracted? I fear it is the case. I fear I shall have to look for you in graveyards, my dear, and find you playing madly with bones and hollow skulls. But”—he made a lewd grimace—“I am no stranger to such games. In truth, I believe we shall fit well together, you and I.”
Standing frozen at the sight of him, Giulietta did not know how to reply; she had barely understood his meaning. The only thing on her mind was Romeo, and why it was not he, but the odious Salimbeni, who had come to deliver her from the grave. But that was, of course, a question she did not dare to ask.
“Come here!” Salimbeni gestured for her to leave the burial chamber, and Giulietta had no choice but to obey. And so she emerged from the sepulchre by his side to find herself in black night, encircled by a ring of torches held by liveried Salimbeni guards.
Looking around at the faces of the men, Giulietta thought she saw pity and indifference in equal measures, but what was most unsettling was the impression that they knew something she did not.
“Are you not desirous,” asked Salimbeni, relishing her confusion, “to know how I was able to rescue you from death’s festering embrace?”
Giulietta could barely bring herself to nod, but then, she did not really have to, for Salimbeni was quite happy to continue his monologue without her consent.
“Fortunately for you,” he went on, “I had an excellent guide. My men saw him wandering about, and instead of skewering him right away—as their orders would have them do—they wisely asked themselves what manner of treasure could tempt a banished man to return to his forbidden city and risk detection and violent death? His path, as you have already guessed, led us straight to this monument, and since it is well known that you cannot murder the same man twice, I easily divined that his motive for descending into your cousin’s tomb must be something other than blood-thirst.”
Seeing that Giulietta had turned sufficiently pale during his speech, Salimbeni now finally gestured for his men to produce the person in question, and they did so by tossing the body into their circle the way butchers toss aside a sickly carcass for the grinder.
Giulietta screamed when she saw him lying there, her own Romeo, bloody and broken, and if Salimbeni had not restrained her, she would have thrown herself at him to stroke his grimy hair and kiss the blood from his lips while there was still breath left in his body.
“You devil incarnate!” she roared at Salimbeni, struggling like an animal to rid herself of his grip, “God will punish you for this! Let me to his side, you fiend, that I may die with my husband! For I carry his ring on my finger, and I swear by all the angels in Heaven that I shall never, ever be yours!”
Now at last, Salimbeni frowned. Grabbing Giulietta’s wrist, he nearly broke the bone to inspect the ring on her finger. When he had seen enough, he shoved her into the arms of a guard and stepped forward to kick Romeo hard in the stomach. “You slithering thief!” he sneered, spitting in disgust. “You couldn’t help yourself, could you? Well, know this: It was your embrace that killed your lady! I was going to kill you alone, but now I see she is as worthless as you!”
“I beg you,” coughed Romeo, struggling to lift his head off the ground and see Giulietta one last time, “le
t her live! It was only a vow! I never lay with her! Please! I swear it by my soul!”
“How touching,” observed Salimbeni, looking from one to the other, not convinced. “What say you, girl”—he took Giulietta by the chin—“is he telling the truth?”
“Damn you!” she spat, trying to shake off his fist. “We are man and wife, and you had better kill me, for just as I lay with him on our wedding bed, so will I lie with him in our grave!”
Salimbeni’s grip tightened. “Is that so? And will you, too, swear on his soul? Mind you, if you lie, he will go straight to Hell on this very night.”
Giulietta looked down at Romeo, so miserable on the ground before her, and the desperation of it all strangled the words in her throat and made her unable to speak—and lie—any further.
“Ha!” Salimbeni towered over them both triumphantly. “So, here is one flower you did not pick, you dog.” He kicked Romeo once more, indulging in the moans of his victim and the sobs of the woman begging him to stop. “Let us make sure”—reaching into his cotehardie, he pulled out Romeo’s dagger and unsheathed it—“you pick no more.”
With one slow, indulgent motion, Salimbeni sank the eagle dagger into its owner’s abdomen and pulled it back out, leaving the youth in breathless agony, his whole body contorted around the gruesome wound.
“No!” screamed Giulietta and sprang forward, her panic so strong that the men could not hold her. Throwing herself down by Romeo’s side, she wrapped her arms around him, desperate to go where he was going, and not be left behind.
But Salimbeni had had enough of her theatrics, and pulled her back up by the hair. “Quiet!” he barked, slapping her across the face until she obeyed. “This howling will not help anyone. Compose yourself, and remember that you are a Tolomei.” Then, before she understood what he was doing, he pulled the signet ring from her finger and tossed it on the ground, where Romeo lay. “There go your vows with him. Be glad they are so easily undone!”
Through the veil of her bloody hair, Giulietta saw the guards pick up Romeo’s body and fling it down the stairs to the Tolomei sepulchre as if it was no more than a sack of grain thrown into storage. But she did not see them slamming the door after him, nor making sure the handle was securely locked. In her horror she had forgotten how to breathe, and now, at last, a merciful angel closed her eyes and let her fall into the embrace of soothing oblivion.
[ V.II ]
Virtue itself turns vice being misapplied,
And vice sometime’s by action dignified
…
SEEN FROM THE TOP OF THE Mangia Tower, the half-moon-shaped Campo looked like a hand of cards with the picture side down. How suitable, I thought, for a city that held so many secrets. Who would have thought that men like the evil Messer Salimbeni could thrive in such a beautiful place—or rather, that he had been allowed to.
There was nothing in Maestro Ambrogio’s journal to suggest that this medieval Salimbeni had had redeeming qualities—such as the generosity of Eva Maria or the charms of Alessandro—and even if he did, it didn’t change the fact that he had brutally murdered everyone Giulietta had ever loved, with the exception of Friar Lorenzo and her sister, Giannozza.
I had spent most of the night in anguish over the brutal events described in the journal, and the dwindling number of pages left told me that a bitter end loomed. There was, I feared, not going to be a happily-ever-after for Romeo and Juliet; it was not merely literary acrobatics but solid facts that had turned their lives into a tragedy. As far as I could tell, Romeo was already dead, stabbed in the stomach with his own dagger—or rather, my dagger—and Giulietta was now in the clutches of a loathed enemy. What remained to be seen was whether she, too, would die before the pages ran out.
Perhaps this was why I was not in a merrier mood as I stood at the top of the Mangia Tower that morning, waiting for my motorcycle Romeo to appear. Or perhaps I was apprehensive because I damn well knew I shouldn’t have come. What kind of woman agrees to a blind date at the top of a tower? And what kind of man spends his nights with a helmet on his head, visor closed, communicating with people via tennis balls?
But here I was.
For if this mysterious man was truly the descendant of medieval Romeo, I simply had to see what he looked like. It was more than six hundred years since our ancestors had been torn apart under very violent circumstances, and between then and now, their disastrous romance had become one of the greatest love stories the world had ever known.
How could I not be excited? Surely, I ought to be all steamed up at the idea that one of my historical figures—undeniably the most important of them all, at least to me—had finally come alive. Ever since Maestro Lippi had first made me aware that there was a contemporary, art-loving, wine-drinking Romeo Marescotti at large in Siena by night, I had secretly dreamt of a meeting. Yet now that I finally had it before me—fleshed out in red ink and signed with a swirl—it occurred to me that what I really felt was nausea … the kind of nausea you feel when you are betraying someone whose good opinion you cannot afford to lose.
That someone, I realized, sitting on the embrasure overlooking a city at once achingly beautiful and irresistibly arrogant, was Alessandro. Yes, he was a Salimbeni, and no, he did not like my Romeo one bit, but his smile—when he allowed it to surface—was so genuine and so contagious that I had already become hooked.
Then again, it was ridiculous. We had known each other for a week, no more, and for most of that time we had been at each other’s throats, eagerly spurred on by my own prejudiced family. Even Romeo and Giulietta—the real ones—could not boast that kind of initial enmity. It was ironic that the story of our ancestors should come full circle like this, leaving us looking like Shakespearean wannabes, while at the same time seriously reshuffling our little love triangle.
No sooner had I deigned to acknowledge my infatuation with Alessandro, however, than I started feeling sorry for the Romeo I was about to meet. According to my cousin Peppo, he had fled to foreign lands to escape the viciousness that had driven him and his mother out of town, and whatever his ultimate purpose in returning to Siena, he was very possibly risking it all by offering to meet me in the Mangia Tower today. For that alone, I owed him thanks.
And even if he was not Alessandro’s equal, the least I could do was to give him a chance to wow me, if that was what he wanted to do, and not stubbornly close my heart to him the way Juliet had closed her heart to Paris after meeting Romeo. Or … perhaps I was jumping to conclusions. Perhaps all he wanted was to talk with me. If that were the case, it would—quite frankly—be a relief.
When I finally heard steps on the stairs, I got up from my perch on the stony embrasure and brushed off my dress with stiff hands, steeling myself for the quasi-legendary encounter about to happen. It took a while, though, before my hero made it to the very top of the spiral stairs, and as I stood there, poised to like him, I could not help but notice that—judging from his heavy breathing and the way he dragged his feet the last little bit—between the two of us, I was in far better shape.
Then, finally, my panting stalker appeared, leather suit draped over one arm, helmet dangling from the other, and all of a sudden, everything stopped making sense.
It was Janice.
IT WOULD BE HARD to pinpoint the exact moment when things had started going south in my relationship with Janice. Our childhood had been full of conflicts, but so are most people’s childhoods, and the overwhelming majority of mankind seems to be able to reach maturity without having completely lost the love of their siblings.
Not so with us. Now, at twenty-five, I could no longer remember when I had last embraced my sister, or had a conversation with her that did not deteriorate into a juvenile spat. Whenever we met, it was as if we were eight-year-olds again, falling back on the most primitive forms of argument. “Because I say so!” and “I had it first!” tend to be expressions most people leave happily behind as vestiges from a barbarian age the way they do blankies and pacifiers; to Janice
and me, they were the philosophical cornerstones of our entire relationship.
Aunt Rose had generally taken the approach that it would all straighten itself out in due course, as long as there was an even distribution of love and candy. Whenever we applied to her for arbitration, she would be tired of the case before she even heard it—it was, after all, only one of many piling up around her—and would always give us a standard reply to do with sharing, or being nice to each other. “Come now!” she would say, reaching for the crystal bowl with chocolate pretzels sitting on a side table, within easy reach of her armchair. “Be good girls! Julie, be fair to Janice now, and let her borrow your”—whatever it was … doll, book, belt, bag, hat, boots—“so we can have some peace around here, for heaven’s sake!”
And so, inevitably, we would walk away from her with a whole new can of worms, Janice snickering at my losses and her own undeserved gains. The reason she wanted my things in the first place was that her own had broken or gotten “tired,” and it was easier for her to take over mine than to make money and go out and buy new ones. And so we would leave the armchair after yet another wealth redistribution that had taken away what was mine and replaced it with nothing but a dry chocolate pretzel from the bowl. For all her litanies about fairness, Aunt Rose was a perpetual generator of nasty unintended consequences; the whole hellish path of my childhood was paved with her good intentions.