ROMEO AND FRIAR LORENZO came to Rocca di Tentennano with ten horsemen trained in all manner of combat. Were it not for Maestro Ambrogio, they would never have known where to find Giulietta, and were it not for Giulietta’s sister, Giannozza, and the warriors she lent them, they would never have been able to follow words with action.
Their connection with Giannozza had been Friar Lorenzo’s doing. When they were in hiding in the monastery—Romeo still immobilized from his stomach wound—the monk had sent a letter to the only person he could think of who might sympathize with their situation. He knew Giannozza’s address only too well from having been the sisters’ secret courier for more than a year, and not two weeks had passed before he received an answer.
“Your most painful letter reached me on a good day,” she wrote to him, “for I have just buried the man who ran this house, and am now finally in charge of my own destiny. Yet I cannot express the grief I felt, dear Lorenzo, when I read about your tribulations, and about my poor sister’s fate. Please let me know what I may do to help. I have men, I have horses. They are yours.”
But even Giannozza’s capable warriors stood helpless against the massive gate of Rocca di Tentennano, and as they observed the place from afar in the twilight hour, Romeo knew he would have to resort to trickery to get inside and save his lady.
“It reminds me,” he said to the others, who had all fallen silent at the sight of the fortress, “of a giant wasp’s nest. To attack it in broad daylight would mean death to us all, but perhaps we stand a chance come nightfall, when they are all asleep but for a few sentinels.”
And so he waited until dark to pick out eight men—one of them Friar Lorenzo, who could not be left behind—and to make sure they were equipped with ropes and daggers, before taking them stealthily to the foot of the cliff on which the Salimbeni stronghold was built.
With no audience but the twinkling stars in a moonless sky, the intruders climbed the hill as quietly as possible, to eventually arrive at the very base of the great building. Once here, they crept along the bottom of the slanting wall until someone spotted a promising opening some twenty feet up and poked Romeo on the shoulder, indicating the opportunity without a word.
Allowing no one else the honor of going first, Romeo secured a rope around his waist and proceeded to take a firm, stabbing grip of two daggers before commencing his ascent by hacking the blades into the mortar between the boulders and pulling himself up, laboriously, by the arms. The wall was slanted just enough to make such a venture possible, but not enough to make it easy, and Friar Lorenzo gasped more than once as Romeo’s foot slipped from its hold and left him hanging by the arms. He would not have been so concerned if Romeo had been in perfect health, but he knew that every motion his friend made as he climbed the wall must cause him almost unbearable pain, since his abdominal wound had never properly healed.
But Romeo barely felt his old injury as he climbed up the wall, for it was drowned out by the ache in his heart at the thought of Giulietta being forced into submission by Salimbeni’s ruthless son. He remembered Nino only too well from the Palio, where he had seen him expertly stabbing Tebaldo Tolomei, and he knew that no woman would be able to bar her door to his will. Nor was Nino likely to fall prey to threats of a curse; surely the young man knew that, as far as Heaven was concerned, he was already cursed for all eternity.
The opening aloft turned out to be an arrow slit, just wide enough to let him through. As Romeo came down heavily on the floor tiles, he saw that he was in an armory, and he almost smiled at the irony. Untying the rope around his waist and securing it to a cresset on the wall, he jiggled it twice to let the men at the other end know they could safely follow.
ROCCA DI TENTENNANO was as joyless on the inside as it was on the outside. There were no frescoes to brighten the walls, no tapestries to keep out the drafts; unlike Palazzo Salimbeni, which was a display of refinement and abundance, this place was built for no other purpose than dominance, and any attempt at adornment would have been but an obstacle to the swift movements of men and arms.
As Romeo traversed the endless, winding corridors—Friar Lorenzo and the others trailing closely behind—he began to fear that finding Giulietta in this living mausoleum and escaping with her unnoticed would be a matter of luck rather than courage.
“Careful!” he hissed at one point, holding up a hand to stop the others as he caught sight of a guard. “Back up!”
To avoid the guard they had to embark upon a labyrinthine detour, and in the end they found themselves back exactly where they had been before, crouching silently in the shadows, where the wall torches did not reach.
“There are guards posted on every corner,” whispered one of Giannozza’s men, “but mostly in that direction—” He pointed ahead.
Romeo nodded gravely. “We may have to take them one at a time, but I would rather wait as long as possible.”
He did not have to explain why he wanted to postpone the clamor of weapons. They were all keenly aware of being vastly outnumbered by the guards currently asleep in the bowels of the castle, and they knew that once the fighting began, their only hope would be to run. For that purpose, Romeo had left three men outside to keep the horses ready, but he was beginning to suspect their job would merely be to return to Giannozza and tell the sorry tale of failure.
Just then, as he was despairing over their lack of progress, Friar Lorenzo poked him on the shoulder and pointed out a familiar figure carrying a torch at the other end of a hallway. The person—Nino—was walking slowly, even reluctantly, as if his was an errand that could happily be postponed. Despite the cold night he was dressed in a tunic, and yet he had a sword strapped to his belt; Romeo knew right away where he was headed.
Waving Friar Lorenzo and Giannozza’s men along, he crept down the corridor in silent pursuit of the malefactor, stopping only when the other paused to address two guards flanking a closed door.
“You may leave now,” Nino told them, “and rest until tomorrow. I will personally ensure that Monna Giulietta is safe. In fact”—he turned to address all the guards at once—“everyone may leave! And tell the kitchen that, tonight, there is no limit to the wine.”
Only when the guards had disappeared down the corridor—already grinning at the prospect of a carousal—did Nino take a deep breath and reach for the door handle. But as he did so, a noise right behind him made him start. It was the unmistakable sound of a sword being drawn from a sheath.
Nino turned around slowly to face his assailant with incredulity. When he recognized the person who had come this far to challenge him, his eyes all but sprang from their sockets. “Impossible! You are dead!”
Romeo stepped into the torchlight with a baleful smile. “If I were dead, I would be a ghost, and you would not need to fear my blade.”
Nino gazed at his rival in silent wonder. Here was a man he had never expected to see again; a man who had defied the grave to save the woman he loved. It was possible that—for the first time in his life—it now occurred to Salimbeni’s son that here was a true hero, and that he, Nino, was the villain. “I believe you,” he said, calmly, and placed the torch in a cresset on the wall, “and I respect your blade, but I do not fear it.”
“That,” observed Romeo, waiting for the other to prepare himself, “is a big mistake.”
Just around the corner, Friar Lorenzo listened to the exchange with futile agitation. It was beyond his comprehension that Nino did not call back the guards in order to overpower Romeo without a fight. This was an ignominious break-in, not a public spectacle; Nino did not have to risk this duel. Nor, however, did Romeo.
Right beside him, crouched in the darkness, Friar Lorenzo could see Monna Giannozza’s men exchanging glances, asking themselves why Romeo did not call them out to cut Nino’s throat before the cocky offender could even cry for help. After all, this was no tournament to win a lady’s heart; this was a case of downright theft. Romeo, surely, did not owe an honorable joust to the man who had stolen his wi
fe.
But the two rivals thought otherwise.
“The mistake is yours,” countered Nino, unsheathing his sword with gleeful anticipation. “Now I shall have to say you were cut down by a Salimbeni twice. People will think you grew to like the feeling of our iron.”
Romeo threw his opponent a derisive smile. “Might I remind you,” he said, positioning himself for combat, “that your family is short on iron these days. Indeed, I believe people are too busy talking about your father’s … empty crucible to care about much else.”
The insolent remark would have made a less experienced fighter lunge at the speaker in fury, forgetting that anger destroys your focus and makes you an easy victim, but Nino was not so easily fooled. He restrained himself and merely touched the tip of his blade to Romeo’s in acknowledgment of the point. “True,” he said, moving in a circle around his opponent, searching for an opening, “my father is wise enough to know his limitations. That is why he sent me to deal with the girl. How very rude of you to delay her pleasure like this. She is behind that very door, waiting for me with moist lips and rosy cheeks.”
This time it was Romeo who had to restrain himself, testing Nino’s blade with but the slightest touch and absorbing the vibration in his hand. “The lady of whom you speak,” he pointed out, “is my wife. And she will cheer me on with cries of pleasure as I chop you into pieces.”
“Will she now?” Nino lunged forward, hoping to surprise, but missed. “As far as I know, she is no more your wife than she is my father’s. And soon”—he grinned—“she will be no one’s wife, but my little whore, pining all day for me to come and entertain her at night—”
Romeo lunged at Nino, and missed the other only by a hair as Nino had the presence of mind to parry and deflect the blade. It was enough, however, to put a halt to their conversation, and for a while there was no sound other than that of their blades crossing with hateful clangs as they entered into a circular dance of death.
While Romeo was no longer the nimble-footed fighter he had been before his injury, his tribulations had taught him resilience, and, most important, they had filled him with a white-hot hatred that—if properly mastered—might trump any fighting skill. And so, even as Nino danced around him in a taunting manner, Romeo did not take the bait, but waited patiently for his moment of revenge … a moment he was confident the Virgin Mary would grant him.
“How very fortunate I am!” exclaimed Nino, taking Romeo’s inaction for a sign of fatigue. “I get to indulge in my two favorite sports on the same evening. Tell me, how does it feel—”
Romeo needed no more than a brief, careless imbalance in Nino’s stance to spring forward with impossible speed and drive his sword in between the other’s ribs, to penetrate his heart and pin him, briefly, to the wall.
“How it feels?” he sneered, right into Nino’s astounded face. “Did you really want to know?”
With that, he withdrew his blade in disgust and watched the lifeless body slide to the ground, leaving a trail of crimson on the wall.
From around the corner, Friar Lorenzo was shocked to witness the conclusion of the brief duel. Death had come so abruptly to Nino that the young man’s face showed nothing but surprise; the monk would have liked for Nino to realize his own defeat—even if it was only within the blink of an eye—before expiring. But Heaven had shown itself more merciful than he, and had ended the scoundrel’s sufferings before they had even begun.
Not pausing to wipe down his sword, Romeo stepped right over the dead body to turn the door handle that Nino had guarded with his life. Seeing his friend disappearing through the fateful door, Friar Lorenzo at last got up from his hiding place and hastened across the hallway—Giannozza’s men in tow—to follow Romeo into the unknown.
Stepping through the door, Friar Lorenzo paused to let his eyes adjust. There were no lights in the room save the glow from a few embers in the fireplace and the faint shine of the stars through an open window; even so, Romeo had walked straight over to the bed to wake its sleeping tenant.
“Giulietta, my love,” he urged, embracing her and showering her pale face with kisses, “wake up! We are here to save you!”
When the girl finally stirred, Friar Lorenzo saw right away that something was wrong. He knew Giulietta well enough to grasp that she was beyond herself, and that some power stronger than Romeo was working at her to put her back to sleep.
“Romeo …” she murmured, struggling to smile and touch his face, “you found me!”
“Come,” Romeo encouraged her, trying to make her sit up, “we must go before the guards come back!”
“Romeo …” Giulietta’s eyes were closing again, her head drooping limply like the bud of a flower felled by a scythe. “I wanted to—” She would have said more, but her tongue failed her, and Romeo looked at Friar Lorenzo in desperation.
“Come and help me!” he urged his friend, “she is ill. We’ll have to carry her.” When he saw the other hesitating, Romeo followed the monk’s eyes and saw the vial and cork on the bedstand. “What is that?” he demanded, his voice hoarse with fear. “A poison?”
Friar Lorenzo leapt across the floor to inspect the vial. “It was rosewater,” he said, smelling the empty vessel, “but also something else—”
“Giulietta!” Romeo shook the girl violently. “You must wake up! What did you drink? Did they poison you?”
“Sleeping potion …” mumbled Giulietta without opening her eyes, “so you could wake me up—”
“Merciful Mother!” Friar Lorenzo helped Romeo sit her up. “Giulietta! Come to! It’s your old friend, Lorenzo!”
Giulietta frowned and managed to open her eyes. Only now, seeing the monk and all the strangers surrounding her bed did she seem to understand that she was not yet dead, not yet in Paradise. And when the truth reached her heart, she gasped, her face contorted with panic.
“Oh, no!” she whispered, clinging to Romeo with all her remaining strength. “This is not right! My dear—you are alive! You are—”
As she started coughing, violent spasms ran through her body, and Friar Lorenzo could see the pulse in her neck pounding as if the skin was about to burst. Not knowing what else to do, the two men tried to soothe her pains and calm her down, and they kept holding her, even as sweat ran from her body and she fell back on the bed in convulsions.
“Help us!” cried Romeo to the men standing around the bed. “She is suffocating!”
But Giannozza’s warriors were trained to end life, not sustain it, and they stood uselessly around the bed as the husband and the childhood friend struggled to save the woman they loved. Although they were strangers, the men were so engrossed in the tragedy unfolding before their eyes that they did not notice the advent of the Salimbeni guards until these were at the door and escape was impossible.
It was a cry of horror from the hallway that first alerted them to the danger. Someone had clearly caught sight of young master Nino, sprawled in his own blood. Now at last, Giannozza’s men had occasion to draw their weapons as the Salimbeni guards began pouring into the room.
In a situation as desperate as theirs, a man’s only hope of survival was to have none. Knowing they were already dead, Giannozza’s men threw themselves at the Salimbeni guards with fearless frenzy, cutting them down without mercy and not even pausing to ensure that their victims were beyond suffering before moving on to the next. The only armed man who did not turn to fight was Romeo, who could not let go of Giulietta.
For a while, Giannozza’s men were able to defend their position and kill anyone who came into the room. The door was too narrow to admit more than one enemy at a time, and as soon as someone burst inside, he would be met by seven blades in the hands of men who had not spent the evening drinking themselves into a stupor. In a space as narrow as this, a few determined men were not as helpless against a hundred opponents as they would have been in an open field; as long as the hundred came to them one by one, there was no strength in numbers.
But not all Sali
mbeni’s guards were imbeciles; just as Giannozza’s men began to entertain a hope that they might, in fact, live through the night, they were distracted by a loud clamor from the back of the room, and spun around to see a secret door open and a stream of guards pouring through it. Now, with enemies coming at them from the front and rear at once, the men were quickly overwhelmed. One by one, Giannozza’s men fell to their knees in defeat—some dying, some already dead—as the room flooded with guards.
Even now, with all hope lost, Romeo still did not turn to fight.
“Look at me!” he urged Giulietta, too focused on reviving her lifeless body to think of defending himself. “Look at—” But a spear thrown from across the room struck him right between the shoulder blades, and he collapsed over the bed without another word, even in death unwilling to let go of Giulietta.
As his body went limp, the eagle signet ring fell from his hand, and Friar Lorenzo understood that Romeo’s last wish had been to put the ring back on his wife’s finger where it belonged. Without thinking, he grabbed the holy object from the bed—lest it be confiscated by men who would never respect its destiny—but before he could put it on Giulietta’s finger, he was pulled away from her by strong hands.
“What happened here, you blithering monk?” demanded the captain of the guards. “Who is that man, and why did he kill Monna Giulietta?”
“That man,” replied Friar Lorenzo, too numb from shock and grief to feel any real fear, “was her true husband.”
“Husband?” The captain took the monk by the hood of his cowl and shook him. “You’re a stinkin’ liar! But”—he bared his teeth in a smile—“we have ways to fix that.”