When he saw us walking towards him, he shook his head and sent me a smile that was part reproach, part relief. And as soon as I was within reach, he pulled me close to kiss my cheek and whisper into my ear, “I think maybe I will have to chain you in the dungeon.”
“How medieval of you,” I replied, disentangling myself with feigned modesty, seeing that we had an audience.
“You bring it out in me.”
“Scusi?” Friar Lorenzo looked at us both with raised eyebrows, clearly eager to get on with the ceremony, and I dutifully turned my attention to the monk, postponing my rebuttal until later.
We were not getting married because we felt we had to. This wedding ceremony in the Lorenzo sanctuary was not only for us, it was also a way of proving to everyone else that we were serious when we said we belonged together—something Alessandro and I had known for a long, long time. Besides, Eva Maria had demanded an opportunity to celebrate the return of her long-lost granddaughters, and it would have broken Janice’s heart had she not been given a glamorous part to play. And so the two of them had spent an entire evening going through Eva Maria’s wardrobe, looking for the perfect bridesmaid’s dress, while Alessandro and I had continued my swimming lessons in the pool.
But even if our wedding today felt like little more than a confirmation of vows we had already exchanged, I was still moved by Friar Lorenzo’s sincerity, and by the sight of Alessandro right next to me, listening intently to the monk’s speech.
Standing there with my hand in his, I suddenly understood why—all my life—I had been haunted by the fear of dying young. Whenever I had tried to envision my future beyond the age that my mother had been when she died, I had seen nothing but darkness. Only now did it make sense. The darkness had not been death, but blindness; how could I possibly have known that I was going to wake up—as from a dream—to a life I never knew existed?
The ceremony went on in Italian with great solemnity until the best man—Malèna’s husband, Vincenzo—handed Friar Lorenzo the rings. Recognizing the eagle signet ring, Friar Lorenzo grimaced with exasperation and said something that made everyone laugh.
“What did he say?” I whispered under my breath.
Seizing the opportunity to kiss my neck, Alessandro whispered back, “He said, Holy Mother of God, how many times do I have to do this?”
WE HAD DINNER in the inner courtyard of the monastery, under a trellis overgrown with grapevines. As twilight turned to darkness, the Lorenzo brothers went inside to fetch oil lamps and beeswax candles in handblown glasses, and before long the golden light from our tables drowned out the cold glimmer from the starry sky above.
It was gratifying to sit there next to Alessandro, surrounded by people who would never have been brought together otherwise. After some initial apprehensions, Eva Maria, Pia, and cousin Peppo were all getting along famously, chipping away at the old family misunderstandings at last. And what better occasion to do so? They were, after all, our godparents.
The majority of the guests, however, were neither Salimbenis nor Tolomeis, but Alessandro’s friends from Siena and members of the Marescotti family. I had already been to dinner with his aunt and uncle several times—not to mention all his cousins living down the street—but it was the first time I met his parents and brothers from Rome.
Alessandro had warned me that his father, Colonel Santini, was not a great fan of metaphysics, and that his mother tended to keep her husband on a need-to-know basis when it came to Marescotti family lore. Personally, I couldn’t be more happy that none of them felt a need to dig into the official story of our courtship, and I had just squeezed Alessandro’s hand in relief, underneath the table, when his mother leaned over to whisper to me, with a teasing wink, “When you come to visit, you must tell me what really happened, no?”
“Have you ever been to Rome, Giulietta?” Colonel Santini wanted to know, his booming voice briefly extinguishing all other conversation.
“Uh … no,” I said, digging my nails into Alessandro’s thigh. “But I’d love to go.”
“It is very strange …” The Colonel frowned slightly. “I have a feeling I have seen you before.”
“That,” said Alessandro, putting an arm around me, “is exactly how I felt when we met the first time.” And then he kissed me, right on the mouth, until they all started laughing and rapping at the table, and the conversation turned—thankfully—to the Palio.
Two days after the drama in the cathedral crypt Aquila had finally won the race after almost twenty years of disappointment. Despite the doctor’s recommendation that I take it easy for a while, we had been right there in the fray, Alessandro and I, celebrating the rebirth of our destinies. Afterwards, we had flocked with Malèna and Vincenzo and all the other aquilini to the Siena Cathedral for the victory mass in celebration of the Virgin Mary and the cencio she had so graciously bestowed on Contrada dell’Aquila despite Alessandro being in town.
As I had stood there in the church, singing along to a hymn I didn’t know, I thought of the crypt that was somewhere below us, and the golden statue that no one knew of but us. Maybe one day the crypt would be safe enough for visitors, and maybe Maestro Lippi would restore the statue and give it new eyes, but until then, it was our secret. And perhaps it ought to remain that way. The Virgin had allowed us to find her shrine, but everyone who had entered it with evil intent had died. Not exactly a great pitch for group tours.
As for the old cencio, it had been returned to the Virgin Mary just as Romeo Marescotti had vowed it would be. We had taken it to Florence to get it professionally cleaned and preserved, and now it hung in a glass casing in the small chapel at the Eagle Museum, looking surprisingly pristine considering its recent trials. Everyone in the contrada was, of course, euphoric that we had managed to track down this important piece of history, and no one seemed to find it the least bit odd that the subject of its recovery and fine condition always gave me rosy cheeks.
OVER DESSERT—A GRANDIOSE wedding cake personally designed by Eva Maria—Janice leaned over to put a yellowed roll of parchment on the table in front of me. I recognized it right away; it was the letter from Giannozza to Giulietta that Friar Lorenzo had shown me at Castello Salimbeni. The only change was that, by now, the seal had been broken.
“Here is a little present,” said Janice, handing me a folded-up sheet of paper. “This is the English version. I got the letter from Friar Lorenzo, and Eva Maria helped me translate it.”
I could see that she was eager for me to read it right away, and so I did. This is what it said:
My darling sister,
I cannot tell you how happy I was to receive a letter from you after this long silence. And I cannot tell you how I grieved when I read its news. Mother and Father dead, and Mino and Jacopo and little Benni—I do not know how to put words on my sorrow. It has taken me many days to be able to write you a reply.
If Friar Lorenzo was here, he would tell me that it is all part of the grand design of Heaven, and that I should not cry for dear souls that are now safely in Paradise. But he is not here, and nor are you. I am all alone in a barbarous land.
How I wish I could travel to see you, my dearest, or you to see me, that we might console each other in these dark times. But I am here as always, a prisoner in my husband’s home, and although he is mostly in bed, getting weaker every day, I fear he might live on forever. Occasionally I venture outside at night, to lie in the grass and look at the stars, but from tomorrow, meddlesome strangers from Rome will fill the house—trade connections from some obscure Gambacorta family—and my freedom will, once again, be cut off at the windowsill. But I am determined not to fatigue you with my sorrows. They are negligible compared to yours.
It grieves me to hear that our uncle keeps you imprisoned, and that you are consumed by thoughts of vengeance on that evil man, S———. My dearest sister, I know it is near impossible, but I beg you to rid yourself of these destructive thoughts. Put your faith in Heaven to punish that man in due course. As fo
r me, I have spent many hours in the chapel, giving thanks for your own deliverance from the villains. Your description of that young man, Romeo, makes me certain he is the true knight you were so patiently waiting for.
Now I am once again glad that it was I who entered into this wretched marriage and not you—write me more often, my dearest, and spare me no detail so that, through you, I may live the love that was denied me.
I pray this letter finds you smiling, and in good health, freed from the demons that were haunting you. God willing I shall see you again soon, and we will lie together in the daisies and laugh away past sorrows as if they never were. In this bright future awaiting us, you shall be wed to your Romeo, and I shall be free of my bonds at last—pray with me, my love, that it may be so.
Yours in eternity—G
When I stopped reading, both Janice and I were crying. Only too aware that everyone at the table was mystified at this outbreak of emotion, I threw my arms around her and thanked her for the perfect present. It was doubtful how many of the other guests would have understood the significance of the letter; even those who knew the sad story of the original Giulietta and Giannozza could not possibly have understood what it meant to my sister and me.
IT WAS NEAR MIDNIGHT when I was finally able to tiptoe back into the garden, pulling along a rather unenthusiastic Alessandro. By now everyone had gone to bed, and it was time to carry out something I had been meaning to do for a while. Opening the squeaky gate to the Lorenzo sanctuary, I looked at my grudging companion and put a finger on my lips. “We’re not supposed to be here now.”
“I agree,” said Alessandro, trying to draw me into his arms. “Let me tell you where we’re supposed to be—”
“Shh!” I put a hand over his mouth. “I really have to do this.”
“What’s wrong with tomorrow?”
I removed my hand and kissed him quickly. “I wasn’t planning on getting out of bed tomorrow.”
Now at last, Alessandro let me pull him into the sanctuary and up to the marble rotunda that held the bronze statue of Friar Lorenzo. In the light of the rising moon, the statue looked almost like a real person, standing there with his arms open, waiting for us. Needless to say, the chances that his features resembled the original in any way were slim, but that did not matter. What mattered was that thoughtful people had recognized this man’s sacrifice, and had made it possible for us to find him again, and thank him.
Taking off the crucifix, which I had been wearing ever since Alessandro gave it back to me, I reached up to hang it around the statue’s neck where it belonged. “Monna Mina kept this as a token of their connection,” I said, mostly to myself. “I don’t need it to remember what he did for Romeo and Giulietta.” I paused. “Who knows, maybe there never was a curse. Maybe it was just us—all of us—thinking that we deserved one.”
Alessandro did not say anything. Instead, he reached out and touched my cheek the way he had done that day at Fontebranda and, this time, I knew exactly what he meant. Whether or not we had truly been cursed, and whether or not we had now paid our dues, he was my blessing, and I was his, and that was enough to disarm any missile that fate—or Shakespeare—might still be foolish enough to hurl our way.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
…
WHILE JULIET IS A WORK OF FICTION, it is steeped in historical fact. The earliest version of Romeo and Juliet was indeed set in Siena, and once you start digging into local history, you begin to understand why the story originated precisely where it did.
Perhaps more than any other Tuscan city, Siena was torn by fierce family feuds all through the Middle Ages, and the Tolomeis and the Salimbenis were famously pitted against each other in a manner that very much resembles the bloody rivalry between the Capulets and the Montagues in Shakespeare’s play.
That said, I have taken a few liberties in portraying Messer Salimbeni as an evil wife-beater, and I am not sure Dr. Antonio Tasso at Monte dei Paschi di Siena—who was kind enough to show my mother around Palazzo Salimbeni and tell her about its remarkable history—would appreciate the idea of a torture chamber in the basement of his venerable institution.
Nor will my friends Gian Paolo Ricchi, Dario Colombo, Alex Baldi, Patrizio Pugliese, and Cristian Cipo Riccardi be happy that I made the ancient Palio such a violent affair, but since we know so very little about the medieval version of the race, I hope they will give me the benefit of the doubt.
I also hope Saint Catherine of Siena will forgive me for involving her in the legend of Monna Mina and the curse on the wall, as well as in the story of Comandante Marescotti and the boy Romanino, where she appears as a baby in the Benincasa household. Both scenarios are my invention, and yet I have tried to remain faithful to the spirit of Saint Catherine’s early life in Siena, her remarkable personality, and the miracles attributed to her.
Archaeologist Antonella Rossi Pugliese was kind enough to take me on a walking tour of Siena’s most ancient parts, and it was she who inspired me to delve into the mysteries of the Siena underground, such as the Bottini caves, the lost cathedral crypt, and the remnants of the bubonic plague of 1348. However, it was my mother who discovered Santa Caterina’s room in the old hospital, Santa Maria della Scala, and who—on the same occasion—managed to convince a kind custodian to show her the entrance to a medieval plague pit.
The less macabre parts of my mother’s research on Sienese history were primarily made possible by the Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati, Archivio dello Stato, and Libreria Ancilli—which, by the way, is where Julie goes to have the index card that was hidden in her mother’s box deciphered—but we are also grateful for the illuminating insights of Professor Paolo Nardi; Padre Alfred White, OP; and John W. Peck, SJ, as well as the literary legacy of the late Johannes Jørgensen, a Danish poet and journalist whose biography of Saint Catherine offers a spellbinding insight into Siena in the fourteenth century. Furthermore, the Museo della Contrada della Civetta and the Siena municipal police have been tremendously helpful, the latter primarily for not arresting my mother during her many clandestine investigations into bank security systems and the like.
While on the issue of suspicious activities, I hasten to apologize to Direttor Rosi at Hotel Chiusarelli for staging a break-in at his beautiful establishment. As far as I know, there has never been a breach of security at the hotel, nor would the director and his staff ever interfere with the movements of their guests or remove personal belongings from their rooms.
I also need to emphasize that the artist Maestro Lippi—who is a real person—is not quite as eccentric as I have laid him out to be. Nor does he have a messy workshop in downtown Siena, but rather a breathtaking atelier in an old Tolomei castle in the countryside. I hope the Maestro will forgive me these artistic liberties.
Two friends from Siena have been particularly helpful and generous with their local knowledge: Avv. Alessio Piscini has been an inexhaustible resource of everything related to Contrada dell’Aquila and the Palio tradition, and author Simone Berni has patiently suffered a barrage of questions regarding Italian usage and Sienese logistics. I owe it to them both to say that, if any factual errors managed to sneak into the book, they are my own fault, not theirs.
I would also like to extend my very special thanks to the following people outside Siena: My friend and fellow freedom-fighter from the Institute for Humane Studies, Elisabeth McCaffrey, and my book-club sisters, Jo Austin, Maureen Fontaine, Dara Jane Loomis, Mia Pascale, Tamie Salter, Monica Stinson, and Alma Valevicius, who kindly critiqued an early draft.
Two people have been key in helping me turn story into book: My agent, Dan Lazar, whose enthusiasm, diligence, and savvy made it all possible, and my editor, Susanna Porter, whose keen eyes and expert touch helped to trim and tighten the book without getting me all tangled up. It has been an honor and a privilege to work with them both.
Needless to say, I am deeply grateful for the tremendous help and encouragement from all the wonderful people at Writers House and Random House,
two households (dare I say) both alike in dignity. Maja Nikolic, Stephen Barr, Jillian Quint, Kim Hovey, Vincent La Scala, Lisa Barnes, Theresa Zoro, and Libby McGuire in particular have been instrumental in realizing this book. And a thank-you also to Iris Tupholme at HarperCollins Canada for her constructive advice about the work.
And finally, I owe so much more than thanks to my husband, Jonathan Fortier, without whose love, support, and humor I could never have written this book, and without whom I would still be asleep, not even knowing it.
I have dedicated Juliet to my amazing mother, Birgit Malling Eriksen, whose generosity and devotion are boundless, and who spent almost as much time doing research for the story as I spent writing it. I hope the book is everything she prayed it would be.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
…
ANNE FORTIER grew up in Denmark and emigrated to the United States in 2002 to work in film. She co-produced the Emmy-winning documentary Fire and Ice: The Winter War of Finland and Russia and holds a Ph.D. in the history of ideas from Aarhus University, Denmark. The story of Juliet was inspired by Anne Fortier’s mother, who always considered Verona her true home … until she discovered Siena.
Reading Group Questions and Discussion Topics for Juliet
Reading Group Questions and Discussion Topics for Juliet
In Anne Fortier’s novel Juliet, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet casts a long shadow over the lives of the main characters, past and present. Looking at the “original” story of Romeo and Giulietta set in 1340, consider in what ways Fortier uses Shakespeare’s great tragedy as a model for her own work, and in what ways she departs from it.
Discuss the ways in which the bonds of sisterhood—for good and for ill—are central to the novel. Why do you think Fortier introduces this element into her story?