Juliet

V.V

Siena , A.D. 1340

ROCCA DI TENTENNANO was a formidable structure. It sat like a vulture on a hill in Val d’Orcia, perfectly perched to scavenge far and wide. Its massive walls were built to withstand innumerable hostile sieges and attacks, and considering the manners and morals of its owners, those walls were not an inch too thick.

Throughout her journey there, Giulietta had wondered why Salimbeni had been so kind as to send her to the country, far away from him. When he had seen her off the day before, standing in the courtyard outside Palazzo Salimbeni and looking at her with an air of benevolence, she had wondered whether he now-thanks to the curse on his manliness-felt remorse for what he had done, and whether his sending her away had been a way of compensating her for all the pain he had caused her.

In her hopeful state, she had observed him as he took leave of his son Nino-who was to accompany her to Val d’Orcia-and had thought she saw genuine affection in Salimbeni’s eyes as he gave his last instructions for the road. “May God bless you,” he had said, as Nino mounted the horse he had ridden in the Palio, “on your journey and beyond.”

The young man had not replied; in fact, he had acted as if his father was not even there, and for all his wickedness, Giulietta had-ever so briefly-felt embarrassed for Salimbeni.

But later, seeing the view from her window at Rocca di Tentennano, she began to grasp his true intention in sending her here, and to understand that it was not meant as a gesture of generosity, merely as a new and ingenious form of punishment.

The place was a fortification. Just as no one could get in who did not belong there, so would no one ever be able to leave who was not allowed to. Now she finally understood what people had meant when they gravely referred to Salimbeni’s previous wives as having been sent to the island; Rocca di Tentennano was a place from which the only possible escape was death.

Much to Giulietta’s surprise, a servant girl came right away to light the fireplace in her room, and to help her out of her travel clothes. It was a cool day in early December, and for the last of the many hours of the journey, her fingertips had been white and numb. Now she stood in a woolen dress and dry slippers, turning herself about in front of the open fire, trying to remember when she had last felt comfortable.

Opening her eyes, she saw Nino standing in the door, regarding her with something as unexpected as kindness. It was too bad, she thought, that he was a scoundrel like his father, for he was a handsome young man, strong and able, to whom smiling seemed to come far more easily than perhaps it ought, considering the weight-surely-of his conscience.

“May I ask,” he said, his tone as cordial as if he had addressed her on the dancing floor, “that you join me downstairs for dinner tonight? I understand you have been eating alone these past three weeks, and I apologize on behalf of my ill-mannered family.” Seeing her surprise, he smiled charmingly. “Do not be afraid. I assure you, we are completely alone.”

AND INDEED THEY WERE. Posed at either end of a dinner table that could comfortably seat twenty, Giulietta and Nino ate most of their meal in silence, their eyes only occasionally meeting through the candelabra. Whenever he saw her looking at him, Nino smiled, and at length Giulietta found the necessary boldness within herself to speak the words that were on her mind. “Did you kill my cousin Tebaldo in the Palio?”

Nino’s smile disappeared. “Of course not. How could you think that?”

“Then who did?”

He looked at her curiously, but neither of her questions had visibly upset him. “You know who did. Everyone knows.”

“And does everyone know”-Giulietta paused to steady her voice-“what your father did to Romeo?”

Instead of answering, Nino rose from his chair and walked along the table all the way down to where she sat. Here, he knelt down next to her and took her hand the way a knight would take the hand of a maiden in distress. “How can I ever make good the evil my father has done?” He pressed her hand to his cheek. “How can I ever eclipse that mad moon shining upon my kin? Please tell me, dearest lady, how I may please you?”

Giulietta studied his face for the longest time, then simply said, “You can let me go.”

He looked at her, puzzled, not sure what she meant.

“I am not your father’s wife,” she went on. “There is no need to keep me here. Just let me go, and I will never bother you again.”

“I am sorry,” said Nino, pressing her hand to his lips this time, “but I cannot do that.”

“I see,” said Giulietta, withdrawing her hand. “In that case you can let me return to my room. That would please me very much.”

“And I will,” said Nino, getting up, “after another glass of wine.” He poured more wine into the glass she had barely touched. “You have not eaten much. You must be hungry?” When she did not reply, he smiled. “Life around here can be very pleasant, you know. Fresh air, good food, wonderful bread-not the stones we are served at home-and”-he opened his arms-“excellent company. Everything is yours to enjoy. All you have to do is take it.”

Only when he offered her the glass, still smiling, did Giulietta begin to understand his full meaning. “Are you not afraid,” she said, lightly, taking the glass, “of what your father would say?”

Nino laughed. “I think we both would appreciate a night of not thinking about my father.” He leaned against the table, waiting for her to drink. “I trust you can see that I am nothing like him.”

Putting down her glass, Giulietta stood up. “I thank you,” she said, “for this meal and your kind attention. But now it is time for me to retire, and I bid you good night-”

A hand around her wrist prevented her from leaving.

“I am not a man without feeling,” said Nino, serious at last. “I know you have suffered, and I wish it were otherwise. But fate has ordained that we be here together-”

“Fate?” Giulietta tried to free herself, but could not. “You mean, your father?”

Only now did Nino give up all pretense and look at her wearily. “Do you not realize that I am being generous? Believe me, I do not have to be. But I like you. You are worth it.” He let go of her wrist. “Now go, and do whatever it is that women do, and I will come to you.” He had the nerve to smile. “I promise, you will not think me quite so offensive by midnight.”

Giulietta looked him in the eye, but saw only determination. “Is there nothing I can say or do to convince you otherwise?”

But all he did was smile and shake his head.

THERE WAS A GUARD posted on every corner as Giulietta walked back to her room. And yet, despite all the protection, there was no lock on her door, no way of keeping Nino out.

Opening her shutters to the frosty night outside, she looked up at the stars and was amazed at their number and brightness. It was a dazzling spectacle, put on by Heaven for her alone, it seemed, to give her one last chance to fill her soul with beauty before it all went away.

She had failed at everything she set out to do. Her plans to bury Romeo and kill Salimbeni had both come to naught, and she must conclude that she had kept herself alive only to be abused. Her sole consolation was that they had not managed to void her vows with Romeo no matter how they had tried; she had never belonged to anyone else. He was her husband, and yet was not. While their souls were entwined, their bodies were separated by death. But not for long. All she had to do now was remain faithful to the end, and then perhaps, if Friar Lorenzo had told her the truth, she would be reunited with Romeo in the afterlife.

Leaving the shutters open, Giulietta walked over to her luggage. So many dresses, so much finery… but nested in a brocade slipper lay the only thing she wanted. It was a vial for perfume, which had been on her bedstand at Palazzo Salimbeni, but which she had soon decided to put to other use.

Every night after her wedding, an old nurse had come to serve her a measure of sleeping potion on a spoon, her eyes full of unspoken compassion. “Open up!” she had said, briskly, “and be a good girl. You want happy dreams, do you not?”

The first few times Giulietta had promptly spat out the potion in her chamber pot as soon as the nurse had left the room, determined to be fully awake in case Salimbeni came to her bed again, that she might remind him of his curse.

But after those first few nights, it had occurred to her to empty the vial of rosewater Monna Antonia had given her as they said goodbye, and-instead of the perfume-slowly fill it up with the mouthfuls of sleeping potion she was served every night.

In the beginning, she thought of the concoction as a weapon that might somehow be used against Salimbeni, but as his visits to her room became more and more rare, the vial sat on her bedstand with no dedicated purpose, except to remind Giulietta that, once it was full, it would surely be lethal to anyone who drank it all.

From the earliest age, she remembered hearing fanciful tales of women killing themselves with sleeping potion when abandoned by their lovers. Although her mother had tried to shield her daughters from that kind of gossip, there had been too many servants around the house who enjoyed the wide-eyed attention of the little girls. And so Giulietta and Giannozza had spent many afternoons in their secret ditch of daisies, taking turns being dead, while the other played out the horror of the people discovering the body and the empty bottle. Once, Giulietta had remained still and unresponsive for so long that Giannozza had, in fact, believed she was really dead.

“Giu-giu?” she had said, pulling at her arms. “Please stop! It is not funny anymore. Please!”

In the end, Giannozza had started crying, and although Giulietta had eventually sat up, laughing, Giannozza had been inconsolable. She had cried all afternoon and all evening, and had run away from dinner without eating. They had not played the game since.

During Giulietta’s imprisonment at Palazzo Salimbeni, there were days when she sat with the vial in her hands, wishing it was already full, and that she possessed the power to end her own life. But it was only on the last night before her morning departure for Val d’Orcia that the vial had finally run over, and throughout the journey she had consoled herself with thoughts of the treasure nested in a slipper in her luggage.

Now, sitting down on the bed with the vial in her hands, she felt confident that what she held would stop her heart. This, then, she thought, must have been the Virgin Mary’s plan all along; that her marriage with Romeo was to be consummated in Heaven, and not on earth. The vision was sweet enough to make her smile.

Taking out the quill and ink that was also hidden in her luggage, she settled down briefly to write a final letter to Giannozza. The inkwell Friar Lorenzo had given her when she was still at Palazzo Tolomei was by now almost empty, and the quill had been sharpened so many times that only a feeble tuft was left; even so, she took her time composing one last message to her sister before rolling up the parchment and hiding it in a crack in the wall behind the bed. “I will wait for you, my dearest,” she wrote, tears smearing the ink, “in our patch of daisies. And when you call my name, I shall wake up right away, I promise.”

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 wife.

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 Salimbeni’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.”

MAESTRO AMBROGIO SAW it with his own eyes. The wagon came in from Rocca di Tentennano late at night-just as he was passing by Palazzo Salimbeni-and the Salimbeni guards did not falter in unloading their miserable cargo before the very feet of their master on the front steps of his home.

First came Friar Lorenzo-bound and blindfolded and barely able to climb off the wagon by himself. Judging by the unforgiving way in which the guards hauled him into the building, they were taking him straight to the torture chamber. Next, they proceeded to unload the bodies of Romeo, Giulietta, and Nino… all wrapped together in the same bloody sheet.

There were those who would later say that Salimbeni had looked at his son’s dead body without emotion, but the Maestro was not fooled by the man’s stony features as Salimbeni beheld his own tragedy. Here was the outcome of his wicked dealings; God had punished him by serving up his son to him like a butchered lamb, smeared in the blood of the two people he himself had sought to separate and annihilate against the will of Heaven. Surely, at that moment, Salimbeni understood that he was already in Hell, and that, wherever he went in the world and however long he lived, his demons would always follow him.

When Maestro Ambrogio returned to his workshop later that night, he knew the Salimbeni soldiers might come knocking at any moment. If the rumors about Salimbeni’s torture methods were true, poor Friar Lorenzo was likely to blurt out everything he knew-as well as an abundance of falsehoods and exaggerations-before midnight.

But, the Maestro wondered, would they really dare come for him, too? After all, he was a famous artist with many noble patrons. Yet he could not be sure. Only one thing was certain: Running away and hiding would surely fix his guilt, and-once a runaway-there could be no return to the city he loved above any other.

And so the painter looked around his workshop for anything incriminating, such as the portrait of Giulietta and his journal, lying on the table. Pausing only to enter one last paragraph-a few jumbled sentences about what he had seen that night-he took the book and the portrait, wrapped them both in cloth, put them in an airtight box, and hid that box in a secret hollow in the wall where, surely, no one else would ever find it.