Juliet

VII.I

AFTER MAESTRO LIPPI STOPPED READING, we sat for a while in silence. I had originally pulled out the Italian text to get us off the topic of Alessandro being Romeo, but had I known it would take us to such dark places, I would have left it in my handbag.

“Poor Friar Lorenzo,” said Janice, emptying her wineglass, “no happy end for him.”

“I always thought Shakespeare let him off the hook too easily,” I said, trying to strike a lighter tone. “There he is, in Romeo and Juliet, walking around red-handed in the cemetery-bodies sprawled everywhere-even admitting that he was behind the whole double-crossing screw-up with the sleeping potion… and that’s it. You’d think the Capulets and the Montagues would at least try to hold him responsible.”

“Maybe they did,” said Janice, “later on. ‘Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished’… sounds like the story wasn’t over just because the curtain dropped.”

“Clearly it wasn’t.” I glanced at the text Maestro Lippi had just read to us. “And according to Mom it still isn’t.”

“This,” said the Maestro, still frowning over the evil deeds of old man Salimbeni, “is very disturbing. If it is true that Friar Lorenzo wrote such a curse, with those exact words, then it would-in theory-go on forever, until”-he checked the text to get the wording straight-“‘you undo your sins and kneel before the Virgin… and Giulietta wakes to behold her Romeo.’”

“Okay,” said Janice, never a great fan of superstitious mumbo jumbo, “so, I have two questions. One: who is this you-?”

“That’s obvious,” I interjected, “seeing that he is calling down ‘a plague on both your houses.’ He is obviously talking to Salimbeni and Tolomei, who were right there in the basement, torturing him. And since you and I are of the house of Tolomei, we’re cursed, too.”

“Listen to you!” snapped Janice. “Of the house of Tolomei! What difference does a name make?”

“Not just a name,” I said. “The genes and the name. Mom had the genes, and Dad had the name. Not much wiggle room for us.”

Janice was not happy with my logic, but what could she do? “Okay, fair enough,” she sighed. “Shakespeare was wrong. There never was a Mercutio, dying because of Romeo and calling down a plague on him and Tybalt; the curse came from Friar Lorenzo. Fine. But I have another question, and that is: If you actually believe in this curse, then what? How can anybody be stupid enough to think they can stop it? We’re not just talking repent here. We’re talking un-friggin’-do your sins! Well… how? Are we supposed to dig up old Salimbeni and make him change his mind and… and… and drag him to the cathedral so he can fall to his knees in front of the altar or whatever? Puh-leez!” She looked at us both belligerently, as if it was the Maestro and me who had brought this problem upon her. “Why don’t we just fly home and leave the stupid curse here in Italy? Why do we have to care?”

“Because Mom cared,” I said, simply. “This was what she wanted: to stick it out and end the curse. Now we have to do it for her. We owe her that.”

Janice pointed at me with the rosemary twig. “Allow me to quote myself: All we owe her is to stay alive.”

I touched the crucifix hanging around my neck. “That’s exactly what I mean. If we want to stay alive happily ever after, then-according to Mom-we have to end the curse. You and me, Giannozza. There’s no one else left to do it.”

The way she looked at me, I could see her coming around, realizing I was right, or, at least, telling a convincing story. But she didn’t like it. “This,” she said, “is so far out. But okay, let’s assume for a moment that there really is a curse, and that-if we don’t stop it-it really will kill us, like it killed Mom and Dad. The question is still how? How do we stop it?”

I glanced at the Maestro. He had been unusually present-minded all evening-and still was-but even he didn’t have the answer to Janice’s question. “I don’t know,” I confessed. “But I suspect the golden statue plays a part. And maybe the dagger and the cencio, too, although I don’t see how.”

“Oh, well!” Janice threw up her hands. “Then we’re cooking!… Except that we have absolutely no clue where the statue is. The story just says that Salimbeni ‘made for them a most holy grave’ and posted guards at ‘the chapel,’ but that could mean anywhere! So… we don’t know where the statue is, and you lost the dagger and the cencio! I’m amazed you’ve managed to hang on to that crucifix, but I suspect that’s because it has no significance whatsoever!”

I looked at Maestro Lippi. “The book you had, which talked about Juliet’s Eyes and the grave… are you sure it didn’t say anything about where it is? When we talked about it, you just told me to go ask Romeo.”

“And did you?”

“No! Of course not!” I felt a surge of irritation, but knew that I could not reasonably blame the painter for my own blindness. “I didn’t even know he was Romeo until this afternoon.”

“Then why,” said Maestro Lippi, as if nothing could be more straightforward, “do you not ask him next time you see him?”

IT WAS MIDNIGHT BY the time Janice and I returned to Hotel Chiusarelli. As soon as we entered the lobby, Direttor Rossini rose behind the reception counter and handed me a stack of folded-up notes. “Captain Santini called at five o’clock this afternoon,” he informed me, clearly blaming me for not being in my room, on tiptoes to take the call. “And many times since. Last time he called was”-he leaned forward to check the clock on the wall-“seventeen minutes ago.”

Walking up the stairs in silence, I saw Janice glaring at my handful of messages from Alessandro-evidence of his keen interest in my whereabouts. I began bracing myself for the inevitable next chapter in our ongoing discussion of his character and motives, but as soon as we entered the room we were met by an unexpected breeze from the balcony door, which had sprung open by itself with no immediate signs of a break-in. Instantly apprehensive, however, I quickly checked that no papers were missing from Mom’s box; we had left it right there, sitting on the desk, since we were now convinced that it contained nothing like a treasure map.

“Please call me back-” sang Janice, leafing through Alessandro’s messages one by one. “Please call me back-Are you free for dinner?-Are you okay?-I’m sorry-Please call-By the way, I’m a cross-dresser-”

I scratched my head. “Did we not lock that balcony door before we left? I specifically remember locking it.”

“Is anything missing?” Janice tossed Alessandro’s messages on the bed in a way that had them scatter in all directions.

“No,” I said, “all the papers are there.”

“Plus,” she observed, wiggling out of her top in front of the window, “half the law enforcement in Siena is keeping an eye on your room.”

“Would you get away from there!” I cried, pulling her away.

Janice laughed delightedly. “Why? At least they’ll know it’s not a man you’re sleeping with!”

Just then, the phone rang.

“That guy,” sighed Janice, shaking her head, “is a nutcase. Mark my words.”

“Why?” I shot back, making a dash for the receiver. “Because he happens to like me?”

“Like you?” Janice had clearly never heard anything so naïve in her entire life, and she embarked upon a long-drawn, snorting laugh, which only stopped when I threw a bed pillow at her.

“Hello?” I picked up the phone and carefully shielded the receiver from the noise of my sister stomping defiantly about the room, humming the sinister theme from a horror film.

It was Alessandro all right, concerned that something had happened to me, since I had not returned his calls. Now, of course, he acknowledged, it was too late to think about dinner, but could I at least tell him whether I was, in fact, planning to attend Eva Maria’s party tomorrow?

“Yes, Godmother…” mimicked Janice in the background, “whatever you say, Godmother-”

“I hadn’t actually-” I began, trying to remember all my excellent reasons for saying no to the invitation. But somehow they all seemed utterly groundless now that I knew he was Romeo. He and I were, after all, on the same team. Weren’t we? Maestro Ambrogio and Maestro Lippi would have agreed, and so would Shakespeare. Furthermore, I had never been completely convinced that it was really Alessandro who had broken into my hotel room. It certainly would not be the first time my sister had made a mistake. Or told me a lie.

“Come on,” he urged, in a voice that could talk a woman into anything, and probably had, many times, “it would mean a lot to her.”

Meanwhile, in the bathroom, Janice was wrestling loudly with the shower curtain, pretending-by the sound of it-to be stabbed to death.

“I don’t know,” I replied, trying to block out her shrieks, “everything is so… insane right now.”

“Maybe you need a weekend off?” Alessandro pointed out. “Eva Maria is counting on you. She has invited a lot of people. People who knew your parents.”

“Really?” I could feel curiosity tearing at my feeble resolve.

“I’ll pick you up at one o’clock, okay?” he said, choosing to interpret my hesitation as a yes. “And I promise, I’ll answer all your questions on the way.”

When Janice came back into the room, I was expecting a scene, but it never came.

“Do as you wish,” she merely said, shrugging as if she couldn’t care less, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“It’s so easy for you, isn’t it?” I sat down on the edge of the bed, suddenly exhausted. “You’re not Juliet.”

“And you’re not either,” said Janice, sitting down next to me. “You’re just a girl who had a weird mom. Like me. Look”-she put an arm around me-“I know you want to go to this party. So, go. I just wish-I hope you don’t take it too literally. The whole Romeo-and-Juliet thing. Shakespeare didn’t create you, and he doesn’t own you. You do.”

Later, we lay in bed together and looked through Mom’s notebook one more time. Now that we knew the story behind the statue, her drawings of a man holding a woman in his arms made perfect sense. But there was still nothing in the book that indicated the actual location of the grave. Most of the pages were crisscrossed with sketches and doodles; only one page was unique in that it had a border of five-petal roses all around, and a very elegantly written quotation from Romeo and Juliet:

And what obscur’d in your fair volume lies,

Find written in the margent of my eyes.

As it turned out, it was the only explicit Shakespeare quotation in the entire notebook, and it made us both pause.

“That,” I said, “is Juliet’s mother talking about Paris. But it’s wrong. It’s not your fair volume or my eyes, it’s this fair volume and his eyes.”

“Maybe she got it wrong?” proposed Janice.

I glared at her. “Mom get Shakespeare wrong? I don’t think so. I think she did this on purpose. To send someone a message.”

Janice sat up. She had always loved riddles and secrets, and for the first time since Alessandro’s phone call she looked genuinely excited. “So, what’s the message? Someone is obviously obscured. But we can find him. Right?”

“She talks about a volume,” I said, “and a margent, which means margin. That sounds like a book to me.”

“Not just one book,” Janice pointed out, “but two books: our book, and her book. She calls her own book her eyes, which sounds to me a lot like a sketchbook”-she knocked on the page of the notebook-“as in this book. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“But there’s nothing written in the margin-” I started flipping through the notebook, and now, for the first time, we both noticed all the numbers that were jotted down-seemingly randomly-on the edges of the pages. “Oh my-you’re right! Why didn’t we see this before?”

“’Cause we weren’t looking,” said Janice, taking the book from me. “If these numbers do not refer to pages and lines, you can call me Ishmael.”

“But the pages and lines of what?” I asked.

The truth hit us both at the same time. If the notebook was her volume, then the paperback edition of Romeo and Juliet-the only other book in the box-would have to be our volume. And the page and line numbers would have to refer to select passages in Shakespeare’s play. How very appropriate.

We both scrambled to get to the box first. But neither of us found what we were looking for. Only then did it occur to us what had gone missing since we left the room that afternoon. The mangy old paperback was no longer there.

JANICE HAD ALWAYS been a sound sleeper. It used to annoy me to no end that she could sleep through her alarm without even reaching out for the snooze button. After all, our rooms were right across the corridor from each other, and we always slept with our doors ajar. In her desperation, Aunt Rose went through every alarm clock in town in search of something that was monstrous enough to get my sister out of bed and off to school. She never succeeded. While I had a pink little Sleeping Beauty alarm on my bedstand until I left for college, Janice ended up with some industrial contraption-which Umberto had personally modified with a set of pliers at the kitchen counter-that sounded like an evacuation alarm from a nuclear power plant. And even so, the only one it woke up-usually with a yelp of terror-was me.

On the morning after our dinner with Maestro Lippi, I was amazed to see Janice lying awake, looking at the first golden blades of dawn as they came sliding in through the shutters.

“Bad dreams?” I asked, thinking of the nameless ghosts that had chased me around my dream castle-which looked more and more like the Siena Cathedral-all night.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she replied, turning to face me. “I’m going to drive down to Mom’s house today.”

“How? Are you renting a car?”

“I’m gonna get the bike back.” She wiggled her eyebrows, but her heart was not in it. “Peppo’s nephew runs the car pound. Wanna come?” But I could see that she already knew I wouldn’t.

When Alessandro came to pick me up at one o’clock, I was sitting on the front steps of Hotel Chiusarelli with a weekend bag at my feet, flirting with the sun through the branches of the magnolia tree. As soon as I saw his car pull up, my heart started racing; maybe because he was Romeo, maybe because he had broken into my room once or twice, or maybe simply because-as Janice would have it-I needed to get my head checked. It was tempting to blame it all on the water in Fontebranda, but then, you could argue that my madness, my pazzia, had started long, long before that. Six hundred years at least.

“What happened to your knees?” he asked, coming up the walkway and stopping right in front of me, looking anything but medieval in jeans and a shirt with rolled-up sleeves. Even Umberto would have had to agree that Alessandro looked remarkably trustworthy despite his casual attire, but then, Umberto was-at best-a rapscallion, so why should I still live under his morality code?

The thought of Umberto sent a little pang through my heart; why was it that the people I cared about-perhaps with the exception of Aunt Rose, who had been practically non-dimensional-always had a shadow-side?

Shaking my gloomy thoughts, I pulled at my skirt to cover the evidence of my marine crawl through the Bottini the day before. “I tripped over reality.”

Alessandro looked at me quizzically, but said nothing. Leaning forward, he picked up my bag, and now, for the first time, did I notice the Marescotti eagle on his forearm. To think that it had been right there all the time, literally staring me in the face when I drank from his hands at Fontebranda… but then, the world was full of birds, and I was certainly no connoisseur.

IT WAS ODD TO be back in his car, this time in the passenger seat. So much had happened since my arrival in Siena with Eva Maria-some of it charming, some anything but-thanks in part to him. As we drove out of town, one topic, and one topic only, was scalding my tongue, but I could not bring myself to raise it. Nor could I think of much else to talk about that would not, inevitably, bring us right back to the mother of all questions: Why had he not told me he was Romeo?

In all fairness, I had not told him everything either. In fact, I had told him next to nothing about my-admittedly pathetic-investigations into the golden statue, and absolutely nothing about Umberto and Janice. But at least I had told him who I was from the beginning, and it had been his own decision not to believe me. Of course… I had only told him I was Giulietta Tolomei to prevent him from finding out that I was Julie Jacobs, so it probably didn’t really count for much in the big blame game.

“You’re very quiet today,” said Alessandro, glancing at me as he drove. “I have a feeling it’s my fault.”

“You never got around to telling me about Charlemagne,” I countered, putting a lid on my conscience for now.

He laughed. “Is that it? Don’t worry, by the time we get to Val d’Orcia, you’ll know more about me and my family than you could ever want. But first, tell me what you already know, so I don’t repeat it.”

“You mean”-I tried to read his profile, but couldn’t-“what do I know about the Salimbenis?”

As always when I mentioned the Salimbenis, he smiled wryly. Now, of course, I knew why. “No. Tell me about your own family, the Tolomeis. Tell me everything you know about what happened in 1340.”

And so I did. Over the next little while I told him the story I had pieced together from Friar Lorenzo’s confession, Giulietta’s letters to Giannozza, and Maestro Ambrogio’s journal, and he did not interrupt me once. When I had come to the end of the drama at Rocca di Tentennano, I wondered briefly if I should go on to mention the Italian story about the possessed Monna Mina and Friar Lorenzo’s curse, but decided not to. It was too strange, too depressing, and besides, I didn’t want to get into the issue of the statue with the gemstone eyes again, after having flatly denied knowing anything about it that day at the police station, when he had first asked me.

“And so they died,” I concluded, “at Rocca di Tentennano. Not with a dagger and a vial of poison, but with sleeping potion and a spear in the back. Friar Lorenzo saw it all with his own eyes.”

“And how much of this,” said Alessandro teasingly, “did you make up?”

I shrugged. “A bit here and there. Just to fill in the blanks. Thought it might make the story more entertaining. It doesn’t change the essentials, though-” I looked at him only to find him grimacing. “What?”

“The essentials,” he said, “are not what most people think. In my opinion, your story-and Romeo and Juliet as well-is not about love. It is about politics, and the message is simple: When the old men fight, the young people die.”

“That,” I chuckled, “is remarkably unromantic of you.”

Alessandro shrugged. “Shakespeare didn’t see the romance either. Look at how he portrays them. Romeo is a little whiner, and Juliet is the real hero. Think about it. He drinks poison. What kind of man drinks poison? She is the one who stabs herself with his dagger. The manly way.”

I couldn’t help laughing at him. “Maybe that’s true for Shakespeare’s Romeo. But the real Romeo Marescotti was no whiner. He was tough as nails.” I glanced at him to see his reaction, and caught him smiling. “It is no mystery why Giulietta loved him.”

“How do you know she did?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” I shot back, starting to get a little miffed. “She loved him so much that-when Nino tried to seduce her-she committed suicide to remain faithful to Romeo, even though they had never actually… you know.” I looked at him, upset that he was still smiling. “I suppose you think that’s ridiculous?”

“Absolutely!” said Alessandro, as we surged forward to pass another car. “Think about it. Nino was not so bad-”

“Nino was outrageous!”

“Maybe,” he countered, “he was outrageously good in bed. Why not find out? She could always kill herself the morning after.”

“How can you say that?” I protested, genuinely upset. “I don’t believe you actually mean it! If you were Romeo, you would not want Juliet to… test-drive Paris!”

He laughed out loud. “Come on! You were the one who told me I was Paris! Rich, handsome, and evil. Of course I want Juliet to test-drive me.” He looked over and grinned, enjoying my scowl. “What kind of Paris would I be if I didn’t?”

I pulled at my skirt once more. “And when exactly did you plan on that to happen?”

“How about,” said Alessandro, gearing down, “right now?”

I had been too absorbed in our conversation to pay attention to the drive, but now I saw that we had long since turned off the highway and were crawling along a deserted gravel road flanked by scruffy cedars. It ended blindly at the foot of a tall hill, but instead of turning around, Alessandro pulled into an empty parking lot and stopped the car.

“Is this where Eva Maria lives?” I croaked, unable to spot a house anywhere near.

“No,” he replied, getting out of the car and grabbing a bottle and two glasses from the trunk, “this is Rocca di Tentennano. Or… what’s left of it.”

WE WALKED ALL THE way up the hill until we were at the very base of the ruined fortress. I knew from Maestro Ambrogio’s description that the building had been colossal in its day; he had called it “a forbidding crag with a giant nest of fearsome predators, those man-eating birds of old.” It was not hard to imagine what it had once looked like, for part of the massive tower was still standing, and even in its decay it seemed to loom over us, reminding us of the power that once had been.

“Impressive,” I said, touching the wall. The brick felt warm under my hand-much different, I was sure, than it would have felt to Romeo and Friar Lorenzo on that fateful winter evening in 1340. In fact, the contrast between the past and the present was never more striking than here. Back in the Middle Ages, this hilltop had been buzzing with human activity; now it was so quiet you could hear the happy hum of the tiniest insects. Yet around us in the grass lay the odd piece of freshly crumbled brick, as if somehow the ancient building-left for dead many, many years ago-was still quietly heaving, like the chest of a sleeping giant.

“They used to call it ‘the island,’” explained Alessandro, strolling on. “L’Isola. It is usually windy here, but not today. We are lucky.”

I followed him along a small, rocky path, and only now did I notice the spectacular view of Val d’Orcia dressed in the bold palette of summer. Bright yellow fields and green vineyards stretched all around us, and here and there was a patch of blue or red, where flowers had taken over a verdant meadow. Tall cypresses lined the roads that snaked through the landscape, and at the end of every road sat a farmhouse. It was the kind of view that made me wish I had not dropped out of art class in eleventh grade, just because Janice had threatened to sign up.

“No hiding from the Salimbenis,” I observed, holding up a hand against the sun. “They sure knew how to pick their spots.”

“It has great strategic importance,” nodded Alessandro. “From here, you can rule the world.”

“Or at least some of it.”

He shrugged. “The part worth ruling.”

Walking ahead of me, Alessandro looked surprisingly at home in this semi-state of nature with the glasses and a bottle of Prosecco, apparently in no hurry to pop the cork. When he finally stopped, it was in a little hollow grown over with grass and wild spices, and as he turned to face me-smiling with boyish pride-I felt my throat tighten.

“Let me guess,” I said, wrapping my arms around myself although there was barely a breeze, “this is where you bring all your dates? Mind you, it didn’t work too well for Nino.”

He actually looked hurt. “No! I haven’t-my uncle took me up here when I was a boy.” He made a sweeping gesture at the shrubs and scattered boulders. “We had a sword fight right here… me and my cousin, Malèna. She-” Perhaps realizing that his big secret might begin to unravel from the wrong end if he went on, he stopped abruptly and said instead, “Ever since, I always wanted to come back.”

“Took you a long time,” I pointed out, only too aware that it was my nerves speaking, not me, and that I was doing neither of us a favor by being so skittish. “But… I’m not complaining. It’s beautiful here. A perfect place for a celebration.” When he still didn’t speak, I pulled off my shoes and walked forward a few steps, barefoot. “So, what are we celebrating?”

Frowning, Alessandro turned to look at the view, and I could see him wrestling with the words he knew he had to say. When he finally turned to face me, all the playful mischief I had come to know so well had disappeared from his face and, instead, he looked at me with tortured apprehension. “I thought,” he said slowly, “it was time to celebrate a new beginning.”

“A new beginning for who?”

Now at last, he put the bottle and glasses down in the tall grass and walked over to where I stood. “Giulietta,” he said, his voice low, “I didn’t take you up here to play Nino. Or Paris. I took you up here because this is where it ended.” He reached out and touched my face with reverence, like an archaeologist who finally finds that precious artifact he has spent his whole life digging for. “And I thought it would be a good place to start over.” Not quite able to interpret my expression, he added, anxiously, “I am sorry I didn’t tell you the truth before. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to. You kept asking about Romeo and what he was really like. I was hoping that”-he smiled wistfully-“you would recognize me.”

Although I already knew what he was trying to tell me, his solemnity and the tension of the moment struck me unexpectedly, right in the heart, and I could not have been more shocked had I arrived at Rocca di Tentennano-and heard his confession-knowing absolutely nothing.

“Giulietta-” He tried to catch my eye, but I didn’t let him. I had been desperate for this conversation ever since discovering who he really was, and now that it was finally happening, I wanted him to say the words over and over. But at the same time, I had been running an emotional gauntlet for the last couple of days, and although, obviously, he couldn’t know the details, I needed him to feel my pain.

“You lied to me.”

Instead of backing up, he came closer. “I never lied to you about Romeo. I told you he was not the man you thought.”

“And you told me to stay away from him,” I went on. “You said I would be better off with Paris.”

He smiled at my accusatory frown. “You were the one who told me I was Paris-”

“And you let me believe it!”

“Yes, I did.” He touched my chin gently, as if wondering why I would not allow myself to smile. “Because it was what you wanted me to be. You wanted me to be the enemy. That was the only way you could relate to me.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but realized he was right.

“All this time,” Alessandro went on, aware that he was winning me over, “I was waiting for my moment. And I thought-after yesterday, at Fontebranda, I thought you would be happy.” His thumb paused at the corner of my mouth. “I thought you… liked me.”

In the silence that followed, his eyes confirmed everything he had said and begged me to reply. But rather than speaking right away I reached up to put a hand on his chest, and when I felt his warm heartbeat against my palm, an irrational, ecstatic joy bubbled up inside me from a place I had never known was there, to find its way to the surface at last. “I do.”

How long our kiss lasted, I will never know. It was one of those moments that no scientist can ever reduce to numbers, try as she might. But when the world eventually came whirling back, from somewhere pleasantly far away, everything was brighter, more worthwhile, than ever before. It was as if the entire cosmos had undergone some exorbitant renovation since the last time I looked… or maybe I had just never looked properly before.

“I am so glad you are Romeo,” I whispered, my forehead against his, “but even if you were not, I would still-”

“You would still what?”

I looked down in embarrassment. “I would still be happy.”

He chuckled, knowing full well that I had been about to say something far more revealing. “Come…” He pulled me down in the grass beside him. “You make me forget my promise. You are very good at that!”

I looked at him as he sat there, so determined to collect his thoughts. “What promise?”

“To tell you about my family,” he replied, helplessly. “I want you to know everything-”

“Oh, but I don’t want to know everything,” I cut him off, straddling his lap. “Not right now.”

“Wait!” He tried in vain to stop my misbehaving hands. “First, I have to tell you about…”

“Shh!” I put my fingers over his mouth. “First, you want to kiss me again.”

“… Charlemagne-”

“… can wait.” I removed my fingers and touched my lips to his in a lingering kiss that left no room for contradictions. “Wouldn’t you say?”

He looked at me with the expression of a lone defender facing a barbarian invasion. “But I want you to know what you’re getting yourself into.”

“Oh, don’t you worry,” I whispered, “I think I know what I’m getting myself into-”

After struggling for three noble seconds, his resolve finally caved in, and he pulled me as close as Italian fashion permitted. “Are you sure?” The next thing I knew I was lying on my back in a bed of wild thyme, giggling with surprise. “Well, Giulietta…” Alessandro looked at me sternly, “I hope you’re not expecting a rhyming couplet.”

I laughed. “It’s too bad Shakespeare never wrote any stage directions.”

“Why?” He kissed me softly on the neck. “Do you really think old William was a better lover than me?”

In the end, it was not my modesty that put an end to the fun, but the unwelcome specter of Sienese chivalry.

“Did you know,” Alessandro growled, pinning my arms to the ground in an attempt at saving his remaining shirt buttons, “that it took Columbus six years to discover the mainland of America?” As he hovered above me, constraint incarnate, the bullet dangled between us like a pendulum.

“What took him so long?” I asked, savoring the sight of his valiant struggle against the backdrop of blue sky.

“He was an Italian gentleman,” replied Alessandro, speaking to himself as much as to me, “not a conquistador.”

“Oh, he was after the gold,” I said, trying to kiss his clenched jaw, “just like them.”

“Maybe at first. But then”-he reached down to pull my skirt back where it belonged-“he discovered how much he loved to explore the coastline and get to know this strange, new culture.”

“Six years is a long time,” I protested, not yet ready to get up and on with reality. “Far too long.”

“No.” He smiled at my invitation. “Six hundred years is a long time. So I think you can be patient for half an hour while I tell you my story.”

THE PROSECCO WAS warm by the time we finally got around to it, but it was still the best glass of wine I had ever had. It tasted like honey and wild herbs, of love and giddy plans, and as I sat there, leaning against Alessandro, who was leaning against a boulder, I could almost believe that my life would be long and full of joy, and that I had finally found a blessing to put my ghosts to rest.

“I know you are still upset because I didn’t tell you who I was,” he said, stroking my hair. “Maybe you think I was afraid you would fall in love with the name and not the man. But the truth is the exact opposite. I was afraid-I am still afraid-that when you hear my story, the story of Romeo Marescotti, you will wish you had never met me.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but he did not let me. “Those things your cousin Peppo said about me… they are all true. I am sure the psychologists could explain it all with some graphs, but in my family, we don’t listen to psychologists. We don’t listen to anybody. We-the Marescottis-have our own theories, and we are so sure they are right that-as you say-they become dragons beneath our tower, letting no one in and no one out.” He paused to fill up my glass. “Here, the rest is for you. I am driving.”

“Driving?” I laughed. “That doesn’t sound like the Romeo Marescotti that Peppo told me about! I thought you were supposed to be reckless. This is a huge disappointment.”

“Don’t worry…” He pulled me closer. “I will make up for it in other ways.”

While I sipped my Prosecco, he told me about his mother, who became pregnant at seventeen and wouldn’t say who the father was. Naturally, her own father-old man Marescotti, Alessandro’s grandfather-had been furious. He threw her out of the house, and she went to live with her mother’s old school friend, Eva Maria Salimbeni. When Alessandro was born, Eva Maria became his godmother, and she was the one who insisted that the boy should be baptized with the traditional family name, Romeo Alessandro Marescotti, even though she knew it would make old man Marescotti foam at the mouth to have a bastard carry his name.

Finally, in 1977, Alessandro’s grandmother persuaded his grandfather to allow their daughter and grandson to come back to Siena for the first time after Alessandro was born, and the boy was baptized in the Aquila fountain just before the Palio. But that year, the contrada lost both Palios in terrible ways, and old man Marescotti was looking for someone to blame. When he heard that his daughter had taken her little boy to see the Aquila stable before the race-and had let him touch the horse-he became convinced that this was the reason right there: The little bastard had brought bad luck to the whole contrada.

He had yelled to his daughter to take her boy, go back to Rome, and not come home again before she had found a husband. So, she did. She went back to Rome and found a husband, a very good man who was a Carabinieri officer. This man let Alessandro use his last name, Santini, and brought him up like his own sons, with discipline and love. That was how Romeo Marescotti became Alessandro Santini.

But still, every summer, Alessandro had to spend a month at his grandparents’ farm in Siena, to get to know his cousins and get away from the big city. This was not his grandfather’s idea, or his mother’s; but it was his grandmother who insisted on it. The only thing she could not persuade old man Marescotti to do was to let Alessandro come to the Palio. Everyone would go-cousins, uncles, aunts-but Alessandro had to stay at home, because his grandfather was afraid he would bring bad luck to the Aquila horse. Or so he said. So, Alessandro had stayed behind on the farm all alone, and had made his own Palio riding the old workhorse around. Later, he learned how to fix scooters and motorcycles, and his Palio had been just as dangerous as the real thing.

In the end, he didn’t want to go back to Siena at all, for whenever he went, his grandfather would nag him with comments about his mother, who-for good reason-never came to visit. And so Alessandro finished school and joined the Carabinieri like his father and brothers, and did everything to forget that he was Romeo Marescotti. From then on, he only called himself Alessandro Santini, and he traveled as far away as he could from Siena, signing up every time there was a peacekeeping mission in another country. This was how he ended up in Iraq, perfecting his English in yelling arguments with American defense contractors and narrowly avoiding being blown to bits when insurgents ran a truck full of explosives into the Carabinieri headquarters in Nassiriyah.

When he finally visited Siena, he did not tell anyone that he was there, not even his grandmother. But on the night before the Palio, he went to the contrada stable. He didn’t plan it; he just couldn’t stay away. His uncle was there, guarding the horse, and when Alessandro told him who he was, his uncle was so excited that he let him touch the yellow-and-black Aquila giubbetto-the jacket that the jockey would wear during the race-for good luck.

Unfortunately, during the Palio on the following day, the jockey from Pantera-the rival contrada-got hold of that very giubbetto, and was able to slow down the Aquila jockey and horse so much that they lost the race.

At this point in the story, I could not help but twist around and look at Alessandro. “Don’t tell me you thought it was your fault.”

He shrugged. “What could I think? I had brought bad luck to our giubbetto, and we lost. Even my uncle said so. And we haven’t won a Palio since.”

“Honestly-!” I began.

“Shh!” He put his hand over my mouth lightly. “Just listen. After that, I was gone for a long period, and I only came back to Siena a few years ago. Just in time. My grandfather was very tired. I remember he was sitting on a bench, looking out over the vineyard, and he didn’t hear me until I put my hand on his shoulder. Then he turned his head and took one look at my face, and started crying, he was so happy. That was a good day. We had a big dinner, and my uncle said they would never let me leave again. At first, I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay. I had never lived in Siena before, and I had many bad memories. Also, I knew that people would gossip about me if they knew who I was. People don’t forget the past, you know. So, I started by just taking a leave. But then something happened. Aquila ran in the July Palio, and for us, it was the worst race of all times. In the whole history of the Palio, I don’t think any contrada has ever lost in such a bad way before. We were leading the whole race, but then in the very last curve, Pantera passes us and wins instead.” He sighed, reliving the moment. “There is no worse way to lose a Palio. It was a shock to us. And then later, we had to defend our honor in the August Palio, and our fantino-our jockey-was punished. We were all punished. We had no right to run the next year, and the year after that: We were sanctioned. Call it politics if you like, but in my family, we felt it was more than that.

“My grandfather was so upset, he had a heart attack when he realized that it could be two years before Aquila would run in the Palio again. He was eighty-seven. Three days later, he died.” Alessandro paused and looked away. “I sat with him those three days. He was so angry with himself for wasting all this time; now he wanted to look at my face as much as possible. At first, I thought he was upset with me for bringing bad luck again, but then he told me that it was not my fault. It was his fault for not understanding earlier.”

I had to ask. “Understanding what exactly?”

“My mother. He understood that what had happened to her had to happen. My uncle has five girls, no boys. I am the only grandchild who carries the family name. Because my mother was not married when I was born, and I was baptized with her name. You see?”

I sat up straight. “What kind of sick, chauvinist-”

“Giulietta, please!” He pulled me back to lean against his shoulder again. “You will never understand this if you don’t listen. What my grandfather realized was that there was an old evil that had woken up after many generations, and it had chosen me, because of my name.”

I felt the little hairs on my arms stand up. “Chosen you… for what?”

“This…” said Alessandro, filling my glass again, “is when we get to Charlemagne.”