“Surely”—Giulietta paused to steady her voice—“surely his kind actions towards us have erased whatever vice he may previously have possessed?” Seeing that the monk was still hostile, she very calmly added, “Surely, Heaven would not have chosen Romeo as the instrument of our deliverance had not God himself desired his redemption.”
Friar Lorenzo held up a warning finger. “God is a divine being, and as such does not have desires.”
“No, but I do. I desire to be happy.” Giulietta pressed the letter against her heart. “I know what you are thinking. You wish to protect me, as an old and trusted friend. And you think Romeo will cause me pain. Great love, you believe, carries the seeds of great sorrow. Well, perhaps you are right. Perhaps the wise spurn one to remain safe from the other, but I should rather choose to have my eyes burnt in their sockets than to have been born without.”
…
MANY WEEKS AND many letters were to pass before Giulietta and Romeo met again. In the meantime, the tone of their correspondence rose in a fervent crescendo, culminating—despite Friar Lorenzo’s best efforts at calming the sentiments—in a mutual declaration of eternal love.
The only other person who was privy to Giulietta’s emotions was her twin sister Giannozza—the only sibling Giulietta had left in the world after the Salimbeni raid on her home. Giannozza had been married the year before, and had moved away to her husband’s estate in the south, but the two girls had always been close and had remained in frequent contact through letters. Reading and writing were unusual skills for young women to have, but their father had been an unusual man, who hated bookkeeping, and who was happy to leave such indoor tasks to his wife and daughters, seeing that they had little else to do.
However constant their writing to each other, the delivery of Giannozza’s letters was infrequent at best, and Giulietta suspected that her own letters going the other way were just as late in arriving—if they ever made it at all. In fact, after her arrival in Siena she had not received a single missive from Giannozza, even though she had sent several reports about the horrendous raid on their home and her own unhappy refuge—and lately imprisonment—in their uncle’s house, Palazzo Tolomei.
Although she trusted Friar Lorenzo to get her letters safely and secretly out of the house, Giulietta knew that the monk had no control over their destiny in the hands of strangers. She had no money to pay for a proper delivery, but was dependent on the kindness and diligence of travelers going down her sister’s way. And now that she was under house arrest there was always a danger that someone would stop Friar Lorenzo on his way in or out and demand that he empty his pockets.
Aware of the danger, she began to hide her letters to Giannozza under a floorboard rather than sending them right away. It was enough that she was asking Friar Lorenzo to deliver her love letters to Romeo; for him to carry many more reports of her shameless activities would be cruel. And so they all ended up under the floor—the fanciful tales of her amorous encounters with Romeo—awaiting the day when she could pay a messenger to deliver them all at once. Or the day when she would throw them all on the fire.
As for her letters to Romeo, she received smoldering responses to every single one. When she spoke in hundreds, he replied in thousands, and when she said that she liked, he said that he loved. She was bold and called him fire, but he was bolder and called her sun; she dared to think of them together on a dancing floor, but he could think of nothing but to be with her alone …
Once declared, this ardent love knew only two paths; one led towards fulfillment, the other towards disappointment. Stasis was impossible. And so one Sunday morning, when Giulietta and her cousins were allowed to go to confession in San Cristoforo before mass, she entered the confessional only to discover that there was no priest on the other side of the partition.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” she began, dutifully, expecting the priest to encourage elaboration.
Instead, a strange voice whispered, “How can love be a sin? If God did not want us to love, then why did he create such beauty as yours?”
Giulietta gasped in surprise and fear. “Romeo?” She knelt down in an attempt at verifying her suspicion through the metal filigree and, indeed, on the other side of the grate she saw the outline of a smile that was anything but priestly. “How dare you come here? My aunt is but ten feet away!”
“There lies more peril in your sweet voice,” complained Romeo, “than in twenty such aunts. I beg you, speak again and make my ruin complete.” He pressed his hand against the grate, willing Giulietta to do the same. She did, and although their hands did not touch, she could feel his heat against her palm.
“How I wish we were lowly peasants,” she whispered, “free to meet whenever we chose.”
“And what would we do, we lowly peasants,” inquired Romeo, “when we met?”
Giulietta was thankful that he could not see her blushing. “There would be no grate between us.”
“That, I suppose,” said Romeo, “would be some small improvement.”
“You,” Giulietta went on, sneaking a fingertip through the filigree, “would undoubtedly speak in rhyming couplets as men do when they seduce reluctant maids. The more reluctant the maid, the finer the poetry.”
Romeo swallowed his laughter as best he could. “Firstly, I never heard a lowly peasant utter anything in verse. Secondly, I wonder exactly how fine my poetry would have to be. Not so very much, I think, considering the maid.”
She gasped. “You rascal! I shall have to prove you wrong by being very prudish and refusing your kisses.”
“Easily said with a wall between us,” he smirked.
They stood in silence for a moment, trying to feel each other through the wooden boards.
“Oh, Romeo,” sighed Giulietta, suddenly sad, “is this what our love must be? A secret in a dark room, while the world bustles on outside?”
“Not for long, if I can help it.” Romeo closed his eyes, pretending the wall was Giulietta’s forehead against his own. “I wanted to see you today to tell you that I am going to ask my father to approve of our marriage and approach your uncle as soon as possible with a proposal.”
“You wish to … marry me?” She was not sure she had understood him properly. He had not posed it as a question, rather as a fact. But perhaps that was the Siena way.
“Nothing else will do,” he groaned. “I must have you, completely, at my table and in my bed, or I shall waste away like a starving prisoner. There you have it; forgive the lack of poesy.”
When, for a moment, there was nothing but silence on the other side of the wall, Romeo began to fear that he had offended her. He was already cursing his own frankness when Giulietta spoke again, chasing away those small, fluttering fears with the scent of a greater beast. “If it is a wife you seek, it is Tolomei you need to woo.”
“As much as I respect your uncle,” observed Romeo, “I had hoped to carry you, not him, to my chamber.”
Now finally, she giggled, but it was not a lasting pleasure. “He is a man of great ambition. Make sure your father brings a long pedigree when he comes.”
Romeo gasped at the perceived insult. “My family wore plumed helmets and served the Caesars, when your uncle Tolomei wore bearskin and served barley mash to his pigs!” Realizing that he was being childish, Romeo went on, more calmly, “Tolomei will not refuse my father. Between our households there has always been peace.”
“Would that it was a steady stream of blood!” sighed Giulietta. “Do you not see? If our houses are already at peace, then what is to be gained by our union?”
He refused to understand her. “All fathers wish their children well.”
“And so they feed us bitter medicine and make us cry.”
“I am eighteen. My father treats me like an equal.”
“An old man, then. Why not married? Or have you already buried your childhood bride?”
“My father does not believe in unweaned mothers.”
Her shy smile, barel
y visible through the filigree, was gratifying after so much torment. “But does he believe in old maids?”
“You cannot be sixteen.”
“Just. But who counts the petals of a wilting rose?”
“When we are married,” whispered Romeo, kissing her fingertips as best he could, “I shall water you and lay you on my bed and count them all.”
She attempted a frown. “What of the thorns? Perhaps I shall prick you and ruin your bliss.”
“Trust me, the pleasure will far outstrip the pain.”
And so they went on, worrying and teasing, until someone tapped impatiently on the wall of the confessional. “Giulietta!” hissed Monna Antonia, making her niece jump in fear. “You cannot have much left to confess. Hurry up, for we are leaving!”
As they made their brief but poetic farewells, Romeo repeated his plan to marry her, but Giulietta dared not believe him. Having seen her sister Giannozza married off to a man who should have been acquiring a coffin for himself rather than a wife, Giulietta knew very well that marriage was not something for young lovers to plan on their own; marriage was first and foremost a matter of politics and inheritance, and had nothing to do with the wishes of the bride and groom, but everything to do with the ambitions of their parents. Love—according to Giannozza, whose first few letters as a married woman had made Giulietta cry—always came later, and with someone else.
IT WAS RARE FOR Comandante Marescotti to be pleased with his firstborn. Most of the time, he had to remind himself that—as was the case with most fevers—there existed no remedy for youth but time. Either the subject died, or its affliction eventually wore itself out, leaving no virtue for the wise to cling to but patience. Alas, Comandante Marescotti was not affluent in that particular currency, and his paternal heart, as a result, had grown into a many-headed beast guarding a cavernous store of furies and fears, always alert, but mostly unsuccessful.
Now was no exception.
“Romeo!” he said, lowering his crossbow after the most atrocious marksmanship yet that morning, “I will lay ear to no more. I am Marescotti. For many years, Siena was run from this very house. Wars were planned in this very atrium. The victory at Montaperti was pronounced from this very tower! These walls speak for themselves!”
Comandante Marescotti, standing as tall in his own courtyard as he would in front of his army, glared at the new fresco and its busy, humming creator, Maestro Ambrogio, still unable to fully appreciate the genius of either. Certainly, the colorful battle scene added a little warmth to the monastic space, and the Marescotti family was handsomely poised and appeared convincingly virtuous. But why did it have to take so bloody long to finish it?
“But Father!”
“No more!” This time, Comandante Marescotti raised his voice. “I will not be associated with that kind of people! Can you not appreciate the fact that we have lived in peace these many years, while all those greedy newcomers, the Tolomeis, the Salimbenis, and the Malavoltis have been slaughtering each other in the streets? Do you want their evil blood to spread to our house? Do you want your brothers and cousins murdered in their cribs?”
From across the courtyard, Maestro Ambrogio could not help but look at the Comandante, who so rarely expressed any emotion. Still taller than his son—but mainly because of his posture—Romeo’s father was one of the most admirable men the Maestro had ever portrayed. Neither his face nor his figure showed any signs of excess; here was a man who only ate as much as his body needed for healthy upkeep, and who only slept for as long as it needed rest. In contrast, his son Romeo ate and drank whatever he felt like, and happily turned night into day with his escapades and day into night with untimely sleep.
Even so, they were so very like each other to look at—both strong and unbending—and despite Romeo’s habit of breaking the house rules, it was a rare sight to have the two of them locked in a verbal duel like this, on tiptoes to make their points.
“But Father!” said Romeo again, and once more, he was ignored.
“And for what? For some woman!” Comandante Marescotti would have rolled his eyes, but he needed them to take aim. This time, the arrow went straight to the heart of the straw puppet. “Some woman, some random woman, when there is a whole city of women out there. As if you did not know!”
“She is no random woman,” said Romeo, calmly contradicting his sire. “She is mine.”
There was a moment’s silence, during which another two arrows hit the target in rapid succession, making the straw puppet dance merrily on its rope like a man at his own hanging. Eventually, Comandante Marescotti drew a deep breath and spoke again, his voice calmer now, the unswerving vessel of reason. “Perhaps, but your lady is the niece of a fool.”
“A powerful fool.”
“If men are not born fools, politics and flattery certainly help them along.”
“I hear he is very generous to family.”
“Is there any left?”
Romeo laughed, well aware that his father had never sought to amuse. “Some, surely,” he said, “now that the peace has been kept for two years.”
“Peace, you call it?” Comandante Marescotti had seen it all before, and vain promises fatigued him even more than blatant falsehoods. “When the ilk of Salimbeni goes back to raiding Tolomei castles and robbing clergy on the high road, mark my words, even this peace is drawing to an end.”
“Then why not secure an alliance now,” insisted Romeo, “with Tolomei?”
“And make an enemy of Salimbeni?” Comandante Marescotti looked at his son with narrowed eyes. “If you had taken in as much intelligence around town as you have wine and women, my son, you would know that Salimbeni has been mobilizing. His aim is not only to step on the neck of Tolomei and rule all banking out of town, but to lay siege to this very city from his strongholds in the country and, if I am not mistaken, seize the reins of our republic.” The Comandante frowned and began pacing up and down. “I know this man, Romeo, I have looked into his eyes, and I have chosen to bar my ears and my door to his ambition. I know not who is worse off, his friends or his foes, and so Marescotti has sworn to be neither. One day, maybe soon, Salimbeni will make a mad push to overthrow the law, and our gutters will run with blood. Foreign soldiers will be brought in, and men will sit in their towers waiting for that knock on the door, regretting the alliances they have made. I will not be one of them.”
“Who says all this misery cannot be prevented?” urged Romeo. “If we were to join forces with Tolomei, other noble houses would follow the Eagle banner, and Salimbeni would soon lose ground. We could hunt down the brigands together and make the roads safe again, and with his money and your dignity, great projects could be undertaken. The new tower in the Campo could be finished within months. The new cathedral could be built within years. And the providence of Marescotti would be in everyone’s prayers.”
“A man should stay out of prayers,” said Comandante Marescotti, and stopped to cock his crossbow, “until he is dead.” The shot went right through the head of the puppet and landed in a pot of rosemary. “Then he may do whatever he wants. The living, my son, should make sure to pursue true glory, not flattery. True glory is between you and God. Flattery is the food of the soulless. Privately, you may rejoice in the fact that you saved that girl’s life, but do not seek acknowledgment or rewards from other men. Vainglory is unbecoming to a nobleman.”
“I do not want a reward,” Romeo said, his manly face giving in to the stubborn squint of boyhood, “I just want her. It moves me little what people know or think. If you do not bless my intention to marry her—”
Comandante Marescotti held up a gloved hand to prevent his son from speaking words that, once heard, could never be unsaid. “Do not threaten me with measures that would hurt you more than me. And let me not see you like this, acting beneath your age, or I shall withdraw my permission for you to ride in the Palio. Even the games of men—nay, especially the games—require the decorum of men. So, too, with marriage. I have never betrothed
you to anyone …”
“And for that alone I love my father!”
“… because I traced the outline of your character from the earliest age. Had I been an evil man, with some enemy due for punishment, I might have considered stealing away his only daughter and letting you make worms’ meat out of her heart. But I am not such a man. I have waited with great perseverance for you to shed your inconstant self and be satisfied with one pursuit at a time.”
Romeo looked crestfallen. But the potion of love was still tingling sweet upon his tongue, and a smile could not be restrained long. His joy broke away like a colt from its handlers, and galloped across his face on unfamiliar legs. “But Father, I have!” was his giddy reply. “Constancy is my true nature! I shall never look at another woman for the rest of my days, or rather, I shall look, but they shall be to me like chairs, or tables. Not that I intend to sit, of course, or eat off them, but in the sense that they are but furniture. Or perhaps I should say that they are to her what the moon is to the sun—”
“Do not compare her with the sun,” warned Comandante Marescotti, and walked over to the straw puppet to retrieve his arrows. “You always preferred the company of the moon.”
“Because I was living in eternal night! Surely, the moon must be the sovereign of a wretch who has never beheld the sun. But morning has broken, Father, draped in the golds and reds of marriage, and it is the dawn of my soul!”
“But the sun retires,” reasoned Comandante Marescotti, “every night.”
“And I shall retire, too!” Romeo clenched a fistful of arrows against his heart. “And leave the dark to owls and nightingales. I shall embrace the bright hours with industry, and prey no more on wholesome sleep.”
“Make no promises about the dark hours,” said Comandante Marescotti, placing a hand on his son’s shoulder at last. “If your wife is but half the creature you have laid her out to be, there will be much preying, and little sleep.”