Everyone who saw him that day would have sworn that Romeo was attempting the impossible. The distance saved by the shortcut was easily nullified by the many jumps, and once back on the road, he would—at best—be as far behind the other riders as he had been before. To say nothing of the harm done to the horse from galloping across heaps and holes and jumping like a mad dog under the August sun.
Luckily, Romeo did not know his odds. He also did not know that he emerged on the road ahead of the field due to very unusual circumstances. Somewhere along the way, an anonymous bystander had let loose a hamper of geese right in front of the Palio riders, and in the confusion, rotten eggs had been very accurately launched at a particular horseman—belonging to a particular tower-house—in retaliation for a similar incident the year before. Such pranks were part of the Palio, but only rarely did they have any profound influence on the race.
There were those who saw the Virgin Mary’s hand in it all: the geese, the delay, and Romeo’s magical flight over seven fences. But to the fourteen riders, who had dutifully followed the road, Romeo’s sudden appearance ahead of them could be nothing but the work of the devil. And so they pursued him with hateful vehemence as the road gradually narrowed to funnel them all through the arch of Porta Camollia.
Only the boys who had climbed up onto the brickwork of the city gate had been able to see the latter part of Romeo’s daring ride with their own eyes, and whatever their previous allegiances, whatever the loves and hates of their kin crowding below, those boys could not help but cheer on the reckless challenger as he shot through the gate beneath them, eminently vulnerable without his body armor and helmet, and immediately followed by a band of frenzied foes.
MANY A PALIO HAD been decided at Porta Camollia; the rider who had the good fortune to be first through the city gate stood a decent chance of maintaining the lead through the narrow city streets and ending up the winner in Piazza del Duomo. The greatest challenge from now on was the tower-houses lining the road on both sides; despite the law stipulating that if objects had been deliberately thrown from a tower, then that tower must be torn down, flowerpots and bricks kept falling—miraculously or devilishly, depending on your allegiance—onto rivals passing in the street below. Despite the law, such acts were rarely punished, for to gather a sober and unanimous account of events leading to accidents along the Palio racetrack was something very few city officials had ever bothered to attempt.
As he rode under the fateful gate and entered Siena in the lead position, Romeo was only too aware of disobeying his father. Comandante Marescotti had instructed him to avoid being in the lead, precisely because of the danger of projectiles thrown from the towers. Even with a helmet on his head, a man could easily be knocked from his horse by a well-aimed terra-cotta pot; with no helmet on, he was sure to be dead before he even hit the ground.
But Romeo could not let the others pass him. He had struggled so hard to catch up and pass the field that the idea of falling back to the fourth position—even in the interest of strategy and self-preservation—was as repulsive as giving in completely and letting the others finish the race without him.
And so he spurred on the horse and thundered into town, trusting in the Virgin to carve his way with her heavenly staff and deliver him from any evil falling from aloft.
He saw no faces, no limbs, no bodies; Romeo’s path was lined with walls studded with screaming mouths and wide-open eyes, mouths that made no sound, and eyes that saw nothing but black and white, rival and ally, and which would never be able to recount the facts of the race, for in a maddened crowd there are none. All is emotion, all is hope, and the wishes of the crowd will always trump the truth of one.
The first projectile hit him just as he entered the neighborhood of Magione. He never saw what it was, just felt a sudden, burning pain in his shoulder as the object merely grazed him and fell to the ground somewhere in his wake.
The next one—a terra-cotta pot—hit his thigh with a numbing thud, and for a brief instant he thought the impact might have crushed the bone. But when he touched a hand to his leg, he felt nothing, not even pain. Not that it mattered whether the bone was broken or not, as long as he was still in the saddle and his foot still firmly in the stirrup.
The third object to hit him was smaller, and that was fortunate, for it hit him right on the forehead and nearly knocked him out. It took Romeo a few gasps to shake the darkness and regain control of the horse, and meanwhile, all around him, the wall of screaming mouths was laughing at his confusion. Only now did he fully understand what his father had known all along: If he stayed in the lead through the neighborhoods controlled by the Salimbenis, he would never finish the race.
Once the decision was made, it was not hard to fall back from the lead position; the challenge was to avoid being passed by more than three other riders. They all glared at him as they passed him—the son of Tolomei, the son of Salimbeni, and someone else who did not matter—and Romeo glared right back at them, hating them for thinking he was giving up, and hating himself for resorting to tricks.
Taking up the pursuit, he stayed as close to the three as he could, keeping his head down and trusting that no tower-dwelling Salimbeni supporter would risk hurting the son of their patron. His calculation proved right. The sight of the Salimbeni banner with the three diamonds made everyone hesitate one moment too long in throwing their bricks and pots, and as the four riders galloped through the neighborhood of San Donato, Romeo was not struck by a single object.
Riding by Palazzo Salimbeni at last, he knew the time had come for him to do the impossible: pass his three rivals, one by one, before the track turned sharply up Via del Capitano and into Piazza del Duomo. This was truly the moment when divine intervention would show itself; were he to succeed and win the race from his current position, it could only be a result of heavenly favor.
Spurring on the horse, Romeo managed to catch up with the son of Tolomei and the son of Salimbeni—side by side as if they had been allies forever—but just as he was about to pass them, Nino Salimbeni drew back his arm like a scorpion its tail, and sunk a shiny dagger into the flesh of Tebaldo Tolomei, right above the harness where the tender neck was visible between the body armor and the helmet.
It happened so quickly that no one else could possibly have seen exactly who attacked and how. There was a flash of gold, a brief struggle. Then seventeen-year-old Tebaldo Tolomei tumbled from the horse, limply, in the middle of Piazza Tolomei, to be pulled aside by his father’s screaming clients, while the assassin continued at full speed without even looking back.
The only one to react to the atrocity was the third rider, who—fearing for his own life now that he seemed the only serious contender left—began swinging his banner at the murderer, trying to knock him out of the saddle.
Giving Cesare full rein, Romeo tried to pass the two wrestling riders, but was thwarted when Nino Salimbeni broadsided him in an attempt at avoiding the third rider’s banner. Hanging by little more than a stirrup, Romeo saw Palazzo Marescotti fly by and knew that the most lethal corner of the Palio was coming up ahead. If he was not back in the saddle when the road turned, his Palio—and maybe his life—would come to a very ignoble end.
IN PIAZZA DEL DUOMO, Friar Lorenzo regretted—for the twentieth time that morning—not staying in his lonely cell with his prayer book. Rather, he had allowed himself to be swept outside and away by the madness of the Palio. Here he was, trapped in the crowd and barely able to see the finish line, never mind that demonic cloth flying from a tall pole, that silken noose around the neck of innocence: the cencio.
Next to him was the podium holding the heads of the noble families, not to be confused with the podium of the government, which held fewer luxuries, and fewer ancestors, but—for all the self-effacing rhetoric—an equal amount of ambition. Both Tolomei and Salimbeni were visible on the former, opting to watch their sons triumph from the comfort of cushioned seats rather than suffering the dust of the starting line at Fontebecci only to to
ss their paternal advice at an ungrateful youngster who would never heed it anyway.
As they sat there, waving at their cheering supporters with measured condescension, they were not deaf to the fact that, this year, the tone of the masses had changed. The Palio had always been a cacophony of voices with everyone singing the songs of their own contrada and their own heroes—including the houses of Tolomei and Salimbeni, if they had a rider in the race—but this year it seemed many more people were joining in the songs of Aquila, the Marescotti eagle.
Sitting there, listening to it all, Tolomei looked worried. Only now, Friar Lorenzo ventured to guess, did the great man wonder whether it had been such a good idea to bring along with him the true prize of the Palio: his niece Giulietta.
The young woman was hardly recognizable as she sat there between father and husband-to-be, her regal attire at odds with her wan cheeks. She had turned her head once, to look right at Friar Lorenzo, as if she had known all along that he was standing there, observing her. The look on her face sent a stab of compassion through his heart, immediately followed by a stab of fury that he was unable to save her.
Was this why God had delivered her from the slaughter that befell her family—only to thrust her into the arms of the very villain who had shed their blood? It was a cruel, cruel fate, and Friar Lorenzo found himself suddenly wishing that neither she, nor he, had survived that evil day.
IF GIULIETTA HAD KNOWN her friend’s thoughts as she sat there on the podium, displayed for everyone to pity, she would have agreed that marriage to Salimbeni was a fate worse than death. But it was too early to give in to despair; the Palio was not yet over, Romeo was—as far as she knew—still alive, and Heaven might still be on their side.
If the Virgin Mary had truly been offended by Romeo’s behavior in the cathedral the night before, she would surely have struck him dead on the spot; the fact that he had been allowed to live, and return home unharmed, must mean that Heaven wanted him to ride in the Palio. But then … the design of Heaven was one thing, and quite another was the will of the man sitting next to her, Salimbeni.
A distant rumble of oncoming horses made the crowd around the podium contract in expectation and erupt in frenzied cheers, calling out the names of their favorites and rivals as if shouting could somehow direct fate. Everywhere around her, people stretched to see which of the fifteen Palio riders would be first into the piazza, but Giulietta could not look. Closing her eyes to the turmoil, she pressed her folded hands to her lips and dared to speak the one word that would make everything right, “Aquila!”
One breathless moment later, that word was repeated everywhere around her by thousands of voices: Aquila! Aquila! Aquila! It was cried, it was chuckled, it was sneered … and Giulietta opened her eyes excitedly to see Romeo sweeping through the piazza—his horse skidding on the uneven track and foaming with exhaustion—heading straight for the angel wagon with the cencio. His face was torn with rage, and she was shocked to see him smeared in blood, but he still had the eagle banner in his hand, and he was first. First.
Not pausing to cheer, Romeo rode right up to the angel wagon, pushed aside the chubby choirboys dressed with wings and suspended with ropes, grabbed the pole with the cencio, and planted his own banner instead. Holding his prize high in unrestrained triumph, he turned to face his closest rival, Nino Salimbeni, and to relish the other’s rage.
Nobody cared about the riders coming in third, fourth, and fifth; almost as one, the crowd’s heads were turning to see what Salimbeni was going to do about Romeo and this unexpected turn of events. By now, there was not a man or woman in Siena who was ignorant of Romeo’s defying Salimbeni, and his pledge to the Virgin Mary—that if he won the Palio, he would not turn the cencio into clothes, but drape it over his wedding bed—and there were few hearts that did not harbor some sympathy for the young lover.
Seeing that Romeo had secured the cencio, Tolomei got up abruptly, swaying in the crosswinds of fortune. All around him, the people of Siena were wailing and pleading, begging him to change his heart. Yet next to him sat a man who would surely squash that heart if he did.
“Messer Tolomei!” bellowed Romeo, holding the cencio high as the horse reared up beneath him, “Heaven has spoken in my favor! Do you dare ignore the wishes of the Virgin Mary? Will you sacrifice this city to her wrath? Does the pleasure of that man”—he pointed boldly at Salimbeni—“mean more to you than the safety of us all?”
A roar of outrage went through the crowd at the idea, and the guards surrounding the podium positioned themselves to draw and defend. There were those among the townspeople who defied the guards and boldly reached for Giulietta, urging her to jump from the podium and let them deliver her to Romeo. But Salimbeni put a stop to their attempts by standing up and placing a firm hand on her shoulder.
“Very well, boy!” he yelled to Romeo, counting on his many friends and supporters to cheer him on and turn the tide. “You won the race! Now go home and turn that cencio into a nice dress for yourself, and maybe I’ll let you be my bridesmaid when—”
But the crowd had heard enough and would not let him finish. “Shame on the Salimbenis,” cried someone, “for violating the will of Heaven!” And the rest responded immediately, screaming out their indignation against the noble gentlemen and preparing to turn rage into riot. Old Palio rivalries were now quite forgotten, and the few imbeciles still singing were quickly shut up by their peers.
The people of Siena knew that if they all united against the few, they might be able to storm the podium and steal away the lady who so obviously belonged to another. It would not be the first time they had rebelled against Salimbeni, and they knew that if only they kept pushing, they would soon have the mighty men hiding within their tall towers, all stairs and ladders pulled up and out of reach.
To Giulietta, who sat on the podium like an inexperienced sailor on a stormy sea, it was frightening and intoxicating to feel the power of the elements raging about her. There they were, thousands of strangers, whose names she did not know, but who were ready to brave the halberds of the guards to bring her justice. If only they kept pushing, the podium would soon keel over, and all the noble gentlemen would be busy saving themselves and their fine robes from the rabble.
In such a pandemonium, Giulietta figured, she and Romeo might be able to disappear, and the Virgin Mary would surely keep the riot going long enough for them to escape the city together.
But it was not to be. Before the mob had gathered momentum, a new group of people came bursting into the piazza, to scream terrible news at Messer Tolomei. “Tebaldo!” they cried, pulling at their hair in despair, “it is Tebaldo! Oh, the poor boy!” And when they finally reached the podium and found Tolomei on his knees, begging them to tell him what had happened to his son, they replied in tears, waving a bloody dagger in the air, “He is dead! Murdered! Stabbed to death during the Palio!”
As soon as he understood the message, Tolomei fell over in convulsions, and the whole podium erupted in fear. Shocked by the sight of her uncle like this, looking as if he was possessed by a demon, Giulietta at first recoiled, then forced herself to kneel down and attend to him as best she could, shielding him from the scuffle of feet and legs until Monna Antonia and the servants were able to get through. “Uncle Tolomei,” she urged him, not knowing what else to say, “calm yourself!”
The only man to stand straight through it all was Salimbeni, who demanded to see the murder weapon and instantly held it up for everyone to behold. “Look!” he roared. “There you have your hero! This is the dagger that killed Tebaldo Tolomei during our holy race! See?” He pointed at its shaft. “It has the Marescotti eagle engraved! What do you make of that?”
Giulietta looked out in horror to see the crowd staring at Salimbeni and the dagger in disbelief. Here was the man they had wanted to punish just a moment ago, but the shocking news of the misdeed and the sight of Messer Tolomei’s grieving figure had distracted them. Now they did not know what to think, and they just stoo
d there, gaping, waiting for a cue.
Seeing the changing expression on their faces, Giulietta understood right away that Salimbeni had planned this moment in advance, in order to turn the mob against Romeo in case he won the Palio. Now they were quite forgetting their reasons for attacking the podium in the first place, yet their emotions were still running wild, ravenous for some other object to tear apart.
They did not have to wait long. Salimbeni had enough loyal clients in the crowd that, as soon as he waved the dagger in the air, someone yelled out, “Romeo is the murderer!”
Within a moment, the people of Siena were once again united, this time in disgusted hatred against the young man they had just hailed as their hero.
Afloat on such a full sea of commotion, Salimbeni now dared to order Romeo’s immediate arrest, and to call everyone who disagreed a traitor. But to Giulietta’s immense relief, when the guards returned to the podium a quarter of an hour later, they brought only a foaming horse, the eagle banner, and the cencio. Of Romeo Marescotti there had been no trace. No matter how many people they had asked, they had received the same reply: Not a single person had seen Romeo leaving the piazza.
Only when they started making house calls later that night did one man—in the interest of saving his wife and daughters from the uniformed villains—confess that he had heard a rumor saying Romeo Marescotti had escaped through the underground Bottini aqueduct in the company of a young Franciscan friar.
When Giulietta heard this rumor whispered by the servants later that evening, she sent up a grateful prayer to the Virgin Mary. There was no doubt in her mind that the Franciscan friar had been Friar Lorenzo, and she knew him well enough to be sure that he would do everything in his power to save the man he knew she loved.