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 sanct
ioned. 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.”
[ VII.II ]
The ape is dead and I must conjure him.
I conjure thee by Rosaline’s bright eyes,
By her high forehead and her scarlet lip
…
THE PLAGUE AND THE RING
Siena, A.D. 1340–1370
THE MARESCOTTIS ARE ONE of the oldest noble families in Siena. It is believed that the name was derived from Marius Scotus, a Scottish general in Charlemagne’s army. Most of the Marescottis settled in Bologna, but the family spread its wings far and wide, and the Siena branch was particularly renowned for courage and leadership in times of crisis.
But, as we know, nothing great is great forever, and the fame of the Marescottis is no exception. Hardly anyone remembers their glorious past in Siena nowadays, but then history was always more concerned with those who live to destroy than with those devoted to protection and preservation.
Romeo was born when the family was still illustrious. His father, Comandante Marescotti, was much admired for his moderation and decorum, and his deposits on that account were so plentiful that not even his son—whose greed and sloth were always outstanding—could squander his savings.
However, even the Comandante’s virtues were taxed to the bone when, early in the year 1340, Romeo encountered the woman Rosalina. She was the wife of a butcher, but everyone knew they were not happy together. In Shakespeare’s version, Rosalina is a young beauty who torments Romeo with her vow of chastity; the truth is quite the opposite. Rosalina was ten years older than he, and she became his mistress. For months, Romeo tried to persuade her to run away with him, but she was too wise to trust him.
Just after Christmas of 1340—not long after Romeo and Giulietta died here at Rocca di Tentennano—Rosalina gave birth to a son, and everyone could see the butcher was not the father. It was a great scandal, and Rosalina was afraid her husband would learn the truth and kill the baby. So, she took the newborn to Comandante Marescotti and asked if he would raise the boy in his own house.
But the Comandante said no. He did not believe her story, and turned her away. Before she left, however, Rosalina said to him, “One day you will be sorry for what you have done to me and to this child. One day, God will punish you for the justice you are denying me!”
The Comandante forgot all about this until, in 1348, the Black Death came through Siena. More than a third of the population died within months, and the mortality was worst inside the city. Bodies were piled in the streets, sons abandoned fathers, wives abandoned husbands; everyone was too afraid to remember what it means to be a human and not an animal.
In one week, Comandante Marescotti lost his mother, his wife, and all his five children; only he alone was left to survive. He washed them and dressed them, and he put them all on a cart and brought them to the cathedral to find a priest who could perform a funeral. But there were no priests. Those priests who were still alive were too busy taking care of the sick in the hospital next to the cathedral, the Santa Maria della Scala. Even there, they had too many dead bodies to be able to bury them all, and what they did was build a hollow wall inside the hospital and put all the bodies inside and seal it off.
When the Comandante arrived at the Siena Cathedral, there were Misericordia Brothers outside in the piazza digging a big hole for a mass grave, and he bribed them to admit his family into this holy ground. He told them that this was his mother, and his wife, and he told them the names and ages of all his children, and explained that they were dressed in their finest church clothes. But the men didn’t care. They took his gold and tipped the cart, and the Comandante saw all his loved ones—his future—tumble into the hole with no prayers, no blessings, and no speranza … no hope.
When he walked back through town, he did not know where he went. He did not see anything around him. To him, it was the end of the world, and he began yelling at God, asking why he had been left alive to witness this misery, and to bury his own children. He even fell to his knees, and scooped up the dirty water from the gutter running with rot and death, and poured it over himself, and drank it, hoping to finally get sick and die like everyone else.
While he was there, kneeling in the mud, he suddenly heard the voice of a boy say to him, “I’ve tried that. It doesn’t work.”
The Comandante looked up at the boy, thinking he was looking at a ghost. “Romeo!” he said. “Romeo? Is it you?”
But it was not Romeo, just a boy of eight or so, very dirty and dressed in rags. “My name is Romanino,” said the boy. “I can pull that cart for you.”
“Why do you want to pull my cart?” asked the Comandante.
“Because I am hungry,” said Romanino.
“Here—” The Comandante took out the rest of his money. “Go buy some food.”
But the boy pushed his hand away and said, “I am not a beggar.”
So, the Comandante let the boy struggle to pull the cart all the way back to Palazzo Marescotti—occasionally, he helped him and gave the cart a little push—and when they arrived at the gate, the boy looked up at the eagle ornaments on the wall and said, “This is where my father was born.”
You can imagine what a shock it was to the Comandante to hear this, and he asked the boy, “How do you know that?”
“Mother used to tell me stories,” replied the boy. “She said my father was very brave. He was a great knight with arms this big. But he had to go and fight with the Emperor in the Holy Land, and he never returned. She used to say that maybe, one day, he would come back and look for me. And if he did, I had to tell him something, and then he would know who I was.”
“What did you have to tell him?”
The boy grinned, and just then, in that smile, the Comandante knew the truth before he even heard the words: “That I am a little eagle, an aquilino.”
That same night, Comandante Marescotti found himself sitting at the empty servants’ table in the kitchen, eating food for the first time in days. Across from him, Romanino was gnawing at a chicken bone, too busy to ask questions.
“Tell me,” said the Comandante, “when did your mother Rosalina die?”
“Long ago,” replied the boy. “Before all this. He beat her, you know. And one day, she didn’t get up. He yelled at her, and pulled at her hair, but she didn’t move. She didn’t move at all. Then he started crying. And I went up to her and talked to her, but she didn’t open her eyes. She was cold. I put my hand on her face—that was when I knew he had beat her too hard, and I told him so, and he kicked me, and then he tried to catch me, but I ran … out the door. And I just kept running. Even though he yelled after me, I just kept r
unning, and running, until I was at my aunt’s, and she took me in, and I stayed there. I worked, you know. I did my bit. And I took care of the baby when it came, and helped her to put food on the table. And they liked me, I think they really liked having me around to take care of the baby, until … until everyone started dying. The baker died, and the butcher, and the farmer who sold us fruit, and we did not have enough food. But she kept giving me the same as the others, even though they were still hungry, so … I ran away.”
The boy looked at him with wise green eyes, and the Comandante thought to himself how strange it was that this boy, a skinny little eight-year-old, could have more integrity than he had ever seen in a man. “How did you survive,” he had to ask, “through all this?”
“I don’t know”—Romanino shrugged—“but Mother always told me I was different. Stronger. That I wouldn’t get sick and stupid like the others. She said that I had a different kind of head on my shoulders. And that’s why they didn’t like me. Because they knew I was better than them. That was how I survived. By thinking of what she said. About me. And them. She said I would survive. And that’s what I did.”
“Do you know who I am?” asked the Comandante at last.
The boy looked at him. “You’re a great man, I think.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“But you are,” insisted Romanino. “You’re a great man. You have a big kitchen. And a chicken. And you let me pull your cart all the way. And now you’re sharing your chicken with me.”
“That doesn’t make me a great man.”
“You were drinking sewer water when I found you,” observed the boy. “Now you are drinking wine. To me, that makes you the greatest man I’ve ever met.”
THE NEXT MORNING, Comandante Marescotti took Romanino back to the boy’s aunt and uncle. As they walked together down the steep streets towards Fontebranda, weaving their way through garbage and gore, the sun came out for the first time in days. Or perhaps it had been shining every day, but the Comandante had spent all his time in the darkness of his home, pouring water to lips that were beyond drinking.