Pausing, Eva Maria smiled and put a gentle arm around the two old women, squeezing them in appreciation, and they both giggled girlishly at her gesture.
“So,” she said, looking at me meaningfully, “this is why we are gathered here tonight: to remember what happened, and make sure it never happens again. Monna Mina was the first one to do this, more than six hundred years ago. Every year on the anniversary of her wedding night, for as long as she lived, she would go down into the basement of Palazzo Salimbeni—into that dreadful room—and light candles for Friar Lorenzo. And when her daughters were old enough, she would bring them, too, so they could learn to respect the past and carry on the tradition after her. For many generations, this custom was kept alive by the women of both families. But now, to most people, all those events are very distant. And I’ll tell you”—she winked at me, revealing a sliver of her usual self—“big modern banks don’t like nightly processions with candles and old women in blue nightgowns walking around in their vaults. Just ask Sandro. So, nowadays we have our meetings here, at Castello Salimbeni, and we light our candles upstairs, not in the basement. We are civilized, you see, and not so young anymore. Therefore, carissima, we are happy to have you here with us tonight, on Mina’s wedding night, and to welcome you to our circle.”
I FIRST REALIZED something was wrong at the buffet table. Just as I was trying to pry a drumstick off a roasted duck that was sitting very elegantly in the middle of a silver platter, a wave of warm oblivion rolled onto the shore of my consciousness, gently rocking me. It was nothing dramatic, but the serving spoon fell right out of my hand, as if the muscles suddenly all went limp.
After a few deep breaths, I was able to look up and focus on my surroundings. Eva Maria’s spectacular buffet had been set up on the terrace off the great hall, underneath the rising moon, and out here, tall torches defied the darkness with concentric semicircles of fire. Behind me, the house shone brilliantly with dozens of lit windows and external spotlights; it was a beacon that stubbornly held the night at bay, one last, refined bastion of Salimbeni pride, and if I was not mistaken, the laws of the world stopped at the gate.
Picking up the serving spoon once more, I tried to shake my sudden wooziness. I had only had one glass of wine—poured for me personally by Eva Maria, who wanted to know what I thought of her new-growth sangiovese—but I had tossed half of it into a potted plant because I did not want to insult her wine-making skills by not finishing my glass. That said, considering everything that had happened that day, it would be odd if I did not, at this point, feel mildly unhinged.
Only then did I see Alessandro. He had emerged from the dark garden to stand between the torches, looking straight at me, and although I was relieved and excited to have him back at last, I instantly knew something was wrong. It was not that he seemed angry; rather, his expression was one of concern, perhaps even condolence, as if he had come to knock on my door and inform me that there had been a terrible accident.
Filled with foreboding, I put down my plate and walked towards him. “‘In a minute,’” I said, attempting a smile, “‘there are many days. O by this count I shall be much in years ere I again behold my Romeo.’” I stopped right in front of him, trying to read his thoughts. But by now, his face was—as it had been the very first time I met him—completely void of emotion.
“Shakespeare, Shakespeare,” he said, not appreciating my poetry, “why does he always come between us?”
I dared to reach out to him. “But he is our friend.”
“Is he?” Alessandro took my hand and kissed it, then turned it over and kissed my wrist, his eyes never letting go of mine. “Is he really? Then tell me, what would our friend have us do now?” When he read the answer in my eyes, he nodded slowly. “And after that?”
It took me a moment to grasp what he meant. After love came separation, and after separation death … according to my friend, Mr. Shakespeare. But before I could remind Alessandro that we were in the process of writing our own happy end—were we not?—Eva Maria came flapping towards us like a magnificent golden swan, her dress ablaze in the torchlight.
“Sandro! Giulietta! Grazie a Dio!” She waved for us both to follow her. “Come! Come quickly!”
There was nothing else to do but obey, and we walked back to the house in Eva Maria’s shimmering wake, neither of us bothering to ask her what could possibly be so urgent. Or perhaps Alessandro already knew where we were headed and why; judging by his glower we were once again at the mercy of the Bard, or fickle fortune, or whichever other power commandeered our destinies tonight.
Back in the great hall, Eva Maria led us straight through the crowd, out a side door, down a corridor, and into a smaller, formal dining room that was remarkarbly dark and quiet considering the party going on right around the corner. Only now, crossing the threshold, did she briefly pause and make a face at us—her eyes wide with agitation—to make sure we stayed right behind her and remained quiet.
At first glance, the room had seemed empty, but Eva Maria’s theatrics made me look again. And now I saw them. Two candelabra with burning candles stood at either end of the long table, and in each of the twelve tall dining room chairs sat a man wearing the monochrome garb of the clergy. Off to a side, veiled in shadows, stood a younger man in a cowl, discreetly swinging a bowl of incense.
My pulse quickened when I saw these men, and I was suddenly reminded of Janice’s warning from the day before. Eva Maria, she had said—bursting with sensational headlines after talking to cousin Peppo—was a mobster queen rumored to dabble in the occult, and out here, at her remote castle, a secret society supposedly met to perform gory blood rituals to conjure the spirits of the dead.
Even in my woozy state, I would have stepped right back out the door, had not Alessandro put a possessive arm around my waist.
“These men,” whispered Eva Maria, her voice trembling slightly, “are members of the Lorenzo Brotherhood. They have come all the way from Viterbo to meet you.”
“Me?” I looked at the stern dozen. “But why?”
“Shh!” She escorted me up to the head of the table with great circumstance, in order to introduce me to the elderly monk slumped in the thronelike chair at the table end. “He does not speak English, so I will translate.” She curtsied before the monk, whose eyes were fixed on me, or, more accurately, on the crucifix hanging around my neck. “Giulietta, this is a very special moment. I would like you to meet Friar Lorenzo.”
[ VIII.II ]
O blessed blessed night, I am afeard,
Being in night, all this is but a dream,
Too flattering sweet to be substantial
…
“GIULIETTA TOLOMEI!” THE OLD MONK rose from the chair to frame my head with his hands and look deeply into my eyes. Only then did he touch the crucifix hanging around my neck, not with suspicion, but with reverence. When he had seen enough, he leaned forward to kiss my forehead with lips as dry as wood.
“Friar Lorenzo,” explained Eva Maria, “is the leader of the Lorenzo Brotherhood. The leader always assumes the name of Lorenzo in remembrance of your ancestor’s friend. It is a great honor that these men have agreed to be here tonight and give you something that belongs to you. For many hundreds of years, the men of the Lorenzo Brotherhood have been looking forward to this moment!”
When Eva Maria stopped talking, Friar Lorenzo gestured for the other monks to rise, too, and they all did so, without a word. One of them leaned forward to take a small box that had been sitting in the middle of the dining room table, and it was passed from hand to hand with great ceremony until it finally reached Friar Lorenzo.
As soon as I recognized the box as the one I had found in Alessandro’s trunk earlier that day, I took a step back, but when she felt me moving, Eva Maria dug her fingers into my shoulder to make me stay where I was. And when Friar Lorenzo embarked upon a lengthy explanation in Italian, she translated every word he said with breathless urgency. “This is a treasure that has been guarded by the V
irgin Mary for many centuries, and only you must wear it. For many years, it was buried under a floor with the original Friar Lorenzo, but when his body was moved from Palazzo Salimbeni in Siena to holy ground in Viterbo, the monks discovered it within his remains. They believe he must have kept it hidden somewhere on his body to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. Since then, it disappeared for many, many years, but finally it is here, and it can be blessed again.”
Now, at last, Friar Lorenzo opened the box to reveal Romeo’s signet ring that was nested inside in royal blue velvet, and we all—even I—leaned forward to look.
“Dio!” whispered Eva Maria, admiring the wonder. “This is Giulietta’s wedding band. It is a miracle that Friar Lorenzo was able to save it.”
I stole a glance at Alessandro, expecting him to look at least slightly guilty about driving around with the damned thing in the trunk all day and only telling me part of the story. But his expression was perfectly serene; either he felt no guilt at all, or he was frighteningly good at masking it. Meanwhile, Friar Lorenzo gave the ring an elaborate blessing before taking it out of the box with trembling fingers and handing it not to me, but to Alessandro. “Romeo Marescotti … per favore.”
Alessandro hesitated before taking the ring, and when I looked up at his face I saw him exchanging a stare with Eva Maria, a dark, unsmiling stare that marked some symbolic point of no return between the two of them and went on to close around my heart like the grip of a butcher before the blow.
Just then—perhaps understandably—a second wave of oblivion blurred my vision, and I swayed briefly as the room took a turn about me and never came to a complete halt. Grabbing Alessandro’s arm for support, I blinked a few times, struggling to recover; amazingly, neither he nor Eva Maria allowed my sudden discomposure to interrupt the moment.
“In the Middle Ages,” said Alessandro, translating what Friar Lorenzo was telling him, “it was very simple. The groom would say, ‘I give you this ring,’ and that was it. That was the wedding.” He took my hand and let the ring slide onto my finger. “No diamonds. Just the eagle.”
It was fortunate for the two of them that I was too groggy to voice my opinion about having an evil ring from a dead man’s coffin forced onto my finger without my consent. As it was, some foreign element—not wine, but something else—kept jiggling my consciousness, and all my rational faculties were by now buried under a mudslide of tipsy fatalism. And so I simply stood there, docile as a cow, while Friar Lorenzo sent up a prayer to the powers above and went on to demand yet another object from the table.
It was Romeo’s dagger.
“This dagger is polluted,” explained Alessandro, his voice low, “but Friar Lorenzo will take care of it and make sure it does not cause any more harm—”
Even in my haze I was able to think, How nice of him! And how nice of you to ask before you gave this guy an heirloom that my parents left for me! But I did not say it.
“Shh!” Eva Maria evidently did not care whether I understood what was going on. “Your right hands!”
Both Alessandro and I looked at her, puzzled, as she reached out and placed her own right hand on top of the dagger, which Friar Lorenzo was holding towards us. “Come!” she urged me. “Put your hand on top of mine.”
And so I did. I put my hand on top of hers like a child playing a game, and after I had done that, Alessandro put his right hand on top of mine. To close the circle, Friar Lorenzo put his free hand on top of Alessandro’s, while he mumbled a prayer that sounded like an invocation to the powers below.
“No more,” whispered Alessandro, ignoring Eva Maria’s warning glare, “will this dagger harm a Salimbeni, or a Tolomei, or a Marescotti. The circle of violence is ended. No more will we be able to hurt each other with any weapon. Now peace has finally come, and this dagger must be returned to where it came from, poured back into the veins of the earth.”
When Friar Lorenzo had finished the prayer, he put the dagger very carefully into an oblong metal box with a lock. And only now, handing off the box to one of his brothers, did the old monk look up and smile at us, as if this was a completely normal social gathering, and we had not just taken part in a medieval wedding ritual and an act of exorcism.
“And now,” said Eva Maria, no less exalted than he, “one last thing. A letter—” She waited until Friar Lorenzo had taken a small, yellowed roll of parchment out of a pocket in his cowl. If it was really a letter, it was very old and had never been opened, for it was still sealed with a red wax stamp. “This,” Eva Maria explained, “is a letter which Giannozza sent to her sister Giulietta in 1340, while she was living in Palazzo Tolomei. But Friar Lorenzo never managed to give it to Giulietta, because of everything that happened at the Palio. The Lorenzo Brothers only found it recently, in the archives of the monastery where Friar Lorenzo took Romeo to recover after saving his life. It is now yours.”
“Uh, thanks,” I said, watching as Friar Lorenzo put the letter back in his pocket.
“And now—” Eva Maria snapped her fingers in the air, and within the blink of an eye a waiter had materialized right next to us carrying a tray with antique wine goblets. “Prego—” Eva Maria handed the largest vessel to Friar Lorenzo before serving the rest of us and raising her own goblet in a ceremonial toast. “Oh, and Giulietta … Friar Lorenzo says that when you have—when all this is over, you must come to Viterbo and give the crucifix back to its true owner. In return, he will give you Giannozza’s letter.”
“What crucifix?” I asked, only too aware that my words were slurred.
“That one—” She pointed at the crucifix hanging around my neck. “It belonged to Friar Lorenzo. He wants it back.”
Despite the bouquet of dust and metal polish, I drank with a vengeance. There is nothing quite like the presence of ghostly monks in embroidered capes to make a girl need a drink. To say nothing of my recurring wooziness and Romeo’s ring, which was now stuck—completely stuck—on my finger. But then, at least I had finally found something that actually belonged to me. As for the dagger—presently locked away in a metal box before its journey back to the crucible—it was probably time for me to acknowledge that it had, in fact, never been mine.
“And now,” said Eva Maria, putting down her goblet, “it is time for our procession.”
WHEN I WAS LITTLE, curled up on the bench in the kitchen and watching him work, Umberto had sometimes told me stories of religious processions in Italy in the Middle Ages. He had told me about priests carrying the relics of dead saints through the streets, and of torches, palm leaves, and sacred statues on poles. Occasionally he had ended a tale by saying, “and it is still going on, even now,” but I had always interpreted that the way one interprets the “happily ever after” at the end of fairy tales: as wishful thinking, and nothing more.
I had certainly never imagined that I would one day take part in a procession of my own, especially not one that seemed to have been put on partly in my honor, and which took twelve austere monks and a small glass case with a relic through the whole house—including my bedroom—followed by the better part of Eva Maria’s party guests, carrying tall candles.
As we moved slowly along the upstairs loggia, dutifully following the path of the incense and Friar Lorenzo’s Latin chant, I looked around for Alessandro, but could not see him anywhere in the procession. Seeing my distraction, Eva Maria took me by the arm and whispered, “I know you are tired. Why don’t you go to bed? This procession will go on for a long time. We will talk tomorrow, you and I, when all this is over.”
I did not even try to protest. The truth was that I wanted nothing more than to crawl into my Homeric bed and curl up in a tight ball, even if it meant missing the rest of Eva Maria’s strange party. And so, when we passed by my door next, I discreetly extricated myself from the group and stole inside.
My bed was still moist from Friar Lorenzo’s holy-water sprinkles, but I didn’t care. Without stopping to take off my shoes, I collapsed—facedown—on top of the bedspread, cer
tain that I would be asleep within a minute. I could still taste Eva Maria’s bitter sangiovese in my mouth, but didn’t even have the energy to go out and brush my teeth.
As I lay there, however, waiting for oblivion, I felt my dizziness receding to a point where everything suddenly became perfectly clear again. The room stopped rotating around me, and I was able to focus on the ring on my finger, which I still could not get off, and which seemed to emanate an energy all its own. At first, the sensation had filled me with fear, but now—seeing that I was still alive and had not been harmed by its destructive powers—the fear gave way to tingling anticipation. Of what, I was not entirely sure, but I suddenly knew that I would not be able to relax until I had talked to Alessandro. Hopefully, he would be able to give me a calm interpretation of the evening’s events; failing that, I would be quite content if he simply took me in his arms and let me hide there for a while.
Taking off my shoes, I slipped out onto our shared balcony in the hopes of catching a glimpse of him in his room. Surely, he had not yet gone to bed, and surely—despite everything that had happened this evening—he would be more than ready to continue where we had left off this afternoon.
As it turned out, he was standing right there on the balcony, fully dressed, hands on the railing, looking despondently into the night.
Even though he heard my French door open and knew I was there, he did not turn around, just sighed deeply and said, “You must think we’re insane.”
“Did you know about all this?” I asked. “That they would be here tonight … Friar Lorenzo and the monks?”