Now, finally, Alessandro turned to look at me with eyes that were darker than the star-spangled sky behind him. “If I had known, I wouldn’t have brought you here.” He paused, then said plainly, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I said, hoping to soften his frown. “I’m having the time of my life. Who wouldn’t? These people … Friar Lorenzo … Monna Chiara … chasing ghosts around—this is the stuff that dreams are made of.”
Alessandro shook his head, but just once. “Not my dreams.”
“And look!” I held up my hand. “I got my ring back.”
He still did not smile. “But that is not what you were looking for. You came to Siena to find a treasure. Didn’t you?”
“Maybe an end to Friar Lorenzo’s curse is the most valuable thing I could possibly find,” I countered. “I suspect gold and jewelry don’t count for much at the bottom of a grave.”
“So, is that what you want to do?” He studied my face, clearly wondering what I was trying to say. “End the curse?”
“Isn’t that what we’re doing tonight?” I stepped closer. “Undoing the evils of the past? Writing a happy end? Correct me if I am wrong, but we just got married … or something very like it.”
“Oh, God!” He ran both hands through his hair. “I’m so sorry about that!”
Seeing his embarrassment, I couldn’t help giggling. “Well, since this is supposed to be our wedding night, shame on you for not bursting into my room and slapping me around in a medieval manner! In fact, I’m going down to complain to Friar Lorenzo right now—” I made a move to go, but he caught my wrist and held me back.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said, playing along at last. “Come here, woman—” And he pulled me into his arms and kissed me until I stopped laughing.
Only when I began unbuttoning his shirt did he speak again. “Do you,” he asked, briefly stopping my hands, “believe in forever?”
I met his eyes, surprised at his sincerity. Holding up the eagle ring between us, I simply said, “Forever started a long time ago.”
“If you want, I can take you back to Siena and … leave you alone. Right now.”
“And then what?”
He buried his face in my hair. “No more chasing ghosts around.”
“If you let go of me now,” I whispered, stretching against him, “it could be another six hundred years before you find me again. Are you willing to take that risk?”
I WOKE UP when it was not yet day, to find myself alone in a nest of tousled sheets. From the garden outside came a persistent, haunting birdcall, and that was most likely what had pierced my dreams and stirred me from sleep. According to my watch it was three in the morning, and our candles were long since burnt out. By now, the only light in the room was the raw shine from a full moon coming through the French doors.
Perhaps I was being naïve, but it shocked me that Alessandro had left my bed like this, on our first night together. The way he had held me before we fell asleep had made me think he would never let go of me again.
Yet here I was, alone and wondering why, feeling parched and hung-over from whatever it was that had hit me earlier. It did not help my confusion that Alessandro’s clothes were—as were mine—still lying on the floor beside the bed. Switching on a lamp, I checked the bedside table and found that he had even left behind the leather string with the bullet, which I had personally pulled over his head a few hours ago.
Wrapping myself in one of the sheets from the bed, I winced when I saw the mess we had made of Eva Maria’s vintage linen. And not only that, but entangled in the white sheets lay a bundle of frail, blue silk, which I had not even noticed until now. Strangely, as I began unfolding it, it took me a while to recognize it for what it was, probably because I had never expected to see it again. And most definitely not in my bed.
It was the cencio from 1340.
Judging by the fact that I had not noticed it until now, this invaluable artifact had been hidden among the sheets by someone who was determined to have me sleep on it. But who? And why?
Twenty years ago, my mother had gone to extremes to protect this cencio and pass it on to me; I in turn had found it, but quickly lost it, and yet here it was again, right beneath me, like a shadow I couldn’t shake. Only the day before, at Rocca di Tentennano, I had asked Alessandro point-blank if he knew where the cencio was. His cryptic response had been that, wherever it was, it was meaningless without me. And now, suddenly, as I sat there holding it in my hands, everything fell into place.
According to Maestro Ambrogio’s journal, Romeo Marescotti had vowed that, if he won the Palio of 1340, he would use the cencio as his wedding-sheet. But the evil Salimbeni had done everything in his power to prevent Romeo and Giulietta from ever spending a night together, and he had succeeded.
Until now.
So maybe this, I thought to myself, startled that I was able to make sense of it all at three in the morning, was why there had already been a smell of incense in my room when I came back from the swimming pool the day before; perhaps Friar Lorenzo and the monks had wanted to personally ensure that the cencio was where it belonged … in the bed they assumed I would be sharing with Alessandro.
Seen in a flattering light it was all very romantic. The Lorenzo Brotherhood clearly considered it their life mission to help the Tolomeis and the Salimbenis “undo” their sins of old, so that Friar Lorenzo’s curse could finally be broken—hence the ceremony this evening to put Romeo’s ring back on Giulietta’s finger and to discharge the eagle dagger of all its evil. I could even be convinced to look favorably on the placing of the cencio in my bed; if Maestro Ambrogio’s version of the story was really true, and Shakespeare’s wrong, then Romeo and Giulietta had been waiting to consummate their marriage for a long, long time. Who could possibly object to a little ceremony?
But that was not the issue. The issue was that whoever had placed the cencio in my bed must have been in cahoots with the late Bruno Carrera, and thus—directly or indirectly—been responsible for the break-in at the Owl Museum, which had sent my poor cousin Peppo to the hospital. In other words, it was no mere romantic whim that saw me sitting here tonight with the cencio in my hands; something bigger and more sinister was clearly at stake.
Suddenly afraid that something bad had happened to Alessandro, I got out of bed at last. Rather than scrambling around for new clothes, I simply slipped back into the red velvet dress lying on the floor and went over to open the French doors. Stepping out onto the balcony, I filled my lungs with the soothing sanity of a cool night before stretching to look into Alessandro’s room.
I didn’t see him. However, all his lights were on, and it looked as if he had left in a hurry, without closing the door behind him.
It took me a second or two to gather courage to push open his balcony door and step inside. Although I now felt closer to him than to any other man I had ever met, there was still a little voice in my head saying that—physiognomy and sweet words aside—I did not know him at all.
I stood for a moment in the middle of the floor of his room, looking at the décor. This was clearly not just another guest room, but his room, and if things had been different, I would have loved to poke around and look at the photos on the walls, and all the little jars full of strange knickknacks.
Just as I was about to peek into the bathroom, I became aware of distant voices coming from somewhere beyond the half-open door to the interior loggia. Sticking my head through the doorway, however, I saw no one on the loggia or in the great hall below; the party had clearly wrapped up hours ago, and the whole house lay in darkness, except for the odd wall sconce flickering in a corner.
Stepping out into the loggia, I tried to determine where the voices were coming from, and concluded that the people I could hear were in another guest room a bit farther down the hallway. Despite the scattered disembodiment of the voices—to say nothing of my own state of mind—I was sure I heard Alessandro talking. Alessandro and someone else. The sound of hi
s voice made me nervous and warm at the same time, and I knew I would not be able to go back to sleep unless I saw who it was that had managed to lure him from my side tonight.
The door to the room was ajar, and as I tiptoed closer, I carefully avoided stepping into the light spilling out onto the marble floor. Stretching to see inside the room, I was able to make out two men and even pick up fragments of their conversation, though I did not understand what they were saying. Alessandro was indeed there, sitting on top of a desk in nothing but a pair of jeans, looking remarkably tense compared to the last time I had seen him. But as soon as the other man turned to face him, I understood why.
It was Umberto.
[ VIII.III ]
O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face.
Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
…
JANICE HAD ALWAYS CLAIMED that you have to get your heart broken at least once in order to grow up and figure out who you really are. To me, this harsh doctrine had never been more than yet another excellent reason for not falling in love. Until now. As I stood there on the loggia that night, watching Alessandro and Umberto conspire against me, I finally knew precisely who I was. I was Shakespeare’s fool.
For despite everything I had learned about Umberto over the past week, the first thing I felt when I saw him was joy. A ridiculous, bubbling, nonsensical joy that it took me a few moments to quell. Two weeks ago, after Aunt Rose’s funeral, I had felt that he was the only person in the world left for me to love, and when I had taken off on my Italian adventure I had felt guilty about leaving him behind. Now, of course, everything was different, but that didn’t mean—I now realized—that I had stopped loving him.
It was a shock to see him, but I knew right away that it ought not have been. As soon as Janice had sprung the news on me—that Umberto was, in fact, Luciano Salimbeni—I had known that, for all his dorky questions over the phone, pretending to misunderstand everything I told him about Mom’s box, he had been several steps ahead of me all the time. And because I loved him and had kept defending him to Janice—insisting that she had somehow misunderstood the police, or that it was simply a case of mistaken identity—his betrayal of me was so much more excruciating.
No matter how I tried to explain his presence here, tonight, there could no longer be any doubt that Umberto was really Luciano Salimbeni. He had been the one siccing Bruno Carrera on me in order to get his hands on the cencio. And considering his track record—people had tended to die when Luciano was around—he had most likely been the one who had helped Bruno tie his shoelaces one last time.
The odd thing was that Umberto still looked precisely the way he always had. Even the expression on his face was exactly as I remembered it: a little arrogant, a little amused, and never betraying his innermost thoughts.
The one who had changed was me.
Now I could finally see that Janice had been right about him all these years; he was a psychopath waiting to snap. And as for Alessandro, sadly, she had been right about him, too. She had said that he didn’t give a hoot about me, and that it was all just a big charade to get his hands on the treasure. Well, I should have listened to her. But that was all too late now. Here I was, stupid me, feeling as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to my future.
This, I thought to myself as I stood there looking at them through the door, would be a natural time for me to cry. But I couldn’t. Too much had happened this night—I had no emotions left in store, save a lump in my throat that was part disbelief, part fear.
Meanwhile, inside the room, Alessandro got off the desk and said something to Umberto that involved the familiar concepts, Friar Lorenzo, Giulietta, and cencio. In response, Umberto reached into his pocket and took out a small, green vial, said something I couldn’t understand, and gave it a vigorous shake before handing it to Alessandro.
Breathless and on tiptoes, all I could see was green glass and a cork stopper. What was it? Poison? Sleeping potion? And for what? Me? Did Umberto want Alessandro to kill me? Never had I needed Italian more than now.
Whatever was in the vial, it was a complete surprise to its recipient, and as he turned it over in his hand, his eyes became practically demonic. Handing it back to Umberto, he sneered something dismissive, and for the briefest of moments I dared to believe that, whatever Umberto’s wicked plans, Alessandro would have nothing to do with them.
Umberto merely shrugged and put the vial gently down on a table. Then he held out his hand, clearly expecting something in return, and Alessandro frowned and handed him a book.
I recognized it right away. It was my mother’s volume of Romeo and Juliet, which had disappeared from the box of papers the day before, while Janice and I were out spelunking in the Bottini … or maybe later, when we were swapping ghost stories in Maestro Lippi’s workshop. No wonder Alessandro had kept calling the hotel over and over; he had obviously wanted to make sure I was out before he broke in and took it.
Without a word of thanks, Umberto started riffling through the book with self-congratulatory greed, while Alessandro stuck his hands in his pockets and walked over to look out the window.
Swallowing hard to keep my heart from popping right out of my throat, I looked at the man whose last words to me, spoken only a few hours ago, had been that he felt reborn and cleansed of all his sins. Here he was, already betraying me, not just with anyone, but with the only other man I had ever trusted.
Just as I decided that I had seen enough, Umberto slammed the book shut and threw it dismissively on the table next to the vial, sneering something I didn’t need to know Italian to understand. Like Janice and me, Umberto had come to the frustrating conclusion that the book in itself did not contain any clues to the whereabouts of Romeo and Giulietta’s grave, and that some other vital piece of evidence was clearly missing.
Without much of a warning, he came over to the door, and I barely had time to dart off into the shadows before Umberto stepped out onto the loggia, impatiently waving Alessandro along. Pressed against a recess in the wall, I saw them both walking off down the hallway and disappearing quietly down the stairs into the great hall.
Now, finally, I could feel the tears coming, but I held them in, deciding that I was more angry than sad. Fine. So Alessandro had been in it for the money, just as Janice had divined. That being the case, he could at least have had the decency to keep his hands to himself and not make things worse. As for Umberto, there were not enough words in Aunt Rose’s big dictionary to describe my fury at his being here tonight and doing this to me. It was obviously he who had manipulated Alessandro, telling him to keep an eye—and two hands, and a mouth, and so forth—on me at all times.
My body executed the only logical game plan before my brain had even approved it. Rushing into the room they had just left, I picked up the book and the vial—the latter exclusively out of spite. Then I ran back to Alessandro’s room and bundled up my loot in a shirt lying on his bed.
Looking around the room for other items that could be construed as relevant to my victimhood, it occurred to me that the most useful object I could possibly steal would be the keys to the Alfa Romeo. Ripping open the drawer in Alessandro’s bedstand, however, all I found were a handful of foreign change, a rosary, and a pocketknife. Not even bothering to close the drawer, I scanned the room for other possible locations, trying to put myself in Alessandro’s place. “Romeo, Romeo,” I mumbled, peeking under this and that, “where dost thou keep thine car keys?”
When it finally occurred to me to look under the bed pillows, I was rewarded with the discovery of not only the car keys, but a handgun as well. Without allowing myself time for second thoughts, I grabbed both, and was astounded by the weight of the weapon. If I had not been so upset, I would have laughed at myself. Look at the pacifist now—gone were all my rosy dreams of a world with perfect equality and without guns. To me now, Alessandro’s handgun was exactly the kind of equalizer I needed.
Back in my own room, I quickly tossed everything into my wee
kend bag. As I started to zip it up, my eyes fell on the ring on my finger. Yes, it was mine, and yes, it was solid gold, but it symbolized my spiritual—and now also physical—symbiosis with the man who had broken into my hotel room twice and stolen half of my treasure map in order to give it to the two-faced bastard who had very possibly murdered my parents. So I pulled and pulled until the ring finally came off, and left it on one of the bed pillows as one last, melodramatic goodbye to Alessandro.
Mostly as an afterthought, I grabbed the cencio from the bed and folded it gingerly before putting it into the bag with the rest of my stuff. It wasn’t that I had any use for it whatsoever, nor did I think I could ever go out and sell it to anyone—especially in its current condition. No, I simply didn’t want them to have it.
Whereupon I picked up my loot and slipped right back out the balcony door without waiting for applause.
THE OLD VINES GROWING on the wall were just strong enough to carry my weight as I began my descent from the balcony. I had dropped the bag first, aiming for a spongy bush, and after seeing that it had landed safely, I had embarked on my own laborious escape.
Inching along on the wall, my hands and arms throbbing, I passed closely by a window that was still illuminated despite the late hour. Stretching to make sure there was no one in the room who might wonder about the scratching sounds, I was astounded to see Friar Lorenzo and three of his fellow monks sitting very quietly, hands folded, in four armchairs facing a fireplace full of fresh flowers. Two of the monks were clearly nodding off, but Friar Lorenzo looked as if nothing and no one could compel him to close his eyes until this night was over.
At one point while I was hanging there, panting and desperate, I heard agitated voices coming from my room above, and the sound of someone stepping angrily out onto my balcony. Holding my breath, I hung as still as I possibly could, until I was sure the person had gone back inside. The prolonged strain, however, was too much for the vine. Just as I dared to move again, it snapped and started peeling off the wall, sending me into a headlong plunge to the greenery below.