by Anne Fortier
Faced with such unswerving logic, Tolomei was at a loss to come up with a word of objection. Giulietta even felt a brief stab of sympathy for him; standing between these two men, her uncle looked much like a drowning man grasping for the dispersed boards of a boat, and the result was anything but graceful.
“Am I to understand that you are opposing my claim, Comandante?” asked Salimbeni, once again stepping in between the two. “Surely, you do not mean to question Messer Tolomei’s rights as head of his own family? And surely”—there was no mistaking the threat in his eyes—“the house of Marescotti does not desire a quarrel with Tolomei and Salimbeni?”
Behind the column, Giulietta could no longer fight back her tears. She wanted to run over to the men and stop them, but knew that her presence would only make things worse. When Romeo had first mentioned his intention to marry her—that day in the confessional—he had said that, between their families, there had always been peace. It would seem that now, because of her, those words were no longer true.
NICCOLINO PATRIZI, ONE OF the nine head administrators of Siena, had overheard the escalating conflict beneath the podium with growing apprehension. He was not the only one.
“When they were mortal enemies,” mused his neighbor, eyes fixed on Tolomei and Salimbeni, “I feared them greatly. Now that they are friends, I fear them even more.”
“We are the government! We must be above such human emotion!” exclaimed Niccolino Patrizi, rising from his chair. “Messer Tolomei! Messer Salimbeni! Why such clandestine airs on the vigil of Madonna Assunta? I hope you are not conducting business in the house of God?”
A pregnant silence fell over the noble assembly at these words spoken from the podium, and beneath the high altar, the bishop momentarily forgot to bless.
“Most honorable Messer Patrizi!” replied Salimbeni with sarcastic civility. “You pay no compliment to either us or yourself by speaking such words. Rather, you should congratulate us, for my very good friend Messer Tolomei and I have decided to celebrate our lasting peace with a marriage.”
“My condolences on the death of your wife!” spat Niccolino Patrizi. “I had not heard of her demise!”
“Monna Agnese,” said Salimbeni, unstirred, “will not live beyond this month. She lies abed at Rocca di Tentennano and takes no nourishment.”
“It is hard,” mumbled one of the Biccherna magistrates, “to eat, when you are not fed!”
“You will need to seek the Pope’s approval for a wedding between former foes,” insisted Niccolino Patrizi, “and I doubt you will get it. Such a torrent of blood has washed away the path between your houses that no decent man can send his daughter across. There is an evil spirit—”
“Only marriage can chase away evil spirits!”
“The Pope believes otherwise!”
“Possibly,” said Salimbeni, allowing an unbecoming smile to bend his lips, “but the Pope owes me money. And so do you. All of you.”
The grotesque claim had the desired effect; Niccolino Patrizi sat down, flushed and furious, and Salimbeni looked boldly upon the rest of the government as if to challenge anyone else to speak against his enterprise. But the podium was silent.
“Messer Salimbeni!” A voice cut through the murmur of subdued indignation, and everybody stretched to see the challenger.
“Who speaks?” Salimbeni was always delighted to get a chance at putting lesser men in their place. “Do not be shy!”
“Shyness is to me,” replied Romeo, stepping forward, “what virtue is to you, Messer Salimbeni.”
“And what, pray,” said Messer Salimbeni, holding his head high in an attempt at looking down at the contender, “can you possibly have to say to me?”
“Just this,” said Romeo, “that the lady you covet already belongs to another man.”
“Indeed?” Salimbeni cast a glance at Tolomei. “How so?”
Romeo straightened. “The Virgin Mary delivered her into my hands that I may guard her forever. And what Heaven has entwined, let no man tear apart!”
Salimbeni first looked incredulous, then broke into laughter. “Well spoken, lad, I recognize you now. Your dagger killed a good friend of mine lately, but I shall be generous and bear no grudge, seeing that you took such fine care of my bride-to-be.”
Turning away, Salimbeni made it evident that he considered the conversation over. All eyes now fell on Romeo, whose face was aflame with revulsion, and more than one felt sorry for the young man who was so obviously a victim of the wicked little archer.
“Come, my son,” said Comandante Marescotti, backing away. “Let us not linger where the game is lost.”
“Lost?” cried Romeo. “There never was a game!”
“Whatever the dealings of those two men,” said his father, “they have shaken hands beneath the altar of the Virgin. Quarrel with them, and you will be quarreling with God.”
“And so I shall!” exclaimed Romeo. “For Heaven has turned against itself in allowing this to happen!”
When the youth stepped forward again, no gesture was needed to bring about silence; everyone’s eyes were already fixed on his lips in uneasy expectation.
“Holy Mother of God!” yelled Romeo, surprising the whole assembly by addressing the empty air of the dome above rather than Salimbeni. “A great crime is being committed in this very house, under your very cape, on this very night! I pray that you set the scoundrels straight and show yourself to them, that no one may doubt your divine will! Let the man who wins the Palio be your chosen one! Bestow on me your holy banner that I may drape it over my wedding bed and rest upon it with my rightful bride! Thus satisfied, I shall give it back to you, O merciful Mother, for it was won according to your will, and given to me by your hand alone, to show all mankind your sympathies in this matter!”
When Romeo finally fell silent, there was not a man around him who would meet his eyes. Some were petrified by the blasphemy, others were ashamed to see a Marescotti strike such a selfish and unconventional bargain with the Virgin Mary, but most were merely sorry for his father, Comandante Marescotti, who was a man universally admired. Whether by divine intervention following such a blatant profanation, or by the simple necessity of human politics, young Romeo Marescotti, in most people’s minds, would not be allowed to survive the Palio.
[ IV.III ]
Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch. Marry, ’tis enough.
Where is my page? Go, villain, fetch a surgeon
…
WALKING AWAY FROM THE OWL MUSEUM, I was torn. On the one hand it was a relief that the cencio and Romeo’s dagger were now in Peppo’s safe; on the other hand I regretted giving them away so quickly. Suppose my mother had wanted me to use them for a specific purpose? Suppose they somehow held a clue to the location of Juliet’s grave?
All the way back to the hotel I was resisting the urge to return to the museum and reclaim my treasures. I was successful mainly because I knew that the satisfaction of getting them back would soon be overshadowed by fear of what would happen to them next. Who was to say they were more secure in Direttor Rossini’s safe than in Peppo’s? After all, the thug knew where I lived—how else could he have broken into my room?—and sooner or later, he would figure out where I kept my things.
I believe I stopped in the middle of the street. Until this moment it had not even occurred to me that going back to the hotel was the least intelligent thing I could possibly do, never mind that I no longer carried the artifacts. Without a doubt, the thug would be waiting for me to do just that. And after our little hide-and-seek in the university archive, he was probably not in a particularly generous mood.
Clearly, I would have to change hotels, and it would have to be done in such a way that my trail went cold. Or maybe this was, in fact, my cue to hop on the next plane back to Virginia?
No. I could not give up. Not now, when I was finally getting somewhere. I would change hotels, maybe tonight, when it was dark. I would become invisible, cunning, mean. This time, Juliet was going to the matt
resses.
There was a police station on the same street as Hotel Chiusarelli. I lingered outside for a bit, watching the officers come and go, wondering whether this would be such a smart move—making myself known to the local law and risking their discovering my double identity. In the end I decided it was not. Based on my experiences in Rome and in Copenhagen I knew that police officers are just like journalists; sure, they’ll hear your story, but they much prefer to make up their own.
And so I walked back downtown, turning every ten steps to see if I was being followed, and wondering what precisely my strategy should be from now on. I even went into the bank in Palazzo Tolomei to see if Presidente Maconi had time to see me and give me advice; unfortunately, he did not, but the teller with the slim glasses—now my best friend—assured me that he would be more than happy to meet with me when he returned from his vacation at Lake Como in ten days.
I HAD WALKED PAST the forbidding main door of Monte dei Paschi several times since my arrival in Siena. My steps had always quickened to bring me past this Salimbeni fortress without detection, and I would even duck my head, wondering if the office of the Head of Security was facing the Corso or some other way.
But today was different. Today was the day I took the bull by the horns and gave it a good shake. And so I walked up to the Gothic front door and went inside, making sure the surveillance cameras got a good shot of my new attitude.
For a building that had been burnt down by rival families—my own being one—torn apart by an angry populace, rebuilt several times by its owners, confiscated by the government, and finally reborn as a financial institution in the year 1472, making it the oldest surviving bank in the world, Palazzo Salimbeni was a remarkably peaceful place. The interior design blended medieval and modern in a way that made sense of both, and as I walked up to the reception area, the gap of time between now and then closed seamlessly around me.
The receptionist was on the phone, but held a hand over the receiver to ask me—first in Italian, then in English—whom I had come to see. When I told him I was a personal friend of the Head of Security, and that I had urgent business to discuss with him, the man smiled and said I could find what I was looking for in the basement.
Pleasantly surprised that he let me enter just like that, unescorted and unannounced, I started down the stairs with deliberate detachment, while a chorus line of little mice were riverdancing on the inside of my rib cage. They had been oddly silent while I was running from the tracksuit thug earlier on, but here they were full force, just because I was going to see Alessandro.
When I had left him at the restaurant the night before, I had, quite frankly, harbored no desire ever to see him again. The feeling, I am sure, was mutual. Yet here I was, walking straight into his lair for no other reason than instinct. Janice used to say that instinct was reason in a hurry; I was not so sure about the reason part. My reason told me it was highly likely that Alessandro and the Salimbenis were involved in all the nastiness currently coming my way; however, my gut told me I could count on him, even if it was only to let me know how much he disliked me.
As I descended into the basement the air got considerably cooler, and traces of the original building structure began to emerge as the walls became rough and worn around me. Back in the Middle Ages this foundation had carried a tall tower, perhaps as tall as the Mangia Tower in the Campo. The whole city had been full of these tower-houses; they had served as fortifications in times of unrest.
At the bottom of the stairs, a narrow corridor went off into the darkness, and ironclad doors on either side made the place feel like a dungeon. I was beginning to fear that I had taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way, when there was a sudden outburst of voices, followed by cheers, coming from behind a half-open door.
I approached the door with some apprehension. Whether or not Alessandro was actually down here, there would be a lot of explaining to do, and logic had never been my strong suit. Peeking inside, I could see a table full of metal parts and half-eaten sandwiches, a wall of rifles, and three men in T-shirts and uniform pants—one of them Alessandro—standing around a small television screen. At first I thought they were watching the input from a surveillance camera somewhere in the building, but when they all suddenly moaned and clutched their heads, I realized they were watching a soccer game.
When no one reacted to my initial knocking, I pushed through the door—just a little bit—and cleared my throat. Now finally, Alessandro turned his head to see who had the gall to interrupt the game, and when he saw me standing there, attempting a smile, he looked as if someone had knocked him over the head with a frying pan.
“Sorry to disturb,” I said, trying hard not to look like Bambi-on-stilts, although that was precisely how I felt. “Do you have a moment?”
Seconds later, the two other men had left the room, grabbing guns and uniform jackets as they went, half-eaten sandwiches wedged in their mouths.
“So,” said Alessandro, killing the soccer game and tossing aside the remote, “satisfy my curiosity.” He clearly did not think I needed the rest of the sentence, although the way he looked at me suggested that—notwithstanding the fact that I was a barnacle on the criminal underbelly of society—he was secretly pleased to see me.
I sat down on a vacant chair, looking around at the hardware on the walls. “Is this your office?”
“Yeah—” He pulled the dangling suspenders up on his shoulders and sat down on the other side of the table. “This is where we interrogate people. Americans mostly. It used to be a torture chamber.”
The dare in his eyes almost made me forget my general unease and the reason why I had come. “It suits you.”
“I thought so.” He put a heavy boot against the side of the table and tipped back to lean against the wall. “Okay, I am listening. You must have a very good reason for being here.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it reason.” I looked away, trying in vain to remember the official story I had rehearsed coming down the stairs. “Obviously, you think I’m a conniving bitch …”
“I’ve seen worse.”
“… and I haven’t exactly signed up for your fan club either.”
He smiled wryly. “Yet here you are.”
I folded my arms across my chest, choking back a nervous laugh. “I know you don’t believe I am Giulietta Tolomei, and you know what? I don’t care. But here is the bottom line”—I swallowed hard to steady my voice—“someone is trying to kill me.”
“You mean, apart from yourself?”
His sarcasm helped me regain my cool. “There’s some guy following me,” I said, gruffly. “Nasty type. Tracksuit. Bona fide scum. I figured he was a friend of yours.”
Alessandro didn’t even flinch. “So, what do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know—” I searched for a spark of sympathy in his eyes. “Help me?”
There was a spark all right, but it was mostly one of triumph. “And remind me why I would do that?”
“Hey!” I exclaimed, genuinely upset with his attitude. “I’m … a maiden in distress!”
“And who am I, Zorro?”
I swallowed a groan, furious with myself for thinking he would care. “I thought Italian men were susceptible to female charms.”
He considered the idea. “We are. When we encounter them.”
“Okay,” I said, sucking in my fury, “fair enough. You want me to go to hell, and I will. I’ll go back to the States and never bother you or your fairy godmother again. But first, I want to find out who this guy is, and have someone bust his ass.”
“And that someone is me?”
I glared at him. “Maybe not. I just assumed someone like you wouldn’t want someone like him running loose in your precious Siena. But”—I made a move to get up—“I see that I got you all wrong.”
Now, finally, Alessandro leaned forward with mock concern and put his elbows on the table. “All right, Miss Tolomei, tell me why you think someone is trying to kill you.”
Never mind that I had nowhere else to go; I would have walked right out of there, had it not been for the fact that he had finally called me Miss Tolomei. “Well—” I moved uncomfortably on the edge of the seat. “How about this: He followed me through the streets, broke into my hotel room, and then, this morning, he came after me with a gun—”
“That,” said Alessandro, deploying a great deal of patience, “doesn’t mean he intends to kill you.” He paused to study my face, then frowned. “How do you expect me to help you, if you are not telling me the truth?”
“But I am! I swear!” I tried to think of some other way of convincing him, but my eyes were drawn to the tattoos on his right forearm, and my brain was busy processing the impulse. This was not the Alessandro I had expected to find coming into Palazzo Salimbeni. The Alessandro I knew was polished and subtle, if not downright square-toed, and he certainly did not have a dragonfly—or whatever the heck it was—etched into his wrist.
If he could read my thoughts, he didn’t show it. “Not the whole truth. There are a lot of pieces missing in the puzzle.”
I snapped upright. “What makes you think there is a big picture?”
“There is always a big picture. So, tell me what he is after.”
I took a deep breath, only too aware that I had chosen to put myself in this situation, and that a more substantial explanation was due. “Okay,” I finally said, “I think he is after something that my mother left for me. Some family heirloom that my parents found years ago, and which she wanted me to have. So, she hid it in a place where only I could find it. Why? Because—whether you like it or not—I am Giulietta Tolomei.”
I looked at him defiantly and found him studying my face with something akin to a smile. “And have you found it?”
“I don’t think so. Not yet. All I’ve found is a rusty box full of paper, an old … banner, and some kind of dagger, and quite frankly, I don’t see—”
