Juliet (38 page)

In her farewell letter to Giannozza, however, composed in her prison cell the day after Tebaldo’s funeral, Giulietta could no longer speak so bravely in favor of the future. “You were right,” she wrote simply, “and I was wrong. When life hurts more than death, it is not worth living.”

AND SO SHE HAD
decided to die, and to refuse all nourishment until her body gave in, setting her soul free to reunite with Romeo. But on the third day of her hunger strike—her lips parched and her head throbbing—a new thought began to haunt her, namely, the question of where exactly in Paradise she would have to go in order to find him. It was obviously a vast place—it had to be—and there was no saying whether the two of them would be sent to the same region. In fact, she rather feared they would not.

While she might not be perfectly blameless in the eyes of God, she was still an innocent maid; Romeo, on the other hand, had undoubtedly left behind a long trail of mischief. Furthermore, there had been no funerary rites and no prayers said over his body, and so it was even doubtful whether he would go to Paradise at all. Perhaps he was doomed to wander around as a ghost, wounded and bloody, until—if ever—some kind Samaritan took pity on him and finally put his body to rest.

Giulietta sat up in bed with a gasp. If she died now, who was to make sure Romeo was properly buried? Leave it to the Tolomeis to discover the body next time there was a family funeral—in all likelihood her own—and they would most certainly give it anything but peace. No, she thought, reaching out for the water at last, her weak fingers barely able to grasp the cup, she would have to stay alive until she had spoken with Friar Lorenzo and explained the situation to him.

Where on earth was the monk? In her misery, Giulietta had not wanted to speak to anyone, not even her old friend, and it had been a relief
that he had never come to see her. But now—her heart set on a plan she could not possibly execute on her own—she was furious with him for not being at her side. Only later, after wolfing down every scrap of food she could find in the room, did it occur to her that her uncle Tolomei might have prohibited the monk’s visits altogether, in an attempt at preventing him from spreading reports of her misery.

Pacing up and down the floor, occasionally pausing to peek out through a crack in the sealed shutters to guess the time of day, Giulietta eventually concluded that death would have to wait. Not because she had a desire to live, but because there were still two tasks left in life that only she could accomplish. One of them was to get hold of Friar Lorenzo—or some other holy man more bent on obeying the law of God than that of her uncle—and to have him ensure that Romeo was properly buried; the other was to make Salimbeni suffer in a way no man had ever suffered before.

MONNA AGNESE DIED
on All Saints’ Day, after having been confined to her bed for over half a year. There were those who whispered that the poor lady had stayed alive for so long simply to annoy her husband, Messer Salimbeni, whose new wedding clothes had been laid out for wear ever since his August engagement to Giulietta Tolomei.

The funeral was held at Rocca di Tentennano, the impregnable Salimbeni fortress in Val d’Orcia. No sooner had he tossed earth over the coffin than the widower took off for Siena with the fluttering dispatch of a winged cupid. Only one child accompanied him on his return to town: his nineteen-year-old son Nino—already a hardened Palio assassin, according to some—whose own mother had preceded Monna Agnese into the Salimbeni sepulchre several years earlier, following a similar affliction, commonly known as starvation.

Tradition demanded a period of mourning after such a loss, but few were surprised to see the great man so soon back in town. Salimbeni was renowned for his celerity of mind; while other men spent several days mourning the death of a wife or child, he would shrug it off within hours, never missing an important business transaction.

Despite his occasional, suspect dealings and tireless rivalry with the
house of Tolomei, Salimbeni was a man most people could not help but admire to the point of toadying. Whenever he was present in a gathering, he was the undisputed center of attention. And whenever he sought to amuse, everyone responded with laughter, even if they had barely heard what he said. His unstinting ways endeared him immediately to strangers, and his clients knew that once you had earned his trust, you would be handsomely rewarded. Understanding the dynamics of the city better than anyone, he knew when to hand out food to the poor, and he knew when to stand firm in the face of the government. It was no coincidence that he liked to dress like a Roman emperor in a fine woolen toga with scarlet edging, for he ran Siena like a small empire of his own, and anyone who opposed his authority was treated as a traitor to the city at large.

In the light of Salimbeni’s political and fiscal savvy, it astounded the people of Siena to witness his enduring infatuation with Messer Tolomei’s melancholy niece. There he was, bowing politely to her pale figure at mass, when she could barely look at him. Not only did she despise him for what had happened to her family—her tragedy was, by now, widely known—but he was also the man who had driven her lover Romeo out of town after incriminating him in the suspicious murder of Tebaldo Tolomei.

Why, people asked themselves, did a man of Salimbeni’s stature put his dignity at stake in order to marry a girl who could never warm to him, were they both to live a thousand years? She was beautiful, certainly, and most young men were able to conjure up Giulietta’s perfect lips and dreamy eyes whenever they felt the need. But it was quite another thing for a man as settled as Salimbeni to toss aside all respectability and claim her for his own so soon after her sweetheart’s disappearance and his own wife’s passing.

“It is all a matter of honor!” said some, approving of the engagement. “Romeo challenged Salimbeni to a fight over Giulietta, and such a fight can only have one logical outcome: The winner must live, the loser die, and the lady fall to the man standing, whether he wants her or not.”

Others were more candid and confessed that they saw the touch of the devil in Salimbeni’s actions. “Here is a man,” they would whisper to Maestro Ambrogio over wine in taverns late at night, “whose power has long been checked by no one. Now at last that power has turned malignant,
and as such it is threatening not only us, but him as well. You have said it yourself, Maestro: Salimbeni’s virtues have ripened to a point where they are turning into vice, and, now that they are long sated, his immense appetites for glory and influence must naturally seek new sources of nourishment.”

To name an example of such nourishment was not mere guesswork; there were certain females about town who would readily testify to Salimbeni’s increasingly wicked ways.

From being a man who sought to please and be pleased, Salimbeni had, one lady told the Maestro, gradually come to resent those who too readily bent to his wishes. He had begun to seek out the unwilling, or the downright hostile, in order that he might have reason to fully exercise his faculties of dominance, and nothing pleased him more than an encounter with someone—most often a defiant foreigner newly arrived—who did not yet know that he was a man who must be obeyed.

But even defiant foreigners listen to friendly advice, and before long, Salimbeni was once again, much to his irritation, met by nothing but sickening smiles and charades whenever he ventured out on the town in what he considered disguise. Most business owners would have liked nothing more than to bar their door to the rapacious customer, but in the absence of men willing to enforce the law against the tyrant, how could private industry ever be safe from such infringement? And so the satyr play was allowed to continue, its lead on a perennial quest for ever more worthwhile challenges to his potency, while the chorus of people left in his wake could do little but recount the myriad dangers of hubris and the tragic blindness to reason that will, invariably, ensue.

“So you see, Maestro,” concluded the lady—always happy to exchange gossip with those of her neighbors who did not spit in the street when they saw her—“this certain man’s obsession with that certain young lady is no mystery at all.” She leaned on her broom and waved him closer, anxious that no one overhear her insight. “Here is a girl—a lovely, nubile creature—who is not only the niece of his enemy, but who, herself, has every reason in the world to despise him. There is no risk of her fierce resistance degenerating into sweet submission … no risk that she will ever willingly admit him to her chamber. Do you see, Maestro? In marrying
her
, he will secure for himself the very wellspring of his preferred aphrodisiac—hatred—and that is a source that will surely never run dry.”

…

THE SALIMBENI WEDDING
succeeded the Salimbeni funeral by a week and a day. The graveyard soil still moist underneath his fingernails, the widower wasted no time in dragging his next wife to the altar that she might forthwith infuse his sagging family tree with the luxurious blood of the Tolomeis.

For all his charisma and generosity, this blatant display of egoism was disgusting to the people of Siena. As the wedding procession passed through town, more than one bystander remarked on its semblance to a military triumph in Roman times; here came the booty from foreign lands—men and beasts hitherto unseen, and a chained queen upon a horse, crowned for mockery—all presented to the slack-jawed mob lining the road by an exulting general waving at them all from a passing chariot.

The sight of the tyrant in his glory like this brought back in full force all the suspicious murmurings that had followed Messer Salimbeni wherever he went since the Palio. Here was a man—some said—who had committed murder, not just once, but whenever he damn well pleased, and yet no one dared speak against his actions. Clearly, a man who could get away with such crimes—and force a wedding with an unwilling bride on top of it—was a man who could, and would, do anything to anyone.

As he stood by the wayside in the drizzling November rain, looking at the woman whose path had been crossed by every star in Heaven, Maestro Ambrogio found himself praying that someone would step forward and save Giulietta from her fate. In the eyes of the crowd she was no less beautiful now than she had been before, but it was evident to the painter—who had not seen her since the night before the fatal Palio—that hers had become the stony beauty of Athena, rather than the smiling charms of Aphrodite.

How he wished that Romeo would return to Siena this very instant and come charging into town with a band of foreign soldiers to steal away his lady before it was too late. But Romeo, said people, shaking their heads, was far away in distant lands, seeking comfort in women and drink where Salimbeni would never find him.

All of a sudden, standing there with his hood up against the rain, Maestro Ambrogio knew how he must conclude the large fresco in Palazzo Pubblico. There must be a bride, a sad girl lost in bitter memories,
and a man on a horse leaving town, but leaning back in the saddle to hear a painter’s plea. Only by confiding in the silent wall, thought the Maestro, would he be able to ease the pain in his heart on this hateful day.

GIULIETTA KNEW IT
as soon as she had finished the breakfast that was to be her last meal in Palazzo Tolomei: Monna Antonia had put something in her food to calm her down. Little did her aunt know that Giulietta had no intention of obstructing the wedding by refusing to go. How else would she get close enough to Salimbeni to make him suffer?

She saw it all in a haze—the wedding procession, the gaping street hordes, the stern assembly in the dark cathedral—and only when Salimbeni lifted her veil to reveal her bridal crown to the bishop and the awestruck wedding guests did she snap out of her trance and recoil at their gasps and his closeness.

The crown was a sinful vision of gold and sparkling stones, which rivaled anything that had ever been seen before, in Siena or elsewhere. It was a treasure more suited for royalty than for a sullen country girl, but then, it was not really for her. It was for him.

“How do you like my gift?” he asked, studying her face as he spoke. “It has two Ethiopian sapphires that reminded me of your eyes. Priceless. But then … they seemed so forlorn that I gave them the company of two Egyptian emeralds that reminded me of the way that fellow—Romeo—used to look at you.” He smiled at the shock in her face. “Tell me, my dear, do you not find me generous?”

Giulietta had to steel herself before addressing him. “You, Messere, are so much more than generous.”

He laughed delightedly at her reply. “I am glad to hear it. You and I will get along very well, I think.”

But the bishop had heard the evil remark and was not amused. Nor were the priests who attended the wedding feast later, and who entered the bridal chamber to bless it with holy water and incense, only to discover that Romeo’s cencio was spread out on top of the bed. “Messer Salimbeni!” they exclaimed, “you cannot make up your bed with this cencio!”

“Why not?” Salimbeni asked, wine goblet in hand, musicians in tow.

“Because,” they replied, “it belongs to another man. It was given to
Romeo Marescotti by the Virgin Mary herself, and it was meant for his bed alone. Why would you challenge the will of Heaven?”

But Giulietta knew very well why Salimbeni had put the cencio on the bed, for he had put the green emeralds in her bridal crown for the very same reason: to remind her that Romeo was dead, and that there was nothing she could do to bring him back.

In the end, Salimbeni threw out the priests without getting their blessing for the night, and when he had heard enough sycophantic drivel from the drunken wedding guests, he threw them out as well, together with the musicians. If some people were surprised by their patron’s sudden lack of generosity, they all understood his reason for ending the party—she sat in the corner, more asleep than awake, but even in her state of disarray was far too lovely to be left alone much longer.

While Salimbeni was busy taking leave of them all and receiving their good wishes, Giulietta saw her chance to grab a knife from the banquet table and conceal it beneath her clothes. She had been eyeing that particular weapon all night, and had seen it capture the light from the candles as the servants had used it to cut meat for the guests. Even before she held it in her hand, she had already begun to plan how she would use it to carve her loathsome groom. She knew from Giannozza’s letters that—this being her wedding night—there would be a point where Salimbeni would come to her, undressed and with thoughts for everything but fighting, and she knew that this would have to be the moment when she struck.