Juliet (53 page)

Just then, Comandante Marescotti entered the dining hall with great dignity, his proud bearing suported by a cane. Instead of shooing the monk out the door with a broom—as he was just about to do—Romanino calmed himself and made sure his grandfather was seated comfortably at the table end, before he explained the circumstances of the unexpected visit.

“Viterbo?” The Comandante frowned. “How would they know my name?”

The monk stood awkwardly, not knowing whether he should stay up or sit down, and whether he or Romanino was expected to answer the
question. “Here …” he said instead, placing the box in front of the old man, “this, I was told, must be returned to its proper owner.”

“Grandfather, be careful!” exclaimed Romanino as the Comandante reached out to open the box. “We do not know what demons it contains!”

“No, my son,” replied the Comandante, “but we intend to find out.”

There was a moment’s dreadful silence while the Comandante slowly lifted the lid and peeked into the box. Seeing that his grandfather did not immediately fall to the floor in convulsions, Romanino stepped closer and looked, too.

In the box lay a ring.

“I wouldn’t …” began the monk, but Comandante Marescotti had already taken out the ring and was staring at it in disbelief.

“Who,” he said, his hand shaking, “did you say gave you this?”

“My abbot,” replied the monk, backing up in fear. “He told me that the men who found it had spoken the name Marescotti before they died of a ghastly fever, three days after receiving the saint’s coffin.”

Romanino looked at his grandfather, anxious that he should put down the ring. But the Comandante was in another world, touching the ring’s eagle signet without any fear and mumbling to himself an old family motto, “Faithful through the centuries,” engraved on the inside of the band in tiny letters. “Come, my son,” he finally said, reaching out for Romanino. “This was your father’s ring. Now it is yours.”

Romanino didn’t know what to do. On the one hand, he wanted to obey his grandfather; on the other, he was afraid of the ring, and he was not so sure that he was its rightful owner, even if it had belonged to his father. When Comandante Marescotti saw him hesitating, the old man was filled with anger, explosive anger, and he began to yell that Romanino was a coward, and to demand that he take the ring. But just as Romanino stepped forward, the Comandante fell back in his chair in a seizure, dropping the ring on the floor.

When he saw that the old man had fallen prey to the ring’s evil, the monk screamed in horror and fled from the room, leaving Romanino to throw himself at his grandfather and beseech his soul to remain in the body for the last sacrament. “Monk!” he bellowed, cradling the Comandante’s head, “come back here and do your job, you rat, or I swear I’ll bring the devil to Viterbo and we’ll eat you all alive!”

Hearing the threat, the monk came back into the kitchen, and he
found in his satchel the small vial of consecrated oil that his abbot had given him for the journey. So, the Comandante received the extreme unction, and he lay very peacefully for a moment, looking at Romanino. His last words before he died were, “Shine on high, my son.”

Understandably, Romanino did not know what to think about that damned ring. It was obviously evil and had killed his grandfather, but at the same time, it had belonged to his father, Romeo. In the end Romanino decided to keep it, but to put the box in a place where no one but he could find it. And so he went down into the basement and into the Bottini, to put the box away in a dark corner where nobody ever came. He never told his children about it for fear that their curiosity would make them unleash its demons once again, but he wrote down the whole story, sealed the paper, and kept it with the rest of the family records.

It is doubtful whether Romanino ever discovered the truth about the ring in his lifetime and, for many generations, the box remained hidden in the Bottini underneath the house, untouched and unclaimed. But even so, there was a feeling among the Marescottis that an old evil was somehow imbedded in the house, and the family eventually decided to sell the building in 1506. Needless to say, the box with the ring stayed where it was.

NOW, MANY HUNDRED
years later, another grandfather, old man Marescotti, was walking through his vineyard one summer day when he suddenly looked down and saw a little girl standing at his feet. He asked her, in Italian, who she was, and she replied, also in Italian, that her name was Giulietta, and that she was almost three years old. He was very surprised, because usually little children were afraid of him, but this one kept talking to him as if they were old friends, and when they started walking, she put her hand in his.

Back at the house, he found that a beautiful young woman was having coffee with his wife. And there was another little girl there, too, stuffing herself with biscotti. His wife explained to him that the young woman was Diane Tolomei, the widow of old Professor Tolomei, and that she had come to ask some questions about the Marescotti family.

Grandfather Marescotti treated Diane Tolomei very well and answered all her questions. She asked him if it was true that his line was descended
directly from Romeo Marescotti, through the boy Romanino, and he said yes. She also asked him if he was aware that Romeo Marescotti was the Romeo from Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet
, and he said yes, he was aware of that, too. Then she asked if he knew that her line came straight from Juliet, and he said yes, he suspected as much, seeing that she was a Tolomei, and that she had called one of her daughters Giulietta. But when she asked him if he could guess the reason for her visit, he said no, not at all.

Now Diane Tolomei asked him if his family still had in their possession Romeo’s ring. Grandfather Marescotti said that he had no idea what she meant by that. She also asked him if he had ever seen a small wooden box that supposedly contained an evil treasure, or if he had ever heard his parents or grandparents mention such a box. He said no, he had never heard anything about it from anyone. She seemed a little disappointed, and when he asked her what this was all about, she said that maybe it was better this way, maybe she should not bring these old things back to life.

You can imagine what Grandfather Marescotti said to that. He told Diane that she had already asked too many questions, and he had answered every one of them, so now it was time she answered some of his. What kind of ring was she talking about, and why did she think he would know anything about it?

What Diane Tolomei told him first was the story of Romanino and the monk from Viterbo. She explained that her husband had been researching these issues all his life, and that he was the one who had found the Marescotti family records in the city archive and discovered Romanino’s notes about the box. It was a good thing, she said, that Romanino had been too wise to wear the ring, for he was not its rightful owner, and it was possible that it would have done him much harm.

Before she could continue with her explanations, the old man’s grandson, Alessandro—or, as they called him, Romeo—came to the table to steal a biscotto. When Diane realized that he was Romeo, she got very excited, and said, “It is a great honor to meet you, young man. Now, here is someone very special that I want you to meet.” And she pulled one of the little girls into her lap, and said, as if she was presenting a wonder of the world, “This is Giulietta.”

Romeo stuck the biscotto in his pocket. “I don’t think so,” he said. “She’s wearing a diaper.”

“No!” protested Diane Tolomei, pulling down the girl’s dress. “Those are fancy pants. She is a big girl. Aren’t you, Jules?”

Now, Romeo started backing up, hoping he could sneak away, but his grandfather stopped him and told him to take the two little girls and play with them while the adults had coffee. So, he did.

Meanwhile, Diane Tolomei told Grandfather Marescotti and his wife about Romeo’s ring; she explained that it had been his signet ring, and that he had given it to Giulietta Tolomei in a secret marriage ritual performed by their friend, Friar Lorenzo. Therefore, she claimed, the ring’s rightful heir was Giulietta, her daughter, and she went on to explain that it must be recovered for the curse on the Tolomeis to finally end.

Grandfather Marescotti was fascinated by Diane Tolomei’s story, mostly because she was obviously not an Italian, and yet she was so very passionate about the events of the past. It amazed him that this modern woman from America seemed to believe there was a curse on her family—an ancient curse from the Middle Ages, no less—and that she even thought her husband had died as a result of this. It made sense, he supposed, that she should be eager to somehow try and stop it, so that her little girls could grow up without it hanging over their heads. For some reason, she seemed to think that her daughters were particularly exposed to the curse, maybe because both their parents had been Tolomeis.

Obviously, Grandfather Marescotti was sorry that he could not help this poor young widow, but Diane interrupted him as soon as he started to apologize. “From what you have told me, Signore,” she said, “I believe the box with the ring is still there, hidden in the Bottini underneath Palazzo Marescotti, untouched since Romanino put it there more than six hundred years ago.”

Grandfather Marescotti could not help laughing and slapping his knees. “That is too fantastic!” he said. “I cannot imagine it would still be there. And if it is, the reason must be that it is hidden so well that no one can find it. Including me.”

To persuade him to go looking for the ring, Diane told him that if he were able to find it and give it to her, she would give him something in return that the Marescotti family must be equally keen to recover, and which had been in Tolomei possession for far too long. She asked him if he had any idea what sort of treasure she was talking about, but he did not.

Now, Diane Tolomei took a photo out of her purse and put it on the table in front of him. And Grandfather Marescotti crossed himself when he saw that not only was it an old cencio spread out on a table, but it was a cencio he had heard described many times by his own grandfather; a cencio which he had never imagined he would ever see, or touch, because it could no longer possibly exist.

“How long,” he said, his voice shaking, “has your family kept this hidden from us?”

“For as long,” replied Diane Tolomei, “as your family has kept the ring hidden from us, Signore. And now, I think, you will agree that it is time we return these treasures to their proper owners, and put an end to the evil that has left us both in this sad state.”

Naturally, Grandfather Marescotti was insulted by the suggestion that he was in a sad state, and he said as much, loudly listing all the blessings surrounding him on all sides.

“Are you telling me,” said Diane Tolomei, leaning over the table and touching his hands, “that there are not days when you feel a mighty power watching you with impatient eyes, an ancient ally who is waiting for you to do the one thing you
have
to do?”

Her words made a great impression on her two hosts, and they all sat in silence for a moment, until suddenly they heard a terrible noise from the barn, and they saw Romeo come running, trying to carry one of his screaming and kicking guests. It was the girl Giulietta, who had cut herself on a hayfork, and Romeo’s grandmother had to stitch her up on the kitchen table.

Romeo’s grandparents were not actually angry with him for what had happened. It was much worse. They were simply terrified to see that their grandson was causing pain and destruction wherever he went. And now, after listening to Diane Tolomei’s stories, they began to worry that he truly did have evil hands … that some old demon lived on inside his body, and that, just like his ancestor Romeo, he would live a life—a short life—of violence and sorrow.

Grandfather Marescotti felt so bad about what had happened to the little girl that he promised Diane he would do everything in his power to find the ring. And she thanked him and said that, regardless of his success, she would return soon with the cencio, so that at least Romeo could
get what belonged to him. For some reason, it was very important to her that Romeo still be there when she came back, because she wanted to try something with him. She did not say what it was, and no one dared to ask.

They agreed that Diane Tolomei would return in two weeks, which would give Grandfather Marescotti time to investigate the matter of the ring, and they all parted as friends. Before she drove away, however, Diane said one last thing to him. She told him that if he was successful in his search for the ring, he must be very careful and open the box as little as possible. And under no circumstances must he touch the ring itself. It had, she reminded him, a history of hurting people.

Grandfather Marescotti drove into town the very next day, determined to find the ring. For days and days he went all over the Bottini underneath Palazzo Marescotti to find Romanino’s secret hiding place. When he finally found it—he had to borrow a metal detector—he could see why no one else had stumbled across it before; the box had been pushed deep inside a narrow crack in the wall, and was covered with crumbled sandstone.

As he pulled it out, he remembered what Diane Tolomei had said about not opening the lid more than necessary, but after six centuries in dust and gravel, the wood had become so dry and fragile that even his careful touch was too much for the box. And so the wood fell apart like a lump of sawdust, and within a moment, he found himself standing with the ring right in his hand.

He decided not to give in to irrational fears, and instead of putting the ring in another box, he put it in his trouser pocket and drove back to his villa outside of town. After that drive, with the ring in his pocket, no other male was ever born in his family to carry the name Romeo Marescotti—much to his frustration, everyone kept having girls, girls, girls. There would only ever be Romeo, his grandson, and he very much doubted this restless boy would ever marry and have sons of his own.

Of course, Grandfather Marescotti did not realize all this at the time; he was just happy that he had found the ring for Diane Tolomei, and he was anxious to finally get his hands on the old cencio from 1340 and show it around the contrada. He was already planning to donate it to the Eagle Museum, and imagined that it would bring much good luck in the next Palio.