“I’m just trying to be rational-” I began, but she wouldn’t let me go on.
“You’ve never done a rational thing in your life!” She closed her ripped shirt with a tight knot. “Why start now?”
As she stomped away from me, I very nearly did sit down and give up. To think it was all my own doing-this whole nightmare of a treasure hunt-and that it could have been avoided, had I trusted Alessandro and not run away from Castello Salimbeni the way I did. If only I had stayed where I was, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, and, most important, doing nothing, I might still have been there now, once again asleep in my canopy bed with his arms around me.
But my destiny had demanded otherwise. And so here I was instead, in the bowels of nowhere, filthy beyond recognition and watching passively while a homicidal freak with a submachine gun was screaming at my father and my sister to tell him where to go next in this cave with no exits.
Knowing very well that I couldn’t just stand there doing nothing when they so desperately needed my help, I reached down to pick up a flashlight that had been dropped on the floor. Only then did I notice something sticking out of the dirt right in front of me. In the pale light of the beam it looked like a large, cracked seashell but, obviously, it couldn’t be. The ocean was nearly fifty miles away. I knelt down to take a closer look, and my pulse quickened when I realized that I was looking at part of a human skull.
After the initial fright, I was surprised the discovery did not upset me more than it did. But then, I thought, considering Mom’s directions, the sight of human remains was merely to be expected; we were, after all, looking for a grave. And so I began digging into the porous floor with my hands to see if the rest of the skeleton was there, and it did not take me long to determine that, indeed, it was. But it was not alone.
Right beneath the surface-a mix of earth and ashes, by the feel of it-the bottom of the cave was filled with tightly packed, randomly interlocking human bones.
IX.III
A grave? O no, a lantern, slaughter’d youth.
For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes
This vault a feasting presence, full of light
MY MACABRE DISCOVERY HAD everyone recoiling in revulsion, and Janice nearly threw up when she saw what I had found.
“Oh, my God!” she gagged. “It’s a mass grave!” Stumbling backwards, she pressed her sleeve tightly against her mouth and nose. “Of all the disgusting places-we’re in a plague pit! Full of microbes. We’re all going to die!”
Her panic sent a ripple of fear through the men as well, and Cocco had to yell at the top of his lungs to calm everybody down. The only one who did not appear too frazzled was Friar Lorenzo, who merely bent his head and started praying, presumably for the souls of the departed, of whom-depending on the actual depth of the cave-there must be hundreds, if not thousands.
But Cocco was in no mood for prayers. Forcing the monk aside with the butt of his gun, he pointed straight at me and barked something nasty.
“He wants to know where to go from here,” Umberto translated, his voice a calm counterweight to Cocco’s hysteria. “He says you told him Giulietta was buried in this cave.”
“I didn’t say that-” I protested, knowing full well that it was precisely what I had said. “Mom says… go through the door, and here lies Juliet.”
“Where door?” Cocco wanted to know, glaring demonstratively this way and that. “Me, I see no door!”
“You know,” I lied, “the door that is here. Somewhere.”
Cocco rolled his eyes and growled something dismissive before stomping off.
“He doesn’t believe it,” said Umberto, grimly. “He thinks you set him up. Now he is going to talk to Friar Lorenzo.”
Janice and I watched with growing alarm as the men surrounded the monk and started bombarding him with questions. Dumbstruck with fear, he tried to listen to them all at once, but after a while he simply closed his eyes and covered his ears.
“Stupido!” sneered Cocco, reaching out for the old man.
“No!” exclaimed Janice, rushing forward and grabbing Cocco by the elbow to prevent him from hurting Friar Lorenzo. “Let me try! Please!”
For a few chilling seconds, it looked as if my sister had overestimated her own power over the crook. Judging by the way Cocco stared at his own elbow-still with her hands wrapped around it-he could barely fathom that she had actually had the gall to restrain him.
Probably realizing her own mistake, Janice quickly let go of Cocco’s arm and dropped to her knees to hug his legs in submission, and after another few baffled moments Cocco finally threw up his hands with a grin and said something to his comrades that sounded like, Women! What is a man to do?
And so, thanks to Janice, we were allowed to talk to Friar Lorenzo without interference, while Cocco and his men fired up a pack of cigarettes and started kicking around a human skull as if it were a soccer ball.
Positioning ourselves so that Friar Lorenzo couldn’t see their obscene game, we asked him-through Umberto-if he had any idea how to get to Romeo and Giulietta’s grave from where we were. But as soon as he understood the question, the monk gave a brisk answer and shook his head dismissively.
“He says,” translated Umberto, “that he does not want to show these evil men where the grave is. He knows they will desecrate it. And he says he is not afraid of dying.”
“God help us!” muttered Janice under her breath. Then she put a hand on Friar Lorenzo’s arm and said, “We understand. But you see, they will kill us, too. And then they will go back up there, and kidnap more people, and kill them as well. Priests, women, innocent people. It will never end, until someone takes them to that grave.”
Friar Lorenzo pondered Umberto’s translation for a while. Then he pointed at me and asked a question that sounded strangely accusatory.
“He asks if your husband knows where you are,” said Umberto, looking almost bemused despite the circumstances. “He thinks you are very foolish to be here, surrounded by these bad men, when you should be at home, doing your duty.”
I more felt than saw Janice rolling her eyes, ready to give up on the whole thing. But there was something incredibly sincere about Friar Lorenzo that resonated inside me in a way my sister would never be able to understand.
“I know,” I said, meeting the monk’s eyes. “But my most important duty is to end the curse. You know that. And I can’t do it without your help.”
After hearing Umberto’s translation of my answer, Friar Lorenzo frowned slightly and reached out to touch my neck.
“He asks where the crucifix is,” says Umberto. “The crucifix will protect you from the demons.”
“I… don’t know where it is,” I stammered, thinking back to Alessandro removing it from my neck-mostly to tease-and putting it on the bedstand right where I had put his bullet. After that I had forgotten all about it.
Friar Lorenzo was clearly not happy with my answer, nor was he pleased to discover that I was no longer wearing the eagle ring.
“He says it would be very dangerous for you to approach the grave like this,” said Umberto, wiping a drop of sweat from his forehead, “and he wants you to reconsider.”
I swallowed a few times, trying to calm my galloping heart. Then I said, before I could convince myself otherwise, “Tell him that there is nothing for me to consider. I have no choice. We must find that grave tonight.” I nodded at the men behind us. “Those are the real demons. Only the Virgin Mary can protect us from them. But I know their punishment will find them.”
Now at last, Friar Lorenzo nodded. But instead of speaking, he closed his eyes and started humming a little tune, head rocking back and forth as if he was trying to remember the lyrics to a song. Glancing at Janice I saw her making a face at Umberto, but just as she opened her mouth to comment on my progress-or lack thereof-the monk stopped humming, opened his eyes, and recited what sounded like a short poem.