Introducing a pivot where no pivot was required, Romeo let his eyes sweep the entire room. And now he finally saw it: A visage, half veiled in hair, was looking straight at him from the shades of the upstairs loggia. But no sooner had he recognized the oval form as the head of a woman than it withdrew into the shadows, as if fearing discovery.
He spun back to face his partner, flushed with excitement. Even though chance had afforded him but the faintest glimpse of the lady aloft, there was no doubt in his heart that the figure he had seen was that of the lovely Giulietta. And she had been looking at him, too, as if she somehow knew who he was and why he had come.
Another ductia took him around the room in cosmic majesty, and after that the estampia, before Romeo finally spotted a cousin in the crowd and managed to summon him with a piercing glare. “Where have you been?” he hissed. “Do you not see I am dying here?”
“You owe me thanks, not curses,” whispered the other, taking over the dance, “for this is a measly party with measly wine and measly women, and-wait!”
But Romeo was already on his way, deaf to discouraging words and blind to the widow’s reproachful gaze as he took flight. On a night like this, he knew, no doors were barred to a bold man. With all servants and guards employed on the ground floor, anything above it was to the lover what a forest pond is to the hunter: a sweet promise for the patient.
Up here, on the first floor, the dizzying fumes from the party below made the old young, the wise foolish, and the stingy generous, and as he walked through the upstairs gallery, Romeo passed by many a dark niche full of rustling silk and hushed giggles. Here and there a flash of white betrayed the strategic removal of garments, and, walking by a particularly salacious corner, he nearly stopped to stare, intrigued by the infinite flexibility of the human body.
The farther from the stairs he went, however, the more silent the corners, and when at last he entered the loggia overlooking the dancing floor, not a single person was left to be seen. Where Giulietta had stood, half concealed by a marble column, there was now only emptiness, and at the end of the loggia was a closed door that even he dared not open.
His disappointment was great. Why had he not extracted himself from the dance earlier, like a shooting star escaping the immortal boredom of the firmament? Why had he been so sure that she would still be here, waiting for him? Folly. He had told himself a story, and now was the time for its tragic end.
Just then, as he was turning to leave, the door at the end of the loggia opened, and a slender figure, hair ablaze, slipped through the doorway-like an ancient dryad through a crack in time-before it closed again with a hollow thud. For a moment there was no movement and no sound save the music downstairs, yet Romeo thought he could sense someone breathing, someone who had been startled to see him standing there, looming in the shadows, and who was now struggling to catch her breath.
Perhaps he should have spoken a word of comfort, but his excitement was too great to be harnessed with good manners. Rather than offering an apology for his intrusion, or even better, the name of the intruder himself, he merely tore off his carnival mask and stepped forward, eagerly, to draw her from the shade and finally unveil her living face.
She neither engaged him nor shrank away; instead she walked over to the edge of the balcony and looked down at the dancers. Encouraged, Romeo followed her, and when she leaned over the balustrade, he had the satisfaction of seeing her profile glowing with the lights from below. While Maestro Ambrogio might have exaggerated the lofty lines of her beauty, he had not done justice to the luminosity of her eyes, or the mystery of her smile. And the ripe softness of her breathing lips, certainly, he had left for Romeo to discover for himself.
“Surely this must be the famous court,” the girl now began, “of the king of cowards.”
Surprised by the bitterness of her voice, Romeo did not know what to answer.
“Who else,” she went on, still not turning, “would spend the night feeding grapes to an effigy while murderers parade around town, bragging about their exploits? And what decent man could contemplate a party such as this, when his own brother has been-” She could not continue.
“Most people,” said Romeo, his voice a stranger even to himself, “call Messer Tolomei a brave man.”
“Then most people,” replied she, “are wrong. And you, Signore, are wasting your time. I will not dance tonight; my heart is too heavy. So, go back to my aunt and feast on her caresses; you will receive none from me.”
“I am not here,” said Romeo, stepping boldly closer, “as a dancer. I am here… because I cannot stay away. Will you not look at me?”
She paused, forcing herself not to move. “Why should I look at you? Is your soul that inferior to your body?”
“I did not know my soul,” said Romeo, lowering his voice, “until I saw its reflection in your eyes.”
She did not reply right away, but when she did, her voice was sharp enough to graze his courage. “And when did you thus deflower my eyes with your own image? You, to me, are merely the distant form of an excellent dancer. What demon stole my eyes and gave them to you?”
“Sleep,” Romeo said, gazing at her profile and hoping for a return of her smile, “was the culprit. He took them from your bed pillow and brought them to me. O, the sweet torment of that dream!”
“Sleep,” the girl retorted, her head still stubbornly turned, “is the father of lies!”
“But the mother of hope.”
“Perhaps. But the firstborn of hope is tragedy.”
“You speak with such familiar fondness as one does only of relatives.”
“Oh no!” she exclaimed, her voice shrill with bitterness. “I dare not brag of such high connections. When I am dead, were I to die in a grand, religious manner, let the scholars argue over my bloodline.”
“I care not for your bloodline,” Romeo said, boldly touching a finger to her neck, “save to trace its secret writing on your skin.”
For a moment, his touch made her silent. And when she next spoke, her breathless words rendered void the intended dismissal. “Then I fear,” she said, over her shoulder, “that you will be disappointed. For my skin spells no pretty narrative, but a tale of slaughter and revenge.”
Braver now that she had allowed his first venture, Romeo cupped his hands over her shoulders and leaned forward to speak through the silken screen of her hair. “I heard of your loss. There is not a heart in Siena that does not feel your pain.”
“Yes, there is! It resides in Palazzo Salimbeni, and it is incapable of human feelings!” She shook off his hands. “How often I have wished I was born a man!”
“Being born a man is no safeguard against sorrow.”
“Indeed?” She finally turned to face him, taunting his gravity. “And what, pray, are your sorrows, Signore?” Her eyes, vibrant even in the darkness, looked him over with amusement, then settled on his face. “Nay, as I suspected, you are too handsome to have sorrows. Rather, you have the voice and the face of a thief.”
Seeing his indignation, she laughed sharply and went on, “Yes, a thief. But a thief that is given more than he takes, and therefore considers himself generous rather than greedy, and a favorite rather than a fiend. Contradict me if you can. You are a man from whom no gift has ever been withheld. How could such a man ever have sorrows?”
Romeo met her teasing stare with confidence. “No man was ever on a quest, who did not seek its end. Yet on his way, what pilgrim says no to a meal and a bed? Do not begrudge me the length of my journey. Were I not a traveler, I never would have landed on your shore.”