Although she trusted Friar Lorenzo to get her letters safely and secretly out of the house, Giulietta knew that the monk had no control over their destiny in the hands of strangers. She had no money to pay for a proper delivery, but was dependent on the kindness and diligence of travelers going down her sister’s way. And now that she was under house arrest there was always a danger that someone would stop Friar Lorenzo on his way in or out and demand that he empty his pockets.
Aware of the danger, she began to hide her letters to Giannozza under a floorboard rather than sending them right away. It was enough that she was asking Friar Lorenzo to deliver her love letters to Romeo; for him to carry many more reports of her shameless activities would be cruel. And so they all ended up under the floor-the fanciful tales of her amorous encounters with Romeo-awaiting the day when she could pay a messenger to deliver them all at once. Or the day when she would throw them all on the fire.
As for her letters to Romeo, she received smoldering responses to every single one. When she spoke in hundreds, he replied in thousands, and when she said that she liked, he said that he loved. She was bold and called him fire, but he was bolder and called her sun; she dared to think of them together on a dancing floor, but he could think of nothing but to be with her alone…
Once declared, this ardent love knew only two paths; one led towards fulfillment, the other towards disappointment. Stasis was impossible. And so one Sunday morning, when Giulietta and her cousins were allowed to go to confession in San Cristoforo before mass, she entered the confessional only to discover that there was no priest on the other side of the partition.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” she began, dutifully, expecting the priest to encourage elaboration.
Instead, a strange voice whispered, “How can love be a sin? If God did not want us to love, then why did he create such beauty as yours?”
Giulietta gasped in surprise and fear. “Romeo?” She knelt down in an attempt at verifying her suspicion through the metal filigree and, indeed, on the other side of the grate she saw the outline of a smile that was anything but priestly. “How dare you come here? My aunt is but ten feet away!”
“There lies more peril in your sweet voice,” complained Romeo, “than in twenty such aunts. I beg you, speak again and make my ruin complete.” He pressed his hand against the grate, willing Giulietta to do the same. She did, and although their hands did not touch, she could feel his heat against her palm.
“How I wish we were lowly peasants,” she whispered, “free to meet whenever we chose.”
“And what would we do, we lowly peasants,” inquired Romeo, “when we met?”
Giulietta was thankful that he could not see her blushing. “There would be no grate between us.”
“That, I suppose,” said Romeo, “would be some small improvement.”
“You,” Giulietta went on, sneaking a fingertip through the filigree, “would undoubtedly speak in rhyming couplets as men do when they seduce reluctant maids. The more reluctant the maid, the finer the poetry.”
Romeo swallowed his laughter as best he could. “Firstly, I never heard a lowly peasant utter anything in verse. Secondly, I wonder exactly how fine my poetry would have to be. Not so very much, I think, considering the maid.”
She gasped. “You rascal! I shall have to prove you wrong by being very prudish and refusing your kisses.”
“Easily said with a wall between us,” he smirked.
They stood in silence for a moment, trying to feel each other through the wooden boards.
“Oh, Romeo,” sighed Giulietta, suddenly sad, “is this what our love must be? A secret in a dark room, while the world bustles on outside?”
“Not for long, if I can help it.” Romeo closed his eyes, pretending the wall was Giulietta’s forehead against his own. “I wanted to see you today to tell you that I am going to ask my father to approve of our marriage and approach your uncle as soon as possible with a proposal.”
“You wish to… marry me?” She was not sure she had understood him properly. He had not posed it as a question, rather as a fact. But perhaps that was the Siena way.
“Nothing else will do,” he groaned. “I must have you, completely, at my table and in my bed, or I shall waste away like a starving prisoner. There you have it; forgive the lack of poesy.”
When, for a moment, there was nothing but silence on the other side of the wall, Romeo began to fear that he had offended her. He was already cursing his own frankness when Giulietta spoke again, chasing away those small, fluttering fears with the scent of a greater beast. “If it is a wife you seek, it is Tolomei you need to woo.”
“As much as I respect your uncle,” observed Romeo, “I had hoped to carry you, not him, to my chamber.”
Now finally, she giggled, but it was not a lasting pleasure. “He is a man of great ambition. Make sure your father brings a long pedigree when he comes.”
Romeo gasped at the perceived insult. “My family wore plumed helmets and served the Caesars, when your uncle Tolomei wore bearskin and served barley mash to his pigs!” Realizing that he was being childish, Romeo went on, more calmly, “Tolomei will not refuse my father. Between our households there has always been peace.”
“Would that it was a steady stream of blood!” sighed Giulietta. “Do you not see? If our houses are already at peace, then what is to be gained by our union?”
He refused to understand her. “All fathers wish their children well.”
“And so they feed us bitter medicine and make us cry.”
“I am eighteen. My father treats me like an equal.”
“An old man, then. Why not married? Or have you already buried your childhood bride?”
“My father does not believe in unweaned mothers.”
Her shy smile, barely visible through the filigree, was gratifying after so much torment. “But does he believe in old maids?”
“You cannot be sixteen.”
“Just. But who counts the petals of a wilting rose?”
“When we are married,” whispered Romeo, kissing her fingertips as best he could, “I shall water you and lay you on my bed and count them all.”
She attempted a frown. “What of the thorns? Perhaps I shall prick you and ruin your bliss.”
“Trust me, the pleasure will far outstrip the pain.”
And so they went on, worrying and teasing, until someone tapped impatiently on the wall of the confessional. “Giulietta!” hissed Monna Antonia, making her niece jump in fear. “You cannot have much left to confess. Hurry up, for we are leaving!”
As they made their brief but poetic farewells, Romeo repeated his plan to marry her, but Giulietta dared not believe him. Having seen her sister Giannozza married off to a man who should have been acquiring a coffin for himself rather than a wife, Giulietta knew very well that marriage was not something for young lovers to plan on their own; marriage was first and foremost a matter of politics and inheritance, and had nothing to do with the wishes of the bride and groom, but everything to do with the ambitions of their parents. Love-according to Giannozza, whose first few letters as a married woman had made Giulietta cry-always came later, and with someone else.
IT WAS RARE FOR Comandante Marescotti to be pleased with his firstborn. Most of the time, he had to remind himself that-as was the case with most fevers-there existed no remedy for youth but time. Either the subject died, or its affliction eventually wore itself out, leaving no virtue for the wise to cling to but patience. Alas, Comandante Marescotti was not affluent in that particular currency, and his paternal heart, as a result, had grown into a many-headed beast guarding a cavernous store of furies and fears, always alert, but mostly unsuccessful.