My room was still a mess, but I did not feel like addressing my baggage just yet. At least the broken glass was gone, and a new pane had been installed while I was out; if someone else wanted to get into my room tonight, he would have to wake me first.
Unrolling the lengthy document on top of the bed, I spent a long time trying to orient myself in its forest of names. It was no ordinary family tree, for it traced our roots exclusively through the female line, and it was only concerned with logging the direct connection between the Giulietta Tolomei of 1340 and me.
I eventually found myself and Janice at the very bottom of the document, right below the names of our parents:
After my initial guffaw at the fact that Janice’s given name really was Giannozza-she had always hated being Janice, and had maintained, to the point of tears, that it was not her name-I went all the way to the top of the document to find the exact same names right there:
And so forth. The list in between was so long that I could have used it as a rope ladder from my balcony. It was impressive that someone-or rather, dozens of people over the centuries-had so diligently kept track of our bloodline, starting all the way back in 1340, with Giulietta and her sister, Giannozza.
Every now and then those two names-Giulietta and Giannozza-popped up side by side on the family tree, but always with a different last name; they were never called Tolomei. What was particularly interesting was that, as far as I could see, Eva Maria had not been entirely right in saying that Giulietta Tolomei was my ancestor. For according to this document, we were all-Mom, Janice, and me-descended from Giulietta’s sister, Giannozza, and her husband, Mariotto da Gambacorta. As for Giulietta, there was no record of her having married anyone, and certainly not of her having children.
Full of foreboding, I eventually put the document aside and dove back into the other texts. The knowledge that it was, in fact, Giannozza Tolomei who was my real ancestor made me much more appreciative of Giulietta’s fragmented letters to her and occasional comments on Giannozza’s quiet country life far away from Siena.
“You are lucky, my dearest,” she had written at one point, “that your house is so large and your husband so hard of walking-” and later on she had mused, “Oh, to be you, sneaking outside and lying in the wild thyme for a stolen hour of peace-”
I eventually nodded off and slept soundly for a couple of hours, until a loud noise woke me up while it was still dark.
SOMEWHAT BLURRY ON the sounds of the waking world, it took me a moment to recognize the bedlam as a motorcycle revving its engine in the street beneath my balcony.
For a while I just lay there, annoyed at the inconsiderate nature of Siena youth in general, and it took me longer than it should have to realize that this was no ordinary gang rally, but a single biker trying to catch someone’s attention. And that someone, I began to fear, was me.
Peeking out through the cracks in the shutters, I could not see much of the street below, but as I stood there, stretching this way and that, I started hearing noise all around me in the building. The other hotel guests, it seemed, were also getting out of bed and banging open the shutters to see what on earth was going on.
Emboldened by the collective uproar, I opened my French doors to peek out, and now I finally saw him; it was indeed my motorcycle stalker, making textbook figure-eights beneath a streetlamp. There was no doubt in my mind that it was the same guy who had followed me twice before-once to save me from Bruno Carrera, and once to look at me through the glass door of Malèna’s espresso bar-for he was still black on black, visor closed, and I had never seen another bike just like his.
At one point he turned his head and spotted me in the balcony door. As the engine noise suddenly waned to a purr, it was nearly drowned out by angry shouts from the other windows and balconies of Hotel Chiusarelli, but he could not care less; reaching into his pocket, he took out a round object, pulled back his arm, and pitched whatever it was at my balcony with perfect aim.
It landed before my feet with an odd, squishy sound, and even bounced a bit before it finally rolled to a halt. With no other attempt at communication, my leather-clad friend jerked the Ducati into a frenzied acceleration that very nearly made it rear up and throw him off. Seconds later he disappeared around a corner and was gone, and had it not been for the other hotel guests-some grumbling, some laughing-the night would once again have been quiet.
I stood for a moment, staring at the missile, before I finally dared pick it up and bring it back into my room, closing the balcony door tightly behind me. Turning on the lights, I found that it was a tennis ball wrapped in heavy bond paper and secured with rubber bands. The paper, it turned out, was a message drafted by a strong, confident hand in the dark red ink of love letters and suicide notes. This was what it said:
Giulietta ∼
Forgive me that I am carefulle, I have very good reason. Soon you will understand. I must talk with you and explain to you every thing. Meet me in the top of the Torre del Mangia tomorrow morning on 9, and do not tell it to any body.
∼ Romeo
V.I
Why I descend into this bed of death
Is partly to behold my lady’s face
But chiefly to take thence from her dead finger
A precious ring
Siena , A.D. 1340
ON THE NIGHT OF THE FATAL PALIO, the body of young Tebaldo Tolomei was laid out in the church of San Cristoforo, across the piazza from Palazzo Tolomei. In a gesture of friendship, Messer Salimbeni had stopped by to drape the cencio over the dead hero and to promise the grieving father that the murderer would soon be found. After that, he had excused himself and left the Tolomei family to their grief, pausing only briefly on his way out to bow to the Lord and appreciate Giulietta’s slender form kneeling rather invitingly in prayer before the bier of her cousin.
All the women of the Tolomei family were gathered in the church of San Cristoforo that night, wailing and praying with Tebaldo’s mother, while the men ran back and forth between church and palazzo, wine on their breath, athirst to execute justice on Romeo Marescotti. Whenever Giulietta heard snippets of their hushed conversations, her throat tightened in fear, and her eyes welled up at the imagined sight of the man she loved, caught by his enemies and punished for a crime she was certain he had not committed.
It spoke in her favor that she was seen to grieve so profoundly over a cousin with whom she had never exchanged a single word; the tears Giulietta cried that night mingled with those of her cousins and aunts like rivers running into one and the same lake; they were so plentiful that no one cared to explore their true source.
“I suppose you are truly sorry,” her aunt had said, looking up briefly from her own grief to see Giulietta crying into the cencio that was draped over Tebaldo. “And you should be! Had it not been for you, that bastard Romeo would never have dared-” Before she could finish the sentence, Monna Antonia had once again collapsed in tears, and Giulietta had discreetly removed herself from the center of attention to sit down in a pew in one of the darker corners of the church.
As she sat there, lonely and miserable, she was sorely tempted to try her luck and escape from San Cristoforo on foot. She had no money, and no one to protect her, but, God willing, she might be able to find her way back to Maestro Ambrogio’s workshop. The city streets, however, were awash with soldiers searching for Romeo, and the entrance to the church was lined with guards. Only an angel-or a ghost-would be able to get past them unnoticed.