Pacing up and down the floor, occasionally pausing to peek out through a crack in the sealed shutters to guess the time of day, Giulietta eventually concluded that death would have to wait. Not because she had a desire to live, but because there were still two tasks left in life that only she could accomplish. One of them was to get hold of Friar Lorenzo-or some other holy man more bent on obeying the law of God than that of her uncle-and to have him ensure that Romeo was properly buried; the other was to make Salimbeni suffer in a way no man had ever suffered before.
MONNA AGNESE DIED on All Saints’ Day, after having been confined to her bed for over half a year. There were those who whispered that the poor lady had stayed alive for so long simply to annoy her husband, Messer Salimbeni, whose new wedding clothes had been laid out for wear ever since his August engagement to Giulietta Tolomei.
The funeral was held at Rocca di Tentennano, the impregnable Salimbeni fortress in Val d’Orcia. No sooner had he tossed earth over the coffin than the widower took off for Siena with the fluttering dispatch of a winged cupid. Only one child accompanied him on his return to town: his nineteen-year-old son Nino-already a hardened Palio assassin, according to some-whose own mother had preceded Monna Agnese into the Salimbeni sepulchre several years earlier, following a similar affliction, commonly known as starvation.
Tradition demanded a period of mourning after such a loss, but few were surprised to see the great man so soon back in town. Salimbeni was renowned for his celerity of mind; while other men spent several days mourning the death of a wife or child, he would shrug it off within hours, never missing an important business transaction.
Despite his occasional, suspect dealings and tireless rivalry with the house of Tolomei, Salimbeni was a man most people could not help but admire to the point of toadying. Whenever he was present in a gathering, he was the undisputed center of attention. And whenever he sought to amuse, everyone responded with laughter, even if they had barely heard what he said. His unstinting ways endeared him immediately to strangers, and his clients knew that once you had earned his trust, you would be handsomely rewarded. Understanding the dynamics of the city better than anyone, he knew when to hand out food to the poor, and he knew when to stand firm in the face of the government. It was no coincidence that he liked to dress like a Roman emperor in a fine woolen toga with scarlet edging, for he ran Siena like a small empire of his own, and anyone who opposed his authority was treated as a traitor to the city at large.
In the light of Salimbeni’s political and fiscal savvy, it astounded the people of Siena to witness his enduring infatuation with Messer Tolomei’s melancholy niece. There he was, bowing politely to her pale figure at mass, when she could barely look at him. Not only did she despise him for what had happened to her family-her tragedy was, by now, widely known-but he was also the man who had driven her lover Romeo out of town after incriminating him in the suspicious murder of Tebaldo Tolomei.
Why, people asked themselves, did a man of Salimbeni’s stature put his dignity at stake in order to marry a girl who could never warm to him, were they both to live a thousand years? She was beautiful, certainly, and most young men were able to conjure up Giulietta’s perfect lips and dreamy eyes whenever they felt the need. But it was quite another thing for a man as settled as Salimbeni to toss aside all respectability and claim her for his own so soon after her sweetheart’s disappearance and his own wife’s passing.
“It is all a matter of honor!” said some, approving of the engagement. “Romeo challenged Salimbeni to a fight over Giulietta, and such a fight can only have one logical outcome: The winner must live, the loser die, and the lady fall to the man standing, whether he wants her or not.”
Others were more candid and confessed that they saw the touch of the devil in Salimbeni’s actions. “Here is a man,” they would whisper to Maestro Ambrogio over wine in taverns late at night, “whose power has long been checked by no one. Now at last that power has turned malignant, and as such it is threatening not only us, but him as well. You have said it yourself, Maestro: Salimbeni’s virtues have ripened to a point where they are turning into vice, and, now that they are long sated, his immense appetites for glory and influence must naturally seek new sources of nourishment.”
To name an example of such nourishment was not mere guesswork; there were certain females about town who would readily testify to Salimbeni’s increasingly wicked ways.
From being a man who sought to please and be pleased, Salimbeni had, one lady told the Maestro, gradually come to resent those who too readily bent to his wishes. He had begun to seek out the unwilling, or the downright hostile, in order that he might have reason to fully exercise his faculties of dominance, and nothing pleased him more than an encounter with someone-most often a defiant foreigner newly arrived-who did not yet know that he was a man who must be obeyed.
But even defiant foreigners listen to friendly advice, and before long, Salimbeni was once again, much to his irritation, met by nothing but sickening smiles and charades whenever he ventured out on the town in what he considered disguise. Most business owners would have liked nothing more than to bar their door to the rapacious customer, but in the absence of men willing to enforce the law against the tyrant, how could private industry ever be safe from such infringement? And so the satyr play was allowed to continue, its lead on a perennial quest for ever more worthwhile challenges to his potency, while the chorus of people left in his wake could do little but recount the myriad dangers of hubris and the tragic blindness to reason that will, invariably, ensue.
“So you see, Maestro,” concluded the lady-always happy to exchange gossip with those of her neighbors who did not spit in the street when they saw her-“this certain man’s obsession with that certain young lady is no mystery at all.” She leaned on her broom and waved him closer, anxious that no one overhear her insight. “Here is a girl-a lovely, nubile creature-who is not only the niece of his enemy, but who, herself, has every reason in the world to despise him. There is no risk of her fierce resistance degenerating into sweet submission… no risk that she will ever willingly admit him to her chamber. Do you see, Maestro? In marrying her, he will secure for himself the very wellspring of his preferred aphrodisiac-hatred-and that is a source that will surely never run dry.”
THE SALIMBENI WEDDING succeeded the Salimbeni funeral by a week and a day. The graveyard soil still moist underneath his fingernails, the widower wasted no time in dragging his next wife to the altar that she might forthwith infuse his sagging family tree with the luxurious blood of the Tolomeis.
For all his charisma and generosity, this blatant display of egoism was disgusting to the people of Siena. As the wedding procession passed through town, more than one bystander remarked on its semblance to a military triumph in Roman times; here came the booty from foreign lands-men and beasts hitherto unseen, and a chained queen upon a horse, crowned for mockery-all presented to the slack-jawed mob lining the road by an exulting general waving at them all from a passing chariot.
The sight of the tyrant in his glory like this brought back in full force all the suspicious murmurings that had followed Messer Salimbeni wherever he went since the Palio. Here was a man-some said-who had committed murder, not just once, but whenever he damn well pleased, and yet no one dared speak against his actions. Clearly, a man who could get away with such crimes-and force a wedding with an unwilling bride on top of it-was a man who could, and would, do anything to anyone.