Juliet
Anne Fortier

To my beloved mother,

Birgit Malling Eriksen,

whose magnanimity and Herculean research

made this book possible

Go hence to have more talk of these sad things. Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished, For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

Shakespeare

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Epigraph

The Prologue

I.I

I.II

I.III

II.I

II.II

II.III

III.I

III.II

III.III

III.IV

IV.I

IV.II

IV.III

IV.IV

IV.V

V.I

V.II

V.III

V. IV

V. V

VI.I

VI.II

VII.I

VII.II

VIII.I

VIII.II

VIII.III

IX.I

IX.II

IX.III

X

Author’s Note

About the Type

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

The Prologue

They say I died.

My heart stopped, and I was not breathing – in the eyes of the world I was really dead. Some say I was gone for three minutes, some say four; personally, I am beginning to think death is mostly a matter of opinion.

Being Juliet, I suppose I should have seen it coming. But I so wanted to believe that, this time around, it would not be the same old lamentable tragedy. This time, we would be together forever, Romeo and I, and our love would never again be suspended by dark centuries of banishment and death.

But you can’t fool the Bard. And so I died as I must, when my lines ran out, and fell back into the well of creation.

O happy pen. This is thy sheet.

There ink, and let me begin.

I.I

Alack, alack, what blood is this which stainsThe stony entrance of this sepulchre?

It has taken me a while to decide where to start. You could argue that my story began more than six hundred years ago, with a highway robbery in mediaeval Tuscany. Or, more recently, with a dance and a kiss at Castello Salimbeni, when my parents met for the first time. But I would never have come to know any of this without the event that changed my life overnight and forced me to travel to Italy in search of the past. That event was the death of my great-aunt Rose.

It took Umberto three days to find me and tell me the sad news. Considering my virtuosity in the art of disappearing, I am amazed he succeeded at all. But then, Umberto always had an uncanny ability to read my mind and predict my movements, and besides, there were only so many Shakespeare summer camps in Virginia.

How long he stood there, watching the theatre performance from the back of the room, I do not know. I was backstage as always, too absorbed in the kids, their lines and props, to notice anything else around me until the curtain fell. After the dress rehearsal that afternoon, someone had misplaced the vial of poison, and for lack of anything better, Romeo would have to commit suicide by eating Tic Tacs.

‘But they give me heartburn!’ the boy had complained, with all the accusatory anxiety of a fourteen-year-old.

‘Excellent!’ I had said, resisting a motherly urge to adjust the velvet hat on his head. ‘That’ll help you stay in character.’

Only when the lights came on afterwards, and the kids dragged me onstage to bombard me with gratitude, did I notice the familiar figure looming near the exit, contemplating me through the applause. Stern and statuesque in his dark suit and tie, Umberto stood out like a lone reed of civilization in a primordial swamp. He always had. For as long as I could remember, he had never worn a single piece of clothing that could be considered casual. Khaki shorts and golf shirts, to Umberto, were the garments of men who have no virtues left, not even shame.

Later, when the onslaught of grateful parents subsided and I could finally leave the stage, I was stopped briefly by the programme director, who took me by the shoulders and shook me heartily – he knew me too well to attempt a hug. ‘Good job with the youngsters, Julie!’ he gushed. ‘I can count on you again next summer, can’t I?’

‘Absolutely,’ I lied, walking on. ‘I’ll be around.’

Approaching Umberto at last, I looked in vain for that little spark of happiness in the corner of his eyes that was usually there when he saw me again after some time away. But there was no smile, not even a trace, and I now understood why he had come. Stepping silently into his embrace, I wished I had the power to flip reality upside down like an hourglass, and that life was not a finite affair, but rather a perpetually recurring passage through a little hole in time.

‘Don’t cry, principessa,’ he said into my hair, ‘she wouldn’t have liked it. We can’t all live forever. She was eighty-two.’

‘I know. But…’ I stood back and wiped my eyes. ‘Was Janice there?’

Umberto’s eyes narrowed as they always did when my twin sister was mentioned. ‘What do you think?’ Only then, up close, did I see that he looked bruised and bitter, as if he had spent the last few nights drinking himself to sleep. But perhaps it had been a natural thing to do. Without Aunt Rose what would become of Umberto? For as long as I could remember, the two of them had been yoked together in a necessary partnership of money and muscle – she had played the withering belle, he the patient butler – and despite their differences, clearly neither of them had ever been willing to attempt life without the other.

The Lincoln was parked discreetly over by the fire pit, and no one saw Umberto placing my old pack in the trunk before opening the back door for me with measured ceremony.

‘I want to sit in front. Please?’

He shook his head in disapproval and opened the passenger door instead. ‘I knew it would all come apart.’

But it had never been Aunt Rose who insisted on the formality. Although Umberto was her employee, she had always treated him like family. The gesture, however, was never returned. Whenever Aunt Rose would invite Umberto to join us at the dinner table, he would merely look at her with bemused forbearance, as if it was an ongoing wonder to him why she kept asking and just somehow didn’t get it. He ate all his meals in the kitchen, always had, always would, and not even the name of sweet Jesus – spoken in rising exasperation – could persuade him to come and sit down with us, even at Thanksgiving.

Aunt Rose used to dismiss Umberto’s peculiarity as a European thing and smoothly segue into a lecture about tyranny, liberty, and independence that would inevitably culminate in her pointing a fork at us and snorting, ‘and that is why we are not going to Europe on vacation. Especially Italy. End of story.’ Personally, I was fairly certain that Umberto preferred to eat alone simply because he considered his own company vastly superior to what we had to offer. There he was, serene in the kitchen, with his opera, his wine, and his perfectly ripened block of Parmesan, while we – Aunt Rose, me, and Janice – bickered and shivered in the drafty dining room. Given the option, I would have lived every minute of every day in the kitchen, too.

As we drove through the dark Shenandoah Valley that night, Umberto told me about Aunt Rose’s last hours. She had died peacefully, in her sleep, after an evening of listening to all her favourite Fred Astaire songs, one crackling record after another. Once the last chord of the last piece had died out, she had stood up and opened the French doors to the garden outside, perhaps wanting to breathe in the honeysuckle one more time. As she stood there, eyes closed, Umberto told me, the long lace curtains had fluttered round her spindly body without a sound, as if she was already a ghost.

‘Did I do the right thing?’ she had asked, quietly.

‘Of course you did,’ had been his diplomatic answer.

It was midnight by the time we rolled into Aunt Rose’s driveway. Umberto had already warned me that Janice had arrived from Florida that afternoon with a calculator and a bottle of champagne. That did not, however, explain the second vehicle parked right in front of the entrance.

‘I sincerely hope,’ I said, taking my pack out of the trunk before Umberto could get to it, ‘that is not the undertaker.’ No sooner had I said the words then I winced at my own flippancy. It was completely unlike me to talk like that, and it only ever happened when I came within earshot of my sister.

Casting a brief glance at the mystery car, Umberto adjusted his jacket as if it was a bulletproof vest. ‘I fear there are many kinds of undertaking.’

As soon as we stepped through the front door of the house, I saw what he meant. All the large portraits in the hallway had been taken down and were now standing with their backs to the wall like delinquents before a firing squad. And the Venetian vase that had always stood on the round table beneath the chandelier was already gone.

‘Hello?’ I yelled, with a surge of rage that I had not felt since my last visit. ‘Anyone still alive?’

My voice echoed through the quiet house, but as soon as it had faded I heard running feet in the corridor upstairs. Yet despite her guilty rush, Janice had to make her usual slow-motion appearance on the broad staircase, her flimsy summer dress emphasizing her sumptuous curves far better than if she had worn nothing at all. Pausing for the world press, she tossed back her long hair with languid self-satisfaction and sent me a supercilious smile before commencing her descent. ‘Lo and behold,’ she observed, her voice sweetly chilled, ‘the virgitarian has landed.’ Only then did I notice the male flavour-of-the-week trailing right behind her, looking as dishevelled and bloodshot as one does after time alone with my sister.

‘Sorry to disappoint,’ I said, dropping my backpack on the floor with a thud. ‘Can I help you strip the house of valuables, or do you prefer to work alone?’

Janice’s laughter was like a little wind chime on your neighbour’s porch, put there exclusively to annoy you. ‘This is Archie,’ she informed me, in her business-casual way. ‘He is going to give us twenty grand for all this junk.’

I looked at them both with disgust as they came towards me. ‘How generous of him. He obviously has a passion for trash.’

Janice shot me an icy glare, but quickly checked herself. She knew very well that I couldn’t care less about her good opinion, and that her anger just amused me.

I was born four minutes before her. No matter what she did, or said, I would always be four minutes older. Even if, Janice’s own mind, she was the hypersonic hare and I the plodding turtle, we both knew she could run cocky circles around me all she liked, but that she would never actually catch up and close that tiny gap between us.

‘Well,’ said Archie, eyeing the open door, ‘I’m gonna take off. Nice to meet you, Julie – it’s Julie, isn’t it? Janice told me all about you.’ He laughed nervously. ‘Keep up the good work! Make peace not love, as they say.’

Janice waved sweetly as Archie walked out, letting the screen door slam behind him. But as soon as he was out of hearing range, her angelic face turned demonic. ‘Don’t you dare look at me like that!’ she sneered. ‘I’m trying to make us some money. It’s not as if you’re making any, is it now?’

‘But then I don’t have your kind of…expenses.’ I nodded at her latest upgrades, eminently visible under the clingy dress. ‘Tell me, Janice, how do they get all that stuff in there? Through the navel?’

‘Tell me, Julie,’ mimicked Janice, ‘how does it feel to get nothing stuffed in there? Ever!’

‘Excuse me, ladies,’ said Umberto, stepping politely between us the way he had done so many times before, ‘but may I suggest we move this riveting exchange to the library?’

Once we caught up with Janice, she had already draped herself over Aunt Rose’s favourite armchair, a gin and tonic nestling on the foxhuntmotif cushion I had cross-stitched as a senior in high school while my sister had been out on the prowl for upright prey.

‘What?’ She looked at us with ill-concealed loathing. ‘You don’t think she left half the booze for me?’

It was vintage Janice to be angling for a fight over someone’s dead body, and I turned my back to her and walked over to the French doors. On the terrace outside, Aunt Rose’s beloved terra-cotta pots sat like a row of mourners, flower heads hanging beyond consolation. It was an unusual sight. Umberto always kept the garden in perfect order, but perhaps he found no pleasure in his work now that his employer was no longer around to appreciate it.

‘I am surprised,’ said Janice, swirling her drink, ‘that you are still here, Birdie. If I were you I would have been in Vegas by now. With the silver.’

Umberto did not reply. He had stopped talking directly to Janice years ago. Instead, he looked at me. ‘The funeral is tomorrow.’

‘I can’t believe,’ said Janice, one leg dangling from the armrest, ‘you planned all that without asking us.’

‘It was what she wanted.’

‘Anything else we should know?’ Janice freed herself from the embrace of the chair and straightened out her dress. ‘I assume we’re all getting our share? She didn’t fall in love with some weird pet foundation or something, did she?’

‘Do you mind?’ I croaked, and for a second or two, Janice actually looked chastened. Then she shrugged it off as she always did, and reached once more for the gin bottle.

I didn’t even bother to look at her as she feigned clumsiness, raising her perfectly groomed eyebrows in astonishment to let us know that she certainly had not intended to pour quite so much. As the sun slowly melted into the horizon, so would Janice soon melt into a chaise longue, leaving the great questions of life for others to answer as long as they kept the alcohol coming.

She had been like that for as long as I remembered: insatiable. When we were children, Aunt Rose used to laugh delightedly and exclaim, ‘That girl, she could eat her way out of a gingerbread prison,’ as if Janice’s greediness was something to be proud of. But then, Aunt Rose was at the top of the food chain and had, unlike me, nothing to fear. For as long as I could remember, Janice had been able to sniff out my secret candy no matter where I hid it, and Easter mornings in our family were nasty, brutish, and short. They would inevitably climax with Umberto chastising her for stealing my share of the Easter eggs, and Janice – teeth dripping with chocolate – hissing from underneath her bed that he wasn’t her daddy and couldn’t tell her what to do.

The frustrating thing was that she didn’t look her part. Her skin stubbornly refused to give away its secrets; it was as smooth as the satin icing on a wedding cake, her features as delicately crafted as the little marzipan fruits and flowers in the hands of a master confectioner. Neither gin nor coffee nor shame nor remorse had been able to crack that glazed façade; it was as if she had a perennial spring of life inside her, as if she rose every morning rejuvenated from the well of eternity, not a day older, not an ounce heavier, and still ravenously hungry for the world.

Unfortunately, we were not identical twins. Once, in the schoolyard, I had overheard someone referring to me as Bambi-on-stilts, and although Umberto laughed and said it was a compliment, it didn’t feel that way. Even when I was past my most clumsy age, I knew I still looked lanky and anemic next to Janice; no matter where we went or what we did, she was as dark and effusive as I was pale and reserved.

Whenever we entered a room together, all the spotlights would immediately turn to her, and although I was standing there right beside her, I became just another head in the audience. As time went on, however, I grew comfortable with my role. I never had to worry about finishing my sentences, for Janice would inevitably do that for me. And on the rare occasions when someone asked about my hopes and dreams – usually over a polite cup of tea with one of Aunt Rose’s neighbours – Janice would pull me away to the piano, where she would attempt to play while I turned the sheets for her. Even now, at twenty-five, I would still squirm and grind to a halt in conversations with strangers, hoping desperately to be interrupted before I had to commit my verb to an object.

We buried Aunt Rose in the pouring rain. As I stood there by her grave, heavy drops of water fell from my hair to blend with the tears running down my cheeks; the paper tissues I had brought from home had long since turned to mush in my pockets.

Although I had been crying all night, I was hardly prepared for the sense of sad finality I felt as the coffin was lowered crookedly into the earth. Such a big coffin for Aunt Rose’s spindly frame…now I suddenly regretted not having asked to see the body, even if it would have made no difference to her. Or maybe it would? Perhaps she was watching us from somewhere far away, wishing she could let us know that she had arrived safely. It was a consoling idea, a welcome distraction from reality, and I wished I could believe it.

The only one who did not look like a drowned rodent by the end of the funeral was Janice, who wore plastic boots with five-inch heels and a black hat that signalled anything but mourning. In contrast, I was wearing what Umberto had once labelled my Attila-the-Nun outfit; if Janice’s boots and neckline said come hither, my clunky shoes and buttoned-up dress most certainly said get lost.

A handful of people showed up at the grave, but only Mr Gallagher, our family lawyer, stayed to talk. Neither Janice nor I had ever met him before, but Aunt Rose had mentioned him so often and so fondly that the man himself could only be a disappointment.

‘I understand you are a pacifist?’ he said to me, as we walked away from the cemetery together.

‘Jules loves to fight,’ observed Janice, walking happily in the middle, oblivious to the fact that the brim of her hat was funnelling water onto both of us, ‘and throw stuff at people. Did you hear what she did to the Little Mermaid?’

‘That’s enough,’ I said, trying to find a dry spot on my sleeve to wipe my eyes one last time.

‘Oh, don’t be so modest! You were on the front page!’

‘And I hear your business is going very well?’ Mr Gallagher looked at Janice, attempting a smile. ‘It must be a challenge to make everyone happy?’

‘Happy? Eek!’ Janice narrowly avoided stepping in a puddle. ‘Happiness is the worst threat to my business. Dreams are what it’s all about. Frustrations. Fantasies that never come true. Men that don’t exist. Women you can never have. That’s where the money is, date after date after date…’

Janice kept talking, but I stopped listening. It was one of the world’s great ironies that my sister was into professional matchmaking, for she was probably the least romantic person I had ever known. Notwithstanding her urge to flirt with every one of them, she saw men as little more than noisy power tools that you plugged in when you needed them and unplugged as soon as the job was done.

Oddly enough, when we were children, Janice had had an obsession with arranging everything in pairs, two teddy bears, two cushions, two hairbrushes…even on days when we had been fighting, she would put both our dolls next to each other on the shelf overnight, sometimes even with their arms around each other. In that respect it was perhaps not so strange that she would choose to make a career out of matchmaking, seeing that she was a genuine Noah at putting people in pairs. The only problem was that, unlike the old patriarch, she had long since forgotten why she did it.

It was hard to say when things had changed. At some point in high school she had made it her mission to burst every dream I might ever have had about love. Running through boyfriends like cheap nylon tights, Janice had taken a peculiar pleasure in disgusting me by describing everybody and everything in such a dismissive way that it made me wonder why women bothered with men at all.

‘So,’ she had said, rolling pink curlers into my hair on the night before our prom, ‘this is your last chance.’

I had looked at her in the mirror, puzzled by her ultimatum but prevented from responding by one of her mint-green mud masks that had dried to a crust on my face.

‘You know,’ she had grimaced impatiently, ‘your last chance to pop the cherry. That’s what prom’s all about. Why do you think the guys dress up? Because they like to dance? Puh-leez!’ She had glanced at me in the mirror, checking her progress. ‘If you don’t do it at prom, you know what they say. You’re a prude. Nobody likes a prude.’

The next morning, I had complained about a stomachache, and as the prom came closer, my pains grew worse. In the end, Aunt Rose had to call the neighbours and tell them that their son had better find himself another date for the evening; meanwhile, Janice was picked up by an athlete called Troy and disappeared in a smoke of squealing tyres.

After listening to my moans all afternoon, Aunt Rose began insisting that we go to the hospital in case it was appendicitis, but Umberto had calmed her down and said that I did not have a fever, and that he was certain it was nothing serious. As he stood there next to my bed later in the evening, looking at me peeking out from underneath my blanket, I could see that he knew exactly what was going on, and that, in some strange way, he was pleased with my scam. We both knew there was nothing wrong with the neighbours’ son as such, it was just that he did not fit the description of the man I had envisioned as my lover. And if I could not get what I wanted, I would rather miss the prom.

‘Dick,’ Janice now said, stroking Mr Gallagher with a satin smile, ‘why don’t we just cut to the chase. How much?’

I did not even try to intervene. After all, as soon as Janice got her money, she would be off to the eternal hunting grounds of the bushy-tailed wannabe, and I would never have to set eyes on her again.

‘Well,’ said Mr Gallagher, stopping awkwardly in the car park, right next to Umberto and the Lincoln, ‘I’m afraid the fortune is almost entirely tied up in the estate.’

‘Look,’ said Janice, ‘we all know it’s fifty-fifty down to the last nickel, okay, so let’s cut the crap. She wants us to draw a white line down the middle of the house? Fair enough, we can do that. Or,’ she shrugged as if it was all the same to her, ‘we simply sell the place and split the money. How much?’

‘The reality is that in the end,’ Mr Gallagher looked at me with some regret, ‘Mrs Jacobs changed her mind and decided to leave everything to Miss Janice.’

‘What?’ I looked from Janice to Mr Gallagher to Umberto, but found no support at all.

‘Holy shit!’ Janice flared up in a broad smile. ‘The old lady had a sense of humour after all!’

‘Of course,’ Mr Gallagher went on, more sternly, ‘there is a sum put aside for Mr…for Umberto, and there is a mention of certain framed photographs that your great-aunt wanted Miss Julie to have.’

‘Hey,’ said Janice, opening her arms, ‘I’m feeling generous.’

‘Wait a minute.’ I took a step back, struggling to take in the news. ‘This doesn’t make any sense.’

For as long as I could remember, Aunt Rose had gone through hell and high water to treat us equally; for heaven’s sake, I had even caught her counting the number of pecans in our morning muesli to make sure one of us didn’t get more than the other. And she had always talked about the house as something that we, at some point in the future, would own together. ‘You girls,’ she used to say, ‘really need to learn how to get along. I won’t live forever, you know. And when I am gone, you are going to share this house.’

‘I understand your disappointment,’ said Mr Gallagher.

‘Disappointment?’ I felt like grabbing him by the collar, but stuck my hands in my pockets instead, as deep as they could go. ‘Don’t think I’m just accepting this. I want to see the will.’ Looking him straight in the eye I saw him squirming under my gaze. ‘There’s something going on here behind my back.’

‘You were always a sore loser,’ Janice broke in, savouring my fury with a catty smile, ‘that’s what’s going on.’

‘Here.’ Mr Gallagher clicked open his briefcase with shaky hands and handed me a document. ‘This is your copy of the will. I’m afraid there’s not much room for dispute.’

Umberto found me in the garden, crouched under the arbour he had once built for us when Aunt Rose was in bed with pneumonia. Sitting down next to me on the wet bench, he did not comment on my childish disappearing act, just handed me an immaculately ironed handkerchief and observed me as I blew my nose.

‘It’s not the money,’ I said, defensively. ‘Did you see her smirk? Did you hear what she said? She doesn’t care about Aunt Rose. She never did. It’s not fair!’

‘Who told you life was fair?’ Umberto looked at me with raised eyebrows. ‘Not me.’

‘I know! I just don’t understand – but it’s my own fault. I always thought she was serious about treating us equally. I borrowed money.’ I clutched my face to avoid his stare. ‘Don’t say it!’

‘Are you finished?’

I shook my head. ‘You have no idea how finished I am.’

‘Good.’ He opened his jacket and took out a dry but slightly bent manila envelope. ‘Because she wanted you to have this. It’s a big secret. Gallagher doesn’t know. Janice doesn’t know. It’s for you only.’

I was immediately suspicious. It was very unlike Aunt Rose to give me something behind Janice’s back, but then, it was also very unlike her to write me out of her will. Clearly, I had not known my mother’s aunt as well as I thought, nor had I fully known myself until now. To think that I could sit here, today of all days, and cry over money. Although she had been in her late fifties when she adopted us, Aunt Rose had been like a mother to us, and I ought to be ashamed of myself for wanting anything more from her.

When I finally opened it, the envelope turned out to contain three things: a letter, a passport, and a key.

‘This is my passport!’ I exclaimed. ‘How did she…?’ I looked at the picture page again. It was my photo all right, and my date of birth, but the name was not mine. ‘Giulietta? Giulietta Tolomei?’

‘That is your real name. Your aunt changed it when she brought you here from Italy. She changed Janice’s name, too.’ I was stunned. ‘But why?…How long have you known?’ He looked down. ‘Why don’t you read the letter?’ I unfolded the two sheets of paper. ‘You wrote this?’ ‘She dictated it to me.’ Umberto smiled sadly. ‘She wanted to make sure you could read it.’ The letter read as follows:

My dearest Julie,

I have asked Umberto to give you this letter after my funeral, so I suppose that means I am dead. Anyway, I know you are still angry that I never took you girls to Italy, but believe me when I say that it was for your own good. How could I ever forgive myself if something happened to you? But now you are older. And there is something there, in Siena, that your mother left for you. You alone. I don’t know why, but that was Diane for you, bless her soul. She found something, and supposedly it is still there. By the sound of it, it was much more valuable than anything I have ever owned. And that is why I decided to do it this way, and give the house to Janice. I was hoping we could avoid all this and forget about Italy, but now I am beginning to think that it would be wrong of me if I never told you.

Here is what you must do. Take this key and go to the bank in Palazzo Tolomei. In Siena. I think it is for a safety deposit box. Your mother had it in her purse when she died. She had a financial advisor there, a man called Francesco Maconi. Find him and tell him that you are Diane Tolomei’s daughter. Oh, and that is another thing. I changed your names. Your real name is Giulietta Tolomei. But this is America. I thought Julie Jacobs made more sense, but no one can spell that either. What is the world coming to? No, I have had a good life. Thanks to you. Oh, and another thing: Umberto is going to get you a passport with your real name. I have no idea how you do these things, but never mind, we will leave that to him.

I am not going to say goodbye. We will see each other again in heaven, God willing. But I wanted to make sure you get what is rightly yours. Just be careful over there. Look what happened to your mother. Italy can be a very strange place. Your great-grandmother was born there, of course, but I’ll tell you, you couldn’t have dragged her back there for all the money in the world. Anyway, don’t tell anyone what I have told you. And try to smile more. You have such a beautiful smile, when you use it.

Much love & God bless, Auntie

It took me a while to recover from the letter. Reading it, I could almost hear Aunt Rose dictating it, just as wonderfully scatterbrained in death as she had been when she was still alive. By the time I was finished with Umberto’s handkerchief, he did not want it back. Instead, he told me to take it with me to Italy, so that I would remember him when I found my big treasure.

‘Come on!’ I blew my nose one final time. ‘We both know there’s no treasure!’

He picked up the key. ‘Are you not curious? Your aunt was convinced that your mother had found something of tremendous value.’

‘Then why didn’t she tell me earlier? Why wait until she’s…’ I threw up my arms. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

Umberto squinted. ‘She wanted to. But you were never around.’

I rubbed my face, mostly to avoid his accusatory stare. ‘Even if she was right, you know I can’t go back to Italy. They’d lock me up so fast. You know they told me…’

Actually, they – the Italian police – had told me significantly more than I had ever passed on to Umberto. But he knew the gist of it. He knew that I had once been arrested in Rome during an antiwar demonstration, and spent a very unrecommendable night in a local prison before being tossed out of the country at daybreak and told never to come back. He also knew that it hadn’t been my fault. I had been eighteen, and all I had wanted was to go to Italy and see the place where I was born.

Pining in front of my college’s bulletin boards with their gaudy ads for study trips and expensive language courses in Florence, I had come across a small poster denouncing the war in Iraq and all the countries that took part in it. One of those countries, I was excited to discover, was Italy. At the bottom of the page was a list of dates and destinations; anyone interested in the cause was welcome to join in. One week in Rome, travel included, would cost me no more than four hundred dollars, which was precisely what I had left in my bank account. Little did I know that the low fare was made possible by the fact that we were almost guaranteed to not stay the whole week, and that the tab for our return flights and last night’s lodgings would – if all went according to plan – be picked up by the Italian authorities, that is, the Italian taxpayers.

And so, understanding very little about the purpose of the trip, I circled back to the poster several times before finally signing up. That night, however, tossing around in my bed, I realized I had done the wrong thing and that I would have to undo it as soon as possible. But when I told Janice the next morning, she just rolled her eyes and said, ‘Here lies Jules, who didn’t have much of a life, but who almost went to Italy once.’

Obviously, I had to go.

When the first rocks started flying in front of the Italian Parliament – thrown by two of my fellow travellers, Sam and Greg – I would have loved nothing more than to be back in my dorm room, pillow over my head. But I was trapped in the crowd like everyone else, and once the Roman police had had enough of our rocks and Molotov cocktails, we were all baptized by tear gas.

It was the first time in my life I found myself thinking, I could die now. Falling down on the asphalt and seeing the world – legs, arms, vomit – through a haze of pain and disbelief, I completely forgot who I was and where I was going with my life. Perhaps like the martyrs of old, I discovered another place; somewhere that was neither life nor death. But then the pain came back, and the panic, too, and after a moment it stopped feeling like a religious experience.

Months later, I kept wondering if I had fully recovered from the events in Rome. When I forced myself to think about it, I got this nagging feeling that I was still forgetting something crucial about who I was – something that had been spilled on the Italian asphalt, and never come back.

‘True.’ Umberto opened the passport and scrutinized my photo. ‘They told Julie Jacobs she can’t return to Italy. But what about Giulietta Tolomei?’

I did a double take. Here was Umberto, who still scolded me for dressing like a flower child, urging me to break the law. ‘Are you suggesting…?’

‘Why do you think I had this made? It was your aunt’s last wish that you go to Italy. Don’t break my heart, principessa.’

Seeing the sincerity in his eyes, I struggled once more against the tears. ‘But what about you?’ I said gruffly. ‘Why don’t you come with me? We could find the treasure together. And if we don’t, to hell with it! We’ll become pirates. We’ll scour the seas…’

Umberto reached out and touched my cheek very gently, as if he knew that, once I was gone, I would never come back. And should we ever meet again, it would not be like this, sitting together in a child’s hideaway, our backs turned against the world outside. ‘There are some things,’ he said softly, ‘that a princess has to do alone. Do you remember what I told you…one day you will find your kingdom?’

‘That was just a story. Life isn’t like that.’

‘Everything we say is a story. But nothing we say is just a story.’

I threw my arms around him, not yet ready to let go. ‘What about you? You’re not staying here, are you?’

Umberto squinted up at the dripping woodwork. ‘I think Janice is right. It’s time for old Birdie to retire. I should steal the silver and go to Vegas. It will last me about a week, I think, with my luck. So make sure to call me when you find your treasure.’

I leaned my head against his shoulder. ‘You’ll be the first to know.’

I.II

Draw thy tool; here comes two of the house of Montagues

As far back as I could remember, Aunt Rose had done everything in her power to prevent Janice and me from going to Italy. ‘How many times do I have to tell you,’ she used to say, ‘that it is not a place for nice girls?’ Later on, realizing that her strategy had to change, she would shake her head whenever anyone would broach the subject, and clasp her heart as if the very thought of the place put her at death’s door. ‘Trust me,’ she would wheeze, ‘Italy is nothing but a big disappointment, and Italian men are pigs!’

I had always resented her inexplicable prejudice against the country where I was born, but after my experience in Rome I ended up more or less agreeing with her: Italy was a disappointment, and the Italians – at least the uniformed variety – made pigs look pretty good.

Similarly, whenever we asked her about our parents, Aunt Rose would cut us off by reciting the same old story. ‘How many times do I have to tell you,’ she would grunt, frustrated at being interrupted in the middle of reading the newspaper, wearing the little cotton gloves that kept the ink off her hands, ‘that your parents died in a car accident in Tuscany when you were three years old?’ Fortunately for Janice and me – or so the story continued – Aunt Rose and poor Uncle Jim, bless his soul, had been able to adopt us immediately after the tragedy, and it was our good luck that they had never been able to have children of their own. We ought to be grateful that we had not ended up in an Italian orphanage eating spaghetti every day. Look at us! Here we were, living on an estate in Virginia, spoiled rotten; the very least we could do in return was to stop plaguing Aunt Rose with questions she didn’t know how to answer. And could someone please fix her another mint julep, seeing that her joints were aching something fierce from our incessant nagging.

As I sat on the plane to Europe, staring out into the Atlantic night and reliving conflicts past, it struck me that I missed everything about Aunt Rose, not just the good bits. How happy I would have been to spend another hour with her, even if she were to spend that hour ranting. Now that she was gone, it was hard to believe she could ever have made me slam doors and stomp upstairs, and hard to accept that I had wasted so many precious hours in stubborn silence, locked in my room.

I angrily wiped a tear rolling down my cheek with the flimsy airline napkin and told myself that regrets were a waste of time. Yes, I should have written more letters to her, and yes, I should have called more often and told her I loved her, but that was all too late now; I could not undo the sins of the past.

On top of my grief there was also another sensation gnawing at my spine. Was it foreboding? Not necessarily. Foreboding implies that something bad will happen; my problem was that I didn’t know if anything would happen at all. It was entirely possible that the whole trip would end in disappointment. But I also knew that there was only one person I could rightfully blame for the squeeze I was in, and that person was me.

I had grown up believing I would inherit half of Aunt Rose’s fortune, and therefore had not even tried to make one of my own. While other girls my age had climbed up the slippery career pole with carefully manicured nails, I had only worked in jobs I liked – such as teaching at Shakespeare camps – knowing that sooner or later, my inheritance from Aunt Rose would take care of my growing credit-card debt. As a result, I had little to fall back on now but an elusive heirloom left behind in a faraway land by a mother I could barely remember.

Ever since dropping out of grad school I had lived nowhere in particular, couch-surfing with friends from the antiwar movement, and moving out whenever I got a Shakespeare teaching gig. For some reason, the Bard’s plays were all that had ever stuck in my head, and no matter how hard I tried, I could never get tired of Romeo and Juliet.

I occasionally taught adults, but much preferred kids – maybe because I was fairly sure they liked me. My first clue was that they would always refer to the grown-ups as if I weren’t one of them. It made me happy that they accepted me as one of their own, although I knew it was not actually a compliment. It simply meant that they suspected I had never really grown up either, and that, even at twenty-five, I still came across as an awkward tween struggling to articulate – or, more often, conceal – the poetry raging in my soul.

It didn’t help my career path that I was at a complete loss to imagine my future. When people asked me what I would like to do with my life, I had no idea what to say, and when I tried to visualize myself five years down the road, all I saw was a big, black pothole. In gloomy moments I interpreted this impending darkness as a sign that I would die young, and concluded that the reason I could not envision my future was that I had none. My mother had died young, and so had my grandmother, Aunt Rose’s younger sister. For some reason, fate was on our case, and whenever I found myself contemplating a long-term commitment, whether it was work or housing, I always bowed out at the last minute, haunted by the idea that I would not be around to see it to completion.

Every time I came home for Christmas or a summer holiday, Aunt Rose would discreetly beg me to stay with her rather than continuing my aimless existence. ‘You know, Julie,’ she would say, while picking dead leaves off a houseplant or decorating the Christmas tree one angel at a time, ‘you could always come back here for a while, and think about what you would like to do with yourself.’

But even if I was tempted, I knew I couldn’t do that. Janice was out there on her own, making money by matchmaking and renting a two-bedroom apartment with a view over a fake lake; for me to move back home would be to acknowledge that she had won.

Now, of course, everything had changed. Moving back in with Aunt Rose was no longer an option. The world as I knew it belonged to Janice, and I was left with nothing more than the contents of a manila envelope. As I sat there on the plane, rereading Aunt Rose’s letter over a plastic cup of sour wine, it suddenly occurred to me how thoroughly alone I was now, with her gone and only Umberto left in the world.

Growing up, I had never been good at making friends. In contrast, Janice would have had a hard time squeezing her closest and dearest into a double-decker bus. Whenever she went out with her giggling throng at night, Aunt Rose would circle around me nervously for a while, pretending to look for the magnifying glass or her dedicated crossword pencil. Eventually, she would sit down next to me on the sofa, seemingly interested in the book I was reading. But I knew she wasn’t.

‘You know, Julie,’ she would say, picking specks of lint from my pyjama bottoms, ‘I can easily entertain myself. If you want to go out with your friends…’

The suggestion would hang in the air for a while, until I had concocted a suitable reply. The truth was that I did not stay at home because I felt sorry for Aunt Rose, but because I had no interest in going out. Whenever I let people drag me along to some bar I always ended up surrounded by meatheads and geeks, who all seemed to think we were acting out a fairy tale in which I would have to choose one of them before the night was over.

The memory of Aunt Rose sitting next to me and in her own sweet way telling me to get a life sent another pang through my heart. Staring glumly through the greasy little aeroplane window into the void outside, I found myself wondering if perhaps this whole trip was meant as some kind of punishment for how I had treated her. Perhaps God was going to make the plane crash, just to show me. Or perhaps he would allow me to actually get to Siena, and then let me discover that someone else had already snagged the family treasure.

In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I began to suspect that the real reason Aunt Rose had never broached the issue while she was still alive was that it was all rubbish. Perhaps she had simply lost it in the end, in which case the alleged treasure might well turn out to be nothing but wishful thinking. And even if, against all odds, there really had been something of value still kicking around in Siena after we left some twenty-plus years ago, what were the chances it was still there? Considering the population density of Europe, and the ingenuity of mankind in general, I would be very surprised if there was any cheese left in the centre of the maze once – and if – I ever got there.

The only thought that was to cheer me through the long sleepless flight was that every miniature drink handed out by the smiling flight attendants took me further away from Janice. There she was, dancing around in a house that was all hers, laughing at my misfortune. She had no idea I was going to Italy, no idea that poor old Aunt Rose had sent me on a golden goose chase, and at least I could be glad about that. For if my trip failed to result in the recovery of something meaningful, I would rather she was not around to crow.

We landed in Frankfurt in something resembling sunshine, and I shuffled off the plane in my flip-flops, puffy-eyed and with a chunk of apple strudel still stuck in my throat. My connecting flight to Florence was more than two hours away, and as soon as I arrived at the gate, I stretched out across three chairs and closed my eyes, head on my macramé handbag, too tired to care if anyone ran away with the rest.

Somewhere between asleep and awake I felt a hand stroking my arm.

‘Ahi, ahi,’ said a voice that was a blend of coffee and smoke, ‘mi scusi!’

I opened my eyes to see the woman sitting next to me frantically brushing crumbs off my sleeve. While I had been napping, the gate had filled up around me, and people were glancing at me the way you glance at a homeless person – with a mix of disdain and sympathy.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said, sitting up, ‘I’m a mess anyway.’

‘Here!’ She offered me half her croissant, perhaps as some kind of compensation. ‘You must be hungry.’

I looked at her, surprised at her kindness. ‘Thanks.’

Calling the woman elegant would be a gross understatement. Everything about her was perfectly matched; not just the colour of her lipstick and nail polish, but also the golden beetles adorning her shoes, her handbag, and on the perky little hat on her immaculately dyed hair. I strongly suspected – and her teasing smile more than confirmed – that this woman had every reason to be content with herself. Probably worth a fortune, or at least married to one, she looked as if she did not have a care in the world save to mask her seasoned soul with a carefully preserved body.

‘You are going to Florence?’ she inquired, in a strong, utterly charming accent. ‘To see all the so-called artworks?’

‘Siena, actually,’ I said, my mouth full. ‘I was born there. But I’ve never been back since.’

‘How wonderful!’ she exclaimed. ‘But how strange! Why not?’

‘It’s a long story.’

‘Tell me. You must tell me all about it.’ When she saw me hesitating, she held out her hand. ‘I am sorry. I am very nosy. I am Eva Maria Salimbeni.’

‘Julie – Giulietta Tolomei.’

She nearly fell off her chair. ‘Tolomei? Your name is Tolomei? No, I don’t believe it! It is impossible! Wait…what seat are you in? Yes, on the flight. Let me see.’ She took one look at my boarding pass, then plucked it right out of my hand. ‘One moment! Stay here!’

I watched her as she strode up to the counter, wondering whether this was an ordinary day in Eva Maria Salimbeni’s life. I assumed she was trying to change the seating so we could sit together during the flight, and judging by her smile when she returned, she was successful. ‘Et voilà!’ She handed me a new boarding pass, and as soon as I looked at it, I had to suppress a giggle of delight. Of course, for us to continue our conversation, I would have to be upgraded to first class.

Once we were airborne, it did not take Eva Maria long to extract my story. The only elements I left out were my double identity and my mother’s possible treasure.

‘So,’ she finally said, head to one side, ‘you are going to Siena to…see the Palio?’

‘The what?’

My question made her gasp. ‘The Palio! The horse race. Siena is famous for the Palio horse race. Did your aunt’s housekeeper – his clever Alberto – never tell you about it?’

‘Umberto,’ I corrected her. ‘Yes, I guess he did. But I didn’t realize it’s still taking place. Whenever he talked about it, it sounded like a mediaeval thing, with knights in shining armour and all that.’

‘The history of the Palio,’ nodded Eva Maria, ‘reaches into the very’ – she had to search for the right English word – ‘obscurity of the Middle Ages. Nowadays the race takes place in the Campo in front of City Hall, and the riders are professional jockeys. But in the earliest times, it is believed that the riders were noblemen on their battle horses, and that they would ride all the way from the countryside and into the city to end up in front of Siena Cathedral.’

‘Sounds dramatic,’ I said, still puzzled by her effusive kindness. But maybe she just saw it as her duty to educate strangers about Siena.

‘Oh!’ Eva Maria rolled her eyes. ‘It is the greatest drama of our lives. For months and months, the people of Siena can talk of nothing but horses and rivals and deals with this and that jockey.’ She shook her head lovingly. ‘It’s what we call a dolce pazzia… a sweet madness. Once you feel it, you will never want to leave.’

‘Umberto always says that you can’t explain Siena,’ I said, suddenly wishing he was with me, listening to this fascinating woman. ‘You have to be there and hear the drums to understand.’

Eva Maria smiled graciously, like a queen receiving a compliment. ‘He is right. You have to feel it’ – she reached out and touched a hand to my chest – ‘in here.’ Coming from anyone else, the gesture would have seemed wildly inappropriate, but Eva Maria was the kind of person who could pull it off.

While the flight attendant poured us both another glass of champagne, my new friend told me more about Siena, ‘so you don’t get yourself into trouble,’ she winked. ‘Tourists always get themselves into trouble. They don’t realize that Siena is not just Siena, but seventeen different neighbourhoods – or, contrade – within the city that all have their own territory, their own magistrates, and their own coat of arms.’ Eva Maria touched her glass to mine, conspiratorially. ‘If you are in doubt, you can always look up at the corners of the houses. The little porcelain signs will tell you what contrada you are in. Now, your own family, the Tolomeis, belong in the contrada of the Owl and your allies are the Eagle and the Porcupine and…I forget the others. To the people of Siena, these contrade, these neighbourhoods, are what life is all about; they are your friends, your community, your allies, and also your rivals. Every day of the year.’

‘So, my contrada is the Owl,’ I said, amused because Umberto had occasionally called me a scowly owl when I was being moody. ‘What is your own contrada?’

For the first time since we had begun our long conversation, Eva Maria looked away, distressed by my question. ‘I do not have one,’ she said, dismissively. ‘My family was banished from Siena many hundred years ago.’

Long before we landed in Florence, Eva Maria began insisting on giving me a ride to Siena. It was right on the way to her home in Val d’Orcia, she explained, and really no trouble at all. I told her that I didn’t mind taking the bus, but she was clearly not someone who believed in public transport. ‘Dio santo!’ she exclaimed, when I kept declining her kind offer. ‘Why do you want to wait for a bus that never shows up, when you can come with me and have a very comfortable ride in my godson’s new car?’ Seeing that she almost had me, she smiled charmingly and leaned in for the clincher. ‘Giulietta, I will be so disappointed if we cannot continue our lovely conversation a bit longer.’

And so we walked through customs arm in arm; while the officer barely looked at my passport, he did look twice at Eva Maria’s cleavage. Later, when I was filling out a sheaf of coloured forms to report my luggage missing, Eva Maria stood next to me, tapping the floor with her Gucci pump until the baggage clerk had sworn an oath that he would personally recover my two suitcases from wherever they had gone in the world and, regardless of the hour, drive directly to Siena to deliver them at Hotel Chiusarelli, the address of which Eva Maria all but wrote out in lipstick and tucked into his pocket.

‘You see, Giulietta,’ she explained as we walked out of the airport together, bringing with us nothing but her minuscule carry-on, ‘it is fifty per cent what they see, and fifty per cent what they think they see. Ah!’ She waved excitedly at a black sedan idling in the emergency lane. ‘There he is! Nice car, no?’ She elbowed me with a wink. ‘It is the new model.’

‘Oh, really?’ I said politely. Cars had never been a passion of mine, primarily because they usually came with a guy attached. Undoubtedly, Janice could have told me the exact name and model of the vehicle in question, and that it was on her to-do list to make love to the owner of one while parked at a scenic spot along the Amalfi Coast. Needless to say, her to-do list was radically different from mine.

Not too offended by my lack of enthusiasm, Eva Maria pulled me even closer to whisper into my ear. ‘Don’t say anything, I want this to be a surprise! Oh, look…isn’t he handsome?’ She giggled delightedly and steered us both towards the man getting out of the car. ‘Ciao, Sandro!’

The man came around the car to greet us. ‘Ciao, Madrina!’ He kissed his godmother on both cheeks and did not seem to mind her running an admiring claw through his dark hair. ‘Bentornata.’

Eva Maria was right. Not only was her godson sinfully easy on the eyes, he was also dressed to kill, and although I was hardly an authority on female behaviour, I suspected he never lacked willing victims.

‘Alessandro, I want you to meet someone.’ Eva Maria had a hard time curbing her excitement. ‘This is my new friend. We met on the plane. Her name is Giulietta Tolomei. Can you believe it?’

Alessandro turned to look at me with eyes the colour of dried rosemary, eyes that would have made Janice rhumba through the house in her underwear, crooning into a hairbrush microphone.

‘Ciao!’ I said, wondering if he was going to kiss me, too.

But he wasn’t. Alessandro looked at my braids, my baggy shorts, and my flip-flops, before he finally wrung out a smile and said something in Italian that I didn’t understand.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but I don’t…’

As soon as he realized that, on top of my frumpy appearance, I did not even speak Italian, Eva Maria’s godson lost all interest in my person. Rather than translating what he had said, he merely asked, ‘No luggage?’

‘Tons. But apparently, it all went to Verona.’

Moments later I was sitting in the backseat of his car next to Eva Maria, fast-forwarding through the splendours of Florence. As soon as I had convinced myself that Alessandro’s brooding silence was nothing but a consequence of poor English skills – but why should I even care? – I felt a new kind of excitement bubble up inside me. Here I was, back in the country that had spat me out twice, successfully infiltrating the movers and shakers. I couldn’t wait to call Umberto and tell him all about it.

‘So, Giulietta,’ said Eva Maria, at last leaning back in comfort, ‘I would be careful and not tell…too many people who you are.’

‘Me?’ I nearly laughed. ‘But I am nobody!’

‘Nobody? You are a Tolomei!’

‘You just told me that the Tolomeis lived a long time ago.’

Eva Maria touched an index finger to my nose. ‘Don’t underestimate the power of events that happened a long time ago. That is the tragic flaw of modern man. I advise you, as someone from the New World: listen more, and speak less. This is where your soul was born. Believe me, Giulietta, there will be people here to whom you are someone.’

I glanced at the rearview mirror to find Alessandro looking at me with narrow eyes. English skills or no, he clearly did not share his godmother’s fascination with my person, but was too disciplined to voice his own thoughts. And so he tolerated my presence in his car for as long as I did not step outside the proper boundaries of humility and gratitude.

‘Your family, the Tolomeis,’ Eva Maria went on, oblivious to the bad vibes, ‘was one of the richest, most powerful families in all of Siena’s history. They were private bankers, you see, and they were always at war with us, the Salimbenis, to prove who had more influence in the city. Their feud was so bad that they burnt down each other’s houses – and killed each other’s children in their beds – back in the Middle Ages.’

‘They were enemies?’ I asked, stupidly.

‘Oh yes! The worst kind! Do you believe in destiny?’ Eva Maria put her hand on top of mine and gave it a squeeze. ‘I do. Our two households, the Tolomeis and the Salimbenis, had an ancient grudge, a bloody grudge…If we were in the Middle Ages, we would be at each other’s throats. Like the Capulets and the Montagues in Romeo and Juliet.’ She looked at me meaningfully. ‘Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Siena, where we lay our scene–do you know that play?’ When I merely nodded, too overwhelmed to speak, she patted my hand reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry, I am confident that you and I, with our new friendship, will at last bury their strife. And this is why’–she turned abruptly in her seat–‘Sandro! I am counting on you to make sure Giulietta is safe in Siena. Did you hear me?’

‘Miss Tolomei,’ replied Alessandro, looking at the road ahead, ‘will never be safe anywhere. From anyone.’

‘What kind of talk is that?’ scolded Eva Maria. ‘She is a Tolomei; it is our duty to protect her.’

Alessandro glanced at me in the mirror, and I got the impression that he could see far more of me than I could see of him. ‘Maybe she doesn’t want our protection.’ From the way he said it I knew it was a challenge, and I also knew that, despite his accent, he was eminently at home in my language. Which meant that he had other reasons for being monosyllabic with me.

‘I really appreciate this ride,’ I said, deploying my cutest smile. ‘But I am sure Siena is very safe.’

He acknowledged the compliment with a slight nod. ‘What brings you over here? Business or pleasure?’

‘Well…pleasure, I suppose.’

Eva Maria clapped her hands excitedly. ‘Then we will have to make sure you are not disappointed! Alessandro knows all the secrets of Siena. Don’t you, caro? He will show you places, wonderful places that you would never find on your own. Oh, you will have fun!’

I opened my mouth, but had no idea what to say. So I closed it again. It was quite evident from his frown that showing me around Siena would rank very low on Alessandro’s agenda for the week.

‘Sandro!’ Eva Maria went on, her voice turning sharp. ‘You will make sure Giulietta has fun, no?’

‘I can imagine no greater felicity,’ replied Alessandro, turning on the car radio.

‘See?’ Eva Maria pinched my flushed cheek. ‘What did Shakespeare know? Now we are friends.’

Outside, the world was a vineyard, and the sky was suspended over the landscape like a protective, blue cape. It was where I was born, and yet I suddenly felt like a stranger–an intruder–who had crept in through the back door to find and claim something that had never belonged to me.

It was a relief when we finally pulled up in front of Hotel Chiusarelli. Eva Maria had been more than kind throughout the trip, telling me this and that about Siena, but you can only make so much polite conversation after losing a night’s sleep and all your luggage in one fell swoop.

Everything I owned had been in those two suitcases. I had basically packed up my entire childhood right after Aunt Rose’s funeral, and had left the house in a taxi around midnight with Janice’s triumphant laughter still ringing in my ears. There had been all sorts of clothes, books, and silly knickknacks, but now they were in Verona, and I was here, stuck in Siena with little more than a toothbrush, half a granola bar, and a pair of earplugs.

After pulling up at the curb in front of the hotel and dutifully opening the car door for me, Alessandro escorted me all the way into the vestibule. He obviously didn’t want to, and I obviously didn’t appreciate the gesture, but Eva Maria was watching us both from the backseat of the car, and by now I knew that she was a woman who was used to having things her way.

‘Please,’ said Alessandro, holding the door open. ‘After you.’

There was nothing else to do but enter Hotel Chiusarelli. The building greeted me with cool serenity, its ceiling supported by high marble columns, and only very faintly, from somewhere below us, could I discern the sound of people singing while throwing pots and pans around.

‘‘Buongiorno!’ An august man in a three-piece suit rose behind the reception counter, a brass name-tag informing me that his name was Direttore Rossini. ‘Benvenu–ah!’ He interrupted himself when he saw Alessandro. ‘Benvenuto, Capitano.’

I placed my hands flat on the green marble with what I hoped was a winning smile. ‘Hi. I am Giulietta Tolomei. I have a reservation. Excuse me for a second.’ I turned towards Alessandro. ‘So, this is it. I am safely here.’

‘I am very sorry, Signorina,’ said Direttore Rossini, ‘but I do not have a reservation in your name.’

‘Oh! I was sure…is that a problem?’

‘It is the Palio!’ He threw up his arms in exasperation. ‘The hotel is complete! But’–he tapped at the computer screen–‘I have here a credit card number with the name Julie Jacobs. Reservation for one person for one week. To arrive today from America. Can this be you?’

I glanced at Alessandro. He returned my stare with perfect indifference. ‘Yes, that’s me,’ I said.

Direttore Rossini looked surprised. ‘You are Julie Jacobs? And Giulietta Tolomei?’

‘Well…yes.’

‘But…’ Direttore Rossini took a little sidestep better to see Alessandro, his eyebrows describing a polite question mark. ‘C’è un problema?’

‘‘Nessun problema,’ replied Alessandro, looking at us both with what could only be a deliberate non-expression. ‘Miss Jacobs. Enjoy your stay in Siena.’

Within the blink of an eye Eva Maria’s godson was gone, and I was left with Direttore Rossini and an uncomfortable silence. Only when I had filled out every single form he put in front of me did the hotel director finally allow himself to smile. ‘So…you are a friend of Captain Santini?’

I looked behind me. ‘You mean, the man who was just here? No, we’re not friends. Is that his name? Santini?’

Direttore Rossini clearly found me lacking in understanding. ‘His name is Captain Santini. He is the–what do you say–Head of Security at Monte dei Paschi. In Palazzo Salimbeni.’

I must have looked stricken, because Direttore Rossini hastened to comfort me. ‘Don’t worry, we don’t have criminals in Siena. She is a very peaceful city. Once there was a criminal here’–he chuckled to himself as he rang for the bellboy–‘but we took care of him!’

For hours I had looked forward to collapsing on a bed. But now, when I finally could, rather than lying down I found myself pacing up and down the floor of my hotel room, chewing on the possibility that Alessandro Santini would run a search on my name and truffle out my dark past. The very last thing I needed now was for someone in Siena to pull up the old Julie Jacobs file, discover my Roman debacle, and put an untimely end to my treasure hunt.

A bit later, when I called Umberto to tell him I had arrived safely, he must have heard it in my voice, because he instantly knew something had gone wrong.

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ I said. ‘Just some Armani stiff who discovered I have two names.’

‘But he is an Italian,’ was Umberto’s sensible reply. ‘He doesn’t care if you break some law a little bit, as long as you wear beautiful shoes. Are you wearing beautiful shoes? Are you wearing the shoes I gave you?…Principessa?’

I looked down at my flip-flops. ‘Looks like I’ve had it.’

Crawling into bed that night, I slipped right into a recurring dream that I had not had for several months, but which had been a part of my life since childhood. The dream had me walking through a magnificent castle with mosaic floors and cathedral ceilings held up by massive marble pillars, pushing open one gilded door after another and wondering where everyone was. The only light came from narrow stained-glass windows high, high over my head, and the coloured beams did little to illuminate the dark corners around me.

As I walked through those vast rooms, I felt like a child lost in the woods. It frustrated me that I could sense the presence of others, but they never showed themselves to me. When I stood still, I could hear them whispering and fluttering about like ghosts, but if they were indeed ethereal beings, they were still trapped just like me, looking for a way out.

Only when I read the play in high school had I discovered that what these invisible demons were whispering were fragments from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet–not the way actors would recite the lines on stage, but mumbled with quiet intensity, like a spell. Or a curse.

I.III

Within this three hours will fair Juliet wake

It took the bells of the basilica across the piazza to finally stir me from sleep. Two minutes later Direttore Rossini knocked on my door as if he knew I could not possibly have slept through the racket. ‘Excuse me!’ Without waiting for an invitation, he lugged a large suitcase into my room and placed it on the empty baggage stand. ‘This came for you last night.’

‘Wait!’ I let go of the door and gathered the hotel bathrobe around me as tightly as I could. ‘That is not my suitcase.’

‘I know.’ He pulled the large handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. ‘It is from Contessa Salimbeni. Here, she left a note for you.’

I took the note. ‘What exactly is a contessa?’

‘Normally,’ said Direttore Rossini with some dignity, ‘I do not carry luggage. But since it was Contessa Salimbeni…’

‘She is lending me her clothes?’ I stared at Eva Maria’s brief handwritten note in disbelief. ‘And shoes?’

‘Until your own luggage arrives. It is now in Frittoli.’

In her exquisite handwriting, Eva Maria anticipated that her clothes might not fit me perfectly. But, she concluded, it was better than running around naked.

As I examined the specimens in the suitcase one by one, I was happy Janice could not see me. Our childhood home had not been big enough for two fashionistas and so I, much to Umberto’s chagrin, had embarked upon a career of being everything but. In school, Janice got her compliments from friends whose lives were headlined by designer names, while any admiration I got came from girls who had bummed a ride to the charity store, but who hadn’t had the vision to buy what I bought, nor the courage to put it together. It was not that I disliked fancy clothes, it was just that I wouldn’t give Janice the satisfaction of appearing to care about my looks. For no matter what I did to myself, she could always outdo me.

By the time we left college, I had become a dandelion in the flower bed of society. Cute, but still a weed. When Aunt Rose had put our graduation photos side by side on the grand piano, she had smiled sadly and observed that, of all those many classes I had taken, I seemed to have graduated with the best results as the perfect anti-Janice.

Eva Maria’s designer clothes were, in other words, definitely not my style. But what were my options? Following my telephone conversation with Umberto the night before, I had decided to retire my flip-flops for the time being and pay a little more attention to my bella figura. After all, the last thing I needed now was for Francesco Maconi, my mother’s financial advisor, to think I was someone not to be trusted.

And so I tried on Eva Maria’s outfits one by one, turning this way and that before the wardrobe mirror, until I found the least outrageous one–a foxy little skirt and jacket, fire-engine red with big black polka dots–that made me look as if I had just emerged from a Jaguar with four pieces of perfectly matched luggage and a small dog called Bijou. But most important, it made me look as if I ate hidden heirlooms–and financial advisors–for breakfast.

And by the way, it had matching shoes.

In order to get to Palazzo Tolomei, Direttore Rossini had explained, I must choose to either go up Via del Paradiso or down Via della Sapienza. They were both practically closed to traffic–as were most streets in the centre of Siena–but Sapienza, he advised, could be a bit of a challenge, and all in all, Paradiso was probably the safer route.

As I walked down Via della Sapienza the façades of ancient houses closed in on me from all sides, and I was soon trapped in a labyrinth of centuries past, following the patterns of an earlier way of life. Above me a ribbon of blue sky was crisscrossed by banners, their bold colours strangely vivid against the mediaeval brick, but apart from that–and the odd pair of jeans drying from a window–there was almost nothing that suggested this place belonged to the modern world.

The rest of Italy had developed around it, but Siena didn’t care. Direttore Rossini had told me that, for the Sienese, the golden age had been the late Middle Ages, and as I walked, I could see that he was right; the city clung to its mediaeval self with a stubborn disregard for the attractions of progress. There were touches of the Renaissance here and there, but overall, the hotel director had sniggered, Siena had been too wise to be seduced by the charms of history’s playboys, those so-called masters, who turned houses into wedding cakes.

As a result, the most beautiful thing about Siena was her integrity; even now, in a world that had stopped caring, she was still Saena Vetus Civitas Virginis, or, in my own language, Old Siena, City of the Virgin. And for that reason alone, Direttore Rossini had concluded, all of his fingers spread on the green marble counter, it was the only place on the planet worth living.

‘So, where else have you lived?’ I had asked him, innocently.

‘I was in Rome for two days,’ he had replied with dignity. ‘Who needs to see more? When you take a bite of a bad apple, do you keep eating?’

From my immersion in the silent alleys I eventually surfaced in a bustling, pedestrian street. According to my directions it was called the Corso, and Direttore Rossini had explained that it was famous for the many old banks that used to serve foreigners travelling the old pilgrim route, which had gone straight through town. Over the centuries, millions of people had journeyed through Siena, and many foreign treasures and currencies had changed hands. The steady stream of modern-day tourists, in other words, was nothing but the continuation of an old, profitable tradition.

That was how my family, the Tolomeis, had grown rich, Direttore Rossini had pointed out, and how their rivals, the Salimbenis, had grown even richer. They had been tradesmen and bankers, and their fortified palazzos had flanked this very road–Siena’s main thoroughfare–with impossibly tall towers that had kept growing and growing until at last they had all come crashing down.

As I walked past Palazzo Salimbeni I looked in vain for remnants of the old tower. It was still an impressive building with a positively Draculean front door, but it was no longer the fortification it had once been. Somewhere in that building, I thought as I scurried by, collar up, Eva Maria’s godson, Alessandro, had his office. Hopefully he was not just now paging through some crime register to find the dark secret behind Julie Jacobs.

Further down the road, but not much, stood Palazzo Tolomei, the ancient dwelling of my own ancestors. Looking up at the splendid mediaeval façade, I suddenly felt proud to be connected to the people who had once lived in this remarkable building. As far as I could see, not much had changed since the fourteenth century; the only thing suggesting that the mighty Tolomeis had moved out and a modern bank had moved in were the marketing posters hanging in the deep-set windows, their colourful promises interrupted by iron bars.

The inside of the building was no less stern than the outside. A security guard stepped forward to hold the door for me as I entered, as gallantly as the semiautomatic rifle in his arms would allow, but I was too busy looking around to be bothered by his uniformed attention. Six titanic pillars in red brick held the ceiling high, high above mankind, and although there were counters and chairs and people walking around on the vast stone floor, these took up so little of the room that the white lions’ heads protruding from the ancient walls seemed entirely unaware that humans were present.

‘Si?’ The teller looked at me over the rim of her fashionably slim glasses.

I leaned forward a little, in the interest of privacy. ‘Would it be possible to talk to Signor Francesco Maconi?’

The teller actually managed to focus on me through her glasses, but she did not appear convinced by what she saw. ‘There is no Signor Francesco here,’ she said firmly, in a very heavy accent.

‘No Francesco Maconi?’

At this point, the teller found it necessary to take off her glasses entirely, fold them carefully on the counter, and look at me with that supremely kind smile people fix on you just before they stick a syringe in your neck. ‘No.’

‘But I know he used to work here…’ I did not get any further before the woman’s colleague from the booth next door leaned in on the conversation, whispering something in Italian. At first, my unfriendly teller dismissed the other with an angry wave, but then she began to reconsider.

‘Excuse me,’ she said eventually, leaning forward to get my attention, ‘but do you mean Presidente Maconi?’

I felt a jolt of excitement. ‘Did he work here twenty years ago?’

She looked horrified. ‘Presidente Maconi was always here!’

‘And would it be possible to speak with him?’ I smiled sweetly, although she did not deserve it. ‘He is an old friend of my mother, Diane Tolomei. I am Giulietta Tolomei.’

Both women stared at me as if I were a spirit conjured up before their very eyes. Without another word, the teller who had originally dismissed me now fumbled her glasses back on her nose, made a phone call, and had a brief conversation in humble, underdog Italian. When it was over she put down the receiver reverently, and turned towards me with something akin to a smile. ‘He will see you right after lunch, at three o’clock.’

I had my first meal since arriving in Siena at a bustling pizzeria called Cavallino Bianco. While I sat there pretending to read the Italian dictionary I had just bought, I began to realize that it would take more than just a borrowed suit and a few handy phrases to blend in with the locals. These women around me, I suspected, sneaking glances at their smiles and exuberant gestures as they bantered with the handsome waiter, Giulio, possessed something I had never had, some ability I could not put my finger on, but which must be a crucial element in that elusive state of mind, happiness.

Strolling on, feeling more clumsy and displaced than ever, I had a stand-up espresso in a bar in Piazza Postierla and asked the buxom barista if she could recommend a cheap clothes store in the neighbourhood. After all, Eva Maria’s suitcase had, fortunately, not contained any underwear. Completely ignoring her other customers the barista looked me over sceptically and said, ‘You want everything new, no? New hair, new clothes?’

‘Well…’

‘Don’t worry, my cousin is the best hairdresser in Siena–maybe in the world. He will make you beautiful. Come!’

After taking me by the arm and insisting that I call her Malèna, the barista walked me down to see her cousin Luigi right away, even though it was clearly coffee rush hour, and customers were yelling after her in exasperation as we went. She just shrugged and laughed, knowing full well that they would all still fawn over her when she came back, maybe even a little bit more than before, now that they had tasted life without her.

Luigi was sweeping up hair from the floor when we entered his salon. He was no older than me, but had the penetrating eye of a Michelangelo. When he fixed that eye on me, however, he was not impressed.

‘Ciao, caro,’ said Malèna and gave him a quick peck on both cheeks, ‘this is Giulietta. She needs un makeover totale.’

‘Just the ends, actually,’ I interjected. ‘A couple of inches.’

It took a major argument in Italian–which I was more than relieved to not understand–before Malèna had persuaded Luigi to take on my sorry case. But once he did, he took the challenge very seriously. As soon as Malèna had left the salon, he sat me down on a barber’s chair and looked at my reflection in the mirror, turning me this way and that to check all the angles. Then he pulled the elastic bands from my braids and threw them directly into the bin with an expression of disgust.

‘Bene…’ he finally said, fluffing up my hair and looking at me once again in the mirror, a little less critically than before. ‘Not too bad, no?’

When I walked back to Palazzo Tolomei two hours later, I had sunk myself further into debt, but it was worth every nonexistent penny. Eva Maria’s red-and-black suit lay neatly folded at the bottom of a shopping bag, matching shoes on top, and I was wearing one of five new outfits that had all been approved by Luigi and his uncle, Paolo, who happened to own a clothes store just around the corner. Uncle Paolo, who did not speak a word of English, but who knew everything there was to know about fashion, had knocked thirty per cent off my entire purchase as long as I promised never to wear my ladybird costume again.

I had protested at first, explaining that my luggage was due to arrive any moment, but in the end the temptation had been too great. So what if my suitcases were waiting for me when I returned to the hotel? There was nothing in them I could ever wear in Siena anyway, perhaps with the exception of the shoes Umberto had given me for Christmas, and which I had never even tried on.

As I walked away from the store, I glanced at myself in every shop window I passed. Why had I never done this before? Ever since high school I had cut my own hair–just the ends–with a pair of kitchen scissors every two years or so. It took me about five minutes, and honestly, I thought, who could tell the difference? Well, I could certainly see the difference now. Somehow, Luigi had managed to bring my boring old hair to life, and it was already thriving in its new freedom, flowing in the breeze as I walked and framing my face as if it was a face worth framing.

When I was a child, Aunt Rose had taken me to the village barber whenever it occurred to her. But she had been wise enough never to take Janice and me at the same time. Only once did we end up in the salon chairs side by side, and as we sat there, pulling faces at each other in the big mirrors, the old barber had held up our ponytails and said, ‘Look! This one has bear-hair and the other has princess-hair.’

Aunt Rose had not replied. She had just sat there, silently, and waited for him to finish. Once he was finished, she had paid him and thanked him in that clipped voice of hers. Then she had hauled us both out the door as if it were we, and not the barber, who had misbehaved. Ever since that day, Janice had never missed an opportunity to compliment me on my beary, beary lovely hair.

The memory nearly made me cry. Here I was, all dolled up, while Aunt Rose was in a place where she could no longer appreciate that I had finally stepped out of my macramé cocoon. It would have made her so happy to see me like this–just once–but I had been too busy making sure Janice never did.

Presidente Maconi was a courtly man in his sixties, dressed in a subdued suit and tie and astoundingly successful in combing the long hairs from one side of his head across the crown to the other. As a result, he carried himself with rigid dignity, but there was genuine warmth in his eyes that instantly put me at ease.

‘Miss Tolomei?’ He came across the floor of the bank to shake my hand heartily, as if we were old friends. ‘This is an unexpected delight.’

As we walked together up the stairs, Presidente Maconi went on to apologize in flawless English for the uneven walls and warped floors. Even the most modern interior design, he explained with a smile, was helpless against a building that was almost eight hundred years old.

After a day of constant language malfunctions it was a relief to finally meet someone fluent in my own tongue. A touch of a British accent suggested that Presidente Maconi had lived in England for a while–perhaps he had gone to school there–which might explain why my mother had chosen him as her financial advisor in the first place.

His office was on the top floor, and from the mullioned windows he had a perfect view of the church of San Cristoforo and several other spectacular buildings in the neighbourhood. Stepping forward, however, I nearly stumbled over a plastic bucket sitting in the middle of a large Persian rug and, after checking that my health was intact, Presidente Maconi very carefully placed the bucket precisely where it had stood before I kicked it.

‘There is a leak in the roof,’ he explained, looking up at the cracked plaster ceiling, ‘but we cannot find it. It is very strange–even when it is not raining, water comes dripping down.’ He shrugged and motioned for me to sit down on one of two artfully carved mahogany chairs facing his desk. ‘The old president used to say that the building was crying. He knew your father, by the way.’

Sitting down behind the desk, Presidente Maconi leaned back as far as the leather chair would allow and put his fingertips together. ‘So, Miss Tolomei, how may I help you?’

For some reason, the question took me by surprise. I had been so focused on getting here in the first place, I had given little thought to the next step. I suppose the Francesco Maconi who had until now lived quite comfortably in my imagination knew very well that I had come for my mother’s treasure, and he had been waiting impatiently these many, many years to finally hand it over to its rightful heir.

The real Francesco Maconi, however, was not that accommodating. I started explaining why I had come, and he listened to me in silence, nodding occasionally. When I eventually stopped talking, he looked at me pensively, his face betraying no conclusion either way.

‘And so I was wondering,’ I went on, realizing that I had forgotten the most important part, ‘if you could take me to her safety deposit box?’

I took the key out of my handbag and put it on his desk, but Presidente Maconi merely glanced at it. After a moment’s awkward silence he got up and walked over to a window, hands behind his back, and looked out over the roofs of Siena with a frown.

‘Your mother,’ he finally said, ‘was a wise woman. And when God takes the wise to heaven, he leaves their wisdom behind, for us on earth. Their spirits live on, flying around us silently, like owls, with eyes that see in the night, when you and I see only darkness.’ He paused to test a leaded pane that was coming loose. ‘In some ways, the owl would be a fitting symbol for all of Siena, not just for our contrada.’

‘Because…all people in Siena are wise?’ I proposed, not entirely sure what he was getting at.

‘Because the owl has an ancient ancestor. To the Greeks, she was the goddess Athena. A virgin, but also a warrior. The Romans called her Minerva. In Roman times, there was a temple for her here in Siena. This is why it was always in our hearts to love the Virgin Mary, even in the ancient times, before Christ was born. To us, she was always here.’

‘Presidente Maconi…’

‘Miss Tolomei.’ He turned to face me at last. ‘I am trying to work out what your mother would have liked me to do. You are asking me to give you something that caused her a lot of grief. Would she really want me to let you have it?’ He attempted a smile. ‘But then, it is not my decision, is it? She left it here–she did not destroy it–so she must have wanted me to pass it on to you, or to someone. The question is: are you sure you want it?’

In the silence following his words, we both heard it clearly: the sound of a drop of water falling into the plastic bucket on a perfectly sunny day.

After summoning a second key-holder, the sombre Signor Virgilio, Presidente Maconi took me down a separate staircase–a spiral of ancient stone that must have been there since the palazzo was first built–into the deepest caverns of the bank. Now for the first time I became aware that there was a whole other world underneath Siena; a world of caves and shadows that stood in sharp contrast to the world of light above.

‘Welcome to the Bottini,’ said Presidente Maconi as we walked through a grotto-like passageway. ‘This is the old underground aqueduct that was built a thousand years ago to lead water into the city of Siena. This is all sandstone, and even with the primitive tools they had back then, Sienese engineers were able to dig a vast network of tunnels that fed fresh water to public fountains and even into the basement of some private houses. Now of course, it is no longer used.’

‘But people go down here anyway?’ I asked, touching the rough sandstone wall.

‘Oh, no!’ Presidente Maconi was amused by my naïveté. ‘It is a dangerous place to be. You can easily get lost. Nobody knows all the Bottini. There are stories, many stories, about secret tunnels from here to there, but we don’t want people running around exploring them. The sandstone is porous, you see. It crumbles. And all of Siena is sitting on top.’

I pulled back my hand. ‘But this wall is…fortified?’

Presidente Maconi looked a bit sheepish. ‘No.’

‘But it’s a bank. That seems…dangerous.’

‘Once someone tried to break in,’ he replied, eyebrows up in disapproval. ‘Once. They dug a tunnel. It took them months.’

‘Did they succeed?’

Presidente Maconi pointed at a security camera mounted high in an obscure corner. ‘When the alarm went off, they escaped through the tunnel, but at least they didn’t steal anything.’

‘Who were they?’ I asked. ‘Did you ever find out?’

He shrugged. ‘Some gangsters from Napoli. They never came back.’

When we finally arrived at the vault, Presidente Maconi and Signor Virgilio both had to swipe their key cards for the massive door to open.

‘See?’–Presidente Maconi was proud of the feature–‘not even the president can open this vault on his own. As they say, absolute power corrupts absolutely.’

Inside the vault, safety deposit boxes covered every wall from floor to ceiling. Most of them were small, but some were large enough to serve as a luggage locker at an airport. My mother’s box, as it turned out, was somewhere in between, and as soon as Presidente Maconi had pointed it out to me and helped me insert the key, he and Signor Virgilio politely left the room. When, moments later, I heard a couple of matches striking, I knew they had seized the opportunity to take a cigarette break in the corridor outside.

Since first reading Aunt Rose’s letter, I had entertained many different ideas of what my mother’s treasure might be, and had done my best to temper my expectations in order to avoid disappointment. But in my most unchecked fantasies I would find a magnificent golden box, locked and full of promise, not unlike the treasure chests that pirates dig up on desert islands.

My mother had left me just such a thing. It was a wooden box with golden ornamentation, and while it was not actually locked–there was no lock–the clasp was rusted shut, preventing me from doing much more than merely shaking it gently to try and determine its contents. It was about the size of a small toaster-oven, but surprisingly light, which immediately ruled out the possibility of gold and jewellery. But then, fortunes come in many substances and forms, and I was certainly not one to scoff at the prospect of high denomination paper money.

As we said goodbye, Presidente Maconi kept insisting on calling a taxi for me. But I told him I did not need one; the box fitted very nicely in one of my shopping bags, and Hotel Chiusarelli was, after all, nearby.

‘I would be careful,’ he said, ‘walking around with that. Your mother was always careful.’

‘But who knows I’m here? And that I’ve got this?’

He shrugged. ‘The Salimbenis.’

I stared at him, not sure if he was really serious. ‘Don’t tell me the old family feud is still going on!’

Presidente Maconi looked away, uncomfortable with the subject. ‘A Salimbeni will always be a Salimbeni.’

Walking away from Palazzo Tolomei, I repeated that sentence to myself several times, wondering precisely what it meant. In the end I decided that it was nothing more than what I ought to expect in this place; judging by Eva Maria’s stories about the fierce contrade rivalries in the modern Palio, the old family feuds from the Middle Ages were still going strong, even if the weapons had changed.

Mindful of my own Tolomei heritage, I put a little swagger in my gait as I walked past Palazzo Salimbeni for the second time that day, just to let Alessandro know–should he happen to look out the window at that exact moment–that there was a new sheriff in town.

Just then, as I glanced over my shoulder to see if I had made myself absolutely clear, I noticed a man walking behind me. Somehow he didn’t fit the scene; the street was full of chattering tourists, mothers with strollers, and people in business suits, talking loudly into their mobile phones at some invisible other. This man, by contrast, was wearing a shabby tracksuit and a pair of mirrored sunglasses that did nothing to conceal the fact that he had been looking straight at my bags.

Or was I imagining things? Had Presidente Maconi’s parting words ruffled my nerves? I paused in front of a shop window, hoping very much that the man would pass me and continue on his way. But he didn’t. As soon as I stood still, he paused, too, pretending to look at a poster on a wall.

Now for the first time, I felt the little fleabites of fear, as Janice used to call them, and ran through my options in a couple of deep breaths. But there was really only one thing to do. If I kept walking, the chances were he would eventually sidle up to me and snatch the bags right out of my hand, or, even worse, follow me to see where I was staying, and pay me a visit later.

Humming to myself I entered the store, and as soon as I was inside, I ran up to the clerk and asked if I could leave through the back entrance. Barely looking up from his motorcycle magazine, he simply pointed at a door at the other end of the room.

Ten seconds later I came shooting out into a narrow alley to nearly overturn a row of Vespas parked side by side. I had no idea where I was, but that didn’t matter. The important thing was that I still had my bags.

When the taxi dropped me off back at Hotel Chiusarelli, I would have happily paid anything for the trip. But when I overtipped the driver, he shook his head in protest and gave back most of it.

‘Miss Tolomei!’ Direttore Rossini came towards me with some alarm as soon as I entered the vestibule. ‘Where have you been? Captain Santini was just here. In uniform! What is going on?’

‘Oh!’ I tried to smile. ‘Maybe he came to invite me out for coffee?’

Direttore Rossini glared at me, his eyebrows suspended in a pointed arc of disapproval. ‘I do not think the captain was here with carnal intentions, Miss Tolomei. I very much suggest you call him. Here.’ He handed me a business card as if it was a holy wafer. ‘This is the number of his telephone, there, written on the back, do you see? I suggest’–Direttore Rossini raised his voice as I continued past him down the hall–‘you call him right now!’

It took me about an hour, and several trips to the hotel reception desk, to open my mother’s box. After trying every tool I had, such as the hotel key, my toothbrush, and the telephone receiver, I ran downstairs to borrow tweezers, then nail clippers, then a needle, and finally a screwdriver, only too aware that Direttore Rossini looked less and less friendly every time he saw me.

What finally did the trick was not actually opening the rusty clasp, but unscrewing the entire closing mechanism, which took me quite a while, since the screwdriver I had borrowed was too small. But I was fairly sure Direttore Rossini would explode if I showed up at his reception desk one more time.

Through all those efforts, my hopes and expectations for the contents of the box had grown increasingly more wild, and once I was able to open the lid, I could barely breathe with anticipation. Seeing that it was so light, I had become convinced there was a fragile–and very costly–item in the box, but when I finally looked inside, I realized my mistake.

There was nothing fragile in the box; in fact, there was barely anything at all except paper. Boring paper at that. Not money or stocks or deeds or any other kind of securities, but letters in envelopes and different kinds of texts typed out on sheets that were either stapled together or rolled up with rotting rubber bands. The only actual objects in the box were a notebook with scribbles and doodles, a cheap paperback copy of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and an old crucifix on a silver chain.

I inspected the crucifix for a while, wondering if perhaps it was extremely old and somehow valuable. But I doubted it. Even if it was an antique, it was still just made of silver, and as far as I could see, there was nothing special about it.

Same story with the paperback volume of Romeo and Juliet. I flipped through it several times, determined to see its value, but there was nothing about the book that struck me as the least bit promising, not even a single pencil-note in the margin.

The notebook, on the other hand, had some interesting drawings that could, with a bit of goodwill, be interpreted as having something to do with a treasure hunt. Or maybe they were just sketches from trips to museums and sculpture gardens. One sculpture in particular had caught my mother’s eye–if indeed this was her notebook, and these her drawings–and I could see why. It represented a man and a woman; the man was kneeling, holding a woman in his arms, and had her eyes not been open, I would have guessed she was asleep or even dead. There were at least twenty different drawings of this sculpture in the notebook, but many of them dwelled on details, such as facial features, and in all honesty, none of them made me any wiser as to why my mother had been so obsessed with it in the first place.

There were also sixteen private letters in the box, sitting on the bottom. Five were from Aunt Rose, begging my mother to give up her ‘silly ideas’ and return home; four were also from Aunt Rose, but they were sent later, and my mother had never opened them. The rest were in Italian, sent to my mother from people I did not know.

At this point, there was nothing left in the box except the many typewritten documents. Some were creased and faded, others were newer and more crisp; most were in English, but one was in Italian. None of them appeared to be originals, they were all–except the Italian one–translations that must have been typed out sometime within the last hundred years or so.

As I looked through the pile, it gradually became clear to me that, in fact, there was rhyme and reason in the seeming madness, and once I had acknowledged as much, it did not take me long to spread out the documents on my bed in some kind of chronological order:

Maestro Ambrogio’s Journal (1340)

Giulietta’s Letters to Giannozza (1340)

The Confessions of Friar Lorenzo (1340)

La Maledizione sul Muro (1370)

Masuccio Salernitano’s Thirty-Third Story (1476)

Luigi Da Porto’s Romeo & Juliet (1530)

Matteo Bandello’s Romeo & Juliet (1554)

Arthur Brooke’s Romeus & Juliet (1562)

William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet (1597)

Giulietta and Giannozza Family Tree

Once I had them laid out before me, however, it took me somewhat longer to make sense of the collection. The first four items, all from the fourteenth century, were mysterious and often fragmented, while the later texts were clearer. But most important, the later texts had one thing in common; they were all versions of the story of Romeo and Juliet, culminating in the one that most people knew: Shakespeare’s Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.

Although I had always considered myself a bit of an expert on that play, it came as a complete surprise to me to discover that the Bard had not, in fact, invented the story, but had merely piggybacked on previous writers. Granted, Shakespeare was a genius with words, and if he had not run the whole thing through his pentameter machine, it is doubtful whether it would ever have become widely known. But even so it looked, in my humble opinion, as if it had already been a darn good story when it first landed on his desk. And interestingly enough, the earliest version of it–the one written by Masuccio Salernitano in 1476–was not set in Verona at all, but right here, in Siena.

This literary discovery very nearly distracted me from the fact that I was, quite frankly, left with a pretty hefty personal disappointment. There was nothing in my mother’s box that had any monetary value whatsoever, nor was there, among all the papers I had looked at so far, the slightest suggestion of family valuables hidden elsewhere.

Perhaps I should have been ashamed of myself for thinking like this; perhaps I should have shown more appreciation for the fact that I was finally holding something in my hands that had belonged to my mother.

But I was too confused to be rational. What on earth had made Aunt Rose believe there was something tremendously valuable at stake–something worth a trip to what was, in her mind, the most dangerous of places, namely Italy? And why had my mother kept this box of paper in the belly of a bank? I felt silly now, especially thinking of the guy in the tracksuit. Of course he had not been following me. That, too, must have been a figment of my all too fertile imagination.

I started leafing through the earlier documents without enthusiasm. Two of them, The Confessions of Friar Lorenzo and Giulietta’s Letters to Giannozza, were nothing more than collections of fragmented phrases, such as, ‘I swear by the Virgin that I have acted in accordance with the will of heaven’ and ‘all the way to Siena in a coffin for fear of the Salimbeni bandits.’

Maestro Ambrogio’s Journal was more readable, but when I began leafing through it, I almost wished it wasn’t. Whoever this Maestro was, he had had a bad case of verbal diarrhoea and had kept a journal about every single triviality that had happened to him–and, by the look of it, his friends, too–in the year 1340. As far as I could tell, it had nothing to do with me or with anything else in my mother’s box, for that matter.

That was when my eyes suddenly fell on a name in the middle of the Maestro’s text.

Giulietta Tolomei.

I frantically scrutinized the page under the bedside lamp. But no, I had not been mistaken; after some initial musings on the hardships of painting the perfect rose, the verbose Maestro Ambrogio had written page after page after page about a young woman who happened to have a name identical to mine. Coincidence?

Leaning back in my bed, I started reading from the beginning of the journal, occasionally checking the other fragmented texts for cross-reference. And so began my journey back to Siena in the year 1340, and my kinship with the woman who had shared my name.

II.I

And in this borrow’d likeness of shrunk deathThou shalt continue two and forty hours

Siena, A.D. 1340

Oh, they were fortune’s fools!

They had been on the road for three days, playing hide-and-seek with disaster and living on bread as hard as rock. Now, finally, on the hottest, most miserable day of summer, they were so close to their journey’s end that Friar Lorenzo could see the towers of Siena sprouting bewitchingly on the horizon ahead. And here, sadly, was where his rosary ran out of protective power.

Sitting on his horse cart, rocking wearily along behind his six mounted travel companions—all monks like himself—the young friar had just begun to imagine the sizzling beef and soothing wine awaiting them at their destination when a dozen sinister-looking horsemen came galloping out of a vineyard in a cloud of dust to surround the small travelling party and block the road to all sides, swords drawn.

‘Greetings, strangers!’ bellowed their captain, toothless and grimy but lavishly dressed, no doubt in the clothes of previous victims. ‘Who trespasses on Salimbeni territory?’

Friar Lorenzo yanked on the reins of his cart to stop the horses, while his travel companions did their utmost to position themselves between the cart and the bandits.

‘As you can see,’ replied the most senior of the monks, holding out his shoddy cowl as proof, ‘we are but humble brothers from Florence, noble friend.’

‘Huh.’ The brigand leader looked around at the alleged monks, his eyes narrow. Eventually, his gaze settled on Friar Lorenzo’s frightened face. ‘What treasure on the cart back there?’

‘Nothing of value to you,’ responded the senior monk, backing up his horse a bit, the better to block the bandit’s access to the cart. ‘Please allow us passage. We are holy men and pose no threat to you or your kinsmen.’

‘This is a Salimbeni road,’ the captain pointed out, underlining his words with his blade—a signal for his comrades to move closer. ‘If you wish to use it, you must pay a toll. For your own safety.’

‘We have paid five Salimbeni tolls already.’

The villain shrugged. ‘Protection is expensive.’

‘But who,’ argued the other with stubborn calm, ‘would attack a group of holy men bound for Rome?’

‘Who? The worthless dogs of Tolomei!’ The captain spat twice on the ground for good measure, and his men were quick to do the same. ‘Those thieving, raping, murdering bastards!’

‘This is why,’ observed the monk, ‘we should rather like to reach the city of Siena before dark.’

‘She is not far,’ nodded the brigand, ‘but her gates close early nowadays, on account of the grievous disruptions caused by the rabid dogs of Tolomei to the general disturbance of the fine and industrious people of Siena and even more so, I might add, to the grand and benevolent house of Salimbeni—in which dwells my noble master—in particular.’

The captain’s speech was received with supportive grunts from his gang.

‘So, as you can surely appreciate,’ he continued, ‘we do, in all humbleness of course, rule this road and most other roads in the general vicinity of this proud republic—of Siena, that is—and so my insightful advice to you, as a friend to another friend, is to hurry up and pay that toll now, so you can get on your way and slip inside the city before she closes, after which point innocent travellers like yourselves are likely to fall prey to the scoundrelous gangs of Tolomeis that come out to pillage and such—as shall not be specified in the face of holy men—after nightfall.’

There was a deep silence after the villain had spoken. Crouched on the cart behind his companions, holding the reins slack, Friar Lorenzo felt his heart hopping around inside his chest as if it was looking for a place to hide, and for a moment he thought he was going to faint. It had been one of those days, a scorching sun and not the slightest breeze, that reminded one of the horrors of hell. And it did not help that they had run out of water many hours ago. If Friar Lorenzo had been in charge of the moneybag, he would readily have paid the villains anything in order to move on.

‘Very well, then,’ said the senior monk, as if he had felt Friar Lorenzo’s silent plea, ‘how much, then, for your protection?’

‘Depends.’ The villain grinned. ‘What do you have on that cart, and what is it worth to you?’

‘It is a coffin, noble friend, and it contains the victim of a dreadful plague.’

Most of the brigands drew back at this news, but their captain was not so easily put off. ‘Well,’ he said, his grin broadening, ‘let’s have a look, shall we?’

‘I do not recommend it!’ said the monk. ‘The coffin must remain sealed—those are our orders.’

‘Orders?’ exclaimed the captain. ‘Since when did humble monks get orders? And since when’—he paused for effect, nursing a smirk—‘did they begin to ride horses bred in Lipicia?’

In the silence that followed his words, Friar Lorenzo felt his fortitude plunging like a lead weight to the very bottom of his soul, threatening to come out the other end.

‘And look at that!’ the brigand went on, mostly to amuse his comrades. ‘Did you ever see humble monks wear such splendiferous footwear? Now there’—he pointed his sword at Friar Lorenzo’s gaping sandals—‘is what you should all have worn, my careless friends, if your intent was to avoid taxation. As far as I can tell, the only humble brother here is the mute fellow on the cart; as for the rest of you, I’ll bet my balls you are in the service of some munificent patron other than God, and I am confident that the value of that coffin, to him, far exceeds the miserable five florins I am going to charge you for its release.’

‘You are mistaken,’ replied the senior monk, ‘if you think us capable of such expense. Two florins are all we can spare. It reflects ill on your patron to thwart the Church by such disproportionate greed.’

The bandit relished the insult. ‘Greed, you call it? Nay, my fault is curiosity. Pay the five florins or I shall know how to act. The cart and coffin stay here, under my protection, until your patron claims them in person. For I should dearly love to see the rich bastard who sent you.’

‘Then you will be protecting nothing but the stench of death.’

The captain laughed dismissively. ‘The smell of gold, my friend, overcomes all such odour.’

‘No mountain of gold,’ retorted the monk, casting aside his humility at last, ‘could suitably cover yours.’

Hearing the insult, Friar Lorenzo bit his lip and began looking for an escape. He knew his travel companions well enough to predict the outcome of the spat, and he wanted no part in it.

The brigand leader was not unimpressed with the audacity of his victim. ‘You are determined, then,’ he said, head to one side, ‘to die on my blade?’

‘I am determined,’ said the monk, ‘to accomplish my mission. And no rusty blade of yours can sever me from my goal.’

‘Your mission?’ the bandit crowed. ‘Look, cousins, here is a monk who thinks God has made him a knight!’

All the brigands laughed, more or less aware of the reason, and their captain nodded towards the cart. ‘Now get rid of these fools and take the horses and the cart to Salimbeni…’

‘I have a better idea,’ sneered the monk, and tore off his cowl to reveal the uniform underneath. ‘Why don’t we go see my master Tolomei instead, with your head on a pole?’

Friar Lorenzo groaned inwardly as his fears were fulfilled. With no further attempts at concealment, his travel companions—all of them Tolomei knights in disguise—drew their swords and daggers from cloaks and saddlebags, and the mere sound of the iron made the brigands pull away in astonishment, if only to instantly throw themselves and their horses forward again in a screaming, headlong attack.

The sudden clamour made Friar Lorenzo’s horses coil on their haunches and erupt in a frenzied gallop, pulling the cart along as they went, and there was little he could do but tear at the useless reins and plead for reason and moderation in two animals that had never studied philosophy. After three days on the road they showed remarkable spirit as they pulled their load away from the turmoil and up the bumpy road towards Siena, wheels wailing and the coffin bouncing this way and that, threatening to fall off the cart and break into splinters.

Failing all dialogue with the horses, Friar Lorenzo turned to the coffin. Using both hands and feet he tried to hold it steady, but while he struggled for a good grip on the unwieldy thing, a movement on the road behind him made him look up and realize that the safety of the coffin should be the very least of his concerns.

For he was being followed by two of the brigands, galloping apace to reclaim their treasure. Scrambling to prepare his defence, Friar Lorenzo found only a whip and his rosary, and he watched with trepidation as one of the bandits caught up with the cart, knife between his toothless gums, and reached out to grasp the wooden siding. Finding the necessary fierceness within his clement self, Friar Lorenzo swung the whip at the boarding brigand and heard him yelp with pain as the oxtail drew blood. But this was not enough to deter his companion, and when Friar Lorenzo struck again, the second villain got hold of the whiplash and jerked the handle right out of his grip. With no more than the rosary and its dangling crucifix left for self-protection, Friar Lorenzo took to throwing bits of leftover lunch at his opponent. But despite the hardness of the bread, he was unable to prevent him from finally climbing on board.

Seeing that the friar was out of ammunition, the brigand rose to his feet in gleeful triumph, took the knife from his mouth, and demonstrated the length of the blade to its trembling target.

‘Stop in the name of Christ!’ exclaimed Friar Lorenzo, holding up his rosary. ‘I have friends in heaven who will strike you dead!’

‘Oh really? I don’t see them anywhere!’

Just then did the lid of the coffin swing open, and its occupant—a young woman whose wild hair and flaming eyes made her look like an angel of vengeance—sat up in consternation. The mere sight of her was enough to make the bandit drop his knife in horror and turn completely ashen. Without hesitation the angel leaned out of the coffin, picked up the knife, and thrust it immediately back into the flesh of its owner, as high up his thigh as her anger could reach.

Screaming with anguish, the wounded man lost his balance and tumbled off the end of the cart to even greater injury. Her cheeks glowing with excitement, the girl turned to grin at Friar Lorenzo, and she would have climbed out of the coffin had he not prevented her.

‘No, Giulietta!’ he insisted, pushing her back down. ‘In the name of Jesus, stay there and be quiet!’

Slamming the lid over her indignant face, Friar Lorenzo looked around to see what had become of the other horseman. Alas, this one was less impetuous and had no intention of boarding the rumbling wagon at its current speed. Instead, he galloped ahead to seize the harness and slow the horses, and much to Friar Lorenzo’s distress, this soon began to take effect. Within another quarter of a mile the horses were gradually forced into cantering, then trotting, and finally to a complete standstill.

Only then did the villain approach the cart, and as he rode towards it, Friar Lorenzo saw that it was none other than the lavishly clad captain of the brigands, still smirking and seemingly untouched by the bloodshed. The setting sun gave the man a halo of bronze that was utterly undeserved, and Friar Lorenzo was struck by the contrast between the luminous beauty of the countryside and the sheer viciousness of its inhabitants.

‘How about this, Friar,’ began the villain, with uncanny gentility. ‘I grant you your life—in fact, you can even take this fine cart and these noble horses, no tolls paid—in exchange for that girl?’

‘I thank you for the generous offer,’ replied Friar Lorenzo, squinting against the sunset, ‘but I am the sworn protector of this noble lady, and I cannot let you have her. If I did, we would both go to hell.’

‘Bah!’ The brigand had heard it all before. ‘That girl is no more of a lady than you or I. In fact, I strongly suspect she is a Tolomei whore!’

An indignant shriek was heard from inside the coffin, and Friar Lorenzo quickly put his foot on top of the lid to hold it closed.

‘The lady is of great consequence to Messer Tolomei, that is true,’ he said, ‘and any man that lays a hand on her will bring a war upon his own kin. Surely your master, Salimbeni, desires no such feud.’

‘Ah, you monks and your sermons!’ The bandit rode right up to the cart, and only then did his halo fade. ‘Do not threaten me with war, little preacher. It is what I do best.’

‘I beg you to let us go!’ urged Friar Lorenzo, holding up his quivering rosary and hoping it would catch the sun’s last rays. ‘Or I swear upon these holy beads and the wounds of sweet Jesus that cherubs will come down from heaven and strike your children dead in their beds!’

‘They shall be welcome!’ The villain drew his sword anew. ‘I have too many to feed as it is.’ He swung his leg across the head of his horse to jump aboard the cart with the ease of a dancer. Seeing the monk backing away in terror, he laughed. ‘Why so surprised? Did you really think I would let you live?’

The brigand’s sword withdrew to strike, and Friar Lorenzo sank to his knees in submission, clutching the rosary and waiting for the slash that would cut short his prayer. To die at nineteen was cruel, particularly when no one was there to witness his martyrdom, except his divine Father in heaven, who was not exactly known for running to the rescue of dying sons.

II.II

Nay sit, nay sit, good cousin Capulet,For you and I are past our dancing days

I cannot remember how far I got in the story that night, but the birds had started chirping outside when I finally drifted off on a sea of papers. I now understood the connection between the many different documents in my mother’s box; they were all, in each their way, pre-Shakespearean versions of Romeo and Juliet. Even better, the texts from 1340 were not just fiction, they were genuine eyewitness accounts of the events that had led to the creation of the famous story.

Although he had not yet made an appearance in his own journal, the mysterious Maestro Ambrogio, it seemed, had personally known the real human beings behind two of literature’s most star-crossed characters. I had to admit that so far none of his writing offered much overlap with Shakespeare’s tragedy, but then, more than two and a half centuries had passed between the actual events and the Bard’s play, and the story must have travelled through many different hands along the way.

Bursting to share my new knowledge with someone who would appreciate it—not everyone would find it funny that, through the ages, millions of tourists had flocked to the wrong city to see Juliet’s balcony and grave—I called Umberto on his mobile phone as soon as I got out of my morning shower.

‘Congratulations!’ he exclaimed, when I told him that I had successfully charmed Presidente Maconi into giving me my mother’s box. ‘So, how rich are you now?’

‘Uh,’ I said, glancing at the mess on my bed. ‘I don’t think the treasure is in the box. If there even is a treasure.’

‘Of course there’s a treasure,’ Umberto countered, ‘why else would your mother put it in a bank safe? Look more carefully.’

‘There’s something else.’ I paused briefly, trying to find a way of saying it without sounding silly. ‘I think I’m somehow related to Shakespeare’s Juliet.’

I suppose I couldn’t blame Umberto for laughing, but it annoyed me all the same. ‘I know it sounds weird,’ I went on, cutting through his chuckle, ‘but why else would we have the same name, Giulietta Tolomei?’

‘You mean, Juliet Capulet?’ Umberto corrected me. ‘I hate to break it to you, principessa, but I’m not sure she was a real person…’

‘Of course not!’ I shot back, wishing I had never told him about it. ‘But it looks like the story was inspired by real people…Oh, never mind! How’s life at your end?’

After hanging up, I started paging through the Italian letters my mother had received more than twenty years ago. Surely there was someone still alive in Siena who had known my parents, and who could answer all the questions Aunt Rose had so consistently brushed aside. But without knowing any Italian it was hard to tell which letters were written by friends or family; my only clue was that one of them began with the words ‘Carissima Diana’ and that the sender’s name was Pia Tolomei.

Unfolding the city map I had bought the day before, together with the dictionary, I spent some time searching for the address that was scribbled on the back of the envelope, and finally managed to pinpoint it in a minuscule piazza called Piazzetta del Castellare in central Siena. It was located in the heart of the Owl contrada,

my home turf, not far from Palazzo Tolomei where I had met Presidente Maconi the day before.

If I were lucky, Pia Tolomei—whoever she was—would still be living there, eager to speak with Diane Tolomei’s daughter and lucid enough to remember why.

Piazzetta del Castellare was like a small fortress within the city, and not that easy to find. After walking right past it several times, I finally discovered that I had to enter through a covered alleyway, which I had first assumed was the entrance to a private yard. Once inside the piazzetta, I was trapped between tall, silent buildings, and as I looked up at all the closed shutters on the walls around me, it was almost conceivable that they had been drawn shut at some point in the Middle Ages and never opened since.

In fact, had there not been a couple of Vespas parked in a corner, a tabby cat with a shiny black collar poised on a doorstep, and music playing from a single open window, I would have guessed that the buildings had long since been abandoned and left to rats and ghosts.

I took out the envelope I had found in my mother’s box and looked at the address once more. According to my map I was in the right place, but when I did a tour of the doors I could not find the name Tolomei on any of the doorbells, nor could I find a number that corresponded to the house number on my letter. You’d need to be clairvoyant to become a postman in a place like this, I thought.

Not knowing what else to do, I started ringing doorbells, one at a time. Just as I was about to press the fourth one, a woman opened a pair of shutters way above me, and yelled something in Italian.

In response, I waved the letter. ‘Pia Tolomei?’

‘Tolomei?’

‘Yes! Do you know where she lives? Does she still live here?’

The woman pointed at a door across the piazzetta and said something that could only mean, ‘Try in there.’

Only now did I notice a more contemporary kind of door in the far wall; it had an elaborate black-and-white door handle, and when I tried it, it opened. I paused briefly, unsure of the proper etiquette for entering private homes in Siena; meanwhile, the woman in the window behind me kept urging me to go inside—she clearly found me uncommonly dull—and so I did.

‘Hello?’ I took a timid step across the threshold and stared into the cool darkness. Once my eyes adjusted, I saw that I was standing in an entrance hall with a very high ceiling, surrounded by tapestries, paintings, and antique artifacts on display in glass cabinets. I let go of the door and called out, ‘Anybody home? Mrs Tolomei?’ But all I heard was the door closing with a sigh behind me.

Not entirely sure how to proceed, I started down the hallway, looking at the antiques on the way. Among them was a collection of long, vertical banners with images of horses, towers, and women that all looked very much like the Virgin Mary. A few were very old and faded, others were modern and quite garish; only when I got to the end of the row did it dawn on me that this was no private home, but some kind of museum or public building.

Now, finally, I heard the sound of uneven footsteps and a deep voice calling out impatiently, ‘Salvatore?’

I spun around to face my unwitting host as he emerged from a neighbouring room, leaning on a crutch. He was an older man, definitely past seventy, and his frown made him look older still. ‘Salva—?’ He stopped on the spot when he saw me, and said something else that did not sound particularly welcoming.

‘‘Ciao!’ I said, in a bushy-tailed sort of way, and held up the letter as you would a crucifix in front of Transylvanian nobility, just in case, ‘I am looking for Pia Tolomei. She knew my parents.’ I pointed at myself. ‘Giulietta Tolomei. To-lo-mei.’

The man walked up to me, leaning heavily on his crutch, and plucked the letter right out of my hand. He looked suspiciously at the envelope and turned it over several times to reread the addresses of both the recipient and the sender. ‘My wife sent this letter,’ he finally said, in surprisingly smooth English, ‘many years ago. To Diana Tolomei. She was my…hmm…aunt. Where did you find it?’

‘Diane was my mother,’ I said, my voice sounding oddly mousy in the big room. ‘I am Giulietta, the oldest of her twins. I wanted to come and see Siena—see where she lived. Do you…remember her?’

The old man did not speak right away. He looked at my face with eyes full of wonder, then reached out and touched a hand to my cheek to make sure I was real. ‘Little Giulietta?’ he finally said. ‘Come here!’ He grabbed my shoulders and pulled me into an embrace. ‘I am Peppo Tolomei, your godfather.’

I barely knew what to do. Normally I was not someone who ran around hugging people—I left that to Janice—but even I didn’t mind it from this endearing old man.

‘I’m sorry to barge in,’ I started, then stopped, not sure what to say next.

‘No-no-no-no-no!’ Peppo brushed it all aside. ‘I am so happy you are here! Come, let me show you the museum! This is the museum for the contrada of the Owl.’ He barely knew where to start and hopped around on his cane, looking for something impressive to show me. But when he saw my expression, he stopped himself. ‘No! You don’t want to see the museum! You want to talk! Yes, we must talk!’ He threw up his arms and nearly knocked over a sculpture with the crutch. ‘I must hear everything. My wife—we must go see my wife. She will be so happy. She is at the house—Salvatore! Oh, where is he?’

Five minutes later I came zooming out of Piazzetta del Castellare on a red-and-black scooter. Peppo Tolomei had helped me into the saddle with the gallantry of a magician helping a lovely young assistant into a box he intends to saw in half, and as soon as I had a secure grip on his braces, we zoomed out through the covered alleyway, braking for no one.

Peppo had insisted on closing up the museum right away and taking me home with him, so that I could meet his wife, Pia, and whoever else happened to be around. I had gladly accepted the invitation, assuming that the home to which he was referring was just around the corner. Only now, as we flew up the Corso past Palazzo Tolomei, did I realize my mistake.

‘Is it far?’ I yelled, hanging on as best I could.

‘No-no-no!’ replied Peppo, narrowly missing a nun pushing an old man in a wheelchair. ‘Don’t worry, we will call everyone and have a big family reunion!’ Excited at the prospect, he began describing all the family members I would soon be meeting, though I could barely hear him in the wind. He was too distracted to notice that, as we passed Palazzo Salimbeni, we went right through a handful of security guards, forcing them all to jump aside.

‘Whoa!’ I exclaimed, wondering if Peppo was aware that we might be having our big family reunion in the slammer. But the guards made no move to stop us, merely watched us go past the way dogs on a tight leash watch a fluffy squirrel strut across the road. Unfortunately, one of them was Eva Maria’s godson, Alessandro, and I was almost certain he recognized me, for he did a double take at the sight of my dangling legs, perhaps wondering what had happened to my flip-flops.

‘Peppo!’ I yelled, pulling at my cousin’s braces, ‘I really don’t want to be arrested, okay?’

‘Don’t worry!’ Peppo turned a corner and accelerated as he spoke. ‘I go too fast for police!’ Moments later we shot through an ancient city gate like a poodle through a hoop, and flew right into the masterpiece of a full-blown Tuscan summer.

As I sat there, looking at the landscape over his shoulder, I wanted so much to be filled with a sense of familiarity, of finally returning home. But everything around me was new; the warm wafts of weeds and spices, the lazily rolling fields—even Peppo’s cologne had a foreign component that was absurdly attractive.

How much do we really remember from the first three years of our lives? Sometimes I could conjure a memory of hugging a pair of bare legs that were definitely not Aunt Rose’s, and Janice and I were both sure we remembered a large glass bowl filled with wine corks, but apart from that, it was hard to tell which fragments belonged where. When we occasionally managed to uncover memories of ourselves as toddlers, we always ended up confused. ‘I’m sure the wobbly chess table was in Tuscany,’ Janice would always insist. ‘Where else could it have been? Aunt Rose has never had one.’

‘Then how,’ I would inevitably counter, ‘do you explain that it was Umberto who slapped you when you pushed it over?’

But Janice couldn’t explain it. In the end, she would merely mumble, ‘Well, maybe it was someone else. When you’re two years old, all men look the same.’ Then she’d snort, ‘Hell, they still do.’

As a teenager I used to fantasize about returning to Siena and suddenly remembering everything about my childhood; now that I was finally here, hurtling down narrow roads without recognizing anything, I began to wonder if living away from this place for most of my life had somehow withered away an essential part of my soul.

Pia and Peppo Tolomei lived on a farm in a small valley, surrounded by vineyards and olive groves. Gentle hills rose around their property on all sides, and the comfort of peaceful seclusion more than made up for the lack of extended views. The house was by no means grand; its yellow walls had weeds growing in the cracks, the green shutters needed much more than just a paint job, and the terracotta roof looked as if the next storm—or maybe just someone sneezing inside—would make all the tiles come rattling down. And yet the many trailing vines and strategically placed flowerpots were able to mask the decay and make the place utterly irresistible.

After parking the scooter and grabbing a crutch leaning against the wall, Peppo took me directly into the garden. Back here, in the shade of the house, his wife Pia sat on a stool amongst her grandchildren and great-grandchildren like an ageless harvest goddess surrounded by nymphs, teaching them how to make braids out of fresh garlic. It took several attempts before Peppo was able to make her understand who I was and why he had brought me there, but once Pia finally dared to trust her ears, she stuck her feet into her slippers, got up with the aid of her entourage, and enfolded me in a tearful embrace. ‘Giulietta!’ she exclaimed, pressing me to her chest and kissing me on the forehead all at once. ‘Che meraviglia! It is a miracle!’

Her joy in seeing me was so genuine that I almost felt ashamed of myself. I had not gone to the Owl Museum this morning in search of my long-lost godparents, nor had it occurred to me before this moment that I even had godparents, and that they would be this happy to see me alive and well. Yet here they were, and their kindness made me realize that, until now, I had never felt truly welcome anywhere, not even in my own home. At least not when Janice was around.

Within an hour the house and garden filled with people and food. It was as if everybody had been waiting just around the corner, local delicacy in hand, desperate for an excuse to celebrate. Some were family, some friends and neighbours, and they all claimed to have known my parents and to have wondered what ever happened to their twin daughters. No one said anything explicit, but I sensed that, back then, Aunt Rose had swooped in and claimed Janice and me against the wishes of the Tolomei family—thanks to Uncle Jim she still had connections in the State Department—and that we had vanished without a trace, much to the frustration of Pia and Peppo, who were, after all, our godparents.

‘But that is all in the past,’ Peppo kept saying, patting me on the back, ‘for now you are here, and we can finally talk.’ But it was hard to know where to begin; there were so many years that must be accounted for, and so many questions that needed answers, including the reason for my sister’s mysterious absence.

‘She was too busy to come along,’ I said, looking away. ‘But I’m sure she’ll come and visit you soon.’

It did not help that only a handful of the guests spoke English, and that every answer to every inquiry had to first be understood and interpreted by a third party. Still, everyone was so friendly and warm that even I, after a while, began to relax and enjoy myself. It didn’t really matter that we couldn’t understand each other, what mattered were those little smiles and nods that said so much more than words.

At one point, Pia came out on the terrace with a photo album and sat down to show me pictures from my parents’ wedding. As soon as she opened the album, other women clustered around us, eager to follow along and help turn the pages.

‘There!’ Pia pointed at a large picture. ‘Your mother is wearing the dress I wore at my wedding. Oh, aren’t they a handsome couple? And here, this is your cousin Francesco…’

‘Wait!’ I tried to prevent her from turning the page, but in vain. She probably didn’t realize that I had never seen a picture of my father before, and that the only grown-up photo of my mother I had ever known was her high-school graduation portrait on Aunt Rose’s piano.

Pia’s album came as a surprise to me. Not so much because my mother was visibly pregnant underneath the wedding gown, but because my father looked as if he was a hundred years old. Obviously, he was not, but standing next to my mother—an attractive college dropout with dimples in her smile—he looked like old man Abraham in my illustrated children’s Bible.

Even so, they appeared to be happy together, and although there were no shots of them kissing, most of the photos showed my mother clinging to her husband’s elbow and looking at him with great admiration. And so after a while I shrugged off my astonishment and decided to accept the possibility that here, in this bright and blissful place, concepts like time and age had very little bearing on people’s lives.

The women around me confirmed my theory; none of them seemed to find the union in any way extraordinary. As far as I could understand, their chirping commentary—all in Italian—was primarily about my mother’s dress, her veil, and the complex genealogical relationship of every single wedding guest to my father and to themselves.

After the wedding photos came a few pages dedicated to our baptism, but my parents were barely in them. The pictures showed Pia holding a baby that could have been either Janice or me—it was impossible to tell which one, and Pia could not remember—and Peppo proudly holding the other. There appeared to have been two different ceremonies; one inside a church, and one outside in the sunshine, by the baptismal font of the contrada of the Owl.

‘That was a good day,’ said Pia, smiling sadly. ‘You and your sister became little civettini, little owls. It was too bad…’ She did not finish the sentence, but closed the album very tenderly. ‘It is such a long time ago. Sometimes I wonder if time really heals.’ She was interrupted by a sudden commotion inside the house, and by a voice impatiently calling her name. ‘Come!’ Pia got up, suddenly anxious. ‘That must be our Nonna!’

Old Granny Tolomei, whom everyone referred to as Nonna, lived with one of her granddaughters in the centre of Siena, but had been summoned to the farm this afternoon in order to meet me—an arrangement that clearly did not fit her personal schedule. She was standing in the hallway, irritably arranging her black lace with one hand while leaning heavily on her granddaughter with the other. Had I been as uncharitable as Janice, I would have instantly proclaimed her the picture-perfect fairy-tale witch. All that was missing was the crow on her shoulder.

Pia rushed forward to greet the old lady, who grudgingly allowed herself to be kissed on both cheeks and escorted into a particularly favoured chair in the living room. Some minutes were spent making Nonna comfortable; cushions fetched, placed, and moved around, and special lemonade brought in from the kitchen, immediately sent back, and brought in anew, this time with a slice of lemon perched on the rim.

‘Nonna is our aunt,’ Peppo whispered in my ear, ‘and your father’s youngest sister. Come, I will introduce you.’ He pulled me along to stand to attention in front of the old lady and eagerly explained the situation to her in Italian, clearly expecting to see some sign of joy on her face.

But Nonna refused to smile. No matter how much Peppo urged her, even begged her, to rejoice with the rest of us, she could not be persuaded to take any kind of pleasure in my presence. He even had me step forward so that she could see me more clearly, but what she saw only gave her further reason to scowl, and before Peppo managed to pull me out of range, she leaned forward and snarled something I did not understand, but which made everyone gasp with embarrassment.

Pia and Peppo practically evacuated me from the living room, apologizing all the way. ‘I am so sorry!’ Peppo kept saying, over and over, too mortified even to look me in the eye. ‘I don’t know what is wrong with her! I think she is going crazy!’

‘Don’t worry,’ I said, too stunned to feel anything, ‘I don’t blame her for not believing it. It’s all so new, even for me.’

‘Let us go for a little walk,’ said Peppo, still flustered, ‘and come back later. It is time I show you their graves.’

The village cemetery was a welcoming, sleepy oasis, and very different from any other graveyard I had ever seen. The whole place was a maze of white, freestanding walls with no roof, and the walls themselves were a mosaic of graves from top to bottom. Names, dates, and photos identified the individuals dwelling behind the marble slabs, and brass sconces held—on behalf of the temporarily incapacitated host—flowers brought by visitors.

‘Here.’ Peppo had a hand on my shoulder for support, but that did not prevent him from gallantly opening a squeaky iron gate and letting us both into a small shrine off the main path. ‘This is part of the old Tolomei…hmm…sepulchre. Most of it is underground, and we don’t go down there any more. Up here is better.’

‘It is beautiful.’ I stepped into the small room and looked around at the many marble plates and the bouquet of fresh flowers standing on the altar. A candle was burning steadily in a red glass bowl that seemed vaguely familiar to me, indicating that the Tolomei sepulchre was a place carefully maintained by the family. I suddenly felt a stab of guilt that I was here alone, without Janice, but I quickly shook it off. If she had been here, she would most likely have ruined the moment with a sarky comment.

‘This is your father,’ pointed Peppo, ‘and your mother right next to him.’ He paused, lost in memory. ‘She was so young. I thought she would be alive long after I was gone.’

I looked at the two marble plates that were all that was left of Professor Patrizio Scipione Tolomei and his wife, Diane Lloyd Tolomei, and felt my heart flutter. For as long as I could remember, my parents had been little more than distant shadows in a daydream, and I had never imagined I would one day find myself as close to them—at least physically—as this. Even when fantasizing about travelling to Italy, for some reason it had never occurred to me that my first duty upon arrival must be to find their graves, and I felt a warm wave of gratitude towards Peppo for helping me do the right thing.

‘Thank you,’ I said quietly, squeezing his hand, which was still resting on my shoulder.

‘It was a great tragedy the way they died,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘and that all Patrizio’s work was lost in the fire. He had a beautiful farm in Malamarenda—all gone. After the funeral your mother bought a little house near Montepulciano and lived there alone with the twins—with you and your sister—but she was never the same. She came to put flowers on his grave every Sunday, but’—he paused to pull a handkerchief from his pocket—‘she was never happy again.’

‘Wait a minute.’ I stared at the dates on my parents’ graves. ‘My father died before my mother? I always thought they died together.’ But even as I spoke, I could see that the dates confirmed the new truth; my father had died more than two years before my mother. ‘What fire?’

‘Someone—no, I shouldn’t say that.’ Peppo frowned at himself. ‘There was a fire, a terrible fire. Your father’s farm burned down. Your mother was lucky; she was in Siena, shopping, with you girls. It was a great, great tragedy. I would have said that God held his hand over her, but then two years later…’

‘The car accident,’ I muttered.

‘Well…’ Peppo dug the toe of his shoe into the ground. ‘I don’t know the truth. Nobody knows the truth. But’—he finally met my eyes—‘I always suspected that the Salimbenis had a hand in it.’

I didn’t know what to say to this. I pictured Eva Maria and her suitcase full of clothes sitting in my hotel room. She had been so kind to me, so eager to make friends.

‘There was a young man,’ Peppo went on, ‘Luciano Salimbeni. He was a troublemaker. There were rumours. I don’t want to…’ Peppo glanced at me nervously. ‘The fire. The fire that killed your father. They say it was not an accident. They say someone wanted to murder him and destroy his research. It was terrible. Such a beautiful house. But you know, I think your mother saved something from the house. Something important. Documents. She was afraid to talk about it, but after the fire, she began to ask strange questions about…things.’

‘What kind of things?’

‘All kinds. I didn’t know the answers. She asked me about the Salimbenis. About secret tunnels underground. She wanted to find a grave. It was something to do with the plague.’

‘The…bubonic plague?’

‘Yes, the big one. In 1348.’ Peppo cleared his throat, not comfortable with the subject. ‘You see, your mother believed that there is an old curse that is still haunting the Tolomeis and the Salimbenis. And she was trying to find out how to stop it. She was obsessed with this idea. I wanted to believe her, but…’ He pulled at his shirt collar as if he suddenly felt hot. ‘She was so determined. She was convinced that we were all cursed. Death. Destruction. Accidents. A plague on both our houses… that is what she used to say.’ He sighed deeply, reliving the pain of the past. ‘She always quoted Shakespeare. She took it very seriously…Romeo and Juliet. She thought that it had happened right here, in Siena. She had a theory…’ Peppo shook his head dismissively. ‘She was obsessed with it. I don’t know. I am not a professor. All I know is that there was a man, Luciano Salimbeni, who wanted to find a treasure.’

I could not help myself, I had to ask: ‘What kind of treasure?’

‘Who knows?’ Peppo threw up his arms. ‘Your father spent all his time researching old legends. He was always talking about lost treasures. But your mother told me about something once—oh, what did she call it?—I think she called it Juliet’s Eyes. I don’t know what she meant, but I think it was very valuable, and I think it was what Luciano Salimbeni was after.’

I was dying to know more, but by now Peppo was looking very distressed, almost ill, and he swayed and grabbed my arm for balance. ‘If I was you,’ he went on, ‘I would be very, very careful. And I would not trust anyone with the name of Salimbeni.’ Seeing my expression, he frowned. ‘You think I am pazzo… crazy? Here we are, standing by the grave of a young woman who died before her time. She was your mother. Who am I to tell you who did this to her, and why?’ His grip tightened. ‘She is dead. Your father is dead. That is all I know. But my old Tolomei heart tells me that you must be careful.’

When we were seniors in high school, Janice and I had both volunteered for the annual play—as it so happened, it was Romeo and Juliet. After the auditions Janice was cast as Juliet, while I was to be a tree in the Capulet orchard. She, of course, spent more time on her nails than on memorizing the dialogue, and whenever we rehearsed the balcony scene, I would be the one to whisper her lines to her, being, after all, conveniently located onstage with branches for arms.

On opening night, however, she was particularly horrible to me. As we sat in makeup, she kept laughing at my brown face and pulling the leaves out of my hair, while she was being dolled up with blond braids and rosy cheeks, and by the time the balcony scene rolled around, I was in no mood to cover for her. In fact, I did quite the opposite. When Romeo said, ‘What shall I swear by?’ I whispered, ‘Three words!’

And Janice immediately said, ‘Three words, dear Romeo, and good night indeed!’ which threw Romeo off completely, and had the scene end in confusion.

Later, when I was posing as a candelabrum in Juliet’s bedroom, I made Janice wake up next to Romeo and say right off the bat, ‘Hie hence, begone, away!’ which didn’t set a very good tone for the rest of their tender scene. Needless to say, Janice was so furious that afterwards she chased me all the way through the school, swearing that she was going to shave off my eyebrows. It had been fun at first, but when, in the end, she locked herself in the school bathroom and cried for an hour, even I stopped laughing.

Long after midnight, when I sat in the living room talking with Aunt Rose, afraid of going to bed and submitting myself to sleep and Janice’s razor, Umberto came in with a glass of vin santo for us both. He did not say anything, just handed us the glasses, and Aunt Rose did not utter a word about me being too young to drink.

‘You like that play?’ she said instead. ‘You seem to know it by heart.’

‘I don’t really like it a whole lot,’ I confessed, shrugging and sipping my drink at the same time. ‘It’s just…there, stuck in my head.’

Aunt Rose nodded slowly, savouring the vin santo. ‘Your mother was the same way. She knew it by heart. It was…an obsession.’

I held my breath, not wanting to break her train of thought. I waited for another glimpse of my mother, but it never came. Aunt Rose just looked up, frowning, to clear her throat and take another sip of wine. And that was it. That was one of the only things she ever told me about my mother without being prompted, and I never passed it on to Janice. Our mutual obsession with Shakespeare’s play was a little secret I shared with my mother and no one else, just like I never told anyone about my growing fear that, because my mother had died at twenty-five, I would, too.

As soon as Peppo dropped me off in front of Hotel Chiusarelli, I went straight to the nearest internet café and Googled Luciano Salimbeni. But it took me several verbal acrobatics to come up with a search combination that yielded anything remotely useful. Only after at least an hour and many, many frustrations with the Italian language, I was fairly confident of the following conclusions:

One: Luciano Salimbeni was dead.

Two: Luciano Salimbeni had been a bad guy, possibly even a mass murderer.

Three: Luciano and Eva Maria Salimbeni were somehow related.

Four: There had been something fishy about the car accident that had killed my mother, and Luciano Salimbeni had been wanted for questioning.

I printed out all the pages so that I could reread them later, in the company of my dictionary. The search had yielded little more than Peppo Tolomei had just told me this afternoon, but at least now I knew my elderly cousin had not merely invented the story; there really had been a dangerous Luciano Salimbeni at large in Siena some twenty or so years ago.

But the good news was that he was dead. In other words, he definitely could not be the tracksuit charmer who might or might not have stalked me the day before, after I left the bank in Palazzo Tolomei with my mother’s box.

As an afterthought, I Googled Juliet’s Eyes. Not surprisingly, none of the search results had anything to do with legendary treasures. Almost all were semischolarly discussions about the significance of eyes in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and I dutifully read through a couple of passages from the play, trying to spot a secret message. One of them went:

Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye Than twenty of their swords.

Well, I thought to myself, if this evil Luciano Salimbeni had really killed my mother over a treasure called Juliet’s Eyes, then Romeo’s statement was true; whatever the nature of those mysterious eyes, they were potentially more dangerous than weapons, simple as that. In contrast, the second passage was a bit more complex than your average pickup line:

Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, Having some business, do entreat her eyes To twinkle in their spheres till they return. What if her eyes were there, they in her head?

I mulled over the lines all the way down Via del Paradiso. Romeo was clearly trying to compliment Juliet by saying that her eyes were like sparkling stars, but he had a funny way of phrasing it. It was, in my opinion, not particularly appealing to woo a girl by imagining what she would look like with her eyes gouged out.

But really, this poetry was a welcome diversion from the other facts I had learned that day. Both my parents had died in a horrendous way, separately, and possibly even at the hands of a murderer. Even though I had left the cemetery hours ago, I was still struggling to take in this terrible discovery. On top of my shock and sorrow I also felt the little fleabites of fear, just as I had the day before, when I thought I was being followed after leaving the bank. But had Peppo been right in warning me? Could I possibly be in danger now, so many years later? If so, I could presumably pull myself back out of danger by going home to Virginia. But then, what if there really was a treasure? What if, somewhere in my mother’s box, there was a clue to finding Juliet’s Eyes, whatever they were?

Lost in speculation, I strolled into a secluded cloister garden off Piazza San Domenico. By now day was turning to dusk, and I stood for a moment in the portico of a loggia, drinking in the last rays of sunshine while the evening shadows slowly lengthened. I did not feel like going back to the hotel just yet, where Maestro Ambrogio’s journal was waiting to sweep me through another sleepless night in the year 1340.

As I stood there, absorbed in the twilight, my thoughts circling around my parents, I saw him for the first time—

The Maestro.

He was walking through the shadows of the opposite loggia, carrying an easel and several other items that kept slipping from his grip, forcing him to stop and redistribute the weight. At first I simply stared at him. It was impossible not to. He was unlike any other Italian I had ever met, with his long, grey hair, sagging cardigan, and open sandals; in fact, he looked most of all like a time traveller from Woodstock, shuffling around in a world taken over by runway models.

He did not see me at first, and when I caught up with him and handed him a paintbrush he had dropped, he jumped with fear.

‘Scusi,’ I said, ‘but I think this is yours.’

He looked at the brush without recognition, and when he finally took it, he held it awkwardly, as if its purpose completely escaped him. Then he looked at me, still perplexed, and said, ‘Do I know you?’

Before I could answer, a smile spread over his face, and he exclaimed, ‘Of course I do! I remember you. You are—oh! Remind me…who are you?’

‘Giulietta. Tolomei? But I don’t think—’

‘Si-si-si! Of course! Where have you been?’

‘I…just arrived.’

He grimaced at his own stupidity. ‘Of course you did! Never mind me. You just arrived. And here you are. Giulietta Tolomei. More beautiful than ever.’ He smiled and shook his head. ‘I never understood this thing, time.’

‘Well,’ I said, somewhat confused, ‘will you be okay?’

‘Me? Oh! Yes, thank you. But…you must come and see me. I want to show you something. Do you know my workshop? It is in Via Santa Caterina. The blue door. You don’t have to knock, just come in.’

Only then did it occur to me that he had me pegged for a tourist and wanted to sell some souvenirs. Yeah, right, I thought.

When I called Umberto later that night, he was deeply disturbed by my new information about my parents’ deaths. ‘But are you sure?’ he kept saying, ‘are you sure this is true?’ I told him that I was. Not only did everything point to there having been dark forces at play twenty years ago but, as far as I could see, those forces might still be lingering and on the prowl.

‘Are you sure he was following you?’ Umberto objected. ‘Maybe—’

‘Umberto,’ I interrupted him, ‘he was wearing a tracksuit.’

We both knew that in Umberto’s universe only a black-hearted villain would walk down a fashionable street dressed in sportswear.

‘Well,’ said Umberto, ‘maybe he just wanted to pick your pocket. He saw you leaving the bank, and he thought you had taken out money.’

‘Yes, maybe. I sure don’t see why someone would steal this box. I can’t find anything in it to do with Juliet’s Eyes…’

‘Juliet’s Eyes?’

‘Yeah, that’s what Peppo said.’ I sighed and threw myself down on the bed. ‘Apparently, that’s the treasure. But if you ask me, I think it’s all a big joke. I think Mom and Aunt Rose are sitting up in heaven, having a really good laugh right now. Anyway…what are you up to?’

We talked for at least another five minutes before I discovered that Umberto was no longer in Aunt Rose’s house, but at a hotel in New York, looking for work, whatever that meant. I had a hard time imagining him waiting tables in Manhattan, grating Parmesan over other people’s pasta. He probably shared my sentiments, for he sounded tired and out of spirits, and I wanted so much to be able to tell him that I was on track to land a major fortune. But we both knew that, despite recovering my mother’s box, I had barely figured out where to start.

II.III

Death that hath suck’d the honey of thy breathHath had no power yet upon thy beauty

Siena, A.D. 1340

The lethal strike never came.

Instead, Friar Lorenzo—still kneeling in prayer before the brigand—heard a brief, frightful wheeze, followed by a tremor that rocked the whole cart, and the sound of a body tumbling to the ground. And then…silence. A brief glance with a half-open eye confirmed that, indeed, his intended killer was no longer looming over him, sword drawn, and Friar Lorenzo stretched nervously to see where the villain had disappeared so suddenly.

There he lay, broken and bloody on the bank of the ditch, the man who had moments ago been the cocksure captain of a band of highwaymen. How frail and human he looked now, thought Friar Lorenzo, with the point of a knife protruding from his chest, and with blood trickling from his demonic mouth and into an ear that had heard many sobbing prayers but never taken pity on a single one.

‘Heavenly Mother!’ The monk uplifted his folded hands to the sky above. ‘Thank you, oh sacred Virgin, for saving your humble servant!’

‘You are welcome, Friar, but I am no virgin.’

Hearing the ghostly voice and realizing that the speaker was very near and rather fearsome with plumed helmet, breastplate, and lance in hand, Friar Lorenzo sprang to his feet.

‘Noble St Michael!’ he cried, at once exalted and terrified. ‘You have saved my life! That man, there, that rascal, was just about to kill me!’

St Michael raised his visor to reveal a youthful face. ‘Yes,’ he said, his voice human now, ‘I had surmised as much. But I must add to your disappointment; I am no saint either.’

‘Whatever your description, noblest knight,’ exclaimed Friar Lorenzo, ‘your advent is in truth a miracle, and I am confident that the holy Virgin will reward such kind actions in heaven!’

‘I thank you, Friar,’ replied the knight, his eyes full of mischief, ‘but when you talk to her next, could you tell her that I will happily settle for a reward here on earth? Another horse, perhaps? For this one is sure to land me with the pig at the Palio.’

Friar Lorenzo blinked once, maybe twice, as he began to realize that his saviour had spoken the truth; he was indeed no saint. And judging by the way the young man had spoken of the Virgin Mary with impertinent familiarity he was certainly no pious soul either.

There was no mistaking the faint creaking of the coffin lid as its occupant tried to steal a glance at her bold saviour, and Friar Lorenzo quickly sat down on top of it to hold it closed, his gut telling him that here were two young people who had better never know each other. ‘Ahem,’ he said, determined to be polite, ‘whereabouts is your battle, noble knight? Or are you off to defend the Holy Land?’

The other looked incredulous. ‘Where are you from, funny friar? Surely a man so connected to God knows that the time of crusades has passed.’ He threw out his arm in the direction of Siena. ‘These hills, those towers…this is my Holy Land.’

‘Then I am truly glad,’ said Friar Lorenzo hastily, ‘that I have not come hither with evil intent!’

The knight was not convinced. ‘May I ask,’ he said, squinting, ‘what errand you have in Siena, Friar? And what do you have in that coffin?’

‘Nothing!’

‘Nothing?’ The other glanced at the dead body on the ground. ‘It is very unlike the Salimbenis to bleed for nothing. Surely you have something desirable with you?’

‘Not at all!’ insisted Friar Lorenzo, still too shaken to put faith in yet another stranger with manifest killing skills. ‘In this coffin lies one of my poor brothers, grotesquely disfigured by a fall from our windy bell tower three days ago. I must deliver him to Messere—um…to his family in Siena this very evening.’

Much to Friar Lorenzo’s relief, the expression on the other’s face now changed from rising hostility into compassion, and he asked no more about the coffin. Instead, he turned his head to look impatiently down the road. Following his gaze, Friar Lorenzo saw nothing except the setting sun, but the sight reminded him that it was thanks to this young man, heathen or no, that he was able to enjoy the rest of this evening and, God willing, many more like it.

‘Cousins!’ bellowed his saviour. ‘Our trial run has been delayed by this unfortunate friar!’

Only now did Friar Lorenzo see five other horsemen coming right out of the sun, and as they approached, he began to recognize that the handful of young men were involved in some manner of sport. None of the others wore armour, but one of them—a mere boy—held a large hourglass. When the child caught sight of the dead body in the ditch, the device slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground, breaking the glass in half.

‘Now here is an evil omen for our race, little cousin,’ said the knight to the boy, ‘but maybe our holy friend here can undo it with a prayer or two. What do you say, Friar, do you have a benediction for my horse?’

Friar Lorenzo glared at his saviour, thinking he was the victim of a jest. But the young knight seemed perfectly sincere as he sat there on the mount as comfortably as other men would sit on a chair in their own home. Seeing the monk’s frown, however, the young man smiled and said, ‘Ah, never mind. No benediction will help this jade anyway. But tell me, before we part, whether I have saved a friend or a foe?’

‘Noblest master!’ Shocked that he had for a moment been tempted to think ill of the man whom God had dispatched to save his life, Friar Lorenzo sprang to his feet and clasped his heart in submission. ‘I owe you my life! How could I be anything but your devoted subject forever?’

‘Fine words! But where lies your allegiance?’

‘My allegiance?’ Friar Lorenzo looked from one horseman to another, begging for a clue.

‘Yes,’ urged the boy who had dropped the hourglass, ‘who do you cheer for in the Palio?’

Six pairs of eyes narrowed as Friar Lorenzo scrambled to compose an answer, his gaze jumping from the golden beak on the knight’s plumed helmet to the black wings on the banner tied to his lance and further on to the giant eagle spread over his breastplate.

‘But of course,’ said Friar Lorenzo hastily, ‘I cheer for…the Eagle? Yes! The great Eagle…the king of the sky!’

To his relief, the answer was received with cheers.

‘Then you are truly a friend,’ concluded the knight, ‘and I am happy that I killed him and not you. Come, we will take you into town. The Camollia Gate does not allow carts after sunset, so we must hurry.’

‘Your kindness humbles me,’ said Friar Lorenzo. ‘I beg you to tell me your name that I may bless you in all my prayers from now and forever?’

The beaked helmet dipped briefly in a cordial nod.

‘I am the Eagle. Men call me Romeo Marescotti.’

‘Marescotti is your mortal name?’

‘What’s in a name? The Eagle lives forever.’

‘Only heaven,’ said Friar Lorenzo, his natural stinginess briefly eclipsing his gratitude, ‘can grant eternal life.’

The knight beamed. ‘Then obviously,’ he retorted, mostly for the amusement of his companions, ‘the Eagle must be the Virgin’s favourite bird!’

By the time Romeo and his cousins finally delivered monk and cart to their destination inside the gates of Siena, dusk had turned darkness, and a wary silence had come over the city. Doors and shutters were now closed and barred to the demons that came out at night, and had it not been for the moon and the occasional passer-by carrying a torch, Friar Lorenzo would have long since lost his bearings in the sloping labyrinth of streets.

When Romeo had asked him whom he had come to visit, the monk had lied. He knew all about the bloody feud between the Tolomeis and the Salimbenis, and that it could, in the wrong company, be fatal to admit that he had come to Siena to see the great Messer Tolomei. For all their willingness to help, you never knew how Romeo and his cousins would react—nor what lewd stories they would tell their friends and family—if they knew the truth. And so instead, Friar Lorenzo had told them that his destination was Maestro Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s workshop, since it was the only other person he could think of in Siena.

Ambrogio Lorenzetti was a painter, a true maestro, who was known far and wide for his frescoes and portraits. Friar Lorenzo had never met him in person, but he remembered someone telling him that this great man lived in Siena. It was with some trepidation he had first spoken the name to Romeo, but when the young man did not contradict him, he dared to assume that he had chosen wisely.

‘Well, then,’ said Romeo, stopping his horse in the middle of a narrow street, ‘here we are. It is the blue door.’

Friar Lorenzo looked around, surprised that the famous painter did not live in a more attractive neighbourhood. Rubbish and filth littered the street all around them, and scrawny cats were eyeing him from doorways and dark corners. ‘I thank you,’ he said, descending from the cart, ‘for your great help, gentlemen. Heaven will reward you all in due course.’

‘Stand aside, monk,’ replied Romeo, dismounting, ‘and let us carry that coffin inside for you.’

‘No! Do not touch it!’ Friar Lorenzo tried to position himself between Romeo and the coffin. ‘You have helped me enough already.’

‘Nonsense!’ Romeo all but pushed the monk aside. ‘How do you intend to get it into the house without our help?’

‘I don’t…God will procure a way! The Maestro will help me.’

‘Painters have brains, not muscles. Here.’ This time, Romeo did move the other aside, but he did it gently, aware that he was engaging a weaker opponent.

‘No!’ the monk exclaimed, struggling to assert himself as the sole protector of the coffin. ‘I beg you, I command you!’

‘You command me?’ Romeo looked amused. ‘Such words do little but rouse my curiosity. I just saved your life, monk. Why can you not stomach my kindness now?’

On the other side of the blue door, inside Maestro Ambrogio’s workshop, the painter was busy doing what he always did this time of day: mixing and testing colours. The night belonged to the bold, to the crazed and to the artist—often one and the same—and it was a blessed time to work, for all his customers were now at home, eating and sleeping as humans do, and would not come knocking until after sunrise.

Joyfully engrossed in his work, Maestro Ambrogio did not notice the noise in the street until his dog, Dante, started growling. Without putting down his mortar, the painter stepped closer to the door and tried to gauge the severity of the argument that was, by the sound of it, taking place on his very doorstep. It put him in mind of the grand death of Julius Caesar, stabbed by a throng of Roman senators and dying very decoratively, scarlet on marble, harmoniously framed by columns. Would that some great Sienese could bring himself to die in a like manner, allowing the Maestro to indulge in the scene on a local wall.

Just then, someone banged on the door, and Dante began barking.

‘Shush!’ said Ambrogio to the dog. ‘I advise you to hide, in case it is the horned one trying to get in. I know him a great deal better than you.’

As soon as he opened the door, a whirlwind of agitated voices burst inside and wrapped the Maestro in a heated argument—something to do with a certain object that needed to be carried inside.

‘Tell them, my good brother in Christ!’ urged a breathless monk. ‘Tell them we shall deal with this thing alone!’

‘What thing?’ Maestro Ambrogio wanted to know.

‘The coffin,’ replied someone else, ‘with the dead bell-ringer! Look!’

‘I think you have the wrong house,’ said Maestro Ambrogio. ‘I did not order that.’

‘I beg you to let us inside,’ pleaded the monk. ‘I will explain everything.’

There was nothing else to do but step aside, and so Maestro Ambrogio opened the door wide to allow the young men to carry the coffin into his workshop and put it down in the middle of the floor. It did not surprise him at all to see that young Romeo Marescotti and his cousins were once again up to no good; what puzzled the Maestro was the presence of the hand-wringing monk.

‘That is the lightest coffin I have ever carried,’ observed one of Romeo’s companions. ‘Your ringer must have been a very slender man, Friar Lorenzo. Make sure to choose a fat one next time that he may stand more firmly in that windy bell tower.’

‘We shall!’ exclaimed Friar Lorenzo with rude impatience. ‘And now I thank you, Gentlemen, for all your services. Thank you, Messer Romeo, for saving our lives—my life! Here’—he extracted a small, bent coin from somewhere underneath his cowl—‘a centesimo for your trouble!’

The coin hung in the air for a while, unclaimed. Eventually, Friar Lorenzo stuffed it back underneath his cowl, his ears glowing like coals in a sudden draft.

‘All I ask,’ said Romeo, mostly to tease, ‘is that you show us what is in that coffin. For it is no monk, fat or slender, of that I am sure.’

‘No!’ Friar Lorenzo’s anxious aspect lapsed into panic. ‘I cannot allow that! With the Virgin Mary as my witness, I swear to you, every one of you, the coffin must remain closed, or a great disaster will undo us all!’

It struck Maestro Ambrogio that he had never before attempted to capture the features of a bird. A small sparrow that had fallen out of the nest, its feathers ruffled and its eyes little frightened beads…that was precisely what this young friar looked like as he stood there, cornered by Siena’s most notorious cats.

‘Come now, monk,’ said Romeo, ‘I saved your life tonight. Have I not by now earned your confidence?’

‘I fear,’ said Maestro Ambrogio to Friar Lorenzo, ‘that you will have to deliver on your threat and let us all be undone by disaster. Honour demands it.’

Friar Lorenzo shook his head heavily. ‘Very well, then! I shall open the coffin. But allow me first to explain.’ For a moment, his eyes darted to and fro in search of inspiration, then he nodded and said, ‘You are right, there is no monk in this coffin. But there is someone just as holy. She is the only daughter of my generous patron, and’—he cleared his throat to speak more forcefully—‘she died, very tragically, two days ago. He sent me here with her body, to beg you, Maestro, to capture her features in a painting before they are lost forever.’

‘Two days?’ Maestro Ambrogio was appalled, all business now. ‘She has been dead two days? My dear friend!’ Without waiting for the monk’s approval, he opened the lid of the coffin to assess the damage. But fortunately, the girl inside had not yet been ravished by death. ‘It seems,’ he said, happily surprised, ‘we still have time. Even so, I must begin right away. Did your patron specify a motif? Usually I do a standard Virgin Mary from the waist up, and in this case I will throw in Babe Jesus for free, since you have come all this way.’

‘I…believe I will go with the standard Virgin Mary, then,’ said Friar Lorenzo, looking nervously at Romeo, who had knelt down next to the coffin to admire the dead girl, ‘and our Heavenly Saviour, since it is free.’

‘Ahimè!’ exclaimed Romeo, ignoring the monk’s warning stance. ‘How can God be so cruel?’

‘Stop!’ cried Friar Lorenzo, but it was too late; the young man had already touched a hand to the girl’s cheek.

‘Such beauty,’ he said, his voice tender, ‘should never die. Even death hates his trade tonight. Look, he has not yet brushed her lips with his purple stain.’

‘Careful!’ warned Friar Lorenzo, trying to close the lid. ‘You know not what infection those lips carry!’

‘If she were mine,’ Romeo went on, blocking the monk’s efforts and paying no heed to security, ‘I should follow her to Paradise and bring her back. Or stay there forever with her.’

‘Yes-yes-yes,’ said Friar Lorenzo, forcing the lid down and very nearly slamming it over the other’s wrist, ‘death turns all men into great lovers. Would that they were equally ardent while the lady was still alive!’

‘Very true, Friar,’ nodded Romeo, getting up at last. ‘Well, I have seen and heard enough misery for one night. The tavern calls. I shall leave you to your sad business and go drink a toast to this poor girl’s soul. In fact, I shall drink several, and perchance the wine will send me straight to Paradise that I may meet her in person and…’

Friar Lorenzo sprung forward and hissed, for no apparent reason, ‘Before it throws you from grace, Messere Romeo, bridle your tongue!’

The young man grinned, ‘…pay my respects.’

Not until the rogues had left the workshop for good and the sound of hoofbeats had waned, did Friar Lorenzo again lift the lid of the coffin. ‘It is safe now,’ he said, ‘you can come out.’

Now at last the girl opened her eyes and sat up, her cheeks hollow with exhaustion.

‘Almighty God!’ gasped Maestro Ambrogio, crossing himself with the mortar. ‘What manner of witchcraft is this?’

‘I beg you, Maestro,’ said Friar Lorenzo, gently helping the girl to stand up, ‘to escort us to Palazzo Tolomei. This young lady is Messer Tolomei’s niece, Giulietta. She has been the victim of much evil, and I must get her to safety as soon as may be. Can you help us?’

Maestro Ambrogio looked at the monk and the girl, still struggling to catch up with events. Despite her fatigue, the girl stood straight, her tousled hair alive in the candlelight, and her eyes as blue as the sky on a cloudless day. She was, without a doubt, the most perfect creation he had ever beheld. ‘May I ask,’ he said to the monk, ‘what compelled you to trust me?’

Friar Lorenzo made a sweeping gesture at the paintings surrounding them. ‘A man who can see the divine in earthly things, surely, is a brother in Christ.’

The Maestro looked around, too, but all he saw was empty wine bottles, half-finished work, and portraits of people who had changed their mind when they saw his bill. ‘You are too generous,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘but I shall not hold that against you. Have no fear, I will take you to Palazzo Tolomei, but first, do satisfy my rude curiosity and tell me what happened to this young lady, and why she was laid out for dead in that coffin.’

Now for the first time, Giulietta spoke. Her voice was as soft and steady as her face was tense with grief. ‘Three days ago,’ she said, ‘the Salimbenis raided my home. They killed everyone by the name of Tolomei—my father, my mother, my brothers—and everyone else who stood in their way, except this man, my dear confessor, Friar Lorenzo. I was in confession in the chapel when the raid took place or I, too, would have been…’ She looked away, struggling against despair.

‘We have come here for protection,’ Friar Lorenzo said, taking over, ‘and to tell Messer Tolomei what happened.’

‘We have come here for revenge,’ Giulietta corrected him, her eyes wide with hatred and her fists pressed hard against her chest as if to prevent herself from an act of violence, ‘and to gut that monster, Salimbeni, and string him up by his own entrails…’

‘Ahem,’ said Friar Lorenzo, ‘we will, of course, exercise Christian forgiveness.’

Giulietta nodded eagerly, hearing nothing. ‘…While we feed him to his dogs, piece by piece!’

‘I grieve for you,’ said Maestro Ambrogio, wishing he could take this beautiful child in his arms and comfort her. ‘You have borne too much.’

‘I have borne nothing!’ Her blue eyes pierced the painter’s heart. ‘Do not grieve for me, just be so kind as to take us to my uncle’s house without any further questioning.’ She caught herself, and added quietly, ‘please.’

When he had safely delivered monk and girl to Palazzo Tolomei, Maestro Ambrogio returned to his workshop at something resembling a gallop. He had never felt quite this way before. He was in love, he was in hell…in fact, he was everything all at once as Inspiration flapped its colossal wings inside his skull and clawed painfully at his rib cage, looking for a way out of the prison that is a talented man’s mortal frame.

Sprawled on the floor, eternally puzzled by mankind, Dante looked on with half a bloodshot eye as Maestro Ambrogio composed his colours and began the application of Giulietta Tolomei’s features onto a painting of a hitherto headless Virgin Mary. He could not help but begin with her eyes. Nowhere else in his workshop was such an intriguing colour to be seen; indeed, not in the entire city was the same shade to be found, for he had only invented it on this very night, almost in a fever frenzy, while the image of the young girl was still fresh on the wall of his mind.

Encouraged by the immediate result, he began to trace the outline of her remarkable face underneath the flaming rivulets of hair. His movements were still magically swift and assured; had the young woman at this very moment sat before him, poised for eternity, the painter could not have worked with more giddy certainty.

‘Yes!’ was the only word escaping him as he eagerly, almost hungrily brought those breathtaking features back to life. Once the picture was complete, he took several steps backwards and finally reached out for the glass of wine he had poured for himself in a previous life, five hours earlier.

Just then, there was another knock on the door.

‘Shh!’ hushed Maestro Ambrogio, wagging a warning finger at the barking dog. ‘You always assume the worst. Maybe it is another angel.’ But as soon as he opened the door to see what demon had been dispatched by fate at this ungodly hour, he saw that Dante had been in the right.

Outside, in the flickering light of a wall torch, stood Romeo Marescotti, a drunken grin splitting his deceivingly charming face in half. Apart from their encounter only a few hours earlier, Maestro Ambrogio knew the young man only too well from the week before, when the males of the Marescotti family had sat before him, one by one, in order to have their features incorporated into a formidable new mural in Palazzo Marescotti. The paterfamilias, Comandante Marescotti, had insisted on a representation of his clan from past to present, with all credible male ancestors—plus a few incredible ones—in the centre, all employed, somehow, in the famous Battle of Montaperti, while the living hovered in the sky above, cast as the Seven Virtues. Much to everyone’s amusement, Romeo had drawn the lot least suitable for his character, and consequently Maestro Ambrogio had found himself forging the present as well as the past as he expertly applied the features of Siena’s most infamous playboy to the princely form perched on the throne of Chastity.

Now chastity reborn pushed his kind creator aside and stepped into the workshop to find the coffin still sitting—closed—in the middle of the floor. The young man was clearly itching to open it and peer once more at the body inside, but that would have meant rudely removing the Maestro’s palette and several wet paintbrushes that were now resting on top of the lid. ‘Have you finished the picture yet?’ he asked instead. ‘I want to see it.’

Maestro Ambrogio closed the door quietly behind them, only too conscious that his visitor had been drinking too much for perfect balance. ‘Why would you wish to see the likeness of a dead girl? There are plenty of live ones out there, I am sure.’

‘True,’ agreed Romeo, looking around the room and finally spotting the new addition, ‘but that would be too easy, wouldn’t it?’ He walked right up to the portrait and looked at it with the gaze of an expert; an expert not in art, but in women. After a while he nodded. ‘Not bad. The eyes are remarkable. How did you…’

‘I thank you,’ said the Maestro hastily, ‘but the true artistry is God’s. More wine?’

‘Many thanks.’ The young man took the cup and sat down on top of the coffin, carefully avoiding the dripping brushes. ‘How about a toast to your friend, God, and all the games he plays with us?’

‘It is very late,’ said Maestro Ambrogio, moving the palette and sitting down on the coffin next to Romeo. ‘You must be tired, my friend.’

As if transfixed by the portrait before him, Romeo could not tear away his gaze long enough to look at the painter. And when he finally spoke, there was a sincerity to his voice that was new, even to himself. ‘I am not as much tired,’ he said, ‘as I am awake. I wonder if I were ever this awake before.’

‘That often happens when one is half-asleep. Only then does the inner eye truly open.’

‘But I am not asleep, nor do I wish to be. I am never going to sleep again. I think I shall come every night and sit here instead of sleeping.’

Smiling at the ardent exclamation, a most enviable privilege of youth, Maestro Ambrogio looked up at his masterpiece. ‘You approve of her, then?’

‘Approve?’ Romeo nearly choked on the word. ‘I adore her!’

‘Could you worship at such a shrine?’

‘Am I not a man? Yet as a man, I must also feel great sorrow at the sight of such wasted beauty. If only death could be persuaded to give her back.’

‘Then what?’ The Maestro managed to frown appropriately. ‘What would you do if this angel was a living, breathing woman?’

Romeo took a deep breath, but the words escaped him. ‘I…don’t know. Love her, obviously. I do know how to love a woman. I have loved many.’

‘Perhaps it is just as well she is not real, then. For I believe this one would require extra effort. In fact, I imagine that to court a lady like her, one would have to enter through the front door and not skulk beneath her balcony like a thief in the night.’ Seeing that the other had fallen strangely silent, a brush-stroke of ochre trailing across his noble face, the Maestro proceeded with greater confidence. ‘There is lust, you know, and then there is love. They are related, but still very different things. To indulge in one requires little but honeyed speech and a change of clothes; to obtain the other, by contrast, a man must give up his rib. In return, his woman will undo the sin of Eve, and bring him back into Paradise.’

‘But how does a man know when to hand over his rib? I have many friends without a single rib left, and I promise you, they were never once in Paradise.’

The earnest concern on the young man’s face made Maestro Ambrogio nod. ‘It is as you said,’ he acknowledged. ‘A man knows. A boy does not.’

Romeo laughed out loud. ‘I admire you!’ He put a hand on the Maestro’s shoulder. ‘You have courage!’

‘What is so very wonderful about courage?’ retorted the painter, bolder now that his role as mentor had been approved. ‘I suspect this one virtue has killed more good men than all the vices put together.’

Again Romeo laughed out loud, as if he did not often have the pleasure of such saucy opposition, and the Maestro found himself suddenly and unexpectedly liking the young man.

‘I often hear men say,’ Romeo went on, unwilling to quit the topic, ‘that they will do anything for a woman. But then, upon her very first request, they whine and slink away like dogs.’

‘And you? Do you also slink away?’

Romeo flashed a whole row of healthy teeth, surprising for someone who was rumoured to attract fisticuffs wherever he went. ‘No,’ he answered, still smiling, ‘I have a fine nose for women who ask nothing more than what I want to give. But if such a woman existed’—he nodded towards the painting—‘I would happily break all my ribs in pursuit of her. Better still, I would enter through the front door, as you say, and apply for her hand before I had ever even touched it. And not only that, but I would make her my one and only wife and never look at another woman. I swear it! She would be worth it, I am sure.’

Pleased with what he heard, and wanting very much to believe that his artwork had had such a profound effect as to turn the young man away from his wanton ways, the Maestro nodded, rather satisfied with the night’s work. ‘She is indeed.’

Romeo turned his head, eyes narrow. ‘You speak as if she were still alive?’

Maestro Ambrogio sat silently for a moment, studying the young man’s face and probing the depth of his resolve. ‘Giulietta,’ he said at last, ‘is her name. I believe that you, my friend, with your touch stirred her from death tonight. After you left us for the tavern, I saw her lovely form rise by itself from this coffin.’

Romeo sprang from his seat as if it had burst into flames beneath him. ‘This is ghostly speech! I know not whether this chill on my arm is from dread or delight!’

‘Do you dread the schemes of men?’

‘Of men, no. Of God, greatly.’

‘Then take comfort in what I tell you now. It was not God who laid her out for dead in this coffin, but the monk, Friar Lorenzo, fearing for her safety.’

Romeo’s jaw dropped. ‘You mean, she was never dead?’

Maestro Ambrogio smiled at the young man’s expression. ‘She was ever as alive as you.’

Romeo clasped his head. ‘You are sporting with me! I cannot believe you!’

‘Believe what you want,’ said the Maestro, getting up and removing the paintbrushes, ‘or open the coffin.’

After a moment of great distress, pacing back and forth, Romeo finally braced himself and flung open the coffin.

Rather than rejoicing in its emptiness, however, the young man glared at the Maestro with renewed suspicion. ‘Where is she?’

‘That I cannot tell you. It would be a breach of confidence.’

‘But she lives?’

The Maestro shrugged. ‘She did when I saw her last, on the threshold of her uncle’s house, waving goodbye to me.’

‘And who is her uncle?’

‘As I said: I cannot tell you.’

Romeo took a step towards the Maestro, fingers twitching. ‘Are you saying that I will have to sing serenades beneath every balcony in Siena until the right woman comes out?’

Dante had jumped up as soon as the young man appeared to threaten his master, but instead of growling a warning, the dog merely put its head back and let out a long, expressive howl.

‘She will not come out just yet,’ replied Maestro Ambrogio, bending over to pat the dog. ‘She is in no mood for serenades. Perhaps she never will be.’

‘Then why,’ exclaimed Romeo, all but knocking over the easel and portrait in his frustration, ‘are you telling me this?’

‘Because,’ said Maestro Ambrogio, amused by the other’s exasperation, ‘it pains an artist’s eyes to see a snowy dove dally with crows.’

III.I

What’s in a name? That which we call a roseBy any other word would smell as sweet

The view from the old Medici fortress, the Fortezza, was spectacular. Not only could I see the terracotta roofs of Siena broiling in the afternoon sun, but at least twenty miles of rolling hills were heaving around me like an ocean in shades of green and distant blues. Again and again I looked up from my reading, taking in the sweeping landscape in the hope that it would force all stale air from my lungs and fill my soul with summer. And yet every time I looked down and resumed Maestro Ambrogio’s journal, I plunged right back into the dark events of 1340.

I had spent the morning at Malèna’s espresso bar in Piazza Postierla, leafing through the official early versions of Romeo and Juliet written by Masuccio Salernitano and Luigi da Porto in 1476 and 1530 respectively. It was interesting to see how the plot had developed, and how da Porto had put a literary spin to a story, which, Salernitano claimed, was based on real events.

In Salernitano’s version, Romeo and Juliet—or rather, Mariotto and Giannozza—lived in Siena, but their parents were not at war. They did get married in secret, after bribing a friar, but the drama only really began when Mariotto killed a prominent citizen and had to go into exile. Meanwhile, Giannozza’s parents, unaware that their daughter was already married, demanded that she marry someone else. In desperation, Giannozza had the friar cook up a powerful sleeping potion, and the effect was so great that her imbecilic parents believed she was dead and went ahead and buried her right away. Fortunately, the good old friar was able to deliver her from the sepulchre, whereupon Giannozza travelled secretly by boat to Alexandria, where Mariotto was living the good life. However, the messenger who was supposed to inform Mariotto of the sleeping-potion scheme had been captured by pirates, and upon receiving the news of Giannozza’s death, Mariotto came blasting back into Siena to die by her side. Here, he was captured by soldiers, and beheaded. Chop. And Giannozza had spent the rest of her life weeping in a convent.

As far as I could see, the key elements in this original version were: the secret marriage, Romeo’s banishment, the harebrained scheme of the sleeping potion, the messenger gone astray, and Romeo’s deliberate suicide-mission based on his erroneous belief in Juliet’s death.

The big difference, of course, was that the whole thing supposedly happened in Siena, and if Malèna had been around, I would have asked her if this was common knowledge. I highly suspected it was not.

Interestingly enough, when da Porto took over the story half a century later, he too, was eager to anchor the story in reality, going so far as to call Romeo and Giulietta by their real first names. He lost his nerve over the location, however, and moved the whole thing to Verona, changing all family names—very possibly to avoid retribution from the powerful clans involved in the scandal.

But never mind the logistics; in my interpretation—aided by several cups of cappuccino—da Porto wrote a far more entertaining story. He was the one who introduced the masked ball and the balcony scene, and his was the genius that first devised the double suicide. The only thing that did not immediately make sense to me was that he had Juliet die by holding her breath. But perhaps da Porto had felt that his audience would not appreciate a bloody scene…scruples that Shakespeare, fortunately, did not have.

After da Porto, someone called Bandello had felt compelled to write a third version and add a lot of melodramatic dialogue without—as far as I could see—altering the essentials of the plot. But from then on the Italians were done with the story, and it travelled first to France, then England, to eventually end up on Shakespeare’s desk, ready for immortalization.

The biggest difference, as far as I could see, between all these poetic versions and Maestro Ambrogio’s journal, was that in reality there had been three families involved, not just two. The Tolomeis and the Salimbenis had been the feuding households—the Capulets and the Montagues, so to speak—while Romeo, in fact, had been a Marescotti and thus an outsider. In that respect, Salernitano’s very early rendition of the story was the one that came closest to the truth; it was set in Siena, and there had been no mention of a family feud.

Later, walking back from the Fortezza with Maestro Ambrogio’s journal clutched to my chest, I looked at all the happy people around me and once again felt the presence of an invisible wall between me and them. There they were, walking, jogging, and eating ice cream, not pausing to question the past, nor burdened, as I was, with a feeling that they did not fully belong in this world.

That same morning, I had stood in front of the bathroom mirror trying on the necklace with the silver crucifix that had been in my mother’s box, and decided I would start wearing it. After all, it was something she had owned, and by leaving it in the box she had clearly intended it for me. Perhaps, I thought, it would somehow protect me against the curse that had marked her for an early death.

Was I insane? Maybe. But then, there are many different kinds of insanity. Aunt Rose had always taken for granted that the whole world was in a state of constantly fluctuating madness, and that a neurosis was not an illness, but a fact of life, like pimples. Some have more, some have less, but only truly abnormal people have none at all. This commonsense philosophy had consoled me many times before, as it did now.

When I returned to the hotel, Direttore Rossini came towards me like the messenger from Marathon, dying to tell me the news. ‘Miss Tolomei! Where have you been? You must go! Right away! Contessa Salimbeni is waiting for you in Palazzo Pubblico! Go, go’—he shooed me the way you would a dog hanging around for scraps—‘you must not leave her waiting!’

‘Wait!’ I pointed at two objects that sat conspicuously in the middle of the floor. ‘Those are my suitcases!’

‘Yes-yes-yes, they were delivered a moment ago.’

‘Well, I’d like to go to my room and—’

‘No!’ Direttore Rossini flung open the front door. ‘You must go right away!’

‘I don’t even know where I’m going!’

‘Santa Caterina!’ Though I knew he was secretly delighted with yet another opportunity to educate me about Siena, Direttore Rossini rolled his eyes and let go of the door. ‘Come, I will draw directions!’

Entering the Campo was like stepping into a gigantic seashell. All around the edge were restaurants and cafés, and right where the pearl would have been, at the bottom of the sloping piazza, sat Palazzo Pubblico, the building that had served as Siena’s city hall since the Middle Ages.

I paused for a moment, taking in the hum of many voices under the dome of a blue sky, the pigeons flapping around, and the white marble fountain with the turquoise water—until a wave of tourists came up behind me and swept me along with them, rushing forward in excited wonder at the magnificence of the giant square.

While drawing his directions, Direttore Rossini had assured me that the Campo was considered the most beautiful piazza in all of Italy, and not only by the Sienese themselves. In fact, he could hardly recount the numerous occasions on which hotel guests from all corners of the world, even from Florence, had come to him and extolled its graces. He, of course, had protested and pointed out the many splendours of other places—surely, they were out there somewhere—but people had been unwilling to listen. They had stubbornly maintained that Siena was the loveliest, most unspoiled city on the globe, and in the face of such conviction, what could Direttore Rossini do but allow that, indeed, it might be so?

I stuffed the directions into my handbag and began walking down towards Palazzo Pubblico. The building was hard to miss with the tall bell tower, Torre del Mangia, the construction of which Direttore Rossini had described in such detail that it had taken me several minutes to realize that it had not, in fact, been erected before his very eyes, but at some time in the late Middle Ages. A lily, he had called it, a proud monument to female purity with its white stone flower held aloft by a tall red stem. And curiously, it had been built with no foundation. The Mangia Tower, he claimed, had stood for over six centuries, held up by the grace of God and faith alone.

I blocked the sun with my hand and looked at the tower as it stretched against the infinite blue. In no other place had I ever seen female purity celebrated by a 335-foot phallic object. But maybe that was me.

There was a quite literal sense of gravity about Palazzo Pubblico and its tower, as if the Campo itself was caving in under its weight. Direttore Rossini had told me that if I was in doubt, I was to imagine that I had a ball and put it on the ground. No matter where I stood on the Campo, the ball would roll right down to Palazzo Pubblico. There was something about the image that appealed to me. Maybe it was the thought of a ball bouncing over the ancient brick pavement. Or maybe it was simply the way he had pronounced the words, with whispering drama, like a magician talking to four-year-olds.

Palazzo Pubblico had, like all seats of government, grown with age. From its origins as little more than a meeting room for nine administrators, it was now a formidable structure, and I entered the inner courtyard with a feeling of being watched. Not so much by people, I suppose, as by the lingering shadows of generations past, generations devoted to the life of this city, this small plot of land as cities go, this universe unto itself.

Eva Maria Salimbeni was waiting for me in the Hall of Peace. She sat on a bench in the middle of the room, looking up into the air, as if she was having a silent conversation with God. But as soon as I walked through the door, she came to, and a smile of delight spread over her face.

‘So, you came after all!’ she exclaimed, rising from the bench to kiss me on both cheeks. ‘I was beginning to worry.’

‘Sorry to keep you waiting. I didn’t even realize…’

Her smile dismissed everything I could possibly say. ‘You are here now. That is all that matters. Look’—she made a sweeping gesture at the giant frescoes covering the walls of the room—‘have you ever seen anything so magnificent? Our great Maestro, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, made them in the late 1330s. He probably finished this one, over the doors, in 1340. It is called Good Government.’

I turned to look at the fresco in question. It covered the entire length of the wall, and to make it would have required a complex machinery of ladders and scaffolding, perhaps even platforms suspended from the ceiling. The left half depicted a peaceful city scene with ordinary citizens going about their business; the right half was a wide view of the countryside beyond the city wall. Then something occurred to me, and I said, baffled, ‘You mean…Maestro Ambrogio?’

‘Oh, yes,’ nodded Eva Maria, not the least bit surprised that I was familiar with the name. ‘One of the greatest masters. He painted these scenes to celebrate the end of a long feud between our two families, the Tolomeis and the Salimbenis. Finally, in 1339, there was peace.’

‘Really?’ I thought of Giulietta and Friar Lorenzo escaping from the Salimbeni bandits on the high road outside Siena. ‘I get the impression that in 1340 our ancestors were still very much at war. Certainly out in the countryside.’

Eva Maria smiled cryptically; either she was delighted that I had bothered to read up on family lore, or she was miffed that I dared to contradict her. If the latter, she was graceful enough to acknowledge my point, and said, ‘You are right. The peace had unintended consequences. It happens whenever the bureaucrats try to help us.’ She threw up her arms. ‘If people want to fight, you can’t stop them. If you prevent them inside the city, they will fight in the country, and out there, they will get away with it. At least inside Siena, the riots were always stopped before things got completely out of hand. Why?’

She looked at me to see if I could guess, but of course, I couldn’t.

‘Because,’ she went on, wagging a didactic finger in front of my nose, ‘in Siena we have always had a militia. And in order to keep the Salimbenis and the Tolomeis in check, the citizens of Siena had to be able to mobilize and have all their companies out in the city streets within minutes.’ She nodded firmly, agreeing with herself. ‘I believe this is why the contrada tradition is so strong here even today; the devotion of the old neighbourhood militia was essentially what made the Sienese republic possible. If you want to keep the bad elements in check, make sure the good men are armed.’

I smiled at her conclusion, doing my best to look as if I had no vested interest. Now was not the time to tell Eva Maria that I did not believe in weapons, and that, in my experience, the so-called good men were no better than the bad ones.

‘Pretty, is it not?’ Eva Maria continued, nodding at the fresco. ‘A city at peace with itself?’

‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘although I have to say people don’t look particularly happy. Look.’ I pointed at a young woman who appeared to be trapped in a cluster of dancing girls. ‘This one seems—I don’t know. Lost in thought.’

‘Perhaps she saw the wedding procession passing by?’ suggested Eva Maria, nodding at a train of people following what looked like a bride on a horse. ‘And perhaps it made her think of a lost love?’

‘She is looking at the drum,’ I said, pointing again, ‘or, the tambourine. And the other dancers look…evil. Look at the way they have her trapped in the dance. And one of them is staring at her stomach.’ I cast a glance at Eva Maria, but it was hard to interpret her expression. ‘Or maybe I’m just imagining things.’

‘No,’ she said, quietly, ‘Maestro Ambrogio clearly wants us to notice her. He made this group of dancing women bigger than anybody else in the picture. And if you take another look, she is the only one with a tiara in her hair.’

I squinted and saw that she was right. ‘So, who was she? Do we know?’

Eva Maria shrugged. ‘Officially, we don’t know. But between you and me’—she leaned towards me and lowered her voice—‘I think she is your ancestor. Her name was Giulietta Tolomei.’

I was so shocked to hear her speak the name—my name—and articulate the exact same thought I had put to Umberto over the telephone that it took me a moment to come up with the only natural question: ‘How on earth do you know?…That she is my ancestor, I mean?’

Eva Maria almost laughed. ‘Isn’t it obvious? Why else would your mother name you after her? In fact, she told me so herself—your bloodline comes straight from Giulietta and Giannozza Tolomei.’

Although I was thrilled to hear this, spoken with such certainty, it was almost more information than I could handle at once. ‘I didn’t realize you knew my mother,’ I said, wondering why she had not told me this before.

‘She came to visit once. With your father. It was before they were married.’ Eva Maria paused. ‘She was very young. Younger than you. It was a party with a hundred guests, but we spent the whole evening talking about Maestro Ambrogio. They were the ones who told me everything I am telling you now. They were very knowledgeable, very interested in our families. It was sad the way things went.’

We stood for a moment in silence. Eva Maria was looking at me with a wry smile, as if she knew there was a question that was burning a hole in my tongue, but which I could not bring myself to ask, namely: What was her relationship – if any – with the evil Luciano Salimbeni, and how much did she know about my parents’ deaths?

‘Your father believed,’ Eva Maria went on, not leaving me room for further inquiry, ‘that Maestro Ambrogio was hiding a story in this picture. A tragedy that happened in his own time, and which could not be discussed openly. Look’ – she pointed at the fresco – ‘do you see that little birdcage in the window up there? What if I told you that the building is Palazzo Salimbeni, and that the man you see inside is Salimbeni himself, enthroned like a king, while people crouch at his feet to borrow money?’

Sensing that the story somehow gave her pain, I smiled at Eva Maria, determined not to let the past come between us. ‘You don’t sound very proud of him.’

She grimaced. ‘Oh, he was a great man. But Maestro Ambrogio didn’t like him. Don’t you see? Look…there was a marriage…a sad girl dancing…and now, a bird in a cage. What do you make of that?’ When I did not reply right away, Eva Maria looked out the window. ‘I was twenty-two, you know. When I married him. Salimbeni. He was sixty-four. Do you think that is old?’ She looked straight at me, trying to read my thoughts.

‘Not necessarily,’ I said. ‘As you know, my mother—’

‘Well, I did,’ Eva Maria cut me off. ‘I thought he was very old and that he would die soon. But he was rich. I have a beautiful house. You must come and visit me.’

I was so baffled by her straightforward confession, and subsequent invitation, that I just said, ‘I’d love to.’

‘Good!’ She put a possessive hand on my shoulder. ‘And now you must find the hero in the fresco!’

I nearly laughed. Eva Maria Salimbeni was a true virtuoso in the art of changing subjects.

‘Come now,’ she said, like a teacher to a class full of lazy kids, ‘where is the hero? There is always a hero. Look at the fresco.’

I looked up dutifully. ‘That could be anyone.’

‘The heroine is inside the city,’ she said, pointing, ‘looking very sad. So, the hero must be…? Look! On the left you have life within the city walls. Then you have Porta Romana, the city gate to the south, which cuts the fresco in half. And on the right-hand side…’

‘Okay, I see him now,’ I said, being a good sport. ‘It’s the guy on the horse, leaving town.’

Eva Maria smiled, not at me, but at the fresco. ‘He is handsome, is he not?’

‘Drop dead. What’s with the elf hat?’

‘He is a hunter. Look at him. He has a hunting bird and is just about to release it, but something holds him back. That other man, the darker man walking on foot, carrying the painter’s box, is trying to tell him something, and our young hero is leaning back in the saddle to hear it.’

‘Perhaps the walking man wants him to stay in town?’ I suggested.

‘Perhaps. But what might happen to him if he does? Look at what Maestro Ambrogio has put above his head. The gallows. Not a pleasant alternative, is it?’ Eva Maria smiled. ‘Who do you think he is?’

I did not answer right away. If the Maestro Ambrogio who had painted this fresco was, in fact, the same Maestro Ambrogio whose journal I was in the process of reading, and if the unhappily dancing woman with the tiara was indeed my ancestor, Giulietta Tolomei, then the man on the horse could only be Romeo Marescotti. But I was not comfortable with Eva Maria knowing the extent of my recent discoveries, nor the source of my knowledge. She was, after all, a Salimbeni. So, I merely shrugged and said, ‘I have no idea.’

‘Suppose I told you,’ said Eva Maria, ‘that it is Romeo from Romeo and Juliet?…And that your ancestor, Giulietta, is Shakespeare’s Juliet?’

I managed to laugh. ‘Wasn’t that set in Verona? And didn’t Shakespeare invent them? In Shakespeare in Love—’

‘Shakespeare in Love!’ Eva Maria looked at me as if she had rarely heard anything so revolting. ‘Giulietta’ – she put a hand on my cheek – ‘trust me when I say that it happened right here in Siena. Long, long before Shakespeare. And here they are, up there, on this wall. Romeo going into exile and Juliet preparing for marriage to a man she cannot love.’ She smiled at my expression and finally let go of me. ‘Don’t worry. When you visit me, we will have more talk of these sad things. What are you doing tonight?’

I took a step back, hoping to conceal my shock at her intimacy with my family history. ‘Cleaning my balcony.’

Eva Maria didn’t miss a beat. ‘When you are finished with that, I want you to come with me to a very nice concert. Here.’ She dug into her handbag and took out an admission ticket, ‘it is a wonderful programme. I chose it myself. You will like it. Seven o’clock. Afterwards we will have dinner, and I will tell you more about our ancestors.’

As I walked to the concert hall later that day, I could feel something nagging me. It was a beautiful evening, and the town was buzzing with happy people, but I was still unable to share in the fun. Striding down the street with eyes for nothing but the pavement ahead, I was gradually able to identify the cause of my grumpiness.

I was being manipulated.

Ever since my arrival in Siena, people had been on tiptoes to tell me what to do and what to think. Eva Maria most of all. She seemed to find it only natural that her own bizarre wishes and plans should dictate my movements, dress code included, and now she was trying to control my line of thought as well. Suppose I did not want to discuss the events of 1340 with her? Well, too bad, because I didn’t have a choice. And yet, in some strange way I still liked her. Why was that? Was it because she was the very antithesis of Aunt Rose, who had always been so afraid of doing something wrong that she never did anything right either? Or did I like Eva Maria because I was not supposed to? That would have been Umberto’s take on it; the surest way of making me hang with the Salimbenis would be to tell me to stay the hell away from them. I guess it was a Juliet thing.

Well, maybe it was time for Juliet to put on her rational hat. According to Presidente Maconi, the Salimbenis would always be the Salimbenis, and according to my cousin Peppo that meant woe unto any Tolomei standing in their way. This had not only held true for the stormy Middle Ages; even now, in present-day Siena, the ghost of maybe-murderer Luciano Salimbeni had not yet left the stage.

On the other hand, maybe it was this kind of prejudice that had kept the old family feud alive for generations. What if the elusive Luciano Salimbeni had never laid a hand on my parents, but had been a suspect solely because of his name? No wonder he had made himself scarce. In a place where you are found guilty by association, your executioner is not likely to sit patiently through a trial.

In fact, the more I thought about it, the more the scales tipped in Eva Maria’s favour; after all, she was the one who seemed most determined to prove that despite our ancestral rivalry, we could still be friends. And if that was really so, I did not want to be the party pooper.

The evening concert was hosted by the Chigiana Musical Academy in Palazzo Chigi-Saracini, right across the street from my friend Luigi’s hair salon. I entered the building through a covered gateway to emerge in an enclosed courtyard with a loggia and an old well in the middle. Knights in shining armour, I thought to myself, would have pulled water from that well for their battle horses, and beneath my high-heeled sandals the stone tiles in the floor were worn smooth from centuries of horses’ hooves and cartwheels. The place was neither too big nor too imposing, and it had a quiet dignity of its own that made me wonder whether the things going on outside the walls of this timeless quadrangle were truly that important.

As I stood there, marvelling at the mosaic ceiling underneath the loggia, an usher handed me a brochure and pointed out the door going up to the concert hall. I glanced at the brochure as I climbed the stairs, expecting it to list the musical programme. But instead, it was a brief history of the building written in several different languages. The English version began:

Palazzo Chigi-Saracini, one of the most beautiful palazzos in Siena, originally belonged to the Marescotti family. The core of the building is very old, but during the Middle Ages the Marescotti family began to incorporate the neighbouring buildings, and, like many other powerful families in Siena, they began the erection of a great tower. It was from this tower that the victory at Montaperti in 1260 was announced, by the sound of a drum, or tambourine.

I stopped in the middle of the staircase to reread the passage. If this was true, and if I had not completely mixed up the names in Maestro Ambrogio’s journal, then the building in which I was currently standing had originally been Palazzo Marescotti, that is, Romeo’s home in 1340.

Only when people started squeezing past me in irritation did I shake off my surprise and move on. So what if it had been Romeo’s home? He and I were separated by nearly seven hundred years, and besides, back then, he had had a Juliet of his own. Despite my new clothes and hair, I was still nothing but a gangly offshoot of the perfect creature that once was.

Janice would have laughed at me if she had known my romantic thoughts. ‘Here we go again,’ she would have jeered, ‘Jules dreaming about a man she can’t have.’ And she was right. But sometimes, those are the best ones.

My strange obsession with historical figures had been kicked off at the age of nine with President Jefferson. While everyone else, including Janice, had posters of pop tarts with exposed midriffs plastered all over their walls, my room was a shrine to my favourite Founding Father. I had gone to great lengths to learn how to write out Thomas in calligraphy, and had even embroidered a cushion with a giant T, which I hugged every night as I fell asleep. Unfortunately, Janice had found my secret notebook and passed it around in class, making everyone howl with laughter at my fanciful drawings of myself standing in front of Monticello wearing a veil and a wedding gown, hand in hand with a very muscular President Jefferson.

After that, everyone had called me Jeff, even the teachers, who had no idea why they did it, and who amazingly never saw me wincing when they spoke to me during lessons. In the end I stopped putting up my hand entirely, and just sat there, hiding behind my hair in the back row, hoping no one would notice me.

In high school – thanks to Umberto – I had started looking towards the ancient world instead, and my fancy had jumped from Leonidas the Spartan to Scipio the Roman and even to Emperor Augustus for a while, until I discovered his dark side. By the time I entered college I had finally strayed so far back in time that my hero was an unnamed caveman living on the Russian steppes, killing woolly mammoths and playing haunting tunes on his bone flute under the full moon, all by himself.

The only one to point out that all my boyfriends had one thing in common was, of course, Janice. ‘Too bad,’ she had said one night, when we were trying to fall asleep in a tent in the garden and she had managed to extract all my secrets one by one, in exchange for caramels that were originally mine, ‘that they are all deader than doornails.’

‘They are not!’ I had protested, already regretting telling her my secrets. ‘Famous people live forever!’

To this, Janice had merely snorted, ‘Maybe, but who wants to kiss a mummy?’

Despite my sister’s best efforts, however, it was no flight of fancy but simple habit for me to now feel a little frisson at the discovery that I was stalking the ghost of Romeo in his own house; the only requirement for us to continue this beautiful relationship was that he stayed just the way he was: dead.

Eva Maria was holding court in the concert hall, surrounded by men in dark suits and women in glittering dresses. It was a tall room decorated in the colours of milk and honey and finished off with touches of gold. About two hundred chairs were set up for the audience, and judging by the number of people already gathered there, it would be no problem filling them. At the far end, members of an orchestra were fine-tuning their instruments, and a large woman in a red dress looked as if she was threatening to sing. As with most spaces in Siena there was nothing modern here to disturb the eye, save the odd rebellious teenager wearing sneakers underneath his pleated trousers.

As soon as she saw me, Eva Maria summoned me to her entourage with a regal wave. As I approached the group, I could hear her introducing me with superlatives I did not deserve, and within minutes I was best friends with some of the leading figures of Sienese culture, one of whom was the President of the Monte dei Paschi Bank in Palazzo Salimbeni.

‘Monte dei Paschi,’ explained Eva Maria, ‘is the greatest protector of the arts in Siena. None of what you see around you would have been possible without the financial support of the Foundation.’

The President looked at me with a slight smile, and so did his wife, who stood right next to him, draped around his elbow. Like Eva Maria, she was a woman whose elegance belied her years, and although I had dressed up for the occasion, her eyes told me I still had a lot to learn. She even seemed to whisper as much to her husband.

‘My wife thinks you don’t believe it,’ said the President teasingly, his accent and dramatic intonation suggesting he was reciting the lyrics of a song. ‘Perhaps you think we are too’ – he had to search for the word – ‘proud of ourselves?’

‘Not necessarily,’ I said, my cheeks heating up under their continuing scrutiny, ‘I just find it…paradoxical that the house of the Marescottis depends on the goodwill of the Salimbenis to survive, that’s all.’

The President acknowledged my logic with a slight nod, as if to confirm that Eva Maria’s superlatives had been appropriate. ‘A paradox, yes.’

‘But the world,’ said a voice behind me, ‘is full of paradoxes.’

‘Alessandro!’ exclaimed the President, suddenly all jollity and game, ‘you must come and meet Signorina Tolomei. She is being very…severe on all of us. Especially on you.’

‘Of course she is.’ Alessandro took my hand and kissed it with facetious chivalry. ‘If she was not, we would never believe she was a Tolomei.’ He looked me straight in the eye before releasing my hand. ‘Would we, Miss Jacobs?’

It was an odd moment. He had clearly not expected to encounter me at the concert, and his reaction did not reflect well on either of us. But I could hardly blame him for grilling me; after all, I had never called him back after he stopped by my hotel three days ago. All this time, his business card had been sitting on my desk like a bad omen from a fortune cookie; only this morning I had finally torn it in half and thrown it in the bin, deciding that if he had really wanted to arrest me, he would have done so already.

‘Sandro,’ said Eva Maria, misinterpreting our intensity, ‘don’t you think Giulietta looks lovely tonight?’

Alessandro managed to smile. ‘Bewitching.’

‘Si-si,’ intervened the President, ‘but who is guarding our money, when you are here?’

‘The ghosts of the Salimbenis,’ replied Alessandro, still looking straight at me. ‘A very formidable power.’

‘Basta!’ Secretly pleased by his words, Eva Maria pretended to frown and tapped him on the shoulder with a rolled-up programme. ‘We will all be ghosts soon enough. Tonight we celebrate life.’

After the concert Eva Maria insisted on going out to dinner, just the three of us. When I began protesting, she played the birthday card and said that on this particular night – ‘as I turn another page in the most excellent and lamentable comedy of life’ – her only wish was to go to her favourite restaurant with two of her favourite people. Strangely, Alessandro did not object at all. In Siena, one clearly did not contradict one’s godmother on her day of days.

Eva Maria’s favourite restaurant was in Via delle Campane, just outside the border of Contrada dell’Aquila, that is, the Eagle neighbourhood. Her favourite table, apparently, was on the elevated deck outside, facing a florist’s shop that was closing down for the night.

‘So,’ she said to me, after ordering a bottle of Prosecco and a plate of antipasto, ‘you don’t like opera!’

‘But I do!’ I protested, sitting awkwardly, my crossed legs barely fitting beneath the table. ‘I love opera. My aunt’s housekeeper used to play it all the time. Especially Aida. It’s just that…Aida is supposed to be an Ethiopian princess, not a triple-wide wonder in her fifties. I’m sorry.’

Eva Maria laughed delightedly. ‘Do what Sandro does. Close your eyes.’

I glanced at Alessandro. He had sat behind me at the concert, and I had felt his eyes on me the whole time. ‘Why? It’s still the same woman singing.’

‘But the voice comes from the soul!’ argued Eva Maria on his behalf, leaning towards me. ‘All you have to do is listen, and you will see Aida the way she really is.’

‘That is very generous.’ I looked at Alessandro. ‘Are you always that generous?’

He did not reply. He didn’t have to.

‘Magnanimity,’ said Eva Maria, testing the Prosecco and deeming it worthy of consumption, ‘is the greatest of all the virtues. Stay away from stingy people. They are trapped in small souls.’

‘According to my aunt’s housekeeper,’ I said, ‘beauty is the greatest virtue. But he would say that generosity is a kind of beauty.’

‘Truth is beauty,’ said Alessandro, speaking at last, ‘beauty, truth. According to Keats. Life is very easy if you live like that.’

‘You don’t?’

‘I’m not an urn.’

I started laughing, but he never even smiled.

Although she clearly wanted us to become friends, Eva Maria was incapable of letting us continue on our own. ‘Tell us more about your aunt!’ she urged me. ‘Why do you think she never told you who you were?’

I looked from one to the other, sensing that they had been discussing my case, and that they had disagreed. ‘I have no idea. I think she was afraid that…or maybe she…’ I looked down. ‘I don’t know.’

‘In Siena,’ said Alessandro, preoccupied with his water glass, ‘your name makes all the difference.’

‘Names, names, names!’ sighed Eva Maria. ‘What I don’t understand is why this aunt – Rosa? – never took you to Siena before.’

‘Maybe she was afraid,’ I said, more sharply this time, ‘that the person who killed my parents would kill me, too.’

Eva Maria sat back, appalled. ‘What a terrible thought!’

‘Well, happy birthday!’ I took a sip of my Prosecco. ‘And thanks for everything.’ I glared at Alessandro, forcing him to meet my eyes. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t stay long.’

‘No,’ he said, nodding once, ‘I imagine it is too peaceful here for your taste.’

‘I like peace.’

Within the coniferous greens of his eyes, I now got a warning glimpse of his soul. It was a disturbing sight. ‘Obviously.’

Rather than replying, I clenched my teeth and turned my attention to the antipasto. Unfortunately, Eva Maria did not pick up on the finer nuances of my emotions; all she saw was my flushed face. ‘Sandro,’ she said, riding what she thought was a wave of flirtation, ‘why have you not taken Giulietta around town and shown her some nice things? She would love to go.’

‘I’m sure she would.’ Alessandro stabbed an olive with his fork, but didn’t eat it. ‘Unfortunately, we don’t have any statues of little mermaids.’

That was when I knew for sure he had checked my file, and that he must have found out everything there was to know about Julie Jacobs – Julie Jacobs the anti-war demonstrator, who had barely returned from Rome before heading off to Copenhagen to protest against the Danish involvement in Iraq by vandalizing the Little Mermaid. Sadly, what the file would not have told him was that it was all a big mistake, and that Julie Jacobs had only gone to Denmark to show her sister that, yes, she dared.

Tasting the dizzying cocktail of fury and fear in my throat, I reached out blindly for the breadbasket, hoping very much my panic didn’t show.

‘No, but we have other nice statues!’ Eva Maria looked at me, then at him, trying to grasp what was going on. ‘And fountains. You must take her to Fontebranda—’

‘Maybe Miss Jacobs would like to see Via dei Malcontenti,’ proposed Alessandro, cutting her off. ‘That was where we used to take the criminals, so their victims could throw things at them on their way to the gallows.’

I returned his unforgiving stare, feeling no further need for concealment. ‘Was anyone ever pardoned?’

‘Yes. It was called banishment. They were told to leave Siena and never come back. In return, their lives would be spared.’

‘Oh, I see,’ I snapped back, ‘just like your family, the Salimbenis.’ I stole a glance at Eva Maria, who was, for a change, dumbstruck. ‘Am I wrong?’

Alessandro did not answer right away. Judging from the play of the muscles in his jaw, he would have liked very much to respond in kind, but knew that he could not do so in front of his godmother. ‘The Salimbeni family,’ he finally said, his voice strained, ‘was expropriated by the government in 1419 and forced to leave the Republic of Siena.’

‘For good?’

‘Obviously not. But they were banished for a long time.’ The way he looked at me suggested that we were now talking about me again. ‘And they probably deserved it.’

‘What if they…came back anyway?’

‘Then’ – he paused for effect, and it struck me that the green in his eyes was not like foliage at all, but cold and crystallized, like the slice of malachite I had presented as a special treasure in fourth grade, before the teacher had explained that it was a mineral mined to extract copper, with evident harm to the environment – ‘they must have had a very good reason.’

‘Enough!’ Eva Maria raised her glass. ‘No more banishment. No more fighting. Now we are all friends.’

For about ten minutes we managed to have a civil conversation. After that, Eva Maria excused herself to go to the restroom, and Alessandro and I were left to each other’s devices. Glancing at him, I caught him running his eyes over me, and for the briefest of moments I was able to convince myself that it was all just a cat-and-mouse game to see whether I was sufficiently feisty to become his playmate for the week. Well, I thought to myself, whatever the cat was plotting, it was in for a nasty surprise.

I reached out for a slice of sausage. ‘Do you believe in redemption?’

‘I don’t care,’ said Alessandro, pushing the platter towards me, ‘what you did in Rome. Or anywhere else. But I do care about Siena. So tell me, why are you here?’

‘Is this an interrogation?’ I spoke with my mouth full. ‘Should I call my lawyer?’

He leaned towards me, his voice low. ‘I could have you in jail like this—’ He snapped his fingers right in front of my nose. ‘Is that really what you want?’

‘You know,’ I said, shovelling more food onto my plate and hoping very much he did not notice my hands shaking, ‘power games have never worked on me. They may have worked wonders for your ancestors, but if you recall, my ancestors were never really that impressed.’

‘Okay.’ He leaned back in his chair, changing tactics. ‘How about this: I’m going to leave you alone on one condition. That you stay away from Eva Maria.’

‘Why don’t you tell that to her?’

‘She is a very special woman, and I don’t want her to suffer.’

I put down my fork. ‘But I do? Is that what you think of me?’

‘You really want to know?’ Alessandro gave me the once-over as if I were an overpriced artifact put up for sale. ‘All right. I think you are beautiful, intelligent…a great actor…’ Seeing my confusion, he frowned and went on, more sternly, ‘I think someone paid you a lot of money to come here and pretend to be Giulietta Tolomei…’

‘What?’

‘…and I think that part of your job is to get close to Eva Maria. But guess what? I’m not going to let that happen.’

I barely knew where to start. Fortunately, his accusations were so surreal that I was too flabbergasted to feel truly wounded. ‘Why,’ I finally said, ‘do you not believe I am Giulietta Tolomei? Is it because I don’t have baby-blue eyes?’

‘You want to know why? I’ll tell you why.’ He leaned forward, elbows on the table. ‘Giulietta Tolomei is dead.’

‘Then how,’ I retorted, leaning forward too, ‘do you explain that I am sitting right here?’

He looked at me for the longest time, searching for something in my face that somehow wasn’t there. In the end he looked away, his lips tight, and I knew that for some reason I had not convinced him, and probably never would.

‘You know what?’ I pushed back my chair and got up. ‘I’m going to take your advice and remove myself from Eva Maria’s company. Tell her thank you for the concert and the food, and tell her that she can have her clothes back whenever she wants them. I am done with them.’

I didn’t wait for his response, but stalked off the deck and away from the restaurant without looking back. As soon as I had turned the first corner and was out of sight, I could feel tears of anger rising, and despite my shoes I started running. The last thing I wanted was for Alessandro to catch up with me and apologize for his rudeness, should he be so human as to try.

Going home that night, I stuck to the shadows and the streets less travelled. As I walked through the darkness, hoping rather than knowing I was going the right way, I was so preoccupied with my discussion with Alessandro – and, more specifically, with all the brilliant things I could have said, but didn’t – that it took me a while to realize I was being followed.

In the beginning it was little more than an eerie feeling of being watched. But soon I began to notice the faint sounds of someone sneaking along behind me. Whenever I forged ahead I could discern a shuffle of clothes and soft soles, but if I slowed down the shuffle disappeared, and I heard nothing but an ominous silence that was almost worse.

Turning abruptly down a random street, I was able to pick up movement and the shape of a man out of the corner of my eye. Unless I was very much mistaken, it was the same thug who had followed me a few days earlier, when I had left the bank in Palazzo Tolomei carrying my mother’s box. My brain had obviously filed our previous encounter under danger, and now that it recognized his shape and gait, it set off a deafening alarm that forced all rational thoughts from my head and made me pull off my shoes and, for the second time that night, start running.

III.II

Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight.For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night

Siena, A.D. 1340

The night was ripe with mischief.

As soon as Romeo and his cousins were out of sight of the Marescotti tower, they threw themselves around a street corner, gasping with laughter. It had been far too easy for them to escape the house this evening, for Palazzo Marescotti was bustling with family visitors from Bologna, and Romeo’s father, Comandante Marescotti, had grudgingly put on a banquet with musicians to entertain the lot. After all, what did Bologna have to offer that Siena could not deliver tenfold?

Knowing very well that they were, once again, violating the Comandante’s curfew, Romeo and his cousins paused to strap on the gaudy carnival masks they always wore on their nightly escapades. As they stood there, struggling with knots and bows, the family butcher walked by with a rack of ham for the party and an assistant carrying a torch, but he was too wise to recognize the youngsters. One day, Romeo would be the master of Palazzo Marescotti and the one who paid for its deliveries.

When the masks were finally in place, the young men put their velvet hats back on, adjusting them for greatest possible concealment. Grinning at the sight of his friends, one of them picked up the lute he had been carrying and struck a few merry chords. ‘Giu-hu-hu-lietta!’ he sang in a teasing falsetto. ‘I would I were thy bi-hi-hird, thy little wanton bi-hihi-hi-hird—’ He made a few birdlike hops, causing everyone but Romeo to gag with laughter.

‘Very funny!’ scowled Romeo. ‘Keep jesting at my scars and I’ll give you a few of your own!’

‘Come on,’ said someone else, champing at the bit, ‘if we don’t hurry, she will be in bed, and your serenade will be nothing but a lullaby.’

Measured in footsteps alone, their journey this evening was not long, barely five hundred strides. But in every other way, it was an odyssey. Despite the late hour, the streets were crawling with people – locals mingling with foreigners, buyers with sellers, pilgrims with thieves – and on every corner stood a prophet with a wax candle, condemning the material world while eyeing every passing prostitute like a dog watching a string of sausages.

Elbowing their way up the street, jumping over a gutter here, a beggar there, and ducking under deliveries and sedan chairs, the young men at length found themselves on the edge of Piazza Tolomei. Stretching to see why the crowd had come to a standstill, Romeo caught a glimpse of a colourful figure swaying to and fro in the black night air on the front steps of the church of San Cristoforo.

‘Look!’ exclaimed one of his cousins. ‘Tolomei has invited San Cristoforo to dinner. But he is not dressed up. Shame on him!’

They all watched in awe as the torch-lit procession from the church made its way across the piazza towards Palazzo Tolomei, and Romeo suddenly knew that here was his chance to enter the forbidding house through the front door rather than stupidly standing around beneath what he presumed was Giulietta’s window. A long line of self-important people trailed behind the priests carrying the saint, and they were all wearing carnival masks. It was commonly known that Messere Tolomei held masked balls every few months in order to sneak banished allies and lawless family members into his house. Had he not, he would scarcely have been able to fill the dancing floor.