Juliet

VI.II

Siena , A.D. 1370

THERE IS A STORY THAT NOT MANY people have heard, because it was hushed up by the famous families involved. It starts with Santa Caterina, who had been known for her special powers since she was a little girl. People would come to her from all over Siena with their pains and aches, and would be healed by her touch. Now, as a grown woman, she spent most of her time taking care of the sick at the hospital by the Siena Cathedral, the Santa Maria della Scala, where she had her own room with a bed.

One day Santa Caterina was called to Palazzo Salimbeni, and when she arrived, she saw that everyone in the house was sick with worry. Four nights ago, they told her, there was a great wedding held here, and the bride was a woman of the Tolomeis, the lovely Mina. It had been a magnificent feast, for the groom was a son of Salimbeni, and the two families were there together, eating and singing, celebrating a long peace.

But when the groom went to his wedding chamber in the midnight hour, his bride was not there. He asked the servants, but no one had seen her, and he was filled with fear. What had happened to his Mina? Did she run away? Or was she abducted by enemies? But who would dare do such a thing to the Tolomeis and the Salimbenis? It was impossible. So, the groom ran everywhere, looking for his bride, upstairs, downstairs, asking the servants, asking the guards, but everyone told him that Mina could not have left the house unseen. And his heart as well said no! He was a kind young man, a handsome man. She would never run away from him. But now, this young Salimbeni must tell his father, and her father, and when they heard what was wrong, the whole house began searching for Mina.

For hours they searched-in the bedrooms, the kitchen, even in the servants’ quarters-until the lark started singing, and they finally gave up. But now that a new day had begun, the oldest grandmother of the wedding party, Monna Cecilia, came downstairs to find them sitting there, all in tears and talking of war against these, war against those. And old Monna Cecilia listened to them, and then she said to them, “Sad gentlemen, come with me, and I will find your Mina. For there is one place in the house you have not looked, and I feel in my heart that she is there.”

Monna Cecilia took them down, down, deep underneath the earth and into the ancient dungeons of Palazzo Salimbeni. And she showed them that the doors had been opened with the household keys that were given to the bride in the wedding ceremony, and she told them what they already knew: that these were caverns where no one had come for many years, for fear of the darkness. The old men in the wedding party were terrified, for they could not believe that the new bride had been given keys to all these secret doors, and they got more and more angry as they went, and more and more afraid. For they knew that there was much darkness down there, and that many things had happened in the past, before the Plague, that were best forgotten. So there they were, all the great men, walking after old Monna Cecilia with their torches, not believing their eyes.

At last they came to a room that was used in the old days for punishment, and now Monna Cecilia stopped, and all the men stopped too, and they heard the sound of someone crying. Without hesitation, the young groom rushed forward with his torch, and when the light reached the far corner of the cell, he saw his bride there, sitting on the floor in her fine blue nightgown. She was shivering with cold, and so afraid that she screamed when she saw the men, for she did not recognize anyone, even her own father.

Of course, they picked her up and brought her upstairs into the light, and they wrapped her in wool and gave her water to drink and nice things to eat, but Mina kept shaking and pushed them all away. Her father tried to talk to her, but she turned her head away and would not look at him. At last the poor man took her by the shoulders and asked his daughter, “Do you not remember that you are my little Mina?” But Mina pushed him away with a sneer and said, in a voice that was not hers, a voice as dark as death, “No,” she said, “I am not your Mina. My name is Lorenzo.”

You can imagine the horror of both families when they realized that Mina had lost her mind. The women started praying to the Virgin Mary, and the men started accusing each other of being bad fathers, and brothers, and of finding poor Mina so late. The only one who was calm was old Monna Cecilia, who sat down with Mina and stroked her hair and tried to make her speak again.

But Mina rocked back and forth and would not look at anyone until Monna Cecilia finally said, “Lorenzo, Lorenzo, my dear, I am Monna Cecilia. I know what they did to you!”

Now at last, Monna Mina looked at the old woman and started crying again. And Monna Cecilia embraced her and let her cry, for hours, until they fell asleep together on the wedding bed. For three days Monna Mina slept, and she had dreams, terrible dreams, and she woke up the whole house with her screams, until at last the families decided to call for Santa Caterina.

After she had heard the whole story, Santa Caterina understood that Monna Mina had become possessed by a spirit. But she was not afraid. She sat by the young woman’s bed all night and prayed without a pause, and by morning, Monna Mina woke up and remembered who she was.

There was much joy in the house, and everybody praised Santa Caterina, even though she scolded them and said that the praise was due only to Christ. But even in this hour of great joy, Monna Mina was still troubled, and when they asked her what was troubling her, she told them that she had a message for them, from Lorenzo. And that she could not rest until she had delivered it. You can imagine how everyone must have been terrified to hear her speak of this Lorenzo again, this spirit who had possessed her, but they said to her, “Very well, we are ready to hear the message.” But Monna Mina could not remember the message, and she started crying again, and everyone was horrified. Maybe, they worried to each other in hushed voices, she would lose her mind once more.

But now, the wise Santa Caterina handed Monna Mina a feather dipped in ink and said, “My dear, let Lorenzo write his message with your hand.”

“But I cannot write!” said Mina.

“No,” said Santa Caterina, “but if Lorenzo has the skill, his hand will move yours.”

So, Monna Mina took the feather and sat for a while, waiting for her hand to move, and Santa Caterina prayed for her. At last, Monna Mina got up without a word and went out onto the stairs like a sleepwalker and down, down, deep into the basement, with everyone following her. And when she came into the room where they found her, she went to the wall and started running her finger over it, as if she was writing, and the men came forward with torches to watch what she was doing. They asked her what she was writing, but Monna Mina said, “Just read!” And when they told her that her writing was invisible, she said, “No, it is right there, do you not see?”

Now Santa Caterina had the good idea to send a boy to fetch clothes dye from her father’s workshop, and she made Monna Mina dip her finger in the dye and write once again what she had already written before. And Monna Mina filled the whole wall, this woman who had never learned to read or write, and what she wrote made all the great men cold with fear. This was the message that the spirit Lorenzo made Monna Mina write:

A plague on both your houses

You shall all perish in fire and gore

Your children forever wail under a mad moon

Till you undo your sins and kneel before the Virgin

And Giulietta wakes to behold her Romeo

When Monna Mina had finished writing, she fell into the arms of her groom, calling him by his name, and asked him to take her away from the room, as her task was over. So he did, crying with relief, and brought her upstairs, into the light, and Monna Mina never spoke with the voice of Lorenzo again. But she never forgot what had happened to her, and decided that she wanted to understand who this Lorenzo had been, and why he had spoken through her, even though her father and father-in-law did everything in their power to keep the truth from her.

Monna Mina was a stubborn woman, a true Tolomei. She spent many hours with old Monna Cecilia when her husband was away on business, listening to stories of the past, and asking many questions. And although the old woman was afraid at first, she also knew that it would give her peace to pass on this heavy burden to someone else, so that the truth would not die with her.

Monna Cecilia told Monna Mina that just where she had written that terrible curse on the wall, was where a young monk named Friar Lorenzo had written the same words many, many years earlier, in his own blood. It was the room where they had kept and tortured him until he died.

“But who?” Monna Mina asked, leaning over the table to clasp Monna Cecilia’s gnarled hands in her own. “Who did this to him, and why?”

“A man,” Monna Cecilia said, her head drooping with sorrow, “whom I have long since stopped thinking of as my father.”

THIS MAN, MONNA CECILIA explained, had ruled the Salimbeni household in the era of the great Plague, and he had ruled it like a tyrant. Some people tried to pardon him by saying that, when he was a little boy, Tolomei bandits had killed his mother before his very eyes, but that does not excuse a man for doing the same to others. And that was what Salimbeni did. He was cruel to his enemies, and severe on his family; whenever he was tired of his wives, he locked them away in the countryside and instructed the servants to never feed them quite enough. And as soon as they were dead, he married anew. As he grew older, his wives grew younger, but in the end not even youth could please him anymore, and in his desperation he developed an unnatural desire for a young woman whose parents he himself had ordered killed. Her name was Giulietta.

Despite the fact that Giulietta was already secretly betrothed to another, and that the Virgin Mary was believed to have blessed the young couple, Salimbeni forced his own marriage with the girl, and by doing so provoked the most formidable enemy a man could have. For everyone knew that the Virgin Mary did not like human interference in her plans, and, indeed, the whole thing ended in death and misery. Not only did the young lovers kill themselves, but Salimbeni’s oldest son perished, too, in a desperate struggle to defend his father’s honor.

For all these insults and griefs, Salimbeni arrested and tortured Friar Lorenzo, holding him responsible for secretly helping the young lovers in their disastrous affair. And he invited Giulietta’s uncle, Messer Tolomei, to witness the punishment of the insolent monk who had destroyed their plans of uniting the two feuding families through marriage. These were the men Friar Lorenzo cursed with his writing on the wall: Messer Salimbeni and Messer Tolomei.

After the monk had died, Salimbeni buried the body under the floor of the torture chamber as was his custom. And he had his servants wash off the curse and put new chalk on the wall. But he soon discovered that these measures were not sufficient to undo what had happened.

When Friar Lorenzo appeared to him in a dream a few nights later, warning him that no soap and no chalk could ever erase the curse, Salimbeni became filled with fear and closed off the old torture chamber to contain the evil powers of the wall. And now, suddenly, he began to listen to the voices of people saying he was cursed, and that the Virgin Mary was looking for a way to punish him. The voices were everywhere; in the street, in the market, in church-even when he was all alone he heard them. And when, one night, a great fire broke out in Palazzo Salimbeni, he was sure it was all part of Friar Lorenzo’s curse, which called for his family to “perish in fire and gore.”

It was about this time that the first rumors of the Black Death came to Siena. Pilgrims came back from the Orient with stories of a terrible plague that had destroyed more villages and towns than a mighty army, but most people thought it was only something that would strike the heathens. They were sure that the Virgin Mary would-as she had done many times before-spread her protective cape over Siena, and that prayers and candles could keep the evil at bay, should it ever cross the ocean.

But Salimbeni had long lived with the illusion that everything good that happened around him was an effect of his brilliance. Now that something bad was coming, it was only natural for him to think that this, too, was his doing. And so he became obsessed with the idea that he and he alone was the cause of every disaster that happened around him, and that it was his fault the Plague was threatening to come to Siena. In his madness he dug up the bodies of Giulietta and Romeo from their unholy ground, and made for them a most holy grave in order to silence the voices of the people or, maybe more accurately, the voices in his own head blaming him for the deaths of a young couple whose love had been blessed by Heaven.

He was so eager to make peace with the ghost of Friar Lorenzo that he spent many nights looking at the curse written out on a piece of parchment, trying to find a way of meeting the demand to “undo your sins and kneel before the Virgin.” He even had clever professors from the university come to his house and speculate on how to make Giulietta “wake to behold her Romeo,” and they were the ones who finally came up with a plan.

In order to do away with the curse, they said, Salimbeni must begin by understanding that riches are evil, and that a man who possesses gold is no happy man. Once he has admitted that much, he will not be sorry to pay large sums of his fortune to people devoted to ridding him of his guilt, such as clever professors from the university. Also, such a man will be happy to commission an expensive sculpture that will, most certainly, do away with the curse and help its owner at last sleep soundly at night, knowing that he alone, by sacrificing his wicked money, has bought forgiveness for his entire city, and credits against the rumored plague.

The statue, they told him, must be placed on Giulietta and Romeo’s grave, and it must be covered in the purest gold. It must depict the young couple and do it in such a way that it would become an antidote to Friar Lorenzo’s curse. Salimbeni must take the precious gems from Giulietta’s bridal crown and use them as eyes in the sculpture: two green emeralds in the head of Romeo, and two blue sapphires in the head of Giulietta. And underneath the statue, an inscription must read:

Here sleeps true and faithful Giulietta

By the love and mercy of God

To be woken by Romeo, her rightful spouse

In an hour of perfect grace

In that way, Salimbeni could artificially re-create their moment of resurrection, allowing the two young lovers to behold each other again and forever, and allowing every citizen of Siena to see the sculpture and call Salimbeni a generous and religious man.

To aid this impression, however, Salimbeni must make sure to cultivate a story of his own benevolence, and to commission a tale that freed him from guilt altogether. The tale must be of Romeo and Giulietta, and it must contain much poetry and much confusion, as good art does, for an accomplished storyteller brimming with dazzling falsehoods commands far more attention than an honest bore.

As for those people who would still not be silent on the issue of Salimbeni’s guilt, they must be silenced, either by gold in their hands or iron in their backs. For only by getting rid of such malicious tongues could Salimbeni ever hope to be purified in the eyes of the people and find his way back into their prayers and thus into the holy ears of Heaven.

Those were the recommendations from the university professors, and Salimbeni set about meeting their demands with much vigor. Firstly-following their own advice-he made sure to silence the professors before they could slander him. Secondly, he employed a local poet to fabricate a tale about two star-crossed lovers whose tragic deaths were no one’s fault but their own, and to circulate it among the reading classes, not as fiction, but as a truth shamefully ignored. Finally, Salimbeni employed the great artist, Maestro Ambrogio, to oversee the work with the golden statue. And once it was ready-with the precious eyes in place-he posted four armed guards in the chapel at all times, to protect the immortal couple.

But even the statue and the guards could not hold the Plague at bay. For over a year the horrible disease ravaged Siena, covering healthy bodies in black boils and killing almost everyone it touched. Half the entire population perished-for every person that lived, another died. In the end, there were not enough survivors to bury the dead; the streets ran with rot and gore, and those who could still eat were starving for lack of food.

Once it was over, the world had changed. The slate of men’s memory had been wiped clean, for better and for worse. Those who had survived were too busy with their needs to care much for art and old gossip, and so the story of Romeo and Giulietta became little more than a faint echo from another world, occasionally remembered, but only in fragments. As for the grave, it was gone forever, buried under a mountain of death, and few people were left who knew the value of the statue. Maestro Ambrogio, who had personally affixed the gemstones and knew what they were, was one of the many thousand Sienese who had died during the Plague.

WHEN MONNA MINA had heard everything Monna Cecilia knew about Friar Lorenzo, she decided that there was still something that could be done to appease his ghost. And so on a day when her husband had seemed particularly enamored with her before riding off on business, she ordered six capable servants to follow her into the basement and break up the floor of the old torture chamber.

Naturally, the servants were not happy with their morbid task, but seeing their mistress standing so patiently next to them as they worked, urging them on with promises of cakes and sweets, they dared not complain.

Over the course of the morning, they found the bones not just of one, but of several people. At first, the discovery of death and molestation made them all sick to the stomach, but when they saw that Monna Mina-although pale-did not budge, they soon overcame their horror and picked up their tools to continue their work. And as the day went on, they were all filled with ardent admiration for the young woman, who was so determined to rid the house of its evil.

Once all the bones had been recovered, Monna Mina had the servants wrap them in shrouds and take them to the cemetery, except for the most recent remains, which, she was sure, must be Friar Lorenzo’s. Not quite sure what to do, she sat for a while with the body, looking at the silver crucifix that had been clutched in its hand, until a plan formed in her head.

Before her marriage, Monna Mina had had a confessor, a holy and wonderful man, who came from the south, from the town of Viterbo, and who had often spoken of the town’s cathedral, San Lorenzo. Would not this be the right place to send the monk’s remains, she wondered, that his holy brothers might help him find peace at last, far away from the Siena that had caused him such unspeakable woes?

When her husband returned that evening, Monna Mina had everything prepared. Friar Lorenzo’s remains were now in a wooden coffin, ready to be loaded onto a cart, and a letter had been written to the priests at San Lorenzo, explaining just enough to make them understand that here was a man who deserved an end to his sufferings. The only thing wanting was her husband’s permission and a handful of money for the venture to be launched, but Monna Mina was a woman who had already learned-in just a few months of marriage-how a pleasant evening could extract such things from a man.

Early next morning, before the mists had lifted from Piazza Salimbeni, she stood at her bedroom window, her husband blissfully asleep in the bed behind her, and saw the cart with the coffin leaving for Viterbo. Around her neck hung Friar Lorenzo’s crucifix, cleaned and polished. Her first instinct had been to put it in the coffin with the monk’s remains, but in the end she had decided to keep it as a token of their mystical connection.

She did not yet understand why he had chosen to speak through her and force her hand to write an old curse that had called down a plague on her own family, but she had a feeling he had done it out of kindness, to tell her that she must somehow find a cure. And until she did, she would keep the crucifix to remind her of the words on the wall, and of the man whose last thoughts had not been for himself, but for Romeo and Giulietta.