Juliet

II.II

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 texts 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 some 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 traveled 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 cell 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 downtown 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 sometime 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. To become a mailman in a place like this, I thought, clairvoyance must be a prerequisite.

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 artsy, 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 neighboring 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 one does 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 shooting out of Piazzetta del Castellare straddling the rear end of 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 suspenders, we zoomed out through the covered alleyway, breaking 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 moves 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 suspenders, “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 artwork of a fullblown 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.

But 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 so much more than just a paint job, and the terra-cotta 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 somehow complemented the decay and made 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 neighbors, 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 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 wedding 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 did not 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-a college dropout vixen 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 downtown 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 favored 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 at 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 to even 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 drag. “This is part of the old Tolomei… hmm… sepulchre. Most of it is underground, and we don’t go down there anymore. 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 snarky comment.

“This is your father,” pointed Peppo, “and your mother right next to him.” He paused to muse on a distant 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 traveling 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 Malamerenda-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 rumors. 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 were 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 tryouts Janice was cast as Juliet, while my role 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 the first words of her lines to her, being, after all, conveniently located onstage with branches for arms.

On opening night, however, she was particularly horrible to me-when 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 did not set a very good tone for the rest of their tender scene. Needless to say, Janice was so furious she chased me through the entire school afterwards, 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 my 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, savoring 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. This 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 years ago or so.

But the good news was that he was dead. In other words, he definitely could not be the tracksuit charmer who-maybe, maybe not-had 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 read:

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 sure had a funny way of phrasing it. It was, in my opinion, not particularly smooth to woo a girl by envisioning 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 terrible 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 process this horrendous 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 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 crawled up my legs. 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, gray hair, sagging cardigan, and open sandals; in fact, he looked most of all like a time traveler 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 weirded out, “are you gonna 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, buddy, I thought, I’ll get right on that.

WHEN I CALLED UMBERTO later that night, he was deeply disturbed by my new insights into 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 the fact that there had 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 figured 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 scam. 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 cheese 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.