Juliet. Anne Fortier

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       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.