Читать книгу Juliet - Anne Fortier - Страница 12

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.’