O, Juliet (31 page)

“My love,” I moaned.

“Listen, listen . . . ,” he whispered.

He smiled. “It is good, is it not?”

“The best you have ever written.”

I searched frantically for words of comfort. Something, anything, of hopeful cheer must be said. It came to me suddenly.

“The God of Love will intervene,” I said.

“What?” I could see his sight was dimming.

“The God of Love . . . he is our personal savior.When someone takes his own life for a sentiment as pure as ours, he goes to a special heaven over which our god presides. A heaven for those who die for love.”

His laugh was weak. “I think our poet would approve . . . of this heaven.” Romeo’s heavy-lidded eyes closed. “I see it. It is indeed beautiful. A huge walled garden with soft carpets of flowers, and rows of vines. Glorious trees—olive and walnut and fig. A two-sided marble fountain there in the center, one part of cool, clear water, the other of wine. The sky overhead is deep blue with clouds . . . endlessly changing their shapes into faces and fabulous creatures. A great entertainment.”

He gasped a breath.

“Romeo, stay with me!”

I kissed him then, with all my might and all my fervor. He raised his head and kissed me back, and I thought the mad thought that I might somehow kiss the life back into him. But then his head fell limp and heavy into my lap. He lay looking up at my face with love and desperation.

“Forgive me,” he whispered.

In the next moment I saw the light that was his life flicker . . . then fade . . . then extinguish entirely.

So slender a thread,
I thought, and closed his eyes with my hand. I sat still as a statue and death, like fine dust, rose around me. The torch crackled on the wall. Oh, this tomb was cold!

It came suddenly to mind that perhaps
if I willed the breath out of me
, I, too, might expire. I pushed the air from my lungs and held, held, held . . . but the breath returned in a panicked rush.

I sobbed with my failure.

I felt the weight of death in my lap but held my eyes high, refusing its unbearable sight. Then Dante whispered low in my ear,
“I cannot keep my devastated eyes from looking ever and again at you.”

With the last of my courage I lowered my gaze and took in the sight of Romeo’s body, lean and finely muscled. Graceful even in death. I grasped his arms to fold them into a cross on his chest. It was then I saw that he wore our braided gold marriage ring, the same as I had been too cowardly to wear.

Oh, the sight of it!

I cried out and fell on him, weeping and kissing his hands, breast, cheeks, mouth. I kissed his eyelids then, one by one, feeling the moist, delicate skin under my lips’ touch.

I prayed for a taste of that oblivion I had recently known. No thought. No pain. But then I would wake to find my love—the whole meaning of my life—gone from me. But there
was
a way! A clear path to oblivion. With a steady hand I pulled the dagger at Romeo’s waist from its sheath. I held it up to torchlight, a strange and beautiful artifact. It was sharp, its point narrow and still wet with blood—Jacopo’s.

I wiped it clean on my funeral veil.

My fingers touched the place on my breast where I felt my heartbeat below it. I was sure my skin could not long resist such sharp steel. My arms were strong enough for a single hard, downward thrust. The pain would be brief, a trifle compared to the dry, grating agony that already raked my chest.

There is no special heaven,
I thought bitterly
.
Our precious God of Love was nothing but a cruel trickster. One who teased his devoted children with morsels of the most delicious existence, only to revoke them with violence and death
.

I grasped the hilt in woven-fingered prayer and held the blade over my heart. I closed my eyes.

“Juliet!”

The echoing voice startled me and the dagger fell from my grasp, clattering on the marble floor at my side. I looked up to see hurrying toward me down the catacomb’s aisle a familiar form, a torch held high before her.

Lucrezia.

“Dear friend,” she cried as she set her torch on the wall. Then she saw the still form of my husband, his head cradled in my lap. “Oh, oh, poor Romeo!” She knelt across from me and placed her hand on his lifeless chest. Tears threatened, but she refused to let them fall. She looked at me. “Thank God you are back among the living. Come, we must away.”

I stayed planted firmly where I was.

“Please,” she pleaded. “Friar Bartolomo stands guard outside the tomb door. We cannot be found here.”

“Bartolomo is the cause of Romeo’s death.”

Lucrezia looked stricken. “I know. He arrived in Florence just after Romeo . . .” She stumbled on the words.

“After Romeo killed Jacopo.”

Then her eyes fell on the blade that had dropped from my hand. “Juliet, what are you contemplating?”

“An end to my grief.”

“I do not think Romeo would wish you to take your own life.”

“He said that. He did.”

Lucrezia grew hopeful. But then she saw my stubborn expression.

“Do you not fear God’s punishment?”

“What worse punishment can he have in store any greater than this?”

Lucrezia’s face was full of anger. I needed to make her understand.

“For a moment in time,” I said, “a man knew me for who I was and, without reservation, loved me for who I was. How can I now live knowing no one will ever see me again in such a perfect light? Hear me as I wish to be heard? Love me as Romeo loved me?”

“By holding the memory in your heart!” she cried.

“What, exist in memory the rest of my life? That is not living, Lucrezia.”

“Then write it. In poetry. Let your love flow through the point of your quill, find form on the page.”

“ ‘The Story of Romeo and Juliet,’ ” I mused. “To bring hope to all that true love can flower in a world as cruel and comfortless as this one. But
you
will have to write it.” I managed a smile. “Just be sure to write it as a man.”

“Oh, Juliet!”

“Lucrezia, friend, I am done with this life. It is done with me. All that made it worth living is here on my knee. What lies outside this tomb is more a death than what lies within.”

She was shaking her head from side to side.

“Would you ask me to live only for the sake of living? Or for fear of eternal damnation?”

She set her lips firm and refused to look at me.

“I begged Romeo to stay with me, but much as he wished, he could not. And much as I will miss your tender friendship, I cannot stay with you. But don’t you remember? You have ‘an extraordinary life’ ahead. A brilliant future of love and children and learning and beauty. Live it with me in your heart. And Romeo. Remember us, and we will live forever. I promise you. Now go, friend, please go. Tell the friar you found us both gone to our maker. Seek help before you enter here again. And one thing more. Take Viola into your house, her husband and child, too. There is another marriage for love to sweeten your life.”

“What kind of friend am I to leave you here like this!” she sobbed, her face awash with tears.

“The very best friend. One who truly understands my heart. Here, give me a kiss.”

She took my face in her hands and laid her lips on my forehead. I held her fingers to my cheeks, not wishing to release them and dreading the last sight of this beautiful angel. But with a wounded cry she stood and, taking her torch from the wall, strode away into the dark of the catacomb’s aisle.

I looked down upon Romeo’s face. Strangely, I felt heat flowing into my limbs.

“Here we are, my love, alone at last. No one to harry us. Here in the peaceful calm.”

I touched his skin and found it warm.

“Are you still close enough to hear?” I whispered. I bent down and spoke into the cusp of his ear. “I’m frightened. Not of fiery hell or shrieking harpies overhead. Only of failing to find you.”

I kissed him one last time.

“If there is any justice in the world, I will.”

I fumbled at my side and found the handle of Romeo’s blade. I placed its tip above my breast and prayed for strength and grace.

“Oh, happy dagger,” I prayed, “take me home!”

 

“Juliet . . .”

My name was being called. I heard it as if from a distance and I saw a point of light before my eyes.

A star . . . the one at the tip of Taurus’s chin. I was speeding through the blackest of night skies, but where it once was filled with glittering points of fire, it now but showed the one constellation—the bull in all its power and glory.

Those fixed points grew larger and brighter, glowing like each was a sun unto itself. But the light did not blind me. No, no. The whole of the heavens had gone from black to white.

White as clouds. Clouds endlessly changing their shapes into faces and fabulous creatures. Oh! Now I could see there was blue sky. Blue as a summer’s day. And a wall. A garden wall, ivy tendrils and flowery vines tumbling gracefully down.

Then I saw it. A ladder set against the stone, and I heard my name called again.

“Ju-li-et!”

I began to climb. It was high, this wall, but my legs and arms carried me up and up, my heart bursting with hope and joy.

“Come to me, love. Come to me now!”

His hand reached down, that hand with its woven band of gold. He gripped me tight and lifted me up and into his warm embrace.

Romeo smiled. “See where you are.”

Above in the changing clouds I saw for the briefest moment the shape of the God of Love. Below was the Garden of Sweetest Delights. Flowers in the colors of silk danced in the soft breeze on broad meadows. A grove of ancient olives and walnuts and figs shaded a clear rushing stream. And there beside it, contentedly grazing, two white horses.

But the garden, I could see now, was walled on only three sides. From where we stood on high, I saw in the distance lands of great majesty. Mountains. Deserts. A city of golden spires. A sunlit sea. All stretching to infinity.

Romeo came close, his sweet breath caressing my face.

“This is ours,” he whispered. “For eternity.”

Cosimo de’ Medici
, for his extraordinary service to the Republic of Florence, was named at his death
Pater Patriae—
“Father of the Country.” Through his singular efforts and investments in learning and the arts, and
Poggio Bracciolini
’s scouting for the lost books of antiquity, Europe emerged from the Dark Ages into the brilliant light of the Renaissance.

Cosimo’s daughter-in-law
Lucrezia Tornabuoni de’ Medici
became the foremost woman of the age—shrewd businesswoman, supporter of the greatest artists of the day, and primary patron of Sandro Botticelli. Lucrezia’s marriage to Piero de’ Medici was an unusually happy one, and their firstborn son, Lorenzo—taking up the reins from his grandfather Cosimo—presided over the Golden Age of the Italian Renaissance. For his brilliant leadership and patronage of the arts and philosophy, he came to be known as “Lorenzo the Magnificent.” Her younger son she named Giuliano. Two of her grandchildren became popes. But Lucrezia de’ Medici’s greatest personal achievement had nothing to do with her offspring or the patronage of others.

She became the greatest poetess of her time.

A
cknowledging those who have helped me in writing my novels is always a pleasure. But during the course of writing and promoting my last two books, an interesting shift occurred. While each individual assisted and supported me in his or her own particular way, I realized that everyone’s efforts had transmogrified into a well-oiled “team effort.”

Communication was open, smooth, and easy. Everybody—aside from doing the jobs at which they were experts—all worked laterally, “outside the box,” as they say. Agents gave me wonderful story notes; my editor came up with marketing strategies; publicists, my webmistress, bloggers and fellow authors supplied ideas for promotion. Thus enthusiastically surrounded, supported, and protected, I was able to do my job—writing and promoting my books—comfortably and happily.

David Forrer and Kimberly Witherspoon, my agents since the beginning, are simply awesome. Lyndsey Blessing, Alexis Hurley, and Susan Hobson in foreign rights, keep my books flowing out into the rest of the world. Rose Marie Morse and Patricia Burke brought expertise in publicity and Hollywood that beautifully rounded out the agency team and really spiced up the stew.

When it comes to editors, there are none that compare with Kara Cesare—smart, insightful, and compassionate. I can always count on her to be at my side from soup to nuts and never steer me wrong. Editorial director Claire Zion is a veritable lion, and made the promotional phase of the editorial process a dream. While she is not in my everyday purview, I always know that publisher Kara Welsh is covering my back. Publicists Megan Swartz and Kaitlin Kennedy really “worked the room” with
Signora da Vinci
. When it came to
O, Juliet
, Caitlin Brown and Julia Fleischaker in publicity, and Ashley Fisher in marketing knocked themselves out. The folks in the art department, who have designed consistently stunning covers for all my books, went way beyond the beyond for
O, Juliet
.

Many thanks to Roberto Zecca for all his help researching olive growing and pressing in the fifteenth century, the history of Florence, and the hills and villas south of the city.

Thirty-year partner in crime Billie Morton, and dear friend Betty Hammett—my trusted “first readers”—gave me the thumbs-up on this manuscript. Once I had that, I knew I could breathe a sigh of relief. James “the Padre” Arimond again assisted me with all things Latin and religious, and my all-around assistant, Tasya, turned chaos into order.