Juliet

To my beloved mother,

Birgit Malling Eriksen, whose magnanimity and Herculean research made this book possible

Go hence to have more talk of these sad things. Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished, For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

Shakespeare

Cover Page

Title Page

Epigraph

The Prologue

I.I

I.II

I.III

II.I

II.II

II.III

III.I

III.II

III.III

III.IV

IV.I

IV.II

IV.III

IV.IV

IV.V

V.I

V.II

V.III

V. IV

V. V

VI.I

VI.II

VII.I

VII.II

VIII.I

VIII.II

VIII.III

IX.I

IX.II

IX.III

X

Author’s Note

About the Type

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

They say I died.

My heart stopped, and I was not breathing – in the eyes of the world I was really dead. Some say I was gone for three minutes, some say four; personally, I am beginning to think death is mostly a matter of opinion.

Being Juliet, I suppose I should have seen it coming. But I so wanted to believe that, this time around, it would not be the same old lamentable tragedy. This time, we would be together forever, Romeo and I, and our love would never again be suspended by dark centuries of banishment and death.

But you can’t fool the Bard. And so I died as I must, when my lines ran out, and fell back into the well of creation.

O happy pen. This is thy sheet.

There ink, and let me begin.

Alack, alack, what blood is this which stainsThe stony entrance of this sepulchre?

It has taken me a while to decide where to start. You could argue that my story began more than six hundred years ago, with a highway robbery in mediaeval Tuscany. Or, more recently, with a dance and a kiss at Castello Salimbeni, when my parents met for the first time. But I would never have come to know any of this without the event that changed my life overnight and forced me to travel to Italy in search of the past. That event was the death of my great-aunt Rose.

It took Umberto three days to find me and tell me the sad news. Considering my virtuosity in the art of disappearing, I am amazed he succeeded at all. But then, Umberto always had an uncanny ability to read my mind and predict my movements, and besides, there were only so many Shakespeare summer camps in Virginia.

How long he stood there, watching the theatre performance from the back of the room, I do not know. I was backstage as always, too absorbed in the kids, their lines and props, to notice anything else around me until the curtain fell. After the dress rehearsal that afternoon, someone had misplaced the vial of poison, and for lack of anything better, Romeo would have to commit suicide by eating Tic Tacs.

‘But they give me heartburn!’ the boy had complained, with all the accusatory anxiety of a fourteen-year-old.

‘Excellent!’ I had said, resisting a motherly urge to adjust the velvet hat on his head. ‘That’ll help you stay in character.’

Only when the lights came on afterwards, and the kids dragged me onstage to bombard me with gratitude, did I notice the familiar figure looming near the exit, contemplating me through the applause. Stern and statuesque in his dark suit and tie, Umberto stood out like a lone reed of civilization in a primordial swamp. He always had. For as long as I could remember, he had never worn a single piece of clothing that could be considered casual. Khaki shorts and golf shirts, to Umberto, were the garments of men who have no virtues left, not even shame.

Later, when the onslaught of grateful parents subsided and I could finally leave the stage, I was stopped briefly by the programme director, who took me by the shoulders and shook me heartily – he knew me too well to attempt a hug. ‘Good job with the youngsters, Julie!’ he gushed. ‘I can count on you again next summer, can’t I?’

‘Absolutely,’ I lied, walking on. ‘I’ll be around.’

Approaching Umberto at last, I looked in vain for that little spark of happiness in the corner of his eyes that was usually there when he saw me again after some time away. But there was no smile, not even a trace, and I now understood why he had come. Stepping silently into his embrace, I wished I had the power to flip reality upside down like an hourglass, and that life was not a finite affair, but rather a perpetually recurring passage through a little hole in time.

‘Don’t cry, principessa,’ he said into my hair, ‘she wouldn’t have liked it. We can’t all live forever. She was eighty-two.’

‘I know. But…’ I stood back and wiped my eyes. ‘Was Janice there?’

Umberto’s eyes narrowed as they always did when my twin sister was mentioned. ‘What do you think?’ Only then, up close, did I see that he looked bruised and bitter, as if he had spent the last few nights drinking himself to sleep. But perhaps it had been a natural thing to do. Without Aunt Rose what would become of Umberto? For as long as I could remember, the two of them had been yoked together in a necessary partnership of money and muscle – she had played the withering belle, he the patient butler – and despite their differences, clearly neither of them had ever been willing to attempt life without the other.