Juliet's Nurse (28 page)

The blood comes up in her cheeks, scarleting my pure lamb. I flush as well, the sudden fevering that’s struck me half a dozen times a day during these weeks past flashing over me once more. But for all the heat, we wrap arms around each other, joy echo
ing with joy as we breathe air fruited by peach and poperin pear. Breathing together that sweetest of anticipation just before lips part and teeth sink in, and juice and taste explode upon the tongue.

Though I’d lieve not ever let her go, I pull away first, so I’ll not feel what it is to try to hold her longer than she would be held. “Get you to San Fermo, and take care none see you till the friar’s done his part. I must fetch the roping ladder by which Romeo’ll climb to you once the day turns dark.” I’ve been her age. Knowing what stirs a heart, and other parts as well, I add, “Though I’m the drudge, and toil in your delight, you shall bear the burden that’ll come at night.”

She laughs and blushes deeper. So new-woke with love, she twitters like a wanton’s bird. Reciting some pretty poesy, she calls parting such sweet sorrow, gives me a giddy kiss, and turns away to meet her match at Friar Lorenzo’s cell.

It’s no easy thing to watch her leave alone. But I must think for both of us, and be ready for what comes after the marriage vows are trothed. And so I kneel next to the arbor hive, careful not to block the bees as they stream forth. Sliding a hand beneath the cut log, I draw out the box Tybalt long ago hid there.

It’s no fine cassone. Not carved by a skilled hand, nor painted with some impressive scene, nor tooled in precious leather. The box he chose is simple, to attract no notice. Even the bees fly blithely by as I lift the lid and remove the sack that lies within, my fingers clumsy as I undo the knot. When the pouch opens, I rock back and pour what the hives and I have earned into my lap. Though it’s not a hundredth of what Lord Cappelletto’d give to dowry Juliet, it’ll buy what I’d have her have. A new drawn-thread bedsheet im
ported from some far-off port, to lay upon with the husband only she and I and Friar Lorenzo will know she has.

I count out enough to purchase a sheet as wide as her broad bed, slipping the coins inside my gown. Handful by handful, I work the rest into the sack. Twist and tie it, and lay it in the box, then slide the box back into place. Tybalt must not notice it’s been moved. Must not question me, on this of all days. But Tybalt seems to have forgotten the bees. The clay bowl beside the hive is dry. I draw water from the courtyard well to give the honey gatherers, before making my own bizz-buzzing way from Ca’ Cappelletti.

Romeo’s man is little more than a boy, and for all Romeo swore he was good at keeping confidence, he’s no good at keeping time, and so he keeps me waiting in the day’s hottest sun. When at last he arrives with the roped ladder, my thirst’s so great I’m grateful he slips out a bulging skin filled with aqua vitae, so we can drink to the marriage of his master to my mistress. A happy omen, for my first sampling of such was on the day I wed Pietro. My new husband taught me to taste the fiery liquor with his own tongue, and sang a merry rhyme to ease me to it.
The first sip is bracing, the second’s a blessing, the third’s your last care in the world.

I sing the foolish verse to Romeo’s Balthasar, as he tells me he is called, and he sings it back to me in a wavering contralto. Though I miss the deep resonance of Pietro’s basso, I’m glad to have another voice mingle with my own, celebrating the vows Juliet and Romeo have by now already made beneath Friar Lorenzo’s cross. Once we
empty the skin, Balthasar bows to me and I make curtsy, and we go our ways. Mine is toward the Mercato Vecchio, where I must find among the fabric merchants a bedsheet fine enough for Juliet’s parting with her maidenhead.

Just before I reach the marketplace, a flash of regal carmine catches my eye. I draw back, for the last man I want to see today is Paris.

But it’s Mercutio who stumbles from the nearby passageway, his carmine robe stained with a darker crimson. A sword drops from his hand, metal clattering against street-stones as he curses Cappelletti and Montecchi.

I espy within the passageway a second sword. Wet with blood and being slid by a quaking hand back into its too-familiar scabbard. My eyes catch Tybalt’s, and in that instant I read his terror at what he’s done.

Mercutio lets out an animal’s anguished howl. He cries, “A plague on both your houses,” and crumples to the ground.

FIFTEEN

A
plague on both your houses
.

If Mercutio’s many fornications are not enough to send him straight to hell, for this spiteful oath alone he deserves damnation. How could anyone wish such suffering as the plague brings, not just upon the Cappelletti and Montecchi but on all Verona? For the pestilence’ll not stop at the boundary of one house without stealing its awful way into another. None knows that better than I do. So though I should cross myself and pray for Mercutio’s departing soul, instead I spit and say, “May the devil have you.”

Then I look back toward Tybalt. But he’s gone.

Tybalt, my last boy. As near a son to me as I’ll ever have again. And as much in danger now as mine were on that awful day they stole into our plague-dead neighbor’s house.

I know what I am, and what I’m not. Much as I ache to protect Tybalt, I turn the other way. Back to Ca’ Cappelletti.

Though Cansignorio might eventually have killed his nephew himself, the Scaligeri honor’ll not bear anyone else having slain him. When the prince pronounces the punishment for taking Mercutio’s life, all I feel for Tybalt’ll be not a pennyworth of help to him. But Lord Cappelletto—surely he’ll cast every bit of favor he’s ever curried with Cansignorio to save his heir.

Only when I reach Ca’ Cappelletti do I realize I still carry Romeo’s cords. I secret them outside the compound wall, then hurry into Lord Cappelletto’s study.

When I burst in, the old man jerks up, astonished. He’s been dozing among his accounting books. A happy fool, whose joy I rob by saying, “Prince Cansignorio’s nephew is slain.”

I need Lord Cappelletto strong, need him at his most conniving. But he shrinks, so small and weak and old. “Paris? Slain?”

“Not Paris. Mercutio. Stabbed in the street by Tybalt.”

This brings him to his feet. He reaches out an unsure hand, and I offer my arm to steady him. “Where is he?”

“He vanished when Mercutio fell.” The tolling of bells and blasting of trumpets drown out any more I might say.

Lord Cappelletto bolts from behind his desk, shouting for me to show him where last I saw his heir. And so we rush together through the courtyard and out of the compound, Lady Cappelletta, alarmed by how her husband cries out Tybalt’s name, hastening along with us.

The street where Mercutio fell is already thick with people. Prince Cansignorio stands in the middle of the keening, kneeling
crowd, far changed from the bravadoed young man who first seized Verona’s throne. Looking upon his sister’s slain son ages him well past his not-quite-forty years.

“Which way ran he that killed Mercutio?” he asks. “Who began this bloody fray?”

A youth steps forward. One of the ones I met at the fountain this very morning, though it seems a century ago. He bites his thumb, and points with it past the prince.

My knees buckle beneath me. They’ll not support the weight of what I see. Tybalt, sprawled motionless upon the ground.

The same ground rears up at me, and something roars inside my head. My stomach twists and fills my mouth. The thundering resolves into words, shouted by that pointing youth.

“There lies quarrelsome Tybalt, who killed brave Mercutio. And who for that crime, was slain by young Romeo.”

Each sharp word stabs into my heart. Tybalt, killed. Romeo, his killer.

Lady Cappelletta rushes to where the young man points, wailing for her nephew. Dumbstruck, Lord Cappelletto follows, falling to the ground and cradling his heir in disbelief. What enfeebles him inflames her. She clamors back to the prince. Throws herself upon her knees, kissing his knuckles and kneading his fingers, pulling his hand to her heart. “Romeo slew Tybalt,” she says. “Romeo must not live.”

“Not Romeo.” Lord Montecche erupts through the crowd, pushing his way between Lady Cappelletta and Cansignorio. “He was Mercutio’s dear friend, and concluded only what the law otherwise would end—the life of Tybalt, who laid your nephew dead.”

The prince swings from one to the other like a weathervane caught in an angry wind. None seem to breathe, no heart to beat, until he speaks. “Tybalt disturbed our peace, and for that paid the proper price. But Romeo took what it was my lawful right alone to take. Let him hence in haste. Banished, he may live. But if he’s found again upon Verona’s streets, that hour is his last.”

Cansignorio calls for his guard to gather up Mercutio and carry him to the castle to be prepared for burial among the other Scaligeri in Santa Maria Antica. The crowd follows, eager to insinuate themselves into his princely grief. Only Lord Cappelletto, Lady Cappelletta, and I remain. And Tybalt, our dear Tybalt.

Creeping close, I cannot keep my eyes from the wound upon his chest. His face, his hands are already deathly pale. But that dark, wet mark—it seems the only thing alive of him.

I tear tooth into my tongue till I taste my own blood, hating myself for every harsh word I’ve had for Tybalt of late. I wish with all my soul that I could take them back. Why did I not keep him from this fatal fight?

Lord Cappelletto shakes his head like a dog trying to loose a porcupine’s quill from its nose. “Why would Tybalt raise a sword against the count?”

“Honor.” Lady Cappelletta spits the word at him. “All your talk of honor, of your precious family name. All the ancient prideful grudges of the Cappelletti. That’s what laid him dead.”

Lord Cappelletto touches the gold crest worked upon the hilt of Tybalt’s sword. “The Cappelletti had no enemy in Mercutio. He was a relation to the Scaligeri, I’d not have wanted Tybalt to—”

“It was not for you,” I say. For in this instant I realize what must have caused the quarrel: Tybalt was more like my Pietro than I’ve realized, dying not for some foolish male honor, but to protect precious female virtue. “Tybalt knew there was a rakehell who was trying to seduce Rosaline. He beseeched and besieged her, and would not let her be. Even came into your house to find her. Tybalt tried to tell you, but you’d not listen to him.”

Lord Cappelletto loses what little color the shock of Tybalt’s death had left him. I know my words have hit the mark. Know, too, it does not matter. So what if he’s as sorry as I am, to not have stanched what stormed in Tybalt?

Blade, street, blood. They’re Tybalt’s death, just as they were Pietro’s.

Lord Cappelletto pulls at Tybalt’s cloak until it covers that awful wound. “I’ll take him to Santa Caterina, to our family crypt.” He crosses himself, plodding out each deliberate word. As though he must convince himself that Tybalt’s truly gone. “Best not to make too grand a public funeral, with Cansignorio’s own mourning turning him against us. I’ll have Rosaline and her convent Sisters pray a month of private Masses for our Tybalt, God have mercy on his soul.”

Lady Cappelletta grips one of Tybalt’s lifeless hands, refusing to let go. Though it’s no woman’s place to travel with a body to its burial, she insists on going with him. Insists with the same wildness in her eye that haunted the years in which her womb squeezed forth one ill-formed creature after another. Her madness blazes like a fire, warming Lord Cappelletto, and me as well. Weak as this blow has made us, its her fierce strength we need.

Lord Cappelletto nods, agreeing to let her come. Turning to me, he says, “You must tell Juliet.”

If all of heaven’s angels sang in one great harmony, it’d not sound sweeter than what I hear as I approach Juliet’s chamber: her lilting voice weaving love lines into an adoring tune. From the doorway, I watch my newly wedded girl take each of San Zeno’s statued hands in one of hers, swaying as though she’d dance the saint about the room. Giddy, she twirls herself from him and catches sight of me. Taking a half-step back, she studies my grief-struck face. “Why do you wring your hands?”

I look down at my hands, as though they’d speak. Wishing they might, and save my tongue the torture of answering her. “We are undone.”

She stares at me, and I know those words are not enough. My eyes swim past her, searching out the window and across the arbor to what were Tybalt’s rooms. “He’s gone. He’s killed. He’s dead.”

Juliet stumbles backward, catching herself against the holy icon. “Can heaven be so envious?”

“Romeo can, even if heaven cannot.”

Her eyes, her mouth gape in confusion. “Romeo?”

“I saw the wound, here.” I lay my hand in the tender flesh valleyed beneath my ribs, and something sharps inside me. As though the same blade that felled Tybalt gouges me as well. “Tybalt, the best friend I had. I never dreamt I’d live to see him dead.”

“Romeo slaughtered, and Tybalt slain? Who lives, if those two are gone?”

I live, and she lives. Always my same awful fate. Despite this grief great enough to kill us both, through the pitiless mercy of some unseen saint we yet survive. “Tybalt’s dead. Romeo killed him, and is banished.”

“O God.” She reaches for me, the same desperate babe who howled for me all those years ago. “Did Romeo shed Tybalt’s blood?”

Such cruel relief, to still have her to comfort after all I’ve lost. I hold her fast against me, letting her grief curse out. “Serpent heart, hid with a flowering face. Beautiful tyrant, angelic fiend. Just opposite to what you justly seemed. Spirit bowered from hell, paradised in such sweet flesh. O, that deceit should dwell in such a palace.”

“There’s no trust, no faith, no honesty in men,” I answer, stroking her hair and laying kisses on those precious locks. That her fond heart must learn such hate so young. “Shame come to Romeo.”

Juliet yanks herself from me, so fast her emerald ring gouges my soft flesh. “Blistered be your tongue. Romeo was not born to shame.”

Were her curses not for Romeo, but for Tybalt? “Will you speak well of him that killed your cousin?”

Quick as her anger came, it just as quick is gone. She knuckles her hands into her eyes, as if to blind herself to our terrible fate. “Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband? Is he a villain who killed my cousin, if that villain cousin would have killed my husband?”

I grab each of her thin wrists, pulling those angry fists from her reddening eyes. She blinks once at me with surprise, and then a second time with the same steely resolve I watched harden Tybalt. “My husband lives—this is all comfort. But some other word you said, worse than
Tybalt’s dead
.”

I shake her wrists, as if to jerk such thoughts away. What’s worse than
Tybalt
’s dead
, so long as we both live?

Before I even force aloud the question, she answers. “Tybalt’s death was woe enough. But
Romeo is banished
cuts like ten thousand
Tybalt’s dead
.”

Tybalt, who loved and was loved by her for fourteen years. Who held her dear from the first day I bore her to this chamber. Whose face, and voice, and doting touch were the second she learned after mine. How does she shed tears over this living Romeo she’s known but a day, and forget it’s a lifetime of our dearest Tybalt that’s lost to us?

“Lord and Lady Cappelletti are already at Santa Caterina,” I say. Surely if she sees Tybalt lying in the Cappelletti crypt, his heart stilled by Romeo’s sword, she’ll share the weight of what shatters me. “Will you go to them? I’ll bring you there.”

She shakes her head and pulls away from me, stumbling backward into our bed. For all the day’s heat, her teeth begin to chatter. She pulls the bed curtain around her like a shroud. “Romeo, my three-hours husband, was meant to make a highway to my bed. But it’s death, not Romeo, that’ll take my maidenhead.”

She does not speak these words to me, but to some specter only she can see. It frights me. Not because such madness is so strange, but because it’s so familiar.

Have I not gazed longingly upon that same specter? Not ached to have my own life end, rather than bear the grief of living through the loss of those I loved?

Pietro’s tight hold bore me through the burying of our sons. Rocking Juliet in my arms anchored me through mourning my
Pietro. Loving what’s in this life is the only remedy for death. If Juliet’ll not let me hold her through this fresh loss, what harbor will either of us find for our grief?

I bow my head to my cockly-eyed Madonna, silently begging for her aid. All the answer I get is what Juliet whispers through her clattering teeth. “I, a maid, die maiden-widowed.”

I’d not leave her for all the world. Nor look on the Montecche ever again. But hearing
I
and
die
dance together on her tongue, I know I must do something. “I’ll find Romeo,” I say.

I make her swear she’ll stay inside our chamber while I’m gone. Whatever her despair, there’s naught here with which she might undo her life. She promises, saying she’ll not leave her wedding bed. She pulls the ring from her finger, pressing it into my hand to take to Romeo.

I cup the weight of it in my palm. This precious thing Lord Cappelletto gave her, which now she’ll have me gift to Romeo—the one who is to her dearest loved, and by the Cappelletti and my own heart hated most.