Juliet's Nurse (29 page)

I wit well enough where to look for Romeo: where any lovesick sinner goes to be absolved. But for once, the corridor outside the friar’s cell is empty. His door, ever open to any who are in need, is instead shut fast. I knock, cracking my knuckles so hard I expect the wood to splinter beneath them. But the door’ll not budge.

Leaning close, I hear voices within. I rap again with even greater might. From the other side, Friar Lorenzo asks who knocks and
whence I come. Asks as though he must take care who is let in. Does this not confirm what I suspect? Surely Romeo hides here.

I might turn away, fetch some men from Cansignorio’s guard, and lead them here. Why not let the prince deal Romeo a blow as fatal as the one Romeo dealt Tybalt? But uncertainty worms within me. “I come from Juliet,” I say.

The door swings open. Friar Lorenzo waves me inside and latches the door after me.

The Franciscan stands alone. “Where’s my lady’s lord? Where’s Romeo?”

He crooks a finger to a prayer niche cut within the cell. “There on the ground, with his own tears made drunk.”

Romeo is huddled against the wall. Blubbering and weeping, weeping and blubbering. As though it’s him, and not Juliet, who suffers for what he’s done.

“Stand up.” I jab my foot at him. “Stand, and be a man.” Did Juliet dare compare this sniveler to my Pietro? “For Juliet’s sake, rise and stand.”

“Do you speak of Juliet?” He raises his head, his voice wavering like a child’s. “How is it with her? Does she not think me a murderer, for having stained our joy with blood removed but little from her own?”

For all Tybalt’s love, it’s my blood, not his, that’s little removed from Juliet’s. And with all that blood’s heat I answer. “She says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps.” What harm is my lie, against his greater sin? I’ll not use any words of hers to comfort him. “She falls on her bed, and starts, and calls
Tybalt
. Cries
Romeo
, then falls down again.”

“
Cries Romeo, then falls
—as if my name slaughters her, as my cursed hand killed Tybalt.” He draws his dagger. “In what vile part of this body does
Romeo
lodge? Tell me, Friar, that I may cut it from me.”

With quick hand, I snatch the knife. I want to point it to his chest and drive it home. Want to feel it pierce flesh and organ and draw warm blood. To know it is my sharp thrust that drains all from Tybalt’s killer.

And yet—if you’ve ever plunged a knife to butcher a newly slaughtered sheep, you know how hard it is to drive blade into flesh. But that is naught compared to what it takes to pull out the knife that’s been so keenly driven in.

I watched Mercutio fall. I saw my Tybalt felled. Both haunt enough. Slaying Romeo would no more earn back Tybalt’s life than good Tybalt’s death did Mercutio’s. It’d only leave my own hand guilt-stained as well.

I fling the dagger across the cell. It hits the floor and spins. Stops, pointing not at us, but at the bloodied Christ crucifixed above the Franciscan’s narrow bed.

“Would you slay yourself, when happiness is yours?” Friar Lorenzo is so consumed with reprimanding Romeo, he pays no mind to me. “Juliet, to whom you vowed your love, yet lives. Tybalt, who would’ve killed you, you slew. The law that might punish you with death asks only exile. For each of these, you might be happy. And yet you whimper and would die miserable.”

Romeo totters in shame, which pleases his confessor. “Go to Juliet, and give her comfort,” Friar Lorenzo tells him. “But be mindful. Do not stay too long. Be gone before the night-watch makes
its rounds so you may pass safely to Mantua, where you must stay until I’ve time to blaze your marriage, reconcile your families, beg pardon of the prince, and call you back to Verona. Saints be willing, we’ll have more joy then than the Montecchi or the Cappelletti have known in the generations since this ancient feud began.”

The marriage blazed, the families reconciled, Juliet and Romeo dwelling happily together for ever after. This is what she wants. What I, loving her, should want as well.

May Tybalt’s saints forgive me—but what death took is taken. Whatever serpent has slithered into our Eden, poisoning our joy, I’d not let the devilish creature steal Juliet as well. So when Friar Lorenzo tells me, “Go commend this to your lady,” I nod my assent and force out thanks for all his counsel, before I turn to Romeo.

“My lord, I’ll tell my lady you will come.” My lord, I call him. For if Juliet’s fate is now entwined with his, mine is as well. I slip the emerald from my finger, and hold it out to him. “Here, sir, a ring she bid me give you.”

He kisses the ring, and kisses my own hand for delivering it. “How well my comfort is revived by this,” he says. He cradles it as gently as Juliet did a wounded bird when she was but a girl of eight, while I tell him where to find the ropes by which he’ll breach the arbor wall and reach my darling one.

I spend my night in the Cappelletti tower. Where else can I go, while Romeo takes my place beside Juliet? Tybalt’s bed is empty. But I’d not lie within his darkened chamber, thinking of him already laid in
side the Cappelletti tomb. Instead I climb, as he so often did. I make my way to the tower top, where I’ve the stars for company. Trying to forget the sight of Tybalt’s lifeless body, I pray for his everlasting soul, gone from this world with all the rest I’ve loved.

All, save Juliet.

Juliet, who in these same hours learns what I could never teach: the pleasure of a husband’s touch. Even at my age and in my widowhood, my body still quakes remembering the shivery explosions I felt when I first lay with Pietro. Love. Lust. Loss. Inseparable companions.

Lightning’s bright shock and thunder’s heavy grumble burst the small hours of the night, loosing heavy rain upon Verona. It’s as though heaven itself weeps with me. When the first streaks of dawn lace the easterly sky, I steal my way back down to Juliet. But just as I draw near to her door, I hear above the tempest Lord Cappelletto calling Lady Cappelletta to go to Juliet.

Juliet—although she’s ever a slug-a-bed, surely this once it’s not the lying down but what rises up that occupies her. Romeo cannot yet be twenty, and at that age, they rise and come and rise again with such quick ease, my lamb must have passed a night well full of cock-struts. But now, it is another cock that crows, the morning lark that sings, and Lady Cappelletta that caws. And so I’ll not tarry with a knock.

I cover my eyes, open the door, and call, “Madam.” Madam, for my lamb is wooed, won, married, and maiden no more.

“Nurse?” she answers, and I enter. From behind my hand I peek at Romeo, half-lit by the candle that burned all night before my
Blessed Virgin. He’s a scrawny thing without his doublet, not broad and strong like my Pietro, nor even so well muscled as Tybalt. Still more a boy than I’d guessed him to be.

“Lady Cappelletta is coming to your chamber.” I might as well be speaking in the tongue of a Far Eastern trader, dull-eared as Juliet is for me, being so full-eyed for Romeo. She gazes soft at him, and hears me not.

I turn my own uncovered gaze on him, as hard as hers is soft. “The day is broke. Be wary, look about.” My warning works fast on him, and I leave young love to its fare-thee-wells.

The sala, so teeming full during the masked ball the evening before last, seems cavernous now. As I step inside, an eerie moaning echoes through the shadowed room.

A trick of the storm, perchance, the wind catching some loose shutter. But the moan sounds again, so close I let out a startled gasp. It’s coming from Lord Cappelletto, who sits alone within the dark. With weak voice he calls, “Angelica?”

I’ve not heard my name spoke aloud in this house in all the years since Pietro’s been gone. Would not have thought Lord Cappelletto even knew it, though I suppose it was writ upon the contracts Friar Lorenzo brought him so long ago. I’ve always been only
Nurse
to him. Though when he says, “Is that you, Angelica?” my name sounds like some delicate thing he treats with care.

I’ve never known Lord Cappelletto young, but now he seems more than old. Shaky, and sapped. “It’s late,” I say, as though sleep were any remedy to him, or me.

“Late? What hour could be so late, so dark?” He nods toward
the window, which despite the summer heat is shut fast against the storm. “When sky’s sun is set, the earth drizzles dew. But for the setting of my brother’s son, it rains downright.” Dark as the shuttered sala is, I sense more than see how deeply our newest grief etches his face. “Tybalt took so strongly after Giaccomo, it’s like losing him again. Like losing both at once.”

I lay my hand on his. I expect it to feel cold, an eel hooked from the fishmonger’s basket. But it rests warm in mine. More comfort than I’d thought I’d get from him. “He was a good boy,” I say, “and would have made a better man, had not hot temper taken him.”

“We were born to die, and I’ll not fault him for being quick to defend Rosaline.” His eyes search out the place along the wall where Tybalt’s sword once hung. “Poor broken girl. Even as she sobbed and wailed for her murdered brother, I bade her repeat to me before the Holy Abbess of Santa Caterina what she’d confided to Tybalt. How the rakehell, eyeing her at prayers within the church, pressed a secret suit. With words, and deeds, and every sort of flattery, tried to seduce her. Offered his Judas coins to buy the purity she’s vowed to keep. Even masked himself and came into my house, plotting to take his lust on her.”

Tybalt was always so quick to find some insult to the Cappelletti honor, I’d half-believed he’d imagined the plot to corrupt Rosaline. But I might have known Cansignorio’s lascivious nephew would seek some debauched pleasure with such a pious girl. “May the saints forgive Tybalt. And may the devil take Mercutio.”

Lord Cappelletto gives a fierce shake of his head, crossing himself to fend off the taint of such damnation. “Not Mercutio. He only
stepped between them. It was Romeo Montecche who ill-used my niece.”

Romeo who tried to seduce Rosaline?

Romeo, who finding her already gone when he arrived here, sought another just as innocent.

Romeo who pressed his silver coin on me for offering Juliet to him, like a lamb led to a sharp-toothed wolf.

Romeo, who lies right now in our bed. Taking what he could not pry from Rosaline, from Juliet instead. Horror grips my throat, tears into my chest. How can I have been so big a fool, and let my precious Juliet be ruined?

Juliet, ruined.

Lord Cappelletto asks, “What’s that you speak?”

Have I said those two most awful words aloud? But he’s not heard them clear, for with watery eyes he asks, “How is my girl, my all?”

“She has much to weep for.” More than she yet knows.

“Poor child, she’d wash Tybalt’s corpse with tears, though by Prince Cansignorio’s decree we cannot grieve publicly for him. But I’ve remedy for that. We’ll honor Tybalt after we’ve won the favor of the Scaligeri once again.” Resolve settles across Lord Cappelletto’s shoulders. Whatever shared sorrow shrouded us together is quick forgot as he nods a command at me. “Come, let us see how Juliet takes the gladder tidings Lady Cappelletta brought her.”

What happy word can Lady Cappelletta have given Juliet? What relief could it be against this terrible truth I bear?

I follow Lord Cappelletto into the chamber. My darling lies on
the bed, shaking with silent sobs while Lady Cappelletta stands turned away from her.

“How now, wife?” As Lord Cappelletto speaks, I slip past Lady Cappelletta to stroke what silent comfort I can onto Juliet’s downturned head. “Have you delivered to her our decree?”

“Ay, sir.” Lady Cappelletta ducks her chin, so she’ll not have to meet his eye. “She gives you thanks, but will have none.”

“Will have none?” In two swift strides, Lord Cappelletto’s beside the bed. He hovers so close, his angry spittle hits us both. “Are you so proud? So ungrateful, when I’ve found a worthy gentleman to make you a bride?”

“Not proud.” Juliet’s voice is so small we all must strain to hear her. “And not ungrateful. But I cannot marry where I do not love.”

“Cannot marry? Do not love?” He swoops his claw of a hand into her hair, yanking her from the bed. “As you are mine, I give you to my friend. I’ll fettle you like a horse, and ride you out on Thursday. Then shall you be made Paris’s wife.”

Juliet wraps shaking arms around his boots, weeping and beseeching. But Lord Cappelletto berates my darling as he too often did poor Tybalt. “Disobedient wretch. I tell you this: you’ll stand and make your vows in church on Thursday, or never after look me in the face.”

He kicks her away, and reaches his hand to Lady Cappelletta. “Wife, did we ever think ourselves blessed, that God lent us but this only child? Now I see this one is one too much, and we’ve a curse in having her.”

God lent? Not God but the friar, who borrowed and lent. Who
with secret deceit took what I will ever love and gave my babe to this man who could so quick turn hate on her.

“God in heaven bless her.” I curve my great body over her trembling one. “You are to blame.”

Lord Cappelletto gapes as though he’s forgot I’m here. “What’s that, my lady wisdom? What blame is there, when day, night, work, play, alone, in company, for fourteen years all has been one care to me: to have her well matched. The more so since Tybalt’s lost, and Paris is all that’s left to be a son to me. A gentleman, noble, fair, and honorable.”