Juliet's Nurse (4 page)

“Your milk is fresh?” He asks me this the way a man fingering his coin purse might inquire about the strength of a plough-ox.

“It came the same day she was born.” I turn my back to him as I lace my nightdress, to keep him from surveying me in the way I’ve surveyed him. Though in truth he’s not raised his gaze from Juliet.

“You sent your own child off?”

This is what he thinks of me. That I would pay some peasant in the hills to take my just-born child, so I could earn a few soldi more by nursing his. I turn to him with a stare that could vinegar whole casks of wine. “Susanna was not sent, she was taken.” I cross myself. “God rest all Christian souls.”

He crosses himself, repeating my prayer before adding, “I christened Juliet for my most cherished, departed mother, God keep her in His rest.” This surprises me. I’d not known she’d already been baptized, being but a day old when I came to her. He presses a thumb gently to her forehead, just as the priest must have done. “The prince himself stood for her, and so did Il Benedicto.”

Two godfathers, and well chosen. Prince Cansignorio Scaligero is the most powerful man in the city, having killed his own brother this winter past to seize the rule of Verona. And Il Benedicto is the most pious, as resolved to be poor as the prince is to be rich. Il Benedicto owns nothing but a haircloth shirt, sleeps in the doorway of whichever church he finds himself nearest to when the curfew bells are rung, and eats only if some stranger, moved by some mixt of guilt and charity, presses food on him. No one knows his true name or his family or where he came from, nor why he chose, longer ago than anyone can remember, to evangelize in our streets. Some say Il Benedicto is too devout to abide the petty corruptions of a monastery. Others whisper he’s too unschooled to be allowed to join a religious order. But not one of the tens of thousands of souls in all Verona doubts that this pauper is the nearest of us to God. No man could do better than this calculating Lord Cappel
letto has, guaranteeing his family the protection of both God and government by binding his daughter to such godfathers.

His daughter, their goddaughter—but my darling lamb. And easier for me to scheme a way out of Ca’ Cappelletti with her, now that I know how much Lord Cappelletto wants the world to think him pious. “Bless the saints,” I say, and I do bless them, for giving me my chance to see Pietro, “if she is already baptized, she can join the children’s procession for the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin.” Making myself as big-eyed as a cow, I offer to carry her, if his lordship wishes it.

He purses those liver lips, unsure. So I add, “Il Benedicto leads the procession, kneeling.” It is only a guess, but surely a good one, as Il Benedicto never misses a chance to inspire Verona with his bloody-kneed piety.

“Make sure Il Benedicto blesses her on the steps of the Duomo, once everyone is assembled just before the procession starts,” he tells me. “And carry her toward the front of the cortege, near Prince Cansignorio’s favored nephews.”

I nod my feigned obedience. What trouble is it to me to keep her close to the swaggering little counts, at least until I can slip away to see Pietro?

But Lord Cappelletto will not leave me and Juliet be. He points to the empty cradle, with its sumptuous layette. “My daughter is not to be taken into a servant’s truckle-bed.”

“She naps in the cradle. But nights are long for a child to be alone.” As they are for a full-grown woman. “If I keep her close, she’ll not cry.”

Juliet gurgles a smile at him. Already she knows how to rule a man. Nestling against Lord Cappelletto, she softens him from an imperious father into something closer to a doting grandpapa. “I suppose if Juliet prefers it, you may put her down for the night in her bed, and lie there yourself,” he says. “Only until she is old enough to mind you sleeping beside her, but that will be some time yet.”

Some time
. I hold his words tight in my chest, guarantee of all the hours they promise I’ll have with Juliet.

My breasts are hard and full again, and I reach for my nursling, needing her to suck the ache away. But before Lord Cappelletto will let me have her, he says, “Make sure Juliet wears the Cappelletto headpiece, always. Not only when you take her out, but whenever she is awake.”

He means for me to know she is above me. But surely it is only him who is above, too certain of his superiority to see that silk and pearls and all King Midas’ piss-streams of gold could not equal the worth of what flows between my milk-babe and me.

Juliet begins to work her mouth into the demanding circle I know so well. As her lips curl in and out, I wait, knowing that when the first cry comes Lord Cappelletto will have to give her back to me. Only I can give her what she most wants. What she truly needs.

When you make the circuit of a city’s churches following a kneeling supplicant, you move with God’s glory, but not with God-speed. The Nativity Day procession forms a snake of many parts, slithering slowly away from the Duomo, a thousand Ave Marias swallowing
the rhythmic slapping of the Adige against the city’s edge. Juliet begins to fuss as soon as the cortege turns south. By the time we reach the Chapel of the Sainted Apostles, her tiny lungs hit full howl.

You might think the celebrants of the birth of the Holy Mother would greet an infant’s cry with
alleleuia
and
amen
. But we’re surrounded by a rivalry of mamas, each trying to push their little ones closer to the head of the procession in the hope of winning the Blessed Virgin’s favor. Or at least of having something to brag over, when they gather tomorrow at one or another of the city fountains to haul water home for their daily round of chores.

Marking what tart looks and bitter murmurs we get for disturbing the solemn rite, I pinch Juliet’s swaddled bottom to be sure she’ll keep up her wailing, which I take as my excuse to steer us out of the piazza. Once we’re free of the crowd, I slip the jeweled cap from her head, hiding it in my sleeve so no one will know her for a Cappelletta as I carry her toward the Via Zancani. Toward home.

Pietro meets us in the doorway, gathering me and Juliet together in his big arms, his thick chest absorbing the last of her howls. “How I’ve missed you, Angelica,” he says, guiding us inside. “These have been the loneliest weeks of all my life.”

He’s kept house as best he can in my absence, which even in what little light steals through the waxed cloth that covers our window-holes, I see is terribly. This should please me, for what woman is not glad to know how helpless her husband is without her? But here in our dim little room, the loss of Susanna cuts even more sharply than it has during all the weeks I’ve been gone.

In the familiar nest of our marriage bed, I bury myself against
Pietro, and he buries himself inside me. As though we could lose our freshest grief in pleasure taking. This is the crudest comfort we can offer each other, and like beasts driven by their heat, we take it.

After we are spent, I lie in Pietro’s arms with Juliet at my breast, breathing in the warm scent of the straw mattress. For a few precious moments, it is as if Susanna lived, and we are a family. Until the noise creeps into the room. A steady, droning buzz, coming from the opening to the roof, a sound I know in my bones.

“You brought a hive here?”

“It’s too quiet, all alone.” His voice tremolos against the hum of the bees. “Not in all the years of my army did I ever think this house could be so quiet.”

Pietro’s army. That’s what he called our boys. Half a dozen sons, each a head taller than the next, from Angelo, not yet two years and squirming in one of his older brother’s arms, to Nunzio, at fifteen already of a height to look Pietro directly in the eye. These little rooms could hardly contain them all, and whichever way I turned I’d find one of the older boys tickling a younger one until both shrieked with joy, or one of the littler ones stomping and strutting in proud imitation of his bigger brothers. If Enzo began to sing, soon enough you’d hear a chorus, and if Berto let slip some wind, the others would join in to make a stinking cacophony. Once when I sent Donato to bring my loaves to the public oven, he passed a preacher who drew a crowd by imitating a tree-frog’s call, and for months afterward our home sounded with a pond’s worth of ribbiting. This little house was never still, never silent, with Pietro’s army. Until, within a single ugly week, every one of them was dead.

I tell Pietro that all day the Cappelletti compound is noisy as a little village. “But at night, if I wake, I hear only Juliet. Her breath.” I shift her from my breast and lay her down between us, show him how I turn my head over hers, holding a cheek above her dainty nose and milk-wet mouth to feel that breath on me. Then slowly, slowly, I lower my head onto her chest, laying my ear over her heart. Careful, always, not to burden her tiny body with the weight of me. How many hours I’ve held myself like this, just to be certain of her during the darkest of night.

When I lift my head, Pietro props himself on his elbow and rests his own cheek onto Juliet’s small body. He closes those beautiful eyes of his and listens, squeezing my hand with gentle pulses that echo the beating of her heart.

Lying entwined with them beneath the portrait of the Holy Madonna, all I want is to feel her cockly-eyed blessing on us. But I cannot ignore the bizz-buzzings shimmering up my spine. “You know it frightens me to have bees so near.”

Pietro drops my hand and rolls away from me and Juliet. “They may be near, but you’re not.” Lying on his back, he stares up at the ladder-hole to the roof, watching the bees crossing above.

I wish now that Lord Cappelletto shared his sorrowful brother’s sentiment. But with all his prideful love for Juliet, he’d never allow her to live in the cramped quarters of a wet-nurse. Not when he could summon any of a hundred peasant women to Ca’ Cappelletti, to nurse her there.

All around the city, churchbells begin to ring. Knowing the Virgin’s procession must be nearing its end, I rise from our bed. I pull
my veil and my gown and Juliet’s pearl-beaded headdress from where they’re heaped with Pietro’s clothes, and begin to dress. I count out three almond comfits to bring Tybalt, leaving all the rest behind as I bid my husband good-bye.

Before returning to the Via Cappello, I carry Juliet to the Franciscan friary, ready to cover her innocent ears while I confess the bittersweet pleasures I’ve just taken with Pietro. Though the Pope may go to Babylon and back proclaiming that it’s a sin to revel in any pleasures of the body, the Franciscans are forgiving sorts, if you make sure to sprinkle
blessed husband
,
conjugal duties
, and
matrimonial bed
throughout your shrift. Even so, I’m careful in my choice of confessors.

Friar Lorenzo fancies himself a man of never-ceasing learning. He is writing a treatise on marital relations. Or so the rumor goes, the whispered explanation for why he leans so eager an ear to any penitent who divulges what Friar Lorenzo in his chaste state cannot know directly. Lovesick boys, naughty girls, and many a full-grown man or woman wearing well-rumpled shift or smock—they all warm the cool air of Friar Lorenzo’s stone cell with details of their hot lusts. Although the friar is a thin man, practically swimming within the folds of his cassock, he has rather large ears even for a cleric. Between those ears brims the greatest gift for a penitent, a natural history of healing herbs and cordials. When a lady finds herself more harmed than charmed after a visit from the raunchy Mab, in the space of the same shrift with Friar Lorenzo she can confess
her sins, be forgiven, and be dispensed some flowery decoction to rid her lips of what blisters she earned playing her lover’s trumpet. No wonder Friar Lorenzo is regarded as a treasure without equal in all Verona.

“God give you peace, Angelica,” he greets me. “It’s been so long since you’ve come to be shriven, I’d not known which to fear for more, your mortal body or your immortal soul.” He lays a hand of blessing on Juliet. “But I see what has kept you away. Lord Cappelletto has already made several generous altar-gifts to celebrate this new member of the Church, and he honored me by choosing my hand to sprinkle her holy baptism.” He smiles encouragement at me. “A pleasure, always, to absolve a sin.”