Queen Mab (10 page)

Faunus looked on in interest as a courtly messenger wandered lost through the streets.  He slipped behind him and glanced over the man's shoulder.  He seemed to bear a list of names. Spying the name of Rosaline, Faunus cloaked himself in the illusion of a musician and placed his hand upon the servant's shoulder.  "Pray, gentle sir, you look to be lost."

The messenger practically leapt in surprise.  "Forgive me!  I did not see you there!  Indeed, I am looking for many a noble face and foot to attend a masque at the home of Capulet."

"Ladies and gentlemen giving chase to worldly delights in the court of Capulet!  What joyful sport!  Are you having trouble finding the joiners of your feast?"

The servant nodded.  "My master bade me to invite these that are listed here, but alas, I cannot read. Can you, sir?"

Faunus shrunk back.  "Oh no, not I!  I am but a poor musician who plays his pipes to bring joy to people's day.  But I saw those two men there looking upon a note."  He directed the servant's attention to Romeo and Benvolio.  "They seem to be gentlemen of honorable means.  Speak to them, and I am sure they would be glad to assist you in your quest."

"Oh thank you!" bobbed the servant.  "Thank you!  For you have saved me!  Thank you, kind sir!"

"Speak nothing of it," Faunus replied, sending him on his way. 

He watched as Romeo gladly read the messenger the names, pausing as he said both Mercutio and Rosaline.

Gratefully, the servant said to the two men, "Please join the masque!  If you be not from the House of Montague, you are welcome to the house of my master, the Lord Capulet!  It begins tonight at sunset, and I should be glad to see you there!  Now, I bid you thanks and goodbye."

Benvolio's eyes sparkled as he took Romeo's arm.  "Rosaline shall be there and so we shall go!  Compare her face with some that I shall show, and I will make thee think thy swan a crow."

Romeo shook his head.  "Never!  I shall go to prove your eyesight wrong, and bask in the beauty of the one to whom my heart belongs."

Benvolio clapped his arm around Romeo's shoulders and steered him to home to plan for the upcoming evening's events.

Faunus smiled, wishing he could be there to see it all, knowing that this was the genesis which would begin Mab's fall.

M
ab stood in the doorway of a darkened house, the sounds of merriment echoing down the cobblestone streets of Verona as the city prepared for the night's festivities.  Dusk crept over the horizon and once more she could step into this world of flesh and blood.  She listened to the prattle of a coming party of revelers, masked and merry.

As they turned the corner, Mab recognized the first man in the mob—Romeo.  His eye turned towards any maiden who glanced his way, the yearning of his faux melancholy wielded as seductive trick.  Mab had known men like him over the centuries.  She had sat hidden in the corners of many a poor girl's room as she wept, as if the tears from her eyes could carry away the darkness stifling her heart.  Oh, she had known men like Romeo.

He was followed by Benvolio, a friend of all might and no matter, whose dull wit and serious ways would bore a maiden as sure as Romeo would break her heart. 

But then followed another man who stole Mab's very breath away. 

"Mercutio," she whispered. 

The pain of parting was as fresh and new as if it had happened only yesterday.  The wound she thought had been healing proved itself a liar, striking her with an arrow of regret for the moments they had not been together.  She was filled with yearning to go to him, to throw herself in his arms and escape into the worlds they once built side-by-side. 

"Give me a torch, I am not for this ambling," Romeo complained, reaching out to take it from Mercutio's hand.

With a twinkle in his eye, Mercutio lifting it high above his head, causing his friend to leap after it.  "Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance!"

"Not I, believe me.  You have dancing shoes with nimble soles, I have a soul of lead which so stakes me to the ground I cannot move," he replied as he jumped.

"You are a lover, borrow Cupid's wings, and soar with them above a common bound," said Mercutio, taking off down the street.

Queen Mab lost them as Romeo gave angry chase, trying hard to catch up with Mercutio's wit.  They turned the corner into an alleyway, and their voices became muffled.  She sped to keep pace and watch them at their game.

Mercutio had his arm around his friend's neck, churlishly advising, "If love be rough with you, be rough with love.  Prick love for pricking and you beat love down."  He gave Romeo a kiss upon his crown and then turned to the revelers in his midst.  "Give me a mask to cover myself in."  He grabbed one from Benvolio, looking it over with delight. "Ah!  An ugly mask for my most ugly face!  What care I if a curious eye looks upon this mask with its deformities?  Here are the beetle-shaped brows which shall blush for me and leave my face always the improvement when this veil is removed."

Romeo sat upon the step, a skulking bundle of passion, surrounding himself with the blackness of rainclouds and storms.

"I dreamt a dream tonight," said Romeo to Mercutio.

"And so did I," replied his friend, trying to rouse Romeo and steer him to the dance.

"Well, what was yours?"

"That dreamers often lie."

Romeo corrected him.  "In bed asleep, while they dream things true."

Mercutio stopped, turning to Romeo.  He became as pale as one who has seen a ghost. "O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you."

Queen Mab was a hind who caught the smell of a hunter.  His words were ones that should not be.  She had promised him forgetting, abandoned him to the night.  That he should remember her touch at all seemed to say that something was not right.

Romeo paused, giving Mercutio a puzzled look.

"She is the fairies' midwife," Mercutio explained, searching his friend's face for kindred recognition. "And she comes in shape no bigger than an agate stone on the forefinger of an alderman.  Drawn with a team of little atomies over men's noses as they lie asleep."

Mab quietly pressed herself against the wall, desperately wanting to hear the memories which Mercutio held so dear he could not be forced by her, with all her power, to forget.

"Her wagon spokes made of long spinners' legs," he said, coaxing Romeo to reminisce with him. "The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers; her traces, of the smallest spider web; her collars, of the moonshine's watery beams; her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film; her wagoner, a small grey-coated gnat, not half so big as a round little worm pricked from the lazy finger of a maid."

Romeo and Benvolio acted as if these words nothing more than fancy, but Mercutio went on insistent, as if he hoped somehow he could open the door to his friend's memory and Romeo would suddenly cry, "Ah yes!  I know her, too!"  But he was met instead by indulgent smiles. 

"Her chariot is an empty hazelnut, made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers," Mercutio said, painting the picture in the air before him.  "And in this state she gallops night by night through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love; over courtiers' knees, that dream on curtsies straight; over lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees; over ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream."

Mercutio stepped closer to his friend, gripping his shirt desperately in the hopes of understanding. "Sometimes she gallops over a courtier's nose, and then dreams he of smelling out a suit; and sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's tail tickling a parson's nose as he lies asleep, then dreams he of another benefice.  Sometimes she driveth over a soldier's neck, and then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, of healths five fathom deep; and then anon drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes, and being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two and sleeps again."

Frustrated that Romeo still stared upon him blankly, Mercutio tore himself away and shouted, "This is that very Mab that plats the manes of horses in the night and bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs, which once untangled much misfortune bodes.  This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, that presses them and learns them first to bear, making them women of good carriage.  This is she!"

Romeo interrupted, coming over to hold his friend silent and still, thinking it was the ramblings of a madman.  "Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!  You talk of nothing."

Even though his friends did not know his meaning, Mab heard and knew.  There was such an aching sadness of loss as Mercutio opened his mouth that Mab thought her heart might break.  He seemed almost ashamed for his remembrances, for being one of the chosen few who had walked among the fair folk and had knowledge when he should not.  He bowed his head, staring at his hands as though to speak the lies the world might ask, to deny the truth that he knew was true, was more than a man should shoulder. 

But he said the words anyways, to bring comfort to his friends.  "True, I talk of dreams, which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy, which is as thin of substance as the air and more inconstant than the wind, who woos even now the frozen bosom of the north, and, being angered, puffs away from thence, turning his face to the dew-dropping south."

Queen Mab could not bear it.  She whispered to Benvolio to hasten their steps to the Capulets, so that drink and song might cause her Mercutio to laugh once again and bring a carefree smile to this face she held so dear.

"This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves," interrupted Benvolio, tired of being distracted and pointing to the home of Capulet.  "Supper is done and we shall come too late."

As they left, Mab looked up in the night sky, filled with such bittersweet happiness for this moment, savoring every word and reliving the rumble of Mercutio's voice in her bones.

But this peaceful revelry was suddenly replaced with a deep foreboding, some sense that tonight began a terrible march towards some destiny that not even she could forestall. 

She looked over at the men as they made their way and heard Romeo speak. "My mind misgives some consequence yet hanging in the stars shall bitterly begin his fearful date with this night's revels and expire the term of a despised life closed in my breast by some vile forfeit of untimely death..."

His voice trailed off.

Indeed, thought Mab, even the fool Romeo felt it.

Q
ueen Mab stepped inside the ballroom, masked in black velvet and gold.  The room was filled with costumed guests, anonymous in their masquerade.  Mab looked across the room and saw Lord Capulet.  He was red-faced and sweating before even the first hours of the ball had departed.

Lord Capulet turned to her, as if he felt her eyes upon him.  She saw him swallow uncomfortably as he recognized her and did not understand why there should be this faerie queen, this demigod of dreams in their midst.  As he left the small group he was engaged with and teetered through the crowds to her side. 

He bowed graciously before her and murmured politely his greetings of joy. "My memory of you comes flooding back as if our meeting occurred only yesterday."

She smiled.  "Indeed, I am sure that is quite the case.  For me, each year almost seems to pass as quickly as the days."

"You are welcome here to our humble home, Queen Mab, and I extend our hospitality."

"I should hope one such as you would not have forgotten the old ways."

"No indeed, my queen," he turned to a servant and spoke in low tones.  "Milk and honey for this guest."

The servant bowed deeply and skittered away.

"What brings you to our simple gathering?" Lord Capulet asked as baskets of rose petals fell from above like rain, causing his guests to laugh and clap in delight.

She could see he was trying to clear his head, trying desperately to rid himself of the swaying of the room so that he might be able to focus solely upon her.

From his glassy-eyed visage, she knew it was a losing battle.

"Fifteen years ago, I gave you a pronouncement.  A very important prediction which would best be served if it was remembered," she said.

Lord Capulet looked into his glass, trying to remember what it was.

"Your daughter," reminded Queen Mab.

"What about my daughter?" asked Lord Capulet.

"How swiftly the mortal mind forgets," sighed Queen Mab.  "Tonight, she meets her husband-to-be, a man in whom she might take refuge, and in doing so, build a protection for all the House of Capulet."

"And who is this man?"

"Why, the County Paris, a man of good breeding and taste who would make a fitting son to your family," she replied.

Lord Capulet clapped in delight.  "You and I are of one mind and to this my heart is easily joined."  Lord Capulet waved at his ballroom floor.  "You are welcome here to dance and sing among my party guests and to welcome the end of that which would end this House.  Drink!  Be merry!  Work your ways without fear of interference.  I shall be your partner in this cunning intrigue."

At that moment, Romeo and his party passed.  Queen Mab should have told Lord Capulet to eject them, but the sound of Mercutio's gentle ribbing and explosive laughter among these friends held her tongue.  She could not send him away.  Instead, she retired behind a column as Tybalt greeted the enemy at the door.

"This, by his voice, should be a Montague."  Tybalt turned to his page and commanded, "Fetch me my rapier, boy."

"Why, how now, kinsman! Wherefore storm you so?" asked Lord Capulet.  His attention was upon Mercutio.  Lord Capulet placed his hand upon his nephew's arm, urging him to notice Prince Escales's kinsman.  But Tybalt would not be silenced, each man unaware that the other was in a battle for survival.

"Uncle, this is a Montague, our foe, a villain that is hither come in spite, to scorn at our solemnity this night," Tybalt explained.

Lord Capulet followed his glance and remarked, "Young Romeo is it?"

"Tis he, that villain Romeo."

With soothing words, Lord Capulet tried to cool his nephew's fiery temper.  "Content thee.  Let him alone."