Still Star-Crossed

The Montagues and kin

The Capulets and kin

The royal family of Verona

The newly dead

Others

Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid.
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.

—Twelfth Night

I
N FAIR
V
ERONA
’
S STREETS
, the sun was hot.

Late summer was upon the city, and the sun, oh, it beat. It dazzled off the cobblestones so the beggars groaned and burnt their bare dirty feet. It poured down on the merchants so the sweat trickled down their necks on market day. And the great families—well, they were safe in their cool stone houses, cellars deep enough to hold a bit of chill in, but when they did emerge after sunset, the air was still hot and thick.

Yes, the heat hung heavy on Verona. Was it this that bowed its citizens’ heads? That quieted the normally bustling city, leaving its people whispering in twos and threes before disappearing in shadowed doorways?

Or was it death?

It had been a bloody summer. Night after night, the streets echoed with the pounding of feet, the scrape of steel. The names of the dead passed from hoarse throats to disbelieving ears. Mercutio. Tybalt. Paris. Romeo. Juliet.

A fortnight and odd days had passed since the flowers of the city’s youth had finished cutting each other down. Shaken by the loss of so many of their own, the great houses
of Montague and Capulet had sworn to end the bloodshed. Great Montague, to prove his offer of friendship, had just three days before unveiled his gift to his ancient enemy.

The statue portrayed a beautiful young woman just a breath past girlhood. Fashioned in pure gold, it stood over the grave of a lady to whom Montague had never spoken a word in life. His greatest enemy’s only child. His son’s five-day wife. Juliet of Capulet.

It was a pretty piece of work, Montague’s tribute to his dead daughter-in-law. On this Verona morn, the sunrise glittered off her golden face. The cemetery was empty, but had there been any visitors at that moment, they would have noted the skillfully wrought expression of sadness as she gazed on her love Romeo’s statue on the other side of the gate. They would note the pretty poem at the base, mourning her untimely death.

And as the first rays of the sun kissed fair Juliet’s frozen form, they’d see the word
HARLOT
scrawled in black paint across her face.

“Just don the gown, I prithee, Livia.”

Lady Rosaline blew a brown curl out of her face. She shook the black gown toward her younger sister for what seemed the hundredth time.

Livia wrinkled her nose in disgust and danced out of Rosaline’s grasp. “Must we really keep our mourning weeds on, Rosaline? I am sure cousin Juliet would not wish it.”

Rosaline gave up trying to catch Livia and plumped down on her sister’s bed. “She told thee so, did she? Her shade whispered it from the crypt?”

Livia laughed and snatched the black dress. She threw it on the ground and began to dance on it. Livia never walked when she could instead practice the latest twirl and dip from court. “Aye. I passed by the Capulet tomb and her ghost whispered, ‘Cousin, do not put on ugly black mourning for me, for I had rather be remembered with joy than with ugly black that will leave every man and woman of Capulet sweating in the summer heat. Also, I wish thee to have my coral bracelet.’ ”

“A talkative shade, our cousin.” Rosaline picked up the dress, smoothing its wrinkles. “Of course, so she was in life.”

The sisters’ eyes met in the mirror. Livia, caught mid-twirl, paused. For a moment her gaiety faltered and gave way, like a veil tossed back in the wind.

The orphaned daughters of Niccolo Tirimo did not weep much. It was one of the few traits they shared. Fifteen-year-old Livia had laughed a great deal these last weeks. A stranger might have thought her unfeeling, but her sister knew better. Livia laughed most when she was frightened.

As for Rosaline, the elder at seventeen, her head had not ceased to ache since the bloodbath began. Her temples throbbed anew as she looked at Livia’s wide eyes, filled with unshed tears, in the mirror, and the names of the dead began to filter through her mind: Merry Mercutio, sighed over by half the ladies of Verona, slain by Tybalt’s sword. Cousin Tybalt himself, so protective of his Capulet kinswomen, fallen
to Romeo’s blade. Count Paris, kin to the prince, spilling out his lifeblood at the door of his beloved’s tomb. Romeo, Montague lordling. And Juliet, flower of the Capulets.

The Juliet Rosaline mourned was not the lovely maiden Verona wept for. The city grieved for a wealthy, beautiful young heiress; Rosaline, however, remembered a sticky hand in hers, a piping voice ordering her to wait so Juliet’s shorter legs could catch up, the awed mirth in Juliet’s eyes when they accomplished some particularly naughty bit of mischief. When Rosaline was small, she’d been much in the company of her uncle Capulet’s only daughter. Though Juliet had been several years younger than Rosaline, Capulet’s imperious little heir had preferred the company of the older girls, and Rosaline could not say her nay. Luckily, Juliet had been a witty, openhearted child, so her company was no burden. Rosaline’s mother, Lady Katherina, had served Verona’s Princess Maria as a lady-in-waiting, and she often took her daughters and niece with her to the palace, where she spent her days. Juliet, Livia, Rosaline, and the princess’s daughter, Isabella, had made the palace their playground.