by Rachel Caine
And as simply as that, the matter settled for me. Mercutio was Mercutio, whomever he loved, whatever he did. Perhaps, as the Church taught, it was a cursed perversion, but I was old enough to know that many in the city practiced far worse, and with far less love in their hearts. While I was not drawn to Mercutio in any way of the flesh, he would always be my spiritual brother.
I don’t know how Romeo discovered the same, but soon we realized that each of us willingly lied and contrived for Mercutio, giving him excuses for absences to see his lover. I had never asked any details, and had only the one glimpse, but Romeo knew more than I, and shared it with me; Mercutio’s lover these past three years was a young scholar named Tomasso, who was considering the priesthood. He was the third son of a poor merchant, hardly moving in our social class.
I would have said that Mercutio was in love with the risk, but I knew it wasn’t true; he was in love with Tomasso, as purely and passionately as (if far less demonstratively than) Romeo claimed to be with Rosaline. And it worried me. Mercutio’s family had already made a match for him with a girl he loathed; the wedding would be done within the next year, and I wondered what it would do to him, and to his love. I felt sorry for the girl, too. She was innocent of any wrongdoing, but she’d be punished all the same.
“He’s clever,” I said, and closed and barred the window shutters. “Mercutio will never be caught out. He fears only betrayal.”
“Not from us,” Romeo said. He cut a glance at me, and wiped a trickle of blood from his broken lip. “I am sorry, coz. But Rosaline is beautiful, is she not?”
“Yes,” I said. “She is beautiful.”
And then I retrieved my cup and demanded more wine, to wipe that admission from my mind.
• • •
I woke to a pounding head and a mouth that felt as if grape stompers had made merry in it. My manservant had somehow wrestled me out of my clothes and into a nightshirt, and I was sunk deep in my feather bed. The twitter of birds beyond the window, and the cries of merchants in the streets below, told me that I’d slept too long, and gradually I realized that the pounding was not simply inside my skull, but upon the door of my rooms.
As I stirred and groaned, rolling on my side, a yawning Balthasar rose from his low, hard mattress near the hearth and stumbled to answer the call. I knew I was in difficulty when he straightened, swept the door wide, and bowed to his fullest.
My lady mother, Elise Montague, entered in a cloud of rosewater and the soft glint of gold, and paused at the foot of my bed as Balthasar quickly hurried to the shutters and opened them to admit more light. I winced as the brightness lanced through and bounced from the red-gold chain around my mother’s neck, and the dangling drops in her ears. Her hair gleamed rich as well, the color of ripe wheat, and as always it was smooth and perfectly dressed, held in a gemmed net that framed her still-lovely face to perfection. I’d inherited my foreign green eyes from her, though my hair and skin were Italian-dark; even after so many years in the healthy climate of Verona she seemed wan and pale, and very thin in her dark, elegant gown.
She regarded me with steady, cool assessment.
“Good day to you, Mother,” I said, and sat up. “Did I miss mass?”
“Yes,” she said. “And your absence was noticed. Are you well?”
“I have a sickness of the stomach.”
“Ah,” she said, and snapped her fingers without glancing toward Balthasar. He quickly grabbed an armchair and moved it beneath her as she lowered herself—a trick that only the truly rich and entitled could manage, I thought, without looking either awkward or foolish. “A disease of drink. That explains everything. Benvolio—”
“Mother, if you’ll remove yourself, I’ll make myself decent and call on you in your chambers,” I said. “I’m not a child.”
“No, you’re a man grown, and held to the same standard,” she said. “Your father was little older than you when we were married.” I knew. He’d been all of nineteen, and she had been seventeen, when he’d died on the point of a Capulet dagger. She’d been heavily pregnant, but not with me; I was already a healthy boy of almost two, and had the vaguest possible memory of him; my sister, Veronica, still in the womb when he perished, would have not even that.
I groaned and rubbed my forehead. “If you’ve come to aggravate my condition with talk of marriage—”
My mother turned her head and speared poor Balthasar with an utterly impersonal glance. “Bring food for him,” she said. “He’s of no great use to anyone in this condition.” She dismissed him with a firm nod, and he scurried to do her bidding. My rooms were, I thought, one of the few places in Verona where my mother could be assured that she’d be obeyed without question; even within the Montague halls she was still the excess widow, the foreign flower dragged into the toxic hothouse of one of the richest, most ambitious families of the city. Grandmother did not approve, and God knew, what Grandmother disapproved would never find much favor within these walls, or without.
So Balthasar and I indulged my mother, and let her act the part of the aristocratic woman she would be on foreign soils.
“I need to bathe, Mother,” I said.
“I’ll have it prepared,” she said with serene calm. “But you will talk to me, my son. We have much to discuss.”
This did not sound at all entertaining. I sat up, pulling the covers chest-high, and tried to look less like a wayward child, though I’d always be that in her eyes. “I am at your disposal, as always.”
A tiny hint of a smile woke a shallow dimple just by the edge of her lips, but it smoothed again almost immediately. “Have you given thought to the girl? She comes of impeccable stock, her family’s fortunes are secure, and they are eager to secure a match before she’s thought too old.”
“She’s fifteen,” I said. “And boring.”
“She’s appropriate, biddable, and presentable.”
“What of the Toretti girl?”
My mother gave me one of those looks. “She is no longer appropriate.”
“Oh, you just made her more interesting.”
“Benvolio, do not be flippant. The girl has been . . . compromised. Her virtue is in question.”
“The interesting ones are always questioned.”
“That is why I offer you the boring ones, my son. Believe me, in the end, they will be a benefit to you, and the interesting ones, as you like to call them, would be a millstone on your back. You’d never live down the gossip.”
“Cruel market chatter, worth less than a goose fart,” I said. “I care nothing for it.”
“You’d care if it came from the mouth of Tybalt Capulet,” she said, with unerring accuracy. “I am trying to protect you, my son. If not the Scala girl, then whom? You’ve already rejected the best candidates I could bring you. Perhaps the Church would suit you better.”
Since one of the core tenets of our faith was “Thou shalt not steal,” perhaps not. “I tried on a monk’s robe recently, and I didn’t favor it,” I said. “Is there no greater match to be made from another city? Or even from your mother country?”
“The last thing I would wish is to burden you with a wife so alien to you, and to this family,” she said. “You bear enough of that stigma already, which I well know. And I wouldn’t wish to exile a young girl so far from her home and family without good cause.”
“Am I not a good cause?” I asked, and I must have put some of Mercutio’s charm in it, because for the first time, my mother truly smiled. It gladdened my heart. She did not often do it; the English are a serious, quiet people, and she always seemed so guarded, even with me. I could well understand why. Love and war are the same in Verona. “I will bow to your experience, Mother, but perhaps a girl from Fiorenza, or Milan . . . ?”
“Perhaps,” she said. “But your grandmother has already made it very clear that you will be married by the end of the year. Your friend Mercutio’s banns have already been posted. She’s busy matchmaking for Romeo as well. Her intent is to see the next
generation of Montagues and their close allies well into the world before she quits it, you know.”
“She’ll never quit this world,” I said. “Surely a walking corpse fired by cankerous hatred can’t die. From the feel of her rooms, she already burns in hell.”
Her back stiffened, and her eyes widened in alarm. “Benvolio!”
“She’s no spies here. I can say what I like. God knows there’s nowhere else I’m allowed.” I felt angry and strangely exhausted, and I was glad to see Balthasar ease into the room with a tray of bread, cheese, water, fruit, and juices. He set it on the bed and withdrew to a respectful distance to stand guard at the locked door. “Have you breakfasted?”
“Hours ago,” my mother said crisply. “Before mass, which you should have attended. I expect you will remonstrate with your manservant for allowing you to oversleep the hour.”
“I’ll strap him until he yells,” I lied, and bit into a succulent peach. A lazy wasp buzzed in the window, drawn by the sticky sweet juice, and Balthasar sprang into action to shoo it out again. The battle between swift wings and clumsy batting hands was entertaining, at least. “What news at the church?”
“Nothing definite,” she said. “There’s a whisper of trouble at the Capulet palazzo with one of the girls; they both pled sickness today, though Lady Capulet and her entourage came.”
“And Tybalt?”
“Present, though largely absent, if you take my meaning. He looked as ill as you. There were bruises on his hands. You did not brawl with him, did you? You know the prince has taken a dim view of public disturbances. And, of course, your grandmother would expect a more fatal outcome if you did so.”
“I did not brawl with anyone,” I said, but she cast a pointed look at my knuckles. I looked down, and was surprised to see a faint shadow of bruising there, and a small cut. “Ah. Perhaps I did. My memory of last night is clear as . . . wine.” No, I did remember. I’d punched Romeo for his unforgivable obsession with Rosaline Capulet. In the cold light of morning, and my mother’s judgmental stare, I told myself that it had been purely to defend the family honor. “It wasn’t a Capulet.”
Her gaze was far too sharp for comfort. “The Capulet maidens were not in attendance. Might it have something to do with them?”
“No.”
“You offered them no offense?”
“Have I ever?” I raised my eyebrows and—deliberately—took another bite of my peach.
“Did you see them?”
“If I ever have, I hardly remember. I hear the elder girl is too studious, and the younger too sweet, and not even you would present them as possible brides.” I finished the peach and put the pit on the tray, then yawned. “Are you finished disapproving for the morning? If you are, please have juice; Balthasar has brought too much.”
I didn’t think she would—my mother rarely lowered her guard, even with me—but after a stiff moment she sighed and reached for one of the goblets on the tray. There was a very slight loosening of her shoulders, and now that she was not so fiercely armored I noticed the fine lines around her eyes, and the faint shadow of weariness beneath. Life for my mother, in this house, was a lifetime of living under siege. Romeo had told me the stories he’d had of his own nurse about my mother’s grief and distraction when my father died, but by the time I was old enough to note it, she had moved from tears to a resigned, chilly silence. To me, as a child, she had been as beautiful and unapproachable as the marble Madonna on her fountain—an icon of love, but not love itself.
She sipped juice for a moment in silence, then said, “Your sister has suggested a match for you.” There was nothing to indicate whether she approved of the idea or not, but any mention of Veronica woke deep feelings of alarm in me. “The Scalas’ second girl. Have you a strong opinion on the matter?”
I considered, because—surprisingly—I did not. I knew nothing of the girl in question, save that her name was Giuliana, and she seemed quiet. I could not even give an opinion as to whether she was fair; I’d scarcely noticed her at all, the few times I’d been near. But if dear Veronica put her forth, surely there was a snake hiding in that plain, deceptive grass.
“I would have to inspect her,” I said.
“Something will be arranged. I will expect you to give it your attention, Benvolio.” She replaced the emptied cup on the tray, nodding to Balthasar, and he whisked it away. “These are dangerous times. Very dangerous.”
“For Montague? It’s always dangerous.”
“No,” she said, and her green eyes locked on mine, like on like. “For us, my son. For you and me. I have ever been tolerated within the family, and while your grandmother needs you, she favors your cousin over all. I understand she set you a task.”
“I’m to keep Romeo out of trouble,” I said, and forced a casual smile. “Surely no more difficult than to stop the wind from blowing. Trouble and Romeo are long wedded.”
“That is my point,” she said softly. “It is an impossible task she’s given you, and you should know by now that the one thing she will not forgive is failure.”
I shrugged. “There’s little enough she can really do to hurt me,” I said. “I am the surplus Montague; I know it; there’s no disappointment to be had for my future. I will make my own way.”
“She would not punish you,” my mother said. “But as your mother, I can be cut off, cast out, forgotten. Even your sister stands at risk, though not as much, since she has made a good match for herself. Still, if your grandmother is angry enough, she will ruin me, and Veronica’s future will be tainted as well.”
“Ruin you how?” I had forgotten my own troubles, and even my modesty; I threw back the covers and stood in my thin nightshirt, but Balthasar—good man—was there to wrap a robe around me, and bring me a folding stool on which to sit across from her. “Mother—”
“There are a thousand ways to ruin a woman,” my mother said, with a weary shadow of a smile. “Any hint of impropriety, any whisper of intrigue would be enough. My point is that both your sister and I are vulnerable to such things, even if you are not. So, please, my son, keep this firmly in front of you. It’s not merely that you’re asked to manage your feckless cousin’s behavior; it is that you are asked to protect us.”
“From our own,” I finished for her. “From our own blood.”
“Blood has slaughtered blood since Cain killed Abel,” she said. “No doubt even the Montagues and Capulets will one day interbreed, though it may not stop hatred from festering. It’s only in stories that such happy endings are possible.”
“Peace is made, sometimes,” I said, and reached out to take her hand in mine. Her flesh was cool, pale against my darker; she even had the feel of marble, though soft and pliable it might be. “Mother, I swear I will do all I can to protect you.”
“Will you?” It hurt me that she asked it, but I nodded, and saw a shadow of relief in her eyes. “Then I am much heartened, Benvolio.” She withdrew her hand and stood to twitch her skirts into their correct and proper folds. “I thank you for the promise. I will see about the Scala girl; a few discreet questions in the right ears will reassure me of her suitability before I subject you to yet another bridal inspection. But you must promise me you will consider her fairly. I’ faith, I scarce know what you seek in these girls, but at some crossroads you must choose a path, for good or ill.”
She didn’t wait for my response, not that I could have provided one. I didn’t know what I sought in the girls presented to me, either, save that I craved . . . more. Some challenge. Some spark of intellect or spirit that would warm me in the night when the lights were dim. A comely girl was all that was required to satisfy propriety; a wife need not be more than rich and decorative, though it was useful if she had a certain political cleverness.
I could not shake the image of Rosaline Capulet, face lit gold by a single candle, reading her volume of poetry. No simple facade there, no easy match that would require nothing from me save the duties of marriage. A woman of her type would be nothi
ng but trouble in the end, even leaving aside her impossible bloodline.
Stop, I told myself sternly. You’re as ridiculous as Romeo. Except that I would never even consider dragging the Montague reputation through the streets for a woman. Whatever I felt, it would be kept masked, chained, and hidden away like a mad relative. Suffering was the path to Christ, I’d been told. Perhaps one day I’d be made a saint—the patron saint of fools and lovers, if those terms were not exactly the same.
My mother made polite, empty conversation for a few moments more, then swept grandly out of my room. She had a full day of intrigue and tension ahead of her, and little time to waste with her eldest—and only—male offspring.
“Will you be beating me now for letting you sleep through mass, sir?” Balthasar asked, with a helpfully bland expression. “Shall I fetch a strap?”
I cuffed him. “He jests at scars who never felt a wound, fool. Have I ever beaten you?”
“Perhaps it would be helpful,” he said. “I shouldn’t wish your lady mother to feel I am the devil’s whisper, leading you on the path to damnation. I would never find another placement.”
“I don’t need a strap to beat you.” I formed a fist, and winced; I’d forgotten the scabs on my knuckles, which stretched painfully. Balthasar raised thin eyebrows, which gave him an owl-eyed look.
“Clearly, sir,” he said. “Will you be a peacock or a crow today?”
