by Rachel Caine
“What’s this talk of death, my friend? Of cages?” Surely his father, whatever he suspected, would not put his own son to a public trial for the crime of sodomy; that would forever tarnish his own name. Were they discovered, my own offenses would be puffballs and nonsense beside it.
“I put it to you plainly: I am to be swiftly married off,” he said. “Married and buried, wed and dead. ’Tis no accident the words rhyme so well.”
I let out a sigh of relief. “And ’tis no surprise, as they’d published the banns—what brings on this dark—”
“Dark and lark, love and dove, hawk and handsaw, I am not fit for this, Benvolio; I am not fit—do you not see it?” He was weeping, I realized with a start; he angrily swept tears from his cheeks and glared at me as if I were the cause of all his suffering. “I will hurt her, this soft bride of mine; I cannot help it—I am all the wrong shape, you see? I may be forced, as she may be forced, but both of us will bleed for it . . . but blood is all that families require, marriage blood, maiden blood, proof of cruel love. . . . She is too young; she cannot understand what I am, what I feel, what I know of myself. I am to hurt her, and she is to hurt me. And it comes on us fast as plague.”
It was clear to me then. “There is a date set.”
“Two months hence,” he said miserably. “Two months. And Tomasso weeps and will not see me, and there is naught I can do to make any of it less vile. We have been wed in heart for five years, from the moment we first clapped eyes on each other, and now it is broken, broken as my heart. I know I will hurt this girl, in revenge. It is not a pretty thing, but the thought of her sickens me, and I cannot . . . I cannot—”
“Run,” I said, and leaned forward to lock gazes with my friend. “Take the money you’ve been paid for the gold and jewels thus far, pay for passage to some friendlier place, and take Tomasso away. There is a way out, Mercutio. You must take it.”
“Now you thieve for me, instead of your whims and honors?” He laughed softly, and shook his head. “I might steal away, but Tomasso—he is too afraid, I think. Verona is all he knows, all he loves besides me. I have begged him to go; we could be pilgrims on the road to perdition, but he will not have it. You have a generous heart. I love you for it, but my own heart is bound here, too.”
“Then refuse,” I said. “Refuse the girl. Refuse the wedding.”
“I would ruin her more by doing that than if I blooded her,” he said, “and you know it. A marriage promise broken stains the girl, not the man who refuses her. She would be doomed. It would destroy her, and her father’s honor.”
He was right. We lived in a world that lived and breathed honor, and a promise was a bond that we broke only with dire consequences. A lesser man than my friend would not care a fig for the girl, or her family, but Mercutio wasn’t so shallow. The world was a bundle of spikes and razors, and any move he made would cut deep. Better to sacrifice Tomasso, and a love that could never be acknowledged, than to make the innocent suffer.
That did not make it any less painful.
“If you change your mind,” I said, “my gold is yours. You know this.”
“I know,” he said, and clapped hands with me, then embraced. “I know.”
I kept company with him until just before dawn, then slipped away in the gray. I came home to a bed well warmed with hot bricks, and a sleepy servant who put it about that I was abed with a summer’s ague, to buy me the morning to rest.
I slept ill, and dreamed of blood and a woman’s wet kiss, and candlelight gleaming on skin and shadow. Dark eyes that challenged as much as they welcomed.
Rosaline.
The next day brought fate, and doom, and death with the dawning.
• • •
The first I knew of the trouble was a hammering on my door. I’d slept a bare two hours, perhaps, and Balthasar even less; he went yawning and red eyed to admit Romeo.
“Sir, your cousin is not well—” Balthasar tried to stop his onward rush, but Romeo simply swept him aside.
“It’s Mercutio,” he blurted, and threw the covers back on my bed. “He left me in the market after mass, and I saw him being followed, and I think the servant was from his own family’s house. Get up, Ben. Get up!”
I did, grabbing for whatever clothing came to hand—a wrinkled linen shirt, hose that had seen better days. I did not bother with a doublet, only threw on a leather jerkin and loose calf-length trousers like a laborer. “Change,” I ordered him. “No Montague colors. Balthasar, get him something less noticeable. Do it quickly.”
Balthasar scurried off to the chests to find something as Romeo began to unbuckle and untie his Montague doublet. The hose would do, being dark. I took away his too-recognizable dagger and sword and substituted a good but plain set from my stores. We dressed quickly, in charged silence, all too aware that we might be too late. If Mercutio was being stalked, it would be better if it were a straightforward enemy who wished to plant a sword’s point in his chest . . . but if someone from the Ordelaffi household was on his trail, something darker was brewing. He never allowed a servant to trail him, hadn’t since his childhood; he’d allied himself with us both from nature and from necessity, to avoid his family saddling him with such a hindrance. It was new, and worrying, that they felt the need to eye his comings and goings.
We dashed down the hallway, past startled servants, and at the door we came face-to-face with my sister, Veronica, and her giggling cadre of scheming, vicious friends, who were arriving fresh from the market. One of them, I noticed, was one of the Ordelaffi girls, a cousin of Mercutio’s.
Veronica stepped back and fanned herself, and her friends goggled at us with a fresh wave of muffled laughter. “Well,” she said. “It seems too early by far for a costumed ball, and why you would go as peasants . . .”
Romeo pushed her out of the way, and Veronica gave a shrill squeak of alarm as he darted past. She turned on me, furious at the slight, and her eyes narrowed. “Going to find your dear friend?” she asked. The giggling of the girls with her stopped as if it had been severed by a blade. “His family seeks him, too. Wherever could he be, do you think? What might he be doing so early in the morning, hidden in the trees?”
I looked from her to the Ordelaffi girl, sharp faced and foxlike, with the cruel gleam in her eyes of someone with a grudge. I gripped my sister hard by the shoulders and shook her until the jeweled pins in her hair began to slip free. “What did you do?” I asked Veronica. “What did you say?”
“It’s a sin,” she said, “what he does. And you know it. You have sometimes been cruel to me, brother. Measure for measure, that’s how we play, is it not?”
“You’d kill a man for your wounded pride?”
“I’m a Montague,” she said. Her color was high, and her eyes bright and vulpine. “I do not suffer slights. Not even from you.”
I should have hit her, but I did not have time. She had wasted enough of it already.
I dashed out after Romeo, caught up, and said, “He’s in the trees.” We both knew the place; it was a trysting spot that we’d seen Mercutio go before, to meet Tomasso.
I prayed God he was not meeting him this morning.
• • •
God does answer all prayers, but sometimes, he answers with a cold and remorseless denial . . . and I knew, as I came through the gates and started running down the path, that there would be no miracle for us today. There was a knot of men already there, most in Ordelaffi colors, though a few onlookers had already gathered to see whatever show was being staged for their benefit . . . and then I saw Tomasso.
The young man was thin and serious, as befitted a would-be religious man, and he still wore the sort of postulant robes that I’d swathed myself in when I’d gone out with Friar Lawrence. His hood was thrown back, and his face was set and pale, but tranquil as a martyr’s.
He was on his knees, with his hands bound roughly behind his back, and a circle of armed men surrounded him.
They were having a good deal more trou
ble with Mercutio. I heard the ring of steel, and saw him darting between the trees, graceful and full of fury as he tried to win the way to his prisoned lover.
He failed, but not from any lack of skill; he gave up on his own accord when Lord Ordelaffi, burly and crimson faced, shoved aside the soldiers and stalked up to his son bare-handed. Even enraged, Mercutio could not wound his father. He dropped the point of his sword, and his father took it from him and flung it viciously away, then followed that with a closed-fisted blow so mighty it laid Mercutio in the dirt.
Romeo lunged forward. I grabbed him and held him still. My grip was too tight, and would leave bruises, but I could not care about that just now. I burned, as Romeo did, to go to the help of our friend, but there was no help now.
We could do nothing but stand and watch.
The beating his father gave Mercutio was brutal, and it went on a long time. It was not quite the death of him. He was breathing yet, and capable of lifting his head from the ground of his own accord, though I was not sure that he could see through the torrents of blood that obscured his face. His father made sure of clear vision, though, by having servants wipe the crimson from his eyes and hold him in a wavering, kneeling position for the rest that came.
Lord Ordelaffi left him there and turned toward his men. “Finish it,” he said in a rough, disgusted voice. “Quickly. Let us be done with this unpleasant business.”
I had never spoken to Tomasso. The only knowledge I had of him was from Mercutio’s lips, who’d spoken of his kindness, his warmth, his intelligence, his passion for God and learning. He did not struggle when they pulled him roughly to his feet, nor when they fitted the noose around his neck.
Mercutio tried to save him. I could not hear the words, but I knew he was telling his father anything, everything to spare the boy’s life, trying with all his skill and wit and charm; when he started to raise his voice, to beg whether others might hear, his father ordered a belt passed around his throat, and had him choked just enough to silence him. Romeo was weeping to see it, and it was all I could do to hold him back. And myself, God help me.
Mercutio could not even scream as they hauled on the rope and pulled Tomasso from his knees, and then his feet.
It was not a large tree they hanged the boy from. I don’t know why that bothered me so, that it was so small, so pathetic, because the branch was sturdy enough to bear his slight weight when they pulled him up, and though his toes kicked just a few inches above the ground, it was enough; it would serve as well as a mighty height.
It took a horribly long time to be finished, and Romeo wavered as if he might be sick, until I hissed in his ear, “If they see you flinch, they’ll turn on us, too.” The mood of the onlookers was gleeful, not solemn; they cheered when Tomasso swung, and threw stones at him as he twisted and died. I wanted desperately to kill them, kill them all, but I hung on to my cousin in grim fury and let none of that show. You’ve cold milk in your veins, Mercutio had accused me, but I was all fire and ash now, and hardly holding it in. No one had yet recognized me, or Romeo, and if they did our station might not save us; we were Mercutio’s close companions, and in the heat of this awful frenzy, that would be enough to see us beaten or killed. It would destroy the Ordelaffi family, but likely politics was not on their minds just now.
I thought they might hang Mercutio after, but instead they left him weeping and bloody on the dirt, fingers plunged deep in the soil as if he wished to bury himself in it.
Lord Ordelaffi said a few words to his chief servant, then stalked off with most of his attendants, heading for the walls. He wiped his son’s blood from his hands with a silk cloth, and left it lying soiled at the side of the road. One of the peasants scurried over to retrieve it. The blood would wash out, and silk was precious.
The servant had a good voice for speaking, deep and authoritative, and he told those of us still lingering that the filthy sodomite who’d been justly hanged had waylaid the heir of Ordelaffi, but that Mercutio had resisted him and vengeance had been exacted for the crime, and everyone must attest that justice had been done.
It was a thin enough fiction, but it would be accepted. Blood had been spilled, and all Christians knew that blood washed away sin. Mercutio’s reputation would be forever tarnished, and I knew that they’d marry him off quickly to his unwanted bride, to still any rumors.
But they’d have to wait until he was healed enough to stand on his own.
It took three of the servants to haul Mercutio up and force him on his way, but not because of resistance; all the fight was out of him, and only heavy despair remained. There were too many between us and him, and there was nothing we could do for him now. But it was a sickening, bitter horror to watch him dragged away, knowing how alone he would be.
The Ordelaffi made it clear that all should leave, and left Tomasso’s body to swing and twist in the morning breeze. I drew Romeo with me uphill to the gates, and took him to the side until the last of the family’s retainers were gone.
“We should cut him down,” Romeo said, wiping the tears from his face. “Mercutio wouldn’t leave him.”
“Mercutio has no say in it,” I said, “and they’ll be watching to see who dares come next. If we go ourselves, it’ll be the end of us. Go get Friar Lawrence. They can’t argue with the Church claiming the dead.”
He left, then, glad of something physical to do with his anger and grief. I sank down to a crouching position against the wall and breathed, just breathed, until some of my sick fury began to subside into something more manageable.
I thought I’d known the depths of cruelty men hid, but this . . . this was another thing entire. I’d known all our lives that we were fragile, easily punctured flesh, but seeing the boy choke on that noose, seeing the laughter and jeers from those who’d killed him . . . hearing the thumps as rocks pelted his dying body . . . that had shattered something within me, something I did not know was so precious.
I hadn’t known I had innocence left in me until I’d felt it die.
I ached, suddenly and wearily, to see Rosaline, to take comfort in her warm smile, her dark eyes. But I knew that she would ask me the hardest question of all: Why did you not help?
I hated myself, as much as I hated any of the men on that rope.
Because I was just as much to blame.
Friar Lawrence came at a hustling pace, with Romeo chivvying him along like a dog driving a wayward sheep, and when he saw me sitting by the gate he frowned and slowed. “Benvolio?” He offered me his hand. I stared at it uncomprehendingly for a moment, then nodded and wearily got to my feet. “Come.”
“We dare not,” I said. It tasted foul in my mouth, and worse when I swallowed. “If we’re recognized—”
“Ah, of course,” he said, and nodded. “I understand. I’ll care for the poor wretch. Go home. Take your cousin. I trust you know better than to try to see Mercutio just now.”
I did. I was not sure of Romeo, truly, but I nodded. I held the friar’s hand, looked into his eyes, and said, “Be gentle with Tomasso. He died bravely.”
“He died a sinner,” Friar Lawrence said, but it was not an accusation, only a sorrow expressed. “But even a sinner may be brave. I will see him shrived and buried; fear not. I will not mark his grave, though. There are those who would defile it, even inside the church’s precincts.”
He spoke as if he knew, and he likely did.
I put my arm around Romeo’s shoulders when he tried to follow the friar out of the gates. We watched as he walked down the hill, paused in front of Tomasso’s hanging body for a moment, prayed silently, and then lifted the boy to loosen the noose from his throat.
The way he carried the body, held close to his chest like a sleeping child, made my throat feel tight enough to shatter.
I turned Romeo toward home, and made him walk. “I swear,” he said in a raw, naked voice, “I swear I will find who betrayed him. Someone did, Ben. You know someone did.”
“I know,” I said. My own tone sounded
flat and lifeless. And I did.
But I could not tell Romeo that it was my own sister, his own cousin, who had done it.
On my life, I could not.
• • •
In the end, we spent the day silently, together, playing chess. Neither of us drank, because we knew well that once we’d begun we would not stop until we drowned ourselves, for sheer misery. From time to time, Romeo would say something, always painful: “We should have stopped it,” perhaps, or, “They would not even let him mourn.” I scarce noted it, except as the punctuation to the roaring silence that filled the space between us.
When Balthasar finally said, very tentatively, “Shall I bring food?” it occurred to me that our family would soon be down to dinner, and our absences would be very strongly, ominously noted. I could not bring myself to care overmuch, but it was Romeo who—surprisingly—did.
“No,” he said, and stood up. “Bring us water to wash off the dust. We’ll dress and go down.”
“Will we?” I asked him without looking away from the flickering light of the candle on the table. I’d been staring at it since it had been lit, and now it was a guttering nub. “Why?”
“For the same reason you forced us from that place,” Romeo said. “Because Mercutio is our friend, and Mercutio’s friends had best show themselves to be good and well-mannered sons. The family will protect us, but they’d best hold no doubts of our innocence in private.”
I was being shown a fool by my own younger, less responsible cousin. Without him, I might have remained immured in my apartments, hiding and brooding, and that would have occasioned comments—if not in public from the family, then in private amongst the servants, who would rattle their gossip about the town. And soon I’d be suspect as well. My own extended bachelorhood would be dragged out as proof.
Romeo was right. We had to show our clean, well-scrubbed faces and, when the music was played for us, dance most sweetly.
