Prince of Shadows: A Novel of Romeo and Juliet

by Rachel Caine

  I was busily thinking of all the ways I might use that arrogant flag against them. I might steal it and use it to drape a donkey—yes, a donkey carrying a drunkard dressed in Capulet colors through the town square. The image made me smile, and I marked it down for later use. The ridicule would madden them, and Tybalt in particular.

  My smile faded, because in the middle of the bright whirl of masked and anonymous strangers, I saw a girl’s straight back, high-held chin, and the graceful rise of her neck. She was too tall for common fashion, and her mask was plain white with only a small sparkling of red crystals to brighten it. She did not need much ornamentation, I thought. The dress she wore was also plain, and demure—it would not have been wrong gracing a dowager, and was well suited to a girl destined for the nunnery.

  But despite its best efforts, her costume did not make her plain.

  Rosaline stood against a pillar near the edges of the room, smiling politely and refusing all offers to join in the dancing; she held a small cup of wine, but I did not think she was drinking.

  I was not the first to spot her. Mercutio was. He swept toward her without hesitation, sketched an elaborate bow, and kissed her hand with perfect gentility—and did not release it. He bent close, and I saw his lips move beneath the mask. I saw Rosaline seem to draw back against the pillar; whatever he had said, it had repelled her.

  Romeo stood next to me, sighing. “I wish I had not come,” he said. “You have dancing shoes with nimble soles; I have a soul of lead that stakes me to the ground so I cannot move. I cannot see her.”

  I realized, with a jolt of surprise, that he had looked right over Rosaline, the very girl he idolized so . . . and surveyed the crowd with all the joy of a mourner at the grave.

  Mercutio had still not released Rosaline’s hand, and I could see the paleness of her knuckles as she struggled to pull free. His lips were moving near her ear, but as I watched, she finally tore her hand from his and edged past, disappearing into the crowd in a whirling flutter of skirts.

  I felt unaccountably hot and flushed beneath the mask, and my fists had clenched tight. But I held myself still as Mercutio came back to us, still eyeing the crowd with a glitter I did not like. “Come, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance,” he said, and pushed my cousin a little. “You are a lover; borrow Cupid’s wings and soar with them above a common bound.” Another push. Romeo pushed back.

  “I am too sore pierced with his shaft to soar with his feathers,” he said, and whatever else he said I lost, because I saw Rosaline again through the crowd. She was turned toward us, staring not at me, I thought, but at Mercutio. I could not read her expression past the mask, but she seemed to me disturbed.

  Romeo and Mercutio continued to quarrel behind me—or rather, Romeo to insist he was done with love, and Mercutio to mock him with long-winded talk of dreams. I edged away from them, moving slowly so as not to attract their interest, and entered the dance that swirled in the center of the room. The older men and some of the women sat and watched the merrymaking, and I nodded and offered my hand to a passing young girl masked as a deer; we made our steps, and I handed her off to another man in rich Capulet colors, with a mask of bloodred and gold. Tybalt. I recognized the arrogant set of his jaw, and looked away in the hope he did not likewise know me. He did not seem to, and the dance passed on, steps and claps, turns and hands briefly clasped as the musicians sawed and brayed on . . .

  ...and then, suddenly, my hand was on Rosaline’s palm, and we were turning slowly, like petals in a lazy wind, and our gazes met and locked. Her lips parted, but she did not speak. So neither did I. When the measure was danced, rather than release her, I pulled her to the side, and she came, most willing.

  “You should not be here,” she whispered. Her voice was low and urgent, her eyes fierce behind their covering. “If my brother spies you—”

  “Do not let anyone lead you off alone,” I told her. “Promise me that you will not.”

  “Mercutio already tried,” she said, and studied me with what I thought might be a frown. “I am no fool, to be so lightly ruined. What’s planned for me?”

  “Nothing good,” I said. “Capulet seeks retribution for its losses today, and Montague will try to strike first—why are you here?” It came out more passionately than I had meant for it to, and more vexed.

  “No fault of mine,” she said. “I was safely in the convent when Tybalt came to remove me; the abbess would have refused him, but he threatened to do great violence if deprived, so I agreed to return. They’ll send me on to their own choice of holy order soon. I only am put up here to provide a plain ground for Juliet’s brilliance.”

  She did not sound bitter, I thought, only resigned. Like Mercutio, I was holding to her hand, but she did not try to pull free. If anything, her fingers tightened on mine, to the point of pain.

  “Can you not try again?” I said. “Slip away, find a place they will not look . . . ?”

  She shook her head slowly, never looking away. “The arm of my family is long, and there is no hole into which they will not reach. Best if I do not risk others for my own selfish purpose. Whatever comes, I will bear it.” She blinked, then, and glanced away. I followed the look to Mercutio, who had his head bent to listen to another young girl—a more distant relation, but still Capulet blood. “Your friend . . . I know he has been sorely tried, but he seems so greatly changed from what I remember.”

  “What did he say to you?” I was aware of the dance moving behind us, of sharp glances from some of the older guests toward us; we could not be seen to linger. “Did he—”

  “Look after him,” she said, and slipped her hand free of mine. “There’s a darkness in him that will spill out, if it has not already. Another reason I should withdraw to the peace of my rooms, and thence to the convent. This is my cousin Juliet’s triumph, after all. I would not wish to draw from it.”

  “Rosaline . . .” I said her name, and heard the gentleness in my own voice; I saw the answering flash in her eyes, and heard the intake of her breath. I took another step to bring us closer, but I did not touch her. Not again. “God be with you, if I cannot.”

  “And with you,” she said. I saw a quick, silver shine of tears over her eyes, quickly blinked away. “And with you.”

  Then she turned and was gone, weaving her way out of the heady crowd.

  I felt cold, suddenly, as if the only source of heat in the room had gone with her, and the hair on the back of my neck prickled with sudden alarm, for I saw Mercutio had disappeared as well . . . gone into the shadows with the tender young Capulet cousin. Mercutio nursed a wicked and sincere hatred, and there was little he would not do to avenge his lost lover.

  Then I saw Romeo.

  Juliet Capulet ought, by all rights, to have been on the arm of her suitor Paris, but the count had gone to greet his more powerful relative, the prince of Verona, who had arrived with much flourish in the hall. The disruption had broken apart the dancers, and all eyes were trained toward the prince and his party, not toward the blushing, inconsequential girl in whose nominal honor this feast had been devised.

  And the girl, small and sweet and looking more child than woman in her gown and mask, was staring up into my cousin’s face. His unmasked face, for he’d pushed the covering up, and she had likewise displaced her own, and I saw the expressions on them both: rapt. An almost religious ecstasy, something beyond mere attraction. It verged into the profane.

  Romeo had ever been a follower of Venus, but this . . . There was something new in his face, his eyes, in the bend of his shoulders toward hers, and the clasp of their hands. I saw it mirrored in her, blinding and beautiful but also dangerously fanatical.

  Worse: I saw Tybalt had seen it, too. I was close enough by to hear him mutter to Capulet, “Uncle, this is a Montague, our foe—a villain come in spite to scorn us.”

  Capulet was no fool; he spied my cousin immediately and said, “Young Romeo, is it?”

  “’Tis he, that villain Romeo,” Tybalt spat, and
pushed forward with his hand on his dagger. I tensed and felt for the familiar hilt of mine; it was worthless to start a brawl here, but I couldn’t let a Capulet murder my cousin without any attempt to foil him.

  I did not need to put myself on the point of Tybalt’s knife, for his uncle drew him back sharply. “No,” he said. “Verona brags of him as a virtuous, well-governed youth, and I would not for the wealth of all the town do him harm here.” His words were honey, but his expression vinegar; he was thinking of the politics of the matter, and of the prince’s royal presence in the very room. “Be patient and take no note of him.” Tybalt made a rough, low sound of protest, and tried to pull free, but his uncle’s grip tightened to steel. “It is my will. Show a fair presence and put off these frowns. It ill becomes a feast.”

  “It fits when such a villain is a guest; I’ll not endure him!” Tybalt said.

  “He shall be endured!” Capulet said, and twisted the young man’s arm. “I say he shall. Am I the master here, or you?”

  “You,” Tybalt gritted out from between his teeth, though his red-faced fury was plain beneath the mask. “’Tis a shame.”

  “For shame, I’ll make you quiet,” his uncle replied, and the threat was plain in his voice. “Go to, and cheerfully.”

  It was a dismissal, and Tybalt took it as such, though he looked straight murder upon my cousin Romeo, and I knew very well that this would not end with the eldest son of Capulet being sent away without his supper. He pushed his way through the crowd, leaving in the same direction as his sister but with a good deal less grace.

  I watched, in outright horror, as Romeo drew the Capulet girl off behind the shadow of a pillar, and their hands entwined in love knots, and their lips met first softly, then more strongly. A Capulet girl would be well ruined tonight, without doubt, but I had not looked to find it here, and from the earnest hands of my cousin.

  I was obscurely relieved to see the fat old nurse of the Capulets waddle over to spoil the moment, sending Juliet off to attend her mother, and staying a moment to answer eager questions from my cousin before shaking him off like dust.

  I made my way to him, and marked well the pallor of his face, the dark and shocked look of his eyes.

  “She is a Capulet,” he said; I do not think he said it to me, more to himself. “My life is my foe’s debt.”

  “We must begone,” I said, and grasped his elbow to lead him out. “The sport is over.” If sport it had ever really been. I searched the room for Mercutio, and saw him emerging from an alcove. He spied us, and arrowed our direction, pausing to deliver mocking bows to Capulets along the way.

  Capulet himself rose to block us from the exit. His eyes were bitter and black, but his tone had a honeyed, poisoned sweetness. “Gentlemen, do not prepare to be gone just yet; will you not have food from our feast?”

  “We’ve had our fill, gentle Capulet,” Mercutio said, and gave him his very deepest, most mocking bow. “Our thanks to you.”

  Capulet’s smile curdled like sour milk, and he nodded. “I thank you all; I thank you, honest gentlemen. Good night.” He called for torches to see us home, and as if our departure were a signal, many others began to offer their good-byes as well.

  Romeo, like Lot’s wife, could not but stare back with pure and aching fascination while I drew him onward, and when I glanced as well I saw the Capulet girl Juliet straining to follow us, against all sense and decorum, and her nurse firmly anchoring her in place.

  I felt the same irresistible pull through my cousin’s flesh, trying to draw him back to her. It was more than infatuation, more than love.

  It was something darker than that, and with a darker end.

  “I must turn back,” he said, as soon as we had him outside in the street. The chill of the night bit hard after the overheated gaiety of the feast, and I wrapped my cloak tighter around my shoulders as I fought to keep hold of him. “Benvolio, I must go back!”

  Mercutio threw his own arm over Romeo’s shoulders and steered him firmly away from the Capulet palace, and toward our own safer territory. “Madness,” he said, and laughed to rub knuckles over Romeo’s curls. “Give him a taste of his fair Rosaline and he’s hungry all over again. There’s nothing so fair about that wench, or any.”

  Romeo began to hotly fire back, but then withheld his choler, and I realized why almost at the same moment: Mercutio, it seemed, had missed Romeo’s encounter with Juliet, and therefore thought his longing was for his obsession of this morning. But no man who’d gazed so hotly on a girl as Romeo had on Juliet could still harbor feelings for another; he’d forgotten Rosaline in the second he’d fixed eyes on her younger cousin.

  For some obscure reason, I did not wish to tell Mercutio of it, and I could see that Romeo was likewise reluctant.

  “Mayhap you’re right,” I said, drawing the focus from Romeo’s sudden silence. “Home with us, then. We’ve scored a coup this night; Capulet had to swallow their pride and allow us to put our feet beneath their table. Grandmother will be well pleased with that.”

  “I put my feet beneath more than their table,” Mercutio said, and gave me a wild, sharp grin like the edge of a dagger. “She’ll be better pleased than you know.”

  I felt a surge of anger, of dislike, and looked away from him. He was not, I thought, the friend I had known for so long. He was whole without, and ruined within, twisted and burned and blackened, and I mourned for him, because the Mercutio I had loved died on a rope months ago.

  “Home,” I said, under my breath. “Home and safe.”

  Though I had the disquieting notion that what had just occurred would follow us no matter how far we ran, and that safety would never again be ours.

  FROM THE DIARY OF VERONICA MONTAGUE, BURNED UPON ORDERS OF LADY MONTAGUE

  My brother, Ben, has done everything possible to avoid me these past months, since the death of the pervert outside the city wall; God wills that these vile, unnatural sinners be condemned and cast out, and whatever Benvolio believes (heretic that he is), I believe that I did God’s business in whispering of the assignation—still, best the blame fall on the Capulet whore, for safety’s sake, for Mercutio makes a bad enemy. I had thought he would swing alongside, but his father was too merciful, and now I must beware constantly of his wrath. ’Tis lucky I thought to swing the guilt toward our enemies when I did.

  Benvolio knows the truth, and hates me as much as a brother might hate a sister, but I do not think he would break ranks to betray me to his friend. I keep a watchful eye, nonetheless.

  The banns have been cried, and my marriage day approaches! Would that I could marry a young and virile man, but Lord Enfeebled is still rich, and I will have wealth and position enough to move among the finest company. God grant that he expires soon, or I will have to visit that witch they whisper of in town to procure something to speed him on his way. My old nurse says that many a gouty old goat of a husband has been hurried to paradise; I think it more likely they have been shown the straight path to the devil’s own bedchamber.

  When I am wedded, for safety’s sake, I will put it about that Benvolio and Mercutio are . . . more than friends. It will be easily believed, and this time, both with pay with their lives; even the softhearted prince will see that it must be done. All that I need do is purchase some commoner witnesses to swear they glimpsed such unnatural practices, and any risk from my brother will be finished.

  But first, the wedding. I have insisted upon the finest quality for the feast, as befits a woman with such a well-endowed purse, and I am inviting the better half of Verona to celebrate with me. My mother is pinch-faced about the expense, but she’s ever treated me as her lesser child; I will see she pays me some due before I leave her maternal embrace.

  ’Tis a pity that men run the world. I was born to be a prince.

  I suppose I will settle for marrying one, when this old fool is dead.

  Weeks passed.

  The mood between our houses turned ever darker. Hatred grew on hatred, quickly and violen
tly, for slights both real and imagined. No edict from the prince could stop it from coming to blood. First, a distant Capulet cousin was knifed in the street by someone not even allied to our house, yet it was cried about on Montague; next, a Montague servant was set upon and beaten to death while on an errand for my aunt, and this was—possibly unfairly—set at the Capulets’ door.

  And as untimely as ever, my sister’s wedding approached at the speed of a runaway horse, and with as much decorum; Veronica had turned shrill and moody, and nothing was good enough, not even the fit or fabric of the gown. My mother was tight-lipped on the subject, but my uncle was not so circumspect; he complained, loudly and often, of the lavish expense in ridding himself of the unwanted burden of a niece. Whatever he had cheated from her bridegroom would hardly cover the cost, though we all secretly rejoiced that she would soon be gone.

  I came around the corner from my apartments on a bright Thursday morning, with the Angelus bell’s chime still hanging in the air, and found Veronica weeping on a bench in the garden. She was sitting uncovered in the sun, which was strange to see—she always claimed that sun ruined a woman’s skin, and yet here she was, bathed in the glow, disheveled and red eyed, with a single maid hovering anxiously nearby to catch the wet kerchiefs as Veronica finished with them. The maid had not escaped my sister’s ill temper, I saw; there was a red mark on her cheek in the shape of a plump small hand. Perhaps she’d not brought enough kerchiefs to soak up Veronica’s tears.

  I tried to move past without incident, but Veronica looked up and in a choked, watery voice, whispered, “Benvolio? Please . . .”

  I could not remember a time she had ever used such a word, and so I paused, to gaze down at her. I did not feel any sympathy. Whatever troubles she suffered, she had more than earned them, and I had not forgotten our filthy family secret. The blood that was on her dainty hands had rubbed off on mine, and I would never forgive her for that.