by Rachel Caine
Her lips parted, as if she would speak. I did not give her the chance, because I could not bear it.
I slid down the tile roof, took hold of the edge, and dropped lightly down into the street in front of my foolish cousin. “Come on,” I said, and dragged him homeward.
• • •
My cousin was not himself, in ways I could not begin to explain, nor to fathom.
He had always been headstrong and blind to the consequences of his actions, but he was never completely insane . . . poetry to a Capulet girl had been ill-advised, an embarrassment, but he had known full well the limits even as he wallowed in the hazy cloud of passion.
He well knew that there was no chance of any dalliance with the soon-to-be-wed Juliet, apple of Capulet’s eye. Or he should have understood. His infatuation with Rosaline had been a boy’s love, one that imagined an angel where a flesh-and-blood woman lived, and never expected to so much as brush his fingertips on the hem of her garment.
Yet that night, in the safety of his rooms, he said, “I shall have her, Benvolio. She shall be mine, only mine. I cannot live any other life than with her. I knew the instant I saw her, but the touch of her fingers, the taste of her lips . . .” He was not caught up in a fancy; I could see that. He was utterly serious, as serious as any man twice his age. It was only that it was a subject he dared not take seriously, on his life. “I know you think me foolish to go to her, but I could do nothing else. I could not sleep nor eat without seeing her smile again, and now that I have sated that hunger it only grows more fierce. I must marry her, Ben. Marry or die.”
“I think you mean marry and die,” I said, “because you know you cannot have her. Her family and ours will never stomach it.”
He shook his head in impatient disregard, and stalked the room restlessly. He’d dismissed his servants, and I’d left Balthasar behind, so there were no potentially prying eyes to carry tales back to our grandmother, but still I felt the hot breath of her presence on my neck. He is your responsibility, she had told me, and given me that devil’s look that meant I had best not disappoint her, and she would know—oh, yes, somehow, the ancient crone would know what was brewing here.
But more than my fear of her was my dread of the blind look in my cousin’s eyes. That was more than mere love. It was a martyr’s exaltation. And it was unnatural.
It raised chills along my spine.
“You can’t understand,” he told me, with the fever of a true fanatic. His eyes glowed with passion, and his face was alight with it. “Benvolio, you’ve never felt such joy as grips me even at the mention of her name: Juliet, Juliet. Was there ever a more beautiful sound since God first spoke? You can’t understand; you have not seen her. She is . . . she is perfection; she is the most perfect woman ever formed. . . . She is made of light and love. . . .”
“She’s a child,” I told him flatly, and stood up to block his path. He stopped, but did not back away, and the madness did not dim in his eyes. “She’s a Capulet daughter—no, the Capulet daughter, on whom they pin all their hopes—and she is all but married to Count Paris—”
“He cannot have her,” Romeo said, and the exaltation turned dark, then, and violent, and his right hand gripped the dagger at his side. “She is a precious flower; she cannot be so rudely plucked by such as him; I will not bear the thought of him pawing her—”
“Cousin, think! He is the prince’s own close friend and relative! You will not only humiliate your uncle; you will earn us the prince’s enmity for all time. You will destroy Montague, and for what? A girl, a girl barely of an age to bleed, much less know what she—”
He struck me. It was not a love tap, either; it was a full blow, delivered fast and strong and without any warning at all, and I was rocked back a step, but only a step . . . but as I brought up my own fist, he pulled his dagger, and the needle point aimed straight for my throat.
I stopped short, balanced on the balls of my feet with my neck a bare inch from the tip of the blade. There was a very dark, antic look in my young cousin’s eyes, something that I thought was eerily akin to Mercutio’s black moods; I was far from sure that he would not spike me straight through if I dared move. It would mean his life, but I was beginning to think, considering what I had seen this night, that Romeo no longer cared a fig for his life, or mine, or anyone’s, save this Capulet girl’s. I slowly took a step back, and some sanity came into him; he looked a bit ashamed as he lowered the dagger, though he did not sheathe it. “I warn you: Do not speak of her so,” he said. “I love you well, Ben, but I love her more than any creature on this earth. If it were not blasphemous, I would say I love her more than God and man alike. No, I may say that. I must say it, and if God must damn me, then let it be done.”
I winced, because even the boldest man did not tempt God so. “You don’t know what you say. I beg you, Romeo, for your life’s sake—”
“Beg away,” he said, and finally sheathed steel as he turned his back on me. “I should kill you, you know. I should at least cut out your tongue so that you can’t betray us before we can be wed in the sight of God.”
“Wed,” I repeated. He meant to climb it, then, this ultimate pinnacle of madness. I felt numbed. He had not threatened me so much as simply expressed aloud his logic, but in it was no room for the love we had always borne each other as brothers. I was simply a barrier to his desires now, one to be minimized, or destroyed if necessary. “You really mean to wed her.”
“Juliet,” he said, and turned back toward me. He held my gaze with that wild martyr’s look and beatific smile. No saint had ever seemed so exalted, nor so bent on self-destruction for the sake of his ecstasy. There was nothing sane in it, and nothing that could be reasoned to. “Her name is Juliet.”
“Romeo . . .” I said it gently, the way a man will address a strangely feral dog, and held up my hand in a gesture of peace. “Coz, I know you love her; it is plain to the blindest eyes. But I beg you think what you are doing to yourself—”
“I care not.”
It was a bitter pill, but I swallowed it, and said, “Then to her. Do you imagine for a moment her family will stand for such an insult? They’ll murder you, and the girl—at best, Juliet will be disgraced, spoiled, unmarriageable. And if you believe that Count Paris will not avenge the wrong done him—”
“I don’t care,” he said. “Christ forgive me, Benvolio, but there is nothing in the world for me but her, and nothing for her but me, and if I cannot have her, better I am dead, better we are both dead, better the world is dead and our dreams with it. Do you understand?” He wanted me to, desperately, but all I saw was a man in a sweated fever who was making no sense. “I can let nothing stand between us. Nothing, and no one.” He pulled in a breath. “I don’t wish to do it, but if you think to betray me, I will betray you first. The prince would do anything for a man willing to identify the Prince of Shadows.”
I did not believe it. He was my cousin, my brother, a bond as unbreakable as my heart to my chest . . . but I read the intention in his face, the determination and anguish in his eyes. He could not mean it, and yet he did.
I stared at Romeo in silence for a long, long moment, and then said, “You’re mad.”
He gave me a twitch of a smile, but it did not alter the truth of what was in his face. “If this is madness, then I would rather die mad than live sane.”
I backed away from him then, in defeat, and went back to my own apartments. I felt sickened and cold, and there was a bitter metal taste in my mouth. When Balthasar began helping me remove my clothes I realized I had sweated them through. He clucked his tongue as he took them. “It’s a wonder you’ve not caught your death of ague,” he said. “Terrible vapors out in the night.” He took a closer look at my face and frowned. “Master?”
I shook my head, and he found a heavy robe to drape around me. I still felt chilled inside it. “I need to take a message out,” I said. “I cannot go myself. Will you see it delivered?”
“Have I ever failed you?”
“Never,” I said, and sat down at the writing table to draw out paper and ink. I wrote quickly, sanded it, folded it, and sealed it with wax—but without the Montague marks—before handing it to him.
He glanced down at it, then up at me, eyebrows raised. I had written no names—neither inside nor out.
“Rosaline Capulet,” I said, very quietly. His eyebrows climbed higher, but he said nothing, only nodded. “Be most extremely careful.”
“Leave it to me,” he said. “Will you expect an answer?”
“I hope,” I said, and sat back, frowning. “I hope that I do.”
FROM THE HAND OF BENVOLIO MONTAGUE, TAKEN BY BALTHASAR, HIS MANSERVANT, TO FRIAR LAWRENCE BEFORE MATINS, AND THENCE DELIVERED BY THE FRIAR TO ROSALINE CAPULET
From your brother in Christ,
I am deeply concerned for the soul of your fair cousin, whose devotion to her most dear Lord is wavering; I believe she may be tempted by one who means to lead her astray. I pray you, watch for her safety and lead her to the paths of righteousness. I will likewise guide my wandering brother back to the fold.
Go with God’s love, and my own.
FROM THE HAND OF ROSALINE CAPULET, DIRECTED TO BENVOLIO MONTAGUE, CONFISCATED FROM HER SERVANT BY TYBALT CAPULET. NOT DELIVERED.
From your sister in Christ,
Alas, your warning has come too late, for I find that my innocent cousin’s true faith has been corrupted, and in its place a dangerous heresy has taken vital root. No words of mine will be sufficient to sway her from this false doctrine, though she knows she risks her immortal soul.
I urge you, do all you can to prevent this false prophet from further corrupting her sweet and trusting soul. I dare not entrust this to the friar’s delivery; he intrigues too closely with my cousin for my comfort, and may not bring this to you. I beg you, act swiftly to prevent what may be tragedy. I can do nothing but pray you succeed.
Walk carefully, and with God, beloved brother in Christ.
If only I had thought to write a letter also to Friar Lawrence, explaining in bare words the risk, all might have proceeded quite differently . . . but that is my sin of overbearing caution, and no one else’s. Romeo barred me from his rooms all the next day, but I thought him penned up inside; his manservant swore it was the case. It wasn’t until my grandmother summoned me to her chambers that I knew something had gone wrong. Badly wrong.
Into the smoldering, sweltering furnace I went, where my grandmother sat mounded in blankets and warmed by the blazing hearth. I was surprised to find that my mother was with her as well—not only my mother; beside her, looking fevered and mutinously angry, sat my sister, Veronica. She was all but married, and I had hoped to be spared any further contact with her until then.
At least she was sweating through her clothes as well, though she strove to look composed and elegant—a difficult thing when one’s hair clings in damp threads to one’s face, and sweat runs like a widow’s tears.
My mother did not sweat, though there was a faint glistening on her brow. She sat quietly, hands folded in her lap, and gazed at me with steady warning.
I bowed to her, to my grandmother, and threw Veronica a barely perceptible nod.
“Stand up,” my grandmother said. She looked pale and chill and half-dead, but her eyes gleamed with virile power. “Where is your cousin?”
“In his rooms,” I said, and was assaulted quickly by the conviction that I was wrong. I left it at that, because showing weakness would be like running from a lion. Sweat already beaded on my brow, and I could feel the damp patches soaking beneath my arms. Jesu, it was like the bowels of the devil in here.
She let me stew in silence for a full minute, and then snapped her fingers. A serving woman stepped forward out of the corner, eyes downcast, visibly terrified. She kept her shaking hands knotted in her apron.
“Tell him,” my grandmother said. The woman darted a quick look at my mother, who nodded encouragement.
She licked her lips, and her voice came softly, and faltering. “Begging your pardon, sir, but I empty chamber pots, and . . . and when I came to fetch it, young master Romeo was not there.”
“His manservant swears he’s within. You just didn’t see him.”
“No, sir, I . . .” She licked her lips again, and took in a deep breath, for courage. “Nobody marks my comings and goings. His chamber pot was under the bed, like always. I had to go all the way through. He wasn’t there.”
“Was his chamber pot used?” my grandmother asked. “Come on, girl; speak up. My ears are old!”
“Some part used,” the girl stammered. Her rough-scrubbed hands were white where they were pressed in on themselves. “As if he was there in the morning but no longer.”
My grandmother shoved her back in the shadows with a flick of her hand, and the girl was grateful for it. Then all the attention came back to me.
“He is not within these walls,” Grandmother said. “Do you know where he is?”
“No,” I said. Better to admit it. A lie would only make it look worse.
“Your cousin has been out many times recently without you. Were you aware of that?”
“Some of it,” I said. My own voice had tightened up, and I tried to ease my tone, and the tension that had taken hold of my shoulders. The heat, the intense heat was making me feel light-headed, and sweat dripped uncomfortably down my face. “I will find him.”
“Best you do, before something worse happens. Is he still on about that Rosaline girl?”
“No,” I said, which was the perfect truth. “He sees the wisdom of leaving Rosaline alone now.”
“Good,” Veronica said primly. “Loose-tongued viper that she is, she’d betray poor Romeo in a second. Look what came of her last gossip.”
My grandmother glanced her way, and Veronica shut her mouth, quick enough for her teeth to click together. “Did I seek your opinions, girl?” Veronica, I thought, had best watch herself. The temporary diversion did not last, because Grandmother’s attention turned back to me with the force of a shove. “Is it some other girl, then?”
I risked a lie. “I don’t know.”
“Pray God it is, and someone suitable,” she said. “You’ve been little use to me in the matter of Romeo, Benvolio. I am most displeased. Tell me, what do you believe your future is in this house?”
“Why, Grandmother,” I said, “I believe that it is whatever you decree it will be. But you have need of someone to avenge your wrongs and be your strong right hand.”
“Is that what you are, then? My strong right hand? The scriptures tell us, ‘If thy hand offend thee, cut it off.’ I warn you, boy: Bring your cousin to heel and make him comport himself as befits the true heir of Montague, or there will be consequences. Grave consequences.”
My mother was uncharacteristically worried; I could see it in her normally unreadable face. She feared for me, and that meant more than Grandmother’s threats.
I bowed my head. “I will find him,” I said. “May I have your leave to—”
“Go,” my grandmother said, and pointed her cane at me with an unsteady hand. “Find the boy. Tybalt Capulet sent a much distempered letter here complaining of Romeo’s behavior at the feast, and I think he means to scrape a duel if he can. Prevent that at all costs. We cannot lose Romeo.”
She burst into wet, red coughs, and I escaped quickly. But I was not the only one. My mother rose and followed, and so did Veronica.
“Bide a moment,” my mother said, once we were without the doors. She took a dainty linen square from her sleeve and dabbed at her forehead. “I am sorry, my son, but she is in earnest in her anger. Romeo’s betrothal will be announced soon, and his behavior must be seen as above reproach. His promised bride is of excellent family, and far wealthier than we are. You understand the politics of this.”
I did. Children of such houses were bought and sold for favors and profits, all under the cloak of the Church and tradition. Romeo and Mercutio, my sister . . . all affianced without consent, an
d I dangled on the precipice, fighting the drop. Rosaline alone had escaped that customary fate, but she was soon to wed Christ. Maybe that’s your escape, part of me whispered. Take on that suffocating robe for good. Priests may claim celibacy, but it’s the exception, not the rule. Yet taking the cloth would not free me from the family; far from it. They would expect preferment, and push me from priest to monsignor to bishop to pope, if they could. At least Rosaline could look to a future of prayer and study, if lucky.
“I understand,” I said. “But the old woman will be on her deathbed soon, at the rate she coughs up her blood.”
“She’ll die in that chair, ordering us about,” my sister said sourly. “Doubt that not. And she’s got venom enough to poison us all if she’s roused to bite. So be quick about your work, Ben. I have only a few days until I’m free of all this. Don’t spoil it for me!”
“What motive could I have for that?” I asked her, in too-honeyed tones, and she frowned. She knew all too well what motive I harbored. And what hatred I concealed under the smile. “Mother.” I bowed to her, ignored Veronica, and walked away with fast, hard hits of my heel on the floor. My uncle was walking the other way across the atrium, head bent as he listened to one of the five or six rich men gaggled around him; he looked gravely interested in what they were saying, though I doubted he was. The masks that duty pressed upon us . . . He seemed not to note my passage at all, and I hastened my pace, went quickly up the stairs and into my rooms, where Balthasar nearly stumbled into me in hurrying to open the door.
I said nothing at all to him, changing to clothes that would best reflect the might and power of Montague; besides, the ones I had worn were stinking already, and I wanted the smell of the old woman’s room off of me. Balthasar silently presented me with sword and dagger, which I added, and donned his own before topping it with a half cloak, and then the two of us slipped away, out through the hallways and a little-used door that creaked when we opened it onto the back garden. It was a pleasant enough day, sunny and mild, and the flowers rioted in their colors among the sharply trimmed topiary trees. Like the Capulets, we had bravos in our pay, and some loitered in the sunny space; Balthasar summoned two of them, and we left through the side gate.
