by Rachel Caine
He knew who I was, what I was.
And now it remained only what hay he would make of it.
Mercutio, ignorant of the undercurrents, said, “But only one word, with one of us? Couple it with something; at least make it a word and a blow.” Sweetly said, with a poisonous sting in its tail. He meant to provoke, and Tybalt scarce needed it . . . but he spared a second from his pleasurable contemplation of my doom to send Mercutio a scorching, dismissive look.
“You’ll find me apt enough to it, sir, if you will give me occasion,” he said.
I felt the darkness come on the day, despite the sweltering sun, and put a warning hand on Mercutio’s shoulder. He shook it free, and his tone took on a sharp, angry edge. “Could you not take some occasion without giving?”
Tybalt pointed at me. “You, I shall save for a later feast, for the insult to my house and to my sister. I’ve weapons enough to wound you when I wish.” He altered his aim toward Mercutio. “You consort with Romeo.”
“Consort? What does that make us, minstrels? If you would make minstrels of us, you may expect nothing but discord.” Mercutio tipped the still-sheathed hilt of his rapier forward, the better to drive home his insults. “Here’s my fiddlestick, then. Here’s what will make you dance.”
We’d already attracted a crowd of onlookers—idlers and fools, but a few well-to-do and even here and there a noble, surrounded by their own attendants, all bearing witness to this folly. Not even a folly—a farce; Tybalt knew he held the winning ground, and his gaze upon me said as much. These were merely the first steps in a deadly serious dance.
We could not win, and I knew it. It was madness, but Mercutio was in the grip of a long-burning fever, and he gazed at Tybalt as if he held the cure for his distemper.
“We’re in the most public of eyes,” I said to them both. “Let us take this to some private place, or else keep a cool head and go. Mercutio—”
He shook me off, and stepped forward to Tybalt. A more blatant challenge I could not imagine, and Tybalt did not back away—nor did he answer it, not yet.
“Men’s eyes were made to look,” Mercutio said, and swept his own gaze up Tybalt, and down, in a lazy and insulting appraisal. “Let them gaze. I will not budge for any man’s pleasure.”
Tybalt laughed, a flash of white teeth like the glint of a blade. “Marriage has changed you, then. I wonder how much. Can a woman make a man of you?”
Mercutio let out a sound that was as much growl as curse, and tried to draw. I held him back, even though my own blood beat hard at my temples, urging me to draw, strike, end him and the smirking bravo next to him. End the threat to my close-held secret.
I saw a distinctive flash of Montague colors, and for a bare second I allowed myself a surge of relief. I thought that Balthasar had arrived to back us—but no. Not Balthasar, and no bravos pushing toward us, nor allies rushing to our backs.
Romeo alone had joined us.
My wandering cousin had chosen the wrong moment to show himself, but having done so, he did not back away; after a hesitation, he came forward, hands outstretched and empty, a calm and almost angelic light on his face.
Well, I’d meant to find him. And I had. But a worse place of discovery I could not imagine.
“Well,” Tybalt said, and stepped off from Mercutio. “Peace be with you, sir; here comes my man.”
“I’ll be hanged, sir, if he wears your livery. If you run, he’ll chase you; perhaps that makes him your man. . . .” Mercutio was still trying to bait the Capulet heir, but Tybalt had eyes only for Romeo. If there had been fury in him before, now it was nothing but rage, absolute and tipping toward insanity.
“Romeo,” Tybalt said, and closed the distance between them quickly. My cousin should have reached for his sword, but he did not. His hands remained empty and open. “The love I feel for you demands no better term than this: You are a villain.”
Romeo spread his hands even wider, and his smile did not falter. “The reason I have to love you excuses such a greeting. I am no villain, and therefore, I’ll say farewell. You know me not.”
He tried to pass and come to us, but Tybalt was having none of peace now; he lunged and shoved my cousin back in an explosion of violence as sudden as it was inevitable. “This does not excuse the injuries you’ve done me and my house. Turn and draw!”
“I never injured you. I love you better than you can know, until you know the reasons.” Romeo’s face was . . . exalted, like that of a saint going to the cross. I felt sick at the sight of it, the unreasoning and unwavering purpose of it. “Good Capulet—a name I love as dearly as my own—be satisfied with that.”
He tried to embrace Tybalt Capulet, who backed away as if my addled cousin bore some plague. It was more shocking, in its way, than Tybalt’s assault had been, and while I blurted out Romeo’s name in warning, Mercutio drew his sword, and that sound, the sound of blade clearing scabbard, was the only thing in the world that rang in my ears—that, and the indrawn breath of the crowd around us.
Tybalt turned toward Mercutio, toward the real danger.
“That was dishonorable, Romeo,” Mercutio said. “A vile submission, to make peace. Come, Tybalt, rat catcher, will you draw?”
The crowd was pressed closer now, avid, and I could smell the sweat and fear and excitement like lightning in the hot, still air. I did not draw, not yet. The chance that we could still make away from here, and kill Tybalt at a less public time, stayed my hand.
So perhaps the rest was, in the end, my fault for the hesitation.
“Why, Mercutio, what would you have with me?” Tybalt asked, and made a rude gesture a man would give to entice a whore, so that there was no mistaking his meaning. The onlookers laughed, and Mercutio’s face turned a dead, awful white, while his dark eyes blazed with the flames of hell.
“Good King of Cats, I’ll have nothing but one of your nine lives, and if I do not like your behavior, I’ll beat out the rest of the eight. Will you draw, sir? Make haste, lest mine is at your ears before it’s out.”
Tybalt’s mimicry ended, and in a cold voice he said, “I am for you, then.” And he drew his sword.
It started slowly, with a tap of blades, humble as spoons clanking, but the two of them circled, measuring, and I saw that Tybalt moved like the cat we’d always named him . . . lithe and quick and deadly. Mercutio was a fine swordsman, precise and strong, but he’d had drink, and there was emotion in him now, fueling a too-hot fire, while Tybalt seemed cold as a man three days dead. Tybalt glided right; Mercutio stumbled to counter. It was clear who would win, if it came to a real fight.
Romeo saw it, too, and he stepped forward again. “Good Mercutio, put up your sword.” But neither of them heeded, nor even could heed, so focused were they on each other. I felt a terrible surge of hopeless anger—at Romeo, for stumbling upon this; at Mercutio, for setting himself on this black and futile course; at myself, for failing to prevent it.
Tybalt flung himself forward in a deadly fast attack, a simple and elegant thrust headed straight for Mercutio’s breast. Whether slowed or not by the wine, Mercutio still beat it aside, and riposted toward Tybalt’s bent thigh, a cut that would have opened a vein and left him bled as white in the gutter as Roggocio, had it landed.
But it did not. Tybalt, Prince of Cats, leaped free of it, growled, circled, and came back for him while Mercutio was off-footed, and scored a shallow cut along my friend’s right arm. Not much, just a thin red line to dampen the white linen sleeve, but it was enough to show that death was coming, and coming fast.
Romeo shoved me aside, and pulled his own rapier free. “Draw, Benvolio! We can beat down their weapons; we must stop them. . . . Tybalt, Mercutio—the prince has expressly forbidden this in the streets— Hold, Tybalt! Mercutio!”
I drew then, but it was too late, too late, too late. Mercutio attacked, and, drunken or not, blinded by his demons or not, he would have killed Tybalt with that blow had it landed, but it failed . . . only because Tybalt’s heel slipped
on some wet mess in the street, and he was not where he ought to have been when the steel slid past.
Romeo, seeing that it was about to come to real blood, lunged in between them and spread his arms to face Tybalt. What he meant to do, I do not know; maybe he meant to take Mercutio’s place in the duel, or perhaps only to stop the fight. But it did not matter. Tybalt had already begun his answering lunge, and I felt frozen in place as I saw the steel glide forward, point and edge, toward Romeo’s breast. But Romeo twisted, and the lunge slid on, grazing his ribs as it went. . . .
To bury half the rapier’s length in Mercutio’s chest.
Mercutio’s lips parted, and he gave a little cry of surprise as his rapier fell from his hand to rattle in the street. Tybalt seemed equally shocked as he recovered, and yanked his blade free of my friend’s ribs. It slid out with a terrible sound, steel grating bone, and the blood that gouted out was the exact shade of Capulet livery, the same that Tybalt wore on his doublet and his cap, the same slashed into Petruchio’s sleeves and particolored hose as he rushed forward to pull Tybalt away. I did not hear what the Capulets said; my ears seemed tuned only to the sound of Mercutio’s tortured, hitching breaths, and the pulse of his blood flowing to the stones. I was there with him without feeling myself move or ordering my body to make the effort; he was falling, and I was there to catch him.
And with me, Romeo, pallid Romeo, his face blank with shock that his peacemaking had gone so terribly wrong.
Mercutio’s blood was foaming pink on his lips, but he was still talking. If a grimace counted as a smile, he smiled. “Benvolio, I’m hurt,” he said. He sounded surprised. “May a plague curse both your families . . . both . . . your . . . families. . . .” With the repetition, it took on the edge of horror. His eyes rolled wildly, and his weight went heavy in my arms. “I’m finished. . . . Is he gone? Escaped?”
“It’s nothing,” I said. My breath was coming too fast, the lights were all too bright around us, and my heart pounded in my temples like a drum. I tasted sweat, or tears, or both. “You will be fine.”
He flashed bloodied teeth in something too fierce, too painful to be a smile. “Aye, aye, a scratch, but ’tis enough. Where is my page?”
He had no one, as ever he’d had no one . . . none but two of us, kneeling in his blood, holding him up. Romeo grabbed a gawking boy and twisted his ear until he yelped. “Go, fetch a surgeon!” Then he tried to smile for Mercutio. “Courage, man. The hurt cannot be so much.”
“Not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but ’tis enough; ’twill serve,” Mercutio said. He gave a bubbling, wet laugh that sounded too much like a death rattle. His breath smelled of blood. “Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man. I am not long for this world, my friends—” Pain struck him deep, and his body arched against us, fists clenching and trembling as if he fought off death like an enemy. His face screwed up under the agony, and suddenly his eyes opened wide, and he grabbed for my collar and pulled me close—close enough to feel his hot, fevered breath on my face. “A plague on both your houses; mark me, Benvolio; I am sorry. . . .” But whatever he meant, it skittered away from him under a new wave of pain, and when he collapsed again, loose in our arms, he had wandered into black humor. “A dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat to scratch a man to death . . . a braggart, a rogue, a villain that fights by the numbers . . . Why the devil did you come between us?” His voice went suddenly and unexpectedly childish and petulant, as he caught Romeo’s stricken gaze. “I was hurt under your arm!”
“I . . . I . . . was trying to help,” Romeo whispered. “I thought it for the best. . . .”
“Help me into some house, Benvolio; I feel faint—a plague on both your houses, they have made worm’s meat of me . . . your houses . . .” He gripped my collar so tightly I thought he meant to strangle me. “Your houses, do you understand? It is a curse . . . Oh God, take me in. . . .”
I would not let him die here in the street, stared at and remarked upon by the common folk; Romeo seemed too stunned to act, so I stood, gathered Mercutio’s body up in my arms, and walked through the square. If he was heavy—and he must have been—I did not feel it. I felt little except a burning wish that he not die there on the ground, or in my arms, before we had reached some comfort.
“Benvolio?” Mercutio asked. He sounded thin and weak and far away, and I could not bring myself to look down at him.
“Hush,” I said. “I’m taking you home. Your father will call for a surgeon.”
“No surgeon, and I have no father,” he whispered. Though I did not stare down at him, I could see from the corner of my eye the pale, bloodless color of his skin, and the brilliant red still flowing over his doublet, soaking it hot and wet against my chest. “The surgeon’s already had me with his sharpest knife. Did you think Tybalt was such a deft hand with a blade? One thrust, clean . . .” He seemed, at this moment, to admire it. “I always mocked him, but he has proved his point on me.”
“Quiet. Save your strength.”
“I have none to save,” he said, and then, as if in surprise, “You carry me.”
“Aye.” I was gasping for breath, I realized, and staggering from effort. There must have been men and women in the way, but they’d drawn back like waves from Moses himself, save that the red sea was trailing behind me. Mercutio’s blood dripped from the points of my elbows and from the edges of my sleeves. I was carmined with it. Made Capulet.
My shoulder found a wall, and I leaned there a moment, just a moment, to clear the blurring from my eyes. My head and heart pounded together in a deafening chorus, and it came to me with sudden icy clarity that I might collapse well before I carried him the rest of the way to either his house or mine.
“Listen,” Mercutio whispered. His hand tugged hard at my collar. “Listen, I must make a confession; be my confessor, dear friend—”
“No,” I said. “No, you will not die.”
“Listen, I sinned. I sinned most gravely against you. I meant only for it to attach to the one who betrayed us, but I see now; I see I was wrong—”
“Quiet, for the love of God!” I was on the hottest verge of grief. Mercutio’s mind was wandering, and I could not listen; I could not.
Still, he talked on. “. . . not Capulet, not Capulet guilt at all, but Montague as well, enemies upon enemies, and poison to one is poison to all, and I am sorry—”
“Hsst! Young master! Here, bring him here!”
I lifted my head, and blinked. There was a young woman standing in a doorway ahead; I did not recognize her, except as someone who was willing to help in this most extreme darkness. I took in a deep breath and pushed off the wall, staggering the last ten feet and into the shadow of her lintel.
The inside was cool and dark, and smelled sweetly of herbs. It was no noble bed I laid Mercutio upon, only a narrow mattress stuffed with lumpy straw, but he sighed in relief just the same. The girl came behind us, carrying a steaming pot full of water, some rags, and some foul-smelling unguent in yet another pot, and then it came to me in a rush that I knew her.
The witch.
Her gaze was troubled as she stared down at my friend, and she shook her head as if she knew well what the outcome of this would be . . . but she said, “Help me take this off him,” and reached for the ties of his doublet. I caught her hand, staring at her, but she shook her head. “I mean to help, sir, only help.”
I heard nothing but regret and grief, and so I released her. I’d take help from the devil himself, if he’d appeared in a puff of smoke and promised to ease Mercutio’s pain.
Together we folded back the thick padded velvet; it was stabbed through, and sopping with blood. The linen shirt beneath was as red as any Capulet’s cloth. She bit her lip and rolled Mercutio on his side, saw the open bloody lips of the wound on his back, and let out a little resigned sigh before she wadded up pads of cloth and bade me press against the wound in his chest. As I did, I felt the stammering beat of his heart. I knew that if he lived, rot would carry hi
m off in agony; a wound such as this would almost certainly fester, and no surgeon could stitch together what had been cut apart within him.
“We can buy him a little time,” she said in a low voice, “but the blade went too deep, and too true.”
Something arrested my attention then—beneath the thick red blood, there were dark stains on Mercutio’s chest. No, not stains—inked letters I did not recognize, with an odd and ancient slant to them. I rubbed at them, but they did not smear.
“Leave it,” the girl said. “He needs to save his strength.”
I knew she meant he would never regain it again, and nodded to tell her. Mercutio’s eyes had closed, and the lids looked translucently pale, all his healthy color fled. His lips were the color of cold seas.
I did not think he would ever open those eyes again, but he did, and lunged up to grab my arm with unnatural strength. “A plague on both your houses,” he blurted. “I never meant it so, Benvolio; I am sorry—break it . . . break it before it consumes . . . promise . . .”
And then his eyes rolled back into his head, and his mouth lolled open, and he fell back into the hands of the young witch who’d given her bed to soothe him.
“He is not yet dead,” she whispered, and eased him down again. She had packed the wound in his back, and now she smeared the cloth with thick white unguent. She motioned for me to do the same, and I fumbled my own handful of cloth in place, and anointed it. Then I held him up as she wrapped the bandage tight around his chest, from armpit to waist, covering the wound and the eldritch writing I’d seen upon him. Before she was through, though, a flower of red had bloomed on his chest, spreading its sinister petals in a slow, inevitable growth.
But still he breathed a little. It seemed a miracle, and one I was willing to embrace. “I thank you,” I said. “You did not have to help, after my rough treatment of you.”
She shook her head. “I could not do otherwise,” she said. “I grieve, but Mercutio knew the price he would pay for his revenge. I warned him.”
