Prince of Shadows: A Novel of Romeo and Juliet

by Rachel Caine

  “You mean it feigns death,” I said, speaking plainly, and he nodded, ducking his head well into the neck of his robe. “For how long does this likeness of death last?”

  “For two and forty hours,” he said. “Most precise. And there are no bad effects; you awake as from a pleasant sleep. . . .”

  He sweated in his guilt, and struggled to think himself innocent, as villains and fools so often do. At least the witch admitted her fault.

  “Whom did you mean this draught for, then?”

  “Ah, sir, that I cannot confess, for it is a great secret.”

  I was all out of patience now. “Then give the bottle hence, and let it be crushed into the street, where it can do no one any harm!”

  That is when he, overcome with pallor, said, “But I have already given it to she who will drink it, young sir, and for the love of God and your cousin, you must not interfere; you must not—”

  I knew, then, what had already happened. It was dark now, full night, and too late, all too late. It was plain from his words that Juliet Capulet’s hand had received this dark poison—harmless though he claimed it—and that she would have already quaffed it. Why? To evade her enforced marriage to Count Paris, of course. She meant to feign death, and steal away to my cousin’s arms.

  It was not a fool’s plan, after all. It was dangerous, yes, and it would earn Juliet and Romeo the enmity of both our families, but they might yet escape this curse together, and alive. . . .

  And yet, if Mercutio was right, if there was a curse at work, surely it would not be so simple as that.

  “Too late to prevent the course,” he said, his face round and pale as the moon above the dark cloth. “The potion is drunk. They will seek to rouse her for tomorrow’s solemnities but find her cold in her bed, and will bear her with much lamentation to the family tomb. No sin or blame comes to Count Paris, nor to the Capulets, and the keen lovers will have their happiness despite their quarreling families.”

  “And what of Romeo? What if he hears of her death? I know my cousin’s mind in this, and it will not go well, Friar—”

  “I have sent to Mantua, sir, with word for Romeo describing the plan. He need only wait a short time to collect his lady from her sleep; I will help him spirit her away before she wakes in the tomb.” He gazed at me with a mournful resignation. “Sir, I would rather not have done all this, but you know the lengths to which they have already gone; I feared—no, I knew—that young Juliet would end her own life, by any means necessary, to avoid Count Paris’s bed. What would you have me do, shield my eyes from her intention to self-murder and the gravest of sins? Or help the course of true love—”

  “If it is true love,” I said flatly. “You heard the witch.”

  “But, sir, if he thought Rosaline the author of his misery, why then would he send the curse to sting poor, innocent Juliet?”

  It was a most excellent question, and it shook my convictions to their dry bones, but I had seen Romeo, seen the torment in him, the unwilling nature of his obsession. I did not believe that Juliet had found her happiness in this so-called love, either; it was a fever that would burn them to bones.

  But the friar was not yet finished. He cleared his throat and said, “It may well be impetuous of me to speak so, but fair Rosaline has also bid me carry notes and arrange assignations, my clever young man. I would well beware that if there is a curse of love, it may seek to fall upon you.”

  I laughed aloud. I could not help it; the absurdity of it was too great. “I am no Romeo, to be pushed into the arms of a chance-met girl. . . .” But even as I said it, I thought that was exactly what I was. I had chanced into Rosaline’s rooms that first evening, when the Prince of Shadows sought his quiet revenge upon Tybalt . . . but no. What there was between me and Rosaline was no curse, and further, it had grown slowly, carefully, and even now, I knew that however it would pain me, I could walk from her, and pretend as if my heart had not turned to ash.

  Surely a curse would not allow me to walk away.

  Friar Lawrence bowed just a little, having well made his point, and said, “All will be well, young Montague. Only two days more will see the lovers reunited and safely away, and all’s well that ends well.”

  I felt a deep, terrible disquiet, but I bowed in return, taking a polite leave of him. I cared not about the witch; I knew she had told me all she could, and from the fright in her eyes, she would be off before the morning light. We would, I thought, be well rid of her.

  But if there was a curse, as Mercutio had believed . . . if there was, then there were two things I would need to find to end it: a rosary, and something in which he’d written his curse, in secret.

  I allowed myself to be speeded home for the gloomy evening, where my mother grieved quietly for her lost daughter, and my uncle for his lost dowry, and I . . . I only grieved, and paced, and slept fitfully until the morning.

  • • •

  All Verona woke to the lamentations of House Capulet, for Juliet was dead.

  The morbid details of it came as no shock, and mirrored what Friar Lawrence had predicted . . . the girl had been safely to bed in the night, and in the dawn her fat old nurse had discovered her stiff and cold in her bed, with a bottle of poison close by her side. It was difficult to learn more, since I was about my uncle’s business of the day, which meant making funeral rites for my sister in a suddenly crowded church calendar, as well as dispensing payments to all the necessary guards, bravos, and allies who faithfully served us. Mercutio had been quickly buried, without so much ceremony as might have been honorable; his widow left Verona that morning, sent back to her family with a significant portion of the Ordelaffi fortune packed in her bags.

  In the twilight of the evening, as the Capulets mimicked us and hastily changed their day’s preparations from wedding to funeral, I walked with the family’s procession down the narrow streets and out to where the Montague family tomb was kept, in the care of the monastery. As Veronica’s brother, I held pride of place at the front of the bier, shouldering a portion of the weight of her silk-wrapped body; I felt suffocated beneath the traditional black robe and mask that all those who bore her on their shoulders wore, while the men around us carried torches to light our way. Even the prince of Verona was masked and garbed, carrying one side of her slight weight, by which he showed his sorrow for the needless waste of her life.

  It was a political gesture, and one that my uncle would have celebrated, had the occasion not been as solemn.

  The women of Montague were not allowed to follow, not even at a distance; they stayed within the walls of the palazzo, and grieved in privacy. That, I thought, was a good thing, as well as custom, as we were wary of Capulet anger still.

  We settled my sister to rest upon her stone bed within the tomb. In a month or two, once the corruption of her body had finished, servants would enter and inter her bones beneath the carved stone lid of her sepulchre, where she would rest until called to the resurrection. Though the interior of the tomb was decorated with fine paintings, I tried to notice little of it; the oppressive sense of death here seemed suffocating, for all its gold leaf and gentle angels. Veronica had been wrapped close in grave windings of the finest silk, leaving only the square of her eyes, nose, and mouth exposed, and the flesh seen there was as pale as the grave clothes.

  “We all go to our God stripped of our vanities,” said the prince, standing at my shoulder and looking at Veronica with me. “Come, Benvolio; she is in the hands of angels now.”

  She seemed very small to me. Death had robbed her of the vigor and energy with which she had attacked her future, and however malicious that energy had been, I still missed its fire. There had been little enough love between us, but blood knows blood, even so.

  And hers was now, forever, cold.

  I crossed myself and left the tomb. Outside, I took in a deep, convulsive breath of the cooling night air, and stripped away the domino mask as if it burned me. The smell of the tomb—old, dusty death—clung to me in the f
olds of the robe, and I took it off as well, though custom said I should wear it hence. I began to hand it absently off to Balthasar, only to remember that I’d sent him to Mantua, with Romeo. I wondered whether anyone had told Romeo of the melee, and Veronica’s death. I wondered whether he would even care, so fixed was he on his love of Juliet.

  The prince clapped me on the back. “That was well-done, and a credit to your sister’s memory,” he said. “She died innocent, and God will welcome her soul into paradise.” He moved off quickly, to glad-hand my uncle and other upright, rich town leaders. Capulet was, of course, not among them.

  Lord Ordelaffi was.

  I made my way to his side. He looked older than I remembered, and more tired, in this unguarded moment; he forced a smile and offered a firm handshake to me. “Benvolio,” he said. “My sorrow for your sister.”

  “And mine, for your son,” I said. His eyes slid away as he nodded. “I regret I did not know of his burial before it was done, or I would have gladly borne him to his rest.”

  “You had grief enough, with Romeo’s exile and your sister’s untimely end,” he said, which sounded well enough, but there was falseness behind it. He had not wished to see Mercutio’s friends, nor to be reminded of the love that we had borne him. “It is in God’s hands now.”

  “I know it is not an auspicious time, sir, but I left with Mercutio a few things that I would like to retrieve,” I said. “May I come and find them?”

  “What, tonight?” he asked, and frowned. “I suppose there is no reason to wait. I have already given over some of his things to the poor, and to the Church. If what you seek is among them, you must deal with the monsignor.”

  I thanked him and drifted to my uncle’s side to tell him that I would accompany Lord Ordelaffi home, and thence be escorted by his men to the palazzo; he nodded, much distracted by the hot, whispered argument that was again being offered by Veronica’s aged bridegroom over the return of the proffered dowry. Five thousand florins was at stake. My uncle would not care what I did.

  The Ordelaffi palace was smaller than the Montague, but built along similar lines—what windows existed toward the street were high above, and blocked with stout shutters. They were more defensive than decorative; not so long ago, the great houses of Verona had repelled one another’s assaults with arrows, spears, and boiling oil. Today we were more gracious, but no less guarded.

  The difference truly came inside the Ordelaffi palace. I had been here but rarely, and always with Mercutio. The last time had been more than two years before, and I was surprised to note the barren walls where rich tapestries had once been draped to keep out the night’s chills. Portraits still adorned them, but the gold-illuminated icons I remembered were gone, as were the richer candlesticks and plate.

  It seemed smaller, and poorer, than ever.

  I followed Lord Ordelaffi down a bare hallway to a room set well off from its fellows; it was locked, and he fetched the key from a servant to open it to my gaze.

  Mercutio’s room had changed, too. It was stripped of its furnishings—gone to the poor, or to the Church, or (more likely) to be sold to cover the cost of his widow’s departure. A sad heap of his things lay on a threadbare carpet. My eyes darted to the niche where he had stored away the things I stole on my nighttime adventures as the Prince of Shadows. It was still shut tight.

  Lord Ordelaffi shut the door behind him, sealing the two of us within. I turned slowly to look at him, and saw a dark glint in his sullen face. “You knew of his crimes,” he said. “His dalliances. You lied for him, Benvolio, and you are as guilty as anyone in sealing his fate. You and that cursed thief friend of his, his Prince of Shadows.” Ordelaffi’s voice was rich with disgust. “My son consorted with thieves, as well as carried on his . . . his sinful relations with that apostate. Do not try to tell me you were ignorant of all of it. I found the gold, hidden away in a trunk, that my son kept for that criminal!”

  That had not been my gold, but Mercutio’s; I said nothing in response, preferring to wait. Lord Ordelaffi’s eyes were small and reddened with emotion—grief or anger, I could not tell.

  “You knew him well,” he said. “Why did he drive me to such extremes? I beat the boy, as I should have, to drive the folly out of him, but he only became more sullen, and more secretive in his transgressions. Why could he not be . . . be . . .” His hands grasped at a meaning he could not name.

  I did it for him. “Be the son you wished?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because he was as he was formed, as God made him,” I said. “All your beating and pushing would not force him into another shape. He loved you, my lord, but you broke his heart with the murder of the one he loved. What he was, after . . . he was neither the boy you wanted, nor the man he wished to be. And much grief has come of his shattering.” I was angry, but in a cold, remote way; Ordelaffi was not the roaring giant he’d been when he’d ordered the execution of Mercutio’s lover and set in motion all that followed. “But rest assured on one account: Your son was no thief.”

  “He was friend and accomplice to one—a coward, a dog who led my son astray.”

  I took a step toward him, holding his gaze, and for all his bluster, all the vicious beatings he had given his son, this time he retreated. “Careful,” I said, low in my throat. “Speak ill of your son and it will go just as ill for you.”

  He swallowed, looked away, and opened the door behind his back to edge away. “Take what you like,” he said. “I care not. Whatever remains may go in the midden, where it belongs.”

  The sound of the door closing was a thunderclap of futile rage. I took a deep breath and smelled fear—his, not mine. He would be haunted, I thought; all his days he would be stalked by the ghost of the son he could not love.

  The things on the floor were a jumble—broken wooden toys from Mercutio’s childhood that I set aside to be mended and given to others; a lute with three loose strings and a cracked neck; a dented goblet I well remembered in his hand. I stirred the pile, and found little else of value, but I bound it all up in the old carpet and made it a bundle to carry. I’d leave nothing for his father’s angry hands.

  The niche was locked, but I was an expert at such things, and it yielded in only a moment. It seemed empty, but when I felt into its depths, I touched leather, and pulled out a book—a thin volume written in Mercutio’s own hand.

  I sat down on the sill of the window, where I’d so often entered by climbing the wall, and lit a candle to read.

  He had written of me and Romeo, and our adventures together as boys; he’d spoken also of the Prince of Shadows, but never even in the privacy of these pages identified him, only confessed his own involvement in selling on some of the stolen goods. I wondered whether his father had read this, but I doubted he had; he had not the stomach for truth in such searing measures.

  Because also, Mercutio spoke of Tomasso. It was tender, and passionate, and equally it was tragic, because my friend had known always that there could be no happiness in his love, only disappointment and grief. Yet he had pursued it to the bitterest end, because it was love.

  On the day of Tomasso’s murder, he had written only one thing, in writing that seemed jagged and hard.

  He died this day. All that is good in me died with him.

  From that day forward, the entries were shorter, and there was no hint of happiness in them; on the contrary, as the candle burned down and my eyes blurred with weariness, I met a Mercutio I hardly knew . . . a boy no longer, but a man forged into a weapon that cut on all sides, like a ball of sharp knives. Love had curdled to a black and furious hatred, and he did not much care where it struck.

  I’ faith, I almost hate the Montagues as much . . . knowing they saw his death, saw my humiliation, goes hard. Hearing of Capulet guilt makes me think had I not been such fast friends with Montague it would not have happened.

  • • •

  Reading it drew the breath from me, and I felt faint and ill, and for a moment I put down his book, u
nable to read more. He struck me hard, and from the grave, and I knew it was just.

  I read the rest of it quickly, numbed to pain now, and found the entry where he recorded his visit to the witch. On the next leaf he had inscribed what seemed a poem, and well I remembered his half-mad quoting of it . . . and at the end, the simple, dry words etched in the strange color:

  CURSED BE THE CAPULETS. CURSED BE THE HOUSE WHO BETRAYED US.

  This, then, was the second part of what the witch had said we should find . . . the curse, written in his own hand . . . and I realized that the ink, rusted brown rather than black, smelled strange and yet familiar.

  Blood.

  I flinched back from it, feeling the menace in those sharp strokes of his pen, the slashes of the letters. Here was the doom he had, all unwitting, cast upon not just Capulet, but Montague as well. A plague upon both your houses. He had thought to curse Rosaline and all her kin, but instead it had reflected back upon Veronica and Montague.

  And Romeo.

  I closed the volume, blew out the candle, shouldered the bundle of broken dreams, and carried it all home, where I set a flame to his diary and watched his curse burn to ash. Two-thirds of it was done, then.

  But nowhere in the sad collection that remained did I find the third piece . . . the rosary that he had taken from Tomasso’s body.

  I have given his things to the poor, and to the Church, his father had said.

  The rosary would have gone to the Church.

  • • •

  The scribe assigned to Monsignor Pietro was young, and keen; upon forcing the lock on the study door within the monsignor’s private residence, I found careful records of all that had been received from House Ordelaffi. It revealed much about the nature of Mercutio’s father’s penitence; the tapestries I had seen removed were listed, and much of the plate and silver had ledger entries. The records listed a trunk full of Mercutio’s precious books he had acquired, and assorted adornments and religious articles of the young man, now gone to God’s keeping.