by Melinda Taub
“Dead!”
“Aye. Three weeks ago in high July she met with Romeo, son and heir of old Montague. It seems they wed in secret.”
Isabella’s eyes grew wide. “A son of Montague, wed to a lady of Capulet? ’Twere wise they spoke not of it.”
“Aye.” Escalus’s jaw was set. “Though rash and unadvised they were in all other things. Impetuous fools. In any case, Juliet’s cousin Tybalt took a dislike to Romeo and his fellows, and challenged him on the street to a duel. Romeo’s friend took up his part and was slain at Tybalt’s hand.”
“Romeo’s friend? Another Montague, I suppose?”
“Nay, sister.” Escalus drew close so he could lay a hand over Isabella’s. “ ’Twas Mercutio.”
Isabella pulled sharply on the reins. “Ay me! Mercutio? Our kinsman?”
“Even so.”
“I pray you did not let his murderer go free, brother.”
“Would I had had the chance to punish him. After he cut Mercutio down, Tybalt was himself slain by Romeo straightaway.”
Isabella’s hands were clenched tightly on the reins. Her sunny smile was replaced with a frown. How heavily Verona’s woes returned to those who escaped them. “Good.”
“Isabella! I forbid thee to speak so. Verona must understand that the Crown’s justice—”
“Hang the Crown’s justice,” said Isabella. “And I am a princess now, Escalus; thou canst forbid me nothing. If young Romeo avenged Mercutio’s death, I will thank him for that.”
“Not in this world, thou shalt not. I exiled Romeo for his part in this bloodshed and he fled Verona, leaving his young Capulet wife in her parents’ house. They, unknowing, had arranged for her to wed the county Paris.” Isabella shuddered; Count Paris was another of their kinsmen. “Aye, this sorry tale hath many noble souls ensnared. To escape this adulterous union, Juliet enlisted the help of a friar to feign her death so that she could escape and join her love.”
“Feign death?”
“Aye. The friar gave her a potion that induced a sleep so deep it appeared that life had fled. We entombed her with all sadness in the crypt of her ancestors, where her love was to find her, but he never received the message that was sent and heard only that she had died. Romeo returned to find what he thought was her corpse, and slew himself. Juliet woke, found him dead, and swiftly followed him.”
Isabella sat back in the saddle, staring wide-eyed up at the city walls rising before them. Her hands twitched the reins as though she was having second thoughts about visiting the city of her birth. “In the name of God, a fearful passage. I chose an unhappy time for my homecoming. All those young lives … Tell me that cousin Paris at least kept clear of all this.”
Escalus shook his head. “Romeo slew him at the gate of Juliet’s tomb.”
“All this began three weeks ago, you say?”
“Nearly. As best as we can tell, Romeo and Juliet met at a feast of her father’s on the fourteenth day of July, and they wed and died within a week.”
“And now? Are the houses at peace?”
Escalus gave a heavy shrug. “So they say. The grieving parents have sworn that the deaths of their children have cured them of their enmity. They have even raised statues of the two lovers at their tomb.”
Isabella threw him a sharp glance. “But you have little faith in this oath.”
“If generations could not cure their ire, will a summer of murder really do so? Old Montague and Capulet mean well enough, but they’ve little control over the youths of their houses, who walk the streets day and night, their hands hovering at their swords. ’Tis but a matter of time.”
“Thou know’st not so. Wilt thou not let them prove their penitence?”
“More likely they will disprove it with the bodies of more of my subjects.” Escalus shook his head. “No, ’twill take more than pretty statues to bring peace to my city.”
“Your city. You sound like Father.”
“Father kept the peace until the day he died.”
“After a fashion. Montagues and Capulets aplenty slew each other under his reign. What mean you to do?”
Escalus sighed, passing a hand over his sweaty brow. “I’ faith, I know not.”
“ ’Tis strange to think little Juliet could be so rash,” Isabella said. “Rosaline would never have done so. The cleverest of my friends, she was. If it had been Rosaline Romeo loved, none of this would have come to pass.”
“Actually, he—” Escalus cut himself off. “Ah! Of course.”
Isabella blinked. “Of course what?”
“I’ll explain anon. Isabella, thou art heaven sent.” He squeezed her hand quickly. “I must make haste back to the city.” With a flick of his reins, he sent Venitio surging ahead toward Verona’s walls.
“Whither goest thou?” Isabella called after him.
“House Capulet,” he called over his shoulder.
“Oh, give it here. I’ll wear the cursed thing.”
Livia pulled the hated black dress from Rosaline’s hands. Rosaline looked at her skeptically. “Thou wilt don it?”
“An ’twill stop thee looking like thou smell’st something foul, aye.” Livia stood on tiptoes to smack a little-girl kiss on Rosaline’s cheek.
Rosaline swallowed, then returned her sister’s affections with an embrace, provoking a surprised squeak from Livia. Sorry though she was for Romeo’s death, she was also filled with relief that she and Livia had escaped this summer’s events unscathed. It all could have been so different, had she encouraged Romeo’s affections. It was just this sort of disaster she’d feared when she’d spurned Romeo’s love. Apparently cousin Juliet had had none of her caution.
“Ay! Leave off, Rosaline, you’ll squeeze me in two.”
Rosaline frowned, the effort of forcing her tears back sharpening her headache. What must it be like to love someone so desperately that you cared not what your own death might do to your family? However the poets might praise it, such a love was something she dreamed not of.
What if she had accepted the dreamy-eyed young Montague who had begun to follow her around at the start of spring this year? Instead of barring her door against his visits, refusing to hear his earnest, pretty sonnets, sending back his gifts—what if she had allowed his courtship?
Rosaline had not loved Romeo, but ’twas impossible not to like him. Quick to smile, never pressing the privilege of his rank, he and his two friends were a familiar sight in the city, and even his family’s enemies had grudgingly conceded that he was the best kind of youth. Few maids of Verona would have turned down a chance at such a husband. But Rosaline had not wanted any husband, so it had been all too easy to harden her heart against his entreaties.
If she had not, if she had accepted his love and returned it with her own, could they have been married peacefully? She was not the only daughter of Lord Capulet, like poor Jule. Rosaline and Livia were mere nieces, and their name was not even Capulet, but Tirimo. Maybe those cut down would still be alive.
But even guilt could not persuade her of this logic. In the eyes of Verona, she was still a Capulet. More likely, they would still be dead, and it would be Rosaline herself slumbering in the family tomb.
Rosaline smiled and released Livia, who took the black dress and held it out in front of her, wrinkling her nose in distaste before giving a martyred sigh. Rosaline cast her eyes to heaven. “ ’Tis only for a few more weeks.”
“I shall be old by then.” Livia stripped off her white linen dress and left it in a puddle on the floor. “ ’Tis all very well for thee. Black becomes thee so well it will only make thy pack of swains chase thee all the harder.”
Rosaline shook her head at Livia’s prattle. But there was an undeniable grain of truth to this. Though both were counted among Verona’s beauties, the sisters could not have looked less alike. Livia took after their father, with fine, honey-blonde hair, big blue eyes, and fair skin. The kind of face they wrote sonnets about, Rosaline thought, but it was undeniably not a coloring fla
ttered by black attire. Already, holding the dress up to herself in the mirror, Livia looked pale and colorless, like she might fade away altogether.
Rosaline was a different tale. She looked every inch a Capulet, like their mother. Tall and long-limbed, she had the Capulet coloring too: green eyes, olive skin, a rosy mouth prone to pouting. Her tumble of impossibly thick brown curls was pinned back in a twist, but as usual a few strands had sprung stubbornly free and hung round her face. Her own black gown, she noted dispassionately, made her looks stand out all the better.
She was beautiful. There was no point in being modest about it, as all who’d seen her had been telling her so since she left the nursery. But what of that? She’d trade places with the ugliest girl in Verona if she could. Juliet had been beautiful too.
Rosaline bent and retrieved Livia’s abandoned white linen. “I suppose you’re right,” she said. “I’m sure I ought to parade round the cemetery every day in my mourning garb. I would have ten proposals ere I left the gates.”
Livia snorted and made a grab for the dress, but Rosaline swung it away, holding it out before her and curtsying to it as though it were a young man. “Of course, sir, I’d be honored to wed thee,” she said to it, dancing it out of Livia’s grasp, “but only if thou wilt promise to find a husband for my poor, unmarriageable sister, Livia.”
Livia shrieked in mock outrage and charged her sister, but long-legged Rosaline easily outran her, laughing. Their chase took them out of Livia’s bedroom and down the stairs of the house to the main foyer. “Hast thou a clubfooted bastard brother, my lord? A servant with a harelip, perhaps? Any man who can bear the indignity of a wife who does not look her best in black—”
Rosaline stopped so suddenly that Livia nearly ran into her. Their aunt’s steward was in their doorway.
Rosaline had never much cared for Lucullus. He was a large, quiet man who seemed to live for nothing but to do her aunt’s bidding. He and the rest of her servants did no more than they had to for her and Livia, and when they did enter the cottage, they did so unannounced—to remind them, Rosaline thought, that this was not their home, that they were but guests reliant upon their aunt’s charity. She provided them little but a roof over their heads, leaving them to pay the rest of their expenses out of their meager income, but her household seemed determined they should not forget the paltry aid provided. Though he rarely spoke, Rosaline always thought she saw disapproval in his eyes when they rested on the duchess’s poor nieces—especially after Romeo began to hover at her door. The duchess was both mother to Lady Capulet and a Capulet relation herself by birth, and she had never feared to express her scorn for every man, woman, and child of House Montague. Her servant, Rosaline was sure, shared her overweening pride in House Capulet. No doubt he did not think much of two orphan girls from a minor branch of the family galumphing through their house like peasants.
He bowed. “My ladies.”
Rosaline nodded as she smoothed her skirt. “Good e’en, Lucullus. What’s thy business?”
“Your uncle Lord Capulet would speak with you, Lady Rosaline,” he said.
Rosaline frowned. She and Livia were not important enough to be much noticed by their uncle, the head of the Capulet clan. Since their parents died and their fortunes fell, she could count on one hand the number of times they had dined at the great Capulet house without other, grander members of the family. “What is mine uncle’s will?”
Lucullus shrugged. “ ’Tis not mine to know. He’ll tell you himself when you see him this evening.”
The streets of Verona were not exactly safe for a woman alone these days. She glanced out the window. The sun was already a mere sliver sinking into the western wall. It would be full dark before she arrived at her uncle’s house, even if she left now. “Tomorrow morning, perhaps,” she said, as politely as she could.
Lucullus shook his head. “Your uncle has said he will see you forthwith. The duchess your great-aunt is at the house already. She sent me to accompany you, and she shall bring you home again when she is done attending to her daughter.”
Rosaline frowned in annoyance. It was one thing for her grand relatives like the duchess and Lord Capulet to ignore her; it was quite another for them to order her back and forth like a page when it finally pleased them to notice her. She squashed the urge to stamp her foot and refuse to go. But she could at least escape Lucullus’s company. “No need, sirrah. I shall go alone.”
“Are you sure, lady?” he asked.
Rosaline felt Livia’s worried gaze on her. Perhaps going alone was not the most sensible decision she had ever made, but the prince’s men were patrolling the streets to prevent any trouble, and surely the journey was short enough that she had little to fear. Besides, this way she could stop in the graveyard and offer a prayer at Juliet’s crypt without Lucullus’s eyes on her. “Aye. I thank thee for thy pains.”
The man nodded, gave a brief bow, and left. Rosaline closed the door behind him. She and Livia looked at each other. Livia’s big blue eyes were wide with confusion. “Rosaline, what in the world can Uncle want with you?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Rosaline.
Benvolio walked, his hand upon his sword.
He ought to be at home, he knew. Ever since the deaths of his two best friends, Mercutio and Romeo, his weeping mother had scarce let him from her sight, as though the shade of that whoreson Tybalt might spring from the shadows at any moment and run him through.
He wanted to stay and comfort her. Truly he did. Perhaps before, he would have. Of the three friends, he’d always been the coolest head, the sensible one. Compared to those other two hotheads, anyway.
Which no doubt explained how he still lived while they slumbered in their tombs.
Benvolio’s jaw clenched at the thought. He could feel the anger beginning to scream inside him again. For what good was it to avoid the duels and ill-advised romances of your fellows if they died and left you all alone?
And so this evening he’d fled the stifling walls of his house in favor of the cooler night air of Verona’s streets. The city still sang with tension, taut as a bowstring, and it certainly would not help for a young Montague to be seen stalking the streets, but Benvolio didn’t care. He, Romeo, and Mercutio had passed many an hour in just this way, wandering Verona side by side, bragging and quarreling and seeking mischief. Benvolio could almost imagine they were there beside him. Mercutio would be to his left, spinning them a tale that was equal shares fanciful and filthy. A cheerfully ugly youth Mercutio had been, tall and lanky with a shock of straw-colored hair and a grin a mile wide.
Not that my looks ever offended the ladies of Verona, Benvolio. Or Venice. Or Padua.
That sort of ribald quip Mercutio would accompany with a waggle of his eyebrows and a devil-may-care grin. Benvolio could just see his cousin Romeo shake his head. Thou hast never been to Padua. Romeo had always been the only one with any hope of curbing Mercutio’s vast, looping flights of braggery. He’d be ahead of them, deciding whether to point their meanderings up into the hills or down to the city walls. Leading them, as he would one day lead Benvolio’s family.
Romeo had not looked much like a Montague. His wavy light brown hair and dreamy, handsome face had marked him more as his mother’s son than his father’s. Those who met them often assumed that Benvolio, not Romeo, was old Montague’s son and heir. With his spiky dark hair and his crooked smile, he took after his uncle far more than Romeo did.
I have been to Padua, his memory-Mercutio announced, flopping idly into a handstand. For a city is its people, and Mistress Margaret Closenothing the seamstress is from Padua, and I have certainly been to her.
In that case, the shade Romeo retorted sweetly, Mistress Closenothing has been to every city in Italy.
Mercutio crashed back to his feet. I’ll not stay here to be insulted. My horse! My horse! To Padua at once!
Romeo laughed and threw an arm about his shoulders. We’ll all go, he promised.
“No,” Benvolio mu
rmured, breaking through the ghostly silence of their japery. “We won’t.”
And just like that, his friends—ghosts, memories, what you will—were gone, and Benvolio walked on alone through the deepening darkness of the Verona streets, his hand tightened on his sword, not sure if he wanted to prevent a fight or start one.
The choice was made for him when a woman’s scream shattered the night air. Benvolio ran toward the sound, feet slipping against the cobblestones in his haste. The scream came again, and Benvolio’s heart tightened as he realized the sound was coming from the graveyard—the recent home of so many of Verona’s young nobles. From the sound of it, someone was trying to give them yet another new neighbor.
Benvolio’s breath burnt in his lungs as he churned up the hill to the graveyard gates. Five young men stood clustered there. He recognized several of them. His jaw clenched. Orlino, Marius, and Truchio were young Montague cousins. They’d idolized Romeo. No great surprise to see them starting trouble now, but he’d have thought they had better taste than to do it in the shadow of the new statues of Romeo and his bride, Juliet.
He drew nearer, and sure enough, steel glinted in the torchlight. His young kinsmen faced off against two other youths, swords raised. Benvolio cursed silently. The pair wore the Capulet crest on their sashes.
“Misbegotten Capulet stale!”
At first Benvolio thought Orlino’s vile insult was intended for the statue of Juliet. But his sneer was directed at the ground. Benvolio realized there was a woman sprawled in the dirt between the swordsmen. The black of her mourning dress had melted her into the shadows.
