by David Hewson
‘This day’s black deed shapes what’s to come. Tybalt may start the misery but I shall end it.’
‘Romeo!’
‘Keep clear from me, friend. What happens now lies on my account alone.’
Blade out he edged his way through the crowd. Close to the route Tybalt must have taken he grabbed a youth nearby and held him by the throat, rapier next to his cheek.
‘Where did he go? Tell me or I swear I’ll–’
‘Two of them ran off to the bridge!’ The kid had bright and frightened eyes. ‘Don’t hurt me. I didn’t do anything.’
‘Tybalt?’
‘I heard him say he was off to hide in Sottoriva down among the whores. Plenty of shady places for his kind there.’
The sky boomed. The clouds overhead seemed solid black, so close it felt as if they might fall and swamp the streets themselves.
Rapier in hand, Romeo set up a steady pace and headed north.
* * *
Sottoriva.
‘Below the shore’ the name meant. It was a dark arcade of tenements that ran beneath the Adige bank from the fish market to the walls of Sant’Anastasia. Whores and vagabonds and a few impoverished pedlars populated these grim and rotting buildings festering like a hidden sore set apart from Verona’s grander quarters.
By this time rain ran everywhere, writhing deep rivulets both sides of the cobbles, a filthy grey torrent of muck and mud and worse. Figures dodged beneath the low colonnades, hiding from the weather and much else besides.
Romeo raced through the torrent like a madman. The rain had plastered his hair to his skull, his clothes to his body. Both sides of Sottoriva he worked, bellowing Tybalt’s name. Eyes glinted fearfully back at him from the shadows of the mean arcades where the flood waters of the storm bucketed from door to door.
There was a low, yellow light in the darkness to the left, in the colonnade on the city side. It was a shrine. A small statue of the Virgin sat inside a miniature portico of the kind the Romans might have built. Fresh flowers, even in this grim place, were set by the grille. Wild ones, he saw, as he got closer. No man or woman here could afford to buy better.
Candles burned by the image, though, and someone had paid for them. The dim light they cast began to stir something in him. The promise that even in the darkest, most inhospitable of moments there might be the faintest prospect of grace.
Then a voice came out of the shadows one door along and he was back in the day again, the red fire burning, hating.
‘Run away, Montague,’ Tybalt called, a hazy shape by the smoke-stained pillars. ‘You did it once already. Follow your nature, coward. Be gone from here or meet your fate.’
The water here was thick and deep. It swilled around his ankles as cold as the tomb and stinking of humanity. As his eyes adjusted he saw they were near the end of the colonnades. The brown brick wall of Sant’Anastasia stood out in the open at the end. Not far away was the piazza before the church. An open space, back in the city proper.
‘My friend’s dead, Tybalt. Your cowardly blade took his life. One subtle stab while I held him from your grip.’
A laugh. ‘You helped me. I give you thanks for that. But death only if you come on.’
Then he stepped out of a doorway ahead. Soaked to the skin like Romeo, blade out, ready to fight. The Virgin watched with blind stone eyes.
‘Now,’ Tybalt yelled and was at him, rapier flashing, left hand behind his back, a classic stance. Romeo parried, thrust at him in return. These lessons had been drummed into him by a master from Padua. Hour after hour they’d spent practising by the grey river, in the hot mornings of August, the freezing afternoons of January.
The words of the man came back to him.
Fight through instinct. Only dead men think.
So he didn’t. He feinted, parried, let Tybalt expend his sudden fury and energy as they tramped through the ankle-deep water like two lone hateful soldiers stranded at low tide.
Four times Tybalt came at him. Four times Romeo fended him off.
The swordmaster’s advice was easier said than followed. Romeo couldn’t help it, couldn’t thrust from his memory that beautiful moment in Laurence’s cell. Their clasped fingers, their love shared.
Tybalt retreated and scuttled round the corner, stopping on the gleaming rain-soaked cobblestones outside the façade of Sant’Anastasia. There were people close by. Witnesses. Soldiers not far away in all probability.
‘Every word I said back there is true,’ Romeo told him, as he caught up. Tybalt gasped for breath, trying to summon the energy to make one more lunging assault. ‘I have good reason to love you, friend. And you good reason to show affection to me.’
‘No Capulet loves a Montague.’
The storm was moving slowly on. Bold beams of sunlight had begun to peek through gaps in the black clouds.
‘But they do, Tybalt. She does.’
‘She?’
Romeo edged closer, his rapier lowered a touch. ‘Your cousin Juliet. We married this afternoon. Tonight we tell her parents and mine. This bloody vendetta is over.’
Tybalt laughed. ‘For a dead man you have a strange sense of humour.’
Romeo held out his empty left hand. A peaceful gesture. ‘This is no joke. Juliet’s my bride. I’m her husband. Our two houses must come together and heal all these years of needless wounds.’
A quiet moment. From the corner of his eye Romeo saw Benvolio enter the side of the piazza.
‘My cousin?’ Tybalt asked. ‘She’s her father’s daughter. Neither of them gives a damn about me.’
There was another battle here, inside Romeo’s head. Between the red rage over Mercutio’s murder and the warm love he felt for Juliet. The rational part of him knew that one defeated the other. But a man wasn’t always rational. Or else he wasn’t a man.
‘Come with me now. To Escalus. We’ll tell him what happened. I’ll be honest and say Mercutio insulted you. Attacked you. That you in defence of yourself…’ An image of that sharp and deadly needle rose in his head. He fought to stifle it. ‘That you, in the same heat, responded. Mercutio was his nephew. You’ll need all the help you can get.’
‘I will,’ Tybalt agreed with a nod. ‘This is kind of you, my new-found cousin. A generous offer indeed.’
He threw the rapier to the ground and extended his right hand. ‘I take this bargain, Montague. It’s well made.’
Romeo dropped his blade then. On the damp piazza of Sant’Anastasia their two hands met.
Tybalt was an inch or so shorter. He had a smile on him. One that was hard to interpret. His handshake was firm and gripped Romeo’s so tightly it was hard for him to move his fingers.
The words of the dead fencing master came back to him.
Not every opponent’s a gentleman. Watch where the other hand goes. And look for treachery.
‘So you married her?’
Another roll of thunder, distant this time. The storm would soon pass.
‘I did.’
‘In that case, tell me. What’s it like? That soft, sweet place between her legs?’
A long moment. Another fading growl from the sky.
‘Romeo!’ Benvolio cried out from the arcade. ‘His–’
Tybalt’s left hand flew out from behind his back and there the blade was, sharp as a pin, dark with Mercutio’s blood. He dragged Romeo towards him, aimed the point straight at his midriff.
Then hesitated. Smiling. Puzzled. Pained.
Staggering back, he dropped the slender weapon and bent to look at his belly. Romeo’s dagger was stuck there, hard in up to the haft.
The red rage and the left hand won. Perhaps they always did. Romeo kicked Tybalt’s feet from under him. Laughing, crying, Tybalt twisted as he fell, landed hard on the knife, bellowing with angry pain. The soldiers were running at them, yelling, Benvolio too. Another figure stood close by. One he recognised. The big woman. Juliet’s nurse, watching, hand to mouth, tears streaming down her flabby cheeks.
Romeo d
ragged the dagger out, heard only a low, pained groan in return, saw trembling fingers clutch fearfully at the bloody wound and then go still. He raised his hands and waited for them to seize him.
There was no pleasure in this moment, no sense of victory. Only a harsh refrain he knew would come to haunt him for all the black days that remained.
An hour ago I was a loving husband. Now I’m a foul murderer.
Strong arms gripped him. A boot to the shins brought him hard to the ground, head bowed, face over the slain Tybalt whose dead black eyes stared up at the clearing sky.
* * *
Juliet was on her balcony struggling to think, to plan, to have anything in her head but joy tempered by trepidation. Wondering what words the two of them might use to turn shock to surprise and then delight when they told their parents that evening. The Montagues had a milder reputation. It was her father she feared the most. The anger and disappointment he’d feel at losing the marriage – of his daughter and, more important, his house – to the aristocratic Paris. And the discovery that he’d been usurped by the son of his greatest enemy.
How?
Be honest, she thought. Tell the truth. Show them the love that brought her and Romeo together. Then wait and hope and pray.
After that Romeo would be in her arms. Perhaps in her bed if they hadn’t been thrown out of the palazzo. That would be the sweetest moment of all. A time of discovery and revelation, the two of them like butterflies emerging from their silken shells.
Her quiet reverie was broken by shrieks and screams. The door behind burst open. Nurse stumbled in, grey hair a mess, her heavy face grim with anger, wet with tears.
‘Oh God, he’s dead, love. We are undone. Alack the day! He’s gone, he’s killed, he’s dead.’
The coldest shiver ran down Juliet’s back. ‘What…?’
Through the open door she could hear other noises rising up the stone staircase. Wails and cries of grief and fury.
‘Your Romeo. Who would have thought it?’
Keep calm, she thought. Understand this. For every step forward now will carry danger.
She raced to the woman and tried to catch her darting eyes. ‘Please, Nurse. Don’t torment me now. Romeo’s dead?’
‘In the piazza before Sant’Anastasia.’ She crossed herself quickly, twice. ‘I saw the wound, I saw it with my own two eyes. Stabbed straight through his breast. A piteous corpse, a bloody piteous corpse. Pale as ashes, all bedaubed in gore… Oh, God.’ She tore off her grubby cap and threw it on the floor. ‘I may not forget this easily.’
‘Dead…?’
‘I saw it.’
Juliet’s voice turned soft and weak. ‘Then so am I. We shall share the same coffin…’
‘Your Romeo was the murderer, girl! That vicious lad of yours. To think I went along with all this nonsense… Lord knows what the master will do…’
‘Then…?’
There was a look in the woman’s face she didn’t recognise. All these years together. So much trust at times, some open, some private. Now it was as if she didn’t know her.
‘He’s murdered Tybalt. I came straight on him standing over the poor little bugger’s body. A mouthy little villain your cousin I’ll grant, but still your flesh and blood.’
‘Killed Tybalt? Why? There must have been a reason!’
Her old face turned ugly and dismissive. ‘A reason? A reason? The young in this city never let up brawling. Rogues the lot of them, stabbing another to death on God’s ground. There’s no trust in any of them. No faith, no honesty in men. These sorrows make me old. Shame on that dog, Romeo…’
‘He surely had some cause!’
‘You’d defend the bastard who murdered your cousin?’
As calmly as she could Juliet said, ‘If Romeo killed Tybalt then surely it’s because my cousin wished to do the same to him. Perhaps he knew. About us. You saw what he was like. Only this afternoon he had his hands round my throat…’
The commotion downstairs had ended. Then she heard her father’s furious voice and the front doors slammed.
‘Where is he now?’ Juliet asked.
‘Where murderers belong. In the marshal’s dungeons. Your parents have been summoned to meet Escalus. The Montagues, too.’
‘What… what will happen?’
‘Either they hang him or banish him. Whichever, he’s gone from here. You’ll never see your Romeo again, that’s for sure.’
Fast thoughts. Deep desires.
‘I’ll not die a maid. I will not.’
‘Your father knows nothing of the nonsense you two got up to today. Best for both of us it stays that way. Look to Count Paris…
‘That man shall never touch me… Please. If Romeo lives get word to him.’
Nurse shook her head. ‘Why, love? What’s the point?’
‘I brought him to this. If he can somehow come here…’
‘How’s that possible? He’s in a cell. Maybe headed for the gallows.’
Juliet was desperate. Clutching at straws. ‘You said he might be banished. If that’s so then find him. He knows the way to this room. If there’s a chance…’
The woman stepped back. Her tears had stopped. ‘Think of yourself. Your own future. You wish to break your heart twice over?’
‘Once will do,’ she said firmly. ‘A single night. He’s owed that and so am I. Let tomorrow bring whatever it will. You’re good at these ways of the world. Find him. If there’s a means he can come to me secretly then… let him try.’
‘Juliet–’
She kissed the woman’s flabby cheek and wondered at the response. ‘I must see him.’
‘If Master should discover me playing such games I’m out on my ear, aren’t I? One more beggar woman out in the street. And who’s going to throw the likes of me a penny?’
The purpose of this reprimand was obvious. Juliet went to her table, found what money she had, then opened her box of jewellery.
‘Bring him here and this is yours. Everything I have. Take it.’
The woman could scarcely keep her eyes off the jewels and the coins. ‘That is a kindness…’
Juliet snapped the lid firmly shut. ‘When he’s here…’
‘If he’s not hanging by the neck I’ll do my best. But I tell you, girl. You keep this quiet. If by some miracle he does reach your bed this night, that’s it. Tomorrow your father will have other plans for you. For pity’s sake don’t mention that nonsense you got me into this afternoon. He’ll have me in jail for treachery. And you… Heaven knows…’
Her heart was in her mouth. ‘Will you do it?’
‘Well.’ Nurse couldn’t take her eyes of the jewellery box. ‘I’ll try.’
* * *
Escalus had taken Cangrande’s war room as his office, the grandest chamber in the castle by the river. From the long window he could see the bridge across the Adige, now, with the plague restrictions, Verona’s only entrance and exit point. Around three walls ran a high frieze with Cangrande’s coat of arms: two crowned mastiffs climbing a ladder. Beneath was a pattern of brightly-coloured geometric motifs and a painted curtain on the dado. A violent fresco of fantastical animals engaged in bloody battle occupied all of the fourth wall.
On the shiny walnut table in front of him sat a long sword, old and dusty, the fabric fraying on the handle, rust staining the guard. Luca Capulet looked at it. They said it was Cangrande’s own weapon, buried with him in the stone tomb set beneath his equestrian statue over the door of Santa Maria Antica, that Escalus had watched his men lift the lid of the sarcophagus then reached inside and wrestled the weapon from the dead lord’s fingers.
The weapon filled the room with a subtle smell of dust and the dead. This was a very different place from the guard house in which Escalus had delivered his warning the day before. That old blade before them made a statement: You are mine now. To do with as I wish.
He sat with his wife on one side, the Montagues on the other. They looked older, Luca Capulet thought. He would h
ave laughed in other circumstances. Of course, they did. It was many a long year since the four of them had occupied the same room. Time had dealt its blows, yet the enmity between them had never wavered.
Romeo was in custody in the cells downstairs. Tybalt’s body had been handed over to the church, along with the corpse of Mercutio. Because of the plague restrictions both would be buried in the morning. No open coffins, no lengthy mourning ceremonies were allowed. Escalus was firm on that, as he was on many things.
Benvolio, the only witness the marshal wanted, sat on a chair between them, fidgeting all the while.
With his one good eye Escalus stared at him across the table. ‘Care to tell me what you told the soldiers? Who began this bloody fray?’
‘Tybalt, sir…’
‘An unreliable witness!’ Capulet cried. ‘This lad’s a Montague. How may we believe a single word he says?’
Benvolio glowered at him. ‘I am an honest man. Whatever name I bear. Listen to my testimony and you’ll see I spare no one any blame.’
‘Well said,’ Escalus told him. ‘Then speak.’
‘Tybalt began the fight after Mercutio’s stupid bating. The two were of equal blame. Romeo tried to part them. Tybalt…’ He groaned, remembering. ‘He had a hidden stiletto and stabbed Mercutio with it slyly while Romeo held him back. After that…’ he looked at Andrea and Francesca Montague, ‘your son was rightly angry. I tried to stop him. But he was so fast and furious, so far through the crowds I couldn’t. What happened then… you must ask Romeo.’
‘He won’t speak,’ Escalus said.
Benvolio shook his head. ‘Why not? I saw it all. Tybalt tricked him. He dropped his sword, made as if they were friends, and found his stiletto, just as he did with your nephew. Romeo stabbed him to save his own life. It was clear–’
‘Liar!’ Capulet roared. ‘This is the only witness? A partial one.’
‘I tell no lies. I was there…’
‘Go, Benvolio,’ Escalus ordered. ‘I have no further need of you.’
When he’d left Capulet cried, ‘Hang the blackguard. Or cut off his vile head. That’s what you promised, Marshal. So do it.’
