by David Hewson
‘As I did.’ Laurence pointed towards the monastery and his garden. ‘Everything I know… I learned in the servitude of a kind and honest master of a faith we’re told to hate.’
‘Yet, if you had had the choice?’ she asked. ‘If you came to a crossroads and one way led to slavery, the other to freedom…’
‘God made my choices for me. Through the agency of my dear brother.’
She tapped her head and said, ‘I make my own.’
Laurence frowned. ‘We all like to think that, don’t we?’ He led her back to the lane that ran to the city. ‘Go, Juliet. Be strong and certain in your resolve.’
‘How will you reach him?’
There was a young friar in the monastery, Laurence said. A quiet, reliable lad. He could take some medicine, and papers that said it was destined for physicians treating plague in the south. The guards wouldn’t argue over that.
‘John can carry a letter for your love. I’ll tell him where to meet you tomorrow night. After that…’ He couldn’t finish the sentence for a moment. From the look on her face Juliet didn’t need it. ‘After that you’re in the hands of God.’
‘Then,’ she said gently, ‘in him… in Him we trust.
Laurence watched her go. John, he found in the presbytery. He told the lad very little except that he had to deliver some goods to an address in Mantua, and messages with them. Then he wrote two letters, one for Romeo, a second in Greek for his brother, sealed them and told the young friar they were private, for the eyes of their recipients only. After that he scribbled a document from the monastery bearing its seal, asking for all to give free passage to a young friar carrying potions for the sick. There was only one mule available, a slow and elderly creature. It would have to do.
As the day began to die he watched John lead the sluggish beast towards the Cangrande castle and the bridge.
The lad couldn’t reach Mantua before dark. He’d have to stay somewhere and finish his journey the following day. If Romeo returned by horseback he could be in Verona by evening when Juliet would be waking. In his head Laurence had added up the hours and minutes, the miles as well. This was all possible. It had to be. Lives hung on it.
‘Mine among them,’ the friar whispered looking at his garden.
Unwanted grass and nettles were rising beneath the careful rows of balsam, mint and rosemary. They came from nowhere, overnight. In a blink of an eye sometimes it seemed.
He found his hoe and bent to work. The days ahead were like the weeds. They both would come regardless.
* * *
The apothecary had one spare room. In that small space, on a single cot, Romeo curled up exhausted as the afternoon came to a close. Nico had decided not to return to work. Instead he occupied himself by playing with chemicals and herbs, alembics and a rickety contraption of distilling equipment. Sounds came periodically through the door – curses, cries of joy, the occasional puff of a chemical explosion.
Was this the new world they’d talked of? A lonely place of strangers? Of rulers who lived with monkeys and houses that bore paintings on their exteriors, like tattoos on a primitive?
Two days before he’d been nothing more than a spurned, spoiled child, heart set obsessively on an impossible love for Rosaline, a girl whose face he could now barely remember. Then they’d sneaked into Capulet’s banquet. From that moment on, from the second he saw Juliet’s face, his life had been seized by a relentless passion that brooked no analysis, no attempt at reason.
He recalled what he’d told Isabella d’Este when she tested him about poetry.
If a man cannot love another, how can he love himself? And if a man cannot love himself then what lies in his future but rage and hate?
‘And death,’ he murmured now.
How much of love was the noble sacrifice that verse portrayed? How much a selfish, obsessional need to possess another? He’d felt jilted. Juliet was faced with a forced marriage to a man she didn’t know. Had they, as a result, raced headlong into something they could not understand? And, through their rashness, he was now a murderer, banished from her and all of the Venetian Republic. For all that he’d told Juliet, he was a murderer. Cold-hearted and deliberate. Every second of the encounter that began in Sottoriva remained with him, each blow and cry and parry. He could have shrunk from them all and left Tybalt to the watch. Instead, he’d let the red rage win. Romeo knew what had fired it too. The last words her vile cousin had uttered.
Tell me. What’s it like? That soft sweet place between her legs?
‘It’s heaven,’ he whispered to himself. ‘Like the rest of her. The touch of her. The sound. The scent.’
He’d become a man possessed, who craved to possess in return. This was a dangerous breed of madness that seemed without cure outside oblivion.
Perhaps that would be the kindest thing for them both. Perhaps he should steal out of the apothecary’s warm and hospitable home, secrete himself down a shadowy nook in Mantua’s ornate streets, open his veins with a dagger and wait for the endless dark to fall. He could picture it in his head now just as easily as he could remember the feeling of his blade piercing Tybalt’s chest as it took his life.
His reverie was shattered by a louder cry of victory in the room beyond, followed by an outburst in a strange tongue. Greek, perhaps. Laurence had written his missive to his brother in that language Romeo couldn’t read. It was no accident. He wondered what it said.
The door opened. Nico was there, a look of pure joy on his rugged sunburnt face. ‘Hallelujah, my new friend! Give praise to whatever god it is you worship. For truly this is a momentous day.’ He had two metal cups in his hands, a scarlet liquid swilling over the top. ‘Here.’
Nico held out a goblet. Romeo took it. The metal was warm, as was the liquid within.
‘I have no need of medicine. Or a drug.’
The apothecary scowled. ‘Medicine? I do that stuff for work, lad. You don’t think I spend my leisure hours on it as well?’
‘Then?’
‘Booze. Liquor. Gut-rot. That’s what this is. Well, not gut-rot, I hope. A distillation I have invented myself. Good grape spirit bought from a merchant in Modena. Afterwards infused with myrtle orange and pomegranate… cumin, coriander.’ He scratched his head. ‘The rest I forget. I’ve written it down though. Somewhere. And besides…’ He wagged a finger at Romeo. ‘I know you Verona businessmen. You’d steal it if you could…’
‘I would not!’
‘Well, some of you might.’
‘The colour?’
It was bright red and quite clear, the smell sweet yet bitter too.
‘The colour’s a secret. Are you going to have a sip or just stare at it?’
Nico tried his, more than a sip. Romeo did the same. And coughed. Then coughed a little more.
‘Is it too strong?’ the apothecary wondered. ‘Too coarse? Too sweet? Too evocative of the orchard? Come. Give opinions. That’s why you get it for free. If I’d perfected the bloody thing you’d be paying for it.’
A little too strong, Romeo thought. A little too sweet. But…
He thought of Juliet’s garden. The fragrance of the oranges and pomegranates. And Laurence’s, too. There was fruit in the concoction, but the flavour was as much of the monastery as the Capulet palazzo. An apothecary’s drink, herbal, spicy like medicine and with a bite.
‘I think you should sell it,’ Romeo declared.
‘I agree. I’m bored with potions. One more cup for you and then it’s bed. You look as if you haven’t slept in days. And tomorrow… who knows? I’ll find my way into the castle and see if the lady Isabella is in a more accommodating mood. The monkey!’
‘The monkey?’ Romeo asked.
‘Remember. Kind words about the monkey. They never go amiss. Now…’
Another draft of sweet red liquid. That tasted better somehow.
‘This may give you strange and vivid dreams,’ Nico warned as he handed it over. ‘It’s the valerian. But…’ He finished his cup and l
ooked ready for another. ‘It’s a just a dream. That’s all. Like us I guess.’ He waved his cup around the tiny room. ‘One big dream we call the world. And the best we can do is make sure it’s not a nightmare.’
‘I’ll drink to that.’
Two old pewter cups met in the hot and stuffy room.
‘It’ll all be fine, Romeo,’ the apothecary promised. ‘You sleep now. With any luck your little love will come and pay a visit. Then tomorrow we’ll go about getting her back in your arms for real. Salute!’
‘Salute,’ Romeo replied.
* * *
Luca Capulet was issuing orders to the servants when Juliet returned to the palazzo. She hovered by the door to his study, eavesdropping. Gregory, the only one who could write, was making notes, Pietro by his side. Nurse stood by the window, listening to the master’s orders.
‘Invite all the guests we had on Monday,’ Capulet ordered. ‘Then I’ll give you a fresh list and double their numbers. Find me twenty of the best cooks. I have one daughter only and this shall be a memorable moment. For me… if not for her.’
‘We won’t have any bad chefs,’ Pietro said. ‘I’ll make them lick their fingers.’
Capulet stared at him and asked, ‘What good’s that?’
The lad looked at his mate for support. ‘Well… I mean… that’s how you tell a bad cook, isn’t it? If he won’t lick his own fingers you know there’s something up.’
‘Just go and do it, will you?’ They vanished down the stairs to the kitchen, muttering. Capulet glanced at the nurse. ‘Why am I surrounded by idiots?’
‘Do you have further need of me, sir?’
‘Did my daughter go to see Friar Laurence?’
‘She did. On her own. I thought it best.’
‘Is there any chance he might have instilled some sense into her head? Instead of all that peevish nonsense…’
Juliet walked in, came straight up to her father, kissed him once on the bristly cheek, then knelt before him.
‘No more games, my headstrong child,’ he whispered. ‘Where’ve you been?’
‘You know, father. To the holy brother. He urged me to beg your pardon.’ She pulled the blue vial from the pocket of her dress. ‘Friar Laurence bade me drink this to bring me to my senses.’
‘Sound fellow,’ Capulet declared.
Juliet took his hand and looked up into his eyes. ‘Forgive me, I beseech you. From this point on I’m ruled by you. Then Count Paris in your stead.’
The nurse looked shocked, Capulet amazed.
‘This is true? Not another ruse?’
‘Every word, sir.’
He clapped his hands and cried, ’Mother! Wife!Fetch her!’
The nurse found her in the laundry, issuing orders. A joyful Bianca Capulet came and listened to Juliet make her promises again.
‘Paris must be told, husband.’
‘He knows already. I met him at Laurence’s.’ Juliet glanced at her. ‘I’m glad you sent him there. Truly. I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused. It’s time to put an end to it.’
Capulet cried with joy and reached for the cup of wine on his desk. ‘A toast! A toast! To matrimony! And dutiful children! This is blissful news indeed! Tomorrow we’ll do it. God bless this friar. We’re in his debt.’
She still knelt before him, head bowed. Capulet remembered all the harsh words he’d used that morning.
‘Stand up, child.’ She did and awkwardly he hugged her. ‘I am… sorry for this brief storm that came between us. I said things I never meant. You’re my precious, much-loved daughter. I could no more hurt you than I could harm your mother. Or myself.’
‘I know,’ she replied.
Then she kissed him one more time on the cheek. Her mother embraced her. The nurse babbled something none of them heard.
‘I need to think of clothes and jewellery. Then sleep. The last night in my little room before I become a bride.’
‘Aye,’ her father said. ‘All things change tomorrow. Go with her! Both of you. That’s women’s territory. Clothes and gems. Nothing a man need be near.’
She didn’t move. There was something in his eye. A tear, she thought. Of relief. Of joy. Perhaps of a sorrow that his child would soon be his no more.
‘Thank you,’ Juliet said and left him with a smile.
The friars’ vials, one black, one blue, were in the pocket of her skirt. She’d hide them in a drawer somewhere while Nurse and her mother weren’t looking. Then choose a dress and jewellery for a wedding that could never be.
* * *
Night was sweeping over Verona. By the swallow-tail bridge the guards who’d bullied and threatened Romeo had spent the best part of an hour checking the papers Friar John had brought from Laurence, throwing a variety of pointless questions in his direction.
‘Brave young chap,’ the sergeant said. ‘Ferrying medicine out there when you know plague’s about. Not worried you might catch it, then? Wake up spewing, your face squirting pus like custard, all ready to die?’
‘I trust in God,’ John told him.
The three soldiers laughed and slapped one another about the arms.
‘Don’t we all?’ one asked. ‘But does he trust in us?’
The second put a fat finger into his ruddy nose as if this helped him think. ‘If the Lord doesn’t, I doubt it’s from any lack of care on his part. I mean he must be a very busy chap what with all the nonsense going on. People finding them new lands across the sea for one thing. Millions of new souls to worry about…’
‘He’s God, you idiot,’ the sergeant cried. ‘He can’t be any busier now than what he was before. That’s what God means. All-knowing. All-powerful. Nothing surprises him. How can it? If he invented it all? Ask this lad here if you don’t believe me!’
They stared at John. He pointed to the saddle bags on his mule. ‘It’s getting late, sirs. I have some way to travel and only this old beast with me.’
The first guard swore and spat in the gutter. ‘I reckon God’s just bored. And we get to do all this running around living and dying to keep the fellow amused.’
‘Blasphemy!’ the sergeant bellowed. ‘I could have you strung up for that.’
‘My point exactly!’ the soldier replied.
The second one nodded at the mule and suggested it was time John got moving. ‘Don’t know why you’re hanging round here chewing the fat with us, lad. You’re a bold one setting foot across that bridge right now. Either that or daft as a brush.’
The sergeant squinted at the young friar and gave him back his papers. ‘My money’s on the second. You take your quack medicine out there and give people a little hope. They’ll still be dead in the morning. You with them. And if you’re not, don’t think you can come back here infecting us with your dirty diseases. Man of the cloth who’s poorly looks much like one of us in the same condition.’
‘Thank you, sirs.’ John packed the papers alongside the supply of medicine in his bags. ‘I am grateful for the richness of your advice.’
‘Getting dark too,’ the first soldier added. ‘Can’t believe you wasted all this time gassing to us. You should have been on the road hours ago. There’s cut-throats and villains out there who’d have them bags off you in a flash.’
‘Some of them like pretty young boys as well,’ the second said. ‘Especially in a cassock.’
John gave them a wry salute then led the grumbling beast through the gatehouse and onto the red-brick bridge. He’d travel as quickly on foot as on its back. The creature was old and frail. There was no need to add to the burden it carried already.
* * *
A full moon hung in a deep blue velvet sky. The night was heavy with a heat so humid the air seemed to swim before her, thick with insects and a fearful anticipation. A white dress lay on the bed, ready for the seamstresses who’d add gold braid to it in the morning. There was a circlet too and they’d talked of flowers and perfumes. The ritual of marriage had begun.
Then, laughing, her mother
and the nurse looked around the room, ready to go. One last fond kiss came from each.
‘Such a pretty dress,’ Nurse said. ‘Such a beautiful bride she’ll make.’
‘She will,’ her mother agreed. ‘Tomorrow will be a long and happy day.’
‘I hope so,’ Juliet added, feeling as if she were a character in a painting. Like Carpaccio’s Ursula, an object, there to be admired and observed.
‘You wait and see.’ She stroked her daughter’s cheek. ‘Don’t fret. This habit of yours… of worrying about everything. There’s no need, my sweet. The stars shine down on you and Paris. Look at them.’
Hand-in-hand they walked to the window, brushed aside the curtains and gazed at the night sky. It was alive with all the constellations, some of which Juliet could name thanks to those books she’d brought from Venice. She wondered if she would ever return to the pleasure of turning those pages, finding new surprises among them, something to make her wiser and more ready for the world.
‘Every shining star smiles down upon you, Juliet. Two will have your names for sure. Aligned in perfect symmetry across the heavens. Now you’re past your doubts, all bodes well. And shall be.’
All she could think of was to whisper, ‘Yes, Mother.’
Then they were gone.
She had put the two vials in a drawer where they kept the oils for the tub. The blue one she discarded. The black she took in her hands. When she removed the cork stopper the smell struck her: strong, full of flowers and something exotic. She turned the bottle and watched the viscous black liquid crawl towards the neck. It would be so easy to pour it away, to pretend it never existed. To meet Paris tomorrow and let fate take her wherever it led.
Perhaps the friar was wrong in any case. She’d wake as normal, put on the dress, go to Sant’Anastasia, led to the altar like an animal for sacrifice.
Or it might kill her. A thought, then. What if Laurence had given her poison after all, afraid that to let her live would reveal his subterfuge in marrying her to Romeo in the first place? Men lied; men arranged matters to suit their own desires.
‘Not Laurence,’ she whispered. ‘He’s a good soul. I’m sure of it.’
But what if she woke early in that dreadful charnel house? Would Tybalt’s ghost rise to haunt her, the way he had in life? Or seek Romeo for taking his life upon a rapier’s point?
