A
fter Viola has had her fill of greens and a large cupful of rich goat's milk, Benvolio offers to see her home. In a small burlap pouch she carries a vial of the Healer's best cough elixir for Sebastian. I walk them to the door and bid them good night. They have just rounded the corner of Saint Peter's when I notice a bustling figure of rotund proportions, hastening away from Friar Laurence's cell. 'Tis Juliet's boisterous nurse, Angelica. I beckon her.
“Lady Rosaline?” The nurse lumbers o'er and eyes the Healer's shingle with trepidation. “Why dost thou consort with this witch?” she demands in a whisper.
“The Healer is no more a witch than you are,” I tell
her. “Now, I would know what Juliet has heard of this day's trouble.”
The nurse expels a long sigh. “Aye, aye, this hateful day, endless, hateful day. By my oath, surely the sun has rounded this world more slowly than is customary, or if not, more swiftly, delivering two days in the span of one. 0, Lord, this day has seen too much, and I am exhausted from grief.” She throws her meaty arms round my neck and commences to sob. “0, Lord, dear Lord! We've lost our Tybalt, our daring, darling Tybalt, the life pierced out of him with a hole put there by none but him who is his cousin's husband. Romeo slew Tybalt! 'Tis a crime unrivaled.”
“Has the news been delivered to Romeo's wife?” I ask, still clung to by the nurse.
“'Twas I who told Juliet the news!
âTybalt is gone and Romeo banished, Romeo that kill'd him, he is banished.'
Aye, that is exactly how I said it and at last Juliet understood. 0, 'twas like a demon burst forth from her breast. She gasped, then she bellowed, then she wailed, and 0, how we wept, she in my arms, then I in her arms, and onceâjust onceâshe was moved to curse nature for giving her Romeo the spirit of a fiend. In one breath she wished him shame, but in the next, recanted, and deemed Tybalt villain.”
I disentangle myself from the nurse's weighty embrace. “What else?”
“What else? I, her devoted companion, did calm her
by promising to bring forth Romeo to console her, that is what else! For though his banishment to Mantua still looms, he remains yet within the bounds of Verona.”
“Glad I am to hear he has not departed the city,” I say, then wish I hadn't. True, if Tybalt does not die, then Romeo might be spared his sentence. But that is still to be seen, and if the nurse were apprised of e'en the possibility of Romeo's pardon, she might do something rash, and thus complicate things. When the nurse looks at me quizzically, I quickly amend: “So that they may have at least one night together. Where is Romeo at present?”
“I found him in the friar's cell, found him weeping like a woman, writhing on the stony floor as a child would. Ah, well, there is the magnificent truth of it. Aye, âtis his tender age that is his defect, as Juliet's innocence is hers; they are too green, too childish, too fresh, and unformed in mind and manner for the weight of this love. 'Tis a blessing too burdensome for their scant years to carry. Still, there is nothing for it now, for they are wed and that is sacred. They must grow into this marriageâ”
I had forgotten Angelica's tendency to ramble on so. I hold up a hand to silence her. “What did Friar Laurence advise?”
“0, the holy man did have a splendid notion,” she replies. “My Juliet and her Romeo shall have their wedding night, for I will hang the corded rope as planned, and Romeo will ascend the ladder to find his bride. Safe they'll be in the cover of night, and on the morrow, before
the guard is dispatched, Romeo shall escape to Mantua, where he shalt live till we can find a time to mend this muddle and put it all to rights.”
'Tis a sound plan, the only reasonable course. I send the nurse home to report all to Juliet. “Tell my cousin I wish her well. And nurseâ”
“Aye, m'lady?”
“Have a care with that corded ladder. Much depends upon it.”
She curtsies to me, then turns and ambles away across the square. I send up a silent prayer for Juliet on her wedding night before going back inside the Healer's cottage.
The Healer lights a candle scented with lavender. For a long time, we sit in silence. Tybalt lives, and I watch him with sadness.
“'Tis frustrating,” I say at last, “to see a person suffer and have no ability to aid him.” I stand, making my way to the Healer's worktable. Above it are shelves, crowded with herbs and remedies. I examine them, feeling helpless. “There is much we know, much we can cure, and yetâ”
“Our profession is young,” she tells me. “E'en these many years of study and practice have been insufficient to teach us all this world has to offer in the way of healing. So much is yet unknown, untried. As with TybaltâI have heard tell of such conditions, but he is the first I've seen myself.”
On the scarred wooden surface of the table I spy a wrinkled scrap of paper. A list of ingredients is writ upon it, with fine ink in a careful hand. “What is this?”
“Friar Laurence did bring it to me,” she explains, her eyes suddenly wary. “A recipe for some strange liquor, a potion really, sent to him by a learned woman who resides in some land north of here called Denmark. He tells me it carries most astounding properties.” Pulling her shawl closer round her shoulders, she describes for me the strange potion's power. “It brings to anyone who ingests it the aspect of death, but in reality 'tis safe to drink as mother's milk. I did brew him one small portion,” she confesses.
I shudder. “Seems a profane thing to attempt, sinful almost.”
“Aye. I felt so myself, but the friar convinced me 'twas not as bad as all that. But now that he has his experiment, I believe I shall burn the recipe.”
She rises slowly from her chair, taking the odious scrap from the table. With steady hand does she hold it above the candle's flame. I watch as the tiny blaze takes hold of the foolscap with flickering yellow teeth, blackening it, curling the edges to ash. At the very last second, the Healer releases the corner she holds, letting it and the small fire that clings to it fall with a hiss upon the tabletop. The flame lasts only a moment, then dies.
After this, we sit in companionable silence, lost in our own thoughts and separate prayers. At last I bid my friend good night and head for home.
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I arrive to find my good lady mother in her courtyard. She listens to the music made by steamy breezes in the treetops and the sweetness of crickets' song. I wonder how badly, in these lonesome moments, she does miss the husband who left her, who left us both.
“Rosaline!” my mother calls out. She rushes to me, wraps me in her embraceâI knew not until this moment how much this day of all days I've had need of it. Without warning, I feel the tears begin, slowly at first, but gaining strength until I am sobbing in my mother's arms. These are true and heartfelt. These, at last, are honest tears for Tybaltâwho now lives only to decide to dieâand for Mercutio.
“God-den, precious one,” my mother says, then gives me a soft and serious look. “I looked for thee at Tybalt's funeral this afternoon. Wherefore did you neglect to attend the service? 'Twould have been good for you to bid him farewell. 'Tis the reason we gather oâer our deadâto grieve together, to say good-bye. 'Tis a step toward acceptance.”
She is right, of course, but I cannot tell her that the faceless man our family mourned in the tomb this day was not Tybalt.
“I could not bear to witness Tybalt's interment,” I explain with a loud sniffle, “for seeing him thus would forever sully my recollection of him. I wished my final memory to be of good Tybalt alive.”
She nods in understanding and places her cool palm
upon my cheek. “You look tired. No doubt you and Juliet did not sleep at all last night. Tell me, did you stay up past dawn, giggling and remembering the handsome lords who flirted with thee?”
She laughs lightly, and of a sudden I recall she believes I spent last night at my uncle's house, in Juliet's company. In truth, I spent it talking and snuggling beside Benvolio on the mossy ground of the sycamore grove. Indeed, another thing I cannot tell my mother.
“Did I sleep?” I repeat, sounding more than a bit foolish, then answer honestly, “In fact, I slept very little.”
“You girls and your visits. Wherefore dost thou call them sleepovers, I wonder, when you ne'er so much as close your eyes.”
Before she can press me further, I excuse myself and hurry indoors. I want nothing more than to say a prayer for Tybalt, then lie down and close my eyes to sleep.
But sleep, again this night, is not to be.
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When I arrive in my chamber, I find the window open wide, and there, in a patch of moonlight, waits Benvolio! He places his finger to his lips, bidding me stay quiet.
“How?” I begin softly. “How did you come in?”
“Carefully.” He nods toward the open window. “With the aid of a rather unsteady pile of bricks that leads to a low roof, from which I pulled myself in through yon window.”
“Resourceful of thee,” I whisper.
“Shall I leave?” he asks.
“Never” is my answer. And then I am in Benvolio's arms, and there is no sound but the breezy music of the night without and my name upon his lips.
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I will confess, I come awfully close to surrendering my virtue completely, and there is more than one moment when I am nearly unable not to.
But we refrain.
'Twould be a sin, first and foremost, but beyond that, I will not risk getting with child. Benvolio understands. 'Tis wonderful just having the warmth of him here beside me, feeling him breathe, hearing him sigh, kissing him. Soft and slow and lingering.
We sleep, briefly, then awaken to kiss some more. His kisses are perfection. He swears mine are sweeter than any he's ever known, and I believe him, for I have ne'er in my life meant anything as I mean these kisses I give to Benvolio.
When at last we make ourselves say good night, the earliest ribbons of daylight have begun to tease the horizon.
Benvolio slips out the window. I watch him vanish like a sweet dream into the swell of morning, then return to my bed, to sigh myself to sleep.
U
pon a downy bed before a cozy fire, in a small, dark cottage, my once able body lies tranquilly. I seem to hover above it, observing from the air. My being is a part of the morning itself.
So I did not die completely, then. I exist there on the soft pallet in a state somewhere in betwixt. Of neither here nor there, life nor death.
'Tis a freedom most frightening, most challenging and intense.
I am a filament, a moment, a thought unthought.
I am trembling nothingness.
'Tis marvelous strange, yet passing pleasant and worth exploring. First, a soundless glide round this quaint dwelling. Ah, there is the woman who keeps a silent vigil.
She is Rosaline's friend, the Healer; I sense her goodness. She approaches, a jar in her wrinkled hands. From here, in the atmosphere, I will my own hands to rise and clutch the woman's arm. But no such movement occurs.
With tender expertise, she dips her withered fingers into the jar and begins to apply a slick salve to the wound upon my chest. I feel nothing. Hath it any scent? I cannot smellânor do I feel the clean sting it carries, if there is one. Alas, I shall miss sensation quite a lot.
A window. 'Tis open, just a thread's breadth, but that is likely all I need. To the window, then, and out â¦
Out, above the Healer's tidy garden, I mingle with the heat of the coming day. Sunrise is a smudge of apricot color along the horizonâO, for a tunic the color of daybreak! But what use have I for clothing now? For I am more like a morning than a man, I am a smudge of wisdom and sentiment against the sky.
What is expected of me here in the breeze, the bright, the everywhere?
In the distance, I see pebbled country lanes and roughhewn fences protecting tall tomato gardens, sheep in their pastures, a glistening stream. But I am impelled toward town, and so I soar o'er Saint Peter's spire, skimming
vias, piazzas,
and well-kept homes until I come to my uncle's place.
I whisper in, like a dream, through Juliet's open window.
And find myself in hell!
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Zounds! That is Romeo she lies with!
That one so young should be abed with
any
man is wrong enough, but of all the bachelors in Verona, she chooses to award herself to
Romeo?
Romeo, whose weapon left me as I am now. Romeo, in my cousin's bed.
Would that I could shout, I would call for my uncle and all his guardsmen to apprehend this villain! This villain my kinswoman kisses and calls “love.”
“Love.” She calls him “love.”
What can a girl of thirteen summers know of love?
And when in the name of God Almighty did this perversity occur? Before he nicked me with his blade, or since? At the feast? (Saints, was it only one night past? Aye!) Did they make their first acquaintance there, or have they been courting for months and months in secret? Were I not already mostly dead, I believe I might expire from the shock of it!
I alight upon a ledge near her wardrobe and watch as they argue o'er larks and nightingales, and kiss profoundly. Little Juliet, the imp, her hair tousled from a night ofâO, God, I wish not to think of whatâwrapped in her mother's good sheets and kissing a Montague.
I want to be enraged, but in this wispy state I find that I have more room for forgiveness than fury.
O, fine, then! Juliet may have her Romeo and with my
ethereal blessing. This much is clear, he is her husband, if not in law, then in deed and desire.
From without, her nurse calls, “Madam ⦔
I look on now as Romeo takes his leave. He departs quickly, hastening from the room to the balcony, scaling the outer wall to escape through the orchard. Juliet looks empty in his wake, and afraid.
And now my formidable aunt, Lady Capulet, enters to find her Juliet in tears. Ha, she believes the brat weeps for me!
They talk of my death, and I am lonesome to hear it, but also moved by the extent to which my aunt desires to avenge me.
Juliet lies, of course. She tells her mother she would deliver to Romeo a potion to make him sleep in quiet. Feigning to detest him, she says slyly that her
“heart abhors”
the fact that she canst not
“come to him to wreak the love”
she bore for me upon his body.
Clever girl! If I could laugh, I would, for 'tis cunning of the child to make it sound like a vengeful act, when what in truth she wants to do to that Montague is ⦠well, precisely what she has already done upon those sheets. But her cleverness is no shield against what her lady mother announces now:
“Marry, my child, early next Thursday morn, the gallant, young, and noble gentleman Paris, at Saint Peter's church, shall happily make thee there a joyful bride.”
This brings sweet Juliet up short, and her pretty eyes
go bright and sharp and angry when she speaks. “I wonder at this haste, that I must wed ere he that should be husband comes to woo.”
So Paris hath not e'en
called
upon her? No wonder she finds insult. Were I still, er, available, I would give Paris a pounding myself! My beauteous cousin most assuredly deserves adequate wooing. Whatever is the matter with my uncle, not to insist the cad come courting before taking as his bride this treasure that is Juliet?
0, the scene worsens now, when Uncle Capulet makes his entrance. He is used to a daughter demure and ever compliant, and his rage ignites when Juliet denies his wish. This change in Juliet stuns me, but in truth, it does what is left of me good to see the urchin show some snap!
Capulet feels otherwise. He calls her unworthy! Juliet, whom just days past he worshipped as the hopeful lady of his earth. Ah, was it merely her weakness that he loved?
I have neâer seen him so incensed, and now he lashes out at Juliet in such a vicious fashion I cannot help but react, flinging my vaporous being in the path of his ire. 'Tis futile, of course, as I am air. Thankful I am he does not try to strike the girl. Instead, he hurls his cruelty in the form of words.
“Out, you green-sickness carrion!”
he hollers.
“Out, you baggage!”
E'en his icy wife is appalled by the severity of his verbal attack. She attempts to intercede, crying
“Fie, fie, what, are you mad?”
Juliet falls to her knees, but Capulet will hear none from his child and ignores her plea.
“Wife,”
he growls,
“we scarce thought us blest that God had lent us but this only child, but now I see that this one is one too much, and that we have a curse in having her.”
O, blister'd be his tongue! Had I wind in me, such wicked words wouldst surely have knocked it out. Juliet, still kneeling, huddles now upon the floor, rocking, shaking with soundless sobs.
And now her nurse does leap to Juliet's defense, daring to speak up to her lord and master. But Capulet's fury subsides not at all. Instead, he hands down a most bruising threat.
“Graze where you will, you shall not house with me. Look to't, think on't. I do not use to jest. Thursday is near ⦠an you be mine, I'll give you to my friend; and you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets, for, by my soul, I'll ne'er acknowledge thee, nor what is mine shall never do thee good. Trust to't ⦠.”
Have I heard him rightly? He will toss her out, cut her off from all wealth and comfort! How can he? She is his child. Hath he forgotten that in her infancy he cradled her and thought her more brilliant than the sun? How can this man, my father's brother, this uncle whom I loved and admired, be such a serpent when denied a single want?
Again, poor Juliet begs for reprieve, but Capulet offers none. He goes, and now the girl appeals to her mother, but the woman puts an end to it, taking her own leave with this statement:
“Talk not to me, for I'll not speak a word. Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee.”
Is Lady Capulet's heart a thing of ice, that she can abandon her only daughter with words such as these?
Alone with her nurse, Juliet's voice turns as thin as a spinner's web.
“O, God!âO, nurse, how shall this be prevented? What say'st thou?”
The nurse sighs, and there is a moment of silence before she speaks. And I am harshly amazed by her advice, for 'tis practical, aye, but so unkind, and so verily wrong!
“I think it best you married with the count,” says she. “O, he's a lovely gentleman!”
Juliet is betrayed again, and by a friend so close as this one. But in pain, she finds resolve, for I mark a slight stiffening of her spine, a lift of her dainty chin. She levels a look at her nurse, and there is something cold in it.
“Well, thou hast comforted me marvelous much,”
says Juliet. 'Tis an ironical statement, made with sarcasm. The nurse does not recognize it. She smiles, relieved, believing that Juliet has succumbed to her fate.
But I see something brewing there behind my cousin's calm expression, something defiant in her eyes, which belies her sudden agreement.
“Go in and tell my lady I am gone, having displeas'd my father, to Laurence's cell, to make confession and to be absolv'd.”
With a nod, the nurse hastens to do it, while Juliet whispers a denunciation in the traitor's wake. “Go, counselor; thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain. I'll to the friar to know his remedy.”
And now, a small, brave smileâhad I my body about me, I believe that little grin would cause chills along my spine, and 'tis e'en more certain that had I blood 'twould run cold at the words she utters next.
“If all else fail,”
say'st Juliet with a most disquieting calm,
“myself have power to die.”