I Am Juliet (8 page)

The nightingale sang in the pomegranate tree outside the window. Romeo’s skin glowed silver in the moonlight as he sat up beside me in the bed. He touched my hair, then kissed my lips again, swollen from the night.

‘Did you like that?’ he whispered.

I kissed him instead of answering. We had been clumsy that first time, wanting to explore the secret places but uncertain what was allowed in the dance. Our bodies and our hands knew each other the second time, knew each other’s love, and pleasure. And after that I did not count …

‘I think it must get better with practice,’ I said.

He smiled. ‘We will practise a lot. Practise for every icicle of winter, warm each other in each gale. Juliet will be my sun, even under snow clouds.’

I stroked his shoulder: hard muscle and soft skin. So this was what Guigemar and his lady had done. They had not just sat together reading in the garden. This was
why the Queen had survived in that dark dungeon, had crossed the wild sea. She had survived for this.

‘With my body I thee worship,’ I whispered.

I felt the strength of him, ran my fingertips along the short hairs on his arms, then the muscles of his stomach. The body that had looked a little dumpy stuffed into layers of clothing was compact and strong now. Why did men cover themselves in silk and velvet when there was so much beauty underneath?

The nightingale sang again, long and sweet. Romeo bent his head and kissed me again, a long soft kiss, not like the bruising kisses we had exchanged as the hours tolled across the night. He swung his feet to the floor.

‘No!’ I clutched his hand. ‘That was the nightingale, not the morning lark.’

‘It was the lark.’ He spoke softly. All night we had been quiet, a small nation made of two. ‘Night’s candles are burnt out. I must be gone and live, or stay and die.’

‘That isn’t the dawn. It’s a meteor to light your way to Mantua. Dear love, stay a little longer. You need not go yet.’

He looked at me seriously. ‘I’ll stay, if that is what you wish. I’ll say the grey is not the dawn. I’ll say the lark is but the nightingale. I want to stay more than I want to go. I’ll say to death “welcome” if Juliet wills it so. See, it is not day …’

I could not bear to hear him speak of death. ‘It is daylight! Be gone, away! It is the lark that sings so out of tune. More light and light it grows.’

He whispered, ‘More light and light, and more dark and dark our woes.’

‘Madam.’ It was Nurse’s voice, urgent, outside. ‘Your mother is coming to your chamber.’

‘Quickly!’ I said, but still I could not let him go.

He took my fingers gently from his arms and kissed them, then kissed me on the lips again. He shrugged into his shirt and hose, grabbed his shoes and stockings. I pulled my shift back over my head, and ran out onto the balcony after him.

‘Art thou gone? My lord, my love, my friend. I must hear from you every hour, for in a minute there are many days.’

‘I will. Farewell. One kiss and I’ll descend.’

His lips touched mine for three heartbeats, then he climbed swiftly down the ladder. I watched him run between the rose beds, then climb the pomegranate tree against the garden wall. For a moment he stood among its branches, looking back at me, a shadow against the dawn, his face as white as Tybalt’s in his tomb.

No, I would not think of death, nor sorrow. We would meet again, and soon. Now I was a wife — his wife. Nothing could stop me now.

I looked at the tree again, as though his shadow might have left a mark. But he was gone.

‘Juliet?’

I turned. ‘Mother?’

My body was still moist with him, my lips bruised. Surely she would see?

My mother’s dress was black, her coif too. Even her slippers were black satin. Her beads were jet, and glittered as the first sunbeams flickered across the garden and onto the balcony. Was she up early? Perhaps she hadn’t been to bed, but had sat with Tybalt’s corpse through the night.

‘I … I am not well,’ I said.

‘Still weeping for your cousin’s death?’ How could she not notice the signs of love? Did she ever really look at me, except to see the duty of a daughter? Her face was colder than stone. ‘Tears will not wash Tybalt from his grave. Too much weeping shows lack of wit, not grief. Better you weep because the villain lives who slaughtered him.’

‘What villain?’

‘That same villain, Romeo.’

I stepped into the bedroom. My body still smelled of Romeo, of us. I hoped that the scent of roses and lavender would cover it.

‘God pardon him,’ I said. ‘I do, with all my heart.’

She looked at me incredulously. I had to be careful. She would expect me to be angry too. How many weeks or months must I stay here and pretend?

I said cautiously, ‘I wish that mine would be the only hands to take our vengeance.’

My mother smiled. ‘We will have vengeance, fear you not. I’ll send to one in Mantua, where that banished runagate shall live. I’ll send him such an unaccustomed dram that he shall soon keep Tybalt company in the earth. And then I hope you will be satisfied.’

Poison! My heart clenched so hard it hurt. My mother’s still room held many medicines that could kill in the wrong dose. The sword was a man’s weapon. Was poison a woman’s? Last night I had learned what my mother had never taught me about love. What had she not taught me about death?

I had to get a message to Romeo. Perhaps through Friar Laurence …

I said automatically, ‘Indeed, I never shall be satisfied with Romeo till I behold him …’ That was true enough. I added, ‘Dead …’ I stopped, hearing my words. They belonged to a good daughter, not a good wife. I should not say them, not even to stop suspicion. I said carefully, trying to find words that would still be true to Romeo, yet not alert my mother, ‘If you could but find a man to bear such a poison, I would temper it, that Romeo should soon sleep in quiet.’ And let it be, I prayed. Oh, let him be safe in sleep tonight.

I looked at my mother. I doubted she had even heard my words.

‘Now I’ll tell thee joyful tidings, girl,’ she said.

‘Joy comes well in such a needful time,’ I responded. A nice girl’s words. Obedient. I must play their game till winter. ‘What are they, madam?’

‘Well, you have a careful father, child. One who will sort your sorrow with a day of joy.’

‘What day?’

‘Early Thursday morning, the gallant, young and noble gentleman, the Lord Paris, at St Peter’s Church, shall happily make you a joyful bride.’

A marriage in two days’ time! How? Why? It was as if the nightingale had become a vulture. ‘No!’ I said.

She stared at me. She had not thought I even knew such a word.

Somehow my voice swept on. ‘I will not marry yet! And, when I do, I swear, it shall be Romeo.’

My mother’s eyes grew as hard as her black beads. I wished I could gulp the words back.

I added quickly, ‘Who you know I hate, rather than Paris.’

Boots clapped on marble in the corridor. My mother looked at me grimly. ‘Here is your father. Tell him so yourself and see how he takes the news from you.’

My father entered, Nurse at his heels. He was dressed in black too, black that sucked in every other colour in the room. He looked more tired than grieved. His daughter was just another duty to get done in a long
hard day. My mother loved Tybalt, I thought, but all you have suffered is an insult to our house.

‘Still crying, daughter? Your tears will make a flood, your sighs a wind.’ He looked at my mother. ‘Well, wife, have you told her?’

‘Yes. But she will none, and gives you thanks. I wish the fool was dead.’

I had always known she would have gladly exchanged my brother’s death for mine. I bored her. Disappointed her. But this?

My father rubbed his eyes. ‘She should be on her knees, to thank us, proud that so worthy a man will be her bridegroom.’

‘I … I can’t be proud,’ I said. ‘I hate the thought of marriage after all that has happened.’ Tybalt had caused my grief. Let him be the excuse to keep me from marrying Paris now. ‘I thank you, indeed I do, but —’

‘“Proud”? And “I thank you”?’ My father stared at me as if I were Tybalt’s poor wolfhound got to its hind legs to argue with him. Weariness swept into fury. ‘Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds, but get your fine legs ready on Thursday, to go with Paris to St Peter’s Church, or I’ll drag you there on a stretcher.’

I wished I could be stone, like the statues in the hall. A statue had no father or mother, that her heart should freeze like this. What was a daughter? Nothing, when she refused to be what her parents wanted her to be.

‘Father, please.’

‘You baggage! You tallow face!’

His yells hit the marble walls. I heard their echo down the corridor.

I kneeled in my shift on the floor. It was as though I pleaded for a million daughters. Pleaded to be myself, not just a daughter, a possession like his ships. ‘Good father, I beseech you on my knees …’ I had never asked him for anything. Not his love, nor even his notice. ‘Hear me with patience but to speak a word!’

‘Hang thee, young baggage. Disobedient wretch! Get thee to church on Thursday or never after look me in the face. Say nothing, don’t reply, don’t answer me. My fingers itch.’

He lifted up his hand to slap me. I cowered back.

‘Wife, we scarce thought ourselves blessed to have but this only child! Now I see this one is one too much.’

He grasped me by the hair. I screamed. His hand slapped my face, once and then again.

‘My lord … you are to blame, my lord, to scold her so.’ It was Nurse. My dear Nurse.

My father stared at her. ‘Hold your tongue!’

‘I speak no treason, sir!’

‘You mumbling fool! Speak with the other gossips. I want none of it here.’

His face was red. His hands shook as they gripped my hair. I bit my lip to stop crying with the pain.

My mother murmured, ‘Sir, you are too hot-tempered.’

My father dropped me, so suddenly my elbow cracked against the floor. ‘Hot?’ he repeated. ‘God’s bread, it makes me mad! Day, night, hour, time, work, play, all my life has been to have her matched well, a gentleman of noble parentage, stuffed with honourable parts, and then to have a wretched snivelling fool to answer, “I’ll not wed. I cannot love. I am too young. I pray you, pardon me.”’

He stared down at me, as if I were a beggar in the street. ‘Thursday is near, and you are mine,’ he added coldly. ‘I’ll give you to my friend. If you refuse, you can beg in the streets, hang, starve, die, for all I care. I won’t acknowledge you. For what is mine shall never do you good. Trust to that, my girl. You have my word.’

He pushed past Nurse. She curtseyed, trembling, remaining with her head bent low till he was gone.

I lay where he had shoved me, on the floor. I looked up at my mother, her eyes as black shadowed as her dress. ‘Is there no pity sitting in the clouds? Oh, sweet my mother, cast me not away! Delay this marriage for a month, a week. Or, if you do not, make the marriage bed in that dim monument where Tybalt lies.’

My mother was silent. I thought she listened to me. But when she spoke it was with more contempt than I had ever heard.

‘Do as you want, for I have done with thee.’ I heard the silk of her dress sweep across the floor and out the door.

I sat on the cold floor in my shift. My hair was down and knotted, my feet bare. No wonder my parents had not listened to me.

No, it made no difference what I wore or what I said. I was theirs, to do with as they wanted. All I’d ever known was what they had given me: life, the silks I wore, the pearls, the dancing master. But none of it for love. If they loved me, they would have listened to me. My parents had created their daughter as my father would have shipwrights build a ship: for its use and the wealth it would bring him.

But I was not a ship. I was Juliet. And I owed my parents nothing now.

I said in a small voice, ‘Nurse? Have you any word to comfort me?’

She sighed. ‘Well, here it is. Romeo is banished, and likely he’ll not come back. So perhaps it is for the best that you marry Paris.’

I stared at her.

She went on more quickly. ‘Oh, Paris is a lovely gentleman. Romeo’s a dishcloth to him. I think you’re lucky in this second match, for it exceeds your first. Your first is dead, or as good as. A husband gone away is no use to you, nor you to him.’

‘You speak from your heart?’ I asked her.

‘And from my soul too.’

Nurse’s hands had tended me all my life. I thought she loved me. Loved me like her Susan, whom she had tried to save through the forty days of plague, caring not for her own life, but her child’s.

But I was not her Susan. Nurse cared for me. But she cared more for herself, her comfortable life. I had been alone for all my life and never known it. My mother, my father, had not known me. Even Nurse had abandoned me.

There was only one who loved me. Somehow, some way, I had to get to Romeo in Mantua. Even the anger of the Montagues, which I would surely find there, could be no worse than what my family had done.

I closed my eyes. I prayed. And when I opened them, I knew what I must do. Friar Laurence would know where Romeo was. The good friar might even help me.

I turned to traitor Nurse. I said abruptly, ‘Well, you have comforted me marvellously much. Go and tell my mother that I’m going to Friar Laurence’s cell to make confession for having displeased my father.’

Would Nurse believe it?

Her face cleared. ‘I will, and this is wisely done!’

As if my heart would change as fast as hers. ‘Ring for the maids. And for fruit. I wish for fruit.’

‘Of course, my locket. Ah, your appetite is back at last. There’s preserved quinces in the kitchen, I saw them myself, and cherries, and an apple pie —’

‘Fresh fruit,’ I said. ‘Oranges or a pomegranate.’

‘But fresh fruit is indigestible on an empty stomach —’

‘Oranges,’ I insisted, and turned my back on her.

She left. I waited for the Joans to come to dress me and bring the oranges. With them would come a knife, a long sharp knife to cut the fruit.

If I could not get to Mantua, I would need a knife.