Juliet's Nurse (21 page)

“A cat,” I correct her, “and he’d not be satisfied with any less than two full loaves.”

The cooing turns to cawing laugh, and Tybalt steps out from where he’s hid. “Is a convent walk a place to play, and are you yet of such a pranking age?” I ask, though my smile shows how glad I am to see him.

“Does the cruel virago scold,” he hunches out his head and wags a finger, before straightening himself tall again, “even when a goodly man places candles before a godly saint?”

“A goodly man,” I repeat, mocking him in turn, to Juliet’s delight—for she and I still see the boy, the youth, that Tybalt’s been, though at twenty-three he’s eager to believe none can detect it. “Does that not depend on whether what you offer is a narrow taper or a well-thickened votive?”

I reach into the wooden chest he carries, feeling for the familiar shape of candles. But what I touch instead is an unexpected form. Drawing it out, I see the offerings Tybalt’s brought are carved in the shape of the Holy Mother. I lift this one to my lips to offer prayerful kiss. I breathe in the sweet scent, pressing my thumb until it makes a slight burrow in the beeswax.

“Did it come from our hive?” Juliet asks.

“Harvested from the one within our arbor, and the others that I—”

The convent bell cuts Tybalt off. He nods for me to place the
votive upon the altar at the statue’s base and makes a quick prayer as I touch its wick to the one that already burns low there. Carrying the near-full chest in his hands, he offers one elbow to Juliet and the other to me. We slip our arms through his, walking three abreast across the cloister grounds. Honey-scent, spring, Juliet, and Tybalt—all of this warms me.

Though convent-dowries and what the Sisters sell of their vineyards’ yield keep their church well, it’s not so large as some within the city. Christ, like some Mohammedan sultan, takes many brides at once, and the churchyard teems with the families of all those who are being consecrated.

“I pray you, sir, let us pass,” Tybalt says to a man so broad there is no easy way around him.

The man turns and, instead of stepping aside, takes quick survey of Tybalt. “Whose son are you?”

Such a question, meant to insult any full-grown man, cuts all the worse with one who’s spent so much of his life fatherless.

“I am Tybalt Cappelletto, brother to Rosaline who will be consecrated a Sister of Santa Caterina within the hour. And I should like to kneel and pray for her long service to the Holy Church, rather than standing here squabbling with you.”

But the man’ll not move. “You bring so small a chest of candles, Cappelletto?”

Tybalt takes a half-step forward, crooking his elbow to maneuver Juliet behind him. “I bring such a goodly store each week. Our candles burn day and night in every chapel and before every holy statue at Santa Caterina, as the Sisters say Mass for our noble family.”

The man smiles as though Tybalt is a hind with one foot caught in a well-strung trap. “Fifty boxes of candles a year, is that all the Cappelletti offer?”

“Candles to keep filled the score of gifted silver candlesticks that bear the Cappelletti crest, and a wedding cassone overflowing with trousseau linens.” Having risen from the catacomb and pressed his way through the crowd to find us, Lord Cappelletto takes even more than his usual pleasure in cataloguing his own calculated benevolence. “Along with silver plate for the church altar, and another two chests filled with enough of Prato’s finest wool to make full-skirted habits for every Sister here. And a plot of tilling land near to Villafranca, rich soil that the Cappelletti’ve held for five generations, ever since it was given to us by the Pope’s decree for besting some rebellious mountain peasants with unfounded pretentions to nobility.”

Lord Cappelletto spits the last part, but this thick mule of a man only shrugs. “Rich dirt, perhaps, but poor compense for all the Cappelletti slaughtered by their fiercer, braver foes, in that generation and the next.” He swells his belly all the larger, to be sure we cannot pass, and nods at Tybalt’s wooden chest. “I suppose you may be so indulgent for a niece. Would that I could do as much for my goddaughter Augusta Infangati, who consecrates her vows today. But as a man with seven sons, I must take more care in stewarding my family’s fortunes.”

Son and sons, is that all this man talks about? I’d curse him and every son he has, and be done with him so we can settle ourselves to prayer. But it’s not a woman’s place to speak in public, and Lord Cappelletto’ll not leave off so easily.

“A burden it must be, to know your family’s wealth will be so divided and diminished, when the whole of it has never been even half what we Cappelletti have.” He tips one ear, as though pondering some great question. “But perhaps that’s not all there is to the matter. Even one as poor as Il Benedicto makes tithe out of his meager means, yet it’s said the Montecchi never tally the church’s portion as fully as you ought.”

Marking how the name
Montecchi
shoots an angry twitch along Tybalt’s jaw, I lean close and whisper to him what I dare not say to Lord Cappelletto. “A nice quarrel to have before a church, while Juliet waits to kneel and pray, as do your aunt and pious Rosaline.”

The Montecche is already thundering back at Lord Cappelletto. Tybalt cuts him off, shoving the box of candles into the man’s fat gut. “I make a gift of these to you, that you may give them to the church to celebrate your goddaughter, and none of your sons suffer a pennyworth of loss for it. Come Uncle, Coz, and Nurse, let’s show the Sisters of Caterina the reverence that’s their due.”

He ducks around the man to walk beside his uncle, taking care that Juliet and I follow unharmed.

“You were right to put your duty to Rosaline before such bickering,” I tell Tybalt, when we reach the church door.

“I’d not put anything before my family,” he answers. “I care not how large a man’s fortune is, nor how many sons he’s spawned. But I’ll not forget how the Montecche insulted me, and Rosaline, and our uncle, and the Holy Church as well.”

There’s only so much insult given as what we choose to take. But high-born Tybalt, braised like the tenderest veal cutlet in all
Lord Cappelletto’s talk of family honor, will not see that. So I turn instead to Juliet. She’s laid a hand upon Lord Cappelletto’s arm and whispers some pleasant word to coax a smile from him. Such affection is more than his wife ever offers, and any who look upon Lord Cappelletto can see how he treasures it. Treasures her. He smiles and says, “Darling daughter,” kissing her farewell then hurrying to take his place among the kneeling men, while Juliet and I join Lady Cappelletta on the women’s side of the nave.

Darling she is, and daughter, too. Milk-daughter, and more, to me. Let Lord Cappelletto call her what he will. He’s as blind with would-be father love as Tybalt is with hot rage over whatever slight he’s sure the Montecche made. Mannish pride on either side, and Juliet and I have naught to do but bow our heads and pray among the women.

Rosaline’ll not see us once the Mass is done. The stone-faced prioress nods approvingly at all that Lord Cappelletto gifts the convent, then announces that Rosaline is so moved by her newly consecrated state that she’s vowed not to speak for an entire week. And she’ll keep a holy fast for just as long, consuming nothing but the Host.

By my saints, this Christ is a demanding husband. To ask a wife to forego the pleasures of a conjugal bed, and have neither words nor food to fill her mouth instead.

Lord Cappelletto scowls at this proroguing of his planned feast. He’s thinking of the powerful guests he’s longing to impress, and
of ravioli and savory pie and all the other already-prepared dishes that’ll not keep another week. Lady Cappelletta, who’s learned to love an evening’s revelry since her husband, grown too old to dance, leaves her to terpsichore among his guests, shares his displeasure. But Tybalt’s jaw softens at the prioress’s pronouncement. Though I wonder what in his sister’s self-denying devotions so pleases him, I give Juliet’s chin a loving chuck and say, “It’s just as well to wait the feast. For all we’ve sewn of Rosaline’s trousseau, there’s been little time to array Juliet, and Lady Cappelletta, as finely as we ought for such a fête.”

The thought of getting up greater finery satisfies girl and woman both, and Lord Cappelletto’s hairy fingers busily tally how much can be made of another week of preparations. Tybalt catches my eye with his own, endarting his gladness to me before taking his leave to untether the post-horse.

Plodding as the carriage ride is, still we arrive at Ca’ Cappelletti before Tybalt. Lady Cappelletta hastens to the upper storage room and unlocks the cassone that holds the finest of the household fabric stores. “The zetani, at last,” she says, pulling out a length of cloth as azure as Santa Maria’s own celestial robes.

Juliet’s slim fingers ripple along the velvet-embossed silk. “Does my lord father bid it, Madam?”

That she calls Lady Cappelletta by the same
Madam
as I do is comfort to me, though to hear her mouth form
father
for Lord Cappelletto always sets a sharp shard in my craw.

But
bid
is the word that catches for Lady Cappelletta. “This zetani was pawned to him in payment for some debt so long past,
the color fades along the folds.” She raises an eyebrow in careful calculation. “Surely even my lord husband’ll not begrudge us fabric enough to make new sleeves for his dear daughter, and his wife.”

Juliet raises pleading eyes to Lady Cappelletta. “Can I not have a whole gown of it?”

It’s not greed but a child’s innocent delight that makes my girl ask. But such innocence only draws a frown from Lady Cappelletta. Indulgent as Lord Cappelletto is with Juliet, my girl’s not noticed he’s harder with his wife.

“No simple stitch will pull such well-wefted cloth to proper shape,” I say. “Which means we’ll have enough to do to get sleeves cut, set, and sewn in one week’s time.”

The soft zetani scents our fingers with the rosemary that’s kept it free of worm and moth, and I know my Juliet will shine in so rich a color worn against the pale yellow stripes of her gown. But it seems whatever rest I’d hoped to have once Rosaline’s trousseau was done will never come, for we work long past the evening torches being lit. Although I keep a ready ear for Tybalt’s return, I never hear him. Such is the man that he’s become, still prancing on cat paws though he’s long grown—yet oftener and oftener keeping counsel only with himself.

It’s a short night’s nap I get, because not long after the lauds bells are rung trumpeters pierce Verona’s sleep, summoning Prince Cansignorio’s most trusted advisors. Lord Cappelletto responds to the blasts like a hound to the huntsman’s whistle, rushing down into the still-dark street to join the hastily called council.

I swing open the window in our bedchamber. “Why let in such chill?” Juliet murmurs, snuggling deeper beneath the bedclothes.

I do not worry her with an answer as I lean out to smell the air. No fire, no powder. The city’s quiet, except for the peals of the trumpeters, the hoofbeats of their horses, and the clatter of the lords answering the call. But after I pull the window tight within its case and turn back to the room, a shiver catches me. Not of cold, but of something else. Some foreboding makes me cross myself and ask safekeeping from my Virgin before I climb once more into the bed where Juliet, fast asleep again, breathes a steady rhythm into the still room.

By the time Lord Cappelletto returns, the sun is high and the whole house is long awake. He barks down in the kitchen before storming his way into the sala.

Lady Cappelletta, practiced at ignoring her husband’s moods, does not even turn her head when he enters. Juliet wraps the length of zetani she is working around her shoulders, wanting Lord Cappelletto to take some pretty notice of it, and her. “Will I not make a fine sight at the feast?”

But for once his brooding brow does not raise in joy at Juliet. “There’ll be no feast,” he says.

This at least works a response from his wife. “Does my lord husband not wish to celebrate our brother’s daughter Rosaline’s most holy state?”

Brother
,
Rosaline
, and
holy state
—she offers all three when any one of them ought to be enough to catch his heart. But none do.