Juliet's Nurse (26 page)

I might pity the poor girl, who’ll never know the delights Juliet is to find in Paris’s bed. But what Rosaline cannot know, she’ll not
miss. She bows her head and crosses herself, over and over through the dinner, shocked at the company’s indulgences. The goodly nun eats only lettuce dressed with lemon, followed by a handful of fresh grapes. Nibbling like a rabbit among hounds until she can bear no more, when she leans and whispers to Tybalt, who rises and leads her from the room.

The rest of the company makes up for her restraint. Having had our fill of peacock, we’re served the flakiest of focaccia, the pastry filled with egg-basted turtledove. Next comes fig-peckers braised with four kinds of olives, then pheasants covered with fried squid, followed by veal mortadella simmered in fava beans and mint. Lord Cappelletto flouts the sumptuary law, keeping keen eye to make sure the trencher nearest Prince Cansignorio’s nephew is always the first filled.

Though Juliet sits across from Count Paris, she does not raise her gaze to his, the shyness natural to her age ripening to coyness by my morning’s tutelage. She tilts her head to mine, feeding me from her trencher with her own hand, like I’m her pet. Hiding my bruises behind my broad palm, I eat all that she demurs, waving off only the boar’s head covered in pomegranate. Too toothless at my age to burst the rosy seeds and taste the succulence inside, I’ve Juliet to savor what I no longer can. I bid her nibble upon those pretty seeds as we gossip like old women and giggle like young girls, ahum with our wooing news.

When the rose water is brought in finger bowls, I fuss over Juliet, carefully turning my own ill-used face from the company while I dab at her mouth and work the silver-and-ivory pick I wear about my
neck to clean her teeth. She’s too grown to need such tending, but it occupies me while the lesser servants clear away the plate and push aside the tables. The diners don their masks, and I raise mine. More guests arrive already in their costumes. Lord Cappelletto drones a pompous speech about the days when he wore a merrymaker’s visor, though his bulbous nose is so frightfully large it’s impossible to imagine the mask that could’ve covered such a thing. “Thirty years, since I last danced,” he says, raising an uncertain eyebrow to some other shrivelled codger, “or only some five-and-twenty?”

Who cares which it was, I wish to say, impatient for him to give lute and pipe leave to play so Juliet may prance to her finer future.

Wax or flower, whichever Paris is, he shades easily among the masked revelers. Not so his cousin Mercutio, for not by his face alone has that debaucher made himself known around Verona. Mercutio wears his doublet so short, it shows every whorl and flourish upon his gilded codpiece. He’s a nearer relation to the prince than Paris is, which may prove perilous. Rumors swirl through the city of how Cansignorio plots to have his bastard sons rule after him, and all Verona knows how Cansignorio disposes of relations he deems rivals. Although it’s hard to imagine lascivious Mercutio taking any interest in the throne—unless perhaps there were a shapely maiden or two seated stark-naked upon it.

The summer night grows dark, and the house is thick with torchsmoke. I try to keep sight of Juliet among the dancers, but the rings and chains move quick, and my old eyes weary with peering through my mask-holes. Searching for a place to sit, I spy Tybalt at the edge of the hall, sliding his sword in and out of its scabbard.

“Freshly stained?” I ask, nodding at his blade.

“I drew during this morning’s fray, but had no time to drive my hate home before the prince’s guard came calling peace.” Disappointment smolders along his face, as it did when he was but a boy, longing for his far-off father’s company.

“Did I not tell you I’d no desire for your vengeance?”

“I heed you, Nurse, as I try to heed my uncle. But neither you nor he can dissuade me, when it’s my sister I defend.”

“Rosaline?” What sort of brute would attack a nun? “Was she—” I search for the word, imagining the folds of her habit hiding such bruises as I bear. “Is Rosaline unwell?”

“She is well.” The words bring no softening to what pinches hard in him. “Too well, too fair, too wise, wisely too fair. She’s caught the eye of a certain cursèd rakehell who woos and woos, and will not hear her
no
.”

This must have been what he wrote so secretly of in his letter, why he was so impatient for her reply. The wall around the vineyard of Santa Caterina is low enough for a lusty man to climb. And many a girl or woman who’s shut up in a convent for want of a proper dowry would be glad for a clandestine suitor. But not pious Rosaline. She’d not be hit by Cupid’s own enchanted arrow.

“What harm can unchaste words do chaste ears?” I repeat what fell from Tybalt’s own mouth, in hope it’ll cool his too easy temper.

But Tybalt’s like an iron held so long in the fire it glows of its own accord. “The scoundrel haunts the convent. Offers gold enough to seduce a saint, in hopes Rosaline’ll ope her lap to him. To know some fiend plots to use my sister so—”

“Is only to know what moves a man.” Pietro, I miss you now anew, for surely you might better speak to Tybalt of what I know he needs. Might bend his ear with more merry tales than Lord Cappelletto’s droning on of family honor. Might convince him to seek a more pleasurable thrusting than what men do with swords. “It’s time you thought of such pursuits yourself. Not to cast your eyes upon one pledged to chastity, but to set your heart on some hartless hind.” I conjure all the love I’ve ever felt for Tybalt. “You’ve an affectionate nature. Why not make an honorable suit, and take a bride?”

“It’s not for me to take, but to be given. My uncle will arrange a wife for his heir such as suits him, when he deems the time is right. I’ll have naught to say about it, except to mutter the church vows when I’m told I must. What joy is there in that?”

I search across the sala, hoping to catch sight of Paris empalmed with Juliet. Though the dancers are a blur, my own palm quakes with the thrill of imagining their hands joined. “Lord Cappelletto can arrange a winsome match,” I say. “If you but speak to him—”

“I’ve tried to speak my part, endeavoring to tell him that this villain who would seduce my sister has dared come here enmasked to find her. And am told,
be patient
, and
take no note of him
, and
he shall be endured
. Am told I must keep the peace within Ca’ Cappelletti, even with one not worthy to be granted it.” He draws sword and strikes, his well-handled blade slicing a single blood-red thread from a nearby tapestry. “I’m the one who’s always told to guard our honor, yet when I try am called by my own uncle a
goodman boy
, a
saucy boy
, and a
princox
.”

“Your uncle says many things that would better go unuttered,
and are best unheeded.” I stoop and pluck up the silken strand, looping it to form a bright bud I nestle between my breasts. But I cannot raise even the smallest smile from Tybalt. “You are a good man, and no boy. Saucy at times, but who does not prefer a sauced meat to a dry one? As proud a cock as any prince, but no princox.”

Nothing I say soothes what rages in his eyes, or loosens the tight grasp on his hilt. Hoping wine will do what words will not, I go to find him a full goblet, and myself one as well. But before I can make my way back to him, I hear, “
Nurse
,
Nurse
,” shrilled in that voice I’m suffered to obey. I empty both goblets in swift gulps, stash them on a window’s sill, and turn to present myself to Lady Cappelletta.

I’m flushed with the wine, but she’s flushed with something else, the samite pulling low upon her bosom as she leans close to Paris. “Nurse, I crave—” Paris arches an eyebrow at the word, which makes her flush more—“a word, I crave a word with Juliet. Fetch her here.”

Fetch, like I’m a hound and Juliet some slobbered-upon bone. But I nod and curtsy. Let Paris see Lady Cappelletta for what she is, and see me as a worthy part of Juliet’s dowry. Juliet, who I find not among the dancers but, after seeking everywhere, discover in an alcove speaking to one of the masked guests, a thin and tallish fellow. “Pilgrim,” I hear, and “prayer,” and “book.” Can my Juliet be so simple-hearted, wasting an evening’s revels in such dull talk? Duller even than what Lady Cappelletta might have to say.

“Madam.” I speak boldly, for surely Juliet’ll be glad to be called away from such as this. “Your mother craves a word with you.”

Hearing me, and realizing she’s been overheard, Juliet flitters like a pale moth and is gone.

“What is her mother?” the fellow asks, his callow voice an odd match to his well-jeweled mask.

What is her mother?
I might count all heaven’s stars before I could count the ways I can answer that. “Marry, bachelor,” I say. If he’s a clever man, he’ll know what I say next is as untrue as a married bachelor would be. “Her mother is the lady of the house, and a good lady, and a wise and virtuous one.”

Though he’s not so handsome above as Paris, nor so well-formed below as Mercutio, still he has a boyish pretty mouth below his mask, and a pair of shapely arms. I press myself close upon those arms and say, “I nursed her that you talked withal.” And nursed enough wine tonight to take this stranger into my confidence. “I tell you, he that can lay hold of her shall have the chinks.”
Chinks of the precious dowry coins Lord Cappelletto will gift Paris, whole cassoni of which could be worth no more than her treasured maidenhead. With that bit of bawd, off I go after Juliet.

But the wine pounds in my head more steadily than my feet pound upon the floor. I’m whirled this way and that among the press of people, until Lord Cappelletto orders the musicians done and the stairway torches lit. I find my lambkin standing to the side, watching the departing guests. She pulls me near to ask who this one is, and that, just as she’s done since she was a girl of six, wide-eyed at all the finery worn to a fête.

When she points to the pretty-mouthed one, I tell her I know not his name. My knowing not is not enough, and off she sends me
to find out. But this guest I ask does not know, and neither does that. And so I go on inquiring, until I feel a grope upon my rump, and turning quick collide into Mercutio, who laughs and tells me the pretty-mouthed youth is called Romeo.

The name means naught to me. “What Romeo?”

“Romeo Montecche.”

Such a rascal is this Mercutio, to prank me with false words. I parry back, “What man is mad enough to bring a Montecche here?”

Mercutio roars open-mouthed, and says he is the man, and if a saucy maid will call him mad, she’ll get what she deserves. With that he swats my bottom, sending me stumbling. When I right myself I keep on my way until I’m back beside Juliet.

“His name is Romeo, and a Montecche.” All Lord Cappelletto’s bitter railing about the ill-blood between their families ought to make the name Montecche familiar to her. But her startled eyes fill with such confusion, I add, “son of your great enemy.” I take care to whisper, for if Tybalt hears a Montecche’s here, and him already in such angry spirits—

But when I look about for Tybalt, he’s nowhere in the room. How long is it since I had sight of him? He might be lying in wait outside for the would-be seducer. If he sees instead a Montecche passing from his uncle’s house, Tybalt’ll follow him into some dark corner of the city to lay sword to him. Or not to him, but them, for Romeo leaves with Mercutio and half a dozen of the other maskers. Tybalt is hot enough to try them all. Which worries me so much I only half hear Juliet reciting some verse twining hate and late, and love and enmity.

I cup a hand to my ear. “What’s this? What’s this?”

Even in this near-extinguished light, I feel the warmth of her blush as she answers. “A rhyme I learned of one I danced withal.”

A pretty bit of poesy from Paris, it must be. I’m impatient to have her tell it to me, that I might know what count to take of the count who courts her. But before I can bid her repeat it, Lord Cappelletto calls, “Juliet.”

“Anon, anon,” I answer, for I’ll not make her face him alone.

We find him misty-eyed and musty-breathed, speaking of fathers and daughters and the honor it will be to unite his house with the Scaligeri. Hearing him, Juliet goes green as a spinached egg. Only my quick catch keeps her from fainting to the floor. “It’s late,” I say, “and the torches make for close air on such a hot night.” With no more by-your-leave than that, I steer my girl away to our bedchamber.

“What’ve you had to drink?” I ask, when we’re shut up alone.

“Naught but water. Like Rosaline.”

Naught to drink, nor to eat. Weak she must be. I take my leave and hie to the kitchen, snatch from the voracious serving-man the most delicate remaining morsels, and tuck a vessel near-full of wine beneath my arm. Laden, I return to find the chamber door pulled fast to me. I call once, twice, and a third time, worrying that she’s fainted. But, ear to the door, I’d swear I hear her speak, answered by a second voice sounding farther off. Tybalt, perhaps, climbed up to her window as he did so many times in childhood. Could he have found a heart for such frolicking tonight? If any could call him to it, it would be Juliet. Her bounty is as boundless as the sea, her love as deep—

Paris’s wooing must be catching, for my thoughts to weave into such lovers’ verse. “Juliet,” I call once more, arms aching from all I carry.

The door flies open. Juliet’s no longer the pale moth, nor the Florentine’s greened egg. She’s pinked, and pleased, and pulls me inside, and shuts the door behind me, and waves away all I’ve brought. Steals a look toward the moon-lighted window and asks, “Nurse, what hour is it?”

The answer throbs from my sore head to my swelled feet, paining every part in between. “So late of night, it’s better called early on the morrow.”

She fills a silver goblet with rubied wine, and passes it to me. “Will it be long till the hour of nine?”

I mark the pearly tooth she works into her lip, and know there’s more tolling than the city’s bells. Perhaps it was another man’s voice I heard without, a more smitten heart than Tybalt’s calling as she stood in the window as shining fair as the East’s own sun. “The lauds are already rung. Next will be the prime, and after those the terce, that ring the hour of nine. Are you so well wooed, and your heart so fully won, that you forget such simple things?”