Juliet's Nurse (27 page)

The question makes her laugh, and cry, and throw her arms around me. So furiously am I hugged, the goblet drops, splashing wine across us both. My morello hides it well enough, but the beautiful zetani’s ruined.

I tut at her. “Lovestruck though he is, if he saw you now—”

I only mean to tease, but Juliet digs sharp nails into me. “What do you mean? Will he not be true, when he sees me for what I am?”

“What you are is good and goodness.” I rock her in my arms, like I did when she was but a babe. “Have no worries, you’ve won his whole heart. If it’s already early on the morrow, then by my saints, this will be the day that you are trothed to Paris.”

“Paris?” The name falls like a curse from her mouth.

“Juliet, did he not please you? You dance, and trade rhymes, and hurry night into morning so you may see him anon.” I meant to teach her art enough to earn a noble match. But not so much as to tease and toy, and risk losing what any girl ought be glad to get. “His love’s declared, so you may trust it. If you care for him, be plain about it. Elsewise, you are unfair to Paris.”

“Would that I were unfair to Paris. What do I care if he finds me fair?”

I catch her chin in my hand, look close into her eyes. It’s not a flirt’s pretty pout that pulls at her features. Rubbing my broad thumb along her soft cheek, I stop a tear. “So you do not love?”

“Love? Of course I love. Has my heart not rushed along with yours, each time you repeated how you felt when first you saw Pietro? All these years I believed I swelled with the very flush you did, just to hear it told. Until tonight, when at last I felt such love myself, and knew it a thousand times more wonderful than even your words could tell it.” She lays her head upon my neck. All the slim of her nuzzles against the girth of me, and her heart sounds as quick within my chest as it does her own. “I do love, dear Nurse. But this love I have is not for Paris.”

“Then for who?”

She lifts her head and turns half away. “What is
who
? Who am I,
or you, or any of us, when love makes changelings of us?” She closes her eyes and I swear by the Madonna, she is more beautiful than I’ve ever seen her, standing bathed in moonlight. “What if I were not a Cappelletta? Would I still be who I am?”

“Yes.” The word forms like a holy prayer upon my lips. Or more, for it is my dearest prayer answered. I search that moonlit face. Does Juliet sense at last what all these years I’ve held from her? “You’ll always be a precious jewel, even if you’re no Juliet Cappelletta.”

“And what if I were the very opposite of the Cappelletti?”

“The very opposite of what they are, is the very thing Pietro and I ever were.” The words that always seemed impossible to speak now melt easily from me. “Poor we were, without a name or fortune. But we loved, and were happy, and made in our happy love—”

“What if I were a Montecche?”

Her words are like a needle drawn too hard. They bunch my brow. They make no sense to me. “But you were not born to the house of Montecchi.”

Some strange sentiment tremors across her. “Not born,” she says, “but what if I were wed to it?”

Is there a heart that knows a heart better than a mother knows her child? For I see now what was right before my nose some hour past. “Romeo, the one you spoke withal—is he this love?”

“Romeo.” She sighs to say his name. “No rose could be more sweet. No man more meet.” Tears shine in her eyes, and something more shines upon her lips. “I do love, and Romeo is the one I love, and Romeo loves me.”

The hard stone floor seems to shift, the very earth sliding from beneath me. Paris—such a match would he be for my girl. I could not conjure more kind, more handsome, more well-placed than he. And this Romeo, some near relation to the very Montecche who punched and kicked at me, believing I was Tybalt. Which could I possibly want for Juliet?

But when she buries herself against me and asks, “Why must I always hate where I’m told the Cappelletti hate, and love only where they bid me love?” I will my legs strong, that I may bear the sliding and the shifting. Glad as I am the Cappelletti’s ancient quarrels mean naught to her, I’m gladder still when she almonds her eyes at me and says, “Surely you’d not have me wed a man who moves me any less than Pietro moved you.”

To have her love as Pietro and I loved—this is the one legacy I’ve to give. How could I wish for her the match Lord Cappelletto makes, if it’d be no more loving a marriage than his own? Would I have her so miserable with wealth and rank as Lady Cappelletta, when I know how even on our hungriest days love fed me, and Pietro, and all of our boys?

This is the lesson the rich never learn. A full heart lasts longer than a full belly. And a well-carved bed hung with finely painted canopy and curtains is no great fortune to the wife who finds no pleasure there.

But little as I care what Lord Cappelletto wants, there’s another among the Cappelletti who yet concerns me. Juliet and I’ve heard Tybalt curse the Montecchi long enough we both know such a wooing will not sit well with him. When I remind her of
this, she smiles the very way she did when she toddled after Tybalt as a tiny thing.

“My cousin’d do better to love than hate, you’re always saying so yourself. By my lesson, he can unlearn this generations-old enmity, and learn to love where love’s well won. For how can he despise all Montecchi, once his dearest cousin is become one?”

It took so small a slight to drive Tybalt to take up a sword in this ancient feud, I’d not have thought there’d be any way to convince him to lay it down again. But I want to believe that what was best in the boy can yet govern the man. If her love can temper Tybalt’s hate, he’ll be the better for it.

And if my body still aches with keen reminder of what vengeful wrath can wreak, what fault is it of Romeo’s? My own vile father’s violence did not taint my marriage. Why would Romeo’s Montecchi blood stain Juliet’s new joy?

“If he loves you as Pietro loved me, he’ll win my consent. But first I must know if his heart is as true as yours.”

“At nine, you shall know. I told him I would send to him at that hour.” She’s so lovestruck, she kisses my lids, and lobes, and the great wine-soaked, morello-covered bosom of me, as she says, “Your eyes must be mine, and your ears, and your heart as well, so you can judge by light of day the truth of what I feel tonight.”

Judge I will. For Juliet is all to me. If I might see her married—not merely once, as I said before Lady Cappelletta hours past, but well, as she begs of me now—then truly my mother’s heart will beam fuller than moon, and sun, and all the fairest stars I set upon her headdress.

FOURTEEN

T
hough Juliet and I barely doze a dozen winks between us, the rest of Ca’ Cappelletti clings to heavy slumber. Slipping from our chamber before the terce
bells ring, I move through a hushed house. The remains of feast and fête litter sala, stairs, and courtyard, the snores of lord and servants the only sounds within the compound. Despite my haste, I stop within the arbor. The bees are already in flight, scenting the morning yeasty-sweet with brood and honey, their bodies goldened by their loads of pollen. I whisper to them of what fills Juliet’s heart, and mine, as though they might bear my words to my departed husband as they soar into the sky. It’s all I want, to share love’s happy tidings with him. But my eye catches on one of the Scaligeri-style ladders that’d been put up within the courtyard. Nestled instead beneath Juliet’s window, the
flowers twined to it crushed last night by Romeo’s eager boot. My sore side aches as I wrestle the decoration back to its former place, so none will wonder who climbed so close to speak to her.

Stepping into the Via Cappello, I nearly collide into Tybalt, who’s pulling at his glove with the satisfied expression of a cat licking cream off its paw.

“Where are you rushing to?” His eyebrow arches. Not with the boyish curiosity with which he’d pose endless questions to me or to Pietro, but with a cocksure man’s quick censuring.

“Juliet suffers from last night’s excitement, I must fetch remedy for her.” Not one false word in that, though together they conceal the truth. “You’ve risen early,” I add, to heave his mind from her and me, “though perhaps part of you rose late, moved by some beauty found among the fêting dancers. And having moved something in her, the part that rose first now rests, as the rest of you must rise at this hour to hasten home.” With a wink, I ask, “Who is she, Tybalt?”

“Not she, but he.” His chin thrusts forward, drawing his long face even longer. “I’ve done as my uncle bade, letting him play generous host to the rogue who’d rob my sister of her greatest treasure. But the villain’s gone out from our house, and I’ve left a challenge at his own for him.”

I wish I could run a hand through Tybalt’s curls and ease away this sour humor as I soothed so many dark moods that shadowed his boyhood. But he’s too old to let me lay comforting hand on him. Too old to know how young he yet is—though Juliet, younger still, may be the one who’ll calm for good what rages in him. All I can do is cut short his talk of bloody-bladed revenge by pulling my veil full
upon my face. Carefully covering the last of the bruises that remain from when I was mistook in Tybalt’s cloak, I leave his smoldering hate to seek Juliet’s new-kindled love.

The Piazza delle Erbe is already thick with vendors hawking and customers haggling. I fan away the swelting air, wondering how I’ll recognize Romeo unmasked in the day’s light. The only familiar face I pick out in all the thronging crowd is Mercutio’s. He’s perched upon the piazza fountain as if he’s peering up the Madonna’s statued skirts. There’s barely a stitch of cloth upon him as he splashes in the spouting water, defying any who pass to chastise him for defiling the public font.

Mercutio may know no morals, but he knows well Romeo. And so I make my veiled way to him and say, “God ye good morrow.” For which I get back naught but filthy bandying.

I survey his smirking companions, marking which seems to wear the mouth I met yester-eve. Easy enough to choose, as the sleepless youth wears the same doublet and hose, as well. When I artfully ask where I may find young Romeo, this very one says, “Young Romeo will be older when you have found him than he was when you sought him,” before admitting he’s the fellow who bears that name.

Well said that is, and I tell Romeo so. Cleverness is a rare enough trait among young men, as Mercutio himself proves, interrupting me to recite some randy rhyme that’s all hare and hoar without much wit. He carries on until at last Romeo waves him and the others off.

I wait till they’re well gone before I speak. “My young lady bid me inquire you out,” I say, though I keep what she bade me convey
to myself. I’ll not open her heart to him, until I discern what he might be.

Even unmasked, this Romeo is not so handsome as Paris. Though I suppose some might find him comely, with light locks falling to his shoulders. There’s a brooding in his eyes and at that pretty mouth, tinged not with Tybalt’s gall but with a wistful melancholy that might easily move a heart as soft as Juliet’s.

“The gentlewoman,” I begin, though it startles my own ears to hear my girl called such. Did I not mark the girlish way she giggled and flushed yestermorn, when first I spoke of her marrying? Those words must’ve softened her eye to Romeo, and charmed her ear to whatever he whispered to woo her. “The gentlewoman is young. If you lead her in a fool’s paradise, if you deal double with her—”

Suddenly I wish, if not for Tybalt’s sword, at least for some steely way to show this Romeo I’ll not let any hurt to Juliet go unanswered. Even a mother bird has beak and claws to defend her nest. But what have I to raise against a man?

I lean wordless toward Romeo’s narrow chest, as if to show I’d peck him clean if he does her harm.

Romeo raises a knobby-jointed hand in protest. Lays that hand upon his heart and swears it swells with love for her. With quavering voice he says, “Commend me to your lady.”

He’s wise enough to ken I’m what will bring him and her together. Or, if I doubt, keep them apart. Surely only a pure heart can discern all I am to Juliet, when such as Lord and Lady Cappelletti still deny it.

I promise to tell Juliet well of him. “When I say how you pro
test, she’ll be a joyful woman.” That word sits easier with me now, for surely this teary Romeo will gently make a woman of her.

My answer draws his pretty mouth into a proper smile. “Bid her devise some means to come to shrift this afternoon,” he says, “and there she shall at Friar Lorenzo’s cell be shrived and married.”

By my Sainted Maria, what am I to make of this? To honor her straightaway in holy marriage, that is as it should be. But to have them joined in the very cell where as a babe I brought her, the place where when she toddled I first modeled to her how to make good shrift—I might’ve been glad for it, had I not guessed years past what trickery the Franciscan performed when my girl was baptized there.

“Friar Lorenzo agrees to marry you?”

Romeo swells with youthful pride at having secured the Franciscan’s approval. “He says a happy alliance it will prove, that turns our households’ rancor to pure love.”

I nod. Calculating as Friar Lorenzo is, I’ll not be outdone by him. None knows better than I how well he holds secrets, and if he weds Juliet to Romeo, surely neither she nor I will bear any sin or blame from it. Who else would marry them, without the consent of the Cappelletti?

Romeo presses a florin into my hand with the same certainty with which a priest lays consecrated Host upon the tongue. But with my tongue I tell Romeo I’ll not take even a denaro. What I do, I do not for gold or silver but for love of Juliet. And then, because I know I must win his love as well, I tease Romeo as I’ve long teased Juliet and, in happier times, Tybalt. “There is a nobleman in town that would fain lay knife aboard, and husband a meal of my mistress.”

At this Romeo goes pale as a clout. Has no one taught him the jesting my darling ones and I’ve enjoyed? No matter. It’s a pleasure he can learn from me, while Juliet learns other pleasures of him. “She’d as lieve see a toad,” I assure Romeo, “a very toad, as see him.”

I prate on about when Juliet was a prating thing, making careful study of how Romeo hangs ravenous on each word, hungering to know more of her. Before I take my leave, I remind him to keep no counsel, that we must hold this marriage secret.

He swears his serving-man is just as true to him as I am to Juliet. But how can a common servant be all I am to her? True in what I do, if not in what I’ve let her believe I am. Surely the time is near to tell her all, though how am I to deliver such unexpected news?

In wondering at it, I nearly miss what Romeo says next. Lovesick, he prattles as a poet might of tackled stairs and top-gallants of joy, until I discern that he means for me to meet his man a little while hence, and receive some ropes by which Romeo’ll come to Juliet to consummate tonight what the friar will officiate today.

Tybalt’s never needed ropes to reach our window, cat-nimble climber that he is. Nor did Pietro, directed by me to mount the tower stair and pass into the bedchamber to mount me. But this Romeo wants to believe himself a clever sneak, and so I indulge him, promising to collect the ropes and set them where he may scale his way to her.

Taking my leave, I do not turn directly back to the Via Cappello. I need to ready myself for the quick of it—my Juliet, wedding this day. Crowded as the Piazza delle Erbe is this morning, I conjure the quiet of it on that Lammas Day fourteen years past when Pi
etro brought me to Ca’ Cappelletti. Even in this heat, my body still shivers with that ache, that longing for babe newly born, and freshly lost. Or so I thought.

Wandering through Verona’s streets, I make seven circuits around the city. First for Nunzio, my eldest. Then one after the other for Nesto, Donato, Enzo, Berto, and their littlest brother, Angelo. This is the gift and curse of memory. Though we bury our dead, we cannot ever bid a final good-bye. I circle past the places that hold especial rememberances of each of my boys, some that I’ve not let myself indulge since I was swallowed up within Ca’ Cappelletti all those years ago. I save Pietro for last. His is the longest loop. There’s not a place in this city that does not echo of him. Of us. Again and again I whisper what makes me miss him as keenly as I ever have: that from our love a new love grows, and soon Verona will bear new memories, of our Juliet and her Romeo.

The sun’s climbed high by the time I return to Ca’ Cappelletti. Juliet secrets herself in the arbor. Sitting in the shade of a poperin tree, she worries the ring Lord Cappelletto set upon her finger a week past. But the dazzle of his emerald’ll not hold her attention once she sees me. She’s on her feet asking, “Honey nurse, what news?”

Honey nurse, that sweet that gave her life. Sentimental old fool that I’ve become, emotions grow so thick in my throat, not a word is able to escape me.

Her color fades. “Good sweet nurse—why do you look so sad?”

“I’m aweary.” I take the place she left upon the bench. “My bones ache from what a jaunce I’ve had.”

“I would you had my bones, and I your news.” She tugs at me with the same impatience as when she was three or four and thought I held some candied comfit from her. “Come, I pray you, speak.”

Jesu, what haste. “Do you not see that I am out of breath?”

But Juliet was never one to be stayed. Nor have I been one to stay her. “You have breath to tell me you are out of breath,” she says. “And take longer in making excuse why you delay, than the whole of the telling would take. Tell me simple, is your news good or bad?”

If it were yesterday, I’d jest with her as I often have, and tell her she knows not how to choose a man, and blazon Romeo with faults he does not have, and bid her go serve God as nunnish Rosaline does. But it’s as if she’s unlearned her girlish love of waggery in this little time she’s known wistful Romeo.

“What a head have I,” I say instead. “It beats as if it would fall in twenty pieces. And my back, and side. Beshrew your heart, for sending me about, to catch my death.”

These words are better meant for Tybalt, chiding earned by what I got when last I ventured from Ca’ Cappelletti. But Juliet at least hears them with a loving and not a wrathful ear. “By all my faith, I’m sorry you’re not well. Sweet, sweet, sweet nurse.” She kisses my head and lays a gentle hand upon my side, which ache less under her caring touch. “Tell me, what says my love?”

How can I not answer those pleading eyes? “Your love says, like an honest gentleman, and a courteous, and a kind, and a handsome,
and I warrant a virtuous—” But why do I court for Romeo? Does my love count for naught? “Where is your mother?”

“Where is my mother?” She repeats the question with such wonder—is this at last the time to tell her? Can she have already guessed the truth? But her eyes flick to the arched passage to the courtyard. “Where would she be? Why, she’s within.”

Is this any poultice for my sore and sorry bones? That she’ll not even know me for her mother, that all I am to her is messenger?

“Lady Cappelletta is within, but my heart is without, as only you know, Nurse.” She smiles, and sighs, and takes my hands in each of hers. “And without you, what comfort has my heart?” Her soft hands are still small against mine, gripping with a child’s fretful need. “Come, what says Romeo?”

Those eyes flash familiar at me, and by all my years of loving her, and loving my Pietro, I know there’s time enough for her to learn what I really am. That it’ll better wait till she is wed, and perchance on the way to being herself made a mother. For now, there’s naught she’ll listen to but what she wants to hear.

“Hie you hence to Friar Lorenzo’s cell, to make your shrift.” I loose my hands from hers to tuck her wayward hair, straighten her sleeve, and smooth her skirts as I’ve ever done, although in truth such beauty needs no bettering. “There stays a husband to make you a wife.”