Juliet's Nurse (17 page)

“The boy will be a man soon enough.” I hear in my own words the echo of what Pietro said of Juliet. Juliet, who neither Tybalt nor I can bear to lose. “We must take care that he’ll not grow bitter before he’s grown. He loves Juliet more dearly than he loves himself. He’ll not be able to endure it if you send her to the nuns.”

“To the nuns?” Lord Cappelletto does not bother to keep to a whisper, as he repeats what I’ve never let on I know. His words pull Tybalt full awake, and Tybalt’s stirring rouses Juliet.

I kneel beside the bed, laying one hand on her head, and the other onto Tybalt’s. “Just because God’s not granted you a son, is no reason to banish your daughter.” Let Lord Cappelletto take whatever pleasure he’ll have in hearing me beg. “Please, do not shut Juliet away in Santa Caterina.”

“You’re sending her back with Rosaline?”

I cannot understand what Tybalt’s asked, or why it makes his uncle crumple onto the edge of the big bed.

“No one is sending Juliet anywhere,” Lord Cappelletto says. He pulls her onto his lap, as though to fend off any who might try. “I’d not even return Rosaline, if it were left to me. She is an obedient child, though not so winsome as my Juliet, and two marriages would serve the Cappelletti all the better, with what alliances a dowry as big as what I’d give would bring. But my brother would not have his daughter wed, not risk her to her mother’s fate.” He wraps an arm around Tybalt, holding the cousins together. “I suppose it’s just as well. Rosaline’d not know how to pass back into a worldly house like this, having lived half her life already among the Holy Sisters.”

Half Rosaline’s life was scarce two years ago—not so long after that Easter Day when Tybalt told me what he’d heard the bishop say. The silver chalice Lord Cappelletti gifted to the Duomo must never have been meant to pay for Juliet’s place in the convent. It was for Rosaline’s.

Lord Cappelletto is like any man, ever wanting to produce an heir. But even in these wife-maddening years of trying to make a son, he’s never stinted in adoring Juliet. My sleepy-eyed girl snugs herself against him now, and any fool can see she long ago won his heart.

With Juliet and Tybalt in the circle of his arms, Lord Cappelletto reminds me of the painting in his own bedchamber, the Sainted Maria holding the Holy Infant and his blessed cousin the Baptizing Giovanni.

And I might as well be the ass the Holy Family rode out from Bethlehem. I’m no more than a dumb beast that Lord Cappelletto can declare he’s done with, now that Juliet is weaned. For what good is it to me to keep my girl from the convent, if I cannot stay with her?

“Rose-line go way?” Juliet asks, frowning when Lord Cappelletto nods. “But you and Tybalt and Ma’da stay with Nurse and me?”

She’s my true heart and reads my very thoughts: whoever comes or goes, surely Juliet and I must be together.

“Yes, my beloved,” Lord Cappelletto promises. “God and saints be willing, we will all of us stay healthy and well, within Ca’ Cappelletti.”

Juliet smiles across her father’s arm at me, and I smile back.
Only when a lone morning lark begins to twitter, calling for a mate that does not answer back, do I wonder how I can tell Pietro that I’ll not be coming home.

Lord Cappelletto insists Juliet join him and Tybalt as they accompany Rosaline to Santa Caterina. It’s the first time she and I will ever be apart. But by my saints, it’ll be the last.

Lord Cappelletto holds her tight against him on one post-horse, Tybalt and Rosaline matching their pose on another. “Honey nurse?” Juliet asks, looking down at me.

“You’ll be back before the sun makes his way across the sky, and I’ll be here,” I say, not betraying my worry about where I must go, who I must see, in the scant hours before she, Lord Cappelletto, and Tybalt return.

My stiff and swollen hand works clumsily when, alone in Juliet’s chamber, I wind my braid beneath a veil, as any decent woman does before going out. But as I step into the Via Cappello, a crooked-back crone creeps by, bare-headed. A wimple-less mother passes the other way, herding her unshod brood. All around me, women bow uncovered heads, taking careful steps across fallen stones. Surely they cannot all be prostitutes. No more than all the boys who hold out an imploring hand today were beggars just two days ago.

Walled off within Ca’ Cappelletti, I’d not imagined all the devastation yesterday’s quaking caused. Full buildings felled with families still in them. Shrieks of pain and plaintive prayers from under piles of rubble. I’ve seen Verona’s buildings stand emptied by the
creeping pestilence, but I never dreamt the city would face such reversed misery. Light streams through the gaping spaces where roofs and walls have fallen away, the sun beating hard on the bruised and bewildered who, having escaped a collapse, now wander with no place to go. Teams of men, grunting like beasts, struggle to unbury the not yet dead. Plastery dust swirls in the air, coating everything with an eerie pall.

Where in all of this is my Pietro?

Consumed with fear of losing Juliet, I’d not thought what threat the trembling earth might have been to him. Pietro’s so strong he’s ever been my strength—but passing among these ruined buildings, I realize that the men who lie lifeless beneath them were just as hale and every bit as hardy as my husband, until the quake came.

The wooden stalls of the Piazza delle Erbe now are broken heaps, and the few who’ve come out to sell are outnumbered by the hungry. One old man waves a cudgel, trying to hold off a pack of children who are snatching at his wares. Two of the bigger boys rush him, pinning him to the ground while the others rifle his stock like rats scurrying onto a new-moored boat. None of those who hasten past stop to help the man. Not even me. When I glance back after I’ve crossed the piazza, the children have already picked his goods clean.

Turning south, I see a trio of stubble-faced youth scrambling atop the remains of the metal-workers guild hall, stuffing what they loot into bulging sacks. Such shameless thieving makes me gape, until one pulls his dagger, flashing it at me. Hurrying away, I turn into a narrow street. Before I’m halfway down it, a shriek of
timber splits the air, and a house-front topples into my path. A moment later, and I’d have been beneath it.

I double-back, twisting along one tight passage, then another, improvising routes around what the rubble blocks. I’ve never been so lost in broad daylight, and it’s more by luck than memory that I find my way to the Via Zancani.

Although most of its roof tiles lie shattered in the street, our home still stands. Only when I see the barred door do I realize Pietro’s not yet back from Villafranca. I cross myself and make a quick prayer asking San Pietro, his patron saint, to keep my husband safe. Then I hurry off again.

I’m not the first to seek Friar Lorenzo’s aid today, and it’s no short wait among those who line the windowless passageway outside his cell. In the press of people, there are some who share their suffering with any who’ll listen, and those who keep their mouths shut tight, determined to hold what burdens them for the friar’s ears alone. I fall among the latter and have no use for the former, too troubled about Pietro to take any interest in these strangers’ misfortune.

When at last I step into his cell, Friar Lorenzo’s customary “God give you peace” sounds wearied. He does not even wait for me to answer with
And peace to you
before he reaches for my swollen mitt of a hand and turns it over, examining my welts.

“Plantain leaf, a simple cure,” he says. “If only there was so ready a remedy for what brings most Christian souls to me today.”

Though the poison still singes up and down my arm, I tell him that it’s not bee stings that brought me. “Pietro went earlier this week to Villafranca—”

“Well that he did, my child. The quaking there was not so great. Some cornices and lintels fallen to the ground, but not a single person needing to be buried.”

The thick-cassocked friars gather news like magpies gather anything that shines, and I take comfort from his report. But so long as Pietro’s unhurt, I’m not sorry that he’s still far away. That I’ve time to plot and plan before he must hear what he’d not have me say.

“Bethanks to your wise dispensing of wormwood, Juliet is weaned, as Lord Cappelletto wished.” I bow my head to show I know my place. “But his wife has lost another babe, and she’ll not bear again. Poor Lady Cappelletta. So young married, and too soon marred.”

I wait for Friar Lorenzo to cross himself and intone a prayer for her, before I continue. “The ones so delicate as she is often prove no better for rearing children than for bearing them. And so Lord Cappelletto wishes me to stay at Ca’ Cappelletti and care for Juliet.” Surely, Friar Lorenzo will wish it as well—if I make him see some especial advantage in it. “Lord Cappelletto dotes on Juliet more than most men do their daughters. Though who’d expect less from such a noble and pious man, and a most generous benefactor of the hallowed Church?”

Friar Lorenzo well knows how often Lord Cappelletto opens his purse to holy hands, and he makes quick calculation of all that it’s worth to keep such a man pleased. “I’ll need to draw up a new contract,” he says. “Now that the child is weaned, you’ll not earn the whole of Pietro’s rent any longer, though as you say, I’m sure Lord Cappelletto will be most generous in what he pays to keep you.”

The whole of Pietro’s rent
—this is the first anyone’s bothered to tell me what price men put on what I am to Juliet. These three years past I’ve earned what in that time I lost: the cost of the home I left for Ca’ Cappelletti. Each hour I stole at the Via Zancani, each time Pietro begged me to move back—all of it paid for with the very milk of me. More mine than in all the years I lived there, yet not mine at all.

“Such matters are beyond me,” I say, fluttering a hand to smooth my veil. “But Pietro—he can be proud, like any man. Your godly counsel will do much to guide him to accept whatever Lord Cappelletto offers.”

“I will speak to Pietro as soon as he returns from Villafranca and inform him of the new terms of your service,” Friar Lorenzo says, eager to earn whatever payment he’ll make for drawing up the contract.

I accept his absolution along with the pouch of plantain leaves. Taking my leave of his cell, I head to the lower church. It is the least grand part of San Fermo, yet it’s always been my favorite. The paint is still being laid fresh on the frescos in the upper church, but the saints upon the columns down below are old familiars. They’re always ready to hear my prayers and, if they offer nothing in response, at least they’ll not ask anything of me, either.

On this of all days, I know what I need to beg of them. Of her. For it’s the Holy Virgin whose favor I seek, and of all the many paintings and statues of her in Verona, it’s the one in the lower church whose help I need. I know her face better than I do my own, for though I’ve caught an occasional glimpse of my
self reflected in a puddle or a water pail, I’ve knelt gazing on her for countless hours. A century of fading has taken its toll on the golden crown around her head and the brightly patterned throne on which she sits. But time’s not marred the pale breast where her Sacred Infant suckles. I’ll beseech this Blessed Mother, who’ll never wean her own Holy Son, to take mercy on me and ensure that what Pietro’ll not hear from me, he’ll listen better to from our holy confessor.

But when I climb down the steps, I see someone is already inside the lower church. A youth of Tybalt’s years, he stands with his back to me. He’s swaying and moaning, halfway between the image of my suckling Maria and a fresco of the naked full-grown Christ accepting his cousin’s sprinkling baptism.

It’s not the spirit that moves the youth. It’s the flesh. I come up behind and pinch his ear. “Here, of all places, for the hand to be upon the prick—”

“The prick of noon,” he laughs, “and sext will soon be ringing.”

I raise a hand to slap such sacrilege from him, but when he turns to face me, my open palm goes to my mouth instead. It’s Prince Cansignorio’s impish nephew.

Though I recognize this Mercutio, he has no notion who I am. And well it is that he does not, for I’d not have anyone know I nearly struck a member of the royal household.

Mercutio wiggles his own royal member at me. “Half Verona has fallen—why not make rise what I can?”

Piety, debauchery—when the pestilence raged, there were those who chose the first, hoping to be saved, and those who indulged the second, fearing they would not. To desecrate a church with
self-spilled seed—that’s one extreme, to be sure. But it’s said that in the sudden jolt of catastrophe, some who survive feel the dark premonition of their own eventual death. Mercutio may smirk with a youth’s bravado, but I sense beneath it a desperate child’s fear.

“Do not let the friars find you at that here.” That’s all the reprimand I can bring myself to give him, before I hurry off.

First Nunzio, then Nesto, grew to such an age, younger in some and older in others, when a mother must avert her eyes, and pretend she does not know what her son’s hand does beneath his doublet hem by day and the bed cover at night. My sons indulged themselves with especial frequency, for they had Pietro’s heat. Donato at all of nine was not long from discovering what already pleased the elder two. But before he did, they and their three younger brothers all were taken. Self-pleasuring, that simple sin, one among the many things they’d never know.