Juliet's Nurse (30 page)

He shoves me aside, wrenches Juliet up by her shoulder. “Whine and pule if you will, but if you’ll not wed, you’ll not house with me. You may beg, starve, die in the streets. I’ll have naught to do with you.” He crosses to the door, but turns back once more to speak to me. “Thursday is near. Look to your heart, advise her well.”

Juliet raises her tear-stained face to Lady Cappelletta. But just like the hind caught by the hound, she could not even protect herself, and she cannot pity my poor girl. “Do as you will, for I am done with you,” she says and follows her husband from the room.

Juliet sinks back to the floor. I cannot coax her to her feet, have no strength to carry my full-grown girl back to our bed. So I settle next to her, weighing how the very thing I wished for her just two days past now works such misery on her: for good and handsome Paris to want her for a wife.

Romeo, Romeo
—over and over she whimpers his name. My darling does not know that fiend for what he is. And I’ll not tell her. Not shatter more her already breaking heart by revealing how
falsely he’s dealt with her. Not let her know how stupidly I let it happen.

How long we sit like this, her sobbing and me scheming, I do not know. There is no bell to mark it, no clock tower to tick it off. Only the once-ferocious storm, which flashes quiet as suddenly as it started, melting Juliet’s wails into urgent words. “Oh God, Nurse. By my husband on earth and my faith in heaven, what am I to do? Comfort me, counsel me. Have you no word of joy?”

Of joy, no. But of good counsel, yes. For all I want to tell her—that she is no Cappelletta, that there is naught Lord Cappelletto can take from her that values more than all I have to give—I know the fool I’ve been. To let myself be fooled, and let so much be nearly lost.

If Lord Cappelletto turns her out, what life is left her? Could I go begging for some household to take in the Cappelletti shame and let us live as scrub maids in their scullery? So soft a girl as Juliet would not last a week at that.

And if her secret marriage to Romeo is exposed—what then? I’d not trust her for another hour with that deceiver. I wish no less than bitter death for him. For what he did to Rosaline, to Tybalt, and worst of all to my Juliet. I’ll not let the world know the only thing a lady has to trade on he’s already pried from her.

Mother though I am, there’s nothing I could do to save her, if it were not for Paris. Paris, who offers name, fortune, family. And even love. What more can she—can we—ask?

“Faith, here it is. Romeo is banished, has naught in all the world, and can make no challenge to you.” I rush through this barest mention of him, then slow my speech to ease her to what more I have
to say. “I think it best you marry with Count Paris. He is a lovely gentleman. None is so fine, so fair, and you’ll grow happy in the match.”

This stints her sobs. She raises eyes I’d swear can read the very depths of me, and asks, “Do you speak truly from your heart?”

“From my heart, and my soul.” I make a cross over the first, to show I swear upon the second. “Or else beshrew them both.”

“Amen,” she answers. Adds, in yet more piety, “Go in and tell them I am going, having displeased my Lord Cappelletto, to make shrift and be absolved by Friar Lorenzo.”

It does not lessen a mother’s love to admit some of her babes are born obedient, while others ever struggle to assert their will. My Juliet has always been a good girl. A girl whose pleasure lies in pleasing. Whatever spell vile Romeo cast on her, it must weigh little compared to what wills her to obey me, and Friar Lorenzo, and even Lord Cappelletto.

Lord Cappelletto. Brutal as he was to her this morning—as I’m my father’s daughter, I know how much a woman, a girl, will do to appease the brute who beats her. Though I’d deal more vengefully with him, I’ll bide my hours and bear his presence till Thursday comes and she’s wived to Paris. What is Lord Cappelletto’s anger, when with my loving counsel she’ll open her heart to the prince’s noble nephew, and earn herself a safe and a happy future?

SIXTEEN

J
uliet bade me tell Lord and Lady Cappelletti where she’s gone, what she’s agreed to do. And so I make my way to the kitchen. The ever-drudging cook is mashing a great mound of dates into a mass of capon livers, working knife and pestle quick as Lord Cappelletto prattles on about boar and basil salsiccetti, leek and chickpea migliacci, roasted eel minced with mint and parsley to be cooked with walnuts and almond milk into a crusted pie. Dish after dish he says the cook must make in only two days’ time.

Lady Cappelletta’s slim fingers finick against her mourning cloak. “Is it not too soon to throw a marriage feast?”

Lord Cappelletto swats away her question as he might a fly that’s settled on the freshly slaughtered lamb. Outside the Cappelletti walls, every parish, every guild, every holy order in Verona un
furls its banners to parade in Count Mercutio’s funeral procession. But he’s as deaf to all of that as Tybalt, lying entombed, is. Deperate to be sure he’ll marry his house to Paris, he signals a serving-man, listing out a mere dozen guests he deems it seemly to invite to the ill-timed feast.

As the serving-man departs, Lord Cappelletto catches sight of me hovering outside the doorway. His anger flashes fast again, but I step inside with a contrite curtsy. “Juliet is chastened. She’s gone to make penance to Friar Lorenzo.”

Lady Cappelletta glances to her husband to gauge what he will make of this before setting any emotion of her own upon her face. Lord Cappelletto only mutters, “May he chance to do some good with the peevish, self-willed child.” But he piles heavy hope that Friar Lorenzo will succeed, ordering everyone within the house to the exacting preparation he deems necessary to celebrate Paris being wed to Juliet.

I’m set to picking herbs from along the edges of the arbor. Leaden-headed and swollen-eyed, I reach beneath thyme and parsley leaves to dig my hands into the warm, moist earth. I need the reassuring feel, the fecund smell of what can grow new life. Bees weave in and out of the herb beds, eager to be back at their gathering now that the rain is done. We work together, I making my green-burdened trips to the kitchen as they make their golden ones to the hive. In one of my passes through the courtyard, I catch Juliet’s light step in the entryway. “See how she comes from shrift,” I say to Lord and Lady Cappelletti, surprised myself by how merry she looks.

“How now, my headstrong, where have you been gadding?”
Stern as Lord Cappelletto’s raised eyebrow seems, lurking in his
my headstrong
I hear a fond affection, laced with the barest regret for how cruelly he’s used her.

“Where I have learned to repent the sin of disobedience.” She kneels and then, as though kneeling is not enough, folds prostrate on the hard stones. “Pardon, I beseech you. Henceforward I am ever ruled by you.”

I might roll my eyes and urge her up, pinch her for so overladening her performance. So ill-practiced is she at deceit, she play-acts overmuch to hide her dalliance with Romeo. But Lord Cappelletto is well-fooled. Grinning like the chimpanzee paraded in the prince’s menagerie, he summons the house-page, instructing him to bear this news to Paris.

Juliet pulls herself up and says she’s already met the count at the friar’s cell. “I gave him what love I might, within the bounds of modesty.”

She plays the part so well, I clap my hands together, then must pretend I only clasp them tight in prayer, and thank aloud the saints who bless Ca’ Cappelletti with this propitious match.

Lord Cappelletto nods, offering amen. “May God bless the reverend holy friar. We and all Verona are much bound to him.”

Bound to him Juliet and I most certainly will be, for concealing everafter her first marriage. Bound with us, Friar Lorenzo would be, if any hint of it escaped.

“Nurse.” Juliet must also feel the weight of our shared secret. “Will you help me sort such ornaments as you think fit to furnish me tomorrow?”

“No.” Lady Cappelletta pecks out the word like a hen going after a worm. “Not till Thursday will you be wed. That’s hardly time enough—”

“Go, Nurse,” Lord Cappelletto interrupts her. “Go with her now, and ready her, and we’ll all be off to church tomorrow.”

He hums “Heart’s Ease,” a lover’s ballad, while Lady Cappelletta clings as close to him as a sundial’s shadow does its pointer, reminding him of how little time there is for so much preparation to be done.

Juliet sorts spiritless through her collars and hair garlands, keeping her gaze from mine. Her silence tells me how she yet yearns for Romeo, and how little she looks forward to the next day’s wedding.

No mother wishes a hasty marriage upon her daughter. Nor a loveless one. But I know there are worse fates than what faces Juliet.

We were born to die
. Though Lord Cappelletto spoke the truth, he said only half of it. We are born to die, but born also to live before we’re dead. When I lost Pietro’s kerchief and was sure I’d lost him as well, I spent desperate hours wishing my life already done. And once he was truly gone—but by then I knew what at Juliet’s age none can fathom: the grief we think will drown us we’ll learn somehow to bear. And the joy we’d swear is ever lost to us will seep back again.

I rub a sprig of rosemary I’ve snatched from the kitchen garden against the pillow-casing, to mask any lingering musk of Romeo.
“Be sure to wait until Paris is well in his cups before you lead him here tomorrow night. Do not suffer a servant to bear a torch, and let the candle before the Sainted Madonna burn low before he hitches up your gown.”

“Do you think me so hideous, he must be drunk and blinded to have me?”

“It matters not what I think, but what he thinks.” What man does not wish to believe he lies with a virgin—and how many girls and women have lied as well to let a man believe he does? If Paris harbors any doubts within the dark, by morning light there’ll be this stained sheet to dispel them. “He’d not seek you for a wife, if he did not find you pleasant to look upon. Did he not say as much, when he met you at San Fermo?”

“He said my face was his, and I’d no right to slander it.” She turns that face from me, as though I’ve no right to it either, since telling her to let him claim it.

I step close anyway, twining the rosemary twig into her hair like it was a lover’s nosegay. “And his face, did you find it fair?”

“I tried not to think of what was fair, and unfair.”

Is it her age? Or the Cappelletti wealth that she was raised in? Which leads her to believe the world is fair, when all my life and loss have taught me that it’s not?

I kneel beside the grand cassone at the bottom of her bed, lifting out the lifetime of clothes stored there. Saved once for her, preserved since she’s outgrown them for the children she’ll soon bear. Such delicious hours we’ll have when those babies come, hoarding their soft, their warmth, that milk-sweet scent between us like a
miser’s gold. Paris’ll not begrudge such a mother as I know she’ll make, with me to guide her.

I unroll the precious garments piece by piece, starting with the tiniest ones. I need only the slightest glimpse of each to recall her at the age she wore it. The striped pelisse she wriggled in just out of swaddling. The rose-robed cherub who’d shriek as I chased after her. Dark gray stripes to suit the child who pushed me off with angry fists but who, when tears welled in my eyes, spilled out her own as she clambered into my lap to kiss and be kissed comfort. Out of a quilted purple gown that carried her from her sixth year to her seventh tumbles the toy bird Tybalt gave her when she was but a babe. She long loved the little plaything, crying miserably when it was lost, until doting Tybalt said he’d got her a real bird to replace it. He led us down into the arbor, pointed to a nest within the medlar tree, and told her the warbler there was hers, which she might come watch any time. Only, she must not cry, for that would scare the timid bird away. Our dear Tybalt was clever as he was kind, and many a tear dried that year from no more than a mention of her bird.

When I hold the toy to Juliet and remind her of Tybalt’s deed, a scowl pulls across her face. “Such trickery, so young. Little wonder he came to such an awful end.”

Trickery.
To come from her, who being deceived by Romeo has learned so fast to put on her own deceptions. Pretending the grateful daughter before Lord Cappelletto while forgetting all affection for Tybalt.

“Do you deny the love you bore Tybalt, out of some allegiance
to Romeo?” I brush her cheek, as if to sweep away the speck of her resentment. “You must put such things from your heart, now that you’ll marry Paris.”

“There is much I must put from my heart now that you’ve counseled me to wed the count.” She twists away from me. “What affection should I bear Tybalt, who struck down the cousin of the man I am to marry? Does not a husband’s grief outweigh his wife’s? Would you not have me mourn Paris’s kinsman Mercutio, and curse the hand that killed him?”

Though I study her hard, I cannot tell whether she is true in this wifely submission, or still playacting at contrition. “Does Paris ask this of you?”

“Paris asks to kiss what he has yet to wed.” She shudders. “That is the man he is. One who’d take advantage of maiden innocence.”

Pure of heart and thick of head—is that what I’ve raised her to be? Kissing true-natured Paris the day before their wedding vows is far better than laying with false-tongued Romeo in an illicit marriage. But before I find a way to tell her that, she crosses herself and adds, “God save me from becoming such a harlot as could want a man who’d have her without first making her a Christian wife.” She raises a hand to her mouth, going so wide-eyed that now I see for certain she is playacting. “Oh, Nurse, I have forgotten—you did as much at twelve with that Pietro.”

This is too much for me. That she’d slander me a harlot, and mock the very love tales she’s begged me to repeat so many times to her.

I’ll not hold my tongue. I’ll tell her how vile a villain her Romeo is. For what good is a willful colt, until it’s broke? But not left bro
ken: I’ll bridle her to bridal be by offering a model of a proper marriage, telling how she sprung from that most wonderful love between me and Pietro. Once she knows, and there’s no secret left between us, then we’ll—

“Are you yet busy?”

Juliet and I both startle at Lady Cappelletta entering the bedchamber.

She shows no more joy than usual for Juliet. “My lord husband would have me offer help to you.”

“I’ve culled what’s needed for tomorrow.” Juliet waves a quick hand to the trifles she’s set out, before bending her knee in imploring curtsy. “If it please you, I would be left alone to pray the heavens to smile upon my state, which as you know is cross and full of sin.”

This pleases Lady Cappelletta, to think Juliet so awful. I’m sure she’ll leave us to ourselves.

But then Juliet straightens her leg and looks entreating into Lady Cappelletta’s eyes. “Let the nurse sit up and be a help to you, for I am sure you’ve your hands full all, in this so sudden business.”

Juliet’ll not meet my gaze. Need not meet it, having grown so bold as to put me out. To put me to waiting on Lady Cappelletta, who sizes me up like I’m some dumb ox upon the trader’s block, for which she’ll drive a pinchfist’s bargain. “Take these keys,” she says, slipping a ring from her belt, “and fetch out the banqueting cloth. Scrub it to lay upon the table.”

I might out-argue Lady Cappelletta, or best her into believing she does not want my labor after all. But I’ll not beg Juliet to let me stay while she’s caught in such a mood.

The hour’s late. The too-little sleep she got last night raws her nerves. I’ll leave her rest alone this once. When I steal back hours hence to tousle her awake, I’ll tell all that’s in my heart, for her to carry when she stands beside noble Paris and makes true marriage vows.

Just past her door, I think I hear her call me back. Does she yet long to be with me the way she did when she was a littler girl? But what can I do with her tonight but play out once more the dismal scene we’ve already had? I’ll not chance more sore words between us. I must let her be alone long enough to be glad of me again. Just till morning. There’ll be time then to tell her, first of Romeo’s deception, then of my own. After which we’ll never let another secret forge its way between us.