Juliet's Nurse (32 page)

“Juliet,” I repeat, impatient as I am to be rid of him. “I must ready her.” Immodest it’d be for a father to watch a full-grown daughter’s final washing and anointing.

He leans nearer to the bed. As he brushes a fare-thee-well hand against her cheek, my heart catches, sure he’ll sense whatever life pulses within her.

But grief’s too constant a companion for him to disbelieve it. “Dress her in the green samite,” he says. The finest gown in all the household. Lady Cappelletta’ll not be pleased to learn she’ll never again wear it. “It was my first Juliet’s. She was married in it.”

Have I ever envied wealthy Lady Cappelletta? Pietro could not have afforded even a patch of so fine a fabric. But my husband never would have dressed me in a dead woman’s clothes, never made me feel there was anyone or anything he cherished more than me.

Lord Cappelletto’s eyes go to Juliet’s finger. Mine cannot help but follow, though I know he’ll not see what he seeks there. “Where is the emerald ring?”

I tap a fingernail against one of my yellowed teeth, as if I might chisel out the right half-truth to tell him. “She was not wearing any ring when she fell prostrate before you yesterday. Perchance it was given over in Friar Lorenzo’s cell, where she made her shrift.”

Every stitch I speak is true, though I sew them together in such a way that they cover over all I know. Let the scheming Franciscan, ever covetous for gems and plate and finery, explain to Lord Cappelletto what’s become of the Cappelletti jewel.

I bow my head and cross myself, muttering how lucky it is to be claimed just when one has a freshly shriven soul. Lord Cappelletto murmurs amen, and sighs, and stands, and says he must go down to the family chapel to pray for Juliet, and for Tybalt.

At last my girl and I get our hour alone together. Though by my holidame, I’d not have this be our last.

I climb into our bed and turn my head over hers, hoping to feel her breath upon my cheek, as I did when she was just a babe. But I sense nothing. I lay my ear onto her chest. Something throbs between us. Heart, blood, love. I cannot separate what’s hers from mine.

I let the full weight of my head sink onto her, wrapping my warm body against her immobile one. “Dearest lamb, how you frighted me. Did you feel so despairing you thought you’d need deceive me, when all I live for is your happiness?”

Raising her too-still arm, I kiss her palm and cradle it against me. And then I tell her.

Tell how twice I did not let myself fathom what with my mother-love some deepest part of me surely must have known. The first, when I woke uncomprehending one last child had quickened in me, and in my astonishment labored two long days to bring that tenderest infant out. How Pietro’s weeping told me it was lost, and how by the Virgin’s grace I came here to her. How this was the second time I was so unperceiving: sure as I was that my milk, my love, my tender care was what fed her, it took years before I realized it was more than milk that bound us. How blood and bone and every bodily humor tie her to me, and to my lost Pietro. “I am
your mother.” The words glimmer in the golden air. “You are my daughter.”

How many times have I imagined saying this, imagined what surprise and joy and deepest love she’d offer in reply? How I’ve wanted to have her know why what I give her will always be so much more than what Lady Cappelletta offers, why what lives in her of my Pietro weighs more than every jewel and cloth and coin Lord Cappelletto ever could bestow her. I’ve longed to tell, and have her wrap soft arms around me, and weep with joy-filled relief to know our dearest truth, and mayhap confess to me she’d long before sensed it for herself.

But there’s no joy-filled relief. Not for her, lying senseless to all I say. Or for me, who might as well’ve whispered into an empty cask, sealed it up, and cast it in the Adige to bob away unheard.

The brazier’s been tucked away unused since winter warmed to spring, but in this full heat of summer I light a fire in it. Cool as the water is when it’s drawn from the courtyard well, I wait for the fire to take the chill from it before I dip a fazzoletto cloth
in, wring it out, and touch it to Juliet.

The last I looked upon my boys was when I washed each one before Pietro bore them off to be buried. Six beautiful bodies, speckled with black spots.
God’s tokens
. So enchanting a name for such a horrific sight. Like insects swarming across their thighs, their arms. Those specks were worse than the plague’s raised boils, which at least appeared angry, insolent. God’s tokens were a more awful marring. Delicate pricks death took over and over, gently eating its way across the flesh of all my darling sons.

But not my daughter. Juliet’s body is perfect. Perfectly quiet, perfectly still. Perfectly lovely.

Downstairs, Lord Cappelletto reads out some version of the liturgy Friar Lorenzo long led me in. Friar and lord can have their learned Latin prayers. I’ve something more holy, my hands cleansing every precious part of her.

Did I think just two nights past she was her most beautiful by moonlight? Lying here, bathed in the day’s full sun, she is more pure, more beautiful, than anyone or anything I’ve ever seen.

From the first day I held her, I bathed and swaddled her so many awestruck times. I remember every inch of her. But I mark the difference, too. How heavy she’s become. The infant I craved and cradled as though she were still a part of me is now this full-grown body I must roll carefully, dipping the soft cloth over and over into the warmed water as I slowly trace my way across her. I wash the length of her fingers and stretch of her arms, the curl of her toes and the curve of her legs. With her back to me, I part her hair, tucking it to either side to reveal the blades of her shoulders jutting like an angel’s wings. The smooth rounding of that bottom I wiped when she was at her littlest. I swear, though I know all of her, my most familiar is yet a mystery to me. Could so lovely a child, a near-woman, have grown from me? Could she be so nearly lost so young?

Would she really have left me, letting me believe that she was dead while she went off to Mantua to live secretly with Romeo? I’d not have thought she could hold so much from me. But I’ve held all I know of who she is, and what he is, from her.

What he is. This is the one thing I’ve still not confided, even to these now unhearing ears. I’d not made her know it yesterday, hoping ignorance might ease her to forget him and make a loving wife to Paris. But if she’d sooner take her own life than live wedded to any but Romeo—or, living, beshrew me heart and soul just to be with him—then I must hold my motherly tongue. I’ll not tell what still wears upon my heart, to keep her from shoving me away again.

With caked rose petals and rosemaried oil, I anoint my daughter. The bright floral fragrance dances with the sharp woody one. Can scents make a harmony? Yes, as surely as Juliet and I have, and always will.

In those first awful days and months without Pietro, how I craved him. My body ached to have those great paws of his upon me, the cinnamon-sweet scent of him and the tickle of his whisper in my ear. I was half-mad even just to hear the timbre of his voice again, and to use my own to say all the things I’d not realized till too late I’d never have a chance to tell him.

To not have bid good-bye to Pietro. Or to Tybalt. All I would’ve said and done to keep that boy from harm. Or even just to show my deepest love before I lost him.

It was no different even with my sons. When they lay infected with pestilence, we knew we’d not have them long. But Pietro and I’d not utter anything we thought might fright them, and so left unsaid what otherwise would’ve filled their final hours.

Always, death has robbed me of this chance to speak my fullest heart to those I love. Until Juliet.

It’ll not be long before Lord Cappelletto comes to claim her.
I must make for her some sign so that waking in the Cappelletti tomb, she’ll know I know that she yet lives, and be comforted by my love as she shivers alone among ancient bones, beside death-struck Tybalt.

Never have I wished I could write, or she read, until now. To have the power to close my hand around a pen and mark words upon a page that her hungry eyes could claim a whole day hence—what remedy that’d be, when I am far from her.

But I must clever out a way to make myself known without words. Did not the touch and taste of me soothe her, when she knew naught but a baby’s babbling? Just as the rub of Pietro’s linen shirts still succor me.

This is what I have to give our daughter. I slip one of the precious three shirts I’ve saved over her head, smoothing the well-worn cloth across her tender breasts. A far coarser weave than Juliet has ever donned, although she’s snuggled many a night against the faded fabric, all that came between us in this bed. I work the samite gown in place, careful to hide any trace of the secret shirt beneath it. Though it’s richer to the touch than the frayed-thin linen, the samite’s green sallows my girl’s cheeks.

I bend to give her one last kiss, and taste the friar’s potion lingering on her lips. Loathe as I am to leave her when we’ve so little time together, I’ll not have her wake to such bitterness.

I hie down the tower stair into the arbor. The air is filled with pollen-coated bees, hurrying their precious treasure into the hive. When my toddling Juliet could not abide the wormwood taste of me, I plunged a desperate hand into the waxy comb, and earned a
dozen searing stings. But as I unseal the hive today, bees alight along my arm but do me no more harm than they did Tybalt, as they arced with grace around him. I dip my fingers carefully inside and lift them away honey-coated. With the other hand I replace the seal before hastening back to Juliet.

I work my broad thumb between her lips, spreading its honey on her tongue. My three middle fingers coat her pink gums and pearly teeth, the littlest one saved to trace a honey kiss upon her lips. These lips through which my suckling girl first knew me.

These lips which, with this honey, will once more drink in all my love for her.

SEVENTEEN

A
ll Verona believes a rich man’s daughter is being laid dead within his family tomb today. Why would they not? The parish bells toll it. The holymen and noblemen who don mourning bands and accompany the gold- and fur-trimmed bier pay solemn tribute to it. The poor huddled on the benches placed to line the cortege route earn their coin by witnessing it. And Lady Cappelletta and I peer down from the sala windows, watching all of it.

Roused by Lord Cappelletto and dressed in a silk mourning gown covered by a vair and ermine mantle, a ruby necklace newly clasped to set off her garnet cross, with sapphire rings on every finger and a gold-and-sapphire garland in her hair, Lady Cappelletta dutifully rent and wept and caterwauled during the long hours of
the vigil. Cursing the Montecchi and mourning the twin loss of Tybalt and the samite gown, mayhap, if not Juliet.

I let my grief for Tybalt swell to tears as well, so none would wonder why I’d not cry over my nursling’s seeming corpse. But as the death knell tolls, the procession candles burn, and the cortege snakes away from Ca’ Cappelletti leaving us behind, our eyes are dry, and our words are few. Insistent as she was on clinging to Tybalt, Lady Cappelletta showed no such interest in accompanying Juliet’s body to the Cappelletti vault. Lord Cappelletto, ever calculating what makes best public spectacle, must be glad she’s not forgotten a woman’s proper mourning role now that so many Veronese are watching.

We wait side by side, each wound in her own thoughts, until it’s time to leave for the Duomo. No ordinary church will do for Lord Cappelletto, nor for Count Paris, who sends the prince’s own liveried carriage for Lady Cappelletta. In the thick July heat, she heaps the fur hood beside her on the bolster. I sit opposite, watching Verona’s streets slip past.

When Juliet awakes, I’ll not hold from her what she is to me, what I am to her. But I’ll serve her better if she keeps me ever close. And so I’ll feign for Romeo the very love she’d have me feel. But I’ll not forget the evil that he’s done. Plotting to debauch a nun. Deceiving and defiling innocent Juliet instead. Trying with his Judas coins to make me a common pander. Running his murderous blade through our beloved Tybalt. For all that, I’ll show to him the same false heart by which he beguiled Juliet. If she’s to travel to Mantua to make a household with him, then I must go withal, biding my time while I tend her.

Juliet need never know how cruelly Romeo’s served her, so
long as I secretly serve him the ruthless same. Perchance I’ll find an apothecary in Mantua who’ll minister an unaccustomed dram, a poison that’ll do to Romeo what Friar Lorenzo’s potion only pretends on Juliet.

And what then? What will become of her once he is dead?

Many a wife who’s too soon widowed finds youth and beauty can win for her another, better match.

Lady Cappelletta draws back her veil, amber eyes wide as she repeats, “Another, better match?”

Her astonishment brings on my own. I’d not realized I spoke that part aloud, so fiercely did I want to convince myself it could prove true. Before I can work my tongue into some half-truth to shade my meaning, she asks, “What man would have me, when all Verona knows I cannot bear again?”

It’s Lord Cappelletto’s eventual demise, the only possible end she can hope for her own loveless marriage, that troubles her. Not yet thirty, but haggard-eyed as she stares out at the banners bearing the Cappelletti crest hung all along the route. “Tybalt gone, Paris lost to us.” Worry curdles her words. As though the fear I first saw eddying over her when she lay in the parto bed has never ebbed. “What’s left for a widow, when a husband leaves no heir?”

Rosaline and her Holy Sisters line the Duomo steps, the answer to her question. Few among them shine as Rosaline does with pious light. They stand identical in their wimples and habits, except for the youngest orphans, the ones who’ve no means of donning sacred cloth until some wealthy sinner buys absolution with a bit of dotal-alms charity.

Whatever dowry portion returns to Lady Cappelletta when Lord Cappelletto dies, however much beyond that he might choose to bequeath her, without nephew or son-in-law to serve as her protector, she’ll end up in a convent. Just as I would’ve these years past, without Juliet. What else is there for a woman with neither heir nor husband?

But Juliet, still in the bloom of youth and blessed with my fertile humors—surely she’ll fare better. She’s barely older than I was when Pietro found me, and she’ll have me to search out such a man as—

The carriage stops. Paris waits in the piazza to hand us down, his face pocked with grief. Handsome, young, and powerful. Yet so easily unmade by the despair death dances down on even the most fortunate.

Lady Cappelletta leans heavily on his arm, grateful for one final chance to hold to him. I bow my head, following in mock obedience to take my place among the mourners.

“Angelica.” Friar Lorenzo winnows himself from the mass of brown-frocked Franciscans gathering to make their procession into the church. He grasps my elbow, whispering fusty breath into my ear. “The thing you spoke of in my cell, about Susanna. I cannot know what has given you such thoughts, but I must tell you—”

“You’ve told me already.” For once, it’s my eyes that bear down on his, searching out a hidden sin. “What appears as death is not always death
.
”

He draws back as if I’ve slapped him. The piazza is filling with whole companies of friars, nuns, and well-ranked priests, all handsomely paid by Lord Cappelletto to be here. Behind the holy orders
crowd finely dressed members of Verona’s most powerful families—although only the ones who bear no enmity to the Cappelletti. Or who hide such feelings today, when the family is high in Prince Cansignorio’s and Count Paris’s favor. Friar Lorenzo runs a lizard’s tongue along his wine-stained teeth. But he’ll not dare speak another word as the assemblage swells around us.

I turn from him to file into the cathedral with the rest of the women. Banners and pennants with the Cappelletti and Scaligeri coats of arms hang from every wall within the Duomo. The air is sweet with beeswax, so many candles burning along the altar and before the rood screen that the whole apse of the church seems ablaze.

What appears as death is not always death.
Is this not what Christ, looking down at us from upon his cross, is meant to tell? Is this not why we pray for the everlasting life of those who’ve passed, and search for every trace of them in the features of their children? Why I carry such careful memories of my boys, believing that so long as love for them lives in me, they’re not truly lost. Why I still wear my husband’s shirt, and wrapped Juliet in one as well, so his touch, his smell, might keep him close to us. How I know my own dearest lamb will rise again, as surely as Christ himself did from his tomb.

Chanting fills the cathedral, the deep voices of priests and friars surging from the chancel, joining with the harmonious swell of nuns secreted within some hidden choir. Their voices arc along the vaulted ceiling and reign back down over all who kneel to honor Juliet. The holy music hums within my very bones, as priests and
deacons bless and incense and kiss sacred text, every familiar ritual meant to earn eternal life.
What appears as death is not always death.

No more than what appears as virtue always is true goodness.

The thought pulls tight across my chest, squeezing the breath from me.
What appears as virtue
. Hundreds of Veronese kneel before me, yet my eyes cannot help but search the gilted openings within the rood screen, seeking out the back of Friar Lorenzo’s tonsured head.

My holy confessor’s practiced such deceptions, always cloaking them in seeming virtue. Stealing a poor woman’s newborn babe, and thinking it recompense enough to contract her as servant to the rich family who unwittingly receives it. Groping so many years after a lord’s wealth, only to snatch his greatest treasure, a daughter entered into marriage without her father’s lawfully required consent. Counseling a mere child to play at the sin of taking her own life. Making mockery of my grief, along with Lord Cappelletto’s and Paris’s, by letting us believe one dead who lives.

And now, this greatest sacrilege. How can the Franciscan hide behind his own piously clasped hands praying a false Requiem Mass, and suffer me to do the same, when we both know Juliet yet lives? Unless—

Unless she does not live.

What if he’s lied to me once more, and Juliet is truly dead? What if he tricked her into swallowing his poison with promise of some secret rendezvous with banished Romeo—and tricked me as well with the promise my precious girl survives?

He took the cross-tied pouch from me, the only proof of his
part in this. If I speak a word against him without that, I’m nothing but a heretic and madwoman.

A heretic and madwoman. I pray to the Holy Mother and all my saints that’s all I am. A heretic for bending knee and bowing head through false Requiem. A madwoman, frantic with fear until I can see my girl, my heart’s delight, awakened from feigned death. Smiling and speaking and laughing once more.

All around me, people rise, turning to make their way out of the cathedral. I’m carried along by the close press of bodies, like a broken shard tossed into the Adige. Taken one last time to Ca’ Cappelletti.

Fur-lined mourning robes, a quarter-mile long funeral procession, silk flags and gilt banners and a hundred blazing candles—and still there must be more to mark the mourning of ones so rich as the Cappelletti. They host a feast as well, the sala thrown open to welcome Verona’s most godly and most powerful, who gorge themselves on our grief.

The Requiem Mass was enough for me. I’ll not bear the banquet. So I steal my way downstairs, through the courtyard and the arched passageway into the arbor. I kneel one last time beside the beehive, drawing out the box Tybalt husbanded beneath it, grateful for the coin-heavy sack inside. Enough to keep Juliet and me in simple household. I secure the sack within my dress and replace the box, praying my thanks to Tybalt and telling myself I must do what he meant to. For his sake, and Rosaline’s, and most of all for Juliet’s.

But can I do it? Can I, after all, bring myself to kill even such a villain as Romeo?

Something crackles in the air behind me. Paris.

He slips into the arbor, bouquet in hand, to stare up at the window of Juliet’s bedchamber. As if by the very power of his royal gaze he might conjure her there. I give a loud
amen
, so he’ll think I kneel in prayer.

He whirls my way as though half-expecting her, then makes a quick half-bow to hide his disappointment at discovering only me. “You do not dine with the others?” he asks.

“Grief thieves me of my appetite.”

“Grief thieves us both of more than that.” He draws a pink rose from the bouquet, its petals barely opened into bloom. “So tender a heart she had, to die of mourning her beloved cousin.”

So tender a heart he has, to believe that. Though I might have thought the same of Juliet, before Romeo preyed upon her.

“A too-loving nature. She had it since she was a babe.” My words are true enough to satisfy us both.

I’d not’ve thought I’d care for company, but Paris draws me gently to the arbor bench, asking me one thing and then another about Juliet, as a babe and then a girl and lastly a young woman, and I’m as glad as ever to tell.

“You make me love her more with every word,” he says. “And hate myself for hastening her death.” He slides his thumb along the rose’s stem, searching out a thorn. Pierces himself just for the awful pleasure of the pain. “Lord Cappelletto urged patience when first I asked for her hand. But once Tybalt was killed, he wanted no delay
in trothing her to me. He told me to stop her tears with joy. But times of woe are not the time to woo.”

“I urged her to it, too.” For all I must hold secret, it’s good at least to share as much as that. For it was my championing Paris that drove her to the Franciscan’s cell. If I’d been more careful in my counsel, perhaps she’d not have turned to the conniving friar.

And yet, I see from how deep Paris’s sorrow cuts that I was right in this: he is the one man worthy of her. Not just a handsome face, a full purse, a powerful uncle. He’s a heart that’s truly noble. If Romeo had not snuck in seeking Rosaline, what happy future might my Juliet’ve had with Paris?

I am a fool to indulge such thoughts. Yet what is a fool but one who hopes?

From all my life’s grief, I’d forged these weeks past a single hope: that if Juliet and Paris wed, she might make a well-loved and loving wife. It’s a hope I cannot help holding, even now.

Paris knows naught of how Juliet was beguiled by Romeo. But he knows Romeo is Tybalt’s killer, the sworn enemy of the Cappelletti, and by his own princely uncle’s royal decree banished from Verona. Who better to rid us of Romeo? If Paris discovers Romeo’s intended trespass, surely he’ll take it for villainy and drive him off while Juliet yet slumbers, saving me the sin of poisoning him.

When my girl awakens among the cobwebbed bones of a hundred rotted Cappelletti, beside poor Tybalt’s slowly mouldering corpse, what if, trembling with terror, she finds Romeo’s abandoned her, and discovers handsome Paris guarding her instead? Seeing his grief and then his gladness, surely she’ll realize for herself his worth.