Juliet's Nurse (8 page)

My throat tightens as I turn. Pietro is pressed against the bottom of the bed, hidden from view. The tower door is pulled shut,
covered by the wall-hanging. But there, at the feet of the statue of San Zeno, is the dinner knife.

“Tybalt brings things in to play,” I say. “He’d invent a broadsword out of anything, to pretend that he’s a knight at jousting.”

“The Cappelletti have foes enough for him to raise a blade to when he comes of age. But our family silver is not for a child’s play. Have Tybalt—”

“Is that the crier, already coming up the Via Cappello?”

Lord Cappelletto, ever impatient to calculate how to turn the day’s first news to his family’s advantage, forgets whatever was about to trip from his wagging tongue. He makes his daily retreat through the sala, his footsteps echoing down the stairs and into the entryway to Ca’ Cappelletti.

Pietro pulls himself back onto the bed. “This is no way for a husband to be with his wife.”

“This is the only way for a wet-nurse to be with her husband.” I wrap my hand around him, careful not to disturb Juliet. It has never taken much to firm Pietro, and our months apart serve in my favor. As soon as Juliet’s had her fill of me, he lays her on the bolster above our heads, as though this was our bed and she our babe.

But once he and I are done and laced back up again, Pietro kneels beside the bed, taking my hand to his lips. “Now that I’ve a hive here, and the other at our house, I’ll harvest more honey and more beeswax. When I sell the wax and what I make with the honey, it will bring enough to pay our rent and keep the two of us, all year.”

I am not a stupid woman. I know that when a man contracts to hire a wet-nurse, and another to let his wife serve as one, there
is hard bargaining over how much money passes from one to the other, though no one bothers the milk-mother with such details. Whatever Friar Lorenzo said and did when Susanna died to bring me and my nursling together, it was set down as so many soldi to be paid each month by Lord Cappelletto. A sum that is delivered to Pietro by Friar Lorenzo, who keeps some tidy portion as his brokering fee. But what ties me to Juliet is worth far more than money.

“It will be summer before there’s honey and beeswax to be harvested,” I say. And although I’m not the kind of woman who holds her tongue before her husband, for once I do. I’ll not remind him now that it’s far longer than that before an infant is weaned. Two years, two and a half—does he not remember how it was with our boys? Would I want any less than that for my last darling?

Before he can answer, the door from the tower creaks open. Tybalt pushes aside the wall-hanging, bounding his way into the chamber as he recites all the many things he’s noticed about the hive. How some bees fly, and others crawl along the ground. And some stay within the hive, pushing out the dead. He grabs my husband by the hand, pulling him back into the tower, down the stone steps, and outside.

I leave the window open, listening to their voices in the arbor as I fish the thimble from the bedclothes and prepare Friar Lorenzo’s remedy for Juliet.

I’ve not forgot what else Friar Lorenzo told me I must do. I must bring him those pearls, to give grateful thanks to the Holy Church that Juliet is saved.

I remind myself of this as I sit with Lady Cappelletta in her chamber. While my thick fingers spin a steady rhythm and her thin ones sew, my eyes rove like unleashed beasts, searching the stone floor.

But I cannot find those wayward pearls. Not that first day. Nor the second. As the nones bells ring on the afternoon of the third day, something finally catches my ever-roving gaze. Some lustrous thing wedged within the pebbly crack between two of the large floorstones. Juliet stirs in the cradle, and I reach my foot out to rock her. But I’ll not let my eyes leave that spot, certain it’s a pearl.

“It must tire you, working such a fine stitch,” I say to Lady Cappelletta.

She nods, letting her needle dangle as she rubs her eyes. I sing a slow lullaby about a fast-growing swan, pretending it is meant for Juliet, watching as Lady Cappelletta becomes the bird I sing about, her long, slender neck too delicate to bear the strain of holding up her pretty head.

Once her chin dips down, I say three silent Pater Nosters. When I’m sure she’s deep in her sleep, I slip from my chair and lower myself to where the pearl lays. My breath stills as I work a thick forefinger and my fatter thumb into the crevice. The pearl is curved and smooth, and the rough floorstones scrape my knuckles raw as I pry it loose.

Tucking the gem inside my dress, I survey every inch of all the rest of the floor. But search as I might, I cannot find the second pearl. Just yesterday, Marietta took her leave of Ca’ Cappelletti. Or Maddalena, maybe she was called. The latest of the serving-maids,
she’d not stayed long enough for anyone to be certain of her name, and was gone so quick there’d not have been time to shout it after her even if we’d known it. Perhaps it was the weight of a pilfered pearl in her pocket that carried her away so fast, well beyond anywhere Lord Cappelletto, let alone the wet-nurse, might find her.

When Juliet and I lie at night in her great bed, I roll my own purloined pearl in my palm, imagining how much it might bring at one of the money-lender’s stalls. Who knows how far Pietro and I might travel on that sum, what of the wide world we could discover together. But precious as the pearl is, it is nothing compared to Juliet. No more than a small, hard sphere beside my warm, soft girl.

I go early the next morning to make my shrift. Friar Lorenzo greets me with his familiar “God give you peace” as I pull the blanket from Juliet’s head to show him how the purply prickle has faded.

“So dark.” His words confound me, until I realize that he does not mean her face. He means her new-sprouted hair.

In place of the blonde down she was born with, this hair is as coarse and dark as mine. And her eyes—they’ve darkened too, so slowly I’ve not noticed, from their first pale gray, past Lady Cappelletta’s amber, to a deep brown that matches my own. “It must be your milk,” he says.

I’m not a woman who blushes easily, not even in a friar’s cell. What use is such coyness before your holy confessor? Still, my cheeks redden as I wonder how he knows that I used my own milk to concoct his remedy for Juliet. “The hair came in before that,” I say.

“Before? You’ve nursed her since she was born.”

I realize too late that he’d not known. Not until I half-told what now he makes me tell in full. I silently beg forgiveness, not from my saints but from Juliet, as my guilty tongue betrays how I milked myself to heal her, a secret only she and I should share.

Friar Lorenzo frowns and mutters something about seething the flesh of a kid in the milk of its mother. As if goat stew has anything to do with my darling girl. “Remember your place, Angelica. You are only her wet-nurse.”

How could I forget my place when it’s with Juliet, always with Juliet? I’m the one, the only one, who wakes with her and sleeps holding her, the one who’s given up Pietro and my little house and my whole life for her. The one who suckles her, and saved her. “Only her wet-nurse,” I repeat, nodding. There’s much of Juliet’s heart that only her wet-nurse can know.

I draw the pearl from my belt-purse and pass it to Friar Lorenzo.

“Only one?” he asks. That same
only
. Always it is that same
only
, when he speaks of what I am, and what I do, and what I bring.

With a quick tug of his purse string, Lord Cappelletto gives the Church far greater offerings than this lone pearl. Altar-gifts to celebrate Juliet’s birth. The cost of a month’s fresco painting to commemorate a saint’s day. A handsome sum of silver coins, that God might favor the commencement or completion of some business dealing in which Lord Cappelletto has an interest. He’d drop a diadem’s worth of pearls into Friar Lorenzo’s waiting palm, for he gladly tithes from his vast riches. And, eager to best every other noble family in Verona, even more gladly brags of it.

But this thanksgiving gift for saving Juliet comes from me, alone.
I searched and searched, and found the pearl. And if it was any sin to take it, surely it is absolution to give it over to the Church.

“I prayed to the Holy Mother to help me find the pearl Juliet choked on, and she did,” I say. “Only one, so that must be what the Blessed Maria knows the Church should have.”

Friar Lorenzo looks at me. Looks, I swear, into my very soul. Then he pockets his precious gem and sends us back to Ca’ Cappelletti.

FOUR

D
uring all the years I ran my own house, I never relished how I had to hurry my dough to the city ovens for baking, or bargain for every bent coin’s worth of household necessities I bought in the market. How I hefted dirty pots to the fountain, scrubbing them while I sweated under the sun’s heat or shivered with the winter’s cold or soaked to sodden in the rain that might come any time of year, then hauled them home filled with whatever water we’d need until I returned to the public fountain the next day with another load to clean. With so many tasks pulling me through Verona’s teeming streets, I never saw the joy in any of them, until passing the winter within Ca’ Cappelletti.

There are braziers to heat every room in this house, and at least the itchy little house-page never lets the woodpile dwindle. But the
smoke-thick air that hangs inside is rough in my throat. So rough my eyes tear, and I long to walk in the bone-chill of the fresh winds blowing off the Adige. Instead, I’m shut away like some lord’s jealously guarded wife, going out only when I can give excuse to see Friar Lorenzo. And how often can a wet-nurse tell her employer she has sins she must confess?

Juliet is as restless as I am, angry that I can do nothing about the teeth tearing their way out of her gums. Why a babe of six months needs teeth at all, I cannot say, when surely I’m enough to feed her. Or would be enough, if not for the pain those teeth bring her. Sore and sullen, my beloved nursling shoves my breast away like I am no comfort to her.

Only Lord Cappelletto savors these dark days. Some of his seed seems to have settled in his wife, and he’s as pleased as she is sick with it. He thunders in as we sit with our sewing, carrying a gilt chest nearly as large as Juliet’s cradle. The sight, or perchance the smell, of him makes Lady Cappelletta heave into the bucket that now is always beside her. While he waits for her to finish, he beams just like Tybalt does whenever he has some new trick he wants to show us.

“I’ve brought your dowry jewels.”

“They are not mine,” Lady Cappelletta says. “They are yours.” Her voice is uncertain. As though she fears that for all her retching, she and the jewels are about to be packed up and sent back to whatever family cared so little for her happiness, they married her off to this old mule.

“They are mine so long as you are mine, and I shall choose which ones you’ll wear, and with which gown, on the palio-day.”

“The foot race?” Lady Cappelletta eyes go so wide, perhaps she worries that he means for her to run the course herself. A fine show it would be, her huffing along among the teams of well-oiled men nominated each year from the city’s assorted parishes to compete in the race, named for the green palio-cloth that’s awarded to the winner.

But that’s not the spectacle Lord Cappelletto means to make of his pretty young bride. “Prince Cansignorio is hosting a palio-day banquet for Verona’s hundred richest men, and their wives. There’ll be more than one family there to whom we owe a century-old grudge, and I’ll not be outshone by any of them.”

He unlocks the little chest, selecting a pile of gold buttons and silver-set gems for us to sew onto her gown and sleeves, and an even larger pile we’re to attach to his robe and doublet. It will be no easy thing to work so many fancy stitches, with the palio-day only a week away. But when Lord Cappelletto snaps the chest shut and departs, I’m glad to take up a needle, and to have Lady Cappelletta do the same.

Verona’s palio-race has been run along the campo outside the city walls for a hundred years at least. Longer than the Scaligeri have ruled Verona. But Lord Cappelletto’s boasted to Tybalt about how he advised Prince Cansignorio, who is ever eager to surpass the brother who ruled before him, to extend the length of this year’s race all the way to the Piazza dei Signori. And to richen the prize. The new prince will gift the winner not only with the traditional palio-cloth but with three whole bolts of pale blue samite, thumb-wide bands of gold and silver woven through the thick fabric. Also
a riding horse bred from his royal stable, and a brace of fatted geese. Before the race begins, there will be endless delights for the gawking eyes of any who line the course. Musicians. Jugglers. The prince’s whole menagerie paraded by. Perhaps an exorcism, if Providence will send some bedeviled soul for the saving. Prince Cansignorio promises Verona a celebration to make even the bishop forget it is a Lenten Sunday.

I, of course, am no bishop. So while Lord and Lady Cappelletti vie with rival nobles for the favor of the prince’s table, I’ll steal away to watch the race with Pietro, cheering as we always do for our parish-runner. I deserve an excursion outside Ca’ Cappelletti, beyond the city gates. And tetchy as Juliet’s grown from teething, perchance a few hours of fresh air, and fresh sights, will distract her.

Verona’s narrow streets ring thick with different languages on the palio-day. Not just the dialects of Venetians and Tuscans, or Sards and Calabrians. The air is heavy with the guttural languages spoken by those who come from across the Alps and far to the North, as well as the rapid, jagged rasps of Arabian traders. There are those who say the world is broad and wide, and those who say there is no world without Verona’s walls. Today it seems that both are right: the broad, wide world throngs within the city walls, separating me from Pietro. As the inns empty of foreigners, I push through the crowded streets, Juliet tight in my arms, and Tybalt close by my side.

He appeared in Juliet’s chamber this morning, just after his aunt and uncle left for the prince’s castle. Chittering away while he watched me braid my hair, ready my overgown, and slip on my veil, never considering that I might not intend to bring him with me. This is my own doing. From the first day nimble Tybalt came into Juliet’s chamber, I’ve taught him to funnel his love for his dead mother and his sent-away sister onto her. He entertains her for hours on end, delighting in filling her with delight. It is always the bitterest of sweetness to see them together, for he is of an age somewhere between Nesto and Donato, and offers Juliet the same tender affection my sons showered on their littlest brother, Angelo.

How could I leave Tybalt behind? He is so lonely. So sensitive. And he is the closest companion I have within Ca’ Cappelletti, as I whisper when I remind him that our outing is to be an especial secret, just between him and me, and Juliet.

Tybalt marvels at the throngs who are turning out for the race, bowing his head in reverence to the clusters of dark-robed priests and priors, then gawking at the eager hands of pickpockets and prostitutes. But even such wondrous distractions do not keep him from asking, “Will my father be here?” as we cross beneath the massive portraits of San Zeno and San Cristoforo that decorate the city gate.

Tybalt’s widowed father has been in Mantua longer than I’ve been at Ca’ Cappelletti. Tybalt asked for him on All Saint’s Day, on Christmas Day, on the Feast of the Epiphany. Even, out of habit, on a few lesser saints’ days. Always there is a letter, with his father’s seal. Letters so full of sentiment, Lord Cappelletto refuses to read them aloud, leaving little Tybalt to struggle to decipher his father’s
ornate script. Though I cannot read a word, I learn from those letters what Tybalt is too young to understand: why his father left him. Too attached to the dead wife whose features show in her living son. Too afraid to cherish the boy, lest he be lost as well.

“Do you see Pietro?” Better, I reason, to distract Tybalt with a question that will delight him, than to give his own question the same-again answer that shadows even his happiest days.

Pietro comes to check the hive in the Cappelletti arbor as often as he can, though still not as often as I want him. Whenever he appears, Tybalt follows him like a waggly-tailed pup, reporting all he’s observed of the bees since Pietro’s last visit. Young though he is, Tybalt’s no fool, and when he asked me how I knew the honey-man, I made him cross his heart and swear upon his much-cherished honor to keep the answer to himself. But when I then confided that Pietro is to me what Lord Cappelletto is to Lady Cappelletta, Tybalt laughed and said this could not be true, for his uncle and aunt never smile at each other as Pietro and I do. What else we do we are careful to keep from him, and with each visit, Pietro crafts ever-more elaborate challenges to distract the boy long enough for us to sneak our time together in Juliet’s broad bed. Or upon the stone floor of her chamber. Or against its carved-wood door. By my troth, there’s not an inch of that room that Pietro and I’ve not explored as we explore each other, hurrying ourselves to be done before Tybalt bursts in to show off the latest kingfisher feather, or goat horn, or bear claw that Pietro bade him find.

At my mention of Pietro, Tybalt scrambles ahead, searching out the spot along the edge of the race-course where my husband has
stretched a bedsheet for us to sit upon as we watch the day’s entertainments. It is one of my better sheets, just the thing a man would choose to throw onto the ground, never mind how people to either side will grind their filthy soles into it. A year ago, I would have carped at Pietro for ruining a sheet this way. But now I sleep on far finer linens, stitched with the Cappelletti seal by Lady Cappelletta’s own hand. My worn bedding, my musty marriage-chest, the few tiny rooms of our rented house—they’ve become part of another life, the life I had before I had Juliet.

Tybalt runs to Pietro, who catches him up, swinging the boy in his two strong arms so that Tybalt somersaults high in the air before tumbling onto the sheet with a laughing shriek. Pietro, already red-cheeked and purple-tongued, offers me a swig from a three-quarters-plump wineskin As he lays his stubbly cheek against Juliet’s smooth one, he slips a hand inside my dress, rubbing with his thumb in a way that sends shivers all through me.

I give his hand a playful slap. “Best not set a pot to boil, if you’ve no way to let off its steam.”

We settle on the sheet sitting one inside the other like a set of stacking bowls, my back warming against Pietro’s broad chest and his big legs curving snug around my hips, passing the wineskin between us to ward off the February chill. Though the ruby barbera’s not of so fine a quality as what fills the casks at Ca’ Cappelletti, at least it’s not watered down like the pale trebbiano Lord Cappelletto allows me to be served.

I pour some of the barbera onto my pinky and rub it along Juliet’s aching gums. The wine, and being out in the brisk air, soothe
her. She coos at the bright scarf I bob before her, while Tybalt runs along the edge of the raceway, doubling back every few minutes to report on what spectacle of minstrels or stilt-walkers will soon parade before us.

I wait until the boy is out of earshot to tell Pietro about Lady Cappelletta. “It’s a mystery how a woman can eat so little yet vomit so much. At least, it is a mystery to her.” I lift the wineskin in toast to her ignorance. “I told her it’s a sure sign she is carrying a son, a strong boy who wants her belly all to himself. I can be kind to her, when I have a mind to.”

Pietro leans back, letting cool air fill the space between us. “What kindness is there in lying to her?”

“You do not know that it’s a lie. It might be a son. Or a daughter. Or a hairy mole. Or an overly bilious humor. Or a clever ruse to keep her husband from her bed, though I doubt she is capable of that.” How can Pietro chide me? “Why not let her believe she carries his heir, if that makes it easier for her to suffer these months of constant retching?”

He reminds me the rich are spiteful. “If she does not bear the son you’ve promised, she may take her disappointment out on you.”

“Until she bears a son, her husband has her in such a qualmish state, she’s not able to do much hurt to me, or to anyone else.” I hope this will prove true, that there will be a healthy boy to please the father and relieve the mother, before Juliet is old enough to notice how Lady Cappelletta looks at her.

“I’ll make some ginger comfits, taffied with honey and almond milk, for you to give her when her stomach needs steadying.”

I do not care to have my husband thinking up treats for Lady Cappelletta. “The Apothecary Guild will come after you, if you start making medicines.”

Mischief plays along his face. “Perhaps you can demonstrate what punishment you think the guild master should demand?” He pulls me close, his breath warm. “I miss you, Angelica. The smell of you, the taste of you. That perfumed bed in another man’s house—that’s no way for us to be together.” He draws Juliet away from me. “Let Tybalt watch her for a little while.”

It’s more than wine that’s stoking my husband. Stoking me, too. And it’s true, Tybalt is devoted to Juliet. If I tell him to count out the number of monkeys and baboons to her as the prince’s gilt-caged menagerie parades by, and to make up a fabulous story to tell her about each of the prince’s lions, he’ll do it, whether I am watching over his shoulder or not. Perhaps when he reappears, Pietro and I might—

A curse and a splintering crack split the air. Four of the young men who’ve been calling out bets for the palio-race swear and jump on a fifth, who’s broken a cudgel over one of their heads. The foursome topples the culprit, and all five tumble in a mass of angry arms and legs onto our sheet. The broken cudgel swings wildly, smashing the side of my face.