Juliet's Nurse (10 page)

Following so close to Prince Cansignorio offers faint comfort. Several years shy of thirty, he’s barely older than the palio-day brawlers and, it seems, no wiser. Lacking his brother’s lust for control, he’s not bothered to quell the violence. Mayhap he believes that as long as Verona’s bloodthirsty youth are killing one another, they’ll be too busy to raise a blade against him. Though the city is in want of peace, he offers only a grand show of his own supposed piety, pledging a thousand candles to each church and chapel in the city. He leads the Easter procession on a three-hour circuit for all Verona to witness his enormous waxy offering, as though we are too stupid to realize that princes pay their tithes out of poor men’s taxes.

At last, we reach the Duomo. As we face the rippled marble columns framing the cathedral’s entry, the crowd sways before its arches and peaks, its windows carved with more beasts than Noah could’ve fit within a fleet of arks. I wish I could set my rump upon one of the stone griffins flanking the door and settle Juliet onto my lap, for at eight months she’s grown heavy as a good-sized sack of grain. But what do Cansignorio or Il Benedicto care for a woman’s suffering? Neither of them offer any balm for my throbbing feet and aching shoulders, as they stand in the shade of the cathedral, taking long turns addressing the crowd. Blessed, the poor are told they are, though not a one of them—with their dirt-streaked nails, callused hands, and bodies still bent from whatever toil swallows the other six days of their week—will gain entrance to the Duomo. Not today, a day so sanctified that prince, counts, lords, and all the new-moneyed merchants turn out in their finest silks and furs, vel
vets and jewels, to command places in the cathedral. It is Easter. Christ is risen, and so are the profits of every fabric dealer and goldsmith in the city.

I wonder where Pietro might be among the gathering. This was the one hope I carried when I left Ca’ Cappelletti: that he and I would find some way to find each other. Foolish wish. For how can I tell if my husband is one of the tens of thousands of people crowding the streets that fan out from the Duomo, when I face only the back of Lord Cappelletto’s balding head and the Scaligeri horses’ behinds?

The prince’s nephews ride two astride the same horse, a broad black beast that, as if to add an
amen
to Il Benedicto’s final blessing of the crowd, lifts its tail and looses a mound of slick, brown dumplings onto the cathedral steps. The younger of the boys, the one called Mercutio, digs a quick heel into the horse’s flank. The beast turns sideways just as the liveryman steps forward to lift the child from the horse. Swinging his far leg across the animal’s hindquarter, Count Mercutio thrusts himself into the liveryman’s arms with such force the servant stumbles back into the steaming turds. Sliding across the mound, he loses his grip on the boy, who manages to crash, hands outstretched, into the ample bosom of the bishop’s niece.

Surely the liveryman will be put out from service, and probably from the city walls, for such clumsiness, though I see it’s all the boy’s doing, a prank to amuse himself during the solemn monotony of Easter morning. Tybalt stares at Count Mercutio, worry edging his face. Count Paris, the prince’s other nephew, still atop the horse
and clutching its mane to keep from tumbling off, mirrors Tybalt’s expression. As though each of them knows that while this bit of Mercutio’s fun is at the liveryman’s expense, next time it might be at theirs.

Lord Cappelletto gives a quick nod to Tybalt to make haste as he follows the prince’s family through the massive cathedral doors. Tybalt looks longingly at me, but I give his shoulder a loving push. Shifting Juliet from one hip to the other, I make my way to the smaller northern door with the other women.

In all my decades in Verona, I’ve never been inside the Duomo. I always offer my confession in Friar Lorenzo’s cell, Pietro and I going to full Mass no more than once or twice a year. And that we did at San Fermo Maggiore. Nesto insisted the communion wafers there tasted better than any others he ever had. We laughed when he said that, thinking it a sinless sacrilege for a child to believe such a thing. After he died, I took what small comfort I could in feeling the same circle on my tongue he’d been so adamant about having on his.

If I were at San Fermo now, I would make my familiar way along the nave, slip through the side door in the upper church and down the stairs, passing the corridor that leads to Friar Lorenzo’s cell to head instead into the lower church. There, in the cool dark air, I could nestle Juliet to my breast and nurse her as I used to nurse my boys, under the watchful eyes of my most beloved saints. But the Duomo is as strange to me as a Mohammedan’s temple. Spread broader and rising taller than San Fermo, the grand cathedral does not make me feel like an angel ascending to heaven—more like a
tiny churchmouse dizzily scurrying across its vast, patterned floor. Scores of candles burn upon the altar. Watching them glow, I try to feel Pietro near, to believe it is his bees who birthed the wax that drips, liquid hot, before the image of Our Lord and Savior.

Though I know by rote my Ave Maria, Pater Noster, and Pax Domini, the rest of Mass remains a mystery to me. Not so Lord Cappelletto. Even from across the nave, I mark the proud way he intones in Latin along with the cathedral priests. He pulls sanctimoniously on Tybalt’s ear whenever the boy’s eyes start to wander to the sculpted swords that frame the rood screen, or the painted scenes along the side-walls of bloodied martyrs glorying in their righteous torments.

Once the last prayer sounds against the cathedral walls and the congregation rises from our knees, the priest signals for the acting out of the Passion, which features a live lamb and three donkeys—a spectacle beyond anything the Franciscans over at San Fermo ever offered. The woman beside me strains to get a better view of every hollow between the would-be Christ’s ribs and the shimmering oil on his anointed feet. The Crucifixion is so realistic, I wonder if instead of pardoning a criminal in honor of the holy-day, Cansignorio means to start a new tradition by having this one sacrificed.

But no, the pretend Savior survives long enough to be entombed and then rise up. For what inspiration would there be in death, common as that is? The miracle is in the Resurrection. Or ought to be, though in truth I notice Mercutio snickering and Tybalt slumping with disappointment when they see how the priests playing the Roman guard conspire to block the congregation’s view while the
pretend-Christ clumsily replaces his brittle band of thorns with a golden crown. Holy chicanery it is, yet it impresses the thousands of Veronese pressing in behind us, whose rippling murmurs of awe fill the cathedral.

After the congregation has gasped and oohed to the bishop’s satisfaction, he gives a final benediction and disappears into the sacristy. Cansignorio and the counts follow, Lord Cappelletto close on their heels. He hurries Tybalt along with him, the boy struggling to keep the chalice raised high as a score of men who are the most trusted of the prince’s allies swarm forward with the various treasures they are gifting to the church.

The last of them is barely through the rood screen before the congregation begins to press its way from the cathedral, eager to trade piety for pleasure. But I must wait for Lord Cappelletto. Slipping a finger into Juliet’s needy mouth, I murmur, “Yes, dearest lamb,” matching my words to the familiar, urgent rhythm with which she sucks: three insistent squeezes, then a pause, and then three more. Kissing her dark hair, I smell not the delicate baby scent I crave, but the dank, spicy incense that fills the Duomo. At last the cathedral bell begins to ring, and the bells of all the churches across Verona answer, their high- and low-pitched peals dancing across the city’s tiled rooftops. Lord Cappelletto reappears, barely flicking his eyes to me to signal that I am to follow after Tybalt, who’s scurrying at his heel.

As soon as we return to Ca’ Cappelletti, Lord Cappelletto orders every trencher in the house set out in the sala. There is cabbage loafed with eggs and garlic, savoried with marjoram, mint,
and walnuts, baked heavy with Piacentine cheese. Mutton is served stuffed with pork bellies, parsley leaves laced through the meats. Next come liver pies and veal tortes, and platters of aspic shimmering with whole peppercorns and slivered cardamom seeds. Lord Cappelletto possesses the same gusto for breaking the Lenten fast that he’ll soon have for breaking wind.

Although Lady Cappelletta still lies raving in the parto bed, he does not seem to mark her absence as he holds Juliet upon his lap and catechizes Tybalt about which men who knelt and worshipped nearest them in the cathedral are allies to the Cappelletti, and which are enemies. He talks full-mouthed of a seducer kidnapping a dowried girl away from her lawfully bound fiancé, or of a drunken insult shouted at a gambling table, quizzing Tybalt about what revenge should be exacted for each wrong, never mind that they were committed three generations past.

The more Lord Cappelletto talks, the more he drinks, until he’s had wine enough to drown the Venetian fleet. He pushes first a goblet and then a trencher toward me, and orders me to drink and eat my fill.

But for once, I’ve no appetite. I’m thinking of the lamb stew I always made for Easter, which my Berto especially loved. Donato teased him as we walked home from church one year, saying there’d not be enough for Berto, which made the younger boy cry. Nothing we said or did could calm him, until Nunzio hoisted him onto his shoulders and ran the whole way home, letting Berto dip a spoon into the cookpot before the rest of us had even turned into the Via Zancani. I’d not believed I could bear to taste that stew
again after the pestilence stole our sons, but still I made it that first Easter and ladled out a bowl for Pietro. Pulling me onto his lap, my husband tore off a piece of bread, dipped it into the soup, and begged me to have it for Berto’s sake. Every Easter since, we’ve eaten it like that, with each mouthful recalling another memory of our lost boys. But this year Pietro must be having who knows what for his holy-day meal, alone in our house or out among strangers at some public tavern, his pocket full of honeyed sweets I cannot taste.

Sometime during the week past, a splintered fish bone slipped beneath the tooth that sits beside the gaping hole left by those I lost in the brawl. I push my tongue at the stuck bone, letting the pain throb into my gum and flash along my jaw as I watch Lord Cappelletto giving Juliet tastes of this or that from his finger. When a pinkieful of lemon pottage makes her throw up—not the soft milkish spit she trails every day on me but thick gobs of undigested food—I reach fast for her, glad for the excuse to carry her back to our bedchamber.

Tybalt follows after us. I wish he’d chirrup out some joke or song to cheer me despite myself. But he sinks onto a high-backed stool set against the far wall, plugging his nose with his fingers while I wash Juliet and replace her puke-covered swaddling with fresh bands. He watches like a cat outside a mouse hole until I nurse her to sleep.

“What’s the Order of Santa Caterina?” A funny question, even for a boy as odd as Tybalt.

“A convent.” The truth. But from the confusion that pulls at his
curious eyes, I can see that like so many of life’s truths, it’s of no particular help. Not until I explain,
“
A place where nuns live.”

This Tybalt understands. He clasps his hands against his chest, fluttering his eyelids and pulling his cheeks taut in mimicry of the dourest abbess, and parades around the room. Then he asks, “What does
weaned
mean?”

I crook an elbow around Juliet’s head, to protect her from hearing such a word. “Weaned is when a child grows too big for nursing.”

He nods like some great sage. “When they’re weaned, they go to the convent.”

His words catch me cold. “When who’s weaned? Who’s going to a convent?”

“It’s what the bishop said, when Uncle bade me give him the silver chalice.” He screws his voice into a perfect imitation of the bishop’s haughty tone: “We shall keep a place at the Cloister of Santa Caterina. Send her as soon as she is weaned.”

Something sharp jags inside me. “You’re sure that’s what you heard?”

Tybalt puts a hand to his heart, swearing on his most prized possessions: three marzipan wise men he’s been hoarding since Christmas.

“Was he looking at your uncle, or at another man?”

“He looked at the chalice. It was heavy, and I had to carry it for hours, until he took it from me.”

I curse that chalice, which I mistook for a mere paschal offering, never guessing it was the first piece of a convent-dowry. Now I see that the silver goblet is like Juliet herself—a sacrifice Lord Cappelletto will gladly make, bargaining with God to give him a son.

Tybalt’s words still turn in my head hours later, as I fall into a tormented sleep in which I dream I search all through Ca’ Cappelletti only to discover my girl gone, and Lord Cappelletto laughing over some swollen-headed boy who fills her cradle. This boy is so hideously deformed, his face cannot be called human. He has a spiderish number of arms and legs, which spill out of the cradle onto the floor. Even as I dream, I can hear Lady Cappelletta howling as she lies wakeful with wild-eyed fear that she’ll never deliver a living son. Or maybe she howls from the grim realization of all that it will take for her to bear one.