Juliet's Nurse (22 page)

“There’s been fighting,” he tells her, “upon Verona’s streets.”

“Surely there has.” I answer fast, in case his words have frighted Juliet. “As happens on so many nights, while we are safe inside.”

“This was not some night-brawl in a remote corner of the city. There’s blood spilt among the Scaligeri monuments in the Santa Maria Antica churchyard. Prince Cansignorio, fearing some treason, has forbidden any gathering of lords outside his council chamber until the culprits are caught.”

Such is a man’s reasoning, which makes everything that happens have to do with him. Cansignorio, who with cold heart and quick hand killed one brother and keeps the other chained within a prison cell, knows well how easily traitorous thoughts can turn to deeds. But with a woman’s wit, I sense something else at play.

I let out one cough and then another, hacking louder and louder until Lord Cappelletto orders me from the room to take wine and water.

Needing neither wine nor water, I swallow my false coughs and head instead for Tybalt’s rooms. But he’s not there. Not in the courtyard. I spy him at last in the arbor, staring at the beehive.

I cannot move on so fleet a foot as he does, and, keen as his long-ago lessons from the master-at-arms have made him, he calls, “Good day, dear Nurse,” without even turning.

“A good enough day for those who did naught last night. But for any who scaled the compound walls and went—“

“Will you not come close,” he cuts me off, “and look at this?”

I’ve no use for bee watching, and he well knows it. But to talk
to Tybalt, one must talk as Tybalt will, and so I edge closer to the hive. At a limb-hole of the log, a mob of bees savages some winged foe like fierce-jawed dogs tearing at a fox.

“Why do they attack one of their kind?”

“Not one of their kind,” he corrects me. “An intruder, who snuck into their hive to steal their honey. Do you not see the difference?”

I’ll not get near enough for my old eyes to mark it. But he leans yet closer, admiring the raging insects. “It’s said the bees are more like us than the English or French or Germans. Always seeking for what is sweet—but when something goes amiss, fast to fight to defend their hive.”

“A foolish sacrifice, to waste one’s life just to sink a single sting.”

He turns, ready to tell me I am wrong. But my gasp overruns his words. A finger-long cut crusted with blood slices his cheek. “You’re hurt,” I say, as if to dare him to deny it.

“It’s but a scratch, and well worth the greater damage I did the Montecche.”

“That pompous old man? He must be your uncle’s age.”

“It’s not him I fought, but one of his precious sons. Less precious now, for the hurt I’ve done him.” He smiles, and the cut snakes into an angry curve. “Insult they gave us, and injury I gave back.”

Insult, ever insult. The Cappelletti honor is like that finely worked zetani. A pretty, precious thing, though in truth too delicate. The poor who cloak ourselves in coarse woollen bigello, which bears a host of blows, can only wonder that the zetani of a rich man’s honor is so easily marred. And so often in need of avenging.

“Prince Cansignorio believes both insult and injury were meant for him,” I tell Tybalt. “When he discovers you’re the culprit—”

“He’ll not know. I took care to meet the Montecche when only stars were watching, as he returned alone from a night of drinking.”

Is there no way to make Tybalt see the danger in what he’s done? “The Montecchi will cry for justice.”

Tybalt laughs as though I’ve truly turned into the foolish old virago he teases that I am. “Will the man whose blood I drew denounce me publicly, and admit to all Verona how clumsily he fought, and how easily I bested him?”

He unseals one end of the log hive and daggers off an edge of comb. The bees arc around him, intoxicated by the sweet scent of their own handiwork. But none offers an angry sting. It’s as if they believe him one of their own, and know he means no enmity to them.

He holds the dripping comb out to me. “Honey will keep the cut from festering. Will you not offer a careful rub and a kind word, to have me healed?”

For all the sauce and swagger with which Tybalt wields a weapon, deep within he’s still the lonely child who’s ever needed me. Needs me as much as I need him.

I take the comb and dab honey along the angry stripe that mars his cheek, as I tell him about Prince Cansignorio’s decree. “Your uncle’ll not be pleased to learn you’re the cause that cancels Rosaline’s holy-wedding feast.”

This cools a little of his hot pride. “My sister deserves more banquets than all Verona has the means to give. But she’s too saintly to
care whether we feast her. And my uncle, who values naught more than the good name of the Cappelletti, must be glad to have his heir defend it.”

Tybalt speaks the words
his heir
as one might speak of
his silver belt
or
his ermine-lined gown
or
the fee-simple of his landed holdings
. Lord Cappelletto’s taken Tybalt as his heir, but never given in return what Tybalt so longed for from his father, and found only too briefly in Pietro.

I slip the comb into his pouting mouth so he can suck the remaining honey from it, as he learned to do when Pietro first set the hive here. I wait until I’m sure the sweetness is on Tybalt’s tongue before I say, “Lord Cappelletto loves you, and Rosaline, as surely as he loves Juliet.”

He chews the comb until he’s worked all the golden honey from it, then spits the palish wax upon the ground. “My uncle loves Rosaline for being pious, which he hopes will bring the favor of God and Church upon our house. He loves me for matching honor to that favor, so long as my first honoring act is unwavering obedience to him. But Juliet has his purest love.”

Quick as my words come, he lays a long finger against my lips before I can utter any of them. “Hush, Nurse. We both know it’s true, and you know I’ll not resent it.” He smiles again, and the glistening honey on his cheek makes this curl of the cut appear less sinister. “Juliet is as charming as Rosaline is good. Any man might love her. Why would her father not?”

I’ll not answer as I could. Not dare betray to Tybalt what I’ve not let anyone know that I know: who her true father was. “You’ll
have to stay within Ca’ Cappelletti until the cut has healed, to keep clear of Prince Cansignorio’s suspicion. But there’ll be no hiding it from your family.”

I lead him out of the arbor and through the courtyard, stopping to collect some wine before we climb up to the sala. Though for my part I might prefer some aqua vitae, wine is all Lord Cappelletto drinks. And so I pray the vin santo will be enough to calm his ire, and to let flow Lady Cappelletta’s full sympathy for Tybalt, which runs as deep as my own.

It’s Juliet who first catches sight of us as we enter the sala. Paling at her dear-loved Tybalt’s bloodied cheek, she cries out, the zetani sliding from her lap and pooling on the floor.

Lady Cappelletta’s amber eyes flicker with surprise, then horror. “Who’s done this to you?”

Lord Cappelletto, who stands at the window, turns to see what’s amiss. Spying Tybalt’s wound, he demands, “What villain is this within my house, jeoparding our family by raising a weapon against the prince?”

I step between them. “He’s not jeoparded—”

Lord Cappelletto cuts me off, pushing his way to Tybalt. “Are you yet a child, hiding behind the nurse’s skirts?”

“I’m neither villain nor child.” Tybalt draws himself to his full height, dwarfing Lord Cappelletto. “I raised a weapon only to defend our family. Glad I was to do it, and to pay this simple price”—he runs his smallest finger along his sliced cheek—“for the pleasure of spilling a greater quantity of Montecchi blood. Such was their due, for insulting our gifts to the Holy Church.”

Lord Cappelletto’s mouth sharpens to a pucker, as he takes in Tybalt’s words. But then it broadens as he laughs, pulling Tybalt into his arms.

“Dry your womanish tears,” he tells Lady Cappelletta and Juliet. “Tybalt’s done right. Done as I did many a time when I was of his age, to pluck the crow of the Montecchi and their allies.” He claps a hairy hand upon his nephew’s back, like a knight patting his stallion after a victorious joust. “Prince Cansignorio’s quick to take a slight where none is given. But he’s got no part in this private quarrel between families. So long as none know the part you played last night, it’ll be but a short delay before the edict’s lifted, and we feast for pious Rosaline. And for brave Tybalt.”

It’s not love of the sort Pietro showed Tybalt, that tender echo of what he felt for our own sons. But it’s all Lord Cappelletto offers, and Tybalt drinks it in like a bee sucking nectar from a blossom.

One note, then the next, then yet another—they fly so swift from Tybalt’s lute, I can barely draw air in fast enough to match singing to them. Together we turn such a bright tune that Lady Cappelletta hums along, one foot tapping as she sews.

Such is not enough for Juliet. Her sleeves done two days past, the needle now holds no interest for her. Bearing herself with perfect grace, she hops and turns about the sala. A pleasing sight to match each pretty song. But she longs for a chain of other dancers.

“Might not my lord father—”

Lady Cappelletta’s smile sours. “Your lord father has much to do, tallying rents and tributes.”

She’s always glad for the long hours her husband spends in his study bent over his correspondence, and gladder still when he leaves Ca’ Cappelletti entirely, which he’s done much this week and a half past. Lord Cappelletto’s impatient for any chance to be in Prince Cansignorio’s presence, showing the Cappelletti loyal.

His going out makes harder Tybalt’s staying in. After so many days with little to do but pluck tempestuously upon the lute strings, Tybalt’s chin hangs, and his shoulders slope.

“Dance with me, Coz,” Juliet says, “while Nurse sings for us.”

But even she cannot draw off his sulk. “I prefer to dance with steel rather than with silk.”

Such poetry, just to show he’s still eager to spill blood. “It’s dancing with steel that’s gashed your face, and left you closed inside among the ladies,” I remind him.

He makes no answer, which upsets me more than the bitterest rebuke. This quiet, brooding Tybalt—he steals in like evening’s shadow creeping across a room, pushing out the bright, loving boy we adored. Would my sons have sullened so, if they’d lived to such an age? Would they have turned away from me, as Tybalt of late so often does?

Juliet reaches out her hands to me. “Nurse, you must make yourself my partner. Come, I’ll hear no plaints about your corn-riddled feet or achy hips.” She widens those familiar eyes in such a way as she knows makes it near impossible for me tell her no.

But I’m suddenly in such a sweat as if it were the height of summer, or some devilish spell raged over me.

“I must have water,” I say, laying my needlework down and standing myself up. This is my well-worked compromise for the hours I spend in Lady Cappelletta’s presence: I’ll not ask a by-your-leave-may-I-m’lady of her, as the common servants must. Instead, I annouce what I intend to do and set myself to doing it, unless I am bade otherwise.

“I’ll go withal.” Tybalt’s quick onto his feet, as if accompanying me to the courtyard well offers some great respite for his restlessness.

His coming along does not please me, for ruddied as I feel, I might plunge face and neck, arms and chest, into the water trough, were he not near. Instead, I must settle for long sips from the well-cup.

Tybalt’s mouth twists in thought as he watches all I swallow. “Bees need to drink, just as we do.” He points through the passageway to the arbor, toward a low clay bowl near the hive that’s filled with a pebbly mound over which he’s poured water. “It’s not rained in weeks. The other hives must be without water by now.” Tipping his head, he surveys the top of the compound wall. “Perhaps tonight, I can replenish them.”

“You cannot,” I say. “You must not.” Flushed though I am, that portending shiver shakes over me. “Your cut’s nearly healed. Surely the bees can wait another week, until you can go safely through Verona’s streets.”

“In a week, we may have lost whole hives. Pietro’s hives.”

“I’ll go.” Why do I promise such a thing, though the bees frighten me? It’s hearing how he speaks of Pietro. Esteeming my husband’s memory is the one honor I understand. “If you’ll invent some ex
cuse to satisfy Lady Cappelletta, I’ll go early tomorrow, when it’s yet cool.”

He is a sly fox and I’m the fat hen, I see that from the smile that spreads along his face as he tells me where each hive is set and how to reach them, saving for last the ones nooked within the walls of Santa Caterina. He knew I’d not let him journey so far with the prince’s edict still in place.

Small sacrifice it is for me. Shut away all this time, I long to roam the city and wander through the countryside beyond its walls.

“It’ll take all morning, and much of the afternoon,” I say. Longer, if I dally in places of my choosing.

“You’ll need to save the hours after noon to go to the Mercato Vecchio while the fabric merchants have out their finest wares.”

“Do you mean for me to dress the bees, once I’ve watered them?” In truth, the thought of walking among those crowded stalls, bright colors dazzling my eye as my hands work their way across silk, samite, and Damascus cloth—that delights me, whatever reason Tybalt has for wanting me to go.