Juliet's Nurse (23 page)

He takes my plump hand, raising his long arm and twirling me beneath it as Juliet would’ve had me do in her capers around the sala. “The bees need no more dress than a dusting of bright pollen. But our dear Nurse deserves something prettier than that old morello to wear to Rosaline’s feast.”

His words stop me mid-turn. For near eleven years, I’ve worn naught but mulberry-dyed cloth. I’ve not minded my widow’s weeds, bought with what was made selling off Pietro’s few garments, and the scant furnishings and kitchen things we’d owned.
I wear my loss for all the world to see, for it’s all I’ve left of my happily wedded state. Or nearly all, aside from our Madonna, and Pietro’s three linen shirts. Well darned they are by now, but still I ever wear one beneath my dress, the last hidden rub of him on me. Only my precious bedmate Juliet knows how I yet keep something of his against me. But even she does not suspect how I hope the dull morello worn atop those shirts washes any brightness from my face, keeps anyone from noticing the way my coloring matches her own.

I drop my hand from Tybalt’s. “Sumptuous colors come at great cost. They’re meant for such as Juliet, and Lady Cappelletta.”

“Pick something golden, then. The color of new-minted coins, and the flowing honey that brings them.” He reaches for the cup, dips it once more into the well bucket, and holds it tippling full to me. “Half all the harvests’ profits are your due. Will you not spend them?”

This is a well-worn argument between us. The boy who, through all his tutor’s beatings, never cared to reckon sums has turned into a man who faithfully tallies how much each season’s wax and honey yield, and figures to the last eighth-denaro the half-share he insists is mine. I’ve not touched any of it, letting Tybalt store those coins along with the wages Lord Cappelletto pays each quarter for my minding Juliet. As though the things I do for Juliet, I do for money—no more than Tybalt tends Pietro’s hives solely to take a partner’s portion of the little sum to be earned at it.

Another flash of heat rises over me. I accept the cup, swallowing down the water while Tybalt reminds me for the hundredth time
that the coins sit in a box hidden beneath the arbor-hive. The bees guard our lucre, which is made from robbing them. “Take all of it, if you wish. And take my hooded cloak as well, so that at each place where there’s a hive, they’ll know I’ve sent you.”

“And what of Juliet?” I ask. We both know this is no journey on which Lord Cappelletto would allow her.

“I’ll play the knight-gallant for her, and give her dances as well as songs, and jousting games, and every piece of play her pretty heart desires.” Grown as he is, he’s got less patience to dote on Juliet, though she longs for his attention as much as ever. I nod to let him see how pleased I am that he’ll please her.

Taking quick measure of my gladness, he asks, “And while I amuse my cousin, will you carry a message from me to Rosaline?”

The slightest crease rises between his eyes, and I begin to wonder if all the talk of watering bees or buying cloth was but a ruse, so that he could ask this of me.

“Of course.” The fat hen is not so fast outfoxed, for I’m glad to be privy to whatever confidence he sends his cloistered sister. “What shall I tell her?”

“No need for telling.” He draws a folded page from his doublet sleeve, already sealed with a fat dollop of blood-red wax. “I’ve got it written here.”

“Written—for Rosaline?” Perchance the girl can read, the Sisters of Santa Caterina needing to be learned enough to spend their days bent over holy books. But to write is to keep confidence from me, and Tybalt well knows it. “There was no need for you to struggle with a pen,” I say, mouthing Lord Cappelletto’s ready reminder of
Tybalt’s flaws, “when I’d have no trouble remembering your message, and repeating it to her.”

Unkind it is of me, but if the words hurt Tybalt, he gives no show of it. “Rosaline prefers me write, so she may keep the missive and read it over in any lonely hour.”

I’d not believe pious Rosaline passed any lonely hours, living among a convent’s worth of company and devoting herself to her holy wedded Christ. I pack my tongue close among my well-cracked teeth to keep from saying so to Tybalt, as I tuck the letter into my own sleeve.

TWELVE

I
t’s good I’ve got the girth I do. It draws up the length of Tybalt’s cloak, the excess fabric folded over the twice-girdled silver belt he’s lent me. A rich man’s finery works like a faery-tale spell. Wrapped in it, I slip into houses as grand as Ca’ Cappelletti in every parish of Verona, each with a hive within its hidden garden. There are yet more hives nooked into the very walls that encircle the city, and tucked in trees that edge the fields beyond the walls. None question me busying myself about the hives, cloaked in fine camlet embroidered with the Cappelletti crest in gilded thread.

I imagine Pietro as I go about, how carefully he must have chosen each place, how wily he was to site his hives so well. Log or cork, woven fennel stalk or wooden chest—I’d not known there were so many ways to house a hive, each selected to suit where it’s
placed. And nearby, always some simple dish piled with pebbles where water’s meant to be.

Tybalt’s talked so much of how Pietro loved his bees, I try to feel for the tiny creatures some small part of what my big bear of a husband felt. As I tip the jug I carry, the bees dance with expectant delight, the most adventurous ones touching down on one of the tiny rocks, drinking from the shimmery surface even before I’m done. It’s not unlike tending a flock. Though it was my family’s poverty that put me to shepherding, I came to relish roaming beyond the sinister confines of my father’s house, the dull familiar of our little village. I passed happy days among my sheep, soothing any nighttime pangs of solitude by burrowing myself against a warm, woolly companion. It’s comfort to think Pietro felt the same, venturing out from the Via Zancani to set one hive and then another, slowly casting a buzzing skein around Verona and the countryside beyond.

As I make the steep climb to Santa Caterina, the ruts formed on the narrow path by hoof and cart and carriage all work hard upon my feet, the borrowed belt clanging an uneven rhythm to match my unsure pace. I empty the jug in careful swigs, husbanding a few drops onto my sleeve and pressing the dampened cloth against the hot nape of my neck. The sun stays close on me, drawing his course along the sky as I rise above the city, until at last I stand before the convent gate.

Setting down the water jug, I use both hands to tug upon the bell-pull, feeling for the resistance that weighs the weathered rope, a metal answer to my effort. This is how our lives are marked and meted out. The tolling of the hours of a day, the Sunday of a week, the holy-days of a year. And then the rings like this, tolled to tell
that somebody’s arrived. And the other kind, rung from parish church when someone’s departed. Only when I led my flock to pasture could I forget such a great and brassy sound, forget that in all the universe there was something louder than bleating sheep, or a wolfish howl, or the most fiercely raging storm. Louder than any noise I heard upon the hills.

An-gel
,
an-gel
. In the awful time when we lost all, the death knells rang day and night, knocking my heart from its rhythmed beats and stunning the breath from me. Pietro would gather me in his great arms, so that his broad chest was all I could know of the world. Pressing his lips to my ear, he whispered
an-gel, an-gel,
over and over, matched to the pealing of the bells. Angel, each one of our boys was become, as though their souls rode to heaven on the tolls. Angel, Pietro said I was, his Angelica here on earth.

I want to hear my husband’s comforting
an-gel
once again. But the high-pitched clanging of the bell upon the gate to Santa Caterina offers only a keening questioning.

Metal slides against metal, the hasp swings, and the wooden door gives way. I’m faced with a woman near my own age, or so I guess from what the wimple shows of her gaunt face. Her hands are rubbed raw, the odor of lye clinging to her.

“I’m here to tend the bees,” I say, lifting the jug. She nods and turns without a word. I follow her inside, wait while she slides the hasp shut. She points me to the well and, before I’ve drawn the water to refill the jug, silently disappears back into the laundering shed.

Tybalt’s told me where to find the half a dozen hives nestled among the convent grounds. As I bend to pour water at the first
of them, set within the vineyard wall, a lone bee flies inside the gape of cloak below my chin. I stop stone still, anticipating the hot anger of its sting. But I feel instead a gentle tickle as it crawls along the curve of my collar-bone. The creature makes curious survey of my tender flesh, such as none has done since death stilled Pietro’s insisting kisses. Tybalt’s spoke enough of the workings of a hive that I know this bee was hatched no more than a few months past. But still I cannot help thinking of it as my husband’s. I close my eyes, shutting out the world that’s easily seen, and wonder if in its oddly pleasant prickling there’s some message from him.

“Pietro, our girl’s near grown. Lovely and loving as only we could make her. Fresh as the milk and sweet as the honey that’s fed her. And Tybalt—at last to raise a boy who’s lived to be a man. You’d be proud of him. But husband, how I miss you. Just as much today as I ever have.” I wait, wanting for some answer. But all I hear is the steady hum of the insects entering and exiting the hive. The shivery sensation along my neck is gone, whatever bee was there flown off to join the others, unrecognizable to me once I blink my eyes open to the bright sun.

I make my way from one hive to the next, the convent grounds familiar from my recent visit, though to move about them, even to breathe the same scent of earth and plants, feels different without Juliet and Tybalt. The land slopes gently here, and at the farthest hive, I turn back to look across the low wall that encloses the convent. Spread in the valley below, encircled by the Adige, is Verona. I search for the familiar shape of San Fermo, then the soaring campanile of Sant’Anastasia, and try to pick out which of the household towers rising between them is Ca’ Cappelletti.

Does a bee feel such a pull for its hive, as I do for the teeming city? Is each nectar-gatherer as devoted to its queen as I am to Juliet, that even on so short a flight, there is always the longing to be back with her?

The bee is more practiced at parting from its queen, for it takes flight each day. I’ve not been away from Juliet since the morning more than a decade past when, newly weaned, she rode here with Lord Cappelletto and Tybalt, to bring Rosaline back to the nuns. I still miss those first years. Sometimes I believe I’m living them again during our nights of enlaced sleep, when all the world retreats and Juliet’s bed becomes a tiny ship in which the two of us drift, dreaming together.

I can feel the wonder of her at each age she’s been. Tiny baby, plump toddler, fast-growing girl. The near-woman she is now. I’d keep her this age forever if I could, though part of me is impatient to see the lady she’ll soon be—and to have her know all she is to me.

That impatience quickens my pace to the final hive, set near the statue of Santa Caterina. But when I round the curve in the path, the water jug slips from my hands, smashing to the ground. The bees. They’re everywhere. Crawling on the outside of the hive, irrupting onto the ground below it, infesting every nearby leaf and stem. Fear shivers over me as I watch the dark, creeping army. And then, in a frenzied instant, every bee alights at once. Like Biblical locusts blotting out the sky, they swoop together toward the saint.

They land upon the book she carries, which disappears beneath the writhing swarm. The great mound of bees teeming Santa Ca
terina’s breast seems a perversing of every statue, every fresco, every image I’ve ever seen of Santa Maria suckling the Holy Christ.

I thought that it was you
. A tremor shudders my own breast, as I remember Juliet’s words. What have I to do with such an awful-omened thing?

I sidle away, too frighted to turn my back lest the bees come after me. As soon as I round a curve in the path and can no longer see them, vinegary fear pumps through my legs, and I race across the sloping grounds to the convent gate, thrust back the metal bar, and heave the hasp free. Shoving open the gate, I stumble down the winding path.

It’s a clumsy-footed scramble to the city, tripping over Tybalt’s too-long cloak. And over my own dripping dread. Just as I reach the Ponte delle Navi, something slams hard against me from behind, knocking me face-first to the stone span. Bone cracks as blood fills my throat.

“Dirty Cappelletto.” Each syllable comes with a boot kick, the last of them pitching me onto my side.

“What’s this?” Another voice, uncertain. “A maid in a man’s cloak?”

“Made to pay, she’ll be,” the first, angrier man says. “Though what I’ll thrust in her is not what I’d thrust into that knavish Tybalt.”

A thud—and then a weight on me. That same man, cursing. And another, pummeling him with a wrathy, “The devil take you, for attacking a woman in broad daylight.”

I try to push myself up, but the slightest lift of my head sets the world swimming. I cover my face while they brawl over me.

The shouting spreads, and the sounds of fighting, too. Like tinder igniting into an ever-growing ring of flame.

Someone grips my wrist, peels my arms from my face. A careful finger pries my eyelid up. In the blur, I make out brown cassock, and Friar Lorenzo’s great gaping ears.

He pulls me to my feet and guides me from the fray, which spills from the bridge into the piazza. Edging past the swinging fists and flashing daggers, we slip around the massive hind-end of San Fermo and take shelter in the arcaded churchyard.

The noise of the clash is muted within these holy walls. But that only makes the pounding in my head sound louder. “No farther,” I say. Or try to, the words swallowed in a bloody gurgle.

It is enough for the friar to make out my meaning. He sets me upon a bench and unrolls the sleeve of Tybalt’s cloak. Bunching the gilt-embroidered edge against my nose, he bids me hold it tight to staunch the blood.

I nod, but even that slight movement shoots pain through my skull. Friar Lorenzo hies to his cell, returning to offer both poultices and prayers. Neither brings me relief. With a rip of pain along my side, my stomach twists, and I heave out a putrid stream onto his holy robe.

When I croak out an apology, Friar Lorenzo waves the words away. He has all a Franciscan’s devotion to the wretched—coupled, perchance, with some scheme to appeal to Lord Cappelletto for the gift of a new cassock. He moves to make the sign of the cross upon me, but his
benedicte
is drowned out by a thundering of horses’ hooves and the angry trumpets of Prince Cansignorio’s royal guard.

“Thank Christ, they’ll put an end to the fighting,” Friar Lorenzo says.

It’s true, the lance-wielding guard will scatter the brawlers. But
Tybalt, who drew his sword to answer so small a slight as he imagined the old Montecche gave him at the convent, has his hot-headed match in a thousand other young men of Verona. As I mark the blood that’s soaked into the gold-threaded Cappelletti crest embroidered on his cloak, I wonder whether it will take more power than the prince has, and a greater miracle than Friar Lorenzo can pray forth, to calm them all and bring a lasting peace to the city’s streets.

Though Friar Lorenzo offers his arm to lead me back to Ca’ Cappelletti, once we make our slow way out of the churchyard and enter the piazza, he stops to survey the handful of youth who, too wounded to run off, are being held by the prince’s guard.

Each breath sears new pain into me. I long to be a-bed and have Juliet lay her pretty head beside my throbbing one. But I’m caught quick while Friar Lorenzo weighs the worth of delivering me to Lord Cappelletto against what he might amass here. The Franciscan’ll not easily forego a chance to offer succor to any who are hurt. He must want to tend the injured brawlers, and to plead with the guard to have mercy on them, which will surely earn him the favor of the young men’s powerful families.

Another horseman cantors up the Via Filippini. He wears Cansignorio’s own colors, the carmine of his high-hemmed doublet and well-turned leg setting off his night-black mount. It’s as if an over-earnest hand has copied over the prince, creating a younger, handsomer, and less haughty version of Verona’s ruler.

“Is this some new treason against my uncle?” he asks.

Nephew to a prince—surely the greatest gain is to be made by catering to him. “Young cocks, Count Paris, you know how they
crow. But it’s only some ancient grudge, rupturing anew. No treason is intended.” Friar Lorenzo presses his palms together and bows his head as though he’s begging for the count’s guidance to solve a great dilemma. “I might treat both their anger and their injuries, and thus do my rightful duty to Verona’s ruler by calming such disturbances to our streets, if I were not pledged to escort this goodly widow to Ca’ Cappelletti.”

The count, though no older than the brawlers, bears his princely connection with great pride. “I’ll guide the widow,” he tells Friar Lorenzo, “while you remedy the rest.” He unhorses himself, leaving the reins to one of the guard, and offers me his arm. “If it pleases you?”

It pleases me to look upon such a pleasant face. And yet it pleases me not, to be bloodied and stained in his handsome presence.

“May the saints bless you for your benevolence.” I lean unsteadily on him, forcing my features not to betray how badly I ache as we walk along the Via Leoni. “Surely Lord Cappelletto—”

“Sure Lord Cappelletto surely is, as I’ve seen often enough in my uncle’s council chamber.” He smiles, and despite the pain I do, too. Few there are for me to smirk with, about Lord Cappelletto’s pretensions. “You are by blood or by marriage, a Cappelletta?”

That wilts my smile. “Neither,” I say. What binds me to Juliet is something I cannot explain. Not to this noble stranger. Even with Juliet herself—we’ve no words for what we share. “I care for Lord Cappelletto’s daughter.”

“Is she of an age that requires much care?” He gives a curious glance to my mannish cloak.

“She’s a girl for whom none can help but care. Including her
devoted kinsman Tybalt, who dotes on her while I am off upon a pressing errand, gifting me his own cloak to do it in.”