O, Juliet (21 page)

“Oh no, no,” I begged him.

“I’ll go faster now, Juliet. Faster.” The man was good at his word.

“No, Romeo . . . oh, Romeo . . . oh ... oh ...”

“I’m coming to you, my love,” he whispered. “You must come to me. Come to me!”

With all of my being and all of my soul . . . I obeyed my husband.

 

We lay there side by side, nothing touching save our fingers entwined. The room’s chill was creeping up our still-warm, damp bodies. Romeo reached down and brought the coverlet over us. He lay on one elbow over me and tucked the sheet around one shoulder, kissing the other, pushing his nose behind my ear and tasting it with his tongue.

“You are more salty than sweet,” he observed.

I turned and licked his cheek. “You are more sweet than salty.”

“There is a poem in that, I think.”

I looked to my desk and thought of the verse I had written not so very long before, of the fire. Now it seemed a lifetime had passed. Still, I was startled to see a shade of dawn in the window.

“You have to go,” I said.

He lay very quietly.

I sat up. “You must go. Now.” I rose from the bed and, throwing on my nightgown, went to my clothing chest. I withdrew a shift and from beneath a pile of linen removed Romeo’s doublet and Friar Bartolomo’s white robe—that which I had worn as my wedding dress. I placed them all in front of Romeo, who had wrenched himself to sitting. Then I found his hose tangled in the bedsheets.

“First hose and nightshirt,” I said in the voice of a housewife. “The doublet next. Over that the friar’s robe. I’ll find a rope for your belt. It will be a good disguise. They’ll be looking for Romeo, not a young monk.”

He began dressing with desultory slowness.

“Faster,” I said, watching the sky lighten the window.

He grew slower yet.

“Romeo!”

Anger flashed in his eyes. “I’ll never see you again.”

“You will. I promise you will. We have not come this far to be torn from each other forever. We are meant to be together! Romeo and Juliet. Even the Fates cannot part us.”

He could not help but smile at my ravings.

“But you must hurry. Leave the city before sunrise. Can you steal a horse?”

“Better a mule if I am to be a friar.” He was lacing up his doublet. “First a murderer. Now a thief. Some husband.” I helped him on with the robe. “I’ll go to the Monastery San Marco,” he said. “The stable there.”

I pulled the coiled silk tie from my bed curtain and wrapped it round Romeo’s waist.

“Your hair,” I said. “There is far too much of it.”

“Cut it off,” he ordered me.

There was a blade under my bed. I took it and with no hesitation began to chop. It was a ragged job but far better than it had been. With the robe’s hood on his head he looked a proper novice. The sight of him in his disguise made me smile unaccountably.

“Will I make a good escape in this?” he asked.

“Only God will know this ‘servant’ was inside his wife last night.”

“Juliet!” Romeo laughed at my outrageousness and hugged me to him. But then the embrace grew desperate. I had to push him away.

“Go, Romeo. Now. You dare no longer stay.”

“And I
will
see you again? Hold you in my arms?”

“Yes. Yes!”

When the balcony door opened, we both startled at how light it already was. With a final glance he leapt over the wall and scrambled down the fig tree’s trunk. I watched my lover-monk run the garden’s curved path and, tucking his skirts in his rope belt, scale the garden wall.

Then he was gone. All sight of him. The melody of his voice.

That he was with me still, there was no doubt. His seed. His scent. The taste of him in my mouth.

Despite my cheerful words of our future meetings, the hollowness of his absence overwhelmed me at once. I pulled closed the balcony door, but as it shut and my eyes fell on the pile of his shorn hair, I felt panic rise, as though that door, with Romeo outside it, had closed forever.

“No,” I said aloud, scolding myself. I straightened my back. He was my husband. I was his wife—well wed and well bedded. Romeo would find refuge with his uncles while somehow we found justice for him. There could be no question of it.

For the God of Love was merciful, and presided over all.

T
he gloom of Florentine autumn could not have settled more heavily than it did the day we bore Marco to the Capelletti graveyard. The mourning party, one that for our small family should have been modest, began to swell from the moment we left our home. Citizens, having eschewed their peacock silks, had this day donned their dusty black and their grimmest countenances.

Marco’s body was borne upon an open bier covered only with a sheer linen gauze by eight men, his friends and family on foot following behind. The cortege moved slowly, but in no way silently. All around me I heard the muttered curses upon Romeo’s name. “Monticecco murderer,” they said. “Fire starter.” “Slayer of the new Florentine peace.” “Vile butcher of the city’s beloved son.”

Oh, how I longed to shout, “You are mistaken! He is innocent! His family are peaceful people. Friends. It is Jacopo Strozzi you should so revile, not Romeo!”

But there I was, trapped beneath my black veil, trapped in the prison of Jacopo’s lies, mistruths that the good people of Florence, so unused to peace between our warring families, were all too eager to embrace.

Several families shared the graveyard, their tombs small marble edifices above the ground, these leading to subterranean chambers and tunnels. I was no stranger to this charnel house, for many of my people had died and here been laid to rest. We were taught, even as children, to turn a steely face to the Reaper.

The tomb door—a heavy stone that pivoted on a creaking mechanism—was pushed open by two strong factory workers. Men with torches went in first, ducking their heads, as the doorway was unnaturally low. Priests with their somber chants and swinging incense balls were next.

The family followed, I on my mother’s arm. She had been long past tears on the way across the city, but as we entered the tomb, I heard her sob once, then sniff sharply as if to regain her composure. As we accompanied the corpse down the long aisle, we were not spared the sight of our loved ones in every horrible stage of decay. On either side of us on their marble slabs lay Papa’s ancient ancestors in long collapsing piles of bone. Then my uncles, great-uncles, their wives and children. The smell was quite unspeakable—sweet, sickening dust, so fine that it felt we were breathing in the dead. Mama clutched my hand tighter as we glided ghostlike deeper into the catacombs, for here reposed the sons and daughters she had borne, in more recent stages of moldering death.

A small commotion and the sound of scraping stone up ahead signaled that Marco had been lifted onto his place of final rest. The priests grew feverish in their prayers and finally Mama broke, weeping loudly, her cries echoing within the arched ceiling of the tomb.

I forced myself to look upon Marco’s face under the gauze. I somehow thought he would look different in death, for he had been so animated in life. But there he was, recognizable after all as my dear cousin, always ready with a smile, a sly jest to make me laugh.

A pain stabbed through my chest with the knowledge that Marco had died on the point of Romeo’s dagger. Whether by purpose or pushed there, that was the fact of it. Had Romeo and I not loved each other, my cousin would not be lying here dead.

Now it was I who sobbed aloud. I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see that Jacopo Strozzi was my comforter. It took all my strength not to cringe away from those bony fingers, fingers that had clutched Romeo and Marco to him in a death grip.

It was unbearable. I feigned an even louder cry and doubled over in a semblance of pain, but it was meant to unhand me from Marco’s murderer—and succeeded.

Thankfully the priests’ droning had finished, and they turned away from the bier. Others were only too glad to follow them from the tunnel, and none too soon we were back in the dismal but welcome light of day.

The crowd outside the tomb had grown somber. I saw for the first time that day Lucrezia, looking, I thought, as alarmed as she was sad. She was flanked by her husband-to-be and Piero’s father, Don Cosimo.

Everyone closed ranks round the clergymen, who would now speak of God’s mercy for our beloved brother, and my father, who would offer Marco’s eulogy. The priests were mercifully brief and stepped back into the crowd that had grown utterly silent.

My father, grief and the gray light of day having aged him, began to speak.

“My eldest brother’s only son was named after his father. The Two Marcos, we called them, for the two were alike in more than name. Some men—I think perhaps I am one—see more shadow than light in the world. To this father and son, all was illuminated with boundless hope and unaccountable joy. My brother’s death was a sad thing, but he had lived out his life. My nephew, whom I had taken to my heart like my own child . . .”

Papa was unable to go on, but all understood the unspoken words—a man dying too young. There was a furious hush, seething with indignation and rage.

Then the unexpected happened. The impossible. The outrageous.

The crowd parted and into the void walked Roberto Monticecco, spine straight and expression mournful. He might have been a leper, the way people backed from the sight of him. Others seemed poised to attack.

Jacopo moved to my mother’s side and placed a steadying arm around her shoulders. I dared look at my father, whose mouth had fallen open in shock and dismay. Holding Papa’s eyes, Roberto opened his palms helplessly and shook his head.

“Stop,” Papa said. “Stop there.”

“Capello, let me speak.”

“Speak? What will that accomplish?”

“I’ve come to offer my condolences.”

“I do not want them.”

“You know this death was an accident.”

“I know no such thing.”

“Why would my son wish to harm his friend?”

“They were not friends,” Jacopo offered in an offended tone.

“They were,” I said, almost before I knew I had spoken.

All eyes fell on me, and I thought Jacopo’s glare so sharp it might slice off pieces of flesh.

“Do you
defend
Romeo?” my father demanded indignantly of me. “Were you there?” A place under his eye had begun to twitch. “What does a silly woman know of such things?” His cruelty was unexpected.

I was frightened and humiliated, but I had to finish what I had started.

“Of course I was not witness to the stabbing.” I winced as I said the word, remembering the first sight of Romeo at my door, covered in Marco’s blood. “But Marco told me how he thought Romeo the best of men.”

“Sadly, it was one-sided, this sentiment,” Jacopo insisted, growing visibly angry at me.

“No,” Roberto said. “My son told me several times of his love for Marco.”

“Why should we believe him?” Jacopo persisted. “Why should we believe you?” he said, glaring at Roberto. “You have offended this poor, suffering family by your presence here. Capello is too polite to tell you to leave, but I am not.”

Roberto looked pleadingly at my father and at Mama. I could see she was moved by their new friend’s words. She wanted so to believe him. Certainly she was thinking this moment of Mona Sophia. I saw her trembling hand begin to rise. Papa stayed it with his own.

“You should leave now,” he said to Roberto. “Otherwise I cannot promise your safety.”

Roberto stood his ground for a moment more, pleading with his eyes.

Then a rock was thrown, connecting squarely with his jaw. He cried out and clutched his face. Mama and I gasped in unison, but the sight of Roberto’s blood dripping between his fingers seemed an instant incitation. The sea of mourners that had parted to admit him now drew closer around him.

Blades were unsheathed.

I saw Jacopo among those who crowded in, clearly pleased at the turn of events. “Papa, do something,” I said, not bothering to lower my voice.

He did nothing, and panic rose in me. In moments, Romeo’s father could be torn to pieces.

“Stop.” The single word, uttered low, was firm and commanding. “Stand down.”

I recognized the voice at once, and the mourners—turned surging mob—had known it as well. They stood in place as though a heavenly hand had blocked their way.

Cosimo de’ Medici, the most reasonable and respected of men, had spoken.

“Roberto Monticecco,” he went on, as though he were addressing a gentleman at one of his balls, “we understand your desire to offer your sympathy and to defend the honor of your son, but perhaps it was unwise for you to come. I suggest you go home. And for the time being, if I were you, I would lock my doors and gates . . . for the safety of your wife and your workers.”

The crowd grumbled their assent, pleased at Don Cosimo’s warning.

I saw Papa out the corner of my eye. He seemed relieved. A path opened and Roberto, stiff with dignity, walked through. Once he had disappeared, the space filled with mourners.

Don Cosimo spoke again. “Capello, my friend, you have not finished your eulogy of Marco. Will you continue?”

T
he funeral concluded, members of our family, friends, neighbors, and Papa’s clients walked home to our house. It was a truly dismal procession, for it had begun to rain, but all were quietly alert, as Don Cosimo and his son had come, on foot, as well.

Still at Mama’s arm, I felt her nervousness. The greatest man in Florence had never graced us with a visit before. Marco, for all that we loved him, was neither a rich nor a prominent man. Don Cosimo’s coming, therefore, was a sign of the profoundest respect toward my father, and Papa’s civic stature—by this simple act—was greatly enhanced.