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Authors: Lisa Fiedler

BOOK: Romeo's Ex
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L
ate in the afternoon, I arrive at Juliet's. She has sent the nurse's boy, Peter, to summon me; I am told 'tis a matter of dire urgency.
I cannot imagine what could be deemed more dire than what hath already befallen her—a near-dead cousin, a smuggled spouse lately thought a murderer, now banished. I find myself longing for the days when, for Jules, “dire” applied to such circumstances as having no appropriate slippers to wear with a favorite gown.
I make my way through the house noting a great bustle amongst the servants. Lady Capulet and Juliet's nurse are in a fine dither, and mine uncle stands in the center of it all, waving a sheet of paper.
“So many guests invite as here are writ,”
he instructs a
servant. When that one is dispatched, he catches hold of the sleeve of another and demands,
“Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning cooks.”
It seems another feast is in the works. Peculiar that a second celebration would come so swiftly upon the coattails of the last, and after a death in the family. Ere mine uncle can mark my presence, I make for the stairs and take them in twos.
I reach Juliet's chamber and find the door ajar. “Juliet?”
She jumps at the sound of my entrance and quickly conceals behind her back some small thing she clutches in her fist.
“'Tis only me, Juleps.”
“I feared you were my nurse or my lady. They left me just moments ago, bidding me sleep. Ha! As if I could.” She tucks the object beneath her pillow now. “O, Roz, glad am I that you have come. ‘Tis all so impossibly desperate!”
“What is?”
“Didst thou not notice the commotion in the hall?”
“Aye, it seems your sire plans another banquet.”
“Not any banquet. My wedding.”
“Your wedding? To whom, for the love of God?”
“Paris,” says Juliet, her voice breaking on a sob.
“When?”
“'Twas set for Thursday, but my anxious lord has changed his mind and called for it to take place tomorrow.”
“0, Jules, this is terrible.”
“You know not the half of it, cousin,” says Juliet. “The things my father said, the names he called me … .” She shakes her head, as though e'en the memory of it pains her. “Look you here.” She holds up a small vial.
“What have you?”
“A wedding gift, if thou wilt. From Friar Laurence.”
I am now thoroughly perplexed. “Perfume?”
“Nay. Poison.”
“Jules!”
“'Tis not precisely poison,” she qualifies. “Rather, 'tis a miraculous draught, a liquor that shall make me appear dead.”
“I know of the stuff. The Healer spoke of it; she brewed a small batch for the Friar, being that they share an interest in herbs and their properties, using a recipe sent to him some years ago by a noblewoman from Denmark.”
“Ah,” Juliet says. “'Tis imported, then.”
“'Tis risky. 'Tis unproven.”
“'Tis all I have.”
I wrap my arms around her; we sit down on her bed, the vial balanced there betwixt us, and Juliet tells me all that hath transpired, beginning with this morning's brutal quarrel with her lord and lady.
“I was determined to find a way out of this union,” she tells me, wringing her hands in her lap. “If my father would not grant me a reprieve, then I vowed I would find my own deliverance …” she pauses, lowering her eyes, “ … upon the point of a dagger.”
My heart gives a mighty thump. “Juliet, never say it!”
She meets my gaze again. “And what wouldst thou advise?”
“Anything but that! 'Tis suicide you speak of. A mortal sin!” I take her chin firmly in my hand. “And the most cowardly of acts, be sure of it.”
“Is it?” she asks, defiant now. “I hold no other power. My sire decides to whom I shall be married and when. And should I recoil from his choice, he will decide that I am no longer welcome in this home. Were I to lodge a knife in my breast, now, that is no one's choice but my own.”
I cannot help myself. I slap her, hard, across her face … so hard, my palm stings.
The force of the clout turns Juliet's face away from me. For a moment she is still, her chin upon her shoulder. Then, slowly she lifts her head. Her cheek is stained red from the impact of my hand. Good. I surely hope it smarts.
“Do not await my apology,” I tell her. “For 'tis not about to come.”
Her voice comes evenly, strangely calm, as though she has not heard me. “I went to the friar's cell to ask his counsel, and ‘twas this liquid he gave me. I am to drink it tonight. When the day of my marriage dawns I will be found here under its magical spell. Dead they will call me, and who is to know if my lord and lady will grieve? Mayhap they will be glad to be done with me, disobedient
wretch that I am. Of course, my demise shall deprive my father of the superior son for whom he so desperately wishes, and my mother will be near inconsolable o'er the fine food that shall go to waste when the wedding feast is called off. Although I suppose it will just as sufficiently feed the mourners who come to see me buried.”
I cannot believe this that I hear. My mouth has fallen open. She goes on.
“The good friar has already sent a Franciscan brother to deliver a missive to Romeo exiled in Mantua. The dispatch tells him to come for me in the tomb, where he shall find me seemingly deceased, but in truth, I shall be on the verge of waking. Hence we shall away, together, to Mantua, to live happily as man and wife.”
“Pray, cousin, what will you do if the potion be faulty, if you do not appear dead on the morrow? Wilt thou accept it as fate's decision and get thyself up and to the church to marry a second husband?”
“Never.”
Juliet withdraws from beneath her pillow a most lethal-looking blade.
“You may slap me again, if you must,” she says in that same flat tone. “But if I be forced to choose betwixt marriage to Paris and true death, I will put my faith in this knife. And in my only power, which is to die at my own hand.”
0, she is so very, very young, and so afraid. There is no wonder she has lost all trust. I snatch her weapon away.
“There are other daggers,” she whispers.
I scowl at her. “Odd, but just days ago you feared having e'en one blade about your person.”
“I have aged a lifetime since then.”
“You have aged not at all. You are still every bit a child!”
She rolls her eyes petulantly.
“Shame on thee, Juliet. Shame! What you describe is not power; nay, 'tis the very opposite of power. It is weakness and stupidity and indolence and defeat. Mark me, cousin, there is nothing mighty in quitting life. The only victory is summoning the audacity to stay. If you truly wish to exert power in the face of your father's cruelty, there is only one thing for you to do.”
“And what is that?” she asks.
“Live. No daggers, no potions. Live, and tell your lord that you cannot marry for you have already married.”
“He will turn me out, I told thee.”
“Let him. Romeo will return for you, and rather than spirit you away in secret from a crypt he can collect you at your own front door. You will have naught to fear from old Capulet after that.”
Juliet lowers her eyes to the vial. “'Tis easier this way.”
“Aye. 'Tis why I so dislike the plan.”
And having said so, I take the blade and march from her chamber, slamming the door as I go.
O
ne advantage of this almost-death is that I can be everywhere and see everything.
The disadvantage, of course, is that I can do nothing to influence what I see.
I have remained here, a ghost in Juliet's chamber, since her return from the friar's cell. I heard her tell Rosaline of a strange sleeping poison, I saw her reveal a dagger, and I witnessed the desperate moment in which Rosaline was driven to slap her hard. Relieved was I when Roz claimed Juliet's weapon, but still I was compelled to stay and watch over my beloved, confused young cousin.
“Ah, well,” she whispers, as though she feels me here, “there are other daggers. I've one stashed here in the darkest corner of my wardrobe cabinet, beneath my satin
undergarment. Rosaline is welcome to the blade she took; I am fortunate the nurse did not detect it when she dug through this soft finery in search of bridal attire. I've hidden yet another blade beneath an ivy-filled urn upon the balcony. Rosaline, you're welcome to the dagger, for the one on the balcony is longer, and this one concealed in the folds of my pale pink chemise be the sharpest of the three. I shall pray awhile before I drink. And then, a toast to my beloved I shall make.”
I watch as she uncorks the demon bottle. If the friar is true, tomorrow she shall be borne to the Capulet tomb, where she will stay dead but awhile, then awaken to kiss her husband, Romeo, the ghost of the flavor of this mysterious liquor still present on her lips.
“How shall it taste, I wonder?” she asks aloud.
And so she prays, then drinks her sleeping potion, not knowing if it is to be trusted. Mayhap she believes herself courageous for tempting Providence so boldly, but I see her action is more cowardly than brave. So childish is Juliet that the prospect of having to fight for what her heart desires frightens her enough to provoke a deed so dangerous.
I watch through the night.
And pray myself that the friar's draught keeps its promise.
 
Daylight comes and with it the girl's nurse. She calls out, but no answer does Juliet make. The nurse draws back the
bed curtains and sees the dismal scene. Juliet, her skin gone gray as a winter's sunset, the gown she was to wear at her wedding still hung upon a peg beside the bed.
“Lady, lady, lady!”
she cries, and reaches 'neath the cover to find that Juliet's flesh is cold.
“Help, help! My lady's dead!”
Juliet's mother comes now, and when she sees the pretty corpse, she falls to her knees by her daughter's bed wailing, “O, me, my child, my only life.”
And here is my uncle, Juliet's father, coming to collect the bride-to-be but finding instead a pretty corpse. His wife sobs,
“She's dead, she's dead … .”
Capulet's misery comes in a keening howl.
I long for a voice, for with it I would remind the man that 'twas only yesterday he called her baggage and threatened to toss her out of his house.
Well, she will be out of his house now, won't she?
He loved her only when she took commands, and her lady mother was equally unreliable with her affections.
I would damn them both to hell, but as they huddle beside their dead child, I realize they are already there.
H
ow many living cousins is one girl expected to mourn? And in the course of a single week! For there lies Juliet, believed dead, and all those who grieved so recently for Tybalt have gathered here again to pay their last respects.
I have come with the others to the tomb and bow my head and ask God's blessing, but 'tis fraud, all of it. Mayhap they wonder why I shed no tears. Mayhap they think me in some manner of shock, or denial. 0, how I tire of these false funerals for the living.
As we enter the tomb, the nurse corners me beside an urn of withering roses. Her ruddy cheeks are damp with tears.
“'Twas I who found her, you know.”
“Yes, nurse. I know.”
Now the cleric begins his ritual:
In nomine Patris,
et Filii,
et Spiritus Sancti …
The candles are lit, the psalms are sung. The tomb is a shadowy place that smells of long-dead flesh and brittle bones, yet I am pleased that my cousin hath found a way to come here. For when her love collects her, she will leave this place enjoying high spirits. Whereas all others who have come here dead have left here, well,
as
spirits.
'Tis a comical thought. O, I will laugh. I know it, I will laugh at my own musings and clever wordplay, and if I laugh they will not think me shocked, but mad! I feel the giggle bubbling in my throat … I clench my teeth against the happy sound …
And of a sudden, it occurs to me that after tonight, when Romeo carries his bride off to Mantua, much time will pass ere I am able to see her again. Or perhaps all time. Perhaps they will embrace their exile so thoroughly that they will abscond to someplace e'en farther than Mantua and cut all ties with their quarreling kin.
Juliet, my darling cousin, my dearest friend, will be gone from me.
I shall miss her. I shall miss her deeply.
 
Good-bye, sweet Juliet. May God keep you well in Mantua.
I pray you'll travel safe and find yourself welcome. And
above all else, I pray that your Romeo will prove
himself worth the trouble.

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