by Rachel Caine
I limped forward, gritting my teeth against the burn, and laid my palm flat on the velvet-covered marble. The suffering Christ looked down on me with a severe expression, and I quickly crossed myself. “In all humility, I ask for sanctuary from those who would see me killed,” I said. “And best if they know not who they’re really hunting, Friar.”
He spied the bag I held in the other hand, and nodded toward it. “What carry you there?”
I tossed it to him. “A gift, for the Church,” I said. “Imagine the poor that might be fed from such a beneficence.”
He gazed at me for a moment, then opened the bag and made a gulping sound. “Stolen goods!” he thundered. I could hear the howling of the dog drawing nearer. “How dare you, boy!”
“I keep none of it,” I said. “I give it freely to the Church. May Christ himself witness my sincerity.”
Friar Lawrence was caught in a dilemma, and if the situation had been less dire it might have been amusing. He considered for far too long before he said, “Quickly, go behind the altar.” He tossed the heavy bag behind with me, tore the cloak from my shoulders, and used it to mop up the spots of blood, all the way to the door of the chapel, and then out to the street to confuse the trail. “Stay here and quiet, for the love of God and your mortal flesh!”
I eased back against the wall and took the respite to pull pieces from my linen shirt to bind up the wound tightly. The bleeding had slowed, which was lucky, but the limp would be difficult to conceal, and a nasty betrayal should anyone put out word to look for such to the guard. One problem at a time, I told myself. First, you must get home alive.
I heard the dog come nearer . . . nearer . . . and the shouts of the men, with the high-pitched, anxious tone of the goldsmith riding over all.
Then it all swept past, without a pause.
I collapsed in sweet relief for a few moments, and was about to rise when I heard the chapel door swing open. I thought it would be the friar returning, but instead, it was someone else. I heard the light tread, the quick, nervous breathing, and the rustle of stiff fabrics as someone knelt before the altar. I risked a quick glance over and saw a hooded figure—but not the figure of a monk, or a man.
Those were the skirts of a woman.
She began to raise her head, and I quickly ducked down again, silently swearing at the ill luck. “Friar?” Her voice was low, and a little uncertain. I heard her rise to her feet. “Friar Lawrence? Are you here? I’ve come at the appointed time. . . .”
All was clear, then; the friar’s vows of chastity were well lapsed, and this was some girl come for an assignation. I’d ruined the holy man’s night in many ways, it seemed—but then the chapel door opened and closed again, and I heard the hasty slap of sandals and the heavy, labored breaths of the monk. “My lady,” he said, “I am sorry; please sit. It’s been a . . . surprising night. I’ve another wayward lamb to tend, so if you would not mind—”
“Another . . .” She gasped. “There’s someone here! I knew it! I could hear him move!”
“Another with as little reason to be known as you, my lady, so please console yourself. He will not see your face, nor you his. Wait here, in the shadows, while I fetch him to the confessional.”
He appeared a moment later, frowning down at me. I gave him an innocent look and held out the bag, which he snatched away with righteous haste. “Up, you sinner,” he said. “And keep your mouth well shut on the lady’s presence here, mark me.”
I hobbled up. “I swear,” I said, “your amorous trysts are safe with me.”
I heard her gasp again, but this time it sounded less fear than fury, and though she had her hood up and face turned down, she could not resist an angry glare in my direction.
And the candlelight showed me just a small glimpse of sweetly familiar lines and flashing dark eyes, and I knew who she was, just as from the same glimpse she marked my face, and her lips parted in shock.
Rosaline Capulet rose, threw back her hood, and hastened to my side. “You’re hurt!” she said. I could not take my gaze from her. The beating’s effects had long passed, and though there was a thin scar near her hairline where she’d been cut, she looked as lovely as ever. I’d never thought to see her again, nor to be so close if I did, and the smell of pressed roses and oranges washed through me like warm rain.
And then she touched me, gentle fingers on my arm, and in flinching I almost fell. “Your face,” I said stupidly. I couldn’t stop drinking in the sight, the miracle of it. I controlled myself with an effort of sheer will. “I am glad you’re well healed.”
“You are not!”
“I’m well enough,” I said. Her presence was too overwhelming, and the implications were beyond me. “Why are you here, at such an hour, without escort?”
She looked quickly past me, at Friar Lawrence, who firmly took hold of my shoulders and steered me toward the confessional. “Now, now, sir, you’ve spoiled my efforts to keep fire and fuel apart, by which I mean Montague and Capulet, but you must mind your own affairs. The lady’s are none of yours.”
“But—” Surely she was not here for an assignation with this fat old man. The thought burned holes in me. “She should have taken her vows by now!”
“I delayed,” she said from behind me. “I dissembled. I pretended illness. But now my mummery’s come to an end. I am to be sent to a convent, where my faults will be . . . corrected,” she said from behind me, and I resisted the friar’s grip and turned to look straight at her. She was straight and tall now, hands clasped low, and the candlelight caressed the curve of her face like a lover’s hand. “Next week. The friar has promised me that he will send me tonight to a friendlier order, where I may at least be granted leave to read and study. My brother’s wish is that my spirit be broken, but I will thwart him in this. If I must be God’s, I will be God’s on my own terms, and not Tybalt’s.”
“Tonight,” I said. It felt like a blow, though there was no reason for that. “You go tonight.”
“Aye, boy, she’s risked much to steal away for this chance, and you’ll not ruin it from familial spite!” Friar Lawrence pushed me into one side of the confessional and tried to slam the door, but I caught it on both palms and shoved back. Rosaline had not moved.
“He’s not forgiven you, has he?” I asked. “For letting me go?”
She did not answer, but then, she did not have to; I knew the truth well enough. I was the reason her brother threatened her with the loss of the one thing she feared—her study. He’d see her sent to an order that held to the belief that women should be dumb beasts, content to parrot the responses given them and mortify their sinful flesh . . . and it would kill her; I could see it in her eyes. All that was precious in her would die.
My fault again.
“There are rumors about that you betrayed Mercutio and his lover,” I said, and saw her flinch. “I know you did not. It was said to put him against your family, not out of any truth.”
She let out a slow breath and nodded. “I heard of the boy’s murder,” she said. “I would never have betrayed them, even had I known. I believe God loves all, sinners and saints, and judgment is His business, not mine. But I’m grieved to be another excuse for hatred between our houses.”
I did not know what else to say to her. I’ve thought of you was true, but ridiculously wrong. . . . I was a Montague, and unlike Romeo, I knew my path. I finally said, “I am glad you’re well, lady.”
Her sharp gaze took in the blood on my dark clothing, and the bite beneath the ripped fabric. “I am glad the dog was slow,” she said, and smiled a little. “Though that limp will betray you tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“Stage a fall down the steps of your house,” she said, “in the early morning, before witnesses. Be sure the injury is well wrapped before you do; you’d not want blood to betray you, but you can feign a wrenched ankle then and none can disprove it.”
It was good, practical advice, and I nodded to her. I no longer trusted my voice; it wanted
to soften, to warm, to say things I could not allow. It came to me with a horrible sense of sorrow that she would know these things from all her sad experience of concealing and explaining away her own injuries, suffered at the hands of her brother.
I let the friar shut the door, and sank down on the confessional seat with a feverish feeling of . . . what? Loss? I did not want to examine the feeling so closely; it felt too big, like a storm caged in the bone of my chest. She’d been alarmed for me. Worried. She’d touched me so gently, and the shape of her fingers burned and tingled still.
And tonight, she was leaving to fade away into a convent, never to be seen again. She’d have her books, her study. I should be happy that she was safe from her family’s ambition, from her brother’s fury.
But I could not be happy.
I waited in the cold, lonely confessional with my ears pricked for any words from her, any sounds; even the whisper of her skirts against the floor tantalized my senses. The smell of roses and oranges lingered on me, though I could not say why it clung so closely; she’d scarcely touched me at all (though it burned still on my skin). I ought to have been ordering my thoughts around salvation, around repentance, but all I truly repented was that I would never see her again. I gently bounced my head upon the hard wood behind me, trying to disrupt the thought. The chair was uncomfortable, the space narrow and close, and as the imaginary, intoxicating smell rising from Rosaline’s skin faded, the reality of stale incense and sweat descended around me. I heard Friar Lawrence whispering to her, his voice low and urgent, and her own replies carried some hints of reluctance. I thought she might wish to say something to me, some sort of good-bye . . . but perhaps it was only fear of change, of trusting to her fate.
I put my hand flat against the door, a silent valediction, a good-bye, a wish . . . and I waited, in silence, as I heard the groan of the chapel’s outer door open.
I slowly lowered my hand to my lap. I suppose it would have been appropriate to spend the time in prayer, but all I could think was that God had just taken away my only light in a dark, comfortless future—however distant and dim it might have been, still, it had been hope.
And now it was gone. No, I had to be honest with myself: Now she was gone.
I heard a sudden sharp cry, and a flurry of footsteps. I heard Friar Lawrence make a frustrated, deep-throated growl, and then the door of the confessional flung open.
Framed in the light from behind, with her cloak spreading wide with her motion, she looked an angel—more an angel than I was ever like to see. She stared at me with wide eyes, and I thought she had no more idea what to say than I, in that moment. We did not need words, I think, though fantasies tumbled through my mind in blurring bursts of color—her hair unbound and heavy as silk in my hands, her lips soft against mine, her breath whispering secrets.
And then I knew, with the fatal misery of a doomed man, that I wanted her, a Capulet, in ways that I had never wanted a woman before—not a hasty, impersonal fumbling in the dark, not the duty of a cold husband with an unfamiliar wife . . . something else, for the sake of passion, and fire, and challenge.
“Go,” I said. “I pray you will be safe.” My voice came out low and gentle, and I had the gift of her smile, for just a moment.
“Go with God, Benvolio,” she said. “Be careful.”
And then Friar Lawrence stepped between us, shook a finger at me in stern remonstrance, and slammed the door on me.
I did not mind. I closed my eyes in the dark and heard her say my name, again and again: Benvolio.
I had never realized how little happiness I had in life until she had shown me distant flickers of what it might appear.
I clung to one foolishly optimistic thought. . . .
She had not said good-bye.
• • •
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” I said to Friar Lawrence. He cleared his throat and leaned forward on the other side of the screen. He smelled like garlic and wine, and he needed a bath, but probably found them unholy.
“I’ve told you already, I am not a priest; I may not grant you any forgiveness,” he said. “And by sitting here and pretending to holy orders, I have sins of my own to confess!”
“Be quiet and listen,” I said. “I expect no absolution. I want only a friendly ear.”
“Well, then, you may have it, and right gladly,” he said. “Is it true, then? Are you this legendary Prince of Shadows?”
“Who told you so?”
“The girl, though hardly in so many words. I think she was sad to leave, when she had been lighthearted enough before. . . . Did you take her virtue, boy?”
“What? No!”
“You creep in the windows of the innocents,” he said sternly. “By her own admission, you came a-calling at the Capulet palace in the dark of night. I remember a certain evening when you importuned me to rush to her defense when her brother was angry. I thought it might be a case of lost family honor.”
“Rosaline’s honor is not her family’s,” I said. “And I did not take it, in any case.”
“Well, then. Continue, if you wish to confess.”
“I confess that I steal from the arrogant and the venal,” I said. “I steal to punish them for their insolence and their cruel pride. And I have no shame in that.”
“A straightforward nobleman would simply take it out in challenge,” he said. “And I hear you are no novice at the blade, and have a hot temper when pushed. Why this cold, dark-of-night pursuit?”
“Dueling is a death offense, by the prince’s own command,” I said. “And it takes skill to become a good thief. Skill, and nerve.”
“Very well, then. You steal. What else?”
“I’ve killed,” I said, more quietly. “Two Capulet men who cornered us in a narrow place, if I might answer for my servant’s sins as well.”
“A fair match?”
“Fair enough, and outnumbered.”
“Then you’ve no guilt for that, beyond that of any decent man. What else?”
I hesitated, and then said, “I let a boy be hanged, and I did not try to stop it.”
That brought a long silence from the monk, followed by a heavy, soul-deep sigh. “Aye, you are far from alone in that,” he said. “No doubt your cousin Romeo flinches from that memory as well. But to act on your own against a mob would have been foolish and useless. Your friend Mercutio courted his disaster, and the boy’s life was the price. You have sin, perhaps, but not in as great a part as he, who had not the courage to turn away from his lover, nor to defy his family. I knew Tomasso. He was a sweet young man, but weak willed and too much in love. It was never to end well; may God have mercy upon his soul.”
Now, to the hardest. “It was not the Capulets responsible for betraying Mercutio to his father,” I said. “It was my sister. Veronica. I know common talk blames Rosaline for it. That was Veronica’s malice.”
“It matters little now, and Veronica’s sins are not yours,” Friar Lawrence said, and I saw the shadow on the other side of the confessional screen shake its tonsured head. “The boy’s gone to God; Rosaline is safely on her way to the convent. The trouble between the Capulets and Montagues can get no worse.”
“It can if Mercutio takes it in his head to seek vengeance.”
“The boy was rashly angry, true, but he’s calmed now; he’s well married, and rumors say there will be a babe on the way soon. His grudge against the Capulets may well stand, but what of it? You have as good a reason, or better.” He meant my father’s death. But my father had been born into the feud; the Ordelaffi family had typically been Capulet allies, but only on the outskirts of the conflict. Mercutio might have cheerfully accepted his own death at the hands of a Capulet, but not his lover’s, by intrigue and at the end of a rope his own father had carried. There was no honor in it.
I judged it would not gain much to argue, so I let the point pass. “I have had lustful thoughts,” I said.
“So have all men, my son.”
“Forgive
me, Friar, should you not upbraid me for my shortcomings, and make me promise to do better to earn my forgiveness?”
“Oh, yes, I see your point. Very well, then. Think on the girl no more; she’s lost to the world now. And I know you are sensible enough to know you’d never have had her in any case.”
I did not want to answer that, so I let silence answer for me, until Friar Lawrence’s shadow gave a sad sigh. “Ten Our Fathers and a donation to the poor for the part you played, however small, in Tomasso’s death. Ten Hail Marys for your lustful thoughts.”
“And my thieving?”
I heard him rattle the heavy bag I’d pressed into his hands. “I think this would buy you a dispensation even in the court of the pope, my son. Fear not; I will not waste it on sinful pursuits. I will commission a new saint for the chapel. Perhaps Saint Nicholas.” There was mischief in that. Saint Nicholas was commonly held to be the patron saint of thieves. In a sly way, it was a dedication to the Prince of Shadows as a generous donor.
“You’ll need to sell them far away,” I warned him. “Della Varda will recognize his own handiwork easily enough.”
“I will sell them in Fiorenza,” Friar Lawrence said placidly. “I was bound there soon in any case. And even should he track them to my door, what guilt has a holy brother for accepting a generous, and anonymous, donation? The bishop will never let him have it back. What’s given to Christ is always Christ’s.”
The friar had a streak of larceny in him, I thought, and I wondered what his occupation had been in the days before he’d shaved his pate. Something a good deal less holy, I thought. “I wish you luck, Friar.”
“And I you,” he said, with more concern in his voice. “Stay a moment, and hark me well. This stealing you do has less of greed in it than grief, and it will bring you more. You see it as an adventure, sir, and so the poets would name it, stealing grandly about in the moon and avenging your honor in secret. But I tell you, it will bring you nothing but pain in the end. I beg you, and I instruct you, to give it up and follow a straight path. Make me a promise, then, and receive your forgiveness with your God.”