by Rachel Caine
“Dare I ask?” he said then, as we walked through the square with pigeons exploding upward from our path. A child’s choir was singing near the fountain, and we avoided a loose chicken being chased by a red-faced servant. The market was still busy up ahead, full of movement and color, though it was late in the day to be buying anything but livestock or dry goods. I headed for the market, not knowing where else to stop; we could inquire among the stall merchants and malingering wealthy and see whether Romeo had been spotted. Someone would have seen him, most certainly. No one could hide for long in Verona.
I gave courteous, though brief, greetings to acquaintances as we entered the outskirts of the market, and sent Balthasar to ask after Romeo at various merchants friendly to the Montagues—they sometimes wrapped our house’s color into their shades, or flew it in a banner, though that was a risky venture in a city so polarized as ours was becoming. Capulet colors were also in evidence, in approximately the same numbers. I saw a few of their paid men sauntering through, but they seemed at ease, and one even escorted a plump woman I took to be his wife, trailed by two small children. Well, then, even the Capulet adherents were human.
I was not happy to know it, since it made hating them more difficult.
A stall haunted by a sinister-looking old woman proffering vials of oils and concoctions made me slow my steps, and Balthasar sent me a curious look. “Master? Are we not seeking Master Romeo? I don’t think you’ll find him in this old witch’s quarters.”
“Not this old witch,” I said, and turned on him. “There’s word of a witch doing business in Verona. Mercutio is said to have sought her out. What know you?”
“Little,” he said, and looked away at a grubby child running past carrying a struggling, squawking chicken, with a butcher wielding a cleaver in wrathful pursuit. “She’s said to be new to the city. Purveyor of potions and charms, telling of fortunes, the usual thing.”
“Why would Mercutio seek her out?”
“Perhaps his wife has been to see her. A husband’s well advised to see what a wife’s been up to, visiting those old hags. They’re known for their poisons.”
I hadn’t thought of it, but poison was a common weapon among all the classes in Verona—rich and poor, high and low. It was more often used by women than men, but politics was a dirty business, and poison a tool of the trade.
But not Mercutio, surely. As much as he hated those he saw as enemies, he would kill with close, personal violence. Not some subtle and cold design.
But if he did, some evil angel whispered, if he did, whom would he choose?
Not me, even if he blamed me. Not Romeo, for similar reasons . . . he loved us enough to kill us quick and clean, face to honest face.
But the Capulets . . . perhaps. A poisoned drink for a poisoned tongue. I went cold considering how easily Rosaline might be touched by such a thing . . . an innocent, struck down by one who was avenging an innocent. He might also be turning that cold hate on his own father, a thing that would surely damn his soul to eternal flames.
“Find her for me,” I told Balthasar. “Do it quietly.”
He looked gravely doubtful, now. “Your grandmother will take it ill if you make visits to such heretical company. . . .”
“I care not,” I said irritably, although of course I did care, and his warning was well-spoken. “It will not be Benvolio Montague who visits her, be assured. Find her; our secret friend will go in my place.”
“Ah,” he said, and looked much cheered. “You might tell our secret friend that these evil creatures are well used to threats. They generally require silver to loosen their tongues.”
“He is in funds.” Actually, the Prince of Shadows had been bent too much on revenge recently, and not enough upon profit; I would need to begin to remedy it soon. The thought of the remaining loot dangling below the jakes was tempting, but all that was left were pieces that would be easily recognized if traded in Verona; I needed to find a jeweler I could trust to cut the rubies that I’d stolen, and a trustworthy sword maker to refit the very fine blade to a new handle. But I had enough to bribe some low witch, certainly.
“Sir,” Balthasar said, and jerked his chin in the direction he wished me to look. I turned toward the cathedral and saw that Count Paris—accompanied, of course, by half an army of hangers-on—was making his leisurely way through the square in our direction. It was slow progress, because he paused every few steps to exchange politenesses, bow to ladies, inspect vendors’ wares. He spotted us, and corrected his wandering course to move in our direction.
Ever the dutiful servant of my family, I pasted on a smile and sketched a bow to him as he approached. “My lord Paris,” I said, and waited until he granted me a gracious, minimal gesture of his hand to straighten. “I trust this day finds you in fine health.”
“Tolerable, Benvolio. I hear your sister’s wedding day approaches. I anticipate the day.”
“As do I,” I said, with much feeling. The faster Veronica’s shadow left my door, the better life would seem. “My congratulations on your own recent match.”
“Ah, yes, young Juliet.” Count Paris was a handsome man, and, like all who’d survived the cutthroat world of Veronese nobility, no fool at all. He gave me a carefully measured smile. “A pity we could not arrange such a match with Montague, but alas, your fair sister’s hand was already promised.”
Your good fortune, I wanted to say, but I smiled back, with equal false sincerity. “I wish both bride and groom the happiest of lives,” I said. “Good sir, have you seen my cousin Romeo about today?”
“I have,” he said. “He seemed in a great hurry. I wish you luck in catching him. Fair day, Benvolio.”
“And to you.”
We bowed again, I much deeper than he, and his parade swept by us. Behind me, Balthasar let out a gusty sigh. “He’ll soon regret having Tybalt as a relation,” my man said.
“Anyone would,” I agreed. “Now be off with you, to find this witch woman.” I sent him a nod as a dismissal.
He did not go. “I shall not leave you alone and unattended,” he said. “’Twould not be right, sir.”
“Don’t be foolish. I can well care for myself.”
“All the same, it’s my head in your grandmother’s winepress if you tumble onto the point of a Capulet sword and I’m not dead before you to prove my loyalty. No, master, I’ll not leave your side unless you are with better company.”
He was maddeningly stubborn, but he was also right. It was dangerous to be left alone, wearing bold Montague livery, in a crowd that could, at any moment, erupt with partisan violence. I looked around for succor, and spotted a familiar face.
“Oh, no, sir,” Balthasar said in a low, disapproving tone. Because the familiar face was that of Mercutio, lounging like a lazy cat in the sun on the central fountain’s low ledge. He nursed an empty cup, and looked vaguely into the crowd with dull disinterest . . . until he spotted me.
“Well met, Benvolio!” he called as he lurched to his feet, and the sad relief in him was too much to deny. He was brokenly lonely, and I had not the heart to turn him away. “How fare you this fine day?”
Balthasar was giving me a disapproving shake of his head, and I grabbed him close to whisper, “As long as he clings to me, he cannot interfere with you and your mission. Go. Now.”
“Master—”
I shoved him hard away, and he stumbled off into a run, still frowning with unsettled worry.
My servant had ever had better sense than me, or any of my kinsmen.
I turned to Mercutio, and flung an arm around his shoulders in friendship. “I do well enough, though I lack for pleasant company,” I said. “I seek Romeo; have you seen him?”
“What, lost again? I thought he was never to be separated from your skirts, nursemaid!” He clapped an arm around my neck and squeezed, but not hard enough that I needed a defense. “I’ve not seen the villain, but shall we winkle him out of his hiding place? Surely you don’t think him still licking the cobbles b
ehind that Capulet wench.”
I thought for a moment that he knew of my cousin’s new, mad obsession, but he was not, in fact, thinking of Juliet; I knew that from the bitter, angry expression that twisted his face from angel to devil. He was thinking of innocent Rosaline, into whose cipher he had poured all his grief, loathing, and hatred. I feared for her again, thinking of what he would do—or might have already done.
If he had resorted to poisons, I could not save an enemy’s daughter at the cost of my broken, wronged friend, and it might come to such a choice. But neither could I stomach sheltering Mercutio if he murdered the innocent, Capulet or no.
Mercutio was well drunken, even by the early hour; from the smell and state of his clothes, he’d not bothered to visit home, nor change his linen. His smell had a metallic edge of sweat and anger, sweetened with too much wine. But there was no peaceful looseness to his muscles, as there should have been; beneath my arm, his shoulders were bunched hard as a hangman’s rope. When a passing servant in Capulet livery gave us a wide berth, he lunged at him, clashing his teeth, and laughed as the youth blanched and scurried away.
“You’d best be off home, Mercutio,” I told him. “A bath would serve you.”
“Many things would serve me,” he said. “But none so well as a Capulet on the point of my blade.”
“Too hot for that, and the mood hotter still,” I told him. “If you will not go home, then will you not come with me? Balthasar is on errands, but I’ll order a bath for you, and a bed. You can sleep in peace under our roof.”
“Can I?” he asked, and drew in a sudden, wrenching breath. “I would much desire the peace of a dreamless rest, but, Ben, I will confess to you as I cannot to those hard-mouthed priests: I cannot sleep, in peace or out of it. I shut my eyes and Tomasso’s face is before me, or worse . . . he is not dead, and I cannot release him to his rightful rest.” He ran a hand over his face, wiping sweat, and I noted how it trembled. “He haunts me. He lies beside me, and will not speak; we are parted but not parted enough. How then may I sleep, unless wine weighs me down into the dark?”
He sounded as broken as I knew he was, and it made me cringe; weakness in our world drew wolves. “Come, then,” I said, and clapped him firmly on the back to brace him. “A bath, and a safe and solitary bed in a place where your ghosts cannot find you.”
“Your grandmother will take it ill.”
“My grandmother may take it as she likes.” Brave words, but he was right: She would resent that I sheltered Mercutio under her roof. Even decently married, and with a rumored babe on the way, he would never be beyond gossip. “It’s too bright a day for trouble.”
We might have escaped that trouble, save that in that last moment, Mercutio spied Romeo.
My cousin rounded the corner from the cathedral, walking with brisk, purposeful steps. I spotted him in the same instant, and noted the vivid, almost religious ecstasy of his smile; he was bestowing it upon the low and high alike, and making no effort to cast a careful eye upon his surroundings. My cousin, the strutting young peacock, was kitted in his finest, and he glowed and glimmered in the warm light like some hero of legend.
It was not a day to be making himself so obvious a target. He’d not even bothered with a single retainer to follow behind and keep the knives from his back. If my grandmother was right, Capulets would be sharpening their blades for just such an opportunity.
Mercutio saw none of that. He saw only a chance for rough play, and before I could stay him he lurched forward, shouting too loudly, “Signor Romeo, bonjour! That’s a French salutation to match the French cut of your breeches, sir, and where hid you last night?”
Romeo’s ecstatic smile faded. He did most ardently want to avoid the scene, but could not, so he pasted on false cheer and came toward Mercutio, with me following behind like a reluctant old uncle. “Good morning to you both. What do you mean, hid?”
“You gave us the slip, sir, the slip,” Mercutio said, and waggled his finger. “Your cousin’s been eaten with worry.”
“Pardon, good Mercutio.” Romeo bowed. “My business was great, and in such a case as mine, a man may strain courtesy.”
Mercutio laughed and likened courtesy to curtsies, and lifted invisible skirts to deliver a mincing little illustration of it. “I am the very pink of courtesy,” he said, and got in my cousin’s way as he tried to bow his way onward.
“Pink for flowers?” Romeo’s smile fixed, and was growing cold. This was a turn I did not much like; it was a taunt, a very pointed one. That earned us a murmur of disapproval and a scorching look from a passing old dowager and her entourage.
It also earned Romeo Mercutio’s shove. “Just so!”
“My pump is well flowered,” Romeo said. It was the sort of jest a gentleman might make only among close company, not on the streets in full hearing of passersby. It was also cruel, harkening as it did to Mercutio’s enforced marriage—a subject with which our friend was as much anguished as angry.
I stepped forward, but I might have as easily stepped between two men bent on duel. They ignored my intervention.
Mercutio laughed, and snapped teeth. “I will bite you by the ear for that.” He threw a heavy arm around Romeo’s neck, snake-quick, and locked him in embrace. “Come, is not this better than groaning for love? Now you are sociable; now you are Romeo. This driveling love of yours is like an idiot that runs up and down, the better to hide his toy in a hole.”
That earned us more angry glares, for it was too close to vulgarity for the public, and Romeo caught the hint quickly. “Stop—stop there.”
Mercutio tried to go on, and I was sure he would plunge us into real trouble, but then a fat nurse separated from the oncoming crowd, attended by a servant, and headed toward us with purpose. I nearly remembered her swollen, heat-pinked face; she huffed as she approached, and whisked the air vigorously with her fan. What now? I wondered, because I saw Romeo freeze in place like a schoolboy caught with a stolen apple. He writhed free of Mercutio’s headlock and shoved us both away.
“Go home,” Romeo said to me. “I’ll follow anon.”
I placed her, then, this overstuffed woman; she was Capulet, the nurse who sometimes hovered near young Juliet when the girl was allowed the freedom of the air. I had seen her quaffing large wine cups at the feast. “Coz . . .” I took Romeo by the arm, and he shook me off. The servant walking behind the nurse—a Capulet, though without the identifying colors—half drew his dagger as he looked at me, and I released my hold. “Come with us.”
“I said I will follow,” he said, and turned back to the nurse.
Perhaps, if I’d been alone, I’d have dared force the issue, but Mercutio was already offering more insult, in form of an offensive good-bye to the fat old nurse, and I could see her face purpling with outrage. Two of the city guard turned toward us and headed in our direction, and all I could do was grip Mercutio’s elbow to draw him away, and leave Romeo to his intrigues.
“Fool!” I said, and pushed Mercutio as soon as we were far enough away to pull no more attention. “What do you mean to do, humiliate him? He is your friend!”
“And your cousin,” Mercutio said, “yet I see you’re no more fond of him just now than I. All that bleating over the girl, the girl, the girl. I’ve my own female, and they’re not of much use, Benvolio, not of much use at all.”
“Save for heirs,” I said. “And once you have them, surely you will be free to do as you please. . . .”
“Will I? Here, in this city of righteous, upstanding deceivers, heretics, monsters, and murderers?” He laughed, but there was wildness in it, and despair. “There is no freedom, Benvolio; you should give up that folly now. This city is made of stone, and the stones will press us down, and down, cutting off all light and hope until dark is the only light you will ever see; do you understand me?” He gripped me by my arms, searching my face intently. “Dark is the only light.”
I nodded, because in that moment his intensity made me both wary and sad. My frie
nd suffered, most intensely, and I knew there was nothing I could do to take it away. “I cannot leave Romeo on his own,” I said. “He’s . . . not himself.”
“Who is?” Mercutio barked a bitter laugh, and wiped sweat from his brow with his forearm. “Are you his fretting wet nurse now, and he a mewling infant? Has it come to such a pass?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s come to that.”
He shook his head, still smiling that odd, intense smile, and shrugged. “Very well,” he said. “A pity, a great pity, that you have no backbone to stand straight to an old woman. A sick one, at that. You’ve disappointed me, Benvolio. I thought you more of a man.”
“A man keeps his vows,” I said. It was difficult to say it calmly, but I managed. “And you’re no stranger to quaking in fear before that old woman. You said it yourself: She’d humble Hercules and affright Hector.”
“True,” he said. “Well, then, keep to your useless vows. I’m to the tavern to find merrier companions. Your face could curdle vinegar today.” He took a few steps, then turned back toward me, sudden devilish pleasure lighting his face. “Did you hear? There’s rumor of displeasure between Count Paris and Capulet. Something about his affianced’s behavior. Perhaps someone succeeded in ruining the girl after all. It wasn’t me; was it you?”
“No,” I said. My throat felt tight, my brow suddenly sweated. A crowd of boisterous lads had pushed between us and the shadowed corner where Romeo was huddled in private whispers with the nurse. The Capulet nurse. I broke away from Mercutio, ignoring him as he called my name, and pressed through the bodies.