If We Were Villains

by M. L. Rio

  “We did not kill him,” Meredith said, instantly, angrily. I recognized the reflex, guilt kicking out against an allegation too close to the truth.

  “No, of course not,” Alexander said, and made every word sting. “We just let him die.”

  At the time, it had seemed such an important distinction. But in the weeks that followed, as we recovered from the temporary madness of that morning, it grew more and more tenuous. Alexander’s words snapped the last thread of pretense. We knew by then as well as Richard did that there was no difference at all.

  Alexander stood, including everyone in a sweeping glare as he patted his pockets. “I need a smoke. Come find me if there’s news.” He left the room abruptly, a cigarette already sticking out of his mouth. James watched him go, then slumped and let his head sink into his hands. Filippa perched on the arm of his chair, one hand alighting on the back of his neck, bending low to say something I couldn’t hear. As soon as Alexander was out of sight, Meredith shot me a look of mingled indignation and confusion.

  “The fuck is wrong with him?” she said.

  “I have no idea.”

  SCENE 17

  Three days later I was alone in the Tower, getting ready for the masque and our truncated performance of Romeo and Juliet. The costumers had dressed us in a style they described as “carnevale couture,” which as far as I could tell adhered to no particular time period but called for a lot of velvet and gold embroidery. I checked my reflection in the mirror, turned from side to side. I looked like a musketeer, but a particularly flamboyant and well-funded one. The half cape they’d given me was slung over one shoulder and tied with a sparkling ribbon in the middle of my chest. I tugged at it self-consciously.

  James and the girls had already gone (except Wren, who as far as we knew was still bedridden in the infirmary), and I had only a few minutes to spare. I tried to pull my boots on standing up, but quickly toppled sideways onto my bed and finished the job from there. My mask sat on the nightstand, watching me with hollow eyes. It was a beautiful, enchanted sort of thing—crisscrossed with lines of gold and painted with diamonds in shimmering blue and black and silver. (As they’d been measured and made for us by the art students and wouldn’t fit anyone else properly, we’d been told that we could keep them.) I tied the silk ribbon behind my head with fumbling fingers, muttering my first lines under my breath, then took one last look at myself and hurried down the stairs.

  Alexander was in the library, but at first I didn’t even recognize him and he startled me so badly that I stumbled backward. He looked up from where he was crouched over a fine line of white powder on the coffee table. His keen eyes watched me through two deep holes in a green and black mask, wider and less delicate than mine, tapering to a sharp devilish point at the end of his nose.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, more loudly than I meant to.

  He twirled the tube of a ballpoint pen between his fingers and said, “Just getting a bit of a buzz before the ball. Would you like to join me?”

  “What? No. Are you serious?”

  “I am more serious than my custom; you / Must be so too.” He bent his head over the table and sniffed hard. I turned away, unwilling to watch, furious with him for some elusive, incoherent reason. I heard him exhale and looked around again. The line was gone, and he sat with his hands on his knees, his head tilted back, eyes half closed.

  “So,” I said. “How long has this been going on?”

  “Are you going to scold me?”

  “It would be well warranted,” I said. “Do the others know?”

  “No.” He lifted his head again and watched me with unnerving intensity. “And I expect it to stay that way.”

  I glanced at the clock, mind whirring. “We’re going to be late,” I said, shortly.

  “Then let’s go.”

  I left the library without waiting to see if he would follow. We were on the trail, halfway to the Hall, when he finally caught up and fell in step beside me.

  “Are you going to cold-shoulder me all night?” he asked, so casually that I was sure he wouldn’t care if I did.

  “I’m considering it, yeah.”

  He laughed again, but the sound had a false ring to it. I moved impatiently forward. I wanted to get away from him, lose myself in a press of people I didn’t know and avoid thinking about it for another few hours. The cape hung heavily on my shoulders, but the cold crept underneath, gnawing at my skin through the thinner layers of my shirt and doublet.

  “Oliver,” Alexander said, and I ignored him. He could barely keep up with me, lungs working hard to convert the frigid air to something breathable. Snow crunched under our feet—brittle and icy on top; soft, dense powder underneath. “Oliver. Oliver!” The third time he said my name he grabbed me by the arm and wrenched me around to face him. “Are you really going to be a twat about this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine. Look.” He was still holding my arm, too hard, fingers crushing down through the muscle until they reached bone. I gritted my teeth, almost sure he didn’t even realize he was doing it, unwilling to acknowledge the more troubling possibility that he did. “I just need an extra little kick to get me through exams. I’ll be clean when you see me in January.”

  “You’d better be. Have you even thought about what’ll happen if Colborne finds that shit in the Castle? He’s just looking for a reason to tear this whole thing open again, and if you give him one, I swear I’ll kill you.”

  He stared at me, mask to mask, with a wary, suspicious look I didn’t quite recognize. “What’s gotten into you?” he said. “You don’t sound like yourself.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re not acting like yourself.” I tried to drag my arm out of his grip, but his fingers were locked around my bicep. “You’re smarter than this. I’m not keeping any more secrets for you. Get off me. Let’s go.”

  I tore my arm free and turned my back on him, plunging forward into deeper snow.

  SCENE 18

  Alexander shadowed me up three flights of stairs. The ballroom stretched skyward from the fourth floor to the fifth, with a long balcony and a sparkling glass atrium that stabbed up at the moon.

  The Christmas masque was traditionally spectacular, and the winter of 1997 was no exception. The marble floors had been polished to such a high shine that the partygoers might as well have been walking on mirrors. Weeping fig trees, which grew out of deep square planters in each corner, were bedecked with tiny white lights and strands of ribbon and wire that sent flashes of gold darting around the room. The chandeliers—strung on thick chains that stretched from wall to wall ten feet above the balcony—let a warm glow fall across the crowded floor. Tables cluttered with bowls of punch and platters of tiny hors d’oeuvres lined the west wall, and the students who had already arrived clustered around them like moths around a lantern. Everyone was dressed their absolute best, though their faces were hidden—the boys all in white bauta masks, the girls in small black morettas. (Our masks were overwhelmingly elaborate by comparison, made to stand out in a sea of blank, anonymous faces.) The orchestral students had gathered on one side of the room with their instruments, sheet music propped up on elegant silver music stands. A waltz—airy and beautiful—swelled under the ceiling.

  As soon as we entered, heads turned toward us. Alexander went immediately forward into the crowd, a tall imposing figure in black and silver and serpentine green. I lingered at the door, waited for the staring to subside, and then began a slow, inconspicuous walk around the edge of the room. I searched for sparks of color, hoping to spot James, or Filippa, or Meredith. As on Halloween, we didn’t know how it would begin. Expectation vibrated in the room like an electrical current. My hand rested on the hilt of the knife in my belt. I’d spent two hours on Tuesday afternoon with Camilo, learning the combat of the play’s first duel. Who was Tybalt, and where had he hidden himself? I was ready.

  The orchestra fell silent, and almost immediately a voice called out from the balcony, “The quarrel is be
tween our masters and us their men.”

  Two girls—both third-years, I thought—were leaning out of the balcony on the east wall, plain silver half masks hiding their eyes, their hair drawn tightly back from their faces. They were dressed as boys, in breeches, boots, and doublets.

  “’Tis all one,” the second one said. “I will show myself a tyrant: when I have fought with the men, I will be civil with the maids, and cut off their heads.”

  “The heads of the maids?”

  “Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads; take it in what sense thou wilt.”

  They affected bawdy, masculine laughter, which was enthusiastically rejoined by the onlookers below. I watched and wondered how best to enter to stop their dispute. But as Abraham and Balthasar (also third-year girls) entered on the ballroom floor, Gregory and Sampson swung their legs over the balcony wall and began to climb down the nearest column, fingers gripping tightly in the greenery wound around it. As soon as they touched the floor, one of them whistled, and the two Montague servants turned. The biting of thumbs—accompanied by more indulgent laughter—turned quickly to an argument.

  Gregory: “Do you quarrel, sir?”

  Abraham: “Quarrel, sir! No, sir.”

  Sampson: “If you do, sir, I am for you: I serve as good a man as you.”

  Abraham: “No better.”

  Sampson: “Yes, better, sir.”

  Abraham: “You lie!”

  They dissolved into a clumsy four-way duel. The audience (pushed back now to the edges of the room) watched in keen delight, laughing and cheering their favorites. I waited until I felt the fight was ripe to be interrupted, then ran forward, drew my own dagger, and drove the girls apart. “Part, fools!” I said. “Put up your swords; you know not what you do.”

  They fell back, panting hard, but the next voice came ringing from the opposite end of the room. Tybalt.

  “What, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds? / Turn thee, Benvolio, look upon thy death.”

  I wheeled around. The crowd had parted around Colin, who stood staring at me through the eyes of a black and red mask, the sides cut sharply back from his cheekbones, angular and reptilian, like dragons’ wings.

  Me: “I do but keep the peace: put up thy sword,

  Or manage it to part these men with me.”

  Colin: “What, drawn, and talk of peace! I hate the word,

  As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee:

  Have at thee, coward!”

  Colin charged at me, and we crashed together like a pair of gamecocks. We lunged and parried until the four girls threw themselves into the fray, jeered on by the hundreds of masked students watching. I took an elbow to the chin and fell heavily to the floor on my back. Colin was on top of me in an instant, reaching for my throat, but I knew Escalus would arrive in time to forestall my strangulation. He—or, rather, she—appeared at the top of the balcony stairs in staggering royal splendor.

  “Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace, / Profaners of this neighbor-stainèd steel— / Will they not hear?”

  On the contrary, we all ceased squabbling at once. Colin let go of me, and I rolled onto my knees, gazing up at Meredith in mute amazement. She looked no less a prince than one of us boys would have—rich red hair tied back in a long braid, shapely legs hidden in high leather boots, face shielded by a white mask that shimmered as if it had been dipped in stardust. A floor-length cape swept the stairs behind her as she descended.

  Meredith: “What ho! you men, you beasts,

  That quench the fire of your pernicious rage

  With purple fountains issuing from your veins,

  On pain of torture, from those bloody hands

  Throw your mistemper’d weapons to the ground

  And hear the sentence of your movèd prince!”

  We obediently threw our daggers down.

  Meredith: “Three civil brawls, bred of an airy word,

  Have thrice disturb’d the quiet of our streets,

  And made Verona’s ancient citizens

  Cast by their grave beseeming ornaments,

  To wield old partisans, in hands as old,

  Canker’d with peace, to part your canker’d hate.”

  She walked slowly between us, head held high. Colin stepped back and bowed. I and the other girls had each sunk to one knee. Meredith looked down at me and lifted my chin with one gloved hand. “If ever you disturb our streets again, / Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace.” She turned on her heel, the hem of her cape snapping across my face. “For this time, all the rest depart away.”

  The girls and Colin bent to gather their discarded weapons and lost bits of costume. But the prince was impatient.

  “Once more, on pain of death, all men depart!”

  We scattered from the center of the room, which erupted in applause as Meredith ascended the stairs to the balcony again. I hovered at the edge of the crowd, watching her feet on the steps until she was gone, then turned to the nearest reveler—a boy, I didn’t know who, only his brown eyes visible through the holes in his mask—and said, “O, where is Romeo?” To another spectator, “Saw you him today? / Right glad I am he was not at this fray.”

  At exactly that moment, Romeo emerged from a door on the east wall, clad all in blue and silver, his mask gently curving back toward his temples. He seemed almost a mythical figure, Ganymede, caught beautifully between man and boy. I knew it would be James, had guessed as much, but his appearance was no less affecting.

  “See, where he comes,” I said, to the girl nearest me, in a softer tone. That strange possessive pride washed over me again. Everyone in the room was watching James—how could they not?—but I was the only one who really knew him, every inch. “So please you, step aside: / I’ll know his grievance or be much denied. / Good morrow, cousin!”

  James looked up, looked right at me. He seemed surprised to see me standing there, though I didn’t know for the life of me why he should be. Was I not always his right-hand man, his lieutenant? Banquo or Benvolio or Oliver—little difference.

  We argued lightly about his unrequited love, a game emerging wherein I blocked his way each time he tried to leave, attempted to evade my questions. He was content to play along until at last he said, more firmly, “Farewell, my coz.”

  “Soft!” I said. “I will go along; / An if you leave me so, you do me wrong.”

  “Tut, I have lost myself; I am not here; / This is not Romeo, he’s some other where.”

  He turned to go, and I darted around to bar his path again. My desire to keep him there had, at some point, transcended the alignment of an actor’s motivation and his character’s. I desperately wanted him to stay, seized by the nonsensical idea that if he left, I would lose him, irretrievably. “Tell me in sadness, who is that you love,” I said, searching the parts of his face I could see for a flicker of reciprocal feeling.

  James: “A sick man in sadness makes his will:

  A word ill urged to one that is so ill!

  In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman.”

  For a moment, I forgot which line of mine followed. We stared at each other, and the crowd faded around us into indistinct shadow and set dressing. With a jolt I remembered my words, but not quite the right ones.

  “Be ruled by me,” I said, a few lines too soon. “Forget to think of her.”

  James blinked rapidly behind his mask, but then he stepped back, detached, and carried on. I stood still and watched him pace around: his words, his footsteps, his gestures—everything restless.

  A servant entered with news of the Capulets’ upcoming feast. We gossiped, planned, and plotted, until a third masker finally entered: Alexander.

  He spoke his first line from where he was sitting on the edge of the punch table, his arms draped around the two nearest audience members—one of whom was giggling uncontrollably behind her mask, while the other shrank away from him, obviously terrified.

  “Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance.”

  H
e slid off the table so smoothly that he might have been made of liquid and approached with his loping feline gait. He nudged me out of his way, walked around James in a small circle, pausing to eye him from every intriguing angle. They volleyed words and quips between them, easy and inconsequential until James said, “Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, / Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.”

  Alexander released a purring laugh and seized James by the front of his doublet.

  Alexander: “If love be rough with you, be rough with love!

  Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.

  Give me a case to put my visage in:

  A visor for a visor.”

  The foreheads of their masks knocked together, Alexander holding James so tightly I heard him grunt in pain. I started toward them, but as soon as I moved, Alexander shoved him backward, right into my arms.

  Alexander: “What care I

  What curious eye doth quote deformities?

  Here are the beetle brows shall blush for me.”

  I pushed James upright again and said, “Come, knock and enter; and no sooner in / But every man betake him to his legs.”

  Alexander: “Come, we burn daylight, ho!”

  James: “Nay, that’s not so.”

  Alexander (impatiently): “I mean, sir, in delay,

  We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day.

  Take our good meaning, for our judgment sits

  Five times in that ere once in our five wits.”

  James: “And we mean well in going to this masque;

  But ’tis no wit to go.”

  Alexander: “Why, may one ask?”

  James: “I dream’d a dream tonight.”

  Alexander: “And so did I.”

  James: “Well, what was yours?”

  Alexander:$$ “That dreamers often lie.”

  James: “In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.”

  Alexander: “O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you!”