Juliet's Nurse

by Lois Leveen

  Tybalt marvels at the throngs who are turning out for the race, bowing his head in reverence to the clusters of dark-robed priests and priors, then gawking at the eager hands of pickpockets and prostitutes. But even such wondrous distractions do not keep him from asking, “Will my father be here?” as we cross beneath the massive portraits of San Zeno and San Cristoforo that decorate the city gate.

  Tybalt’s widowed father has been in Mantua longer than I’ve been at Ca’ Cappelletti. Tybalt asked for him on All Saint’s Day, on Christmas Day, on the Feast of the Epiphany. Even, out of habit, on a few lesser saints’ days. Always there is a letter, with his father’s seal. Letters so full of sentiment, Lord Cappelletto refuses to read them aloud, leaving little Tybalt to struggle to decipher his father’s ornate script. Though I cannot read a word, I learn from those letters what Tybalt is too young to understand: why his father left him. Too attached to the dead wife whose features show in her living son. Too afraid to cherish the boy, lest he be lost as well.

  “Do you see Pietro?” Better, I reason, to distract Tybalt with a question that will delight him, than to give his own question the same-again answer that shadows even his happiest days.

  Pietro comes to check the hive in the Cappelletti arbor as often as he can, though still not as often as I want him. Whenever he appears, Tybalt follows him like a waggly-tailed pup, reporting all he’s observed of the bees since Pietro’s last visit. Young though he is, Tybalt’s no fool, and when he asked me how I knew the honey-man, I made him cross his heart and swear upon his much-cherished honor to keep the answer to himself. But when I then confided that Pietro is to me what Lord Cappelletto is to Lady Cappelletta, Tybalt laughed and said this could not be true, for his uncle and aunt never smile at each other as Pietro and I do. What else we do we are careful to keep from him, and with each visit, Pietro crafts ever-more elaborate challenges to distract the boy long enough for us to sneak our time together in Juliet’s broad bed. Or upon the stone floor of her chamber. Or against its carved-wood door. By my troth, there’s not an inch of that room that Pietro and I’ve not explored as we explore each other, hurrying ourselves to be done before Tybalt bursts in to show off the latest kingfisher feather, or goat horn, or bear claw that Pietro bade him find.

  At my mention of Pietro, Tybalt scrambles ahead, searching out the spot along the edge of the race-course where my husband has stretched a bedsheet for us to sit upon as we watch the day’s entertainments. It is one of my better sheets, just the thing a man would choose to throw onto the ground, never mind how people to either side will grind their filthy soles into it. A year ago, I would have carped at Pietro for ruining a sheet this way. But now I sleep on far finer linens, stitched with the Cappelletti seal by Lady Cappelletta’s own hand. My worn bedding, my musty marriage-chest, the few tiny rooms of our rented house—they’ve become part of another life, the life I had before I had Juliet.

  Tybalt runs to Pietro, who catches him up, swinging the boy in his two strong arms so that Tybalt somersaults high in the air before tumbling onto the sheet with a laughing shriek. Pietro, already red-cheeked and purple-tongued, offers me a swig from a three-quarters-plump wineskin As he lays his stubbly cheek against Juliet’s smooth one, he slips a hand inside my dress, rubbing with his thumb in a way that sends shivers all through me.

  I give his hand a playful slap. “Best not set a pot to boil, if you’ve no way to let off its steam.”

  We settle on the sheet sitting one inside the other like a set of stacking bowls, my back warming against Pietro’s broad chest and his big legs curving snug around my hips, passing the wineskin between us to ward off the February chill. Though the ruby barbera’s not of so fine a quality as what fills the casks at Ca’ Cappelletti, at least it’s not watered down like the pale trebbiano Lord Cappelletto allows me to be served.

  I pour some of the barbera onto my pinky and rub it along Juliet’s aching gums. The wine, and being out in the brisk air, soothe her. She coos at the bright scarf I bob before her, while Tybalt runs along the edge of the raceway, doubling back every few minutes to report on what spectacle of minstrels or stilt-walkers will soon parade before us.

  I wait until the boy is out of earshot to tell Pietro about Lady Cappelletta. “It’s a mystery how a woman can eat so little yet vomit so much. At least, it is a mystery to her.” I lift the wineskin in toast to her ignorance. “I told her it’s a sure sign she is carrying a son, a strong boy who wants her belly all to himself. I can be kind to her, when I have a mind to.”

  Pietro leans back, letting cool air fill the space between us. “What kindness is there in lying to her?”

  “You do not know that it’s a lie. It might be a son. Or a daughter. Or a hairy mole. Or an overly bilious humor. Or a clever ruse to keep her husband from her bed, though I doubt she is capable of that.” How can Pietro chide me? “Why not let her believe she carries his heir, if that makes it easier for her to suffer these months of constant retching?”

  He reminds me the rich are spiteful. “If she does not bear the son you’ve promised, she may take her disappointment out on you.”

  “Until she bears a son, her husband has her in such a qualmish state, she’s not able to do much hurt to me, or to anyone else.” I hope this will prove true, that there will be a healthy boy to please the father and relieve the mother, before Juliet is old enough to notice how Lady Cappelletta looks at her.

  “I’ll make some ginger comfits, taffied with honey and almond milk, for you to give her when her stomach needs steadying.”

  I do not care to have my husband thinking up treats for Lady Cappelletta. “The Apothecary Guild will come after you, if you start making medicines.”

  Mischief plays along his face. “Perhaps you can demonstrate what punishment you think the guild master should demand?” He pulls me close, his breath warm. “I miss you, Angelica. The smell of you, the taste of you. That perfumed bed in another man’s house—that’s no way for us to be together.” He draws Juliet away from me. “Let Tybalt watch her for a little while.”

  It’s more than wine that’s stoking my husband. Stoking me, too. And it’s true, Tybalt is devoted to Juliet. If I tell him to count out the number of monkeys and baboons to her as the prince’s gilt-caged menagerie parades by, and to make up a fabulous story to tell her about each of the prince’s lions, he’ll do it, whether I am watching over his shoulder or not. Perhaps when he reappears, Pietro and I might—

  A curse and a splintering crack split the air. Four of the young men who’ve been calling out bets for the palio-race swear and jump on a fifth, who’s broken a cudgel over one of their heads. The foursome topples the culprit, and all five tumble in a mass of angry arms and legs onto our sheet. The broken cudgel swings wildly, smashing the side of my face.

  Something jagged catches inside my cheek, and salty blood thicks into my mouth. I spit one molar and then another onto the bedsheet, as a crowd of gangly, coltish youth, some barely past their boyhood, swarm at us.

  Pietro pushes Juliet into my arms, wrapping himself around us as he tries to pull me to my feet. But it’s impossible to stay standing amidst the angry surge.

  Hundreds of them, there suddenly seem to be. Some coming from the campo and others pouring out from the city gates. All of them swinging fists, clubs, whatever they can grab, while decent people struggle to shove their way clear.

  I bend over Juliet, my body the only protection I can give her. Pushing my tongue against the bloodied gap on the side of my mouth, I hold to her like a half-drowned person clings to a floating log, as everything we have with us—our bedsheet, the scarf, and my lost teeth—are swallowed up in the press of bodies.

  It’s impossible to see more than a few arms-lengths in the direction we last saw Tybalt run, away from the city toward where the race was meant to start. I realize there’s no way Pietro and I can keep Juliet safe if we try to go after him. And I’m too afraid, for her and for myself, to send Pietro off alone.

  A mother of sons
knows which boys have to be watched every waking moment—and some sleeping ones as well—to be kept from trouble, and which might wander off but will always return, none the worse for their adventures. Though cat-like Tybalt loves to leap, he always lands on his paws. Or so I’ve believed. But who knows what might become of such a trusting boy in the midst of a fist-ready mob.

  Terrified families pour into the race course. The frenzied mob, hungry for more space in which to fight, follows. Pietro half-pulls, half-carries me in the other direction, into the sycamores edging the campo. The grove seethes with shrieking children, frightened mothers, and uncertain fathers. Near us, a trembling girl of twelve or fourteen sobs. Her mother kneels before her, trying to work some tuck in the girl’s torn gown to cover her tiny breasts and belly, which have been badly pummeled in the fray. I turn away and seek the only comfort I can think of, leaning against a thick-branched sycamore to nurse Juliet.

  My poor lamb must be half-starved, for she drinks me in as she’s not done in the weeks since her teething started, those new-sharp teeth shooting a delicious pain through my too-full breast.

  Pietro watches her suck with eyes full of wonder, the way he did when I suckled our sons. When I curse the brawlers, he says, “They are just boys. Their blood is still so hot from the pleasure-filled nights of Carnival, they seek mischief even now that it is Lent.”

  “Not all boys are so hot-blooded.” Our boys, I mean. They might have tussled with each other, but Nunzio and Nesto both had Pietro’s tender heart. They kept their younger brothers from any real harm. Except once, that once. It was Berto who led them to it. Or maybe Enzo. I was never sure, for none of them would tell me how it happened. And before I could wheedle or ­harangue it out of them, death stilled all their tongues. For months afterwards, I pleaded with the saints, cataloguing all I’d do if they would give me back my sons. Even just one or two, if I could not have them all. Who cares which was the first to lead the others into danger?

  “It must have been a group of Florentines who started it.” I cannot understand what Pietro means, until I realize he’s talking not about our boys, but about the brawlers. He repeats what everyone around us is saying, about a bridge in Florence where the young men gather by torchlight to fight. Not ten or twenty of them, as might come to blows in any God-fearing city, but eight or nine hundred at a time, some barely old enough to grow hair on their chins, or anywhere below. All punching and stabbing at once, until they cannot tell friend from enemy in the maddened fray.

  “This is not Florence,” I say. Verona’s not suffered such fighting in years. Not since Prince Cangrande II put down a rebellion early in his reign, ordering every soul in the city into the Arena to watch as he hacked off the heads of a half dozen conspirators. I’d buried my face against Pietro as each condemned man was blindfolded. Like the kneeling, bare-necked culprits, I’d not known when the first axe blow would fall. Though my stomach leapt at each thwacking execution, what haunted me more were the scores of others Cangrande II tortured and left dangling from the old Roman bridge over the Adige. Their cries echoed through the city for three days and three nights as they begged Death to take them, while ravens plucked at their bloodied bodies.

  But in the sound and sight and smell of their agony, the rest of Verona knew ourselves safe. After that, the only blood shed in our streets was what Cangrande II ordered to amuse himself. Ambushes followed by savage beatings, mostly. Or a quick-plunged blade of assassination. Such attacks were plentiful, to be sure, for he was a brutal man, but they were aimed only at whatever noblemen the prince deemed too powerful. A prudent mother could easily keep her children locked at home until each spurt of violence was over.

  But Cangrande II is dead. And though no one mourned him, not even his widow nor either of his mistresses, as I shiver in the sycamore grove I realize no one knows if Prince Cansignorio is man enough to keep the city’s peace. Cansignorio, after all, has never killed anyone aside from his own brother. And after that, he fled to Padova until he was certain he’d be welcomed back as Verona’s new rightful ruler. What good is a prince who cannot keep a youthful mob—or the warring Milanese or wily Mantuans—at bay?

  Bells ring from inside the city walls, one angry peal answering another. Word spreads through the sycamores that the Franciscans are making their way out to the campo. Walking bare-footed in brown-robed pairs and chanting in Latin, as though godly incantations can stop a fist or club midswing.

  All at once, the earth itself begins to rumble. Worry rounds Juliet’s eyes as hundreds of horse-hooves thunder against the ground. The angry rhythm sets off a wave of anticipation throughout the grove. Prince Cansignorio must have sent his knights at last. Whether he rides at their head, as the older generations of Scaligeri did, or sits drinking from golden goblets with his wealthy guests, none of us in the grove can guess. But we listen with care to the crashing lances of a hundred mounted knights, and the tormented shrieks of whoever is in their path.

  At last the sounds of fighting die away, and the brigade clatters off. Families all around us gather themselves, convincing one another they feel safe enough to leave the sycamores and make their way home. But I cannot take Juliet back to Ca’ Cappelletti. Not without Tybalt.

  The barbera burns in my belly, my head aching from its vapors. Why did I bring him withal? Why, having brought him, did I not keep him near? Tybalt is neither my child nor my charge. But he’s a tender boy. And he is Juliet’s cousin, the only nephew of her powerful father. How could I risk not only his little neck but also every tie I have to her?

  Juliet, squirming in my arms, begins to cry for Tybalt. By my heart, I know the half dozen ways she shares any unhappiness with me. She cries when she is hungry for my breast, and she cries when her swaddling becomes too full of piss and shit. Cries from colic, though not often, given what Lord Cappelletto lets me be fed. Cries from the cold or the heat or the aching in her gums. Cries when she is too long in her mother’s presence. And cries when she is too long from her cousin’s.

  I somehow believe Juliet’s sobs will draw Tybalt to us. When they do not, my wine-soaked worry deepens. “What if—”

  Before I can give voice to all I fear, Pietro cuts me off. “He strayed away before the fighting started. We’ll find him, and you’ll see he’s fine.”

  Pietro is a hopeful man. But that can sometimes wear upon a wife. He knows I have no patience for being told everything is fine, when in truth neither of us can tell how well, or how awfully, something might turn out.

  Walking out from among the trees, we pass brawlers and innocents alike, dragging their mauled selves from the campo. Those too hurt to walk howl for friend or stranger to take mercy on them. The gilded cages of the menagerie lie toppled on their sides, the whimpers of the frightened animals inside swelling into the cacophony of human shouts and cries. But we see no sign of Tybalt and no trace of where we sat when he last left us.

  “There’s no place for him to find his way back to.” I raise my voice to make myself heard above Juliet, whose wailing grows louder the longer she longs for her cousin, who could be halfway to Villafranca by now. Or drowned in the Adige. Or carried off by ransom-seekers. “And no way for us to know where to look for him.”

  “So we will look in all directions,” Pietro says. He starts to walk in a circle. Not a perfect round, but an ever-widening curve that slowly grows to take in a greater and greater area.

  I taught him this trick years ago. Whenever a sheep strayed off, I’d spiral farther and farther around my flock until I found it. But sometimes what was left to be found was only the mauled remains that a bloody-fanged wolf had left behind.

  Pietro keeps walking, the distance between us growing as he circles away. I’m not the sort of wife who follows anywhere her husband leads. But then he begins to whistle. He knows I cannot stand him whistling when I’m worried. I cut in a sharp line across his curving path, scolding him to pray instead, or just to shut up entirely. Anything but that cheerful whistling, which does not seem right
until we find Tybalt.

  “Until,” he repeats, meaning to assure me the boy will be found. Pietro slips an arm around me, and we walk side by side. Curling our way beyond what was crushed in the brawl, we cross winter-bare fields, Juliet inconsolable in my arms. We’ve walked for who knows how long, my throat aching from calling for the lost boy, when Pietro stops. He hears first what I, soaked in Juliet’s crying, miss: the matched cries of Tybalt, pitched as high as those of his baby cousin.

  Tybalt is tucked in the crook of an olive tree. Pietro reaches up, murmuring gentle words until the boy crawls into his arms. His big hands run over the teary child, and he shrugs to let me know neither flesh nor bones seem broken.

  “The brawl is over.” Pietro cradles Tybalt to his chest as I cradle Juliet to mine. “The mob is gone, it’s safe to come back with us now.”

  Tybalt tips his head up. “What brawl? What mob?”

  “Never mind about that,” I say. I pass a hand through the boy’s pretty curls, as much to reassure myself as to comfort him. “Why were you hiding?”

  “The other boys said I could not win.”

  My relief at finding Tybalt ebbs back into worry. “What other boys?”

  “There were five of them. We had a contest to see who could piss the highest. I made an arc just like a fountain, I should’ve beat them all. But one of them, who was smaller than me but wore a fur-trimmed carmine cloak just like the prince’s, said I’d not win unless I could make myself into a statue the way he can.”

  I work the edge of my tongue in and out of my fresh-cracked toothhole, trying to dull the throbbing edge of pain as I puzzle through what Tybalt means. The boy he met must be Cansignorio’s nephew, Count Mercutio, who’s been sent by the prince’s conniving sister and her calculating husband to Verona to serve in the court of his ruling uncle. Everyone knows why, though no one dares say it out loud: if Cansignorio cannot make a legitimate heir, this Mercutio might one day rule our city. Unless he somehow provokes his living uncle, and thus meets the same fate as his murdered one. Such are the prospects of a royal boy.