Juliet's Nurse

by Lois Leveen

  I’d watched the two of them from inside Juliet’s bedchamber. Even with the window pulled tight to keep the bees out, I could not help but imagine the dizzying smell of ripe fruit going soft in the midday sun. And intermingled with the smell of fruit, a smudgy waggle of smoke, which tapered into the sky from the torch Pietro’d lit to keep the bees at bay. Through the wavering air, I saw how he unsealed the lid from the cut-log hive, deftly slicing and lifting out the combs. How he broke those combs into the deep-sided pot that Tybalt held for him, to begin the slow process in which the wax, which Pietro will trade to a chandler, rises, while the thick honey sinks.

  Even with a cloth covering his face, Pietro sang while he worked, to show me he has no fear of bees. He is a barrel-chested basso, and his timbrous notes wavered against the panes as if they meant to steal their way into the room, as Pietro has stolen his way inside the half dozen times he’s come to Ca’ Cappelletti to check his bees.

  After Pietro culled what he wanted from the hive, he replaced the cover on the hewn log. And then my husband dipped his broad thumb into the honeypot and pulled it back out glistening, closing his eyes as he sucked off the golden liquid. At last, he opened those beautiful eyes and dipped his thumb again. This time, he held it up, slowly waving it at me.

  My mouth watered for that sun-colored honey, and so I disappeared from the window, carrying Juliet through the tower passageway and down into the arbor.

  Pietro pulled me around the side of the dovecote, holding me close as he slipped that thumb into my mouth. But Juliet wriggled in my arms like a kitten wrapped in a drowning-sack, separating Pietro’s chest from mine.

  I’d taken a half-step back from Pietro, tasting apple and pear and pomegranate, my tongue coated with all the fruits of the arbor condensed into the warm honey, as I commented on Tybalt and his capon.

  But Tybalt’s not what my husband’s thinking of. “It’s been a year, Angelica. Time to loose the child’s swaddling.”

  A year. A birth, a saint’s day, Christmas, Lent, Easter. Each was Juliet’s first. Each, aside from birth, is what Susanna never had. Every holy-day, every season, I feel it.

  The first year is the hardest. That is what the black-veiled crones say, the ones who gather like sharp-beaked crows at a stranger’s graveside, cawing unasked-for advice at the mourners. The brown-frocked friars, if they bother to murmur any sort of comfort, will say as much as well. But no one says aloud what my mother-heart cannot unlearn: hard as the first year is, harder still is what happens in all the years that follow, when part of you forgets for a moment here or there what you’ve lost, even as the rest knows that in your deepest bones you can never for a day, an hour, an instant, forget.

  I still catch sight of Donato or Enzo or any of my boys, out of the corner of my eye. Sometimes I see them at the age they were when death snatched them, and sometimes as the age they’d be now, every one of them grown tall. Sometimes they’re some age in between, so I’m not certain from the fleeting features which son I saw, those beautiful lost faces blending one into another.

  But not Susanna. She stays ever a newborn babe, still covered in our shared blood, as she was in that too brief moment when first and last I glimpsed her. If Juliet’s grown and gained this year past, it’s only in measure against Susanna. How can I be glad for that? Why wish this last child grown enough to be taken from me and sent off to live among cold-humored nuns? Swaddled, she is safe. Suckling, she is satisfied. And so am I.

  “It is for Lord and Lady Cappelletti to decide when she is ready to be unswaddled.” Even as I say it, I know how Pietro might argue back. Lady Cappelletta has no notion what a child needs. And when have I been eager to obey Lord Cappelletto? Pietro might point out these things, or things much like them, and I ready myself to answer as soon as he does. But instead he says what I never expected to hear.

  “We could have another.”

  My tongue swells in my throat, too full for me to speak. All I can manage is to shake my head. Shake it as though to keep what he says from landing in my ears.

  We’ve never spoken this way, uttering out-loud plans for making babies. There’d been no need for such talk during those first laughing days of lusty love when we made Nunzio. Nor in the fifteen years that followed, when our little house filled with growing boys. And after we lost our sons, I never dared say to Pietro, nor did he dare say to me, that we should make another. This was what the pestilence taught, a lesson too terrible to ever forget: it was not for us to decide what child we got, when they came, and when they were taken.

  Month after month, I’d watched the moon grow full, wishing, hoping, my belly would grow with it, but all that swelled me was time, and wine, and sweets. And then, long after I’d given up waiting: Susanna.

  Did Pietro say anything to me, or I to him, to make her come? Could we have said anything to make her stay?

  This past year, the year since she was lost, is the only time I ever let the getting or not getting of children govern how Pietro and I indulge ourselves. There are countless ways for a wife to please a husband, and a clever husband can match them one for one in the pleasing of his wife. Pietro’s not ever remarked on how careful I’ve become since entering Ca’ Cappelletti to keep his seed from landing where it might quicken in me. Not because I do not want his child, but because I cannot bear to lose the child I already have.

  For this is what wealthy men dread most in a wet-nurse. I’ve seen women with smaller waists and faces far gaunter than mine standing in church doorways, milk soaking through their gowns while some sneering notary takes their testimony. But each woman and every notary and anyone who happens by—all know such a woman’s sworn-to-God statement will do no good when the court hears the suit her employer has brought against her. The merest suspicion of pregnancy is grounds enough to break a contract with a wet-nurse, no matter if it proves false or true. I’ll not take such a risk with Juliet.

  I love Pietro. But with what foolishly deluded heart can my husband believe that he and I might yet see even one child raised and wed, when we have buried seven children dead?

  “It was you who brought me here,” I remind him. “You set your mark on the nursing contract, hiring me away.”

  “It was Friar Lorenzo’s idea, not mine,” he says. “He told me there was one other baby born that day in all Verona, and by God’s grace the family was in want of a wet-nurse.” My strong Pietro quivers like a too-shorn sheep. “I waved his words away, thinking I could not bear to let you go. But when I saw how your body ached, like my own heart, for our dead daughter, it seemed the only way to stop your weeping. The only comfort I could give to you.”

  I pull Juliet close against my heart, feeling the weight of how much my husband loves me. “You were right, Pietro. She’s my comfort for all we’ve lost. Just as you wanted her to be.”

  “As I wanted, and you needed, a year ago.” He dips his little pinky into the depths of the honeypot, then traces my lips with the golden liquid. Dots it on my sweat-damp brow, his finger lingering between my eyes like Friar Lorenzo offering Ash Wednesday absolution. “But now I need you home with me again.”

  Instead of answering with words, I lead him into the tower and up to Juliet’s room. Laying her in the cradle, I bid him gather back the sun-warmed honey with tongue instead of finger. He savors that and more from me. For the first time in a twelve-month, I let him spend himself deep inside me, and I shiver with the pleasure of it.

  Afterward, I steal to the privy pot, as though his seed means no more to me than what else is squatted out here. I mouth a silent plea to the Virgin Mother. Sacred Maria, you who did not bear your own husband’s child so that you could raise the one God gave to you—a shrewd opening, to remind her of our likened states—I beg of you, take pity on me. On me, and on Juliet. Most Holy Madonna, keep us together, always. Then I rouse Pietro, telling him it’s time for him to take what he’s harvested back to the Via Zancani.

  But the pleasures I steal with my husband are not the only delights I
must keep secret. Come nightfall, while Tybalt and the other Cappelletti sleep with bellies full of the evening’s meal of roasted capon, I do what I’ve never so much as hinted to anyone, even Pietro or Friar Lorenzo, I’ve long been doing. I unwrap the swaddling bands, letting Juliet’s arms and legs spring free.

  She gurgles with pleasure at the rush of air. I match her throaty purrs, nuzzling the delicious plump of her legs and arms, cupping my belly against the soft bottoms of her feet.

  This is my secret joy, and hers. It started one half-mooned night before the Pentecost, when I awoke to her crying over having soiled herself. I unswaddled her and wiped her clean, but in my exhaustion I fell back to sleep before binding her arms and legs again. I dozed and dreamt and woke to Juliet grabbing at my hair and ears. She even wiggled her curious hand into my gaping mouth to touch my broken teeth and full, wet tongue. When I laughed, she folded herself and stuck her own toes into her mouth. I gobbled up her other foot, humming as she squealed. In that delicious moment, I knew the same pleasure she’d known months before, my mouth as full of her as hers has been of me.

  We slept again, entwined like vines heavy with ripe grapes. When sun and lark roused the house the next morning, I reswaddled her, pressing a finger first to my lips, then to hers. She nodded, sure and solemn, as though she knew we needed to keep anyone from suspecting how free she’d been.

  When the next night came and I took her into bed with me, she looked up with such expectation in her dark eyes, I could not leave her bound. I woke terrified through those first weeks, fearing her limbs would go crooked because they were not kept wrapped tight. For that is all we ever hear: the tighter the swaddling, the straighter the arms and legs. But the fear that comes with morning’s light is nothing compared to what I feel in the dark, once her arms are free and she reaches for me, or when she tests her uncertain legs by stepping against my thighs. We are lovers of the purest kind, for what greater love is there than the one between a mother and a milk-babe? Happy nights, when we take such simple, secret pleasures.

  Swaddled, she is safe. Suckling, she is satisfied. That is all Ca’ Cappelletti, or Friar Lorenzo, or even my own dear Pietro need know.

  SEVEN

  When Juliet is nearly a year and a half old, Prince Cansignorio comes to dine. Lord Cappelletto, eager to please his powerful guest, lets Carmignano flow by the cask, and I do not miss the chance to drink my fill as I hold Juliet for her royal godfather and the other guests to admire. The prince has brought a half dozen musicians with him, and they play different styles of song, some brightly plucked upon the lute and some heavy with the viol’s melancholy, to match each course as it’s served. While I soothe Juliet by swaying to the melodies, Cansignorio sits at the table-head drinking down one round of the Cappelletti’s wine after another. Lord Cappelletto twines compliments over his regal guest until the prince interrupts and, with a tongue heavy as wet wool, announces that he’s sent counselors to every ruling-house within a month’s travel by horse or sail. They’re seeking a woman not too old, not too ugly, with not too many brothers in her powerful family, to become Cansignorio’s holy wedded wife.

  Lord Cappelletto raises his goblet before anyone else can. “To a goodly, Godly match.”

  The prince nods and drains his cup once more, as Lord Cappelletto leans forward to suggest that Cansignorio’s good fortune would be best served if, before any dowry is negotiated, he dismissed a certain maladminstering Uberti, appointing Lord Cappelletto to oversee his treasury instead.

  Though the prince waves in wine-flushed agreement, all ­Europe knows it’s not only by the size of the dowry-portion that a ruler ­values his wife. I see it in how Cansignorio looks at Juliet, eyes full of pity for Lord Cappelletto, and something else for Lady ­Cappelletta, who still cannot produce a son. Eggs are eaten, herbs are applied, prayers are said. But nothing quickens. Her blood has stopped and started three times in twelve months, what is purged from her each time not even formed enough to bury beside her other lost one. The fault cannot be in the stars, or something gone off in the year’s grain, for bellies spread all over Verona. The prince’s mistress is thin and carrying high, so that not even the bishop can pretend not to notice that Cansignorio will have ­another bastard long before he ever takes a bride. Lord Cappelletto takes careful note, commissioning a finely worked silver dog with sapphires for its eyes as a gift of congratulations to the prince, and an even more ornate silver-and-sapphire cross for the altar of one of the chapels in the Duomo as penance for his envy.

  While the thickest of winter’s fog twists through Verona’s streets, Lord Cappelletto sends the nittish house-page searching through the family’s storerooms. It takes a half-day’s hunt before he barges into our chamber bearing such a contraption as I’ve never seen, a thick wooden ring etched with the Cappelletti crest, held up by four carved legs set on a larger ring balanced on wooden wheels. “Girello,” Lord Cappelletto calls it. He orders me to unswaddle Juliet and set her inside the frame, as though she’s a cork being fitted with feathers for a game of shuttlecock, and he means for me to bandy her back and forth.

  Juliet has no need for this strange machine of which Lord Cappelletto is so fond. She is ample-limbed and dimple-fleshed like me, not wan and sullen like Lady Cappelletta. I know how ready her chubby legs are, a sturdy match to her plump, impatient arms. I’d bid Tybalt to teach Juliet to walk as my boys taught their younger brothers, for a ready babe will give toddling chase to an apple rolled along the floor. Pietro’s army roly-polied an entire orchard’s worth of apples between the six of them. I baked each bruised fruit with parsnip, fig, and turnip, seasoning the mixture with anise, fennel, and a touch of mustard. Then I chewed with my own mouth the portion to feed whichever boy was just out of swaddling. The whole neighborhood could smell the scent, imagine the taste of one of our sons learning to walk.

  But Ca’ Cappelletti fills only with the dull, grating sound of wood wheels along the stone floors. Juliet careens in the girello, dark eyes flashing wonder at how she can make herself go. But then comes the pause as she turns, looking back to make sure I’m following. I am all she seeks, and she ventures in her walker only so far that she can please herself at being able to waddle her way back to me again.

  As Juliet masters the girello, Lord Cappelletto tells me the page is to take the cradle from her chamber. He says it is to make more space for Juliet to practice walking, but from the way his scheming tongue darts at the spittle that gathers in the corner of his mouth, I can tell this is a lie—or at least not all I’d have of the truth.

  I piece the fuller truth together hours later when I stand in the sala window, straining in the last of the day’s light to sew a border of Damascus cloth onto one of Tybalt’s doublets. It is a lurid violet, as costly for the vivid color as for the exotic fabric. Tybalt begged for it in imitation of the new fashion the prince’s nephews wear. Lord Cappelletto, ever wanting to outdo his noble rivals, happily indulges anything that ties his household to Cansignorio’s. Never mind how my eyes strain to work such careful stitches, attaching the border to a garment that Tybalt, already long in the leg, will soon outgrow.

  As I pierce the needle into the precious Damascus cloth, I catch sight out the window of the house-page. He’s bearing the cradle along the Via Cappello as though Lord Cappelletto has ordered him to float an infant Moses down the Adige to some unknown pharaoh. But no, just before the page reaches the Porta dei Leoni, he turns into a humble doorway.

  It’s the house of a pursemaker. He is a man with maybe six, maybe seven daughters. I can never keep track as they pass back and forth on their household errands. However many they total, you do not need an abacus to tally that there are too many of them for a pursemaker to dowry.

  Wide-hipped and young, those daughters are. It flashes on me like a lightning bolt: Lord Cappelletto means to have his pick, trying one and then another to fill that cradle with a son.

  I store away the discovery like Tybalt stores candies in his sleeve, though it gives m
e something more sour than sweet to chew. I draw Juliet out of the girello, saying I must go to San Fermo to be shriven, though we head first to the Via Zancani.

  “You cannot warm two houses with only one woodpile,” I say, after I’ve shared the gossip with Pietro. Lord Cappelletto will never have heat enough to make a son in his marriage bed, if he spends himself among the pursemaker’s daughters.

  Pietro, who has heat enough for an ironmaker’s furnace, swings himself before me. “But if your fire’s big enough, who knows how many pots you can bring to a boil.”

  My husband is a merry man. It’s a truth I treasured when he and I had every night together, for we always made good use of them. But the stolen hour here or there we’ve had these seasons past to take our quickest pleasures—they are like crumbs of stale bread to a starving man. And worse, to a starving woman.

  There are undowried daughters up and down the Via Zancani, the same as on the Via Cappello. And Pietro can easily find time as he travels from hive to hive to stop among the prostitutes who ply their trade in the sun-bleached stands and shadowed corridors of the Arena.

  “Have you been bringing many pots to boil?” I ask.

  He pulls me to him. “One pot is all a good cook needs to make the most savory of stews.” Burying his face in my bare belly, he runs those big hands above and below, touching and then tasting all the places he knows well. What we make is more savory than stew, fills me more than whole loaves of bread. We lie so long together, I have to skip my shrift, carrying my sins along with the precious taste of Pietro on my tongue. The smell of him lingers on me as I bear Juliet through the wintry streets, clinging to Pietro’s promise that he passes solitary days and nights while I am gone.

  Back in Ca’ Cappelletti, Lady Cappelletta is wearing a new gilt-and-emerald brooch and a puzzled look, not sure what to make of her husband’s sudden generosity. I remind her it is a rich man’s duty to purchase such sumptuous things, for how else are the silversmiths, gem traders, and silk merchants to keep their families fed?