Juliet's Nurse

by Lois Leveen

  As the cross catches the summer sun, my besotted lamb reaches for it. Pietro slips Friar Lorenzo’s pouch to me, then flourishes his empty hand as though he’s a court magician. Juliet, startled to find what she seeks gone, blinks out disappointed tears. But Pietro offers his other hand, which holds a second well-filled sack, this one smelling of cherries, clove, and cinnamon. Juliet snatches it, twirling with delight. She pulls out three honeyed cherries, stuffs them into her mouth, and resumes her frenzied circuit through the arbor.

  I hate to see her cry. But I hate more to see her soothed so easily.

  “What comfit will comfort her, once she’s tasted this?” I wag Friar Lorenzo’s pouch of wormwood at Pietro.

  “The child finds other delights than the breast. So might the breast, and the rest of my beloved wife, find other delights than suckling the child.”

  He pulls me into the shade of the peach tree. A tender sapling when first I came to Ca’ Cappelletti, these three years later it’s grown big enough to bear plump fruit. Pietro plucks a peach, halving it with his bare hands. He grasps the pit in his strong teeth and spits it to the ground. Then he rubs the wet, ripe peach halves along my neck, across my collar-bone. Deep into my dress. Slicking my breasts with peach flesh, as juice pours down my belly.

  His tongue follows, licking and probing. Reminding me a husband’s mouth can be as needy as a nursling’s. As needy, and as needed. July is hot even in this shadiest corner of the arbor, and I am hot, too. Pietro knows it, urging my hands to the most ravenous parts of him.

  I’m dancing my hips against his when a sharp shriek ruptures the air. A shriek, and then an awful silence. And then harrowing sobs that pierce my heart.

  I race through the arched passage into the courtyard, Pietro following. Juliet’s sprawled beside the well. Tripped over her own impatient feet, her brow cracked open.

  I kneel and kiss her bloodied head. But before I can ready a breast to soothe her wailing, Pietro takes her by her tiny shoulders, turning her away from me toward him.

  “Did you fall upon your face?” he asks, as though any fool could not know that’s what she’s done.

  He waits for Juliet to snivel back a sob and nod, then says, “A child falls upon its face, while a woman falls upon her back.” He laughs, sweeping her up with his big arms so she lies gazing at summer’s cloudless sky. “Will you not fall backward for a merry man, when you are grown and have wit enough to know more pleasures?”

  Juliet stints mid-wail. She smiles up into Pietro’s winking eyes and leaves off crying. “Aye,” she says, though surely she cannot know what he means, never mind how many times she’s been with me when I’ve fallen on my back for him.

  He sets her down and runs a broad thumb across the ugly lump that’s swelling from her brow. “A lesson every girl does well to learn, and you’ll have a bump as big as a cockerel’s stone to remind you of it.” He laughs again, and she laughs too. Her tears forgotten, she runs off into the arbor to play.

  I lean back, letting the well-stones take the weight of me. “She’s too young for talk of rooster parts, and rutting people.”

  “She is growing. Soon she will be grown.” He sits beside me, slipping an arm across my shoulders and pulling me to him. “Why not let the girl know what pleasures she’ll relish when she’s a woman?”

  “She’ll not ever get to relish them.” I bury my head against him and tell him how Lord Cappelletto plans to send her to the convent as soon as she is weaned. “He’ll take her first from me, and then from every worldly pleasure. She’ll wither away in a cloister, so he can have his son.”

  My merry-tongued husband has no words at first. But then he sighs and says, “She’s his child. He may dispose of her as he pleases. You’ve known that all along. But if we have one of our own—”

  “She is my own.” The words I’ve never said aloud come pouring out. A flood, an avalanche. “It’s my milk that’s made her. The bone and muscle and soft, smooth flesh of her, they’re all grown from what I give. The hair upon her head, dark as my own, and those plump cheeks. There’s more of me in her than of Lady Cappelletta, or even Lord Cappelletto. Anyone can see it.”

  “What they see is the Cappelletti crest. Upon her clothes, and this grand house. And on the signet ring with which Lord Cappelletto will seal the papers committing her to Santa Caterina.” Pietro kisses me, not with his earlier passion, but with the same gentle comfort I offered Juliet for her broken brow. “You’ve always known this time would come.”

  I’ve known, of course. But by my troth, I’ve not known, too.

  Have I not said that self-deceiving is the very way of humankind? That in our hearts, we all wish to be fooled, and so we make fools of ourselves? There are coin-hungry husbands who every year contract for a different babe to be cradled at their wives’ breasts, and hard-to-please fathers who will hire first one nurse, then fickly turn her out and seek another, and then another after that, so that their child ever suckles upon strangers. But what Juliet and I share is not, cannot, be like that.

  I am a fool, perhaps, but even as Juliet shed her swaddling, learned to waddle then to walk and now to run, even as she’s swallowed her first tastes of solid food—in all this time we’ve had together, I’ve not truly believed that Lord Cappelletto could ever be so heartless as to cleave me from her.

  “I’ll not lose her.”

  “No, you’ll not. Novitiates, and even full-habited nuns, may have visitors. I’ll take you to the convent whenever she’s uncloistered.”

  How can Pietro’s talk of some-day visits succor me, when I know I’d not survive the stretch of time between them? “How can I live even for one day apart from Juliet?”

  “Three years, you’ve lived apart from me.”

  “And it was ten times three years that we had together first. Why can I not have even half so long with her?” My words fly sharp and heavy, like the rocks Tybalt hurls from atop the Cappelletti tower.

  How can my husband argue with me over this? Does he not know what losing Juliet will cost me? Did he not grieve for our sons, and for the loss of little Susanna? Is my mother-love so different from what a father feels?

  Pietro pulls himself away, rising to his feet. “Mantua is only a day’s ride from here. Lord Cappelletto may return at any time. When he does, he’ll expect to find her weaned. And if she’s not, he’ll likely put you out at once for disobeying him. You’ll get no chance to bid God-be-with-you-and-good-bye to Juliet. No leave to see her, even on uncloistered days at Santa Caterina. Nor ever again to visit Tybalt.”

  What Pietro says is true. But every syllable of it forms a taste as bitter on my tongue as Friar Lorenzo’s wormwood will be upon my breast.

  “I must go to Villafranca. A day’s walk each way, to haggle for what spices I can afford before I harvest this summer’s honey. When I’m back, I’ll not come here again. I’ll not keep sneaking about, stealing time with you like I’m a thief taking what is rightfully Lord Cappelletto’s.” He leans down and kisses my hair, letting his words slip softly into my ear. “For thirty years we made a home together, through the worst that anyone could suffer. Since you came here, I’ve worn my patience like haircloth, waiting to have you back again. It’s time for you to be my proper wife. Let me love you near, as I’ve loved you every day you’ve been away.”

  I close my eyes, feeling the sun pour its stern heat across my face as I nod to my beloved husband. But he cannot see how I rub my tongue against my mouth-roof, knowing his honeycoated words’ll not take away this bitter taste.

  For one last night, I nurse Juliet into milk-sweet sleep. Restless though I am, waiting for her to wake and take her final taste of me, she sleeps heavily, stirring only when the morning lark twitters outside the open window, and the sun begins to stretch its golden way into the room.

  “Me pick?” she asks, studying me with drowsy determination. I nod, glad for this game she’s loved to play since before she had the words for it.

  She opens an expectant mouth and
takes in the nipple of my left breast. As she suckles, she reaches her hand up to stroke my face, drinking me in until my left breast has no more milk to give. I wait in perfect anticipation for her to reach her mouth to the ripe right nipple. Then I pull her close, savoring her last latching onto me. Wondering if ever tender hearts could break more than mine will, and hers as well, when we are forced apart.

  By day’s full light, I cannot deny the truth in what Pietro said. Yesterday’s bruise has deepened into a hideous purpled rise above Juliet’s eyes. That sight alone might be enough for Lord Cappelletto to put me out. I’ll not risk disobeying what he’s ordered me to do. Not anger him so, he might never let me see Juliet again. So I pray to Santa Margherita and Sant’Agata and the Blessed Virgin Mother for such strength as only women show, as I loose Friar Lorenzo’s cross-bound pouch.

  I was not much older than Tybalt is now, when I had Nunzio, my firstborn, at my breast. I can still remember how he crawled up my belly and found the nipple for himself. They will do that, the clever ones, in their first hour. And from that first hour, for fifteen years my milk ran for my boys. And then, when I was long past thinking I would ever suckle babe again, it came once more. Seven I birthed, and seven I nursed. But after today, not any more.

  While Juliet giggles and gambols about the arbor, I sit beside the dovecote to rub on the wormwood, the godly friar’s way to trick a child to stop suckling. I flinch at the first dab, expecting it to burn like salt in a fresh wound. But crueler than that, I feel nothing.

  As I coat myself with this bitterest of herbs, I sense a dark form suddenly rising. The bees—they’re flying frenzied from the hive, the arbor filling with their thousand-headed hiss. They hover in a whirling mass in the hot, fruit-scented air before forming a furious, swirling cone between me and Juliet.

  The slabbed bench slides beneath me, then drops away. The fast jerk flings me to the ground. Stones fly past. The dovecote cracks, birds caw. Bells across the city clang. Not rung with the pious care that calls the holy to pray, but as if some unseen demon’s hand was smacking every clapper in Verona, intent on splitting all our bells to pieces.

  I cling for a hellish eternity to the shuddering ground, wondering if this thundering from every side will ever end. Worried the world will no longer stand when it is done. And plotting how to drag myself to Juliet.

  And then, in an instant, the earth stills. The eddying cloud of bees funnels back into their fallen hive. Birds soar from the crumbled ruins of the dovecote, screeching as they spread themselves through the arbor trees. Screams of agony seep into Ca’ Cappelletti from Verona’s streets. But not a sound comes from Juliet.

  She’s heaped on the ground. She does not sob, does not stir. Not even when I crawl near and lay a hand across her chest to feel for the quiet beating of her heart.

  I pull her to me, pushing my breast into her gaping mouth. She vomits me out the instant she tastes wormwood.

  “Goddamn the brown-frocked friar.” The words are out before I know I’ve made them. Surely I’m the one who’ll wind up damned, for that unholy utterance. Perhaps I already am.

  The arch over the passageway to the courtyard has collapsed. I stumble over toppled hunks of marble, clutching glassy-eyed Juliet to me. The great Cappelletti crest that hung within the courtyard lies smashed upon the ground. But the well still stands. I thank the saints for it as I haul up a pail of water, the rope rough against my hands.

  My legs quake so, I cannot tell whether the earth is trembling again. I scrub and scrub my bittered breasts, dipping my tongue to test the taste. Wormwood, wormwood, wormwood. I cannot rid myself of it. How can I make Juliet come back to me, to herself, without a milk-sweet breast to draw her here?

  Leaving her beside the well, I scurry once more across the jagged pile of fallen stone into the arbor. I do not give myself time to think, or doubt, or fear, before bending to pry loose the lid of the cut-log hive. I plunge my hand inside, the waxy comb crumbling in my desperate fingers.

  The first sting burns the wattle of flesh hanging beneath my elbow. Pain sizzles up and down my arm and across my hand, as a second bee stings, and then a third. Then too many to keep count.

  I hold tight to the crushed bits of comb, zigzagging my way from the hive, shaking bees out of my sleeve. By the time I’m back in the courtyard, I’m so swollen with stings, it’s hard to unfold my fingers. I slip the sticky comb between Juliet’s gaped lips and beg her to take suck.

  She begins to work her mouth, leaching golden honey from the wax. The sweetness soothes her, and soon she hums with pleasure. She reaches for me, squeezing my arm, which makes the stings pain even more.

  We rock together in the day’s heat. Cocooned in pain, and grief, and honeyed relief, while Verona’s streets echo with terrified shouts reporting all the damage the shaken earth has wrought.

  NINE

  The servants have all gone pecking after their own pleasures since Lord and Lady Cappelletti went away, and the house-page is still not back at his post. Which means there’s no warning before the horse is inside the Cappelletti gate. Lathered from being ridden too hard for too long, the beast brays as the rider jumps down. I recognize the heavy footfall on the stone path, the clanging of the broad silver belt. But I’ve no time to right myself and Juliet, and no means to make her swollen head and bruised face less frightful.

  “Juliet?” Lord Cappelletto calls her name as a question announcing his return.

  “Papa,” she answers, opening her arms and raising her face in anticipation of his kiss.

  What’s sweet anticipation for her is sour worry for me. Lord Cappelletto left the most beautiful of daughters, and returns to find a seeming changeling for his child. All the easier for him to cast her off to a convent, and cast me from her forever.

  But though he startles at first sight of her, he kneels and kisses her with keen father-love, then murmurs soft words only she can hear before kissing her again. His voice catching in prayer, he brushes his finger along her brow, gently tracing the bruise that’s spread beneath her eye. “I rode straight from Mantua as soon as the ground ceased shaking, fearing you were hurt.”

  “Me was hurt. Me fall, and Nurse fall, and dovey-coo fall.”

  I seize upon what she says, nodding toward the fallen archway. “We were in the arbor when the earth quaked. The dovecote collapsed, and Juliet fell and cracked her brow. She cried for the dug, but having weaned her as you bade me, I comforted her with honey.” Every word I say is true, even if things’d not occurred in the order that I tell them. But I put my whole heart into what I promise will happen next. “What’s bruised on her will heal, and she’ll be every bit the lovely Cappelletta di Cappelletto, pride of Ca’ Cappelletti, before the dovecote is rebuilded.”

  Lord Cappelletto shakes his head. “It’ll not be built again. Lady Cappelletta has borne a son—”

  “Thanks be to God.” I cross myself with my sting-riddled arm, though I’m unsure whether Juliet is saved. “A son, at last.”

  “Her last,” he says. “Dead within the hour it came out of her, and dead she nearly was with delivering it.” Grief bows his balding head. “The day we arrived in Mantua, her pains came on. The Gonzaghe sent their own court midwife along with their physick, but neither one could save my son. Nor could the physick cure my brother.” He clasps Juliet tighter, nearly smothering her against the dark folds of his new mourning cloak. “The physick is certain nothing more will quicken in Lady Cappelletta’s womb.”

  Juliet wriggles her face free. Impatient with his talk of what she’s too young to understand, she mews out, “Tybalt?”

  She wants to know where her beloved playmate is. But Lord Cappelletto, bound by his own thoughts, says, “He’ll be my heir. I promised my brother I’d take him as my own to keep our family’s fortune complete.”

  Heir and fortune mean much to a man as rich as Lord Cappelletto. But what comfort can they be to a father-hungry boy like Tybalt?

  Lord Cappelletto spends the rest of the day shut
inside Ca’ Cappelletti, so bereft he turns away even the prince’s own messengers, though he sends out alms of loaves, oil, and wine to honor the memory of his brother, and of his last lost son. His days in Mantua have aged him by ten years, and he carries himself more burdened than the page and serving-man who, having skulked back to Ca’ Cappelletti, are ordered to haul off the pieces of the crumbled archway and the fallen Cappelletti crest.

  When, hours later, a carriage arrives, Lord Cappelletto himself reaches up to lift out Lady Cappelletta, grief seeding an unwonted tenderness for his nearly taken wife. She is more wan than ever, her amber eyes unfocused as he guides her gently to the ground. “Ma’da,” Juliet calls, putting all a child’s expectation into those two syllables. But Lady Cappelletta, flickering like a tallow-candle in a sudden wind, pays her no notice.

  I kiss Juliet’s dark hair, whispering that Tybalt is here, too. But what appears next is not Tybalt, though the delicate creature has his pretty eyes and poutish mouth, its well-shaped head crowned with the same long, soft curls. Juliet buries herself among my skirts, taking timid peeks at the beautiful being. A younger, softer, girlish version of Tybalt, with none of his awkward angularity. Nor his bold curiosity. Hesitating at the carriage opening, she crosses herself and recites some Latin prayer.

  Lord Cappelletto nods at her piety. “Fear not, fair Rosaline,” he says. “Tybalt, come help your sister down.”

  Tybalt is not eager to obey, I can tell from how long it takes him to make his way to the carriage opening, jump to the ground, and turn to lower this Rosaline out. His long face is made longer by grief, and he’ll not meet my eye, nor Juliet’s. As the last of the day’s dusk seeps from the sky, he follows Lord Cappelletto up the stairs, Rosaline holding to his arm in imitation of how Lady Cappelletta clings to her husband, all of them cloaked in mourning.