by Lois Leveen
Juliet has ever loved to hear my stories of when she was her littlest, so I tell the tale of that day. I do bear a brain for memories, and a tongue as well that loves to speak, and on I prate until Lady Cappelletta stamps a foot and says, “Enough of this. I pray you, hold your peace.”
What I hold is not my peace but a pretty piece of Juliet’s past, and I’m so keen to share it, I tell yet more of when she was a toddling thing, a falling girl, and Pietro saged how she one day would be a woman and fall as women do, for a man.
This brings a flush to Juliet, turning her face bright against the azure of her gown, like the reddened sun dawning into fresh sky. When I talked to her this morning of falling for a man, she hung eager on each word. But that was done between the two of us. Now, before Lady Cappelletta, she waves my words away. Dark eyes pleading above those blushing cheeks, she says, “Stint, I pray you, Nurse.”
Pray I do, with all my soul. “God mark you to His grace, you were the prettiest babe that ever I nursed,” I say, adding with great care to catch Lady Cappelletta’s ear, “If I might live to see you married once, I have my wish.”
My wish, and my felicity. We’ll make a handsome household with Count Paris. And soon enough there’ll be babes of my dear babe that, if I cannot suckle, I can at least succor, and raise. A lasting part of my Pietro, and a joy of my old age.
“Marry,” says Lady Cappelletta, taking to my hint like a shad swimming for some worm wriggled on a hook, “is the very theme I care to talk of. Tell me, daughter Juliet, how stands your disposition to be married?”
She only calls Juliet daughter when there is some especial reason playing mother suits her, some praise or prize to seize herself. But Juliet slides her eyes to me and watches for my careful nod before she answers. “It is an honor that I dream not of.”
True enough. Too giddy a girl to sleep this day, and why should she save only for a dream what I’ve told her will be waking true? “An honor,” I repeat, with a wink to her. “Were I not your only nurse, I’d say you’d sucked wisdom from the teat.”
Lady Cappelletta smooths the seagreen samite over her own never-tasted breasts, reminds us how often ladies of esteem younger than Juliet are already made mothers. Recalls that she herself was delivered of a babe when she was not much older. And for once says the very words I hope to hear. “The valiant Paris seeks you for his love.”
“A man, young lady.” This is what I say? At such a moment, to sound such a thick-witted fool. But why not be a joyous fool, to know my Juliet’ll have so fine a match? Count Paris may not carry the spice-and-honey scent of my Pietro, but surely he can be something near to what my bee-sotted husband harvested. “Lady, such a man as all the world. Why, he’s a man of wax.”
My wax Lady Cappelletta must immediately outdo. “Verona’s summer has not such a flower,” she says.
A flower handsomer by far than the old shrub to which she’s wed. Mayhap that is her part in this, for I’d not expect her to delight in being made a grandame, and have all Verona reminded she’s no longer any summer flower herself. But to gather such a flower to her by marrying Juliet to him—
“Nay, he’s a flower,” I say, to pluck what’s budding from Lady Cappelletta. “In faith, a very flower.” I rub one pollened hand against the other, and think of all that the bees take from such lovely flowers, to make the delicious drip of honey that Juliet so loves.
But Lady Cappelletta is done with flowery talk, and makes a bookish speech to Juliet, about pens and lines and what is writ along the margins of some dull tome or other. Books? Who cares what lays between the covers of a book? What matters is what lays between the covers of a bed. To remind them both of this, I place a loving hand upon Juliet’s taut belly, as if to warm her womb to what it will receive, and say, “Women grow by men.”
I might add that first men grow by women, for it’s time Juliet was taught how to play a pricksong so more than music swells. But better to save such talk for when we are far from Lady Cappelletta, who has no ear, no taste, for bedroom harmonies. My Juliet shall learn from me the lessons that I learned laying with Pietro, and know what pleasures a warm-humored wife can take, and give, within a marriage bed.
Footsteps sound from the compound’s entryway—not just the scuttering of servants but the first of the guests already arrived. “Speak briefly,” Lady Cappelletta says, “can you like of Paris’s love?”
Now her eyes, like mine, are on Juliet. I cannot say what Lady Cappelletta sees, but I see in this one moment all Juliet’s life. And all of mine. I see summation of all my joy, comfort for all my sorrows. I remember what it was to be such a creature, and have that ram of a Pietro come tupping upon me. I want such years of pleasure for her. But I see too that she is still a tender lambkin, not sure even how to answer without first taking private counsel with me.
“I’ll look to like, if looking liking move.” She pauses, choosing her words with care. “But no more deep will I endart my eye, than your consent gives strength to make it fly.”
A clever rhyme, and I reward it with another wink, to show she’s a good girl for saying it so. Let Lady Cappelletta believe it’s her consent, and her lord husband’s, Juliet speaks of. My girl and I both know what we together can make fly.
But what flies now is one of the newly hired serving-men. He’s not been here a week, but already he’s as indolent and insolent as any who’ve ever served within Ca’ Cappelletti. Rushing in, he treads hard upon my foot before making a bootlicker’s bow to Lady Cappelletta. “Madam, the guests are come, supper served up, you called, my young lady asked for.” He slides his slithery eyes over Juliet. I’d have him out for that, but, catching my glare, he adds, “The nurse cursed in the pantry, and every thing in extremity.”
Cursed—hearing that, I might name an extremity into which I’d put, if not everything, at least the serving-man and pantry-maid and any others who dare try tell me what’s my place. I’ve seen dozens like this one come and go in the nearly fourteen years I’ve been here. I’ll outlast him and his impertinence. Or if I’ll not, it’ll only be because I’ll go with Juliet when she’s wed to Count Paris and become mistress of her own house.
“I must hence to wait,” the servant says, as though he means to wait table, when by my holidame, I suspect what the wastrel waits is only a chance to pinch some cups, and some choice meats, and the pantry-maid as well. “I beseech you follow straight.”
“We’ll follow.” Lady Cappelletta barely gives curt nod to dismiss him, before shooting one last judging squint at my dear girl. “Juliet, the count awaits.”
As soon as Lady Cappelletta passes out of the room, I grab Juliet about the waist and swing her round. Nose to nose, like a mama cat admiring her kitten’s whiskers, I say, “Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days.”
The cook’s plucked a half dozen peacocks, stuffed them with fried oysters and spiced oranges, roasted all in belly lard, laid each upon a silver platter, and arranged the feathers back upon them. When they’re served, the forty guests who’ve come to dine stamp their feet in delight. Iridescent feathers shimmer as knives thrust and carve the birds.
All through the sala, young men make great show of sucking meat from quills and offering them as adornment to the loveliest ladies. Tybalt did as much for me, years past. A pretty bit of flattery to an old woman. But tonight he sits somber beside the sister whose features are so like his own, except that while his are edged with truculence, hers sit prim enough they might still every wavering feather. Rosaline wears a dun-colored habit, the crucifix about her neck as big as an assassin’s dagger. Though Lord Cappelletto and the other revelers raise goblet after goblet to drink her health, not a sip passes her pure lips.
I might pity the poor girl, who’ll never know the delights Juliet is to find in Paris’s bed. But what Rosaline cannot know, she’ll not miss. She bows her head and crosses herself, over and over through the dinner, shocked at the company’s indulgences. The goodly nun eats only lettuce dressed with lemon, followed by a h
andful of fresh grapes. Nibbling like a rabbit among hounds until she can bear no more, when she leans and whispers to Tybalt, who rises and leads her from the room.
The rest of the company makes up for her restraint. Having had our fill of peacock, we’re served the flakiest of focaccia, the pastry filled with egg-basted turtledove. Next comes fig-peckers braised with four kinds of olives, then pheasants covered with fried squid, followed by veal mortadella simmered in fava beans and mint. Lord Cappelletto flouts the sumptuary law, keeping keen eye to make sure the trencher nearest Prince Cansignorio’s nephew is always the first filled.
Though Juliet sits across from Count Paris, she does not raise her gaze to his, the shyness natural to her age ripening to coyness by my morning’s tutelage. She tilts her head to mine, feeding me from her trencher with her own hand, like I’m her pet. Hiding my bruises behind my broad palm, I eat all that she demurs, waving off only the boar’s head covered in pomegranate. Too toothless at my age to burst the rosy seeds and taste the succulence inside, I’ve Juliet to savor what I no longer can. I bid her nibble upon those pretty seeds as we gossip like old women and giggle like young girls, ahum with our wooing news.
When the rose water is brought in finger bowls, I fuss over Juliet, carefully turning my own illused face from the company while I dab at her mouth and work the silver-and-ivory pick I wear about my neck to clean her teeth. She’s too grown to need such tending, but it occupies me while the lesser servants clear away the plate and push aside the tables. The diners don their masks, and I raise mine. More guests arrive already in their costumes. Lord Cappelletto drones a pompous speech about the days when he wore a merrymaker’s visor, though his bulbous nose is so frightfully large it’s impossible to imagine the mask that could’ve covered such a thing. “Thirty years, since I last danced,” he says, raising an uncertain eyebrow to some other shrivelled codger, “or only some five-and-twenty?”
Who cares which it was, I wish to say, impatient for him to give lute and pipe leave to play so Juliet may prance to her finer future.
Wax or flower, whichever Paris is, he shades easily among the masked revelers. Not so his cousin Mercutio, for not by his face alone has that debaucher made himself known around Verona. Mercutio wears his doublet so short, it shows every whorl and flourish upon his gilded codpiece. He’s a nearer relation to the prince than Paris is, which may prove perilous. Rumors swirl through the city of how Cansignorio plots to have his bastard sons rule after him, and all Verona knows how Cansignorio disposes of relations he deems rivals. Although it’s hard to imagine lascivious Mercutio taking any interest in the throne—unless perhaps there were a shapely maiden or two seated stark-naked upon it.
The summer night grows dark, and the house is thick with torchsmoke. I try to keep sight of Juliet among the dancers, but the rings and chains move quick, and my old eyes weary with peering through my mask-holes. Searching for a place to sit, I spy Tybalt at the edge of the hall, sliding his sword in and out of its scabbard.
“Freshly stained?” I ask, nodding at his blade.
“I drew during this morning’s fray, but had no time to drive my hate home before the prince’s guard came calling peace.” Disappointment smolders along his face, as it did when he was but a boy, longing for his far-off father’s company.
“Did I not tell you I’d no desire for your vengeance?”
“I heed you, Nurse, as I try to heed my uncle. But neither you nor he can dissuade me, when it’s my sister I defend.”
“Rosaline?” What sort of brute would attack a nun? “Was she—” I search for the word, imagining the folds of her habit hiding such bruises as I bear. “Is Rosaline unwell?”
“She is well.” The words bring no softening to what pinches hard in him. “Too well, too fair, too wise, wisely too fair. She’s caught the eye of a certain cursèd rakehell who woos and woos, and will not hear her no.”
This must have been what he wrote so secretly of in his letter, why he was so impatient for her reply. The wall around the vineyard of Santa Caterina is low enough for a lusty man to climb. And many a girl or woman who’s shut up in a convent for want of a proper dowry would be glad for a clandestine suitor. But not pious Rosaline. She’d not be hit by Cupid’s own enchanted arrow.
“What harm can unchaste words do chaste ears?” I repeat what fell from Tybalt’s own mouth, in hope it’ll cool his too easy temper.
But Tybalt’s like an iron held so long in the fire it glows of its own accord. “The scoundrel haunts the convent. Offers gold enough to seduce a saint, in hopes Rosaline’ll ope her lap to him. To know some fiend plots to use my sister so—”
“Is only to know what moves a man.” Pietro, I miss you now anew, for surely you might better speak to Tybalt of what I know he needs. Might bend his ear with more merry tales than Lord Cappelletto’s droning on of family honor. Might convince him to seek a more pleasurable thrusting than what men do with swords. “It’s time you thought of such pursuits yourself. Not to cast your eyes upon one pledged to chastity, but to set your heart on some hartless hind.” I conjure all the love I’ve ever felt for Tybalt. “You’ve an affectionate nature. Why not make an honorable suit, and take a bride?”
“It’s not for me to take, but to be given. My uncle will arrange a wife for his heir such as suits him, when he deems the time is right. I’ll have naught to say about it, except to mutter the church vows when I’m told I must. What joy is there in that?”
I search across the sala, hoping to catch sight of Paris empalmed with Juliet. Though the dancers are a blur, my own palm quakes with the thrill of imagining their hands joined. “Lord Cappelletto can arrange a winsome match,” I say. “If you but speak to him—”
“I’ve tried to speak my part, endeavoring to tell him that this villain who would seduce my sister has dared come here enmasked to find her. And am told, be patient, and take no note of him, and he shall be endured. Am told I must keep the peace within Ca’ Cappelletti, even with one not worthy to be granted it.” He draws sword and strikes, his well-handled blade slicing a single blood-red thread from a nearby tapestry. “I’m the one who’s always told to guard our honor, yet when I try am called by my own uncle a goodman boy, a saucy boy, and a princox.”
“Your uncle says many things that would better go unuttered, and are best unheeded.” I stoop and pluck up the silken strand, looping it to form a bright bud I nestle between my breasts. But I cannot raise even the smallest smile from Tybalt. “You are a good man, and no boy. Saucy at times, but who does not prefer a sauced meat to a dry one? As proud a cock as any prince, but no princox.”
Nothing I say soothes what rages in his eyes, or loosens the tight grasp on his hilt. Hoping wine will do what words will not, I go to find him a full goblet, and myself one as well. But before I can make my way back to him, I hear, “Nurse, Nurse,” shrilled in that voice I’m suffered to obey. I empty both goblets in swift gulps, stash them on a window’s sill, and turn to present myself to Lady Cappelletta.
I’m flushed with the wine, but she’s flushed with something else, the samite pulling low upon her bosom as she leans close to Paris. “Nurse, I crave—” Paris arches an eyebrow at the word, which makes her flush more—“a word, I crave a word with Juliet. Fetch her here.”
Fetch, like I’m a hound and Juliet some slobbered-upon bone. But I nod and curtsy. Let Paris see Lady Cappelletta for what she is, and see me as a worthy part of Juliet’s dowry. Juliet, who I find not among the dancers but, after seeking everywhere, discover in an alcove speaking to one of the masked guests, a thin and tallish fellow. “Pilgrim,” I hear, and “prayer,” and “book.” Can my Juliet be so simple-hearted, wasting an evening’s revels in such dull talk? Duller even than what Lady Cappelletta might have to say.
“Madam.” I speak boldly, for surely Juliet’ll be glad to be called away from such as this. “Your mother craves a word with you.”
Hearing me, and realizing she’s been overheard, Juliet flitters like a pale moth and
is gone.
“What is her mother?” the fellow asks, his callow voice an odd match to his well-jeweled mask.
What is her mother? I might count all heaven’s stars before I could count the ways I can answer that. “Marry, bachelor,” I say. If he’s a clever man, he’ll know what I say next is as untrue as a married bachelor would be. “Her mother is the lady of the house, and a good lady, and a wise and virtuous one.”
Though he’s not so handsome above as Paris, nor so well-formed below as Mercutio, still he has a boyish pretty mouth below his mask, and a pair of shapely arms. I press myself close upon those arms and say, “I nursed her that you talked withal.” And nursed enough wine tonight to take this stranger into my confidence. “I tell you, he that can lay hold of her shall have the chinks.” Chinks of the precious dowry coins Lord Cappelletto will gift Paris, whole cassoni of which could be worth no more than her treasured maidenhead. With that bit of bawd, off I go after Juliet.
But the wine pounds in my head more steadily than my feet pound upon the floor. I’m whirled this way and that among the press of people, until Lord Cappelletto orders the musicians done and the stairway torches lit. I find my lambkin standing to the side, watching the departing guests. She pulls me near to ask who this one is, and that, just as she’s done since she was a girl of six, wide-eyed at all the finery worn to a fête.
When she points to the pretty-mouthed one, I tell her I know not his name. My knowing not is not enough, and off she sends me to find out. But this guest I ask does not know, and neither does that. And so I go on inquiring, until I feel a grope upon my rump, and turning quick collide into Mercutio, who laughs and tells me the pretty-mouthed youth is called Romeo.
The name means naught to me. “What Romeo?”
“Romeo Montecche.”
Such a rascal is this Mercutio, to prank me with false words. I parry back, “What man is mad enough to bring a Montecche here?”