by Lois Leveen
“Why, lamb,” I call as I enter Juliet’s chamber. She’s got the bed curtains pulled as tight as on the coldest winter night. “Why, lady, why, love, sweetheart. Why, bride.”
My slug-a-bed’s sound in her sleep. Stealing every pennyworth of rest, and well she does, for Paris’ll give her none tonight. Will give her all, I mean—so oft she’ll have no rest. Marry and amen to that, and may God forgive me, and her, for deceiving him.
This will be our last hour alone together, and I must make the most of it. Must find the words, the way, to tell her what she really is. What, and who, and how she came to be here, and why I’ve hid it all so long. This is the dowry I’ve got to give. Not coins or gowns or plate, but love. Love such as she’s only known from me, yet love she’s never known for what it truly is.
Such love surely is enough. I’ll rub her in it, like a scented oil. Wrap her with it, like the finest cloth. Adorn her with it, like jewels strung in that dark, thick hair that’s so like mine, and looped around her smooth young neck and dainty wrists. I’ll kiss it onto those almond eyes and tell about the day I first saw it in them. The bittersweet of losing Pietro, only to find him again in her.
I’ll tell it all in this precious hour. Our last hour alone. Yet not alone, for I feel Pietro with me. Feel there is in gallant Paris some echo of my own great-hearted husband. I’ll make her feel it as well, so she’ll know why I’m sure he’s meet match for her.
“Lady.” I draw back the bed curtain. “Lady, my lady.”
Juliet’s dressed. She must’ve been unnerved to wake alone. To rise so early and get herself into her clothes, only to falter and lie lonesome down again.
“What a bride you’ll be, already in your bed. Should I send the count to you directly?” That ought to rouse her. But still she sleeps.
I lay loving hand against her shoulder to shake her awake. Lay loving hand and feel her cold.
But no, it’s me who’s cold. An icy stone sunk to my stomach. A freezing through my heart. For in that touch, I know. A bitter shivering jitters my joints, rattles the teeth in my head, makes me curse the day that I was born.
Born to live to find her dead.
Dead. Dead, dead, dead. My numbed lips form the word, over and over. A whisper, a roar, I cannot tell which. Until Lady Cappelletta comes in calling, “What noise is here? What’s the matter?”
What am I to say? My last child, my only life, is gone.
How can she die and leave me living?
Lady Cappelletta comes near the bed. She looks on Juliet and screams. So loud I grab my darling’s hand. And find clasped there an empty pouch, its loose drawstring tied off with a cross.
The numb, the cold, heats to searing pain. I hide the pouch within my own fat fist. Use that fist, and the other, to beat my head for being such a fool. A fool, and fooled.
Lord Cappelletto rushes in, then crumbles to his knees. “Death,” he says, his own face waxy as a funeral mask. “Death is my heir and steals everything from me. Tybalt stabbed, and Juliet taken with him, broken-hearted from grieving for her cousin.”
The musicians are still playing in the courtyard. Thrumming out their happy tune, not knowing bliss has turned to loss. My Juliet dead, never to know the last good act Tybalt tried to do, and how untrue her beloved Romeo. Me, not knowing as I should have, the instant death took her. Not knowing when I could, I should, have saved her.
My fist’s clenched fast, keeping clasped the awful truth. Between the Cappelletti’s wails, I steal out of the bedchamber, through Ca’ Cappelletti and off to San Fermo, to find the man who killed her.
A scaffold rises inside the upper church, and some exalted painter barks down to his assistants. Another saint is being martyred on the wall. Barbara perhaps, or maybe Dorotea. Brushes dip into garish colors to depict the virgin’s torturous demise. As if those who come to pray do not have enough of death in our own lives, and need frescoed instruction in fresh grief.
I hurry past, down into the dank of the Franciscans’ cloister. There is the usual dismal press of sniveling children, shame-faced husbands, wretched wives, and crag-faced crones outside Friar Lorenzo’s cell. A lifetime of misery, seeking such relief as we’re told only the Holy Church can give.
Pushing my way through, I heave against the door. It gives way, revealing Friar Lorenzo bending his fervid ear to a blushing maiden like a worm wriggling into ripe fruit flesh.
“Benedicte, and God give you peace.” He smiles at me like I’m a child. “But you must have patience as well as penitence, Angelica, and wait your turn.”
“Damn your benedicte, and your God. And you.” I fling the empty poison-pouch at him.
Shock grays his face. But only for an instant, before he wills his features back to composed. “My dear Ginevra, you are absolved. Go forthwith to the church of San Zeno for the morning Mass.” In one swift motion, he ushers the maiden out, latches the door against any other entries, and turns to hover over me. “Angelica, I did not—”
“Did not want what punishment you’d get, if it was learned you ministered an illicit marriage. So you hid the deed with poison.”
“No.” He snatches up the pouch and secrets it among his cache of medicinals. “Juliet came to me in ungodly anguish. She raised a blade to her own breast. I only gave her what would still her hand, as you stilled Romeo’s.”
“If only I’d stilled his heart along with his hand. But he lives, while my Juliet is dead.”
“Not dead, Angelica, though it’s comfort that you think so.”
What comfort, in seeing, touching, keening over her lifeless body? What good to him in denying she is killed?
Friar Lorenzo touches the tips of his fingers together, steepling his hands to lecture me. “What appears as death is not always death. No more than what appears as virtue always is true goodness. The remedy I dispensed has put her into a sleep so deep that she seems a corpse.”
It’s nearly more than my worn heart can believe. “She lives, truly?”
I make him swear to it, before Christ upon the cross. I want to trust his words, to let them melt away this tight hold of loss.
“But why?” I ask. “What could set her to such deception?”
“With her marriage to Romeo consummated, Juliet could not be married to the count, though all within Ca’ Cappelletti would force her to it. To save her from such sin, I deemed it best to let them think her lost. Once they’ve laid her within her family crypt, I’ll send word to Romeo to bear her to Mantua, where they may live in secret joy.”
How could he, could she, have plotted to keep such a thing secret from me? “You’d’ve let me believe Juliet was dead, and bid her live far-off in Mantua without me knowing?”
“Did you not tell her to wed Paris, knowing she was already bound in the eyes of God to Romeo?”
This is why he turned my girl against me? I spit out what Romeo is, what he’s done. But Friar Lorenzo offers not even a flicker of surprise.
“You knew?” I’m still the fool, to need to ask. For what does he not know, sitting all day in this cold cell listening to what’s most intimately told?
“Romeo is not the only man in Verona who, courting what he could not get, would come to me for counsel. Such groans, such sighs, do I hear. But no more than that, concerning Rosaline—no sin done, none confessed. Her virtue was enough to save them both. When he turned his heart instead to Juliet, and found in hers a welcoming return, I only offered holy blessing to what they’d begun. Thus was Romeo saved from sin.”
“And Tybalt?”
“Romeo proclaimed a cousin’s love for Tybalt, but still Tybalt raised a sword at him. As Romeo tried to beat down the bandying, Tybalt struck Mercutio. Only then did Romeo, mad with grief, lift his own blade.” Friar Lorenzo pinches at his Pater Noster beads like a merchant plying abacus to calculate a profit. “God knows, I’d bring them both back if I could, and bind the families to peace as I intended. But what death takes from us we can only have again in heaven.”
I’ve
no need for him to tell me so, when everyone I’ve ever loved is lost to me.
Except Juliet.
If what he says is true. If my girl still lives. If for once I’m given hope instead of grief.
The deepest place within my chest aches. Just as it did when I swelled with milk, and all I sought was the sweet pain of her suck. Hope instead of grief.
But even such hope carries a sharp edge: this potion Friar Lorenzo’s given her must be some semblence of what he used to convince Pietro that our infant daughter was dead. Twice, he’s stolen her from me.
“Death did not take Susanna. You did.” The secret I’ve long kept spills from me—for what have I to lose in letting him know now all that I know? Why hide how much I loath him for all he’s put me through? “Because we were poor and could make no grand gifts to the Holy Church, you stole our living baby and gave her to the wealthy Cappelletti, letting them believe that theirs survived. Deceiving us into accepting that ours was dead.”
A hideous line throbs across his forehead, pulsing angry blue. “Who told you this, Angelica?”
Told. As though I must be ever told, the way a stupid beast must be shepherded. As though I’m no more than some dumb animal, and cannot figure for myself how I’ve been used.
“Sainted Maria.” I see her before me, bare-breasted and beatific as she suckles the sacred babe. But in Friar Lorenzo’s narrow cell there’s no image of the Holy Mother. Only Christ, tortured upon the cross. “By the Sainted Maria, there are things only a mother knows.”
He gathers himself within the thick folds of his cassock, searching out words to convince me I am wrong. But I unlatch the door and take my leave of him.
Though the morning’s bright by the time I return from the friary, Lady Cappelletta’s gone to bed, having taken wine enough to slumber heavily. Lord Cappelletto sits alone with Juliet. Staring dull eyed, his voice so wearied I must bend close to make out what he says. “The earth has swallowed all my hopes but her. Left only this one poor thing to rejoice and solace in. But cruel death snatches even Juliet from us.”
By his us he means the Cappelletti. I once believed his losses measured as heavy as my own, and together we took comfort as we prayed for all those death stole away. But I’ll not find such fellowship with him today. He’s settled the Cappelletti cap once more upon Juliet’s head, and condoles himself by cataloguing how grand the funeral cortege will be. What he could not do for Tybalt, condemned as Count Mercutio’s killer, he’ll conjure instead for Juliet, heralded across Verona as Count Paris’s betrothed. A procession led by her godfathers Cansignorio and Il Benedicto. Entire religious orders burning candles for her soul. The prince’s council carrying the Cappelletti banner and shields. Finely decorated horses clad in the family colors. And Paris walking shoulder to shoulder beside Lord Cappelletto, the carved bier before them, and atop it Juliet.
“Juliet,” I repeat, impatient as I am to be rid of him. “I must ready her.” Immodest it’d be for a father to watch a full-grown daughter’s final washing and anointing.
He leans nearer to the bed. As he brushes a fare-thee-well hand against her cheek, my heart catches, sure he’ll sense whatever life pulses within her.
But grief’s too constant a companion for him to disbelieve it. “Dress her in the green samite,” he says. The finest gown in all the household. Lady Cappelletta’ll not be pleased to learn she’ll never again wear it. “It was my first Juliet’s. She was married in it.”
Have I ever envied wealthy Lady Cappelletta? Pietro could not have afforded even a patch of so fine a fabric. But my husband never would have dressed me in a dead woman’s clothes, never made me feel there was anyone or anything he cherished more than me.
Lord Cappelletto’s eyes go to Juliet’s finger. Mine cannot help but follow, though I know he’ll not see what he seeks there. “Where is the emerald ring?”
I tap a fingernail against one of my yellowed teeth, as if I might chisel out the right half-truth to tell him. “She was not wearing any ring when she fell prostrate before you yesterday. Perchance it was given over in Friar Lorenzo’s cell, where she made her shrift.”
Every stitch I speak is true, though I sew them together in such a way that they cover over all I know. Let the scheming Franciscan, ever covetous for gems and plate and finery, explain to Lord Cappelletto what’s become of the Cappelletti jewel.
I bow my head and cross myself, muttering how lucky it is to be claimed just when one has a freshly shriven soul. Lord Cappelletto murmurs amen, and sighs, and stands, and says he must go down to the family chapel to pray for Juliet, and for Tybalt.
At last my girl and I get our hour alone together. Though by my holidame, I’d not have this be our last.
I climb into our bed and turn my head over hers, hoping to feel her breath upon my cheek, as I did when she was just a babe. But I sense nothing. I lay my ear onto her chest. Something throbs between us. Heart, blood, love. I cannot separate what’s hers from mine.
I let the full weight of my head sink onto her, wrapping my warm body against her immobile one. “Dearest lamb, how you frighted me. Did you feel so despairing you thought you’d need deceive me, when all I live for is your happiness?”
Raising her too-still arm, I kiss her palm and cradle it against me. And then I tell her.
Tell how twice I did not let myself fathom what with my mother-love some deepest part of me surely must have known. The first, when I woke uncomprehending one last child had quickened in me, and in my astonishment labored two long days to bring that tenderest infant out. How Pietro’s weeping told me it was lost, and how by the Virgin’s grace I came here to her. How this was the second time I was so unperceiving: sure as I was that my milk, my love, my tender care was what fed her, it took years before I realized it was more than milk that bound us. How blood and bone and every bodily humor tie her to me, and to my lost Pietro. “I am your mother.” The words glimmer in the golden air. “You are my daughter.”
How many times have I imagined saying this, imagined what surprise and joy and deepest love she’d offer in reply? How I’ve wanted to have her know why what I give her will always be so much more than what Lady Cappelletta offers, why what lives in her of my Pietro weighs more than every jewel and cloth and coin Lord Cappelletto ever could bestow her. I’ve longed to tell, and have her wrap soft arms around me, and weep with joy-filled relief to know our dearest truth, and mayhap confess to me she’d long before sensed it for herself.
But there’s no joy-filled relief. Not for her, lying senseless to all I say. Or for me, who might as well’ve whispered into an empty cask, sealed it up, and cast it in the Adige to bob away unheard.
The brazier’s been tucked away unused since winter warmed to spring, but in this full heat of summer I light a fire in it. Cool as the water is when it’s drawn from the courtyard well, I wait for the fire to take the chill from it before I dip a fazzoletto cloth in, wring it out, and touch it to Juliet.
The last I looked upon my boys was when I washed each one before Pietro bore them off to be buried. Six beautiful bodies, speckled with black spots. God’s tokens. So enchanting a name for such a horrific sight. Like insects swarming across their thighs, their arms. Those specks were worse than the plague’s raised boils, which at least appeared angry, insolent. God’s tokens were a more awful marring. Delicate pricks death took over and over, gently eating its way across the flesh of all my darling sons.
But not my daughter. Juliet’s body is perfect. Perfectly quiet, perfectly still. Perfectly lovely.
Downstairs, Lord Cappelletto reads out some version of the liturgy Friar Lorenzo long led me in. Friar and lord can have their learned Latin prayers. I’ve something more holy, my hands cleansing every precious part of her.
Did I think just two nights past she was her most beautiful by moonlight? Lying here, bathed in the day’s full sun, she is more pure, more beautiful, than anyone or anything I’ve ever seen.
From the first day I held her, I bathed and swaddl
ed her so many awestruck times. I remember every inch of her. But I mark the difference, too. How heavy she’s become. The infant I craved and cradled as though she were still a part of me is now this full-grown body I must roll carefully, dipping the soft cloth over and over into the warmed water as I slowly trace my way across her. I wash the length of her fingers and stretch of her arms, the curl of her toes and the curve of her legs. With her back to me, I part her hair, tucking it to either side to reveal the blades of her shoulders jutting like an angel’s wings. The smooth rounding of that bottom I wiped when she was at her littlest. I swear, though I know all of her, my most familiar is yet a mystery to me. Could so lovely a child, a near-woman, have grown from me? Could she be so nearly lost so young?
Would she really have left me, letting me believe that she was dead while she went off to Mantua to live secretly with Romeo? I’d not have thought she could hold so much from me. But I’ve held all I know of who she is, and what he is, from her.
What he is. This is the one thing I’ve still not confided, even to these now unhearing ears. I’d not made her know it yesterday, hoping ignorance might ease her to forget him and make a loving wife to Paris. But if she’d sooner take her own life than live wedded to any but Romeo—or, living, beshrew me heart and soul just to be with him—then I must hold my motherly tongue. I’ll not tell what still wears upon my heart, to keep her from shoving me away again.
With caked rose petals and rosemaried oil, I anoint my daughter. The bright floral fragrance dances with the sharp woody one. Can scents make a harmony? Yes, as surely as Juliet and I have, and always will.
In those first awful days and months without Pietro, how I craved him. My body ached to have those great paws of his upon me, the cinnamon-sweet scent of him and the tickle of his whisper in my ear. I was half-mad even just to hear the timbre of his voice again, and to use my own to say all the things I’d not realized till too late I’d never have a chance to tell him.