by David Hewson
‘Perhaps the army,’ her husband interjected. ‘I fear for his sanity if he goes to Bologna on his own like this.’
Romeo was handy with a sword, Benvolio thought. One of the best he’d seen at fencing when he cared to show it. But there was more to being a soldier than weaponry. It required a certain state of mind. A detachment from interior, solitary thoughts. And that would surely be hard for the Montague’s pensive and withdrawn son.
‘There he is!’ his mother cried. ‘Across the square.’
She took Benvolio firmly by the elbow. ‘You’re his friend. His age. A close relative. You have a duty…’
‘A duty?’
‘To us, Benvolio. And to him. Find the cause of this melancholy.’
‘And then a cure,’ Montague added. ‘Whatever it costs. Whatever it takes. He’s our boy. We love him dearly.’
The tower bells chimed eleven.
‘Well,’ the old man added. ‘We’ll leave you to it. Best be off. I’ve an appointment with our fierce friend Escalus this afternoon. I need a nap before that.’
They turned. They left. Benvolio thought… why me?
* * *
He pushed through the crowd and caught up with Romeo at the edge of the piazza.
‘Morning, cousin.’
Romeo’s plain clothes were stained with grass and torn by brambles. He looked lost in a dream. ‘It’s still morning?’
‘Just rang eleven. Didn’t you hear?’
‘The hours seem very long these days.’
‘There was a little trouble with the Capulets again. Escalus is angry. For a change.’
Romeo waved a limp hand as if he couldn’t care less.
‘Why do you say the hours are long, cousin?’ Benvolio wondered. ‘They seem much the same to me.’
‘Then yours aren’t empty.’
‘There’s no reason yours should be either.’
They walked on down the lane, away from the bustle of the Piazza Erbe.
‘Your mother and father are concerned about you.’
‘They can’t be that worried. They’re sending me to Bologna next week whether I like it or not.’ He groaned. ‘To be a lawyer.’
‘Lots of money in the law! Bologna’s quite the place, I gather. The finest university in Europe. Lots of very clever people. And… um… young ladies, too.’ He stopped and looked at his cousin. ‘Oh dear. I see it now. There’s that look in your eyes. I am a student physician remember. So I must be observant.’
There was the faintest intimation of a laugh. ‘Well, doctor. Your diagnosis?’
‘You’re in love.’
A wave of the hand again, more vigorous this time. ‘Wrong. I’m out of it. Completely.’
‘Of love?’
‘Luck too. The lady’s not interested.’
Benvolio ran his palm across his forehead and sighed. ‘Oh, that’s tragic! I have to say, though, I’ve seen the symptoms before. Love seems highly desirable from a distance. Then you get close up and find she’s a rough and tyrannical mistress. Next thing you know you’re out in the street with your britches round your ankles.’
‘Very funny.’
‘May I ask… who?’
‘None of your business. And I could do without the sarcasm. A touch of sympathy–’
‘I’ve tried sympathy in these circumstances,’ Benvolio broke in. ‘It just makes things worse. What you’re suffering from is a kind of temporary insanity. We all know it.’
Romeo strode on. ‘You do?’
‘Yes. It comes. It goes. Who is she?’
‘I said: none of your damned business. She’s beautiful. And I gather reluctant to receive Cupid’s arrow.’
Benvolio narrowed his eyes. ‘I must tell you that in medical matters poetry has little efficacy. In fact it can make things worse. I may misconstrue your meaning and prescribe the wrong cure…’
‘She’s sworn to be a lifelong virgin, or so I gather. Doesn’t matter how much money you’ve got. What you offer. Who you are–’
‘They all say that. To begin with.’
‘Rosaline means it…’
Benvolio’s eyes lit up. ‘Rosaline? The horse trader’s daughter from over the river?’
‘I didn’t mean to–’
‘Very fetching girl, I’ll admit. She’s sworn herself to chastity? You’re sure?’
‘So I’m told–’
‘You haven’t heard this from her own lips then?’ Romeo didn’t answer. ‘Have you heard anything from her lips, cousin?’
‘Waste of a beautiful woman. Ruined my life. I might as well be dead.’
Benvolio puffed out his cheeks and blew a raspberry. ‘Rubbish. What you’re suffering from isn’t love, it’s infatuation. The two are as alike and unalike as the plague and a simple summer chill. The cure’s obvious. Stop thinking about her.’
‘Ha! Some doctor you are. To do that I’d have to stop thinking.’
‘She’s not the only beautiful girl around–’
‘Just the most beautiful.’
‘If you cared to look–’
‘Then all I’d see is how lovely she is in comparison to the rest. You don’t understand.’
Benvolio put a hand out to stop him. ‘But I do, Romeo. And I’ll prove it.’
‘By taking your finger out of my face first I trust.’
There was a touch of steel inside his cousin sometimes.
‘I didn’t mean to offend you. Keep your temper. What if I prove there’s another, better than your seemingly chaste horseman’s daughter–’
‘Seemingly chaste? What do you mean? Do you doubt it?’
‘No, no. Not at all. It’s just–’
Romeo turned and grabbed him by the collar. ‘This isn’t a joke, Benvolio! I do not appreciate you treating it as one!’
The day was turning sultry. There was not the least sign of rain. It was as well the brief conflict in the piazza had taken place as early as it did. Hot weather sparked hot tempers. Somewhere Tybalt lurked, nursing that little wound to his fingers and a far greater one to his pride.
‘I see it isn’t,’ Benvolio said, pulling himself from his cousin. ‘Nevertheless infatuation, love, lust and passion… These are all ailments that may bring delight and torture in equal measure, and prove precious hard to separate from one another.’
‘Rosaline’s the only one for me.’
‘That I very much doubt. Since you’re fated to be a lawyer, I shall summon the evidence to demonstrate that fact beyond a shadow of a doubt.’
‘And how do you propose to do that?’
‘A very good question.’ He took a deep breath and placed a finger against his cheek. ‘An excellent one.’
Amused, Romeo leaned against the wall and gave his cousin a quizzical look.
‘There!’ Benvolio cried. ‘A smile. First of the day.’
‘How?’
‘Let’s talk about it along the way.’
* * *
The castle of Cangrande was a grim, imposing fortress on the banks of the Adige. From beneath its high battlements a well-defended red brick bridge with swallow-tail merlons ran across the river to allow for escape to the Tyrol and the north. Not that the fierce lord who’d built this stronghold a century and a half before ever found reason to flee. Now his successors, the Venetians, occupied its sprawling quarters, stationing troops and tax collectors in the barracks and offices, while maintaining a series of dark, damp dungeons for any the Republic had come to hate.
The worst offenders would be shipped off to the cells of the Doge’s Palace or simply executed, by axe or noose, in the cobbled street outside. Two rotting heads on spikes had greeted Capulet at the main gate. He’d no desire to ask who or why. This was not a place any man of Verona wished to find himself, especially one who had intended to spend the morning planning an important banquet for a momentous occasion.
An hour he was made to wait in a dismal antechamber, listening to the groans and complaints of the prisoners in the dungeons below.
Then Escalus summoned him into the guard room, bawled at him, then repeated in very florid terms his threat to execute any man, whatever his class, who broke the peace from now on.
After that, being a gentleman, the marshal shook his hand, declared he would make precisely the same remarks to Montague later that day and ordered him to leave forthwith.
Count Paris was waiting outside, brought there by the Capulet servant Pietro, a well-meaning if unintelligent lad the house had taken under pressure from the orphanage. They retired to a tavern by the river, watching the boats there. Traders mostly and a few traditional fishermen sending out sleek black cormorants to hunt the steady, swirling waters. When the birds came back with catches, a ring around their necks prevented them from swallowing their prey. After their work was done, they were allowed one of their own.
That, Capulet felt watching them, was the way of the world. There was an order to it. The masters guided, the minions obeyed and all received their just reward in the end. It was in much this fashion that the Venetian Republic – every government for all he knew – went about their business. To the Doge in his palace, the House of Capulet was simply one more dutiful boat upon the water, the men no more than glossy black cormorants going out to hunt for bounty, and keeping a little share of what they found.
Count Paris was an aristocrat from Florence and had fled when, two years before, the mad priest Savonarola replaced the traditional February carnival with what came to be known as the Bonfire of the Vanities, a frantic burning of everything deemed by the Dominican friar to be full of sin. Paris’s family owned a flourishing bank and had been close to the hated Medici, both reasons for the ascetic friar to deem them immoral and fit for banishment and ruin. Paris had fled the city quickly, having taken care to move his money and businesses east into various parts of the Venetian Republic. Now, with Savonarola’s ashes scattered on the Arno river, he was able to regain his old empire along with several grand homes in Florence, Verona and the countryside.
At twenty-six he was burly, strong, fit, with a bushy and carefully-manicured ginger beard through which flashed, a little too easily, a frequent and fleeting smile. A catch, Capulet thought, one that would tie the mercantile family of Capulet to old and noble blood going back centuries. If only his daughter could see it that way.
They drank white wine, Garganega naturally, and toyed with the almonds the tavern keeper had brought. The servant Pietro sat on the river bank whittling idly at a stick. Summer was fully upon the city, hot and humid. Capulet, a bulky, unfit man, was beyond walking far at the best of times. In weather like this he’d be glad to be home, lazing in a cool and shady room.
‘Well,’ he said, after recounting the morning’s explosive events and Escalus’s warnings, ‘at least my foe’s bound by the same terms and must, if he’s sane, abide by them. To be honest with you I’m not greatly dismayed to be reined in a touch. Bad blood infects us all in the end. Montague and I are too damned old to be carrying on like angry youths forever looking for a fight. That nephew of mine, Tybalt, is no shirk when it comes to the sword but he’s a violent young fool. At least they don’t have one of their own like that to throw at us. From what I hear Montague’s son’s a pleasant enough lad. A bit bookish. Not fond of commerce. But then… how many of them are?’
Paris raised his cup and suggested a toast: that the young might learn the merit of trade. Their goblets met.
‘You’re both honourable houses,’ the count said. ‘Both merchants of similar size. And matching interests in many ways. It’s a pity you’ve been at odds with one another so long. Imagine how great the two of your enterprises might be if, instead, you worked in tandem.’
Capulet harrumphed and indicated that there was a very long way to go before such a partnership might be countenanced.
‘Consolidation. It’s the future,’ Paris insisted. ‘A man can’t conquer the world. Even Hadrian knew there were limits to empire. He couldn’t keep hold of everything.’
‘True. But his realm stretched from England to Asia, from Germany to Africa. Look at what we have in its place. Even Italy’s divided head to toe by warring factions, every one of them good Catholics. Infidels on all sides. And now it appears there’s yet another world for us to ransack, to the west across the Atlantic. Full of gold and opportunity… and it seems the Spaniards got there first. A long way from Venice, too. God knows I struggle to keep my toe in the market at the Rialto without worrying about lands no civilised man knew existed until that Genoese fellow Columbus sailed there. But the House of Capulet fares well enough, thank you. Business could always be better. It shall be.’
‘With the right marriage,’ the count said, and raised his cup again.
He was a persistent man. This was the third conversation they’d had on the subject in a month.
‘As I said before, my daughter, while precocious in many ways, is still a child. Sixteen years old. Give her two more years and some of her adolescent fire may burn itself out.’
‘Fire? I’m fond of fiery women.’
‘I’d lay a large wager you wouldn’t be so fond of a fiery wife. My daughter’s wilful. Headstrong. Full of the ideas the young possess and cherish as their own as if the rest of us were never young ourselves. Bianca, her mother, was much the same. We had our quarrels. Our long and silent days.’ He scratched his head, remembering that dark time. ‘I dispatched her to Venice for a while when matters turned too difficult for either of us to tolerate. We lost our little boy. The company of nuns and, I gather, a sympathetic doctor, the lagoon air… or simply time and absence. They worked. Why, I neither know nor care. But then she returned and with her our contentment. Juliet was born to us and a livelier, healthier, noisier child you couldn’t imagine.’
Another memory returned, one more bitter. ‘That son we lost almost destroyed us. You see why I hesitate? Sixteen years old. Our only child, a delight to my wife mostly, and to me on those rare days we agree not argue.’
‘Sixteen?’ Paris laughed. ‘There are girls out there married and with child before that.’
‘True. And if you asked them… how many might wish they’d waited just a little longer?’
The humour died. ‘I am twenty-six. My father’s dead. I have no brother, not even a sister. I can trace my house back to the time of Augustus. I require heirs or it will die out with me. Children, as many as God may give us. Do not ask for patience. I may be stoic in business. Not in matters of family.’
‘Nor I. Let me repeat. Juliet is our fondest possession. The one piece of me that will remain on this earth when I’m gone. I’d never say this to her face but the truth is this: I will not, cannot, gift her to you. She must be wooed, gently, from the depths of your heart to hers. My consent you’ll have. But hers you’ll need as well. Without it only storms would come and I am too old for yet more tempests. This nonsense with the Montagues is enough. Too much frankly. If you can wait–’
‘I can’t,’ the count said plainly. ‘If waiting’s one of your conditions then say it and we’ll part friends. It must be now. This month. This week. Tomorrow for all I care. Or never. She’s of age and there is no impediment.’
He stopped then, aware that perhaps he’d overstepped the mark. The count placed his goblet on the table and made sure the servant wasn’t listening.
‘Make no mistake. I will love and honour your daughter. I’ve watched her from afar. Thought about her. Listened to all the delightful opinions men and women have of her here. I will make your Juliet the happiest and most pampered woman in all of Italy if only you’ll grant me leave. No expense shall be spared. No property too grand. All I ask is her hand and that she grace my life with children.’ His face clouded over briefly. ‘I will still travel on… business, naturally. She will not find me tied to her day and night.’
Capulet knew exactly what that meant. He’d done a touch of womanising himself when he was younger. It was expected. But with the years he’d come to feel one love was enough, too much at times. The count, he imagined, w
ould behave like most men of his station. A husband betrayed was a cuckold. A woman treated the same way was… a wife.
‘I believe I’ve made my position clear, Paris. You have my blessing and I do not doubt you’ll treat my daughter with all due respect. But first you must woo her. Convince her. Bring her to your side. If you can make my daughter love you then she’ll be the one to demand a wedding. The very minute we can fix it. So much I can do for you… Nothing more.’
Paris threw his arms open wide. ‘But… how?’
Capulet laughed and refilled their cups from the bottle. ‘Through a little cunning. Tonight we’ll have a banquet. A grand one. There’ll be many guests, city folk mostly. Another on the list… a welcome noble from Florence.’ He raised the cup. ‘If you’re free, of course.’
The count nodded. ‘Name the time.’
‘Eight. There’ll be many pretty ladies. Young ones. Unattached. Great beauties, wonderful dancers among them.’
‘Are you trying to tempt me elsewhere?’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it. I invite them only so you shall see my lovely Juliet is the fairest of all. But you can judge for yourself. Pietro?’
The servant didn’t look up. His head was over the piece of wood in his fat and clumsy fingers.
‘Pietro! What on earth are you doing with that knife? Take care you don’t cut yourself.’
‘A gentleman like the count must be fond of music,’ the servant said. ‘So I made him an instrument.’ He grinned and looked a little bashful. ‘Maybe he’d like to hear it.’
The boy got to his feet and ambled over. Then he put the sliver of wood in his mouth and blew. A single thin and reedy note filled the air. By the river two ducks rose.
‘Them birds like it,’ Pietro said with a broad grin. ‘And you?’
Capulet clapped his shoulder. ‘I think it’s wonderful. Now…’ He gave him a sheet of paper. ‘Here is a task for you. Take this list of names. Go about the city. Find their houses and tell them Luca Capulet is arranging one of his famous banquets tonight. This may be short notice. But since all the food and drink are accounted for, some of it very special from Venice, too, they’ll be clamouring at the door to get in.’