by David Hewson
‘No. I can’t imagine such a thing would ever happen. Or why.’
‘But if something unexpected came about… A kind of gift say…’
‘Then I’d tear the thing to shreds in the face of the fool who offered it.’ He got to his feet and glanced at her. ‘I know everything I do is wrong. That if I say something’s up you’ll say it’s down. If I turn left you’ll tell me we should have gone right. That this is the very definition of wrong… whatever it is I do.‘
She raised her index finger to object. ‘That’s not entirely fair.’
‘But it is. And I understand that is how it goes with stripling girls. There are devils in your blood and it’s fathers who must feel their pitchforks.’
Bianca Capulet’s eyes were firmly on the tablecloth.
‘The choices I make are for this family. For your future. I try to look beyond the present and the near and see what may happen when I’m cold in the grave. That’s what a man must do, out of love and devotion and duty. I never expect your gratitude, daughter. But, by God, I do not deserve your disobedience or – worse – your contempt.’
With that he walked out, shaking.
She toyed with the remains of the apple but there was nothing left except core and pips. Her mother sat quietly weeping by her side.
‘Let me clear the table,’ Juliet said as she began to pick up the plates.
‘We’ve servants for that. Just get dressed. Something pretty for once. Please.’
‘Very well, Mother. I will.’
* * *
Laurence’s cell was in the eastern section of the complex, by the lane that led to the city cemetery along the river. He’d chosen this location deliberately. The skills Paulus had taught the two of them in distant Constantinople provided temporary alleviations. As their Greek master always said, quoting one of his forebears… no man can cure death. But with luck and application they might put off the dreadful day a while. The nearness of the graveyard was a constant reminder of that duty.
Romeo knew the monastery well. His family had supported the Franciscans here for years. They were cheerier than some of the other orders and cared little for money or the trappings of the material world. The friar’s room was large and shady since the single-shuttered windows gave out on to the cloisters around which the other brothers’ cells were arranged. Laurence’s work gave him twice the space of his fellows. A large preparation table stood at the heart of the chamber, a place where herbs were dried and boiled and stored in jars of oil. A rack of larger bottles, all carrying Latin names, was nailed to the plain brick wall. Next to it stood a smaller sideboard with stacks of vials in different colours, blue, red, green, orange and purple.
Pretty things. Romeo wandered over and played with them. A handful were black, with a skull on the front.
‘Rats,’ the friar said when he noticed what Romeo was holding. ‘There’s a thought abroad that perhaps the pestilence is carried somehow through them. In their fur or filth, I imagine. So, in concert with my brother in Mantua, we’ve developed a concoction that may be sprinkled on grain to kill the creatures. Quickly. In a day or so.’
Romeo picked up a bottle and shook it. The thing was empty. ‘They say there’s plague in Vicenza. Any day it could be here.’
‘They do. But we make that for order only. There are some people who’d gladly use it on folks they regard as rats with two legs. I take great care with everything I dispense. The black bottles most of all. Now…’ He placed the wicker basket on the nearest table and sat down. ‘Your problem.’
Families high and low in Verona knew Laurence, liked him and were aware of his odd and tragic background, too. There was no fooling him, no point in beating about the bush.
‘I’ve been feasting with my enemy. And come back sorely wounded.’
Laurence raised a narrow eyebrow.
‘With love,’ Romeo added. ‘And in return I’ve wounded in a self-same fashion the most fetching woman alive. We ache for one another. You can cure us.’
The friar leaned back on his hard wooden stool until he found the cool brick wall. He studied the young man in front of him and spoke the truth: no physician or apothecary could cure the sick unless an ailment was well and truly stated.
‘My heart’s set on Juliet, Capulet’s daughter. And her heart’s set on me. The two of us are agreed. We wish to marry.’
‘Holy Saint Francis! Where? How?’
‘Where and how don’t matter. Only when. Today.’
The lightest imprecation fell from Laurence’s lips.
‘If it’s for the reasons I suspect–’
‘It isn’t. The girl’s a virtuous maid. She would not… We would not countenance any other way.‘
‘Then why the haste?’
‘Why the wait? We know. And besides, her father would like to marry her off to some Florentine count, a man she’s never met. And my parents will send me off to Bologna within the week. It can’t wait. We are meant for each other. I never felt God’s will more strongly. Nor Juliet. What else is there to say?’
The friar picked at his habit, toying at a spare thread. The garment looked ancient, as if it were passed down from another. ‘Well, this is a turn-up for the book, I must say. It was only a few days ago you were in here whining about how much you adored the girl Rosaline. Now it’s another. A Capulet too. You’re young, Romeo, and a young man sees love with his eyes, not his heart–’
‘You told me off for dreaming about Rosaline often enough.’
Laurence nodded. ‘I scolded you for doting on her. That’s not love. I didn’t tell you to bury one infatuation and replace it with another.’
‘No, no.’
Romeo pulled up a stool and sat next to him. The brothers at San Francesco mingled with the world. They didn’t hide from it like recluses. Still they took vows of chastity and the Franciscans usually kept to them. A few were married men before. But not Laurence.
‘Believe me, please. The advice you gave was true. Rosaline was a childish fantasy. Juliet is not and we both know it. Let me bring her here this afternoon. Talk to us. If you don’t see the love we share then…’
‘All this haste, Romeo.’
‘It’s not of our making. If we don’t marry now she’s lost to a man she despises and I’m stuck alone in Bologna, drowning in dusty books. Let me bring her here this afternoon. If after you’ve seen us, you don’t believe me then…’ He picked up a sprig of greenery from the basket. ‘Reject us like two weeds among your herbs.’
‘You do seem very determined. I’ve not noticed that in you before. Is she of age?’
‘Sixteen. And I’m two years older.’
‘I know how old you are. I’ve tended you since you were a child.’
The law on marriage was simple. It was a contract between man and woman. There was no need of ceremony. Not even the presence of a churchman. At sixteen any couple might declare themselves betrothed with nothing more than marks on a piece of paper. Laurence told him this.
‘You don’t need me. If you’re so intent on–’
‘But we do. We wish to become one in the sight of God. Till death us do part. And when the Lord has blessed us then…’ He hesitated, sniffed at the plant, put it back in the pannier. ‘Then, this evening, together, we inform our parents. Capulet and Montague. We tell them of our love and pray this enmity that’s divided them, and Verona, for so long must end.’
In the shady cell Laurence felt cold. An old Greek’s words were in his head, spoken in the clear and kindly voice he’d last heard fifteen years before.
Make the sick well. Heal anger and division most of all. Because these vile ruptures among us drive men apart and lead them to whatever devil they choose or chooses them.
‘You think that’s possible?’
‘Omnia vincit amor. Love conquers all.’ Romeo laughed at himself. ‘Virgil. I must stop quoting verse. It peeves her. A bit.’
Friar Laurence felt himself back in Constantinople at that moment, trembling at th
e thought the world might be not be black and white at all, but a difficult shade of grey. ‘Poetry’s your every other word. You’d let it go for this girl of the Capulets?’
Romeo took the older man’s hands and peered deep into his genial grey eyes. ‘I will do whatever it takes. Anything at all. I love her. With that love we will bring our two families together so that they may witness our devotion. When they do… they’ll know. They’ll bury this ridiculous vendetta. We will all be one.’
The friar looked at his basket. The leaves and stalks and roots there cured maladies. Sometimes. To heal not just a single life but two noble families, kept apart by a cruel, unnecessary hatred for so long? That was a remedy worth a lifetime’s work. One no man could possibly refuse. Paulus would have reached for it without a second thought.
‘Fetch your young lady here. I will talk to both of you. If all is as you say I’ll marry you myself, with all the fond blessings this humble servant of the Lord may offer.’
Romeo cried out with joy and hugged him.
‘We haven’t done it yet,’ the friar pointed out as he fought to shrug off the quick, excited embrace.
‘We will, though. When you see us you’ll witness the truth for yourself. Soon…?’
‘Today for sure. But wisely and slowly we take this. For they that run too fast and never think…’
‘What?’
They fall, Laurence thought. So heavily at times. Like another two in a garden long ago. ‘Never mind. I’ll see you here, in my cell. Come straight to this place directly. The witnesses…’
‘It has to be just you. If they knew, her parents, mine… I hate to think.’
‘This is very untoward.’
Outside there was the toll of a bell, a mournful hymn, the sound of someone sobbing. Romeo shivered.
‘There’s a funeral in the cemetery beyond the cloisters,’ Laurence explained. ‘A young beggar we took in from the street. She was past help sadly.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Laurence shook his head. ‘That’s kind. But you never knew her.’
‘And she’s gone.’
The friar sighed. ‘Death tugs at your ear. “Live now,” he says. “For I am coming.”’
Romeo sat speechless. Laurence laughed then winked at him. ‘You’re not the only one who knows a little Virgil. Let’s hope we may bring some happiness into this world to set against the misery of going out of it. Off with you now. You’ve work to do. A labour of the heart, and that’s both the lightest and the heaviest there is. So… shoo!’
* * *
Usually Juliet dressed quickly and decisively, putting comfort over fashion, practicality above anything her mother demanded. This morning she didn’t know what to choose. Something ugly and unflattering to deter the count intent on wooing her? Or, if Nurse came back with a rapid summons from Romeo, a dress fit for a wedding?
In the end she compromised: no hat, no fancy finestrella sleeves as most of the girls had worn the previous evening, slashed shoulder to elbow, undershirt pulled through them. No circlet, only a single necklace of pearls about her slender white throat. The dress she chose was cream linen, wasp-waisted with a modest square neckline. Too old for her. The garb of a spinster wasting away her years. But also of a mature woman assured of herself. That was how she wished to feel, hiding her anxiety about the day ahead.
Just before ten she watched Nurse leave the palazzo by the back gate. A good few minutes after the hour bell had sounded – punctuality was always to be avoided – she came downstairs and found Count Paris with her mother waiting in the hall. He was dressed to the nines in an ornate fashion she thought more suited to Venice or Rome than small Verona. When she entered he bowed, then made flattering comments about her appearance without, it seemed to Juliet, much looking at her at all. There were introductions, then they were left alone. She smiled and said nothing.
The beard was combed and shaped and primped, a creature in itself, a small ginger pet that had come to nestle on his chin and fallen fast asleep. It emitted a perfumed scent and was hard not to stare at, wondering when the beast might move. Or what his real face would look like underneath.
He was in the middle of an interminable pronouncement of honeyed flattery when she said, ‘I’d like to walk in the garden if you don’t mind.’
Another bow, a flourish of his velvet cap. The hat was dark green with a gold band around the edge and – this had to be deliberate – a pheasant feather dyed scarlet, the colour of the Capulets, stuck in the brim. It clashed with the fabric but she imagined he didn’t notice. Or perhaps wouldn’t care. How things looked was unimportant. What mattered was the function they performed.
They walked outside and she couldn’t stop thinking about the night before. That first meeting in the garden, the laughter, the teasing. The kisses and how they’d rolled together on the grass. Then the way Romeo had climbed up the old vine and she’d helped him on to the balcony above. She looked up at it. The stone figures carved on the front, Bacchus chasing a succession of nymphs, seemed to bathe in the glorious gold of the morning sun. If only they could relive the night before. Nurse might sleep a little longer. And this time, when he asked to come into her room, she’d lead him willingly to her bed.
‘Your window?’ Paris said. ‘Your balcony? I have balconies galore in all my properties. You shall choose the ones you prefer.’
‘Thank you. Most kind.’
‘And they will call you Countess.’
‘Names,’ she whispered. ‘People do make a fuss about them, don’t they?’
She couldn’t take her eyes off the leering, drunken figure of Bacchus, grasping the shoulder of one of the young women he sought. This was an image used repeatedly in paintings of the old gods. A lecherous man of middle age seeking the flesh, willing or not, of any young woman he desired.
‘It seems to me it was never much fun to be a nymph back then. All you did was lounge around naked waiting for an old sot full of wine to come and take you. After that you die. Or get turned into a tree which must be much the same.’
‘Lady… I’m sorry?’
‘No.’ This was important. Think. ‘I’m the one who should be sorry. I prattle on. It’s one of my many faults. You wouldn’t believe how many I possess. Too numerous to count. Just ask my father.’
To her great embarrassment he went down on one knee, right next to the bench where she’d sat with Romeo. There Count Paris fumbled in his fancy jerkin, took out a small cloth pouch and removed from it a ring. Eyes averted, firmly on the ground, he said very bashfully, ‘Please. Please take this.’
Men were odd with women, she decided. Either too forward or too shy. This one much the last. She took it anyway. The band was gold, scratched and old, the colour of the dying sun. There were words inside. She dimly remembered something the foreigners liked. A poesy ring, inscribed with a loving message.
Juliet squinted trying to make out the letters scrawled in faint writing, very worn through being close to someone’s finger she guessed. It was English, a language she could just about manage.
‘I have obtained whom God ordained,’ she read out loud. ‘Obtained?’
‘It was my mother’s. She came from London. Apparently it’s a popular rhyme there.’
‘Popular with wives? Obtained?’
He was staring up at her with pleading eyes. ‘I took that from her finger when she died.’ It was all Juliet could do not to drop it. ‘My father was murdered when I was an infant. My mother raised me and was the most glorious, holy woman in the world. I said I’d keep her ring until I found another worthy to wear it.’
‘She raised you alone? And ran your house’s trade in Florence?’
The question appeared to baffle him. ‘Of course not. That was my stepfather’s job, naturally. My mother was busy with the household–’
‘And have you?’
He looked lost. ‘Have I what?’
‘Found another worthy to wear it?’
He had the appearance of a sad
puppy begging for a favourite toy. ‘I believe so. Finally.’
She was trying to keep her temper but this was hard. Juliet folded her arms and gazed down at him. ‘So there were others?’
‘I am twenty-six. True love is elusive–’
‘You mean they said no?’
The puppy seemed about to cry.
She sat on the stone bench and slapped the space beside her. ‘Kindly get off your knees, stop looking at me that way and sit here. I’m a practical woman, not a little girl.’
‘I see this,’ he said and joined her. ‘Let me spell out the business issues then.’
She listened as he recounted an inventory of his properties, in Florence, Verona and beyond. Then a detailed list of all his commercial interests. After that his farms, the land they covered, the crops they grew. His family – an ageing stepfather, mind gone, and a few cousins who seemed of no importance. Then the bloodline of the Paris dynasty, which appeared to include distant kinship with a couple of popes, one emperor and a warlord who’d killed a lot of Goths. Finally his religious leanings – a good Catholic, more fond of the Church than he was of the present pope – and his membership of any number of Florentine guilds of which she’d never heard.
‘You will gain a husband of substance who loves you. Who will do anything to make you happy. The ring I offered. Do me the honour of wearing it and I shall adore you all my living days.’
Juliet leaned back on the seat, closed her eyes and murmured, ‘Oh sweet Jesus…’
‘Your father is agreed–’
‘Then why ask me? Why bother?’
‘Because I wish you to be happy. The woman I–’
‘Count Paris. You do not know me. Any more than I know you. I’m flattered by your attentions but truly… How in these circumstances may you profess your love? For a stranger?’
There was an expression on his face she found a touch obtuse. As if this idea had never occurred to him.
‘Most wives barely know their husbands when they’re married. The bond is built after, surely. It comes with children.’ He looked her up and down in a way she didn’t enjoy. ‘A son’s important. A daughter an additional blessing if one should come along. Your hips are slim but not so much I think to cause a difficulty in birth–’