by David Hewson
Juliet picked up the contract. ‘Then let us speak these vows. Marry us and have done with it. Afterwards I’ll return to my family, Romeo to his. Tonight we’ll meet and tell them all. Show them what we have together. Then take the consequences whatever they may be.’
‘And if I refuse?’
‘You won’t,’ Romeo cut in. ‘You’re a kind man. If we walk out of here unwed our futures will be shaped by others. You told me you were a slave once. You wouldn’t wish that on another.’
The friar clapped his hands. ‘You are a persuasive pair. And I am in the mood to be a romantic fool. I hope the Lord smiles on all three of us. The ring?’
Romeo squirmed. ‘We have no ring.’
‘No friends? No witnesses? No ring? Just a weary old friar and his bible. I tell you both again. If your parents should take against this match they’ll annul it in an instant.’
‘So you told us,’ she said, impatiently.
‘Then all that’s left is for you to accept these vows.’
He picked up a piece of parchment, old script upon it, the page well-thumbed from use. In the cool cell, his hand trembling a little, Laurence read. ‘Will you, Romeo of the House of Montague, have this woman to be your wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Will you love her, comfort her, honour and keep her, in sickness and in health; and forsaking all others, keep you only unto her, so long as you both shall live?’
Her fingers clasped his, Romeo beamed at Juliet and said, ‘With every breath in my body, with everything I own. Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes. A thousand thousand–’
Laurence looked over the top of the page. ‘One suffices. This is a wedding not a poetry reading.’
‘Here, here,’ Juliet agreed.
‘Juliet of the House of Capulet. Will you have this man to be your wedded husband, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Will you obey and serve him–’
Her fingers unwound from Romeo’s and she tapped the paper. ‘I don’t wish to appear pedantic. But unless I’m mistaken I didn’t hear anything in Romeo’s vow about obedience. Or servitude.’
Laurence stared at her. ‘It says “obey” and “serve”.’
She sucked a quick breath through her teeth and squinted at him. ‘Same thing really, isn’t it?’
‘They’re just words. Very old words.’
‘Words that weren’t in the other vow. I was only wondering… perhaps it’s a mistake or something…’
Laurence showed her the paper and its two different versions, one for the groom, the other for the bride.
Romeo held up a hopeful finger. ‘I’m happy to obey. And serve. Joyfully, with all my heart. We can go back to my vow and put obedience and servitude in there.’
‘No, no!’ Laurence cried. ‘It’s a ritual. A ceremony. The words don’t matter. It’s how you feel. For pity’s sake all you need do is sign the piece of paper and you’re married. You two surely need no vows at all.’
Juliet went to the table, took up the quill, dipped it in the inkwell, found the place at the bottom of page and scribbled her name there. Then she came back, grinning from ear to ear, and took Romeo’s hand again. ‘Dearest husband. I will love, honour, and keep you in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep only unto you, so long as we both shall live. And thinking about it I’d rather I died before you because the idea of a world alone is too much really–’
‘No, no, love! Me surely. I go first for I couldn’t bear to be without–’
‘At the risk of repeating myself,’ Laurence snapped, ‘this is a wedding. Or supposed to be. May we leave all discussion of funeral plans for another occasion?’
‘I think we’re finished now, aren’t we?’ Juliet asked.
‘Almost, thank goodness.’
Laurence gestured at the table. Romeo scribbled his name on the contract.
‘You may kiss now, the two of you. Tenderly and not too eager, please. This is a holy place after all.’
They didn’t seem to hear. Or, if they did, took no notice. Laurence sighed and went to his case of bottles. The one he wanted was near the top, a small dark vessel sealed with a cork. He found it, blew off the dust, retrieved a box of sweet biscuits bought that morning then scrabbled among his tools for a corkscrew little used of late. When he returned they were hand-in-hand, damp-eyed and delirious.
‘Man and wife,’ he declared. ‘Now that’s done, let’s drink a well-earned toast.’
It was the oldest, most precious vintage he had. Vin santo, holy wine from Tuscany, made from a harvest dried on hurdles set above the ground then fermented slowly and stored. Ten years old this was. Sweet as honey and much the same colour.
‘The grape’s Malvasia,’ he pointed out. ‘Not Garganega or Trebbiano. So I sit in the middle of your two warring houses and pray with this ceremony those pointless battles may be over.’
He poured three glasses, then raised his own.
‘Salute, my young lovers. May you both live long and happy lives beneath the gaze of God.’ It was a year or two since he’d had strong drink. The vin santo nearly made him cough but it tasted wonderful. ‘And thank you for the oddest and most congenial wedding I’ve conducted in many a long year.’
Juliet came and kissed him on the cheek.
‘Wipe away the traces of your tears, child,’ the friar said. ‘This is a time to be happy. And pass your joy on to our bleak world.’
‘We will, Father. We promise.’
‘Ah, we all make promises. It’s what others do that breaks them.’
The two embraced once more and asked a few simple questions. Who kept the contract? What else, if anything did they need to do?
Love one another, he said. It seemed such a straightforward notion. Yet the truth of it was as broad and complex as humanity itself and, at times, just as difficult to explain.
They left then. Romeo would see her safely to the street near the Capulet palazzo. After that he would return to his own home and plan for the momentous evening.
Friar Laurence watched them go, waving as they walked towards the portico gate, wondering what he’d done. Men and women were more unpredictable than the herbs he tended daily. They were still swift to bloom and flourish, and quick to wither, even to die for no good reason. This wedding of theirs had happened with the best of intentions. That, at least, was a start, and a start was all a humble friar could offer.
Across the perfect blue horizon, against the bare peaks of the lower Alps, a band of black clouds was growing. Another line from Virgil came to him as he watched the couple stride across the monastery’s short, well-tended lawn.
Latet anguis in herba.
In the grass there lurks a snake.
They’re always there, he told himself, watching the two young figures go arm-in-arm through the gate, only to unwind themselves once the street was near.
Serpents.
Hiding. Waiting. A man might stamp them out. If only he could see them.
* * *
Benvolio stayed with Mercutio, worried that his friend was heading for more trouble. He kept drinking, moaning, getting more and more ill-tempered by the minute. Verona matched his mood. The soldiers were everywhere, harrying people going about their ordinary business, telling them to go home and stay inside. Picking on the hawkers who’d crawled out of the woodwork, selling plague cures in place of the trinkets and fake relics they usually traded.
All the while the afternoon got hotter, more humid, heavier, until it felt as if the angry sky, leaden now with thunder clouds, bore down on them with every step. Finally they stopped, not far from the Porta Leoni where Juliet had met her furious cousin earlier. Mercutio sipped wine from the flask on his hip.
‘Enough drink. Let me take you home,’ Benvolio begged. ‘These streets are too hot to be outside. There are Capulets abroad looking for a fight. On days like this the blood of the mildest man starts to stir. Even–’
Mercutio laughed
. ‘Even you? The mild and gentle Benvolio. We’ve both had our share of brawls. You’re no saint. Not a one among us is.’
It was true. But that was a while back. Life, it seemed to Benvolio, came in stages. Young and innocent child. Angry, baffled, bewildered adolescent. Then the quiet, perhaps cowardly acquiescence that came with age. Men called it maturity. It wasn’t that really. Just the dull acceptance of one’s fate.
‘I’ve seen you lose your rag, Benvolio. Don’t make out you’re any different from the rest of us. Just because you’re off to university, all ready to become a lawyer. What do your lot call it? When you get a deed to something?’
‘The fee simple, you mean.’
‘That’s it. What’s the fee simple worth for your life? Or mine? Any of us stuck in this crappy town waiting on the plague? Or Tybalt with his sharp blade? In the end we’re all just fodder for worms. Dust in a coffin going rotten.’
Benvolio shrugged his shoulders and wondered whether it was worth pointing out that Romeo was the one heading for a lawyer’s trade. It was medicine for him. But he decided it wasn’t worth it. Pretty soon he’d abandon Mercutio to these grim dark lanes. There seemed little purpose in trying to save one so determined not to save himself.
‘Fee simple?’ Mercutio muttered, chucking his cup of beer in the gutter. ‘Only simple thing around here’s you, mate. And me. We’re bloody mugs and–’
There was a distant rumble of baritone thunder from the lowering sky. A few drops of rain dotted the worn cobbles around them. Across the street, emerging from the Via Leoncino, came three dark figures, scarlet feathers in their caps: Tybalt, Petruchio and Lorenzo.
Mercutio rubbed his hands with glee. ‘Finally this day changes for the better. Here they come. The ugliest buggers the Capulet tribe have got to offer.’
Tybalt and his fellow thugs still hadn’t seen them.
‘Let’s just leave it,’ Benvolio said. ‘They haven’t spotted us. Turn round. I’ll walk with you back to the castle.’
Mercutio grinned. For a moment it seemed as if this quiet retreat might happen. But like everything else it was a trick. He dodged Benvolio’s arm, walked out into the light, put his fingers in his mouth, let out a loud and piercing whistle and waved. Tybalt and his peers stopped straight away and looked across the lane.
Out of the corner of his eye Benvolio caught sight of Romeo walking down the broader street from the direction of the Capulet mansion, straight towards them, smiling, as if in a daydream.
‘Leave this to me,’ Tybalt told his cronies, then marched jauntily across, hands in britches, grinning.
‘Look what the stinking cats have dragged in,’ Mercutio yelled as he approached. ‘Their smelly little monarch, stinking of piss like all his creatures.’
Tybalt winked and tipped his cap. ‘Good afternoon, sir. A word with one of you.’
A tap on the blade that sat upon his hip and Mercutio said, ‘A word? Is that all I get from a Capulet? I’d hoped you’d pluck up the courage for a strike at the very least.’
The smirk on Tybalt’s face vanished. ‘I’ll happily provide that if you want it, friend. You consort with that Montague villain, Romeo?’
‘Consort?’ Mercutio laughed out loud and slapped his sides. ‘God the words you stuck-up little-town prats use. Consort? What are we, mate? Minstrels? Is that a lute sitting on my hip then? You want to see me play it?’
Benvolio stepped between them, one arm out to each. ‘This is a public place. Soldiers all around us. You know what Escalus said. He’d hang…’
Mercutio pushed him out of the way. ‘I’ll hang myself rather than turn my back on this piece of shit. Don’t need my uncle to do it for me.’
‘Then remove yourselves to a private place and reason this out there. Mercutio. Tybalt. Take your dispute elsewhere. Go now. Here all eyes are on us and… and…’
Romeo had reached them, still smiling, puzzled by the scene. Tybalt lost interest in Mercutio immediately.
‘Good day.’ He beamed and tipped his hat again. ‘If it isn’t my man–’
‘He’s not your man,’ Mercutio roared. ‘I am, scumbag. Talk to me.’
But Tybalt didn’t. ‘Greetings, Montague. The affection I bear for you means I can think of no better term than this. You’re a low villain. A coward. A thief who sneaks into the homes of better men to steal their food and wine and–’
Romeo’s good mood vanished. He looked around him. Tybalt’s little gang watching from the alley, a few curious spectators gathering, knowing what was on the way.
Calmly he said, ‘The affection I bear for you is real, Tybalt, and puts aside all your adolescent insults. I’m no villain. No coward. No thief. All this I excuse. You do not know me. Perhaps tonight you shall–’
Tybalt moved back, drawing his rapier. ‘Tonight? No, thief. Now. You will not run. All the injuries you’ve done me. My uncle. Draw your weapon and let’s have done with this.’
‘With what? I have never injured you.’
‘I’m a stranger in my own household. Rejected by my family.’
Romeo shook his head. ‘That I’m sorry to hear. But it was not at my bidding. Believe me… the name Capulet is as precious to me as it is to you. Perhaps more so.’ He turned and waved the youth away. ‘I bid you good afternoon, Tybalt. Tonight we should talk more of this and make our peace.’
Two steps he’d taken before Mercutio moved, blade out, the bright length of it sweeping the steamy air. ‘If you won’t have this worthless rat, I will. Up Tybalt! Stand firm. I’ll fight you if he’s too yellow.’
He was swaying. Half-drunk. Tybalt looked at him, head to toe, amused. ‘You’re sure of that. Or is it the drink I hear?’
Mercutio’s rapier cut a lazy circle in front of his face. A duel was a duel. There were rules. No man started until the other agreed. ‘The Prince of Cats! I’ll start with the first of your nine lives and deal with the rest right after.’
‘Up then!’ Tybalt cried.
A clash of blades. Their hands met, faces taut with rage, teeth bared.
‘Scared now, aren’t you?’ Mercutio bawled, spit flying with his words.
Tybalt pushed him back. The rapiers rose. Romeo walked between them from one side. Benvolio from the other. Tybalt’s meeker companions stayed back as the crowd gathered to watch the growing brawl.
‘This is done,’ Romeo shouted. ‘Put up your swords. Mercutio. Do as I ask.’
‘Both of you,’ Benvolio urged.
Tybalt pushed past. The long slim blades met again.
‘Stop this!’ Romeo yelled. He wound his arms round Mercutio, back to Tybalt, daring him to strike a spineless blow. ‘For shame. Heed your uncle’s words, friend. He said no fighting in these streets on pain of death.’
‘What pain is there in death?’ Mercutio cried, tight in Romeo’s arms. ‘With that crowing scoundrel marching round this place like he owns it? Ah–?’
There was a clap of thunder, close. Then more spots of rain. In the confusion Romeo felt a sudden push, saw a glimpse of something slender and sharp, like a pin grown large and deadly.
‘And now we go,’ Tybalt cried, pulling back quickly. When Romeo turned the three of them were dashing, almost running, north towards the fish market and Sant’Anastasia.
Another peal of thunder, closer now, and fat spots of warm, slow rain.
Benvolio was looking round, worried. The soldiers would surely hear of this. Whether it was enough to bring down the wrath of Escalus…
‘A spot,’ Mercutio muttered, holding out his fingers. ‘I feel a spot.’
Romeo took his hands away from his chest then looked at his own outstretched palms. The rain was on them, mixed with blood.
The pin. The long and deadly pin.
It all came clear at that moment. While Romeo gripped his friend trying to keep him from the duel, Tybalt had stolen round with his long stiletto, taken a sly stab at the gap between jerkin and britches, hard into his side.
‘I am hurt,’ Mercutio
whispered, then stumbled to the wall, head up to the darkening sky, eyes wide open, shocked. ‘I am hurt. I am hurt and Tybalt walks scot free.’
The two of them came close and looked. There was a stain starting on his tunic around the waist.
‘Oh,’ he groaned and slid down the wall to the damp cobbles, clutching at his waist. ‘Fetch me a servant, villains. Fetch me–’
Romeo knelt down and looked for the wound. ‘I can’t see anything. How bad–?’
‘Christ! It’s just a scratch, mate!’ Mercutio cried. ‘What do you think? A plague on both your bloody houses. Capulet and Montague. I had him, Romeo. Why come between us? He got his little damned stiletto out and… Oh!’
His head fell to one side. The storm burst. A downpour fell upon them like a sudden rush from heaven.
‘Fetch me a good coffin and a quick hearse,’ Mercutio said, so softly they could barely hear over the thunder. ‘For I am–’
His mouth fell open. His fingers dropped from his waist. A torrent of blood, as fast and free as the rain, gushed on to the black stones. As black, as dead as Mercutio’s eyes.
‘This is my fault,’ Romeo whispered. Benvolio’s hand came to rest on his sodden shoulder.
‘It isn’t. It’s Tybalt’s. He did this. Leave him to Escalus and–’
Romeo got up and felt for the sword on his belt. ‘This is my fault. Mercutio was protecting the honour I refused to defend. And now he’s dead.’
Benvolio stood before him. The sky was dimming so rapidly it looked as if night was descending on the city, with rolls of thunder coming thick and fast. ‘I will hold you back as you did Mercutio.’
‘With the same result? No. Love has done this to me–’
‘What?’
‘Love has made me weak and like a woman. Softened what courage I had.’
He pushed Benvolio out of the way and withdrew his blade. So many fencing lessons he’d had, forced on him by his father. Still, he could fight. Could find a cold fury in him too, when needed.