by David Hewson
She looked down and knew what she would see emerging at her feet. It was the marble rose window of San Zeno, the Wheel of Fortune stirring into motion, groaning, waiting like a millstone hungry for fresh grain. All the figures on it, happy and sad, were staring at her. Holding their stone sides, weeping stone tears, laughing at what they beheld.
Juliet of the Capulets watched them for a moment then felt the cold ground beneath her vanish. Arms flying, hair waving in the unreal wind, she fell headlong down towards the grinning faces and the grinding jaws, wondering at the dark that lay beyond.
* * *
If this was death it came with lots of noise.
Plainchant. Birdsong. Low men’s voices, sad and thoughtful. With them, briefly, the hammer of a chisel on stone.
Juliet woke with a sudden shock and found herself on a hard cot, a wicker panel in front of her. When she moved the screen she saw she was in a spacious, shady room crammed with furniture and equipment. There was a strong, familiar smell. Chemicals and potions. This was Laurence’s cell. Someone had put a loose black habit around her, the serge fabric scratching at her skin. A bleached white cotton nun’s scapular lay on a stool beside the bed, folded ready to wear.
She took two tentative, unsteady steps towards the door. The single window at the front was shuttered, but rays of strong sunlight peeked through the cracks. The voices and the chisel sounds were coming from there. Her father, calm for once but pained, and another, old too and equally disconsolate, accompanied by the measured and cautious tones of Friar Laurence.
She raised her right hand in the gloom and flexed it.
‘Yet still I breathe,’ she murmured, watching her deft fingers move to her command.
He’d said she might wake from the first drug feeling refreshed, as if she’d enjoyed the best of sleeps. The nightmare in the dead house had been so brief she’d no idea whether that was true or not. But now… hunger nagged at her and thirst. Her mind was sharp and clear. She’d never felt so alert and alive, though she couldn’t begin to guess how she’d travelled from the grime and cold of the crypt to this quiet and fragrant place.
Greedily she drank water from a pewter jug set next to the scapular by the bed. Then she walked to the friar’s preparation table. There was a knife and a pair of scissors by the bottles and jars and the alembics.
Memories of those last few moments in the crypt returned. She picked up the blade and thought of Romeo, dead on the chill damp tiles. Blood and a black bottle in the dark. His face, his voice, his touch remained part of her, alive in her mind yet distant already, part of a past that lay behind. The world seemed different now and so did she.
The sharp cold edge of the blade moved against her skin and found the raised veins there.
Then from outside she heard her father’s heartbroken voice.
‘My daughter… my beloved daughter. Cold stone. Grey marble. Is this all there is to be of her?’
Curious, she placed the knife on the table and tiptoed to the shutters, then softly prised them open until the crack was wide enough to see outside, into the dazzling day.
* * *
Luca Capulet wiped the tears from his eyes and retrieved a pouch of coins from his jacket. Andrea Montague stood by his side, shifting awkwardly on old, tired feet. This was the first time they’d spoken in earnest since they were called to the grim scene in the cemetery. Three corpses, two bloody, one with black stains on her lips. Gone now, with only a monument to be decided. A joint one, for Capulet and Montague. Their wives had insisted upon that.
‘You should have seen her in life,’ her father declared, rubbing his sleeve across his face. ‘No statue will do her justice.’
The stonemason with them held a piece of salt-white stone in one hand, lumps chipped from it to show the quality. In the other a preliminary sketch for the memorial: two young figures holding hands, beatific faces upturned to heaven, angel wings on their backs.
‘I do believe you,’ he agreed. ‘But flesh dies and marble lives forever. Though…’ He eyed the pouches. ‘Immortality does cost.’
‘You get half the money up front,’ Montague told him, adding a pouch of his own. ‘The rest will stay with Friar Laurence. Is that agreed, Luca?’
Capulet stared at him, as if seeing Andrea Montague anew. Or perhaps the way he was when then were childhood friends. He pointed at the sketch, grimacing, shaking his grizzled head.
‘Her hair. It should be longer and fuller than this. With no parting or any ribbons. My daughter preferred it plain and natural. No need for ostentation. Her cheekbones were higher and finer, not the flat things he has here. And her brows.’ He grabbed the mason’s charcoal and scribbled an amendment to the drawing. ‘She was the loveliest child a man could ask for. And deserved a father wise enough to tell her that, not an ignorant, selfish idiot who… who…’
His voice faltered and he began to choke on this sudden return of grief. There were tears in the cloister, tears behind the shutters of the cell.
Embarrassed, the mason said he would follow their every wish then took the sketch from the friar’s hands and left.
Montague bent to speak to Capulet. Their words were gentle now, for the first time in two decades. ‘Luca. Our shared tears could fill an ocean. But when the dead are in the ground one’s thoughts must turn to the living. Their legacy. Our wives. The memory of those two sweet children is best served by peace between our houses. Through charity and tenderness. Not constant sorrow. For pity’s sake… no more bitter and pointless enmity.’
Capulet wiped his rheumy eyes and took him by the arm. ‘Here’s to that. We’re two old fools and they’re the ones who paid the price. If I could take your son’s place in that cold tomb…’
‘And I your Juliet’s. But we can’t. I will endow a school in her name. One that teaches the poor to read. Bianca said she wanted that.’
Her father nodded. ‘She did, not that I listened. Then in Romeo’s name I’ll provide a scholarship for poets. That I pledge. I cannot stop wondering at these lost years of hatred between us. Why it took two innocent deaths to teach us the stupidity of that pointless feud. Forgive me, Andrea.’
Montague gripped his fingers and shook them. ‘If I’m forgiven in turn.’
‘And me, sirs?’ Laurence asked quietly.
‘My lovely girl would have killed herself in any case, Friar,’ said Capulet. ‘Rather than marry Paris. I drove her to that. No one else. That’s my cross to bear. Don’t try to ease the burden of it.’
Montague concurred. ‘Your part was small, Friar. We made their lives impossible. It’s time to live with our regrets and do our best to learn from them.’
‘Well put,’ Capulet said and put his cap on, ready to go. ‘Besides, that old bastard Escalus pardoned you. Who wants to argue with him?’ He thought for a moment and glanced at the frail man beside him. ‘It’s a long time since I shared a glass of wine with a boyhood friend of mine…’
‘It is,’ Montague declared. ‘Only if I’m buying and it’s Garganega.’
Luca Capulet smiled at him, remembering the days when they were young, inseparable, convinced the future ahead was bright and full of love. ‘Then I will try your Trebbiano. Which I always liked if I’m honest. Perhaps we should combine them one day. See if two might make a better sale than one.’
‘An idea,’ said Montague, ‘worthy of exploration.’
They wandered off, chatting earnestly. The friar waited until they were out of earshot then glanced anxiously at his cell. Two glittering eyes watched him at the shutter, a face full of questions.
* * *
‘Why do I live?’
‘Because God willed it.’
His voice was low, his manner oblique. They stayed in the shadows of the cell, seated round the table where he’d married them.
‘God won’t tell me. You can.’
It was an hour since Juliet’s father and Montague had ambled back to the city. Laurence had immediately removed the knife and the scissors from the
table then given her more water, something he called tonic, found spelt porridge and boiled eggs for her to eat. She’d fallen greedily on the food. Her body felt alive and tense, her mind sharp and active, almost too much so. The time she’d spent in the crypt she’d dreamt and dreamt. This second strange interlude was different. It was as if she’d died for a while, entered a black state of unconsciousness, then returned renewed, to see the world through different eyes.
His explanation was short, a narrative of accidents mostly, of inadvertent calamities, innocent in themselves, fatal in unison. As he recounted the litany of mishaps she could only think of the dream figures on the rose window of San Zeno, the horror in their eyes as the Wheel of Fortune turned against them. This was life in all its asymmetrical fickleness.
Then Laurence concluded his tale with the disclosure she craved most: an explanation of why she lived. Romeo went to Mantua carrying a letter meant only for the eyes of Nico, Laurence’s apothecary brother there. When the second message, telling of the scheme to feign her death, never reached him, he returned to Verona, thinking Juliet dead. But Nico had given him a letter in Greek, too, for his brother. The friar had recovered the parchment from Romeo’s tunic before he was buried.
‘In my message to Nico I warned him that his visitor was a decent lad at heart but rash, impulsive and, on occasion, prone to violence. In his to me…’ He picked the letter out of a sheaf of papers on the table. ‘He said he believed Romeo was returning to kill himself by your side. That he’d demanded poison for that purpose. If Nico refused to oblige he’d find another apothecary who would.’
The same black bottle she’d found in the crypt now sat by the pouches of money Laurence had taken for the stonemason. He picked it up and turned the thing upside down to show that it was empty.
‘My brother would never give a man a potion designed to take a human life. Instead Romeo left with the same kind of compound I gave to you. An opiate to render him insensate for a while. Stronger, since he was larger in frame. Happily, Nico listed the elements for me…’ He leaned forward, touched her face, lifted her eyelids like a physician, then felt her pulse. ‘To think I believed you a feeble girl,’ Laurence muttered with a shake of his head. ‘And wondered if you’d live.’
‘This…?’ she asked, pointing at the black serge gown.
It was two nights since the fatal sword fight in the cemetery crypt. A day since Romeo was interred in the Montague tomb, and a coffin bearing her name carried into that of the Capulets.
‘When I realised you still lived, Friar John helped me remove you from that place. We brought you here. In your coffin we placed a young sister from the nunnery. Her heart had failed that morning. God forgive me.’
She felt the fabric, her eyes growing wide.
‘It was meant for her,’ he said quickly. ‘She never wore it. We gave her your shroud and shift. In turn…’ He blushed. ‘I’m sorry. We could think of no other way. If I’d told your father and… you never woke. To think his daughter dead a third time would have destroyed the man completely.’
‘Then dead Juliet is. And this rift with Montague…?’
‘Didn’t you hear? It’s done with. Escalus insisted. Not that it was necessary.’
He picked up a flask and poured himself a glass of clear amber liquid. Wine. She could smell it. Her senses seemed so finely tuned.
‘I thought the marshal might be sending me to the scaffold. But he seemed to think I was a… decent, holy man. Your father begged him on my part too.’
‘My mother?’
The friar could barely look at her. ‘Heartbroken. Naturally. Though…’
When he didn’t go on she asked, ‘Though what?’
‘There are stations of grief. Anger. Blame. Regret. Then… acceptance. Death comes. Life goes on. As Andrea Montague said. Though when they see you… this miracle…’
She didn’t speak. He waited. Finally she rubbed the rough serge of the nun’s habit between finger and thumb and said, ‘Fetch me fresh clothes.’
‘If you’re not ready to face them… I could find you breathing space with the nuns.’
‘These robes are not for me.’
He laughed. ‘This is a community of friars. We have no women’s clothes.’
‘Then fetch me those of a boy.’
Laurence thought for a moment, finished his wine and said, ‘Very well.’
‘Tell no one. Promise me, Friar. No one.’
‘And will you promise in return you’ll do yourself no harm?’
‘I did already,’ she pointed out. It was the first question he’d asked when he came in from the cloisters. ‘Do you not believe me?’
‘I wish to,’ Laurence said. ‘Yet still?’
‘Clothes,’ she insisted. ‘Please.’
* * *
A little while later the friar returned, in his arms a young man’s tunic, simple britches, boots, a plain shirt, a cap. The cell looked empty. Hanks of golden hair lay scattered on the tiled floor.
‘Juliet! Where are you? What is this? You promised…’
Then a voice from behind the screen said, ‘And kept my promise. Leave the clothes on the stool, if you will.’
He averted his eyes as he did what she demanded then went back to the table and waited. After a few minutes she came out so changed he could hardly believe it. Her long hair was gone. The yellow locks left were cropped roughly, tight to her head. In the modest cheap clothes she might have been a fresh-faced servant boy or girl of fifteen.
‘What have you done?’
Her face was calm, her manner tranquil. She walked to the table and picked up one of the pouches of coin.
‘Juliet. Your father. Your mother…’
‘Juliet’s dead. You said so.’
He wrung his hands. ‘In good time they will be overjoyed to see you…’
Her sharp eyes glared at him. ‘Time’s rarely been good to me. And if I did as you wish… what then? Do they put that nun’s habit back on me for shame? Or find another suitor who’ll ignore my… wicked past?’
‘They’re your parents. They love you…’
‘And every time they see me I’ll remind them of the pain I caused.’ More quietly she added, ‘That they caused me.’ She raised the pouch. ‘I’ll take this and put it to better use than gilt on a statue to a myth.’
‘But where?’
There was one abiding memory from that last trip to the city on the water, when her mother had taken her to see the Carpaccio paintings, hinting heavily at the wedding to come. It was the glorious afternoon they rode lazily across Saint Mark’s Basin in a gondola, half-slumbering to the rhythmic movement of the single oar. In the distance lay the grey and empty horizon of the Adriatic, vessels on it, heading out to the unknown world beyond.
‘East. To Venice. To begin with…’ She took some coins out of the pouch and threw them on the table. ‘Find me a horse. I need… papers.’ She scratched the new short hair. ‘Don’t I?’
Laurence shook his head then went to the desk and found quill and parchment. He wrote a letter of introduction to an apothecary he knew, a Turk who worked in a storehouse on the Grand Canal. A man who would give her lodging and ask no hard questions. Then a similar missive to a fellow in Vicenza. Venice was two days’ ride. She would need to halt there along the way.
When that was done he looked at her and said, ‘For matters of passage you need a name. A new one. I think… Ursula. A holy martyr. The patron saint of orphans–’
‘Who didn’t exist.’
‘Then perhaps it’s appropriate. Since you’re not an orphan after all.’
‘I baptise myself. Call me Eve.’ Then she touched her cropped blonde hair. ‘Write another for Adam. I’ll choose the one that suits.’
He grunted but all the same he wrote two documents of passage as she asked, stamped them with the monastery seal, found an old satchel and placed the papers inside. Her last name he put as Esposito. Exposed. It was what the monks called foundlings left abandoned ou
tside their gates for care.
By now it was almost midday. She could be in Vicenza before nightfall. Venice the day after.
‘A horse…’ she repeated.
‘That I’ll do. But you will not travel alone. There’s another who can join you. For safety. For company–’
‘Friar…’
‘Go with him willingly or I swear I’ll take you straight to Escalus myself. Let him hang me afterwards. I probably deserve it.’
She smiled then and a little of her previous charm returned. ‘Poor Laurence. We brought you such misery. When all you wanted was to spread a little peace.’
He struggled to his feet and said, gruffly, ‘Aye. I’m not made for subterfuge and monkey business. The day moves on. The road is long. Which will it be? Escalus or Venice?’
* * *
The afternoon was cooler than she expected, with a soft breeze running from the mountains to the north. By the monastery gates, on the path to the river stood a young man in clothes much like hers. He held the reins of two Bardigiano mares. Small, hardy animals, sure-footed, the kind she’d once ridden with her father.
‘This is Friar John,’ Laurence said.
‘Just John now.’ The young man kept staring at her. ‘As for names…’
She took the better-looking horse, checked the bridle, the straps, the stirrups. The friar embraced her one last time, said farewell with a few words she barely heard, then wandered off to the herb garden.
‘What do I call you?’ John asked.
I am me and only me…
‘“Girl” will do for now. Or “boy” if you like. Does it matter?’
He laughed at that and started to check his mount much the way she did, though clumsily as if he’d no idea where to begin.
‘We leave by the graveyard,’ she said, climbing into the saddle and, without waiting for him, stirred the horse to go.
John was at her side by the time they reached the cemetery. Dusty monuments stood in tidy lines, fresh earth like giant molehills between a few of them, two burly sextons busy with their shovels among the cypresses. By the Capulet tomb a small mountain of garlands was stirring in the midday breeze. She asked which was the Montague monument and he pointed out a Gothic structure. Grand in its own way, but pale and grey, a memorial to shadows and memories, not the brief bright and vivid spark of life that was Romeo, flesh and blood.