Juliet's Nurse (15 page)

Juliet, grown tired of her horse, begs for a length of ribbon. I give her three, and show her how to weave them into a braided diadem, which she carries into the sala, where Tybalt is already waiting. When Lord Cappelletto enters, Juliet runs to him with the bright crown in her outstretched hands, calling, “Me give pa-pa.”

But he ignores the gift and does not bend for her soft kiss. “I must go to Mantua,” he says.

Mantua
is a spark that ignites Tybalt. “Will you see my father? When do you leave? May I come?”

“I will go.” A mere three words, yet Lady Cappelletta heaves a
sigh at all it took for her to say them.

Lord Cappelletto, surprised to hear his wife speaking at all, answers, “You’ll not.”

But he looks full at her as he speaks, rather than keeping his eyes on his trencher, or on Tybalt, or on anything else in all the room. When a husband looks away, he is done hearing what his wife might say. But if his eyes meet hers, she may pry upon that tiny crack, if she has nerve to answer back.

All that wine has surely nerved Lady Cappelletta, though I mouth
the pursemaker’s daughters
at her, just to be sure. “My dowry-gold fills your purse,” she tells Lord Cappelletto. “You’ve no need to seek another.”

Tybalt looks with wonder from his aunt to his uncle. “You’re going to Mantua to get a purse?”

“I’m going to Mantua because my brother is unwell.” Lord Cappelletto’s wrinkled features sag under the weight of his words. But they hit Tybalt even harder.

“Will you not let me see my father?” he asks.

Before Lord Cappelletto can reply, I say, “A child is much comfort to a parent at such times.”

For once, Lady Cappelletta catches the meaning first. “Your brother will want to have his rightful son with him in Mantua.” She takes her husband’s hand and lays it upon her babe-stretched belly. “And you will want to have your own.”

It’s the first I’ve ever seen Lord Cappelletto find comfort in this wife. “We will all of us go to Mantua,” he says, just to be sure he’s the one who settles it.

I gather Juliet onto my own lap, whisper
Mantua
into her ear. But before I can spin out tales of all the wonders I imagine we’ll see there, Lord Cappelletto looks over, as if discovering Juliet for the first time. She beams at him like sunlight streaming through church glass, offering the ribboned crown again.

“Juliet Cappelletta di Cappelletto, we must go to Mantua,” he says. He takes the crown and sets it on her dark hair. “You will stay here and be weaned, while we are gone.”

I flash a look at flush-cheeked Lady Cappelletta. But she is leaning toward Tybalt, the two of them murmuring about their journey—both so caught up in their confidence, neither of them thinks of Juliet, or of me. They do not so much as mark Lord Cappelletto waving his long-pronged fork and telling me, “The child is to be done with crying for the dug, before we return.”

For all Juliet’s memory and more, our days have always started with Lord Cappelletto coming for his morning kiss. But these mornings, there is no Lord Cappelletto thumping his way into our chamber, nor any chance of Tybalt climbing through the window or sneaking in by way of the hidden tower door, and no Lady Cappelletta anywhere in Ca’ Cappelletti. It was a furious flurry of preparations, afternoon stealing into night, before we saw all three of them off at the next dawn. Lady Cappelletta sobered back to her usual uncertainty as her husband guided her into the wooden box of the hired carriage. She begged Tybalt to sit with her among the household bolsters and brass-hinged traveling coffers that were lain inside. But
he insisted on riding upon a post-horse just as Lord Cappelletto did, one hand clutching the leathered bridle while the other waved fare-thee-well to Juliet and me.

Juliet’s eyes widen with unease a dozen times a day at having all of our household routines unsettled. Again and again, I remind her that they are gone. That the sun must rise and make his way across the sky, then sink down and disappear, over and over at least a hand-count’s worth of times, and maybe two or three, before they will return. Then I ask what she wants to play, and let her whims set each hour of our days. Though these may be the last we’ll have together, I’d not have her know. I’ll not burden her with all the grief I feel, as I hold her and offer what Lord Cappelletto demands she learn to live without.

It’s more than a week that they’ve been away. Juliet, playing the wood-nymph frolicking among the fruit-laden trees, bids me be her fairy-queen. So I’m plumped upon the bench beside the dovecote as though it were my fairy-throne, when Pietro comes into the arbor. One of his hands curves around a sack that’s tied off with a tiny cross. I realize in a chilling instant why Pietro has it, what Lord Cappelletto must have directed Friar Lorenzo to send.

As the cross catches the summer sun, my besotted lamb reaches for it. Pietro slips Friar Lorenzo’s pouch to me, then flourishes his empty hand as though he’s a court magician. Juliet, startled to find what she seeks gone, blinks out disappointed tears. But Pietro offers his other hand, which holds a second well-filled sack, this one smelling of cherries, clove, and cinnamon. Juliet snatches it, twirling with delight. She pulls out three honeyed cherries, stuffs them into her mouth, and resumes her frenzied circuit through the arbor.

I hate to see her cry. But I hate more to see her soothed so easily.

“What comfit will comfort her, once she’s tasted this?” I wag Friar Lorenzo’s pouch of wormwood at Pietro.

“The child finds other delights than the breast. So might the breast, and the rest of my beloved wife, find other delights than suckling the child.”

He pulls me into the shade of the peach tree. A tender sapling when first I came to Ca’ Cappelletti, these three years later it’s grown big enough to bear plump fruit. Pietro plucks a peach, halving it with his bare hands. He grasps the pit in his strong teeth and spits it to the ground. Then he rubs the wet, ripe peach halves along my neck, across my collar-bone. Deep into my dress. Slicking my breasts with peach flesh, as juice pours down my belly.

His tongue follows, licking and probing. Reminding me a husband’s mouth can be as needy as a nursling’s. As needy, and as needed. July is hot even in this shadiest corner of the arbor, and I am hot, too. Pietro knows it, urging my hands to the most ravenous parts of him.

I’m dancing my hips against his when a sharp shriek ruptures the air. A shriek, and then an awful silence. And then harrowing sobs that pierce my heart.

I race through the arched passage into the courtyard, Pietro following. Juliet’s sprawled beside the well. Tripped over her own impatient feet, her brow cracked open.

I kneel and kiss her bloodied head. But before I can ready a breast to soothe her wailing, Pietro takes her by her tiny shoulders, turning her away from me toward him.

“Did you fall upon your face?” he asks, as though any fool could
not know that’s what she’s done.

He waits for Juliet to snivel back a sob and nod, then says, “A child falls upon its face, while a woman falls upon her back.” He laughs, sweeping her up with his big arms so she lies gazing at summer’s cloudless sky. “Will you not fall backward for a merry man, when you are grown and have wit enough to know more pleasures?”

Juliet stints mid-wail. She smiles up into Pietro’s winking eyes and leaves off crying. “Aye,” she says, though surely she cannot know what he means, never mind how many times she’s been with me when I’ve fallen on my back for him.

He sets her down and runs a broad thumb across the ugly lump that’s swelling from her brow. “A lesson every girl does well to learn, and you’ll have a bump as big as a cockerel’s stone to remind you of it.” He laughs again, and she laughs too. Her tears forgotten, she runs off into the arbor to play.

I lean back, letting the well-stones take the weight of me. “She’s too young for talk of rooster parts, and rutting people.”

“She is growing. Soon she will be grown.” He sits beside me, slipping an arm across my shoulders and pulling me to him. “Why not let the girl know what pleasures she’ll relish when she’s a woman?”

“She’ll not ever get to relish them.” I bury my head against him and tell him how Lord Cappelletto plans to send her to the convent as soon as she is weaned. “He’ll take her first from me, and then from every worldly pleasure. She’ll wither away in a cloister, so he can have his son.”

My merry-tongued husband has no words at first. But then he sighs and says, “She’s his child. He may dispose of her as he pleases.
You’ve known that all along. But if we have one of our own—”

“She is my own.” The words I’ve never said aloud come pouring out. A flood, an avalanche. “It’s my milk that’s made her. The bone and muscle and soft, smooth flesh of her, they’re all grown from what I give. The hair upon her head, dark as my own, and those plump cheeks. There’s more of me in her than of Lady Cappelletta, or even Lord Cappelletto. Anyone can see it.”

“What they see is the Cappelletti crest. Upon her clothes, and this grand house. And on the signet ring with which Lord Cappelletto will seal the papers committing her to Santa Caterina.” Pietro kisses me, not with his earlier passion, but with the same gentle comfort I offered Juliet for her broken brow. “You’ve always known this time would come.”

I’ve known, of course. But by my troth, I’ve not known, too.

Have I not said that self-deceiving is the very way of humankind? That in our hearts, we all wish to be fooled, and so we make fools of ourselves? There are coin-hungry husbands who every year contract for a different babe to be cradled at their wives’ breasts, and hard-to-please fathers who will hire first one nurse, then fickly turn her out and seek another, and then another after that, so that their child ever suckles upon strangers. But what Juliet and I share is not, cannot, be like that.

I am a fool, perhaps, but even as Juliet shed her swaddling, learned to waddle then to walk and now to run, even as she’s swallowed her first tastes of solid food—in all this time we’ve had together, I’ve not truly believed that Lord Cappelletto could ever be so heartless as to cleave me from her.

“I’ll not lose her.”

“No, you’ll not. Novitiates, and even full-habited nuns, may have visitors. I’ll take you to the convent whenever she’s uncloistered.”

How can Pietro’s talk of some-day visits succor me, when I know I’d not survive the stretch of time between them? “How can I live even for one day apart from Juliet?”

“Three years, you’ve lived apart from me.”

“And it was ten times three years that we had together first. Why can I not have even half so long with her?” My words fly sharp and heavy, like the rocks Tybalt hurls from atop the Cappelletti tower.

How can my husband argue with me over this? Does he not know what losing Juliet will cost me? Did he not grieve for our sons, and for the loss of little Susanna? Is my mother-love so different from what a father feels?

Pietro pulls himself away, rising to his feet. “Mantua is only a day’s ride from here. Lord Cappelletto may return at any time. When he does, he’ll expect to find her weaned. And if she’s not, he’ll likely put you out at once for disobeying him. You’ll get no chance to bid
God-be-with-you
-
and-good-bye
to Juliet. No leave to see her, even on uncloistered days at Santa Caterina. Nor ever again to visit Tybalt.”

What Pietro says is true. But every syllable of it forms a taste as bitter on my tongue as Friar Lorenzo’s wormwood will be upon my breast.

“I must go to Villafranca. A day’s walk each way, to haggle for what spices I can afford before I harvest this summer’s honey. When I’m back, I’ll not come here again. I’ll not keep sneaking
about, stealing time with you like I’m a thief taking what is rightfully Lord Cappelletto’s.” He leans down and kisses my hair, letting his words slip softly into my ear. “For thirty years we made a home together, through the worst that anyone could suffer. Since you came here, I’ve worn my patience like haircloth, waiting to have you back again. It’s time for you to be my proper wife. Let me love you near, as I’ve loved you every day you’ve been away.”

I close my eyes, feeling the sun pour its stern heat across my face as I nod to my beloved husband. But he cannot see how I rub my tongue against my mouth-roof, knowing his honey-coated words’ll not take away this bitter taste.