Juliet's Nurse (16 page)

For one last night, I nurse Juliet into milk-sweet sleep. Restless though I am, waiting for her to wake and take her final taste of me, she sleeps heavily, stirring only when the morning lark twitters outside the open window, and the sun begins to stretch its golden way into the room.

“Me pick?” she asks, studying me with drowsy determination. I nod, glad for this game she’s loved to play since before she had the words for it.

She opens an expectant mouth and takes in the nipple of my left breast. As she suckles, she reaches her hand up to stroke my face, drinking me in until my left breast has no more milk to give. I wait in perfect anticipation for her to reach her mouth to the ripe right nipple. Then I pull her close, savoring her last latching onto me. Wondering if ever tender hearts could break more than mine
will, and hers as well, when we are forced apart.

By day’s full light, I cannot deny the truth in what Pietro said. Yesterday’s bruise has deepened into a hideous purpled rise above Juliet’s eyes. That sight alone might be enough for Lord Cappelletto to put me out. I’ll not risk disobeying what he’s ordered me to do. Not anger him so, he might never let me see Juliet again. So I pray to Santa Margherita and Sant’Agata and the Blessed Virgin Mother for such strength as only women show, as I loose Friar Lorenzo’s cross-bound pouch.

I was not much older than Tybalt is now, when I had Nunzio, my firstborn, at my breast. I can still remember how he crawled up my belly and found the nipple for himself. They will do that, the clever ones, in their first hour. And from that first hour, for fifteen years my milk ran for my boys. And then, when I was long past thinking I would ever suckle babe again, it came once more. Seven I birthed, and seven I nursed. But after today, not any more.

While Juliet giggles and gambols about the arbor, I sit beside the dovecote to rub on the wormwood, the godly friar’s way to trick a child to stop suckling. I flinch at the first dab, expecting it to burn like salt in a fresh wound. But crueler than that, I feel nothing.

As I coat myself with this bitterest of herbs, I sense a dark form suddenly rising. The bees—they’re flying frenzied from the hive, the arbor filling with their thousand-headed hiss. They hover in a whirling mass in the hot, fruit-scented air before forming a furious, swirling cone between me and Juliet.

The slabbed bench slides beneath me, then drops away. The fast jerk flings me to the ground. Stones fly past. The dovecote cracks, birds caw. Bells across the city clang. Not rung with the pious care that calls the holy to pray, but as if some unseen demon’s hand was smacking every clapper in Verona, intent on splitting all our bells to pieces.

I cling for a hellish eternity to the shuddering ground, wondering if this thundering from every side will ever end. Worried the world will no longer stand when it is done. And plotting how to drag myself to Juliet.

And then, in an instant, the earth stills. The eddying cloud of bees funnels back into their fallen hive. Birds soar from the crumbled ruins of the dovecote, screeching as they spread themselves through the arbor trees. Screams of agony seep into Ca’ Cappelletti from Verona’s streets. But not a sound comes from Juliet.

She’s heaped on the ground. She does not sob, does not stir. Not even when I crawl near and lay a hand across her chest to feel for the quiet beating of her heart.

I pull her to me, pushing my breast into her gaping mouth. She vomits me out the instant she tastes wormwood.

“Goddamn the brown-frocked friar.” The words are out before I know I’ve made them. Surely I’m the one who’ll wind up damned, for that unholy utterance. Perhaps I already am.

The arch over the passageway to the courtyard has collapsed. I stumble over toppled hunks of marble, clutching glassy-eyed Juliet to me. The great Cappelletti crest that hung within the courtyard lies smashed upon the ground. But the well still stands. I thank the saints
for it as I haul up a pail of water, the rope rough against my hands.

My legs quake so, I cannot tell whether the earth is trembling again. I scrub and scrub my bittered breasts, dipping my tongue to test the taste. Wormwood, wormwood, wormwood. I cannot rid myself of it. How can I make Juliet come back to me, to herself, without a milk-sweet breast to draw her here?

Leaving her beside the well, I scurry once more across the jagged pile of fallen stone into the arbor. I do not give myself time to think, or doubt, or fear, before bending to pry loose the lid of the cut-log hive. I plunge my hand inside, the waxy comb crumbling in my desperate fingers.

The first sting burns the wattle of flesh hanging beneath my elbow. Pain sizzles up and down my arm and across my hand, as a second bee stings, and then a third. Then too many to keep count.

I hold tight to the crushed bits of comb, zigzagging my way from the hive, shaking bees out of my sleeve. By the time I’m back in the courtyard, I’m so swollen with stings, it’s hard to unfold my fingers. I slip the sticky comb between Juliet’s gaped lips and beg her to take suck.

She begins to work her mouth, leaching golden honey from the wax. The sweetness soothes her, and soon she hums with pleasure. She reaches for me, squeezing my arm, which makes the stings pain even more.

We rock together in the day’s heat. Cocooned in pain, and grief, and honeyed relief, while Verona’s streets echo with terrified shouts reporting all the damage the shaken earth has wrought.

NINE

T
he servants have all gone pecking after their own pleasures since Lord and Lady Cappelletti went away, and the house-page is still not back at his post. Which means there’s no warning before the horse is inside the Cappelletti gate. Lathered from being ridden too hard for too long, the beast brays as the rider jumps down. I recognize the heavy footfall on the stone path, the clanging of the broad silver belt. But I’ve no time to right myself and Juliet, and no means to make her swollen head and bruised face less frightful.

“Juliet?” Lord Cappelletto calls her name as a question announcing his return.

“Papa,” she answers, opening her arms and raising her face in anticipation of his kiss.

What’s sweet anticipation for her is sour worry for me. Lord Cappelletto left the most beautiful of daughters, and returns to find a seeming changeling for his child. All the easier for him to cast her off to a convent, and cast me from her forever.

But though he startles at first sight of her, he kneels and kisses her with keen father-love, then murmurs soft words only she can hear before kissing her again. His voice catching in prayer, he brushes his finger along her brow, gently tracing the bruise that’s spread beneath her eye. “I rode straight from Mantua as soon as the ground ceased shaking, fearing you were hurt.”

“Me was hurt. Me fall, and Nurse fall, and dovey-coo fall.”

I seize upon what she says, nodding toward the fallen archway. “We were in the arbor when the earth quaked. The dovecote collapsed, and Juliet fell and cracked her brow. She cried for the dug, but having weaned her as you bade me, I comforted her with honey.” Every word I say is true, even if things’d not occurred in the order that I tell them. But I put my whole heart into what I promise will happen next. “What’s bruised on her will heal, and she’ll be every bit the lovely Cappelletta di Cappelletto, pride of Ca’ Cappelletti, before the dovecote is rebuilded.”

Lord Cappelletto shakes his head. “It’ll not be built again. Lady Cappelletta has borne a son—”

“Thanks be to God.” I cross myself with my sting-riddled arm, though I’m unsure whether Juliet is saved. “A son, at last.”

“Her last,” he says. “Dead within the hour it came out of her, and dead she nearly was with delivering it.” Grief bows his balding head. “The day we arrived in Mantua, her pains came on. The
Gonzaghe sent their own court midwife along with their physick, but neither one could save my son. Nor could the physick cure my brother.” He clasps Juliet tighter, nearly smothering her against the dark folds of his new mourning cloak. “The physick is certain nothing more will quicken in Lady Cappelletta’s womb.”

Juliet wriggles her face free. Impatient with his talk of what she’s too young to understand, she mews out, “Tybalt?”

She wants to know where her beloved playmate is. But Lord Cappelletto, bound by his own thoughts, says, “He’ll be my heir. I promised my brother I’d take him as my own to keep our family’s fortune complete.”

Heir
and
fortune
mean much to a man as rich as Lord Cappelletto. But what comfort can they be to a father-hungry boy like Tybalt?

Lord Cappelletto spends the rest of the day shut inside Ca’ Cappelletti, so bereft he turns away even the prince’s own messengers, though he sends out alms of loaves, oil, and wine to honor the memory of his brother, and of his last lost son. His days in Mantua have aged him by ten years, and he carries himself more burdened than the page and serving-man who, having skulked back to Ca’ Cappelletti, are ordered to haul off the pieces of the crumbled archway and the fallen Cappelletti crest.

When, hours later, a carriage arrives, Lord Cappelletto himself reaches up to lift out Lady Cappelletta, grief seeding an unwonted tenderness for his nearly taken wife. She is more wan than ever,
her amber eyes unfocused as he guides her gently to the ground. “Ma’da,” Juliet calls, putting all a child’s expectation into those two syllables. But Lady Cappelletta, flickering like a tallow-candle in a sudden wind, pays her no notice.

I kiss Juliet’s dark hair, whispering that Tybalt is here, too. But what appears next is not Tybalt, though the delicate creature has his pretty eyes and poutish mouth, its well-shaped head crowned with the same long, soft curls. Juliet buries herself among my skirts, taking timid peeks at the beautiful being. A younger, softer, girlish version of Tybalt, with none of his awkward angularity. Nor his bold curiosity. Hesitating at the carriage opening, she crosses herself and recites some Latin prayer.

Lord Cappelletto nods at her piety. “Fear not, fair Rosaline,” he says. “Tybalt, come help your sister down.”

Tybalt is not eager to obey, I can tell from how long it takes him to make his way to the carriage opening, jump to the ground, and turn to lower this Rosaline out. His long face is made longer by grief, and he’ll not meet my eye, nor Juliet’s. As the last of the day’s dusk seeps from the sky, he follows Lord Cappelletto up the stairs, Rosaline holding to his arm in imitation of how Lady Cappelletta clings to her husband, all of them cloaked in mourning.

I’ve promised Juliet what I’ve not got to give: Tybalt. Long after the compline bells ring, she lies awake in our chamber, waiting. Sobbing herself sick, she begs me to bring her beloved cousin. And so I go looking for him.

Lady Cappelletta is long settled in her bed, though whether Lord Cappelletto lies beside her or spends the night hours upon his knees down in the Cappelletti chapel, I cannot tell as I sidle past the antecamera to their chamber. All is still along the loggia overlooking the courtyard, the storerooms bolted shut, the entry to the parto room left bare. Inside the apartment on the far side of Ca’ Cappelletti, I find only Rosaline. She’s sleeping with a cherub’s guiltless grace in the ornate bed that once held her parents, though in all my time in Ca’ Cappelletti Tybalt’s been the only one to lay his head here.

But tonight, no part of Tybalt is in the bedchamber. Nor in the study that sits beyond it, though he so dreads his tutor’s lessons, I’d not expect to find him there. From the study window I look out over the kitchen roof and across the toppled passage to the arbor, to where the moon rises above Juliet’s chamber. The dark silhouette of the family tower tells me where Tybalt must be. Where I must go to find him.

Despite the score of times Pietro’s climbed the first storey of the tower stair to make his unseen way from the arbor into Juliet’s chamber, I’ve not repeated the climb to the tower’s top, not since that morning long ago when I first followed Tybalt up. By day the many steps were hard enough for me, but at night they’re dark as pitch. Part of me is glad for it, for the darkness keeps me from seeing what I hear: the scurrying of rats or mice, I know not which, and the night-flapping of bats above my head.

I make my way slowly, for I’ve not got Tybalt’s taste for adventuring—although I know what’s urged him up the tower stair
tonight is something else, something heavier on his heart. Turning up the final flight, I see him perched like a falcon upon the ledge at the tower top.

I whistle one low note as I approach. Afraid any more than that might startle him, send him tumbling to the street so far below.

“They took him.” I can barely make out his words. His body is balled tight, his face buried against the sumptuous cloth of his mourning cloak.

“Death took him,” I say, though I know too well what little comfort those words bring.

“They did it. I’m not sure how, and my uncle’ll not tell me. But I know. I saw the swallow-wing.”

I lay a hand on his head. It’s feverish hot. “How could a bird—”

“Not a bird.” Shaking off my mothering fingers, he points to one tower, then another, standing eerie guard over Verona. He does not pick every tower in every parish, only those whose bricked tops are notched with curving clefts, the same as ornament the city walls, and the prince’s castle.

I know the pattern as well as anyone who lives within Verona, though I suppose I never noted how each cleft resembles the wings of a swallow raised in flight.

“The swallow-wing is the mark of those who hate us, because we’re loyal to the Pope.” Tybalt endarts his words like an archer shooting flaming arrows. “It was on the house where my father stayed. That’s why they killed him.”

Burning anger in a boy of thirteen only hides the more tender thing he feels. “He was not killed,” I say. “He died.”

“My mother died from giving birth. My new baby cousin died from being born. But why would my father die, unless some Uberto or Montecche killed him?”

What way is there to teach a child about the randomness of death? My own sons never heard a word of it from me, not in all their youthful years. Nor in that awful week when they lay ill, each too deep in his own agony to know when another of his beloved brothers slipped from us forever. No one could have imagined a thing as awful as the pestilence, until it came. But what good would it have done us to know such a thing could happen, in the years before it did?

“My daughter died, the day that Juliet was born.”

Tybalt raises startled eyes to me, as surprised to hear those words as I am to utter them. But our own pain is all we have to offer when those we love are suffering.

“I miss my Susanna every day. But every day, I know I have Juliet, and you, to love. It’s what saves me from wishing I’d gone, too, when Susanna went.” I kiss his head. Not merely to comfort him, but to give myself a chance to take in his boy-scent, to warm myself with what burns in him. “You miss your father, as a son should. But Juliet is downstairs, crying for you. And Rosaline will want to see you when she wakes. And I need you, and so does Pietro, because we’ve no boy of our own. Neither does your uncle, or your aunt. We’re none of us your father, but you are our dear Tybalt. In our love you’ll find your solace, the same as I found mine in you and Juliet.”

He does not answer, not aloud. But he lets me help him from
the ledge and lead him to the stairs. He slips a grateful hand into my sting-swollen one, and together we make our way back down.

Not knowing how many nights I’ve left with Juliet, I’d not waste this one in sleep. Whenever I begin to doze, I yank myself awake to watch her, nestled through the smallest hours of the night between me and Tybalt. They whispered long together before he fell into the deep sleep that grief brings, and she into the contented slumber of a child whose disordered world has been restored.

But Lord Cappelletto is more wakeful. The nightingale is still trilling when he pushes his way into our chamber. He’s so rushed he’s not stopped to break his night-fast, nor even to rinse the sleep-stink from his mouth. And so it’s with the stalest of breath that he says, “We must go to Santa Caterina.”

“Would you break your new heir’s heart?” I keep my words a whisper, to let the children cling to their final hour of limb-entwined sleep. “I found him atop the tower ledge in the middle of the night, so bereft he might have fallen.” I cross myself. “Or worse, if I’d not lured him down to take condolence from Juliet for the loss of his father.”

Even in the pewtery pre-dawn, I see that Lord Cappelletto’s features mirror Tybalt’s grief. “He was my own and only brother. All I had, after the plague had done with everyone else I loved.” Lord Cappelletto closes his watery eyes. “But what comfort was I to him, when years later it was his wife who lay dead? I lost him then, to his own anguish. Now I’ll never have him back. He’s left me with only a boy to fill his place.”