By now, the sun has shown itself fully in the east. Another burning morning is upon us. Juliet, ever concerned for her parents’ approval, hurries home.
I tarry in the square, taking in the sluggish bustle. Merchants and buyers argue over cost and quality; noblewomen worry o’er the wrinkles the warmth brings to their gowns. At the edge of the square is Saint Peter’s, our gracious cathedral. From her steps, peasant children in dusty clothes call out to playfellows, darting hither and yon amid highborn strangers who would as soon trample them into the dirt. I pass a carter, whose cabbages are already wilting in the heat.
The air is thick with the aroma of commerce: I smell onions and garlic, newly cut wood, lamp oil, fresh bread,
and fragile pastries laden with honeyed fruits. The world and everyone in it sweats, and the scent is primitive and divine. The lowly carry the musky smell of hard work, of honest labor, of hope, while the perfumes and powders of the gentry mingle in a way that is false and cowardly. They mop their damp faces as though ashamed of being human.
Tucked away from the main piazza is a small building of stone, liberally patched with earth and sod. A weathered shingle propped above the shuttered window bears a single word, shallowly carved: HEALER.
I rap on the sturdy door, listen for the latch to fall away. When the door pulls back on an ancient leather hinge, I enter the reassuring gloom I recognize so well.
She greets me with a smile. Her long hair is swept into a silver knot at the nape of her neck. Her skin, for one so aged, is smooth—the effect of a special cream she blends—and her eyes, startlingly clear, are a calming hue near violet.
“Good day, Lady Rosaline.” She inclines her head. I do the same. ‘Tis cooler inside the cottage than without ’neath the blazing sun. And there is no place I feel more useful, more at home. Indeed, my many experiences within the ramshackle walls of this hospice have inspired me to make the difficult choice I earlier described to Romeo. But my undivided pursuit of medical knowledge is only one reason I choose to keep free of amorous entanglements. For during these many months in which I have acted as
the Healer’s apprentice, I have seen with mine own eyes that for the “gentler sex,” love is a most dangerous endeavor. In the course of our practice, the Healer and I have cared for those who have suffered greatly at the hands of their beloved.
I cannot count them, these women young and old who have arrived on this doorstep—some bruised and bleeding from having been beaten by their husbands, others fallen ill from pining o‘er men who refuse to love them in return, their anguish so profound that many hath e’en begged us to administer some evil draught designed to end their very lives and thus their misery. I have observed too that e’en when true love runs smooth, the consequences to a woman can still be grave; for childbirth is a most unpredictable blessing, so suddenly can it shift from miracle to misfortune. Even the most cherished wife has lost her life in the course of an angry birthing.
And there are girls mine own age and younger, unwed, who come to us in mortal shame, asking if there is not a way to rid themselves of the growing babe inside them, a babe conceived in love that they would, under other circumstances, have gladly birthed and raised and loved. The Healer will not commit such surgery; she warns these frightened girls that it could leave them barren. If they persist, the Healer (with a reluctant heart) might send them off to the country physician who performs the act skillfully but in secret. Those who are lucky go on to marry and bear healthy babes. But many, lucky and
unlucky alike, awaken in the dead of night, weeping for that one child they never knew.
That is the condition of women in love. And I refuse to join their tortured number.
Nay! All the poets, all the minstrels, all the Romeos on this earth could never persuade me to fall in love.