After Viola has had her fill of greens and a large cupful of rich goat’s milk, Benvolio offers to see her home. In a small burlap pouch she carries a vial of the Healer’s best cough elixir for Sebastian. I walk them to the door and bid them good night. They have just rounded the corner of Saint Peter’s when I notice a bustling figure of rotund proportions, hastening away from Friar Laurence’s cell. ’Tis Juliet’s boisterous nurse, Angelica. I beckon her.
“Lady Rosaline?” The nurse lumbers o’er and eyes the Healer’s shingle with trepidation. “Why dost thou consort with this witch?” she demands in a whisper.
“The Healer is no more a witch than you are,” I tell
her. “Now, I would know what Juliet has heard of this day’s trouble.”
The nurse expels a long sigh. “Aye, aye, this hateful day, endless, hateful day. By my oath, surely the sun has rounded this world more slowly than is customary, or if not, more swiftly, delivering two days in the span of one. 0, Lord, this day has seen too much, and I am exhausted from grief.” She throws her meaty arms round my neck and commences to sob. “0, Lord, dear Lord! We’ve lost our Tybalt, our daring, darling Tybalt, the life pierced out of him with a hole put there by none but him who is his cousin’s husband. Romeo slew Tybalt! ’Tis a crime unrivaled.”
“Has the news been delivered to Romeo’s wife?” I ask, still clung to by the nurse.
“’Twas I who told Juliet the news! ‘Tybalt is gone and Romeo banished, Romeo that kill’d him, he is banished.’ Aye, that is exactly how I said it and at last Juliet understood. 0, ’twas like a demon burst forth from her breast. She gasped, then she bellowed, then she wailed, and 0, how we wept, she in my arms, then I in her arms, and once—just once—she was moved to curse nature for giving her Romeo the spirit of a fiend. In one breath she wished him shame, but in the next, recanted, and deemed Tybalt villain.”
I disentangle myself from the nurse’s weighty embrace. “What else?”
“What else? I, her devoted companion, did calm her
by promising to bring forth Romeo to console her, that is what else! For though his banishment to Mantua still looms, he remains yet within the bounds of Verona.”
“Glad I am to hear he has not departed the city,” I say, then wish I hadn’t. True, if Tybalt does not die, then Romeo might be spared his sentence. But that is still to be seen, and if the nurse were apprised of e’en the possibility of Romeo’s pardon, she might do something rash, and thus complicate things. When the nurse looks at me quizzically, I quickly amend: “So that they may have at least one night together. Where is Romeo at present?”
“I found him in the friar’s cell, found him weeping like a woman, writhing on the stony floor as a child would. Ah, well, there is the magnificent truth of it. Aye, ‘tis his tender age that is his defect, as Juliet’s innocence is hers; they are too green, too childish, too fresh, and unformed in mind and manner for the weight of this love. ’Tis a blessing too burdensome for their scant years to carry. Still, there is nothing for it now, for they are wed and that is sacred. They must grow into this marriage—”
I had forgotten Angelica’s tendency to ramble on so. I hold up a hand to silence her. “What did Friar Laurence advise?”
“0, the holy man did have a splendid notion,” she replies. “My Juliet and her Romeo shall have their wedding night, for I will hang the corded rope as planned, and Romeo will ascend the ladder to find his bride. Safe they’ll be in the cover of night, and on the morrow, before
the guard is dispatched, Romeo shall escape to Mantua, where he shalt live till we can find a time to mend this muddle and put it all to rights.”
’Tis a sound plan, the only reasonable course. I send the nurse home to report all to Juliet. “Tell my cousin I wish her well. And nurse—”
“Aye, m’lady?”
“Have a care with that corded ladder. Much depends upon it.”
She curtsies to me, then turns and ambles away across the square. I send up a silent prayer for Juliet on her wedding night before going back inside the Healer’s cottage.
The Healer lights a candle scented with lavender. For a long time, we sit in silence. Tybalt lives, and I watch him with sadness.
“’Tis frustrating,” I say at last, “to see a person suffer and have no ability to aid him.” I stand, making my way to the Healer’s worktable. Above it are shelves, crowded with herbs and remedies. I examine them, feeling helpless. “There is much we know, much we can cure, and yet—”
“Our profession is young,” she tells me. “E’en these many years of study and practice have been insufficient to teach us all this world has to offer in the way of healing. So much is yet unknown, untried. As with Tybalt—I have heard tell of such conditions, but he is the first I’ve seen myself.”
On the scarred wooden surface of the table I spy a wrinkled scrap of paper. A list of ingredients is writ upon it, with fine ink in a careful hand. “What is this?”
“Friar Laurence did bring it to me,” she explains, her eyes suddenly wary. “A recipe for some strange liquor, a potion really, sent to him by a learned woman who resides in some land north of here called Denmark. He tells me it carries most astounding properties.” Pulling her shawl closer round her shoulders, she describes for me the strange potion’s power. “It brings to anyone who ingests it the aspect of death, but in reality ’tis safe to drink as mother’s milk. I did brew him one small portion,” she confesses.
I shudder. “Seems a profane thing to attempt, sinful almost.”
“Aye. I felt so myself, but the friar convinced me ’twas not as bad as all that. But now that he has his experiment, I believe I shall burn the recipe.”
She rises slowly from her chair, taking the odious scrap from the table. With steady hand does she hold it above the candle’s flame. I watch as the tiny blaze takes hold of the foolscap with flickering yellow teeth, blackening it, curling the edges to ash. At the very last second, the Healer releases the corner she holds, letting it and the small fire that clings to it fall with a hiss upon the tabletop. The flame lasts only a moment, then dies.
After this, we sit in companionable silence, lost in our own thoughts and separate prayers. At last I bid my friend good night and head for home.
I arrive to find my good lady mother in her courtyard. She listens to the music made by steamy breezes in the treetops and the sweetness of crickets’ song. I wonder how badly, in these lonesome moments, she does miss the husband who left her, who left us both.
“Rosaline!” my mother calls out. She rushes to me, wraps me in her embrace—I knew not until this moment how much this day of all days I’ve had need of it. Without warning, I feel the tears begin, slowly at first, but gaining strength until I am sobbing in my mother’s arms. These are true and heartfelt. These, at last, are honest tears for Tybalt—who now lives only to decide to die—and for Mercutio.
“God-den, precious one,” my mother says, then gives me a soft and serious look. “I looked for thee at Tybalt’s funeral this afternoon. Wherefore did you neglect to attend the service? ’Twould have been good for you to bid him farewell. ’Tis the reason we gather o‘er our dead—to grieve together, to say good-bye. ’Tis a step toward acceptance.”
She is right, of course, but I cannot tell her that the faceless man our family mourned in the tomb this day was not Tybalt.
“I could not bear to witness Tybalt’s interment,” I explain with a loud sniffle, “for seeing him thus would forever sully my recollection of him. I wished my final memory to be of good Tybalt alive.”
She nods in understanding and places her cool palm
upon my cheek. “You look tired. No doubt you and Juliet did not sleep at all last night. Tell me, did you stay up past dawn, giggling and remembering the handsome lords who flirted with thee?”
She laughs lightly, and of a sudden I recall she believes I spent last night at my uncle’s house, in Juliet’s company. In truth, I spent it talking and snuggling beside Benvolio on the mossy ground of the sycamore grove. Indeed, another thing I cannot tell my mother.
“Did I sleep?” I repeat, sounding more than a bit foolish, then answer honestly, “In fact, I slept very little.”
“You girls and your visits. Wherefore dost thou call them sleepovers, I wonder, when you ne’er so much as close your eyes.”
Before she can press me further, I excuse myself and hurry indoors. I want nothing more than to say a prayer for Tybalt, then lie down and close my eyes to sleep.
But sleep, again this night, is not to be.
When I arrive in my chamber, I find the window open wide, and there, in a patch of moonlight, waits Benvolio! He places his finger to his lips, bidding me stay quiet.
“How?” I begin softly. “How did you come in?”
“Carefully.” He nods toward the open window. “With the aid of a rather unsteady pile of bricks that leads to a low roof, from which I pulled myself in through yon window.”
“Resourceful of thee,” I whisper.
“Shall I leave?” he asks.
“Never” is my answer. And then I am in Benvolio’s arms, and there is no sound but the breezy music of the night without and my name upon his lips.
I will confess, I come awfully close to surrendering my virtue completely, and there is more than one moment when I am nearly unable not to.
But we refrain.
’Twould be a sin, first and foremost, but beyond that, I will not risk getting with child. Benvolio understands. ’Tis wonderful just having the warmth of him here beside me, feeling him breathe, hearing him sigh, kissing him. Soft and slow and lingering.
We sleep, briefly, then awaken to kiss some more. His kisses are perfection. He swears mine are sweeter than any he’s ever known, and I believe him, for I have ne’er in my life meant anything as I mean these kisses I give to Benvolio.
When at last we make ourselves say good night, the earliest ribbons of daylight have begun to tease the horizon.
Benvolio slips out the window. I watch him vanish like a sweet dream into the swell of morning, then return to my bed, to sigh myself to sleep.