Upon a downy bed before a cozy fire, in a small, dark cottage, my once able body lies tranquilly. I seem to hover above it, observing from the air. My being is a part of the morning itself.
So I did not die completely, then. I exist there on the soft pallet in a state somewhere in betwixt. Of neither here nor there, life nor death.
’Tis a freedom most frightening, most challenging and intense.
I am a filament, a moment, a thought unthought.
I am trembling nothingness.
’Tis marvelous strange, yet passing pleasant and worth exploring. First, a soundless glide round this quaint dwelling. Ah, there is the woman who keeps a silent vigil.
She is Rosaline’s friend, the Healer; I sense her goodness. She approaches, a jar in her wrinkled hands. From here, in the atmosphere, I will my own hands to rise and clutch the woman’s arm. But no such movement occurs.
With tender expertise, she dips her withered fingers into the jar and begins to apply a slick salve to the wound upon my chest. I feel nothing. Hath it any scent? I cannot smell—nor do I feel the clean sting it carries, if there is one. Alas, I shall miss sensation quite a lot.
A window. ’Tis open, just a thread’s breadth, but that is likely all I need. To the window, then, and out …
Out, above the Healer’s tidy garden, I mingle with the heat of the coming day. Sunrise is a smudge of apricot color along the horizon—O, for a tunic the color of daybreak! But what use have I for clothing now? For I am more like a morning than a man, I am a smudge of wisdom and sentiment against the sky.
What is expected of me here in the breeze, the bright, the everywhere?
In the distance, I see pebbled country lanes and roughhewn fences protecting tall tomato gardens, sheep in their pastures, a glistening stream. But I am impelled toward town, and so I soar o’er Saint Peter’s spire, skimming vias, piazzas, and well-kept homes until I come to my uncle’s place.
I whisper in, like a dream, through Juliet’s open window.
And find myself in hell!
Zounds! That is Romeo she lies with!
That one so young should be abed with any man is wrong enough, but of all the bachelors in Verona, she chooses to award herself to Romeo?
Romeo, whose weapon left me as I am now. Romeo, in my cousin’s bed.
Would that I could shout, I would call for my uncle and all his guardsmen to apprehend this villain! This villain my kinswoman kisses and calls “love.”
“Love.” She calls him “love.”
What can a girl of thirteen summers know of love?
And when in the name of God Almighty did this perversity occur? Before he nicked me with his blade, or since? At the feast? (Saints, was it only one night past? Aye!) Did they make their first acquaintance there, or have they been courting for months and months in secret? Were I not already mostly dead, I believe I might expire from the shock of it!
I alight upon a ledge near her wardrobe and watch as they argue o’er larks and nightingales, and kiss profoundly. Little Juliet, the imp, her hair tousled from a night of—O, God, I wish not to think of what—wrapped in her mother’s good sheets and kissing a Montague.
I want to be enraged, but in this wispy state I find that I have more room for forgiveness than fury.
O, fine, then! Juliet may have her Romeo and with my
ethereal blessing. This much is clear, he is her husband, if not in law, then in deed and desire.
From without, her nurse calls, “Madam …”
I look on now as Romeo takes his leave. He departs quickly, hastening from the room to the balcony, scaling the outer wall to escape through the orchard. Juliet looks empty in his wake, and afraid.
And now my formidable aunt, Lady Capulet, enters to find her Juliet in tears. Ha, she believes the brat weeps for me!
They talk of my death, and I am lonesome to hear it, but also moved by the extent to which my aunt desires to avenge me.
Juliet lies, of course. She tells her mother she would deliver to Romeo a potion to make him sleep in quiet. Feigning to detest him, she says slyly that her “heart abhors” the fact that she canst not “come to him to wreak the love” she bore for me upon his body.
Clever girl! If I could laugh, I would, for ’tis cunning of the child to make it sound like a vengeful act, when what in truth she wants to do to that Montague is … well, precisely what she has already done upon those sheets. But her cleverness is no shield against what her lady mother announces now: “Marry, my child, early next Thursday morn, the gallant, young, and noble gentleman Paris, at Saint Peter’s church, shall happily make thee there a joyful bride.”
This brings sweet Juliet up short, and her pretty eyes
go bright and sharp and angry when she speaks. “I wonder at this haste, that I must wed ere he that should be husband comes to woo.”
So Paris hath not e’en called upon her? No wonder she finds insult. Were I still, er, available, I would give Paris a pounding myself! My beauteous cousin most assuredly deserves adequate wooing. Whatever is the matter with my uncle, not to insist the cad come courting before taking as his bride this treasure that is Juliet?
0, the scene worsens now, when Uncle Capulet makes his entrance. He is used to a daughter demure and ever compliant, and his rage ignites when Juliet denies his wish. This change in Juliet stuns me, but in truth, it does what is left of me good to see the urchin show some snap!
Capulet feels otherwise. He calls her unworthy! Juliet, whom just days past he worshipped as the hopeful lady of his earth. Ah, was it merely her weakness that he loved?
I have ne‘er seen him so incensed, and now he lashes out at Juliet in such a vicious fashion I cannot help but react, flinging my vaporous being in the path of his ire. ’Tis futile, of course, as I am air. Thankful I am he does not try to strike the girl. Instead, he hurls his cruelty in the form of words.
“Out, you green-sickness carrion!” he hollers. “Out, you baggage!”
E’en his icy wife is appalled by the severity of his verbal attack. She attempts to intercede, crying “Fie, fie, what, are you mad?”
Juliet falls to her knees, but Capulet will hear none from his child and ignores her plea.
“Wife,” he growls, “we scarce thought us blest that God had lent us but this only child, but now I see that this one is one too much, and that we have a curse in having her.”
O, blister’d be his tongue! Had I wind in me, such wicked words wouldst surely have knocked it out. Juliet, still kneeling, huddles now upon the floor, rocking, shaking with soundless sobs.
And now her nurse does leap to Juliet’s defense, daring to speak up to her lord and master. But Capulet’s fury subsides not at all. Instead, he hands down a most bruising threat. “Graze where you will, you shall not house with me. Look to’t, think on’t. I do not use to jest. Thursday is near … an you be mine, I’ll give you to my friend; and you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets, for, by my soul, I’ll ne’er acknowledge thee, nor what is mine shall never do thee good. Trust to’t … .”
Have I heard him rightly? He will toss her out, cut her off from all wealth and comfort! How can he? She is his child. Hath he forgotten that in her infancy he cradled her and thought her more brilliant than the sun? How can this man, my father’s brother, this uncle whom I loved and admired, be such a serpent when denied a single want?
Again, poor Juliet begs for reprieve, but Capulet offers none. He goes, and now the girl appeals to her mother, but the woman puts an end to it, taking her own leave with this statement: “Talk not to me, for I’ll not speak a word. Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee.”
Is Lady Capulet’s heart a thing of ice, that she can abandon her only daughter with words such as these?
Alone with her nurse, Juliet’s voice turns as thin as a spinner’s web. “O, God!—O, nurse, how shall this be prevented? What say’st thou?”
The nurse sighs, and there is a moment of silence before she speaks. And I am harshly amazed by her advice, for ’tis practical, aye, but so unkind, and so verily wrong!
“I think it best you married with the count,” says she. “O, he’s a lovely gentleman!”
Juliet is betrayed again, and by a friend so close as this one. But in pain, she finds resolve, for I mark a slight stiffening of her spine, a lift of her dainty chin. She levels a look at her nurse, and there is something cold in it.
“Well, thou hast comforted me marvelous much,” says Juliet. ’Tis an ironical statement, made with sarcasm. The nurse does not recognize it. She smiles, relieved, believing that Juliet has succumbed to her fate.
But I see something brewing there behind my cousin’s calm expression, something defiant in her eyes, which belies her sudden agreement.
“Go in and tell my lady I am gone, having displeas’d my father, to Laurence’s cell, to make confession and to be absolv’d.”
With a nod, the nurse hastens to do it, while Juliet whispers a denunciation in the traitor’s wake. “Go, counselor; thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain. I’ll to the friar to know his remedy.”
And now, a small, brave smile—had I my body about me, I believe that little grin would cause chills along my spine, and ’tis e’en more certain that had I blood ’twould run cold at the words she utters next.
“If all else fail,” say’st Juliet with a most disquieting calm, “myself have power to die.”