How many living cousins is one girl expected to mourn? And in the course of a single week! For there lies Juliet, believed dead, and all those who grieved so recently for Tybalt have gathered here again to pay their last respects.
I have come with the others to the tomb and bow my head and ask God’s blessing, but ’tis fraud, all of it. Mayhap they wonder why I shed no tears. Mayhap they think me in some manner of shock, or denial. 0, how I tire of these false funerals for the living.
As we enter the tomb, the nurse corners me beside an urn of withering roses. Her ruddy cheeks are damp with tears.
“’Twas I who found her, you know.”
“Yes, nurse. I know.”
Now the cleric begins his ritual:
In nomine Patris,
et Filii,
et Spiritus Sancti …
The candles are lit, the psalms are sung. The tomb is a shadowy place that smells of long-dead flesh and brittle bones, yet I am pleased that my cousin hath found a way to come here. For when her love collects her, she will leave this place enjoying high spirits. Whereas all others who have come here dead have left here, well, as spirits.
’Tis a comical thought. O, I will laugh. I know it, I will laugh at my own musings and clever wordplay, and if I laugh they will not think me shocked, but mad! I feel the giggle bubbling in my throat … I clench my teeth against the happy sound …
And of a sudden, it occurs to me that after tonight, when Romeo carries his bride off to Mantua, much time will pass ere I am able to see her again. Or perhaps all time. Perhaps they will embrace their exile so thoroughly that they will abscond to someplace e’en farther than Mantua and cut all ties with their quarreling kin.
Juliet, my darling cousin, my dearest friend, will be gone from me.
I shall miss her. I shall miss her deeply.
Good-bye, sweet Juliet. May God keep you well in Mantua.
I pray you’ll travel safe and find yourself welcome. And
above all else, I pray that your Romeo will prove
himself worth the trouble.