Prince of Shadows: A Novel of Romeo and Juliet (16 page)

It had the breathtaking cruelty of something the old witch would order . . . betray Mercutio’s secret love, use the Capulets as scapegoat to bind the bitter, wounded boy closer to the Montagues. Politics at its most brutal.

“La Signora might have given the order,” I said in a voice just above a whisper, a voice I could hardly hear over the mad thudding of my pulse and the red rush of blood in my ears. “But she used you as her puppet, sister.”

Veronica lifted her hands in a gesture of utter indifference. “I am a woman. I must get used to being used.”

“You’re not a
woman.
You’re a child playing at things you don’t understand.”

“I’m as much a woman as you are a man, Benvolio! I’ve my blood for a year now! And soon I’ll be wed and bedded, and breed more allies for this house. What use are
you
, then? Another excess
boy
?” She shoved past me and rejoined her silly little cousin, and the two girls swept down the hall in a hiss of silk and a cloud of floral perfume.

That evil should smell so sweet . . .

“What quarrel was that?” Romeo asked, once I’d come back to him. “To do with Mercutio?”

“Malice,” I said. “And one day, she’ll feel the scorpion’s sting of it on her own back.” My tone was so dark that he gave me a sidelong look of concern. “I’ll go in secret tonight, to see that Mercutio’s well cared for.”

“Then I come, too,” Romeo said.

I did not have the heart to tell him no.

•   •   •

S
lipping into Mercutio’s rooms was an old-established routine for me, but teaching Romeo my methods was less simple, and the Ordelaffi household was on edge, to complicate matters. We did manage, but it was a near thing, and on clambering sweaty and trembling through the window we found Mercutio’s rooms dark and silent. No lamps lit. No sign of life at all.

“They’ve sent him away,” Romeo said in a harsh voice. “Ben, they sent him away!”

“Or worse,” I said. I found a candle striker and lit one of the half-melted tapers on the wall sconce. The light was thin and feeble, but it served . . . and I found Mercutio’s bloody clothes in a heap nearby, piled in a way that meant a servant had not been allowed to attend him. There were drops drying on the floor. Romeo took the candle and followed me, holding it high enough for me to suss out the thinning trail, and it led us past the undisturbed bed, to the pallet where Mercutio’s manservant would have laid his head, in better days.

But tonight, huddled on it was our friend.

He’d had no care—not even the rudest. He lay in his smallclothes, smeared with blood, face swollen and near unrecognizable. Romeo and I said nothing for a long moment, and then I looked at my cousin, and he nodded and lit a second candle from the first. He left me with that light, and moved off. When he returned, he held a basin of water and a cloth. The water was clean, at least, as was the rag. Mercutio groaned when we helped him sit against the wall, but he did not try to resist as I sponged the worst of the crusted blood from his eyes, nose, and mouth.

Once cleaned, he did not look much improved at all. His eyes were swollen shut, his nose clearly bent, and while he had by some miracle not lost teeth, one had gone loose. Two fingers were broken, and Romeo reset them and helped me bind them fast for healing.

When Mercutio finally spoke, it came slow and slurred and dull. “Did they leave him there? In the tree?”

“Rest easy,” I said. “Friar Lawrence has seen him decently laid to rest.”

“He was brave,” my friend said. It was as if he were on a far distant shore, the words coming but dimly. “You saw, Benvolio. He was brave when they took him.”

“He was,” I agreed. It was suddenly hard to speak, and I had to look away, into the shadows, and not at his beaten face. Grotesque as it was, I knew it was only a small reflection of the pain within. “Most brave.”

“I would have died with him, you know.”

“I know,” Romeo said, when I did not. “You fought for him, Mercutio.”

“And I will never stop fighting for him,” he said, still in that cool, impartial, dull tone. It was not defeat in his voice—it was the opposite: a conviction so overwhelming that it was simply fact, requiring no passion to vindicate it. “I will find who betrayed him. I will have my vengeance, come the devil himself between us.”

I felt a chill crawl my spine, listening to him, because I knew he meant it. He would dig like a terrier until he found his rat, and crushed it.

But the rat was my sister, and beyond her, my grandmother.

His enemy was
Montague.

There was a doom coming on us, and I could feel it as strongly as the prickling of the air before a storm.
Better his father had sent him away,
I thought, and it was a terrible thing, a traitorous thing, but true.

“Come,” Romeo said, and shouldered Mercutio’s sagging weight to help him rise. “A hot cup of wine, and your bed, and cold compresses for your bruising.”

“What a little mother you are, Romeo,” Mercutio said, and laughed. It was an awful sound, empty as a pebble rattling in a cup, but it died as soon as he sank down wearily into his bed. I fetched the wine, and Romeo the compresses. As I fed the wine into my friend’s swollen mouth, he caught my wrist in his broken hand and squeezed. He did not even wince at the pain he inflicted on himself. “I beg you, Benvolio, do not leave me tonight, else I may find a dagger a better friend than you.”

“You’ve often said my wits were sharp as any dagger,” I said, and forced a smile, though I did not think he could see it through those swollen eyes. “There’s no need for a poor substitute.”

“We will not stir from your side,” Romeo said quickly. “You have my word, as Montague.” He said it with pure sincerity, and I had to bite back a wince. What value did our words have, as Montagues, now? “I am sorrowed for you, Mercutio.”

“Sorrow,” Mercutio repeated, and let out a slow, weary sigh. “There will be sorrow enough soon, so that every mouth in Verona can chew a rancid feast of tears and bile and hate.”

“Think on that tomorrow,” Romeo said. He sounded unnerved now, just as I felt. “Tonight, you must rest and heal.”

“Tomorrow, and all the days after,” Mercutio agreed. He let out another sigh, as if giving up his ghost, and made a pathetically small whimper as Romeo pressed a cool compress over his swollen eyes. “Tomorrow, for my enemies. Tomorrow, for blood. Tomorrow, for the wretched living. Tonight is for the sainted dead.”

I got him to drink some wine then, and his shivering slowed as the feather bedding crowded close around him. When he finally slept, Romeo looked at me and said, soft enough not to wake him, “Was it the Capulets who struck at him so, do you think?”

He had not heard Veronica’s confession, nor guessed at it; he knew only that we’d quarreled.

“I think whoever did will soon regret it,” I said. I hated my sister, and I feared the selfish, cold chit, but she was still blood, still family. I should lie for her. I should lie to protect the Montague family and Romeo from his own better nature . . . and yet, I could not bring myself to it. “The truth, like blood, will out.”

I took the key from Mercutio’s neck. I tested the door and found his apartments locked from the outside. That was good; it meant Mercutio’s lord father had decreed his son be abandoned to his wounds and demons at least for the night; not even the most loyal of Mercutio’s servants had dared sneak back to his side. I left Romeo at the bed and opened the secret compartment where Mercutio had taken possession of the jewels, gold, and sword I had stolen the night before; those I put into a leather bag.

“Where are you going?” Romeo asked in a charged whisper, as I swung up into the window and checked the street below. It was the dregs of the night now, when even criminals stole off to their straw beds. “You promised him you’d not go!”

“I’ll come back,” I said. I lifted the bag. “If they search his rooms and find this, he’ll swing like Tomasso, and so may we. I’ll take it to a safer place. If he wakes, say I’m gone to the jakes. It’ll be true enough.”

I slipped out before he could object, swarmed down the wall, and went at a quick, light pace through the warren of streets to the public jakes located near the river. It was a foul place, and no matter how carefully I stepped, the ground was soft and wet and stank of effluence and rot, but that was all to the good.

I held my breath as I came to the bog house, with its wooden seats over the pits; I tied a thin silken rope, one of several I had hidden on me, to the buckles of the bag, and lowered it into the filthy liquid, then tied it to a rusty hook below the seat. I’d hidden things here before, and disposed of others. No sane man searched a waste-filled midden for treasure. It would be safe enough until I retrieved it—or not. I did not greatly care now, as long as it was not found in Mercutio’s possession, nor mine.

I came back to the Ordelaffi house before the blush of dawn rose, and slipped back in with more ease than I’d had when dragging Romeo along. I found my cousin asleep with his head pillowed on the bed next to Mercutio, whose face was still hidden under compresses. I kicked off my filthy boots and left them by the ruined, bloody clothes, and found a pair that fit me well enough from my friend’s closet. Then I changed out the compresses and drank wine and fought off my own exhaustion until I heard the rattle of a key in the door.

“Hsst!” I said, and slapped Romeo’s head sharply. He jerked upright, eyes wild and wide. “Under the bed. Hurry!”

He pushed the chair back and slid beneath the wooden frame, and I scooted in from the other side and pulled the hangings down to conceal us, just as the door opened and heavy footsteps crossed wood, aiming toward us. No servant walked thus, with such assurance. I lifted the draperies just enough to spot the expensive leather of the shoes, and the gleam of gold buckles.

Lord Ordelaffi looked down on his son for a long moment, and then dragged a chair close—the same one Romeo had pushed away—to sit. Dust sifted into my face as Mercutio moved in the bed, and I closed my eyes against it; it crawled into my nose, and I had the horrible fear I might sneeze, or Romeo might, but we both stayed dead silent, somehow.

And Lord Ordelaffi finally said, “You live to see the dawn, then. It is a sign from God that even He does not want you.”

Mercutio’s voice came thready and weak, muffled by the swelling of his nose and mouth. “And no credit to the love of my father.”

“You brought this horror on yourself, with your filthy ways. But I pray you to take the instruction it offers: Give up your sinful perversions, and embrace a life of piety and duty to your family. You will not be offered this pardon again.”

“Pardon? Why, sir, I beg
your
pardon, for if that was pardon, then fists are love and nooses are kisses. You speak of duty? Duty is the rope that strangles me. Piety is a bed of broken glass. And
family
is the company of hateful demons.” His voice was half-mad. The bed shifted, as if Mercutio had rolled on his side, away from his father. “I want none of it.”

“You beg another beating!”

“I do not
beg
. Even if you hate me, I am your son and only heir. Kill me, kill your own name.”

“What matters a legacy when it will breed none of its own?” Lord Ordelaffi shoved the chair back and paced with sharp agitation. I watched the shadow move beneath the draping curtains. “You
will
marry the girl when you are presentable enough, and you
will
get her with child. Past that, I care not of you, or for you. You are no son of mine, save in necessity. We will never speak again.”

He left then, and slammed the door behind him. I heard the metal scrape of the lock.

Romeo and I slithered out from under the bed, and I wiped pale dust from my face and coughed. Mercutio had taken off the compresses. His face was not as swollen, but the bruises had flowered dark, and he scarce looked human.

But he did look . . . different. No longer the fast-witted, silver-tongued jester I had known all my life. There was something older in the hard-to-see glint of his eyes, and the tension in his puffy chin.

“You stayed,” he said. He sounded less distant today, but no less flat. “I love you well for it, but if you’re found in my company here, you’ll be named as sodomites for certain. I am a pestilent friend; I poison all I touch. I beg you, go, and don’t return. Once I am safely married and lashed to the family plow, I can see you again. Not until then.”

“Mercutio—” Romeo looked at him with real worry on his earnest, handsome face. “You spoke of daggers as friends last night. Say you do not mean it, for the love we bear you.”

“A dagger is the only friend I cannot corrupt. Even my blood cannot defile good steel.” But Mercutio carefully shook his head, which must have hurt. “Fear not; I will not give him satisfaction in seeing me safely buried. No, I will gadfly him a while longer, the wretched man who frowns on perversion while he capers at murder. I will bring down the guilty; see if I do not.
All
the guilty, even should I pull down the temple on my head, like Samson.”

I wanted to be glad for him, to wish him success in that, but I was all too aware that the temple that he would be pulling down would be the palace of the Montagues. My sister and my grandmother had set this tragedy in motion, and the coming waves were sure to wash us to far distant shores.

It might be up to me to be sure those waves did not drown us all.

    
FROM THE DIARY OF MERCUTIO, HIDDEN BY HIS HAND

In only a week’s time, how quickly Tomasso has disappeared from the world. His body has not yet completed a feast for the worms, and yet no one remembers him. I am presentable enough to dine in the hall now. My father ignores me; he will keep his silence toward me to his dying day; I know that. No one remarks on my face, or my newly crooked nose. No one asks whether I am well. I am a ghost at the table, as dead to them as the boy they helped murder.

None of them knows his name.

None of them cares.

Damn all of them to hell.

•   •   •

It has been almost a month. The bruises are gone from my face, and the mirror shows me a new man—a stranger, with shadows in my eyes and a cruel tilt to my mouth. My father took the heart from me, and what remains is a cavern of roaring blood, and no pity left.

My servant Elias has brought me whispers and pieces of rumor, and I turn them over greedily, as once I turned over the treasure the Prince of Shadows brought to me. I have wealth secreted away, clean coin from the sale of my friend’s ill-gotten loot. I had meant it to take us away, into a new and likely impossible life together, but with Tomasso gone the gold means nothing, save a tool to loosen tongues and buy my vengeance.

Today Elias has told me a Capulet betrayed us. I’ faith, I almost hate the Montagues as much; I know in my head that Romeo and Benvolio could do nothing for me, or Tomasso, yet knowing they saw his death, saw my humiliation, goes hard. Hearing of Capulet guilt makes me think had I not been such fast friends with Montague it would not have happened.

My fault, again.

I pray every night for forgiveness. I pray that Tomasso will intercede for me, but I do not pray for salvation; that is beyond me now, and I know it.

All that is left is vengeance, and I will have that, at least, if nothing else. I will contrive a revenge yet.

•   •   •

The worst is upon me. I am wed.

She sickens me, though I should have pity on her; she is as trapped in this web as I, but she is a symbol of all I have lost of myself. And I loathe her. It is a bitter bed we make, and after, she weeps herself to sleep. I tell her that once she bears a living heir she can be shut of me, and I know she is well content with that. We both cling to the promise of loneliness.

Men say that love is cruel, but it is the lack of it in the act that is cruelest.

I saw my Prince of Shadows in the market today, but I avoided him. I think he would have followed me, but I fell in with some drunken fellows instead; he prefers his sobriety, my serious young friend. I wonder if he is still stealing, and if so, where he hides his loot. (Even here, I will not inscribe his name. I owe him that much.)

•   •   •

Today Elias brought me a priest. He was to hear my confession, but I confessed him, instead; I heard from his own lips how Rosaline Capulet, that convent-bound bitch, had pointed the finger at us and roused my father’s ire.

It is proof enough.

•   •   •

My wife’s maidservant came to me with reports that my wife sneaks away to visit a witch, one who doses her with potions to make her more fertile. She desires a babe as badly as I, and for the same reasons—it is our salvation from this fleshy purgatory we inhabit.

I forced the wench to tell me where the witch lives, and tomorrow I will pay her a visit.

•   •   •

The witch must have been in terror that I would betray her; the penalty for such unholy acts as she commits is death, but I will not betray anyone with a secret. I threw gold on the table, a mountain of it, and told her to continue to dose my wife with whatever herbs might induce her to conceive, but to make for me a curse, a great and terrible curse.

Imagine my surprise to discover that this young slip of a witch once had a cousin, a cousin I so tenderly cherished. She had come to Verona to discover the reason for Tomasso’s death. Once she learned who I was, she was cheerful in her help to me.

I had long considered carefully how to achieve my vengeance. One blade alone might cut a few throats, but not enough, and not the right ones. No, I needed to destroy the Capulets, root and branch, before turning the vengeance upon my own father and his varlets.

A curse for love, cast in my own hand and faith and flesh. A curse of love, on the house of the guilty.

Let them feast on love, as crows feast on the dead.

Perhaps I am, after all, mad.

•   •   •

I have made me a poem of my madness, and it concerns Queen Mab. In part, it reads:

Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck,

And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,

Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,

Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon

Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,

And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two

And sleeps again. This is that very Mab

That plats the manes of horses in the night,

And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,

Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:

This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,

That presses them and learns them first to bear,

Making them women of good carriage.

I think Mab has made me mad. I no longer care.

•   •   •

I have consorted with the witch to make this curse, and there are three parts to my vengeance: flesh, mind, and spirit. Let me then speak my mind, here:

CURSED BE THE CAPULETS.

CURSED BE THE HOUSE WHO BETRAYED US.

Let Queen Mab visit her madness upon us all.