Prince of Shadows: A Novel of Romeo and Juliet (28 page)

The next rooftop was more treacherous, littered with bottles left by someone who did their drinking in secret, and probably by moonlight; I managed to avoid them, and when I made the next leap, to a pitched tile roof, I saw that I’d gained on my target.

If I’d been thinking of my danger, I might have hesitated at the next jump, which was wider and to a higher point, but now I was fiercely committed, and I had forgotten caution. I could see that only half the next building’s length separated me from my quarry now. He’d run into a funeral procession, and though he was pressing through, to the outraged cries of mourners, he had lost his lead on me.

I put all I had into the dash to the edge, and launched myself into the gap, aiming for the next roof.

I missed.

The rise was higher than I’d thought, and the gap farther, and as I realized I’d miss the roof itself, I saw that I would instead fall inside a small stone balcony with a closed door. There was no real choice to make; I braced myself, landed hard, and threw myself forward with my shoulder as lead.

The balcony door slammed back, and I stumbled into a bedchamber. No one was inside save an old woman embroidering by an open window; she blinked at me as if I were a phantom, and I did not wait to see what she might do, but moved out and into the hallway. It ran straight the length of the house to another balcony, the mirror of the one I’d landed on.

I burst out into the sunlight, put both hands on the hot stonework, and vaulted over and down. I landed hard, rolled, and ignored the aches and bruises, because only a few feet ahead was the bravo I’d been chasing.

He glanced back and saw me. His eyes went wide, and he dodged to the right, down another street and away from the choking crowds. I raced after, but I tangled with a fat old priest and went down hard enough to leave me bruised and dazed.

I shook the impact away, scrambled up, and dashed in pursuit.

He was just throwing himself through the doors of a laundry when I spotted him at the corner, and I ran after. My breath was coming in fast pumps now, sweat soaking my Montague finery; I smelled the strong soaps and lye of the vats, and saw him as he shoved aside a burly washerwoman and ducked behind some hanging wet bedsheets.

I yanked them aside. Another door. I plunged through and had just enough time to see that he’d decided to make a stand; he’d hoped to catch me surprised, and he almost did, but I knocked his blade up with my elbow as I spun, and drew a dagger with my left hand. He was fast, faster than I, and he avoided the slash and turned to run on.

I aimed and threw the dagger, but he veered and it missed its mark, merely slicing a wound in his arm and then ending its course in the wood of a barrel. I snatched it free as I ran after him.

Our pursuit burst out into the open streets surrounding the Piazza delle Erbe, to shouts and cries and flocks of pigeons making for the skies, and as I dodged the fountain, I felt a hand grab at my shoulder.

I spun, blindly striking with the dagger, and it was a lucky thing that Mercutio was just as quick, or I’d have opened his throat. That earned me an instant response as he stepped back and put a hand on the hilt of his sword. There was unreasoning black murder in his eyes. “That was ill considered,” he said. “What game have you flushed?”

“A quick and deadly fox,” I said, and pushed into a run as I shouted back, “If you’re going with me, keep your head!”

I did not think he would do it—he was more drunken now than he had been before, when he’d left me in disgust—but he laughed, and easily caught up and paced me. “You’re like one of those fellows who enters a tavern, claps his sword upon the table, and says, ‘God send me no need of thee . . .’ and by the second cup, you’ll draw it for no reason!”

I had little breath for it, but I grinned and said, “Oh, am I such a fellow?”

“You’re as hot a Jack in your moods as any in Italy, and as soon moved to be moody,” he said, and dodged a squawking rooster that fluttered in his path. “And as soon moody to be moved!”

He went on, firing quick and razor-edged barbs at me, and he was not wrong in most of what he said. I had a bad temper, a black one when it moved over me. I
had
quarreled with a man once for coughing in the street, and with a tailor—but not for wearing his new Easter suit before Easter. I could not remember the quarrel rightly, in this blood-hot moment.

But he was right: I was a dangerous man when put into this evil mood.

Roggocio’s compatriot was ahead of us, but not far ahead, and he was tiring, as greyhounds do when the sprint bids fair to become a longer footrace. Mercutio whooped and passed me, vivid with the joy of taking unthinking action.

And then I saw where the bravo was taking us.

Tybalt, his cousin Petruchio, and many more of his adherents than I cared to number, all lounging like a pride of lions in the shade of a portico. Tybalt spotted the running Capulet bravo and came to his feet, sinuous and graceful, and around him his fellows roused.

They descended the steps to meet the man I’d chased, who pushed through to Tybalt’s side.

“Stop,” I said, and pulled on Mercutio’s shoulder. “The odds are against us.”

“Well against,” he said. “But I thought you were on a hunt. Will you let your quarry slip away so easily?”

“By my head, the Capulets will have us if we are not careful.”

“By my heel, I care not,” he said, and bared his teeth in a fierce grin. “Come, Benvolio, you led me a merry chase. ’Tis a shame to end it with a coward’s retreat.”

He spoke to my anger, my fury, my fear. My blood was up, and though I knew it was wrong, though I knew it was disastrous, I let him draw me onward at a walk.

Even then, it might have been avoided; we might all have passed like wary ships on the sea, all our gun ports opened and glares all around. But then Tybalt stepped into our path and said, “Gentlemen, good evening. A word with one of you.” The speech was courteous enough, but his hand was already on his rapier, and there was fury in his face. The sight of him made the skin tighten on my back—not in fear, oh, no, but in utter fury. I could not see him without thinking of Rosaline, and bruises, and threats.

And Roggocio’s companion was urgently whispering in his ear. I knew what he was telling him. I knew it from the way his expression shifted from casual malice to something more intent—no longer a lazy cat toying with mice, but a lion on a wounded, limping deer.

He knew who I was, what I was.

And now it remained only what hay he would make of it.

Mercutio, ignorant of the undercurrents, said, “But only one word, with one of us? Couple it with something; at least make it a word and a blow.” Sweetly said, with a poisonous sting in its tail. He meant to provoke, and Tybalt scarce needed it . . . but he spared a second from his pleasurable contemplation of my doom to send Mercutio a scorching, dismissive look.

“You’ll find me apt enough to it, sir, if you will give me occasion,” he said.

I felt the darkness come on the day, despite the sweltering sun, and put a warning hand on Mercutio’s shoulder. He shook it free, and his tone took on a sharp, angry edge. “Could you not take some occasion without giving?”

Tybalt pointed at me. “You, I shall save for a later feast, for the insult to my house and to my sister. I’ve weapons enough to wound you when I wish.” He altered his aim toward Mercutio. “You consort with Romeo.”

“
Consort?
What does that make us, minstrels? If you would make minstrels of us, you may expect nothing but discord.” Mercutio tipped the still-sheathed hilt of his rapier forward, the better to drive home his insults. “Here’s my fiddlestick, then. Here’s what will make you dance.”

We’d already attracted a crowd of onlookers—idlers and fools, but a few well-to-do and even here and there a noble, surrounded by their own attendants, all bearing witness to this folly. Not even a folly—a farce; Tybalt knew he held the winning ground, and his gaze upon me said as much. These were merely the first steps in a deadly serious dance.

We could not win, and I knew it. It was madness, but Mercutio was in the grip of a long-burning fever, and he gazed at Tybalt as if he held the cure for his distemper.

“We’re in the most public of eyes,” I said to them both. “Let us take this to some private place, or else keep a cool head and go. Mercutio—”

He shook me off, and stepped forward to Tybalt. A more blatant challenge I could not imagine, and Tybalt did not back away—nor did he answer it, not yet.

“Men’s eyes were made to look,” Mercutio said, and swept his own gaze up Tybalt, and down, in a lazy and insulting appraisal. “Let them gaze. I will not budge for any man’s pleasure.”

Tybalt laughed, a flash of white teeth like the glint of a blade. “Marriage has changed you, then. I wonder how much. Can a woman make a man of you?”

Mercutio let out a sound that was as much growl as curse, and tried to draw. I held him back, even though my own blood beat hard at my temples, urging me to draw, strike, end him and the smirking bravo next to him. End the threat to my close-held secret.

I saw a distinctive flash of Montague colors, and for a bare second I allowed myself a surge of relief. I thought that Balthasar had arrived to back us—but no. Not Balthasar, and no bravos pushing toward us, nor allies rushing to our backs.

Romeo alone had joined us.

My wandering cousin had chosen the wrong moment to show himself, but having done so, he did not back away; after a hesitation, he came forward, hands outstretched and empty, a calm and almost angelic light on his face.

Well, I’d meant to find him. And I had. But a worse place of discovery I could not imagine.

“Well,” Tybalt said, and stepped off from Mercutio. “Peace be with you, sir; here comes my man.”

“I’ll be hanged, sir, if he wears your livery. If you run, he’ll chase you; perhaps that makes him your man. . . .” Mercutio was still trying to bait the Capulet heir, but Tybalt had eyes only for Romeo. If there had been fury in him before, now it was nothing but rage, absolute and tipping toward insanity.

“Romeo,” Tybalt said, and closed the distance between them quickly. My cousin should have reached for his sword, but he did not. His hands remained empty and open. “The love I feel for you demands no better term than this: You are a villain.”

Romeo spread his hands even wider, and his smile did not falter. “The reason I have to love you excuses such a greeting. I am no villain, and therefore, I’ll say farewell. You know me not.”

He tried to pass and come to us, but Tybalt was having none of peace now; he lunged and shoved my cousin back in an explosion of violence as sudden as it was inevitable. “This does not excuse the injuries you’ve done me and my house. Turn and draw!”

“I never injured you. I love you better than you can know, until you know the reasons.” Romeo’s face was . . . exalted, like that of a saint going to the cross. I felt sick at the sight of it, the unreasoning and unwavering purpose of it. “Good Capulet—a name I love as dearly as my own—be satisfied with that.”

He tried to
embrace
Tybalt Capulet, who backed away as if my addled cousin bore some plague. It was more shocking, in its way, than Tybalt’s assault had been, and while I blurted out Romeo’s name in warning, Mercutio drew his sword, and
that
sound, the sound of blade clearing scabbard, was the only thing in the world that rang in my ears—that, and the indrawn breath of the crowd around us.

Tybalt turned toward Mercutio, toward the real danger.

“That was dishonorable, Romeo,” Mercutio said. “A vile submission, to make peace. Come, Tybalt, rat catcher, will you draw?”

The crowd was pressed closer now, avid, and I could smell the sweat and fear and excitement like lightning in the hot, still air. I did not draw, not yet. The chance that we could still make away from here, and kill Tybalt at a less public time, stayed my hand.

So perhaps the rest was, in the end, my fault for the hesitation.

“Why, Mercutio, what would you have with me?” Tybalt asked, and made a rude gesture a man would give to entice a whore, so that there was no mistaking his meaning. The onlookers laughed, and Mercutio’s face turned a dead, awful white, while his dark eyes blazed with the flames of hell.

“Good King of Cats, I’ll have nothing but one of your nine lives, and if I do not like your behavior, I’ll beat out the rest of the eight. Will you draw, sir? Make haste, lest mine is at your ears before it’s out.”

Tybalt’s mimicry ended, and in a cold voice he said, “I am for you, then.” And he drew his sword.

It started slowly, with a tap of blades, humble as spoons clanking, but the two of them circled, measuring, and I saw that Tybalt moved like the cat we’d always named him . . . lithe and quick and deadly. Mercutio was a fine swordsman, precise and strong, but he’d had drink, and there was emotion in him now, fueling a too-hot fire, while Tybalt seemed cold as a man three days dead. Tybalt glided right; Mercutio stumbled to counter. It was clear who would win, if it came to a real fight.

Romeo saw it, too, and he stepped forward again. “Good Mercutio, put up your sword.” But neither of them heeded, nor even
could
heed, so focused were they on each other. I felt a terrible surge of hopeless anger—at Romeo, for stumbling upon this; at Mercutio, for setting himself on this black and futile course; at myself, for failing to prevent it.

Tybalt flung himself forward in a deadly fast attack, a simple and elegant thrust headed straight for Mercutio’s breast. Whether slowed or not by the wine, Mercutio still beat it aside, and riposted toward Tybalt’s bent thigh, a cut that would have opened a vein and left him bled as white in the gutter as Roggocio, had it landed.

But it did not. Tybalt, Prince of Cats, leaped free of it, growled, circled, and came back for him while Mercutio was off-footed, and scored a shallow cut along my friend’s right arm. Not much, just a thin red line to dampen the white linen sleeve, but it was enough to show that death was coming, and coming fast.

Romeo shoved me aside, and pulled his own rapier free. “Draw, Benvolio! We can beat down their weapons; we must stop them. . . . Tybalt, Mercutio—the prince has expressly forbidden this in the streets—
Hold
, Tybalt! Mercutio!”