Prince of Shadows

QUARTO 2

Romeo and Mercutio were waiting for me in my room when I regained the safety of the Montague palace. Like Mercutio, I scaled the wall, which was a good deal easier for me than it had been for him, but I had practiced more, and with less wine in my belly. Still, it had been a long and exhausting evening, and I was well weary by the time I climbed over the sill and landed lightly on the carpets, not more than an arm’s length from where Mercutio had sprawled himself loosely in a chair, cradling a goblet that I suspected had been filled more than once. From the angle of it now, it was well emptied.

It took him at least two breaths to recognize that I was standing at his side. Once he did, he jerked himself upright, cup falling in haste, and threw his arms around me. “Fool!” he said, and roughly pushed me back to stare at my face. “Tybalt did not manage to puncture that wind-bladder you call a stomach, but I may. What manner of devil has gone into you, to do such things for a woman—worse, a Capulet?”

I looked past him to Romeo, who had also gotten to his feet, but somewhat more shyly. There was an uncomfortable light of hero worship in his face. “You survived it,” he said. “Twice you entered that cursed house, and escaped. You truly are blessed.”

“Lucky is not the same as blessed,” I said, and pushed Mercutio away as he opened his mouth to make some clever retort. “I’m not in the mood for games.” I sat in the chair he had leaped from, picked up the goblet, and held it out. My manservant, ever vigilant, filled it—but only halfway. I stared at him. He added a few more drops.

“Does she live?” Romeo asked anxiously. My cousin sank down on a stool near me, looking as earnest as an owl, if considerably less sharp-witted. “Rosaline? Is she—”

“She’s alive,” I said shortly, and quaffed my wine in a choking gulp. “Your poesy’s ashes and bad memories. We’ll consider this matter settled and done, and I swear to you, if I catch you spouting flowers at any other girl save the one your mother chooses—”

“But you must admit, coz, she is the fairest in all Verona, the sun to all the lesser moons. . . .”

I hit him. It came suddenly, in a rush of hot blood that brought me from the chair. Even before I knew what I planned, my fist was clenched and in motion, and the landed blow sent knives up my arm. I might have hit him again, save that Mercutio was on me, holding me back and wrestling me to the chair. My cousin was sprawled on the floor, blood crimson on his lip and fury shimmering in his dark eyes.

“This is your fault!” I shouted at him. “How great a fool are you, Romeo? I should—”

“Beat me bloody?” he demanded, and stood as he wiped the red from his mouth. That, more than Mercutio’s hold, sent a shiver through me as I remembered Rosaline’s split lip, her bloodied face, her desperately concerned gaze—concerned not for herself, but for me. “Love survives the scorn of others, coz. Even the blows of self-righteous relatives.”

“She doesn’t love you!” I blurted out, and threw off my friend’s restraint to climb back to my feet. “Mark me, Romeo: Put yourself at risk again and I will do worse than beat you bloody.”

“Temper, temper, my hot blade,” Mercutio said, and patted me annoyingly on the back. “He’s a fool, yes, but an honest one. Romeo, tell your coz that you’ll forget the girl and let’s part friends for the night. I have a love of my own waiting for my tender attention, and beautiful as you both may be . . .”

He batted his eyelids in a way that made me think ridiculously of my sister, Veronica, and I could not help but smile, a bit. He sent me a saucy wink and a purse of his lips, and I shoved him off balance for reprisal. “I’m not meat for your table, Mercutio.”

“But you sauce up so well,” he said, and arched his brows in comical consideration. “Very well, I leave you to the warm fires of your familial love.”

We clapped hands. He offered the same to Romeo, and a quick embrace. “Safe home, my friend.”

“Safe,” he said, and jumped theatrically up to the windowsill to offer us both a sweeping bow. “But most certainly not to home.”

He spoiled his exit somewhat by nearly slipping as he began his descent down the wall. I watched him swarm down the stone—not quite as expertly as I, but competently—and then he was gone, a shadow in the shadows. Our lunatic friend, off on yet another risky venture.

Behind me, Romeo said, “He’ll be caught one day. You know that.” Romeo was not speaking of the dangerous wall climbing; we both knew that if Mercutio was caught at that he would talk his way out, and his madcap ways were well-known in Verona. No one would think much of it. Romeo was referring to the much deadlier rendezvous our friend was off to make.

We had known, since we were all young sprouts together, that Mercutio was made of fire and fey grace, but as we turned from boys to men expected to do the duty of our families, Romeo and I slowly realized that there was more to our friend than that. I had found it out by chance, walking in on Mercutio in close embrace with a pretty young man a bit older than either of us. I’d heard of such things, of course, but never seen, and I confess to a certain unsettled embarrassment that drove me from them—from Mercutio—for almost a week, before he came to see me and, with an entirely strange attitude of gravitas, asked what I intended to do. You hold our lives in your hands, he had told me. You know what they would do to us. I beg you to remember that whatever you think of me, whatever sins I may commit, I am always your friend.

And as simply as that, the matter settled for me. Mercutio was Mercutio, whomever he loved, whatever he did. Perhaps, as the Church taught, it was a cursed perversion, but I was old enough to know that many in the city practiced far worse, and with far less love in their hearts. While I was not drawn to Mercutio in any way of the flesh, he would always be my spiritual brother.

I don’t know how Romeo discovered the same, but soon we realized that each of us willingly lied and contrived for Mercutio, giving him excuses for absences to see his lover. I had never asked any details, and had only the one glimpse, but Romeo knew more than I, and shared it with me; Mercutio’s lover these past three years was a young scholar named Tomasso, who was considering the priesthood. He was the third son of a poor merchant, hardly moving in our social class.

I would have said that Mercutio was in love with the risk, but I knew it wasn’t true; he was in love with Tomasso, as purely and passionately as (if far less demonstratively than) Romeo claimed to be with Rosaline. And it worried me. Mercutio’s family had already made a match for him with a girl he loathed; the wedding would be done within the next year, and I wondered what it would do to him, and to his love. I felt sorry for the girl, too. She was innocent of any wrongdoing, but she’d be punished all the same.

“He’s clever,” I said, and closed and barred the window shutters. “Mercutio will never be caught out. He fears only betrayal.”

“Not from us,” Romeo said. He cut a glance at me, and wiped a trickle of blood from his broken lip. “I am sorry, coz. But Rosaline is beautiful, is she not?”

“Yes,” I said. “She is beautiful.”

And then I retrieved my cup and demanded more wine, to wipe that admission from my mind.

• • •

I woke to a pounding head and a mouth that felt as if grape stompers had made merry in it. My manservant had somehow wrestled me out of my clothes and into a nightshirt, and I was sunk deep in my feather bed. The twitter of birds beyond the window, and the cries of merchants in the streets below, told me that I’d slept too long, and gradually I realized that the pounding was not simply inside my skull, but upon the door of my rooms.

As I stirred and groaned, rolling on my side, a yawning Balthasar rose from his low, hard mattress near the hearth and stumbled to answer the call. I knew I was in difficulty when he straightened, swept the door wide, and bowed to his fullest.

My lady mother, Elise Montague, entered in a cloud of rosewater and the soft glint of gold, and paused at the foot of my bed as Balthasar quickly hurried to the shutters and opened them to admit more light. I winced as the brightness lanced through and bounced from the red-gold chain around my mother’s neck, and the dangling drops in her ears. Her hair gleamed rich as well, the color of ripe wheat, and as always it was smooth and perfectly dressed, held in a gemmed net that framed her still-lovely face to perfection. I’d inherited my foreign green eyes from her, though my hair and skin were Italian-dark; even after so many years in the healthy climate of Verona she seemed wan and pale, and very thin in her dark, elegant gown.

She regarded me with steady, cool assessment.

“Good day to you, Mother,” I said, and sat up. “Did I miss mass?”

“Yes,” she said. “And your absence was noticed. Are you well?”

“I have a sickness of the stomach.”

“Ah,” she said, and snapped her fingers without glancing toward Balthasar. He quickly grabbed an armchair and moved it beneath her as she lowered herself—a trick that only the truly rich and entitled could manage, I thought, without looking either awkward or foolish. “A disease of drink. That explains everything. Benvolio—”

“Mother, if you’ll remove yourself, I’ll make myself decent and call on you in your chambers,” I said. “I’m not a child.”

“No, you’re a man grown, and held to the same standard,” she said. “Your father was little older than you when we were married.” I knew. He’d been all of nineteen, and she had been seventeen, when he’d died on the point of a Capulet dagger. She’d been heavily pregnant, but not with me; I was already a healthy boy of almost two, and had the vaguest possible memory of him; my sister, Veronica, still in the womb when he perished, would have not even that.

I groaned and rubbed my forehead. “If you’ve come to aggravate my condition with talk of marriage—”

My mother turned her head and speared poor Balthasar with an utterly impersonal glance. “Bring food for him,” she said. “He’s of no great use to anyone in this condition.” She dismissed him with a firm nod, and he scurried to do her bidding. My rooms were, I thought, one of the few places in Verona where my mother could be assured that she’d be obeyed without question; even within the Montague halls she was still the excess widow, the foreign flower dragged into the toxic hothouse of one of the richest, most ambitious families of the city. Grandmother did not approve, and God knew, what Grandmother disapproved would never find much favor within these walls, or without.

So Balthasar and I indulged my mother, and let her act the part of the aristocratic woman she would be on foreign soils.

“I need to bathe, Mother,” I said.

“I’ll have it prepared,” she said with serene calm. “But you will talk to me, my son. We have much to discuss.”

This did not sound at all entertaining. I sat up, pulling the covers chest-high, and tried to look less like a wayward child, though I’d always be that in her eyes. “I am at your disposal, as always.”

A tiny hint of a smile woke a shallow dimple just by the edge of her lips, but it smoothed again almost immediately. “Have you given thought to the girl? She comes of impeccable stock, her family’s fortunes are secure, and they are eager to secure a match before she’s thought too old.”

“She’s fifteen,” I said. “And boring.”

“She’s appropriate, biddable, and presentable.”

“What of the Toretti girl?”

My mother gave me one of those looks. “She is no longer appropriate.”

“Oh, you just made her more interesting.”

“Benvolio, do not be flippant. The girl has been . . . compromised. Her virtue is in question.”

“The interesting ones are always questioned.”

“That is why I offer you the boring ones, my son. Believe me, in the end, they will be a benefit to you, and the interesting ones, as you like to call them, would be a millstone on your back. You’d never live down the gossip.”

“Cruel market chatter, worth less than a goose fart,” I said. “I care nothing for it.”

“You’d care if it came from the mouth of Tybalt Capulet,” she said, with unerring accuracy. “I am trying to protect you, my son. If not the Scala girl, then whom? You’ve already rejected the best candidates I could bring you. Perhaps the Church would suit you better.”

Since one of the core tenets of our faith was “Thou shalt not steal,” perhaps not. “I tried on a monk’s robe recently, and I didn’t favor it,” I said. “Is there no greater match to be made from another city? Or even from your mother country?”

“The last thing I would wish is to burden you with a wife so alien to you, and to this family,” she said. “You bear enough of that stigma already, which I well know. And I wouldn’t wish to exile a young girl so far from her home and family without good cause.”

“Am I not a good cause?” I asked, and I must have put some of Mercutio’s charm in it, because for the first time, my mother truly smiled. It gladdened my heart. She did not often do it; the English are a serious, quiet people, and she always seemed so guarded, even with me. I could well understand why. Love and war are the same in Verona. “I will bow to your experience, Mother, but perhaps a girl from Fiorenza, or Milan . . . ?”

“Perhaps,” she said. “But your grandmother has already made it very clear that you will be married by the end of the year. Your friend Mercutio’s banns have already been posted. She’s busy matchmaking for Romeo as well. Her intent is to see the next generation of Montagues and their close allies well into the world before she quits it, you know.”

“She’ll never quit this world,” I said. “Surely a walking corpse fired by cankerous hatred can’t die. From the feel of her rooms, she already burns in hell.”

Her back stiffened, and her eyes widened in alarm. “Benvolio!”

“She’s no spies here. I can say what I like. God knows there’s nowhere else I’m allowed.” I felt angry and strangely exhausted, and I was glad to see Balthasar ease into the room with a tray of bread, cheese, water, fruit, and juices. He set it on the bed and withdrew to a respectful distance to stand guard at the locked door. “Have you breakfasted?”

“Hours ago,” my mother said crisply. “Before mass, which you should have attended. I expect you will remonstrate with your manservant for allowing you to oversleep the hour.”

“I’ll strap him until he yells,” I lied, and bit into a succulent peach. A lazy wasp buzzed in the window, drawn by the sticky sweet juice, and Balthasar sprang into action to shoo it out again. The battle between swift wings and clumsy batting hands was entertaining, at least. “What news at the church?”

“Nothing definite,” she said. “There’s a whisper of trouble at the Capulet palazzo with one of the girls; they both pled sickness today, though Lady Capulet and her entourage came.”

“And Tybalt?”

“Present, though largely absent, if you take my meaning. He looked as ill as you. There were bruises on his hands. You did not brawl with him, did you? You know the prince has taken a dim view of public disturbances. And, of course, your grandmother would expect a more fatal outcome if you did so.”

“I did not brawl with anyone,” I said, but she cast a pointed look at my knuckles. I looked down, and was surprised to see a faint shadow of bruising there, and a small cut. “Ah. Perhaps I did. My memory of last night is clear as . . . wine.” No, I did remember. I’d punched Romeo for his unforgivable obsession with Rosaline Capulet. In the cold light of morning, and my mother’s judgmental stare, I told myself that it had been purely to defend the family honor. “It wasn’t a Capulet.”

Her gaze was far too sharp for comfort. “The Capulet maidens were not in attendance. Might it have something to do with them?”

“No.”

“You offered them no offense?”

“Have I ever?” I raised my eyebrows and—deliberately—took another bite of my peach.

“Did you see them?”

“If I ever have, I hardly remember. I hear the elder girl is too studious, and the younger too sweet, and not even you would present them as possible brides.” I finished the peach and put the pit on the tray, then yawned. “Are you finished disapproving for the morning? If you are, please have juice; Balthasar has brought too much.”

I didn’t think she would—my mother rarely lowered her guard, even with me—but after a stiff moment she sighed and reached for one of the goblets on the tray. There was a very slight loosening of her shoulders, and now that she was not so fiercely armored I noticed the fine lines around her eyes, and the faint shadow of weariness beneath. Life for my mother, in this house, was a lifetime of living under siege. Romeo had told me the stories he’d had of his own nurse about my mother’s grief and distraction when my father died, but by the time I was old enough to note it, she had moved from tears to a resigned, chilly silence. To me, as a child, she had been as beautiful and unapproachable as the marble Madonna on her fountain—an icon of love, but not love itself.

She sipped juice for a moment in silence, then said, “Your sister has suggested a match for you.” There was nothing to indicate whether she approved of the idea or not, but any mention of Veronica woke deep feelings of alarm in me. “The Scalas’ second girl. Have you a strong opinion on the matter?”

I considered, because—surprisingly—I did not. I knew nothing of the girl in question, save that her name was Giuliana, and she seemed quiet. I could not even give an opinion as to whether she was fair; I’d scarcely noticed her at all, the few times I’d been near. But if dear Veronica put her forth, surely there was a snake hiding in that plain, deceptive grass.

“I would have to inspect her,” I said.

“Something will be arranged. I will expect you to give it your attention, Benvolio.” She replaced the emptied cup on the tray, nodding to Balthasar, and he whisked it away. “These are dangerous times. Very dangerous.”

“For Montague? It’s always dangerous.”

“No,” she said, and her green eyes locked on mine, like on like. “For us, my son. For you and me. I have ever been tolerated within the family, and while your grandmother needs you, she favors your cousin over all. I understand she set you a task.”

“I’m to keep Romeo out of trouble,” I said, and forced a casual smile. “Surely no more difficult than to stop the wind from blowing. Trouble and Romeo are long wedded.”

“That is my point,” she said softly. “It is an impossible task she’s given you, and you should know by now that the one thing she will not forgive is failure.”

I shrugged. “There’s little enough she can really do to hurt me,” I said. “I am the surplus Montague; I know it; there’s no disappointment to be had for my future. I will make my own way.”

“She would not punish you,” my mother said. “But as your mother, I can be cut off, cast out, forgotten. Even your sister stands at risk, though not as much, since she has made a good match for herself. Still, if your grandmother is angry enough, she will ruin me, and Veronica’s future will be tainted as well.”

“Ruin you how?” I had forgotten my own troubles, and even my modesty; I threw back the covers and stood in my thin nightshirt, but Balthasar—good man—was there to wrap a robe around me, and bring me a folding stool on which to sit across from her. “Mother—”

“There are a thousand ways to ruin a woman,” my mother said, with a weary shadow of a smile. “Any hint of impropriety, any whisper of intrigue would be enough. My point is that both your sister and I are vulnerable to such things, even if you are not. So, please, my son, keep this firmly in front of you. It’s not merely that you’re asked to manage your feckless cousin’s behavior; it is that you are asked to protect us.”

“From our own,” I finished for her. “From our own blood.”

“Blood has slaughtered blood since Cain killed Abel,” she said. “No doubt even the Montagues and Capulets will one day interbreed, though it may not stop hatred from festering. It’s only in stories that such happy endings are possible.”

“Peace is made, sometimes,” I said, and reached out to take her hand in mine. Her flesh was cool, pale against my darker; she even had the feel of marble, though soft and pliable it might be. “Mother, I swear I will do all I can to protect you.”

“Will you?” It hurt me that she asked it, but I nodded, and saw a shadow of relief in her eyes. “Then I am much heartened, Benvolio.” She withdrew her hand and stood to twitch her skirts into their correct and proper folds. “I thank you for the promise. I will see about the Scala girl; a few discreet questions in the right ears will reassure me of her suitability before I subject you to yet another bridal inspection. But you must promise me you will consider her fairly. I’ faith, I scarce know what you seek in these girls, but at some crossroads you must choose a path, for good or ill.”

She didn’t wait for my response, not that I could have provided one. I didn’t know what I sought in the girls presented to me, either, save that I craved . . . more. Some challenge. Some spark of intellect or spirit that would warm me in the night when the lights were dim. A comely girl was all that was required to satisfy propriety; a wife need not be more than rich and decorative, though it was useful if she had a certain political cleverness.

I could not shake the image of Rosaline Capulet, face lit gold by a single candle, reading her volume of poetry. No simple facade there, no easy match that would require nothing from me save the duties of marriage. A woman of her type would be nothing but trouble in the end, even leaving aside her impossible bloodline.

Stop, I told myself sternly. You’re as ridiculous as Romeo. Except that I would never even consider dragging the Montague reputation through the streets for a woman. Whatever I felt, it would be kept masked, chained, and hidden away like a mad relative. Suffering was the path to Christ, I’d been told. Perhaps one day I’d be made a saint—the patron saint of fools and lovers, if those terms were not exactly the same.

My mother made polite, empty conversation for a few moments more, then swept grandly out of my room. She had a full day of intrigue and tension ahead of her, and little time to waste with her eldest—and only—male offspring.

“Will you be beating me now for letting you sleep through mass, sir?” Balthasar asked, with a helpfully bland expression. “Shall I fetch a strap?”

I cuffed him. “He jests at scars who never felt a wound, fool. Have I ever beaten you?”

“Perhaps it would be helpful,” he said. “I shouldn’t wish your lady mother to feel I am the devil’s whisper, leading you on the path to damnation. I would never find another placement.”

“I don’t need a strap to beat you.” I formed a fist, and winced; I’d forgotten the scabs on my knuckles, which stretched painfully. Balthasar raised thin eyebrows, which gave him an owl-eyed look.

“Clearly, sir,” he said. “Will you be a peacock or a crow today?”

“Crow,” I said. “It better suits my mood.”

My servant moved off to open cupboards and drawers, and returned with carefully folded, sandalwood-scented clothing. Smallclothes and the linen shirt, which went on quickly enough, though the short ruff, as always, chafed my neck; the padded hose did not go on so easily, but I bore it with patience. Over that came the coppice, the doublet, and as Balthasar tied on the ink black sleeves, I was already beginning to regret my choice for the day; it would be sunny and hot, and while the brighter (peacock) colors wouldn’t be cooler in any practical terms, as the fabrics were just as heavy, they somehow felt so.

Balthasar saw the look on my face and sighed. He untied the sleeves and switched them out for robin’s-egg blue with midnight slashes. The doublet remained black, but it too had the Montague blue worked in intricate patterns, needlework that must have taken the ladies a month to complete. “I suppose, in the mood you’re in, the black is the most practical,” he noted. “It wears blood so much more nobly.”

“There will be no blood today.”

“Optimistic, sir, very optimistic. I salute you.” He adjusted the fit of a sleeve, cocked his head, and nodded approval as he went to get my shoes and the chest of jewels. I was never as gaudy as Tybalt Capulet, but I could hardly leave the house without showing the wealth of Montague in some small way. Today it was an emerald ring I wore on my undamaged left hand, and a lion brooch in gold with eyes of pale blue topaz. I stopped him when he would have decorated me further, like some feast-day statue, but I finally accepted a single earring that flashed more pale topaz. For a young man of my age, it showed almost priestly restraint.

Balthasar brought me the necessary tools of the day—a long, thin left-hand dagger, with the Montague crest worked into the hilt, and my sword. I belted them on and felt complete. The rest was necessary, but weapons, ah, those made me decently clothed.

He picked a bit of lint from my shoulder. “Shall I accompany you, sir?”

“I’ll be with Romeo,” I said. “And with Mercutio, if he appears. No need to nursemaid me.”

“Yes, of course. I’ll just get my bag.”

It was a source of bitter amusement to me that as powerful as everyone assumed a scion of Montague to be, I could not even effectively order my own servant. He was right, of course. If he allowed me to venture out alone and anything untoward happened, his head would be for the chop. Better to die with me on the point of a Capulet sword than face La Signora di Ferro.

We left my apartments and almost immediately saw Romeo, who was sitting on the same bench in the open atrium I’d shared with my sister, Veronica, earlier. He looked as dejected as a half-drowned kitten. I sat beside him. He had also chosen black for the day, relieved with only the smallest bits of color. Anyone seeing him would believe him to be in mourning.

He had a liver-colored bruise on his chin that gave me a savage, unchristian jolt of satisfaction when I saw it; not admirable, that impulse, and like any good cousin I choked it down and kept the smile from my face. “You look well down,” I said. “Last night was no small success, coz.”

“Success, you’d name it? To hear that the fairest face of the city, the fiercest heart, burned all the words of love I wrote? To hear she had no more regard for me than for the slops tossed in the street? Perhaps it is your ideal of success, Ben, but hardly mine.” Romeo was truly sunk in the depths, and gathering up rocks to drown more efficiently. “Still, better to have loved—”

“Shut up,” I said, pleasantly but with an edge, and he cast me a quick glare.

“You hit me,” he said. “I won’t forget.”

“Good,” I said. “Then you’ll remember the real pain and not the imaginary pleasure. There are a hundred suitable flowers blooming in the garden of Verona for you. Leave the Capulet alone.”

“A hundred, you say? And yet you seem to be unable to pick such a flower for yourself. Is it the color of the blossoms that repels you, or the smell?”

I resisted the urge to strike him again. Balthasar, hovering nearby, had an anxious look on his face that warned me I might do well to hold my anger. “Have a care what you say,” I said, very quietly. Perhaps it was the dark look on my face, or the tension that tightened my left hand on the hilt of my sword, that made Romeo take a step back and raise a hand in surrender.

Duels between cousins had been known to happen, even within the downy bosom of House Montague. I was rarely the first to take offense, nor to draw steel, but when I was, Mercutio had long declared me the deadliest of us three, and the least likely to see sense. Romeo was a fair hand with a blade, and witty when the mood took him, but I had a cold, green streak of poison running through my veins, and he knew it well. I had spent my entire life learning to keep it contained, lest it sicken others as well.

“I meant nothing by it, coz; you know I love you as well as my own heart,” Romeo said, in as gentle a tone as I’d ever heard him utter. “But you wound me, and I wound you in turn. You think my love for Rosaline is a passing thing, and it grieves me you think me such a light-head.”

I took a breath and deliberately loosened my grip on the sword, but the fury inside me did not bank itself. “Brood on, then,” I said. “I care not. But if you even think of casting eyes on the wench again, I will do more than mar your looks. If you think La Signora will punish me, think on it again. She’d rather have a dead heir than a foolish one.”

He looked taken aback that I’d said it so directly, and more than a little afraid (of me, I think), but I did not stay to dispute with him. I stalked on, half cloak swinging, and although I did not grip my sword again, my right hand clenched tight for the need of it.

“Perhaps . . . perhaps some soothing wine, sir,” Balthasar suggested. “Wine, shade, some pleasant company . . . ?”

“Stop your mouth,” I said, and set out instead to find trouble.

• • •

It was a frustrating thing that trouble, being so kindly invited, failed to appear. Even the usual swaggering Capulet bravos took their boasts a different way as I approached. I never got close enough to deliver any direct insult, not even to a Capulet loyalist.

In truth, I was not sure why I was so angry at the Capulets, other than Tybalt. My own cousin was the root of my fury, and I’d already bruised him for it. There was a wildness trembling inside me that begged to let fly, and let the arrows fall as random as rain. Balthasar seemed worried. Well, it was likely sensible enough; I was in no fit state for any man’s company, even a servant’s—especially a servant, honor bound to cast his life ahead of mine, or futilely after. The anxious tightness of my man’s face gradually cooled my anger. If I drew him into needless and fatal trouble, I would be as foolish as Romeo.

We were walking the narrow aisles around the Basilica de San Zeno and making for the vivid, always busy Piazza delle Erbe, where the great mingled with the low, and the rich with the poor. I was a curious mixture of all . . . great in my name and my house, high and also low, in my half-English state. Rich with honor and position, and poor in purse, at least as far as my mother and grandmother knew; they tightly controlled the strings for all of us. The fact that I had a comfortable income from less honest means . . . well, that was nothing that needed to be confessed beyond the church walls.

I passed a small chapel, and on a whim paused and entered. It held a beautiful plaster Madonna and child, and small heaps of flowers—some fresh and fragrant, some wilted and dusty. I genuflected and bent a knee, with Balthasar quickly assuming a penitent stance behind me.

And then I prayed to the beloved Virgin for patience, guidance, and most of all, for my cousin to stop loving Rosaline Capulet.

Because if he did not, I genuinely thought I might go mad.

• • •

It is a signature truth of the world that when you court trouble, it tends to avoid you for sheer spite, but when you become reconciled to peace, peace behaves just the same. I left the chapel with a great deal more piety in my heart, well disposed to forgive an insult should one present itself to me . . . and naturally, upon turning the corner out of the chapel, I came faced with three louts wearing the colors of Capulet. No fine gentlemen, these; the coffers of our enemies had bought some low, dangerous men. They were decently barbered, but clearly had more experience with razors drawn across a throat than over a cheek. Their clothes were poor, and as yet clean of any fresh bloodstains, so they’d not been successful in baiting my fellow Montagues today.

Seeing me and Balthasar, alone and cut off from the support of our fellows, they clearly felt they’d been given a heaven-sent gift.

“Sir . . .” Balthasar began, but then subsided, because it was bootless. We were fish on their lines; that is to say, caught. With a resigned sigh, he began rolling his shoulders and limbering them for the fight. Being a servant, he was armed with a cudgel and a knife—a good knife, I had made very sure of that, but in a brawl with three murderers, the two of us were outarmed.

I stepped forward as they arrayed around us at the points of a killing triangle. “Peace of the day upon you,” I said, “if you’ll let us pass.”

The man I faced—the leader, it was easy enough to pick him from the pack—gave an evil leer that had little to do with a smile. He was a stout, swarthy fellow, hairy and sweaty, and he had one white, dead eye, with a scar dragged over his face to show where he’d earned it. He spit at my feet. “Dog of a Montague,” he said. “I’ll pass you through the gates of hell, slick as you please. Unless you make it hard on me, and then I’ll drag you through hot coals along the way.”

“He means,” one of his dimmer fellows said helpfully, “to make you suffer.”

“Yes, I did get the point,” I said, and gave him a little bow. “Most helpful.” I addressed myself to the leader of the gang. “I have just been to prayer, and I’ve no desire to fall from grace quite so quickly. May we not agree to hate at a distance just now?”

“Dog,” he said, very pleasantly. “Blue-bellied coward.” He spit at my feet again, coming nearer this time. Balthasar made an indignant huffing sound, and his hand rested on the hilt of his dagger. He was not so much offended by the insults as by the ham-fisted approach of their bearer.

“If you want to be effective, you might try something a child might not invent,” I said, still painfully pleasant. “For instance, you may say that my breath bids fair to knock down the cathedral. Or a helpful advisory that someone has stolen half my wits, which leaves me with none. Or—”

“Mongrel son of an English bitch,” he said.

I kept my smile, but it hardened and sharpened into a cutting edge. “Better,” I said. “But hardly up to the standards of your patron. Tybalt at least claims to have had her.”

“I had her screaming,” the Capulet pig said, and picked his teeth at me. “I’ll have you the same, fancy boy.”

I heard steel being drawn behind me, but I did not turn. I did not need to. Balthasar’s cudgel smacked with a dull thump, and I heard the muffled crack of bone. Metal clattered to stone, and one of the bravos let out a harsh yelp, before the cudgel struck again, this time with the distinctive sound of wood on skull.

The odds were now even.

“Then by all means, try and have me,” I said, still smiling. He yanked his blade free of its scabbard, and I drew my sword with an unhurried motion that brought it up into parry with a minimum of effort. I knocked his lunge out of line and continued the motion, straightening, feet settling into balance with the ease of practice. I’d been taught well, and thoroughly, since I’d been old enough to hold the sword—that was training all boys of status were given, if they were expected to survive. But more: Through Mercutio’s auspices, I’d been matched with brawlers, duelists, bravos with the same depraved blood instinct as these men. And, bloodied, bruised, humiliated . . . I’d learned.

I sidestepped with a flash of my short cape, confusing the line of my movement, and drew my dagger in the same moment. As he recovered from his lunge, I struck from above with the sword, below with the dagger. The sword plunged easily just below the ridge of his collarbone, angling down as the dagger found ribs and angled up. The dagger was merely surety. The two points almost met in his heart.

He stared at me, stunned as an ox after the hammer, and then looked down on his death. I pulled steel free before he could drag me off balance, and sidestepped the gout of blood that came after. He still had his sword, and I could not take my gaze away until he was down. I’d seen dead men kill the living before, when the living failed to pay due attention.

I wish I could say that I felt horror, or sorrow, or pity, but I did not. I felt . . . cold. In the icy space of survival, the lives of my opponents meant nothing more than opportunities. I might be spurred to fight from anger, but I was never angry when I fought . . . only careful.

So I waited until the life had left the man’s eyes and he fell to the cobblestones, kicked his Capulet-given sword to the side, and turned just as the second man drove Balthasar back at the point of his blade. Balthasar and I, we were old brawling companions; he knew when to engage, and when to step away, and as he did, I moved forward, sword ringing on the new opponent’s blade with a sound like the devil’s church bell. I stepped forward and forced the man off balance; he stumbled over a ridge in the cobblestones, and his shoulders hit the wall behind him. I held him there, corps à corps, and stared into his face. He looked afraid.

He ought to have been.

“Your fellows are dead,” I said. My voice was still pleasant, still calm. “Do you want to survive them?”

He nodded shakily. He stank of garlic and the sweat that streamed down his pallid face, and suddenly I allowed myself to feel a bit of pity. He was young, only a little older than I—a little younger than Balthasar. Perhaps he’d wanted a life of adventure and swagger; perhaps he’d only been earning bread for his poor widowed mother. I couldn’t know his motives, or care, but I still felt a strange kind of kinship with him in that moment.

“Rip off the filthy Capulet colors,” I said. “Leave them in the blood where they belong. Do it now.”

I stepped back. He gulped air, staring at the crimson on my blades, and threw his sword down beside his dead comrades. Then, with trembling fingers, he tore the Capulet insignia—clumsily stitched, probably by his own hand—from his jerkin and threw it on the street.

I lowered my sword and dagger. “A word of advice,” I said. “Leave Verona before Tybalt hears of this, or you’ll die less quickly than your friends.” I reached into my purse and retrieved a gold florin, and flipped it to him.

My manservant said, “And tell the other Capulet bravos that they’d best avoid my master from now on, unless they want to be served the same steel.” He, I noted, had not put away the cudgel, or the dagger.

The survivor took to his heels, clutching his Montague gold, and I checked the corpses to be sure they were, indeed, dead. Balthasar discreetly lifted their purses, but left their rosaries intact.

“We should go quickly,” he said, rising and casting an uneasy glance behind us. “Bodies on the very steps of the church . . .”

“Not by my choice,” I said.

“Would you like to explain that to the prince, sir?”

As always, my servant had an excellent point to offer, and I allowed myself to be hurried off in the opposite direction from where the Capulet exile had gone. A few turns away, Balthasar stopped me and took out a rough linen cloth, tut-tutted, and sponged spots of blood from my doublet and hands. I had already cleaned my blades, obsessive as a tradesman with his tools.

Now that the battle was past, I could no longer keep that ice-cold distance from what I’d done, and the face of the man I’d killed came back—vivid in every detail, down to the last coarse hair and the color of his one good eye, which had been a light cinnamon brown. My hands began to shake, and I felt cold, but it was unseemly for a son of Montague to be seen to be weak.

I said, without looking at Balthasar, “I have the need to confess.”

He betrayed nothing. I wondered how he felt, having felt his cudgel crunch a man’s skull. “Dangerous to go back, sir.”

“Then we go on, to the cathedral,” I said. “Now.”

• • •

I had missed the morning mass, and was early for the noon, which was a good time to find Monsignor Giacomo in the confessional . . . but I found that it must have been a busy morning for sinning. At least ten aspired to cleanse their souls before me—four of them young ladies, accompanied by their ill-favored escorts. One went veiled, but her dress, and that of her lady-in-waiting, signaled her house: Capulet. It might have been the lady of that house, but the veil was not rich enough for someone of her status; Juliet was a small young lady, and this one was almost of Lady Capulet’s height. Therefore, it was Rosaline.

She stood patiently as she waited for confession, her no-doubt-bruised face concealed by her veil. Her hands were gloved to conceal the discolored knuckles. I saw her head turn to regard me for what seemed like a long few seconds, and then she went back to contemplation of the Virgin’s statue. Her escort left her to light a candle and pray to Saint Zeno, and Rosaline knelt in a rustle of skirts and folded her hands piously together.

“Wait here,” I whispered to Balthasar, and went to genuflect at the altar, then made my way to the niche where the Madonna waited, her marble face placid and full of peace. Her open hands offered the same, and I wanted it, badly, because the stress of taking a life tore at me, and the sight of Rosaline . . .

I knelt a few feet away from the girl and bent my head in prayer. There was a subtle, traitorous sense of comfort in being close to her, even here in sacred, peaceful space, even knowing there was no possibility of anything more between us.

“Are you all right?” Rosaline whispered, just for my ears, and I had to struggle to hold myself quiet, to not betray my surprise. She asked after me? “You have blood on your neck.”

“It isn’t mine,” I said. I felt light-headed, hot, and my heart was suddenly beating too quickly. “I could ask you the same, my lady.”

She was so very still that she might have been marble herself, carved by the same master who’d made the holy statue. “A nun needs no beauty.” It was calm enough, but it wrenched at my heart. “But I will heal right enough. You must go, before you’re seen.”

She said it out of concern for me, but it was her own life in jeopardy, as well I knew; I’d receive a scorching rebuke from my grandmother, at worst, but Tybalt had already punished her viciously. Any other missteps could result in one of House Capulet’s famous accidents, so common to disobedient daughters. Easy enough to trip and fall on the steep, slick stairs, or suffer a sudden and fatal sickness. The world had no shortage of ways to die, for either of us.

“I killed two of your brother’s men just now,” I said. “They would have killed me.” Why I said it, I do not know; I simply needed to do it, and her head bowed just a little more, as if from the weight of my admission. “It never ends, does it?”

“No,” she said softly. “Pray God it does, someday, but it will not end today, nor likely tomorrow.”

She did not say it, but my actions had certainly rolled the cycle forward, postponing that day of peace. And, looking at it squarely, I saw it had been my own fault. If I had not been so angry at Romeo, if I had not stormed out looking for a brawl, then I would not have found one.

I crossed myself, rose, and retreated to where Balthasar was fidgeting nervously from foot to foot. He breathed a sigh of relief when I took my place beside him. He didn’t say it, but I read the stiff disapproval in his body language.

I nodded to him and headed toward the exit, just as one young lady emerged from the confessional, and another took her place.

“Sir?” he asked, startled, and hurried to catch up. “Were you not here to be shrived?”

“I’ve confessed as much as I need,” I said. “The rest can wait.” In truth, in my most heretical heart, I thought there was no real forgiveness for taking a life, in this world or the next, regardless of what the priests might say.

I wished I’d been able to see her face, but I knew that witnessing the bruises and cuts again would have given me no peace, only ignited another round of fury at Tybalt. Perhaps she had known it, too. Or perhaps I only imagined the friendship between us, fragile and unspoken and as deadly to us both as a cup of poison.

Who’s the foolish one now? I asked myself, and vowed that I would apologize to my cousin.

Soon.

• • •

The rest of the day went as uneventfully as most. . . . Mercutio eventually appeared, looking content and tormented at the same time, and with Romeo (and supported by our own crew of hired blades, among them the fierce Abraham and slender, grim Alessandro) we went to wander the market square. It was the vital, vivid center of the town, a place where all classes mingled, and today, as most days, it was full of color, noise, and music. Our small band of young men—yes, swaggering, no doubt—kept together, a tight-knit group of blue and black, which in Mercutio’s case was slashed with the vivid orange of his own house. I had been asked to find a new silk merchant for my mother, in a note from her to my rooms, and so I led the men on that very domestic chore, from stall to stall, looking over the goods and the honesty of the sellers.

It was at the third stall that I encountered my sister, Veronica, dressed in extravagant finery and closely attended by her pinch-mouthed nurse, who looked hard put upon. Veronica was buying—at too dear a price—a length of rich gold-and-green damask. She ignored me until I was at her elbow.

“You ought to let me haggle for you,” I said. “That’s half again as much as it’s worth.”

“It’s for my wedding gown,” she said loftily. “If I’m to marry the old goat, at least I will do it in the best.” She sent me a sly glance as the merchant folded the fabric and went to wrap it in a linen package. “There’s talk of dead Capulet men this day.”

“Is there?”

“Talk of a Montague who killed them,” she said. “Might that be you, brother?”

“No.” I was in no mood to confess to my sister. She’d never met a secret she liked to keep, save her own. “Perhaps it was footpads.”

“Footpads who made the survivor rip away his Capulet colors? No one will believe it. I hear the Prince is going to summon Montague and Capulet both, again, to put a stop to the brawling. Questions will be asked.”

I shrugged. “You should go home,” I said. “If Capulet blood is up, you have no business wandering alone.”

“I’m not alone,” she said. “I’m with my attendant, as is any decent woman.”

“Tell me you’re not off to an assignation.”

“Brother!”

That called for a second shrug; the outrage in her voice was far too obvious. Veronica was up to something, but what, I could not say; nor did I truly care. I’d warned her. If she insisted on putting herself in danger—or in a dalliance that could ruin her marriage, at the very least—then it was no business of mine. Though no doubt my grandmother would blame me for that, too.

On the strength of that, though, I sent two of the bravos as escorts for her and the old woman. Whatever mischief Veronica was intending, the men would keep the secret; they were well paid to do that, and they knew that my uncle took a very dark view of betrayal. She’d be as safe as might be—at least from any enemies.

From herself . . . that was another matter altogether, and one to which I was not inclined to give much worry.

Romeo was moody, and before long slipped away. I dispatched another of our followers to cover his back. Mercutio tried to talk to him, but Romeo was—as seemed to be usual for the day—unwilling to speak, and our friend came back to me shaking his head. “He’s off to brood,” he said. “Love does some men no favors, Benvolio.”

I wondered whether he was speaking of himself for a moment, but he flashed me a broken, mad grin. “I know where he’s bound. I followed him yesterday,” he said. “His love’s a thick wine, and his mornings are hangovers . . . he climbs a tree beyond the wall and writes more poems. At least now he has the sense to tear them up when he’s done.”

I wasn’t much satisfied with that, but I let it pass. Hunting Romeo down wouldn’t make him any less moody. He had to find that balance for himself.

I found the silk merchant for my mother, and told him that he’d be called upon soon; Mercutio fancied a pair of fine leather gloves, but they came from a stall that featured a Capulet banner, and the vendor sneered at us.

I stole them for him, a deft and quiet lift that was done in a moment as the merchant’s eye roamed elsewhere. I tossed them over as we walked, and Mercutio clucked and wagged a shaming finger, but only after he’d put them on.

We purchased meat rolls from a handcart, and had free wine from a vendor hoping to supply House Montague. A street performer fresh from Fiorenza produced doves from his dirty beard, to the screaming amusement of a group of children; he had a wild-man look that made me think he put his thrown coins into the purchase of a bottle rather than food, but his hands were steady and clever enough. A mountebank sang nonsense songs and juggled while balanced on a pole, and mocked the passersby with hurled insults, all in good fun . . . until he chose to mock a Capulet who’d stopped to stare.

It was not Tybalt—it was some lesser, vacuous cousin—but he was quick enough to anger, and his shouts of, “Capulet, to me!” quickly drew a knot of red and black around him, which ranged out to surround the jester. The jester’s painted face took on an anxious look, and his eyes darted around for escape, or rescue, and found neither. Someone kicked the pole from under him, and he went tumbling, but tumbling is a mountebank’s trade, and he came up unhurt—until another Capulet punched him squarely in the mouth.

“Churls,” Mercutio said. He was gripping the hilt of his sword. “Clowns beating clowns—it’s unseemly. We should take a hand, Ben.”

“No,” I said. “Two Capulets were killed this morning, and Montague blamed. No more brawling today.”

Mercutio’s sympathies were with the jester, or at least against the Capulets now joining in the beating. “We can’t let them trounce him without an answer! We look like cowards!”

“He’s no kin or oath to us,” I said. I winced, though, when I saw a boot drive deep, and the jester’s head snap back. “Balthasar, run for the city watch. Bring them.”

“Sir,” he said, and dashed away.

It took too long, but he did return with the prince’s liveried men; the Capulets were warned by shouts, and melted into the thick crowds, leaving behind the huddled body of the mountebank and his broken pole. He wasn’t dead, at least.

And it proved to me that the Capulets were raw-nerved today, and ready for any kind of insult to be avenged. Not a good day to be abroad in Montague colors.

I’d taken note of the Capulet cousin who’d started the trouble. Close personal note.

And so, when the bells rang to summon the faithful to mass, I said, “Off to the chapel with us, then, you scruffy pagans. You could all do with a sermon or two.” Such a visit served two good purposes—it would ease the gossip about my missed morning mass, and it protected us from Capulet wrath for a time. In the heat of the afternoon, after mass, no one would be so eager to fight.

“Not I!” Mercutio said with such alarm he might have been the devil himself. “I’m fresh-shrived just this morning, I assure you. I’ve no desire to have a double blessing.”

He winked at me, just a quick and fleeting expression that made me think his shriving was less of the spirit than the flesh . . . and had come from the hands of his Tomasso, who was studying for the priesthood. I cleared my throat in uncomfortable realization, and nodded, and Mercutio darted off through the crowd, cheerful and mad. He made it a point to flirt with a young, comely shopgirl. He often did such things, though I did not think he appreciated her beauty for anything more than what was visible. Safer for him to be thought a rake.

“The rest of you,” I said to the men, who looked sadly resigned, “off to the church.”

Balthasar and Abraham ranged ahead, while I accepted the cordial greetings of allies and neighbors on our way through the crowds, with Alessandro and two others trailing behind. By the time I caught up to them, Balthasar and Abraham had found trouble.

Capulet trouble, in the narrow street that led off the square. As I found them, Abraham said, in a pleasant enough tone, “Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?” A common enough insult, one that would at least occasion a challenge.

The Capulet smirked. “I do bite my thumb, sir.”

This time, the tone was not so pleasant. “Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?” Abraham was plainly giving him a chance to walk away, but the Capulet’s smirk only widened. He shrugged and glanced at his companion in red and black.

“Is the law on our side, if I say aye?”

“No,” the other Capulet said, clearly the more cautious. His caution, though well planted, did not take root.

“No, sir,” the first said, in a hearty and mocking tone, “I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I do bite my thumb.”

The second clearly gave up his attempt to make peace, and stepped forward then to brace my servants. “Do you quarrel, sir?”

“Quarrel, sir? No, sir.” Abraham had his own blood up and running high, and Balthasar’s warning pluck at his sleeve did nothing to dissuade him. I considered calling them in, but I saw more Capulet colors pushing toward us.

And some of them worn by Tybalt.

“If you do, sir, I am for you; I serve as good a man as you,” warned the Capulet bravo.

“No better,” Abraham scoffed, well aware I was behind him.

“Well, sir—” began the first Capulet, but he was cut off.

“Say better—here comes one of my master’s kinsmen,” the other Capulet muttered, and now that they knew Tybalt was watching, the matter was as inevitable as a falling wall’s crash.

“Yes, better, sir,” the first instantly amended.

“You lie,” Abraham said.

And that was the moment when it turned from speech to action. “Draw, if you be men,” the Capulet spat, and steel appeared, on both sides—the two Capulets, and my own men.

I had a choice then, but I knew the Capulets were wounded today, and I’d done the blooding, true enough. It would do well for Montague to yield gracefully, and in public view.

So I stepped forward and beat down their swords with my own. “Part, fools!” I said, and shoved Abraham back. Balthasar, ever attentive, stepped back willingly. “Put up your swords.” And it might have calmed the waters, if only Tybalt had not stepped in behind me.

His voice was silken and cold with amusement. “What, are you drawn among these heartless hinds? Turn, Benvolio. Look upon your death.”

Balthasar was trying to signal me to withdraw, but I knew there was no way to avoid this now; it was a direct challenge from an equal, or near equal. I turned to face Tybalt, and the sight of his arrogant face made my heart race and my hands shake with the need to do for him what I’d done for his man earlier in the day.

But I did try. “I do but keep the peace,” I said, as reasonably as I could. “Put up your sword, or use it to part these men with me.”

He laughed. “Drawn, and you talk of peace!” The laughter stopped, and for the rest of it, he was deathly serious. “I hate the word, as I hate hell, all Montagues, and you,” he said, and there was such venom in it that I did not doubt him. His sword slid free, and the glint of it in the sun caught my eyes. I felt myself go into that cold space again, all concerns falling free. “Have at you, coward!”

He was no brawler; Tybalt had been trained by the best, and he was—by many accounts—better than me, and faster. Even with all my concentration, it was difficult to follow the flicker of his movements as he thrust; I parried, but only barely, and my returning attack was beaten casually aside. I was hard-pressed, then, all my attention on his body, his eyes, the deadly grace of his blade, but I was also aware of the shouts, the riotous noise of blades clashing and cudgels clacking on one another as our men joined the fray, as did others who wanted to earn favor from one house or the other. It quickly became a street brawl, with injured men screaming and blood slicking the cobbles. Someone was giving a call to battle to strike both houses down and stop the fight, but it was of little note until I heard Balthasar shout a warning, and over Tybalt’s shoulder I saw the tall, imperious figures of Capulet and his lady wife. Capulet—elderly and gouty—was trying to call for a sword, but she foiled him in the way that wives do; meanwhile, behind me, I heard a similar argument in familiar voices.

My uncle Montague was also drawn to the fight, and my aunt was hell-bent on holding him back.

Good that the women of both houses had sense, because as I managed—again, barely—to hold off Tybalt’s next assault, I heard more shouts, and saw the flash of the prince’s liveried men pushing through and laying about with their own cudgels. Peacemakers, clouting heads to enforce the point. Behind them came the prince of Verona himself.

Tybalt and I broke off, breathing hard, glaring hate, and I realized that just this once, my cold distance was boiling away. I wanted his blood, badly as he wanted mine. There was a grudge between us, at least in my mind. . . . Rosaline, beaten and huddled in a corner, and him, wiping blood from his hands. He needed a sword in the guts to teach him better.

But it was not to happen now. There were too many witnesses, and already our men were withdrawing to safety, throwing down their weapons under the threat of angry authority. The injured were being pulled aside to make room for Prince Escalus’s advance; someone hastily threw down a cloak to prevent him from staining his shoes with the blood of victims.

He spoke. I don’t remember the speech, and did not attend the words even then, save that it ended in a threat to kill anyone who broke the peace again, whether Capulet or Montague.

I was busy staring down Tybalt. Neither of us had put away our swords, though a sharp word from my uncle finally made me—reluctantly—sheathe.

Another time, Tybalt mouthed to me, as he was likewise forced to stand down. He clapped hands on the shoulders of his friends, and walked away. I would have followed, but Balthasar laid a hand on my own arm and held me back, forcefully enough that I should have struck him, but I knew he had only my safety at heart.

“Calm,” he whispered to me. “Calm, sir; you are in the presence of the prince, and he asks your attendance.”

He was right; this was no time to indulge my rages, and with an effort that shook me to the marrows, I controlled myself, then nodded to him to let loose. He did, seeming doubtful, but I turned from Tybalt and walked toward my uncle and aunt, the Capulets, and Prince Escalus. The prince, surrounded by his retainers, frowned upon all of us. He looked pointedly down at the cobbles, still stained with blood, and the moaning injured being helped away from the area.

My uncle, ever the politician, turned upon me. “Who broached this ancient quarrel?” His words might be neutral, but his tone was accusing. “Speak, nephew. Were you by when it began?”

I explained that it was Tybalt’s fault, in a way that might have been overly witty, given the situation and the moods of those involved; Capulet scowled at me, but he did not object, which proved to me he’d seen what had transpired, at least in part. Lady Capulet was too concerned with keeping her skirts from the blood.

My aunt, however, was more concerned—of course—with Romeo and his absence from the fight than with my own mortal danger. I was the excess elder boy; I was bred to fight Montague’s battles, after all. Romeo was meant for higher things.

I tried not to resent that. I lied, a bit; I knew he’d be blamed for having been with us at the market, and there was no reason to drag him down as well. I told my aunt most of the truth—that he had gone beyond the wall, and was in the wood. To my surprise, my uncle gave the rest of the story, though I was well prepared to provide the information Mercutio had given me.

“He’s been seen there many a morning,” Montague said, with a frown not for me, but for the worry he felt, though he was careful to keep his voice low, and his back turned toward the Capulets. “Adding tears to the fresh morning dew, and adding clouds to clouds with his sighs. Black and portentous may this humor prove, unless good counsel prevails.”

I wondered how much of what my grandmother knew had reached him. “My noble uncle, do you know the cause?”

“I neither know it, nor can learn it of him.”

I pressed him, but it was obvious Romeo’s father did not know the cause of his sorrows, which was a great relief . . . until around the corner, who should come but Romeo himself, trailed by the two faithful retainers. He looked doleful, but his sorrow lessened a bit, replaced by concern, when he saw the state of the street, his father and mother, and the prince. The frowning, lingering Capulets he ignored, save a single glance.

I knew, though, that from the determined set to his chin, Romeo was bound to spout something that would be not only unwise, but dangerous, and likely having to do with the Capulets, and so I quickly turned back to his father and said, “Please you, step aside. I’ll discover his grievance.”

“Do so,” he instructed me sternly, and extended his hand to my aunt. “Come, madam, let’s away.”

The Capulets, who would not have retreated before Montague lest they seem weak, or risked his impugning them to the prince behind their backs, took a hasty good-bye as well. The prince was slower to depart, but leave he did, taking most of his men with him, save a contingent left to watch those who stayed with severe and quelling stares.

“What passed here?” Romeo asked, looking around at the remnants of chaos. “No, let me chance a guess: a clash between two unhappy houses.”

“I have no wounds,” I said. “Thank you for your concern.”

“You never have wounds,” he said absently. “Was it just a little while ago I left you?”

“Just a while.”

“Sad hours seem long . . . was that my father?”

“It was.” I shook my head. “I know I am a fool to ask, but what sadness lengthens your hours?”

“Not having that, which having, makes them short.”

I knew well where he was headed. “In love?”

“Out.”

“Of love?” Please, I thought, let it be so. Let him be mournful because he’s finally reconciled to the idiocy of his suit. . . .

But no. My cousin could never be so agreeable. “Out of her favor, where I am in love . . .”

He went on, at least sensible enough not to mention Rosaline by name, but every worshipful syllable he spoke made me ache to beat him senseless. He knew it was a sickness, knew it was impossible, yet he persisted. I answered his plaintive questions, aware that attacking my cousin in the open square would be a fool’s job.

But when he finally said, “Farewell,” and met my eyes squarely and earnestly to say, “You cannot teach me to forget,” I almost gave in to the temptation.

And as he walked away, lost in his fog of love and madness, I said, “I’ll pay that doctrine, or die in debt.”

And I meant it, every word—I would make him forget. No matter the cost.

• • •

The aftermath of the day’s riot meant that the city of Verona fell into a sullen, deceptive peace. The Capulets still walked the streets in their gang of red-clothed bravos, and our men still matched them, but on opposite streets, and at a distance. Only the women of our houses met and mingled with any kind of impunity, and although it did not look like war, it most assuredly was; I knew women well enough to understand that most of what they did, exquisitely mannered or not, was calculated to improve their own station, or that of their families. In their own ways, the girls of noble families were soldiers—merely armed with very different weapons of charm, beauty, and guile.

If the women were soldiers, my grandmother was the undisputed and widely feared mercenary captain, capable of great cruelty and unexpected generosity. My mother no longer played the game—or rather, played a different one: that of widow, one foot in her husband’s grave and waiting to step the other down. Her only concern seemed to be making acceptable matches for my sister and me. Veronica had consented to the old man they’d chosen for her—no doubt the showers of pearls and gems he’d given her had swayed her opinion of him—and as for me . . .

Upon arriving home, fresh from battle, I found I would soon be combed, scrubbed, curried like a horse on parade, and put before the marriageable young girls of Verona once more.

Mercutio, stretched out on my bed with his head propped on my feather pillow, watched with great, delighted attention as Balthasar chose my clothes for the event—nothing like as subdued as I would have preferred, but a sky blue doublet with black slashes, embroidered with our crest in gold. The tie-on sleeves were more blue, worked with floral designs. I stood in injured silence, head tipped high, as Balthasar added the damned things.

“The very thing to impress the ladies,” Mercutio offered, and popped a grape in his mouth. His eyes were shining with mischief. “Pity that outsize codpieces have gone off fashion. Now, that would persuade a girl to overlook your considerable flaws.”

“My master has no flaws,” Balthasar said stoutly, “save a sometimes questionable taste in companions.”

Mercutio clutched his chest and rolled theatrically. “A hit! A palpable hit! Ben, you must discipline this fool before something terrible happens to him in his sleep.”

Balthasar sighed. “Finished. You look a young Adonis, sir.”

“And look how Adonis ended,” Mercutio added. “Go on, then. Turn for us. Show the goods.” There were times when I hated Mercutio, and I silently glared at him until he sat up. “If shopping for wives makes you so ill-tempered, perhaps you’re not suited for it,” he said. It was a gentle enough intimation, but it caught me wrong-footed, and I bared teeth at him in something less than a smile.

“It isn’t that I don’t favor women,” I said tightly. “You know that well enough. It’s that I don’t like being marketed like a prize stallion.”

“Be careful they don’t check your teeth, then,” he said. “All men must marry, lest they burn, or so says the apostle. Even I am due for the altar soon enough. Reconcile yourself, boy, and stop drawing such a face as to appeal more to gargoyles than girls.” He paused, then continued, with a grin. “And you are not the prize stallion, you know. That falls to Romeo. There’s no reason to make a gelding of yourself.”

“Your friend speaks truth, master,” Balthasar said, and brushed a bit of dust from the velvet. He clucked his tongue in disapproval and brushed more energetically, until I felt like a carpet in need of beating. “Heaven knows, a wife would do you considerable good, sir. Perhaps you’d not feel so in need of sneaking out at night and returning with ill-got bits and bobs.”

“To be fair,” Mercutio said before I could, “he rarely brings them back here. I sell them on his behalf. And you, dear Balthasar, get a nice income for your silence, as you’d do well to remember.”

“I do confess it every Sunday,” he said placidly. “Your lady mother is waiting, sir. I can do no more for you.”

That was both a relief and unfortunate, since it meant proceeding from the simmering pan to the roaring fire, but I sighed—not entirely manfully—and walked toward the door with the air of the condemned to the gibbet.

“Wine, Balthasar,” Mercutio said, reclining again. “I feel we should toast our friend’s good fortune and future marriage prospects.”

Balthasar, never loath to give away my wine, was already in motion when I swept out, walking with a steady, fateful tread through the narrow, dark halls, into the hot blaze of the atrium courtyard garden, where my aunt Montague sat embroidering beneath the orange tree while her ladies chattered like bright-colored birds. Her sharp eyes watched me go, no doubt well aware where I was bound.

I knocked at my mother’s chamber door and was admitted immediately. There were two others seated with her at her small table, and a servant was pouring cooling drinks for all. My mother, in her widow’s black, nodded to me pleasantly, but her eyes had gone a little cold. I was late. She was not amused.

“Benvolio,” she said. “My son, I present to you Lady Scala, and her daughter, the lady Giuliana.”

I spared less than a glance for the visiting noblewoman, though I gave her an elaborate bow and kissed the air above her fingers with all the best courtesy. My mother would be noting any lapses in my courtly graces, I knew, but I’d been trained well, and hard, and I knew the line of my leg and the angle of my bowed head were perfect.

Then to the girl.

This was what my mother expected of me. Giuliana was thirteen, perhaps; where Veronica was, at fifteen, a well-practiced vixen, this round-faced creature looked ill at ease in her finery, like a child playing at woman. I was no old man, but the difference between seventeen and thirteen seemed dire. I felt nothing for her but a distant sort of pity that she be thrust at me like a basket of baked goods in the market. She stood, though, and, with all her concentration, performed an adequate curtsy of her own, spreading her thick, muffling skirts wide as she bobbed. She still wore a maiden’s cap, but beneath it her hair was a simple, uncomplicated brown. Her eyes were the same plain color. She gave me a tentative smile, which I returned without any sense of feeling.

I knew what was expected of me. I took up the dish of sweets and offered it to her. She took a honeyed fig with intense relief and popped it into her mouth, chewing with too much enthusiasm for courtly correctness, and an uneven blush crawled up her neck and stained her cheeks as she realized she’d betrayed both her discomfort and her childish lust for such sweet things. She refused a second and sipped her juice, gaze furious and fixed on the table before her.

I did feel sorry for her, at least a little; she was a pawn in this game, and I at least had the status of some higher piece, perhaps a knight, perhaps even a castle. I’d be sacrificed in the end, but I could more likely achieve my ends than she.

“Do you play chess?” I asked her on impulse. Her gaze flew up to mine, wide and surprised, as if she’d never expected to actually have to speak to me. She glanced quickly at her lady mother, who gave her an encouraging smile.

“Y-yes,” she said. “On occasion.”

“Would you like to play?”

“If—if my lady mother—”

“Of course,” Lady Scala said warmly. “My daughter is most clever with such things. And with singing, and the lute. She’s been well and classically trained.”

My mother’s chess set was a large, baroque thing; it had belonged to my father, I knew, and many was the time I had sat as a very young boy, struggling to learn the rules of the game. By eight I had been decent enough to outmaneuver my mother; by ten, I’d bested the chess master employed by her to test me.

Giuliana took her place across from me and studied the board. She picked up one of the pieces and studied it curiously. Her fingers, I noted, were still chubby, still child-length. She had growing left to do. “I’ve never seen one like it,” she said. “It’s very beautiful.”

“My mother brought it from England,” I said. “It was a gift for my father.” The pieces were minutely carved ivory and ebony, truly masterworks. She put the king carefully back in his place and, after a few seconds of contemplation, opened with her pawn. I countered. She moved. I countered. It went on so for several silent minutes before I began to see her pattern forming, and felt an unexpected surge of admiration.

Giuliana looked up at me, recognizing that I’d appreciated her strategy, and smiled. The shyness was gone now, replaced with confidence. “I studied under Master Traverna,” she said.

“And you do him credit,” I said, and moved out my knight. “But I studied under Master Scagliotti, who defeated him twice.”

“Only twice,” she said, and moved her castle. “Check.”

I glared at her, then down at the board. She was correct. I’d completely overlooked her trap. I quickly moved out of danger, and set up an attack of my own, which she defeated. Before long, we’d quite forgotten that we were expected to be potential mates, dancing politely around each other, and were trading wicked barbs as the pieces fell between us. She was merciless, the tiny Lady Giuliana. I won, but it was a close thing, and if we’d been facing each other on the battlefield, the cost would have been high on both sides.

The color was bright in her cheeks for another reason, at the end—true pleasure, I thought, and I was glad to see it, because I’d not had such a challenging and entertaining game in some time. I rose from the chair as she tipped her king, and took her hand in mine. She rose, suddenly awkward again, and the blush deepened as I bent over her knuckles and brushed my lips lightly over the skin. I kept my gaze on her as I did it, and saw the response in her. It frightened her, I saw; she might never have felt such a thing before.

All in all, not as much of a disaster as it might have been, and when the lady and her daughter took their leave, my mother turned to me with a radiant, completely delighted smile. “My son, you conquered her heart completely! I had no idea you could be so charming.”

I shrugged. “The girl’s clever,” I said. “Far cleverer than she looks, or than her mother wishes her to be.”

“I know such things appeal to you,” my mother said. “But, Benvolio, remember one thing: A clever wife can be an asset or a burden. She’ll require close watching, that one.”

“I thought you wished me married, Mother!”

“As I do, my son.” She touched my hair gently, and kissed my cheek with paper-dry lips. “I also wish you happy. That is a selfish failing, but I cannot help it. Do you wish me to offer for her hand?”

I closed my eyes and sighed. Giuliana’s baby-fat face, lit with a shy smile, appeared before me, but beside it was another face, older and leaner, framed by falling waves of night-dark hair.

Another clever girl, one whose spell I could not break no matter how much logic argued I must. When I shut my eyes I saw her glimmering in candlelight, her body a delicious shadow beneath the nightgown, her full lips rapt and parted as she read her poetry.

I opened my eyes then, and said, “Not as yet. But I do not say no outright.”

My mother, in that moment, looked as transcendently happy as I could ever imagine. She gripped my shoulders and kissed me effusively—both cheeks, then the mouth. She framed my face with her thin hands and gazed on me with true joy.

“I am so glad you are seeing sense,” she said. “This would be a good match, Benvolio. The girl comes with a good dowry, and her family has ties to the pope himself, as well as several dukes. I could not hope for better.”

Neither could I, I thought. There were certain things that would remain beyond my reach, and one of them, always, would be Rosaline Capulet. Best I resign myself to that now, and find what joy I might. Giuliana was, as yet, no great beauty, but she had a sweetness of spirit and a sharpness of wit that would do well enough to complement me.

But I felt a sense of loss, of failure, so great that I could not bear to be in the glare of my mother’s happiness. I took my leave quickly, pleading affairs to conclude, but I had no refuge back in my own rooms; Mercutio was there, waiting for an account of my gruesome failure, and to admit some partial success in my marriage hunt would be unsettling and humiliating. I did not know how I felt. I did not want to explain it to him, for fear he might suss out the grief I felt at losing a girl I’d never had.

Instead, I went to see Master Silvio, the blademaster.

He was at work with one of the distant cousins—Pietro, this one, up from the country and fumble-footed. I leaned against the wall of the large, empty room and watched as Master Silvio—dressed as always in a doublet, hose, street shoes, and half cape—drove the boy back at sword’s point out of the marked square. “No,” he said, and lowered his point as the boy struggled to find his balance again. “No, this won’t do, my boy. You wield that blade as if you plan to reap wheat with it. Elegance, young master. Precision. These are the foundations of the art of the sword— Ah. Young master Benvolio. Did we have a lesson today?”

“No,” I said. “I need a bout to cool my blood.”

Silvio’s thin eyebrows arched. He was a tall man, spidery, with long graying hair that was always queued back to prevent it from obscuring his vision. His eyes were a startling cool gray, and according to the talk of the streets, Master Silvio had been responsible for the deaths of at least a dozen men in his life of dueling, if not more. He had not a visible scar on him.

Dueling with the master was something few wanted to do for recreation.

Young Pietro passed me and whispered, “Thank you,” as he collapsed on a stool in the corner, breathing hard. His clothes were soaked with sweat. I chose a rapier and dagger from the collection neatly hung on the whitewashed wall, and turned to Master Silvio.

“You’re wearing your finest,” he said. “Perhaps it might be wise to—”

I attacked in a leaping lunge, and he glided out of the way of the blade in a fade so graceful he might as well have been a ghost. He had none of the brawler’s technique so valuable in a street fight, but in a noble duel, there was no one better. He was right: I ought to have at least removed the hanging, annoying sleeves, but I had a black fire burning, and I needed to put it out.

“You always tell us to be ready to fight in what we wear,” I said. “An enemy may not wait for me to remove my finery.”

He smiled. It was a meaningless expression with Master Silvio, merely a polite movement of the lips that affected the eyes not at all. “I do say that,” he said. “Very well, Benvolio. Have at me.”

I did, using all my concentration—I had a good reach, a sound balance, near-flawless control of my blade. It did me no good at all. Master Silvio, fighting at his true level, disarmed me in ten exchanges, swirling his blade up mine to corkscrew it out of my grip and into the air. I dropped, rolled like a tumbler, and came up to grab it before it hit the ground, but that left me fighting in an awkward crouch, unable to fully rise. “Not bad,” he told me, as he threatened me with a slow and agonizing death at the point of his blade in my guts. “But not quite fast enough. You should never try that unless you can make it to your feet again before your opponent can reach you.”

I threw all my strength into knocking his sword back and gained the space to straighten, then retreated two steps to firm footing. “Should I content myself with being dead, or take the risk?”

“There are never only two choices, Benvolio.” I used a trick Mercutio had taught me, coming in close and forcing Silvio’s hand to an awkward angle, but the man danced easily away, sidestepping the foot I placed to trip him, and then I was exposed and extended, and his sword was at my throat, the point just stinging me.

His gray eyes were very, very cold.

I dropped my sword and dagger in surrender. For a long moment, he did not move his point, but then he suddenly whipped it up and took several long strides back. I’d waked some instinct in him that was best not stirred, I realized. For one moment, he’d actually wanted to kill. Considered it, in the cold, animal way that a hungry beast considers prey.

“You’re a fool,” he said. “And you’ve ruined your doublet. Your mother will be most unhappy.”

I looked down. There was a vivid slash across my chest, one I’d not even felt. It had gone deep, all the way through the padded velvet, cut the linen shirt beneath, and there was a thin line of blood on my skin. Now that I’d seen it, it stung like a swarm of bees. The sight of the blood made me feel light and watery.

“Satisfied?” he asked me tightly. “Did I exorcise your demons, young master? Do you imagine that’s what your uncle pays me to do, indulge the whims of spoiled young men? I am here to teach you, and from the look of it, you’ve learned nothing of any significance. Were I in earnest, you would be choking on my sword just now, and your mother doubly grieved. The blade is no game.”

“I know,” I said. I felt remarkably still, all the black rage gone as if it had fled through the cut in my chest. “I killed a man yesterday with a sword and dagger to his heart. I don’t even know his name.”

Silvio turned to regard me, and the chill slowly faded out of his gaze, replaced by something like regret. He came back to put a firm hand on my shoulder. “Best you don’t,” he said. “I recall how it felt, to pass such judgment the first time. Sending a man to God is a heavy thing, young master. Little wonder you feel burdened.”

It wasn’t the killing, though, or at least not in whole. It was so many things, all impossible to explain. For Master Silvio, who lived for his art, there would be no understanding of this awful feeling of loss for what I’d never owned. And he was not wrong in what he said; the dead man’s face, with its deep scar and blind white eye, haunted me. He was an enemy, and he had earned what he was paid, but I still felt that there was a debt owed.

Master Silvio watched me for a long moment, then nodded. “I see there are still demons in you to be exorcised. Take up your sword and we will do drills. There is nothing like drills to drive the thoughts from your head. Sweat is better than wine for emptying the soul.”

He was right in that. The ritual of thrust, parry, retreat—of the eight parries and the eight thrusts—of the steps of the deadly dance—all that drove the candlelight from my mind, and even the shadow of her smile dimmed.

Dead men did not haunt me so much as Rosaline’s smile.

Better to marry than to burn.

The apostle had it very right.

FROM THE PEN OF ROMEO MONTAGUE, DISCOVERED BY HIS SERVANTS AND GIVEN TO LA SIGNORA DI FERRO.

She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste,

For beauty starved with her severity

Cuts beauty off from all posterity.

She is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair,

To merit bliss by making me despair:

She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow

Do I live dead that live to tell it now.

I had spent the last week collecting the various accounts of insults offered to House Montague, and they were gratifyingly legion: a poet who’d refused to take a birthday commission from my lady aunt, on the grounds that he was already sworn to write an ode for Capulet; a goldsmith who’d delivered a shoddy piece of work to my uncle; the feckless cousin who’d caused the beating of the jester in the marketplace; and an aspiring ally of Capulet who’d made rude jests in my hearing regarding my lady mother.

That one, I put at the top of my list.

“A man bound for marriage ought not take such risks,” Balthasar complained as he chose my gray clothing, soft boots, and silk mask from the locked chest.

“I am not bound for marriage. I said only I would not refuse her yet.”

“If you are caught on one of these dark nights, you will be hanged, and your station won’t save you.”

“You fret like an old woman,” I said. “And I do not mean my grandmother.”

“She’d be the first to consign you to the scaffold.”

Balthasar wasn’t wrong in that. What he didn’t say, and wouldn’t, was that I would not go alone; he might escape hanging, but Mercutio, caught with the stolen goods, might well perish. Balthasar himself would certainly be turned out penniless, reduced to working as a sell-sword, a footpad, or worse. I would be the ruin not just of myself, but of my friends.

And still, I had to go. I do not know why; perhaps, as Mercutio had once suggested, I had a devil in me that no amount of holy water could exorcise. Or perhaps it was the last rebellion I was allowed before I was led to the altar, to marriage, to all that was laid out for me through my life. I was a Montague, after all. I had responsibilities.

As Prince of Shadows, I had no such burdens. I had only liberties—liberties not given, but taken. Wearing the mask, I was finally, irrevocably in my own control, and no one else’s.

“You’re risking your neck for little gain,” Balthasar grumbled as I tucked the mask away.

“I risk my neck every day in the streets for no gain at all but my family’s name,” I said, and buckled on my sword and dagger. “I am a soldier in a war that never ends. Why not risk all for myself instead?”

He shook his head, as if he didn’t understand—and likely he couldn’t fathom why I did these things. Balthasar was doggedly loyal, and clever . . . things one wanted in a servant. But he had no . . . no spark.

I had met few indeed who did.

And one of them had glowed golden in the candlelight, twirling her braid around a finger as she read of a love she would never know. . . . Rosaline’s spark was set to be hidden away, if not extinguished entire. And I could not—could not—think of her again, for the sake of my own soul.

Instead, I ducked out the window, down, and into the streets.

Unlike most evenings on which I ventured out, I hadn’t asked Romeo or Mercutio to join. . . . I wanted to be alone, to test my edge against the whetstone of the city guards and the security of my target’s walls. It was late enough that the God-fearing had taken to their beds, and the rest were deep in their cups or embarked on more sinister business than mine. I had made inquiries, and I knew where the man who’d insulted my mother lodged; it was a surprisingly respectable district, and a quiet, well-kept building, though not utterly without the usual drama of the city. As I stalked beneath it in the shadows, I heard the familiar notes of voices rising in a sleepy quarrel from the second story, and a babe’s thin wail from the third’s open window. It was a hot, still night, and all the shutters had been thrown wide to admit whatever breeze might visit.

My target lived on the less favored top floor, four stories up in the cramped space beneath the roof. From his open window, no lamps glowed; no voices echoed. Either—likely—he was out drinking and boasting and courting loose women, or—less likely—he was abed and deep asleep. I did not much care, either way, save that I would have to be more careful in the second case.

I used the staircase, cat-footing lightly past tight-shut doors. On the third-floor landing, the neat-kept building began showing signs of neglect and hard use . . . battered walls, a broken-off bracket where a lamp had once burned. It was ink-dark, but I did not mind that. I found the lock by touch and tried it gently; it was fixed fast. That called for the lock picks. I prided myself on this skill, in particular; I had practiced for months blindfolded or sealed in pitch-black rooms until I needed nothing but touch and sound to break any lock I had ever met.

This one was no different. Cautious exploration told me he’d left the key in the hole on the other side of the door, so he was home, and abed; I smiled a little, inwardly, and took out a piece of sheepskin I carried rolled up in my bag. That, laid flat, slid easily under the door’s gap, and I pushed the lock picks in and heard the dull thump of the key falling on the cushion on the other side.

It was not even technically lock picking if he’d made it so easy.

I used his own key and came inside, shutting the door with care behind me and locking it again. I could hear him now, snoring lightly. He was facedown and loose-limbed . . . but I had not reckoned on the girl.

Because there was a girl.

She was lying next to him—wide-awake, staring at me with saucer eyes. As she opened her mouth, I put a finger to mine, and pulled out two gold coins from my purse. She paused, blinking, and I mimed locking my own lips as I held the coins out. She mimed back a throat cutting, then looked at her bed companion. I admit, by that time I had begun to realize that the sheet did not by any means cover all of her, and though the darkness made it more of a suggestion of assets than the true sight of them, the room was suddenly a good deal too warm, and my clothing too tightly sewn.

I shook my head. No throat cutting for her snoring friend.

She silently held out her hand for the coins, and I dropped them in, careful not to make them chime, and I closed her fingers over them before lifting her hand to drop a kiss on the rough skin of her knuckles. She drew in a sharp breath, and I almost thought she might scream, but then she sat up and . . .

Kissed me.

It was surprising, and I should have pulled away for many reasons, not the least of which was my own self-preservation, but there was something darkly wonderful about the danger of it. She was only a bit older than I, and warm and round and womanly, and willing, and for a moment I entertained a feral thought that perhaps he might not wake. . . .

I didn’t pull away. It was not a sweet kiss; it was wet and wanton and very pointed about what the girl wanted of me, and until her man grunted and rolled on his side, I was almost, almost tempted.

I stepped back, breathing hard, and saw her dizzying pale skin shining in the faint moonlight coming in the window. I smiled at her and waggled a chiding finger at her. No.

She shrugged and, clutching the gold, subsided back into the bed. Her paramour rolled over, flung a heavy arm across her, and went back to buzzing like a beehive.

It was a beehive I did not want to overturn, and so I worked quickly, ransacking the few items of furniture in his room. Nothing of any value; even his sword was of only middling quality. He did, however, have a fine Capulet dagger half-hidden beneath a mess of filthy smallclothes, and I tucked that away before turning my attention to his locked chest. It was not large, but it was of better construction than anything else he owned, and it was a bit more of a challenge to open than the average—half a minute, perhaps, which seemed an eternity when considering that the saucy trollop might at any minute decide to keep my gold and betray me anyway. But she kept her part of the bargain, and I eased open the casket, and within . . .

...within was all that remained of his family’s honor. I took out a tattered old parchment, heavy with seals that gleamed with gold leaf in the moon’s glow; that, I stowed away. There were a few heavy chains, a few gems, and, at the bottom, a dagger that was racehorse to the nag he carried for his daily wear. My enemy, one Giuliano Roggocio, had once come from a prominent family, one fallen to low times; I knew the name Roggocio from family tales. My grandmother’s backside rested on wood taken from one of their household doors. She had seen the death of that clan, and likely had been its cause, and they had been wealthy beyond dreams.

The man had reason to hate my house, but none to blacken the name of my mother, and for that, he would have to pay the rest of his family’s fortune.

I took the chains and jewels, and the sword, and I left him the parchment, with its seals of nobility. Let him rejoice in his bloodline as much as I rejoiced in mine.

I locked the chest again, blew a kiss to the girl, and climbed into the window. The night was hot and still; a cart rumbled noisily over cobbles somewhere to my left, but from the sound of it, it was several streets over. A baker, most like, starting the cycle of bread for the day. I faced back into the room, balancing on the sill, and gauged my target.

I heard the snoring buzz of Roggocio’s slumber suddenly break into a snort, and I looked down to see his eyes coming open, and staring straight at me.

“Dog!” he shouted. “Thief! Stop!” He vaulted naked from his bed and launched himself at me. I was caught wrong-footed, balanced on a thin sill, and I knew that if he dragged me into the room I’d have no choice but to kill to stop him. Him, and perhaps the girl.

That, I would not do. I was a thief, yes. But no assassin.

Roggocio did not make it easy for me. He grabbed for me, and his scrabbling fingers ripped at my mask and pulled it loose.

With the moon at my back, I could only hope he did not see my face.

I leaped up, caught the edge of the roof, swung my legs into the room, and hit him squarely in the chest, sending him flying back onto the bed and the alarmed, now-screaming girl. I reversed the momentum to take me the other direction, over the lip of the roof and onto its slick clay tiles. A difficult trick, but one a good sneak thief must know to survive. I regularly dosed my soft boot soles with resin to make them grip, but the hardest part was to catch my balance, which I did, spreading my arms wide to shed momentum. Even then, it was a near thing. The pitch of the roof was steeper than I’d thought, and one of the tiles broke free and began to slide. I knew better than to flail; if one tile was loose, the others were no better. I dropped flat, catching myself on both hands, and swarmed up to the peak of the roof, where I pulled myself upright again and ran lightly down the center seam, leaving the sound of alarms and cries behind. I surprised a sleeping cat, which bounded off with a yowl of protest, and then I gathered speed to make the leap to the next, lower roof. From there, I dropped into the iron basket of a balcony, and then down to the cobbles.

A near miss. Very near. But still, a success. I told myself that he could not have seen me, and even if he had glimpsed some part of my face, he could never have associated those features with those of Benvolio Montague.

With my bag full of treasure, I sought out Mercutio.

He was not asleep. I’d thought to catch him still abed, but he was up, dressed, and prowling his rooms restlessly. When I climbed in his window he jumped like the cat I’d startled, sword half drawn, and sheathed it irritably at the sight of me. “Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for word of your corpse! Don’t you know better than to do this alone?”

For answer, I held out the bag. He swore at the heaviness of it, and dumped the treasure out onto the bed. It was better than I’d expected. In the dim room where I’d pilfered it, I hadn’t been able to assess quality, but these were fine indeed, the last vestiges of a once-wealthy family. He whistled as he held up a ruby as large as a robin’s egg. It had a heart of fire in it that made me shiver, and suddenly I felt that I’d made a mistake, a large one. These were jewels that would be difficult to dispose of safely—too recognizable, like the sword.

“This could be cut down,” Mercutio said, examining the ruby, “though it would be a pity to ruin such a thing. Look you, how the light catches in it, like blood.”

“Exactly like blood,” I said. “We need to be rid of these things quickly.”

“And this?” He held up the sword, admiring the watered steel. “I could have a goldsmith mount another hilt on it. Shame to waste such a beautiful blade.”

“Make sure the goldsmith keeps his mouth well closed,” I said. “There’s a rope in this for us if he doesn’t.”

“Isn’t there always?” Mercutio opened a secret door in the wall of his room and put the things within, locked it back, and hung the key on a chain around his neck. “It will take time, you know. Not even I can work miracles. I’m not the Christ of crime.”

“Heathen,” I said. He pursed his lips and blew me a kiss. “Were you truly dressed out of worry for me? It seems unlikely, I think.” He sank into a deep armchair, one long-fingered hand pressed to his forehead to hide his eyes. I did not need to see them to read the dejection in his body. “Trouble in your sinful paradise, my brother?”

“What would you know of sin?” he shot back. “You’ve cold milk in your veins when it comes to love; I know it.”

I thought, unwillingly, of Rosaline, but I said, “I had a naked woman kiss me tonight while I was rifling for these little trinkets.”

That surprised him enough that he took his hand away from his face. “Naked.”

“As sinful Eve,” I said. “And quite a willing mouth on her, too.”

“And?”

I shrugged. “Best to get on with the job, I thought.” Though there had been a drunken moment when I’d considered something much different, in wild and exotic detail.

“Disappointing.” He put the hand back in place again. “We’ll teach you how to use a woman yet. Granted, I have only a little experience in that way, but more than you, I’d wager.” He laughed a little, but it sounded like gallows laughter to me. “I’m to get more, it seems.”

I sat down opposite him, suddenly worried that this was not merely Mercutio’s usual dark moods. “Tell me,” I bade him.

“My dear and sainted father has decreed that I soar too high to remain free, and so I am to be caged,” he said. The bitter taint in his voice chilled me. “Caged and hooded, jessed and trained to the perfumed hand of a lady. But no matter how you tame a falcon, still they will hunt, will they not? Hunt, or die.”

“What’s this talk of death, my friend? Of cages?” Surely his father, whatever he suspected, would not put his own son to a public trial for the crime of sodomy; that would forever tarnish his own name. Were they discovered, my own offenses would be puffballs and nonsense beside it.

“I put it to you plainly: I am to be swiftly married off,” he said. “Married and buried, wed and dead. ’Tis no accident the words rhyme so well.”

I let out a sigh of relief. “And ’tis no surprise, as they’d published the banns—what brings on this dark—”

“Dark and lark, love and dove, hawk and handsaw, I am not fit for this, Benvolio; I am not fit—do you not see it?” He was weeping, I realized with a start; he angrily swept tears from his cheeks and glared at me as if I were the cause of all his suffering. “I will hurt her, this soft bride of mine; I cannot help it—I am all the wrong shape, you see? I may be forced, as she may be forced, but both of us will bleed for it . . . but blood is all that families require, marriage blood, maiden blood, proof of cruel love. . . . She is too young; she cannot understand what I am, what I feel, what I know of myself. I am to hurt her, and she is to hurt me. And it comes on us fast as plague.”

It was clear to me then. “There is a date set.”

“Two months hence,” he said miserably. “Two months. And Tomasso weeps and will not see me, and there is naught I can do to make any of it less vile. We have been wed in heart for five years, from the moment we first clapped eyes on each other, and now it is broken, broken as my heart. I know I will hurt this girl, in revenge. It is not a pretty thing, but the thought of her sickens me, and I cannot . . . I cannot—”

“Run,” I said, and leaned forward to lock gazes with my friend. “Take the money you’ve been paid for the gold and jewels thus far, pay for passage to some friendlier place, and take Tomasso away. There is a way out, Mercutio. You must take it.”

“Now you thieve for me, instead of your whims and honors?” He laughed softly, and shook his head. “I might steal away, but Tomasso—he is too afraid, I think. Verona is all he knows, all he loves besides me. I have begged him to go; we could be pilgrims on the road to perdition, but he will not have it. You have a generous heart. I love you for it, but my own heart is bound here, too.”

“Then refuse,” I said. “Refuse the girl. Refuse the wedding.”

“I would ruin her more by doing that than if I blooded her,” he said, “and you know it. A marriage promise broken stains the girl, not the man who refuses her. She would be doomed. It would destroy her, and her father’s honor.”

He was right. We lived in a world that lived and breathed honor, and a promise was a bond that we broke only with dire consequences. A lesser man than my friend would not care a fig for the girl, or her family, but Mercutio wasn’t so shallow. The world was a bundle of spikes and razors, and any move he made would cut deep. Better to sacrifice Tomasso, and a love that could never be acknowledged, than to make the innocent suffer.

That did not make it any less painful.

“If you change your mind,” I said, “my gold is yours. You know this.”

“I know,” he said, and clapped hands with me, then embraced. “I know.”

I kept company with him until just before dawn, then slipped away in the gray. I came home to a bed well warmed with hot bricks, and a sleepy servant who put it about that I was abed with a summer’s ague, to buy me the morning to rest.

I slept ill, and dreamed of blood and a woman’s wet kiss, and candlelight gleaming on skin and shadow. Dark eyes that challenged as much as they welcomed.

Rosaline.

The next day brought fate, and doom, and death with the dawning.

• • •

The first I knew of the trouble was a hammering on my door. I’d slept a bare two hours, perhaps, and Balthasar even less; he went yawning and red eyed to admit Romeo.

“Sir, your cousin is not well—” Balthasar tried to stop his onward rush, but Romeo simply swept him aside.

“It’s Mercutio,” he blurted, and threw the covers back on my bed. “He left me in the market after mass, and I saw him being followed, and I think the servant was from his own family’s house. Get up, Ben. Get up!”

I did, grabbing for whatever clothing came to hand—a wrinkled linen shirt, hose that had seen better days. I did not bother with a doublet, only threw on a leather jerkin and loose calf-length trousers like a laborer. “Change,” I ordered him. “No Montague colors. Balthasar, get him something less noticeable. Do it quickly.”

Balthasar scurried off to the chests to find something as Romeo began to unbuckle and untie his Montague doublet. The hose would do, being dark. I took away his too-recognizable dagger and sword and substituted a good but plain set from my stores. We dressed quickly, in charged silence, all too aware that we might be too late. If Mercutio was being stalked, it would be better if it were a straightforward enemy who wished to plant a sword’s point in his chest . . . but if someone from the Ordelaffi household was on his trail, something darker was brewing. He never allowed a servant to trail him, hadn’t since his childhood; he’d allied himself with us both from nature and from necessity, to avoid his family saddling him with such a hindrance. It was new, and worrying, that they felt the need to eye his comings and goings.

We dashed down the hallway, past startled servants, and at the door we came face-to-face with my sister, Veronica, and her giggling cadre of scheming, vicious friends, who were arriving fresh from the market. One of them, I noticed, was one of the Ordelaffi girls, a cousin of Mercutio’s.

Veronica stepped back and fanned herself, and her friends goggled at us with a fresh wave of muffled laughter. “Well,” she said. “It seems too early by far for a costumed ball, and why you would go as peasants . . .”

Romeo pushed her out of the way, and Veronica gave a shrill squeak of alarm as he darted past. She turned on me, furious at the slight, and her eyes narrowed. “Going to find your dear friend?” she asked. The giggling of the girls with her stopped as if it had been severed by a blade. “His family seeks him, too. Wherever could he be, do you think? What might he be doing so early in the morning, hidden in the trees?”

I looked from her to the Ordelaffi girl, sharp faced and foxlike, with the cruel gleam in her eyes of someone with a grudge. I gripped my sister hard by the shoulders and shook her until the jeweled pins in her hair began to slip free. “What did you do?” I asked Veronica. “What did you say?”

“It’s a sin,” she said, “what he does. And you know it. You have sometimes been cruel to me, brother. Measure for measure, that’s how we play, is it not?”

“You’d kill a man for your wounded pride?”

“I’m a Montague,” she said. Her color was high, and her eyes bright and vulpine. “I do not suffer slights. Not even from you.”

I should have hit her, but I did not have time. She had wasted enough of it already.

I dashed out after Romeo, caught up, and said, “He’s in the trees.” We both knew the place; it was a trysting spot that we’d seen Mercutio go before, to meet Tomasso.

I prayed God he was not meeting him this morning.

• • •

God does answer all prayers, but sometimes, he answers with a cold and remorseless denial . . . and I knew, as I came through the gates and started running down the path, that there would be no miracle for us today. There was a knot of men already there, most in Ordelaffi colors, though a few onlookers had already gathered to see whatever show was being staged for their benefit . . . and then I saw Tomasso.

The young man was thin and serious, as befitted a would-be religious man, and he still wore the sort of postulant robes that I’d swathed myself in when I’d gone out with Friar Lawrence. His hood was thrown back, and his face was set and pale, but tranquil as a martyr’s.

He was on his knees, with his hands bound roughly behind his back, and a circle of armed men surrounded him.

They were having a good deal more trouble with Mercutio. I heard the ring of steel, and saw him darting between the trees, graceful and full of fury as he tried to win the way to his prisoned lover.

He failed, but not from any lack of skill; he gave up on his own accord when Lord Ordelaffi, burly and crimson faced, shoved aside the soldiers and stalked up to his son bare-handed. Even enraged, Mercutio could not wound his father. He dropped the point of his sword, and his father took it from him and flung it viciously away, then followed that with a closed-fisted blow so mighty it laid Mercutio in the dirt.

Romeo lunged forward. I grabbed him and held him still. My grip was too tight, and would leave bruises, but I could not care about that just now. I burned, as Romeo did, to go to the help of our friend, but there was no help now.

We could do nothing but stand and watch.

The beating his father gave Mercutio was brutal, and it went on a long time. It was not quite the death of him. He was breathing yet, and capable of lifting his head from the ground of his own accord, though I was not sure that he could see through the torrents of blood that obscured his face. His father made sure of clear vision, though, by having servants wipe the crimson from his eyes and hold him in a wavering, kneeling position for the rest that came.

Lord Ordelaffi left him there and turned toward his men. “Finish it,” he said in a rough, disgusted voice. “Quickly. Let us be done with this unpleasant business.”

I had never spoken to Tomasso. The only knowledge I had of him was from Mercutio’s lips, who’d spoken of his kindness, his warmth, his intelligence, his passion for God and learning. He did not struggle when they pulled him roughly to his feet, nor when they fitted the noose around his neck.

Mercutio tried to save him. I could not hear the words, but I knew he was telling his father anything, everything to spare the boy’s life, trying with all his skill and wit and charm; when he started to raise his voice, to beg whether others might hear, his father ordered a belt passed around his throat, and had him choked just enough to silence him. Romeo was weeping to see it, and it was all I could do to hold him back. And myself, God help me.

Mercutio could not even scream as they hauled on the rope and pulled Tomasso from his knees, and then his feet.

It was not a large tree they hanged the boy from. I don’t know why that bothered me so, that it was so small, so pathetic, because the branch was sturdy enough to bear his slight weight when they pulled him up, and though his toes kicked just a few inches above the ground, it was enough; it would serve as well as a mighty height.

It took a horribly long time to be finished, and Romeo wavered as if he might be sick, until I hissed in his ear, “If they see you flinch, they’ll turn on us, too.” The mood of the onlookers was gleeful, not solemn; they cheered when Tomasso swung, and threw stones at him as he twisted and died. I wanted desperately to kill them, kill them all, but I hung on to my cousin in grim fury and let none of that show. You’ve cold milk in your veins, Mercutio had accused me, but I was all fire and ash now, and hardly holding it in. No one had yet recognized me, or Romeo, and if they did our station might not save us; we were Mercutio’s close companions, and in the heat of this awful frenzy, that would be enough to see us beaten or killed. It would destroy the Ordelaffi family, but likely politics was not on their minds just now.

I thought they might hang Mercutio after, but instead they left him weeping and bloody on the dirt, fingers plunged deep in the soil as if he wished to bury himself in it.

Lord Ordelaffi said a few words to his chief servant, then stalked off with most of his attendants, heading for the walls. He wiped his son’s blood from his hands with a silk cloth, and left it lying soiled at the side of the road. One of the peasants scurried over to retrieve it. The blood would wash out, and silk was precious.

The servant had a good voice for speaking, deep and authoritative, and he told those of us still lingering that the filthy sodomite who’d been justly hanged had waylaid the heir of Ordelaffi, but that Mercutio had resisted him and vengeance had been exacted for the crime, and everyone must attest that justice had been done.

It was a thin enough fiction, but it would be accepted. Blood had been spilled, and all Christians knew that blood washed away sin. Mercutio’s reputation would be forever tarnished, and I knew that they’d marry him off quickly to his unwanted bride, to still any rumors.

But they’d have to wait until he was healed enough to stand on his own.

It took three of the servants to haul Mercutio up and force him on his way, but not because of resistance; all the fight was out of him, and only heavy despair remained. There were too many between us and him, and there was nothing we could do for him now. But it was a sickening, bitter horror to watch him dragged away, knowing how alone he would be.

The Ordelaffi made it clear that all should leave, and left Tomasso’s body to swing and twist in the morning breeze. I drew Romeo with me uphill to the gates, and took him to the side until the last of the family’s retainers were gone.

“We should cut him down,” Romeo said, wiping the tears from his face. “Mercutio wouldn’t leave him.”

“Mercutio has no say in it,” I said, “and they’ll be watching to see who dares come next. If we go ourselves, it’ll be the end of us. Go get Friar Lawrence. They can’t argue with the Church claiming the dead.”

He left, then, glad of something physical to do with his anger and grief. I sank down to a crouching position against the wall and breathed, just breathed, until some of my sick fury began to subside into something more manageable.

I thought I’d known the depths of cruelty men hid, but this . . . this was another thing entire. I’d known all our lives that we were fragile, easily punctured flesh, but seeing the boy choke on that noose, seeing the laughter and jeers from those who’d killed him . . . hearing the thumps as rocks pelted his dying body . . . that had shattered something within me, something I did not know was so precious.

I hadn’t known I had innocence left in me until I’d felt it die.

I ached, suddenly and wearily, to see Rosaline, to take comfort in her warm smile, her dark eyes. But I knew that she would ask me the hardest question of all: Why did you not help?

I hated myself, as much as I hated any of the men on that rope.

Because I was just as much to blame.

Friar Lawrence came at a hustling pace, with Romeo chivvying him along like a dog driving a wayward sheep, and when he saw me sitting by the gate he frowned and slowed. “Benvolio?” He offered me his hand. I stared at it uncomprehendingly for a moment, then nodded and wearily got to my feet. “Come.”

“We dare not,” I said. It tasted foul in my mouth, and worse when I swallowed. “If we’re recognized—”

“Ah, of course,” he said, and nodded. “I understand. I’ll care for the poor wretch. Go home. Take your cousin. I trust you know better than to try to see Mercutio just now.”

I did. I was not sure of Romeo, truly, but I nodded. I held the friar’s hand, looked into his eyes, and said, “Be gentle with Tomasso. He died bravely.”

“He died a sinner,” Friar Lawrence said, but it was not an accusation, only a sorrow expressed. “But even a sinner may be brave. I will see him shrived and buried; fear not. I will not mark his grave, though. There are those who would defile it, even inside the church’s precincts.”

He spoke as if he knew, and he likely did.

I put my arm around Romeo’s shoulders when he tried to follow the friar out of the gates. We watched as he walked down the hill, paused in front of Tomasso’s hanging body for a moment, prayed silently, and then lifted the boy to loosen the noose from his throat.

The way he carried the body, held close to his chest like a sleeping child, made my throat feel tight enough to shatter.

I turned Romeo toward home, and made him walk. “I swear,” he said in a raw, naked voice, “I swear I will find who betrayed him. Someone did, Ben. You know someone did.”

“I know,” I said. My own tone sounded flat and lifeless. And I did.

But I could not tell Romeo that it was my own sister, his own cousin, who had done it.

On my life, I could not.

• • •

In the end, we spent the day silently, together, playing chess. Neither of us drank, because we knew well that once we’d begun we would not stop until we drowned ourselves, for sheer misery. From time to time, Romeo would say something, always painful: “We should have stopped it,” perhaps, or, “They would not even let him mourn.” I scarce noted it, except as the punctuation to the roaring silence that filled the space between us.

When Balthasar finally said, very tentatively, “Shall I bring food?” it occurred to me that our family would soon be down to dinner, and our absences would be very strongly, ominously noted. I could not bring myself to care overmuch, but it was Romeo who—surprisingly—did.

“No,” he said, and stood up. “Bring us water to wash off the dust. We’ll dress and go down.”

“Will we?” I asked him without looking away from the flickering light of the candle on the table. I’d been staring at it since it had been lit, and now it was a guttering nub. “Why?”

“For the same reason you forced us from that place,” Romeo said. “Because Mercutio is our friend, and Mercutio’s friends had best show themselves to be good and well-mannered sons. The family will protect us, but they’d best hold no doubts of our innocence in private.”

I was being shown a fool by my own younger, less responsible cousin. Without him, I might have remained immured in my apartments, hiding and brooding, and that would have occasioned comments—if not in public from the family, then in private amongst the servants, who would rattle their gossip about the town. And soon I’d be suspect as well. My own extended bachelorhood would be dragged out as proof.

Romeo was right. We had to show our clean, well-scrubbed faces and, when the music was played for us, dance most sweetly.

I could not forget Mercutio’s wild mood before dawn. Married and buried, wed and dead. Would they still wed him? Or would his family lock him away in some monastery, sworn against his will to holy orders—no, they dared not; he was their eldest son and must be made to run to heel. They’d marry him, and he was right: He’d hurt the girl, more now than ever before. Her family had been willing to sell her for position, as all girls of means were sold or bartered; they’d simply seek a better bargain now that Mercutio’s reputation lay in tatters, but marry her they would, and as quickly as possible. His father would demand it, to shore up the Ordelaffi name. I did not like to think on that unhappy wedding night. If it was consummated at all, it would be done coldly and ruthlessly. Mercutio had nothing in his heart now but ashes and gall, and that would make a bad marriage, a poisonously cruel one.

The certainty of seeing my sister at dinner made me feel sick with the desire to close my hands around her plump neck, but I rose, allowed Balthasar to dress me in appropriate clothes, and met Romeo in the hall, newly washed and berobed himself. He looked at me somberly, nodded, and the two of us strode into the dining hall together.

Conversation dimmed upon our entry, but we looked neither right nor left, heading steadily and calmly for our seats. They sat empty, awaiting us, and as we took our places servants quickly sprang into action to bring us wine and soup. I know not what flavor they placed in front of me, though certainly the cooks had labored for hours on the preparation. The wine and the soup and the napkin would, at the moment, all have the same inedible texture.

I ate mechanically, smiled when the occasion seemed to call for it, and made conversation with my mother, who watched me with unnerving focus. She was worried, I thought.

I did not look at nor speak with Veronica, who sat only a few places away. She, for her part, was busily whispering with our younger cousin Isabella. Their hushed giggles scraped raw on my nerves, but I resisted all the violent impulses that tried to move me, and smiled, and smiled, and smiled.

At last, someone spoke plainly, and it was my uncle. “Benvolio,” he said. He was several cups into the wine, and leaning on his elbow as he tasted the next, then nodded for it to be filled to the brim.

“Sir?”

“This business today with young Mercutio,” he said. “I trust there is no truth to the rumors of his behavior?”

“Rumors, sir?” I stared at him, blank faced, daring him to speak of such things at the table.

He was not quite that drunk. “No matter, no matter. I was only concerned for the safety of my nephew and my son, who have spent so much time with the boy. Nothing untoward occurred, then?”

I laughed, and it sounded surprisingly carefree to my ears. “We have always been the soul of propriety, I assure you, Uncle. I know not what rumors are being passed, but you know that our enemies often try to blacken reputations in unsavory ways.”

“For cert, yes, but this comes not from an enemy,” Montague said. A pin would have made a sound of thunder had it dropped; somewhere far down the table, a fork clattered noisily as it fell on a plate, and there was a hiss of disapproval like a pit of snakes disturbed. “This comes from his own household.”

I shrugged. “Mercutio and his father have been at odds lately, as you know; it comes of having a strong-willed heir, as you do yourself, sir.”

He laughed, casting a proud and indulgent look on Romeo, who seemed dangerously silent. “Of course, of course. A high-spirited boy is a credit to any father,” he said. “But you should be more cautious with your friend. I do not wish to think ill of him, but your own reputations may suffer should these rumors persist.”

“They won’t,” I said. “It’s air and nonsense. Why, Mercutio’s to be married soon.”

Montague was more acute than the wine would indicate, because while he still smiled at me, he cut his eyes toward his son and said, “Romeo? ’Tis true, what Benvolio says?”

“Has my cousin ever been a liar?” Romeo asked. “You wound my brother, and in wounding him, I bleed.”

“Come now, fond as I am of you both, you are not brothers.” No, because if I had been born of his loins, I would be the heir, a fact that made Montague justifiably unnerved. Heirs had died at the hands of their cousins before, many times, to make new heirs.

“As good as,” Romeo countered defiantly. “Raised as brothers, and brothers in affection and in temperament. Call you him a liar, sir, you call me one also.”

“Smooth your rough tongue, my son, I asked only out of love,” Montague said. Romeo attacked his game bird with such single-minded ferocity I could only think that he wanted to pull something apart with his bare hands, and dinner was the least dangerous choice he might have. “Well, then, that’s clear enough. My dear? Shall we retire and leave our children to their amusements?”

He stood, and Lady Capulet stood obediently to leave with him; it was her place to go, whether she was hungry or not, sated or not. I wondered whether she had always been so content with that lot, so biddable. Surely not. Surely once, she had been young and afire with her own potential. Even girls dreamed of what they might do, did they not? I had no idea what they dreamed about, but I did not think it was a lifetime of being ordered, of walking behind, or enduring whatever was allotted to them without complaint.

Some women created their own worlds, like my grandmother. Some, like my mother, were trapped like flies in amber by their choices and lives. I had never been sure which of those extremes described my aunt.

We finished the dinner, Romeo and I, in apparent good spirits, dissembling as if our lives depended on it, which might have been the case. I had left stolen goods at Mercutio’s apartments. If he was of a mood to turn on me, it would be a simple thing—he had seen us there by the wood; I knew it. He knew we had watched Tomasso die, and done nothing.

I could not imagine that he did not hate us.

Try as I might, we did not, as it happened, avoid Veronica in the end. She and the insipid younger cousin trailed us back from the dining hall—it seemed a deliberate strategy—and I heard part of a whisper with Mercutio’s name, and that shrill, muffled giggle, and it broke the fragile hold I had on my own fury.

I rounded on her.

My sister, concentrating on her gossip, did not see me until it was too late to dodge. I grabbed her by the back of the neck and dragged her squealing around the corner, into a darkened alcove, while Romeo forced the cousin along down to the hall with a firm arm over her shoulders. “Enough,” I told Veronica in a voice that ought to have made her grateful she still breathed. “If I hear you say his name again—”

“You’ll what?” She struck my hand away from her, color burning hot in her cheeks. “Hit me, as you did Romeo? Beat me, as Mercutio’s father did him? Do you imagine anyone will allow you to touch me? I am an asset. You—what are you? An extra Montague, of little value. They can’t even sell you for a dowry.”

“They hanged the boy today, while Mercutio was forced to watch,” I said, keeping my voice low and vicious and intimate between us. “Someone dropped a whisper in the wrong ears, and I know it was you, Veronica. I know.”

“Oh, do you?” A smirk danced at the corners of her full mouth now, and she fussed with the lace around her collar, fluffing it into just the right shape. “As I hear it, the first complaint came from someone who chanced to see the two of them in carnal embrace behind the church itself. Someone you would never suspect, I’ll wager.”

I had no idea what she was talking about, and I tightened my grip on her shoulders. I saw a flash of panic in her eyes before the arrogance returned. “Make yourself plain,” I said. “I’ve no time for this, and you know I am out of temper.”

“A Capulet,” Veronica said. “A Capulet girl was the one who complained of their unnatural embrace to the bishop himself. Or so it’s said.”

“Which Capulet girl?” I did not believe her. I did not want to believe her, truth be told, and I saw the vinegar-bitter flash of victory in her eyes.

“The one Romeo is always bleating about,” Veronica said. “The plain one bound for the convent. Rosaline. And so, we are revenged upon her, too.”

I let her go and stepped back as if she’d caught fire. I wanted to believe she was lying; I did not want to believe that Rosaline, of all people, had been the one to do such a cruel and heartless thing. But she is devout, I thought. She plans for a life in the Church. She does not know Mercutio. All she would see is something ugly and venal and perverse, conducted in the dark. Small wonder she would be offended.

But it felt wrong to me. Very wrong.

“You’re lying,” I said. “You soul-rotted little villain, you lie. You’re the one who bent the bishop’s ear and blamed the Capulets for it.”

Her lips curled into a perfect bow of satisfaction. My clever, evil little sister, so good at twisting her words. “Your companion was a liability to the house of Montague with his behavior,” she said. “Bound to be caught eventually. Now he hates the Capulet wench for betraying him, when before he might have seen our quarrel with them as some game of chess, bloodless and adventuresome. I did you a favor, brother, binding him closer to us. I did him a favor. Don’t think Grandmother wouldn’t approve. It was her own idea.”

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.

• • •

Slipping 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.