Prince of Shadows

QUARTO 4

The next morning was the solemn mockery of a marriage for my sister, Veronica.

I had slept not at all; my body ached dully, my eyes felt rubbed in sand, and I was of short temper as Balthasar dressed me in my finest clothes for the wedding. Well, at least someone would be happy today, I thought, even if it was Veronica’s aged bridegroom; Veronica would be happy after the night’s work of pleasing him, because she would have shed House Montague and become mistress of her own estate, with her own funds to begin her social conquest of Verona. After today, I’d have little to do with the girl, and of that, I too could be glad.

“Balthasar,” I said, as he straightened the hang of my sleeves, “I would have you take a journey for me.”

“A journey, sir?” He brushed dust from my shoulder. I could not tell from his expression what he felt.

“To Mantua,” I said. “My cousin will have need of a servant, even in exile. Would you go, to watch after him? He is still in danger. Capulet’s reach is long, and it carries a dagger.”

“I would be most pleased to be of service, but I would hate to leave you,” he said.

I opened up the chest kept locked by my bed, and took out a bag of gold coin. “This is the last of the Prince of Shadow’s profits,” I said. “There’ll be no more of it. Take it, with my thanks. I shall see you once the clouds have lifted, and Romeo is back in the prince’s favor.”

“Do you think such will happen, sir?”

“I pray it will. The alternative is that I remain Montague’s heir for life, and how do I deserve such a punishment?”

“I cannot think of a reason, sir,” he said, and the gold disappeared, tucked within his doublet. “Shall I take a message?”

“Only that he should keep himself out of trouble,” I said, and allowed myself a frustrated smile. “Though history proves that seems impossible. I should tell you that he’s newly wedded, before he blurts it out in drunken sorrow.”

“Wedded, sir?”

“To Juliet Capulet.”

It was the sign of what an excellent servant he was that Balthasar hesitated only a little before saying, without any surprise, “I see, sir; that is a complicated matter indeed. I take it your grandmother does not know?”

“She knows,” I said. “I told her.”

“That must have been . . . eventful.”

“In truth.”

He asked no questions, and I offered no details; the ferocious old harpy had all but accused me of collusion in Romeo’s folly, and I bore the mark of her cane in forming bruises on my back. Only the fact that she was so ancient had spared me from far worse. But she’d not tell my uncle; I knew that; my defeat was also hers. She had no cause to spread the word of our humiliation.

Only to dole such misery out to me.

Balthasar pinned a Montague badge to my chest and said, “You look very well, sir. I trust you will take care in the confines of the church, and along the way? I worry that I won’t be there to watch after you.”

“I will have to look out for myself.” I clapped my hand to his shoulder, and he looked away. “You’ve been a good servant and a better friend.”

He nodded without speaking, and slipped a jeweled dagger in its sheath at my side. Though decorative, it had a keen edge, and so did my rapier, which he belted on as well. It might give offense to the bridegroom, but I cared little what the greedy old man thought of me.

I cared about living through the morning.

Balthasar took his leave, and I joined my mother in the hall; my aunt and uncle descended the stairs a moment later, dressed in heavy velvets. Montague, too, was armed, but only with a dagger. I did not doubt the ladies were likewise encumbered, but those blades were concealed in sleeves, boots, or bodices. My mother seemed cool and distant, and she held a rosary that she had brought with her from England; I recognized the well-worn beads.

Veronica came last, and in a cloud of cooing attendants. My sister wore her wealth stitched densely on the gold-chased fabric of her bridal gown—pearls and sapphires, with the flash of rubies and diamonds at her throat and ears. She seemed much satisfied with herself, I thought, and I fell in at the front of the party with Montague swords before my uncle dragged me back by his side, to a safer position. Of course. I was now his heir, though he liked that fact as little as I.

The procession to the cathedral was made under the hot sun, and two days’ rain had become a miserably humid morning; the cobbles steamed, and so did I, inside my fine clothes. Veronica’s face turned pink from the heat, a fact that displeased her enough to demand fans and shade from her attendants as we walked in a block down the narrow streets. Gawkers had turned out, of course. Some wished us well, and tossed flowers; some only stared, and some spit and made curse signs when they thought they could do it unobserved. Near the piazza—busy as always—I spotted Capulet bullies massed in a clot of red, and they broke loose and pushed through toward us.

“Beware,” I said to my uncle, and pointed at the oncoming men.

“Walk on,” he ordered. “We are bound for the church. Let nothing stop us, certainly not some weak-bellied Capulets!”

And so we went on, and the guard tightened around us until I had to watch close to not tread heels upon those nearest . . . and just as we came close to the shadow of the cathedral, the Capulets, allied with others, sprang their trap. More poured from the street adjoining, and still more closed in behind, and then with a roar they sprang on us, knives and cudgels and swords, and the melee was on.

Veronica screamed in frustration and fear as she was buffeted by brawlers on either side; the guards around us were hard-pressed to defend us. I drew my sword and lunged over a guard’s shoulder, burying the point cleanly in a Capulet soldier’s chest. They had roused all their allies against us, and hired more bravos; they had opened the treasury in order to hurt us, and hurt us they had. So far, none of their blades had reached beyond our guards, but the cobbles were already wet with blood, and bodies fell to my left under a strong assault. I pivoted in that direction, drew my dagger, and slashed with it to parry the attack of a hired man. He grinned with the excitement of hot blood, and of all that there was to notice, I was oddly struck by how good his teeth were . . . and then I beat tempo on his rapier, one, two, three, and then a pivot and riposte in quarto, and my sword slid between his ribs and out his heart, and he was down, grimacing now.

But the next attacker caught me in the side—a glancing blow that gouged off flesh and hit rib, but a hit nonetheless, and the tenor of the brawl had changed around me as Montagues rallied and fought for their very lives. Women were screaming, and I saw blood on Veronica’s dress; I had the fleeting thought that she would be very cross, but then two Capulets came at me, and I sorely missed the quick blade of Mercutio, and Romeo and Balthasar on my right hand. Alone, I was vulnerable, and I felt it never so much as in that moment, with blood running hot from my side, and every lunge, thrust, and parry seeming to take more strength than the last.

There was renewed shouting, alarms being beaten, and just as I was forced back and knew I was overmatched, the watch’s men crashed into the lines of Capulet bravos and sent them running. The Capulets themselves were not so fainthearted, and a few stayed to fight, but only one tried for me. I beat him back until the watch could take hold.

In the aftermath, I leaned against a cool stone wall and caught my breath in gasps. My body shook with effort, and now that I had the leisure, I felt the wound’s sharp ache. But the blood, though free-flowing, was nothing fatal, and I turned to look at my family.

My mother was safe, still ringed by guards; with her huddled her maids and my aunt’s party. But my mother was fighting to be free of the restraints, and for a moment I did not understand, until I saw Veronica standing alone, facing a lissome Capulet boy no older than she. He was mayhap a minor cousin, a page to his illustrious uncle, or perhaps he had even served Tybalt at table.

I did not know his name. All I knew of him was that he had my sister’s right hand in his—a hand that held a small jeweled dagger—and that, as she collapsed against him, he cradled her as if he were surprised by her sudden drop.

I do not remember leaving the shadow of the wall, nor pulling the young boy away from her; I remember only my mother kneeling beside her, and Veronica’s bewildered eyes peering up into mine as her hands restlessly traveled over and over the Capulet dagger that lay buried in her breast.

I turned on the boy, hauled him upright, and shoved him hard against the wall with my dagger aimed for his eye. “Why?” I shouted. He looked as smooth skinned as my sister; surely he was even younger than she, hardly allowed out of his schoolroom. His Capulet colors fit him badly, as if he had not had time to be measured for them. We pull children from their nurses to fight our battles, I thought, and it was eerily clear and cold in my mind. The boy was afraid, and so he should have been.

“I did not mean . . .” He licked pale lips. There were tears in his eyes. “Sir, please, I did not mean to hurt her, but she stabbed at me. . . .”

I did not move. Kill him, my grandmother’s voice shouted in the back of my mind. Why do you hesitate? Your sister’s blood is on his hands, struck down before the church on her wedding day! No one will judge you wrong!

I lowered the dagger, though I kept hold of his throat. “No more,” I said. “Tybalt is dead. Romeo is gone. My young sister lies dying. It is enough. Go and tell your war-making uncle that before I write it in your own blood.”

His eyes widened. “You . . . you mean to let me go?”

“Swear to lay down arms against my family, and go free.”

Suddenly his young, pale face twisted into a wolf’s smile. “Coward,” he spat. “Unnatural brother, who loves his sister so little. I spit on your family, and I spit on your coward’s oaths!” He was still afraid, but he knew there were Capulets watching, Capulets who would carry tales of him back. Like me, he was trapped by Verona itself, in the web of our ancient hates.

But I let him loose, and pushed him into the arms of the captain of the watch. He frowned beneath his shining helmet, and said, “You give him to me?”

“For hanging,” I said. “For murder of my sister. I stand witness, and so is my mother and all these here. Let Capulets be seen for the villains they are.”

“Coward!” the boy cried. His voice cracked, though, and his eyes were wild now. “You will not even avenge her! Coward!”

I raised my blade to eye level. “This crimson stain on me is Capulet blood,” I said. “Blood of honest and brave men, though they be enemies. I would not sully it with yours, boy.”

He shrieked as they led him off. There was no doubt of his guilt, and though the Capulets roared in protest, and would hasten to the prince for appeal, the boy would swing, and justice would be done.

I did not care.

Veronica still lived, by some evil miracle; my mother’s trembling hands touched the hilt of the dagger in her breast, then drew back, then touched again. Around us, voices cried for surgeons, but no surgeon could physick her back to life. She was dead, yet still suffering.

“Benvolio,” she said, and her voice was weak and small and lost. “Benvolio, my dress, my dress is stained—”

I took her hand in mine and knelt beside her. “Hush now; it will be cleaned. ’Tis not so bad as that.” I put gentle fingers on her cheek. She wept, though I am not sure she knew of it. It made her look so much like a frightened child. “Rest awhile now. The surgeon is coming.”

“That boy,” she said, and squeezed my hand tightly for a moment. “Wretched Capulet boy, did you see him? I only meant to frighten him away; I never thought he’d strike me. He was pretty. So pretty. I thought— Do you hate me so much, Benvolio?”

“No,” I said softly. My hate was dying with her. “You are my sister, Veronica.”

“I should not have betrayed your friend,” she whispered, and more tears rolled from the far corners of her eyes, wetting the hair above her ears and the fabric of her headdress, with all its precious pearls. “I did it for no reason, except to show I could, that I had power over another. . . . It was cruel of me. . . .”

“Hush. Mercutio is gone. He aches no longer.”

“Then I will meet him soon, and he will accuse me in the eyes of God,” she said, and gripped my hand so fiercely I thought bones would break. “It feels like a curse on us; don’t you think? For what I did. I should have been better, Ben, I should have— Please say you love me, for pity’s sake, say—”

“I love you,” I said, but it was too late; her last breath fled, and her face relaxed its tension. Her eyes looked toward heaven, but not with anticipation—rather with dread. Young as she’d been, my sister well knew her sins, and how grievous they were.

Friar Lawrence came with the surgeons, and my sister received last rites dead on the bloody cobbles, twenty steps from the door of the church where her withered old bridegroom waited in vain for his vows and his bridal rights. I could hear his querulous voice raised in protest, demanding satisfaction of my uncle. And my uncle, ever practical, demanding return of the dowry.

I hated Capulets and Montagues alike in that weary moment, and all I could think of was the fevered peace I’d felt in Rosaline’s arms, and on her lips.

But if that had been foolish yesterday, today it was impossible.

• • •

Capulet had argued that our bravos had started the brawl, and Montague argued otherwise, and my uncle presented his dead niece and grieving sister to the distempered prince of Verona, who levied a harsh fine on both and hanged the Capulet boy who’d delivered the death blow. It was done swiftly before dark in the piazza, so that justice could be seen to be done. I took no pleasure in the death of another child, but my grandmother had bestirred herself for the occasion, and she smiled an awful smile as she watched, and clapped her palsied hands in delight as he danced on the rope. I found myself standing next to my uncle as the old crone was loaded into her litter.

“Malicious old woman,” my uncle said. He sounded as disgusted and weary as I felt, and he leaned heavily on the silver-headed cane he carried against the debility of his gout. “This business is done. Come. We have much to discuss.”

“My mother—”

“Women grieve,” he said, and fixed me with a sharp, dark gaze. “It is women’s work. Men must be about men’s business, and now that Romeo has failed us, you must be my strong right hand. You did well, giving up the boy to the prince’s justice; a less canny man would have simply killed him, but you showed sense, and cast the blame squarely on Capulet. You’re no hotheaded fool, like my son.” He clapped a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Come, boy. There are plans to be made to take advantage of Capulet disarray. They have bloodied their noses finely today, and their coffers grow empty; Juliet’s marriage to Paris in two days will seal their fortunes more securely, but first they must lay on the feast tomorrow for the betrothal. We will need to speak to the greengrocers, the butchers, the spice merchants—any who owe us favors must be made to understand that Capulet should be offered the worst of their wares, at the best of prices.” He smiled and squeezed my shoulder. “Foolish games, foolish games, but it is the life we lead. Walk with me.”

I would have done, but just then, a fat old woman came huffing through the crowd—a nurse, and one I recognized. Behind her trailed a tall, mournful beanpole servant. I watched the woman’s progress, and realized with a shock, as her gaze fixed upon me, that she meant to upbraid me in the presence of my uncle.

“A moment,” I said quickly, and sketched a quick bow for him. “I will follow directly.”

He saw the nurse, and his brows drew together, then rose upward. “Who comes there?”

A lie would be the only course open. “She is of the Ordelaffi house. A moment, sir?”

“Good Mercutio is not yet decently buried,” he said, and nodded. “See to her needs, then. I move slowly enough; you may catch up as you wish.”

He limped off, surrounded by his attendants; my mother, Lady Montague, and all of the women were clustered around the cart that now held my sister’s body, covered by a blue Montague cloak.

The nurse blinked at all the confusion, as if she’d paid attention to none of it until now. “Lord preserve, I remember when weddings were joyous things, without all this bloodshed. . . . Ah, me, the poor bride, ruined, all ruined, naught to do for it now but pray God forgive the sinners and . . .”

“Madam,” I said, a little too sharply. “Why do you seek me?” She was Juliet’s nurse, and thus no friend of mine. I did not know the girl, nor did I wish to; if she was making some plea and claiming family, I’d walk away quickly. Let Romeo explain this tangle to his father, if he could. I wanted no part in it.

“Oh, young sir, my, how handsome you are. Such eyes, foreign eyes, they seem. Women cast themselves to sea for such handsome—”

“Madam.”

She fluttered her fan and cast me a sharp look, much upon her dignity, and leaned forward to whisper, “I have a note for you, a sweetly folded thing that I urge you to keep about your person and your privacy, lest shame fall upon—”

“Oh, give it here.” I sighed, and snatched the small triangle of paper from her fingers. It was sealed with blank wax, and when I broke it and unfolded the shape, I found that there were no names either.

But still, I knew who had written it, and a slow whispering roar filled my ears as I read.

Confession is good for the souls of those who suffer.

That was all. I swallowed hard, one fingertip scraping over the flowing, confident shapes of letters. . . . This came from Rosaline’s hand, and the scent of her drifted up from the paper, or perhaps that was only my senses and memory playing tricks.

I folded it and hid it away, and bowed to the much-affronted nurse, who fanned herself most rigorously. “I am grateful,” I told her. “Do not linger on my account, madam; this place is made unhealthy for those with your . . . political advantages.”

“If you mean Capulets, sir, I will put one of them against six of your Montague buffoons, and take the change in hand,” she shot back, but she had sense enough to keep it a whispered remonstrance. “Come, Peter, let us home. There is much to do before tomorrow’s feast!”

She sailed away, a short and wide ship with much canvas laid on, with poor Peter as a rudder. I reached inside my doublet and felt for the crisp edges of the paper again, and the smooth wax. Confession.

Rosaline meant me to see Friar Lawrence, and quickly, or she’d not have risked sending Juliet’s nurse with the message. The old woman gossiped far too much for anyone’s safety. Rosaline’s own servants—as I’d already suspected—were loyal to her aunt, and not to her; she could trust no one else even as far as Juliet’s nurse.

If you go, something in me whispered—the rational piece of me that had always guided me toward caution where my cousin rushed headlong—if you go, you risk your life. Worse, your family’s honor.

I had risked my family’s honor nightly for years, crawling the rooftops of Verona. My grandmother had tacitly approved that, because it had pleased her to see me humiliate our enemies. But this was another kind of risk altogether—the risk of alliance with our greatest enemies.

Alliance with the ones who had just killed my sister.

If you go, that part of me continued, then take your dagger and put it in her breast, for revenge. Your grandmother would smile for that, even if you stretched a rope like that Capulet boy. And that also was true . . . she would approve of Rosaline’s death, and clap, and laugh.

The image sickened me.

I cast a quick look around. My uncle was gone already, limping homeward; his sycophants and favorites were clustered around, and he’d not miss me for some time. He’d assigned me guards, though, four of them, who bracketed me like walking statues as I headed for the cathedral itself. I thought of ordering them away, but my mother’s words had proved true: Our enemies had no respect for sacred spaces, and now I was virtually alone. If the Capulets had the stomach for a second course, they would find easier meat but a tougher sauce; I was in no mood to dance with them again.

Inside, the hushed vast cathedral held a sense of eternity; overhead, the ceiling vaulted high and clean, and the ever-present gray stone of Verona took the form of rows of huge columns marching into the dimness, while at the end, the curve of the main chapel exploded in color and light. A child was singing, coached by a patient priest, and his high, sweet voice rang like an angel’s from the shining marble floor. The cathedral was filled with penitents on their knees, and I did not know where to look for Rosaline.

The sound of my guards’ tread behind me echoed martial and warlike in these holy silences, and I turned to the one at my left—Paolo, a trusted aide of my uncle’s, and a fierce mercenary fighter. “I will go alone,” I said. “Wait here.”

“Wait?” He peered at me with frank puzzlement. “We go where you go, young sir. Your uncle takes no chances now with his sole remaining heir.”

“Stay here,” I said. “I’ll not tell you again. My uncle will not be head of the house forever. Think well on whom you would please for your future employment.”

Paolo’s eyebrows climbed, and he stared at me with fierce dark eyes a moment before he bowed a little, mockingly. “As you wish, sir.”

“You can use the time to pray,” I said. “Surely you all have much to repent.”

“Surely,” he agreed, and stuck his thumbs in his belt. “But we don’t have all year, sir, unless you plan to run off to holy orders.”

“Not likely,” I said. “I’ve much to confess, too.”

He laughed, a little too loudly for this place, and waved his fellows off as I walked on into the church. I was doing exactly what my mother had cautioned against; I had made myself an easy assassin’s target, and yet I had no sense of danger here. The cathedral felt cool, calm, and sweetly peaceful. I paused before the beautiful statue of the Madonna, and for a moment, the awful truth crashed upon me, and I staggered and fell to my knees.

Veronica was dead, so pitifully and violently dead, and for nothing. Her killer had died weeping, for nothing.

A plague on both your houses, Mercutio had cried, and he had been right.

I bent my head and prayed, most earnestly, for the soul of my slain sister. I had not loved her as much as a brother should, and she had not been the sister I would have wished, but she had not deserved to die in terror, killed at the hands of a boy barely out of his child’s smock. I prayed for it to stop.

As if God had answered, a dark-cloaked figure settled next to me on the marble, made the sign of the cross, and bent its hooded head. I recognized the scent of her, warm wax and flowers, and I breathed it in like a drowning man’s last gasp of air. I started to turn, but her hand grasped my clasped ones. “No,” Rosaline whispered. “For the love of God, stay as you are. We will be seen.”

As quick as that, her touch withdrew. Where her fingers had rested, mine felt seared and aching. “My sister is dead,” I said. I don’t know why; she would have known, of course. But I felt it needed saying. “I could not stop it.”

“I know.” Her voice was gentle, warm, and sad, all the comfort that I had craved from my own family but would not ever find. “Benvolio, I am sorry. My young cousin is dead also, justly, for her murder. Tybalt was his idol, and he the willing worshiper. Children killing children, for love of nothing but empty hate.”

I heard the anguish in her, and felt its twin in myself. Why was it only the two of us who seemed to see the uselessness? But I cleared my throat of its sudden tightness, and whispered, “Why did you send for me?”

The dark hood turned just a fraction toward me, enough that I saw the sliver of a pale cheek, a fine dark eye. “To tell you that there is something unnatural in this,” she said.

“Hatred is the most natural of things to men.”

“No,” she said. “Not hatred. There is a terrible thing at work here, and I believe it is hate disguised as love. Juliet is a quiet, biddable child; she is thoughtful and has always done as her parents wished. She made no complaints about the marriage to Paris when her father first approached him months ago; she seemed pleased at her good fortune, to be wedding a fine man such as he.”

“Yet she fell in love with Romeo.”

“It is not love,” Rosaline replied, and something dark in her voice struck a chord in me that shivered through my chest. “She scarce knows your cousin, yet she threw away her birthright, her life, for him. She is to marry Paris on Thursday, you know; she begins her married life in terrible sin, or worse—she will flee to join Romeo and throw our family into chaos. There is nothing good to come from this. It is all a ruin.”

I could not but agree; I wanted to think this admirable and fine, this passion of my cousin’s, but in truth it had seemed to distress him as much as pleasure him.

“It is something else,” Rosaline said. “If it did not sound like a madwoman’s rant, I would say that there is some dark sorcery in this.”

It seemed to me as if, in that moment, all sounds stopped in the cathedral, even the soaring song of the child; I heard nothing but the sudden pulse of my heartbeat, loud as a drum in my ears. Mercutio had said as much, in his dying deliriums . . . even the witch had told me he’d sought from her a curse. Love is the curse, Ben, love is the curse. Do you understand? He had sought some sign of comprehension in me, but I had not understood him, though I’d pretended.

“Mercutio,” I said. I blurted it out in surprise, and sat back on my heels; Rosaline drew in a startled breath, and made a quick hushing motion with one hand. I assumed a pious position again, fingers folded together. “Mercutio tried to warn us. ‘A plague on both your houses,’ he said.”

“Capulet and Montague alike,” she said.

It was time to make the confession; it could no longer hurt my sister, who had gone to other judgment. “You know that he thought what you said caused Tomasso’s death.”

“I know, but have always been innocent of that. I knew, of course. But I said nothing.” Her voice dropped even lower, and I had to lean closer, into her intimate perfume, to hear the rest. “It was your sister. I did not want you to know she had done it from sheer malice. I wanted you to think better of her.”

“I knew already,” I said. “She told me. And she told me she had put about that you had done it.” I swallowed, choking down my discomfort.

Rosaline shook her head a little, though whether it was denial or sadness I could not tell. “She was a child,” she said. “With a child’s thoughtless cruelty.”

Veronica had been many things, but thoughtless was not one of them. Still, I saw no reason to confess it. “How does this help us?”

She thought a moment, and whispered back, “If someone laid a curse upon the guilty party, but thought the guilty party was a Capulet . . . and a Montague was the real villain . . .”

“Then the curse would fall on both houses,” I said. “Ah, God, Mercutio . . .” He had tried to warn me. With his last breath, he had seen his wrongs, and tried to confess, and I had misunderstood. “But to make a curse, you need more than malice; you need—”

“You need a witch,” she whispered back, “and Juliet’s nurse babbled today that one makes potions here in Verona, and charms. A young, comely witch, recently come to town. We must seek her out, Benvolio. We must be sure this curse is lifted.”

“I know who she is,” I said. I crossed myself, and rose to my feet. “If there is a curse, I will see it finished. I promise you that.”

Her hand flashed out to wrap around my calf, and I froze, short of breath, swaying on my feet. Those were idolatrous feelings to have here, under the eyes of the Holy Mother. “Careful,” she whispered, and let go. “Be most careful, my Prince of Shadows.”

“And you,” I said, and backed away.

In turning, I narrowly missed a knife aimed for my back. I assume it was a Capulet knife, though the man wielding it had on simple clothes; the knife itself was sharp, double edged, and was of finer stuff than the attacker. He stumbled, off balance and surprised as I dodged away, and fury took me over; I kicked a foot into the bend of his knees and shoved him facedown to the marble floor as the failed dagger skittered from his hand; I knelt on his back and retrieved it, and put it to the base of his skull, preparing to drive it home . . .

...and a strong, feminine hand fell upon mine. “No,” Rosaline said. “Not here. Not now, I beg you. Not in this place.”

“He was not so delicate of stomach!”

“It is your soul I fear for, not his,” she said, and then she was gone, moving quickly away into the shadows of the Mazzini chapel. The sudden violence had caught the attention of my guards, who shoved the faithful—some of whom had become gawkers—aside to reach me.

I hesitated a long moment, then stood up. I still felt the need to hurt him, badly, but I only flipped the dagger and offered it hilt-first to Paolo, who took it and shoved it in his belt. “A gift,” I said, and managed a false smile. “The Capulets send us presents.”

“Aye, they are generous indeed,” he said, and hauled the suddenly chastened assassin to his feet. He was an older man, withered and shaking. Paolo shook him like a terrier with a rat. “What to do with this one, then?”

“Let him go,” I said.

“Let him go?”

I held Paolo’s stare, and he finally grinned, shrugged, and opened his hand. The man stumbled away, clinging to the columns for support, and escaping out into the dusty, dying sunlight.

“I don’t know if you’re brave or stupid, young sir,” Paolo said, “but I think I like you.”

“There’s no profit in killing a poor farmer underpaid for the privilege of murdering me,” I said. “Better to set my sights higher.”

His grin widened and became Luciferian, and he clapped a hand on the back of his fellow bravo. “I’m your man, sir,” he said, and the others echoed him with a gusto ill matched to the cathedral’s dusky silence. The priest preparing the altar for the mass turned to give us a disapproving frown, and I quickly led my men out into the falling Veronese twilight.

• • •

Locating the witch proved to be no trouble; I had scarce noticed my path carrying Mercutio’s dying weight, but Paolo fetched a torch as the stone-faced alleys drowned in shadows, and with that, I was able to track the vivid dark stains that Mercutio had left behind.

The blood led us straight to her door.

It looked the same as any other in the narrow street—made of good stout wood, heavily braced with crude iron. Paolo rained blows upon it, and I did not expect it to open . . . but it did, revealing not the witch at all, but—oh, strange irony—Friar Lawrence.

He seemed as surprised as I, and his fat cheeks pinked as he backed away. “Young master Benvolio,” he said, and tucked his hands into his sleeves in an effort to look saintly. “I thought you would be with your sad family this night.”

“My family can wait,” I said, and shoved past him into the narrow confines. Yes, there was the bed, stripped now of its bloody mattress; there were the dried herbs hanging from lengths of cloth, dangling everywhere and filling the room with a rich, dusty smell. Even so, death was here. Mercutio’s pallid ghost haunted the shadows. “Where is she?”

“Where is who?”

“The witch,” I said, and drew my dagger. I did not menace him, I only held it at my side, but he must have caught the look on my face, well limned by the single burning candle. “I would have her.”

“Witch, you say? Why, sir, she’s no witch, only a woman wise in herbs and medicines, fresh come from the country to see her cousin decently mourned. . . .”

I turned the dagger so the edge caught the light in a silvery line; his gaze darted to it nervously, then back. “Think well on your silence, Friar. There has been too much death today. I would not add more.”

He licked his lips and edged to the door, but Paolo leaned in, blocking the way with insolent ease. “You dare not threaten me, boy.”

“Where is she?”

“‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. . . .’”

“Men do the business of the Lord. Where is she?” I strode forward and took hold of his robe, pulling him toward me. I did not raise the dagger; there was still some chance, however small, that my immortal soul was not completely damned. “Talk, Friar, or I’ll loose your tongue a harder way.”

“Here,” said a voice, and I looked back to see the girl pushing her way out of a small, hidden alcove behind a heap of hanging clothes. “Here, sir, please, don’t hurt him.”

She was smaller than I remembered, and braver; she lifted her pointed chin to hold my gaze with bold resolve. She did not look the part of a witch, I thought, but rather like a saint, ready for her martyrdom.

I let go of the friar, but kept the knife at ready. Witches were unpredictable creatures; if she wished to have me dead, surely she could manage it in an instant, and then escape in a puff of smoke—or so it was said. I did not think she looked quite so fierce.

She raised her empty hands and settled herself on a low stool, then folded her hands in her lap. She looked hardly older than Rosaline, and a good deal more delicately built, as if a stern wind might shatter bones. Still, she’d been strong enough to lift Mercutio’s dying weight, and treat his wounds.

There was a focused, intent look upon her face that seemed almost like peace. “I expected you to return,” she said. “I thought you knew already.”

“Eventful days,” I said. “My friend killed, my cousin exiled, my sister murdered in the streets today before she was to wed. I had not spared a thought for you until now. Until I was reminded that ‘love is the curse.’”

She flinched, and her hands tightened together in her lap, but she did not look away. She raised her chin just a little more in defiance. “It can be, when those around you deem it so,” she said. “Mercutio saw that as clearly as day. Some loves bring nothing but pain; it is not the love that’s at fault, but us. He knew that. He hated you all for it, all of you who stood by, yet he did not mean to curse you. Only the guilty.”

I found I was restlessly turning the dagger in my fingers, and sheathed it, not out of any impulse to mercy but to prevent myself from striking at her. “Tell me the tale,” I said. There was no other seat in the hovel, save the unmattressed bed with its rope straps, but I perched myself on the frame. She gazed at me, then at Friar Lawrence, and bent her head, finally.

“The friar had no part in it,” she said. “He came tonight for herbs and tinctures, nothing that might be a sin. May he not depart?”

“No,” I said, when the friar seemed tempted. “I will need his ears on this. Now, confess, witch. Tell me of this plot between you and Mercutio.”

She licked her lips and began in a soft voice, so soft I strained to hear it. “My cousin Tomasso’s death undid him,” she said. “He always believed . . . believed that somehow they would be safe together. When it happened, when Tomasso was so foully murdered before his eyes . . . his faith was broken, sir, and rightfully so. He begged. He begged his father to spare him, but the rope was thrown up anyway. How should he not feel hate?”

“For his father, yes; for the men who hauled the rope, perhaps. But why us?”

“It is a sin to hate your father,” Friar Lawrence said, all unexpected. “And Mercutio tried to please him, as a son should do. Perhaps he could not curse him.”

“More’s the pity,” I shot back, “since no one bears more of the guilt.” I fixed the girl with my stare. “Continue.”

“He . . . he thought the Capulets were to blame, sir, and the Capulets were your sworn enemies; he wanted vengeance on them.”

“Then why did he cry ‘on both your houses’?”

“Because . . .” She hesitated, then shook her head. “Because the curse we forged named the Capulets, but also said, ‘the house who betrayed us.’ If that was not the Capulets, but instead someone else . . .”

“Then the curse would fall upon us both,” I said, and squeezed shut my aching eyes. What a tangle of pain this was, so many evil mistakes made, and such mounting consequences. “How do we remove the curse?”

“Remove it, sir?” She seemed startled at the question, and affrighted.

“Yes, remove it, before more deaths come from it, and for nothing!” I took her by the shoulders and forced her to meet my eyes; she flinched, and I remembered how unsettling some found the color of them. Why, I was but one step removed from sorcery myself. “How is it to be done?”

“If I tell you, I give you evidence you can use to damn me,” she said, quite sensibly. Friar Lawrence turned pale and crossed himself, no doubt realizing that he was guilty indeed of consorting with a witch. “You must swear I will not be punished for it. I only did as Mercutio asked.” I was well out of patience, and violence was a tool that fit well in my hand; she must have seen it on me, for she flinched and hurried on. “It was a three-part spell, sir, and all three parts must be destroyed before it can be ended.”

“What three parts?”

“One faith, one mind, one flesh,” she said, and looked away. “You saw the one in flesh. I drew it there myself.”

The inked inscription, the one I’d glimpsed on Mercutio’s breast. “The letters upon his skin.” She nodded. “Is his death enough to shatter it?”

“Yes. That link is already broken.”

“And the others?”

“Sir, please—”

This time I drew my dagger. “One time again I ask you: What of the others? Faith and mind?”

“For the mind, he wrote it down in his own hand,” she said, in a very small voice now. “The other . . . the other was cast upon rosary beads. Tomasso’s rosary, that Mercutio took from his grave.”

“How so?” Friar Lawrence was unexpectedly affronted by this. “I buried the boy myself, with his rosary in his hands. . . .” He paled even more, and crossed himself. “Merciful God, Mercutio did not desecrate the grave!”

“He unburied Tomasso, and took the beads,” she said. “And buried him again, with love. If that is desecration, good friar—”

“What else can it be called?” he demanded, but my mind was on Mercutio, digging by the light of the moon, and finding the corrupting body of his lover. No wonder his hatred had turned so poisonous as to infect those around him; I could not imagine the grief and rage that had driven him to it, nor to this.

“The rosary,” I said. “Where is it? And where is the writing of the spell?”

She shook her head now. “He did not tell me, sir; I only taught him. Where the things are now, I know not . . . but the rosary would have to be in Capulet hands; he meant it to be so.”

In Rosaline’s hands, if he believed Veronica’s story about Rosaline’s betrayal . . . yet it was Juliet who seemed to have given herself over to obsession. Juliet who seemed bent on self-destruction.

“You know nothing more?”

“Nothing.”

“Swear it,” I said, and pointed the dagger an inch from her eye. She did not blink. “Swear it now, upon your corrupted soul, witch.”

“My soul is not corrupted, but I swear it upon my soul, and upon God and his angels,” she said. “I know nothing more than I’ve said. If I could stop this, I would; Mercutio is gone, and vengeance is hollow. His spilled blood told me that, at least.” She smiled a little, through sudden tears. “He was not a bad man, you know.”

“He was a broken man, and he was my brother, and my friend. You need not tell me he was a good man, for I loved him,” I said. “And you should never have sent him down this dark path. You imperiled his soul.”

“So does murder,” she replied. “Yet no one shuns Lord Ordelaffi. Nor you, Benvolio, though you have blood on your hands.”

“Less than you would think,” I said, “and never but in the thick of a fight that might have cost me my own life. I am not Mercutio’s father.”

“You did not stop him,” she said, and met my eyes with level accusation. “You stood by and watched as Tomasso died, and Mercutio’s soul was torn in two.”

I had no answer for that, no clever riposte to give; I lowered the dagger, then sheathed it, and nodded to Paolo.

He drew his rapier. “I’ll kill the witch for you,” he said.

“No.” As he advanced, I backed to stand between them, and drew my own sword and beat his down. It was cramped quarters, between us; the ceiling was so low that my head cracked rafters when I moved unwisely. “Let the Church deal with her, or the prince, but I’ll not have her blood on our hands. Who knows what doom she might lay upon her killer?”

That set him back with a frown, and he nodded and backed from the room. I followed, ducking under the low doorway, and found Friar Lawrence behind me, tugging nervously at his habit. “That was well-done, young sir, very well-done,” he said. “I had no notion she was a witch, steeped in the black arts, I came only for her skilled medicaments. . . . Yes, yes, most proper you leave punishment to the city’s prince and the church elders. . . . I can give no evidence of wrongdoing, you understand. . . .”

“Why came you here?” I asked him. He seemed so uneasy it screamed of guilt, and fear, rank fear. “What medicaments did you purchase?”

“Nothing, sir, nothing harmful at all, only a . . . a certain draught, a vial of distilled liquor—”

“Liquor you can purchase anywhere,” I said. “What effect does this draught hold?”

“Benvolio, I would rather not say. . . .” He shook his head, but when pressed by silence, and the closing around of my guards, he said, “When you drink this liquor off, presently through your veins runs a cold and drowsy humor, and no pulse shall keep native progress . . . no warmth, no breath shall testify that you live. The roses of lips and cheeks fade to ashes, and the eyes’ windows fall like death. . . .”

“You mean it feigns death,” I said, speaking plainly, and he nodded, ducking his head well into the neck of his robe. “For how long does this likeness of death last?”

“For two and forty hours,” he said. “Most precise. And there are no bad effects; you awake as from a pleasant sleep. . . .”

He sweated in his guilt, and struggled to think himself innocent, as villains and fools so often do. At least the witch admitted her fault.

“Whom did you mean this draught for, then?”

“Ah, sir, that I cannot confess, for it is a great secret.”

I was all out of patience now. “Then give the bottle hence, and let it be crushed into the street, where it can do no one any harm!”

That is when he, overcome with pallor, said, “But I have already given it to she who will drink it, young sir, and for the love of God and your cousin, you must not interfere; you must not—”

I knew, then, what had already happened. It was dark now, full night, and too late, all too late. It was plain from his words that Juliet Capulet’s hand had received this dark poison—harmless though he claimed it—and that she would have already quaffed it. Why? To evade her enforced marriage to Count Paris, of course. She meant to feign death, and steal away to my cousin’s arms.

It was not a fool’s plan, after all. It was dangerous, yes, and it would earn Juliet and Romeo the enmity of both our families, but they might yet escape this curse together, and alive. . . .

And yet, if Mercutio was right, if there was a curse at work, surely it would not be so simple as that.

“Too late to prevent the course,” he said, his face round and pale as the moon above the dark cloth. “The potion is drunk. They will seek to rouse her for tomorrow’s solemnities but find her cold in her bed, and will bear her with much lamentation to the family tomb. No sin or blame comes to Count Paris, nor to the Capulets, and the keen lovers will have their happiness despite their quarreling families.”

“And what of Romeo? What if he hears of her death? I know my cousin’s mind in this, and it will not go well, Friar—”

“I have sent to Mantua, sir, with word for Romeo describing the plan. He need only wait a short time to collect his lady from her sleep; I will help him spirit her away before she wakes in the tomb.” He gazed at me with a mournful resignation. “Sir, I would rather not have done all this, but you know the lengths to which they have already gone; I feared—no, I knew—that young Juliet would end her own life, by any means necessary, to avoid Count Paris’s bed. What would you have me do, shield my eyes from her intention to self-murder and the gravest of sins? Or help the course of true love—”

“If it is true love,” I said flatly. “You heard the witch.”

“But, sir, if he thought Rosaline the author of his misery, why then would he send the curse to sting poor, innocent Juliet?”

It was a most excellent question, and it shook my convictions to their dry bones, but I had seen Romeo, seen the torment in him, the unwilling nature of his obsession. I did not believe that Juliet had found her happiness in this so-called love, either; it was a fever that would burn them to bones.

But the friar was not yet finished. He cleared his throat and said, “It may well be impetuous of me to speak so, but fair Rosaline has also bid me carry notes and arrange assignations, my clever young man. I would well beware that if there is a curse of love, it may seek to fall upon you.”

I laughed aloud. I could not help it; the absurdity of it was too great. “I am no Romeo, to be pushed into the arms of a chance-met girl. . . .” But even as I said it, I thought that was exactly what I was. I had chanced into Rosaline’s rooms that first evening, when the Prince of Shadows sought his quiet revenge upon Tybalt . . . but no. What there was between me and Rosaline was no curse, and further, it had grown slowly, carefully, and even now, I knew that however it would pain me, I could walk from her, and pretend as if my heart had not turned to ash.

Surely a curse would not allow me to walk away.

Friar Lawrence bowed just a little, having well made his point, and said, “All will be well, young Montague. Only two days more will see the lovers reunited and safely away, and all’s well that ends well.”

I felt a deep, terrible disquiet, but I bowed in return, taking a polite leave of him. I cared not about the witch; I knew she had told me all she could, and from the fright in her eyes, she would be off before the morning light. We would, I thought, be well rid of her.

But if there was a curse, as Mercutio had believed . . . if there was, then there were two things I would need to find to end it: a rosary, and something in which he’d written his curse, in secret.

I allowed myself to be speeded home for the gloomy evening, where my mother grieved quietly for her lost daughter, and my uncle for his lost dowry, and I . . . I only grieved, and paced, and slept fitfully until the morning.

• • •

All Verona woke to the lamentations of House Capulet, for Juliet was dead.

The morbid details of it came as no shock, and mirrored what Friar Lawrence had predicted . . . the girl had been safely to bed in the night, and in the dawn her fat old nurse had discovered her stiff and cold in her bed, with a bottle of poison close by her side. It was difficult to learn more, since I was about my uncle’s business of the day, which meant making funeral rites for my sister in a suddenly crowded church calendar, as well as dispensing payments to all the necessary guards, bravos, and allies who faithfully served us. Mercutio had been quickly buried, without so much ceremony as might have been honorable; his widow left Verona that morning, sent back to her family with a significant portion of the Ordelaffi fortune packed in her bags.

In the twilight of the evening, as the Capulets mimicked us and hastily changed their day’s preparations from wedding to funeral, I walked with the family’s procession down the narrow streets and out to where the Montague family tomb was kept, in the care of the monastery. As Veronica’s brother, I held pride of place at the front of the bier, shouldering a portion of the weight of her silk-wrapped body; I felt suffocated beneath the traditional black robe and mask that all those who bore her on their shoulders wore, while the men around us carried torches to light our way. Even the prince of Verona was masked and garbed, carrying one side of her slight weight, by which he showed his sorrow for the needless waste of her life.

It was a political gesture, and one that my uncle would have celebrated, had the occasion not been as solemn.

The women of Montague were not allowed to follow, not even at a distance; they stayed within the walls of the palazzo, and grieved in privacy. That, I thought, was a good thing, as well as custom, as we were wary of Capulet anger still.

We settled my sister to rest upon her stone bed within the tomb. In a month or two, once the corruption of her body had finished, servants would enter and inter her bones beneath the carved stone lid of her sepulchre, where she would rest until called to the resurrection. Though the interior of the tomb was decorated with fine paintings, I tried to notice little of it; the oppressive sense of death here seemed suffocating, for all its gold leaf and gentle angels. Veronica had been wrapped close in grave windings of the finest silk, leaving only the square of her eyes, nose, and mouth exposed, and the flesh seen there was as pale as the grave clothes.

“We all go to our God stripped of our vanities,” said the prince, standing at my shoulder and looking at Veronica with me. “Come, Benvolio; she is in the hands of angels now.”

She seemed very small to me. Death had robbed her of the vigor and energy with which she had attacked her future, and however malicious that energy had been, I still missed its fire. There had been little enough love between us, but blood knows blood, even so.

And hers was now, forever, cold.

I crossed myself and left the tomb. Outside, I took in a deep, convulsive breath of the cooling night air, and stripped away the domino mask as if it burned me. The smell of the tomb—old, dusty death—clung to me in the folds of the robe, and I took it off as well, though custom said I should wear it hence. I began to hand it absently off to Balthasar, only to remember that I’d sent him to Mantua, with Romeo. I wondered whether anyone had told Romeo of the melee, and Veronica’s death. I wondered whether he would even care, so fixed was he on his love of Juliet.

The prince clapped me on the back. “That was well-done, and a credit to your sister’s memory,” he said. “She died innocent, and God will welcome her soul into paradise.” He moved off quickly, to glad-hand my uncle and other upright, rich town leaders. Capulet was, of course, not among them.

Lord Ordelaffi was.

I made my way to his side. He looked older than I remembered, and more tired, in this unguarded moment; he forced a smile and offered a firm handshake to me. “Benvolio,” he said. “My sorrow for your sister.”

“And mine, for your son,” I said. His eyes slid away as he nodded. “I regret I did not know of his burial before it was done, or I would have gladly borne him to his rest.”

“You had grief enough, with Romeo’s exile and your sister’s untimely end,” he said, which sounded well enough, but there was falseness behind it. He had not wished to see Mercutio’s friends, nor to be reminded of the love that we had borne him. “It is in God’s hands now.”

“I know it is not an auspicious time, sir, but I left with Mercutio a few things that I would like to retrieve,” I said. “May I come and find them?”

“What, tonight?” he asked, and frowned. “I suppose there is no reason to wait. I have already given over some of his things to the poor, and to the Church. If what you seek is among them, you must deal with the monsignor.”

I thanked him and drifted to my uncle’s side to tell him that I would accompany Lord Ordelaffi home, and thence be escorted by his men to the palazzo; he nodded, much distracted by the hot, whispered argument that was again being offered by Veronica’s aged bridegroom over the return of the proffered dowry. Five thousand florins was at stake. My uncle would not care what I did.

The Ordelaffi palace was smaller than the Montague, but built along similar lines—what windows existed toward the street were high above, and blocked with stout shutters. They were more defensive than decorative; not so long ago, the great houses of Verona had repelled one another’s assaults with arrows, spears, and boiling oil. Today we were more gracious, but no less guarded.

The difference truly came inside the Ordelaffi palace. I had been here but rarely, and always with Mercutio. The last time had been more than two years before, and I was surprised to note the barren walls where rich tapestries had once been draped to keep out the night’s chills. Portraits still adorned them, but the gold-illuminated icons I remembered were gone, as were the richer candlesticks and plate.

It seemed smaller, and poorer, than ever.

I followed Lord Ordelaffi down a bare hallway to a room set well off from its fellows; it was locked, and he fetched the key from a servant to open it to my gaze.

Mercutio’s room had changed, too. It was stripped of its furnishings—gone to the poor, or to the Church, or (more likely) to be sold to cover the cost of his widow’s departure. A sad heap of his things lay on a threadbare carpet. My eyes darted to the niche where he had stored away the things I stole on my nighttime adventures as the Prince of Shadows. It was still shut tight.

Lord Ordelaffi shut the door behind him, sealing the two of us within. I turned slowly to look at him, and saw a dark glint in his sullen face. “You knew of his crimes,” he said. “His dalliances. You lied for him, Benvolio, and you are as guilty as anyone in sealing his fate. You and that cursed thief friend of his, his Prince of Shadows.” Ordelaffi’s voice was rich with disgust. “My son consorted with thieves, as well as carried on his . . . his sinful relations with that apostate. Do not try to tell me you were ignorant of all of it. I found the gold, hidden away in a trunk, that my son kept for that criminal!”

That had not been my gold, but Mercutio’s; I said nothing in response, preferring to wait. Lord Ordelaffi’s eyes were small and reddened with emotion—grief or anger, I could not tell.

“You knew him well,” he said. “Why did he drive me to such extremes? I beat the boy, as I should have, to drive the folly out of him, but he only became more sullen, and more secretive in his transgressions. Why could he not be . . . be . . .” His hands grasped at a meaning he could not name.

I did it for him. “Be the son you wished?”

“Yes.”

“Because he was as he was formed, as God made him,” I said. “All your beating and pushing would not force him into another shape. He loved you, my lord, but you broke his heart with the murder of the one he loved. What he was, after . . . he was neither the boy you wanted, nor the man he wished to be. And much grief has come of his shattering.” I was angry, but in a cold, remote way; Ordelaffi was not the roaring giant he’d been when he’d ordered the execution of Mercutio’s lover and set in motion all that followed. “But rest assured on one account: Your son was no thief.”

“He was friend and accomplice to one—a coward, a dog who led my son astray.”

I took a step toward him, holding his gaze, and for all his bluster, all the vicious beatings he had given his son, this time he retreated. “Careful,” I said, low in my throat. “Speak ill of your son and it will go just as ill for you.”

He swallowed, looked away, and opened the door behind his back to edge away. “Take what you like,” he said. “I care not. Whatever remains may go in the midden, where it belongs.”

The sound of the door closing was a thunderclap of futile rage. I took a deep breath and smelled fear—his, not mine. He would be haunted, I thought; all his days he would be stalked by the ghost of the son he could not love.

The things on the floor were a jumble—broken wooden toys from Mercutio’s childhood that I set aside to be mended and given to others; a lute with three loose strings and a cracked neck; a dented goblet I well remembered in his hand. I stirred the pile, and found little else of value, but I bound it all up in the old carpet and made it a bundle to carry. I’d leave nothing for his father’s angry hands.

The niche was locked, but I was an expert at such things, and it yielded in only a moment. It seemed empty, but when I felt into its depths, I touched leather, and pulled out a book—a thin volume written in Mercutio’s own hand.

I sat down on the sill of the window, where I’d so often entered by climbing the wall, and lit a candle to read.

He had written of me and Romeo, and our adventures together as boys; he’d spoken also of the Prince of Shadows, but never even in the privacy of these pages identified him, only confessed his own involvement in selling on some of the stolen goods. I wondered whether his father had read this, but I doubted he had; he had not the stomach for truth in such searing measures.

Because also, Mercutio spoke of Tomasso. It was tender, and passionate, and equally it was tragic, because my friend had known always that there could be no happiness in his love, only disappointment and grief. Yet he had pursued it to the bitterest end, because it was love.

On the day of Tomasso’s murder, he had written only one thing, in writing that seemed jagged and hard.

He died this day. All that is good in me died with him.

From that day forward, the entries were shorter, and there was no hint of happiness in them; on the contrary, as the candle burned down and my eyes blurred with weariness, I met a Mercutio I hardly knew . . . a boy no longer, but a man forged into a weapon that cut on all sides, like a ball of sharp knives. Love had curdled to a black and furious hatred, and he did not much care where it struck.

I’ faith, I almost hate the Montagues as much . . . 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.

• • •

Reading it drew the breath from me, and I felt faint and ill, and for a moment I put down his book, unable to read more. He struck me hard, and from the grave, and I knew it was just.

I read the rest of it quickly, numbed to pain now, and found the entry where he recorded his visit to the witch. On the next leaf he had inscribed what seemed a poem, and well I remembered his half-mad quoting of it . . . and at the end, the simple, dry words etched in the strange color:

CURSED BE THE CAPULETS. CURSED BE THE HOUSE WHO BETRAYED US.

This, then, was the second part of what the witch had said we should find . . . the curse, written in his own hand . . . and I realized that the ink, rusted brown rather than black, smelled strange and yet familiar.

Blood.

I flinched back from it, feeling the menace in those sharp strokes of his pen, the slashes of the letters. Here was the doom he had, all unwitting, cast upon not just Capulet, but Montague as well. A plague upon both your houses. He had thought to curse Rosaline and all her kin, but instead it had reflected back upon Veronica and Montague.

And Romeo.

I closed the volume, blew out the candle, shouldered the bundle of broken dreams, and carried it all home, where I set a flame to his diary and watched his curse burn to ash. Two-thirds of it was done, then.

But nowhere in the sad collection that remained did I find the third piece . . . the rosary that he had taken from Tomasso’s body.

I have given his things to the poor, and to the Church, his father had said.

The rosary would have gone to the Church.

• • •

The scribe assigned to Monsignor Pietro was young, and keen; upon forcing the lock on the study door within the monsignor’s private residence, I found careful records of all that had been received from House Ordelaffi. It revealed much about the nature of Mercutio’s father’s penitence; the tapestries I had seen removed were listed, and much of the plate and silver had ledger entries. The records listed a trunk full of Mercutio’s precious books he had acquired, and assorted adornments and religious articles of the young man, now gone to God’s keeping.

But it did not say where such things were stored.

I had resurrected the Prince of Shadows tonight, dressed in dusty gray and black and masked against recognition; the monsignor slept upstairs, in his soft bed, warmed by a woman who slept at his side, against all churchly conventions. His servants drowsed not so comfortably, nor so sweetly attended, but sleep they did, and my job was made easier by it.

I broke the lock on his storehouse deep in the basement with an iron bar, and within found a treasure house . . . gold, silver, precious gems, and jewels of all descriptions. It was a thief’s paradise, but I took nothing of it, though it clearly did little for the starving pious poor while languishing here. Another time, I might return and teach a rich man of God to love charity a little better.

I searched until I found a trunk emblazoned with the Ordelaffi symbol, and lifted the latch to find the remnants of Mercutio’s life valuable enough to be sold to the Church for his father’s indulgence.

It was a pitiful record. His silver comb was there, and a razor too fine to be of daily use; a collection of rings. His books, all valuable, even if venal in nature.

And a rosary.

I seized it, my heart racing, but my relief was short-lived; this was unmistakably the rosary given to Mercutio by his family at his confirmation; it bore the Ordelaffi seal, and was far too fine for a lowborn seminary student like Tomasso.

There was nothing else. Wherever Tomasso’s rosary had gone, it had not been left at Mercutio’s house, nor given to the Church. Mercutio’s widow, perhaps? No, having read the journal in Mercutio’s own hand, I could not see that that unfortunate young girl would wish to keep any mementos of their brief joining.

Then where?

I looked around the glittering storehouse of earthly treasures, and felt a frustration that drove me to kick the wall hard enough to leave a bruise upon my foot. I had no trails left to follow.

I turned incautiously, heading for the door, and a tilting pile of silver plates wavered and crashed loudly to the floor. I sprinted now, because no servant would sleep through such a racket; I just made it out and into the shadows beneath the stairs as a candle’s glow appeared, and hushed voices rose with suppressed excitement and fear. Two of the monsignor’s servants appeared, bearing cudgels; one had a knife in his belt as well. They examined the door of the strong room and exclaimed when they found the lock shattered; one ran up to alert the household, and the other peered inside, looking for sign of the thief.

I kept to the shadows, hid my face, and stayed as still as flesh might stay. The dull gray of the cloak blended perfectly in the darkness with the stones, and unless they thrust the torch into the space, the illusion would hold. But it would be unhappy hours before it would be safe enough to move, never mind flee, and I knew my muscles would ache first, then cramp in red agony before it was done. I would survive it. I had survived worse, and longer.

But this time . . . this time, luck was not with me.

The servant who peered into the room was not as dull-witted as he seemed. He backed away from the door, looked around the narrow space, and then thrust his light into the shadows where I hid. Instinct bade me to turn and fight, but I stayed silent, frozen, holding even my breath until the candle retreated. I dared let out a slow, trembling whisper then, but then the cold point of a sword pressed my chest, and a voice in my ear said, “Hold, villain, or die.”

I was caught.

After all this time, the Prince of Shadows was caught.

• • •

I was bound at the hands, and the crowd of murmuring servants placed a rope around my neck that was meant to be a halter but felt uncomfortably like a noose, and I was led upstairs, then pushed down on my knees while the hastily roused monsignor donned robes and slippers to come see this intruder. They had not yet unmasked me when he finally arrived, red faced and furious.

“Call the watch,” he told a servant, who ran off with alacrity. I saw the monsignor’s mistress peeping over the banister from upstairs, clearly eager to see the coming events. More eager than I, by far. I calculated my chances; they were not so bad as they appeared, because the servants had been inept at knots, and I had already worked my wrists looser within their bonds. Still, their stoutest man held the rope halter that had been fitted around my neck, and I would need to rise quickly from the ground to deal with him before he could tug me off balance and turn halter to noose, in truth.

The monsignor paced back and forth, staring at my masked face. “Are you the thief known as the Prince of Shadows?” he demanded. I said nothing. “Come, lout, speak, or have you no tongue? Has Veronese justice already stripped you of it?”

“Shall we unmask him, Monsignor?” the servant holding the rope asked.

“Yes, yes, of course,” he said, and gestured vaguely toward me as he paced. “When the watch arrives we will denounce him and turn him to the prince’s justice. This villain will hang by the morning! You dare, you cur, you dare to rob God?”

I had two choices, neither attractive . . . first, wait silently to be unmasked, or second, take action—however unpleasant—to ensure I would not be immediately recognized.

I chose the latter, and said, “I robbed no one, sir. I carry no gold, nor silver, nor precious jewels. You, though . . . you have taken such things from the poor, and hidden them away for yourself in the name of Christ. Is that theft, or blasphemy?”

He interfered with his own servant’s unmasking of me to stride forward and give me a blow with his closed fist. Priest or not, he had a powerful arm, and I rocked back on my heels and blinked away painful sparks. I tasted blood, dull on my tongue.

His servants, as expected, took this as a sign, and instead of ripping away my mask they closed in, fists flying as they screamed curses upon me for my insolence. I hunched in to try to ride the blows, but soon I was on my side, and the rope had been pulled tight. Air had become a frantic struggle, and I was all but senseless when I felt fingers tugging at the silk knotted around my face. It was wet with blood, and the knot had been pulled small; I heard them cursing as their fingers slipped from their grip, but finally, one of them managed to peel the cloth away and bunch it on my forehead.

I kept my lids shut. The blood would mask me, and my nose was already swelling; now I looked like a hundred Veronese youths, noble or peasant, save for the striking color of my eyes.

The monsignor struck me again, a hard blow but an openhanded slap this time. “What is your name?” he demanded. I lay limp and silent, and judging from his voice he turned away toward his men. “Do you know him?”

“He looks a bit like one of the Montagues,” someone ventured, but another jeered it down.

“Nothing like him,” that one countered. “Not with that nose. No, more like one of those Capulet soldiers.”

Another argued that I seemed the son of a barber, another still an apprentice carpenter. I stayed limp and let my mouth gape open to further disguise the shape of my face.

And thus affairs stood when the watch arrived. The monsignor confessed to them that they had apprehended a sneak thief, who might even be the Prince of Shadows; he presented them with the bloody mask to confirm it. The watch captain took hold of the halter rope, frowned down at my battered body, and rightly decided that I was no great immediate threat. He tried to pull me to my feet, but I kept myself slack, despite his kicks and curses, and finally he ordered one of his men to pick me up. The rope was taken off my neck, though my hands remained bound. Loose, but not loose enough.

“Tell the prince that I will be most pleased to attend his execution and spit on his vile corpse,” said the monsignor, in the true spirit of Christ, and then we were on our way out of his residence, into the quiet night-drenched streets.

I bided my time. The soldier carrying me had tossed me over his shoulder, and as he marched on, I gently slid his dagger from its sheath at his hip, reversed it, and carefully sawed through the bonds holding my wrists. Even then, I did not stir—not until we neared the vast stretch of the Maffei palace. We were close to Lords’ Square, and from there it was but a short walk to Prince Escalus’s residence at the Palazzo del Podestà, where they would present me and, bloody or not, he would know my face in an instant.

I had lulled my man into false security; his hand was loose upon my back, and he had not felt my hands liberating his dagger. I shifted my weight off balance as he took a step, and he staggered, dropping me to my feet.

I landed running, and made speed across the courtyard and into the nearest alley. I knew it well, and knew also to jump in the dark for handholds near the junction of two walls; I swarmed up quickly, dagger held between my teeth, and pulled myself up to the roof tiles, where I quickly froze flat, listening to the shouts and alarms below. The watch ran past, then stopped a short distance away as they milled about in confusion. Sleepy householders cursed them and slapped closed shutters, but the soldiers began to hammer on doors, seeking me within the walls. “Go up, you fools!” snapped their commander. “He likes the roofs!”

There followed confusion, but one of the householders below professed to a ladder, and went to fetch it.

I needed to move, but I knew that if I chanced it, they’d spot me below; the clouds were thin, and moonlight fell hard. This roof was simple and exposed, and the slope of it too sharp for me to stay hidden as I climbed toward the peak. Once they’d caught sight of me, they’d not lose me again so easily.

And that was when an ill-dressed youth slouched in a cloak and an extravagant, though limp, hat appeared at the end of the alley and called out, in a rough and oddly high voice, “Thief! A thief, running that way!” He pointed down the alley, even as the soldiers were settling the ladder against the roofline. I crawled forward, ready to push it off, but it wasn’t needed; the soldiers took to the chase with great enthusiasm, pouring in the direction the boy pointed, though the last of them had presence of mind to grab the young man by the scruff of the neck and shake him hard.

“You’d best be telling the truth, boy!” The soldier cuffed him, shoved him backward, and ran to join his fellows in chase of a phantom.

I made quick use of the ladder—since it was there—and ran toward the boy, who was shaking off the blow and rubbing his chin. Moonlight fell on his face as his ill-fitting hat slipped off and unleashed a tangle of thick, dark hair. . . .

And that was no boy at all.

Rosaline.

I did not spare a moment for thought, or for shock; I grasped her arm and propelled her at a run in the opposite direction from where the soldiers had gone. Beneath the cloth, her arm had a different feel from that of a young man—less of muscle, yet somehow still strong. Ahead was the Church of Saint Maria Antica, and I tugged her that direction. My heart was racing with more than the excitement of the chase, and I’d forgotten my bruises and hurts, though they still ached, unremarked.

I pulled her into the shadows and brushed off the ridiculous hat, which drifted down toward the cobbles. Against the rows of white tufa and reddish brick, she seemed taller now, and oddly at home in mannish dress, though her hair tumbled wild over her shoulders. She was breathing quickly, and her eyes caught and held the shimmer of the moon. So did her parted lips.

I was holding her too tight at the shoulders, I thought, and loosened my grip to something gentler. “What are you doing?” My voice came out low and rough, and I thought the watch would hear the violent pounding of my heart, even as far afield as they’d wandered. “Don’t you know what you risk, stealing out so dressed?”

She plucked at the too-large linen shirt. “I took them from the laundry,” she said. “Faith, these hose feel very strange. . . .”

What was strange, and dizzying, was seeing a woman’s shape so plainly and audaciously displayed, even in the shadows. I struggled to keep my eyes fixed on her face. “How come you here?”

“I followed you,” she said, with calm assurance. “Well, to be more fair, I followed your captors when they dragged you from the priest’s house. I thought you might go there.”

“You thought— How? Why?”

She smiled a little, but it seemed grim. “Women are buried in their houses, but we talk; there’s little else to do. I asked my maids to tell me gossip of the Ordelaffi, and the fount flowed now that Tybalt is gone and they no longer fear him so. . . . I learned Mercutio’s father had already disposed of his son’s possessions, and that some had been sent to the monsignor for the Church. I thought Mercutio might have left some clue as to the curse within some writings.”

“And you thought what? That you would try your hand at thieving it?”

“Do you think I would be a bad thief?”

“I think you would be a novice,” I said, “and novices are caught and hanged every day. If they’d found you to be a girl, it would have gone far worse for you. Women may be buried in their homes, but there is a reason for it: to keep you safe—”

“Safe?” Rosaline raised her chin, and her lips set themselves in a firm, straight line, as did her brows. “Safe? You know nothing about us, Benvolio Montague. We live our lives in terror, not in safety—terror of our fathers, who may beat or kill us with any reason or none at all. . . . Terror of the men we will wed, having scarce set eyes upon them before that moment and yet expected to submit to all they ask . . . terror of other women whispering rumors that destroy us, with no defenses possible. You have swords to defend your honor. We have nothing. Safety?” She pushed me back, and I stumbled on a loose brick. “Give me a sword, and I will make my own safety.”

“You don’t know how to use it,” I said, very reasonably, I thought. But she only glared.

“And if I were taught? Trained? How then?”

“Swords are expensive—”

“Give me a trade and I will earn my own!”

This night had taken on an unreal cast, one that made me think I was dreaming, and the dream had gone very, very wrong.

I heard distant voices ringing out, and stepped forward again to drive her deeper to the shadows, then snatched up her discarded hat and slapped it down on her head. “Put up your hair!” I whispered, and she did, twisting it together with quick economy and securing it thus. I stripped off my cloak—even plain as it was, it would be something the watch looked for—and left it discarded on the ground.

Then I drew her behind the church, into a darkened doorway that was little used, and kept barred from within. “There was nothing at the priest’s house we needed.”

“You’re bleeding,” she said, and her hand touched my cheek. “They beat you.”

“A painful disguise, but better than to be recognized.” I did not mean to do it—truly I did not—but somehow my hand touched hers, closed around it, and I lifted her fingers to my lips.

I felt her shiver all the way through.

“I will see you home,” I said. “Surely they will remark on your absence soon.”

“They will not. All are in mourning for Juliet. . . .” She paused, watching me, and frowned again. “But Juliet is not dead, is she? I wondered. I saw Friar Lawrence, and he only half listened to my confession today; he is behind this plan, is he not? To sneak Juliet away?”

“If all works,” I said. “But if there is a curse, and I think there is, then surely this too is doomed to fail. I know not how it can, but perhaps the witch gave the wrong potion, or the friar gave her too much, or she wakes too soon—a thousand things, and none of them we can prevent. But you must go home, Rosaline. With Juliet dead, to their thinking, you are their bargaining chip. They will not waste you on God, but spend you on Paris.” I touched her chin and raised it, very gently. “You were calling for your own sword a moment ago. Why show fear now?”

“Because I have no sword, nor any weapon at all,” she said, and took in a slow, deep breath that moved parts of her that should have been bound tighter. I was so distracted with this notice that I almost failed to hear the rest, as her voice dropped still lower. “And because I think I do not love Paris, but . . . another, and if Mercutio’s curse has worked so deeply upon our two cousins, if they die, surely it falls upon me next. And upon you.”

I had not thought so far ahead, and I felt an icy shock at her words, as if she had plunged me into a fountain in winter . . . because she was right. Mercutio had cursed our houses, and not one person he held guilty. If the curse indeed had struck Romeo and Juliet, and forced them into this ill-considered love, then what would happen next?

Did it account for how I could not forget her, even if I applied myself . . . not her face, nor her voice, nor the way she had looked lit by candles the first night I saw her? That image would not leave me, and it—being honest—was the last thing I saw each night before sleep carried me off, and the first I thought of upon waking. Was it a curse? If it is a curse, I die cursed, and happy, I thought, and almost said so. Only the biting of my tongue kept me from it.

“Do nothing to draw attention,” I told her. “Keep your cloak close about you, and your head down. If anyone calls to us, let me speak; you may pretend to be worse for your cups, if you like, but say nothing. Your voice gives you plain away.”

“I’ve heard youths with voices higher than mine!”

“Not with your height,” I said. “Quiet. And keep you close.”

It frightened me, walking with her down the dark streets toward the Capulet palazzo. . . . I had ever been with men abroad in the evening, and what few women ventured out were hardened veterans of the streets, well able to care for themselves. She was . . . different. And keenly my responsibility. “How got you out?” I asked.

She lifted one graceful hand, and I pushed it quickly back into the shadow of her cloak. Those hands, too, would give her away. “I waited until a group of tradesmen delivered supplies for the kitchen,” she said. “It was near dark, and the men were milling about readying for Juliet’s procession. No one paid me mind.”

“Getting back inside will be different,” I told her. “You cannot climb that wall, and even if you could, you could not climb to your balcony.”

“I can,” she said. “I am not weak!”

“Forgive me, but I do not think your needlework has well prepared you for—”

“I ride,” she shot back. “To the hunt. I have helped spear a boar. My father—”

Such pleasures were normally reserved for men, and I was surprised to hear that the Capulets had allowed a girl so much, but then I remembered that her father was dead, like mine. Unlike me, she had known hers; he must have allowed her beyond what convention and propriety said was right. And she was right: She was no weakling, not if she had faced down a maddened boar bent on escape.

“Well, boar killer,” I said, “then we will try.”

She was far stronger than I expected, for a housebound young woman; I wondered whether she still, in secret, practiced the exercises her father would have made her take to fortify her arms and legs for the hunt, and the weapons she would have to bear. She could not, as I could, climb a wall with a running start, but when I climbed first and gave her the first handholds, she pulled herself up more competently than I expected.

“Careful,” I told her in a whisper, from the top of the Capulets’ wall. “There is—”

“I know,” she huffed back, a bit waspishly, and I smiled down at her and offered her a hand for the rest of the way. Once she was crouched beside me in the single ivy-covered spot of safety—and her balance was only a little unsteady, from effort—I braced myself, took her hands, and lowered her slowly down into the dark corner of the garden.

“Can you make your balcony?” I whispered down, and she looked up, face cool and calm in the moonlight, and nodded. I tried to think of some good-bye, something other than what I ached to say, and I settled for the lukewarm, “Be most careful.” I think the tone of my voice betrayed me, even so.

“And you,” she said, and her own sounded soft, almost a caress. Then she smiled at me, a full and carefree urchin’s grin, and made her way to her safety.

For my part, I waited a bit longer, watched her climb to her balcony and slip inside, and then eased down from the wall and ran back, quickly and quietly, to the monsignor’s household. Why would they fear my return, when the city watch had carried me off to meet the prince’s justice at the end of a short dangle?

I let myself in as before, made my way down to the still-broken stronghold, and this time I took away as much gold as I could comfortably carry.

Then I piled it in the doorway of the Church of Santa Maria Antica, with a note scratched into the white stone beside it: Alms for the poor.

Then I went home, to an uneasy few hours of sleep.

• • •

I slept like the dead until I was roused by impatient servants; my uncle had business for me to do in town, and I received the instructions from him, only barely aware of what I had agreed to do. At least I was dressed and decently barbered, though the steadiest of hands could do nothing for my swelling nose and spectacular bruising, which occasioned much exclamation when I presented myself to my uncle’s chambers.

“Well, this won’t do,” my uncle said, frowning at my aching face. “I can scarce recognize the boy myself. Very well, rest, Benvolio, and lay some poultice on those bruises; you’ll do me no good bearing my messages out looking so ill used. A Montague is meant to win the fight, you know!”

“But I did,” I said, and bowed respectfully. He waited, head cocked, for more explanation, but I did not give it, and he finally let out a frustrated sigh.

I listened to the man’s hasty lecture about how I should comport myself, to reflect honor upon Montague. I suppose he had thought that since Romeo had received these lectures as heir, I had been spared too many of them, but I’d endured hours of sweating, hellish torment in my grandmother’s chambers listening to much of the same. I well knew what was expected of me, and in fact, the bruises upon my face were a testament to how much I valued the honor of House Montague, though he could not know it.

It had the fine benefit, though, of freeing me to my own devices for the day—and a portentous day it was. Friar Lawrence’s account had claimed that if all went well, Juliet Capulet would wake today in her tomb, and my cousin Romeo would be there to joyfully greet her and see her swept away. A triumph of love and devotion.

Perhaps I was too much of a cynic, but I could not see it happening so. Mercutio’s dire words in his journal haunted me, and so did the frantic desperation of the witch who’d crafted the curse on his behalf. If hate could move mountains, then the mountain was still moving, and we could only watch, helpless, as it collapsed upon us.

I had been all but ordered to keep within Montague’s walls, but I had never cared for being penned up, and by the time the evening Angelus bell had rung I was moving through the streets. It seemed Verona continued untouched by the upheavals of the past week—all the deaths, the tragedy, the drama had passed by the common folk, whose lives were full of their own troubles. I bought a roasted leg of pork to eat as I walked, and made for Friar Lawrence’s cell.

He arrived after the service had finished, out of breath but smiling for all that; he greeted me warmly, clucked over my wounds, and hummed a merry—though scandalous—tune as he ushered me within. “All’s well, all’s very well,” he told me. “Romeo will have received word in Mantua and hastened here, and even now he should have entered the tomb and gathered his love in his arms, to ensure her waking goes from rest to paradise itself.” He seemed so very pleased with himself, I thought. “And then they will be safely off together.”

“To what?” I asked him. “Two youths with no funds and no family?”

“Love will sustain them.”

“Hard coin would sustain them better,” I said. In my purse I had some of the monsignor’s gold, rescued from his vaults. It was not right to keep it for myself, but a donation to the poor was a just and good use for it. “You must have been plotting to meet them, Friar.”

“I will see them soon,” he said, and accepted the heavy gift with a smile. “Your cousin will be most grateful, young master.”

I had no time to question him about the time, though; he poured himself a cup of ale and drank it thirstily, and pressed one upon me that I sipped without savor, though it was the best of the abbey’s stock. “Friar—” I was ready to broach my concerns of Mercutio’s curse, but he held up a hand to stop me, one ear cocked toward the hallway.

“Hush, I have a visitor— Here, stay there, and silent!” He pushed me behind the only coverage in the room, a small screen, and I stood there clutching my mug of ale and felt foolish for coming.

Another voice, as hearty as Friar Lawrence’s, called out, “Holy Franciscan friar! Brother, ho!”

“Well, this same should be the voice of Friar John!” my friend boomed, and I heard the two men give fraternal embrace. “Welcome from Mantua. . . . What says Romeo? Or, if his mind be writ, give me his letter.”

I peered around the corner of the screen, and saw a monk as thin as Friar Lawrence was round; he was older, with wisps of white hair circling his tonsured crown. He had a beaming look on his face that clouded over as my friend spoke, and by the end of it, he was as penitent as a tardy schoolboy.

“I went to find a barefoot brother of our order to accompany me to Mantua,” he said. “And I found him here in the city visiting the sick, but the searchers of the town, suspecting that we were both in a house of infectious pestilence, sealed up the doors and would not let us go forth. So, you see, my passage to Mantua has not yet begun.” He spread his hands in helpless apology.

I watched the hard truth dawn on my friar’s face. “Who bore my letter, then, to Romeo?”

Friar John searched quickly within his robes. “I could not send it—here it is again.” He handed over the sealed message with an apologetic smile. “Nor could I get a messenger to deliver it back, so fearful were they of infection.”

“Unhappy fortune,” Friar Lawrence said, and his distress almost crumpled the note in his hand. “This letter was no simple greeting, but full of import, and neglecting it may do much damage. . . . Friar John, find me an iron crowbar and bring it hence.”

“An . . . iron crowbar?” Friar John’s mystified face would have been funny to see in any less dire situation.

“Yes, yes, go!”

“I will go and bring it.”

He left, much speeded by the obvious distress of Friar Lawrence, and I came out behind the screen and put the mug aside.

Friar Lawrence met my eyes with mute horror for a moment, and then said, “I must to the monument alone, then—within three hours will fair Juliet wake. She will be angry that Romeo does not come to greet her, but I will write again to Mantua and keep her here, in my cell, until Romeo comes.”

No more sunny smiles, no more all will be well . . . he was afraid now; I could see it in the tight lines of his eyes and mouth, and the wretched washing motions of his hands.

“I will go with you,” I said.

He did not look so much relieved. His thoughts were far from me. “Poor living corpse,” he said softly. “Closed in a dead man’s tomb.”

I prayed she would not wake to know it, but already I could sense the darkness of the day spinning darker still.