Romeo's Ex

  I shudder. “Seems a profane thing to attempt, sinful almost.”

  “Aye. I felt so myself, but the friar convinced me ’twas not as bad as all that. But now that he has his experiment, I believe I shall burn the recipe.”

  She rises slowly from her chair, taking the odious scrap from the table. With steady hand does she hold it above the candle’s flame. I watch as the tiny blaze takes hold of the foolscap with flickering yellow teeth, blackening it, curling the edges to ash. At the very last second, the Healer releases the corner she holds, letting it and the small fire that clings to it fall with a hiss upon the tabletop. The flame lasts only a moment, then dies.

  After this, we sit in companionable silence, lost in our own thoughts and separate prayers. At last I bid my friend good night and head for home.

  I arrive to find my good lady mother in her courtyard. She listens to the music made by steamy breezes in the treetops and the sweetness of crickets’ song. I wonder how badly, in these lonesome moments, she does miss the husband who left her, who left us both.

  “Rosaline!” my mother calls out. She rushes to me, wraps me in her embrace—I knew not until this moment how much this day of all days I’ve had need of it. Without warning, I feel the tears begin, slowly at first, but gaining strength until I am sobbing in my mother’s arms. These are true and heartfelt. These, at last, are honest tears for Tybalt—who now lives only to decide to die—and for Mercutio.

  “God-den, precious one,” my mother says, then gives me a soft and serious look. “I looked for thee at Tybalt’s funeral this afternoon. Wherefore did you neglect to attend the service? ’Twould have been good for you to bid him farewell. ’Tis the reason we gather o‘er our dead—to grieve together, to say good-bye. ’Tis a step toward acceptance.”

  She is right, of course, but I cannot tell her that the faceless man our family mourned in the tomb this day was not Tybalt.

  “I could not bear to witness Tybalt’s interment,” I explain with a loud sniffle, “for seeing him thus would forever sully my recollection of him. I wished my final memory to be of good Tybalt alive.”

  She nods in understanding and places her cool palm upon my cheek. “You look tired. No doubt you and Juliet did not sleep at all last night. Tell me, did you stay up past dawn, giggling and remembering the handsome lords who flirted with thee?”

  She laughs lightly, and of a sudden I recall she believes I spent last night at my uncle’s house, in Juliet’s company. In truth, I spent it talking and snuggling beside Benvolio on the mossy ground of the sycamore grove. Indeed, another thing I cannot tell my mother.

  “Did I sleep?” I repeat, sounding more than a bit foolish, then answer honestly, “In fact, I slept very little.”

  “You girls and your visits. Wherefore dost thou call them sleepovers, I wonder, when you ne’er so much as close your eyes.”

  Before she can press me further, I excuse myself and hurry indoors. I want nothing more than to say a prayer for Tybalt, then lie down and close my eyes to sleep.

  But sleep, again this night, is not to be.

  When I arrive in my chamber, I find the window open wide, and there, in a patch of moonlight, waits Benvolio! He places his finger to his lips, bidding me stay quiet.

  “How?” I begin softly. “How did you come in?”

  “Carefully.” He nods toward the open window. “With the aid of a rather unsteady pile of bricks that leads to a low roof, from which I pulled myself in through yon window.”

  “Resourceful of thee,” I whisper.

  “Shall I leave?” he asks.

  “Never” is my answer. And then I am in Benvolio’s arms, and there is no sound but the breezy music of the night without and my name upon his lips.

  I will confess, I come awfully close to surrendering my virtue completely, and there is more than one moment when I am nearly unable not to.

  But we refrain.

  ’Twould be a sin, first and foremost, but beyond that, I will not risk getting with child. Benvolio understands. ’Tis wonderful just having the warmth of him here beside me, feeling him breathe, hearing him sigh, kissing him. Soft and slow and lingering.

  We sleep, briefly, then awaken to kiss some more. His kisses are perfection. He swears mine are sweeter than any he’s ever known, and I believe him, for I have ne’er in my life meant anything as I mean these kisses I give to Benvolio.

  When at last we make ourselves say good night, the earliest ribbons of daylight have begun to tease the horizon.

  Benvolio slips out the window. I watch him vanish like a sweet dream into the swell of morning, then return to my bed, to sigh myself to sleep.

  TYBALT

  Upon a downy bed before a cozy fire, in a small, dark cottage, my once able body lies tranquilly. I seem to hover above it, observing from the air. My being is a part of the morning itself.

  So I did not die completely, then. I exist there on the soft pallet in a state somewhere in betwixt. Of neither here nor there, life nor death.

  ’Tis a freedom most frightening, most challenging and intense.

  I am a filament, a moment, a thought unthought.

  I am trembling nothingness.

  ’Tis marvelous strange, yet passing pleasant and worth exploring. First, a soundless glide round this quaint dwelling. Ah, there is the woman who keeps a silent vigil. She is Rosaline’s friend, the Healer; I sense her goodness. She approaches, a jar in her wrinkled hands. From here, in the atmosphere, I will my own hands to rise and clutch the woman’s arm. But no such movement occurs.

  With tender expertise, she dips her withered fingers into the jar and begins to apply a slick salve to the wound upon my chest. I feel nothing. Hath it any scent? I cannot smell—nor do I feel the clean sting it carries, if there is one. Alas, I shall miss sensation quite a lot.

  A window. ’Tis open, just a thread’s breadth, but that is likely all I need. To the window, then, and out …

  Out, above the Healer’s tidy garden, I mingle with the heat of the coming day. Sunrise is a smudge of apricot color along the horizon—O, for a tunic the color of daybreak! But what use have I for clothing now? For I am more like a morning than a man, I am a smudge of wisdom and sentiment against the sky.

  What is expected of me here in the breeze, the bright, the everywhere?

  In the distance, I see pebbled country lanes and roughhewn fences protecting tall tomato gardens, sheep in their pastures, a glistening stream. But I am impelled toward town, and so I soar o’er Saint Peter’s spire, skimming vias, piazzas, and well-kept homes until I come to my uncle’s place.

  I whisper in, like a dream, through Juliet’s open window.

  And find myself in hell!

  Zounds! That is Romeo she lies with!

  That one so young should be abed with any man is wrong enough, but of all the bachelors in Verona, she chooses to award herself to Romeo?

  Romeo, whose weapon left me as I am now. Romeo, in my cousin’s bed.

  Would that I could shout, I would call for my uncle and all his guardsmen to apprehend this villain! This villain my kinswoman kisses and calls “love.”

  “Love.” She calls him “love.”

  What can a girl of thirteen summers know of love?

  And when in the name of God Almighty did this perversity occur? Before he nicked me with his blade, or since? At the feast? (Saints, was it only one night past? Aye!) Did they make their first acquaintance there, or have they been courting for months and months in secret? Were I not already mostly dead, I believe I might expire from the shock of it!

  I alight upon a ledge near her wardrobe and watch as they argue o’er larks and nightingales, and kiss profoundly. Little Juliet, the imp, her hair tousled from a night of—O, God, I wish not to think of what—wrapped in her mother’s good sheets and kissing a Montague.

  I want to be enraged, but in this wispy state I find that I have more room for forgiveness than fury.

  O, fine, then! Juliet may have her Romeo and with my ethereal b
lessing. This much is clear, he is her husband, if not in law, then in deed and desire.

  From without, her nurse calls, “Madam …”

  I look on now as Romeo takes his leave. He departs quickly, hastening from the room to the balcony, scaling the outer wall to escape through the orchard. Juliet looks empty in his wake, and afraid.

  And now my formidable aunt, Lady Capulet, enters to find her Juliet in tears. Ha, she believes the brat weeps for me!

  They talk of my death, and I am lonesome to hear it, but also moved by the extent to which my aunt desires to avenge me.

  Juliet lies, of course. She tells her mother she would deliver to Romeo a potion to make him sleep in quiet. Feigning to detest him, she says slyly that her “heart abhors” the fact that she canst not “come to him to wreak the love” she bore for me upon his body.

  Clever girl! If I could laugh, I would, for ’tis cunning of the child to make it sound like a vengeful act, when what in truth she wants to do to that Montague is … well, precisely what she has already done upon those sheets. But her cleverness is no shield against what her lady mother announces now: “Marry, my child, early next Thursday morn, the gallant, young, and noble gentleman Paris, at Saint Peter’s church, shall happily make thee there a joyful bride.”

  This brings sweet Juliet up short, and her pretty eyes go bright and sharp and angry when she speaks. “I wonder at this haste, that I must wed ere he that should be husband comes to woo.”

  So Paris hath not e’en called upon her? No wonder she finds insult. Were I still, er, available, I would give Paris a pounding myself! My beauteous cousin most assuredly deserves adequate wooing. Whatever is the matter with my uncle, not to insist the cad come courting before taking as his bride this treasure that is Juliet?

  0, the scene worsens now, when Uncle Capulet makes his entrance. He is used to a daughter demure and ever compliant, and his rage ignites when Juliet denies his wish. This change in Juliet stuns me, but in truth, it does what is left of me good to see the urchin show some snap!

  Capulet feels otherwise. He calls her unworthy! Juliet, whom just days past he worshipped as the hopeful lady of his earth. Ah, was it merely her weakness that he loved?

  I have ne‘er seen him so incensed, and now he lashes out at Juliet in such a vicious fashion I cannot help but react, flinging my vaporous being in the path of his ire. ’Tis futile, of course, as I am air. Thankful I am he does not try to strike the girl. Instead, he hurls his cruelty in the form of words.

  “Out, you green-sickness carrion!” he hollers. “Out, you baggage!”

  E’en his icy wife is appalled by the severity of his verbal attack. She attempts to intercede, crying “Fie, fie, what, are you mad?”

  Juliet falls to her knees, but Capulet will hear none from his child and ignores her plea.

  “Wife,” he growls, “we scarce thought us blest that God had lent us but this only child, but now I see that this one is one too much, and that we have a curse in having her.”

  O, blister’d be his tongue! Had I wind in me, such wicked words wouldst surely have knocked it out. Juliet, still kneeling, huddles now upon the floor, rocking, shaking with soundless sobs.

  And now her nurse does leap to Juliet’s defense, daring to speak up to her lord and master. But Capulet’s fury subsides not at all. Instead, he hands down a most bruising threat. “Graze where you will, you shall not house with me. Look to’t, think on’t. I do not use to jest. Thursday is near … an you be mine, I’ll give you to my friend; and you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets, for, by my soul, I’ll ne’er acknowledge thee, nor what is mine shall never do thee good. Trust to’t … .”

  Have I heard him rightly? He will toss her out, cut her off from all wealth and comfort! How can he? She is his child. Hath he forgotten that in her infancy he cradled her and thought her more brilliant than the sun? How can this man, my father’s brother, this uncle whom I loved and admired, be such a serpent when denied a single want?

  Again, poor Juliet begs for reprieve, but Capulet offers none. He goes, and now the girl appeals to her mother, but the woman puts an end to it, taking her own leave with this statement: “Talk not to me, for I’ll not speak a word. Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee.”

  Is Lady Capulet’s heart a thing of ice, that she can abandon her only daughter with words such as these?

  Alone with her nurse, Juliet’s voice turns as thin as a spinner’s web. “O, God!—O, nurse, how shall this be prevented? What say’st thou?”

  The nurse sighs, and there is a moment of silence before she speaks. And I am harshly amazed by her advice, for ’tis practical, aye, but so unkind, and so verily wrong!

  “I think it best you married with the count,” says she. “O, he’s a lovely gentleman!”

  Juliet is betrayed again, and by a friend so close as this one. But in pain, she finds resolve, for I mark a slight stiffening of her spine, a lift of her dainty chin. She levels a look at her nurse, and there is something cold in it.

  “Well, thou hast comforted me marvelous much,” says Juliet. ’Tis an ironical statement, made with sarcasm. The nurse does not recognize it. She smiles, relieved, believing that Juliet has succumbed to her fate.

  But I see something brewing there behind my cousin’s calm expression, something defiant in her eyes, which belies her sudden agreement.

  “Go in and tell my lady I am gone, having displeas’d my father, to Laurence’s cell, to make confession and to be absolv’d.”

  With a nod, the nurse hastens to do it, while Juliet whispers a denunciation in the traitor’s wake. “Go, counselor; thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain. I’ll to the friar to know his remedy.”

  And now, a small, brave smile—had I my body about me, I believe that little grin would cause chills along my spine, and ’tis e’en more certain that had I blood ’twould run cold at the words she utters next.

  “If all else fail,” say’st Juliet with a most disquieting calm, “myself have power to die.”

  ROSALINE

  Late in the afternoon, I arrive at Juliet’s. She has sent the nurse’s boy, Peter, to summon me; I am told ’tis a matter of dire urgency.

  I cannot imagine what could be deemed more dire than what hath already befallen her—a near-dead cousin, a smuggled spouse lately thought a murderer, now banished. I find myself longing for the days when, for Jules, “dire” applied to such circumstances as having no appropriate slippers to wear with a favorite gown.

  I make my way through the house noting a great bustle amongst the servants. Lady Capulet and Juliet’s nurse are in a fine dither, and mine uncle stands in the center of it all, waving a sheet of paper.

  “So many guests invite as here are writ,” he instructs a servant. When that one is dispatched, he catches hold of the sleeve of another and demands, “Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning cooks.”

  It seems another feast is in the works. Peculiar that a second celebration would come so swiftly upon the coattails of the last, and after a death in the family. Ere mine uncle can mark my presence, I make for the stairs and take them in twos.

  I reach Juliet’s chamber and find the door ajar. “Juliet?”

  She jumps at the sound of my entrance and quickly conceals behind her back some small thing she clutches in her fist.

  “’Tis only me, Juleps.”

  “I feared you were my nurse or my lady. They left me just moments ago, bidding me sleep. Ha! As if I could.” She tucks the object beneath her pillow now. “O, Roz, glad am I that you have come. ‘Tis all so impossibly desperate!”

  “What is?”

  “Didst thou not notice the commotion in the hall?”

  “Aye, it seems your sire plans another banquet.”

  “Not any banquet. My wedding.”

  “Your wedding? To whom, for the love of God?”

  “Paris,” says Juliet, her voice breaking on a sob.

  “When?”

  “’Twas set for Thursday, but my anxiou
s lord has changed his mind and called for it to take place tomorrow.”

  “0, Jules, this is terrible.”

  “You know not the half of it, cousin,” says Juliet. “The things my father said, the names he called me … .” She shakes her head, as though e’en the memory of it pains her. “Look you here.” She holds up a small vial.

  “What have you?”

  “A wedding gift, if thou wilt. From Friar Laurence.”

  I am now thoroughly perplexed. “Perfume?”

  “Nay. Poison.”

  “Jules!”

  “’Tis not precisely poison,” she qualifies. “Rather, ’tis a miraculous draught, a liquor that shall make me appear dead.”

  “I know of the stuff. The Healer spoke of it; she brewed a small batch for the Friar, being that they share an interest in herbs and their properties, using a recipe sent to him some years ago by a noblewoman from Denmark.”

  “Ah,” Juliet says. “’Tis imported, then.”

  “’Tis risky. ’Tis unproven.”

  “’Tis all I have.”

  I wrap my arms around her; we sit down on her bed, the vial balanced there betwixt us, and Juliet tells me all that hath transpired, beginning with this morning’s brutal quarrel with her lord and lady.

  “I was determined to find a way out of this union,” she tells me, wringing her hands in her lap. “If my father would not grant me a reprieve, then I vowed I would find my own deliverance …” she pauses, lowering her eyes, “ … upon the point of a dagger.”

  My heart gives a mighty thump. “Juliet, never say it!”