But I had only one, as I turned its smooth, warm shape in my fingers.
Juliet Capulet had been here, in this monk’s cell. And if she had been here, so might have been my cousin Romeo.
I was too late.
“Sir,” Balthasar said from behind me. He sounded strained and grave. “The friar comes.”
I nodded, my face set and hard, and he put his back to the wall. His hand was on his cudgel, and he looked frightened, but ready to go where I led.
He was no doubt praying it would not take him to damnation for striking a holy man, but in this moment, in the white-hot burn of my fury, I cared not for my soul, nor for his.
I cared only to stop our unsafe little world from flying apart around us.
Friar Lawrence saw me, and his plump face went still for a moment, then took on an expression of resignation as he closed the door behind him. “Master Benvolio,” he said. “What brings you?”
I held out my palm and let the pearl roll from one side to the other. The guilt was plain to see in him, but he assumed a brave martyr’s stance, with his hands folded together in his sleeves.
“Don’t you know what will come of this?” I asked. My tone was tight and dangerous, and he took note, but he did not back down.
“Peace, if you will allow it,” he said. “Montague and Capulet have too long let their blood flow down these streets; your own father died for—”
“You betrayed us.”
“I am on no one’s side but God’s, my son. Their love was so strong that if I had refused to bless it, it would have been done without God’s seal; there is no doubt of it. Would you have me step aside and allow the sin instead?”
“You’ve said the words, but I may yet stop them from this folly. Where are they?”
“I’ll not say.”
“Where?” I gripped him by the shoulders and stared hard into his eyes, and he flinched. “He is my cousin, close as a brother, and I won’t see him dead on Tybalt’s sword. Now tell me where they plan to make their bower, and do it quickly!”
The look he gave me was oddly sad, as if he pitied me in that moment—and also knew that I might do him harm. “The passion between them is too great, Benvolio; I’ve never seen the like. A madness, you understand, a thirst slaked only by love’s drink, or death. Which would you have?”
This time I shoved him against the wall, and with my right hand I drew my dagger. I did not put it to his throat, but he knew that was where it would be bound if he delayed me again.
Friar Lawrence squeezed his eyes closed a moment, and his lips moved as if he prayed. Whatever God instructed, he did not seem happy with it, but he finally said, “They will do it by night, in secret. You need not seek them out now; they will wait. I made them vow it under the eyes of God. There is time to separate them, but I warn you: What pulls them together is nothing a mortal man may battle; it is a holy fire, I tell you, a most holy fire that burns in them.”
“The devil can stoke a fire as well as ever God could,” I shot back, but I sheathed my dagger. “You swear on the cross that they parted from each other?”
“Yes,” he said. “Juliet’s nurse has taken her home, and Romeo has gone as well. I swear it upon the cross.”
“If you see Romeo, tell him I know,” I said. “Tell him this is done. It goes no further.”
Friar Lawrence gave me a sad look, and poured himself a cup of wine, which he downed in a great, messy gulp. “I remember a boy swaddling in a robe and playing a monk one evening, for the love of a girl,” he said. “Have you no pity in your heart for your cousin’s strong desire?”
“No more than I will have pity for you, should this go badly,” I said, and drew the dagger. I sank it into the table to a depth that would have reached his heart. “Mark me, Friar. I speak not for myself, but for Montague.”
Balthasar shut the friar’s door behind us, heaving a sigh of relief that he had not been forced to crack the friar’s skull for me. I was not feeling lighter—the damage was still great, most certainly, and the marriage would have to be undone by the Capulet and Montague elders alike, but it could be fixed in secret, with careful diplomacy. Romeo would be punished; Juliet would be hastily married off. But all could still end well enough.
So I wished to believe.
• • •
I had frankly forgotten my appointment with Mercutio’s witch until Balthasar reminded me, skipping close to murmur it in my ear as we passed out of the cloister’s walls. We were not so very far from the river; the muddy, rotting stench of it hung heavily on the air, churned but not dispelled by surly gusts of wind. I was eager to make straight home and beard my cousin in his chambers . . . or beat him, as Tybalt had thrashed the servant. Perhaps pain would bring him to his senses. Failing that, my grandmother’s towering wrath certainly would.
But even so, I shifted course and followed Balthasar’s lead down narrowing, noisome alleys, stepping over drunkards and beggars and keeping a close eye out for villains. I was a richly dressed man in hostile quarters, and not all thirsty blades belonged to Capulet hands. Some merely wanted my purse. Ironic that it was full of fresh-stolen florins. But I was in no fit mood, and my scowl must have warned off any who might have accosted us; we arrived at the docks, where fishermen unloaded their cargoes, and costermongers loaded carts to trundle them to a late market. It was too hot, and the air was slick with the thick scent of rotten oceans.
“There,” Balthasar said, and pointed me in the direction of a cloaked form in the shadows.
He had kept a detail from me, indeed; I’d expected some broken old woman, with moles and an evil cast to her eye. As the woman pushed back her hood, I saw before me a lovely, pointed face, clever and calm, framed by thick brown curls only barely managed by carved wooden combs. She looked a little older than I, but not by more than a thin handful of years, and she might have been a modestly placed merchant’s wife or daughter. Her clothing was not fine, but it was well fitted, and clean. She carried a nosegay of herbs to ward off the stench of the docks.
She was hardly the crone I had expected to find. That, then, had been Balthasar’s juicy, withheld tidbit of information.
I was clearly not what she had expected to find her, because she cast a near-panicked, betrayed look toward my servant, and dropped into a quick curtsy. “Sir,” she said. “I little expected to see someone of your quality. I apologize for the condition of our meeting.”
“You’re the witch?” I had little patience for niceties, even given the pleasant surprise. “Mercutio has visited you?” I kept my voice low, but she still blanched, and cast anxious looks about us. No one noticed, in the clamor of the dock.
“I cannot tell you, sir, with great respect—”
“Is he planning to do harm?” I asked her bluntly. “Have you given him poison?”
“No!” she blurted, and put out a hand that showed she was no stranger to hard work. “No, sir. Please, I beg you, do not say so; I sell only helpful herbs. . . .”
“Then why does he seek you out?” I leaned in on her, threatening, and she shrank back against the wall. I put out an arm against the stones to block her escape, and Balthasar took up a post to hold her on the other side. “Confess. Now. I have no time for games.”
She looked pallid and terrified, and miserable. “Sir, it is only that your friend and I have a grief shared; his friend Tomasso was my cousin, and my dearest friend. I will confess that I hate those who took his life, and that also I share with Mercutio, but I have provided no poisons, I swear. Only—” She had babbled on too far, and I saw the realization of it cross her face in horror. If she could have breathed the words back in, she would have.
“If not poisons, then what?” I snapped, and grabbed her chin in my hand to raise her eyes to mine. She was frankly terrified, and she was right to be. I was in a killing mood. “Confess to me, and you might escape death. Defy me . . .”
“I only helped him,” she whispered. Tears shone wetly, and spilled down her cheeks; I felt the quiver in her flesh where I held her still. “I swear, my lord, the guilt is not mine; it is not—”
“Tell me!”
“I showed him how to cast a curse,” she whispered. “The sin is upon him, sir, not me; I swear, not me! Please, sir, let me go. Please!”
I would have dragged her to Prince Escalus in my fury, but Balthasar cried urgently, “Sir!” and instinct screamed at the same moment, and I released the girl and spun, drawing my sword and getting it free of its scabbard just in time to block a deadly blow aimed for my heart.
I did not know the man who faced me, snarling, until he said, “Dog of a thief! I know who you are!”
It was Roggocio, the fool I’d robbed on a night that seemed so far distant now, the one who’d ripped away my mask. He’d glimpsed my face indeed, though until this moment he had not known my name.
Shock ran through me, cold and hot, and as I settled into the chill silence of the fight, I knew that I could not let him walk from this. He knew too much, enough to betray me, enough to add even more chaos to the already brewing pot of poison.
That, and of course he intended to see me dead.
Balthasar cried another warning, and I heard his cudgel smack flesh; Roggocio had at least one friend willing to come to his aid. I trusted Balthasar to hold my back, and focused upon the blade in Roggocio’s hand. He was well practiced, as would be expected if he’d survived so long as a hired bravo; he wielded a plain but quality blade, well suited to his hand and height. I concentrated not on his eyes, nor on his hands, but on the whole of him: the tiny betraying flickers that would tell me where he’d strike.
It took two passes and clashes of steel, and then he showed his intentions too soon. I parried just enough to move the line of his blade past my chest, turned with it, and struck hard and low, aiming for finding the vulnerability of his inner thigh. My blade slipped easily in, through, and I cut sideways to open the vessels. Blood gouted like a fountain, sheeting gory down his hose, and he let out a short, sharp cry as he fell to his uninjured knee. It was a killing wound, and he knew it instantly. He’d be bled white in only a moment.