I Am Juliet Read online

  I turned to look at him. But no dark-eyed man gazed at me from the terrace.

  Where was he? Had he gone to find someone to introduce us?

  I moved through the crowd. He had vanished. Gone, just like my dreams. But he was not a dream. I could still feel his warmth on my lips, my hand.

  And then I saw him. He stood by the door to the street, with two young men I did not know.

  He was going! And not even a farewell to me! Had I imagined all we had exchanged? No. Then why was he leaving?

  My breath hurt suddenly, as though my heart clenched too hard around it. I had to find out his name, at least, before he left. I slipped over to the servants’ door and hissed: ‘Nurse!’

  She peered out, holding a goblet of wine, her fingers sticky with date pastry. ‘What is it, my lamblet?’

  ‘Who is that young gentleman?’

  Nurse looked over to the door. ‘The one with the silver stocking tops? That’s the son and heir of old Tiberio.’

  ‘Who is he that now is going out the door?’

  ‘With the eagle plume in his hat? Young Petrucio.’

  ‘No! The man who follows him, who didn’t dance?’

  Nurse shrugged and grabbed another pastry from a passing tray. ‘I know not.’

  ‘Go, ask his name,’ I told her. ‘If he be married, my grave is like to be my wedding bed.’

  She looked at me, alarmed. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Go!’

  Someone touched my arm: a cousin, to ask if I would dance the next set. I shook my head. When I looked back to the door, the three young men had gone. He would come back! He had to. He was seeing his friends to their chairs …

  Nurse made her way through the crowd towards me. She looked as grim as when Joanette had spilled orange juice on my new gown. No, worse. She pulled me into the shadows.

  ‘His name is Romeo, and a Montague; the only son of your great enemy.’

  He could not be a Montague. If he were a Montague, then everything I knew was wrong. A Montague was evil, vile.

  The world cracked open. The noises were too loud, the fire too hot.

  ‘My only love sprung from my only hate!’ I whispered. ‘Too early seen unknown, and known too late! Prodigious birth of love it is to me, that I must love a loathed enemy.’

  Nurse stared at me. ‘What’s this?’

  If he were a Montague, then all I had believed was wrong. The world swam, as though every candle flickered at the same time. Even the firelight seemed not quite real.

  I would not sob. I would not show my anguish on my face. I said, ‘A rhyme I learned from someone I danced with.’

  It was not a lie. For we had danced our own dance, there in the shadows, he and I.

  ‘Juliet!’

  It was my mother’s voice, from inside the banquet room. Most of the guests had moved there now. Supper would be served. I had to sit with her, and the Earl of Paris. I had to smile. Tybalt was trained for fighting. I had been trained for this.

  I smiled. My fingernails dug into my clenched hands. ‘Anon!’ I called to my mother.

  Nurse looked at me, concerned. ‘Come,’ she said, ‘let’s away. The strangers are all gone.’

  Gone? He would never be gone from my heart. But he was a Montague.

  How could a Capulet love a Montague? Who was Juliet if not the dutiful daughter who loved and hated where she was told?

  I stepped away from Nurse, towards supper in the banquet room.

  Chapter 9

  The guests had left. I walked with my mother along the gravel path back to the house. My face and heart ached from smiling.

  The moon shone, brighter than the lamps. The day’s fragrance hung in puddles under the rose bushes. Was it only a few hours since I had walked this way? I was a girl then. I was a woman now. Love had been a word to me, a dream. Love was not for Juliet Capulet. Now it was life itself. He was a Montague …

  We stepped up onto the terrace and into the house. It smelled of the bowls of dried oranges and cloves. Dishes clanked, over in the kitchens. My mother stopped at the staircase and kissed my forehead. ‘A good beginning,’ she said quietly. ‘Your father is well pleased, and so is Paris. And you?’

  ‘I … I know not what I feel.’

  She looked amused. ‘Quite proper. Goodnight, my dear.’

  Her women were waiting for her at the top of the stairs. Nurse waited with the Joans for me. I led them along the corridor to my room, let them undress me, unpick the stitches, take the clothes away, undo my hair and brush it, then plait it for the night, clean my face with rosewater, and dress me in my nightshift. Janette drew the warming pan across the sheets. I lay down obediently, and let them pull the covers over me.

  Nurse lay in the truckle bed, her snores like a mob of bulls going to the market.

  I could not sleep. Before tonight I had been content with dreams. Not now.

  I lay there as the shadows of the garden played with the moonbeams on my walls. I tried to think. My mind was too full, too weary from the long day and night. Had there ever been a day so long as this?

  His name was Romeo. He was a Montague.

  Why had he come to a Capulet feast? Was he the Montague Tybalt had spied? Was that why Tybalt had stormed from the hall? But if my father had known there was a Montague in his banquet hall, why had he not had him thrown out?

  Perhaps my father knew that everyone who wore the name Montague wasn’t evil. Was the hatred between our houses one of the games that adults played? My mother pretended that my father had no mistress. When I was six years old, I had seen her ignore the madman who bared his buttocks in the marketplace. I had laughed, till my mother told me, ‘Nice girls do not see such things,’ as if it were my fault for looking, and not his for showing.

  For some reason, our two families played the game of hatred. But hatred killed. Suddenly all the years of hatred slid away and I could think again. I would play my parents’ game no longer. I was not the daughter they had tried to make, like the sugar cups my mother had made for the feast. The sugar cups had dissolved. I had dissolved too. The good daughter had vanished, leaving only me.

  Romeo …

  I had heard the name before. A cousin had once said, ‘Romeo is a good lad,’ then added hurriedly, ‘For a Montague.’ Tybalt had sneered and said, ‘A rat is still a rat.’

  More important was what I had not heard. Tybalt had never boasted of fighting with Romeo Montague. No one had ever laughed at the heir of Montague lying drunk in the street, or brawling by the city gates. If there had been bad to tell, someone would have told it, so we could all laugh at the Montagues.

  Nothing bad, and something good …

  Perhaps, if his name were not Montague, Romeo might have been the man my father chose for me, the heir of a house like ours.

  I could not marry the Earl of Paris now. My loyalty to Capulet had vanished with the torchlight. My family had played me like a chess piece. They cared for me no more than a piece in their games. Now I was myself, not theirs. Just Juliet.

  The moonlight danced along the balcony. I slipped from my bed, the rush matting cold under my feet. I stepped onto the balcony and pulled the curtain behind me. I gazed across the garden at the sleeping town, the last curls of smoke drifting up towards the sky. The breeze whispered against my bare arms. Love, it murmured, love.

  Was Romeo sleeping somewhere out there? How could two names keep us apart?

  ‘Romeo.’ It was the first time I had said his name aloud. I spoke to the garden, to the sky. ‘Romeo … give up your name. Or if you’ll be my love, then I’ll no longer be a Capulet. It is only your name that is my enemy. Oh, be some other name! What’s in a name? That which we call a rose would smell as sweet with any other name. Throw away your name, and for that name, take all myself.’

  A laugh below me. ‘I take thee at thy word.’

  ‘What?’ I stumbled back. ‘Who are you?’

  For a moment I wondered if I were asleep. This was my dream: the rose garde
n, the shadows, the voice of my love … I had dreamed this a thousand times …

  Then my heart grew steady. Even before he spoke, I knew. He was himself, and I was myself, and we were real, and now.

  Romeo stepped forward from the shade of a rose bush. How long had he been standing there, listening, watching?

  ‘I know not how to tell you who I am,’ he said. ‘My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself, because it is an enemy to you.’

  ‘Are you not Romeo and a Montague?’ I whispered.

  ‘Neither, fair saint, if either you dislike.’

  I leaned over the balcony, my heart beating with terror for him. What if a servant heard us and let out the dogs? Or Tybalt appeared with his rapier? ‘The place is death, considering who you are, if any of my kinsmen find you here. If they see you, they will murder you.’

  ‘Look you but sweet, and I am proof against their enmity.’

  He was a boy, laughing and boasting. He was a man. Even from so far away I could feel his warmth. But he could lose his life here.

  ‘I would not for the world they saw you here,’ I whispered.

  ‘I have night’s cloak to hide me from their sight.’ He added softly, ‘If you love me, then let them find me here. My life were better ended by their hate, than lived long but wanting of your love.’

  ‘How did you know where I was?’ Had he bribed a maid, little Joanette perhaps?

  ‘By love.’

  He said it so simply I knew that it was true. He had known where to find me as surely as I had known his face in the banquet hall.

  He smiled. ‘I am no pilot, yet were you as far as that far shore washed by the farthest sea, I would adventure for such merchandise.’

  Suddenly I wondered if he thought me too bold. Guigemar’s lady had not done what I had done tonight. A girl should wait for a man to speak first, not call out into the night. Was he adventuring? Would he boast tomorrow that he had won the Capulet girl?

  I said quickly, ‘Do you love me? I … I know you’ll say you do. And if you say it, I’ll believe it. But, gentle Romeo, if you love me, pronounce it faithfully.’

  He said nothing, looking up at me. Was he hunting for words that might convince me?

  I met his eyes. ‘If you think I am too quickly won, I’ll frown and be perverse and say thee nay, so you will woo me. But trust me, and I’ll prove more true than those who have more cunning to be strange.’

  Would he never speak?

  I said in a small voice, ‘You overheard me speaking of my true love’s passion when I didn’t know you were there. Pardon me. I did not yield so quickly because my love is light. It was covered by the night.’

  A breeze stirred across the garden. It was as though the wind was his fingers. Parts of my body woke in aches and shivers. I felt my breasts against my shift. I had never thought of my breast as different from my chest. I wanted him to touch me. I had never wanted that before. Servants had touched my body all my life. This was different.

  At last he seemed to find the words. Each one was low, distinct: ‘Lady, by yonder moon I swear —’

  ‘Oh, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon.’

  ‘What shall I swear by?’ His voice was as serious as mine.

  ‘Do not swear at all. Or swear by yourself, and I’ll believe you.’ I glanced around the shadows of the garden. I should not be here, alone with a young man, and in the night, dressed only in my shift. No matter what love Romeo might swear to me, how could he think me virtuous? I had never spoken with a man alone in all my life, not even with my brother or my father. I had to leave!

  I bent over the balcony to whisper again. ‘Though I have joy in you, I have no joy in this contract tonight. It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden. Goodnight! Goodnight! As sweet repose and rest come to your heart as that within my breast.’

  He moved forward, so close I wondered if he meant to try to climb the vines up onto the balcony. ‘Will you leave me so unsatisfied?’

  I stepped back, wary. ‘What satisfaction can you have tonight?’

  He moved no closer but met my eyes. Dark eyes, like mine. ‘The exchange of your love’s faithful vow for mine.’

  I had misjudged him. Misjudged myself. ‘I gave you mine before you did request it.’

  ‘Would you withdraw it?’ His face looked as young and uncertain now as mine must have been.

  I said softly, ‘My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep. The more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.’

  I heard Nurse mutter in my bedroom: ‘Juliet? Poppet?’ Then with alarm: ‘Where is the girl?’

  I had to go. ‘I hear some noise within,’ I told Romeo. ‘Dear love, adieu!’

  ‘My little lambkin?’ The bed creaked as Nurse got up.

  ‘Anon, good Nurse!’ I called. I gazed down on my love again. ‘Oh, strange, to be so near, and yet so far away. Sweet Montague, be true.’

  I heard his final words as I pushed back the curtain: ‘Oh blessed, blessed night. I am afraid, being in night, all this is but a dream, too flattering sweet to be substantial.’

  Was it a dream? I looked at Nurse. No one would ever dream of Nurse. She stared back at me, smelling of wine and brandy.

  She burped slightly. ‘My poppet, what is it? What’s wrong? Is it your stomach? All that rich food?’

  ‘Not my stomach, but my heart. Oh, Nurse, I have lost my heart.’

  She stared at me. I heard her silence, loud as the church clock. Twice in my life had Nurse been silent, and both today and yesterday. At last she said, ‘I heard a man’s voice out in the garden. Not Paris? Nor Tybalt either?’

  I shook my head.

  Nurse was no fool, though she could sound one. ‘That young man tonight, the Montague?’

  I whispered, ‘His name is Romeo.’ I waited for Nurse to call the Joans, the footmen, to alert the house guards to cast him out.

  Instead, she said, ‘What do you feel, my lambkin?’

  ‘That my heart is twisted into his, and will be for all time, and his with mine.’

  ‘Ah.’ For the third time Nurse was silent. Finally she reached over and took my hand. ‘I had a heart that loved a man like that. All the world, it seemed, was him and me. A good man, and a kind one.’

  I had never heard Nurse talk like this, deep from her heart. Was it the wine that stopped her chatter and made her words true? Or had she glimpsed in me what she had felt once too?

  I whispered, ‘What happened?’

  ‘The plague,’ said Nurse. ‘When I was seven months with his child. They locked me in the house with him, in case I had it too. Most in those houses died together, when one man had the plague. I sat with him and I watched him die. I wanted to die at that moment, but I had the babe inside me to think of, my Susan, his and mine. “Let me out, let me out!” I screamed. But instead they nailed the door shut. “Give me food!” I shouted. “Of your mercy, give me water to drink!” But no one even threw a loaf through the window.

  ‘Forty days they kept me locked in there. I held a pot out the window to catch the rain to drink. I ate dry crusts, and then I ate nothing, for there was nothing left to eat, and all the while his body lying in the room upstairs, his bright young body that I loved, now bright no more. On the fortieth day they let me out. But my Susan was dead inside me, from sorrow and from starving. I cried then. I could not waste water in tears for him before. I cried for him and for my Susan. But then I had you, my poppet.’ Nurse suddenly looked fierce. ‘And I would give my life and heart for you. So you tell that man out there that if he loves you truly, he will wed you afore he beds you. And if he can’t say yea to that, he is no man to love. But if he will, why then you take him, even if he is a Montague.’

  I stared at her. This was the one marriage in all the world I could not have. No romantic dreams would serve me now. Nurse could marry where she wished. But I, a Capulet …

  Reality slipped over me like cold water. I had been a moonlit girl. It was time to be a woman. Had Guig
emar’s lady let herself die in that dungeon? No, she had sought out her love! Who said I could not marry a Montague? Was it the Church, or the Prince? No. The Holy Church liked two lovers wed. As for the Prince …

  My skin prickled. This marriage could be an answer to all his woes.

  Who better to marry than a Capulet and a Montague? Our marriage would heal the Prince’s city. Romeo’s parents and mine would forbid us if they knew. But what could they do once we were married? My father had one child only, as did Lord Montague. They would have to forgive us. The quarrel would be mended, and by my hand.

  It was as though I had turned the page in Marie’s book, and found it ended happily. A girl would bring two broken families together. A girl hand in hand with her true love, just like in the stories.

  I kissed Nurse quickly on her fat cheek. I stepped back through the curtain. The moon shone like a golden plum hanging over the wall. I knew he would still be there.

  His face broke into happiness as I looked down. ‘My lady?’

  ‘Three words, dear Romeo, and goodnight indeed. If that your love be honourable, your purpose marriage, send me word tomorrow by one that I’ll ask to come to you. Where and what time you will perform the rite; and all my fortunes at your foot I’ll lay. I’ll follow you, my lord, throughout the world.’

  Would he agree? A girl did not propose marriage, and such a sudden one. But he had let me come to him, had let me choose if we should kiss or not. I looked at his face and saw my answer.

  Nurse called from within. ‘Madam!’

  Was she regretting sending me out?

  ‘By and by, I come,’ I called to her. I looked at Romeo, his hat off in the moonlight. I smiled, and felt him smile with me. ‘Tomorrow I will send,’ I whispered.

  He bowed his knee, but kept his gaze on mine. ‘So thrive my soul.’

  ‘A thousand times goodnight!’ I slid back inside. I heard him say, ‘A thousand times the worse, to want your light!’

  Tomorrow … tomorrow we would be wed. Tomorrow Juliet Capulet would change the world. I floated on weariness and the scent of roses …

  Nurse took my arm. ‘You haven’t found when your messenger will meet him, girl! Tell him I’ll come to him to take a message from him to you. But he must say when, and where.’