Prince of Shadows

“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?”