CHAPTER FIVE
Katherina and I jumped on Princess Isabella, placed our hands over her mouth, looked at each other in wide-eyed dread. The walls weren’t thick enough for that kind of volume. After a moment, I tiptoed over, eased open the door to the balcony and listened.
As Nurse woke, she snorted and called, “Lady Rosaline? Is all well?” Her usually bold voice was tentative, for she feared after the early evening’s events, I was displeased with her.
I had been, it was true, unjustly displeased, but right now, it suited me to let her think my annoyance lingered. I stepped out and called in a commanding tone, “I’m on the balcony, Nurse, and I wish to be alone.”
“May I bring you some wine? A drink to ease your mind?”
With even more simulated irritation, I snapped, “No! Nothing will help except a few minutes alone while I read my future in the mocking light of the stars.”
“Yes, Lady Rosaline. As you wish, Lady Rosaline.” Nurse sounded as if she wanted to be huffy, but her guilt got in the way.
I truly wanted to tell her to rest at ease, that my personality was such I could not long hold a grudge for something not her fault, but more important at the moment was that she not come out and find me on the wrong balcony, and my sister and the princess in lads’ garbs. “Thank you, Nurse, for your understanding. If you have wine beside your bed”—as we all do—“drink deep and sleep. Tomorrow will be a better day.”
I deeply doubted that truth, but she thanked me and drank, and settled back. The wine would ease her into oblivion, and I didn’t have time to waste.
I returned to the bedchamber where Katherina and Isabella paced. In a low voice, I said to the distraught young princess, “Tell me about the ring.”
“It was my mother’s!”
I took a breath to ease my impatience. “So you said, but it would help if you’d describe the ring.”
“Oh.” Her voice quavered. “After my mother gave birth to Escalus, they could no longer...she had difficulty...they couldn’t...”
“Your mother couldn’t have more children?” Katherina suggested to ease Isabella’s distress. Katherina might be my younger sister, but she was intuitive and generous and kind in ways I couldn’t begin to match.
“Yes.” Isabella nodded. “Yes. My father, Prince Escalus the Elder, loved her and wanted Mamma, but celibacy was forced upon them. To show his true and constant love, he sought a ring of brilliance and beauty to match his feelings for her, and in Venice he found it. An Indian ring of unmatchable brilliant diamonds, polished in the new way and set in figured gold, and in the midst one large diamond shaped by nature, so they said. The dealer told him a maharaja had given it to his wife to protect her from illness and misfortune, and when she died in a plague, he cast it aside, wanting never to see it again. Thus it came into the hands of a Venetian merchant, who sold it to my father in exchange for the exclusive right to export Verona’s rice.”
The area around Verona had proved to be a fertile place to grow rice, a new crop which, when placed on the tables of the wealthy, had proved to be as coveted as cinnamon, cloves, and pepper. I said, “Your father paid a kingly price for the ring.” I did not say, And you wore it on a ribbon around your neck? I bit my tongue, for the princess’s distress could be seen in the way she shredded her cuffs with her fingernails.
“My parents couldn’t resist each other.”
Katherina and I exchanged glances. We knew about that kind of bond in our own parents.
Isabella’s eyes filled with tears. “When Papà discovered Mamma carried a child—me—he sent her away to a convent, for at that moment, the Acquasasso family fought to overthrow him and take control of the city.”
I knew this, for I’d been nine during that unsettled time, but to Katherina it was unknown and ancient history, and she breathed, “Oh, no. Your poor mamma!”
“I don’t remember my parents. I was not yet born when my father was assassinated, and I was a baby when Mamma died. All I have of her is her ring.” Isabella’s voice quavered and broke.
“Gold and diamonds...it would be safer on your finger,” I pointed out gently.
“It doesn’t fit. My mamma was tiny. My hands are too big.”
That made sense. “Of course. I understand. Why don’t you have it sized?”
“It’s not mine forever. When Escalus marries again, he’ll give it to his bride. He was going to give it to his wife after the birth of their child, as our father had done with Mamma, but sweet Chiarretta died with the babe, and he grieved that he had waited.”
“Ahhh, sad,” Katherina moaned softly. An appreciation of romance, especially tragic romance, had been bred into our bones. It was only by the grace of God, a pharmacist who couldn’t mix a functional dose of poison, and my mom who had lousy aim with a knife that our parents had survived their tragedy in the tomb.
“Listen to me, both of you. Dress me in your boyish garb.”
Isabella vanished behind the folding privacy screen and came back wrapped in her nightgown and sumptuous robe, holding her male clothing.
In a family with so many daughters, among us modesty was an undervalued virtue, so without thought I peeled off my nightgown and reached for a length of linen to bind my breasts and another to wrap around my waist. They’d provide a pudgy boy’s profile. Thus covered, I held my arms out, and as if the two spoiled privileged girls were servants, I allowed them to dress me.
They did it without quibble. Isabella’s plain white linen shirt went on first over my head, followed by her black tights tied at my waist. I pointed at Princess Isabella’s gray tunic trimmed with silver. “I’ll take that.”
It laced at the front and would conspicuously display Katherina’s crimson wool codpiece.
I wanted conspicuous. I needed conspicuous. Better onlookers think me an up-and-coming (ha) youth than a female alone and thus fair game for bodily harm.
At this point, the ever-stylish Princess Isabella nodded her understanding and took over. She removed Katherina’s black velvet sleeves and connected them to the tunic, and while she did that, with a nod to Isabella’s modesty, Katherina donned her robe, unlaced her stuffed codpiece from the front of her tights, and handed it over along with the silver laces.
I attached it, then stretched out my legs in long steps across the room. “The left leg is a little restricted,” I announced, and re-laced it to give me full range of movement.
You might wonder why this is important. The codpiece was the connection between the legs of the tights, holding them together in front, and more than one gentleman had been revealed by his man servant’s sloppy lacing and embarrassed by his own shortcomings. Worse, in some eyes, was the man who was held so tightly he minced around grimacing in the pain of an overly confined pair of coglione.
Indeed, you’re right, I had no such concerns, but obviously I didn’t want to display my female parts—that would be the absolute worst disaster. Also, like Isabella and Katherina, I knew I might have to run and for that I needed to stretch my legs to their full length.
When I announced I was comfortable and they agreed all was hidden, Princess Isabella wound her worked leather belt at my waist to emphasize the roundness I’d created with the linen. On the belt she hung her leather purse, and Katherina attached her own scabbard with her short sword, and she strapped her leather scabbard to my arm. Within rested her sharp eating knife, ready to use to slice a haunch of prosciutto crudo or to thrust into a thief’s gullet.
It was not merely for display. As the greatest swordsman in Verona, Papà believed that his daughters should be able to defend themselves, and although Mamma did not precisely approve, he taught us to inflict whatever damage we could before we, as the girls had said, ran.
Gentle reader, you’ll note I didn’t mention undergarments of any kind. That’s because in this time and place, they were unknown and unworn. Men tucked themselves into their codpieces and women...hung out beneath their skirts. Except during their monthly visitor, and that involved rags tied up every which way...don’t ask.
I forced Isabella and Katherina to give up all their coins and put them in a leather bag I hung from my belt. Princess Isabella gladly handed hers over, but when Katherina complained about me spending her meager allowance, I glared in mighty exasperation. “Did you think to escape unscathed from your mad adventure? Count yourself lucky if the worst that happens is that you must forgo a lemon ice. As for me, before the night hours flee, I must fetch Princess Isabella’s ring and save us all from ruin!”
“Melodramatic,” Katherina muttered.
I turned on her like a stinging wasp. “No! Melodrama is sensational, exciting and exaggerated. There is nothing of exaggeration to this. Pray I succeed or I tell you, Katherina, Princess Isabella’s reputation will be unsalvageable and the Montagues will be ruined. Prince Escalus himself will see to it.”
Both girls paled.
Satisfied I’d at last impressed them with the magnitude of their actions, and in a high dudgeon, I flung Isabella’s blue brocade cape around my shoulders, donned Katherina’s crimson cap and exited stage left...
...Not really.
Merely out of the bedroom, down the corridor and the stairs, carefully avoiding any telltale squeaking boards or cracking tiles. With exquisite care, I opened Casa Montague’s great outer door and stepped out onto Verona’s narrow street where theft, murder and villainy lurked in every shadow.
About the villainy......Yes, really.
Prince Escalus ruled Verona justly, demanding his citizens be obedient to his law.
His punishment upon transgressors was swift and dreadful.
That said, the population of thriving Verona was in the tens of thousands, and among the merchants, aristocrats and shopkeepers lurked those who sought to steal prosperity rather than earn it.
In the crowd on the square, children picked pockets of the unwary.
At night, ruthless gangs roamed the streets far from the light, breaking into homes and shops, taking valuables and searching for helpless victims to pay in silver, blood and pain.
The city’s clock struck midnight as I quietly shut the great outer door behind me.
I hurried along, only glancing occasionally at the glimmer of stars that shone between the tall buildings.
I dared not take a wrong turn, for I must arrive at the theater on the square before the climax of the play.
There I must convince the visiting playwright that his new loving sonnet could not be performed and to return to the former words he had written as a conclusion.
I would be successful; I had no doubt about my powers of persuasion, merely my timing.
Only then would I go to the House of the Women, La Gnocca, and retrieve Isabella’s ring.
As I hurry through the streets, gentle reader, I know what you’re thinking. Either you know what dramatic moment had occurred the evening before, or you wonder about my dour hints and wish I’d plainly spell out the events that have caused me such pique.
Fine. Plainly, I’d earlier arranged to have Nurse lead my father, Romeo, and a party of the men of Verona into the darkened garden where I would be caught in the arms of my One True Love, Lysander. Thus would his family’s objections be overcome—the Montagues are wealthy, but our money is stretched thin and they deemed my dowry insufficient. It was a clever scheme, for after we were caught, we’d be required to wed to heal my disgrace.
Yet by some means, I still knew not how, Prince Escalus intercepted me there. In the dark with no way to distinguish his face, I became acquainted with bold touches and passionate kisses and...
Never mind all that. What matters is that when the torches lit us, Prince Escalus begged Papà for my hand and now I am betrothed to the Wrong Man.
That’s the reason for my humiliation. I, who thought I could direct the course of my life with good sense and judicious planning, had been caught by machinations I had never imagined or seen coming. Had ever a woman been so tricked?
You’ll be pleased to know I did give a good solid kick to Escalus’s manly parts, enough to make him gasp and double over. It was good practice, and only that memory had kept me from total frothing fury.
By the way, if you’re one of those pie-eyed romantics who is thinking, “Oo, but you’ll marry a prince...”
Let’s talk about that.
Have you seen the duties involved in being a princess? Smiling, waving, pretending to be interested while a series of diplomats parade past, being patient with their stupid manly quarrels which usually consist of some variation of whose codpiece is stuffed with the most linen versus the most flesh—at that thought, I adjusted my own stuffed codpiece.
This formality in addition to the usual womanly duties of home care, meal planning, cooking as necessary, bedsport and, oh, let us not forget that I am fondly supposed (based on my mother’s incredible fertility) to be fecund and able to conceive one child while watching the wet nurse simultaneously burp another.
Enough of that, my friend.
Tonight was not for lamentation about my collision course with fate.
Tonight was for me and my mission.
Tonight I left Lady Rosaline Montague behind and became my brother, Lord Cesario Montague.
Yes, Cesario was merely six years old, but most of the unfettered citizens who roamed the streets after dark didn’t know him, and this name gave me a tie to the Montague family and to my father, Romeo, a man some called the greatest swordsman in Verona and the one all called the man with the swiftest temper.
Yes, I complain about my parents, but their true love was a shining beacon, a shaft of light in a dark world of forced marriages, and from them I’d inherited my romantic (albeit well-hidden) nature.
And by virtue of my relationship to the Montagues and the Capulets, I was kin to half of the region we call Veneto.
Frequently...or rather sometimes, that was a plus.
Hopefully none would recognize me tonight.