Chapter 47
With a blinding flash, Lysander burst into flames. That within the chalice was more than mere wine mixed with poison. It was an incendiary, a torture most horrible, meant to deface, disfigure, execute, and leave nothing over which to mourn. Meant for me, and Lysander had taken my place.
Oh God. Oh tears. Oh death. Oh woe and desolation and sorrow and self-reproach.
The audience screamed. They panicked. They stampeded toward the exits.
I dropped my blade and yanked Lysander off the table, slammed him onto the stage, and rolled him in the lap rug.
That extinguished the flames, but at once I could see he was horribly burned.
He coughed in horrible paroxysms. As he struggled to breathe, his chest rose and fell intermittently.
Where the wine had touched him, his skin bubbled and blistered.
His beautiful hair was a smoking ruin, leaving only a patchy burned scalp.
One eye was swollen shut, and the other was open … and blind. …
I didn’t realize I was sobbing until Friar Laurence knelt beside me to examine Lysander and administer swift aid. As he unloaded his bag and handed me the powders and salves he deemed necessary, he commanded, “Stop crying, my child. He’s alive.”
I jumped when Cal knelt beside me and spoke. “Friar Laurence, will he survive?”
“With God’s grace.” It was the good friar’s standard reply, but he wasn’t donning his sacred garments to give last rites, and I drew comfort from that.
“Can he be moved?” Cal asked. At Friar Laurence’s nod, Cal directed his men to lift Lysander completely onto the rug and carry him to—
“My suite!” Nonna Ursula shouted from beside the stage. “Everything is already there to cure any illness.”
“Except old age,” Lady Pulissena said in an aside.
Cal signaled his approval. “Take him there.”
Still on my knees, I watched the guard descend with Lysander’s twitching body, then turned and burrowed into Cal’s chest. “I’m so sorry! I never thought it would end so ill.”
Cal seemed startled for a moment; then he clasped me tight and shook me. “You thought no one would be hurt?”
“No. Only me,” I mumbled and lifted my head to face his furiously dark eyes. “It was our best plan. I couldn’t see how Magno could deny his culpability in front of an audience so large and distinguished. More important, I knew he couldn’t escape a trap set on a stage in front of a hundred people!”
“Yet he did.” Cal broke the news in a crisp voice. “He’s disappeared.”
“What?” I looked around at the emptying garden. “No, he’s in the dungeon. He must be!”
“The uproar gave Magno the chance he needed to escape. He leaped off the stage and vanished into the crowd.”
“No,” I whispered. Then louder, “No. He cannot go free!”
“No,” Cal agreed. “Everyone in Verona is on alert. In particular, your family has gone on the hunt, and they finger their knives as they watch for him. He’ll never escape beyond the city gates.”
A shuffling footstep beside the stage brought our heads around.
Magno emerged from beneath the steps, his small knife held expertly between his fingers, ready to throw.
“That’s why I jumped off and hid. I always plan for every contingency.
You shouldn’t imagine, niece, that you can outsmart a mind so trained and honed as mine.
” His voice vibrated with satisfaction and malice.
“Prince Escalus, release her, step away, and keep your sword sheathed. As you remember, I’m an expert with this knife.
” His gaze shifted to me. “Rosaline, come down here.”
Cal squeezed my arms, and when I looked at him, his gaze shifted sideways to the blade I’d discarded when Magno had thrown the poison at Lysander, the blade that had fallen a mere arm’s length away and was hidden from Magno’s gaze by my voluminous skirts The blade, in fact, that had been Cal’s, gifted to me when he believed me in need of defense.
Perhaps you would say I should have foreseen a future with Prince Escalus when he appeared in the Montague nighttime garden to personally attach the holster to my ankle.
Perhaps you would be obnoxiously right.
Taking my time, making no sudden move that would alert Magno, I palmed the knife, blade pointed up my arm to shield it from sight.
In a tone of manly command Magno repeated, “Rosaline, come down here! You’re going to save me from an ugly death.”
That was his plan. Not mine, and certainly not Cal’s.
I rose from my kneeling position and shook out my skirts—my wide, concealing skirts.
I looked Great-uncle Magno in his light gray eyes, the ones he utilized to lie, seduce, and distract.
In my mind I saw Lysander’s ruined face and blinded eye and heard his scream when the liquid ignited him.
Bracing my feet on the stage, I said, “No.”
Behind me, Cal moaned almost without sound.
Behind my back, I gestured to him to wait, partly because I loved seeing Magno’s face twist in disbelief, but also I had conceived of a fitting revenge.
Magno lifted his knife higher. “I’ll kill you!”
“Mayhap. If your aim is true and you, with your honed mind, can read which way I, a poor illogical woman, will leap. But if you kill me, you’ll never escape, and Prince Escalus will provide you with a most prolonged and torturous demise.”
Cal stood up and, rather than strangling me, dusted at his knees so casually, I wanted to applaud his acting prowess. “That’s true, Magno. Give up now, and your death will be … swifter.”
Magno snorted in disbelief. “As if I believe that!”
“For once, you’re right, Great-uncle Magno.
A promise like that is not worth compromising your plans.
If you want me, come and get me.” In a flurry that gave him a glimpse of the knife I held in my hand, I leaned over and shouted in his face, “Stop doing the I swallowed a live frog impersonation. It’s disgusting! ”
That did it. Great-uncle Magno jumped onto the stage in one impressive leap, cape swirling behind him.
He thrust his small blade into his belt, grabbed me, whipped me around, seized my poorly hidden knife—because how better to show his superiority than use my own weapon to threaten me—and placed the sharpened tip to my throat.