In fair Verona, where we lay our scene
In no small part because of my parents, the famed lovers Romeo and Juliet, Verona’s Festival of Love was not a mere day, but a whole week of unrequited romance filled with heart-shaped masks, stolen kisses, notes declaring undying affection and, of course, reenactments of the famous balcony scene wherein my parents declared their new-found passion while Nurse hollered at my mom to come inside before she froze.
Which is fair, because Mamma was practically unclothed, as one is when one wanders out onto the balcony to sigh about forbidden love in Verona in February, and the average high temp was, as Papà recalls fondly, stiff nipple weather.
I’m Rosaline, the oldest child of the famed, fertile, and very much alive couple, and after my marriage four months ago, the wife of Prince Escalus the younger and therefore princess of Verona.
Try to contain your awe.
The big ticket for the Festival of Love is the reenactment on the Capulet balcony by Romeo and Juliet themselves.
I’ve witnessed the event many times, yet the way my parents play it makes my heart strings twang.
Reluctantly, because all my life I’ve been force-fed love and passion and romance, but my parents really do get carried away by the moment and I get carried along with them.
Technically Cal and I are the rulers of Verona, but Romeo and Juliet are the high priest and priestess.
This is the first year Cal and I been together for the festival and as almost newlywed royals, we’re expected to play our parts to the gooey romantic hilt.
Cal and I will reenact the scene from our own palace balcony to, one supposes, cheers from our citizens.
I have my fair share of Montague drama and naturally, I can recite the whole passage from memory but, you ask, what about Cal?
Is the prince of Verona also an actor able to pull off the flourishes and babbling of young, new love, all in iambic pentameter?
Let me put it this way. Prince Escalus is a man renowned for his somber facade.
He is a most Christian sovereign who rules his city, his family and his life with cool intelligence.
His pronouncements of justice and punishment are always deemed correct by all except those who have committed the crime.
He has a unblemished reputation as a warrior and a swordsman.
As prince, the only thing he’s ever done that wavered from the correct and logical was get involved with me.
That’s probably why I never saw … That is to say, I never expected … In all fairness, no one imagined …
But I’m smarter than everyone else! I manage other people’s lives and they never know it! I had begun to make plans to find him a wife! Who was not me!
When he’d already decided on his next wife, who was me.
Gentle reader, if you’re imagining a tumultuous wooing, you would be correct. Add to that ghostly hauntings, poisoning, and murders, and you have a fair assessment of recent events, yet somehow, we managed to marry and are now blissfully happy.
Hahahahaha. Kidding!
From my observations, I’d say we’re like most newlyweds. If we’re not making the bed ropes sing, we’re fighting about the style of the furniture in our sitting room. That is, I want style and he wants the same old dreary stuff that’s been there since Moses parted the Dead Sea.
I searched all over the palace and found my recalcitrant husband in the atrium examining a recently acquired plant. “Cal, Angelo Mio, we must practice our lines if we’re to—”
“The trader told me he’d acquired this in Outer Nirvana and he’d brought it all the way to give me as a gift in return for a favor. Yet I find it in suspiciously good health for a plant that had taken a trip across deserts and oceans. What do you think?”
As requested, I examined it and pronounced, “I agree it’s healthy, but perhaps he nursed it before presenting it.
But Cal—it looks like common nettle. A useful plant, Friar Laurence uses it in his medicinal potions, but I would expect any trader who brings you a plant could find something a little more unique to that region. Where is Outer Nirvana, anyway?”
“No one knows.” He pressed a kiss on my forehead. “As always, you are a scion of knowledge.”
“Flattery is not going to get you out of practicing your lines.”
Cal grumped out some words.
I didn’t ask for a translation, I simply pointed at a bench, instructed him to sit, and said, “You have the first line.”
“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?” A bit of mischief lit his grave features. “It is the east, and Rosaline is the sun.”
I grinned at him. “Thank you, sweetheart, but the crowd will grumble if you don’t declare your devotion to—”
“My mother-in-law?” He glared balefully.
“Hm. Yes, you do have a point.” He really did. “But you’re the one who’s all about duty. It’s Verona’s Festival of Love. You’re the prince and we’re expected to play our parts in the city’s fabled scene. You can do it!”
“You can do it. I feel stupid.”
I pulled on my lower lip. “I suppose I could find another man to do your lines …”
In a move so swift I didn’t see it coming—and that’s one of the reasons Cal’s such a successful warrior—he snatched me off my feet and into his lap, and bent me backward on the bench and whispered against my lips, “Are you baiting me, Rosie?”
“Maybe a little—”
“Because you know I’m not going to let some other man spout romantic nonsense at my bride.”
I loved him when he was fierce, but I could be, had to be, implacable. “Then you have to learn your lines.”
“Later.”
Gentle reader, you should know that I never, ever discuss our bed sport with other people. They assume that the staid prince translates to a staid lover who is at best swift and always clumsy But when we’re alone … Let’s just say, you’d be surprised.
So it was that Cal’s good friend and bodyguard, Holofernes, had to clear his throat several times before we came up for air. “My prince and princess, Lord Romeo has arrived with an announcement which he says cannot wait.”
Indeed, Papà had followed on Holofernes’s heels. Without the usual courtesies or any preamble at all, he said, “This year, Juliet and I can’t do the balcony scene.”