The witch must have been in terror that I would betray her; the penalty for such unholy acts as she commits is death, but I will not betray anyone with a secret. I threw gold on the table, a mountain of it, and told her to continue to dose my wife with whatever herbs might induce her to conceive, but to make for me a curse, a great and terrible curse.

Imagine my surprise to discover that this young slip of a witch once had a cousin, a cousin I so tenderly cherished. She had come to Verona to discover the reason for Tomasso’s death. Once she learned who I was, she was cheerful in her help to me.

I had long considered carefully how to achieve my vengeance. One blade alone might cut a few throats, but not enough, and not the right ones. No, I needed to destroy the Capulets, root and branch, before turning the vengeance upon my own father and his varlets.

A curse for love, cast in my own hand and faith and flesh. A curse of love, on the house of the guilty.

Let them feast on love, as crows feast on the dead.

Perhaps I am, after all, mad.

•   •   •

I have made me a poem of my madness, and it concerns Queen Mab. In part, it reads:

Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck,

And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,

Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,

Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon

Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,

And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two

And sleeps again. This is that very Mab

That plats the manes of horses in the night,

And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,

Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:

This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,

That presses them and learns them first to bear,

Making them women of good carriage.

I think Mab has made me mad. I no longer care.

•   •   •

I have consorted with the witch to make this curse, and there are three parts to my vengeance: flesh, mind, and spirit. Let me then speak my mind, here:

CURSED BE THE CAPULETS.

CURSED BE THE HOUSE WHO BETRAYED US.

Let Queen Mab visit her madness upon us all.

QUARTO
3

One would believe that Tomasso had never existed, save for the new twist in Mercutio’s once-straight nose; the bruises had faded, and if our friend’s humor had taken a turn for the bizarre and bitter, I could scarce blame him. He had been wed, with all the necessary pomp, to a blushing young girl; Romeo and I had helped put Mercutio to bed with her according to custom, a strange and horrible business knowing what we did, but we’d been spared the awkward business of listening to any consummation behind the curtains, though some servant would have done so.