Still, Mercutio’s cry upon being mortally struck haunted me as I joined my family for the uncomfortable journey back to our palazzo. A plague on both your houses!

Surely his dying warning was already coming true.

•   •   •

I took my leave of my aunt and uncle and went to my rooms, where Balthasar had already arrived; who had found and informed him of the day’s dark events, I did not know, but he had arranged for a tub of hot water, and took away my bloody clothes. Whether they were to be cleaned or burned, I did not care. I sank into the steaming bath with an almost pitiful sense of gratitude, and washed death’s leavings away.

I stayed in the tub, easing stiffened muscles, until Balthasar came back with a bath sheet to dry me. As he scrubbed me down with rough, efficient motions, I felt I was a toddling boy again, and a strange lassitude washed over me. I wanted to take to my bed and be coddled until the fever passed, but this fever was cold, not hot, and I feared it might not be banished so easily.

Inside me was a wild, howling emptiness where all my certainties had once lived. I had lost Mercutio, burning bright in both anger and love; I had as much as lost Romeo, just as hot-spurred but with a sweetness to his temper that Mercutio had never dreamed. My brothers in spirit, if not in blood, and both gone, blown away on an ill wind.

I had never felt more alone.

Balthasar wisely said nothing to me, only brought me warm wine and sat me in a chair near the window, where I might look down on the streets below. After a moment, I rose and closed the shutters. The cobbles outside were stained with a sunset Mercutio would never see, and it put me too much in mind of the blood I’d washed away in the tub. The sight of gray Verona’s stones reminded me of his pallid face and slackened lips.

I closed my eyes awhile, and when I opened them, my mother was there.

Balthasar must have brought her a chair, for she sat straight-backed and proper across from me, dressed in her habitual mourning black with glints of gold at her throat and cuffs. In the privacy of our house, she had taken off the wimple; her hair was pinned up in a complex series of braids and knots that must have taken her lady’s maid hours to achieve. As always, she seemed almost blank of expression, but I thought there might have been a flicker of concern, at least a passing one.

“Benvolio,” she said.

“Mother.” My tone did not invite discussion.