Such pleasures were normally reserved for men, and I was surprised to hear that the Capulets had allowed a girl so much, but then I remembered that her father was dead, like mine. Unlike me, she had known hers; he must have allowed her beyond what convention and propriety said was right. And she was right: She was no weakling, not if she had faced down a maddened boar bent on escape.

“Well, boar killer,” I said, “then we will try.”

She was far stronger than I expected, for a housebound young woman; I wondered whether she still, in secret, practiced the exercises her father would have made her take to fortify her arms and legs for the hunt, and the weapons she would have to bear. She could not, as I could, climb a wall with a running start, but when I climbed first and gave her the first handholds, she pulled herself up more competently than I expected.

“Careful,” I told her in a whisper, from the top of the Capulets’ wall. “There is—”

“I know,” she huffed back, a bit waspishly, and I smiled down at her and offered her a hand for the rest of the way. Once she was crouched beside me in the single ivy-covered spot of safety—and her balance was only a little unsteady, from effort—I braced myself, took her hands, and lowered her slowly down into the dark corner of the garden.

“Can you make your balcony?” I whispered down, and she looked up, face cool and calm in the moonlight, and nodded. I tried to think of some good-bye, something other than what I ached to say, and I settled for the lukewarm, “Be most careful.” I think the tone of my voice betrayed me, even so.

“And you,” she said, and her own sounded soft, almost a caress. Then she smiled at me, a full and carefree urchin’s grin, and made her way to her safety.

For my part, I waited a bit longer, watched her climb to her balcony and slip inside, and then eased down from the wall and ran back, quickly and quietly, to the monsignor’s household. Why would they fear my return, when the city watch had carried me off to meet the prince’s justice at the end of a short dangle?

I let myself in as before, made my way down to the still-broken stronghold, and this time I took away as much gold as I could comfortably carry.

Then I piled it in the doorway of the Church of Santa Maria Antica, with a note scratched into the white stone beside it: Alms for the poor.

Then I went home, to an uneasy few hours of sleep.

•   •   •

I slept like the dead until I was roused by impatient servants; my uncle had business for me to do in town, and I received the instructions from him, only barely aware of what I had agreed to do. At least I was dressed and decently barbered, though the steadiest of hands could do nothing for my swelling nose and spectacular bruising, which occasioned much exclamation when I presented myself to my uncle’s chambers.