The Capulet door was barred, but as I approached it a servant fled through the front, taking with her an apronful of precious silver. Chaos and disaster, and all the world gone to ruin . . .

Turn back, something screamed in me, but the heat inside urged me on, on, into the hall, past Capulet men and women who were too affrighted to challenge my purposeful steps. One man braver than the rest tried to bar my way, but I drew my sword, and he retreated. Juliet’s door was open, and her nurse lay senseless on the carpet beside her curtained bed, one hand clutching her prayer beads.

Rosaline’s door was shut and locked from within.

I banged my open hand upon it. I did not speak, because I knew she was there, as she would know I was without; I could feel her nearness beyond that barrier, pressed against it. I could almost feel the sweet whisper of her breath upon my face.

“No,” she said. Her voice sounded choked and desperate to my burning ears, and I pounded again, more urgently. “No, Benvolio, for God’s own love, no, you must go; we must be stronger than this; we are the last two of our houses in this generation; if we die—”

If we died, the curse would be satisfied. Perhaps. Or perhaps it would only spin on, seeking ever more distant relations to ruin. But did not all mankind narrow back to a common root, of Adam and Eve? Would Mercutio’s curse carry away every living soul, in the end?

“I care not,” I said. My own voice sounded a stranger’s to me. “I care not for death, or doom, or curses; I care only for you, Rosaline, and I know you feel the same; I know—”

“The curse,” she said. I heard tears, and I also heard the key trembling in the lock, as if she had taken hold of it to turn. “There must be a way to break its hold over us. You must know a way!”

She pulled out the key and threw it away; I heard the clatter of metal on stone as it slid over the floor. I put my eye to the keyhole and saw her there, leaning against the door. Only a small, pale portion of her face, and a lock of her hair, but it was enough to drive me to desperation. “Please,” I said. “Please open the door, Rosaline. You know you cannot keep me out for long. I can pick the lock. I can climb the wall. I can open the shutters.”

“You won’t,” she said. It sounded weary now, and heartsick. “You won’t, because you are not such a man, Benvolio; you are an honorable man, and you will not do it. You need me to let you in, and it rips me in two that I deny you that mercy.”