“Pray God I am never stricken with wisdom, then,” I said. “The happiest men I ever knew were followers of folly. It was only when they were stopped from it that their lives turned grim.”

“Men were not made to be happy,” he said, my philosophical guard. “Men were made to suffer and be made ready for the happiness of heaven.”

“A harsh sentence for the crime of birth.”

He shrugged. “Life is not fair, young sir; if it were, I’d be swimming in gold and ale.”

“You already swim in ale,” said his less talkative companion, in a repressive rumble of a voice. “Quiet. I’ll not take your lumps for you.”

That must have been an effective warning, because we passed through the last two halls in silence. Servants stood off, watching as they cleaned; courtiers stopped their hushed conversations to turn and watch my progress.

And then we passed the final arched doorway into a large, square room floored in marble, with a single heavily carved chair upon a dais at the end of it. Prince Escalus was not in the chair; instead, he was standing at its foot, listening to an aged priest bending under the weight of his robes, and as we clanked to a halt ten feet from him, he nodded a dismissal to the man and straightened to regard me.

He looked tired, our prince; he’d had little enough sleep, and I could well imagine governing such an unruly city would take its toll on him. He still stood tall and strong, though, and he stared at me a moment before he turned with a swirl of his half cloak, climbed the steps, and settled himself in the throne.

“I will hear the tale,” he said.

It was, it seemed, not my place to tell it, as a smooth-faced courtier all dressed in black robes—a lawyer—stepped forward and bowed. “My prince, in last evening’s late uproar, an alarm was raised within the Capulet household while the lord and lady were absent. When servants answered this call, they found Juliet Capulet’s nurse dead upon the floor, and this man—a Montague—in carnal embrace with young Rosaline Capulet, sister to slain Tybalt and cousin to poor Juliet.”

The prince nodded, eyes still fixed upon me. “And who raised this alarm?”

“Rosaline Capulet, my lord.”

Put in such terms, it did sound damning. I looked behind me. The Capulets had formed a knot of red behind me, blocking the doorway, and Rosaline’s uncle looked murderous daggers at me. Behind him, the veiled figure of Rosaline stood very still, breath stirring the fabric that shrouded her face.

“And was the nurse murdered, then?”

“Well, my prince, who can say? There were no marks upon her, but a strong young man may kill an old woman by smothering, or by choking—”