“Were there then marks of hands upon her throat?” Prince Escalus asked. He sounded only mildly interested. “Or did her eyes show red?”

“Red, my prince?”

“A physician from Venezia gave a lecture—perhaps you might have attended it more closely—in which he said that one might tell a smothering by the telltale red stains left upon the eyes, as the veins burst within.”

The lawyer hesitated a moment, then bowed. “You are most wise, Highness, but there were no such discolorings that I have been told, and no sign of hands upon her throat.”

“Then there is no evidence that the young man smothered or choked the woman, only that she is dead. There has been a plague of death upon this town of recent days, and almost all within three houses: Ordelaffi, Capulet, and Montague. I understand Benvolio’s aunt expired in the night. Shall we suspect him of that murder as well?” The prince waved away the lawyer’s response before it was delivered. “No, the crux of the matter is that Rosaline Capulet raised an alarm. Why?”

“The villain was breaking her door, my prince,” Capulet said, and stepped forward. “To save her most precious honor, she screamed for aid, and aid was given, but not before this wretch slipped outside, came through her balcony, and began his assault, which was thankfully incomplete.”

The prince’s eyebrows rose, though his face showed little else. He turned his attention back to me. “I do not see your uncle,” he said. “Is there no one to speak for you, Benvolio?”

“I can speak for myself, my prince.”

“Then do so,” he said, and leaned back with his arms on the carved lion’s-head armrests of the throne. “I attend.”

“I must go back, with your patience, to the death of a young man hanged outside these walls. . . .”

I told the story, then, of Tomasso and Mercutio. I ignored the cries of protest from those who felt the tale too perverse for the fragile ears of the ladies, and grimly went on with it, to describe the anguish of Mercutio, his fury, and finally, his curse. “Romeo had never clapped eyes upon the Capulet maiden Juliet until he saw her at the feast where the Capulets would celebrate her betrothal to Count Paris,” I said. “Is it then sensible that he formed such a close attachment that he would marry her in only days? Or that he would linger in Verona past his exile to stay in her embrace, when he knew well his life was forfeit? Mercutio’s lover was ripped from him, and he wished to visit that horror upon those he saw as guilty—to make them feel that love, and that terrible loss.”

“If there is a curse, it follows there must be a witch,” Prince Escalus said. His brows had lowered again, into a frown now, and he rested his chin upon one closed fist. “Can you produce her?”