“But you sauce up so well,” he said, and arched his brows in comical consideration. “Very well, I leave you to the warm fires of your familial love.”

We clapped hands. He offered the same to Romeo, and a quick embrace. “Safe home, my friend.”

“Safe,” he said, and jumped theatrically up to the windowsill to offer us both a sweeping bow. “But most certainly not to home.”

He spoiled his exit somewhat by nearly slipping as he began his descent down the wall. I watched him swarm down the stone—not quite as expertly as I, but competently—and then he was gone, a shadow in the shadows. Our lunatic friend, off on yet another risky venture.

Behind me, Romeo said, “He’ll be caught one day. You know that.” Romeo was not speaking of the dangerous wall climbing; we both knew that if Mercutio was caught at that he would talk his way out, and his madcap ways were well-known in Verona. No one would think much of it. Romeo was referring to the much deadlier rendezvous our friend was off to make.

We had known, since we were all young sprouts together, that Mercutio was made of fire and fey grace, but as we turned from boys to men expected to do the duty of our families, Romeo and I slowly realized that there was more to our friend than that. I had found it out by chance, walking in on Mercutio in close embrace with a pretty young man a bit older than either of us. I’d heard of such things, of course, but never seen, and I confess to a certain unsettled embarrassment that drove me from them—from Mercutio—for almost a week, before he came to see me and, with an entirely strange attitude of gravitas, asked what I intended to do. You hold our lives in your hands, he had told me. You know what they would do to us. I beg you to remember that whatever you think of me, whatever sins I may commit, I am always your friend.

And as simply as that, the matter settled for me. Mercutio was Mercutio, whomever he loved, whatever he did. Perhaps, as the Church taught, it was a cursed perversion, but I was old enough to know that many in the city practiced far worse, and with far less love in their hearts. While I was not drawn to Mercutio in any way of the flesh, he would always be my spiritual brother.