Mercutio dropped the song after we’d passed the piazza’s beautiful statue, the Madonna Verona, as armed soldiers stationed in front of the overblown Palazzo Maffei watched us pass. He didn’t take his arm from my neck, so he truly was drunk enough to need the support, but he had the sense to keep his voice down. “So? How fared your venture?”

I dug the jeweled emblem of the Capulets from my purse and handed it over; he whistled sharply and turned it in the moonlight, admiring the faceted shine before slipping it into his purse. “I have more,” I said, and drew Tybalt’s rapier, which I tossed up in the air. Mercutio—even drunk—was a better swordsman than I, and he snatched it out of the sky with catlike grace. He examined the elegant blade with a delicate brush of his fingers.

“Sometimes I think your skills come from a lower place than heaven,” he said very seriously, and patted my cheek. “The emblem we can sell, if we break it to gold and stones, but this . . .”

“It’s not for sale,” I said. “I want it.”

“For what?”

I smiled, feeling fierce and free and wild in ways that no one would ever believe of the quiet, solid, responsible Benvolio Montague. At night I could be something else than what my city, my station, and my family required. “I don’t know yet,” I said. “But I promise you it will be the talk of the city.”

•   •   •

The next day, Tybalt Capulet’s sword was found driven an inch deep into the heavy oak of a tavern door. Pinned to it was a ribald verse that detailed a highly entertaining story about Tybalt, a pig, and acts not generally condoned by either the Church or right-thinking sheepherders.

It was a good day.

It was the beginning of the end of the good days.

QUARTO
1

Two months later

It was hot in my grandmother’s rooms, as it always was, no matter the season. A fire blazed in the hearth, and from the heat it gave off it might have been kindled by the breath of Satan himself. I’d shed my half cloak before coming, but even so sweat soaked through my hose and created damp, uncomfortable patches under the heavy velvet doublet. As I waited and suffered, a chambermaid put another log on the flames, and I felt sweat run down my face like tears.

The summons to attend my grandmother had come unexpectedly, and now I only hoped to escape quickly. There was no real chance of managing it unscathed.