I did, grabbing for whatever clothing came to hand—a wrinkled linen shirt, hose that had seen better days. I did not bother with a doublet, only threw on a leather jerkin and loose calf-length trousers like a laborer. “Change,” I ordered him. “No Montague colors. Balthasar, get him something less noticeable. Do it quickly.”

Balthasar scurried off to the chests to find something as Romeo began to unbuckle and untie his Montague doublet. The hose would do, being dark. I took away his too-recognizable dagger and sword and substituted a good but plain set from my stores. We dressed quickly, in charged silence, all too aware that we might be too late. If Mercutio was being stalked, it would be better if it were a straightforward enemy who wished to plant a sword’s point in his chest . . . but if someone from the Ordelaffi household was on his trail, something darker was brewing. He never allowed a servant to trail him, hadn’t since his childhood; he’d allied himself with us both from nature and from necessity, to avoid his family saddling him with such a hindrance. It was new, and worrying, that they felt the need to eye his comings and goings.

We dashed down the hallway, past startled servants, and at the door we came face-to-face with my sister, Veronica, and her giggling cadre of scheming, vicious friends, who were arriving fresh from the market. One of them, I noticed, was one of the Ordelaffi girls, a cousin of Mercutio’s.

Veronica stepped back and fanned herself, and her friends goggled at us with a fresh wave of muffled laughter. “Well,” she said. “It seems too early by far for a costumed ball, and why you would go as peasants . . .”

Romeo pushed her out of the way, and Veronica gave a shrill squeak of alarm as he darted past. She turned on me, furious at the slight, and her eyes narrowed. “Going to find your dear friend?” she asked. The giggling of the girls with her stopped as if it had been severed by a blade. “His family seeks him, too. Wherever could he be, do you think? What might he be doing so early in the morning, hidden in the trees?”

I looked from her to the Ordelaffi girl, sharp faced and foxlike, with the cruel gleam in her eyes of someone with a grudge. I gripped my sister hard by the shoulders and shook her until the jeweled pins in her hair began to slip free. “What did you do?” I asked Veronica. “What did you say?”

“It’s a sin,” she said, “what he does. And you know it. You have sometimes been cruel to me, brother. Measure for measure, that’s how we play, is it not?”

“You’d kill a man for your wounded pride?”

“I’m a Montague,” she said. Her color was high, and her eyes bright and vulpine. “I do not suffer slights. Not even from you.”