She gazed at me with her most typical expression of assessment and disdain. Those of any generation younger than her own would never find entire approval, but I, at least, escaped with only her mildest contempt. Her eyes were sharp, bitter, the faded color of an ice gray sky, and her face was the texture of weathered old oak. Family legend said she’d once been beautiful, but I couldn’t believe it. She looked as wrinkled as an apple left too long in a dark corner of the cellar.

“I summoned you near an hour past,” she announced in her high, brittle voice, and coughed. A chambermaid rushed forward to wipe her lips with a soft linen handkerchief, then artfully folded it to hide the telltale bloodstain.

“My apologies, Grandmother,” I said, and offered her a very deep bow. “I was with Master Silvio.” Master Silvio was our blademaster, charged with teaching the young men of Montague the skills necessary for survival in Verona. Grandmother sniffed and dismissed my excuse impatiently with a wave of her hand.

“I trust you’ve improved,” she said. “There’s no place for indifferent blades on the streets with Capulet’s bravos always prowling for trouble.”

I smiled, just a little. “I’m improving, I think.” Not from Master Silvio’s tutelage; Mercutio had been drilling me in the finer points that Master Silvio, for all his reputation, still lacked.

“Do you think I summoned you to discuss your progress at men’s silly games?” She gave me an ice-cold, stern look. “It may interest you to hear your cousin has gone mad.”

“Which one?” Madness was always to be feared, but Grandmother’s meaning had less to do with devils in one’s head than her own expectations of our behavior.

She slammed the point of her cane on the floor for emphasis. “Who do you think, boy? The important one. Romeo. And I blame you, Benvolio.”

I stiffened my spine and tried to think what it was that I might have done to deserve that comment. I was often the one who ended escapades; I rarely started them. Such censure seemed unfair.

“If I’ve offended, I will apologize,” I said, and managed to hold her gaze stoutly, if not fearlessly. “But I know not how I might be to blame.”

“You are the oldest of your cousins, and it is your responsibility to present a good moral example.” She said it as if she had the slightest idea of what a good moral example might be. That alone made me want to laugh, but it would be suicidal at best. The stories told of Grandmother’s misspent youth were legendary. It was miraculous she’d avoided the cloister, or worse.

“I do my best.” I tried to imagine myself with a glowing halo over my head, like one of the gilded angels on a church wall, but from the snap of anger in her, I fell short.