Juliet's Nurse Read Online Free

fine a house—that will shrivel more than a man’s impatience. But who am I to tell her so?
    “He’ll climb right back upon me,” she says, “to make a son.”
    Fear tinges her words. Perchance it’s more than age that makes them ill-matched. He must run hot, as men do, and she cold, as I for one do not. Although never having seen her husband, I cannot say whether there is anything in him that might please any woman. Especially one barely out of girlhood.
    “The midwife will tell him he must wait, as all men do,” I say, thinking of how Pietro brought me here out of our marriage bed.
    Her fingers, heavy with pearl rings, tug at the gold-and-garnet cross that hangs around her neck, then turn the coral bracelets upon either wrist. Extravagant talismans, doubtless from her husband’s family, which no one thought to unclasp at night so she might sleep in comfort.
    She’s sorely in need of mothering herself, new mother though she is. I could sit upon this grand bed, stroking her hair and whispering soothing words until her hands lie calm. I might tell her that many a wife whose husband gives her no pleasure in the getting of babies still finds great joy in the children she’s borne. But Juliet begins to stir, and I turn my back to the parto bed to take up the child who is my charge.

TWO
    F or the first five weeks, I see nothing of the Cappelletti compound except the confinement room. But Lady Cappelletta is not wrong about Lord Cappelletto’s eagerness to make a son. The day after I arrive, her breasts are bound in squash leaves to dry their milk and keep her fertile. And at five weeks to the hour of when her labor ended, her husband—who’s not bothered to make a single visit to the confinement room—orders her brought back to their marriage bed. The fire in the confinement room is put out, the parto linens and sumptuous wall-hangings folded away for when she’ll bear again. The handsome walnut-and-ivory cradle, with its fine white Levantine silk and gold-fringed coverlet, is moved through the family apartments to what will ever after be Juliet’s room.
    Her own room. Bigger than the one in which my whole familyslept, and hung with fabrics I cannot even name, fabrics so mysterious and beautiful I know they’re not from Verona or Mantua or any land where anyone I know has ever been. It has art like a grand parish church, paintings of the Blessed Maria and the Sainted Anna, and a niche as big as a man filled with a statue of San Zeno. All smile their holy approval onto a bed that’s wide enough for a bride, a groom, and half their wedding party. The headboard and footboard rise so high, it’s like a little fortress when the bed curtain closes around them. Outside the footboard sits a cassone-chest longer than I am tall, its sides and cover carved with chubby angels. When I open it, the woody scent of rosemary seeps from the dresses stored inside. Garments sized for a child of two, of four, of six, each more elegant than the next—a bishop’s ransom worth of clothing, waiting for my tiny Juliet to grow big enough to wear. And beside the massive bed, a narrow, low-slung truckle-bed for me.
    Juliet’s chamber glows with light, a perfect setting for my little jewel. There is a window that stretches from below my knees to high above my head, broad as my open arms. My fingers are greedy to touch its thick, warbled panes. Real Venetian glass, nothing like the waxed-cloth windows on the Via Zancani. These panes are set within a heavy frame hinged to swing wide, to let in air from the Cappelletti’s private arbor. In all the years I’ve lived among the city’s crooked, crowded streets, I’ve never known that such trees grow within Verona’s walls, their ripe fruit so fragrant. This is what the rich have: the prettiest smells in all the world, and the means to close out even those whenever they want.
    It is a bright September day, so I keep the window open while Isit in a high-backed chair and sing to Juliet. I