Juliet's Nurse Read Online Free Page B

mitre-hat.
    “Does your family make hats?” I ask, though I doubt that even the most gifted milliners could ever amass such a fortune as built Ca’ Cappelletti.
    Tybalt scores the air with his dagger to correct me. “Not hats, chapels. Our family endowed so many of them with all we earn from our lands, Pope Innocent III himself decreed we should be named for them.”
    “I see the joke,” I say, the word for the Pope’s mitre-hat sounding in our Veronese dialect almost the same as the word for chapel.
    “It’s not a joke,” Tybalt insists. “It is a shibboleth.”
    I do not know what a shibboleth is, cannot guess why Tybalt’s so proud that some long-dead Pope gifted his Cappelletti ancestors with one. But from the way he swaggers out the word, I know how best to answer. “A shibboleth. How clever.”
    This brings another smile to the boy’s face, and he lists the names of a half dozen bygone emperors, telling me how they hatedthe Popes and the Popes hated them. How this emperor warred against that Pope, and the next Pope plotted against the subsequent emperor. On and on for a hundred and fifty years, the Cappelletti always siding with the Pope, supplying knights and horses to capture whole towns from rival families named Uberti and Infangati and Montecchi. A catalogue of bloody conflicts this Tybalt’s been taught to recite like a poet singing a love-ballad.
    How much easier it is to be poor than rich. We are too busy scrambling to find enough to eat each day to worry ourselves over the centuries’ worth of slaughtering that consumes a boy like Tybalt, who chews thick slices from the pear as he schools me about his esteemed relations. His father is Giaccomo, and Juliet’s is Leonardo, and they are brothers. Very cunning, very courageous, and very rich, ever plotting against anyone who dishonors their noble family. Just like all the Cappelletti who came before them. When I ask which man is the elder, Tybalt laughs and tells me they are too old for anyone to remember. From this I figure that his father must be the younger, for an older brother never fails to impress his son about his rightful place in the family line.
    “And your mother?” I make my words sound light, so they’ll not betray my worry. Tybalt’s mother cannot be near so young as Juliet’s, to have a son of his age. If she is cruel or jealous, she will make life hard for her sister-in-law. And for Juliet, and me.
    “My mother is with the angels.” Tybalt turns to throw the pear core out the window. He keeps his back to me, his voice unsteady as he tells how his mother passed just before Michaelmas, birthing his sister Rosaline.
    Not yet a year gone. The air of death still lingering in the confinement room when young Lady Cappelletta was brought in for her own recent childbearing.
    “You must love your sister very much,” I say, to ease any resentment Tybalt might have for the baby whose birth brought the death of their mother.
    “I’ve never seen her. My father sent her away to be nursed, so that he’d not be reminded.”
    Only a man could have such sentiment: to love a departed wife so much, he banishes the child she bore.
    Juliet stirs in her cradle, giving a little cry as if to confirm the folly of men. Every wisp of her first golden hair has fallen out. But even bald as an ancient abbot, Juliet is still my beauty. I take her into my arms, telling myself I only want to check her swaddling, to be sure each limb is wrapped tight.
    Tybalt sees how needy I am just for the feel of her. “My uncle thinks my father is a fool. He says not even a daughter should be sent off as a newborn.”
    Much as I agree, I know better than to confirm aloud that his father is a fool. Instead, I motion the boy close and place his tiny cousin into his arms, hoping she’ll make up for the sister he does not know. He wiggles one of his small fingers before her face, and she smiles up at him. “You must protect your cousin Juliet, and your sister