Page 8 of What Dreams May Come
Yet by some means, I still knew not how, Prince Escalus intercepted me there. In the dark with no way to distinguish his face, I became acquainted with bold touches and passionate kisses and...
Never mind all that. What matters is that when the torches lit us, Prince Escalus begged Papà for my hand and now I am betrothed tothe Wrong Man.
That’sthe reason for my humiliation. I, who thought I could direct the course of my life with good sense and judicious planning, had been caught by machinations I had never imagined or seen coming. Had ever a woman been so tricked?
You’ll be pleased to know I did give a good solid kick to Escalus’s manly parts, enough to make him gasp and double over. It was good practice, and only that memory had kept me from totalfrothing fury.
By the way, if you’re one of those pie-eyed romantics who is thinking, “Oo, but you’ll marry a prince...”
Let’s talk about that. Have you seen the duties involved in being a princess? Smiling, waving, pretending to be interested while a series of diplomats parade past, being patient with their stupid manly quarrels which usually consist of some variation of whose codpiece is stuffed with the most linen versus the most flesh—at that thought, I adjusted my own stuffed codpiece. This formality in addition to the usual womanly duties of home care, meal planning, cooking as necessary, bedsport and, oh, let us not forget that I am fondly supposed (based on my mother’s incredible fertility) to be fecund and able to conceive one child while watching the wet nurse simultaneously burp another.
Enough of that, my friend. Tonight was not for lamentation about my collision course with fate. Tonight was for me and my mission. Tonight I left Lady Rosaline Montague behind and became my brother, Lord Cesario Montague.
Yes, Cesario was merely six years old, but most of the unfettered citizens who roamed the streets after dark didn’t know him, and this name gave me a tie to the Montague family and to my father, Romeo, a man some called the greatest swordsman in Verona and the one all called the man with the swiftest temper.
Yes, I complain about my parents, but their true love was a shining beacon, a shaft of light in a dark world of forced marriages, and from them I’d inherited my romantic (albeit well-hidden) nature. And by virtue of myrelationship to the Montagues and the Capulets, I was kin to half of the region we call Veneto. Frequently...or rathersometimes, that was a plus.
Hopefully none would recognize me tonight.
CHAPTER SIX
Regardless of my wary concerns, as I neared the square, I heard music and laughter, and my heart lifted and my footsteps quickened, to the theater and the backstage door. I asked for Guglielmo, the young sonnet-maker.
The stagehand pointed him out, a thin, bearded, pale-skinned man who wore clothing beset by patches and mended seams. He watched the actors from the wings, waiting to do his walk-on at the end of the play. He clutched a rolled parchment that looked very like the one that Katherina and Isabella had given me. Softly I called him by his name, “Guglielmo.”
His focus was such he resisted my attempt to speak to him with aresolved, “Sh!”
I placed a firm hand on his arm and used pressure to move him around to face me.
The knife I held at his throat may have helped with his decision. “Guglielmo.” I spoke quietly, aware I did not want to intrude on the magic of the onstage play. “Tonight my friends paid you a gold coin for a sonnet which you wroteon commission.”
Immediately he got a mulish look on his face. “I’m not giving you back the gold coin. I earned it, and the poem is one of the best I’veever written.”
“I agree. I don’t even like poetry, and the sonnet is pure genius.” The part about not liking poetry was true, as was the part about the genius.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The gold coin is yours to keep.” I nudged his chin with the point of my blade. “On one condition. You don’t perform the sonnet tonight onstage.”
“What? Why? When I told your friends I could add it to the play, theywere ecstatic!”
“They were unaware that circumstanceshave changed.”
Guglielmo took a moment to process that. “You mean, Lady Rosaline and Lysander are a couple no more?”
I sorrowfullyshook my head.
His eyes narrowed, trying to save the fee. “I could change the names.”
“Too many people know the circumstances which you so succinctly spelled out, and would believe the changes were a code.” When he would have objected again, I pulled a gold coin from the bag on my belt. “See this?” I held it before his eyes.
Clearly, the lowly playwright could see nothing else. He swallowed and nodded.
“What if I told you you could keep the first gold coin and earn this one in a commission from me?”
“I’m listening.” It could be said he strained to hearmy next words.
“Have you heard of Romeo and Juliet?”
