Juliet's Nurse by Lois Leveen Read Free Book Online

within my own awed breast.
    A golden-bellied thrush soars by, so close I lose my footing. I grab at Tybalt to catch my balance, ripping his silken doublet. As he reaches out to steady me, sunlight catches the flesh beneath the tear. It’s raised in angry welts, his torso purpled with bruises.
    “Who did this to you?”
    “Did what?” He asks as though the beatings come so regularly, there is nothing astonishing about them.
    My finger circles his discolored skin. Still child-soft, despite the ugly mark. “Who hits you, Tybalt?”
    “My tutor, of course. He says that I am slow with Latin, and with the abacus. But he’s the one who’s slow, and dull. Why should I be bothered with book-lessons, when I can teach myself to jump and joust and parry like brave knights do?”
    Pietro’s army was true enough to its name, our boys staging epic battles or wrestling like the gladiators of Ancient Rome. But not one of my unschooled sons ever earned a bruise in the way Tybalt has.
    No matter how hungry we were, Pietro never put any of our boys to work for masters who beat them. “You cannot treat a boy like he’s a beast,” he’d say, “and expect he’ll grow up to be a man.” Having spent his childhood coddled by his sisters, Pietro saw no need to allow anyone to cuff and thrash his children. Having spent my childhood terrified by my father’s beatings, I agreed. But despite all of our indulgence, not one of our boys ever grew to be a man. Who knows what Tybalt, born to wealth and power yet marked with what my sons never had to bear, might come to be?
    I tell Tybalt I must sit and nurse Juliet. I let him lead us back down the tower stairs and into our chamber, as I carry her wrapped within my careful arms. I’ll mend his doublet while she sleeps.

    Lord Cappelletto dines in the sala just before sunset, offering barely a word to his wife, who sits on one side of him, and endlessly haranguing his nephew, who’s seated on the other. He speaks of ventures and profits, which bore the boy, and sieges and skirmishes, which thrill him. Lord Cappelletto tells Tybalt that he must learn to move the silver king upon the chessboard in the corner of the sala with cunning care, if he’s ever to understand how his uncle moves the young prince who sits upon Verona’s throne. Through all Lord Cappelletto’s endless lecturing, I’m made to stand beside the table holding Juliet, so that if he happens to look up from his meal, he may gaze upon her.
    Though the aromas of the rich foods growl my stomach, I get not one bite of what the Cappelletti eat. When Lord Cappelletto lets out a belch to show he’s had his fill, the preening serving-man rushes forward to clear the trencher, and without a word I am dismissed. As soon as we’re outside the sala, the serving-man sneers at me, scooping through their leavings with his bare hand to gull whatever he can for himself. I carry Juliet back to our chamber, where I find my own meal: overly boiled farina that’s grown cold long before I dip my spoon to it, which I’m to wash down with a jug of wine that’s so diluted it tastes more of well-water than of grapes.
    It’s no mystery what makes a rich man rich. They have whatwe poor do not: money. This money of theirs is not like what we earn with honest sweat. It has its own magic, by which it is forever making them more of what they’ve already got. When Pietro and I first came to Verona and were in want of a place to sleep, we pawned everything we’d brought except a single cooking pot, yet had barely enough to rent a narrow little house from a man who was so wealthy he owned more buildings than all his relatives could ever inhabit. Every year since, the rent on our house has come so dear that the landlord grows richer and richer while we stay always poor.
    Living within Ca’ Cappelletti, I realize a rich man’s food is not unlike his money, for I’d swear I can see Lord Cappelletto growing fatter while I am always famished.
    So in the