Meredith: “Three civil brawls, bred of an airy word,
Have thrice disturb’d the quiet of our streets,
And made Verona’s ancient citizens
Cast by their grave beseeming ornaments,
To wield old partisans, in hands as old,
Canker’d with peace, to part your canker’d hate.”
She walked slowly between us, head held high. Colin stepped back and bowed. I and the other girls had each sunk to one knee. Meredith looked down at me and lifted my chin with one gloved hand. “If ever you disturb our streets again, / Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace.” She turned on her heel, the hem of her cape snapping across my face. “For this time, all the rest depart away.”
The girls and Colin bent to gather their discarded weapons and lost bits of costume. But the prince was impatient.
“Once more, on pain of death, all men depart!”
We scattered from the center of the room, which erupted in applause as Meredith ascended the stairs to the balcony again. I hovered at the edge of the crowd, watching her feet on the steps until she was gone, then turned to the nearest reveler—a boy, I didn’t know who, only his brown eyes visible through the holes in his mask—and said, “O, where is Romeo?” To another spectator, “Saw you him today? / Right glad I am he was not at this fray.”
At exactly that moment, Romeo emerged from a door on the east wall, clad all in blue and silver, his mask gently curving back toward his temples. He seemed almost a mythical figure, Ganymede, caught beautifully between man and boy. I knew it would be James, had guessed as much, but his appearance was no less affecting.
“See, where he comes,” I said, to the girl nearest me, in a softer tone. That strange possessive pride washed over me again. Everyone in the room was watching James—how could they not?—but I was the only one who really knew him, every inch. “So please you, step aside: / I’ll know his grievance or be much denied. / Good morrow, cousin!”
James looked up, looked right at me. He seemed surprised to see me standing there, though I didn’t know for the life of me why he should be. Was I not always his right-hand man, his lieutenant? Banquo or Benvolio or Oliver—little difference.
We argued lightly about his unrequited love, a game emerging wherein I blocked his way each time he tried to leave, attempted to evade my questions. He was content to play along until at last he said, more firmly, “Farewell, my coz.”
“Soft!” I said. “I will go along; / An if you leave me so, you do me wrong.”
“Tut, I have lost myself; I am not here; / This is not Romeo, he’s some other where.”
He turned to go, and I darted around to bar his path again. My desire to keep him there had, at some point, transcended the alignment of an actor’s motivation and his character’s. I desperately wanted him to stay, seized by the nonsensical idea that if he left, I would lose him, irretrievably. “Tell me in sadness, who is that you love,” I said, searching the parts of his face I could see for a flicker of reciprocal feeling.
James: “A sick man in sadness makes his will:
A word ill urged to one that is so ill!
In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman.”
For a moment, I forgot which line of mine followed. We stared at each other, and the crowd faded around us into indistinct shadow and set dressing. With a jolt I remembered my words, but not quite the right ones.
“Be ruled by me,” I said, a few lines too soon. “Forget to think of her.”
James blinked rapidly behind his mask, but then he stepped back, detached, and carried on. I stood still and watched him pace around: his words, his footsteps, his gestures—everything restless.
A servant entered with news of the Capulets’ upcoming feast. We gossiped, planned, and plotted, until a third masker finally entered: Alexander.
He spoke his first line from where he was sitting on the edge of the punch table, his arms draped around the two nearest audience members—one of whom was giggling uncontrollably behind her mask, while the other shrank away from him, obviously terrified.
“Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance.”
He slid off the table so smoothly that he might have been made of liquid and approached with his loping feline gait. He nudged me out of his way, walked around James in a small circle, pausing to eye him from every intriguing angle. They volleyed words and quips between them, easy and inconsequential until James said, “Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, / Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.”
Alexander released a purring laugh and seized James by the front of his doublet.
Alexander: “If love be rough with you, be rough with love!
Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.
Give me a case to put my visage in:
A visor for a visor.”
The foreheads of their masks knocked together, Alexander holding James so tightly I heard him grunt in pain. I started toward them, but as soon as I moved, Alexander shoved him backward, right into my arms.
Alexander: “What care I
What curious eye doth quote deformities?
Here are the beetle brows shall blush for me.”
I pushed James upright again and said, “Come, knock and enter; and no sooner in / But every man betake him to his legs.”
Alexander: “Come, we burn daylight, ho!”
James: “Nay, that’s not so.”
Alexander (impatiently): “I mean, sir, in delay,
We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day.
Take our good meaning, for our judgment sits
Five times in that ere once in our five wits.”
James: “And we mean well in going to this masque;
But ’tis no wit to go.”
Alexander: “Why, may one ask?”
James: “I dream’d a dream tonight.”
Alexander: “And so did I.”
James: “Well, what was yours?”
Alexander:$$ “That dreamers often lie.”
James: “In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.”