CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 10

Ihurried upstairs to my empty room; Nurse remained with my brother and sisters. I stripped off my cuffs, poured water from the ewer into the basin, and washed my hands and the small cuts the knife's point had made on my arm. I tossed the bloody water into the walnut tree that grew beside my balcony, used a rag to wrap my wound, laced clean cuffs to my ornate sleeves—a task that was best done by two—and following Prince Escalus's commandment, I slid the knife up my sleeve once more. I then paced downstairs past the ladies' facilities and onto the terrace.

A milling and a shouting greeted me. Guests gestured widely, speculated loudly, buzzed and hummed. Fabian and Gertrude of the house of Brambilia sneered and smiled and informed, and I knew each word from their lips dripped of poison and shamed their angel daughter as she was held in the bosom of our beloved Madonna.

I slipped through the crowd to my father's side. I tugged at his sleeve. "Papà, what's happening?"

My father clasped me in his arms, looked at me with such joy and relief, I almost cried for I realized he'd feared I was lost, too, a body out there in the darkness of our garden.

I couldn't reassure him; I had to keep up the ruse of ignorance. "Why is everyone shouting about murder and guilt? Who's dead?"

Papà looked around as if frantic. "There. There's your mother. She should tell you. Stay close to her. She's the most beloved woman in Verona, and she'll keep you safe regardless of . . . what madness takes the crowd."

Too late!

Like the baying of hunting dogs, the guests began moving in, circling, saying in a cacophony, "There she is. There's Rosie. She was his betrothed. I remember hearing she argued against marrying him. She got a knife. She stabbed him in the chest. She killed him!"

I pressed closer to my father.

Fabian and Gertrude of the house of Brambilia stood in the crowd, smiling nastily as they joined in the jeers. Located in different parts of the crowd, I saw Prince Escalus's men, Holofernes, Marcellus, and Dion, watching and listening. The elderly woman was there in her heavy black veils, her eyes glittering as she watched the scene, and I hoped Giotto had coaxed her to eat, for she looked eerily like a corpse.

Papà put his arm around me and loudly said, "I'm sorry you had to hear such sad news in so public and sensational a manner. I would your gentle mother had had the opportunity to tell you in private, where you might mourn." He glared balefully at Porcia. "A foul deed has ended the life of Duke Stephano."

"He is no more? The lord to whom you betrothed me has . . . gone to his just reward?" I buried my face in my hands and pretended to weep while thinking Duke Stephano's just reward would involve a bumpy ride through all of Dante's nine rings of hell ending with a perpetual balletto under Satan's sharp hooves.

One shrill voice rose above the rest. "I saw her take the knife. She confessed to me her intentions. She's guilty of Duke Stephano's murder!"

I should have plucked the blond hair with the dark roots from Porcia's forehead while I had the chance. I held the evidence that the blade buried in Duke Stephano was not my knife, but the crowd was rapidly becoming a mob. Who knew if I would have the chance to prove my innocence?

Where was Prince Escalus? Had he left me to my own devices?

But no. His calm, commanding voice rose above the cacophony. "Good people of Verona, let us take dispassionate counsel before we unfairly judge this noble lady."

No one wanted to take dispassionate counsel. Everyone wanted someone to be declared guilty so they could go home and sleep in their beds unafraid that a sharp blade would next find its way into their chests.

No one had the audacity to naysay the prince—except Porcia.

She pushed her way into the center of the crowd. She pointed her skinny, knobby finger with its long red pointed fingernail at me . . .

All right, fine. Her finger isn't knobby and her fingernail isn't long and red and pointed, but I'm rightfully irritated at this woman who so genuinely desired to see me take a dive into a boiling-hot pool of hellfire for no reason other than—

"She's a virgin!" Porcia cried.

I looked to the heavens for patience and gestured with my upturned hands.

"Virginity is a state much to be required in a young, unwed woman," my father said.

"Unwed, anyway." As nasty as Porcia was being, you'd think I mocked her matronly headdress.

Oh, wait. I had.

"How many times has she been betrothed and yet never wed?" Porcia waggled her shaved eyebrows suggestively.

The prince joined my father and I, standing at my right side.

Porcia continued. "Rosie is warped and bitter with the weight of her aged virginity!"

Guests scrutinized me as if searching for obvious signs of deformity caused by purity.

While Porcia drew a deep breath, preparing for her next blast of venom, I muttered, "How many times will she work the word ‘virgin' into the conversation?"

Prince Escalus got a funny look on his face. I didn't know what to make of it. On that narrow, still, aristocratic face, it looked oddly like . . . a smile. Not a full smile. A quirk that lifted his eyes and one side of his mouth.

I had never witnessed such a thing, and it vanished as quickly as it came. I tried again, still muttering, "If she calls me a virgin five times, you owe me a florin." At first I didn't think he'd heard me.

Then, "Seven."

"Six."

"Done."

"We're already at two," I advised.

"Unless she has given herself to God, it's unnatural for a female to be unwed at such an advanced age!" Porcia continued in full sail. "I tell you, this is by her design. She confessed to me she was going to the garden to meet Duke Stephano—"

"On his command!" I said.

Porcia paid no heed to my interruption. "And I saw her take a carving knife from the duck!"

"Which I still have." I pulled it from my sleeve.

Guests gasped and backed up as if expecting me to go on a slashing rampage.

That fingernail pointed again. "It has blood on the blade!"

"It's my blood!" I didn't know I could unlace my sleeve that quickly, but I did, and I showed the two cuts on my arm. I decided I was done being on the defensive. "You caused this. All this!" I gestured around.

With unerring calm, Prince Escalus plucked the knife from my waving hand.

I advanced on Porcia. "Porcia, explain to the kind citizens of Verona why you believe you should have been betrothed to Duke Stephano and not me."

She pulled that finger back to her chest. "I never said that."

Heads swiveled between her and me.

"Why did you think you could keep him happy?" I asked. No, I demanded. "Tell them what you told me. Tell them!"

In a lofty tone, she said, "A kindly warning that on her wedding night, an uncaring husband can horribly hurt his virgin wife by tearing through her flower!"

I lifted three fingers toward Prince Escalus. Virgin. "Then he should ask, ‘She loves me, she loves me not?' "

Porcia understood the reference to the ancient silly love rhyme, for she made an unattractive moue even as amusement rippled through the crowd.

"Then you told me . . . ?" I prompted.

"What I said was an intimacy between two women." She glared like an adder about to strike.

"You made free with my words. Shall I do the same with yours and tell these good people why you're also a suspect in Duke Stephano's death?"

"I am not!"

I faced the crowd. "She compared him to a raging bull and claimed when he had killed me as he killed his other wives, she'd take up the challenge and teach Duke Stephano to be gentle and tame and—how was it you said it, Porcia?—mellow with pleasure."

She blushed so hard she had blotches of red on her cheekbones and her nose. "You stupid virgin!"

I lifted four fingers and was gratified by a small cough from the prince. A hastily stifled laugh, perhaps?

"Rosie, while those words are not becoming for such a recent widow, I don't understand why this would give you cause to accuse Porcia of murder." Prince Escalus did understand, I could see that, but he wanted me to spell it out for those among the guests who were less quick-witted.

I spoke clearly so that those on the fringes could hear. "She wanted him for herself, and she was dismayed to discover he took me without a dowry."

"I still don't believe it," Porcia fussed. "Who would take such an old virgin without payment?"

Five fingers.

She didn't even seem to realize that, even if not everyone agreed she had a motive for murder, through her own speech she had revealed herself to be vapid and grasping.

Until Troilus's lady mother said, "We will return you to your father's house, Porcia, and hope you discover an appropriate grief at the loss of my son, your young husband, and modesty as befitting a grieving widow."

Porcia scanned the guests and observed that sentiment had turned against her, and she hurried to her mother-in-law, her hands upraised in appeal.

"It would be best, Porcia, if you say no more tonight," Prince Escalus said. "I command you to silence until you go to the priest and confess to the sins of vanity and pride."

My mouth dropped open. I could have got her to call me a virgin one more time. I know I could. But Prince Escalus had plainly cheated, and now I owed him a florin. I crossed my arms and huffed.

"Where is Stephano's body?" Prince Escalus asked my father.

"We carried it to the chapel."

"Did you remove the knife from his chest?"

"No, my prince. We left him as he was found."

"Then this knife and this woman are innocent of the deed."

The father of Duke Stephano's first wife, Anna, spoke up in fierce and jubilant tones. "The knife, perhaps, but not necessarily the woman. She had good reason for killing him. Kill before she was killed. Who here wouldn't do the same?"

A babble of agreement rose from the families of Duke Stephano's deceased brides and an equal furor of disagreement from others in society, mostly men whose wives occasionally excused themselves from functions because of bruises and contusions.

"I discovered Rosie's plan to meet Duke Stephano in the garden. I forbade her and sent her to her room." Prince Escalus smoothly told the lie. "Yet someone did kill Duke Stephano. Tonight let us take counsel with all men who have reason to know anything about this crime." He turned to my father. "The ladies should go hence to their homes and their chapels and say solemn prayers for the soul of Duke Stephano."

As with all the women, I curtsied to the prince and the assembly and exited, and as I did Anna's mother caught my eye, gave me a huge smile and that ancient Roman gesture of approval, a thumbs-up.

I shook my head at her and spread my hands, palms up, in innocence.

Gertrude glided up, all beauty and grace, and in a voice pitched to carry, she said, "I didn't know you had it in you."

When counseling me to control my temper, my mother frequently said, If you wrestle with pigs, you get muddy and the pig is happy. Almost certainly she'd been speaking about Gertrude, and I didn't bother to argue.

In the corridor an older man wearing Stephano's livery rushed forward and knelt before me.

I came to a halt and viewed him warily.

Forcibly taking my hand, he kissed it. "Gràzie, thank you. My name is Curan, and I speak for all the servants in Duke Stephano's house, Lady Rosaline. You freed us from painful and onerous service."

"Don't thank me. I didn't kill him."

"I know. I know! Of course not." He respectfully lowered his gaze. "Why would you kill such a cruel master and murderous husband? You, a gentle creature of modesty and virtue?"

I yanked my hand free. Guests and servants were watching . . . and listening, and he wasn't helping. Taking my skirts in my hands, I hurried away.

He called after me, "It's good that you never have to enter that household where sad and vengeful wife-ghosts weep and watch, there to die a dreadful death at Duke Stephano's hand."

As I walked down the corridor, I knew that I should have stood still and let Curan speak. At least then his trumpeting cheer and approval would have attracted a smaller audience and some sideways glances would have been diverted.

Clearly, despite Prince Escalus and his testimony on my behalf, I wasn't yet reprieved in popular opinion.