CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 37

At last Nurse got what she wanted and hustled me out of the Toil and Trouble. She veered off to peer into La Bocca del Lupo again. Lysander and Marcellus had left, although I know she would have said that regardless for she feared I'd lose my sense, go in, and ask what they were doing.

I wouldn't. That would be so bossy big sister, and that was not how I wanted Lysander to think of me. I really wouldn't allow my curiosity to get the better of me . . . I don't think.

Ah, but to be so close to Lysander and not speak! My heart ached and yearned.

When we got to Friar Laurence's shop, he led the way in, packed up the food basket I'd brought him the other day, and sent Nurse back to the Toil and Trouble with his entire pantry. "I'm too stout anyway." He patted his belly. "It's bad for the belly."

I hugged him. "Yet your heart is good and big. How is Orlando?"

"With God's grace, he'll live."

Tears sprang to my eyes. "I'm so glad. His parents deserve for him to be well, and he deserves all the best. Yet I must wonder, how did he get the poison? Nunziatina says it was Curan."

"An interesting speculation, but ultimately, no." Friar Laurence was most definite.

"From Fabian and Gertrude of the house of Brambilia, then? I'd like to think they were guilty and could be removed from society." I remembered how cruelly Gertrude had taunted me at my betrothal, and their greed in demanding a return of their gold, as if their daughter's life could be paid for in coin.

"Fabian and Gertrude are a source of trouble, indeed, and the house of Brambilia is built on the quicksand of violence and greed." Friar Laurence seemed to choose his words carefully. "But it's not them upon whom my suspicion falls."

I groped for more possibilities. "Is there a chance it was intended for Lartius?"

Friar Laurence seated himself on a stool across the table from me. "I don't believe so."

"How is all this happening?" I seated myself also.

His eyes shifted to the side. "I cannot say."

"Cannot? Or will not?"

"Don't question me." He grasped the large crucifix around his neck as if it steadied him. "I have holy duties you can't comprehend."

I gripped his arm. "You do know something. You must tell me!"

"No."

That softly spoken no shook me to the core. He meant it. But why?

I might ask myself, but I knew. He'd said, I cannot divulge what I hear in confession. For what he heard in confession was sacred, and he would never betray that trust. But if I phrased my question carefully . . . "Friar Laurence, I'll do anything to make sure my family is unharmed. How should I proceed?"

"Rosie, I don't wish to foster pride in you, but for a woman, your mind is perceptive, even gifted."

With an irony Friar Laurence had no chance of comprehending, I said, "With the generous aid from you and my parents, I have thus far managed to avoid pride in my intelligence."

"If thinking logically would have brought you to a conclusion, you'd already know what . . . has occurred, what is occurring. I'll give you the advice the head of my monastery gives us. For every problem, go to church and pray to Jesus, his Holy Virgin Mother, and to St. Zeno, who dwells in that house of the Lord and protects Verona."

I wanted to sigh in exasperation.

Then he said it differently. "After you say your prayers, still the voices in your head, and listen in your soul. When God speaks, if we listen, we can hear."

I nodded. And nodded again. When Nurse burst through the door in a rush, I stood. "Nurse, we go now to Basilica di San Zeno, where we first intended to go this morning, and there we will pray for . . . guidance."

"Let us away," Nurse said fervently. "I want no more of this alley. I fear this place."

"There's aught to fear here." I felt like the elder reassuring her.

Only an overwhelming sense of futility filled my mind. Too much had happened too quickly. I knew only that I was not guilty, yet I imagined every single person in my family, every friend, every guest could die if I couldn't follow the trail back to the person who killed us all.

Titania had died of poisoned eels, the latest in a long line of Duke Stephano's dead wives.

Duke Stephano had died from a knife in the chest.

Porcia had eaten poisoned candy.

Miranda had a slash to the throat, fear and drink had destroyed her mind, and she'd been following me. I glanced back. Was she even now following me. The black-clad and veiled figure hung back, strolling with leisurely pretense, scanning the merchant's carts.

"Do you want me to do something about her?" Nurse asked.

"No. Poor woman. If she imagines she's protecting me, there can be no harm in that."

"If she's bewitched, she won't be able to enter Basilica di San Zeno. That will tell us something."

"Do you think she's bewitched?"

"No. Driven mad by violence, love, and drink, she is, although she's walking rather straighter now. Must have used your coin for food." Nurse now sounded more pitying than disapproving. "Whoever did kill Duke Stephano has rid the world of a great evil."

"Yes." But I was still troubled, trying to track the logic of the killings even though Friar Laurence had warned against it.

Orlando had been poisoned and gone mad.

Someone had murdered the apothecary Agatha at the Toil and Trouble.

Curan seemed guilty of so much, yet . . . what had he to gain?

The summer sun shone bright and warm. The people of Verona strolled and laughed and worked and quarreled. The world continued as it had yesterday and would tomorrow . . . yet change occurred, unbidden and unwanted. I was too young for such musings, but in a week my life rocked like a boat on a raging river, and I didn't know where it would land. Or if.

Outside the basilica, workmen stood, heads together, consulting drawings of the construction, which others sawed and hammered. From the Benedictine Abbey attached to the church I could hear faint singing, praises to God.

Although the reconstruction on the church was even yet unfinished, it was glorious in its soaring columns and arches, its stained glass rose window, glorious raised presbytery, and choir with stone railing. There, the altar shone with the glory of God.

We stopped as we entered to let our sun-blinded eyes adjust, then moved into the main nave. As always, a scatter of worshippers knelt in the pews, begging for grace and forgiveness, praying for the souls of their loved ones, desiring God to answer their prayers for love, for fertility, for health.

Priests, monks, and nuns moved through the church, trimming candles, holding crying children while their parents were at prayer, kneeling with the sick and sorrowful.

Nurse and I made our ways up the center aisle to the Montague box, to the second pew where we offspring of Romeo and Juliet knelt and prayed and rose and sang. Nurse sat in the pew behind me, and I put my knees on the cold hard floor and stared at the altar. I folded my hands, I bent my head, I prayed for enlightenment. I begged God to show me the reason for all the deaths, the madness, the terrors. He knew what that reason was, and I had faith I would receive illumination. God was not so much inscrutable as expectant. The Dear Lord wanted me to use what he gave me; my mind could comprehend all if asked with the proper, humble supplication.

Yet as I knelt there and, Friar Laurence advised, opened my mind and waited, no light shone in my mind.

At last in frustration I rose. I indicated that Nurse should stay and finish her prayers, and I walked toward the crypt, the oldest and lowest level of the church. There St. Zeno rested in a sarcophagus, his face covered by a silver mask. Perhaps if I beseeched him, the patron of Verona and of fishermen, I'd know the answer Friar Laurence assured me I'd find.

I passed between the columns and went down the stairs into the dark, sunken area under the presbytery, to the very spot where my parents were married. I lifted a hand to Verona's patron saint, St. Zeno, the black bishop. "Please," I whispered.

A light sound caught my attention, a fluttering like a small bird taking wing, and I turned to see a small torn piece of tattered Fabriano paper settle onto the red marble step behind me. Hurrying over, I picked it up and read in black blotted ink, Are you saying a prayer for dead Duke Stephano . . . and your own soon-to-be-burning-in-hell soul?

The words had barely settled in my brain when, paper in hand, I leaped the steps in three bounds and ran backward up the aisle toward the back of the church, craning my head, trying to see who had tossed the note off the raised presbytery.

Who had written this cruel missive? Who had tossed it down at me?

I leaped onto a pew and with the added height I caught a glimpse of a veiled woman in black. She held a half-carved building stone balanced on the rail, and she pushed it over onto the step where I had bent to pick up the note.