CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 42

Papà would have shouted at me for being stupid.

He needn't have bothered. As soon as Titania pulled Duke Stephano's sword from underneath his robes, I knew I'd suffer for my failure.

She slashed.

I sprang back.

She sliced my neck and my chest. The sword was sharp. My clothes fell apart. Warm blood slithered down my skin. The copper scent of it filled my nose. Through my own lack of control, I had been injured. I deserved to die, but I determined I must live, for if she continued, before she died, she would kill everyone: Romeo and Juliet, my sisters, my little brother, the unborn sibling, my friends, the podestà, and Lysander, my One True Love.

As my father said, a man's sword was too long for a woman, too large for her hands, and that gave me an advantage which I recognized and exploited. As Titania swung again, the sword directed from above, I pulled my blades from the sheaths on my arms and met her blade.

The two knives met hers with a clash of steel that rang through the tomb.

"That is a man's sword." Knowing it would infuriate her, I made my tone instructional. "The blade is too long for you, the hilt too large for your hands."

She glanced at the sword and faltered.

I leaped in and used the tip of one dagger to cut her chest.

She screamed in anticipation of pain.

But my arms and blade weren't long enough to take a chunk of flesh. All I got was her bodice strings. I leaped back, then feigned forward and found myself staring at the steely blinking point of her blade.

"This is my husband's sword," she said fervently. "It's right and just that you should die upon it."

I leaned back, thinking fast, and spoke almost without thinking. Anything to keep the fight going until I could figure out the way to win. "That's a thought, a terrible thought for me, but here's one for you—the clumsiness of the sword in your hands gives me the advantage."

She went on a slashing spree, using the edge left, right, overhead, slamming at me while I parried and moved and sought a way to take command of the situation. Her face, so awful in its vicious concentration, heated and grew sweaty, sagging like a wax candle melting in the flame of combat. Yet still she struck, and that sword and her long arms gave her every advantage, and I . . . I was bleeding. I was gasping, growing weaker. I had killed myself with my stupid angry attack on her. I had to do something to give myself a moment to rest, to think, so I said quite calmly, "Wait a sundial minute."

I startled her. She faltered. "What?"

Nonchalantly, I lowered my blades as if our fight had been nothing but a brief interruption in our conversation. I said, "Ultimately, I comprehend your motives for the string of murders you committed—unholy love and jealousy. But, Titania—why the potion for you? Why appear to die?"

She stood there and blinked at me as if she had to separate each of my words to have them make sense.

"Nice follow-up, by the way." As if unconcerned, I dabbed at the blood trickling down my bodice with my sleeve, then glanced up. "Titania, if you don't tell me, no one will ever know."

"No one will ever know anyway, because you're going to die here!"

"That may well be true, but don't you want to tell someone about your clever plan?" My performance could have persuaded Beelzebub himself to take a test flight to heaven. "What did your apparent death gain you with Duke Stephano?"

Titania glanced around as if seeking approval from the dead. Uncertainly, she said, "I . . . I believed I'd be asleep forty and two hours."

"Like my mother." I managed to sound as if I approved of such madness.

"Yes, like your mother. That would give Leir time to realize what a great mistake he'd made by scorning my love. By shouting at me." She gained confidence as she spoke. "But when I woke, it should have been daylight. It was dark. So dark. At first I feared I was blind. Then I saw the stars"—she pointed at the sky vent—"and knew something had gone wrong. Was I awake too early? Too late? I wanted drink and food. Water and wine that Curan had promised me, and bread and cheese. I tried to stand and . . . I fell. My knees couldn't support me. My head swam. I vomited, but there was nothing in my stomach. I groped my way across the stone floor . . ." She painted a vivid nightmare picture of this tomb, a woman slowly dying by her own hand, and justice's inevitable retribution.

"I can't imagine." But too clearly I could, for I, too, would die here unless I got very clever very quickly.

She continued. "I found the jug and drank, and at last revived. I tried to eat, but the bread was hard and the cheese cracked, I could not. I opened the door and breathed the night air, looked down on Verona and wondered how all could be so bright with torches and music and laughter when I had so recently been laid to rest on a marble slab." Her faded eyes gazed at some scene I couldn't imagine. "Yet I knew, I knew my most loving husband now realized how much he mourned me."

"That's why you . . ." At last I understood. She'd faked death to make Duke Stephano suffer the pangs of loss and longing. A girl's stupid trick and one of such delusion, I wanted to shake my head, pat her shoulder, and say, Oh, honey. Instead, I leaned against one of the marble slabs—I would have liked to sit, to rest a moment before starting to fight once more, but the resident corpse took up too much room—and asked, "What did you do next?"

"I went home. I went to Casa Creppa where I had lived. I knew what I would find. A house shrouded in mourning cloth. Our servants speaking in hushed tones of my passing, and a master prostrate with grief." Before I could ask, How did that work out? she turned on me like a virago. "Do you know what I found instead?"

"The opposite?" I made my tone friendly and instructional. "You know, Titania, that was your fault. Your killings of Duke Stephano's wives accustomed the household to tragedy. You couldn't expect the servants and Duke Stephano to mourn every single time one of his wives succumbed to death. Especially since I suspect you weren't a popular mistress."

Without warning, she leaped at me.

I barely caught and off-sided her stroke. Maybe it was time to back off from the truth-telling. Titania didn't seem to take it well.

She began to mutter in the drained, lifeless voice. "Time to end it. Time for blood and woe, the end of false friendship and broken dreams."

I'm the oldest in the family. I know how to speak firmly with a slap in my voice. "Titania! Tell me what happened next. You found a bed in Casa Creppa and laid down to rest?"

Still she muttered, "No more youth, no more laughter, only a long sleep of death and contagion—"

"Titania!" I slammed her sword with my dagger. "I visited Casa Creppa with Friar Laurence. Everyone there is frightened for their lives and souls. What horrendous acts did you perform?"

As if the memory made her tired, she lowered her sword.

Her lack of attention to me meant that she really wasn't afraid of me and my knives. Although I wanted to slap her for such disregard, I told myself that was a good thing.

"I rested," she said. "I don't know how long. Days, I think. When I roused, I found food and drink. Here and there in the house. Bowls in the halls outside the master's bedroom. Loaves for the workmen who were stripping away all evidence of Leir's love for me. They saw me. The servants did. They saw me. They were afraid. I didn't understand why. I spoke to them encouragingly. I was myself. Yet they screamed and ran."

"Because they thought you were dead? Because you'd convinced them you were dead?" Those red eyes glared at me, and I added mildly, "Just a suggestion."

"Even Curan feared me. For good reason, as we have discussed."

I nodded.

"He fell to his knees when he saw me. He trembled, then declared his devotion to me, did as I bid him, and I believed him true." She cast a contemptuous glance at the still and awkward pile of clothes and flesh in the corner. "I don't play the fool often, and I always take revenge."

"You wear the cloak of magnificent madness well."

She preened. "Thank you."

Clearly, Titania had lost her ability to sense sarcasm.

Or did she ever possess one? Probably not. "I'm speculating here, but what you imagined was that when Duke Stephano saw you and realized you were indeed alive, it would be the most glorious, loving, triumphant moment of your life."

"I followed the sprightliest music, the loudest laughter, the brightest torches to . . . Casa Montague, mingled with the guests at the door, and found myself at . . ." Titania took a quivering breath. "At the betrothal party of my husband and my best friend."

"I didn't want that union. You understand that?"

"You didn't want my husband?" Her breath smelled like her lungs burned blood. "The man who I treasured, to whom I gave everything? For shame. Shame to you for not recognizing the treasure you were offered!"

I couldn't win. If I wanted him, I betrayed her. If I eschewed him, I failed to value the unworthy man who held her heart.

I had to face the truth; I was perpetually on the defensive. Against her advantages, skill would avail me nothing. I couldn't win this battle unless I gave her what she wanted so desperately.

Victory.

I had to let Titania win.

But I couldn't make it easy. She had to work for it. She had to deserve it. She had to believe.

I barely caught and off-sided one of her strokes, then slapped her sword with my other dagger. The clang sounded throughout the tomb like the mighty church bell that caused the faithful to worship, and her sword wavered. I wanted to follow up with a close-in slash, but I forced myself to swerve away as if dancing on blue coals, giving her time to recover.

Recover she did, and once more she slashed sideways.

I ducked barely in time.

The lack of impact threw her off balance. She spun and stumbled.

Again I barely held myself back, and right that I did so for she came around so quickly I realized she feigned the stumble. If I'd moved in, she would have finished me.

I whispered, "You heard Duke Stephano summon me into the garden and you followed him. While Porcia delayed me, you revealed yourself to him and . . . ?"

"I threw back my veil and he . . . he didn't recognize me." She sounded like a child who'd seen their brightest dream broken.

Even I felt sorry for her. "Perhaps the torch lights distorted you."

"I was like the sun. I shone with love for him. I had killed myself for him. He should have seen me, embraced me, thanked God for my life! But he didn't know me. And when I said, ‘I'm Titania. I'm alive, Husband!' do you know what he said?"

I shook my head. Honestly, I couldn't imagine.

"He . . . he . . . he laughed. Then he looked. Looked close. He laughed again, wildly. He said I was horrible, a ghoul, a walking corpse. He shrank from me. He didn't appreciate me, what I'd done for him."

"He had to die." I dabbed my sleeve at the blood that still trickled from the wound on my chest.

"No. No! I didn't mean to kill him, but he . . . he kept laughing, as if I was a bad jest, a joke he didn't like to see and . . . and nothing was as I imagined. I told him what I'd done for him. Killed his wives. He complained I was the reason he was despised and suspected. He didn't comprehend the depth and breadth of my love. That I'd risked my soul to have him." Thick yellow tears trickled like pus down Titania's emaciated cheeks. She didn't bother to wipe them away. "He was horrified. Terrified. He said I was hideous. He didn't want me back. He commanded me to return to hell. He cursed me. He called me a hag. I had to . . . I had to murder him. I had to take the knife from his belt and . . . put it into his chest. Stop his heart." She wailed like the ghoul he called her, "He had no heart!"

Dear God in heaven. The irony of it. Duke Stephano had been hated for murdering his three wives—and he was innocent. He had seduced a child and created a demon, a demon that had haunted him the rest of his life, killing his wives, providing unending misery to him, and destroying any chance he had for redemption. Finally, in blasphemous outrage, that demon had murdered him.

Some sins lash with a long, stinging tail that poisons and kills.

"You doused the torch," I said, "and left him for me to find."

"Yes."

"When you came back in after you killed him, you sought me and heard Porcia." I remembered the stains on the old lady's gloves. "And you heard what she said about taking him for herself. That's why you killed her."

Her sorrow burned away in the flames of hellish fury. "He's mine!"

Confused by the past and present, unable to see the difference between life and death . . . if I could hold Titania off long enough, her mind and body would collapse into rubble, leaving me alone on the field of battle.

But I couldn't wait. I had to end this now. My wound stung, and moment by moment I grew fainter and the need to put an end to this struggle with hellish, naked villainy more imperative.

"Titania." I knelt on the cold stone floor. I chose my position and my words carefully. "You must forgive me. Grant me mercy. Your husband was yours and yours alone. Is yours. Please don't kill me." My gaze flicked up at her.

For one moment, she looked almost sane.

That would not do. Her sanity was a fleeting thing, the danger she posed to my family was boundless. This had to end now. "I don't want to die for a union that I disdained and that didn't occur."

I felt the blast as the heat of her temper exploded. "You disdain the man I love."

I crouched closer to the floor, bent my head, and pretended to tremble. "I could never want your husband. He's yours! I'm weak and at your mercy. Please, please don't kill me." With one hand on my chest and the other behind me . . . on my ankle . . . I crawled forward, getting as close to her as I could.

She gave voice to all the madness and cruelty she'd learned in her short life. "More than anyone else, I'm going to enjoy killing you."

As she lifted her sword high, I rose and with the prince's knife secure in my palm, I drove the blade into her chest, into her heart.

She paused, almost as if surprise held her in place. Her gaze met mine.

I leaped back.

With no grace, no life, no hope of redemption, she fell to the floor.

It was over.

I looked at my hand in distaste. Titania's blood dripped off the blade, onto my skin. Hastily I dropped the dagger and backed away from the body. From outside the door, I heard Nurse's voice once more shout, "Rosie! Rosie!"

Hammering commenced and rapidly intensified, becoming a rhythmic thumping.

For a moment, I didn't understand. Then I did.

Nurse had fetched help. They were using . . . something . . . to break down the door.

No need. I could open it. I found I staggered when I walked; it was a very odd thing to realize my knees couldn't keep me steady. When I got close, I shouted, "Stand back." Only it wasn't a shout, it was a whisper. My head swam, and I had to lean my hand on the wall and draw a breath before I could try again. "Stand back!" This time I put some volume behind it.

Silence rewarded me.

Someone pounded on the door more rapidly, more softly, and Nurse sobbed, "Rosie, oh my Rosie!" She was beating on it with her hands.

"Anon, good Nurse." I smiled as I said the phrase of my mother. "Be calm. I'll let you in." Using both hands, I moved the mighty metal bar from beneath the handle, turned it, and flung wide the door. Sunshine beamed in. Fresh air and freedom. A crowd of people, but the only person I could see was Nurse.

I pitched forward into her arms. "Take me from this place," I begged. "I'm not yet ready for the tomb."