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His mother had been very proud when he told her.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘you are doing well for yourself, and no mistake.’
He grinned, and then settled his face into the unnatural seriousness that he felt befitted a page of the house of Montague.
She looked serious herself. ‘You’ll be happy, won’t you? Everyone says there’s no harm in him. Not like some of the men one could mention.’
‘I’m very happy,’ he said.
It was true. He was fortunate, and he knew it. There was no better place to be had in Verona, and it was, miraculously enough, his. Balthasar’s.
Lady Montague had raised an eyebrow when she heard his name, but she had not suggested that he use a different one. His mother nodded when she heard that, unsmiling but satisfied, as if one of them had met some unspoken condition. His name was his most precious possession; it had been his father’s before it was his; and often he felt self-conscious bringing it out in public, as if it was too fine a thing for him, or at least as if others might think so. But in the Montague house, it seemed, it was to remain his. And he had lived in Verona long enough to know that all men would look now at his livery before they looked at his face, and none would care about his name now they knew his master’s.
‘Balthasar,’ his new master said. ‘Was he not one of the Three Kings?’
‘The third. He brought the myrrh.’
‘Myrrh to scent the shroud.’ A wry smile, tinged with sadness alongside the humour. One might have said that it sat uneasily on so young a mouth as that of Romeo Montague, but that did not occur to Balthasar. He, too, had grown up in Verona. ‘A grim gift for a baby. But a sweet one, too.’
‘And, you might say, practical. There would be a use for it sooner or later.’ (His mother had said, once, ‘They died as young there as they do here,’ and he had shivered.) He wondered if he had been impertinent, but his master laughed. It was a merry, unguarded sound.
‘Well, you are most welcome here, and you need not bring anything.’
He brought enthusiasm and diligence. This was his first post, and he knew that few men could hope for such a good one. The work was not particularly arduous. The other servants were civil enough to him; the laundrymaid’s attentions were no worse than embarrassing. There was no hard labour and, if there were both late nights and early mornings, at least they never came together. The worst that he could have said of his employment was that it was tedious to stand at the edge of a room while his master was occupied at the centre of it.
And his master was kind to him. His master was kind to all, far too kind for Verona. Love bubbled up in Romeo Montague like a wellspring. He loved his city dutifully; he loved his parents gratefully; he loved his friends with the same exuberant affection that they felt for him; he loved unknown ladies of the city with extravagant hopelessness. There was plenty to spare for Balthasar, to whom it was manifested in an openness that bordered on familiarity, and who within a month felt as if he had been in the establishment forever.
And Balthasar – was happy. He told his master so, when he asked.
‘Christmas day. You have been here a full half year. Are you content?’
‘More than content.’ Even that seemed inadequate. ‘I am proud to wear your colours, sir.’
‘The Montague colours? My father’s?’
He drew a breath. ‘No, sir. Yours.’ Then he looked away, so that he wouldn’t see the perplexity or the anger that he feared might be there, though properly he shouldn’t have.
But his master’s hand was, for a moment, a warm weight on his shoulder; then it was gone. ‘Balthasar. Who else could I depend on?’
They were about the same age, he supposed, but really, there was no sense making comparisons between his people and the gentlefolk. They might as well have had different calendars. His eldest sister was twenty-eight and only just married; a lady, by contrast, might have been married and a mother and seen her own daughter married by that age. But then boys were young when they became men, here, no matter what their station.
It was of no use to question the way things were in Verona. Indeed, it barely occurred to Balthasar to do so. The age-old feud had rolled on for scores of years, perhaps hundreds, before either of them was born, and nothing had changed, except in how many heads were broken today, and on which side, how much blood, and whether or not the wound was mortal.
Worrying would mend nothing, he knew, and yet he could not help worrying. His master had not the prickly temperament of some of the other young gentlemen of Verona. Usually Balthasar considered this to be a blessing. The fewer fights he got himself into, the safer his skin would be. Sometimes it worried him. There were some fights that were best fought from the front.
And there were some fights that could not be avoided.
There was trouble in February, when the carnival covered the faces of the young men for long enough for them to come together, and offered too flimsy a disguise to keep them apart for long. There had been plenty to take to church and repent of. His master had come out of it with a blackened eye and a bloodied nose and a limp that looked worse than it was.
Her ladyship had been furious, with that sharp anger that betrayed recent terror. There had been a thorough scolding for both of them: for her son, for getting himself into trouble, and for his page, for failing to get him out of it. That was unfair, of course: both of them regretted the incident as sorely as she did. Neither of them had meant to be there. His lordship’s approval, by contrast, was palpable, but Balthasar had still worried for his place. What would he do if he were sent away? And how would his master fare without him? But Lent wore on, and nothing more was said, and by Easter it was as if all was forgotten, except of course it couldn’t have been.
Now there was a stiff spring breeze frisking about the city; the blood was beginning to heat; wine flowed once more; and it took one ill-judged word from his master’s father to loose a tempest. And this time the fight was hotter, the weapons keener; and his master two months older and correspondingly closer to the centre of it. They were all there, all the young men: his master’s cousin, and the Prince’s cousin who might as well have been a Montague himself, and the Capulet Tybalt, and his men, and it was a whirl of metal and oaths, the bright colours of the two houses soon shrouded in dirt and blood. Balthasar was busy enough with his own fists; he saw his master’s cousin fall, and his master’s friend pull him away from the fight, but he had lost sight of his master himself, was scanning the square desperately between blows, wondering if he had gone, if he had missed him…
He heard the trumpets and the yell – of pain, of fury – almost simultaneously. He knew that voice, and his most important, his only business, was to reach the man who had uttered that cry before the Prince arrived and no business could be done. He dismissed his opponent with a jab to the belly, wriggled away from the winded man, and dashed towards where his master must be. He found him on the ground, clutching at his right arm with his left hand, his face pale and twisted with pain. Balthasar could not see who had wounded him; the belligerents had already fallen back, where they could. And his master could not, or at least had not. More careful of his safety than of his comfort, Balthasar darted in and pulled him to his feet and away from the scene.
It was a tortuous, furtive journey back to the Montague house: they had no desire to meet the Capulet men, or the Prince’s men, or, indeed, his lordship, who swept past them at one corner in a swirl of velvet and ermine. They darted into an alley and watched in silence until the little train had passed by.
Her ladyship was not with them.
When they reached the house, his master said: ‘Let us not go in at the front door.’
‘You’d face the Capulets, sir, but not your mother?’
‘Why, the Capulets can do nothing worse than kill me.’
Which Balthasar understood perfectly.
They crept in through the kitchens, quiet in that hour when dinner was done and supper not yet started. Balthasar gathered up some items he considered they might need, and they met nobody there, nor yet on the back stairs, and reached his master’s chamber without incident. And not, he thought, a moment too soon.
His master sat down fast on the edge of the bed and groaned. Balthasar approached. He was rarely needed to help with dressing or undressing, and this was an occasion that called for rare attention. The coat was stained with blood, but undamaged. The tunic beneath had a slash in it the length of a man’s finger. The shoulder of the shirt was red, and there was an ugly wound below it. His master glanced up at him, biting his lip.
‘I won’t let it hurt more than I can help, sir.’
‘I know.’
Balthasar washed the wound with water, then with liquor, and then tore clean linen into strips and bound the arm tightly. He frowned at the blood that seeped through, but it did not seem to become worse.
‘Find me a shirt,’ his master said, ‘and the tunic with the loose sleeves.’ He met Balthasar’s eye with a rueful smile.
‘You ought to rest, sir.’
‘If I see my mother now, she’ll fret less later.’
Balthasar saw the reason in it, and obeyed.
Her ladyship was chiefly occupied in scolding her nephew Benvolio, who was still disfigured by dust and blood; seeing her son apparently unharmed, she admonished him in general terms and sent him away. His triumphant glance at Balthasar was a joyous thing.
But as soon as he left the room he had to sit down on the chest in the corridor. Their journey back to the chamber was slow and painful, and Balthasar had his master’s unhurt arm across his shoulders. And there was no more argument over resting.
The evening was slow after the excitement of the day. Benvolio, tidied and bandaged, came to his cousin’s room to swap tales with him and share news of Mercutio. (And if her ladyship was to be avoided in such a case as this, Balthasar thought privately, how much more so the Prince!) The two young gentlemen talked for hours, their voices low, and did not go down to supper, rather sending Balthasar down to bring up wine and bread and cheese.
At length his master’s cousin yawned and said that, with such an eventful day, there was no shame in cutting it short. They embraced, and Balthasar was careful not to consider whether he felt any particular way about that. It was not as if thinking about it could make things any different.
His master stood, stretched, and swore. ‘I will need your help again.’
‘Gladly, sir.’
The tunic came off awkwardly, and there was a little smudge of dried blood on the shirt beneath. Balthasar wondered if after all he should have gone for a surgeon. But his master shook his head at the suggestion. ‘I have plenty to confess. I might as well take my body to the Friar in the morning as well as my soul.’
It was, Balthasar supposed, as good a course of action as any. He murmured the assent that he knew made no difference and moved the shirt away to see the bandage. It was not much bloodier than the shirt had been. Tomorrow would do.
His master looked up at him with an odd, fond, trustful expression. No other man sees him like this, he thought, and the thought warmed him.
There was no way of telling what his master was thinking, even when he said, ‘Would you stay here tonight?’
‘Of course, sir, if you wish it.’ He hoped his surprise had not sounded like reluctance; he tried to mend things with a smile, then thought that perhaps he had overdone it, and busied himself pulling out the truckle bed and finding a blanket.
They lay in the dark, neither of them sleeping, neither of them speaking. Somewhere in the city, a bell rang for Compline.
At last, his master spoke. ‘Balthasar.’
‘I’m here, sir.’
‘Of course. I knew you would be.’ But he sounded fretful.
‘Shall I light a candle, sir?’
‘No. There’s no need for that. But come up here…’
He obeyed, sliding between the cool sheets, stopping just as he met the warmth from his master’s body. Then he felt the more concentrated warmth of a hand against his side.
‘You’re cold.’
‘I’m always cold, sir.’ He stretched out his own hand and felt it clasped in eager fingers.
‘And I always keep you standing around.’
‘Not today, sir.’
‘Never mind the sir. Not now.’
‘Very well…’ He had to bite his tongue.
An affectionate chuckle. ‘No, you were busy enough today.’
‘In the middle of things. It made a pleasant change.’
The mattress shifted. An oath stirred the air and was swiftly swallowed. Two eyes gleamed in the darkness. ‘Well, I am glad for my own sake that you were there, but you should have kept yourself safe.’
Nobody was safe in Verona: surely he knew that? But that seemed hardly relevant. ‘I would follow you to the end of the world. To the grave,’ he said. He would never have said it, in the light, but it was true and it had always been true.
‘It’s a lonely place. You’d find little occupation there.’ The tone was laughing, but the laughter died.
Balthasar rolled onto his side, so that they lay face to face. ‘Well, then, I would hope to serve you all my life, and I will never leave you.’
Both his hands – quite warm, now – were caught and clasped between the other man’s. ‘Nothing would make me happier. But some day I may ask you to leave. Some day I may order you to do so. If it’s another day like today, I may have to.’
He inclined his head so that he could kiss the beloved hands. ‘God send that day may never come.’
‘May it be so.’
And he felt his kiss returned, on his forehead, like a benediction, and he shifted a little so that he looked directly into his lord’s eyes.
His arms were uninjured. He held them out. And in that embrace they found, both of them, sanctuary from the violence of the day, and from the terror of the night, and in the darkness there was no one to tell the difference between master and man.