A/N: Apologies for the wait, the length, and the inferior quality. And anything unintentionally offensive.

It is today a twelvemonth since Valentine and I first came to the monastery in Mantua; a full twelvemonth, now, since we both lost the one that most we loved. We speak of Mercutio often, and maybe the pain is less, or maybe our joy at his memory is greater.

The monk who persuaded the abbot to say that I might be allowed to stay on – who healed my arm in the weeks after my arrival (as I later found, his name is Brother Marco) asked us once what Mercutio meant to us, that he was so highly and so frequently praised. We shared a brief glance as Valentine answered, "A brother," and I, "A friend."

Valentine might have been young, but already he was as perceptive as his brother, and I know that one look was enough. I remember every word of the conversation that we had afterwards, when Brother Marco, satisfied with our answer, left earshot.

"A friend?" I had never seen Valentine so angry. Not when Tybalt sneered at any friend of his brother, not when Mercutio was blamed for some fault of his cousin Paris, like a thing broken or a fight begun. (For Valentine was just as protective of Mercutio as the elder of the younger.) Nay, not ever. His eyes burned black as coal, and they did not seem to belong to him – to some miserable creature of winter, perhaps, but not to any boy. His skin abandoned what little pretence of colour it had mustered since the awful realisation of Mercutio's death, so that his dark hair fell like shadows across that stark white face.

Valentine's ire pierced almost as sharply as his brother's disgust had, and I turned away from the terrible accusatory glare. But he had more rage to vent. For quiet, accepting Valentine to consider me such a monster I felt as if my very soul must be Devil-tainted; and so I took his words for punishment, and heard him, though his manner was frighteningly reminiscent of Mercutio's terrible coldness as he pushed life and me away…

"What dost thou take me for – blind, and a fool with it, Benvolio? Friend? Friend? Hast thou not the mettle to name that which leads thee to speak my brother's name with such reverence?"

Then quite without warning he howled like the night animal I saw in his flashing eyes; the fight left him, and he began to weep.

Between sobs, softly he said, "Mercutio…Mercutio would want thee to remember thy love. For if thou denyst it, what is there left of thy memory of him but falsity and lies? Better to recognise what he was…a friend, ay," – he smiled through the hot tears now – "but never forget what else."

I saw how he crumpled – from the draining force of his fury, the exhaustion of weeping, the grief – and I reached out awkwardly. Without hesitation he folded against my proffered arm and sank into an untroubled slumber.

His innocence is even now a painful reminder of his age. I fear his lot has been far harder to bear than mine has – to lose both father and brother so cruelly, then to be left here unexplained, with the semblance of abandonment. (We do not know what happened to Valentine's distraught mother after she brought him to the monastery in her grief; Brother Matteo rushed after her, but he is an old man and was not able to keep up. Perchance she came safely back to Verona. Valentine and I speak little of the family he has not seen for such a time – besides his mother, whom I think it pains him to remember, he likes his uncle little and Paris even less.)

However mature Fate may have forced him to become, though, he is still far too young to take his solemn vows as yet – the abbot did consent to him staying on as a novice (under the name of Giulio) but I think with some reluctance.

…

Brother Leonardo rushes into the courtyard where I stand with Valentine and Brother Marco. The young monk's cowl is slipping down over his eyes in his hurry, so that he nearly trips on the flagstones, and the older man reaches out to steady him.

"Peace, Brother Leonardo. What gives thee such haste?" he smiles. And then, for Brother Leonardo's eyes are wide with terror, Brother Marco's expression settles with a gravity I have barely seen in that face, so much more often creased with laughter. A single deadly syllable, a terrible question, is forced out in a whisper so hoarse it gives his voice the impression of many more years than he has lived.

"Plague?"

Brother Leonardo can only nod, frantic.

A great sorrow comes into the eyes of Brother Marco, and his words have a vehemence that surprises me. "From whence dost this vile news –"

The younger man interrupts. One word.

"Verona," comes the strangled reply.

Valentine and I each regard the horror on the other's face. Valentine's still-boyish features are frozen in a terrible mask of shock; for all I know, my own countenance is blank – in my time at the monastery, helping Brother Marco tend to the injured and the sick, I have seen more death than I care to think on and I certainly cannot shed tears at every passing – but a great sorrow wells within me like a great river threatening to burst its crumbling banks after a surfeit of rain. Verona! O, sweet city, tainted city that all these days I have not seen!

And little wonder, ay, that Leonardo is in so much distress. He too was born and bred within Verona walls; he, however, has kept a little correspondence with some he knew there. I think that 'some' is mainly young Friar John; the two were boyhood companions, I remember.

Brother Marco takes a short letter from Leonardo's trembling hands. "Grave words indeed," he mutters, as his eyes scan the slip of parchment. "Friar Lawrence – I believe thou knew him well, Brother –" (this was to me, although Valentine too looked up in recognition of the name) "has been taken by the evils of the plague, and those remaining would have our help in tending the affected of Verona."

For a moment I believe my senses do deceive me – how can I have heard those words? That benevolent figure that throughout my life has been ever there to comfort and guide – Friar Lawrence, gone? Friar Lawrence, dead? That surely is impossible. But no, the sorrow in Brother Marco's eyes proclaims the awful truth of such a fact. And so the deathly plague has come to Verona, city of my birth.

Valentine stares at Brother Marco, as disbelieving as I. In the absence of a father, the kindly friar has oft fulfilled the role for Mercutio's brother. (Mercutio himself was wont to spurn all authority – his independence of spirit, that thing I envied so and which I think first drew me to him, would never allow his to obey an adult any more than befriend a Capulet.)

A silence, full of shock and sadness, descends upon the small courtyard where we unhappy four are here grouped. I break it with little thought for the words I speak.

"We must send help to our brothers in Verona, for the plague is a dreadful thing and they are surely overwhelmed. I will go. Brother Leonardo, wilt thou accompany me?"

The monk's drawn face breaks into a sudden smile – his joy at the suggestion of seeing his friend again, and his home city, clearly outweighs the grief that he feels for Friar Lawrence and the dire trouble in which he will find Verona.

"Aye, and gladly," he answers at once. Then his shoulders slump, and he resumes his previous air of melancholy. "Thinkest thou the abbot will allow us to make this venture?" His question is mannered so I can tell he believes only the contrary. "I'faith, 'tis not high likely that both of us shall return, should the vile plague truly be so rife in Verona city even as we speak."

His query, though directed at me, is not really for my answering. Brother Marco's face falls into a frown. "I doubt the abbot would be grateful to lose two of his number, so valued here – thou, Brother Leonardo, art a great scholar, and thou –" he nods to me – "art the best amongst the physicians we have had here. But I will go now to discuss the matter with him."

I watch the departing figure with little hope in my heart. The abbot is not a cruel man; it would not befit one of his position, for cruelty and holiness will sit uneasily in the selfsame soul. Yet Brother Marco has spoken true, I fear. For it may well be – terrible as it seems – that soon we will be needed here as in Verona; the plague, most vile of all evils (to one of medicine like myself) is likely yet to spread to Mantua. And then it is this city which will be overwhelmed. Verona then may be beyond all help save the hand of the divine, for without Friar Lawrence's capable guidance those who could assist are surely panicking.

So caught in my own desperate thoughts am I that at the first I do not hear Brother Leonardo's quiet words, and must ask him to speak again. He does so even more softly, glancing around as he speaks. Who is he frighted should overhear him?

"Our journey will not meet with the abbot's favour, I am certain. The man would protect his own and hold us to our vows of stability rather than give us leave to answer this desperate plea for help." A crooked shadow of a half-smile crosses his face. "So I will take my own leave of this place. I have often felt as if God is far from here, though by rights His spirit should walk these sacred grounds –" He breaks off suddenly, and begs, "Forgive me this blasphemy, friends."

Valentine and I assure him that his words are of no consequence. Although I have told no-one, I too feel detached from the Lord despite the fact that my sanctuary is His house. I urge, "Prithee continue. Thou dost mean to fly in secret?"

"Ay, and with haste. Shall I have company?"

If I leave the monastery in such a way – with the shameful stealth of a common criminal – I can never return. I know this. Perchance it is the exciting prospect of such an adventure that appeals to the childishness I thought to have shed at Mercutio's death. Perchance, the hope of relinquishing ties to this static existence, and my disappointment that joining the monastery has not been what I expected. Or maybe I am merely homesick.

Whatever the reason, I smile. "How are we to come by horses? If I am to be a runaway, I would not be a larcener too…"

…

The hired horse is a gentle beast, responding to my inexpert commands without complaint. That is a good thing, for the terrain is rough; Leonardo and I travel where fewer will see us and recognise our habits.

I am glad of the route we take. It was in fact my suggestion. (Leonardo, in his enthusiasm, thought nothing of our safety – he only desires to reach Verona, and his friend, with all speed.) I felt I could not bear to retrace the stumbling steps that brought me to the monastery at Mantua; I remember all too well the hellish visions that besieged me, in my delirium, as fever and grief lead me on my meandering way.

It would have been a heavy burden too, the weight of imagining how Valentine's mother must have dragged her child along the same road only hours behind, and thinking subsequently of Valentine. My last link to Mercutio, left behind in Mantua – abandoned, poor youth, for a second time.

There was naught else to be done. Despite the circumstances in which he was delivered into the monks' care, he has flourished in the past year, and I think that unlike Leonardo, unlike me, he has found his peace there. To bring him away on our ill-advised, unpermitted passage to a plague-place would have destroyed him. That is not to say that the parting of our ways was smooth; as if he were but small again, and not the youth he is now, he cried and clung and begged to be allowed along. It hurt my heart to sever the brother-like bond which has grown between us all this time.

My countenance must bear the gravity of my thoughts, for Leonardo reins in his mount – a docile bay – and draws him to a halt beside mine. "Thy heart is heavy. Speak."

I shake my head dismissively, claiming, "'Tis no matter; and trivialities must not stay our course. Come, Leonardo, let us be on our way."

As we ride off again Leonardo agrees with some ferocity that we should not delay. "It does not do to tarry and talk while Verona suffers, and John's brethren are burdened with her. We were called to act, not to converse."

And so we progress. The journey is wearing, the atmosphere between us fraught – both our minds, I think, are preoccupied with worry that our own families will have fallen victim. In the monastery I tried not to dwell on my memories of Verona; I thought I would never come home. (Indeed I did not even think it home any longer, not with Mercutio gone, and I tried to make God's home my own. But in truth I could never have been a monk.) Now, though, those I have not seen in so long fly unchecked through my head. Mother and Father. The other boys in the Montague band…

What has become of the feud in my absence, in the face of Tybalt's death and Romeo's flight? What has become of my cousin?

Unlikely though I knew the notion to be, I have a sudden surging of hope that Romeo and I will be reunited. That a grief-stricken uncle and prince will have recognised revenge, not murder, and pardoned my childhood companion; that Romeo will have been called home to make peace with the Capulets, and perchance to marry that love of his whose name he cried at the point of Mercutio's death. Giulia?

I struggle to remember, certain that Giulia is close to the mark; and suddenly the image of 'Giulio' comes to me. Have we been discovered, and what the consequence for Valentine? I did not think of that when we left. How serious a crime can it be for a novice to know of our escape and not to tell? I know there have been beatings in the past for misdemeanors smaller.

Or has he told – Brother Marco, or even the abbot? Are we even now pursued?

Lost in the traps of my own imaginings, I am startled when Leonardo gives a sudden joyous call. "The gates!" I lift my head, and, wonder of all wonders, I am greeted by the sight of a stone archway, beckoning us into Verona.

We dismount. The mare snickers in my ear as I lead her slowly along the now-familiar road, savouring each step as if it was ambrosia to my soul. Leonardo is less restrained, and works his poor creature into a frenzied skittering so that it may keep pace as he runs along, whooping.

After all our careful avoidance of much-travelled routes, it seems we must be observed now as we pass into the city of our birth; but by some miracle, the streets are quiet.

The cobbles bear us in their meandering way into the great square. As I reach the mouth of an alley that spills its dank secrets for the light without to judge, my footsteps and my steed's resound in my ears like they would fain call up the earthquake twelve years dead; my heartbeat and the pulsing of my fatigued blood dance the ponderous steps of thunder, and I pause, remembering.

The flash of steel, the fall of a friend, the grin of a villain as he scampers away with bloodied paws.

Leaves. Plantation leaves, not to be found. And the crude and useless bandage I fashion with desperate hands.

Useless and desperate.

His life bleeds through my fingers.

"'Twas thou that gave the cat occasion to claw me…"

"These are the words of a madman! Thou art delirious."

"Delirious for love."

Mercutio. Mercutio, I FORBID thee to die.

The one time in his life that my friend refused to listen.

Without sound Leonardo has come to stand behind me, fastening his gaze on the open space ahead.

"I know," he says quietly. "I can no more believe I am home than I would credit the statement that I could fly with no wings." And then his grin is like the Spring sun discovering it can blaze unhindered after the age of darkness. "But this joy is so great…so great, I feel it must lend me the powers of flight! Come, friend, come!"

I watch him run on for a moment before I follow, my own gait as heavy as his is light. How many times, as a boy, have Romeo and I mocked our tutor Signor Salvatore for his shuffling pace? He would walk like a man twice his age, and in our youthfulness we would laugh. But now I fancy I recall something I once heard him mention to Father, something of a loss – was he perhaps widowed? un-fathered by the death of a child? – and I yearn to console him, to say to him: I know.

Such an expression does not befit Leonardo, poor fool. What could he know of my loss? He spoke merely of his own home-sickness, and imagined me overwhelmed by relief at our return. Shaking my head, I tug the horse's rein a little sharply – inciting it to a brisker trot – and quicken my pace in order to catch the hurrying Leonardo.

By the time I come level with him in his haste he has all but crossed the square. A little out of breath – for the ride and the run have stolen it; after a year at the monastery I am not used to such vigor – I draw what is left in my lungs so that I may beseech him slow himself, when I perceive that someone watches us.

A man – just out of boyhood, perhaps a few years senior to me – is leaning against the door of the old stable, arms folded and stare fixed steadily upon Leonardo and me. He appears ill-kempt, and his dress is the rough attire of a servant; and I assume he must be the stablehand. The shadows of the decrepit building hide his face but his posture clearly states hostility. Greatly mistrusting, I am nevertheless not quick enough to warn my companion away; still overflowing with his newfound elation (so different from the quiet young monk of Mantua!) he has already raised his voice in greeting. "Good den!" And he strides forward.

I cannot say why I should be so fearful; although he may be unwelcoming, this man – the first soul we have encountered yet, though we stand in what should be the busy heart of the city – has given us no threat, no cause for alarm, only cold and unfriendly looks. But instinctively I bring my cowl up to shade my own features, so that we will meet on even terms, since it seems Leonardo is intent on procuring shelter for our horses here.

Why here? Why, of all the stables we could visit, this dilapidated place? I gaze past the darkened figure into the interior gloom of the little shed. It is as empty as it was this day a twelvemonth past –

– and all at once I am watching that terrible scene repeat itself before me. I see myself crumpled on the muddy straw. Mercutio's lifeless form lies beside me. I lift my dagger, slick with his blood from my hands, and aim its point just above my heart –

Then the stranger in the shadows answers Leonardo, and the phantoms of my imagination dissolve before grief can truly grip me.

"Good den to thee also, sir." The words are curt, spoken with a curled lip, but not impolite. There is contempt in them but no menace; and yet my sense of foreboding only increases. "Shelter for thy beasts?"

Leonardo nods, handing over both the reins and a few coins. (Monks are forbidden earthly possessions, and I own none – but as he confessed to me, he never felt at peace in the monastery; and so he kept some simple things. A small sum of money. Letters from his friend the friar.)

The young man steps into the light as he takes the money, and I see the gleam in his eyes as the coins smile in his palm. The look is suddenly familiar; I recognise Lucio, Tybalt's friend and kinsman. Bad fortunes indeed must have befallen the family! I remember how proud a man Lucio's father was, and wonder that the relation of a Capulet would be forced so low.

I am anxious to be gone, lest I myself be recognised, but Leonardo has more to say. "Know'st thou wherefore the city is so still today?"

Lucio does not turn back to us as he leads the horses into a waiting stall. "I am surprised at thy ignorance, Brother – but perchance the news did not reach thee. Didst thou not hear that our gracious Prince –" (and his expression betrays that he thinks anything graciously of Escalus, if indeed the ruler of Verona is still that same) "has declared this date a time of mourning for the lives lost in the great feud?"

He falls silent – perhaps he is thinking of his friend, or perhaps he is merely waiting for us to leave – but my interest is piqued. "Thou speakest as though the city is at peace. Tell me, do the houses of Montague and Capulet regard each other in favour now?" What a wondrous thing that would be!

"Truly thy lack of knowledge amazes me," comes the irritated reply. "But I suppose there was no occasion for thee to hear the Prince declare that the feud was done, for the proclamation was not made in your far off god-house but in this very square."

The stable door swings shut, marking a clear end to the conversation. But as Leonardo and I share a smile at the happy piece of information, I hear Lucio mutter, "Made to idiots like that pair, and to old fools too ancient to fight. Any man with sense knows that the Montagues still owe us the price of a life, and I swear I will be the one to even that debt…"

Leonardo gives no sign of having heard Lucio's bitter words, for he smiles still as he leads the way to the cell of Friar John. "The fighting ended! Verona at peace with herself once more, and enemies dear friends again…"

He sounds wistful. I entreat him to continue, and he pours out the tale of how – many years ago – he was the companion of another boy (I do not know the name; Leonardo is older than I, and I might have been in infancy when the two were friends) throughout their years of schooling. Then the families intervened, tore the youths apart, turned them against each other. "I would we had more time and a happier reason for our visit, that I might visit him and see if we could not be friends again," Leonardo sighs.

I never knew Leonardo well at the monastery; it is only during this journey that I have talked much with him. I know little of his life, and this story has intrigued me; I ask him to speak more of himself and his upbringing. I hope he might mention a name I recognise, or some other such link to my own life – for what friendships have been built on utter difference, on absence of common circumstance, feeling or opinion? It seems we know Veronas quite disparate: Leonardo's on the eve of the feud's rebirth, and mine at the deadly height of it all.

That leads me to question him at what age he left the city to come to Mantua, "and wherefore?"

Not until I have spoken do I realise that perhaps, like me, he would prefer not to disturb the particular memory. For I fear I have indeed offended him – he droops, no longer so jubilant, and turns his face away as he responds. "I was sent by my mother at the age of thirteen." So only a little older than Valentine. "Sent away because I shamed my family. I…"

But I am not to hear his 'crime' revealed; his narrative is interrupted by the materialisation of the very one we are seeking – Friar John, very much more gaunt than I remember him, comes into view at the end of the street. He walks slowly, lost in thought and in his habit (I recall he was never a large man, but nor was he ever this thin). Leonardo and he set eyes on the other at precisely the same moment.

At once the quiet air is full of a joyous clamouring. "Sweet Leonardo! I feared thou wouldst not come –" the friar begins. The smile erasing every line from his haggard face is only matched by the one that Leonardo gives as he interjects –

"Not come, John, when called by thee? What dost thou take me for?"

And – having uttered the same words that Valentine used when I dared to slight the memory of our shared loss – Leonardo rushes to Friar John, and embraces him as if the Last Judgement is upon them, or as if they are the last two alive in the world – nay, the universe! – but have no concern of it, no care at all.

How happy they are. How greatly their spirits must lift to behold, and to hold, each other again, after so many years of miserable separation. And how my own heart leaps to see them content, for I know.

I know. Well, I do not think Leonardo can have known of my love for Mercutio (I had my own thoughts of his professed friendship with Friar John, but unconfirmed they remained until this moment) but had he known, he would doubtless have understood. He would have recognised what my loss was – just as I, now, feel their delight as though it was mine own. Perhaps Mercutio lingers still in these home streets, watching, saying nothing for once but only smiling…

At length, the two men of God part (although the friar's hand is firmly clasped in Leonardo's still). They begin to walk away – but either Friar John catches sudden sight of me, or the other recalls my presence, for both stop in horror. Fingers hastily untangled, Leonardo turns to me, his countenance an awful mask of guilt. "Friend…" he calls out to me, sounding so hopeless I am afraid he is on the verge of weeping – then he shakes his head. By his side, the friar merely looks resigned, as if waiting for the storm to break over his head.

"So this is why thy mother sent thee to be a monk. The reason could be worse, could it not? At least thou wast not a killer, like I was."

Leonardo gasps, and his frame trembles violently. But the friar – the more frail of the two – steps forward. His face is grave, but I sense he is careful not to judge me as yet. "Thou know'st our secret – I would know thine." Before I can start, however, he speaks again. "Hast thou confessed of this?"

When I reply that no holy man has ever heard of my crime, he smiles gently. "Consider this your confession, then, my friend. Come; speak."

What choice have I, then, but to relate what happened? To tell Friar John – and the shocked Leonardo, who is clinging to the friar again – that it was I who was responsible for the deaths of both Mercutio, whom I loved, and Tybalt (for whom I had no such affection). I explain how my foolish actions decided the outcome of both fatal duels. "It would have been hard enough to lose him, but to have his blood on my hands is almost too much to bear…" And to my mortification I cannot but weep as I finish my sorry story.

Though his eyes remain serious – tending towards sadness – Friar John manages a pale replica of the smile that he first bestowed upon Leonardo. "Have some comfort in this, if thou can: thou art absolved of any sinful part thou took'st in the dark business, though truly I think the fault lies not with thee. Thou art not, to my mind, a murderer; but I know it is not enough for me to say, 'Blame not thyself' and it will be done…" He sighs. "I, too, wish his death had not come to pass, not so soon, and so fruitlessly."

I think upon the words I heard Lucio mutter minutes ago. "Then the feud is not ended?"

Leonardo, at this heavy suggestion, grips Friar John's arm in distress. And the friar, in answer to my query, shakes his head. "It was a broken Prince who issued the proclamation. Escalus in his grief is no longer the ruler we once knew. Both nephews gone – that was hard to him, and hath aged the Prince so that he seems now as old as the ancients among whom he creates these illusions of peace."

It is my turn to startle at the unfamiliar direction events have taken. "Paris too? How comes this?"

"By mistake; by misfortune and misunderstanding, by ill-tolerance and hate," the friar answers quickly; yet the look of his face is now definite sorrow. "Another unneedful death. And how can the feud end when the Capulets bay for blood? How can our fallen-spirited Prince silence the comrades of Tybalt Capulet, when they cry vengeance and would claim a debt of the Montagues? For the latter has lost but one, the former two, and the Capulets say three – they would own County Paris, since he wooed their Lady Juliet and was to have been her husband."

Juliet! 'O God in Heaven, Romeo, couldst thou have chosen worse?' I think, as immediately I recollect the name of his sought love that would elude me so when I thought on it earlier. Then another thing of the friar's speech sounds clearer in my brain. "Thou didst say the Montagues lost one. I know of no deaths beyond that of Tybalt, who I saw die. Prithee tell me, who was that one?"

At this the expression on Friar John's face is such an agony of anguish that, if he had been of Montague, the answer could only have been 'my mother' or some other dear relation of his. "Thou dost not know? Then I think…I think there is something that I needs must show thee."

He hurries away, his start so abrupt that Leonardo and I must run to keep pace. As he hastens along, he will not look back at us, but instead sets his face in perusal of the road cobbles as if they were a matter of great import and interest. With every following step my heart sinks with foreboding greater and greater. What unhappy thing can the friar have to reveal to me? Who can the Montagues have lost that it grieves the good man so much to tell me? My father is no fighting man, so surely not he…

Without my realising, Friar John has brought us to the house of Capulet. And how changed! The great high wall around the orchard has been torn down, laying bare the sorry space within – the grass is overgrown, the trees withered and barren. The grand house itself is grand no longer, but looks somehow tattered, as if it were tired of life. The evident fall of Capulet comes as a shock; though, I suppose, I should have guessed from Lucio's low state. Friar John explains how the feuding families have been stripped of their wealth and titles in punishment, how the Montagues are subdued but the Capulets only cry louder for payment of their debt.

As he speaks, he leads us into the courtyard, now open to the road. Here, too, the signs of Capulet's downfall make a sorry scene. The tiles are split; vicious weeds overrun the warped trellises; and yet two statues of burnished gold stand side by side in a corner of the little square. A man and a woman – or, at least, male and female. They have not the stature of full-grown adults, and the latter especially is more like a child. Simple rectangles of metal fixed to the base of each serve as plaques, upon which explanation of the figures is etched. "Victims of the feud," the friar says, softly. "Go, read them, and know at last."

The sense of foreboding shadowing my spirit reaches its oppressive peak as I, unwilling somehow to look directly at the statues themselves, kneel to make out the names. With the feeling of postponing the inevitable I read first the inscription at the feet of the female:

JULIET CAPULET

I am mildly surprised to find that I regret her death far more strongly than I regret her cousin's. Perhaps only for Romeo's sake – I know he has never lost a love in so terrible a way – but also perhaps because the Lady Juliet was but a child when last I knew of her, and as far as I have heard she was a mild thing. A pity, then, that another life was so wasted; but so it is.

And I cannot bear to draw my eyes away, for I know that then I will see the name of he who stands by her side; I know, too, that I do not want to know who that might be.

"Know at last," the friar repeats, even more softly, as he steps carefully across the broken flagstones to join me. His hand gently guides my head so that I may read what is written of Juliet's youthful companion:

ROMEO MONTAGUE

O no, not him, any other but him! Not Romeo – mine own cousin, and dear friend Romeo!

"They died for love," the friar whispers, meaning to comfort me; but as I read his name over and over, set irrefutably before me in shining gold, all comfort flies its nest in my soul. Romeo! I stare up into his face – a cruelly excellent likeness, now I look upon it – and beg it to move. To speak. To give some flicker of life, any at all! "O, speak to me, cousin!" I cry, all my unspent tears falling. If only it were not in gold, I could hope to rust away his name with my weeping, and live convinced that it has never been true!

"Wilt thou leave me alone in this world?" For I am the only one left. I, Benvolio Montague, am all that remains of our close boyhood clan. I know that Romeo – his image, and not his self, butin my grief I think him Romeo – will make no response, yet I clasp his still hand and search those golden eyes for recognition, remembrance, life.

Friar John is telling the story of their death in a reverent voice, as if my cousin was the hero of such a fairytale Mercutio used to tell – dark and twisted and tragic things. I am sure the tale he tells is a brave one, and exceeding well-told (though the friar tells it not as masterfully as Mercutio would, I know!) but pretty romances, words of heroism and of death, will not reverse that of which they speak. Stories will not put the spark of life into this silent form.

Wherefore was it I chosen to remain? Wherefore must I watch my friends' lives extinguished, and not follow?

O, but follow I can! "The Capulets call for a death," I murmur, cutting across Friar John. "Am I not a Montague? Let me pay the price that our house owes." These words I speak to Romeo alone; but the friar answers them.

"Nay, think not so, my friend. What debt the Montagues may owe – and I think their tragedies are terrible enough – is paid by the death of thy aunt, out of grief for her son." This piece of ill news shocks me little. I was not close to my aunt; I am wicked to think it, I know, but I care not for her death in the face of Romeo's. "And Capulet is greedy; he will have the statues at his own sad house, and not let Montague look upon them at will."

And then he says to Leonardo, behind me, "Let us have done what we came to do."

I would fain resist, and stay weeping at Romeo's feet till some other power removed me, but as I am gently persuaded away I realise something in what Friar John has said. My love and my cousin are dead and can do no more; but I can still be the author of good deeds. So thinking, I allow the friar and Leonardo to lead me to our grim purpose.

…

The only way to measure the slow passage of time in this cursed place – to be sure that it moves at all, and does not stay fixed on one scene of suffering but presents another, and another, as it pleases – is by counting the number of lives that have been claimed here.

Within what – hours? days? – of the door being sealed up (for the Watch is fearful that the pestilence will spread) our patient died. There was very little we could do; the plague is as fleet as it is deadly, and she was already far gone when Friar John wrote to the monastery for our help.

She was Mercutio's mother, and sister to the I would have grieved for this. Grieved that Valentine is now on his own, for the removal of father, brother, cousin and now mother too renders him more alone than I. Grieved that Escalus has been so undone by his own grief that he let his kin die here in this dark house, without his sight and the care of his best physicians. But I think I can only be happy for her – she knows not any longer the suffering of the world, and may be with the husband and son she has lost. Why should we bid her stay?

The friar also. He was too fragile for this work; I think the passing of Father Lawrence had the same effect on him as Mercutio and Paris' on Prince Escalus, if to a lesser extreme. In any case his soul has flown, although Leonardo would call it down to earth again with weeping and wailing.

For this death I do feel sorrow – not for the friar, though he was young, but for Leonardo. I know too well what it is to hold the hand of a loved one while they ebb away. And now Leonardo understands truly the depth of my own grief – though I would he did not have to.

The house is empty but for us; silent, but for Leonardo's piteous cries. (What servants the lady had were sent away when she fell ill, I imagine.) And though it is rent with such sounds of sorrow, and should be heavy with the creeping stench of Death, the air…

…the air is sweet it seems. And my heart knows a sudden lightness.

Leonardo's howls fall away as a hand on my shoulder wills me turn. Turn I do – and Romeo laughs, that laugh I remember so well, at the expression of joy that I cannot and do not desire to keep from my face.

From behind him another steps out. "Mercutio!"

Everything I remember of him is forty times greater in his actual being, save one thing – his usually merry grin is replaced by a smile of an altogether deeper nature. And, as well, when my eyes stray to the site of his wound I am overwhelmed with relief to see it unmarked.

Romeo grasps one of my hands, and Mercutio the other. And in a voice like the music of church bells – how glad I am to hear it, for I feared I never would again! – the latter asks, "Wilt thou come with us? Thy time to follow is now."

And I have no thought of resistance now, no wish to stubbornly remain. For Mercutio is right – and would I doubt his word in any case?

So, laughing, I merely answer, "I know, my friends. I know."

FINIS

So there you have it. Any thoughts? Oh, and you don't have to flame me to tell me it's a terrible ending etc., because I know.