Free Juliet's Nurse by Lois Leveen

beside the bed, taking my hand to his lips. “Now that I’ve a hive here, and the other at our house, I’ll harvest more honey and more beeswax. When I sell the wax and what I make with the honey, it will bring enough to pay our rent and keep the two of us, all year.”
    I am not a stupid woman. I know that when a man contracts to hire a wet-nurse, and another to let his wife serve as one, thereis hard bargaining over how much money passes from one to the other, though no one bothers the milk-mother with such details. Whatever Friar Lorenzo said and did when Susanna died to bring me and my nursling together, it was set down as so many soldi to be paid each month by Lord Cappelletto. A sum that is delivered to Pietro by Friar Lorenzo, who keeps some tidy portion as his brokering fee. But what ties me to Juliet is worth far more than money.
    “It will be summer before there’s honey and beeswax to be harvested,” I say. And although I’m not the kind of woman who holds her tongue before her husband, for once I do. I’ll not remind him now that it’s far longer than that before an infant is weaned. Two years, two and a half—does he not remember how it was with our boys? Would I want any less than that for my last darling?
    Before he can answer, the door from the tower creaks open. Tybalt pushes aside the wall-hanging, bounding his way into the chamber as he recites all the many things he’s noticed about the hive. How some bees fly, and others crawl along the ground. And some stay within the hive, pushing out the dead. He grabs my husband by the hand, pulling him back into the tower, down the stone steps, and outside.
    I leave the window open, listening to their voices in the arbor as I fish the thimble from the bedclothes and prepare Friar Lorenzo’s remedy for Juliet.

    I’ve not forgot what else Friar Lorenzo told me I must do. I must bring him those pearls, to give grateful thanks to the Holy Church that Juliet is saved.
    I remind myself of this as I sit with Lady Cappelletta in her chamber. While my thick fingers spin a steady rhythm and her thin ones sew, my eyes rove like unleashed beasts, searching the stone floor.
    But I cannot find those wayward pearls. Not that first day. Nor the second. As the nones bells ring on the afternoon of the third day, something finally catches my ever-roving gaze. Some lustrous thing wedged within the pebbly crack between two of the large floorstones. Juliet stirs in the cradle, and I reach my foot out to rock her. But I’ll not let my eyes leave that spot, certain it’s a pearl.
    “It must tire you, working such a fine stitch,” I say to Lady Cappelletta.
    She nods, letting her needle dangle as she rubs her eyes. I sing a slow lullaby about a fast-growing swan, pretending it is meant for Juliet, watching as Lady Cappelletta becomes the bird I sing about, her long, slender neck too delicate to bear the strain of holding up her pretty head.
    Once her chin dips down, I say three silent Pater Nosters. When I’m sure she’s deep in her sleep, I slip from my chair and lower myself to where the pearl lays. My breath stills as I work a thick forefinger and my fatter thumb into the crevice. The pearl is curved and smooth, and the rough floorstones scrape my knuckles raw as I pry it loose.
    Tucking the gem inside my dress, I survey every inch of all the rest of the floor. But search as I might, I cannot find the second pearl. Just yesterday, Marietta took her leave of Ca’ Cappelletti. Or Maddalena, maybe she was called. The latest of the serving-maids,she’d not stayed long enough for anyone to be certain of her name, and was gone so quick there’d not have been time to shout it after her even if we’d known it. Perhaps it was the weight of a pilfered pearl in her pocket that carried her away so fast, well beyond anywhere Lord Cappelletto, let alone the wet-nurse, might find her.
    When Juliet and I lie at night in her great bed, I roll my own purloined pearl in my palm,