5. Dancing Shoes With Nimble Soles

Mercutio's departure left Romeo and Benvolio as the acknowledged cleverest boys in the Latin school. This was small consolation to Benvolio for the loss of his friend and studying partner. He now sat next to Romeo, and they made great strides together, especially in French, but it was not the same. Romeo could best every boy in the schoolyard at their old game of insults now, and he had developed a deep friendship with Friar Lawrence. Benvolio did not participate in the games of wit, but spent his recess time studying so that he could go to university one day. He had to admit to himself that he did like Friar Lawrence, but at the same time, he found it difficult to forgive the good friar for the things he had said about Mercutio.

Sundays were his great consolation. In addition to the Latin school, Friar Lawrence had taken over the boys' Sunday club, where the youths of Verona could meet to play under religious supervision after Mass on Sundays. Mercutio's father allowed him to continue attending, along with Valentine.

Mercutio always seemed thrilled to be at the Sunday club, and he invented new games for his friends as easily as ever. When he was not leading them in tossing a ball around or chasing a hoop, he would tell Benvolio about the things he had done during the week.

"Dost thou still study?" Benvolio asked him. "It would be a shame if thou didst learn no more."

"Ay, my father has hired a tutor," Mercutio replied. "The man is very old, and the lessons he sets me are mostly very dull. But he is teaching me mathematics, and I am glad of that."

"Thou didst always love numbers," Benvolio said.

Mercutio nodded. "In mathematics, there is always an answer, and it is always either right or wrong. I like that. There is at least one aspect of the world that is sensible."

"And what of languages, and the great writings? Dost thou still read those?"

"I have the run of Papa's library," Mercutio said, though he would not meet Benvolio's eyes. "I may read whatever I please." He sighed, and wrinkled his nose. "I wish I were back in school with thee. I fear that I shall never learn enough from my tutor to qualify for university."

They did not speak for a while after that, but watched Valentine learning a skipping game from another little boy about his own age. "That is Proteus," Mercutio said. "I like him. He is good for Valentine, and I am glad to see that my brother is learning to make friends. Sometimes I think that I would go mad if I did not have thee and Romeo as my friends, so I am glad that Valentine will have such a fine experience for himself."

Benvolio did not know how to reply to that, so he leaped up and tapped Mercutio's shoulder. "Tag!" he cried. Mercutio laughed, and chased him around the piazza.

Now that Romeo and Benvolio were almost young men, Uncle Tiberio and Aunt Susanna allowed them to stay up and attend whenever great feasts were held at the house of Montague. These were always merry occasions, with music, and lots of fine food and drink. Sometimes, groups of older boys would come to the feasts wearing elaborate masks, and Romeo and Benvolio would spend hours trying to determine who they were. Only one masker was ever easy to identify, and that was Mercutio's Cousin Paris. He stood straighter than his friends, and walked more stiffly.

"Paris feels the weight of being Uncle's heir on his shoulders," Mercutio laughed when Benvolio told him about this. "I think he does not really enjoy masking, but does it because his friends do it. Perhaps I will ask him to give me a mask next Christmas. I know that I would like to go to a feast in a mask."

The idea intrigued Benvolio as well. It was another thing to look forward to when he was older.

Mercutio, lively and impatient, did not choose to wait so long. Uncle Tiberio held a feast to mark Shrove Tuesday, and the preparations for that feast consumed the Montague household for weeks before the event. Romeo and Benvolio, the acknowledged pets of the household, had their fill of scraps when the cooks were making the sweets for the festival. They brought these to Sunday club to share with their friends and playmates.

Mercutio laughed at one misshapen blob of marzipan. "Look, Benvolio! Does this not resemble a man's tool drawn and ready for a little night-work?" Benvolio giggled, even as he recoiled from that image. Mercutio opened his mouth wide, and then bit off the end of the piece of marzipan with a vicious snap of his teeth.

"I wish thou couldst come to our feast," Benvolio said quickly, to cover his embarrassment. "Aunt Susanna always supervises the decoration, and the house looks so beautiful. There will be lanterns, and evergreen wreaths, and ribbons, and music, and everyone talking and laughing and dancing, and . . ."

"That is surely a sight to behold," Mercutio said, and his eyes sparkled. Benvolio knew that look. It was a look that meant that Mercutio was planning something, and that something would get him into trouble as likely as not. Benvolio wondered what a model of Christian love and humility ought to do.

"Do not do anything foolish, Mercutio," he said weakly. "I would not have thee risk a beating on my account."

The Shrove Tuesday feast was a great success. Romeo capered next to the dancers and made them laugh, while Benvolio led some of the other boys on a game that was not quite tag, and not quite hide-and-go-seek, but was immensely entertaining nevertheless. Uncle Tiberio stood at the door to welcome his guests, and he let out a roar of laughter when a party of masked youths arrived. Benvolio stopped to stare, and did not notice when his friend Vincenzo tagged him.

One of the maskers was noticeably smaller than the rest, and seemed almost overwhelmed by his grand, feathered mask. He unrolled a piece of parchment, and in a voice more confident than one might expect of a child, read a speech all in rhyme that introduced the maskers and apologized profusely for their uninvited presence at the party. Benvolio's jaw hung open in delighted surprise, for he recognized the boy's voice.

Uncle Tiberio chuckled indulgently and patted the little masker's head before he welcomed the rest of the masking party to his feast. They dispersed throughout the room, and the boy ran directly over to Benvolio. He raised his mask, and he was Mercutio, just as Benvolio had suspected.

"How didst thou do it?" Benvolio asked. "Did thy father give thee permission to come?"

"No," Mercutio said. "But I do not care. Paris lent me one of his old masks, and I crept out of my bed after everyone thought I was asleep. What games are you playing tonight?"

"Tag," Vincenzo said.

"Thy father will be most displeased," Benvolio said.

Mercutio set his jaw. "I do not care. Papa will beat me anyway. I would rather endure a beating that I earned honestly than one that I did not. So let us play, and I will have a memory to console myself when I am beaten tomorrow."

Sure enough, when they saw each other at church the next day, Benvolio saw several marks on Mercutio's face, only one of which had been made by a priest wielding ashes. They did not speak, but Mercutio flashed a defiant, jaunty smile at Benvolio. Benvolio returned the smile, and tried to ignore the feeling that something inside of him was torn into tiny shreds.

A series of public scuffles and arguments between Montagues and Capulets marked the spring. Each incident brought a stern rebuke from the Prince. After the fourth incident, an argument after Sunday Mass that had somehow ended up as a free-for-all in the streets during which Benvolio had been swatted, hard, on the back of the head by the Capulet family's old nurse wielding a broom, the Prince summoned the heads of both feuding households to Free-town, the judgment place. Aunt Susanna paced around the garden, fretting over the Prince's possible sentence. Romeo plucked cherries from a tree and ate them, spitting the pits in expert arcs over Benvolio's head.

"Didst thou see that old nurse, Benvolio?" he said merrily. "She looked like a galleon in full sail, barreling down the street."

Benvolio rubbed the back of his head ruefully. "Thou didst not feel the touch of her broom."

"She was so angry she did not even notice thee. She laid about with that broom against all comers, Montague and Capulet, as if all were trying to storm her castle."

Benvolio had to smile at that image. "I cannot imagine who would try to board that noble ship."

Aunt Susanna stopped pacing and glared at them. "Romeo! Benvolio! Have you no thought of courtesy for an old woman? Truly, you are worse than savages."

Mildly chastened, both boys suppressed their smiles. "Beg pardon, madam," Romeo said, and spat out another cherry pit.

Uncle Tiberio returned home before sunset, a bemused expression on his face. He said nothing of his meeting with the Prince until after supper, and then he summoned his wife, son, and nephew to his study. He bade them sit, and a servant gave them goblets of wine. Benvolio tasted his and was surprised to discover that it was not cut with water.

"Thou and Romeo are becoming young men," Uncle Tiberio explained. "True scions of the house of Montague. Indeed, that is part of the reason that I have summoned all of you here."

Aunt Susanna's face paled. "Dost thou mean to speak of the Prince's doom? No, it cannot fall on Romeo and Benvolio! They are but children still, too young to –"

"Peace, Susanna, peace," Uncle Tiberio said gently, holding up his hand to still his wife's protests. "The Prince, in his mercy, has chosen to be kind in his judgment, and he wishes to broker peace between the children of our warring clans, in the hope that it will spread to their parents."

Aunt Susanna blinked in surprise. "That is an unusual idea. But perhaps it might work."

Romeo frowned. "Father, do you mean that Benvolio and I must be friendly with Tybalt?"

Uncle Tiberio's eyebrows crawled upwards. Benvolio did not know if Uncle Tiberio had ever met Tybalt, but he knew that he and Romeo had complained much about him. After a moment, Uncle Tiberio's eyes twinkled, and he smiled into his beard. "Friendly, my son? I do not know that I would expect that much from either of you, but I think that civility is not out of the question."

Romeo smiled. "I can be civil to Tybalt. I will ignore him when he taunts us at school. He only wishes he were as clever as Benvolio."

Uncle Tiberio nodded. "That is a good start, son. But there is more to the Prince's doom than that. He understands that there are a great many young sons of noble houses in Verona who do not know how to bear themselves in company. He proposes to remedy this situation by inviting these wayward boys to a series of dancing lessons at his palace."

Romeo and Benvolio stared. Uncle Tiberio threw his head back and laughed. "There will be no more child's games at my feasts from henceforth, I see. More is the pity."

The dancing lessons drew boys from most of Verona's wealthy families, not just the Montagues and the Capulets. The Prince had decreed that peacemaking was to be the burden of all, and his feasting hall was filled with boys. Mercutio immediately sought out his two best friends, and waited at their side for instructions from the dancing master. Tybalt looked around the room and frowned in puzzlement. "I see no maids," he said. "How are we to learn to dance, if we have no maids to squire about the room?"

The dancing master looked down his long, crooked nose at Tybalt. "Every boy will take his turn at dancing as a maid," he explained. "There is no shame in that, and it will do you all good to know both parts to a dance. Though you may not believe it, many of you will one day be the fathers of daughters, and perhaps you will teach them to dance at feasts even as I am teaching you."

With that, the dancing master separated half of the boys and designated them to dance as maids for that lesson. Fortunately, he allowed his class to switch parts frequently, and no one boy ever spent too long dancing in the opposite part. All the boys enjoyed the graceful steps and hops. Benvolio loved the stately pavane, while Romeo preferred the more social branle. Mercutio, who could not hear one note from another, proved to have an excellent sense of rhythm, and shone at the leaping galliard.

Although the ostensible purpose of the dancing lessons was to foster a sense of common purpose and sociability between the Montague and Capulet children, the two factions tried to avoid each other as much as possible. When circumstances forced a Montague to dance with a Capulet, both boys executed their steps silently, with an icy perfection designed to show off their own skills to their rivals. Once, the dancing master made Tybalt and Romeo demonstrate a pavane conversion for the class. The room crackled with tension as the two boys managed to perform the entire figure while keeping the thinnest whisper of air between their fingers so that they would not actually touch each other.

When the boys could get away with it, they selected their own partners, or switched discreetly when the dancing master was not looking. When they learned the moresca, Mercutio, dancing in the inner ring as a maid, found himself facing Tybalt as a partner, while Benvolio, in the men's ring, ended up with Petruchio. The dancing master paused in his music-making to explain the next part of the dance, and Mercutio seized the chance to switch places with Petruchio.

Benvolio smiled at the chance to dance with his friend, but Mercutio tossed a troubled glance in Tybalt's direction. "I do not mind dancing as a maid," he said, "but I do not like the look in Tybalt's eye. It makes me think of –"

The music started, and Mercutio's face suddenly lit up in a brilliant smile as the boys began to dance. The moresca was complicated, and by the time it was over, Benvolio had completely forgotten to ask Mercutio what he had seen in Tybalt's eyes.