This time, the tone was not so pleasant. “Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?” Abraham was plainly giving him a chance to walk away, but the Capulet’s smirk only widened. He shrugged and glanced at his companion in red and black.

“Is the law on our side, if I say aye?”

“No,” the other Capulet said, clearly the more cautious. His caution, though well planted, did not take root.

“No, sir,” the first said, in a hearty and mocking tone, “I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I do bite my thumb.”

The second clearly gave up his attempt to make peace, and stepped forward then to brace my servants. “Do you quarrel, sir?”

“Quarrel, sir? No, sir.” Abraham had his own blood up and running high, and Balthasar’s warning pluck at his sleeve did nothing to dissuade him. I considered calling them in, but I saw more Capulet colors pushing toward us.

And some of them worn by Tybalt.

“If you do, sir, I am for you; I serve as good a man as you,” warned the Capulet bravo.

“No better,” Abraham scoffed, well aware I was behind him.

“Well, sir—” began the first Capulet, but he was cut off.

“Say better—here comes one of my master’s kinsmen,” the other Capulet muttered, and now that they knew Tybalt was watching, the matter was as inevitable as a falling wall’s crash.

“Yes, better, sir,” the first instantly amended.

“You lie,” Abraham said.

And that was the moment when it turned from speech to action. “Draw, if you be men,” the Capulet spat, and steel appeared, on both sides—the two Capulets, and my own men.

I had a choice then, but I knew the Capulets were wounded today, and I’d done the blooding, true enough. It would do well for Montague to yield gracefully, and in public view.

So I stepped forward and beat down their swords with my own. “Part, fools!” I said, and shoved Abraham back. Balthasar, ever attentive, stepped back willingly. “Put up your swords.” And it might have calmed the waters, if only Tybalt had not stepped in behind me.

His voice was silken and cold with amusement. “What, are you drawn among these heartless hinds? Turn, Benvolio. Look upon your death.”

Balthasar was trying to signal me to withdraw, but I knew there was no way to avoid this now; it was a direct challenge from an equal, or near equal. I turned to face Tybalt, and the sight of his arrogant face made my heart race and my hands shake with the need to do for him what I’d done for his man earlier in the day.

But I did try. “I do but keep the peace,” I said, as reasonably as I could. “Put up your sword, or use it to part these men with me.”

He laughed. “Drawn, and you talk of peace!” The laughter stopped, and for the rest of it, he was deathly serious. “I hate the word, as I hate hell, all Montagues, and you,” he said, and there was such venom in it that I did not doubt him. His sword slid free, and the glint of it in the sun caught my eyes. I felt myself go into that cold space again, all concerns falling free. “Have at you, coward!”

He was no brawler; Tybalt had been trained by the best, and he was—by many accounts—better than me, and faster. Even with all my concentration, it was difficult to follow the flicker of his movements as he thrust; I parried, but only barely, and my returning attack was beaten casually aside. I was hard-pressed, then, all my attention on his body, his eyes, the deadly grace of his blade, but I was also aware of the shouts, the riotous noise of blades clashing and cudgels clacking on one another as our men joined the fray, as did others who wanted to earn favor from one house or the other. It quickly became a street brawl, with injured men screaming and blood slicking the cobbles. Someone was giving a call to battle to strike both houses down and stop the fight, but it was of little note until I heard Balthasar shout a warning, and over Tybalt’s shoulder I saw the tall, imperious figures of Capulet and his lady wife. Capulet—elderly and gouty—was trying to call for a sword, but she foiled him in the way that wives do; meanwhile, behind me, I heard a similar argument in familiar voices.

My uncle Montague was also drawn to the fight, and my aunt was hell-bent on holding him back.

Good that the women of both houses had sense, because as I managed—again, barely—to hold off Tybalt’s next assault, I heard more shouts, and saw the flash of the prince’s liveried men pushing through and laying about with their own cudgels. Peacemakers, clouting heads to enforce the point. Behind them came the prince of Verona himself.

Tybalt and I broke off, breathing hard, glaring hate, and I realized that just this once, my cold distance was boiling away. I wanted his blood, badly as he wanted mine. There was a grudge between us, at least in my mind. . . . Rosaline, beaten and huddled in a corner, and him, wiping blood from his hands. He needed a sword in the guts to teach him better.

But it was not to happen now. There were too many witnesses, and already our men were withdrawing to safety, throwing down their weapons under the threat of angry authority. The injured were being pulled aside to make room for Prince Escalus’s advance; someone hastily threw down a cloak to prevent him from staining his shoes with the blood of victims.

He spoke. I don’t remember the speech, and did not attend the words even then, save that it ended in a threat to kill anyone who broke the peace again, whether Capulet or Montague.

I was busy staring down Tybalt. Neither of us had put away our swords, though a sharp word from my uncle finally made me—reluctantly—sheathe.

Another time, Tybalt mouthed to me, as he was likewise forced to stand down. He clapped hands on the shoulders of his friends, and walked away. I would have followed, but Balthasar laid a hand on my own arm and held me back, forcefully enough that I should have struck him, but I knew he had only my safety at heart.

“Calm,” he whispered to me. “Calm, sir; you are in the presence of the prince, and he asks your attendance.”

He was right; this was no time to indulge my rages, and with an effort that shook me to the marrows, I controlled myself, then nodded to him to let loose. He did, seeming doubtful, but I turned from Tybalt and walked toward my uncle and aunt, the Capulets, and Prince Escalus. The prince, surrounded by his retainers, frowned upon all of us. He looked pointedly down at the cobbles, still stained with blood, and the moaning injured being helped away from the area.

My uncle, ever the politician, turned upon me. “Who broached this ancient quarrel?” His words might be neutral, but his tone was accusing. “Speak, nephew. Were you by when it began?”

I explained that it was Tybalt’s fault, in a way that might have been overly witty, given the situation and the moods of those involved; Capulet scowled at me, but he did not object, which proved to me he’d seen what had transpired, at least in part. Lady Capulet was too concerned with keeping her skirts from the blood.

My aunt, however, was more concerned—of course—with Romeo and his absence from the fight than with my own mortal danger. I was the excess elder boy; I was bred to fight Montague’s battles, after all. Romeo was meant for higher things.

I tried not to resent that. I lied, a bit; I knew he’d be blamed for having been with us at the market, and there was no reason to drag him down as well. I told my aunt most of the truth—that he had gone beyond the wall, and was in the wood. To my surprise, my uncle gave the rest of the story, though I was well prepared to provide the information Mercutio had given me.

“He’s been seen there many a morning,” Montague said, with a frown not for me, but for the worry he felt, though he was careful to keep his voice low, and his back turned toward the Capulets. “Adding tears to the fresh morning dew, and adding clouds to clouds with his sighs. Black and portentous may this humor prove, unless good counsel prevails.”

I wondered how much of what my grandmother knew had reached him. “My noble uncle, do you know the cause?”

“I neither know it, nor can learn it of him.”

I pressed him, but it was obvious Romeo’s father did not know the cause of his sorrows, which was a great relief . . . until around the corner, who should come but Romeo himself, trailed by the two faithful retainers. He looked doleful, but his sorrow lessened a bit, replaced by concern, when he saw the state of the street, his father and mother, and the prince. The frowning, lingering Capulets he ignored, save a single glance.

I knew, though, that from the determined set to his chin, Romeo was bound to spout something that would be not only unwise, but dangerous, and likely having to do with the Capulets, and so I quickly turned back to his father and said, “Please you, step aside. I’ll discover his grievance.”

“Do so,” he instructed me sternly, and extended his hand to my aunt. “Come, madam, let’s away.”

The Capulets, who would not have retreated before Montague lest they seem weak, or risked his impugning them to the prince behind their backs, took a hasty good-bye as well. The prince was slower to depart, but leave he did, taking most of his men with him, save a contingent left to watch those who stayed with severe and quelling stares.

“What passed here?” Romeo asked, looking around at the remnants of chaos. “No, let me chance a guess: a clash between two unhappy houses.”

“I have no wounds,” I said. “Thank you for your concern.”

“You never have wounds,” he said absently. “Was it just a little while ago I left you?”

“Just a while.”

“Sad hours seem long . . . was that my father?”

“It was.” I shook my head. “I know I am a fool to ask, but what sadness lengthens your hours?”

“Not having that, which having, makes them short.”

I knew well where he was headed. “In love?”

“Out.”

“Of love?” Please, I thought, let it be so. Let him be mournful because he’s finally reconciled to the idiocy of his suit. . . .

But no. My cousin could never be so agreeable. “Out of her favor, where I am in love . . .”