Death Before Death [May 2001]

Note: I cut out some lines because they greatly slowed down the story. I tried not to, but I found I had no other choice if I wanted this to be at all powerful.

Then she is well, and nothing can be ill.

Balthasar’s words repeated over and over in Romeo’s mind as he kicked his mount into a headlong gallop. It could not be true. It could not be true that Juliet was dead… was gone… forever…

Her body sleeps in Capel’s monument, and her immortal part with angels lives.

Even though his mind said that Balthasar was telling the truth, Romeo’s heart kept a tenacious hold on a slim hope- a hope that Balthasar was mistaken, that this was only a dream- a nightmare- anything… as long as it meant Juliet was not dead…

I saw her laid low in her kindred’s vault…

Balthasar was mistaken. He had to have been mistaken. Romeo wanted to believe the lies he told himself- he had to. If he let himself believe that Juliet was dead… If his love was dead, then he was dead as well. So he couldn’t believe it. Wouldn’t believe it.

Then she is well, and nothing can be ill.

The mantra that meant his death if it were true began again in Romeo’s mind. He drove his lathered mount to still greater speed, Balthasar striving to keep up.

Her body sleeps in Capel’s monument…

 

Romeo stared at the tomb without really seeing it. He had sent Balthasar away, but hadn’t noted when his servant had left. Reality had come crashing down on the one tendril of false hope he had left… had severed it along with Romeo’s soul.

“Thou detestable maw,” he whispered, as if the tomb were a living thing- an evil predator that had torn Juliet from him and with her, life itself. “Thou womb of death, gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth, thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open, and in despite I’ll cram thee with more food!” With a cry of anguish - the chilling cry of a dying man - he pushed at the crowbar, and the tomb creaked open.

“Stop thy unhallowéd toil, vile Montague!”

Romeo stopped in the tomb’s entrance and sagged against the wall as if his world-weary body could not support him. Will this blood-bath never end?

“Can vengeance be pursued further than death? Condemnéd villain, I do apprehend thee. Obey, and go with me, for thou must die.”

Romeo laughed hollowly, mirthlessly, at the unintentional irony of the challenger’s words. “I must indeed,” he said, not turning from the darkness of the grave. “Good gentle youth, tempt not a desp’rate man. Fly hence and leave me. Think upon these gone: Let them affright thee. I beseech thee, youth, put not another sin upon my head by urging me to fury. O, be gone!”

He turned, his eyes the hollow, soulless pits of a man already dead; whose only link to life is the fact that his heart still beats… though not for long. “By heaven, I love thee better than myself!” he cried, trying to get it into this youth’s well-meaning but foolish head that he didn't want to kill anymore! “For I came hither armed against myself. Stay not, begone. Live,” as I cannot… “and hereafter say a madman’s mercy bid thee run away.”

Don’t make me kill you, fool… Romeo was tired - tired of life, tired of killing, tired of the foolish vendetta between his family’s and Juliet’s that had brought this all about. But he would fight, if he had to; if he were forced to…

“I do defy thy conjurations and apprehend thee for a felon here,” the other said, voice thick with confident bravado.

This youth’s foolishness and the futile senselessness of the inevitable duel flamed a hot fury within Romeo’s soul - fury, despair - they were one and the same, now. “Wilt thou provoke me?!” he shouted, the words exploding in angered exasperation from his mouth - from his heart… He yanked his blade from its sheath. “Then have at thee, boy!”

The fight was a short one - Romeo was easily better with the blade, and his sword was fueled by desperation. The challenger soon fell, bleeding heavily; another life on Romeo’s hands… another youth cut down by Romeo’s blade.

“O, I am slain! If thou be merciful, open the tomb, lay me with Juliet,” the youth gasped with his dying breath, and then breathed no more.

“In faith, I will,” Romeo said quietly. “Let me peruse this face.” The flickering light of his torch illuminated the dead man’s face, casting an unsteady light on it that gave the face the accusing cast of a demon’s insane grimace. “Mercutio’s kinsman!” he gasped in shock, “noble County Paris!”

What he said next, he did not know. His eyes were fixed on Paris’ face, which in the sputtering torchlight and Romeo’s grief-mad mind changed into the face of Mercutio, then to Tybalt, then back to Paris - all dead because of him. Romeo stared down at his bloody sword and hands. So many have died… because of me… I killed them. Blood stains my hands… my heart… By living I only bring pain and death. Even to my Juliet…

He stood abruptly, hoisting Paris’ corpse over his sweat-soaked shoulders and staggering into the tomb. “I’ll bury thee in a triumphant grave. A grave?” His eyes fell on Juliet, pale and cold yet beautiful even in death, and the sight wrenched at his heart. “O, no, a lanthorn, slaught’red youth… for here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes this vault a feasting presence full of light. Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interred.”

He looked around the tomb that would be his deathbed with a feeling that ran close to satisfaction, a half-emotion that nestled by the grief burning a hole in his heart. “Tybalt,” he said, seeing his cousin-in-law’s corpse, “liest thou there in thy bloody sheet? O, what more favor can I do to thee than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain to sunder his that was thine enemy?” Tybalt will be happy I am dead, Romeo thought, not without a wry edge to the sentence, as will much of Verona… I do a favor to the world by killing myself.

“Forgive me, cousin!” he said to Tybalt’s corpse in a harsh, deadened voice, and turned to gaze hungrily one last time at his love - at Juliet. “Ah, dear Juliet,” he murmured. “O, here will I set up my everlasting rest and shake the yoke of inauspicious stars from this world wearied flesh…”

Indeed, Romeo seemed ages older than he was. His body was young, but his hands were bloodstained and his eyes showed that his soul was already tethered to the grave. He seemed infinitely exhausted - a boy who had seen more than many man; a boy whose passionate heart had been slain by Fate’s cruel blade.

“Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! And lips, O you the doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain to engrossing death!”

He picked up the potion, looking at it as a prisoner might gaze at his liberator - and to him, it was his liberator. The poison would save him from his own tattered soul… “Come, bitter conduct; come, unsavory guide! Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on the dashing rocks thy seasick weary bark! Here’s to my love!”

Romeo gulped it back, and the potion burned as it scraped its way down his throat. He shuddered at the taste, but could feel himself growing weaker immediately… could feel his life fleeing from him. “O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.” He crumpled to the ground as everything blanked out to darkness. The last voice he heard sounded somehow, impossibly, like Juliet - and then he could hear nothing at all, and never would again.

Fate holds no favorites in her heart
Yet falls on the innocent with immense rage.
The world holds no love for others’ joy
And destroys them at an early age…

Poison runs through fooléd veins
Blood flows to end a lover’s life.
Fate plays cruel tricks to tragic ends
Yet good will result at the end of strife.