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of these days,” he told me. “If you’re lucky. Maybe tonight, the Prince of Cats will get his claws around your throat instead.”
    Tybalt Capulet, Prince of Cats, had been named so by Mercutio in a jest that had less to do with his grace and cruelty than it did a ribald play on words. If Tybalt caught me, my ravaged corpse would be found nailed to the same tavern door where I’d skewered his reputation.
    I felt a breath of chill, and shook it off as I pulled my cloak tighter. “Perhaps,” I said. “He must catch me first.”
    •   •   •
    M ercutio was, of course, my partner in crime. . . . He was an expert in distractions, but having the clumsy, still half-drunken Romeo along was even better. The narrow, uneven streets of Verona were dangerous in full daylight, where footpads and knock-heads lurked in shadows and blind archways. In moonlight, the villains were ever bolder, but even they hesitated to tangle with armed groups. We made sure they saw and heard us as we sauntered over the streets. It helped that Mercutio had a donkey’s singing voice, and used it to bray the bawdiest drinking song he knew; Romeo and I bawled out choruses as we strode up the hill.
    There was a dizzying sameness to the streets of my fair city, even to natives—all the walls were cut from the same stone, faced with marble, broken only by frescoes and the faded colors of mosaics in the half-ruined ancient walls. Verona was not a lush place; the verdant gardens of the rich were walled up from prying peasant eyes. Even from the bell tower of the basilica, it was hard to spot any sign of trees, or even bushes . . . just pale stone, marble, and clay tile roofs.
    Crossing the Piazza delle Erbe, we saw another group of armed young men, these very obviously wearing the colors of Capulet, but they gave us no trouble. Had we been in Montague colors, we’d have brewed a fight, but they only shouted recommendation of the nearest wine shop and continued around the fountain. One of them bared his pockmarked backside at the placid face of the marble statue—ancient, though known as the
Madonna
because of her great beauty—until a shout from the watch guards sent them running and hooting on their way. By this time we had gone quiet, slipping like ghosts through the shadows.
    A short journey brought us to the back wall of the Capulet palazzo.
    Again.
    There was no longer any chance of an easy entrance to the house. . . . I knew well enough that they would be checking the faces of any man entering or leaving. No, this would require extraordinary stealth and effort.
    At least the wall didn’t look especially difficult.
    Mercutio gave me a sharp, knowing smile, and threw his arm around Romeo’s shoulder to steer him down the Via Cappello. “Go to the Via Mazzini,” I told them. “Right past the front gates. Go buy some wine and enjoy it, loudly, in the street.”
    “We who are about to drink, salute you,” Mercutio said, with a flamboyant, cloak-rippling bow. He grabbed my cousin in a headlock when Romeo tried to break free. “You too, poet. Let’s be off about our business of making trouble, and leave Benvolio to his.”
    Romeo struggled, but Mercutio held him until he signaled his surrender.
    “Don’t hurt her,” he told me, so earnestly that I had to again hold back an impulse to cuff him for his assumptions. I was a thief, not a monster. “Please, Ben, promise that you will do nothing but take the verses. If you must punish someone, then let it be me. She bears no guilt in this.”
    He was a bit of a fool, my cousin, but he had a good heart, even while he assumed mine to be blackened. “I will try to restrain all temptations,” I said. “Now go. Hurry.”
    Romeo nodded to me, and Mercutio led him off to a riotous drink and—very likely—trouble of their own.
    I reached into my bag and took out the black silk scarf, which I settled over my head and pulled low over my eyes; I adjusted the eye holes carefully to be