Beatrice and Benedick (15 page)

‘Yes. He follows the teachings of John Calvin.'

I knew a little of the to-do in Europe between the Protestants and Catholics, but it all seemed a long way away from Sicily. ‘Do such things affect us here?'

Now he looked at me as if I was a stranger. ‘Such matters affect all of us, everywhere.'

‘Not I,' I said, thinking it true.

‘And yet you watched a play about it, just last night.'

‘So it was you, at the theatre!' The exclamation burst forth before I could stop it.

‘Yes. And I did not like what I saw.'

I remembered he wrote plays as well as his poems. ‘I suppose the subject matter
was
a little violent for an entertainment.'

He snorted. He seemed altogether more hostile than he had been when I had met him at dinner, more prickly, a good deal angrier. Had he changed too? I was sick of weathervane men, the shifting winds of their sex, and I would have left him to his scribblings, but I wanted to know more.

‘The public love violence,' he said. ‘There is always a bigger crowd at a hanging than a mass. As I said, the play was not about violence, but religion, and the two go hand in hand. Soon, very soon, we will all be cast in the drama, even to the very tiniest walk-on part.'

I struggled to understand; his mind seemed to jump about so. I missed again the sallies of Signor Benedick, for Michelangelo Crollalanza was not my equal in intellect, but my better. I was moved to display what little knowledge I had. ‘But it was just an old tale; two old tales, if truth be told, for Ramiro and Boudicca never breathed the same air.'

‘Exactly.' He waved his quill at me, as if pleased by my knowledge. ‘It was an amalgam of legends, muddled together to fit
their
insidious theme. They were selling a commodity, like a hot pie at a pie stand, and we all gobbled it up.'

‘Whose theme?'

‘Wake up, Lady Beatrice. The Spanish.'

‘But …' I stammered, feeling my way. ‘It was just a play. A silly play.'

‘Then why was the King of Spain there?'

He had made a point. ‘So it was
not
a play?'

‘It is all a play all right. All of it. Iberia is Spain, Albion is England. And they are all players – from Philip II himself to his player-king Claudio.'

‘Claudio?'

‘When I asked the count if he had seen
Pallas and the Centaur,
I did not just ask a fellow idly about a painting. The work hangs in the Medici Palace. He had seen the painting, he said, in his uncle's house. His uncle is a Medici.'

I watched a gull alight on a piece of driftwood. I was as much at sea as he. ‘What does that signify?'

‘Money, Lady Beatrice. It signifies money.'

I tried to put the pieces together. ‘So Philip of Spain is planning the downfall of England, and he needs Medici money to achieve it.'

‘And ships. That is why every nobleman in Sicily is being courted, and every merchant of note too.' He idly sucked the grass stalk he had picked, grimaced and spat. ‘Philip also needs a harbour. That is why your uncle is Don Pedro's host. He has been given the honour in return for the deeps of Messina's harbour. It has the deepest sound in the seven seas, and Messina makes a good stop between Spain and England. Leonato can give Philip letters of marque – he is the Governor of Messina. When you have the thread you have the whole skein.'

I was aghast. When I had met him he had hardly known any of these men. Now he seemed to know everything, as if he could read their very mind's construction in their faces.

I had watched the play too, and listened and seen nothing. ‘So Boudicca of Albion was Elizabeth of England.'

‘A red-headed queen with an infidel religion. Yes.'

‘And Ramiro of Asturias was Philip.'

‘Yes. Young Claudio was almost his double, in appearance, dress, everything. Did you know that in Spain Philip has forbidden his image ever to be used in a play? But here, it was allowed, encouraged. Statecraft and stagecraft are not so different. They missed no detail, damn them.'

He was angry again, and I wondered why he took such a lofty plot so personally. Then I remembered. The part of the play
that had shaken me the most, the part that had filled my dreams with blood. The Moors. His mother was part Moor. ‘And what have the Moors to do with this coil?'

He did not seem to want to be drawn, but shook his head repeatedly, as if he could see the horror, until his English ruff bent like a gull's wing.

‘That massacre, it was in Roman times. Centuries past.'

‘Ah yes, the poor dead Moors. Ancient history.'

He seemed to agree with me, but his tone told me he did not. ‘Or do you mean … is it …' The elements of the puzzle turned in my head for a moment like the planets in an orrery, and seemed to align; only to pass and separate. The conjunction of comprehension over, the darkness came again. ‘Is it to do with the expulsion of the Moors from Sicily? But wasn't that years ago too – the first years of Spanish rule?'

‘Years ago, yes,' he agreed, ‘under the first viceroys. Or is it still going on, yes, even here in this very spot? The Spanish have always needed an enemy for the Sicilians, otherwise the Sicilians might ask themselves why they do not rise up and kick the Spanish into the sea. Just as they once did the French.' He threw the torn grass viciously towards the sea, and it blew back uselessly into his lap. ‘Monreale thinks that if we can all be taught to hate the Moors then the Spanish may go about their enterprise against Elizabeth, the saviours of the island, and of the One True Religion.' He spat the words.

I did not fully understand this, but had one more question to ask. ‘Why does Philip hate the English queen so?'

‘He wanted to marry her, and she refused him. In his wife, he might have overlooked her religion. In a woman who scorned him, her faith is anathema to him. Hatred is a good horse – you can ride him all the way to England. And as you very well know, love is a very short step from hate. Nothing moves a man to bitter words more than a woman's scorn.'

Now he had performed his conjuror's trick on me; we had
moved from the political to the personal. ‘Are you speaking of Signor Benedick?'

He clapped his hands together. ‘Yes, let us talk of love. We have spoken of hate enough.'

I could feel my cheeks burn. ‘Who said there was love in the case?'

‘Love is often unspoken.'

I felt I could be honest with him. ‘And looks to remain so.'

He regarded me. ‘You are only in the middle of your story. Who knows how it will end? No one knows if they play in a comedy or a tragedy until the final curtain. The ending is the thing.'

I thought of the morning's card game. ‘Like
Scopa.
' I expected to have to explain, but I had forgotten he was Sicilian born.

‘Precisely. When you have the
settebello,
sweep the deck and leave.'

As if he suited the action to the words, he began to collect his papers, and as I helped him I read the fragment of a line.

She loved me for the dangers I had passed …

I felt a cold hand squeeze my heart. I looked up from the page. ‘What is your play about?' The poet was ahead of me, climbing the dunes towards the house. I ran to catch up with him. It was suddenly crucial that I knew. ‘Michelangelo! What is the play
about
?' I stumbled in the sand and nearly dropped the pages. The poet was opening the little wicket gate to the Moor's house. He must be acquainted with the admiral.

As I followed him to the little loggia of the house I glanced through the window, and paused at the sight. The walls were papered with writings; scribblings, diagrams and pamphlets were stuck up with pins from floor to ceiling. In the corner was a machine made of wood and metal, with rollers and clamps and some sort of press. A darkwood desk was set in the middle of the room, piled high with leather books on which were balanced, precariously, a globe and an orrery. A man sat at the desk in a
black robe with a small white ruff, over which a grey beard flowed. He wore a close-fitting black cap upon his head, and was scratching over a paper with a quill. All this I saw in an instant, but did not note the half of it. All I could ask myself was: where was the Moor? And where was the lady? As if he felt himself watched, the old man stopped writing and looked up, straight at me.

I stepped back as if struck. Then there were footsteps; the poet came back to collect my pile of pages and saw my face.

‘Who is that?' Hands full, I pointed my chin to the room.

‘My father,' he said simply. ‘Giovanni Florio Crollalanza.'

‘Then you … you
live
here?'

‘Yes. For a week now.'

I felt as if I were back in my dream. ‘Then … where is the Moor?'

The angry look came back to the poet's face. He lifted the papers he carried to his chin. ‘He lives only in these pages.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘He is dead.'

I sat down heavily in the groin of the roots of an olive tree. The leaves whispered above me, and their shadows passed across my skin like a shoal of dark fish.

The poet hunched beside me, as I had first found him, his eyes fixed on the horizon. ‘I thought you knew,' he said, in a voice as flat as the yellow sands. ‘Everyone knows. We took the house after it happened. It was your lady aunt who told my mother that the place was free.'

I tried to stand. Could not. ‘She never told me,' I murmured. And there was no reason why she should have. My aunt knew nothing of my peeping and eavesdropping on the beach, of my stupid fantasy of the Moor and his wife. ‘His poor, sweet lady,' I whispered. ‘How will she live without him?'

The poet looked down at the infinite grains of sand. ‘She does not have to. She is dead too, and by his hand. He strangled her for he thought her untrue.'

I put my head in my hands. How could they have come to this pass? The woman I had seen had eyes only for her Moor; how could he have lost trust in her? I felt, suddenly, unbearably bereft; not of the couple's company for I did not know them, but of the
idea
of them, of the
idea
of an idyllic marriage, built on true affection and forged on equal terms. They had seemed so happy, so in love!

The sun was climbing in the sky, and my aunt would scold me if I did not return. But I could not leave without knowing. The sea had a moonstone shimmer, and I thought of the lady sitting here, waiting for her husband's ship to come in. Now it never would. I could not bear the tragedy of it. ‘What an ending.'

The poet rubbed the back of his neck with his hand, under his hair. ‘Or a prelude to the final act.'

‘What do you mean?'

He looked about him, as if the trees could listen as well as whisper.

‘Tomorrow is Ascension Day, the day of the Vara and the Giganti in Messina. There you will see the climax of the play, I am sure of it. And a Moor will be at the centre of the stage. I told you, it is all about the ending.'

The Vara, I knew, was the Ascension Day parade in Messina, the climax of all our recent celebrations. Hero was to play an important role this year, as each year a young girl from a well-born family was chosen to act the role of the Virgin ascending, and it was a source of great pride and excitement to Hero that she had been chosen, a feeling augmented, I knew, by the strength of Claudio's faith. But I could not connect a local festival with this coil about the Moors. ‘Is it not just a religious procession?' I asked.

‘Ye-es,' he said slowly. ‘But it has another element that the Church has been trying to excise for years. Two giant figures on horseback are conducted through the streets; Mata and Grifone. One is a white lady, and one a Moor.' My skin chilled.

‘The legend says that long ago a gigantic Moor, whose name was Hassan Ibn Hammar, landed near Messina and plundered and sacked all around. One day, during a raid, he saw a girl whose name was Marta – which we Sicilians pronounce Mata – and fell in love with her. In the end, the cruel Saracen became a Christian, changed his name to Grifone and received baptism.'

I thought about the story. ‘But it was a happy ending. A comedy, as you would say. The Moor converted, he married his love.'

He nodded. ‘Yes. It is a story about conversion and the redeeming power of Christianity, and the Church could appropriate it; but since the expulsion of the Moors from Sicily our prelates – including our dear Archbishop of Monreale – denounced the celebration of a Moorish figure.'

‘But,' I struggled to express my thoughts, ‘the procession has nothing to do with the tragedy that was enacted in this house. The figures do not represent
this
Moor and his wife.'

‘No,' he said. ‘But I think tomorrow, they will.'

My head was beginning to ache, and I cared no more for the Spanish or their conniving. I thought about the Moor, of his nobility, his tenderness. When he'd looked at his lady as if only they existed in the world. How he caressed her cheeks and throat and kissed her most sweetly. How did he make the journey from that to placing his hands around her throat in hatred, and squeezing till he put out the light in her eyes, till the life he loved was gone? ‘I cannot believe he killed her.'