Beatrice and Benedick (20 page)

I stopped walking. ‘Your husband is returned?'

‘Yes. The Spanish questioned him as I feared, but there was nothing to connect him to the pamphlets he had distributed, for he signed them with an alias, and no man could be found who would positively identify him as the giver of these epistles. I had but to play my part at the house, and the evidence was gone.' She lowered her voice, for all that she was among friends, and I thought that somewhere in the last twenty years, secrecy had become a habit with her. ‘Something once read cannot be forgotten, and his words had hit home. The men of the Vara were not disposed to tell what they knew, for Giovanni Florio is a Sicilian by birth and dialect and accent, and they look after their own.' She tapped the side of her broad nose with her finger, confidentially. ‘Three score pamphlets were handed out that day, but not one was given up to the Inquisitors, nor found on the ground to be presented in evidence. The streets were as clean as on Palm Saturday.'

I was humbled by her courage, and her confidence, for she was sharing dangerous information with me.

‘Giovanni was foolish, of course. But he cannot help himself when he sees a wrong done.' She breathed the thinning air and sighed it out again. ‘I think we are not long for this island.'

I was sorry for it. I did not want to lose her, nor the companionship of her son. I wondered what it was like to be wed to a man for whom the eye of the sun grew too hot wherever he went. It seemed Guglielma and her household would be constantly moving. No wonder they had so few sticks of furniture – they would be better suited to a Romany's caravan, or to carry all on their backs like a tortoise.

The slope steepened, and silenced our talk for a while. The earth on the slopes of the volcano was evidently rich with
minerals, for not only was it coloured in ochre stripes but it encouraged a burgeoning of growth. Contented bees circled our heads and yellow ginestra bloomed so high that the bushes were taller than we women, all except one. A lofty laundress kept her face covered – perhaps she had some malady of the skin which she wished to give back to the volcano.

We made our way through a thicket of golden chestnut trees, and beyond the treeline the fauna changed with the altitude. Grasses became parched, flowers became spare and there were blooms I did not recognise. A sulphurous smell permeated the air and the stones underfoot were black and porous. The sun lowered behind the hunchback hill, and even the smallest scree sent striped slabs of shadow from the summit. I could now see the very mouth of the volcano, a jagged chasm belching white and drifting steam.

At length we looked down into a dell which was nothing but a bare black crater. Unless someone was to undertake the arduous climb to the lip and look over, our activities would be shielded from all eyes.

Perhaps it was the smell of sulphur, but I began to be afraid; as if some nameless evil lived in this crater. I felt that we were to dance on the back of a great black sleeping dragon who would at any minute wake from his rumbling sleep, constrict us with his stony coils and consume us in his fiery breath. What was I doing here?

The musicians – all women – gathered a little above the crater. I saw a lady bearing a mandolin; another held a local instrument called a guitar. I spotted an accordion, flutes, fiddles, trumpets and clarinets, while those less skilled clutched tambourines. Guglielma took my hand and we half scrambled, half slid down the ashy slope and formed a circle with the other dancers at the bottom of the crater. And waited, breathing the acrid air.

The strange resonant sound of the Jew's harp giving time
twanged around the hillside, then the musicians began to play. Our circle of dancers began to revolve and my fear evaporated. What had I been afraid of? The music was infectious – my heart kept time with the driving rhythm, and my foot was tapping with the rest. To begin with I forgot why we were there – it was a joyous, happy occasion. Moreover I enjoyed, so much, the novelty of being at a dance where there were only women. There was no matter of concern about propriety, of trying to spy the man of your heart among the company. There was no worrying about your dress, or the correctness of your dancing steps, or remembering the order of each revolution of the measure. I was moving in every direction but the right one, and if I managed the correct step it was by accident. But helpful hands guided me, clasping mine and twirling me about, guiding me on my elbow or back. I made many friends that night; wordlessly, for dance was our conversation. I garnered smiles and nods from the girls of Hero's age as much as from the ancient widows hitching up their skirts to show their hairy shanks.

I saw Guglielma as I made the round. She clasped my arm and mouthed in my ear, ‘Tell the music; tell the mountain what you want to rid yourself of. Her name is Etna,' she said. Then, as the music got faster and faster and louder and louder, the ladies began to sink to the floor. It was then I saw why the dance was named for a spider – they were all legs, rolling and crawling and even waggling every limb in the air while they lay on the ground in their transported state. The ash turned their clothes black, and in the half-light they resembled the Trinacria, the very emblem of their island, many legs and a woman's head.

Feeling foolish, now pulled out of the ecstasy of the moment, I sank to the ground and began to roll like the rest. Soon I was covered in ash, and the bitter smell rose to my nose, but I felt elated. I had not behaved so, grubbing on the floor, since I was
a child. I was the music, the music was me; I was the mountain, the mountain was me. I laughed aloud. Guglielma, writhing next to me, shouted, ‘You see?'

‘Yes!' I cried. I was me. I did not need any man. I was Beatrice Della Scala, and I would rather hear a dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loved me. All around me I heard the women speak their prayers to the mountain.
Etna, let me not love the Dottore, for he is married … May I be rid of Angelo the drover … Let me not think of Salvatore any more …
‘Let me be free of
him
!' I cried, louder than all of them. ‘Let me be free of Signor Benedick!'

As I spoke I saw a flare on the lip of the crater and I stopped; pulled out of my hysteria as if slapped. I sat up, frightened by what I had said; and wanting, like a guilty child, to take it back. Had my words ignited the volcano, woken the dragon from his slumber? Around me, the frenzy continued, the music getting ever louder, ever quicker. But I alone saw one flare become two, until the entire lip of the crater, all the way round, was lit by torches, each one illuminating the Spanish soldier that held it.

Then, up to the lip of the crater on a white horse like St James, rode the Archbishop of Monreale, as if he had planned his entrance as carefully as any actor. He looked down at the gathering, but his gaze settled on no one but Guglielma Crollalanza. The musicians faltered and stopped. In the sudden silence his order could be heard as clearly as if he were giving a sermon. ‘Arrest the Moor,' he said.

Then all was confusion. Some of the women ran, some screamed, these powerful ladies turned into so many speckled hens by the appearance of such male authority. All but Guglielma, who stood dignified and silent, awaiting her fate at the axis of all; the still centre around which the chaos revolved. I tried to go to her, but was prevented. An iron grip on my arm.

I turned, ready to fight, for I thought my captor a soldier; but it was the tall laundress. ‘Come out of this,' she hissed, in a deep and familiar voice. As she marched me up the crater, through the dark towards the ring of torches, garments flew above us like great shadowy birds, and by the time we were in the torchlight, the laundress had turned into Benedick.

My addled mind, even in the face of much greater trouble, could only ask itself how much he had heard.

‘
Capitano
Escobar,' said Benedick to the nearest horseman. ‘You know the Lady Beatrice. She led me to this place, and is guiltless in this coil. See her conveyed safely home.'

The captain dismounted, and offered me his arm. ‘Such a friend of Spain may travel in the archbishop's carriage, for His Grace prefers to ride.' And he escorted me to the track, where the ladies in their Sicilian dress were scuttling back down the mountain into the night, before the Spanish could identify them. They could have been caught easily, but the cavalry let them go. The archbishop had the only spider he wanted.

I tried to protest, and turned in the captain's grip. ‘Benedick!' I cried. He looked after us, impassive, but his gaze in the torchlight was as black as flint. He bowed curtly, and turned away, and I knew then that he had heard every one of my words.

All the way down the mountain in the archbishop's carriage I was racked with guilt and horror. My hands shook so that I had to clasp them together. I gave no thought to what trouble awaited me at home, my uncle's shame, my aunt's switch, and Hero's disappointment; but tortured myself only upon the subject of what Benedick had been doing at the Tarantella. Was he such a creature of Spain that he had spied on Guglielma for the archbishop? Or had he seen me quit the house and followed to protect me, for, once again, he had saved me? I did not know what to think.

The motion of the carriage was unbearable, and my stomach lurched, my throat retched. I was bathed in the sweat of the
dance and the horror, not only at what I had spoken in front of Benedick, but of this dreadful twist in the tale; a play now swelling into a tragedy worthy of the legends of Magna Graecia. What hubris had my presence brought upon the head of Guglielma Crollalanza, allowing her nemesis the archbishop to catch her thus? She was the spider, but his was the web.

Benedick:
A cold sense of foreboding sat in my chest like a stone, where my heart had once been.

Not a seat was left in the place as the good people of Messina gathered to see the trial of a Moorish witch by the Inquisition. It was a fine title for a playbill, and the crowds had come for their entertainment. I had never seen a church so full.

And yet, there was a priest presiding over the proceedings; the Archbishop of Monreale led the Tribunal of the Inquisition. He was seated behind an impossibly high oaken bench set upon a platform on a dais, flanked by the viceroy, brave in his gold and velvets. Shrouded in a humble habit like a monk, Leonato Leonatus, Governor of Messina, made a third. Above them the Spanish standard flew. There was no sign, now, of the Trinacria, the Sicilian flag.

Three days had passed since the night on the mountain and this, and more than a dozen times at Leonato's house, in his gardens, his chapel and his orchard walks I had been entreated by the Lady Beatrice. She had pressed notes upon me which I returned unread. She had slipped the
settebello
into my hand, but I had let it drop from my fingers. I did not want to hear more words from her. I had heard enough on the bare mountain. She had wanted rid of me, and she would get her wish.

I could see her now, across the courtroom beside her aunt. Her very frame seemed to have shrunk inside her blue gown, and her collarbones stood forth. Her skin was as white as an
elephant's tooth. Her cheeks had sunk, and even her golden curls had dropped to smooth and sober waves. There were violet shadows beneath her eyes. As I looked upon her, as if bidden, she lifted her gaze to me; her eyes were a stormy tourmaline. I stifled any pity under a stony gaze.

I twitched on the polished wooden bench. I cared not for the Moorish dame, and had, thankfully, not been called as a witness. No. I had done my unwitting part when I had followed Beatrice to the mountaintop, like Don Pedro's faithful gazehound, and led the hunt to the stag at bay. They did not need me to describe what I saw, for there were more costly witnesses here – one of the tribunes himself. But I was here to mark the trial, for if the Lady Beatrice was implicated in any of the action I would have to step forth. No matter that she had denounced me, no matter that she had taken part in that godless dance, I still would see her saved from censure before I left this accursed island.

And I had ammunition in my arsenal. I had listened carefully over the last few weeks, closeted in the gorgeous golden chambers of Palermo and Monreale – I was not so green as I once was. While Beatrice and I were gaily passing back and forth the
settebello
in our lover's game (how I wished for those light times now!) a more weighty game of
Scopa
was being played in the viceroy's courts. Spain's king had a great scheme in hand, one that needed Leonato.

I peered keenly at Beatrice's uncle, the governor, where he sat on the tribune's bench. Leonato looked sick, as if he would rather be anywhere but here, and I knew, in an instant, why. My education of the last few weeks had served me well. I had learned to think, not in a straightforward course, but in the convoluted ways of the politician; a path that was as twisting as the constellation of Cassiopeia.

I knew that the archbishop had seen through my device. I had placed Beatrice in his carriage, told his captain that she had led
me to the dance, in order to exonerate her. But the archbishop had known, somehow, that she had gone there on her own account. And now he had that knowledge to hold over Leonato. I knew, and he knew, that Leonato would do exactly as he was told, or else Beatrice could be charged too. Leonato was now the lapdog of Spain. Beatrice was safe. I could go. But I did not.

I looked to the public gallery where she sat, and there beside her sat one who looked even more white and pinched than Leonato, and more sleepless and tearful than Beatrice; her aunt the Lady Innogen. Only then did I recall that I had seen her at certain gatherings with the Moorish dame. They must be friends, for the lady looked sick with apprehension. I thought grimly that she was right to look so.

I knew few others in the gathering but I knew their type. They were those who would come to a hanging – the indignant, the curious, the bloodthirsty, the indifferent. In amongst them were two faces I was surprised to see; the poet known as Michelangelo, and beside him, as if they were friends, the pamphleteer Signor Cardenio. I wondered what their business was here; I imagined the poet sought drama, and if so he could not do better than this trial, and the magus would like to collect more evidence of the iniquities of the Spanish, but they both looked as if there was more to their presence. They looked, if possible, queasier than my lady Beatrice and her aunt.