Beatrice and Benedick (23 page)

One by one, the women walked slowly down the hill, a sombre black procession, back the way they had come. I sat with my aunt on a warm tombstone, watching as Orsola gathered flowers a little way off. I felt suddenly deathly tired, as if grief and horror had drawn the strength from my limbs. I could only sit, numb. I did not speak; for once I had no words in me. But my aunt did. ‘Her son wrote the eulogy,' she said.

Her son.
I thought the beautiful, dolorous words bore Michelangelo's stamp, for no one could so well express the pain as he. I wondered what he had felt as he wrote them, knowing when they would be spoken. I wondered how I would face him, if I ever saw him more, knowing that I had brought his mother low. My aunt spoke again.

‘I saw her last night, Beatrice. Guglielma gave me the paper, and she herself asked me to perform the ritual we undertook just now. She wanted to be here so she could always see the island. Her island.' She breathed out a long and wavering breath.

‘You saw her?'

‘Yes. They held her in the Palazzo Chiaramonte; she was
alone in a big whitewashed room. She did not give up, Beatrice. She'd found some charcoal and in three days of captivity she'd covered the walls with drawings; drawings of such skill, Niece, as you never saw.' Her blue-grey eyes looked like pebbles in a stream. ‘Even the guards had given her colours and pigments. She drew ships, flowers, angels. And women; many, many women. She sent a message to
us.'

I stole a glance at her profile, strong and sure, like a ship's figurehead. ‘Does my uncle know you saw her?'

‘No, and shall not. I was expressly forbidden to enter, even as the governor's wife. But Friar Francis was given leave to visit Guglielma for the last rites, and he gave me leave to go in his habit and his stead.'

My own eyes prickled, and I looked out to sea, impossibly moved. In the
extremis
of her friend, my aunt had become the Innogen of old.

‘She was so brave, Beatrice, so brave. Her only concern was that her son and husband should get away to the north, and be safe. I went home and pleaded with your uncle, Beatrice, to lessen the sentence. I pleaded the hours around; until the sky lightened and it was time to leave for mass. He said if he intervened we would lose everything. But still I hoped, right until I saw her brought into the square.'

Her countenance crumbled, the ship now wrecked. How had I thought her strong and resolute?

‘There is a gown they wear,' she went on, ‘the heretics. When they have been pardoned, the flames point downwards. They are called
fuego repolto.
I prayed, Beatrice, that after mass she would be wearing such a gown; that she would have been pardoned. But I saw the flames first. They pointed up, towards her heart.' My aunt was dry eyed, but there was pain in every word. I thought of the archbishop's copious, meaningless tears and compared them to my aunt's dry but dreadful grief.

‘She had such spirit, Beatrice. Such spirit. And now it is gone.'

I looked at her then, and tried to articulate a thought that had accompanied me up the hillside. ‘Only gone if you let it go,' I said. ‘Raise Hero like her. With courage, and freedom, and the chance to think and speak and breathe. Do not let her become the modest miss that her uncle would have her be,' I urged. ‘Let her rather live in the image of Guglielma Crollalanza.'

My aunt said nothing, but I thought she was weighing my words.

I looked down to the shoreline again and Guglielma's house; the Moor's house, mindful of the dark lady's final wish. A new urgency entered my sombre repose. I must go there, find the Crollalanzas, make sure they quit the place before they were captured.

I took leave of my aunt, pressing a tender kiss to her temple, leaving her in the arms of Orsola, and set off down the hill. The heat was fierce and I threw back my cloak. It seemed so unfair that the sun should shine that day after all. It should have hidden its face, shamed by what wrongs its cousin fire had done.

When I reached the house on the beach, the little door was open.

I ran into the study and both father and son were there, gathering up papers. They turned like a couple of guilty things; their relief palpable when they saw me, their expressions strangely alike. The father I was not acquainted with, but it was no time for introductions. He looked grey, his eyes hollow like the hot skull we had buried. I could not give tongue to my condolences, did not know what to say. ‘We sail tonight with the tide,' said Michelangelo.

I walked over to the printing press; to the innocent letter blocks Guglielma had jumbled out of their heretical lines. I
pressed my fingertip into one of them, hard, hard enough to hurt me. I studied the fleshy pad and the mark upon it.

H for heretic. The same letter that had been branded on Guglielma's forehead.

‘This is our last chance to talk,' I murmured, once again bereft that day.

‘Go,' said the father to the son. ‘I will finish here.'

Michelangelo and I sat on the dunes; in the place where he'd told me about the Moor, the place where I'd embraced Benedick. I wanted to make amends somehow, yet there was no way to atone for my crime.

But he made it easy for me. He began to weep, as he could not have wept before his father. Then I knew exactly what to do; I held the poet close, as if he were a child, as his mother would never hold him again.

Still in the embrace, I saw a figure ride across the dunes in the far distance, in the direction of Leonato's house. I recognised the horse before the rider, for it was the white royal destrier of Don Pedro.

Benedick:
There was some sort of hurry.

The house was a ferment of preparation and packing. Horses were shod, the quartermaster dispatched to the cellars and larders, carts and haywains appropriated for our great movement. It seemed we would leave the next morning. While the lady burned at the stake, and all eyes were elsewhere, the Spanish ships had amassed, unseen, in the harbour.

It did not matter to me when they left. The sooner they quit the place the better. It seemed that the death of the last Moor had changed the people's perception of their overlords, and the Spanish felt that their days on the island were numbered. The Archbishop of Monreale had overplayed his hand.

But the death had changed me too. Life was short, and you had only one hand to play. I would rather spend the rest of my life being insulted by Beatrice than being given sweet compliments by any other lady. I returned to my room to collect my armour and take it to the armourer – I'd worn it to convey the poet and his pamphleteer friend safely home after their ill-advised attempt to free the Moorish dame, and now I would have no further need of it.

Don Pedro was there in my chamber, sitting in the embrasure, curled up and small, somehow diminished as I had never seen him. His velvets seemed duller, his hair less shiny, his golden skin sallow. I felt no pity for my friend – between him and his conspirators he had killed an innocent lady; no glory lies
behind the back of such deeds. The medal of St James dangled from his hand, winking in the sun. He did not turn as I entered, but slipped something into the cushions of the window seat.

‘You are resolute?' He spoke to the horizon.

‘Yes,' I said. ‘I must stay.' Everything seemed stripped away, and I felt it was the time for complete candour.

He uncurled himself from the embrasure, and stood before me, somehow more of my equal than he had ever been. ‘Benedick,' he said, ‘if you are staying to pay your court to the Lady Beatrice, do not be such a fool. For I am certain that I am in possession of some knowledge that will change your mind.'

My skin chilled. His eyes, though shadowed, were candid. ‘Hear me,' he said. ‘I am your dearest friend, whether you know it or not, and as such, will not go about to link my dear friend to a common stale.'

I laid my hand upon the sword I had not yet given up. ‘If you speak of the Lady Beatrice I must entreat you to retract your words. Curst she may be, but chaste she certainly is.'

He shook his head. ‘Lay not your hand upon your sword. I came here to tell you that, in short, the lady is disloyal.'

I was aghast. ‘Who, Beatrice?'

‘Even she; Leonato's Beatrice, your Beatrice, every man's Beatrice.'

‘Disloyal?'

He looked genuinely unhappy. ‘Go with me now, you shall see. If you love her then, tomorrow wed her; but it would better fit your honour to change your mind.' He faced me squarely, like an adversary. ‘She has formed … an attachment, with the poet Michelangelo. I saw them, even now, embracing on the dunes, outside his house on the shore.'

Our dunes – the dunes where she had told me of her star? I would not believe it. He put a gentle hand on my shoulder in sympathy – I flung it off, and spun to the window, as if I could see her from there. ‘I will not think it.'

‘If you will follow me, I will show you enough. I will disparage her no farther till you are my witness.'

I pushed past him and down the stone stairs. He followed. We clattered down into the courtyard, where his destrier was still saddled and waiting in the hand of an ostler. Babieca, the big bay he had given me with my livery, stood beside the royal beast, waiting too, as if the prince had planned this. I mounted Babieca in one swift vault without the block.

As we whirled through the gateway and thundered down the coast road, I could feel Don Pedro at my elbow, his horse breathing at my sleeve. It had become a furious, foolish race, as if whoever reached Beatrice first would be right about her.

I won, but I lost. She was indeed there on the dunes, where I had embraced her that one wonderful time. She had her arms around the poet, and he was pressed into her body as if they were one, shuddering as she held him. She pulled him to her, so tightly that her knuckles were white and her eyes were pressed closed; she was crooning sweet words into his hair.

Don Pedro was beside me, breathing almost as heavily as the lovers. ‘Come away,' he said softly, pulling at my riding cope.

I had seen enough, and now docile, allowed Babieca to be turned around. Don Pedro led me back beyond the dunes on a leading rein, for I had suddenly forgotten how to ride.

At the roadside shrine he put a hand to my face. ‘I must away to the house, to make the preparations. Why not ride on for a little, clear your head. I will take care of all things needful in your chamber.'

I nodded, numb, and spurred my horse towards Messina, as the prince rode in the other direction back to Leonato's. I had no other thought than to put as many furlongs between me and the Lady Beatrice as I could.

Beatrice:
I had to see him before he went.

I had to give him the
Scopa
card – to tell him he was the worthiest knight after all. The little colourful card was my dearest possession, but I would give it up gladly – it was more precious to me than the reliquary, than a thousand reliquaries. A unique touchstone of our love.

Yes, love! I said the silly single syllable to myself a thousand times as I skipped through the gardens, giddy as a top. I was sure, and to be sure felt so good. After I had comforted him on the beach Michelangelo had told me what he and his father owed Benedick, that he got them out of the cathedral square, and led them safely to the shore. He had not spoken a word, nor asked for thanks, but pressed his army pay into Michelangelo's hand for their passage to Naples. The poet had shown me the piece of eight, Benedick's bite marks still in the frill. I'd kissed the coin before handing it back. Dear Benedick; I had been listening to his words when all this time I should have been watching his actions. ‘Now will you give him the sonnet you wrote?' Michelangelo had asked. I'd nodded, and today I would make good on the promise.

My words and the card were for Benedick and no other. I did not even know if he knew where his friend Don Pedro led him, if the king's Great Enterprise would lead him into the jaws of the English navy, a navy reputed to be the finest in the world. So he had to know what I felt before he left. I ran through the
gardens – the day sparkled. With the departure of the Crollalanzas it was as if the darkness of Guglielma's death had been lifted. I would commemorate her life by living mine to the full; I would run towards love and embrace it. Embrace
him.

The friendly sun sparkled on my uncle's fountains, sunbeams playing with the water sprays, disputing which was brighter. The fruit trees, pregnant with their summer burden, stretched out their espaliered branches like arms reaching wide for an embrace. I knew I would see Benedick tonight, for my uncle and aunt were holding a great farewell feast for the Spanish; the final event in their interminable calendar of entertainments. But I could not wait for tonight, could not wait an hour, nor even a single minute. I could not bear to think of him gone, could not bear to go back to the old life. I did not recognise the Beatrice of one month ago, living quietly as Hero's companion, my only excitement watching the doomed Moor and his wife on the beach. They were gone, the world was changed and I had changed too.