Beatrice and Benedick (24 page)

I ran to the stable block, for I knew the soldiers were preparing for their journey. I looked for Benedick's beloved Babieca, but the big bay was gone. Disappointed, I left the stables and cannoned into Don Pedro.

The prince set me back by my shoulders and regarded me with a quizzical eye. I had not become much acquainted with him in the month that was gone, but he had always been gallant to me; in fact once or twice at our various entertainments my vanity told me that he looked upon me with more than a soldier's eye.

Now he smiled as widely as ever, and kissed my hand. He had bought three magnificent destriers as a parting gift for Leonato, Hero and Innogen, and was leaving three of his best Spanish ostlers behind to settle them. I waited impatiently while he gabbled on about the quality of the horseflesh – for one did not interrupt a prince – but his gifts smacked to me of an unspoken
guilt; he had broken something in his sojourn here, like a child with a toy, and was clumsily making amends. His gallantry was as much in evidence as ever, but his eyes were veiled and his expression guarded. Something was amiss. He looked, at the same moment, surprised, shifty and pent up by some scheme of his own, something that had nothing to do with destriers and ostlers. He paused in his paean and I grasped my chance. ‘My Lord,' I gasped, for I was still in want of breath from careening through the pleasure gardens, ‘have you seen Signor Benedick? I must speak with him.'

He looked about him, as if he had never heard of the gentleman. I could see a number of expressions process across his face, and his eyes told me that a number of answers marched through his brain likewise before he settled on one. ‘I think he is in his chamber,' he said. ‘Or if he is not, then he follows me hard upon from his errands.' He looked at me intently. ‘There is a pleasant window seat in the embrasure of his room. You may wait there in comfort, and see him coming from the road.'

I thanked him, and he smiled at me; a genuine, brilliant smile this time, which left me feeling uneasy. It was the smile of a victor.

I climbed the stairs in the direction of the soldier's quarters. I had never been inside Benedick's room before, not even been alone in that wing of the house where the soldiers were billeted, for propriety would not allow a well-born maid to go tramping in the soldiers' quarters unchaperoned. I had gleaned, though, in the course of a month, the location of his room; oft-times looking up at his window from the gardens at night, trying to guess from that gold square of light whether he read or slept.

I located the door that I knew to be his; and as I turned the handle, saying his name, it did not once strike me as odd that Don Pedro, who had grown up with etiquette fed to him at his mother's dug, would suggest that it would be suitable to wait for a man alone in his bedchamber.

The room was empty, and just as untidy as I would have expected it to be. But it had the same pleasing aspect as my own and Hero's room, with a large arched window and a balcony looking directly out on to the sea road. Benedick was not here now, but Don Pedro had promised he would be here soon. I settled myself happily to wait.

I looked out at the sparkling bay, bit my lips and pinched my cheeks, but in truth my innards were roiling and my heart beating so wildly that I was likely rosy enough. I even arranged my bodice so that it fell becomingly, and patted my curls into place. What was happening to me? As I smoothed my stomacher a crackle of paper reminded me, and I drew out the sonnet I'd written for him. I flattened it out to read it over one last time before it became his, and something fell from the folds. The
settebello.

I moved my position a little on the window seat cushion, and scrabbled for the card down its edges. From the gap between the casement and the padded seat, I drew out not one card, but a pack of
Scopa
cards in a little box. I opened them idly and fondly – this must be the pack from which he took the card to give to me. I fanned them out – frowned, then began, with shaking fingers, to deal them one by one into my lap, until they spilled and scattered to the floor.

Every one had seven coloured coins upon it, rendered in red and yellow and blue.

Every card, every single one, was the seven of coins, the
settebello
.

I turned over the box. The card-maker's legend said
‘Treviso'.
He had bought the cards in the north before he'd ever seen me. A cheat's pack.

My heart raced and my brain slowed. He had won my heart with false dice. How many women had he given the card to, from the courts of Padua to the stews of Venice? How many foolish maids had carried the thing around with them, as I had?
A touchstone for our love, my eye. I found my card and held it next to one of the pristine ones. My card was softened at the edges, one corner turned over, a little torn, the design a little scuffed. It was loved, and had been passed back and forth at dinners, wedding and tourneys, meaning in every exchange. But in fact, it meant nothing.

Cold now with anger, I rose with my ragged
settebello
in my hand, letting the rest fall to the floor, a shower of red and blue and yellow coins. I walked deliberately on the cards, leaving them scattered all over the floor, and I left the room.

Benedick:
By the time I sat down to dinner, I was very drunk.

I had spent the afternoon in the Mermaid Tavern in Messina, among some of the shipmen who were loading the Spanish ships. I played at
Scopa
with the recklessness of one who did not care a jot if he lost the
settebello,
for I felt that particular card would burn my hand. But by some quirk of fate I began to win, and as I won more, I drank more.

I left the table once for a piss on the wharf, and actually saw the poet and the pamphleteer catching their boat to Naples, paying, no doubt, with the eight
reales
I'd given them. They both, as I'd seen all Sicilians do, touched the golden statue of the Virgin on the wharf for luck before embarking. As I watched they walked up the gangplank together, embraced at the bulwark; and then the younger man came back down to shore. The ship weighed anchor, and the poet waved to his friend till he'd sailed out of sight.

I spat inaccurately on the ground, hitting my boots a little. How ironic that I'd unknowingly saved Beatrice's love; if the Spanish had only fried him too I would have no rival for my affection. He had clearly stayed on the island to pay suit to her. I wondered how quickly he would run back to her – whether they would soon wed. It did not matter if they did or did not; she was lost to me now; fallen, an approved wanton, a rotten orange. I wanted to run at him, and punch him repeatedly until he fell into the sea, there to rest in the deeps until his poetic
bones could become coral. But the damage had been done; and in my current state I did not trust my aim. I staggered back inside the tavern, resolved to drink my winnings.

I was rescued, ultimately, by a fellow at the card table, whom it took me a couple of rounds to remember in my fuddled state, despite the fact that he wore a simple habit of fustian. He was Friar Francis, the priest of Leonato's chapel. He squeezed his bulk between the barrels and the carolling sailors and yanked me out of the tavern into the fresh air. It was then, standing on the stoup, that I realised that the stars were turning around me as if I was the Earth itself, the dusty little planet at the centre of the orrery. Somewhere up there was Beatrice's star, and I struggled to focus on it, but it kept sliding away like a raindrop. The friar held me by the shoulders until the cosmos righted itself. His grip was surprisingly strong.

‘Frailty,' I said, stumbling over the word, and waving my arm approximately at Cassiopeia's chair, ‘thy name is woman.'

The friar sighed. ‘So that's the way of it.' He put his arm about my shoulder and led me to my horse. I had neglected to tie Babieca up, but the bay was obligingly wandering among the barrels on the wharf. ‘Once,' said the friar, grunting as he gave me a leg-up into my stirrups, ‘I would have agreed with you. That is why I wear this habit.'

I looked at him, trying to focus, pointing a wavering finger in his face. ‘There is no. Living. With. Them,' I said precisely.

‘Perhaps. But there is no living at the bottom of a bottle either. Believe me, I have tried that too.'

I tried to shake my head, for the Rhenish wine had improved my afternoon immeasurably. But I nearly fell from my saddle, and decided to slump forward on Babieca's warm neck instead. The horse had listened patiently to my grievances upon the journey here, and cocked his ears back to receive more wisdom. ‘Sleepy drinks,' I murmured into the soft nap of the pelt.

I felt the priest lift the reins over my head and lead Babieca
along the shoreline. I may have slept, for the next thing I remembered was a cold plunge as he tipped me from the saddle into the little watering hole just round the corner from Leonato's house.

Sobered, I spluttered and surfaced. The water was warm on this summer's night and not unpleasant, but I had my
Scopa
winnings weighing me down and had to strike out for the edge, indignant. ‘What was that for?'

He sat on a hillock, holding the reins as my horse cropped grass, impassive. ‘You have a feast to go to.'

I pulled myself, dripping, from the drink. ‘I do not wish to see
her.'

He did not ask whom I meant. It seemed he already knew. ‘It is your last chance.'

I remounted with as much dignity as I could muster, and he said no more till we passed through the gatehouse. The night was so warm I was almost dry as I entered the courtyard. The moon hung low and was the colour of Baltic amber, the orb as sick as I.

The first person I saw was the Lady Beatrice marching towards me between two rows of burning torches, her face like thunder. The priest melted away, with a cautionary word. ‘No more sack,' he said.

Beatrice stopped in front of me and I regarded her coldly, perusing her face for changes. Would the construction of her face differ now that Monsieur Love had made defeat of her virginity? I did spy some marks of love in her, but no longer for me. She positively spat her message at me.

‘Against my will, I am sent to bid you to come into dinner.'

‘Fair Beatrice,' I said with heavy irony, for her face was hateful to me now, ‘I thank you for your pains.'

She turned her back on me so fast that her slippers crunched on the mosaic underfoot. ‘If it had been painful,' she retorted over her shoulder, ‘I would not have come.'

I followed her to the great hall, where the cosmos continued its revenges upon me. For the first time in this whirligig of festivities I wanted to be nowhere near Beatrice; but I was seated right next to her. I reached for my cup at once. I was seated next to Claudio on my other side, and she next to Hero, as if in light of our imminent parting and the fact that our lives would be restored to the way they were before, a month ago. New friendships were to be forgotten and replaced by old, but this was an illusion.

The very atmosphere was different from one month ago. Then there had been hope, and laughter, and delicious anticipation of the summer's lease to come. Now there was the sour taste of disappointment, and the stench of the dark lady's death fires hung over the feast like a pall. Beatrice and I were forever estranged, and I would never know again the sweetness I had found with her in the dunes. She had made her choice, and was to be a poet's wife.

Leonato was a pawn of the Spanish – they had taken his money and his reputation and, I was sure, he could not wait for them to leave. The lion was reduced to a lamb. Meanwhile, his wife Innogen seemed as estranged to him as Beatrice was to me, for he had failed her too in the judicial murder of her friend.

The viceroy and the archbishop were absent from our gathering; and I would not have been surprised if they had already embarked, for in the month that they had been here Sicily's relations with her overlords had soured to the extent that they must have concluded that they had better not stay to hear another vespers bell.

Only Claudio and Hero, with the innocence of youth, had found a bosom friend in each other, and forged a companionship that might prevail through the years. But for their last night together they had the impediment of Beatrice and myself sitting between them, as cold and contrary as Scylla and Charybdis.

Frankly, I was surprised at Beatrice's hostility to me. I had seen
her
on the dunes, knew
her
dreadful secret, but really, she owed
me
no censure but rather thanks, for I had saved her lover and his friend from certain arrest. But it did not matter; her enmity made our parting easier, and before long we began to joust again; no snappings of courtship now. The tipguard was gone from the épée; these were the spits and thrusts of naked hostility.

‘You will be glad to know,' I began, ‘that Signor Cardenio caught the evening tide to Naples.'

‘I am indeed glad for him,' said the lady coldly, ‘but sad for Sicily; he was an honourable man.'

‘Then allow me to lift your spirits; Monsieur Love, the poetic Signor Crollalanza, did
not
get on the boat.'

She seemed genuinely surprised. ‘Michelangelo? Are you sure?'

‘If I may believe my own eyes,' I said with heavy significance, ‘and I believe I may.'

‘But …' She stopped herself. ‘Then I am glad for myself. For at least there is one man of honour left upon this island.'

I was stung. ‘There are more men of honour than he upon this isle.'

She looked at me, her blue eyes luminous. ‘And yet one of their number played me for a fool.'

I was intrigued. Had the poet already abandoned her, then? For it is sure I had never seen her as sad as I had that night. ‘Were the stakes high?'

‘At the highest. I played for my heart.'