Beatrice and Benedick (41 page)

‘How now, my Headstrong!' he growled. ‘
What did you do
?'

‘Nothing,' I protested, bleating like a butchered mutton. ‘He made his judgement, and he chose another.'

He dropped my chin and the first letter at the same time. The missive fluttered to the leaf-strewn floor, and I saw then that he stood not upon leaves but on papers. I could make out the wording of my marriage contract, in flowing secretary hand, torn into a thousand halfpence. By the table stood a humble crate stuffed with sheep's flock, and the rest of my dowry peeped out of the wool. So Paris had sent everything back but the
cassone
– he had kept the precious wedding chest, with its
fine painted panel, and sent my treasure back in a cheap olivewood box. I could picture them now, all posing in the great solar of the Palazzo Maffei as the
Judgement of Paris,
with Giulietta now playing the role of Athena. I could imagine another little Capuletti cousin taking Giulietta's part, and Signor Cagliari, the artist, at the
cassone,
painstakingly painting Giulietta's face over mine.

I thought I had done my cousin a kindness. I did not question, then, the wisdom of assigning to Giulietta a fate I had rejected myself; I thought that I had bought her a kind and wealthy husband who would keep her safe. I did not ask myself what would happen if Giulietta, as I had, decided to wait for an insubstantial dream, instead of a solid reality. I was more concerned with my own fate, and I watched my father closely.

He sat heavily in his wooden throne, propped up by the wooden ladders of his name, in a brooding silence. The second letter was crumpled in his hand. I was reminded. ‘And the other letter?'

He looked up, his eyelids heavy, his gaze hostile. ‘What?'

‘The other letter? Not more ill news?'

‘What news could be worse?' he asked, balefully.

‘Glad tidings, then?' My voice brightened unnaturally.

‘Something that matters not to me at all,' he said. ‘Your aunt is dead.'

I was confused for a moment, for I had many aunts, and most of them had been at the masque the previous night.

‘Your mother's sister, Innogen. In Sicily.' As if it was nothing, he threw the second letter at me. I caught it and fled.

The courtyard was hot, but I was cold with shock. I sat on the fountain bowl that I'd once seen filled with Tebaldo's blood, and read the letter over and over.

It was in Leonato's hand, and told a sorry story; that my aunt had taken a fever and died within a week. Her body was to be laid in the
Cimiterio Monumentale,
in the family tomb.

All of a sudden I was back in Sicily, on the mountainside the day of the Moor's death, burying Guglielma Crollalanza's ashes in the plot where my aunt would now lie. I thought of Innogen, the only personification of my mother's line that I had left, and of Hero. How would my cousin shift now without Innogen to teach her that she could be independent, and strong willed? Who would now teach her that she could dance alone?

I went back into the keep; my father, it seemed, had not moved at all.

‘Father, I must speak with you.'

He regarded me, unblinking, from his pale eyes.

‘I wish to return to Sicily to pay my duty to my aunt.'

He took a long breath in through his nose. ‘She will already be interred. The letter will have taken a week to reach us. Corpses stink in the south.'

I did not like his saying, but could not reproach him. ‘It is a matter of respect for our family.' I thought this would persuade him – I was wrong.

‘When I let you go before, I had an heir. And you were in your aunt's care. Now your aunt is gone, and I had to call you home once before because of the dangers that befell your uncle's house. I cannot lose you.'

There was no affection in this last, no emotion; just political expediency. I was a bride prize. ‘So I might have died
last
summer with no inconvenience to you, but not
this
.'

‘Since you express it so; yes.'

This rejoinder quenched me like a cold douse of water. I was so astonished that I was silenced.

But I was not silent for long. For the next week and more I petitioned him. I had learned much from my sojourn in Verona with Paris, and knew well how to make myself unbearable. So I
nagged, scolded, pleaded and cajoled. I thought sometimes he would strike me again, but he never did. He just refused me steadfastly. In desperation I tried a different tack; I tried to be diffident, obedient and humble. I made myself good society in the evening, talking to him of his favourite subject of Verona and her environs. We even took up our
Scopa
games once more, and I watched him find small satisfaction in my inevitable defeats.

And then I had the idea. I took the
Scopa
deck down to dinner one night and played my last desperate card.

‘Father,' I said, once the meats had been cleared away and the servants had left the room, ‘tonight I will play you for a stake. If I win, I want you to let me go to Sicily to pay my respects to my aunt.'

He opened his mouth to refuse me once again, but I held up my hand. ‘If you allow this, I will be back in one month, and then I will marry whomever you please.'

He stroked his nose. ‘With no clever schemes or devices to make a man refuse you?'

I met his eyes, and knew then that he had divined exactly what happened with Paris. ‘None,' I promised firmly.

‘And if I refuse the wager?'

I took a deep breath. ‘Then I will enter a nunnery, and your line will die with you.'

He was silent for a time; I could not tell whether his silence proceeded from anger or grudging admiration. Then: ‘And if I win?'

‘I will never gainsay you again. And I will take a husband tomorrow.'

I had put the cards upon the table. But my father liked courage and honesty.

‘Then deal,' he said; with the slightest shrug, and the slightest smile. And I did, as I had done so many times before.

I shuffled the cards, and asked my father to cut the pack. I
dealt three cards for him, three for me. Then I turned four cards face up, placing them in the middle of the table. The remaining pile I kept close to my elbow. And we began to play
Scopa.
Just my father and I, in that great keep, before the fire.

There was nothing here of the modern world. Nothing to remind us that we did not live in a world of cups and swords and clubs and coins, a world of knaves and kings and queens. I could feel the ghosts crowding me; lords and ladies of the past thronging to my shoulder to read my hand, as I held my cards high before my face like a fan. Turn by turn, my father and I played, trying to ‘capture' the deal cards – a nine for a nine, a knave for a knave. We imprisoned our captures in crossways tricks at our right hands. My father was ahead, then we were even, then he was ahead again. All might have been lost, but I was not worried. At the final deal I made my move, the imperceptible shake of my sleeve, which I had been practising in my chamber. The
settebello,
Benedick's
settebello,
slipped silently from my cuff to the table.

I kept my eyes on my father – in the flickering firelight, he had not noticed. I played the rogue card. ‘
Scopa
,' I said, quietly but firmly.

My father looked at the card, then at me. For a moment I could not breathe, and it seemed that my heart had stopped. Would he divine what I had done? The card itself was still crisp and uncreased, its edges only a little blurred by its travels; not enough, I hoped, to mark it out from the rest of the pack in a dingy, firelit keep. For an eternal moment my father did not move. Then he stood and swept the cards from the board, and they scattered to the rushes. He pointed a long finger at me.

‘One month,' said my father, ‘not a day more.'

And he stalked from the room. I stooped to pick up the cards and put the
settebello,
Benedick's
settebello,
back in my bodice, where it belonged.

Benedick:
The morning after my meeting with Don Pedro, the maelstrom of my mind had settled; I could see the way ahead.

The weather and my mind were in accord. The wind had dropped and the sea was becalmed and broad and blue. I could see little windmills on the cliffs to starboard – Da Sousa, who had been this way before, said they sat upon the shores of Brittany. We were off the coast of France.

Henceforward I paid a daily visit to Don Pedro, to apprise him of our progress as was fitting to my liege lord. Each day now he was up, dressed and sitting at his desk – he seemed to be writing letters, and was, in every particular, a prince again. He still did not leave his cabin, but now sent messages to the captain and wrote letters to his brother Don John, the custodian of his estates in Aragon, to be sent upon landing. He also wrote to the king.

I informed the captain that the prince's rations should be increased, and he merely nodded. I discovered later that Bartoli, correct in every particular, had ensured that the prince had had his rations every day since we'd sailed, except the day of the mutiny, and he'd failed then only because he had been bound.

As the crew filled every sail and Da Sousa turned the wheel for Santander, I decided upon my own course. My prince was still my prince, no matter what his actions upon the
Florencia.
If we reached Spain I would collect my reward – God knows I'd earned it. I had no illusions about Beatrice, who might very well
be wed by now. To serve the prince was the first matter; to get home was the second. But at night, under Beatrice's star, nothing could bind my hopes, nor tether my dreams.

Faruq Sikkander worked efficiently and silently. I did not ask him about the night he'd looked in upon Don Pedro but I wondered whether he could divine sin as he had once divined water. I watched the Moor at his ablutions and prayers, looked at the writing on his forearms as he sluiced them with seawater, and thought, as I had once before of him, that some things were better left alone.

And then, on the day of Santiago, we sighted Santander, to a great cheer from all the men.

My warmest embrace was for Claudio, for he was now so much more than a friend to me. When we parted his eyes were wet, and mine too. ‘I have a brother,' he said.

‘And I.' We made no vows, nor mingled our blood as the Spanish did. Our clasped hands were enough, a gesture that bound us for ever.

Ravenously we finished the rest of the rations, joyously we followed our captain's orders to swab the ship, polish the brackets and make the sorry hull as fine as she could be for the inevitable celebrations.

Only when we made landfall did the prince come on deck, dressed as neatly as he could be, to wave to the expected assembly. But our homecoming was shameful – no trumpets, nor cheering crowds, just a wounded dragon of a ship limping into shore. Da Sousa did his best, without an anchor, to slow our landing, but we still crashed into the jetty at such speed that we holed our bow. As we clambered off the ship in Don Pedro's wake we all fell to the ground like babes, for we had forgotten how to walk. While I was down there I kissed the sweet soil.

I do not know how a returning ship was usually received, but there was little that day to cheer us. No representatives of the Crown were present in the port so we left the men in the tavern
and the Moor outside, and walked to find the mayor of the town. In the sunlit whitewashed streets children cheered us ironically and pelted us with rotten vegetables. Only a day or two earlier I would have caught and eaten, thankfully, what they threw. Only the sheer joy of being alive and walking unsteadily on
terra firma
mitigated the shame of our homecoming. The mayor could not meet us but his registrar told us the sorry truth – that battered ships had been arriving back piecemeal since October, and the people had long since ceased to commemorate such sights. Our orders were to report to the king at El Escorial, as soon as we might.

We bought mules in the port, and arranged for the transport of my treasure, and in the week it took us to reach El Escorial, the world had righted itself. The ground was the ground again, the days of the week had their proper names, but it was many years before I could prevent myself from calling Wednesday Santiago.

And there, at the king's palace again many months after I had left it, I was happy to undertake the only task of which I felt proud in the whole affair. I reunited Faruq Sikkander with his son of the same name. They embraced in the gardens under an arc of water that they had found.

I left them to it and went to the chapel of St James for a thanksgiving mass, where I sat between Don Pedro and Claudio. Captain Bartoli was not with us – he had died in the portside inn in Santander, the day after we'd docked. His duty done at last, he'd slept and never woke. His last ship, the
Florencia
– pride of the Duke of Tuscany – had to be scrapped.