Beatrice and Benedick (48 page)

I tore his hand away, hard, hurting him. I would not be silenced like a child, nor be muzzled like a dog, or bridled like a scold. ‘Yes, yes!' I cried. ‘We are speaking of her! Of
both
of them! It is the same case – a man slanders, a woman dies. Well; Claudio's uncle paid his price. A bold assassin dispatched the good archbishop. And now Claudio must pay too; if there is a man who will assume the office.'

I saw his tanned face drain of colour. ‘What are you saying? What are you asking of me?'

Now I clasped his hands within mine. ‘Kill Claudio.'

He looked at me of a sudden as if I was a stranger. ‘I? Not for the world.'

I dropped his hands. ‘I said that words could kill. You kill me to deny it.'

‘On the
Florencia,
he was my comfort and my friend; and more than that, he became my brother.'

I raised my chin. ‘To be
my
friend henceforth, you must challenge my enemy. Otherwise, we are done.' I went to his side, and laid my hand upon his rough cheek. ‘Once, you thought
me
inconstant,' I said softly. ‘Once you took the word of a man, over that of a woman. There was no difference in birth in the case – one was a prince, the other a princess. The difference was only in our gender. You were wrong then, and even your prince admits his error. Now I ask you this thing because it time to set
right
that wrong. It is time that someone believed a woman. Believe Hero. Believe Guglielma Crollalanza.' I put my hand to my heart. ‘Believe
me.'

We had found ourselves before the altar again. He took my hand from my heart and placed it on his. ‘Do you believe, in your very
soul,
that Claudio has wronged Hero?'

I said the words I'd hoped to say, in another life, before the sky had changed.
‘I do.'

He knelt then, in a gesture of allegiance, as he must have done to Don Pedro a dozen times. And I knew then he would challenge Claudio. He did not look at me as he rose and strode down the aisle.

‘Wait,' I called. I followed him down the nave, and took the
settebello
card from my bodice. Despite my fury, I knew it was no little thing that I asked. I pressed the card into his hand, for he was truly the worthiest knight. He looked into my eyes and nodded.

Benedick:
I went directly to find Claudio, solemn with determination.

I crossed the sunlit court and climbed the stone stair to the count's chamber, unsheathed my sword and entered like a whirlwind.

I saw the count at once, sitting beneath the window, feet splayed, head in hands. He raised his head and the sun gilded his wet cheeks. He was weeping. My martial footsteps stuttered. I had expected to find him bullish, pent and pacing.

I knew then that, for him, Hero had died in truth. I remembered how much he would think of her, talk of her on the
Florencia.
She had been his star to guide him home. I remembered too, with an uncomfortable little niggle like a burr stuck beneath chainmail, that Claudio had told me of an inconstant mother, who had taken a lover behind his father's back and abandoned her son in boyhood.

Sitting beneath the casement Claudio was so diminished; no longer the monster that we had seen at the altar, but so like the boy I'd brought to Messina the previous summer, that my heart shrivelled within me. It occurred to me for the first time that we are angrier with those we love than with any other persons in our lives, that Claudio's dreadful outburst came from the bitter pain of perceived betrayal – by both Hero and his mother – and that his fury proceeded from the death of a dream. I looked at my naked sword in my hand.

I had no stomach for the business, but I must carry it forth.

I looked to Don Pedro. He looked as stern and pious as those portraits in El Escorial; but he was far guiltier than Claudio. He may have been innocent in this business, but he knew what had passed on that mountaintop a year ago, when he called a dancing woman a witch and sent her to the fire.

‘Gallants,' I said with biting irony; ‘this is a heavy day. You both travelled from Spain to Scotland and back, and did not take one soldier's life. Now you are returned you have between you killed a sweet and innocent lady.' I could have been speaking of Signora Crollalanza or Hero.

I saw Claudio's eyes widen – word had not reached him, then, that Hero was dead. It did not seem to matter; his demeanour did not noticeably worsen upon the news, his spirits had nowhere to sink. His world had already ended – the loss of Hero's physical life was no more dire to him than the loss of her chastity. As I'd thought, he'd already been mourning for his dream. He put his head back in his hands, where it had been when I'd discovered him. ‘Yes,' I said. ‘Hang your head. For your slanders ran her through as surely as a blade.'

Don Pedro spoke, haltingly. ‘I am truly sorry for it. Sorry for the whole business. But, Benedick, we
saw
her with our own eyes.'

‘Ah! Yes,' I said, ‘upon your advice I believed my own eyes once before; now I know that appearances can lie just as men can.'

‘Have a care, Benedick. I am still your prince.'

‘No longer,' I said. ‘I have taken an oath that supersedes yours. I must thank you for your many courtesies and discontinue your company.' I lifted the medal of St James from about my neck, picked up his right hand from his side, placed it in the palm and closed his royal fingers over it.

He let it fall by the riband and it swung like a pendulum beating time. He looked at me askance, thinking that I was not in
earnest. I had jested so many times before, but today I had left off my motley and donned my armour.

Once he collected my expression he laid the medal down on a side table. The scarlet ribbon coiled like a snake. He talked to the little pile.

‘But Benedick, there was no mistaking. My brother showed us all.'

‘Your brother Don John?' My voice was rich with scorn. ‘A man you could not even entrust with your estates?'

‘We know too that
one
transgression may be forgiven,' he said carefully. ‘I scourged my brother personally for his mismanagement, in the square at Zaragoza. He would not fail me again.'

I snorted at such stupidity. ‘You do not think a man that you shamed so publicly would more likely harbour thoughts of revenge than loyalty?'

Don Pedro was silent.

‘And where is your brother now?' I asked grimly.

‘He is gone – likely now he knows there will be no wedding he has returned to Aragon to take up the stewardship he once neglected.'

No wedding. The words sounded like a knell. ‘So, in short, he is fled,' I concluded. ‘Does that not speak of a conscience spotted with guilt?'

‘No, for we have the Watch searching for the lady Hero's seducer. And, when we find him – mark me – we will have him confess the vile encounters that they have had a thousand times in secret.'

‘Since we arrived three days ago? When Beatrice had until last night been her bedfellow?'

Once again, the prince was silenced.

‘God knows your countrymen know how to trick out a confession,' I said, ‘with your irons and your fires. But such renditions are as nothing to the guiltless honesty of that poor
maid. In fact, let us begin the trial now, for we have the true villain here.' I crossed the room to Claudio and wrenched his chin upward in my hand. ‘Stand up as you are a man! Defendant – have you nothing to say?' I was stern, but my voice faltered with disappointment in him.

He was silent, and fixed me with his sorrowing eyes. It was as if he had spent all his words at the altar.

‘Well; the lady is likewise dumb,' I said evenly. ‘And as she died upon your words we shall never hear her testimony. Others must speak for her.'

‘You?' asked the prince in surprise.

‘Yes. I speak for her, and my sword speaks for me.' I pulled Claudio to me, till we were nose to nose. ‘Tomorrow I will meet you at dawn,' I jerked my chin towards the open window, ‘down in the courtyard there, to call you to account. Be ready.'

I released his jaw and turned on my heel. Just as I laid my hand upon the latch Claudio spoke at last. ‘What's Hero to you?' he demanded. ‘Or you to Hero?'

I turned slowly and looked at him. There was a world of pain in his question, a boyhood of female abandonment. I almost felt pity; for he was jealous; jealous of my kinship with a corpse. ‘She is a lady,' I said. ‘That is enough.'

The next morning, as the sun began to peep over the sea, I was already in the Roman courtyard, waiting for Claudio.

I walked the ancient, tiny tiles, my eyes on the intricate designs, pacing about the tiled head of Medusa. She watched me with her black eyes, and I watched her.

I had been to matins at the chapel, and afterwards descended to the crypt where my lady tended her cousin, and kissed Beatrice fifty, a hundred times in farewell. I was not afraid of Claudio's sword, was not afraid of any man's sword for I knew
my own skill; but I was as superstitious as any man on this island, and did not wish to tempt the Fates. So I duly said a last goodbye to Beatrice, and my valedictory manner added fervour to her kisses.

My rapier hit my legs as I paced, reminding me with every step of my fell purpose. I was caught in a cat's cradle; if I did not challenge Claudio, Beatrice would have none of me. If I did and was slain, we would be parted for ever anyway. I huffed, and my breath clouded in the cool dawn. Then I caught a motion at my eye's edge – was it Claudio come? – and saw the singular sight of a ragged man, dressed in hooded clothing, climbing up the vines below the prince's window.

I crossed the court in a heartbeat, grabbed the intruder's ankle and challenged him. ‘Hoy! What are you about?'

He kicked out at me. ‘A matter of honour,' he spat. ‘Let me be.'

‘If there was any honour in you you would use the door like an honest man.' I grabbed him by the feet and he tumbled down, bringing most of the vine with him. There was a brief fierce scuffle and I found myself at the pointed end of a mean little dagger, sharp as a marlinspike. But I was armed for a duel, and my spirits were pent and ready for a fight, so I soon had him pinned against the rose plaster walls between my shortblade and rapier. I pressed my elbow to his windpipe and threw back his hood. I uncovered a face that I recognised; with deep-set eyes, wispy hair, a short dark beard and a pearl-drop hanging from one ear.

‘Signor Crollalanza!'

‘I do not know that name any more,' the poet hissed. ‘Now I am Cardenio, like my father before me.'

I looked about me, for the Watch were very keen since Hero's failed wedding. ‘What is your business here?'

‘The same as yours,' he said. ‘Murder.'

I heard a sound in the chamber above, and the light of a candle warmed the window. ‘Come,' I said.

I had him by the scruff, his liripipe wound around my hand, and marched him up the stone stairs to my own room, kicking a brace of drowsy hounds out of the way. I thrust him into a chair and bolted the door behind us. I did not light a candle but the sun had reached my window, and now I could see him clear.

I had not known him very much before, but even I could see he was much changed. His beard was fuller now and unkempt, the hair very thin on top and matted about the ears. His face was as tanned as mine and drawn too. His eyes were not soft and dreaming like those of a poet and lover but black and fathomless like chips of obsidian. The eyes of a desperate man; the eyes of a murderer. I could not countenance, now, that I had once thought he would be Beatrice's husband, and could not believe that I had wasted all those jealous hours in bitter envy of him.

I flung a water skin at him and watched him drain it. He sat, easy and confident in my chair, and I stood like an attorney to question him. ‘I will ask you again. What do you here?'

‘I told you. Murder, like you. A matter of honour, like your own. And I am doing a woman's bidding, just as you are.'

‘You are come for Claudio's life?'

‘No, not he. I would not steal another man's office – that score is yours to settle. And it was not the Lady Beatrice who sent me, but another, now dead.'

‘Your mother,' I said. It was not a question.

‘She laid the blood feud on the archbishop, the viceroy and Don Pedro.'

I remembered the guilty grandees at the inquisition. But there had been another tribune: ‘And Leonato?'

‘Him she spared, through her love of his wife the Lady Innogen. But he was given a warning.'

I had heard tell of it – three Spanish ostlers butchered and laid out in the very courtyard where I'd found Crollalanza. I looked beyond him, through the window, in the direction of Monreale.
Could see again the prelate on the bed, eyes open, mouth oozing poison.

‘You dispatched the archbishop, did you not?'