Beatrice and Benedick (7 page)

I didn't believe a word of this; I thought the prince a man of keen ambition and decided to try him. ‘Princesses and princes are but ladies and lords in waiting. Perhaps, though, you may still climb to the top in our little Sicily, as the cock crows on his own dunghill.'

He looked at me through his knave's eyes. ‘What do you mean?'

‘I mean that Sicily has a viceroy, who is old, and ineffectual.'

He said nothing for a moment, and I wondered whether I had gone too far. But then he spoke again. ‘There is something I forgot to tell you about our king; he will always try on the coat before he appoints the tailor.'

So whatever Don Pedro was doing in Sicily, he was to be tried and tested before he was given preferment. I sensed, though, that he would tell me no more. His tone lightened. ‘It is strange to be so serious, when attired in such foolishness.'

I thought of Signor Benedick. ‘As a seasoned politician, you should know that the most important pronouncements come from the most fatuous faces.' As the music prompted us, I
linked my elbow in his, and we changed places with the next couple.

‘Still, perhaps we should be trivial now?'

‘If it pleases you.' I was biddable, anxious to make amends for any impertinence. ‘What shall we talk of?'

‘Do not ladies always wish to talk of love?' His teeth gleamed through the mouth-hole in the mask.

‘I have little to say on the subject.'

‘But you must have many suitors, Lady Beatrice?'

I thought of the
settebello
card, and Signor Benedick; but I had belittled and rejected him, and could hope for no more overtures. I hardened my face behind my mask, and repeated what I had told my aunt. ‘I had rather hear a dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.'

The prince gave a little bark of laughter from behind his visor.

‘I amuse Your Highness?' I said stiffly.

‘Only because my new companion is of the same mind.'

I stopped halfway around my turn and was bumped from behind by Orsola. ‘Signor Benedick? What did he say?'

‘That he had never yet beheld a face that he could fancy more than any other, and that as a professed tyrant to your sex, he could not take one lady to his heart for pity of all the others.' He chuckled at the memory.

‘
When
did he say this?' I tried to keep my voice light.

‘This very morning,' said the prince. ‘And as he uttered it in a church porch I assume he spoke the truth.'

I set my teeth. That cowardly, heartless, hollow knave! To lay his heart upon my plate at dinner, then take it away at breakfast! And yet, I counselled myself, what had he promised me? He gave me a card which I rejected, he offered me friendship and I traded him insults, he asked me to dance and I laughed in his face. Yes, as usual, I had no one to blame for misery but myself. I danced the rest of the measure
mechanically, and do not know what, if anything, I said more to Don Pedro.

As the music ended my uncle bustled up to me officiously. ‘Niece, could you look to those things I told you of?' I looked at him absently; he had not asked me to do anything that I recalled; but he jerked his silver head with great significance. I understood when Hero was steered into Don Pedro's arms as soon as I had left them. My uncle did not want me to take another turn with the prince.

‘Your mercy, Uncle.' I bowed to Don Pedro and I shook my head at the uncomfortable tableau as I backed away into the crowd. The marriage market among nobility was an odd business. I could not blame my uncle for being an assiduous father, I suppose, and ensuring that Hero did not lose a prince to her cousin, but still they made an awkward pair – I know many a Spanish infanta has been dispatched to the marriage bed even from her cradle, but still, it looked as if Hero was dancing with her father.

My aunt Innogen, in the company of another lady, was gesturing at me urgently across the lawn. As I approached, my aunt lowered her mask, a pearlised crescent moon on a stick. ‘Beatrice, whatever did you say to Signor Benedick? The gentleman I danced with told me he was much wronged by you.'

My insides twisted, and I hung my head. ‘He came to ask me to dance, and I laughed at him.'

‘Then dance alone.'

The new voice was rich and spicy, and the dialect sounded alien to my ears. Its owner stood in the shadows, but my aunt drew her forward, and I looked into the face of the sun once again. She was the same lady who had prevented me from following Benedick.

‘This is my friend, Guglielma Crollalanza,' said my aunt. ‘She was the companion of my heart when I came here as a green girl from the north and a new bride.' She turned to her friend. ‘Do
not encourage my niece, Guglielma, for she is already a horse of your colour.'

The lady gestured to a passing servant, took a crystal goblet from his hand, and passed it to me. ‘Why should she not laugh at a man? Men are amusing. And if a man is too frightened by her tongue to dance with her, I say again, she should dance alone.'

I was intrigued, and took a gulp of wine. ‘Without a partner?'

‘Why not? I did so as a girl; danced till I was dizzy.' The wine was making me a little dizzy myself. The sun mask came closer. ‘And I have seen your aunt do as much too.'

My aunt shushed her friend. ‘Guglielma. I was young, and my husband does not like me to speak of those times.'

It was odd to see the sun disputing with the moon, and as I met the black eyes again, I could see that my aunt's friend had no good opinion of my uncle. ‘Why should it pain him to recall the woman he chose to marry?'

‘Enough,' admonished my aunt, ‘or I will not fulfil my promise to find you a house.'

I was not really in the mood for company, but in this lady, this Guglielma Crollalanza with her forthright manner and sharp tongue, I recognised a kindred spirit. Besides, she gestured to a server again to refill my glass. ‘Do you no longer reside in Sicily, signora?'

‘I am of an old Sicilian family – one of the oldest, the Archirafi. So Sicily is in my blood, though I have travelled widely since I was a girl who called the island home. And yes, I hope to live here again. My husband, my son and I were hoping to summer here – things got a little warm for my husband in the north.' She turned to my aunt as she made this odd statement and I saw a look of complicity pass between them. ‘We are at the Mermaid in Messina until we hear of a house to lease.'

‘There I can help you,' said my aunt, ‘if you cease your
lionising of my niece. It so happens I have heard of a vacant house, not far from here on the beach. A dreadful circumstance that befell the previous tenants was prequel to this happy chance. But if you can overlook its sad history, the house has a pleasing aspect, and vistas of the sea.'

Guglielma Crollalanza seemed unconcerned. ‘There is scarce a dwelling in Sicily that is not soaked in blood. Give me the direction.'

I excused myself and wandered off, bored with their house hunt. Clasping the goblet, hiding my melancholy behind my mask, I walked through the dancers, watching Signor Benedick whirling competently from one partner to another. A tyrant to my sex indeed!

Thoroughly miserable, I wandered into the maze, and drank the rest of the flask as I wandered through the fortress of turns. At last I found myself in the very heart of the labyrinth and sat unsteadily on the stone bench. A statue, frozen in one of the niches in the beech hedge, suddenly came to life and stepped down from his plinth. The pretty youth struck an attitude before me and began to sing. The words of his ditty crept into my ears, something about sighing ladies and deceiving men. Every line seemed to be about Benedick.

‘Go away,' I said.

After that things became hazy. I remember the lanterns blurring before my eyes, and seeming to spin around. I was the axis of an orrery and the lights were the planets wheeling about me. The stone curved arms of the chair seemed suddenly as inviting as pillows – I lowered my heavy head to rest and the goblet rolled from my hand, breaking with a little tinkling crash.

‘Here she is!' cried a girlish voice. ‘Signor, can you help me? We must convey her to my room before she is seen by my father and mother.'

And so I saw, through half-closed eyes, Hero walk ahead of us in the lantern light, leading us unerringly through the maze
she had grown up with. I felt my head loll back and the strong arms carry me, the grass whispering under his sure tread, then the crunching of gravel, then the ringing of stone stairs to Hero's chamber.
Stairs keep us safe, stairs keep us separate.

I was laid at last upon mine and Hero's bed, and I dreamed of a shadowy figure who lifted the queen mask from my face, and lifted the king mask from his, and pressed a tender kiss to my cheek.

Beatrice:
I did not see Signor Benedick on the next day (when I was keeping company with the worst headache I had ever had) but I thought of him without ceasing.

I had it from Hero that Signor Benedick had been most concerned about my whereabouts, for I had not been seen at the masque for above an hour. He had secretly carried me to our room, avoiding the beady eyes of my uncle, and laid me upon the bed. This alone was enough to make me blush, so I did not dare ask about the kiss. My drink-addled brain had surely created this fiction – I cursed my storyteller's brain and I saved a curse too for my aunt's friend, the mysterious woman with the face of the sun, who had so readily plied me with wine.

I would have kept my bed but it was Sunday and Hero insisted that we go to mass. I shuffled behind the family into the little chapel in its own tiny verdant courtyard, set back on a perfect square of grass. I bowed my head as we processed and lowered my eyes in an attitude of penitence, but in truth my head boomed like a tabor whenever I moved it the merest fraction, and I could barely lift my throbbing eyelids. I was glad, for once, of the veil of black lace that all Sicilian ladies wore to mass, and drew it over my face against the fierce sun.

Inside the church, I had hoped for cool and gloom, but beams of merciless light struck through the stained windows and split into all seven colours, and the gilt and brave paint of the saints
who lined the walls hurt my bloodshot eyes. I closed them in counterfeit prayer.

Friar Francis, with one amused eye upon me, took as his text the marriage at Cana. Every mention of water gave me a raging thirst, but the very mention of wine made my gut roil. As we knelt for the sacrament, the fumes rising from the chalice turned my stomach, and I shut my teeth on the pewter. But Friar Francis, with a significant look, tipped the cup until I had to gulp. For one terrible instant I thought that I would spit the blood of Christ all over the chancel, but I swallowed that mouthful and the next. There was little left of Christ's blood for the rest of the family, but on me it worked a miracle indeed; in the space of a few more Latin responses I suddenly began to feel much better, and even to contemplate my dinner with an appetite.

Feeling a little better after we'd dined, I decided to walk down to the beach, for I could always marshal my thoughts better with the backdrop of the waves. Almost as an afterthought, I wandered past the house of the Moor, but there was no sign of the pied lovers.

I wandered all the way to the harbour in Messina, for I loved the place and there was always diversion to be found there. I found Friar Francis, in his respite between matins and evensong, playing
Scopa
with the fishermen, dealing the cards on the upturned boat. I kirtled my skirts and sat cross-legged beside him as I always did, and he crinkled his eyes at me in his friendly fashion. ‘Are you feeling better, Lady?' he asked, amusement warming his voice.

I nodded, a little sheepishly. ‘And I thank you for the good office you did me at mass.'

Now it was his turn to look sheepish. ‘Not such a holy office, to my shame,' he said.

‘But still, the act of a Samaritan,' I consoled.

‘It helped, then?' he asked, dealing the cards with his chubby fingers.

‘Yes. How did you know it would?'

He quartered the cards on the boat, four face up in the centre, and turned over the battle card. It was the nine of swords. ‘I have not always worn holy weeds,' he said. ‘I once wore armour.'

I was reminded, sharply, of my conversations with Benedick. ‘I washed up here after the battle of Lepanto in ‘71. When you are a soldier you learn to fight, but you also learn to drink. When you win, you drink. When you lose, you drink too. And in order to fight another day you have to be able to jump out of bed at the bugle's call.' He piled the pack in front of me, for I was to begin the play. ‘I helped you with an old soldier's trick. A hair of the dog that bit you.'

I said no more; for one of Leonato's Watchmen made up the four, a tiresome fellow who needed the rules constantly explained to him, while protesting all the time that he was a great proficient. I stayed to play a few rounds, but I was not on my game that day. Ironically, it was the
settebello
card, the seven of coins, that completely evaded my hand through each round, and I soon gave up and wandered home, my spirits much depressed.

I did not know what to think of Signor Benedick, but I now thought of the card he had given me as a prize; it was as if when I had given away the card I had given away my luck. As the waves soaked my boots, one thought washed over me with icy clarity: if the
settebello
was to be the only thing he'd ever give me, I wish I had not given it back so readily. I wish I had kept it.

That night dinner was a quiet affair – the regiment did not join us, for according to Orsola there was many a rancid breath and a slack cod among the soldiers today, and they were all taking their rest. My uncle, as part of his relentless programme of entertainments, had organised a fencing tournament to be held in the great courtyard the next day, and they were preparing themselves for that. ‘There is such an oiling of blades and
polishing of buckles and a spitting upon boot-leather as you have never seen,' said Orsola, ‘for their prince Don Pedro has promised the victor a precious golden reliquary, containing the fingerbone of Saint James himself. And Saint James is the most honoured of their saints; to the Spanish he is better than all the other apostles packed together.'