Beatrice and Benedick (14 page)

Then a heroic figure appeared in the prow – a tall figure; broad of shoulder and long of limb. He wore a centurion's helmet over his armour and there was a dark beard on his cheek, but his eyes were light beneath the face paint.

It was Benedick.

I was surprised to see him, for the story of the Moors had almost put him out of my mind for the first time since we'd met. Despite our argument I had to admit he cut an impressive figure in his scarlet and gold Roman garb. As he stood in the prow like a figurehead the audience held its breath and I tingled with anticipation. Then he leapt heroically an impossible distance across the water from one fleet to the other, and set about the
pagans. I heard a yelp from Hero as I realised I'd been crushing her hand in mine, and that I was sitting so far forward in my seat I was nearly in the row before.

Now we saw proper swordplay as both sides drew and actual sparks flew from their blades. My eyes were always on Benedick as he twirled through the fray like a whirlwind – all his skill was on show as he crushed the enemy in his path. I knew it was theatre, but as I had seen him do likewise at the tournament, his part was given more veracity. Besides the fencing there was strategy too – the Spanish ships sailed around the fleet of Albion on three sides so that the pagan flotilla was forced back against its own paper coastline, where artfully painted paper rocks fell from great white cliffs which protruded from the sea. The victory was so complete that the red queen begged most piteously and knelt before Claudio-Ramiro. Benedick held his sword at her neck; but the king spoke up and said that she would be spared as long as she rendered up her treasure and accepted the One True God. The play ended with the queen accepting the cross of fire from Ramiro's hand and her cohorts covering their oppressors with pagan gold.

There was a moment of silence, and then, from behind us on the golden balcony, came the sound of one man clapping.

Every head turned towards him, and a hum of amazed murmurings rolled around the arena like broth in a pot.

Spare and elegant, no taller than Don Pedro, he had a neat beard covering a heavy Habsburg jaw and framing a stern mouth with one protruding lip. His curling black hair was combed severely back from his forehead. Even if he did not wear a crown, there could be no doubt among the crowd as to his identity – even to those of them who had not seen his likeness on a pamphlet or coin – for there was no other man in this world to whom the viceroy would cede his throne. This was Philip II of Spain, the Spanish king.

His scarlet doublet was embroidered with a heavy cross of
pearls and jewels, his stiff white ruff illumined his face, and, to put his identity beyond doubt, a golden circlet sat upon his noble brow. I thought with a jolt that he looked exactly like Claudio. Or rather, Claudio had been dressed to look exactly like him.

The king waved graciously at the company – unsmiling, as if such a benign expression was beneath him – before resuming his applause. The dukes and grandees too stood to applaud likewise, and the crowd soon followed. The king, once the crowd had begun to applaud and cheer, artfully stopped clapping and began to wave elegantly at the exalted crowd instead, thus appropriating our ovation for himself. I was slow to stand but Hero tugged at my arm till I rose reluctantly too.

But one person in that gathering did not rise – he sat three rows before me under the cover of a hooded cloak, but as the applause continued he got to his feet and climbed the tiers to leave unnoticed by the back way. As he passed me – did he nod or did I imagine it? – the wind lifted his cloak and I saw about his neck a quill and a crystal bottle with a black slick of ink within.

Then the king rose too, to a fanfare of trumpets, and walked down to the cavea to meet the actors. Far below I saw the toady archbishop, at his elbow, whisper to the king as he presented Claudio, and with his first sign of humanity the king touched the costume crown. Then he commended Signor Benedick, who stood a little behind Claudio, and as Benedick bowed briefly I tried and failed to read his expression.

Then the king was ushered from the theatre, while the Grecian-garbed stewards kept us in our places until he had gone.

Then a rising hubbub bubbled about me, and Hero chattered about the honour and spectacle of actually setting eyes on the Spanish king. I was as amazed as the rest but a new unease in my stomach added to the ill taste in my mouth left by the play. What was the king doing here? Why would he visit our tiny
island, and not only watch this strange hotchpotch of a play, but promote to his underlords the message it contained?

As the actors left the stage too, I rose precipitately. I wanted to see Signor Benedick before he left. The king's appearance had made me quite forget our quarrel – there seemed to be bigger things at stake. Perhaps he, as one of the players, could shed some light upon the strange evening. As I followed my aunt and Hero as we made our way slowly down the stone steps, held up by the throng, fuming with impatience, I was trying so hard to see him over the bobbing heads of the crowd that I lost my footing on the treacherous crumbling steps. I tumbled down, sprawling on the ancient stones, and Hero gave an unmannerly shriek. But before she or my aunt could assist me a strong hand pulled me up and set me back on my feet.

My eyes, lowered in shame, took in every detail of my rescuer from bottom to top – gilded sabotons, oxblood leather breeches, a golden breastplate. A face bizarrely painted with red-rouged cheeks and eyes that were ringed in black and looked greener than ever even beneath the shade of a centurion's helmet. It was the centurion of Iberia, Signor Benedick.

I looked daggers at him – how timely that he should be my rescuer, when the last time he'd held me in hand we had been dancing a measure, and he insulted me most cruelly. But he only said, looking directly at me with those green eyes, ‘How do you, lady? I hope you are not injured?'

I held my tongue and shook my head, for my fall had brought my aunt and Hero to my side, and I could not question him now, in my aunt's hearing; for whatever the king was doing here, my uncle was caught up in this coil. Besides, as Benedick turned to transfer my hand elegantly to my aunt's, and as he bowed to take his leave, I caught the glint of his medal of the military order of St James. He was bound up in it too.

ACT THREE

Beatrice:
The morning after the Naumachia I woke early from an uneasy sleep full of dreams and blood.

I walked along the shoreline to blow away the foreboding until I reached the harbour and found the friar and the fishermen playing
Scopa.
I joined them for a few rounds. My luck was in and as I held the
settebello
I thought about the card in my room, resting in my cabinet of curiosities with St James's finger. Both keepsakes had been given to me by Signor Benedick, for one victory and one defeat.

After I had fought with him I had been so happy; I thought he had respected me as an adversary. After I had danced with him I had been so sad; in his insults I thought I detected the influence of the Archbishop of Monreale and his other powerful new friends. And then yesterday, when he had picked me up as I stumbled down the ancient tiers of the theatre, he had spoken to me as if he did not know me, with perfect courtesy and propriety, like the very epitome of a knight errant. I preferred the insult, for to me no true respect lay behind such universal courtesy. I wondered whether his new military order had a code of behaviour to which he was striving to adhere. I wondered, too, if that was the case, whether the heart that beat beneath the medal of St James had altered for ever.

‘Lady,' said the friar, for he never used my real name in this company, in case my little habit reached my uncle. ‘The hand is yours.'

I realised I had not moved for some moments, and swept the cards into my hand from the back of the upturned boat. I shuffled them together, and said, ‘
Scopa.
' I had won the hand, and it was time to go.
Scopa
was all about knowing when to leave the game.

I refused the friar's kind offer to walk me back to my uncle's, for I needed the solitude of the beach. I remembered the last time I had walked here like this – one foot on sea and one on shore, the brine soaking my slipper. It was the day Benedick had come to the house. I had not even met him then. Then my heart had been full of the valiant Moor. But from that day to this it was Signor Benedick that was forever in my mind's eye. I had to admit to myself that at the tournament, and again the previous night at the Naumachia, he had overthrown more than his enemies. He had become to me the only man of Italy, the man that I would rather spend my time with than any other whether in dispute or accord. I would rather fight with him than be civil with any other man.

Yet to acknowledge the truth would avail me nothing. He had his brothers in arms, and Don Pedro, the friend of his heart. He had made his feelings about me, about all of my sex, as clear as day. I could never hope for the sweet bliss shared by the Moor and his lily-white love. I was passing their home now, and was suddenly struck; if he was an admiral and she a noblewoman, why had I not seen them since that day? Why had they not attended any of my uncle's many entertainments, if he was so regarded in military circles? Was it because the admiral was a Moor? I decided to climb the dunes to see whether I could spy the couple.

There was indeed a figure there on the sands by the Moor's house; but only one. He was hunched at the bottom of the dunes, facing the infinite sea, the wind lifting his thin hair. And round about him was a wonder – he had created a sea of his own. Hundreds of creamy pages were laid all about him, each
one crammed with yard upon yard of spidery writing, and weighted down with a pebble to foil the wind. I watched him for a while; he was alternately scribbling on a page of paper resting on a hornbook, and raising his head to look out to sea, as if seeking inspiration. At length he would finish the page he was writing and hold it to the wind by two corners as if it was laundry. Then he turned my way to find a stone to anchor it. That's when he saw me. He was Michelangelo Crollalanza, the poet.

I was not sure whether to continue upon my way but he waved the sheet at me and I walked carefully over to him, stepping cautiously over the pages. I would have told him not to get up, but he made no move to rise in my presence and I suspected, as I had done before, that the expected courtesies of society held no importance for him; a trait, I guessed, that he inherited from his mother.

‘What are you writing?'

‘A wrong.' He smiled bitterly with one side of his mouth, as I had remembered him doing at the wedding at Syracuse.

‘This is a singular place to write. Can you not write indoors?'

He shook his head. ‘My father has the only study and has spread himself about it. My mother likes the outdoors. She says she never feels comfortable in a room.'

That I could understand – in the few encounters I'd had with her Guglielma Crollalanza always seemed to have something wild about her, as if she would be more at home in nature.

‘His work is more important than mine, so I give up the space readily. He is righting wrongs too.'

‘What wrongs?'

‘The Spanish are bad stewards of his island. They have claimed the common land, they have trodden on the backs of the poor to build their great estates.'

Unbidden, I sat beside him. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Last night's pageant,' he argued, ‘how much did it cost? One jewel from that player-king's tabard alone would feed a family
for a year. And how many fine dishes have been paraded before you over the past many days? Honey of Ibla, and collyflowers and purslane? Do you know what the poor eat?' He did not wait for an answer. ‘
Maco
, a stew made of chickpeas. And if they can't get
maco,
they eat grass, like the kine.' He ripped a handful from the ground, and the sand whispered out of the roots. It looked dry and bitter, not something you would give even to a mule. ‘Bread is so precious here that the Sicilians say that if you drop a crumb of bread on the ground you are condemned for eternity to try to pick it up with your eyelashes. But the viceroy himself said that the poor can sit and drink their own piss. Believe me, sometimes that happens. In Sperlinga, some of them live in caves, like beasts.'

I had never thought of such things, and felt ashamed, thinking of all the dishes I had left, at my uncle's house, at the wedding at Syracuse, because my belly was full, or because I had no appetite, so fattened was I with flirtation. ‘Is that why your father came back?'

‘Yes. He could not stand idly by. And we had word that he was in danger in the north.'

I remembered what Guglielma Crollalanza had said of her husband.
The sun grew too hot for him in the north.
And then I remembered something else.
He has a different religion to the archbishop and the intelligence to disseminate it.
After the play last night, such differences seemed dangerous. ‘Because of his religion?'