Beatrice and Benedick (19 page)

I could not afford to go to war and return with hollow honours and striped with battle scars, for if I marched with Don Pedro in a fortnight Beatrice would be left here with Monsieur Love, and I was not about to lose her to that scribbling bard.

I asked to see Don Pedro straight after we had broken our fast, and he surprised me by following me to my chamber, as if he wanted to speak with me as much as I with him.

As soon as we were alone I blurted out my intentions. ‘I wish to leave your service and marry,' I stated with no preamble.

He said nothing at first so I knelt and kissed his hand, lifted the medal of St James from my neck and hooked it over the fingers I had saluted. When it was gone from me I felt that a millstone had been lifted – now I knew I had not wanted to wear it since the night of the Naumachia, for from then on it had hung about my neck like a usurer's chain.

The thing dangled from his hand, winking in the morning light, the ribbon entwined in fingers baked dark gold by the Sicilian sun. His eyes were hooded. I wondered whether he was angry, for on the day I'd met him I'd assured him that I had no attachments of the heart. But he seemed to take the news quite equably – he walked to the window, and looked out of it, as if he could already see his ship sailing away. I waited, saying nothing, and at length he turned back. ‘Which way do you look?'

‘Upon the Lady Beatrice.'

His dark eyebrows shot up and I could see the expression in his eyes for an instant. No longer veiled, they were surprised into honesty, and for just a moment I saw naked envy. Then the eyes were hooded again, and I knew I had been mistaken. ‘I
congratulate you,' he said heartily. ‘You played the seven of coins and won yourself a princess.' For the first time I wished I had not told him of my trick of giving out the
settebello
card to the ladies, and I cursed my damned impulse to make everybody laugh.

‘Her wealth is nothing to me,' I said stiffly. ‘As Your Highness knows, the Minolas of Padua are comfortable merchants. My prospects for the future are good, and I have chinks enough for now.'

He nodded, as if he had not heard me. ‘And the lady feels the same way?'

‘I think so.'

His smile grew wider, his eyes graver. ‘Then I will say this. If you feel as you do now on the day we weigh anchor, then we will say goodbye with my blessing. If you change your mind, you will sail with me, to wherever the King's Enterprise will take us.'

It seemed a fair bargain; for I knew that nothing in this world could flout me out of my humour. ‘Agreed.'

He turned back to the window. ‘But since you are as yet in my employ, I will ask you to complete one last mission.'

‘A mission?' I did not want to invite accusations of cowardice, but I did not wish to encounter any danger to my person, now that I had decided to hang up my barely worn soldier's coat.

‘I misspoke,' he said hastily. ‘It is more of a jest, or a wager; and I know how you love such sport. It is not dangerous. There will be no arms where you are bound, nor a single man to bear them.'

He turned his back to the window, and I could no longer see his expression. ‘You see, I have accepted a wager from my friend the Archbishop of Monreale.'

I frowned, thinking of the bloodied creature I had seen only yesterday flaying his own flesh in the streets of Messina. He did
not seem to me the kind of man to accept a wager. ‘Do not his vows forbid him to gamble?'

‘You are right,' he blustered. ‘I meant the viceroy.'

I knew less of the viceroy, for although he had been at nearly every one of our many gatherings I had never heard him utter a word. I thought him, despite his titles, of no more mark than one of the mammets in the puppet theatre – bravely dressed, but mute until some puppetmaster put words into his mouth.

‘I made a bet with him – the viceroy, that is – for we do not leave these shores till Monday next, and I told him that the time shall not go idly by us,' continued the prince. ‘There is a ritual, a godless thing, that the womenfolk of Sicily practise on the evening after the Ascension.'

‘Tonight?'

‘Tonight. They come together to perform a pagan dance. No man is allowed to take part, nor even set eyes on it. I said I knew a man who would be able to observe it, and tell us what passed.'

I was silent, for I could not speak my thought; which was that this seemed an unworthy game for princes.

‘If you succeed, I will give you one hundred golden
reales.
'

My jaw dropped open. One hundred golden
reales
would make a handsome start to my union with Beatrice. Despite my protestations there was no doubt that a princess of Villafranca had a greater fortune than a minor merchant of Padua, and a hundred gold
reales
was no small purse. I wondered what the principal sum of the bet was, if my part share could be so much. ‘And how am I to penetrate such a gathering?'

‘You could dress yourself as a woman.' He observed my dubious expression. ‘The players do it. Two nights past we saw one of my own cavalry dressed as Boudicca.'

I remembered well, a wag called Juan who had donned the red wig and metal breastplate of the Britons' queen a little too readily. But Juan was small, and slight. I was as tall as a maypole. ‘Why me?'

He clapped my shoulder with the hand that held the medal, and it kissed one of my buckles with a chink. ‘My dear fellow, who better? Everyone knows you for a man of excellent humour. If you are discovered, everyone will take it for a jest.'

I narrowed my eyes. ‘So what is it really?'

‘Just that, dear fellow, just that.'

He was a bad liar, and I recalled for an instant the dark hints that Beatrice had spoken upon the dunes. But I cared no more for Spanish conniving – soon enough it would no longer be my affair. Whatever the reason for the wager, I saw no honour in it; but since the prince had given me my freedom, I owed him this in the name of friendship if not in the name of St James. It was a small price to pay – I might have to endure an evening without Lady Beatrice, but God and luck willing it would be my last one.

‘Very well.' I kissed his hand again, with the medal of St James still twined around his fingers. The thing chinked against my teeth. He saw it. ‘Once a Knight of Saint James,' he said, his brown eyes solemn, ‘always a Knight of Saint James.'

He turned with a flourish to leave the room, and caught sight of a paper lying on the rushes. He stooped and picked the thing up. He was suddenly as still as a statue, frozen, reading silently. ‘Where did you get this?'

I peered at the pamphlet. It was the polemic I'd been given on Ascension Day, by the fellow dressed as a magus or necromancer. Signor Cardenio.

‘I was given it at the Vara,' I said uneasily. ‘By an old man.'

Don Pedro's black eyes skimmed the blackletter print again, taking in, I was sure, every insult and epithet laid at the Spaniards' door. His tone, when he next spoke, was light, belying the expression in his eyes. ‘Ah, the Vara. That was many days ago. And could you identify him if you saw him again?'

I did not like the way the interrogation tended. ‘I could,' I said slowly, ‘but I would not wish to if it would cause him any ill. For he did us a kindness, Claudio and me.' I remembered him
shielding us like a shadow as I washed Claudio's feet; an action which, in that religious context, would have been taken as profane by his uncle. The archbishop seemed to want his nephew to be doused in blood, a literal show of their consanguinity.

‘Your loyalty commends you. But you mistake me. I would not wish him ill. I welcome opposition, when it is so well expressed. His quarrel is lively and well argued. I might have some little commission for him for Spain, that is all.' Don Pedro paused lightly. ‘And do I not deserve some loyalty also? We are brothers of Saint James.'

He had forgotten that I had returned my medal, but he made an excellent point. He was my friend, and I did him a disservice with my suspicion – I had confused him with his friend the archbishop. ‘He was tall,' I said, ‘and wore a stiff Padovani ruff and a black scholar's gown. He had a grey beard, deep-set eyes, and a black skullcap. When he spoke it was with a Sicilian accent, and his name was Cardenio.'

‘You see,' he cried, clapping my shoulder. ‘I said you would be an excellent spy. You will be missed in my company.'

I bowed, relieved that he seemed to have made his peace with my leaving him; but I had the feeling his mind had already gone from the room. He shortly followed it, absentmindedly pocketing the pamphlet as he left the chamber.

Beatrice:
I rose at first light, and dressed by the mote of gilded light bleeding through the shutters.

Hero was sleeping peacefully, her long black lashes lying like spiders on her cheeks. I did not want to wake her. I told myself she had had a torrid time at the Vara and needed her rest, but the real reason was that if I told her that I was going on a pilgrimage to honour the Virgin she would beg to come, tired or no, for Mary was her personal goddess now, her touchstone and mainsaint. She had gained from Claudio the virtue of … well, virtue.

My exit was a tricky business for I had to step carefully over Margherita, who slept curled on a mat by the door. I closed the door behind me soundlessly and tiptoed barefoot down the cool stone steps before putting on my soft leather slippers. The slippers were cross-gartered and took more time than I cared about to tie with my shaking hands. I thought at every minute that Orsola would find me on the stair, for Orsola was a tattle-tongue who minded everybody's business but her own. I was not discovered, though, and let myself out of the gate from the painted courtyard into the chapel cloister. On a whim I crossed the little green court to the chapel and found Friar Francis at the tabernacle, readying the host for prime.

‘Lady Beatrice!' he said. ‘You have risen early on this holy day.'

I looked at him guiltily through my lashes. ‘I am spending the day at penance.'

He wiped his hands on his habit and came through the rood screen to regard me in the tinted light from the stained glass. ‘What penance?' he said.

‘Oh, a local pilgrimage,' I said airily. ‘Local women of good character have invited me to walk up the hill. It is a representation of Christ's walk to Calvary.'

He scratched his scanty beard, and his eyes twinkled. ‘Tell the goodwives from me that they are very early in their observances. Six months early,' he said pointedly, ‘for such a pilgrimage would normally take place at Easter.'

‘I mean, Mary's ascension into heaven,' I prattled. ‘It is my scripture that is faulty, not theirs,' I assured him.

‘Perhaps I should do better in my instruction,' he mused aloud, and I thought, on this point at least, he was being serious.

‘I did not want to wake my aunt—'

‘Very considerate of you—'

‘So if she enquires after me, perhaps you would tell her that I am well and will be back by nightfall?'

He pursed his thin lips, worried now. ‘God make it true.' His hazel eyes, normally mild and benign, bored into me like awls. I turned and walked down the nave before I told him everything.

‘Lady Beatrice.'

I stopped but did not look back.

‘All actions have consequences. Be sure of what you are doing.'

Guglielma Crollalanza had said the exact same thing. I carried on walking, but on my way out I sketched a cross guiltily in the direction of the statue of Mary. I considered, as I let myself out of the lychgate to the sea road, that I had caught the habit of thinking of the Virgin by her first name. Like a tiring maid. Like a laundress. Like a woman.

I met the company on the Via Catania, a merry bundle of
women of all ages from little maids who must still taste their first communion, to grandames. They were all dressed, as I was, in Sicilian dress; a red skirt as full as a circle, a white blouse with puffed sleeves, a tightly fitting black waistcoat and black slippers with cross-garters. I greeted Guglielma with a kiss, as seemed natural after our exchange of confidence; and I felt again the granular nature of her dark cheek. Like sand.

I climbed the hill beside her. She had brought a blackthorn stick with her and she flourished it at me like a sword, laughing. ‘The way is hard,' she said.

I said, ‘They make a joke about my family in Verona; they say the Scaligeri never have to trouble about a mountain, a staircase or the steps to a maiden's bed, for they always have a ladder with them.' I explained, ‘The ladder is the emblem of our family arms, the Della Scala.'

She nodded up the hill, blowing hard. ‘We may need your ladder later, for we go right to the summit. It is needful now, for secrecy; in days gone we used to dance our measure before the cathedral, in full view of the prelates of the town. But since the archbishop came, the ladies tell me, it is well to be secret. He does not like our rituals, would ban them if he could.' She winked at me – something I had never seen a woman do, and she did it well, closing one eye entirely, keeping the other wide, smiling all the while. ‘But such things will not be easily suppressed. Sicilian women have danced the Tarantella since Sicily was part of Magna Graecia.'

I looked down to the port of Messina. The day was bright and the bay blue and the golden statue of Mary shone in the harbour like a beacon, as if blessing our enterprise. ‘And do these women
all
wish to rid themselves of a man?'

She laughed again, carefree. ‘No. The dance was a curative one originally, made to rid the body of a spider's bite. When the sweat pours from your flesh, and it will, it flushes out the venom of a spider bite or another malady. You give whatever
you do not want back to the mountain. You will sweat your man out of you.' She struck at the path before her with her stick. ‘I will be giving thanks that I got mine back.'