Beatrice and Benedick (34 page)

So Claudio and I now spent every evening in each other's company. We each made efforts with our appearance before our ‘dinner', tidying our hair and straightening our clothes; comforted by such conventions. We sat at the board together, with empty plates before us, and toyed with wine glasses with nothing in them. As we had nothing to eat nor drink, we talked.

In a short space I knew everything about him; more than I had learned in the preceding months in Venice, on the road and in Sicily. I heard of a childhood spent in Florence, educated by monks. Of a mother who left his father for another. Of an elder brother who died at twenty. Of a father who spent his time administering the Medici coffers and thought more of his banking tables than of his sons. I heard the minutiae too – I saw the scar on Claudio's knee where he'd fallen from his horse at the age of ten, I heard of the leather knight his father once brought him from Lombardy, with a detachable helm, the only present his father ever gave him. I talked too; of my riverside house in Padua and my loving parents, of my friend Sebastian. Of how, as a child, I'd made the noble boys laugh and they'd let me share the swordfighting lessons my father couldn't afford.

And at length, inevitably, we spoke of Sicily. That night of the mass, I asked him the question that had been in my mind since I'd heard him intone the paternoster, and seen comfort steal over the faces of the starving sailors.

‘If we ever quit this ship,' I began, which was the manner in which we began all conversations about the future, ‘will you enter the Church?'

He spun the fine crystal goblet between his fingers. ‘No.' He smiled. ‘I thought of it once, before my brother died. But now I will be expected to enter the bank.' He sounded wistful.

‘You don't mind?'

He looked surprised. ‘Not at all. My father's plans are in accord with my own, for he wishes me to marry a well-born woman, and have children.'

And so, in that manner, our conversation returned to Sicily, as if it had never left. ‘Hero?' I asked.

‘Yes. You know how much I liked her before we went to wars. If we ever quit this ship, I will go directly to Sicily, and claim her if she is still free.'

My heart gave a lurch. ‘I am sure that she will wait. For it seemed to me that the two of you formed an attachment which had already grown into a mountain of affection before we left her father's house.'

I tried to be happy for him; I
was
happy for him, but felt a pang below my heart that was nothing to do with hunger.

Claudio looked at me keenly. ‘The prince told me what passed between you and the Lady Beatrice. I am heartily sorry that the lady was untrue.'

It was a shock to hear her name; a shock to hear her termed so.
Untrue
.

In my private thoughts Beatrice had been flawless, and mine. But now in conversation with my friend my daydreams of Sicily receded and showed themselves for what they were; insubstantial, airy dreams, golden bubbles pricked and burst by the reality
of sharp words. Unspoken, my reveries were boundlessly comforting to me; but once they were articulated, I had to accept the bare facts. Beatrice was untrue.

Unthinking, I raised my empty glass to my lips to purchase time, a reflex that had been a lifetime in the making. Now, I had not spoken a word of Beatrice's transgression to Claudio. I had no wish to besmirch her reputation if she did not wed her poet, and if they did wed, it would extenuate the forehand sin. I would not have expected the prince to tattle about such matters like a washerwoman; once again, he had let me down. I looked at Claudio over the glass. We had not mentioned Don Pedro either since his cowardly act had sent us upon this fool's voyage; perhaps, in this intimate moment, it was time.

‘I had thought …' I began, then abandoned caution. What did it matter what I said? The chances of ever getting home were vanishingly small. ‘I have been wondering if my lord prince was mistaken. About Lady Beatrice.'

‘In what way?'

‘I do not rightly know. But I recognise now that he is not … infallible.'

Claudio lowered his eyes. I could see that his breeding fought with his desire to mention Don Pedro's dishonour. ‘I accept that the prince has made certain … errors on this voyage. But in the case of the lady, I believed it to be the case that you saw her transgression with your own eyes?'

‘Yes.'

‘What exactly did you see?'

‘I saw her embrace a man upon the beach.'

‘A man with whom she was acquainted?'

‘Yes.'

‘And he himself was free? And of an age and class to pay suit to her?'

‘Yes.'

‘And there is no chance that he was her brother or any other relation by blood?'

‘No. He was the poet who attended a number of Leonato's entertainments, by the name of Michelangelo Florio Crollalanza.'

Claudio let forth a sigh. ‘Then I am afraid, my friend, that her actions are unforgivable. If I saw a woman of whom I was enamoured embracing a man thus, she would be dead to me. A woman must be beyond reproach, but, furthermore, beyond
suspicion.
The slightest lightness of conduct must place her beneath your notice. The conclusion must be that if she went on to wed this gentleman then she is guiltless, but married. And if she did not, then she is just as lost to you, for such behaviour cannot be overlooked.' He leaned forward and the candlelight struck the lean angles of his face. ‘Think of it; in a year, two years, you would be wearing the cuckold's horns upon your forehead. You would question the parentage of your children. You would be wed to unquietness all your life.'

Sometimes it was hard to recall that Claudio was younger than I. He had a certain wisdom beyond his years. I had been ready to forgive; but I knew he was right; I put down the glass. ‘Then I will hereby swear never to marry; and will beseech you in this empty glass to toast and join me.' I borrowed a smile from somewhere. ‘But as I know you will not, if we ever quit this ship I will help you to this honourable sacrament with the lady Hero, for at least we know that
she
is very well worthy.'

Under a mask of jollity I clinked my crystal goblet with Claudio's, and we talked of other things.

After that evening my spirits sank even lower. Now I could not even think of Beatrice with impunity – Claudio was right; married or not she was lost to me. Shivering in my sacking one grey noon I dolefully watched the inhospitable coast. Now I saw crags and sea-lochs, and strange slug-grey creatures draped over the rocks, whiskered like a dog and as big as a man. The creatures eyed me back, and as the ship passed they made their
ungainly way down the shingle to the sea. Once in the water they suddenly became as lithe as mermaids; and I wondered whether they were sailors who had become enchanted, for there was not a soul to be seen on the shingle, for mile upon nautical mile.

And then, as I watched, I did see someone.

There, on the rocky coast, was a body; emaciated, wearing what had once been a Spanish sailor's livery and very, very dead. Next to him lay another. And another.

My legs as lead-heavy as my heart, I quietly fetched the captain and Claudio, and pointed to the graveyard upon the shingle.

‘Can we distract the men somehow? Get them below?' For I knew what this sight would do to morale.

‘I will batten down all hands, all but the watch-standers,' agreed the captain, but before he could send for the drummer, Claudio said, ‘Too late.' He nodded aft, to where the men were shouting and gathering.

There was nothing to do but watch, together, as we made our slow progress past the scores of bodies.

‘We should count them,' said Claudio with great presence of mind, and got out his tables.

I do not know what had befallen these men on the beach, but they were tangled together anyhow, limbs interwoven in a terrible casual embrace. Blank eyes stared at the skies and reflected the blue. There was not a wound among them, nor a drop of blood to be seen. Had they starved? Drowned? Or just given up and lain down together?

‘One thousand souls, or thereabouts,' said Claudio, once we'd passed the next cove and the grisly view was out of our sight. As I settled back in place under the mainmast I could not help thinking that, by some awful prescience, we had seen our own deaths; that the men on the beach were the crew of the
Florencia.

Beatrice:
I stood behind my father's great chair and watched him write my name on the
impalmamento,
the marriage contract.

The slick black ink dried under his hand, sealing my fate. I was trapped by those words; those black spidery lines were threads fit to bind me like Ariadne. The name of the gentleman hardly mattered, but I watched my father inscribe it below mine.
PARIS.

My father told me little of this man, this word on a contract who was now to be my future. Paris was a young count of Verona; he had a good fortune and much land, not just in Italy but in the Germanic Habsburg lands, where his bloodline had originated. But what marked him out in eligibility was that he was related to the Capuletti, and staunchly of that party. Now my father had abandoned his impartiality, he would move against the Montecchi with swift decisiveness.

My father had been away from the castle for a brace of days, as he had travelled to Verona to meet with my intended for the
sponsalia,
a meeting of the male members of the marrying families. No women were admitted to such conventions, not even the bride. I had never been acquainted with Paris, despite being raised in the very best of Veronese society, for he had been at the university when I had lived at home. So I was reduced to finding out snippets about my future husband from the servants who had accompanied my father. But all I ever heard tell of the
gentleman, in the kitchens and courts, was that he was a ‘man of wax'; so perfect a specimen of a man, in form and person, that he might have been fashioned of tallow. I tried to console myself that, however little I knew about him, he was reputed so; but in truth I did not like the sound of a waxen husband. Wax was changeable, wax could wane, wax could melt and be broken like a seal. But I had no say whatsoever in the matter. I was trapped, so I did not know why my father had summoned me from my chamber to watch him write. He signed the
impalmamento
with a flourish, daubed wax by his name and made his imprimatur with his seal ring. The ladder of the Della Scala congealed within the wax, trapped too.

‘Signed and sealed.' I sneered, with the barely veiled insolence I had employed since I'd heard my fate. I'd pleaded, cajoled and scolded at first, but my father was implacable. I was to be married, and that was that, so now I'd settled upon scorn. ‘May I go now?'

‘No.' My father set the parchment by to dry.

‘But that is all? The business is complete?'

‘Not quite.'

He pointed his quill to the studded door. As if bidden by the gesture the door opened, and eight figures filed in. They were robed in scarlet, and all wore white gloves. All except one – the fellow that led them wore a surgeon's cap, and his hands were bare.

My skin chilled. ‘Who are they?'

My father was silent.

‘Father, who are these gentlemen?'

‘You were in Sicily for the summer. We have to make sure that some knave did not take your maidenhead.'

I laughed, hollowly, and the sound rolled around the keep. I thought he was jesting. Then I thought of Benedick, of the night in the dunes, of how close I came. ‘Is my word not enough?'

He looked at me then, his light eyes veiled. ‘The Count Paris is a powerful man. The union of our lands will vanquish the Montecchi for ever. We cannot give him,' he said precisely, ‘a rotten orange.'

‘But I am a princess of Villafranca,' I protested. But the red figures encircled me. Red had always been a colour of comfort, red meant our pennant, red stone meant the Della Scala castle. Now it was the colour of fear. ‘No,' I cried in a panic, as the figures grew closer. ‘Please, Father. Don't let them.'

My father waved his long fingers at the fellow in the close cap, the fellow without the gloves. ‘Baldi is a surgeon, and these others are men of medicine; the seven requisite witnesses to your virginity. Lie down.'

‘But Father …'

‘Lie down.'
He did not shout – my father never shouted. Even at the death of Tebaldo I had never heard him cry out. But his quiet voice cut like a blade, and I was afraid of him. The kites screeched from the rafters, as if they mocked me.

Hopelessly, I lay down on the great table where we ate our dinner every night. Baldi, the surgeon, carefully turned up my skirts from the knee; once, twice, as if he made a bed.

I had expected the shame, but I had not expected it to hurt so much. His hands were cold, hard. He touched me where no one had ever touched, where
I
had not even touched.

I looked fixedly at the rafters of the red-stone tower, and saw the shadows of the kites flitting from their conical nests. I took my mind away, to Sicily, to Syracuse, where a sparrow had fallen dead at the feet of the Archbishop of Monreale. Anything to take my mind away from the dreadful probing.

Silent tears ran from my eyes and into my ears. The dreadful irony was not lost on me – in order to ensure that I was untouched by a man's hand, this man, this
stranger,
could prod and probe in my most intimate woman's parts. After an age the
terrible fingers withdrew, out of me, away from me, and the skirts were folded down again.

‘She is
intacta
.'

The others nodded in corroboration. I was innocent. But they were wrong – I was not, not any more. Not after this. And forever more, this man, Baldi, sometime surgeon of Prince Escalus, would be the first man to touch me intimately. Whatever the future held, whomever I married, he would be the first. I did not even know his given name.