Beatrice and Benedick (37 page)

With the crew gone, we attempted to free ourselves, but in vain. Claudio and I could not reach our daggers, nor each other's. The captain was still unconscious, and unarmed. I smashed a nearby hurricane lamp with my foot, and desperately tried to reach the shards of glass, but they were just out of my grasp. We tried frantically to wriggle out of the ropes but ended up chafing our hands till they bled, for there was nothing we could do against the captain's bulk, slumped forward over the ropes. We were trapped, tied like mules, a little trinity alone on this massive hull, with the ship shifting and creaking. If the
Florencia
had been holed on impact, we would go down with it, and if the crew were not back by high tide, we would be carried away wherever the wind took us, until we starved.

There was nothing to do but watch and wait. I looked first to the shoreline.

In the distant bay our sailors were causing havoc in the little village. One house was on fire. I heard the screams of women, and babes, and the barking of dogs. I saw one sailor chasing a
goat down the beach, as hen's eggs dropped from his pockets and a link of sausages flew from his belt like a pennant. It would have been comical were it not an action so utterly devoid of honour. I could not see that any of them would live out the night; and they were endangering us as much as them, for they were engendering hatred for every soldier of Spain.

Then I looked to the other ship, the
San Juan de Sicilia.
It looked black against the dull sky, as if it had been burned, and the shifting mists parted to show shredded sails. It was a galliass of our own class, slightly smaller than the
Florencia.
It looked ghostly, an impression assisted by the fact that there did not seem to be a living soul aboard. By moving my body until the ropes cut, I could just see at least one of the ship's boats still lashed to the side; a small pinnace, such as those in which our mutineers had rowed to shore. I had a sudden notion.

‘Is Bartoli dead?' I mouthed to Claudio. Unaccountably, I felt that we must whisper.

‘I cannot tell,' said Claudio, low voiced too. ‘If he wakes, together we may be able to get free. But what then? We cannot get to shore. They have taken the boats.'

‘We can get to the other ship. They have their boats still.'

‘How?'

‘A bosun's chair,' said an unsteady voice. It was Bartoli, sitting upright now.

We lost no time. With the three of us conscious we could lift the ropes; but by the movement of the pale disc of sun beyond pewter clouds it still took us above an hour to shift the first loop over our shoulders. Then it was easy; we were free in an instant, and stood unsteadily, joints creaking, broken heads pounding, limbs paining us as the blood and vital humours rushed back into deprived regions.

Bartoli set about rigging a bosun's chair. On our starboard side he tossed a rope on a grappling hook to the other ship, and Claudio, as the slightest, shinned across. The rope was looped
round the balustrade of the
San Juan
and the hook tossed back, and a small stool attached to slide across on a pulley.

Bartoli, who was more injured and elderly than we, stayed with the ship, as he had sworn. He would receive and discipline any mutineers who were minded to reboard, and operate the bosun's chair for us if we needed it to return. Only when I was dangling over the open water with the golden chased lettering of the
San Juan de Sicilia
drawing ever closer did I wonder what we would find on this ship of ghosts.

There was no one on deck, and no sign of life whatsoever. Behind the mainmast I lifted the hatch I knew must lead to the hold, for the ship was a mirror of our own; but something was wrong here. I suddenly felt, holding open the hatch, as I had felt when I saw the thousand bodies. A dread foreboding crept over my flesh, and I felt that a nameless evil was emanating from the hold.

I dropped down into the dark, landing lightly on my feet, and held my lantern high. What I saw there reminded me of nothing so much as the fresco in the church of Santa Maria della Carmine in Padua, which I'd perused, round eyed, as a child at mass. Terrible, skeletal twisted souls, eyes open, unable to escape their fate. I could see, here and there, the livery of St James, the same colours I wore. Their saint had abandoned them. Worst of all, I saw gnawed limbs and bite marks, where men had tried to chew upon their own or others' flesh.

I had to pull my chemise over my mouth, for the stench was terrible. I did not fear contagion, for I thought I knew what had taken these men. It was another premonition for the men of the
Florencia.
They had starved.

‘They are all dead,' I yelled to Claudio, my own voice a strange comfort to me. ‘That is why they did not go ashore.'

‘Any provisions?'

I did not even have to look; no man would devour another
while there were even the meanest victuals left. ‘No.' I turned to go, but something caught my eye.

In the bilge were a pile of chests with brass boundings. I put down my lantern, forced one open with my dagger and saw a dull gleam. I put my hand in the chest, and countless coins slid through my fingers. I carried one to the hatch and held up the coin. A gold
real.
I turned about, the bodies all but forgotten.

Treasure.

A hundred chests of it. Terrible, inedible treasure. Chests of gold that, at the end, any one of these men would have happily traded for a single loaf of bread. Useless, priceless ballast which slowed down their voyage so that they could not make it even this far.

‘Claudio!' I called, softly now. It did not occur to me to keep the find to myself as some men would. Claudio dropped down, and recoiled from the dead men, but I led him to the corner. His eye widened. ‘How much?'

‘A fortune.'

He turned to me. ‘Say the words.'

I looked at him in confusion.

‘Say the words. Claim it.'

‘What about you?' I asked. ‘You found it alongside me.'

‘Dear Benedick,' he said. ‘If I spent a bag of gold every hour from now till the day of my death, the Medici would still have chinks to spare. But this gold could be the making of you; could elevate you from gentleman to prince. If you claim it, by the laws of trove the king must give you a share. Say the words,' he urged again. ‘For nobility can be bought as well as bred; who knows that better than I?'

Suddenly I was back in El Escorial, that dreaming, amber afternoon. I could hear the injunction of the chancellery legislators. ‘Let each man who finds a trove lay his hands upon it and say the following form of words … His Majesty shall vouchsafe
a tithe share of the treasure to the finder, and ennoble him in the rolls of Spain.'

I put my hands on the cold, inedible treasure and spoke the words. ‘I, Benedick Minola of Padua, claim this treasure for Philip of Spain.' By the termination of the sentence, I was rich.

We laboriously lifted each chest to the deck, one by one, our weakened muscles protesting, our puny limbs barely able to lift the heavy caskets.

At last we were done, but as we shifted the last chest, a figure lurched out of the dark as though the treasure had birthed him. Two white eyes peered at us, and Claudio and I recoiled as one with a cry. A blade flashed too, but I caught at the hand that held it, and disarmed the fiend as easily as if he were a child. He collapsed in my grip and began to weep like a babe.

We dragged him to the light, but he gave me no resistance; he was all bone and skin, as light as a bird. We pulled him up on deck and he was not even as weighty as one of the chests of treasure. The drear daylight gave relief to his features but could not illuminate his skin. He was a Moor.

I spoke to him in Italian, and Spanish. Claudio had a little English, and less French. But the Moor just rolled his eyes and waggled his tongue; that silent member was as dry as cured meat and whiter than his skin. Then I remembered the last Moor I had met, and the farewell the water-diviner had bid me in the gardens of El Escorial. ‘
As-salaam alaykum
.'

As if in a dream, he replied to me.
‘Wa' alaykum.'

I sat, so that I could be at his level, for I did not think he could stand. Claudio stood over us, unsure of the dark creature we had found. And no wonder, for he was near as hellish a thing as the corpses below. The whites of his eyes were yellow, his orbs wept from the sudden light and I shuddered to think of how
long he had been in the dark. His skin was an ashy grey, not the ebony black of the water-diviner, and hung from his bones like boiled leather. The tight wiry curls of his hair and beard had turned a powdery white, an incongruous contrast with his dusky skin.

‘Can you speak Catalan?' I asked him in halting accents.

‘Yes, and Italian and French.'

‘What happened here?' I said in my own tongue.

‘All starved,' he replied in passable Tuscan.

‘How came the treasure to be here?'

‘It is the king's.'

‘Did the ship capture it?'

‘No,' he said, struggling with his dry tongue. He tried to sit. ‘It belongs to His Majesty King Philip II of Spain.'

Jesu,
the fellow was loyal; even after his tribulations.

‘Yes, and we will return it to him,' I said patiently. I showed him my medal. ‘See, I am a knight of Saint James. I will see it done.'

He seemed to collapse then, as if at the end of a long labour, as if his responsibilities were somehow over.

‘Pay chests,' he said, sounding short of breath.

I saw then. These were the wages for the victorious knights of the glorious armada.

We left him there to recover while we loaded the chests into the ship's boats, all the time conducting a whispered conversation about what we should do with this strange survivor.

‘Leave him,' said Claudio. ‘We have no food for him.'

I nodded to the shore. ‘And yet we have lost a score of mouths today. We might need an able seaman to replace those defectors.'

Claudio looked at the figure hunched upon the deck. ‘If he
is
an able seaman. He looks like a savage.'

‘Well, only he can tell us. Been at sea long?' I called to our prisoner.

I could barely hear him. ‘Seventeen years. Since Lepanto.'

I turned to Claudio. ‘He might be useful,' I said.

Now there was an urgency to our enterprise, for the ship was rocking as the tide came in. Soon the
Florencia
would be afloat again. We cut free the bosun's chair, lowered the fast boats and rowed one each, with fifty chests each aboard and the Moor in my craft. By the time we'd gained the deck of the
Florencia
, eleven of the mutineers had returned with provisions, and were shamefacedly making themselves busy about the ship, having been promised a flogging for the morrow. But there was no sign of the other boat and we were neither willing nor inclined to wait for the remaining mutineers. At sundown the ship lifted from the shore. ‘Cut the lateen sail free!' commanded the captain, and the men set about the ropes with their axes. The canvas and rigging of the mizzenmast swirled and darkened in the water, till they sank into the deeps.

As we sailed away torches descended from the hills into the bay like falling stars. The crofters had returned from the fields at the end of the day, and there was just enough light left to see them cut down the remaining mutineers of the
Florencia
– every last man – and leave the bodies lying on the beach.

Beatrice:
Over the next week, I got to know Paris well.

In the mornings we would pose for our portrait on the
cassone,
and I would admire the scene that sprung to life under Signor Cagliari's talented hand. In the afternoons, after Paris had spent some hours administering his estates, we would go out, at the hour of
passeggiata.
Then we would mingle among the smart citizens of Verona processing along the beautiful streets in their finery. Always I was chaperoned by the young Capuletti cousins Giulietta and Rosaline.

Paris designed brave entertainments for his womenfolk – he would take us into private houses to see a holy relic, into a secret walled garden to admire a particularly decorative fountain, or a little chapel to see a fine fresco. We were taken to a private menagerie at a villa at Sant'Ambrogio, to see a camelopard; a vast, gentle creature chequered like a harlequin, with a neck so improbably long that I wondered that he could hold up his head. On another day we were taken to see the cabinet of curiosities belonging to one of Paris's German uncles. Peering into the
wunderkammer
we saw fleas dancing on a tiny stage, and fitted with an orchestra of minute instruments. So the count showed us wonders of every scale as if they were
his
dowry.

Once we took a golden barge upon the river and ate our dinner under my family bridge, the Ponte Scaligeri, as musicians played from the arches and fireflies danced in time. Paris made sure I never wanted for anything – he would press
delicacies upon me at every turn – succulent shrimps, fat olives, delicate little cakes. I was full to bursting constantly, and when my stomacher began to pain me I started to conceal these foods in my skirt and discreetly drop them on the street or in the river.