Beatrice and Benedick (38 page)

And all the time, I talked. It was exhausting. I corrected the poor count relentlessly, even in the matter of works of art that he actually owned. In our tour of the city I regurgitated all that I had read in my father's books about Verona's history and civic politics, pre-empting Paris every time he attempted to tell us about a certain building or landmark.

In the Castello Scaligero in Villafranca there was a dark, dank dungeon. When I was a little girl Tebaldo used to drag me down there and make me scream by showing me various instruments of torture left there to rust since barbarian times. The most dreadful thing of all to me – worse than the instruments that would pierce flesh or tear limbs – was a scold's bridle, wrought of black iron, designed to silence a woman. Once Tebaldo managed to get the thing on me, and I ran around the castle with the bridle on my head, unable to scream, bashing my head against the walls like a fly in a bottle, until my nurse took it off. For days I could taste the metallic tang of iron and blood in my mouth, feel the corrugated metal tongue of the bridle squeezing my own.

If I'd had such a scold's bridle now, I would have donned it myself and strapped the buckle with my own hand. For my voice had become a rattle, and I began to appreciate, for the first time, the objections to being shackled to an unquiet woman.

But the patient Paris bore my corrections admirably, and seemed happy to be instructed in matters of music, literature, architecture and art. I ground my teeth. My plan was not working.

Increasingly desperate, I added to my repertoire of unquietness by always being too hot or too cold, asking for my cloak to be brought to me and taken away, asking for my fan to be
fetched and then folded, sending his runners for iced sherbets or warmed wine. I was as contrary as I could be. Again, my intended husband indulged me in every particular, without a word of demurral.

As a matter of fact, despite myself, I began to like him. And on more than one occasion I wished, most heartily, that I had met him before Benedick. For that gentleman, even in his absence, continued to be a thorn in my side, for he troubled me to make constant comparisons between himself and Paris. Paris was tall, but not as tall as Benedick. He was amusing, but nowhere near such a wit. He had fine eyes, and a pleasing countenance, but his features could not compare to that one face that I missed. The only particular in which he would be a superior husband to Benedick was that his taste in diversions and pursuits marched with mine. He loved reading, art and music, whereas Benedick never picked up a book, looked on a picture or could tolerate a tune. Paris was what they said of him; he was a man of wax, a man that appeared to be so perfectly correct in every particular that he himself should stand in a cabinet of curiosity. But he was no more than that.

Giulietta and Rosaline were with me constantly, jealous guardians of my honour. Every night they were my bedfellows, every day they would follow a few steps behind Paris and me as we went about the city. They rarely talked, and if they did it was in a murmur so low I could barely hear them. I spoke about a thousand words for every one that they uttered. They made fine foils for my own runaway tongue, but all the same I longed for the vivacious company of my aunt or poor Guglielma Crollalanza. For Giulietta struggled daily with some secret sorrow, and Rosaline, a devout girl, was ever at her prayers. Her knees were worn from hours at the prie-dieu, and her fingers were always tangled in the beads of her rosary.

I learned little of these young women. I canvassed, once, their opinions of marriage; Rosaline, unsurprisingly, stated her
intention to enter a nunnery, and Giulietta, with a faraway look, answered dreamily that marriage was the highest estate to which a man and a woman could aspire.

Too soon, my week in Verona was at an end, and I knew that night's betrothal feast would be my last chance to repel my groom. The next day my father would come for the marriage ceremony, to be held on the steps of the Basilica, and under his eye I could not behave as I had been.

As the young ladies and I readied ourselves for the revelry I was almost as silent as my handmaids, for I had much to think about. Rosaline and Giulietta, as befitted their youth and virginity, were clothed in white; Rosaline wore a girdle of olive leaves to recall Noah's dove, and Giulietta's gown was cunningly wrought of overlapping feathers, to resemble the plumage of a swan.

I pulled my starlight gown from my bed chest. The young maids helped me to dress, and I was glad to note that, despite my gluttony of the past week, the gown fitted as well as it ever had. I smoothed down the midnight-silk bodice with its constellation of diamonds, and traced Cassiopeia's chair with my finger. The waterfall of skirts fell to the floor, cunningly contrived of circles of fine silk in graduating colours of blue – the duck egg of midday for the underskirt, then an overskirt of afternoon, then evening blue, darkening through twilight to the bodice. Even my silent attendants exclaimed at the beauty of the gown. According to tradition, my hair would be worn loose until my wedding, and the young cousins brushed and burnished my hair till it fell in a spun gold skein to my shoulderblades. I pushed my feet into a pair of shoes with silver points, and, as if such shoes invited me to dance, I turned about until the skirts flew out in a circle.

From the folds, along with the damask and sprigs of lavender placed there by Paris's servants, fell the
settebello
card, and the sonnet that I'd written for Benedick, that day on the beach with
Michelangelo Crollalanza. I put the card in my bodice, more from habit than will, but the sonnet I set aside, unread, before the others could see it. I was ashamed of it now. The thought of those words, so passionate they near burned the paper, brought crimson to my cheeks. In the looking glass I saw, with annoyance, how becoming the flush was to me – perversely, the memory of Benedick had made me more comely for Paris. I wished I could hide my blush with a mask, but Paris had decreed that his guests, though they might be inventive in the matter of attire, should be unmasked. Perhaps the man of wax thought his features too fine to be hid. Ready, I led the maids down the staircase, a falling star.

The great hall looked as I had never seen it. In honour of the Capuletti, and in a neat play upon their family name, the solar had been given the air of a chapel. A thousand candles were lit in every niche and alcove, and, by some art, were suspended from the ceiling at differing heights, lighting the gloom of the cross-ribbed vaults with candle-flame constellations. The wax dripped upon the guests, riming them with white droppings to rival those of the kites that lived in our red-stone tower at home. There was no doubt, now, that the Capuletti were gods.

The best of Veronese society was in evidence, all with a Capuletti connection. My father did not like society, but his role as mediator had meant that he must attend family gatherings of both the Montecchi and Capuletti, so I'd known most of the assembly since childhood. There was Signor Martino and his wife and daughters; Count Anselme and his beautiful sisters; Vitravio's widow; Signor Placentio and his lovely nieces, Livia, Lucia and the lively Helena. I spied my uncle Capuletti and his wife, Giulietta's parents, seated beside each other at the high table in a pair of golden chairs. Tall and spare, they looked
down their long noses at the company. They might have been brother and sister as they drank from chalice-like cups in tandem, and took no part in the merriment about them. They greeted me most courteously, but their smiles did not quite reach their flinty eyes. They looked at me as if I had taken a prize that, a year or two hence, they would have played their daughter for.

I seated myself beside Paris, with no appetite for the riches paraded before me. I had to make the breach, and make it tonight. But, unusually, I had a deal of trouble to claim Paris's attention. He could barely greet me for he was seated among the ranks of Capuletti uncles, who all seemed to be shouting the same story down the board at him; some news from England. Grinding my teeth with impatience, I knew I must wait. Giulietta was on my left, and I turned to speak to her, without much hope of conversation. But she seemed, for once, anxious to talk.

‘I have been waiting to speak to you, cousin,' she said, low voiced, ‘but Rosaline is always with us, and she is too devout to hear what I would tell. I must thank you.'

‘Thank me?' I had not expected such a tribute. ‘For what?'

She looked about her, cautiously. ‘You saved someone's life. By your mercy you pardoned one who is the best of men.'

I was at sea, and not in the mood for riddles. I had too much to think about on my own account. ‘I am not sure …'

‘You banished a … young man, to Mantua. Your father would have sentenced him to die.'

Now she had my full attention. I remembered the young Montecchi; well spoken, handsome, and – most beguiling of all – utterly forbidden fruit to a Capuletti girl. ‘Giulietta. Had you formed an understanding with this man?'

Now her silence spoke volumes. It was not the silence I had heard from her all week; the silence of a pliant maid. It was a stubborn silence of obstinate assent. I had been wrong about
her – she had not formed an attachment to Tebaldo, but to his killer and a Montecchi at that. This boy would buy her death and despair. If he so much as set foot in Verona again, my father would have his head. I hardened my heart. ‘You must be ruled by your father. He will choose your husband for you. Forget the Montecchi boy.' The words near choked me, for I knew better than any how hard it was to forget the heart's choice.

Giulietta looked at me. The gratitude was still there in her dark eyes, but tempered with disappointment. She had looked for an ally, and I had told her what she did not want to hear. I fell silent. Who was I to give her advice – I had doled out counsel that I would not take myself. My father had chosen Paris for me, a fitting match both in our ranks and temperaments, and I was set to refuse him. What was I about?

I looked around at the sumptuous Palazzo Maffei, at the fine mouldings, the beautiful frescoes on the walls. I looked at Paris, handsome in blue velvet to match my gown. I pulled on the count's sleeve. I had something to tell him. My decision did not make me happy, but now I thought it for the best.

I was ready to give in.

Paris was a good man, a kind one, and he had seen the worst of me in this last week. I had no illusions – a man may better tolerate contrary behaviours in a woman he is courting than one who is his wife; but from what I had seen I thought he would be a kind and considerate husband. If I did not accept him, what then? Go to a nunnery as Rosaline intended? I had never been one for religion, never done more than dutifully attend chapel, say the mass by rote and flatly sing the responses. I had lost my one chance at love in a game of
Scopa.
The losing card rode in my bodice. Benedick was off fighting a war for a king who was not his own, and even if he sat beside me now he was as lost to me as if he was in the Indies, for he had played me for a fool and rejected me cruelly when last we spoke. If I rejected Paris in my turn, my father would find me another
husband now that he was fixed upon that course. Likely he would find a worse one; perhaps old or cruel, one deaf to art and music and books and the things that I loved. And if I was Countess of Verona and Princess of Villafranca I would have power, of a sort. My father could not live for ever. It was time to accept my fate.

When I addressed Paris at last he laid a hand on my arm to stay me, and did not take it away. I was to wait patiently until the menfolk had finished talking. I studied the hand that laid upon my arm, at the ring with Paris's arms upon it, the ring that, by the end of tonight, would ride upon my hand. Then I heard one word.

Armada.

There was much laughing and merriment – I could not hear more. The strange word bobbed and sunk and rose again upon the tempest of chatter. I craned close to Paris and he patted my arm with his ring hand.
In a moment, dearest, be patient. Men are talking.
Then one of my uncles, spitting chicken bones as he spoke, shouted down the others. He had just returned from Norwich, where this ‘armada' was the talk of the countryside. Philip of Spain had moved against Elizabeth of England with a mighty fleet of ships.

My hand tightened on Paris's arm.
This
was the king's Great Enterprise, the plot of which Michelangelo Crollalanza and I had once spoken on a Sicilian beach. I sharpened my ears to hear more, for this was the first time I had heard the affairs of other nations spoken of in this little world of Verona – something must be badly awry.

And so it proved. ‘Philip's ships were caught in a maelstrom, and the English guns shot them to bits. The Duke of Parma was too cowardly to come to their aid, and the fleets were scattered like
Scopa
cards.'

‘They turned tail?' asked Paris.

‘Couldn't,' spat my uncle. ‘Signor Howard blocked the
channel. Any ships still afloat were sent scuttling north, around the frozen highlands.' He took a gulp of wine. ‘They'll be dead by now; even if the rocks don't get 'em, or the sea-monsters, they only had rations for a month. There've been bodies washing up on the Scottish shores like cockleshells.' My uncle's face creased with mirth. ‘The Spanish King's “Great Enterprise”, blown to buggery by English wind.' He stuck out his tongue and blew a vulgar rasp from his lips.