Beatrice and Benedick (42 page)

Don Pedro sat and listened to the mass, a beatific smile on his face. I had heard from Claudio upon the road that the prince had elicited the same vow from the count that he had from me; that nothing should be spoken of what had passed on board the
Florencia.
Claudio, as a nod to his uncle the Grand Duke and compensation for the loss of his ship, was to be hailed as the
hero of the expedition. With our silence pledged and the captain dead, Don Pedro was safe to be a prince again; glorious, handsome, well dressed and fed. His face exhibited a glowing sheen as if he'd been varnished, like the lambent saints all about us. I glanced up at the spandrels where a roundel of St James sat between the pillars. St James the Great –
Matamoros.
I turned away from the image. I had nothing to thank him for.

I had no expectations, now, that Don Pedro would keep any promise, but he made good on the vows that he had made on that stormy night in my cabin. He reported my deeds to the king, and Philip gave me a tithe of the treasure recovered from the
San Juan de Sicilia.
I discovered that it would have been no small shame if the armada pay chests had been claimed by Elizabeth, so the king's gratitude for their recovery knew no bounds. He ennobled me as Duke of Leon, the previous duke having conveniently perished on the armada. I was now a nobleman and, which was more, a rich one.

In addition to this, Don Pedro reiterated his intention to return to Sicily via his estates in Aragon, for it seemed that some new circumstance had paved the way for another visit to Leonato's palace. ‘The Lady Hero's mother bid me never to return,' he said with arch good humour as if the voyage had never happened, ‘but I have received word that she lately took a fever and passed away, so our welcome is assured.'

I did not appreciate either his sentiments or the news, for I had liked the Lady Innogen well; but I was reconciled to this new Don Pedro, for I had made the discovery that one does not have to like a man to serve him.

On the day we were to leave for Sicily I sought out Faruq Sikkander to give him one of the treasure chests. I had plenty to spare and I thought it his due; but he just looked at the casket where it lay in my hands, as if it might burn him.

‘If you will not accept my money,' I said, ‘may I offer you some advice?'

He nodded, with a ghost of a smile.

‘Take your son and go to Verona. There, they revere a black saint and protect the lives of Moors in his name.'

I knew that the Moors could expect new dangers in Spain, for Philip had had it decreed this day from El Escorial that the armada had failed because the king had taken too long to expel the Moors from Granada. So with the first
real
I spent from my hoard I bought father and son a mule each and set them on their way. As I watched Faruq wind along the northern road with his son he looked forward, ever forward, and missed my wave. I could not blame him. If I had seen what he had seen, I would not want to lay eyes on anyone who had been on board the
San Juan de Sicilia
ever again.

For now I knew the answer to Claudio's question. I knew how he'd survived on board that fell ship. He'd had to do what they said of him. He'd had to personify the dreadful seafarers' tales of dark savages that devour unwary sailors, and cook them in great cauldrons like pottage. He'd had to do what he did alone, and in the desperate dark, and it would haunt him for ever.

‘Benedick,' called Claudio haltingly. ‘Are you coming? Sicily awaits.'

Sicily. And now I could think of Beatrice, and unleash those hopes at last. I was under no illusions – she might have married the poet after all, as I had rejected and abandoned her and cast her in his way. Or she might have gone home to Verona and found some young sprig there. I could only hope against hope that she might be in Sicily to pay her respects to her aunt, and was still free.

And then? Then I would know how to act. I would not simper nor posture, nor sigh like a lover. I was done with dandy clothes and fancy airs. I would be myself, be the Benedick I had learned to be. And we would battle in our old way, and I would pray that the blows might turn to kisses, as they had once before.

I turned my horse to walk alongside Claudio's, and we met the prince at the gatehouse of El Escorial. Don Pedro spurred his horse ahead of his company, his pennant streaming forth. And as I had done a year ago, I followed the prince, Claudio and the sun; to Sicily.

ACT FIVE

Sicily: Summer 1589

Beatrice:
I should not have come, for now I was in Sicily Benedick was everywhere; and nowhere.

I had done no more than leave my trunk at my uncle's house and greet my grieving cousin before I had gone at once, even in the midday sun, to climb the mount to my aunt's tomb. And on that journey, short as it was, the memories of Benedick assailed me. The ebb and flow of the tide sounded like his voice, and the temperate winds whispered his name. The scamels sung his favourite air from the oleanders, and the crickets imitated his laughter from the dunes.

I kept my eyes ahead as I climbed to the hilltop necropolis of the
Cimiterio Monumentale.
I resisted the peerless view that was whispering at my back. I did not want to look, yet, at this land of absolutes – the place where I laughed the most, and cried the most. The place where I found love and lost it. The place where I had given Benedick use for my heart. I knew now he'd abandoned it here when he'd left. And now I'd come back to claim it, it was worthless; a single heart instead of a double one.

At last I reached the Leonatus family tomb, where the dead Leonati huddled in their chilly mausoleums to overlook their living relatives below. It was hard to think that my aunt Innogen, mother's sister to me, was now inside that pale stone. I twined my fingers in the curlicues of the wrought-iron gates, gates that represented the portal between the living and the
dead, from which, once passed, no traveller returns. Bumbling bees buzzed around the floral tributes twined into the wrought iron, but determinedly did not pass through the grille. Even such lowly insects knew that to enter a tomb meant no coming out again. ‘Greetings, Aunt,' I said, and took a crust from my sleeve.

I had come to perform a rite. A rite that once seemed strange to me as a northerner – I found it odd that in Sicily you would remember the dead not with floral tributes and prayers and solemn hymns, but instead bring your children and your curs and your grandmothers and a picnic, and feast upon the tomb of an old friend. I wondered whether the camaraderie continued under the ground; if beneath the stone memorials and mournful epitaphs whole families embraced in a companionable jumble of bones, to dispute over whose knucklebones were whose.

As I broke my bread at the gates, I remembered with a jolt that in this particular tomb, two women lay. My aunt was interred here by family right and rite; but Guglielma Crollalanza, a handful of secret cinders, had been buried here too a year past.

My appetite was gone. I threw the last morsel of my bread through the gates to the dead and brushed the crumbs from my lap with an air of finality. Everything ends. You could not begin again. I had paid my respects, and now I would go. Hero would have to shift for herself; she had no need of me. I would collect my unopened trunk and head to the port, to buy passage on a ship to take me home again to my father. Sicily had changed beyond measure. For Benedick was not here, and without him, things could not be as they were a year earlier.

The buzz of the bees turned to the distant rasp of a trumpet.

As if I had summoned a vision, I looked below and saw a procession of soldiers winding along the sea road from the port. Their armour sparkled, their scarlet pennants streamed in the
warm southern winds. I could not, at this distance, make out the device on the standard, but my heart recognised it with a jolt before my eyes did. The processional pennants of the royal house of Aragon.

Was the scene real? Or had my memory of a year ago, of a cavalcade just like this one, conjured it? For that procession had first brought Benedick to me. And all else was forgotten as I saw, as I had a year ago amongst the muster, a golden head bobbing on a horse. This horse was a grey, though; Benedick's beloved mount, Babieca, had been a bay. If the horse was different, was the rider too?

I had to be sure. Heart thudding, I set off down the incline, scattering a murrain flock of scrawny sheep who stopped and turned at a safe distance to watch me, before dipping their polls again to snatch at the bitter grass.

At the foot of the hill I hurried down the Via Catania to Leonato's house.

I ducked under the pleached bower, past the fountains and through the pleasure gardens. The fruit trees, pollarded and pruned, stood in a neat quincunx. They looked like soldiers. I felt a sudden foreboding; why had the regiment come back to Messina? Was there to be more fighting?

I hastened to the coloured courtyard where I found my uncle, in his black silken robes of mourning. He was in the centre of the Roman mosaic, standing upon the very face of Medusa. With one of his hands he held a letter close to his old eyes, with the other he stroked his silver beard. A messenger in scarlet livery knelt at his feet, keeping his eyes respectfully on the mosaic. My uncle looked up at my approach and waved the letter at me.

‘It seems you are not to be our only visitor, Niece,' he said. ‘I learn in this letter that Don Pedro of Aragon comes to Messina. Claudio is returned too, having done great service in these wars.'

I felt a squeeze of my hand, and Hero was beside me. I had not seen her enter the courtyard, nor even noted her till now. I understood just how well she had learned to hug the shadows in these last days, and stand in sober silence, just as my uncle wished. I glanced at her. Her mourning apparel did not become her, for dark colours drained her sallow complexion and grief had made new hollows in her cheeks. But now she looked as if she was lit from within; coral flamed in her pale cheeks, and her eyes were as bright as a gull's. Claudio's name had been enough to illuminate her like this.

My uncle spoke again. ‘Claudio's uncle will be very glad of his return. I must send a missive by fast rider.'

So the Archbishop of Monreale still lived,
I thought, with a curl of my lip. I had hoped he had died in the interim, but dismissed the prelate from my mind. I cared not for the prince or Claudio, or the county's evil uncle. I cared only for news of one man; but now it came to it, I could not say the words. ‘Tell me, Uncle …' I thought quickly, pretending that I did not recall
his
name. ‘Is Signor Mountanto returned from the wars?'

My uncle looked puzzled, as well he might. ‘Who is it that you ask for, Niece?'

‘My cousin means Signor Benedick of Padua,' supplied Hero hesitantly, as if she feared to speak in company.

My uncle chuckled, a sound at odds with his melancholy garb. ‘Oh, he's returned; and will no doubt take up the cudgels with you for a bout.'

Warm relief washed me like the Messina tide. Then a tucket sounded and my heart leaped to my mouth. The cavalcade approached.

The soldiers rode in a phalanx, behind the standard-bearer, with the dark Don Pedro at their head, just as they had a year ago. They were all in the livery of St James, with their medals clanking against their half-armour as they trotted, but I had no difficulty in picking one knight out from the rest. It was
Benedick, really, truly he; breathing in and breathing out, and rising and falling in his saddle. It was the loveliest single moment of my life; the first time in a year I had proof positive – the most incontrovertible proof of all, the proof of my own eyes – that he was alive.

He was much changed. His skin was ruddy like a sailor's, tanned by the winds. His hair was longer and sun-gilded about his face with streaks as blond as winter wheat. And he was much thinner; as thin as a cursitor. I breathed in, cursing Paris for fattening me up like a Christmas goose. Benedick's slim frame made him seem taller, and his shoulders broader. The horse he rode was not his old horse Babieca, and I wondered what had happened to his favoured mount. There was no sign, either, of the easy smile that I remembered, but my breath quickened as he rode closer, and the breeze lifted the locks from his forehead. Now I saw that his eyes were greener than ever in a complexion tanned by travel. I could not look away. He had vitality in every inch of him.

Don Pedro dismounted on the Roman pavement and greeted my uncle. ‘Good Signor Leonato,' said the prince, embracing the older man fondly, ‘and so we must trouble you for your hospitality once more.'

‘Trouble never came to my house in Your Grace's company,' babbled my uncle. Now this was far from true, for I recalled the events of the previous summer. I bobbed about upon the balls of my feet, trying to see Benedick, but there were more introductions to make. An ill-favoured and miserable-looking fellow stepped forth and was introduced as Don John, Don Pedro's brother. There seemed to have been some sort of schism between the brothers, lately reconciled, but I had no patience with their affairs. Hero stepped forth, and the prince warmly kissed her hand, but above his bowed head she and Claudio mingled eyes, and I recall that the count liked her before he went to war. Suddenly I realised why the cavalcade was here;
they were not here to wage war but to woo; and so their hearts were in just as much jeopardy as a year before.