Claudio, in his purple surcoat, was seated next to the daughter of the house as they were of an age, and there was some goodwife between us. He looked at me pleadingly as we sat and I smiled reassurance. At seventeen he was three years younger than myself, but I had grown to like the young fellow on our journey, once I’d discovered that his stiffness concealed a crippling shyness and his haughty manner masked a merry nature.
So, when we were all placed, the lady Beatrice was seated about six souls away, between her uncle and another bearded fellow who I took to be the governor’s brother. I could hardly see her, even by constantly moving my head as if I had an ague. Every so often I caught a tantalising glance of her long fingers, now cleansed of ink, tearing a piece of bread, or her blond curls lifting and settling as she turned her head. I would have been remiss in my duty to Claudio, were it not for the fact that the little maid of the house was keeping him enraptured with her conversation. Strangely, they seemed to be talking about scripture, and I could clearly hear the lady tell him, in her girlish pipe, some coil about the Madonna and a letter and a lock of hair. I envied Claudio that he could speak with the companion of his choice but not I with mine. Frustrated, I sat through the endless procession of local delicacies, accompanied by strangers and trapped in my chair by propriety.
The Sicilians seemed fond of marrying foods together that should never even have met. I was served a cheese with a lime inside, pasta littered with raisins, and anchovies stirred with oranges. Leonato had promised us in his welcome food such as we had never tasted; and he had made good on his promise for I had certainly never violated my palate with a repast like this before. I sighed as the next dish arrived; a pale mass resembling pigswill, wrapped in a fatty filigree of cow’s caul. ‘Maco,’ said my neighbour helpfully, but I did not know if she named the dish or warned me against it. My innards rumbled and I would, at that moment, have given all of Don Pedro’s fortune for a dish of doves. In the end, my stomach growled at me so much that I tried a tiny bit of the stew – just so much as I could take on my knife’s point. It was bland and mealy and my northern palate rebelled. I was glad that I had thought to bring a little pouch of fiery Paduan mustard, yellow and hot as the sun, which I discreetly but liberally sprinkled on that platter and every one thereafter.
In the midst of this parade of strange dishes, I saw my chance, when the bearded fellow beside the lady Beatrice left his seat to speak to one of the servers. I rose and quickly nipped into the seat next to her, twisting into the chair like an eel so that the bearded gentleman, upon his return, almost sat in my lap. I grinned at him; he waggled his head at me in reproof and walked away to the other end of the board, muttering. I turned my smile upon the lady, but she regarded me warily. Close to she was better than ever – her blue eyes very direct, her coral mouth plump like a rosebud, her eyebrows dark and expressive. Her hair fell in wayward curls about her face, escaping from the constraints of combs and braids; not by any means a neat hairstyle, but one that suited her remarkably well.
As the servers brought new trenchers with another alien concoction, we were necessarily silent and I considered what I would say – rare for me for I usually speak extempore. Giving her the settebello card was a good start. It usually worked; ladies were intrigued, flattered, and full of questions. They always asked about the card first, and then I could get on with the serious business of making them laugh.
But this lady did not wait for me to marshal my wit. She spoke first. And she did not mention the card.
‘Do you travel farther, Signor Benedick, or are you at the farthest?’
‘Lady Beatrice, this very chair is my destination. I came to Sicily with no other object but to sit beside you in it.’
She did not smile. ‘So you have no farther to travel?’
‘I am to convey my young charge to Monreale in the morning to visit his uncle, who is the archbishop there.’
‘But you do not stay at Monreale?’
‘No, and nor does he. There is some great coil afoot, and his uncle thought it better that he stay with yours.’
‘So you will be here for the month.’
‘At the least. And I will sit by you in this chair for every day of it, if you give me leave.’
Now she smiled and picked up her knife, as if selecting a weapon. ‘If you are to do that you must have many histories to tell, so that our evenings do not become tedious.’
‘Lady Beatrice, I have been on this good earth for a score of years, and no one has ever taxed me with being tedious.’
The next dish and her next question arrived together. ‘You must be a man of experience, then. What is your profession?’
‘I am of no profession.’
‘None?’ She raised one arched brow.
‘Is that so rare in one of our class? Do you not have idle brothers?’
‘I have one, older than myself.’
‘And what does he do?’
‘He brawls mostly. He is a great quarreller, and goes to seek trouble if it cannot find him first.’
‘But he has no occupation?’
‘His occupation is to wait for my father to die.’
‘And will his labours be concluded soon?’
‘No.’ She smiled. ‘My father is not very obliging. He will not accommodate anyone if he can help it. Nothing prompts him to good health and long life as much as the idea of thwarting his heir.’
‘And do you like your brother any better than your father does?’
‘No. We fight like cat and cur.’
‘Cannot argument be a sign of attachment?’
‘Not in this case.’
‘But in others?’ I asked swiftly.
She leaned back in her chair, regarding me with her blue gaze. ‘Call you this an argument, Signor Benedick? I would never favour an acquaintance with one of my arguments on a first encounter.’
‘We must be friends, then, before I am admitted to the pleasure of disputing with you?’
‘Precisely,’ she said smartly. ‘But I prize honesty in my friends above all things, and I am afraid you have not been honest with me.’
I spread my hands like a conjuror, hiding nothing. ‘I have spoken plain and to the purpose. Tell me how I’ve erred.’
She looked down at her trencher. ‘When you said you had no profession, you did not speak truly. If you are delivering a young count to his uncle, you are a nursemaid.’
‘Like you?’ I countered.
‘I am my cousin’s companion,’ she corrected. ‘I teach her English, a little Latin and less Greek.’
Now I had to change the subject, for I was a poor student, and could not parry with her in any of those tongues. ‘I joined Count Claudio at Venice, as his father asked mine if I would accompany him to Sicily. I was his companion,’ I said with gentle emphasis, ‘and made him laugh along the way.’
‘You are a paid fool, then?’ Her coral lips curled a little.
‘Is that not an honourable profession?’
I raised my goblet to indicate a dwarf in motley, who turned cartwheels between the tables before bowing deeply in front of the prince. But the fool was facing the wrong way, and at his cue the trumpets blared as if he had broken wind. Don Pedro played along, fanning his face with his long fingers. Beatrice turned to me. ‘Honourable indeed,’ she agreed, in a voice laced with irony. ‘You are the prince’s jester, then?’
‘I hardly know Don Pedro. I have similarly only been in his company since Venice. We joined his company when he was collecting ships for his king. I have spoken no more than two words to him, but now I think of it, both times he laughed.’ I poked at the next course set before me – some sort of meat, so rarely cooked that it was still bleeding. In our conversation too, the bloodletting continued.
‘If you are of no profession, you must have other diversions. Do you have no interests, no hobbies to fill your hours? Do you enjoy music?’ She nodded to the gap in the tables, where her uncle’s musicians were torturing their instruments for our pl
easure.
‘I think it strange that they should serenade us upon sheep’s guts while we eat the rumps. No,’ I decided, ‘there’s not a note of theirs that’s worth the noting.’
‘And what of poetry?’
I shrugged. ‘I am a man who speaks plainly. I cannot understand one word in ten that your uncle says. His words are stranger than his dishes.’
She laughed then, and I enjoyed the sound not just for its pleasing aspect but for the respite it bought me from her attack. I was beginning to feel like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at me.
‘Are you a good horseman?’
‘I know which end points forward, and which back.’
‘You are a pilgrim then, and walk the silver road with a shell in your hat?’ She was making fun of me.
‘You sound like my young friend Claudio; he is quite the devout. I will answer you as I answer him. God has no quarrel with me and I have none with him – we let each other alone.’ I adopted a rich, rolling voice like her uncle. ‘The God of love, who sits above … quick, ask me the poetry question again.’
She smiled but asked a different one.
‘Are you a swordsman, then?’
‘I refer you to my reply upon the subject of horseflesh; I know one end from the other.’ I relented. ‘I learned, of course; but if you give me a rapier and a dagger, and my enemy a parsnip and a stick of celery, he will come out the victor.’
‘So you have never taken commission for a soldier?’
‘No, but I think you should. Do you catechise your brother like this?’
‘Signor Benedick, we are not brother and sister.’
‘No,’ I said, looking into her lovely face, her features alive with argument, ‘that we are not.’
‘But life in armour holds no attraction for you?’
I threw up my hands, in a mock gesture of surrender. ‘You are hard on me, Lady Beatrice. Would it make you kinder, I wonder, if I was on the way to be lain low by some axe-wielding German, or scimitar-swinging Saracen?’
She seemed to be considering this. ‘It is one way to measure a man, by his length on the battlefield.’
‘And you find me wanting?’
She looked at me very directly. ‘I have not yet made up my mind.’
Outfaced by her honesty, I took a drink of my wine. It was thick and red and sour like blood. ‘More often than not soldiers are younger sons, bored by their homely hearths, looking for action. Hotspurs, roaring boys.’ I banged down my cup. ‘If I want to let off steam in an iron coat, I will put a kettle on the fire.’
‘Ah, well.’ She sighed gustily and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Then I cannot give you a gage, if you are not a knight.’
‘A what?’
‘A gage; a favour that a lady gives a knight to wear when he rides into the lists. Usually a ribbon or a flower. Or sometimes,’ she said with delicate emphasis, ‘a playing card.’
There it was. She had mentioned the settebello card at last, but I had lost the advantage of my gambit. She had kept it in her hand, masterfully waiting, and only played it when I was already annoyed. I lost my head. ‘Lady Beatrice. I was lucky enough to be born to a wealthy family. I do not have to till the winter fields like some peasant, nor slave under a hot sun. I take the view, and you may not admire me for it, that as long as I am no trouble to any one I may do as I like. I eat when I have stomach, sleep when I am drowsy and laugh when I am merry. In short, I am quite happy to wear out my youth with shapeless idleness.’
I realised that the room had quietened, and those near to us were listening closely. She heard me in silence, a little smile playing about her damned, beautiful mouth. She had won and she knew it. I lowered my voice to a hiss.
‘But next time there is a muster, I will give up your name for a knight.’
I would have said more, but there was a little commotion as the prince began to rise. The hour was late and the little lady of the house wished to retire, and Claudio was holding her chair for her. My lady Beatrice rose gracefully to accompany her; clumsily, too late, I scrambled to my feet to pull out her chair with an ugly scrape. She turned to murmur her parting shot in my ear.
‘If I am the knight, then I thank you for my gage.’ She favoured me with a soldier’s grin. ‘But now our joust is at an end, and I am the victor, I have the honour to return it.’ She nodded to my plate as she turned to go, and spoke her parting riposte over her shoulder. ‘If you have no more stomach, Lady, you had better turn your trencher. Farewell.’
Disconcerted, I turned over my trencher, as was the custom when the meal was done.
And there was the seven of coins, the settebello, looking up at me.
ACT TWO
Act II scene i
A square before a church in Monreale
Benedick: Having delivered Claudio to his uncle in the cathedral of Monreale, I kicked my heels in the cloister while I waited for him.
I had assumed that I would be required to attend mass and had prepared myself to yawn through the liturgy for a couple of hours. But the good archbishop, clothed in gold and sitting in his throne beneath a giant mosaic of Christ Pantocrator, wept and smiled to see his nephew, then turned dry eyes upon me. He thanked me most graciously for conveying Claudio to him safely, and bid me come back at noon. I looked in his closed face, and the eyes as almond and inscrutable as the eyes of the Christ that floated above him upon the golden walls, and felt, with certainty, that he had some secrets to speak to his nephew. And so I turned myself out of his holy doors, and wandered into the cloister.
The cloister was more like a garden than a holy place, a vast space planted with glossy-leaved orange, olive and almond trees. The quadrangle was laid with pale stone paths and intersected with tiny dark green hedges cut into intricate patterns and lopped at shin level, just the right height to trip a man. In the centre, picking at the hedges with their orange bills, half-a-dozen snow-white geese wandered, honking importantly. No doubt they were sacred or something, but the very sight of them made my stomach growl. I had eaten little more than bread and mustard at dinner, and drunk overmuch. No doubt the apothecaries would say my grumbling stomach was contributing to my morning melancholy.
I walked beneath the shady loggias, striding from one arched shadow to the next, dodging the climbing sun. On the long ride to Monreale, I had not been merry company for Claudio, brooding instead on what Lady Beatrice had said to me the night before, and I fingered the settebello card, where it sat in my baldric, a hard little rectangle just over my heart.
In that huge place, with everyone inside for mass, I could hear the soaring notes of the choir, and I suddenly felt very alone. Strangely, when the choir began their motet, even the geese had suddenly hushed their honking and disappeared. I was not accustomed to my own company, and I did not like myself as a friend. When I was alone my thoughts clamoured loudly into the silence. But I did not want to hear my own thoughts, did not want to peer into my own heart and did not enjoy searching my soul.
But however hard I tried to concentrate on the music of the mass, unwanted thoughts began to creep into my mind.
What is your occupation?
Since boyhood I had always followed wherever others led, like a leaf in the stream. I would have stayed at home for ever had not my latest companion Sebastian taken it into his head to travel; once he was gone then loneliness and dislike of my own company persuaded me to take my father’s offer to accompany Claudio Casadei to Sicily. And now I had reached a new nadir. I had followed a seventeen-year-old novellino all the way to this alien place, and had now been turned away from God’s house, to be told to return and pick up God’s nephew in a brace of hours. Lady Beatrice was right. I was a nursemaid – a nutshell of a man, with no kernel, no substance.
If there had been a stone underfoot I would have kicked it, but the well-swept paths afforded me no such outlet. The song of the choir swelled in my chest like a tide of sadness and pricked at my eyeballs. I sought escape, and walked through a white archwa
y into the bleached piazza beyond.
There there were people and bustle aplenty, and my melancholy began to subside. Here was colour and company and life and noise. Seeking diversion, I spotted a bright cart at the far side of the square and walked over to peer at it. The thing was large and bravely painted in red and blue and yellow, with carved curlicues of gilt and golden frames bordering fantastical scenes all round the sides. The side of the cart facing into the square was comprised of a stage with a pair of blood-bright curtains, closed at present. A bored-looking mule stood between the traces, and a knot of people gathered about the cart with an air of expectation, as if it was a conjuror’s box.
I retreated to the fountain bowl and sat on the warm stone, trailing my hand in the crystal water as I prepared to watch the coming spectacle.
I had not long to wait. With a great fanfare the red curtains opened and a little manikin appeared, so cunningly contrived that it was some moments before I realised that it was not a dwarf but a large puppet. The puppet had a helm of gold, and gilded armour and a shield. I sighed inwardly – everywhere I turned was there to be a polemic of soldiery, to make me feel even less of a man? But I was diverted when the jaw hinged open and the thing began to speak. I could not understand above half of the odd southern dialect, but I could understand by the puppet’s tortured vowels coupled with his blue blazon that he was supposed to be French. I began to smile.
The puppet was joined by a troupe of others, all with marvellously designed and jointed limbs. I could not understand how the little men were being manipulated, for there seemed to be no strings above or levers below. Only by narrowing my eyes against the fierce sun could I divine that each joint, large or small, was attached with a string as fine as a hair to control it. The scenery, too, was devilishly clever – rendered in relief, the buildings were somehow built on to backboards, set behind each other in layers so the tableaux could change. I recognised the fiery mountain above the bay and the very square where we now stood, the cathedral built in sandy stone, and a little ring of golden bells visible in the campanile. I began to enjoy myself.
Beatrice and Benedick Page 3