It was some way into the performance before I noticed the man sitting on the fountain bowl a little way from me. He was laughing too loudly, with the confidence of a man who had been born with enough privilege that no one will dare to silence him. But it was a cheerful noise and it was that which drew my gaze to him first; I was disposed, that day, towards happiness and amusement, to pull me from my trough of misery. He was Don Pedro.
I was surprised to see him. The way is long from Messina to Monreale. Besides, he could, had he wanted, have travelled in mine and Claudio’s train; but he must have had a clandestine purpose for he was without cortège or retinue. He was dressed in scarlet and black, but had left off his armour today – yesterday he would have resembled the puppets more closely.
When he laughed he threw back his head and opened his mouth to show all his teeth. His fangs made me think of a cat of the Africas that I had seen in a menagerie once. He was the same; an oily black pelt, pin-sharp ivory teeth, and easy grace as he relaxed his long frame along the fountain’s edge. He could have been purring. Humbly, I looked away again – I was not sure if he would recognise me, as in his cavalcade from Venice he kept with his officers and when he spoke to us he spoke to Claudio, who was nearer him in rank. I did not wish to presume, and turned my attention back to the play in hand.
Now the ridiculous French had been joined by a band of handsome puppets with red bandannas about their foreheads and particoloured hose like harlequins. These, I supposed, were the Sicilians; the heroes of the tableau. The Sicilians seemed to be questioning the French – trying to get them to speak their language, to say a particular word. Ci ci, it sounded like; Cici. The French could not say it – She-she, they lisped. She-she. Don Pedro laughed at the hapless French. She-she. I laughed. Everybody laughed.
Then the bells of the little white church in the scenery swung and gave their tinny chime, and behind us, as if to assist the counterfeit players’ pretence, the bells of the cathedral boomed fit to shiver my ribs. The French puppets knelt and placed their hands together, while the Sicilians settled down to sleep, the puppets collapsing as their strings slackened and their joints crumpled together.
Everyone in the crowd was curiously still and my hands were cold where they trailed in the fountain. I felt a sudden, unbearable foreboding. The puppets now seemed real to me, the play was real, and the soldiers were real. I could hardly breathe as I watched the kneeling French with dread and pity; and when the Sicilians jumped up and drew their knives I felt a sense of inevitability. I had known this would happen.
The Sicilians tore into the foil breastplates of the French and pulled forth little red paper hearts, with rolled red ribbons attached to them to represent the blood and shambles. The ribbons flew into the crowd and the watching children – who knew this story well, it seemed – gathered them up; the little maids even tied them in their hair. The crowd cheered and clapped and the puppeteers came forth to collect the adulation and the coins. There was just one greybeard and his son, to operate all those multitudes. Puppetry, like murder, was obviously a family business here.
Don Pedro clapped with the rest, rose and flipped the pair a silver real, a gesture so generous that both father and son removed hood and liripipe and bowed.
I stayed in my place, not sure whether to greet the prince, but he turned to me at once. ‘Signor Benedick, is it not?’
Now I scrambled to my feet and bowed. The flourish of my hand sent a few drops of water on to his surcoat, where they sat on the nap of the velvet like diamonds. ‘Yes, Highness.’
‘Take your ease,’ he said. ‘I am here incognito, as you Italians say. And having watched that little play, it might be politic not to let these good people know that I am one of the ruling class.’ I smiled as I was required to; for Sicily had been under the Spanish yolk for nigh on three centuries; they were the latest in a long line of invaders from antique times to the hapless French. Even now that paper king, the viceroy, sat upon his borrowed throne in nearby Palermo. I thought little of Don Pedro’s alias, though; from his dress and grooming, and his easy distribution of his pieces of eight, there could be no mistaking him for anything but a Spaniard.
The prince sat back down on the fountain and motioned me to sit beside him, seemingly content to rest and talk on. ‘A cautionary tale, did you not think?’
‘I did not understand all of it,’ I confessed.
‘The Sicilian Vespers. They tell the story to their children here like a bedtime tale.’ He stretched out his legs. ‘The locals asked the French to say cirici: chickpea. Those that could not were identified as the enemy, and that evening, when the bells chimed for vespers, they murdered every one of them.’
‘Killed by a humble chickpea,’ I mused. ‘I knew the food here was poison.’
A little moppet tripped over my feet, and I set her on to her feet again with a smile. Her pigtails were tied up with ribbons of blood.
‘It is no accident,’ he said. I thought he spoke of the child, but his eyes were on the puppet cart. ‘It is no accident that they enact this play now. The people are sick of conquerors. Romans. Greeks. Arabs. Normans. French. They put up with them for a while,’ he shrugged expressively, ‘and then they’ve had enough. The blood runs close to the surface in Sicily. Like that hill of fire over there.’ He gestured to the volcano, sleeping on the skyline, a line of blue smoke rising to join the clouds. ‘All quiet and calm, until, bang.’ He opened his fingers in a spiky explosion.
I understood him now. ‘And today, the archbishops and viceroys and princes of Spain.’
‘Indeed. God save us from such a fate.’ He crossed himself rapidly, across and down, across and down, stitching his heart firmly into his chest with the warp and weft of faith.
I nodded in agreement, the foreboding and melancholy returning to shroud my own heart. I felt, suddenly, that some misfortune had befallen Sebastian, or he would have written to me – that he was shipwrecked, drowned, dead.
‘Are you well, signor?’ asked the prince, with more fellow feeling than I would have given him credit for. ‘You were merrier on the road, I think.’ I thought then, he is here for a reason, but, like myself, he has some leisure, and is content to while away the time catechising me.
‘I was put in mind of a friend – more of a brother, to say truly – who is in danger’s way.’
‘A soldier?’
Was there no avoiding the subject? ‘No, not that – an adventurer, more.’
‘This world offers no greater adventure than to ride into the field of battle. And you? Your city-states are quarrelsome, I believe; and for a soldier opportunity is all. Have you ever seen battle?’
‘Why does everyone ask that?’ I meant it for a jest, a diversion, but he leaned into me, so close I could see the dark whiskers breaking though his skin, and spoke in deadly earnest.
‘Because something is coming,’ he said. ‘It is time to stand up and be counted. To pick your side.’
‘Is that what you were doing in Venice?’ I asked, without a thought for my insolence. But the prince did not seem to mind my curiosity.
‘Partly, yes. Believe me, I have good reason for asking. Have you ever been a soldier?’
I was tired of all this talk of soldiery. ‘I, Prince?’ I said. ‘Have I not been up and down the map, naked sword in hand, looking for argument? Have I not followed every colour of the rainbow, taking every prince’s pennant as my own? Have I not worn mail so many days that my very flesh is patterned like a Turkey carpet?’
‘Have you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘But I once heard a chestnut explode in a farmer’s fire.’
Don Pedro laughed louder than he had when the French puppets expired.
‘There, sir, you are your old self again.’ He wiped his eyes. ‘Believe me, I know your pain. I, too, miss my brother Don John; he is minding our estates in Aragon, where, I trust, he will prove a good and faithful steward. Perhaps we can be companions for each other for the while?’ He looked at me contemplativ
ely. ‘And you may yet wear a soldier’s coat, though you have not seen active practice.’
‘What do you mean?’
He swung his legs down and sat straight, as if he was on his throne. The cat was gone. ‘Only this. Not all battles are fought in the field. Your countryman, Machiavelli, taught the world that. Sometimes, in a great cause, a man needs a sword and cannon and horses, it is true. But sometimes he needs an affable fellow, a fellow who is amusing, who seems harmless; a fellow who can move among dukes and counts, make them laugh, make them confide in him. Sometimes,’ he said carefully, ‘even a prince needs a man who can hear things.’
‘Are you talking about … a spy?’
‘Let us say an agent, rather. You saw the play. Despite our long vice-regency, we are outsiders here, still. I need someone who can speak to these Sicilian lords in their own language. Someone,’ he smiled briefly, ‘who can say chickpea.’
I decided not to tell him that a Paduan was as much of a stranger here as a Spaniard, for I was intrigued by his sayings.
‘Something is coming,’ the prince repeated. ‘Soon, very soon, we may have need of you,’ he said enigmatically.
I considered. I was not thinking of danger, or intrigue, or even the purse I could accept for such work. Above all, I was thinking of Lady Beatrice. She had chided me with having no occupation. Well, now I was being offered the most dashing of all.
A spy.
That single, sibilant syllable sounded spicy, secret, enticing. All the things that I, Benedick, could be. Benedick, the Spy. What would Beatrice say to me then?
I began to smile. Don Pedro clapped me on the back, and, as if he had rung my heart in my ribs like a clapper, the great bells chimed behind me in the cathedral. I rose. ‘I am to collect my young charge at twelve bells,’ I said apologetically.
‘Claudio Casedei is the young count’s name?’ It was not really a question. ‘He is of a wealthy Florentine family, I think?’ It was spoken very casually.
‘The wealthiest.’ I said. ‘The Tournabuoni. And, through his mother’s marriage, the Medici too. His uncle Ferdinando is the …’ I began, and then stopped. Don Pedro slid his dark eyes to meet mine, and I realised with a jolt that my mission had already begun. ‘His uncle is Ferdinando de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and he holds the purse-strings of all Florence,’ I said. ‘And Claudio’s uncle on his mother’s side – whom he is visiting even now, in the cathedral there – is the archbishop of this city of Monreale.’ I was sure that this second piece of information the prince knew as well as I; but the first I thought was news to him.
‘I will go with you,’ said Don Pedro. ‘Our host Leonato has invited us all to a masked ball in his pleasure gardens tonight, and I must visit the tailors in Palermo for a costume. Why do not we go together?’ He looked me up and down, from my Venetian suit of clothes to my Florentine shoes. ‘And while we are there, as you are to join my cavalcade, we will get you caparisoned like a soldier, and mounted like a corsair. We will visit the barbers too,’ he said balefully, eyeing my curls as the Sicilian puppets had eyed the French, ‘for your fleece rivals Jason’s.’
I mounted the steps to the church with him, and he stopped in the porch under the shade of an enormous palm tree, and faced me, as if we were to be wed. His mind clearly tended that way too, for he asked, ‘And you are not married, or betrothed?’
The tree did not shade me and the sun was now at his highest; I quailed under his and the prince’s eye. In truth, the lady Beatrice had jolted me, and I knew it would take very little encouragement to make me fall in love with her. But under the prince’s gaze I felt suddenly sure that I must deny this. I shook my head. ‘I have not yet seen that special face that I could fancy more than any other.’
‘Not even the Lady Beatrice and her fortune?’
So he had seen us talk at dinner. I grimaced convincingly. ‘Least of all she. Why would I betroth myself to unquietness? If we were but a week married we would talk each other mad.’ Then I realised what he had said. ‘Wait – what fortune?’
‘Her father is Bartolomeo Della Scala, Prince Escalus of Villafranca. He is the kingmaker of Verona, for the other two great families are perpetually at war. She is not the heir at present, though – she has an older brother.’
‘Ah yes, the great quarreller.’
He misunderstood me. ‘Precisely. He does not have the gift of Prince Escalus, to stay out of the squabbles of the Veronese. He may not outlive his father.’
Now I am not a religious man, but this, said so coldly on the hot steps of a cathedral, was a little more matter-of-fact than I cared for.
‘And if he does beat his father to the grave … then she will be a princess and a prize indeed. What do you think now?’
‘I think, Prince, that if you know so much, you have no need of a spy.’
He laughed. ‘Her great wealth does not change your mind?’
It did not. My own father was only a merchant, but he had chinks enough. ‘I swear on my allegiance that I will die a bachelor. Else, what would all the other ladies of the world do? For they all adore me, and I am a confessed tyrant to their sex.’
He laughed once more, showing his teeth. ‘That is well – for single men are single-minded. And you will need your wits about you for the task to come.’
And I entered the church, walking a little taller than when I had left the cloister; and whatever denials I had made to the prince, I had but one thought in my mind; how the Lady Beatrice would greet the new Signor Benedick tonight.
Act II scene ii
A masque in Leonato’s garden
Beatrice: When I saw Signor Benedick, I laughed till I ached.
I’d had such good intentions too. I was genuinely contrite for the way I’d treated him the previous night at dinner, and had dressed with great care, determined tonight to make good.
The garden was dressed in its best too. The night was still warm and numberless candles, their flames amplified by halos of polished pewter, stood in each niche and rockery like tiny sentinel angels. Strings of lanterns reached from tree to tree, and torches flamed in wavering ranks set into the ground by each alley and walk. Musicians wandered about the gardens in little groups, so that, turning a corner in the maze or bower, you might come across a lutenist or a viol player, running the gamut of your conversation. Castrati, naked except for their loincloths, and painted white like statues, stood dotted around the garden in various attitudes, only to come to life and begin to sing when a guest wandered past, their clear pure treble voices floating up to the stars. The effect was magical.
Hero and I were charged to meet the guests and conduct them to where the masks were waiting for them. Hero had suggested, since at a masque we were supposed to dress as other than ourselves, that she should wear a gown of my favourite blue, and that I should wear a flame-coloured gown of Barbary silk, that had been bought from Tripoli for Hero but was too long. It was a beautiful dress, the bright silk cool and flowing. I wore strings of yellow diamonds and topaz about my throat which cascaded in a glittering firefall over my bodice, like the lava that spilled from the volcano. A cunning panel at the waist and flare at the hips made my waist seemed tiny. My inward humours matched my gown, flaming with excitement.
My uncle had had dozens of the finest masks conveyed from Venice, and all afternoon his gardeners had been hanging them about the low-hanging branches of the great mulberry trees clustered in the middle of his lawn, for his guests to pluck like fruits. Now, in the darkness, the varnished faces peeped out between the lanterns in their glowing, jewel-like colours; peacocks, lions, columbines, jesters. Here were celestial faces too; moons dusted with powdered pearl, stars sprinkled with glittering diamonds, and suns crowned with gilded rays. I could see, among the masks, faces from the picture cards of the Scopa deck, one king, one queen and one knave. I untied the queen and placed her face over my own. I wondered whether Signor Benedick would choose to be the king.
Or the knave.
It was th
en that I saw him, walking down the ride from the house, flanked by the prince on one side and young Claudio on the other. I began to smile, for he was changed indeed – the green caterpillar had become a brave scarlet butterfly.
He was wearing the livery of St James, with a Spanish doublet, sleeves slashed up and down and double breasts carved like an apple pie. The sleeves, tight from elbow to wrist, tapered like cannons. His hair was cut short around the ears, tamed, combed down with a pomade I could smell from where I stood, parted on the side and styled in a curl plastered on his forehead. He walked with great pride and importance, taller than ever in vertiginous boots with high block heels. The stubble of his face had gone to stuff tennis balls, and only the shadow of a moustache shaded his lip, with a small triangular beard below. He had turned, in short, into Don Pedro.
Hero curtsied to the prince and Claudio, who bowed, and she conveyed them to the mask tree to choose their identity. I saw my uncle fawn upon them, and cry: ‘Gentlemen, choose your visors!’ as he helped them to the tree’s most costly fruits. Benedick hung back a little, then walked over to me. He bowed with a complicated flourish.
Although he was not in armour, he was ready, it seemed, for anything; for a rapier hung from his baldric, a dagger peeped from his belt and there were several little Spanish knives stuck into his ceinture, as if it were a butcher’s belt. ‘Signor Benedick,’ I said, badly wanting to laugh. ‘Have you come to slay me?’
‘I am dressed as befits my new occupation.’ He looked about him as if the mulberries grew ears in place of leaves. ‘It is a very great secret.’ He looked down at me archly, and I realised even his eyebrows had been tamed. ‘Do not you want to know what it is?’
‘To look as foolish as possible?’
Beatrice and Benedick Page 4