I looked daggers at him – how timely that he should be my rescuer, when the last time he’d held me in hand we had been dancing a measure, and he insulted me most cruelly. But he only said, looking directly at me with those green eyes, ‘How do you, lady? I hope you are not injured?’
I held my tongue and shook my head, for my fall had brought my aunt and Hero to my side, and I could not question him now, in my aunt’s hearing; for whatever the king was doing here, my uncle was caught up in this coil. Besides, as Benedick turned to transfer my hand elegantly to my aunt’s, and as he bowed to take his leave, I caught the glint of his medal of the military order of St James. He was bound up in it too.
ACT THREE
Act III scene i
The dunes before the Moor’s house
Beatrice: The morning after the Naumachia I woke early from an uneasy sleep full of dreams and blood.
I walked along the shoreline to blow away the foreboding until I reached the harbour and found the friar and the fishermen playing Scopa. I joined them for a few rounds. My luck was in and as I held the settebello I thought about the card in my room, resting in my cabinet of curiosities with St James’s finger. Both keepsakes had been given to me by Signor Benedick, for one victory and one defeat.
After I had fought with him I had been so happy; I thought he had respected me as an adversary. After I had danced with him I had been so sad; in his insults I thought I detected the influence of the Archbishop of Monreale and his other powerful new friends. And then yesterday, when he had picked me up as I stumbled down the ancient tiers of the theatre, he had spoken to me as if he did not know me, with perfect courtesy and propriety, like the very epitome of a knight errant. I preferred the insult, for to me no true respect lay behind such universal courtesy. I wondered whether his new military order had a code of behaviour to which he was striving to adhere. I wondered, too, if that was the case, whether the heart that beat beneath the medal of St James had altered for ever.
‘Lady,’ said the friar, for he never used my real name in this company, in case my little habit reached my uncle. ‘The hand is yours.’
I realised I had not moved for some moments, and swept the cards into my hand from the back of the upturned boat. I shuffled them together, and said, ‘Scopa.’ I had won the hand, and it was time to go. Scopa was all about knowing when to leave the game.
I refused the friar’s kind offer to walk me back to my uncle’s, for I needed the solitude of the beach. I remembered the last time I had walked here like this – one foot on sea and one on shore, the brine soaking my slipper. It was the day Benedick had come to the house. I had not even met him then. Then my heart had been full of the valiant Moor. But from that day to this it was Signor Benedick that was forever in my mind’s eye. I had to admit to myself that at the tournament, and again the previous night at the Naumachia, he had overthrown more than his enemies. He had become to me the only man of Italy, the man that I would rather spend my time with than any other whether in dispute or accord. I would rather fight with him than be civil with any other man.
Yet to acknowledge the truth would avail me nothing. He had his brothers in arms, and Don Pedro, the friend of his heart. He had made his feelings about me, about all of my sex, as clear as day. I could never hope for the sweet bliss shared by the Moor and his lily-white love. I was passing their home now, and was suddenly struck; if he was an admiral and she a noblewoman, why had I not seen them since that day? Why had they not attended any of my uncle’s many entertainments, if he was so regarded in military circles? Was it because the admiral was a Moor? I decided to climb the dunes to see whether I could spy the couple.
There was indeed a figure there on the sands by the Moor’s house; but only one. He was hunched at the bottom of the dunes, facing the infinite sea, the wind lifting his thin hair. And round about him was a wonder – he had created a sea of his own. Hundreds of creamy pages were laid all about him, each one crammed with yard upon yard of spidery writing, and weighted down with a pebble to foil the wind. I watched him for a while; he was alternately scribbling on a page of paper resting on a hornbook, and raising his head to look out to sea, as if seeking inspiration. At length he would finish the page he was writing and hold it to the wind by two corners as if it was laundry. Then he turned my way to find a stone to anchor it. That’s when he saw me. He was Michelangelo Crollalanza, the poet.
I was not sure whether to continue upon my way but he waved the sheet at me and I walked carefully over to him, stepping cautiously over the pages. I would have told him not to get up, but he made no move to rise in my presence and I suspected, as I had done before, that the expected courtesies of society held no importance for him; a trait, I guessed, that he inherited from his mother.
‘What are you writing?’
‘A wrong.’ He smiled bitterly with one side of his mouth, as I had remembered him doing at the wedding at Syracuse.
‘This is a singular place to write. Can you not write indoors?’
He shook his head. ‘My father has the only study and has spread himself about it. My mother likes the outdoors. She says she never feels comfortable in a room.’
That I could understand – in the few encounters I’d had with her Guglielma Crollalanza always seemed to have something wild about her, as if she would be more at home in nature.
‘His work is more important than mine, so I give up the space readily. He is righting wrongs too.’
‘What wrongs?’
‘The Spanish are bad stewards of his island. They have claimed the common land, they have trodden on the backs of the poor to build their great estates.’
Unbidden, I sat beside him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Last night’s pageant,’ he argued, ‘how much did it cost? One jewel from that player-king’s tabard alone would feed a family for a year. And how many fine dishes have been paraded before you over the past many days? Honey of Ibla, and collyflowers and purslane? Do you know what the poor eat?’ He did not wait for an answer. ‘Maco, a stew made of chickpeas. And if they can’t get maco, they eat grass, like the kine.’ He ripped a handful from the ground, and the sand whispered out of the roots. It looked dry and bitter, not something you would give even to a mule. ‘Bread is so precious here that the Sicilians say that if you drop a crumb of bread on the ground you are condemned for eternity to try to pick it up with your eyelashes. But the viceroy himself said that the poor can sit and drink their own piss. Believe me, sometimes that happens. In Sperlinga, some of them live in caves, like beasts.’
I had never thought of such things, and felt ashamed, thinking of all the dishes I had left, at my uncle’s house, at the wedding at Syracuse, because my belly was full, or because I had no appetite, so fattened was I with flirtation. ‘Is that why your father came back?’
‘Yes. He could not stand idly by. And we had word that he was in danger in the north.’
I remembered what Guglielma Crollalanza had said of her husband. The sun grew too hot for him in the north. And then I remembered something else. He has a different religion to the archbishop and the intelligence to disseminate it. After the play last night, such differences seemed dangerous. ‘Because of his religion?’
‘Yes. He follows the teachings of John Calvin.’
I knew a little of the to-do in Europe between the Protestants and Catholics, but it all seemed a long way away from Sicily. ‘Do such things affect us here?’
Now he looked at me as if I was a stranger. ‘Such matters affect all of us, everywhere.’
‘Not I,’ I said, thinking it true.
‘And yet you watched a play about it, just last night.’
‘So it was you, at the theatre!’ The exclamation burst forth before I could stop it.
‘Yes. And I did not like what I saw.’
I remembered he wrote plays as well as his poems. ‘I suppose the subject matter was a little violent for an entertainment.’
He snorted. He seemed altogether more hostile than he
had been when I had met him at dinner, more prickly, a good deal angrier. Had he changed too? I was sick of weathervane men, the shifting winds of their sex, and I would have left him to his scribblings, but I wanted to know more.
‘The public love violence,’ he said. ‘There is always a bigger crowd at a hanging than a mass. As I said, the play was not about violence, but religion, and the two go hand in hand. Soon, very soon, we will all be cast in the drama, even to the very tiniest walk-on part.’
I struggled to understand; his mind seemed to jump about so. I missed again the sallies of Signor Benedick, for Michelangelo Crollalanza was not my equal in intellect, but my better. I was moved to display what little knowledge I had. ‘But it was just an old tale; two old tales, if truth be told, for Ramiro and Boudicca never breathed the same air.’
‘Exactly.’ He waved his quill at me, as if pleased by my knowledge. ‘It was an amalgam of legends, muddled together to fit their insidious theme. They were selling a commodity, like a hot pie at a pie stand, and we all gobbled it up.’
‘Whose theme?’
‘Wake up, Lady Beatrice. The Spanish.’
‘But …’ I stammered, feeling my way. ‘It was just a play. A silly play.’
‘Then why was the King of Spain there?’
He had made a point. ‘So it was not a play?’
‘It is all a play all right. All of it. Iberia is Spain, Albion is England. And they are all players – from Philip II himself to his player-king Claudio.’
‘Claudio?’
‘When I asked the count if he had seen Pallas and the Centaur, I did not just ask a fellow idly about a painting. The work hangs in the Medici Palace. He had seen the painting, he said, in his uncle’s house. His uncle is a Medici.’
I watched a gull alight on a piece of driftwood. I was as much at sea as he. ‘What does that signify?’
‘Money, Lady Beatrice. It signifies money.’
I tried to put the pieces together. ‘So Philip of Spain is planning the downfall of England, and he needs Medici money to achieve it.’
‘And ships. That is why every nobleman in Sicily is being courted, and every merchant of note too.’ He idly sucked the grass stalk he had picked, grimaced and spat. ‘Philip also needs a harbour. That is why your uncle is Don Pedro’s host. He has been given the honour in return for the deeps of Messina’s harbour. It has the deepest sound in the seven seas, and Messina makes a good stop between Spain and England. Leonato can give Philip letters of marque – he is the Governor of Messina. When you have the thread you have the whole skein.’
I was aghast. When I had met him he had hardly known any of these men. Now he seemed to know everything, as if he could read their very mind’s construction in their faces.
I had watched the play too, and listened and seen nothing. ‘So Boudicca of Albion was Elizabeth of England.’
‘A red-headed queen with an infidel religion. Yes.’
‘And Ramiro of Asturias was Philip.’
‘Yes. Young Claudio was almost his double, in appearance, dress, everything. Did you know that in Spain Philip has forbidden his image ever to be used in a play? But here, it was allowed, encouraged. Statecraft and stagecraft are not so different. They missed no detail, damn them.’
He was angry again, and I wondered why he took such a lofty plot so personally. Then I remembered. The part of the play that had shaken me the most, the part that had filled my dreams with blood. The Moors. His mother was part Moor. ‘And what have the Moors to do with this coil?’
He did not seem to want to be drawn, but shook his head repeatedly, as if he could see the horror, until his English ruff bent like a gull’s wing.
‘That massacre, it was in Roman times. Centuries past.’
‘Ah yes, the poor dead Moors. Ancient history.’
He seemed to agree with me, but his tone told me he did not. ‘Or do you mean … is it …’ The elements of the puzzle turned in my head for a moment like the planets in an orrery, and seemed to align; only to pass and separate. The conjunction of comprehension over, the darkness came again. ‘Is it to do with the expulsion of the Moors from Sicily? But wasn’t that years ago too – the first years of Spanish rule?’
‘Years ago, yes,’ he agreed, ‘under the first viceroys. Or is it still going on, yes, even here in this very spot? The Spanish have always needed an enemy for the Sicilians, otherwise the Sicilians might ask themselves why they do not rise up and kick the Spanish into the sea. Just as they once did the French.’ He threw the torn grass viciously towards the sea, and it blew back uselessly into his lap. ‘Monreale thinks that if we can all be taught to hate the Moors then the Spanish may go about their enterprise against Elizabeth, the saviours of the island, and of the One True Religion.’ He spat the words.
I did not fully understand this, but had one more question to ask. ‘Why does Philip hate the English queen so?’
‘He wanted to marry her, and she refused him. In his wife, he might have overlooked her religion. In a woman who scorned him, her faith is anathema to him. Hatred is a good horse – you can ride him all the way to England. And as you very well know, love is a very short step from hate. Nothing moves a man to bitter words more than a woman’s scorn.’
Now he had performed his conjuror’s trick on me; we had moved from the political to the personal. ‘Are you speaking of Signor Benedick?’
He clapped his hands together. ‘Yes, let us talk of love. We have spoken of hate enough.’
I could feel my cheeks burn. ‘Who said there was love in the case?’
‘Love is often unspoken.’
I felt I could be honest with him. ‘And looks to remain so.’
He regarded me. ‘You are only in the middle of your story. Who knows how it will end? No one knows if they play in a comedy or a tragedy until the final curtain. The ending is the thing.’
I thought of the morning’s card game. ‘Like Scopa.’ I expected to have to explain, but I had forgotten he was Sicilian born.
‘Precisely. When you have the settebello, sweep the deck and leave.’
As if he suited the action to the words, he began to collect his papers, and as I helped him I read the fragment of a line.
She loved me for the dangers I had passed …
I felt a cold hand squeeze my heart. I looked up from the page. ‘What is your play about?’ The poet was ahead of me, climbing the dunes towards the house. I ran to catch up with him. It was suddenly crucial that I knew. ‘Michelangelo! What is the play about?’ I stumbled in the sand and nearly dropped the pages. The poet was opening the little wicket gate to the Moor’s house. He must be acquainted with the admiral.
As I followed him to the little loggia of the house I glanced through the window, and paused at the sight. The walls were papered with writings; scribblings, diagrams and pamphlets were stuck up with pins from floor to ceiling. In the corner was a machine made of wood and metal, with rollers and clamps and some sort of press. A darkwood desk was set in the middle of the room, piled high with leather books on which were balanced, precariously, a globe and an orrery. A man sat at the desk in a black robe with a small white ruff, over which a grey beard flowed. He wore a close-fitting black cap upon his head, and was scratching over a paper with a quill. All this I saw in an instant, but did not note the half of it. All I could ask myself was: where was the Moor? And where was the lady? As if he felt himself watched, the old man stopped writing and looked up, straight at me.
I stepped back as if struck. Then there were footsteps; the poet came back to collect my pile of pages and saw my face.
‘Who is that?’ Hands full, I pointed my chin to the room.
‘My father,’ he said simply. ‘Giovanni Florio Crollalanza.’
‘Then you … you live here?’
‘Yes. For a week now.’
I felt as if I were back in my dream. ‘Then … where is the Moor?’
The angry look came back to the poet’s face. He lifted the papers he carried to
his chin. ‘He lives only in these pages.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He is dead.’
I sat down heavily in the groin of the roots of an olive tree. The leaves whispered above me, and their shadows passed across my skin like a shoal of dark fish.
The poet hunched beside me, as I had first found him, his eyes fixed on the horizon. ‘I thought you knew,’ he said, in a voice as flat as the yellow sands. ‘Everyone knows. We took the house after it happened. It was your lady aunt who told my mother that the place was free.’
I tried to stand. Could not. ‘She never told me,’ I murmured. And there was no reason why she should have. My aunt knew nothing of my peeping and eavesdropping on the beach, of my stupid fantasy of the Moor and his wife. ‘His poor, sweet lady,’ I whispered. ‘How will she live without him?’
The poet looked down at the infinite grains of sand. ‘She does not have to. She is dead too, and by his hand. He strangled her for he thought her untrue.’
I put my head in my hands. How could they have come to this pass? The woman I had seen had eyes only for her Moor; how could he have lost trust in her? I felt, suddenly, unbearably bereft; not of the couple’s company for I did not know them, but of the idea of them, of the idea of an idyllic marriage, built on true affection and forged on equal terms. They had seemed so happy, so in love!
The sun was climbing in the sky, and my aunt would scold me if I did not return. But I could not leave without knowing. The sea had a moonstone shimmer, and I thought of the lady sitting here, waiting for her husband’s ship to come in. Now it never would. I could not bear the tragedy of it. ‘What an ending.’
The poet rubbed the back of his neck with his hand, under his hair. ‘Or a prelude to the final act.’
‘What do you mean?’
He looked about him, as if the trees could listen as well as whisper.
‘Tomorrow is Ascension Day, the day of the Vara and the Giganti in Messina. There you will see the climax of the play, I am sure of it. And a Moor will be at the centre of the stage. I told you, it is all about the ending.’
Beatrice and Benedick Page 11