Beatrice and Benedick

by Marina Fiorato

  The Vara, I knew, was the Ascension Day parade in Messina, the climax of all our recent celebrations. Hero was to play an important role this year, as each year a young girl from a well-born family was chosen to act the role of the Virgin ascending, and it was a source of great pride and excitement to Hero that she had been chosen, a feeling augmented, I knew, by the strength of Claudio’s faith. But I could not connect a local festival with this coil about the Moors. ‘Is it not just a religious procession?’ I asked.

  ‘Ye-es,’ he said slowly. ‘But it has another element that the Church has been trying to excise for years. Two giant figures on horseback are conducted through the streets; Mata and Grifone. One is a white lady, and one a Moor.’ My skin chilled.

  ‘The legend says that long ago a gigantic Moor, whose name was Hassan Ibn Hammar, landed near Messina and plundered and sacked all around. One day, during a raid, he saw a girl whose name was Marta – which we Sicilians pronounce Mata – and fell in love with her. In the end, the cruel Saracen became a Christian, changed his name to Grifone and received baptism.’

  I thought about the story. ‘But it was a happy ending. A comedy, as you would say. The Moor converted, he married his love.’

  He nodded. ‘Yes. It is a story about conversion and the redeeming power of Christianity, and the Church could appropriate it; but since the expulsion of the Moors from Sicily our prelates – including our dear Archbishop of Monreale – denounced the celebration of a Moorish figure.’

  ‘But,’ I struggled to express my thoughts, ‘the procession has nothing to do with the tragedy that was enacted in this house. The figures do not represent this Moor and his wife.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘But I think tomorrow, they will.’

  My head was beginning to ache, and I cared no more for the Spanish or their conniving. I thought about the Moor, of his nobility, his tenderness. When he’d looked at his lady as if only they existed in the world. How he caressed her cheeks and throat and kissed her most sweetly. How did he make the journey from that to placing his hands around her throat in hatred, and squeezing till he put out the light in her eyes, till the life he loved was gone? ‘I cannot believe he killed her.’

  ‘And what is more, he killed an idea, did he not?’ said Michelangelo. He picked up a black pebble from the sand and rolled it in his fingers. ‘Now you know of the Moor’s history, two things are to be done. You may decide that the safest course is never to love.’

  This seemed a bleak prospect indeed. ‘And the second?’

  ‘To take hold of love where you may.’

  I looked out to sea, at the hundred different blues shifting on the surface of numberless fathoms. Would I be afraid all my life? Would I let the white lady’s terrible end fright me? And yet, I had never been afraid. ‘How would I take hold of it?’

  Now he smiled, for the first time that day. ‘Love, if not spoken, may yet be written.’ He took his quill from the device at his neck, and put it in my hand, and spread a clean sheet of paper before me on the sand.

  And I forgot my aunt, and the lateness of the hour. ‘Show me how,’ I said.

  Act III scene ii

  A procession in Messina

  Benedick: Messina was a sea of white and blue.

  Today was Ascension Day, the day to celebrate the Virgin’s rise to heaven. I knew well that it was an important day in any town of Italy, but I dare swear that in all my life I had never seen such a to-do made of the day as in Messina.

  On my way from my civilised home of Padua I had seen the Venetians go half mad on the Fat Tuesday of Carnevale, with their varnished faces and loose morals. I had seen the citizens of Rome return to their pagan ways as they ran around the city like demented savages at Lupercal. But I had never seen anything like the Vara.

  I had been given what was, apparently, a great honour; I was to help to pull the Vara itself, the strange and vast machine that would lead the procession. The machine told the story of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven, by means of a complex apparatus created in the shape of a pyramid. At the base was a flat dun tombstone where the death of Mary was depicted, and, rising up from it, seven heavens represented by circular platforms in diminishing size through which the soul of the Virgin passed during her ascension. The universe was depicted by painted paper planets with the Earth at the centre of all; and the Sun, Moon and planets revolving around it. Crowning the structure stood the figure of Christ, who, with his right hand, raised the soul of the Virgin Mary to heaven. Some poor local maid would have to stand on Christ’s wooden hand as the device rolled along the streets. I looked up doubtfully at the narrow platform, shaped for Christ’s palm, and thanked God’s son that I was not local, nor a maid. It seemed that whichever girl was selected could well end the day in heaven herself, not by ascension, but by tumbling from that height.

  My role, by contrast, was easy. I was one of more than a thousand archers and rope pullers, dressed in white with blue waistbands, waiting to play our role. At the cry of ‘Viva Maria’ the Vara was to be dragged using two long hawsers. Sidesmen stood at the ready to leverage long shafts of wood and escort the cart along the correct path, preventing it from moving sideways. The roads had been wetted down by hundreds of water-carriers, to allow the Vara to slide along on steel skates.

  As we awaited our signal I looked up at the vast apparatus. Each circular platform was large enough to support several local children, dressed as saints and apostles. There was Peter with his keys and James with his scallop, Thomas holding a real fish which was beginning to stink in the sun, all fidgeting and mewling as we waited. All single able-bodied men in the town were tied into the traces like fill-horses, either to push the thing forward with great oars or to pull on the great knotted ropes attached to the device, each one twisted as thick as a man’s arm. I had left off my Spanish colours today for it was traditional that all those in the procession would wear the colours of the Virgin, so we were all in white, with blue waistbands and white and blue neckerchiefs about our throats.

  We were all told, however, that we could wear rosaries or religious medals of our particular saint, so I had placed above my white and blue tabard the medal of St James, my symbol of knighthood. I spat upon the medallion, and rubbed it on my kerchief, then laid the roundel on my palm and examined it. Was it my imagination or had it lost a little lustre since the Naumachia? I recalled the scene of the massacre of the Moors uneasily – the blood had been very impressive, and the staging wondrously well wrought. The Moors themselves died a good death in battle, and it was not for me to question an apostle’s thirst for Moorish blood. But watching the women and the children writhing in the gore had made me queasy. I thanked St James, where he sat in my palm, that we lived in more civilised days; then hung the Moor-slayer back around my neck.

  My neighbour in the traces, a huge swarthy fellow with a neck as wide as his skull and a rosary tied around his forehead, made some remark in a dialect so thick I did not understand him. I smiled nervously and thankfully he smiled back, showing me a mouth with more gaps than teeth. Feeling he offered little opportunity for conversation to ease the wait, I looked about me for Lady Beatrice; but as none of the ladies was in evidence I assumed they would be joining us in the main procession from the harbour. The viceroy, Don Pedro and the other luminaries of the island were to meet by the golden statue of the Madonna of the Letter by the harbour, to be led to us, inevitably, by the archbishop. But the most important personage of the day was not the prince, nor the governor, nor even the viceroy, but the young girl who would be the Virgin of the Vara, for she was Queen of Messina for the day. Claudio, too, had some role in the procession, for there did not seem to be a day when he could be free of his uncle’s designs.

  We were in a beautiful square, the main piazza of the city, beneath a shining duomo with crenellated buttresses and a pointed campanile casting a merciful shadow over the sweating citizens. There was an elaborate fountain with tiers just like the Vara, and mythical beasts crouching about
the base, enjoying the spray of the water. I envied them, and then my attention was caught.

  A man stood by the fountain. Despite the heat of the day he wore black robes which fell to his feet, a small white stiff ruff in the Paduan style, and a black skullcap close to his head. He was the only slab of darkness in a sea of white and blue, and he looked as dour as the Virgin’s tomb. He had a beard and wise eyes, and so resembled a natural philosopher, an apothecary or an attorney, someone with a serious profession. In his beringed hand a pile of creamy pamphlets fluttered – yet there was no breeze. It must be some tremor of his own, and I wondered whether he had an ague.

  As if summoned by my glance he came forth to my line. ‘Some reading matter while you wait, sirs?’ His accent was Sicilian.

  Grateful for the diversion, I thanked him and took a look at the thing as he passed down the line handing out the papers. I wished him well with his mission, for I would lay a wager that none of the fellows on my oar could read their own name, let alone some polemic.

  I have never been a great one for letters but I read the writing easily, for the matter was printed in good blackletter. The first section seemed to be about religious toleration; ‘All the children of the promise,’ I read, ‘reborn of God, who have obeyed the commands by faith working through love, have belonged to the New Covenant since the world began.’ This did not speak to me, for I am the most tolerant fellow I know on these matters, and I skipped ahead. But at the bottom of the page the word ‘Spanish’ jumped out at me, and I here I read bitter accusations; of enclosure and cruelty to the Sicilian people, of Spanish landlords starving their Sicilian tenants, of the levy of ruinous tithes and taxes. The pamphlet ended by calling the Spanish overlords ‘profane dogs who stupidly devour all the riches of the earth with their unrestrained cupidity’.

  Foolishly the author had put his name to it; no title, but simply: ‘Cardenio’.

  I looked about me for the man in black, but he had vanished like the necromancer he resembled. If I could have speech with him again I would advise Signor Cardenio to be gone before the Spanish got here. Leonato’s Watch were a pair of errant fools; but Don Pedro’s constables were a different matter – efficient, steel-clad professionals who would take him up as soon as look at him for one hundredth of the insults written here. I put the pamphlet in my tabard, for one can read a paper even on the ground, and I would not have an arrest on my conscience.

  Despite my doubts it seemed that not only could some of my fellows in the traces read the pamphlet, but they seemed to be agreeing with the sentiments writ there. I heard the Sicilian for ‘Spanish’ rising above the hubbub a score of times, and I did not think they were expressing their love for their overlords. The atmosphere now had a strange charge to it, and my skin began to prickle. I prayed that we would soon begin pulling before these hotheads became more agitated, but still we waited for our sign to begin. I swear I could feel the trickle of childish urine splashing the runnels of the Vara, as one little saint found the wait just too long.

  Then, from the direction of the harbour, along the way they call the Via Lepanto in memory of the great battle, I saw the procession coming. As soon as my eyes could see the individual figures my gaze settled on Lady Beatrice, looking remarkably well in the colours of the Virgin. Her blond curls were given great advantage by the white headdress and the colour of the gown matched her eyes. I was determined, in the freedom and confusion that such feast days and holidays as this afforded, that I would get some speech of her today, spend some time with her, and tell her how I truly felt. I would apologise for those words that were not mine, and substitute my own, heartfelt pledges.

  Beatrice was walking with her aunt and uncle, behind Don Pedro and the viceroy. I could not, at first, see Hero; but then I realised she was between her parents, a small figure but a powerful one, for she was dressed as the Virgin. I understood then that Leonato’s daughter had been given the honour of being the central figure of today’s procession. With her sallow skin and dark hair she was Mary to the life, as if she had stepped down from a fresco from any church in this land. I sought the archbishop in the march, for I knew he would be at the centre of this coil, but I could not see him either, until I identified the figure far in front of the parade, followed by some sort of herald in red.

  As the figure came closer what I saw almost made me forget Beatrice.

  It was the archbishop, dressed in a brief plain robe of white cut short around his thighs. I had never seen him this way before – gone were the mitre and the chasuble, the cloth of gold and the crook. On his head he wore a humble crown of thorns, and as he came nearer I could see that the sharp barbs had pierced his bleeding brow. Worse, he had something in his hand with which he was repeatedly slapping his thighs and calves – the device must have been sharp for it pierced his skin so that the blood flowed freely – he left a trail behind him like a steer at the slaughterhouse.

  In his path walked Claudio, his face pale as milk under his dark curls, also wearing a crown of thorns and a robe as red as his uncle’s blood. In his hands he held a tall cross which cast its double shadow over his uncle.

  The archbishop’s legs looked flayed now, and as he approached the Vara I saw that his face was running with his trademark tears to mingle with the blood from the thorns. I did not pity him; he was in an ecstasy of his own piety. I was more concerned with Claudio, as the wooden cross he was carrying was wavering. I remembered how young he was, and that he had never seen battle; and I thought he would swoon from the blood.

  As he reached the Vara the archbishop turned to Hero. Don Pedro and the viceroy kissed the little virgin’s hand in turn, then the archbishop handed her to the burly fellows at the ropes, who lifted her from the tombstone to the first platform of the device. The people, who had been cowed into silence by such obvious devotion, suddenly began to cheer at Hero’s ascension. The cries mounted and the pamphlets were dropped and forgotten, trodden in the dust and blood.

  As all eyes watched Hero climb to the very top tier of the Vara, lifted on the rising volume of the crowd’s cheers, I alone watched something else – Claudio falling to his knees in the dust. But there was a great firing of firecrackers, and our chief, from the top of the tombstone, gave the starting signal; everyone but me laid hold of the oars and heaved, and the machine jerked forward on its runners.

  Buffeted in the back by the wooden levers, I was suddenly angry. Abandoning the honour afforded me, I dropped my oar and ran under the ropes as the Vara began to move. I grabbed Claudio by his upper arm, hauled him to his feet and out of the path of the machine, and marched him to the fountain. I snatched the thorns from his head, licked my thumb and wiped the drops of dried blood away. He was shivering, despite the searing heat of the day. ‘It was a cork,’ he said. ‘My uncle held a broad cork in his palm with thirteen pieces of glass set in there. One for each apostle.’ His teeth were chattering. ‘It was not a miracle. And he made me walk in the blood.’

  I helped him up, count though he was, and sat him on the side of the fountain. I washed his feet for him as if I was the Magdalene, until the bowl ran red. A shadow fell across us and the fellow in black with the pamphlets was suddenly there again. He stood over us like a sentinel and watched ahead, as if he was shielding Claudio from the eyes of his uncle. When I had done and looked for him to thank him, his pamphlets were scattered about the pavings and he was gone.

  I turned to Claudio. ‘At least your feet were on the floor,’ I said. ‘Your friend Hero is to be an angel of the skies.’ He smiled a little at this, his colour returning, and we returned to the procession.

  By now Hero was on her perilous perch on the very top of the Vara device, standing precariously on the upstretched right hand of a plaster figurine of Christ. Her waving fingers touched the clouds.

  The cries of Viva Maria! rang out from the crowds in a deafening chant. Archers with golden bows shot flowers at the tower and passed up a bunch of white roses to be conveyed all the way to Hero. The little maid looke
d more comely than I had ever seen her in her blue robe and white wimple with a chaplet of flowers about her forehead, her dark hair rippling below the headdress almost to her knees, roses blooming in her cheeks too. You could see, then, the promise to come. In her hand she held a red crystal heart, the Sacred Heart, I supposed, of Christ.

  With the momentum great gilded wheels with the sun and moon set upon their axles began to turn. The ever-decreasing circular platforms of the whole contraption began to revolve sickeningly, contrariwise with the motion of the machine. The heavenly bodies and planets and stars revolved like an orrery and this complication of superstitious whirligigs rendered the poor little apostles squeamish. Some of them fell asleep, many of them puked most grievously, and some did still worse: but these unseemly emissions did not seem to affect the edification of the people. Little St James, who seemed to be the direst case, was simply passed down to his mother in the crowd.

  I could not leave Claudio yet, and I could not have my talk with Beatrice with him at hand, but I manoeuvred us in the procession so I could keep her in sight. As we reached the harbour and curved round to the golden statue, following in the path of the archbishop’s blood, we stopped at last and seemed to wait once more. For there was more to come.

  As we watched, two giants rolled down the hill towards us. For one foolish moment I thought they were real; but then I saw that they were huge constructions on wheels – two horses as vast as the horse of Troy, one white, one black, carrying riders. Riders made of wood, painted and varnished.

  The white horse carried a white lady, with a blue dress with gold curlicues on the stomacher and a white apron at the skirts. She had a crown made of the towers of a citadel on her head. The black horse carried a Moor in Roman armour with a scarlet cloak about his shoulders and a laurel wreath of victory upon his head. Their coming was eerie – they must have moved upon wheels but they seemed to float, the noise of their machinery inaudible above the hubbub of the crowd. It was as if two huge leviathans had forsaken their unsounded deeps to ride upon the sands.