‘But it is not the ink and the paper that have value. The value lies in the words, and they are yours.’
I strove to be fair. ‘Michelangelo helped me.’
‘No; I know his style. This is from your heart. This is your definition of love. The subject did not want these words?’
‘I did not offer them to him.’
She set down the paper and saw the playing card. ‘The settebello,’ she said, as if she greeted an old friend. She turned it over in her pied fingers, and the seven coins on the face seemed to glitter. ‘Was this for him too?’
I was shamefaced. ‘Yes.’
‘So he is the winner. And you were to be the prize.’
‘Yes.’
‘But not now?’
I paced the room, as I sought the words. ‘I do not want it. I do not want to love him. I do not wish to be enslaved to this feeling.’ I spun to face her. ‘Is it possible to fall out of love?’
‘Not for me. But in Sicily, it is, yes.’
Her answer seemed oddly worded.
She stood. ‘Watch the window,’ she charged me, ‘for I am about to do something that should not be seen, and tell something that should not be overheard.’
She moved over to the device at the corner, the one I had seen from the window – was it only the previous day? – with the great iron rollers and wooden presses. She went to the wooden frame and began to pull some small iron blocks from it, disarranging them, changing one for the other, pulling some out of order entirely and throwing them in a receptacle on the floor. As I squinted in the lamplight I realised what she was doing – the thing was a printing press, one of the new-fangled machines that had put the scribes out of business, and by disarranging the blocks she was removing the evidence of the pamphlet her husband had printed. What had it said? I wondered. Had those dangerous little metal blocks combined to extol his love for John Calvin? Or his hatred of the Spaniards?
I would never know, for Guglielma worked fast, and talked of other things. I watched her quick, black hands and thought: ‘She has had to do this before.’ I was so mesmerised that for a moment I did not heed what she was saying. Then her musical accent broke through my thoughts. ‘The ladies of the island perform a certain ritual tomorrow, the day after Ascension Day. It is a … dance, called the Tarantella.’ She rolled the word around her tongue. ‘It is named for a spider.’ She held out her black hands and wiggled the fingers. ‘I have danced it every year I have lived here, and my grandmothers did it too, and their grandmothers before them; all the Archirafi women. You can do it for fun, or in earnest.’ She wiped the little blocks with a coarse cloth, removing the ink and the evidence together. ‘I called the Tarantella a dance. At the least, that is what it is. At the most, it is an incantation in movement. A cure.’
‘A cure for what?’
‘For anything you want rid of. Including a man.’
‘And does it work?’
She stopped, and looked up at me, the whites of her eyes very white, the pupils as black as her fingers. ‘Oh yes.’ Her deliberate destruction complete, she wiped her hands on her skirt. ‘We women spend the day together, reach the hill at sundown, and dance on the side of the mountain.’
It seemed like a harmless way to pass a day. ‘I will come,’ I decided.
Guglielma said nothing at first. She began to shuffle the pamphlets together into a bundle. She took another lamp from the sconce on the wall and lit it with a taper from the first. She ushered me outside; the night was still warm, the stars back in their proper places.
‘I can help you,’ she whispered, and the dune grasses whispered back. ‘But you have to be sure you want this. It is no little thing. We will be calling on an ancient primal power, from the crater of the volcano and the belly of the very island itself.’ She kissed my cheek quickly and I noticed that her skin had a granular quality. ‘If you are sure, come to the Via Catania outside your uncle’s gate at dawn tomorrow. Tell your aunt you are pursuing a private penance to the Virgin – such things are common at the Ascension. And it is not the blackest lie – for Mary was the epitome of womanhood and it is with womanhood that we deal tomorrow.’
I was slightly shocked, for I had never heard the blessed Virgin named so, by her given name, as if she were a tiring maid or a laundress.
‘If your aunt were not wed to Leonato Leonatus,’ Guglielma went on, ‘I would tell her the truth myself.’ She shot me a look. ‘If she were not married to Leonato Leonatus she would be coming herself, as she did once when she was first wed.’
My eyes widened. ‘My aunt? My aunt danced the Tarantella?’ I wondered, briefly, what demons my aunt had wanted rid of all those years ago. But Guglielma was looking about her as if pursued, and seemed in a hurry. She did not answer but dismissed me. ‘And now, you must go to your business before your aunt worries, and I to mine.’
I looked at the sheaf of pamphlets in her hand. And it occurred to me that loving Giovanni Florio Crollalanza might, in its own way, be as lethal as loving the Moor. And yet, Michelangelo was easily twenty, so the unlikely pair had been devoted for a score of years at least. I looked at the stars and the sea; the sky was dark but Guglielma was darker, now a silhouette against the firmament. I could not see her eyes, so I had the courage to ask, ‘Do you never wish yourself out of love?’
‘No, I do not wish myself out of love. But it would be better if I did – for Giovanni is hurrying to his grave, and will take us all with him.’ I could not see her expression; she was just a voice, a voice that meant every word. ‘But I would rather die with him than live with any other. That is my definition of love.’ Then she set off down the hill, leaving me behind and taking the lamp, the taper and the sheaf of pamphlets to the shore. I turned and trudged to the sea road, suddenly deathly tired.
Looking back some minutes later from the stony path, I could see the light from the Moor’s house had split into two; there was the square of light in the window of the study and there was a fire, on the beach, dancing merrily like a noon-day Devil.
Act III scene v
Benedick’s chamber in Leonato’s house
Benedick: I sought out Don Pedro the very next morning.
After Lady Beatrice had run from me, I had walked back to Leonato’s house along the shoreline, one foot on the sand and the other in the night-black water, and by the time I had gained the palazzo I had made up my mind.
I knew what was the matter with Beatrice. It was clear as day. I knew her own heart as well as my own – I had heard it beat, pressed to mine, as her lips flowered under my kiss. There was no doubt that she wanted me – we were meant to be together, we were two sides of the same heart.
She was not at fault – she showed the right measure of maiden modesty to run from me. I was to blame, and had let my passions rule my honour. It would have been wrong indeed if I had, upon the dunes, made defeat of her virginity. She was not to be tumbled like a Trastavere tart or a Venetian vixen. She was a princess of Villafranca and Leonato’s niece and however lax he might be in allowing her freedoms, I could not, should not, dishonour her. I would make her my wife. Then, once we were betrothed, she could embrace me as a husband and extenuate the forehand sin.
I would resign my commission and offer her marriage. I had no wish, now, to be a knight errant – I had been playing a part these past several days. I had no desire to draw my sword and jump from ship to ship, with no knowledge of whether I would ever return. I could not agree with that ancient combatant Don Miguel that the soldier shows to better advantage dead in battle than alive in flight; I wanted my life, and I wanted to live it with Beatrice. We would go north, away from the fierce gaze of the southern sun, and with her fortune and my … wits, we would shift very well. I might even find another profession, when I was done with soldiery.
I could not afford to go to war and return with hollow honours and striped with battle scars, for if I marched with Don Pedro in a fortnight Beatrice would be left here with Monsieur Love, and I was not about to lose h
er to that scribbling bard.
I asked to see Don Pedro straight after we had broken our fast, and he surprised me by following me to my chamber, as if he wanted to speak with me as much as I with him.
As soon as we were alone I blurted out my intentions. ‘I wish to leave your service and marry,’ I stated with no preamble.
He said nothing at first so I knelt and kissed his hand, lifted the medal of St James from my neck and hooked it over the fingers I had saluted. When it was gone from me I felt that a millstone had been lifted – now I knew I had not wanted to wear it since the night of the Naumachia, for from then on it had hung about my neck like a usurer’s chain.
The thing dangled from his hand, winking in the morning light, the ribbon entwined in fingers baked dark gold by the Sicilian sun. His eyes were hooded. I wondered whether he was angry, for on the day I’d met him I’d assured him that I had no attachments of the heart. But he seemed to take the news quite equably – he walked to the window, and looked out of it, as if he could already see his ship sailing away. I waited, saying nothing, and at length he turned back. ‘Which way do you look?’
‘Upon the Lady Beatrice.’
His dark eyebrows shot up and I could see the expression in his eyes for an instant. No longer veiled, they were surprised into honesty, and for just a moment I saw naked envy. Then the eyes were hooded again, and I knew I had been mistaken. ‘I congratulate you,’ he said heartily. ‘You played the seven of coins and won yourself a princess.’ For the first time I wished I had not told him of my trick of giving out the settebello card to the ladies, and I cursed my damned impulse to make everybody laugh.
‘Her wealth is nothing to me,’ I said stiffly. ‘As Your Highness knows, the Minolas of Padua are comfortable merchants. My prospects for the future are good, and I have chinks enough for now.’
He nodded, as if he had not heard me. ‘And the lady feels the same way?’
‘I think so.’
His smile grew wider, his eyes graver. ‘Then I will say this. If you feel as you do now on the day we weigh anchor, then we will say goodbye with my blessing. If you change your mind, you will sail with me, to wherever the King’s Enterprise will take us.’
It seemed a fair bargain; for I knew that nothing in this world could flout me out of my humour. ‘Agreed.’
He turned back to the window. ‘But since you are as yet in my employ, I will ask you to complete one last mission.’
‘A mission?’ I did not want to invite accusations of cowardice, but I did not wish to encounter any danger to my person, now that I had decided to hang up my barely worn soldier’s coat.
‘I misspoke,’ he said hastily. ‘It is more of a jest, or a wager; and I know how you love such sport. It is not dangerous. There will be no arms where you are bound, nor a single man to bear them.’
He turned his back to the window, and I could no longer see his expression. ‘You see, I have accepted a wager from my friend the Archbishop of Monreale.’
I frowned, thinking of the bloodied creature I had seen only yesterday flaying his own flesh in the streets of Messina. He did not seem to me the kind of man to accept a wager. ‘Do not his vows forbid him to gamble?’
‘You are right,’ he blustered. ‘I meant the viceroy.’
I knew less of the viceroy, for although he had been at nearly every one of our many gatherings I had never heard him utter a word. I thought him, despite his titles, of no more mark than one of the mammets in the puppet theatre – bravely dressed, but mute until some puppetmaster put words into his mouth.
‘I made a bet with him – the viceroy, that is – for we do not leave these shores till Monday next, and I told him that the time shall not go idly by us,’ continued the prince. ‘There is a ritual, a godless thing, that the womenfolk of Sicily practise on the evening after the Ascension.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Tonight. They come together to perform a pagan dance. No man is allowed to take part, nor even set eyes on it. I said I knew a man who would be able to observe it, and tell us what passed.’
I was silent, for I could not speak my thought; which was that this seemed an unworthy game for princes.
‘If you succeed, I will give you one hundred golden reales.’
My jaw dropped open. One hundred golden reales would make a handsome start to my union with Beatrice. Despite my protestations there was no doubt that a princess of Villafranca had a greater fortune than a minor merchant of Padua, and a hundred gold reales was no small purse. I wondered what the principal sum of the bet was, if my part share could be so much. ‘And how am I to penetrate such a gathering?’
‘You could dress yourself as a woman.’ He observed my dubious expression. ‘The players do it. Two nights past we saw one of my own cavalry dressed as Boudicca.’
I remembered well, a wag called Juan who had donned the red wig and metal breastplate of the Britons’ queen a little too readily. But Juan was small, and slight. I was as tall as a maypole. ‘Why me?’
He clapped my shoulder with the hand that held the medal, and it kissed one of my buckles with a chink. ‘My dear fellow, who better? Everyone knows you for a man of excellent humour. If you are discovered, everyone will take it for a jest.’
I narrowed my eyes. ‘So what is it really?’
‘Just that, dear fellow, just that.’
He was a bad liar, and I recalled for an instant the dark hints that Beatrice had spoken upon the dunes. But I cared no more for Spanish conniving – soon enough it would no longer be my affair. Whatever the reason for the wager, I saw no honour in it; but since the prince had given me my freedom, I owed him this in the name of friendship if not in the name of St James. It was a small price to pay – I might have to endure an evening without Lady Beatrice, but God and luck willing it would be my last one.
‘Very well.’ I kissed his hand again, with the medal of St James still twined around his fingers. The thing chinked against my teeth. He saw it. ‘Once a Knight of Saint James,’ he said, his brown eyes solemn, ‘always a Knight of Saint James.’
He turned with a flourish to leave the room, and caught sight of a paper lying on the rushes. He stooped and picked the thing up. He was suddenly as still as a statue, frozen, reading silently. ‘Where did you get this?’
I peered at the pamphlet. It was the polemic I’d been given on Ascension Day, by the fellow dressed as a magus or necromancer. Signor Cardenio.
‘I was given it at the Vara,’ I said uneasily. ‘By an old man.’
Don Pedro’s black eyes skimmed the blackletter print again, taking in, I was sure, every insult and epithet laid at the Spaniards’ door. His tone, when he next spoke, was light, belying the expression in his eyes. ‘Ah, the Vara. That was many days ago. And could you identify him if you saw him again?’
I did not like the way the interrogation tended. ‘I could,’ I said slowly, ‘but I would not wish to if it would cause him any ill. For he did us a kindness, Claudio and me.’ I remembered him shielding us like a shadow as I washed Claudio’s feet; an action which, in that religious context, would have been taken as profane by his uncle. The archbishop seemed to want his nephew to be doused in blood, a literal show of their consanguinity.
‘Your loyalty commends you. But you mistake me. I would not wish him ill. I welcome opposition, when it is so well expressed. His quarrel is lively and well argued. I might have some little commission for him for Spain, that is all.’ Don Pedro paused lightly. ‘And do I not deserve some loyalty also? We are brothers of Saint James.’
He had forgotten that I had returned my medal, but he made an excellent point. He was my friend, and I did him a disservice with my suspicion – I had confused him with his friend the archbishop. ‘He was tall,’ I said, ‘and wore a stiff Padovani ruff and a black scholar’s gown. He had a grey beard, deep-set eyes, and a black skullcap. When he spoke it was with a Sicilian accent, and his name was Cardenio.’
‘You see,’ he cried, clapping my shoulder. ‘I said
you would be an excellent spy. You will be missed in my company.’
I bowed, relieved that he seemed to have made his peace with my leaving him; but I had the feeling his mind had already gone from the room. He shortly followed it, absentmindedly pocketing the pamphlet as he left the chamber.
Act III scene vi
A night on the volcano
Beatrice: I rose at first light, and dressed by the mote of gilded light bleeding through the shutters.
Hero was sleeping peacefully, her long black lashes lying like spiders on her cheeks. I did not want to wake her. I told myself she had had a torrid time at the Vara and needed her rest, but the real reason was that if I told her that I was going on a pilgrimage to honour the Virgin she would beg to come, tired or no, for Mary was her personal goddess now, her touchstone and mainsaint. She had gained from Claudio the virtue of … well, virtue.
My exit was a tricky business for I had to step carefully over Margherita, who slept curled on a mat by the door. I closed the door behind me soundlessly and tiptoed barefoot down the cool stone steps before putting on my soft leather slippers. The slippers were cross-gartered and took more time than I cared about to tie with my shaking hands. I thought at every minute that Orsola would find me on the stair, for Orsola was a tattle-tongue who minded everybody’s business but her own. I was not discovered, though, and let myself out of the gate from the painted courtyard into the chapel cloister. On a whim I crossed the little green court to the chapel and found Friar Francis at the tabernacle, readying the host for prime.
‘Lady Beatrice!’ he said. ‘You have risen early on this holy day.’
I looked at him guiltily through my lashes. ‘I am spending the day at penance.’
He wiped his hands on his habit and came through the rood screen to regard me in the tinted light from the stained glass. ‘What penance?’ he said.
‘Oh, a local pilgrimage,’ I said airily. ‘Local women of good character have invited me to walk up the hill. It is a representation of Christ’s walk to Calvary.’
Beatrice and Benedick Page 14