Beatrice and Benedick

by Marina Fiorato

  Still, the box itself was heavy; strong oak with brass bounds. I huffed and puffed at the weight as I trudged under the gate that bore my arms.

  Villafranca looked just the same, and I remembered running up this very street as a child, with my brother Tebaldo chasing me with a wooden sword. I had another memory too, of me chasing him back the other way, once my swordplay had begun to match his own. We had never liked each other, my brother and I, and we fought like cat and cur every day. We even dubbed each other with certain names; I called him Prince of Cats and he called me Queen of Curs, and we would battle for supremacy for all the hours we were not in the schoolroom. I wondered whether we would be amiable now we were grown.

  My footsteps were heavy, and not just because of the weight of the box. The truth was I had no great wish to be home. I loved Villafranca well enough, the little town with the great castle. It was far enough from Verona for my father to remain above the squabbles of Montecchi and Capuletti – the two great families of the town – but near enough to mediate. Yet my brother disliked me, and my father thought of nothing but his beloved heir, and his own importance in the role of Prince Escalus. I should not, really, have been surprised that my father had not sent a servant to meet the coach. He had never even noted me, let alone loved me. I was that rare thing; a daughter who could not even be of use as a marriage prize.

  I wondered now whether he and Tebaldo had shaped my character, for I was raised in the great red-stone tower of a castle full of men. My mother died as soon as I began to grow and question. Just as I became a woman she ceased to be one, taking a fever and dying in the space of a single summer, the same summer I started to bleed.

  I’d not known what to do, or how to stem the flow. There was nobody to ask. I’d wandered about the castle, crying for my mother, the blood running unchecked down my legs for four days. My father, displaying no great concern, dispassionately called a physician, telling him, in my hearing, that he thought I might be dying too. After the male physician had, rather distastefully, explained to me about my women’s courses, and outlined the nature of the problem to the Prince Escalus, my father had gone back to ignoring me.

  From then on I had become harder, and more outspoken. I would not be weak again. And now I had to readjust, after a summer in the company of women. Hero had been the nearest thing to a sister I had ever known; in my aunt I had seen my mother again, and in Guglielma Crollalanza I had found – and lost – a role model. And yet, even with these female paragons about me, I’d still sought male company this summer; perhaps I had sought out Benedick because I missed Tebaldo’s sparring. Would the company of my brother, now, in any way fill the void left by Benedick’s defection?

  I was across the bridge now, and in the heart of the town. There, on my left, was the little church of the Disciplina where I had been christened and confirmed. And on the right, the Serraglio walls with their defensive towers overlooking the river.

  Now in the main thoroughfare, I knew I would find someone to help me with my box – I had not changed so much in a brace of months that the Villafranchese would not know me – they were my father’s people born and bred. I shook my riding hood from my hair so they would see the Della Scala curls, the same barley-blond as my father’s. The blazon painted on the lid of my strongbox bore the same arms that I’d shown the driver, the same arms as the flag that now flew from the red-stone tower of the castle – the ladder of the Scaligeri. Stairs elevate us from the poor. Stairs keep us separate. Stairs keep us safe.

  But something was wrong.

  Instead of feeling the safety and security of home, I felt danger, prickling under the curls at my nape.

  There was no one in the street, not a soul.

  Every house was shuttered, every door closed, as if a storm was coming. Yet the day was bright and sparkling, and in my childhood I had known every door to be open, and every citizen to call a greeting. In one alleyway I saw a little moppet with curls like my own – I called to her, but a hand shot out from a dark door and pulled her within.

  I carried on to the castle, and my skin cooled with foreboding as I entered the long shadow of the clock tower. The familiar blue and gold clock watched me like a warning eye – for here, too, something was amiss. There were no guards at the postern; only the dark cypress trees stood sentinel at the curtain wall. The great gate was wide open like a gaping mouth.

  My heart started to beat fast and painfully – I was reminded of the night intruders at Leonato’s palace, and thought for one dreadful, foolish moment that the Sicilian brigands had followed me here. Then my foot hit something with a clang. I looked down. It was a bloody rapier.

  I set down the lockbox and knelt to examine the weapon. It was a fine blade, the haft finely chased and set with rubies, the handle wrapped with supple dog leather. But the blade was carmined to halfway with bright blood.

  Suddenly I was back in the castle courtyard of my childhood, watching Tebaldo’s morning swordplay lesson. ‘Halfway,’ said Signor Archangeli, my father’s master-at-arms. ‘If you have occasion to kill, pass the blade through your opponent’s body to halfway, then claim it back. Any further, and if the fellow falls, he’ll take your sword with him.’

  I picked up the blade from the ground and weighed it in my hand. I touched the edge; the blood was still liquid, not tacky. Someone had been run through with this sword, and recently. I looked to the pavings again and saw a ruby had dropped from its setting in the skirmish; and a little farther along, another. The truth thumped in my ears. Not rubies; blood.

  There was a trail of red up the drawbridge and into the castle. I unfastened my cloak from my shoulders and let it drop over the box, and left both outside the barbican. But I took the sword with me.

  In the shadow of the gatehouse I was suddenly cold. But ahead in the sunlit courtyard I could see why the town was empty. All the citizens were here. There were scores of them, but curiously silent, all jostling to see something in the middle of the circle. I was in the north now, so the citizens were as tall as I, and I couldn’t see anything. But a fellow turned and noted me. ‘Let her through,’ he said, ‘she’s the sister.’

  She’s the sister. It seemed a singular way to describe me. I did not know what the fellow meant by it, but walked forth anyway. The crowd parted respectfully and I walked as if in a dream, still clutching the sword.

  There, in the centre of the courtyard, was the great fountain, and lying on the basin of it, my brother was sleeping. My father, the blond giant, stood over him, waiting for him to wake. Tebaldo was always a slug-a-bed, so I went right up to him and shook him, as I had so often as a child. His midriff fell open like a shirt and I could see ruby snakes clustered within his chest. The water of the fountain ran red.

  ‘The future is over,’ said my father. ‘Tebaldo is dead.’

  Act IV scene v

  The Florencia: open sea

  Benedick: It was bitterly cold.

  We forged onwards through the grey seas, whipped by the wind and harried daily by English gunships. We could not fire back, for our guns were at the bottom of the sound. There was no stopping nor turning in our onward rush for we had no anchor. Bartoli and Da Sousa did what they could with the ship’s wheel and the sails, but we were like a leaf in the current. The wind had whipped the sea up into angry grey mountains, and sometimes we were so low in the cleft of a pewter valley that we could not see the sky. Our wondrous ship the Florencia, the vessel that had ruled the waves from Lisbon to Calais, had no sway in the English Channel. We were bound in a nutshell, caught in a mill race.

  My hours on deck were spent clinging to ropes or skating on planks as slippery as glass. My short hours in the cabin were spent rolling around in my cot, sleepless, like a pea on a drum.

  Each day I would go down into the hold to see my loyal horse Babieca. He was held in place, like all the destriers, by four crossed ropes. His flanks were glassy with sweat and his eyes rolled to show the whites. Ordure ran down his back legs, matting the velvet skin.
The smell of manure was terrible. I stroked him and sang to him, and in comforting him found comfort myself.

  For all was confusion on board. The camaraderie that had characterised the first part of our voyage had entirely disappeared. We were cold and afraid. Santiago was no longer our battle cry – but the word ‘Parma’ was now passed around like a prayer. The Duke of Parma was coming with the veterans from the Low Countries. Thousands of men. Countless fleets. I heard a rosary of numbers again, as I had in El Escorial, and the amen of Parma, Parma. We did not trust in saints any more; but an earthly saviour, Parma, would come. Parma would save us.

  Don Pedro kept to his cabin. The prince would accept food from a deckhand thrice a day, but would speak to no one. Having dealt the voyage its death blow with his father’s sword, he retreated completely.

  Bartoli, Claudio and I met in the captain’s cabin at the dawn of each day. We spoke the watchword every morning so we could keep track of the passage of time. I told my own rosary day by day; Jesus, Our Lady, Holy Ghost. When Santiago came around again I knew it had been a week since the fire ships at Calais. We knew, too, that Parma was not coming.

  It was time for action, and we managed the ship as best we could. We set the redundant powder-monkeys down to ostle the horses. We surveyed the gun damage we’d sustained and gave orders to the carpenter for repair. We divided up the watches, so that lookouts could be kept the whole day around. For as often as we glimpsed another limping ship of the armada, we saw an English gunship with the ensign of Drake or Effingham or Howard.

  I came to know the colours of our enemy, and the ships too. I went from blissful ignorance to unquiet knowledge. There was another rosary to learn, a rosary painted in gold on the gunwale of each enemy vessel; Victory, Elizabeth, Golden Lion, Mary Rose, Dreadnought and Swallow. Although we always took evasive action against attack, in truth we were fish in a barrel, waiting for the telltale boom of the guns, powerless to fire back, able only to lick our wounds after the fact, and hope that we would not be holed below the waterline.

  We saw Medina Sidonia’s flagship once, and the captain took out his spyglass to read the orders from the signaller. I squinted to watch the remote figure waving his coloured flags, without a clue as to what they signified. When Bartoli lowered his glass there was a red ring around his eye but his face was white.

  He looked at Claudio and me, and jerked his head towards his cabin. We followed him.

  Bartoli walked across the little room to the bottled window. Claudio and I clung to the walls and placed ourselves in two chairs. The captain looked from the casement for a moment, without speaking, at the roiling sea. He never needed to hold on to anything – I never saw him support himself in all our time on the Florencia. On the captain’s little desk an orrery revolved and spun with the motion of the ship. Ironic, I thought, to have such an instrument when we were not permitted to steer by the stars. The captain spoke at last. ‘We are to go north about,’ he said.

  Claudio and I looked at each other.

  ‘North about?’ I asked.

  The captain turned, and would not quite meet my eyes. He crossed to his desk, jerked open a drawer and pulled out a chart. He spread it before us and placed his grubby finger on the map. ‘We are here … or hereabouts,’ he said ruefully. ‘We are commanded to go north, around the tip of Scotland and the west coast of Ireland, and back to Spain via the Atlantic.’ The finger travelled the route, and we followed it with wide eyes. It seemed impossible. To turn and go back to Spain, if we had an anchor, would take the three weeks it had taken us to get here. But to go this route would take months, if we even lasted so long. This map would be no help to us, for although Spain and Portugal were painstakingly described, England and her islands were no more than insubstantial blobs.

  I looked up at the captain. ‘Can it be achieved?’ I asked.

  He rubbed the back of his neck, under his ruff. ‘We would struggle to return even to Spain on the food we have. Your prince – my captain – was … generous with our supplies on our way here.’ Ever correct with respect to his chain of command, he stopped short, as he always did, of criticising his superior. ‘But to go this route …’ He tailed off expressively. ‘Well.’ He dusted his hands together. ‘We have our orders,’ he said. ‘I will tell the crew.’

  Claudio, the captain and I spent the rest of the day in the hold, making an inventory of our supplies. No member of the crew was admitted to our conference, not even the quartermaster, for the captain feared for morale. ‘Let us apprise ourselves of the situation first,’ he said.

  I was always stupid at figures, but Claudio proved to have a mind like an abacus, and as he had a better fist than I he wrote down our calculations. The horses would do well for now, for their feed was more plentiful than ours, but our supplies were already troublingly low. Our stomachs growled audibly at the pile of food. There were dried meats, ship’s biscuits, cheeses and sausages, even a barrel of preserved oranges for the officers. Claudio fished one out, a sunny, fragrant orb; but his thumb went right through it. ‘Rotten,’ he pronounced.

  We divided our supplies into three, for each month that we might be at sea, and then divided each pile into four for each week, then seven for each day. Then we did the same for the barrels of sack and Rhenish and small beer. Our conclusion was that each man would have a meal the size of a walnut once a day, with half a cup of wine or beer, and the same of water, to wash it down. None of us spoke our thought – that no man could live on so little let alone maintain the strength to sail a ship of this size. We were doomed.

  I cursed Don Pedro’s extravagant feasts on the voyage from Lisbon to Calais, and the nights when I had drained a keg of Rhenish on my own. ‘Sleep with your daggers tonight,’ said the captain, as he lifted the trapdoor to go back on deck. ‘The men will not be happy.’

  I held the ladder for him. ‘They are loyal, are they not?’

  ‘To a point,’ said the captain. ‘But the farthest they have sailed before today is from Livorno to Ragusa and back. Every man has his limits.’

  I followed him back to deck in silence. I took his meaning, for I knew at least one man on board who had reached his.

  Three days later, on the day of Jesus, we once again had sight of the San Martin, Medina Sidonia’s vessel and the flagship of the Portugal fleet. We took another signal from the miniature flagman who waved our fate to us. My innards, already contracting with hunger, lurched; for I had lost all faith in our officers and wondered what new lunacy was to be handed down.

  The captain lowered his spyglass. ‘We are to ditch the horses and mules,’ he said, shaking his head as if from a blow. He was conditioned to accept all orders, but his mouth worked and his choler rose.

  ‘For what reason?’

  ‘Speed,’ he said. ‘If we do not lose the weight we will not get home on our rations.’

  I spoke back to him the dreadful words he’d uttered when we fled from the fire ships. ‘But … you said yourself … that … the horses could be … food.’

  ‘Not any more, it seems,’ he said; and I knew I would not get him to gainsay Medina Sidonia, whatever his private feelings.

  I stumbled to Don Pedro’s cabin, in the eye of the wind. As before I knocked at his door but could not hear a reply. Then I had a notion, and put on my best Florentine accent. ‘Your dinner, sire.’

  The door opened a crack, and as I’d done once before, I put my foot in it. The prince retreated swiftly to a shadow, and I nearly fell through the door. After the brightness of topside I could not see him at once but then I spied him, hunched in a chair by the bottle-glass window. I approached him and knelt.

  Now I could see him a little. His hair was unkempt, his linens soiled. The neat shape of his beard was blurred with an ashy stubble. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Where is my dinner?’

  I looked at him askance, as if he made a jest. ‘It is I,’ I said gently, ‘Benedick.’ My heart began to thud in my throat. Had he lost his wits?

  ‘Yes,’ he said patie
ntly. ‘You may bring me my dinner now.’

  I chose my words carefully. ‘There is no dinner,’ I said. ‘Our commanders have elected that we return to Spain via the northern route, and to do this we will suffer extreme privation. And now,’ I continued when he did not react, ‘Medina Sidonia commands that we dump the horses and mules in the sea.’

  Silence.

  ‘The fact is, Highness, that in the days to come, those creatures may be the difference between life and death. If you could send a signal … intercede, for no one but of your rank could hold sway with Medina Sidonia.’

  He leant forward. Now I could see his eyes, still as black as olives, but even they had changed; they were glittering, fanatical. ‘Let me be clear. I, Don Pedro, Prince of Aragon and Duke of Castile, am to send word to Medina Sidonia, Duke of Niebla of the House of Olivares, to beg that I am to be allowed to eat a mule? A prince,’ he said, ‘does not eat a mule. Now bring me my dinner.’

  My heart sank. I knew it was no good to protest, but I heard myself doing so. ‘But Prince, think of your men,’ I said. ‘We will all starve.’

  He looked at me as if I were a stranger. ‘I care not,’ he said. ‘Leave me be.’

  Realisation dawned upon me, and a dreadful knowledge swelled in my chest as I understood what he was saying. I retreated from him as if I had been struck, and scrambled from that terrible room – I could not wait to quit his presence.

  The act was to be carried out at sunset, when the sea grew calm. The powder-monkeys turned stableboys wept openly as they untied the mules and horses one by one. I led Babieca myself, for I could not give such an office to another. The big bay followed me trustingly, as he always had, delighted to be freed from his dank prison, his nostrils flaring at the fresh air. His hooves stuttered and stumbled on the slippery planks of the deck as he danced delightedly. He nudged the pit of my arm as he’d done so often on the road, asking me, I knew, what new adventure we would embark upon together.