Beatrice and Benedick

by Marina Fiorato

  The best of Veronese society was in evidence, all with a Capuletti connection. My father did not like society, but his role as mediator had meant that he must attend family gatherings of both the Montecchi and Capuletti, so I’d known most of the assembly since childhood. There was Signor Martino and his wife and daughters; Count Anselme and his beautiful sisters; Vitravio’s widow; Signor Placentio and his lovely nieces, Livia, Lucia and the lively Helena. I spied my uncle Capuletti and his wife, Giulietta’s parents, seated beside each other at the high table in a pair of golden chairs. Tall and spare, they looked down their long noses at the company. They might have been brother and sister as they drank from chalice-like cups in tandem, and took no part in the merriment about them. They greeted me most courteously, but their smiles did not quite reach their flinty eyes. They looked at me as if I had taken a prize that, a year or two hence, they would have played their daughter for.

  I seated myself beside Paris, with no appetite for the riches paraded before me. I had to make the breach, and make it tonight. But, unusually, I had a deal of trouble to claim Paris’s attention. He could barely greet me for he was seated among the ranks of Capuletti uncles, who all seemed to be shouting the same story down the board at him; some news from England. Grinding my teeth with impatience, I knew I must wait. Giulietta was on my left, and I turned to speak to her, without much hope of conversation. But she seemed, for once, anxious to talk.

  ‘I have been waiting to speak to you, cousin,’ she said, low voiced, ‘but Rosaline is always with us, and she is too devout to hear what I would tell. I must thank you.’

  ‘Thank me?’ I had not expected such a tribute. ‘For what?’

  She looked about her, cautiously. ‘You saved someone’s life. By your mercy you pardoned one who is the best of men.’

  I was at sea, and not in the mood for riddles. I had too much to think about on my own account. ‘I am not sure …’

  ‘You banished a … young man, to Mantua. Your father would have sentenced him to die.’

  Now she had my full attention. I remembered the young Montecchi; well spoken, handsome, and – most beguiling of all – utterly forbidden fruit to a Capuletti girl. ‘Giulietta. Had you formed an understanding with this man?’

  Now her silence spoke volumes. It was not the silence I had heard from her all week; the silence of a pliant maid. It was a stubborn silence of obstinate assent. I had been wrong about her – she had not formed an attachment to Tebaldo, but to his killer and a Montecchi at that. This boy would buy her death and despair. If he so much as set foot in Verona again, my father would have his head. I hardened my heart. ‘You must be ruled by your father. He will choose your husband for you. Forget the Montecchi boy.’ The words near choked me, for I knew better than any how hard it was to forget the heart’s choice.

  Giulietta looked at me. The gratitude was still there in her dark eyes, but tempered with disappointment. She had looked for an ally, and I had told her what she did not want to hear. I fell silent. Who was I to give her advice – I had doled out counsel that I would not take myself. My father had chosen Paris for me, a fitting match both in our ranks and temperaments, and I was set to refuse him. What was I about?

  I looked around at the sumptuous Palazzo Maffei, at the fine mouldings, the beautiful frescoes on the walls. I looked at Paris, handsome in blue velvet to match my gown. I pulled on the count’s sleeve. I had something to tell him. My decision did not make me happy, but now I thought it for the best.

  I was ready to give in.

  Paris was a good man, a kind one, and he had seen the worst of me in this last week. I had no illusions – a man may better tolerate contrary behaviours in a woman he is courting than one who is his wife; but from what I had seen I thought he would be a kind and considerate husband. If I did not accept him, what then? Go to a nunnery as Rosaline intended? I had never been one for religion, never done more than dutifully attend chapel, say the mass by rote and flatly sing the responses. I had lost my one chance at love in a game of Scopa. The losing card rode in my bodice. Benedick was off fighting a war for a king who was not his own, and even if he sat beside me now he was as lost to me as if he was in the Indies, for he had played me for a fool and rejected me cruelly when last we spoke. If I rejected Paris in my turn, my father would find me another husband now that he was fixed upon that course. Likely he would find a worse one; perhaps old or cruel, one deaf to art and music and books and the things that I loved. And if I was Countess of Verona and Princess of Villafranca I would have power, of a sort. My father could not live for ever. It was time to accept my fate.

  When I addressed Paris at last he laid a hand on my arm to stay me, and did not take it away. I was to wait patiently until the menfolk had finished talking. I studied the hand that laid upon my arm, at the ring with Paris’s arms upon it, the ring that, by the end of tonight, would ride upon my hand. Then I heard one word.

  Armada.

  There was much laughing and merriment – I could not hear more. The strange word bobbed and sunk and rose again upon the tempest of chatter. I craned close to Paris and he patted my arm with his ring hand. In a moment, dearest, be patient. Men are talking. Then one of my uncles, spitting chicken bones as he spoke, shouted down the others. He had just returned from Norwich, where this ‘armada’ was the talk of the countryside. Philip of Spain had moved against Elizabeth of England with a mighty fleet of ships.

  My hand tightened on Paris’s arm. This was the king’s Great Enterprise, the plot of which Michelangelo Crollalanza and I had once spoken on a Sicilian beach. I sharpened my ears to hear more, for this was the first time I had heard the affairs of other nations spoken of in this little world of Verona – something must be badly awry.

  And so it proved. ‘Philip’s ships were caught in a maelstrom, and the English guns shot them to bits. The Duke of Parma was too cowardly to come to their aid, and the fleets were scattered like Scopa cards.’

  ‘They turned tail?’ asked Paris.

  ‘Couldn’t,’ spat my uncle. ‘Signor Howard blocked the channel. Any ships still afloat were sent scuttling north, around the frozen highlands.’ He took a gulp of wine. ‘They’ll be dead by now; even if the rocks don’t get ’em, or the sea-monsters, they only had rations for a month. There’ve been bodies washing up on the Scottish shores like cockleshells.’ My uncle’s face creased with mirth. ‘The Spanish King’s “Great Enterprise”, blown to buggery by English wind.’ He stuck out his tongue and blew a vulgar rasp from his lips.

  Paris roared with laughter.

  And I knew then I could not marry him.

  I rose and stumbled from the room. He did not notice.

  Act IV scene xiii

  The Basilica of Saint Zeno, Verona

  Beatrice: I wandered through the streets of Verona, under the stars.

  The moon was a silver galleon sailing though an archipelago of indigo clouds. I looked up for my star at the foot of Cassiopeia’s chair, and it blurred in my tears as it had done once before; the night when I was with Benedick on the dunes, the night he had embraced me. And now he was likely dead.

  I imagined his lifeless face, eyes upturned and white as he sank down beneath the waves. These stars were likely the last things he saw. I could look at them no more and stumbled into a vast dark doorway. Inside all was marble, striped in black and white like a winter tiger. The Duomo.

  The black tiles led me forth like footprints to the crypt, where a much older church nestled within the newer one. This was St Zeno’s own Basilica, the early Christian church upon which the cathedral had been built. I knelt at the saint’s shrine, and gazed up at the painting of Zeno with the holy family which hung above the little altar. As I looked at his black face, lambent with candlelight, all the events of the summer came back to me in a rush – the Moor, the masque, the wedding, the poet, the Naumachia, the fire, the Vara. And Benedick. Benedick at dinner, Benedick in the dunes, and now Benedick in the sea.

  I remembered him on the day of
the tourney, as Signor Mountanto. He was so self-possessed then, so wondrous at swordplay, so confident at beating anyone who stepped forth. I had always thought, unquestioningly, that he would return from whatever little skirmish he might encounter. I was confident that he was immortal. He may not have been mine, but somehow it was enough that he would always be somewhere on this earth, devil-may-care, talking his way out of trouble. I searched my heart for the smallest hope, but feared that Benedick had at last met with an enemy he could not vanquish with a word or a sword. For what could he do against the elements themselves? He could not gull the winds, he could not charm the seas.

  St Zeno watched me dispassionately as I agonised, waiting patiently for the moment of my supplication. I screwed my eyes tight shut and clasped my hands, kneeling on the cold stone. The crystals on my midnight skirts cracked beneath my knees as I brought to mind the saint’s legend, told to me as a child. St Zeno had once calmed the waters of the Adige when a horse and cart had bolted, parting the waves like Moses. He had magically kept the flood waters of the Veneto plains away from the cathedral door. Surely he could save one wretched, irritating man?

  I did not know the Saint of Padua, I just knew my saint, a Moor who’d come all the way from the Africas to build this Basilica with his own hands. In the name of St Zeno every Moor was granted safe passage on Verona’s streets by law – here they did not suffer the persecutions meted out by other communes (Messina, oh, Messina!). Zeno was from so far away, but he had become as parochial as my father. Every fisherman in Verona had his medal hanging from their rod, every cordwainer stamped his symbol into the shoes they made. So, for the first time, I prayed to Verona’s saint as if I meant what I said. ‘Saint Zeno,’ I pleaded, looking up into his black face, polished ebony reflecting the light of the votive candles, ‘please save him. Save Benedick.’

  He looked at me with eyes as black and white as the marble walls. His impassivity was somehow a comfort. He would help me, or he would not, with the casual dispatch of the divine. I had done all I could. I staggered to my feet, left through the great doors and paused on the steps. Tomorrow I would have stood here and become Beatrice Maffei. How curious the night was – it had switched around, as it had done once before for me in Benedick’s presence, that night on the dunes. The skies had changed, like the dial on a verge clock or one hemisphere to another. Before dinner, Benedick might still have been alive, and I had been considering marriage to Paris. After dinner, I was as good as sure Benedick was dead; but now I knew that if I could not marry him, I could not marry anyone. If there was the smallest hope that he would return, I would wait.

  Back at the Palazzo Maffei I climbed the great white spiral and went directly to my room. I rifled my bed chest until I found what I sought, grabbing at the piece of forgotten parchment. I flattened out the sonnet on my coverlet and read it through. Now every word had meaning, and my tears fell on the ink.

  I dried my eyes – straightened the starlight dress and descended the spiral stair once more. The merriment in the great hall had become even more raucous, and after the quiet and cool of the night the noise broke over me like a wave.

  The first person I saw was Giulietta, dreaming as usual, and she gave me an idea. She too had loved and lost – perhaps I could save her and myself? I passed her chair, laid aside her cap and pulled her dark hair about her shoulders so that it fell to her white bosom. ‘It looks better this way, sweets,’ I said. She gave me a shy smile.

  I sat beside Paris once again, and at once – as if I had not been absent for an hour – his ring hand was back on my arm. I saw a different meaning to the gesture now – it was proprietorial. I waited for my moment to tell him that I could not marry him. There were to be no more games now, just a flat refusal. I would deal with my father later. But the male talk was unceasing; all still of England and of King Philip’s failed attack. Of Parma, of a counter-attack, of what the queen would do, what the Pope would do, what the Lombard merchants would do.

  ‘Their precious Saint John neglected to protect his knights,’ Paris gloated.

  I spoke up, idly, without agenda, without thinking. ‘Saint James,’ I said. ‘The Knights of Saint John are French, and the Knights of the Garter English. Saint James is the patron saint of Spain.’ By some strange accident of the conversational ebb and flow, I had spoken into a quiet lull, and my voice could be heard clearly from one end of the board to the other.

  There was a short, strained silence, and then my kinsmen laughed. ‘Have a care, Count,’ called one. ‘Lady Beatrice may give better instruction in the schoolroom than the bedroom.’ The Capuletti menfolk laughed again.

  Paris smiled, but a little muscle jumped in his cheek. He turned to me and spoke low voiced, his jaw as rigid as it had been when he had been posing for his portrait. But his blazing eyes more than conveyed his meaning.

  ‘Do not ever,’ he spat, ‘presume to correct me in front of my kinsmen again. You may prattle as much as you please in private but never, never make me look a fool in front of my court.’

  I lowered my eyes so he should not see the triumph there. The man of wax had cracked, at last, like the seal on a letter. And the answer had been so simple; he’d accepted my corrections in good grace when we’d been alone, but as soon as I’d corrected him in company – the company of men – I had taken a step too far. I looked about at the couples ranged around the board. How many of those wives outfaced their husbands at home, only to be silent in public? Was this the only way that a woman could rule, this private, domestic power?

  If I had been Paris’s wife in truth his outburst would have silenced me, but I was so close now, I would not be quieted. My heart beat so that I thought he must see it at my throat. ‘Forgive me, my lord,’ I said meekly. ‘My tongue has ever been my fault. But I have always been of the opinion that it is much better to be a talker with decided opinions which one can readily share with one’s husband, than one who is a dumb show. Who would want a modest maid who has nothing to say for herself, not a word to gainsay her husband? Who is as dumb as a block, and meekly agrees with every word her lord says.’ I nodded down the board. ‘Look at my cousin there, so still like an image, saying nothing. I swear I have not heard her utter one word from last week to this.’ Paris followed my gaze, looking past me as if he could no longer see me.

  Giulietta sat there beyond me; she had not heard the dispute; her dark eyes looked far away, through the walls and over the dark fields to Mantua. She looked remarkably well tonight, no longer the sallow maid I’d seen when I had come here, and I knew she was thinking of her love. Just as my memory of Benedick had done for me, her remembrances brought a becoming bloom to her cheek as where the sun touches a creamy magnolia petal with rose. Her white neck was long and elegant, her bosom high and white. Most becoming of all to the count, I was sure, was her modest silence – she sat quietly without a murmur, mute as a swan.

  Paris rose, and spoke a word in the ear of my uncle Capuletti, Giulietta’s father. The two men went for a private conference in the moonlit courtyard. And when they returned, I knew from Capuletti’s expression of quiet triumph that I was free.

  Act IV scene xiv

  The Florencia, open sea

  Benedick: With every league we put between the doomed San Juan de Sicilia and ourselves our spirits were elevated.

  Because we were now so few, our rations, though still not enough to satisfy, seemed a king’s feast. All the mutineers had brought supplies from the bay, and because of this, and for the sake of morale, Claudio and I had persuaded the captain to spare the miscreants a flogging. It was the only time at sea that I had known Bartoli deviate from his strict code of command.

  In truth we were glad of the return of pilot Da Sousa, for we needed the experienced navigator to lead us through the tricky sounds. Our errant pilot had brought a goat aboard, an animal sacrifice to atone for his transgression, and we all benefited from her creamy milk and looked forward to her meat from slaughter. The wind blew and cracked his cheeks for
us, filling our remaining sails, and as we sailed ever southwards the climate became more forgiving, the water more open. We still had the problem of navigation, but thanks to Beatrice’s star, which I tracked and charted every night, I could at least inform the captain, with some confidence, that we were going due south.

  Claudio and the captain pored over our inadequate charts daily, and finally we recognised landfall. A long spit of land reached into the sea; Claudio pronounced it to be Cornwall. Strong crosswinds buffeted us and the captain gave the order to trim our sails – we were once again in the English Channel.

  We were not, of course, out of danger; as we broached the Channel again we kept an eye to the spyglass for English ships. But despite the spectacular failure of the armada it seemed the English had lost their nerve; we saw a merchant sloop here, a fishing smack there, but never a warship at all. We began to believe, for the first time since Scotland, that we could really get home.

  Every man knew his new quarters, and I could at last give my attention to our newest crew member. I gave the Moor the surgeon’s cabin, and for a week he could do naught but lie down. I doubted very much whether he would live, but I rifled the medicine chests of the dead doctor to find relief for his many ailments. As it transpired the Moor knew more of the compounds than I. He waved away the jars of undulating grey leeches and slippery silver mercury and pointed to the vials of arrowroot and cinnabar.

  I noted as I treated the sores on his flesh that his arms were covered in some manner of black writing, but no amount of sponging would take it off – it had a faintly blue tinge and looked as if the ink had been trapped beneath the skin. I did not recognise the strange letters from any alphabet I had ever learned, and wondered from what alien lexicon those words originated. It did not seem, for a time, as if I would ever get the chance to ask him. His recovery was hampered by the fact that he could not sleep – and if he closed his eyes for an instant would wake with a cry. I knew that when he slept he was back on the San Juan de Sicilia.