But I was not silent for long. For the next week and more I petitioned him. I had learned much from my sojourn in Verona with Paris, and knew well how to make myself unbearable. So I nagged, scolded, pleaded and cajoled. I thought sometimes he would strike me again, but he never did. He just refused me steadfastly. In desperation I tried a different tack; I tried to be diffident, obedient and humble. I made myself good society in the evening, talking to him of his favourite subject of Verona and her environs. We even took up our Scopa games once more, and I watched him find small satisfaction in my inevitable defeats.
And then I had the idea. I took the Scopa deck down to dinner one night and played my last desperate card.
‘Father,’ I said, once the meats had been cleared away and the servants had left the room, ‘tonight I will play you for a stake. If I win, I want you to let me go to Sicily to pay my respects to my aunt.’
He opened his mouth to refuse me once again, but I held up my hand. ‘If you allow this, I will be back in one month, and then I will marry whomever you please.’
He stroked his nose. ‘With no clever schemes or devices to make a man refuse you?’
I met his eyes, and knew then that he had divined exactly what happened with Paris. ‘None,’ I promised firmly.
‘And if I refuse the wager?’
I took a deep breath. ‘Then I will enter a nunnery, and your line will die with you.’
He was silent for a time; I could not tell whether his silence proceeded from anger or grudging admiration. Then: ‘And if I win?’
‘I will never gainsay you again. And I will take a husband tomorrow.’
I had put the cards upon the table. But my father liked courage and honesty.
‘Then deal,’ he said; with the slightest shrug, and the slightest smile. And I did, as I had done so many times before.
I shuffled the cards, and asked my father to cut the pack. I dealt three cards for him, three for me. Then I turned four cards face up, placing them in the middle of the table. The remaining pile I kept close to my elbow. And we began to play Scopa. Just my father and I, in that great keep, before the fire.
There was nothing here of the modern world. Nothing to remind us that we did not live in a world of cups and swords and clubs and coins, a world of knaves and kings and queens. I could feel the ghosts crowding me; lords and ladies of the past thronging to my shoulder to read my hand, as I held my cards high before my face like a fan. Turn by turn, my father and I played, trying to ‘capture’ the deal cards – a nine for a nine, a knave for a knave. We imprisoned our captures in crossways tricks at our right hands. My father was ahead, then we were even, then he was ahead again. All might have been lost, but I was not worried. At the final deal I made my move, the imperceptible shake of my sleeve, which I had been practising in my chamber. The settebello, Benedick’s settebello, slipped silently from my cuff to the table.
I kept my eyes on my father – in the flickering firelight, he had not noticed. I played the rogue card. ‘Scopa,’ I said, quietly but firmly.
My father looked at the card, then at me. For a moment I could not breathe, and it seemed that my heart had stopped. Would he divine what I had done? The card itself was still crisp and uncreased, its edges only a little blurred by its travels; not enough, I hoped, to mark it out from the rest of the pack in a dingy, firelit keep. For an eternal moment my father did not move. Then he stood and swept the cards from the board, and they scattered to the rushes. He pointed a long finger at me.
‘One month,’ said my father, ‘not a day more.’
And he stalked from the room. I stooped to pick up the cards and put the settebello, Benedick’s settebello, back in my bodice, where it belonged.
Act IV scene xvi
The Florencia, open sea
Benedick: The morning after my meeting with Don Pedro, the maelstrom of my mind had settled; I could see the way ahead.
The weather and my mind were in accord. The wind had dropped and the sea was becalmed and broad and blue. I could see little windmills on the cliffs to starboard – Da Sousa, who had been this way before, said they sat upon the shores of Brittany. We were off the coast of France.
Henceforward I paid a daily visit to Don Pedro, to apprise him of our progress as was fitting to my liege lord. Each day now he was up, dressed and sitting at his desk – he seemed to be writing letters, and was, in every particular, a prince again. He still did not leave his cabin, but now sent messages to the captain and wrote letters to his brother Don John, the custodian of his estates in Aragon, to be sent upon landing. He also wrote to the king.
I informed the captain that the prince’s rations should be increased, and he merely nodded. I discovered later that Bartoli, correct in every particular, had ensured that the prince had had his rations every day since we’d sailed, except the day of the mutiny, and he’d failed then only because he had been bound.
As the crew filled every sail and Da Sousa turned the wheel for Santander, I decided upon my own course. My prince was still my prince, no matter what his actions upon the Florencia. If we reached Spain I would collect my reward – God knows I’d earned it. I had no illusions about Beatrice, who might very well be wed by now. To serve the prince was the first matter; to get home was the second. But at night, under Beatrice’s star, nothing could bind my hopes, nor tether my dreams.
Faruq Sikkander worked efficiently and silently. I did not ask him about the night he’d looked in upon Don Pedro but I wondered whether he could divine sin as he had once divined water. I watched the Moor at his ablutions and prayers, looked at the writing on his forearms as he sluiced them with seawater, and thought, as I had once before of him, that some things were better left alone.
And then, on the day of Santiago, we sighted Santander, to a great cheer from all the men.
My warmest embrace was for Claudio, for he was now so much more than a friend to me. When we parted his eyes were wet, and mine too. ‘I have a brother,’ he said.
‘And I.’ We made no vows, nor mingled our blood as the Spanish did. Our clasped hands were enough, a gesture that bound us for ever.
Ravenously we finished the rest of the rations, joyously we followed our captain’s orders to swab the ship, polish the brackets and make the sorry hull as fine as she could be for the inevitable celebrations.
Only when we made landfall did the prince come on deck, dressed as neatly as he could be, to wave to the expected assembly. But our homecoming was shameful – no trumpets, nor cheering crowds, just a wounded dragon of a ship limping into shore. Da Sousa did his best, without an anchor, to slow our landing, but we still crashed into the jetty at such speed that we holed our bow. As we clambered off the ship in Don Pedro’s wake we all fell to the ground like babes, for we had forgotten how to walk. While I was down there I kissed the sweet soil.
I do not know how a returning ship was usually received, but there was little that day to cheer us. No representatives of the Crown were present in the port so we left the men in the tavern and the Moor outside, and walked to find the mayor of the town. In the sunlit whitewashed streets children cheered us ironically and pelted us with rotten vegetables. Only a day or two earlier I would have caught and eaten, thankfully, what they threw. Only the sheer joy of being alive and walking unsteadily on terra firma mitigated the shame of our homecoming. The mayor could not meet us but his registrar told us the sorry truth – that battered ships had been arriving back piecemeal since October, and the people had long since ceased to commemorate such sights. Our orders were to report to the king at El Escorial, as soon as we might.
We bought mules in the port, and arranged for the transport of my treasure, and in the week it took us to reach El Escorial, the world had righted itself. The ground was the ground again, the days of the week had their proper names, but it was many years before I could prevent myself from calling Wednesday Santiago.
And there, at the king’s palace again many months after I had left it, I was happy to undertake the
only task of which I felt proud in the whole affair. I reunited Faruq Sikkander with his son of the same name. They embraced in the gardens under an arc of water that they had found.
I left them to it and went to the chapel of St James for a thanksgiving mass, where I sat between Don Pedro and Claudio. Captain Bartoli was not with us – he had died in the portside inn in Santander, the day after we’d docked. His duty done at last, he’d slept and never woke. His last ship, the Florencia – pride of the Duke of Tuscany – had to be scrapped.
Don Pedro sat and listened to the mass, a beatific smile on his face. I had heard from Claudio upon the road that the prince had elicited the same vow from the count that he had from me; that nothing should be spoken of what had passed on board the Florencia. Claudio, as a nod to his uncle the Grand Duke and compensation for the loss of his ship, was to be hailed as the hero of the expedition. With our silence pledged and the captain dead, Don Pedro was safe to be a prince again; glorious, handsome, well dressed and fed. His face exhibited a glowing sheen as if he’d been varnished, like the lambent saints all about us. I glanced up at the spandrels where a roundel of St James sat between the pillars. St James the Great – Matamoros. I turned away from the image. I had nothing to thank him for.
I had no expectations, now, that Don Pedro would keep any promise, but he made good on the vows that he had made on that stormy night in my cabin. He reported my deeds to the king, and Philip gave me a tithe of the treasure recovered from the San Juan de Sicilia. I discovered that it would have been no small shame if the armada pay chests had been claimed by Elizabeth, so the king’s gratitude for their recovery knew no bounds. He ennobled me as Duke of Leon, the previous duke having conveniently perished on the armada. I was now a nobleman and, which was more, a rich one.
In addition to this, Don Pedro reiterated his intention to return to Sicily via his estates in Aragon, for it seemed that some new circumstance had paved the way for another visit to Leonato’s palace. ‘The Lady Hero’s mother bid me never to return,’ he said with arch good humour as if the voyage had never happened, ‘but I have received word that she lately took a fever and passed away, so our welcome is assured.’
I did not appreciate either his sentiments or the news, for I had liked the Lady Innogen well; but I was reconciled to this new Don Pedro, for I had made the discovery that one does not have to like a man to serve him.
On the day we were to leave for Sicily I sought out Faruq Sikkander to give him one of the treasure chests. I had plenty to spare and I thought it his due; but he just looked at the casket where it lay in my hands, as if it might burn him.
‘If you will not accept my money,’ I said, ‘may I offer you some advice?’
He nodded, with a ghost of a smile.
‘Take your son and go to Verona. There, they revere a black saint and protect the lives of Moors in his name.’
I knew that the Moors could expect new dangers in Spain, for Philip had had it decreed this day from El Escorial that the armada had failed because the king had taken too long to expel the Moors from Granada. So with the first real I spent from my hoard I bought father and son a mule each and set them on their way. As I watched Faruq wind along the northern road with his son he looked forward, ever forward, and missed my wave. I could not blame him. If I had seen what he had seen, I would not want to lay eyes on anyone who had been on board the San Juan de Sicilia ever again.
For now I knew the answer to Claudio’s question. I knew how he’d survived on board that fell ship. He’d had to do what they said of him. He’d had to personify the dreadful seafarers’ tales of dark savages that devour unwary sailors, and cook them in great cauldrons like pottage. He’d had to do what he did alone, and in the desperate dark, and it would haunt him for ever.
‘Benedick,’ called Claudio haltingly. ‘Are you coming? Sicily awaits.’
Sicily. And now I could think of Beatrice, and unleash those hopes at last. I was under no illusions – she might have married the poet after all, as I had rejected and abandoned her and cast her in his way. Or she might have gone home to Verona and found some young sprig there. I could only hope against hope that she might be in Sicily to pay her respects to her aunt, and was still free.
And then? Then I would know how to act. I would not simper nor posture, nor sigh like a lover. I was done with dandy clothes and fancy airs. I would be myself, be the Benedick I had learned to be. And we would battle in our old way, and I would pray that the blows might turn to kisses, as they had once before.
I turned my horse to walk alongside Claudio’s, and we met the prince at the gatehouse of El Escorial. Don Pedro spurred his horse ahead of his company, his pennant streaming forth. And as I had done a year ago, I followed the prince, Claudio and the sun; to Sicily.
ACT FIVE
Sicily: Summer 1589
Act V scene i
Leonato’s palace, Messina, Sicily
Beatrice: I should not have come, for now I was in Sicily Benedick was everywhere; and nowhere.
I had done no more than leave my trunk at my uncle’s house and greet my grieving cousin before I had gone at once, even in the midday sun, to climb the mount to my aunt’s tomb. And on that journey, short as it was, the memories of Benedick assailed me. The ebb and flow of the tide sounded like his voice, and the temperate winds whispered his name. The scamels sung his favourite air from the oleanders, and the crickets imitated his laughter from the dunes.
I kept my eyes ahead as I climbed to the hilltop necropolis of the Cimiterio Monumentale. I resisted the peerless view that was whispering at my back. I did not want to look, yet, at this land of absolutes – the place where I laughed the most, and cried the most. The place where I found love and lost it. The place where I had given Benedick use for my heart. I knew now he’d abandoned it here when he’d left. And now I’d come back to claim it, it was worthless; a single heart instead of a double one.
At last I reached the Leonatus family tomb, where the dead Leonati huddled in their chilly mausoleums to overlook their living relatives below. It was hard to think that my aunt Innogen, mother’s sister to me, was now inside that pale stone. I twined my fingers in the curlicues of the wrought-iron gates, gates that represented the portal between the living and the dead, from which, once passed, no traveller returns. Bumbling bees buzzed around the floral tributes twined into the wrought iron, but determinedly did not pass through the grille. Even such lowly insects knew that to enter a tomb meant no coming out again. ‘Greetings, Aunt,’ I said, and took a crust from my sleeve.
I had come to perform a rite. A rite that once seemed strange to me as a northerner – I found it odd that in Sicily you would remember the dead not with floral tributes and prayers and solemn hymns, but instead bring your children and your curs and your grandmothers and a picnic, and feast upon the tomb of an old friend. I wondered whether the camaraderie continued under the ground; if beneath the stone memorials and mournful epitaphs whole families embraced in a companionable jumble of bones, to dispute over whose knucklebones were whose.
As I broke my bread at the gates, I remembered with a jolt that in this particular tomb, two women lay. My aunt was interred here by family right and rite; but Guglielma Crollalanza, a handful of secret cinders, had been buried here too a year past.
My appetite was gone. I threw the last morsel of my bread through the gates to the dead and brushed the crumbs from my lap with an air of finality. Everything ends. You could not begin again. I had paid my respects, and now I would go. Hero would have to shift for herself; she had no need of me. I would collect my unopened trunk and head to the port, to buy passage on a ship to take me home again to my father. Sicily had changed beyond measure. For Benedick was not here, and without him, things could not be as they were a year earlier.
The buzz of the bees turned to the distant rasp of a trumpet.
As if I had summoned a vision, I looked below and saw a procession of soldiers winding along the sea road from the port. Their armour sparkl
ed, their scarlet pennants streamed in the warm southern winds. I could not, at this distance, make out the device on the standard, but my heart recognised it with a jolt before my eyes did. The processional pennants of the royal house of Aragon.
Was the scene real? Or had my memory of a year ago, of a cavalcade just like this one, conjured it? For that procession had first brought Benedick to me. And all else was forgotten as I saw, as I had a year ago amongst the muster, a golden head bobbing on a horse. This horse was a grey, though; Benedick’s beloved mount, Babieca, had been a bay. If the horse was different, was the rider too?
I had to be sure. Heart thudding, I set off down the incline, scattering a murrain flock of scrawny sheep who stopped and turned at a safe distance to watch me, before dipping their polls again to snatch at the bitter grass.
At the foot of the hill I hurried down the Via Catania to Leonato’s house.
I ducked under the pleached bower, past the fountains and through the pleasure gardens. The fruit trees, pollarded and pruned, stood in a neat quincunx. They looked like soldiers. I felt a sudden foreboding; why had the regiment come back to Messina? Was there to be more fighting?
I hastened to the coloured courtyard where I found my uncle, in his black silken robes of mourning. He was in the centre of the Roman mosaic, standing upon the very face of Medusa. With one of his hands he held a letter close to his old eyes, with the other he stroked his silver beard. A messenger in scarlet livery knelt at his feet, keeping his eyes respectfully on the mosaic. My uncle looked up at my approach and waved the letter at me.
‘It seems you are not to be our only visitor, Niece,’ he said. ‘I learn in this letter that Don Pedro of Aragon comes to Messina. Claudio is returned too, having done great service in these wars.’
I felt a squeeze of my hand, and Hero was beside me. I had not seen her enter the courtyard, nor even noted her till now. I understood just how well she had learned to hug the shadows in these last days, and stand in sober silence, just as my uncle wished. I glanced at her. Her mourning apparel did not become her, for dark colours drained her sallow complexion and grief had made new hollows in her cheeks. But now she looked as if she was lit from within; coral flamed in her pale cheeks, and her eyes were as bright as a gull’s. Claudio’s name had been enough to illuminate her like this.
Beatrice and Benedick Page 31