Beatrice and Benedick

by Marina Fiorato

  My uncle spoke again. ‘Claudio’s uncle will be very glad of his return. I must send a missive by fast rider.’

  So the Archbishop of Monreale still lived, I thought, with a curl of my lip. I had hoped he had died in the interim, but dismissed the prelate from my mind. I cared not for the prince or Claudio, or the county’s evil uncle. I cared only for news of one man; but now it came to it, I could not say the words. ‘Tell me, Uncle …’ I thought quickly, pretending that I did not recall his name. ‘Is Signor Mountanto returned from the wars?’

  My uncle looked puzzled, as well he might. ‘Who is it that you ask for, Niece?’

  ‘My cousin means Signor Benedick of Padua,’ supplied Hero hesitantly, as if she feared to speak in company.

  My uncle chuckled, a sound at odds with his melancholy garb. ‘Oh, he’s returned; and will no doubt take up the cudgels with you for a bout.’

  Warm relief washed me like the Messina tide. Then a tucket sounded and my heart leaped to my mouth. The cavalcade approached.

  The soldiers rode in a phalanx, behind the standard-bearer, with the dark Don Pedro at their head, just as they had a year ago. They were all in the livery of St James, with their medals clanking against their half-armour as they trotted, but I had no difficulty in picking one knight out from the rest. It was Benedick, really, truly he; breathing in and breathing out, and rising and falling in his saddle. It was the loveliest single moment of my life; the first time in a year I had proof positive – the most incontrovertible proof of all, the proof of my own eyes – that he was alive.

  He was much changed. His skin was ruddy like a sailor’s, tanned by the winds. His hair was longer and sun-gilded about his face with streaks as blond as winter wheat. And he was much thinner; as thin as a cursitor. I breathed in, cursing Paris for fattening me up like a Christmas goose. Benedick’s slim frame made him seem taller, and his shoulders broader. The horse he rode was not his old horse Babieca, and I wondered what had happened to his favoured mount. There was no sign, either, of the easy smile that I remembered, but my breath quickened as he rode closer, and the breeze lifted the locks from his forehead. Now I saw that his eyes were greener than ever in a complexion tanned by travel. I could not look away. He had vitality in every inch of him.

  Don Pedro dismounted on the Roman pavement and greeted my uncle. ‘Good Signor Leonato,’ said the prince, embracing the older man fondly, ‘and so we must trouble you for your hospitality once more.’

  ‘Trouble never came to my house in Your Grace’s company,’ babbled my uncle. Now this was far from true, for I recalled the events of the previous summer. I bobbed about upon the balls of my feet, trying to see Benedick, but there were more introductions to make. An ill-favoured and miserable-looking fellow stepped forth and was introduced as Don John, Don Pedro’s brother. There seemed to have been some sort of schism between the brothers, lately reconciled, but I had no patience with their affairs. Hero stepped forth, and the prince warmly kissed her hand, but above his bowed head she and Claudio mingled eyes, and I recall that the count liked her before he went to war. Suddenly I realised why the cavalcade was here; they were not here to wage war but to woo; and so their hearts were in just as much jeopardy as a year before.

  Then the crowd divided like the Red Sea, and I saw Benedick clear at the same instant he saw me. He smiled, a smile of such sweetness and joy that the clouds parted and the angels surged forward. I smiled too, and we hurried, half running, towards each other, overwhelmed by the rightness of it. I truly think we would have embraced, but my uncle intervened, fetching him a slap on the back fit to knock him over. ‘Good Signor Benedick, here is one who asked most particularly for news of you. I’ll warrant she’ll ask you to choose your weapon to continue the bout you began a year ago, and I’ll wager you’ll choose the same one as she; your tongue.’

  The crowd waited, listening, smiling with anticipation like those who came to see a bear course. They fully expected a spectacle, and my plan to greet Benedick with private and affectionate courtesies now had to be changed. I wiped the joyful smile from my face and squared my shoulders like a pugilist.

  ‘I, Uncle? I require nothing of Signor Benedick save for the same office I would require from my cook; that is, to find out what is for dinner.’

  The household tittered, and Benedick frowned, his dark brows almost touching in the way I remembered.

  ‘Lady Beatrice, I am glad to find you yet living; and so unchanged. But I have not the pleasure of understanding you.’

  ‘Then you are the one who is unchanged, for you never could keep up.’

  ‘Not with your tongue, it is true; for your waggling member would leave even Babieca …’ he faltered, ‘even the swiftest horse standing. For you speak all mirth and no matter, as you always did; for I am not a cook but a soldier.’

  ‘I only speak mirth if oaths and promises do not matter. And I am glad indeed to hear you call yourself a soldier, for I wished to enquire how many you had killed in these wars. If you recall, I promised to eat all of your killing; and I like to keep my promises. And to say truly, I missed my breakfast so that I may be hungry for my dinner.’

  He blanched as white as ocean spray. And I was sorry at once when I saw what a sea-change my mention of killing had wrought in him. Had he killed a score of men at the armada; a hundred? Had the sights he had seen scarred him and suppressed his merry nature? Appalled, I wanted to apologise, but I could no more retract my misfired wit than he could have called back the shot from his ship’s gunfire. But he recovered himself in a trice, and put up his defences.

  ‘Well, my dear Lady Disdain, I release you from your vow; and pray that you will maintain a tolerable health without such a macabre dinner.’

  I smiled sweetly, a parody of the smile I’d wanted to bestow upon him. ‘I thank you; but I think my disdain will prosper now it has its favoured meat; a fine haunch of Signor Benedick.’

  The crowd laughed, sickening me. I took no pleasure in this false bout.

  ‘Well, lady, I fear your disdain will hunger too, for I will trespass on your presence no more, nor put you to the trouble of speaking such fine courtesies to me. For courtesy is a turncoat, and not the first I have known.’ Here, he seemed to shoot a meaningful glance at the prince, who was conversing with his brother and missed the jest, if jest it was.

  Claudio saw it, though, and took Benedick by the sleeve. ‘Come away,’ he said, as if the conversation had taken a dangerous turn. ‘We must all prepare ourselves for dinner. Ladies.’ Claudio bowed, Benedick did not, and they followed their master from the courtyard.

  It was a masterstroke, a perfect strategy. Just as he used to do a year before, Benedick had stopped suddenly like a hurtling destrier and sent me toppling over the reins. The household had begun to mill about and talk among themselves, now my opponent had left the lists. Alone, now, in the centre of the courtyard, I looked after Benedick and mouthed to the ether.

  My uncle clapped his hands. ‘Tonight we will feast and have a masque in the prince’s honour, just as we did a year past. And in the cause of merriment I decree that we shall all leave off our mourning.’

  I looked sharply at Hero, to see how she would take this disrespect to her mother. My aunt Innogen had barely been in the ground for a week; at this rate the funeral baked meats could practically furnish the banqueting tables. But Hero took the news equably, and looking at her I suddenly knew that she was the reason that Leonato had decreed that mourning apparel should be cast off. I was not the only one who had seen the longing glances flit about the courtyard. Leonato had felt it best to get his daughter out of black, and into her finery; for a bird of paradise was better to spring a trap upon a noble husband than a plain country blackbird.

  ‘Come, Cousin, let us prepare.’ I let Hero drag me away for there would be much ado to make ourselves ready for sundown. I followed her across the coloured tiles, my heart beating fast from the reunion. Now I had Benedick safely back from the seas, now I knew I was to meet him
that night and the next day and go on meeting for as many days and nights as we stayed here, I had to force myself to admit the truth. I may have learned to love him in the year’s interim, but that did not mean that he had come to love a woman he had once rejected so bitterly. How much did that sunburst of a smile when first he saw me really mean? I remembered well the bitter words he had spoken of me when last we stood together in this courtyard. He had begged Don Pedro to take him away from me. I cannot abide my Lady Tongue. And now he had trotted after Claudio from the courtyard, leaving me mouthing my rejoinders to the fresh air. A jade’s trick, and one I knew of old.

  As I followed Hero up the stone stair to her chamber my happiness tempered a little. Benedick had a horse of a different colour and a new sworn brother. I very much feared that he had become the Knight of the Mirror, with an armour wrought of looking glass, to reflect any companion he stood beside.

  Act V scene ii

  A masque in Leonato’s gardens

  Benedick: I could not wait to see Beatrice at the masque that night.

  It seemed almost a miracle that she was here, and I had seen something in her first smile that led me to hope. After that, we’d been playing a part and she had put me thoroughly out of countenance by her first utterance. Her innocent jest about killing and eating soldiers had taken me straight back to the San Juan de Sicilia, to the fate of Faruq Sikkander, and those dreadful chewed bodies. All were victims upon that boat and a jest that had been harmless the previous year now had the power to cut me to the bone. Beatrice’s year-old promise to eat all of my killing took on a new significance, as if she’d had a prophetic soul and had foreseen the horrors ahead. But tonight, if I could only get her alone, I prayed that we might begin anew.

  It was almost a year to the day since we’d danced in this very garden lit by the same torches, the same fireflies. Then, I’d arrived in my livery of St James. Today, I had come as Benedick of Padua. I might still wear the saint’s livery but it did not wear me. I had chosen for my mask the face of a dolphin, for I had seen many of the friendly creatures at sea, and they had leavened my leaden days with their perpetual smiles. I could have worn damask and jewels and a golden garter in my new guise as the Duke of Leon, but I could not bring myself to wear the robes nor use the title of my new rank.

  Some of my fellow actors were the same – Don Pedro and Claudio went about love’s business; their henchmen the thin Conrad and the fat Borachio were at their leisure to drink as much as they might. There was Hero, who looked as different to the plain girl who had met us in the courtyard as a parrot does to a sparrow. A coral gown now warmed her skin, her dark hair was wrapped in gilded thread and dressed in coils about her head, and she wore above fifty fine golden chains about her slender neck. Leonato, who had also abandoned his black, was lecturing her upon some serious subject. I heard a snippet of his sermon: ‘If the prince does address you upon that subject, you know your answer.’

  Some of the players had changed – there was no dark lady, and no Lady Innogen. I wondered whether their ghosts conversed together in the myrtle hedges, heads together, as they had been in life. The poet was also absent, thank God, and I had reason to hope anew that Lady Beatrice was unmarried.

  Some actors were new to the drama; Margherita, the tiring maid who had seemed a child last summer, was now a young lady; similar in height and colouring to her mistress Hero, she had a saucy look in her eye and a round promise to her figure. A year ago I would have troubled her for a dance. But this year there was only one lady I sought.

  I glimpsed Beatrice in the throng, in that gown of many blues that I remembered well, the gown she wore to the wedding at Syracuse. I would have known her bearing and her figure anywhere, but in any case her mask gave her away. It was a beauteous thing; a visor in the shape of a star, with eyeholes set in two of the five points, and rimed with crystals and pearls.

  Like a star she kept disappearing behind clouds; one moment she would be lost in the multitude, only to appear again elsewhere in the galaxy of guests. I noted through narrowed, jealous eyes that she was dancing; but soon realised that she danced alone, with no gentleman upon her arm. She whirled through the company, spinning and spinning till her cerulean skirts flew about her in a circle, and the diamond constellations on her bodice wheeled about like a sparkling orrery. She was captivating, and I did not interrupt her sport. I knew where she was at all times, I could sense her shining presence, like the constellation which had guided us home. I was content – she and I were on the same path, in the same orbit. We would meet sooner or later alone; it was ordained.

  In the meantime, I found an unlikely companion in Don John, Don Pedro’s brother. He was an unprepossessing gentleman; a miller’s thumb of a man, with a large head atop a skinny body and a wasted foot that made him limp. I had some sympathy for his predicament; he had mismanaged Don Pedro’s estates in the past year, leading to considerable losses to the family fortune. He had been publicly scourged in the town square at Zaragoza, then newly taken into Don Pedro’s grace. He was a prisoner dressed in silk, and resentment and respect did battle in his countenance.

  In all particulars he seemed as commonplace as his brother seemed noble, and I knew he was a bastard, an illegitimate child of Don Pedro’s father. The fact that he had been raised – not just tolerated but cultivated – at the prince’s side throughout childhood and adulthood said a great deal about their father’s character. Observing the two brothers, one might have thought that nobility had a physical manifestation; Don Pedro, of true blood and the union of two noble strains, was as handsome as his brother was ill favoured; but I knew now that nobility had nothing to do with appearance. Nobility was not carried in birth or breeding but was something more tangible. Nobility was not an airy gilded cloud but something harder – bred in the bone, the sinew, the beating heart. Nobility was not the wave of a white hand, nor a favour easily given; it was tough, difficult, it was a trial to the body and the soul. With this in mind, I greeted Don John courteously. All my information about his disgrace and his pardon had come to my ear from Don Pedro’s tongue, and I had learned not to trust so easily. I decided the fellow deserved a chance.

  I nodded at him in a friendly fashion and my courtesy drew him to my side, with Conrad and Borachio in his wake.

  ‘Are you not Signor Benedick?’

  Don John cut an odd figure in his silks and samites – like a peasant dressed up for mumming.

  I bowed. ‘You know me well.’

  Don John looked about him. ‘You are close in love to my brother, are you not?’

  ‘I have that honour,’ I said drily.

  Don John drew close, and I could smell his wine-soaked breath at my ear. ‘He is in love with Hero, our host’s daughter, and woos her even as we speak. If you are his true friend, dissuade him from the match. She is no equal for his birth.’

  The night was warm, but I was suddenly cold. Don Pedro was supposed to be furthering Claudio’s cause; could he be wooing Hero for himself?

  ‘Are you sure?’ I had learned, in a year, to doubt the word of princes; even though this bastard don seemed to bear all the outward shows of honesty.

  ‘I heard him swear his affection.’

  ‘I too,’ said Conrad, volunteering an opinion for which he had not been asked.

  ‘And I,’ confirmed Borachio. ‘I heard he would marry her tonight.’

  I looked from one to the other – all three had pushed their visors to the top of their heads, but all wore the same solemn expression beneath. I had only just met Don John, but Borachio and Conrad I had known the previous year, men from Don Pedro’s Aragonese estates. They drank too much, but they were honest fellows. And even on so short an acquaintance, I had already more inclination to trust Don John than his brother.

  Now the snippet of conversation I had heard when I’d passed Leonato and his daughter made sense. If the prince does address you upon that subject, you know your answer. Leonato had tried to catch the prince for Hero last year; now he c
ould make good upon the bargain. Recently bereaved and anxious to secure his line, how was he to know that we had already parcelled up his daughter aboard ship, and chosen her mate for her? Claudio had a prodigious fortune, it was true, but at bottom he was a banker’s son. Don Pedro was royalty, and besides there had been whispers – rilling, silvery whispers that rippled all the way from El Escorial to Messina – that the prince would soon be made Viceroy of Sicily, as a just reward for his bravery at the armada. As the wife of the viceroy, Hero would settle in nearby Palermo, but if she married Claudio Leonato would lose his daughter to Florence.

  And as for the prince? Yes, on board ship he had sworn to get Hero for Claudio, and make all well between the Lady Beatrice and myself. But things had changed. He had, by his own admission, now lost the better part of his fortune through his brother’s bad management while he was at sea. What better for him than an heiress, with coffers to match his lands?

  I must have been silent for some time, for Don John, his warning given, bowed and disappeared, taking Conrad and Borachio with him.

  I watched the prince; if Beatrice was a star then he was once again the sun, charming all before him, gilding the guests with flattery, flashing his teeth. Don Pedro might have been last year’s prince; he was even wearing the same mask, the knave of the Scopa pack. Only I could see, behind the eyes, where his sheen had worn away. I observed the prince deep in conversation with Hero, holding her white hand in his brown one, now and again carrying it to his lips. I began to feel uneasy.