Beatrice and Benedick (31 page)

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 patiently. ‘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.

In truth the next adventure was his last and he was to go alone – it was a broad ramp, roped to the open bulwark and leading nowhere. Each horse before us reared and skittered at the edge, foam-flecked and desperately protesting, before being pushed into the brine with a colossal splash. One horse ahead of us, Don Pedro's grey, kicked out as he was forced into the sea and laid low one of the powder-monkeys. The boy lay on the deck, prone and green, the purple imprint of a perfect horseshoe on his face. He was thrown in after the horse; the only difference that he was afforded a brief prayer.

Now it was Babieca's turn. I'd been given him in Sicily, by Don Pedro, on the day I'd been dubbed a Knight of St James. The horse had been with me in the happiest of times; even borne Beatrice and me on his back when we'd rode down the beach like Templars. And in the worst of times, when I'd lost her, I'd whispered my misery into his velvet ear.

As I led him to the open bulwark I pressed my lips to his silky cheek. Now I was glad of the sea spray to douse my face. I took off his head collar and slapped his rump, but it took myself and three others to shove him forward. He screamed as he fell. I had not known that a horse could scream. But I knew I would never forget the sound.

The setting sun turned the sea to blood. I watched, listening to the terrible screams of the horses and mules. The sea was churning with horses, not just of our fleet but of all the others too – the order had been given to the entire northbound armada. Hundreds, thousands of horses and mules swam desperately until they sank; hooves flailing, eyes rolling, mouths choking with the brine. I watched Babieca until I could no longer see his creamy head – he had turned into the white horses that rode the waves.

Wakeful in my bed that night I thought of all that had been lost. Beatrice. Babieca. And Don Pedro, my friend; that shining prince I'd met on the steps of Monreale cathedral. I should have left him there that day; greeted him as his rank demanded, and moved along. Then he would always have remained a prince to me. For of all the horrors I had seen this day, worse than the boy on the deck, worse than the horses in the sea, was the look in Don Pedro's eye as he'd said ‘
I care not
,' and dismissed me from his cabin.

Beatrice:
My father's anger at Tebaldo's death was greater than his grief.

Various accounts from the townspeople all told the same tale; Tebaldo had become embroiled in a street fight in Verona, and had slain a Montecchi swordsman. Not one detail of this story surprised me; but the sequel was more singular. For the Montecchi's dearest friend and kinsman had ridden all the way to Villafranca to challenge Tebaldo for his transgression; fought him, and killed him. And it was this, this breach of Prince Escalus' citadel, this violation of the peace of the place they called ‘Old Freetown', that incensed my father almost as much as his son's death.

He took, at once, a dozen men-at arms, and rode in a whirlwind to Verona, there, I was sure, to knock down Montecchi doors until he found the villain who had slain his heir.

So on the night of Tebaldo's murder I was alone in charge of the castle, and I could not sleep. As if angered by the crime the day had committed, the night weather had broken and a rainstorm raged around the turret of the red-stone tower. This room had been my mother's, and I had been born in it; she'd told me many times how she looked through the single arched window at the stars.

I was transported back to that night, long ago, when my mother had taken me to the turret and shown me my star, right by Cassiopeia's chair. We were so high that the stars were
brought low – so low that I reached out my chubby hands to grab at them, and the reremice that flapped about the turret on their leather wings batted, startled, into my grasp. ‘I laboured the night long with you,' my mother had said. ‘It went harder with you than with Tebaldo. So all the time I looked at the stars, to take me from this earth, to take me away from the pain. And at the very
instant
you were born,
this
star was born too.'

She pointed, and I followed her long white finger to the heavens. There it was, a shining diamond prominence, young, and vital and sharp, not like the duller ageing stars.

‘When you came out of me,' said my mother, kissing the top of my head, ‘that new star danced for joy.'

I sat up now; tried to remember my mother's face, could not. My father did not go in for portraiture. I peered out of the arched window in search of my star but the sky was crammed with sullen violet clouds, and there were no constellations to be seen.