Beatrice and Benedick (49 page)

‘Never ask a Messinese what he does after the sun goes down,' he replied. But I had my answer. He was the lone assassin, in a monk's hood. The Ragged One.
Cardenio.
Cardenio was not a man but a title, passed from father to son through generations of the blood feud. Folk heroes, brigands, assassins.

‘And the viceroy?'

‘He has taken to his bed, and will not rise again. He has a growth upon his lung that grows like a canker in a hedge. God has taken care of him; or the Devil. One of them.'

‘But then …' I spoke almost to myself, ‘Don Pedro will be the next viceroy.'

‘No, that he will not,' said Cardenio-Crollalanza vehemently.

I understood. ‘Then it is the
prince's
life you seek.'

‘The late mistress of the house had the right of it. My fellows tell me that on the day you left for the armada, she banished him from the house for his crime.'

I remembered it well; the Lady Innogen told Don Pedro not to return to her house while she was alive.

‘Sadly, the lady beat him to the grave, but he shall follow shortly.'

I thought of the prince. I had no longer any love for him, but I had no wish to see him die. He had died for me in a sense already, when he'd lost his nobility. I was struck by the comparison to Hero. Women lived only through their chastity, men through their honour. ‘Must it be this way?' I asked. ‘So much has already been lost.'

Crollalanza's lip curled with scorn. ‘And yet I see him here, in his velvets, eating his haunches of venison, just as he did last year. So what exactly has the prince lost?'

‘His fortune. His war.'
His honour.

‘Aye,' he said. ‘His war. Well, our family snatched that victory from him, and his king too.'

I narrowed my eyes against the rising sun. ‘What can you mean?'

He was silent for a time, looking at me; and at length he spoke. ‘In London,' he said, ‘where my father now lives, there are storytellers on every corner. You may give a groat upon the street to such a bard and he will tell you a tale. A year ago,' he said, ‘you gave my father and me a piece of eight for our passage to Naples. He embarked, I did not; but for your kindness, and your coin, I will tell you a tale – perhaps the last one I shall tell. I will not say if the story is true or false, and if you tell your brothers of Saint James I will deny it with my last breath.'

He stood and looked out of the window, in the direction of the port. I kept my hand on my rapier's hilt, but did not now think he would harm me. ‘It is a story of an old man who took a night ship to Naples, leaving his son behind him. He spent the passage to Naples writing a message in the night cabin of the captain, who was his friend.' His voice was changed, to a musical, beguiling lilt. There was some magic in his tone which made the story live; I could see the old man busy with his quill, the lantern swinging in his cabin, the roiling seas outside. ‘He wrote on a ribbon of parchment, in indelible ink, letter by letter. The message was as long as the cabin. The old man rolled it and dripped a candle upon it; the wax massed like a seal and grew into a mound, and he shaped it into a ball with his old hands.'

I nodded. I had heard of such things; sometimes on the armada secret orders were sent between our ships in this way. ‘The recipient melts the ball of wax to read the message upon the ribbon. That way he can be sure that he is the first one to read the missive.'

Michelangelo nodded in turn. ‘The old man changed ship at Naples, for he was to sail that night for England. He went there in seven days. In London he met with certain of his family there,
who concealed him while they arranged a very special audience. He was conveyed secretly to the Palace of Whitehall, and he put the ball of wax in the hands of a man called Francis Drake, commander of the English navy.'

I could picture the missive, a little red planet of wax, making its progress from hand to hand. ‘And what did the message say?' I asked, though I had guessed.

‘I shall not say, for if I do not tell you cannot know when asked. But I will tell you diverse words – the name Philip, the month of August,' he turned and looked back at me, and the expression in his eyes shivered my ribs; ‘and the word armada.'

‘So you were spying for the English queen, last summer,' I said, bluntly.

‘Not at first. But I gleaned certain information, and formed a theory. I thought that if my father began his sojourn in England by giving up such a nugget of intelligence, he would be guaranteed safe haven.'

And I had given him the money for passage. Fortune's wheel spun about my head. I had saved the very man who had given fair warning to the English queen of the armada's approach. If I had given up Signor Cardenio senior to the Spanish, would Philip's ships have landed at Kent unassailed, and won the day? But then I remembered the driving winds, and the rains, and the disastrous incompetence of the Spanish nobles. I reflected that the goddess Fortune likely knew what she was doing.

His story done, Michelangelo Crollalanza sat down heavily in my chair, the dagger he'd worn to dispatch Don Pedro clinking against the buckles of his baldric. I remembered that he used to wear a pen where he now wore the knife. ‘May you not …
write
against the prince?' I said weakly. ‘For a man's reputation is as dear as his life.'

He snorted. ‘That is my father's office. Under the English queen's protection he can give rein to his polemics against the Spaniard. He is creating a legend as black as ink.'

‘Then can you not be satisfied?'

He shook his head, his black eyes upon me, never shifting his gaze.

‘I saved you once. What makes you think I will not take you straight to the Watch this time?'

The hard eyes softened a modicum. ‘And yet, I do not think you will. I think you know what he is.'

I lowered my gaze.

‘He made a pretty show at the wedding yesterday, him and the count.'

I could not deny it.

‘And it would avail you nothing to betray me. If I am cast into jail, others will do my part – such is the custom of the blood feud. There will be another Cardenio. The isle is full of Archirafi, from my mother's house, and Crollalanzas from my father's. Our family trees are forests and our blood runs in the rivers.' He tucked his dagger below his doublet. ‘Besides, the Watch are busy with a bigger fish in their net. I practically walked through the gate unchallenged.'

‘What is their business so early in the day?'

He looked at me, calculating. ‘They have apprehended the villain who conspired to dishonour the lady Hero.'

‘Who?'

‘Borachio, the prince's man. And with him Conrad, his companion.' I breathed out slowly – those Aragonese brothers of the bottle; one fat, one thin, both wicked. ‘The author of all was Don John, who is fled, but it matters not; Borachio confessed everything. How he caused the maidservant Margherita to clothe herself in Hero's gown, and meet him upon the balcony of her lady's chamber. There he called Margherita by Hero's name, and they performed their mummer's play to a willing audience.'

I could see now how it had been; a puppet show enacted while Beatrice and I were wooing at the Roman baths. This
information was precious – I thought I could see, now, how to twist this sorry tragedy about. ‘I will broker a deal with you,' I said. ‘I will take you through the gate as my kinsman, and convey you safely to the road. In return you will defer your grim task for,' I calculated, ‘three days.'

He stood, and walked close to me, fingering the dagger under the doublet. ‘Why?' he said. ‘Now I might do it pat; dispatch him straight, before the sun is fully up.'

His voice was seductive, persuasive, just as it had been when he was telling his story. But I had no stomach for Don Pedro's murder, no more than I had now for Claudio's. ‘If you do this thing, the household will be turned upside down, the Spanish will decamp, and I will never wed …' I stopped suddenly.

‘The Lady Beatrice,' he supplied.

‘Yes.'

‘And she returns your affections?'

‘Now, yes.'

He considered for a moment. Then his shoulders slumped a little in acquiescence. ‘Very well,' he said. ‘Don Pedro has his stay of execution. For the coin you gave my father and for the love Beatrice gave my mother.'

Once we were clear of the gate and the Watch, he turned to me on the dirt road and took my hand in farewell. For a moment it was almost as if we were friends. He looked at me directly from under his hood. ‘Beatrice always did return your affections,' he said. ‘She loved you constantly; last year, this year. Ask her of a sonnet she wrote, once, upon the dunes; in the company of a poor scribbler.' He sounded, once again, like a poet; the bitter edge to his voice had gone.

And he walked away, into the grey dawn, drawing close his hood as he went, down the Via Catania.

Beatrice:
I visited Hero the morning after the wedding in the little crypt of the chapel.

The celleress melted away when I appeared, and left me with my cousin. Hero was dressed in a grey habit and was holding a darkwood rosary. She was telling the beads between her fingers ten by ten, the Apostle's Creed, the Paternoster, the Ave Maria. I wasn't sure whether she'd even seen me. I waited until she'd passed the little pendant cross twice, and then came forward and took her by the shoulder.

She looked up and her face was as grey as the wimple. Her eyes were shadowed and her skin sallow, and her dark luxuriant sheet of hair hidden completely beneath the coif, not even a strand to be seen. I saw her then as she might be in the future; as a nun. What other path was left to her? What life was left to the unmarriageable, the unwilling to marry? It was the path that had been chosen by Paris's cousin Rosaline Capuletti, the path I'd once contemplated myself. Hero was devout, it was true, but this was not the life she had chosen. It had been chosen for her; for she had been rejected by one man for such a particular sin that she would now be rejected by all. Even Leonato – the one man who should have stood up beside her – had repudiated his daughter, and struck at her life with his own hands. I remembered then my own father, telling me baldly that if I were not found to be chaste he would be ‘childless'.

My thoughts tended so much upon fathers that when Hero
raised her head and whispered, in a voice hoarse with prayer,
‘I have lost him,'
I thought it was Leonato she meant.

I sat beside her on the little truckle. ‘There has been some mistake,' I said. ‘This counterfeit death is calculated to turn the blade of my uncle's anger. All will be explained and he will take you into his house once more.'

‘Not my
father
,' she said, her voice stronger now. ‘
Claudio.
I have lost Claudio.'

I was so amazed that I was struck dumb.

‘I want him, Beatrice.' It was an odd utterance from a nun's lips. ‘Do you remember all the stories you told me last summer?' She smiled, her mouth twisting wistfully. ‘I used to think that my story would end happily, with Claudio and me joined to live happily for all eternity.' I remembered Michelangelo Crollalanza's definition of a story that ended with marriage. A comedy.

‘I was a child last year … and this?'

I could not answer but I thought, This year, you are a shade. A maid that lived but did not live, walled up in this stone purgatory. There was nowhere cold in Sicily but it was cold in this crypt, as cold as a tomb. And a story that ended with death was a tragedy.

But had the story ended? Hero still loved Claudio, but what profit could proceed from such a preference, for a man who had rejected her and spoken to her with such hatred? But then I heard a whisper as soft as shrift murmur around the cold stones.
Lady Tongue. Harpy. Lady Disdain. Benedick reproved you so, and rejected you, and you love him still.

As if I'd summoned him Benedick appeared at the door, leaning on the jamb with a look of sympathy softening his gaze. My heart turned over. ‘Forgive me, lady,' he said to my cousin. ‘Lady Beatrice, a word.'

I went with him up the stair to the chapel, and he drew me down beside him in a pew.

‘She still loves him, then?'

I did not trouble to hide my perplexity. ‘Yes.'

‘Well, she may have him yet. Claudio was mistook,' he said, ‘and a cleverer piece of villainy I have never heard. The villain Borachio embraced
Margherita
on Hero's balcony. It was all a design of Don John's. Margherita was wearing one of Hero's gowns, and a coif that she was wont to wear in her hair, and the villain called her Hero loud enough for all to hear.'

‘Margherita!' All was explained; the maidservant's disappearance and reappearance, her counterfeit slumber.

‘Do not blame the girl; she was gulled into the disguise.'

‘I do not blame her. Men are to blame for this tragedy.'

He did not deny it. ‘And here is a most singular fact; the plan was hatched to deprive
Don Pedro
of his bride. Hero was meant for him all along.'

‘So the prince
did
propose to Hero that night of the masque!'

‘Yes. And when Claudio took the prize, Don John carried forth with the plan, thinking that a slight to Don Pedro's favourite was still a slight to his brother.'

I looked up, in wonderment. ‘How did you learn this?'

‘I questioned the varlet himself at the gatehouse, for the Watch have him clapt in chains. And now that his patron is fled, he has decided it is politic to give up all he knows, like a most obliging villain. But the kernel of the truth I had first from one that you know – Michelangelo Florio Crollalanza.'

‘Michelangelo! Then he is back!'

‘He never left. But he no longer plays the poet; he is a hard and desperate man, a brigand.'