Beatrice and Benedick (51 page)

I went to fetch the penitent, and it was then I saw that we had not been alone at all. I saw another figure rise stealthily from the brush beyond the tomb – a ragged, hooded brigand. I knew we were in no danger for he raised one hand to me and walked away, ever upwards towards the fiery mountain. Then I knew the author of the scrip that Beatrice had given to Claudio, and knew that the words were not written for Hero. Michelangelo Florio Crollalanza had spent a night's watch not for Hero's sake, but for his mother's.

Beatrice:
I saw the congregation through a veil of lace.

Hero, Margherita and I waited in the shade of the little chapel, while all of Messina gathered in the garden outside. We all wore white, with veils of snowy Sicilian lace worked with exquisitely rendered flowers and curlicues and butterflies. I surveyed the scene through a rose and a dragonfly.

Through the open door I could see that the pews had been carried out and ranked along the yew walk and decorated with wreaths of rock rose and ginestra. All was to be different from the terrible, interrupted wedding of a week ago – the ceremony would be conducted, as in olden times, on the church steps, and all the town would witness Claudio's penance.

I saw the count approach from the house. For the first time in our acquaintance he had left off his purple. He was dressed in humble cambric, like a peasant. He had not, today, troubled with pomades and scents, his hair was unkempt, his cheek unshaven. He looked like a true penitent, and he wore his shirt of hair remarkably well.

It was Benedick who was the most noble this day, for in contrast, he was wearing a doublet of fine silk which I had not seen before, as grass-green as his eyes. Then I saw the gilded garter bearing arms and I realised – these were the colours of his Duchy of Leon. Duke he might be, but he looked like a king. My foolish heart swelled. The livery of St James was gone, and with it his air of servitude. Now he served no man.

Only Don Pedro still wore the scarlet and the black, and his suit of clothes was now too big for him. He seemed shrunken and diminished, and his eyes darted about shiftily. I thought then that he must not enjoy his complicity in this very public penance – perhaps he thought it not seemly in a viceroy-in-waiting.

The pipers struck up; it was time.

Margherita hung back a little, hugging the shade of the chapel. She had embraced the Church, for it was to be her home. No man in Sicily would take her to wife now, so the friar had offered her a novitiate in his order. She had accepted gratefully enough, for she could continue to live here on the estate, and be by her mother Orsola. After today's performance she would wear a veil every day, assuming the very habit Hero had only this morning cast off. Bride, bachelor, nun, I thought sourly; the Holy Trinity offered to our sex.

As Claudio, the prince and Benedick reached the steps the friar led us forth and I stood on a lower stair to add to the confusion of our heights. We were still, and silent, and a like hush fell over the crowd. We might have been the three graces visiting earth, but I could think only of the goddesses who had offered themselves to Paris.

But this Paris was not a prince, nor a spoiled mortal. This Paris was a man, a man in humble weeds, who knelt at our appearance and bowed his head.

‘I understand you are all orphans of this island,' murmured Claudio, ‘all of low birth, all of no fortune.'

‘It is so,' confirmed the friar sternly.

‘Then, good ladies,' said the count, still looking at the ground, ‘it is not for
me
to choose one of
you.
I have sinned; I have blood upon my hands. Any one of you would be more than my deserts. Therefore, do
you
elect between you, which one shall have me, but only if you like of me.'

I had expected today to hate him and scorn him, but what I
felt for him was pity. For a man of birth and fortune to take this leap into the dark was something exceptional. Nothing could mitigate his dreadful actions of a week ago, but with his behaviour at the funeral and now at this new wedding, he had made some amends. I was glad – so glad, for Hero's sake – that I could begin to like him again.

Hero now stepped forward, tears dropping from below her veil like diamonds to adorn her gown. She gave him her hand and helped him up.

Claudio raised his eyes. ‘Let me see your face.'

‘No,' said Leonato, more sternly than I had ever heard him speak to his guest. ‘You shall not.'

Claudio gave a little nod. ‘If you will accept me, lady,' he said softly, ‘I am yours.'

And the ceremony took place with them just like that, Claudio in his penitent's weeds, Hero veiled. Her breath filled the lace and it lifted and bellied like a sail. Claudio was shambling and hesitant, and it was Hero who had to lead him, standing tall and straight, her voice strong and confident. I thought for a time that she was attempting to disguise her speech to preserve the fiction we had constructed; but then I corrected myself. This was a new Hero; the Hero who lived was different to the one that was gone. And I thought then of her mother Innogen, and of Guglielma Crollalanza too, and of how proud they would be.

And then, at last, Hero took off her veil – the lace floated to the stone. The moment moved me greatly – for although I knew, of course, that it was she, even to me it seemed miraculous that she had opened those iron gates, toppled those monumental tombstones and returned through death's door.

‘Hero?' Claudio touched her cheek, as if to be sure she was real. ‘You're alive?'

‘I died,' she said, ‘but now I truly live.'

Claudio embraced her so hard I feared that he would chase the breath from her in truth. ‘
My Hero
.'

She pushed him away gently so she could be heard. ‘Your
wife
,' she said. ‘But never
your
Hero. Henceforth I am mine own.'

He smiled and bowed, they kissed, the people cheered. Everyone hugged one another, and for a moment I lost sight of Benedick in the melee till I heard his voice. ‘Friar, wait.'

Friar Francis turned, still holding the book.

‘Which one is Beatrice?'

My heart stuttered.

‘Do not you know?' asked the friar, smiling.

Benedick mounted the steps, towards Margherita. ‘Here is one,' he said softly, and kindly, ‘who made one mistake, but as God loves all sinners, she will make a fine wife for Christ.'

Then he walked to me, close, closer; I breathed heavily, and felt a blush mount to my cheek, for there was just a shred of lace between my mouth and his.

‘And here is one,' he said, ‘who is possessed of a fury, whose tongue runs away like a buckshee horse and who is wrong more times than she is right. And because she is as flawed as an ill-sounded goblet, she will make a fine wife for a man.'

I fumed, the congregation laughed, and the friar smiled. ‘And are
you
that man?'

I waited for his declaration, for the outpouring of his heart, for the sweet words he had unpacked when we were alone on the night that the Roman pools filled with starlight. But something was amiss; he choked and stuttered, and muttered denials.

Impatient, I tore the veil from my head, and my tousled curls fell anyhow about my face. ‘Rather ask what woman would accept such a man! For who would take a groom who tattles endlessly like my lady's eldest son, but whose pronouncements contain little wit and no matter?' I turned my back on him,
playing to the crowd. ‘A poor player who can rehearse his lines but cannot speak them when the time comes for him to step upon the stage. Give these poor people their money back, and have done.'

I smiled grimly at the cheers and laughter from the crowd, and bowed as if I were an actor. When I straightened Benedick was beside me, just as if we were about to be married, if only we could clear this one last obstacle of our own stubborn wills. We stared at each other, jaws jutting forward, mouths set stubbornly, eyes afire. The friar looked amused. ‘So you do not love him either?'

Now that it came to the point, I was stuck for an answer. I had never in my life struggled for words, but I simply did not know how to say what I wanted to say.

‘Well,' said the friar, in mock resignation, ‘there will be no more weddings today, if there is no love in the case.'

Still I was silent, although desperate to speak. The truth was, I could not take the final step. Would I lose myself? Would I lose everything that was meant by the name of Beatrice? I did not know how to capitulate without surrender, to yield without defeat.

But as it transpired, I did not have to find the words. Hero, little Hero, my quiet mouse of a cousin, stepped forth, waving a paper. It looked familiar, and my hand flew to my bodice; yes, the sonnet was gone, there was no scratchy parchment beneath my stays, nor telltale crackle when I took my breath. My sonnet, composed on the dunes with Michelangelo Crollalanza and written to Benedick, was now in Hero's hand.

‘I dare say there
is
love in the case,' she crowed, brimful of her new confidence. ‘For here's a paper written in my cousin's hand, and stolen from her bodice, containing her affection for Benedick.'

‘And here's another,' announced Claudio, his good humour
returned; ‘a halting sonnet written on the
Florencia,
in the margins of an almanac of stars. The direction reads “to my dearest Beatrice”.'

I leapt forward to snatch my sonnet from Hero's hand, but my hampering skirts made me slow. Benedick had taken it and was reading it over before I could move, and batted my reaching hand away. Given no choice, I crossed to a smiling Claudio, and took the paper from his hand.

It took me a little time to read the writing, for Benedick's fist was worse than any schoolboy's, and the motion of the ship and the salt sea spray had hampered his calligraphy. But my eyes adjusted, and the words sang forth, heartfelt and true, drawing tears from my eyes. There was his love, set down in words – ink, wonderful, powerful ink that could print from a press upon a pamphlet, or join two souls upon a marriage contract, or sign a death warrant; that same ink could write down love, capture it and liberate it at the same time.

We looked at each other. ‘Well,' he said softly. ‘Here's our own hands …'

‘… Against our own hearts,' I finished.

And then we did not have to find any more words. They were all written down in the blackletter of the prayer book. The friar spoke the form of service, we spoke the responses; someone else's words in our mouths.

And we were wed.

Then there was another whirl of kissings and embracings; we were carried high upon shoulders about the garden and conveyed to the house, for feasting, dancing and the sweet wedding night beyond.

By some strange accident of the procession, and by virtue of the width of the palazzo door, we went two by two into the house like the beasts into the Ark. Claudio and Hero first, then Benedick and myself. The friar and Leonato, the household, the congregation. Even the musicians walked in pairs. Before we
turned into the great hall I looked back once and saw Don Pedro left in the garden.

He was entirely alone.

I woke with the sun, in a golden sea of bedsheets.

There in the midst was an island humped beneath the covers. My harbour and my home. My treasure, my America, my Indies. My Benedick.

His skin was golden too and I took a moment to look at him greedily, closely, inch by inch. I could see the fuzz of stubble gilding his cheek, the darker hair on his chest disappearing below the coverlet. His curls tumbled over his forehead, long lashes fanned upon his cheek and his merry mouth was adorably serious in repose.

I hid my own wanton smile in the coverlet. I'd had no idea how it could be when a man and a woman lay together. We'd tossed that ocean well last night, we'd made those waves ourselves, heights fit to topple us and troughs fit to drown us. And now the waters had stilled and it was day, I could not bear a moment more without him. I kissed a corner of his jaw where it met his cheek. He woke.

We kissed for a quarter of the bells before we even spoke.

‘Good morrow, Duchesa de Leon,' he said; and I considered then – for the first time – that he was a nobleman, and a rich one too. I trusted that it was not too much to hope that my father would be well content with a son-in-law who combined a duke of Spain, a prodigious fortune and a native of the Veneto in the same person.

‘Good morrow, Principe di Villafranca,' I replied, to remind him that the good fortune was not all on my side. And we smiled together.

It was the sound of the bells that made me turn to the
window, and if I had not, God knows how long it would have taken me to realise that we were not alone.

A figure sat upon the balustrade of the balcony, facing into the chamber, watching us. I felt a jag of fear, remembering the murder of the archbishop.