Beatrice and Benedick (52 page)

The sun was so bright behind the intruder's back that for a moment I could not see his face. I pulled up the coverlet to shield my nakedness – and tugged on Benedick's arm. He blinked at the light, but recognised the figure before I; for he had seen the trespasser more recently. ‘Crollalanza!' he said.

Michelangelo hopped down lightly and padded into the chamber. Uninvited, he sat down on the corner of the mattress, as comfortably as if a newly-weds' marital bed was his own parlour. I did not know how to greet him, for not only was the situation most irregular, but I felt I did not know this man.

Gone was the carefree poet of last year. His skin was as tanned as Benedick's and I could see, for the first time, his Moorish heritage writ in his face. His expression now had a downward tendency – eyes, lips, brows, all turned down at the corners. The loss of his mother had etched new and bitter lines upon his face; two twin troughs of grief sat between his brows. He was dressed in the ragged brown fustian of a brigand, his neck wrapped now not by a ruff but a series of concentric hoods and cowls. The pen and bottle were gone from about his neck, and in their place hung a mean little dagger. The only thing that identified him as Michelangelo Crollalanza was the pearl that still shivered at his left ear. I knew at that moment that his mother must have given the pearl to him, or else he would have eschewed such an ornament by now.

He did not greet us, or we him – the oddness of the tableau seemed to render all normal niceties void.

‘And on the third day he rose again,' said Benedick, his voice heavy with irony. ‘Are you come to dispatch the prince?'

Michelangelo shook his head slowly. ‘I thought upon what
you said; that there are other ways to die. I met a man in the port – Gaspar da Sousa, do you know him?'

I did not recognise the name, but Benedick visibly flinched. ‘I do,' he said slowly. ‘He was the pilot of the gunship
Florencia
.'

‘Yes. I met him by chance at the Mermaid in Messina, and stood him a drink. I recalled the name of his ship from Tuscany's fleet, and asked him if his commander had been an honourable prince by the name of Don Pedro. He answered that his commander had indeed gone by that name, but there was no honour in him. I listened to the tale he had to tell, then came to Don Pedro with it. I told the good prince that if he stays another day, all men shall know what I know.'

Now I was intrigued – what dark secrets had Michelangelo uncovered to hold against the prince? The poet nodded at me. ‘Your cousin, lady, could tell you how quickly slander spreads around this island. Gossip goes faster than Prester John, virtue slower than a pilgrim.' He took out his dagger and began to toss it hand to hand, the blade winking and spinning in the air. It was unnerving.

‘But Don Pedro,' persisted Benedick. ‘He shall not die?'

‘One day God shall ordain to be his last,' said Michelangelo, sounding much more like his old self. ‘But not today. I chose to banish him instead.'

Banishment instead of death, I thought. It was a merciful sentence I had employed once myself. ‘Banishment is death, if you are forced to leave that which you love,' I said, thinking of Giulietta; pining in Verona for the young Montecchi in Mantua.

‘Lady Beatrice,' he said, addressing me directly for the first time. ‘You always did take the point so admirably. Don Pedro must leave Sicily today and with it all hopes of preferment. I have told him that if he ever sets foot on this island again, I will kill him.'

I believed him. ‘So now he will never be viceroy,' I murmured.

‘No – he has chosen quite a different path. He is to go for a pilgrim, and walk to Compostela.'

I looked at Benedick. Santiago de Compostela, back in Don Pedro's native Spain, was the spiritual home of his saint, James the Great.
Matamoros
– the Moor-slayer.

‘What?' My husband's eyes flew wide.

‘It was his idea. I think he wants to go. But he wishes to speak to you,' Michelangelo also looked at Benedick, ‘before he takes his leave. And now,' he sheathed his dagger again, ‘I must take mine, before the overzealous hounds of the Watch catch my scent.'

‘Where will you go?' I asked.

‘England, if I make it so far, to join my father. He has a house in London, by the riverbank.'

He rose, and I felt a sudden pang. I was leaving for Villafranca later in the day to return to my father and introduce him to the reason why I could not now be married to whomever he chose. It was unlikely that I would ever see Michelangelo Florio Crollalanza again. It had been a sudden reunion, and as sudden a leave-taking – and though we were no longer friends, we had been once. I wanted to say something in valediction, somewhat about his mother, or the sonnet that we'd written together, but I could think of nothing sensible. So I asked him, ‘Will you write again?'

He smiled, quite like the old Michelangelo. ‘Now my blood feud is done, I may yet exchange my dagger for a pen.'

‘Will you write of your … mother?' It was almost a whisper.

His face was grave again. ‘Not yet,' he said. ‘One day. I will begin not with a tragedy, but a comedy. Your own story, perhaps.'

I thought of our story; the heartache, the loss, the separation. The death, the despair; the nameless secrets Benedick was keeping in the name of honour. ‘Are our antics comic, then?'

‘You are wed, are you not?' Now his expression tended upwards. His eyes, his mouth, his brows; the tragic mask turned comic again. ‘You loved one summer, quarrelled, parted and then wed the next. You travelled hundreds, thousands of miles in between. You girdled the earth; you circumnavigated a great round
O
and came back where you started.
Tanto traffico per niente
.'

It was a Sicilian tag, but I understood it well enough.
Much ado about nothing.
Put like that, it did seem a nonsense – I smiled at Benedick and he smiled at me; the waste of a year seemed easier to bear with a comic slant upon it. And we were together now; all had ended well.

‘The prince stays for you at the gate,' said Michelangelo. ‘I will see you anon.' He bowed to us like an actor making an exit, vaulted neatly over the balcony and was gone.

Benedick:
We dressed as swiftly as we might and walked hand in hand through the gardens to the gatehouse.

The sun was only just rising, sleepily, and the flowers were beginning to wake and give off their scent. The dew rimed the lawn with crystals, the grasses were spears of emerald. Beyond the walls the sea was sapphire and foam sat upon the waves like a net of pearl. Everything was bejewelled.

And then we got to the gatehouse, and saw, among the glory of my first morning as Benedick the Married Man, a man of ash.

A pilgrim stood there, leaning on a crooked staff taller than himself. He wore robes the colour of sand, and a broad-brimmed hat with a silver scallop badge pinned upon the front. His rope belt was knotted thrice for the Trinity. He wore simple pattens on his feet, and over the whole he wore a rough cream cloak with the hood drawn up over the hat. I peered into the cowl; it was Don Pedro.

He greeted us with a wave of his staff, but wore no smile. Beatrice, with an instinct I loved her for, hung back as I met him beneath the postern. For the second time that day no greetings were exchanged. We had sailed beyond such shallow waters.

‘I hear them, Benedick,' he said to me, low voiced, with no preamble. ‘I hear the woman in the flames, I hear the sailors groaning with hunger. My sins call for me in my dreams. All's gone awry, but in Compostela I'll begin to heal.'

‘I pray that you do.' And I meant it. I could not absolve him; that was God's business. I could only hope that he would find some peace from those voices. But I did have one more thing to ask him; a notion that had rolled around my head like distant thunder since the fruitless wedding day.

‘Did you ever tell Don John, your brother, of the trick you played upon me? When you led me to the beach, to see my lady in the arms of another?'

I had been struck, many times, by the similarity in the way in which Claudio and I were gulled, a year apart, by a pair of brothers.

He furrowed his forehead and I saw then that he wore a smudge of penitent's ash between his brows. ‘Yes. I may have told him in an idle hour along the road, as a jest.'

I knew then how it had been – Don Pedro had boasted of his wiles to his brother, and Don John had served Claudio in like kind, bringing him to note an innocent embrace. I looked to the heavens. A
jest.
I'd sailed on a ship of fools from Spain to Scotland and back, and lost a year of my life with Beatrice. As the poet had said, we'd circumnavigated a great round
O
, and come back to where we'd started. But, looking at the prince now, grey as the ash, I could forgive him. He had so little, and I had everything.

‘Commend me to your wife,' he said, as if his thoughts marched with mine, nodding gardenwards to where Beatrice stood in the shade, smelling a nosegay of roses. ‘You may tell her now,' he said, ‘it no longer matters.'

I took his meaning, and did not know what to say.

He smiled sadly. ‘My ship waits.' He held out his hand to me. In it was a medal on a ribbon. Next to his subfusc garb the gold and scarlet sang, and winked knowingly in the sun. ‘You gave this back to me twice in your life. Might I ask that you keep it this time, as a remembrance of me?'

A treacherous lump rose to my throat. ‘It would be my honour.'

He raised his chin a little to look his last upon me. I do not think I had ever seen him look so noble. ‘Once a knight of Saint James, always a knight of Saint James.'

He clasped my shoulder briefly, bowed to my wife where she stood in the shadow of the arch, and walked through the gatehouse.

I put the ribbon round my neck and dropped the medal beneath my clothes. The disc was still warm from the prince's hand. I returned to Beatrice and we walked back, sober now.

The friar was sweeping the steps of the chapel where we'd wed the previous day, and stopped to lean upon his broom and wish us joy.

‘We have just taken leave of a pilgrim, who takes the silver road,' I told him.

‘Aye; Don Pedro,' said the friar, with less surprise than I'd expected. ‘I blessed his sandals at matins, for he leaves tomorrow.'

‘Today,' my wife corrected, ‘we said our farewells even now.'

The friar's sandy brows drew together in a frown. ‘There are no ships today. It is God's day; they do not sail.'

He was right; we had wed the day before on a Saturday, and on Sundays, ships did not sail. I felt a sudden chill, as if the sun had hidden behind a cloud.

I took Beatrice's hand, pulling her urgently.

‘Where are we going?' she asked.

‘Somewhere you know well.'

Beatrice:
Benedick was right, I knew the place well.

Here I'd seen a Moor couple with his white wife. Here I'd sat with a poet and written a sonnet. Here I'd lain below Benedick as he'd pressed my form into the sand. Here I'd seen a dark lady burn her husband's seditious pamphlets. Here I'd embraced her son, and been spied upon by a prince.

We came to the dunes short of breath, for Benedick seemed anxious, hurried. The sun glittered upon the waves, and found the powdered crystals in the sand. In the bejewelled landscape, there was only one dull patch – a heap of dun garments where the waves met the shore. A body?

Benedick ran forward so swiftly that my hand broke from his. I followed him, heart thumping. But all was well – it was only a pile of clothes. Benedick sorted them with a shaking hand – a sand-coloured robe and cloak, plain pattens. And a broad-brimmed pilgrim's hat, pinned with a silver badge of St James. I took his hand again. ‘All is well,' I said, ‘all is well.' A foolish litany. For then I saw the footprints. They were the perfect impressions of naked feet, and they led into the sea, then … nowhere.

Benedick rushed into the waves, wading as far as he could. I stood, one foot in the sea and one on shore, shielding my eyes and looking beyond him, desperately seeking in that gilded path of sunlight the telltale dot of a bobbing head. But there was nothing but a reverent staff, dipping on the surf like driftwood.
‘Come back,' I cried, terrified for that moment that the sea would take Benedick too.

And he did. He waded back to me, his face stricken with grief, and smashed his hand with frustration upon the water. I pulled him from the surf and we sank down, sodden, upon the sand. For once in his company, I had no words. We sat in a stunned silence. The sun beat down and warmed us, the tramontana blew his hair about, drying the curls. Only his eyes were still wet. And then he began to talk.

Of a prince who was not a prince, but a coward. A prince who cut an anchor and sent a shipful of men to their deaths, and then hid, craven, in his cabin. A prince who made his fellows swear to be secret, so his reputation would stand untouched.

‘His sins weighed him down in the end,' he concluded. ‘They pulled him down into the deeps.'

I remembered more sins, farther back; of the business of Guglielma Crollalanza. I thought of Michelangelo; had he known Don Pedro would take this path – not the silver road to Compostela, but the golden path into the sea? Either way, the blood feud was paid, and Don Pedro had met his end.

Suddenly, I knew what to say. ‘The prince did redeem himself,' I said. ‘He told me of your misprision, and of the
Scopa
cards. If he had not, I would always have doubted you.' I took his face in my hands, turned him to me. ‘I think he loved you in his way; and now, I shall love you in mine.' I kissed him, tasting the salt on his lips, the salt of the sea, the salt of his tears. He put his sodden arms about me and held me so tight to his chest I could barely breathe; but I did not care. Then I exclaimed, as I felt something sharp pressing upon my chest. I loosened my grip and felt in my bodice. I took the
settebello,
sodden and crumpled, from my gown, and held it out to him.