Beatrice and Benedick (2 page)

I had been happy enough these past weeks – I loved my cousin and her family, the island was pleasing and the climate balmy. I had, for my own amusement and for her sake, taken Hero's education in hand; for I had been shocked to learn that my cousin had never read a single book. But I had of late become the victim of dolorous moods and shifts in my temperament. One moment I would rock with laughter; the next be swept away in a gale of tears. I had always been of a merry disposition; perhaps I needed a tonic to settle my humours.

Or perhaps it was my age; at nineteen I was well into my marriageable years. Yet my father had not yet drawn up any contracts or covenants for my marriage, for his position as Prince Escalus was difficult. The two other families of consequence in our state were at war, and our bloodlines were entangled with both. To wed me to one and not the other would remove my father's impartiality and the delicate balance of power in Verona. My brother his heir was unwed for the same reason, and would doubtless become a bachelor prince when my father died.

I had been most thankful, until now, for this. But now I thought of the white woman in the dunes, carrying the weight of a husband. She was my age. She had the blond hair and blue eyes of the north, as I did, and my pale skin too.

As I left the beach for the coast road, the whole island seemed indecently fertile, dotted with vineyards and row crops of vegetables. Along the way calendulas, rock roses and native blackberries bejewelled my route. Even the spiny cacti grew blooming yellow flowers and prickly green pears, seeming to mock my celibacy. I wondered what the Moor's child would look like; a handsome mixture of light and dark. My stomach turned over alarmingly at the thought, and my treacherous liver heated with choler. I resolved to visit the apothecary for a linctus.

By the time I had view of my uncle's house I acknowledged what the problem was, and no linctus would cure it. I wanted
what the maiden had. I wanted the Moor, or my own Moor, or a man of any colour; just someone who would look at me as if I was the only woman in the world.

I sped through the archway and the courtyard in search of Hero. She was only sixteen, my cousin, but she was wise beyond her years, a funny, sober little thing, fiercely intelligent, but with a gentle sense of humour beneath her serious demeanour. She had become my confidante in the last month, and I knew my aunt and uncle were already thinking of an alliance for her, so I saw it as my duty to educate her in others ways beside the construction of Latin verbs. Truth be told, in the last week more of our lessons had been taken up with the recounting of my favourite Italian folk tales than Latin grammar. The subject of these fables was always the same: Love. And today I had another story to add to the canon – the unfolding story of the dusky Moor and his wife.

Beatrice:
The chapel bell tolled nine times and it was time for lessons to begin.

I mounted the steps to Hero's chamber, thinking, as I always did upon stairs, of my family name Della Scala, and our blazon of a ladder upon a shield. My father had told me often that in Roman times, our ancestor Cangrande had brought the sacred stairs of Pontius Pilate back from the Holy Land to Rome, the very stairs which Christ had descended on his way to be crucified. The emperor Constantine rewarded Cangrande with the name
Della Scala,
‘of the Stairs'. It was not just this singular name which set our family apart; our redstone castle in Villafranca was topped with a vast tower containing the highest staircase in the Veneto. ‘Stairs separate us from the common man,' my father was fond of saying. ‘The poor do not have stairs but live in hovels, grubbing about upon the ground. Princes have towers, and many floors; we are elevated. You may measure a man by the stairs in his house.' If this was true my uncle Leonato was doing tolerably well, for his pink palazzo was a maze of stairwells, and the house had nearly as many steps as our castle in Villafranca.

I took this particular flight two at a time in my usual fashion (which I know pained my uncle) but my way was blocked. My aunt Innogen, wife to Leonato and mother to Hero, prayer book in hand, was descending to mass and stopped me with a kiss. Her embracing arm turned me around firmly and steered
me back down the stairs to the coloured courtyard, where the wondrous mosaics of dolphins, sea serpents and mermaids, much older than the house, wove about our feet in their seaborne measure.

My aunt drew me down beside her on a stone bench. Behind us, a hanging tapestry showed a woman petting a white unicorn with her white hand, and was animated in the breeze as if the figures lived. I knew that unicorns would only let maids touch them and was suddenly struck – I did not want to be wed to unicorns for the rest of my days.

I knew, before my aunt began, that I was in trouble; for my aunt Innogen was more like my own dead mother, her sister, than she realised. She had the glassy, blue-grey eyes of my mother, the same colour as the Venetian lagoon on a summer's day. But the calm, just as at those waters, was superficial. Below the surface swirled rip-tides of intelligence and penetration. Being with my aunt made me miss my mother less, for I felt that I was still under her eye. I knew, looking into my aunt's eyes now, that she had divined where I had been this morning, and what I had seen. My cheeks heated again. But when she began her discourse, again with my mother's trick of speech, my aunt talked of quite a different subject.

‘I hear, Niece,' began my aunt, ‘that you have become quite the teller of tales.'

I was silent, for I did not know what she had heard, and did not want to buy myself more trouble. Innogen raised an eyebrow at me. ‘Let me see.
Love
stories. Not exactly Latin verbs, Beatrice.' She chided, but there was a smile in the voice.

‘Hero told you of her schooling, then,' I mumbled.

‘Do not tax Hero with this fault; she was naturally keen to share the fruits of her lessons,' I heard the gentle emphasis, ‘with her mother.'

I did not blame my cousin, but had she told the latest tale?

‘Furthermore,' continued my aunt, ‘I myself overheard,
when passing Hero's chamber, the story of a gentlewoman who had contrived to get herself betrothed to a young count, who refused her hand, causing her to
chase
him in a most
un
gentle fashion.' She smoothed her hair, dark like Hero's but shot with silver, into its golden net, and managed with the gesture to communicate her disapproval. ‘I did not hear the sequel to that one, for I understand the story has, thus far, been left unfinished.'

‘Ah now, this is a fine story,' I babbled. The tale was begging to be told, as I had not yet finished it for Hero. ‘The count falls in love with another, but his betrothed contrives to wait in his lover's bed, and he surrenders his family ring to her by mistake—'

‘Enough!' my aunt cried, throwing up both hands in horror. ‘This history is preposterous.' Her hands dropped to her silken lap and she fingered the bracelet she always wore about her wrist, a gold band with a glowing stone of green chalcedony. She laughed a little. ‘As if a jewel could be taken from a person unawares!' She spoke softly, as if to herself. ‘And bed-tricks are
certainly
not meat for maid's ears.' She sat a little straighter. ‘My husband, your uncle Leonato, wishes Hero to be a model of modest chastity, with a maid's mild behaviour and sobriety. It is he who has forbidden her to read thus far, for this very reason; that she should not be exposed to … licentious stories.'

I caught a chime of discord in her voice and felt the tapestry behind us stir in the breeze and touch my shoulder. ‘And what do
you
wish?' I asked, gently.

My aunt pursed her lips. ‘Try not to be insolent, Beatrice. My husband's wishes are, of course, my own. That said, I …
we
… now want Hero to be educated, as you were yourself, in letters and arts as is befitting a well-born woman. And
you
would do well to remember, Niece, that you will never get a husband if you are so shrewd of your tongue.'

‘But I do not
want
a husband. Why do you speak of husbands?' I asked, suddenly cold in that oven of a courtyard.

‘Hero,' said my aunt carefully, ‘is sixteen years old and may now, by law, become betrothed. Today we are expecting a progress of noble guests at our house for the Festival of the Assumption, and they will stay for a summer's lease. Hero will be thrown in the way of many a young sprig. And there may even be a man enough in the company for you, Niece.' There was a small significant silence, filled only by the gulls mewing from the sea. The tapestry behind us bellied like a sail in the warm breeze, and the unicorn lady brushed my shoulder with her skirts. Like a warning.

I breathed out slowly. ‘Was
that
my father's design in sending me here?'

She raised a dark brow. ‘I do not know. Was it?'

It all made sense. If I were packed off to find a prince or a count of the south, my father would not have been seen to give the crucial balance of power away at home. I smiled grimly. ‘Come, Aunt. I am not my cousin, a child to be gulled into a union. I can see a church by daylight.'

‘The prospect is not pleasing to you? To have a well-born man profess his love for you?'

I thought of the Moor with a shiver. Before this summer I had noted my father's reluctance to dispose of my hand with relief, and I could not admit, even to myself, that I might feel differently now. ‘I would rather hear a dog bark at a crow,' I lied.

My aunt narrowed her blue-grey gaze at me against the climbing sun, and I felt, again, my mother regard me from her eyes. ‘Well, Niece, for all that, I think that I will see you, before I die, fitted with a husband.'

‘I dare swear it,' I agreed, ‘at a hot Christmastide.'

My aunt laughed and made a gesture of resignation. ‘Get to your lessons, wretch,' she said, slapping my behind with her
prayer book as I jumped to my feet. ‘And remember what I said.'

But as I ducked into the cool stairwell once more and out of the sun's burning eye, I thought perhaps I had been too glib.

Perhaps in Sicily, Christmas
was
hot; and I had just sworn to marry.

Beatrice:
I mounted the stairs again to Hero's chamber, more soberly now, to find Hero sitting in the window seat, her small frame hunched in the arched casement, looking down on to the sea road, waiting. She jumped up as I entered and ran to embrace me fiercely. ‘Where have you
been
? I want to know what happened to the lady and the count. Did she ever get the ring from him?'

I waved away her question with a flap of my hand and drew her back to the window seat, instantly forgetting my promise to my aunt. ‘Oh, my pretty little coz,' I burst out, ‘I have
such
a tale to tell you today!'

She clasped my hands eagerly, and I admired, as I always did, her small bones (I was a carthorse to her destrier), her tanned skin (I was day to her night) and her eyes as black and bright as olives (mine were as blue as birds' eggs). Even our hair differed, for hers was black and shiny and fell in a smooth veil to her waist and mine was blond and curly and stopped about my shoulders. Furthermore, I was three years older than she. And yet, for all that, we were friends. I twined her fingers with mine and she asked the question I knew she would ask. ‘How does it begin?'

‘Well …' Then I remembered what my aunt had said. ‘That is to say, it does not begin.'

I got up from the window seat, and went to the writing desk. A polished square on its surface shamed me when I picked the
dusty Latin book up; it had not been handled for a fortnight. I took a breath, and spoke my duty. ‘Not today, Hero. For my aunt told me to instruct you in strictly educational matters. Now construe.' I opened the book and coughed a little at the dust. ‘
Hic ibat Simois, hic est Sigeia tellus
…' I droned on like a bee in a casement, boring myself.

Hero folded her arms sulkily and sing-songed back to me. ‘Here-ran-the-Simois-here-is-the-Sigeian-land-here-stood-the-lofty-palace-of-old-Priam. Beatrice, please! No more dead histories of dead lands. A story of our own dear Italy, and of our times, I beg you.'

I relented and shut the book. ‘Very well, a tale, but a worthy one, of morality and religion.' I racked my brain, for in truth I didn't know any. I dozed through mass, and did not study scripture. So I told a legend that my sea captain had told me on the way through the straits. ‘I can tell you a moral tale closer to home. In biblical times Our Lady herself sent the citizens of Messina a letter, written in Hebrew, rolled and tied with a lock of her hair. Mary praised their faith and assured them of her perpetual protection. Ah, here is some Latin for you; she ended the letter
Vos et Ipsam civitatem benedicimus,
that is …'

‘I bless you and your city,' interrupted Hero. ‘I
know
this. The letter is kept in the cathedral, and we celebrate the day it came every year. I did not mean pious parables, Beatrice. I want to hear a
love
story.'

I sighed. ‘I was brought here to instruct you, for soon you may be lying between the sheets of a marriage contract with some young gallant.'

‘Then teach me of love!' my cousin begged. ‘That can be my education. Beatrice, I
need
to know.'

I looked at her, her dark eyes enormous with pleading. I sat down on the window seat again.

‘Very well.' I lowered my voice, in case my aunt overheard us, and told the tale of the Moor and the lady in the dunes.

I told how they had lain entangled in the still cool shadows of the seagrass, kissing hungrily. ‘And then he pushed her into the dunes, and moved atop her …'