Beatrice and Benedick (39 page)

Paris roared with laughter.

And I knew then I could not marry him.

I rose and stumbled from the room. He did not notice.

Beatrice:
I wandered through the streets of Verona, under the stars.

The moon was a silver galleon sailing though an archipelago of indigo clouds. I looked up for my star at the foot of Cassiopeia's chair, and it blurred in my tears as it had done once before; the night when I was with Benedick on the dunes, the night he had embraced me. And now he was likely dead.

I imagined his lifeless face, eyes upturned and white as he sank down beneath the waves. These stars were likely the last things he saw. I could look at them no more and stumbled into a vast dark doorway. Inside all was marble, striped in black and white like a winter tiger. The Duomo.

The black tiles led me forth like footprints to the crypt, where a much older church nestled within the newer one. This was St Zeno's own Basilica, the early Christian church upon which the cathedral had been built. I knelt at the saint's shrine, and gazed up at the painting of Zeno with the holy family which hung above the little altar. As I looked at his black face, lambent with candlelight, all the events of the summer came back to me in a rush – the Moor, the masque, the wedding, the poet, the Naumachia, the fire, the Vara. And Benedick. Benedick at dinner, Benedick in the dunes, and now Benedick in the sea.

I remembered him on the day of the tourney, as Signor Mountanto. He was so self-possessed then, so wondrous at swordplay, so confident at beating anyone who stepped forth. I
had always thought, unquestioningly, that he would return from whatever little skirmish he might encounter. I was confident that he was immortal. He may not have been mine, but somehow it was enough that he would always be somewhere on this earth, devil-may-care, talking his way out of trouble. I searched my heart for the smallest hope, but feared that Benedick had at last met with an enemy he could not vanquish with a word or a sword. For what could he do against the elements themselves? He could not gull the winds, he could not charm the seas.

St Zeno watched me dispassionately as I agonised, waiting patiently for the moment of my supplication. I screwed my eyes tight shut and clasped my hands, kneeling on the cold stone. The crystals on my midnight skirts cracked beneath my knees as I brought to mind the saint's legend, told to me as a child. St Zeno had once calmed the waters of the Adige when a horse and cart had bolted, parting the waves like Moses. He had magically kept the flood waters of the Veneto plains away from the cathedral door. Surely he could save one wretched, irritating man?

I did not know the Saint of Padua, I just knew
my
saint, a Moor who'd come all the way from the Africas to build this Basilica with his own hands. In the name of St Zeno every Moor was granted safe passage on Verona's streets by law – here they did not suffer the persecutions meted out by other communes (Messina, oh, Messina!). Zeno was from so far away, but he had become as parochial as my father. Every fisherman in Verona had his medal hanging from their rod, every cordwainer stamped his symbol into the shoes they made. So, for the first time, I prayed to Verona's saint as if I meant what I said. ‘Saint Zeno,' I pleaded, looking up into his black face, polished ebony reflecting the light of the votive candles, ‘please save him. Save Benedick.'

He looked at me with eyes as black and white as the marble
walls. His impassivity was somehow a comfort. He would help me, or he would not, with the casual dispatch of the divine. I had done all I could. I staggered to my feet, left through the great doors and paused on the steps. Tomorrow I would have stood here and become Beatrice Maffei. How curious the night was – it had switched around, as it had done once before for me in Benedick's presence, that night on the dunes. The skies had changed, like the dial on a verge clock or one hemisphere to another. Before dinner, Benedick might still have been alive, and I had been considering marriage to Paris. After dinner, I was as good as sure Benedick was dead; but now I knew that if I could not marry him, I could not marry anyone. If there was the smallest hope that he would return, I would wait.

Back at the Palazzo Maffei I climbed the great white spiral and went directly to my room. I rifled my bed chest until I found what I sought, grabbing at the piece of forgotten parchment. I flattened out the sonnet on my coverlet and read it through. Now every word had meaning, and my tears fell on the ink.

I dried my eyes – straightened the starlight dress and descended the spiral stair once more. The merriment in the great hall had become even more raucous, and after the quiet and cool of the night the noise broke over me like a wave.

The first person I saw was Giulietta, dreaming as usual, and she gave me an idea. She too had loved and lost – perhaps I could save her
and
myself? I passed her chair, laid aside her cap and pulled her dark hair about her shoulders so that it fell to her white bosom. ‘It looks better this way, sweets,' I said. She gave me a shy smile.

I sat beside Paris once again, and at once – as if I had not been absent for an hour – his ring hand was back on my arm. I saw a different meaning to the gesture now – it was proprietorial. I
waited for my moment to tell him that I could not marry him. There were to be no more games now, just a flat refusal. I would deal with my father later. But the male talk was unceasing; all still of England and of King Philip's failed attack. Of Parma, of a counter-attack, of what the queen would do, what the Pope would do, what the Lombard merchants would do.

‘Their precious Saint John neglected to protect his knights,' Paris gloated.

I spoke up, idly, without agenda, without thinking. ‘Saint James,' I said. ‘The Knights of Saint John are French, and the Knights of the Garter English. Saint James is the patron saint of Spain.' By some strange accident of the conversational ebb and flow, I had spoken into a quiet lull, and my voice could be heard clearly from one end of the board to the other.

There was a short, strained silence, and then my kinsmen laughed. ‘Have a care, Count,' called one. ‘Lady Beatrice may give better instruction in the schoolroom than the bedroom.' The Capuletti menfolk laughed again.

Paris smiled, but a little muscle jumped in his cheek. He turned to me and spoke low voiced, his jaw as rigid as it had been when he had been posing for his portrait. But his blazing eyes more than conveyed his meaning.

‘Do not
ever
,' he spat, ‘presume to correct me in front of my kinsmen again. You may prattle as much as you please in private but never,
never
make me look a fool in front of my court.'

I lowered my eyes so he should not see the triumph there. The man of wax had cracked, at last, like the seal on a letter. And the answer had been so simple; he'd accepted my corrections in good grace when we'd been alone, but as soon as I'd corrected him in company – the company of men – I had taken a step too far. I looked about at the couples ranged around the board. How many of those wives outfaced their husbands at home, only to be silent in public? Was this the only way that a woman could rule, this private, domestic power?

If I had been Paris's wife in truth his outburst would have silenced me, but I was so close now, I would not be quieted. My heart beat so that I thought he must see it at my throat. ‘Forgive me, my lord,' I said meekly. ‘My tongue has ever been my fault. But I have always been of the opinion that it is much better to be a talker with decided opinions which one can readily share with one's husband, than one who is a dumb show. Who would want a modest maid who has nothing to say for herself, not a word to gainsay her husband? Who is as dumb as a block, and meekly agrees with every word her lord says.' I nodded down the board. ‘Look at my cousin there, so still like an image, saying nothing. I swear I have not heard her utter one word from last week to this.' Paris followed my gaze, looking past me as if he could no longer see me.

Giulietta sat there beyond me; she had not heard the dispute; her dark eyes looked far away, through the walls and over the dark fields to Mantua. She looked remarkably well tonight, no longer the sallow maid I'd seen when I had come here, and I knew she was thinking of her love. Just as my memory of Benedick had done for me, her remembrances brought a becoming bloom to her cheek as where the sun touches a creamy magnolia petal with rose. Her white neck was long and elegant, her bosom high and white. Most becoming of all to the count, I was sure, was her modest silence – she sat quietly without a murmur, mute as a swan.

Paris rose, and spoke a word in the ear of my uncle Capuletti, Giulietta's father. The two men went for a private conference in the moonlit courtyard. And when they returned, I knew from Capuletti's expression of quiet triumph that I was free.

Benedick:
With every league we put between the doomed
San Juan de Sicilia
and ourselves our spirits were elevated.

Because we were now so few, our rations, though still not enough to satisfy, seemed a king's feast. All the mutineers had brought supplies from the bay, and because of this, and for the sake of morale, Claudio and I had persuaded the captain to spare the miscreants a flogging. It was the only time at sea that I had known Bartoli deviate from his strict code of command.

In truth we were glad of the return of pilot Da Sousa, for we needed the experienced navigator to lead us through the tricky sounds. Our errant pilot had brought a goat aboard, an animal sacrifice to atone for his transgression, and we all benefited from her creamy milk and looked forward to her meat from slaughter. The wind blew and cracked his cheeks for us, filling our remaining sails, and as we sailed ever southwards the climate became more forgiving, the water more open. We still had the problem of navigation, but thanks to Beatrice's star, which I tracked and charted every night, I could at least inform the captain, with some confidence, that we were going due south.

Claudio and the captain pored over our inadequate charts daily, and finally we recognised landfall. A long spit of land reached into the sea; Claudio pronounced it to be Cornwall. Strong crosswinds buffeted us and the captain gave the order to trim our sails – we were once again in the English Channel.

We were not, of course, out of danger; as we broached the Channel again we kept an eye to the spyglass for English ships. But despite the spectacular failure of the armada it seemed the English had lost their nerve; we saw a merchant sloop here, a fishing smack there, but never a warship at all. We began to believe, for the first time since Scotland, that we could really get home.

Every man knew his new quarters, and I could at last give my attention to our newest crew member. I gave the Moor the surgeon's cabin, and for a week he could do naught but lie down. I doubted very much whether he would live, but I rifled the medicine chests of the dead doctor to find relief for his many ailments. As it transpired the Moor knew more of the compounds than I. He waved away the jars of undulating grey leeches and slippery silver mercury and pointed to the vials of arrowroot and cinnabar.

I noted as I treated the sores on his flesh that his arms were covered in some manner of black writing, but no amount of sponging would take it off – it had a faintly blue tinge and looked as if the ink had been trapped beneath the skin. I did not recognise the strange letters from any alphabet I had ever learned, and wondered from what alien lexicon those words originated. It did not seem, for a time, as if I would ever get the chance to ask him. His recovery was hampered by the fact that he could not sleep – and if he closed his eyes for an instant would wake with a cry. I knew that when he slept he was back on the
San Juan de Sicilia.

But despite my fears, the Moor's health gradually improved, and as he gained strength I learned more of his history. His story would draw tears from a stone. He had been a boy slave from the northern Africas, given to the king's father Carlos as a gift. ‘I had a talent of finding water' – at this my ears pricked like a cur's – ‘and worked for the king at the Pardo, and later at El Escorial. But with the birth of my son the gift left me,' he said, dry
mouthed, ‘as if I had passed it to him.' Having failed to complete the water gardens for the king, he had been transferred to the galleys, and rowed to Lepanto and back. And now, in this age of ships with no oars, he had been taken for the short boats and pledged his allegiance to the king once more. And still he served; he had stayed with the treasure, had not abandoned the enterprise. By my calculation, and by my recall of the watchwords, he had been in the bay, on that ship of the dead, for a week before we'd arrived. I could not imagine the horror of what he'd encountered. ‘And no one came for the treasure?' I asked, sitting on the end of his cot. ‘Did not the Scots attempt to board the boat?'