Beatrice and Benedick (5 page)

I walked beneath the shady loggias, striding from one arched shadow to the next, dodging the climbing sun. On the long ride to Monreale, I had not been merry company for Claudio, brooding instead on what Lady Beatrice had said to me the night before, and I fingered the
settebello
card, where it sat in my baldric, a hard little rectangle just over my heart.

In that huge place, with everyone inside for mass, I could hear the soaring notes of the choir, and I suddenly felt very alone. Strangely, when the choir began their motet, even the geese had suddenly hushed their honking and disappeared. I was not accustomed to my own company, and I did not like myself as a friend. When I was alone my thoughts clamoured loudly into the silence. But I did not want to hear my own thoughts, did not want to peer into my own heart and did not enjoy searching my soul.

But however hard I tried to concentrate on the music of the mass, unwanted thoughts began to creep into my mind.

What is your occupation?

Since boyhood I had always followed wherever others led, like a leaf in the stream. I would have stayed at home for ever had not my latest companion Sebastian taken it into his head to travel; once he was gone then loneliness and dislike of my own company persuaded me to take my father's offer to accompany Claudio Casadei to Sicily. And now I had reached a new nadir. I had followed a seventeen-year-old
novellino
all the way to this alien place, and had now been turned away from God's house, to be told to return and pick up God's nephew in a brace of hours. Lady Beatrice was right. I
was
a nursemaid – a nutshell of a man, with no kernel, no substance.

If there had been a stone underfoot I would have kicked it, but the well-swept paths afforded me no such outlet. The song of the choir swelled in my chest like a tide of sadness and
pricked at my eyeballs. I sought escape, and walked through a white archway into the bleached piazza beyond.

There there were people and bustle aplenty, and my melancholy began to subside. Here was colour and company and life and noise. Seeking diversion, I spotted a bright cart at the far side of the square and walked over to peer at it. The thing was large and bravely painted in red and blue and yellow, with carved curlicues of gilt and golden frames bordering fantastical scenes all round the sides. The side of the cart facing into the square was comprised of a stage with a pair of blood-bright curtains, closed at present. A bored-looking mule stood between the traces, and a knot of people gathered about the cart with an air of expectation, as if it was a conjuror's box.

I retreated to the fountain bowl and sat on the warm stone, trailing my hand in the crystal water as I prepared to watch the coming spectacle.

I had not long to wait. With a great fanfare the red curtains opened and a little manikin appeared, so cunningly contrived that it was some moments before I realised that it was not a dwarf but a large puppet. The puppet had a helm of gold, and gilded armour and a shield. I sighed inwardly – everywhere I turned was there to be a polemic of soldiery, to make me feel even less of a man? But I was diverted when the jaw hinged open and the thing began to speak. I could not understand above half of the odd southern dialect, but I could understand by the puppet's tortured vowels coupled with his blue blazon that he was supposed to be French. I began to smile.

The puppet was joined by a troupe of others, all with marvellously designed and jointed limbs. I could not understand how the little men were being manipulated, for there seemed to be no strings above or levers below. Only by narrowing my eyes against the fierce sun could I divine that each joint, large or small, was attached with a string as fine as a hair to control it. The scenery, too, was devilishly clever – rendered in relief, the
buildings were somehow built on to backboards, set behind each other in layers so the tableaux could change. I recognised the fiery mountain above the bay and the very square where we now stood, the cathedral built in sandy stone, and a little ring of golden bells visible in the campanile. I began to enjoy myself.

It was some way into the performance before I noticed the man sitting on the fountain bowl a little way from me. He was laughing too loudly, with the confidence of a man who had been born with enough privilege that no one will dare to silence him. But it was a cheerful noise and it was that which drew my gaze to him first; I was disposed, that day, towards happiness and amusement, to pull me from my trough of misery. He was Don Pedro.

I was surprised to see him. The way is long from Messina to Monreale. Besides, he could, had he wanted, have travelled in mine and Claudio's train; but he must have had a clandestine purpose for he was without cortège or retinue. He was dressed in scarlet and black, but had left off his armour today – yesterday he would have resembled the puppets more closely.

When he laughed he threw back his head and opened his mouth to show all his teeth. His fangs made me think of a cat of the Africas that I had seen in a menagerie once. He was the same; an oily black pelt, pin-sharp ivory teeth, and easy grace as he relaxed his long frame along the fountain's edge. He could have been purring. Humbly, I looked away again – I was not sure if he would recognise me, as in his cavalcade from Venice he kept with his officers and when he spoke to us he spoke to Claudio, who was nearer him in rank. I did not wish to presume, and turned my attention back to the play in hand.

Now the ridiculous French had been joined by a band of handsome puppets with red bandannas about their foreheads and particoloured hose like harlequins. These, I supposed, were the Sicilians; the heroes of the tableau. The Sicilians seemed to be questioning the French – trying to get them to speak their
language, to say a particular word.
Ci ci,
it sounded like;
Cici.
The French could not say it –
She-she,
they lisped.
She-she.
Don Pedro laughed at the hapless French.
She-she.
I laughed. Everybody laughed.

Then the bells of the little white church in the scenery swung and gave their tinny chime, and behind us, as if to assist the counterfeit players' pretence, the bells of the cathedral boomed fit to shiver my ribs. The French puppets knelt and placed their hands together, while the Sicilians settled down to sleep, the puppets collapsing as their strings slackened and their joints crumpled together.

Everyone in the crowd was curiously still and my hands were cold where they trailed in the fountain. I felt a sudden, unbearable foreboding. The puppets now seemed real to me, the play was real, and the soldiers were real. I could hardly breathe as I watched the kneeling French with dread and pity; and when the Sicilians jumped up and drew their knives I felt a sense of inevitability. I had known this would happen.

The Sicilians tore into the foil breastplates of the French and pulled forth little red paper hearts, with rolled red ribbons attached to them to represent the blood and shambles. The ribbons flew into the crowd and the watching children – who knew this story well, it seemed – gathered them up; the little maids even tied them in their hair. The crowd cheered and clapped and the puppeteers came forth to collect the adulation and the coins. There was just one greybeard and his son, to operate all those multitudes. Puppetry, like murder, was obviously a family business here.

Don Pedro clapped with the rest, rose and flipped the pair a silver
real,
a gesture so generous that both father and son removed hood and liripipe and bowed.

I stayed in my place, not sure whether to greet the prince, but he turned to me at once. ‘Signor Benedick, is it not?'

Now I scrambled to my feet and bowed. The flourish of my
hand sent a few drops of water on to his surcoat, where they sat on the nap of the velvet like diamonds. ‘Yes, Highness.'

‘Take your ease,' he said. ‘I am here incognito, as you Italians say. And having watched that little play, it might be politic not to let these good people know that I am one of the ruling class.' I smiled as I was required to; for Sicily had been under the Spanish yolk for nigh on three centuries; they were the latest in a long line of invaders from antique times to the hapless French. Even now that paper king, the viceroy, sat upon his borrowed throne in nearby Palermo. I thought little of Don Pedro's alias, though; from his dress and grooming, and his easy distribution of his pieces of eight, there could be no mistaking him for anything but a Spaniard.

The prince sat back down on the fountain and motioned me to sit beside him, seemingly content to rest and talk on. ‘A cautionary tale, did you not think?'

‘I did not understand all of it,' I confessed.

‘The Sicilian Vespers. They tell the story to their children here like a bedtime tale.' He stretched out his legs. ‘The locals asked the French to say
cirici
: chickpea. Those that could not were identified as the enemy, and that evening, when the bells chimed for vespers, they murdered every one of them.'

‘Killed by a humble chickpea,' I mused. ‘I knew the food here was poison.'

A little moppet tripped over my feet, and I set her on to her feet again with a smile. Her pigtails were tied up with ribbons of blood.

‘It is no accident,' he said. I thought he spoke of the child, but his eyes were on the puppet cart. ‘It is no accident that they enact this play now. The people are sick of conquerors. Romans. Greeks. Arabs. Normans. French. They put up with them for a while,' he shrugged expressively, ‘and then they've had enough. The blood runs close to the surface in Sicily. Like that hill of fire over there.' He gestured to the volcano, sleeping on the skyline,
a line of blue smoke rising to join the clouds. ‘All quiet and calm, until,
bang.
' He opened his fingers in a spiky explosion.

I understood him now. ‘And today, the archbishops and viceroys and princes of Spain.'

‘Indeed. God save us from such a fate.' He crossed himself rapidly, across and down, across and down, stitching his heart firmly into his chest with the warp and weft of faith.

I nodded in agreement, the foreboding and melancholy returning to shroud my own heart. I felt, suddenly, that some misfortune had befallen Sebastian, or he would have written to me – that he was shipwrecked, drowned, dead.

‘Are you well, signor?' asked the prince, with more fellow feeling than I would have given him credit for. ‘You were merrier on the road, I think.' I thought then, he is here for a reason, but, like myself, he has some leisure, and is content to while away the time catechising me.

‘I was put in mind of a friend – more of a brother, to say truly – who is in danger's way.'

‘A soldier?'

Was there no avoiding the subject? ‘No, not that – an adventurer, more.'

‘This world offers no greater adventure than to ride into the field of battle. And you? Your city-states are quarrelsome, I believe; and for a soldier opportunity is all. Have you ever seen battle?'

‘Why does everyone ask that?' I meant it for a jest, a diversion, but he leaned into me, so close I could see the dark whiskers breaking though his skin, and spoke in deadly earnest.

‘
Because something is coming
,' he said. ‘It is time to stand up and be counted. To pick your side.'

‘Is that what you were doing in Venice?' I asked, without a thought for my insolence. But the prince did not seem to mind my curiosity.

‘Partly, yes. Believe me, I have good reason for asking. Have you ever been a soldier?'

I was tired of all this talk of soldiery. ‘I, Prince?' I said. ‘Have I not been up and down the map, naked sword in hand, looking for argument? Have I not followed every colour of the rainbow, taking every prince's pennant as my own? Have I not worn mail so many days that my very flesh is patterned like a Turkey carpet?'

‘Have you?'

‘No,' I said. ‘But I once heard a chestnut explode in a farmer's fire.'

Don Pedro laughed louder than he had when the French puppets expired.

‘There, sir, you are your old self again.' He wiped his eyes. ‘Believe me, I know your pain. I, too, miss my brother Don John; he is minding our estates in Aragon, where, I trust, he will prove a good and faithful steward. Perhaps we can be companions for each other for the while?' He looked at me contemplatively. ‘And you may yet wear a soldier's coat, though you have not seen active practice.'

‘What do you mean?'

He swung his legs down and sat straight, as if he was on his throne. The cat was gone. ‘Only this. Not all battles are fought in the field. Your countryman, Machiavelli, taught the world that. Sometimes, in a great cause, a man needs a sword and cannon and horses, it is true. But sometimes he needs an affable fellow, a fellow who is amusing, who seems harmless; a fellow who can move among dukes and counts, make them laugh, make them confide in him. Sometimes,' he said carefully, ‘even a prince needs a man who can hear things.'

‘Are you talking about … a spy?'

‘Let us say an agent, rather. You saw the play. Despite our long vice-regency, we are outsiders here, still. I need someone who can speak to these Sicilian lords in their own language. Someone,' he smiled briefly, ‘who can say chickpea.'

I decided not to tell him that a Paduan was as much of a stranger here as a Spaniard, for I was intrigued by his sayings.

‘
Something is coming
,' the prince repeated. ‘Soon, very soon, we may have need of you,' he said enigmatically.

I considered. I was not thinking of danger, or intrigue, or even the purse I could accept for such work. Above all, I was thinking of Lady Beatrice. She had chided me with having no occupation. Well, now I was being offered the most dashing of all.

A
spy.

That single, sibilant syllable sounded spicy, secret, enticing. All the things that I, Benedick, could be. Benedick, the Spy. What would Beatrice say to me then?