Beatrice and Benedick (13 page)

As the sun began to sink it was time for me to transform myself into Benedick the Actor. I pulled on my light Roman armour of foil and canvas; not designed for close-up scrutiny but it would look brave enough from the tiers. Don Pedro's Aragonese were variously dressed as brave Iberians or dogeared pagans or ruddy Moors, and there were even local women and children who had turned up at the promise of a few
reales,
to be dressed in particolours and to have their faces stained with the walnut.

Don Pedro's own barber passed among the principal actors, painting our eyes and faces. I blinked as he spat on a charcoal pad, and with a sable brush finer than the tail of a shrew, rimmed my eyes with charcoal, and ticklishly painted curling moustaches below my nose. A glance in the looking glass taught me that I resembled one of the puppets I had seen do battle on the little painted cart in Monreale, but I hoped that from many rows up in the theatre the effect would not be too ridiculous.

I looked at Claudio, his face pinched and serious, his complexion sallow with nerves. The barber painted him also – his eyes were ringed too, and a neat beard and moustache painted upon him to uncanny effect. He did not laugh now but looked
into the distance, the dying sun turning his eyes yellow like a lion's. He was helped into his magnificent tabard – not purple today but Spanish scarlet, and the weight of it seemed to hang upon him like a burden. The device on the front, making the thing so heavy for it was worked in pearls and jewels of great price, was a cross. And something else marked him out from the rest of us. The dressers placed a heavy gold circlet on his head.

I felt a weight of foreboding resting on my chest where the bejewelled cross rested on his. What were we enacting here?

I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was the strange, ill-dressed Spaniard knight.

‘I must go.' He held out his only hand, and I shook it, taken aback. He had spent the whole day arranging our battle formation, directing every sword stroke, and now all his actors were dressed he would leave before the first act? ‘But we are about to begin!' I protested. ‘You will not stay to see the spectacle?'

He shook his head and his eyes travelled past me to King Claudio.

I sensed he could tell me something I wanted to know. ‘I suppose,' I hedged, ‘that after what you have seen, it must seem trivial to you to see such a thing enacted for sport.'

He shrugged and his armour clanged together at the neck-guard. ‘I like a play as much as any man, and I will laugh and clap in the gallery, munch my nuts and throw my cushions. But I will not stay tonight because this is not a show.' His eyes came back from the boy king to me. ‘It is real.' And he turned and limped away before I could ask him what he meant.

As the sun lowered and set fire to the sea, I saw the old man in the helmet stumble away down the hill with a swift and rolling gait. As I watched he passed Don Pedro, come to watch our final rehearsal, and despite their rank the two embraced like brothers. I remembered how I had let Don Pedro dub me and dress me up for the night of the masque. I was more of a puppet then than now. My lamb's heart shrivelled within me. No
wonder Lady Beatrice had laughed. I wondered then, when the two men met upon that road, whether the old man in the strange garb or the strapping prince in his scarlet and gold would be more of a tiger in the breach.

Don Pedro greeted me first of the company, as the greatest friend of his heart, even before Claudio. My chattering teeth stilled as my heart was warmed by his friendship, my qualms vanishing. ‘How did you shift with Don Miguel?' he asked. ‘He is a singular character, is he not?'

I thought for a moment, my eyes on the receding figure. ‘A singular character indeed.' But what I really meant to say I did not want to speak out loud, so as not to offend my friend, which was that Miguel, if that was his name, had taught me more about knighthood in one afternoon than all Don Pedro's painted caballeros had taught me on the long road from Venice.

Beatrice:
As I climbed the steps of the Greek theatre, I marvelled at the place.

For a teller of stories this was a place that held my heart – for not only were the stones themselves a very reminder of the legends that I had heard in the schoolroom – and even struggled to read in the original Greek – I was pent up and excited by the notion of all the dramas that must have been played out upon this stage over the ages. I took my place among the toga-clad ghosts, and looked forward to the evening's entertainment; principally for the reason that, since this pageant was a brainchild of Don Pedro's, Benedick would surely be in the device somewhere, as he seemed to hang about the prince like a disease. I was anxious to see him, for something had gone badly awry when last we'd met. I needed to know whether he'd meant the bitter words he'd spoken at the wedding at Syracuse, or whether his sentiments had proceeded from misplaced jealousy. I wanted to return to our merry war, not this more serious conflict we'd embarked upon.

I followed my aunt and Hero up the stone steps to the very top tier, and was confronted with the glory of the vista. It was sunset, so the volcano was nothing more than a blue silhouette hunched over the town, the puff of smoke at the summit turned to coral and rose. The sky was saffron, and the sea was afire. Only my eagerness to lay my eyes on Signor Benedick could pull my eyes from the beauty, but I could not see him
anywhere. I knew from Hero that her friend Claudio was appearing in the pageant in some capacity, but as I had had neither sight nor speech of Signor Benedick for above a week I did not know where he was likely to be.

I did note as I climbed that all the nobility of Messina seemed to be gathered here – I recognised many faces from the masque at my uncle's and the wedding at Syracuse too.

My aunt and I were directed to our seats by a local moppet dressed in a white toga with vine leaves in his curls. I noted that we were to be seated apart from my uncle; that he and Egeon were gathered about a golden throne set in a little balcony apart, which overlooked the finest views of the stage, where the antique emperors may have once sat. I thought the gilded chair was meant for the viceroy, but I saw that petty king sitting in between my uncle and the omnipresent Archbishop of Monreale. I smiled a little at the throne; I had suspected Don Pedro to be vainglorious, but thought that even he might not think it politic to sit in such a chair when the viceroy was present; but when the prince joined the grandees, he did not sit in the throne either. The golden chair sat empty, even when the torches in the auditorium were extinguished by the children in their wreaths and togas, and the pipers struck up, indicating that the performance was to begin.

Once the torches were lit about the cavea a marvel was revealed to us all. The stage was not stone, nor even wooden boards such as you may see at the
commedia.
It was water, a vast shallow tank filled to the brim, with curling white and blue waves painted on the front. The wood of the tank itself was painted blue so the water, lit by candles backed by shell-shaped mirrors, shimmered an azure hue. A narrator, dressed in a toga like my imagined ghosts, stepped into the waves, a hidden platform artfully making him appear as if he walked on water like the Christ.

The actor, a man of middle years with a scanty beard,
unfurled a scroll in his hands, and began to declaim in a loud voice that rolled around the tiers and echoed through the theatre. ‘I am your chorus for the while; and pray your patience for my prologue, your attention for our play, and your kindly judgement for our epilogue. For although we will hear of great kings and venerable saints, and deeds long past, there is a chance for all of us to be a part of history in the days to come.'

After these portentous hints the chorus stepped forth from the water, and the play began. The azure pool sank into darkness as the cavea before it was lit with the mirrored lamps. A crowd of soldiers collected before the stage, chanting and singing in a strange tongue. As the lights warmed their faces I could see that their skin was stained as if with the juice of the walnut, and they had multicoloured turbans twisted about their heads. My skin chilled with foreboding despite the warm of the evening. They were Moors.

The narrator, back in his floating position on the pool, stood over the scene. ‘In ancient Hispania, the good people of the region of Asturias were much troubled by the vile Moor. Then the brave king Ramiro gave battle but was surrounded.'

A figure in scarlet walked forth; it was Claudio. Dressed in blood red, with a jewel-encrusted cross on his breast and a crown on his head. Hero nudged me with her bony elbow fit to bruise my ribs. I squeezed her hand, as the Moors encircled him, their strange chants heavy with threat.

Claudio, now bathed in light, knelt and prayed for a miracle, his strong young voice reaching us even high in the arena where we sat. ‘Blessed Saint James, descend to us now in our hour of need, and rid us of this pestilential horde, this viper in the bosom of Spain.'

I looked sideways at Hero, but she did not seem to understand the meaning of the words, just looked with warm admiration at her friend in his kingly garb. Claudio, his eyes tight shut and his mouth moving, really seemed to be praying.
And it worked – the miracle appeared. A path of light shone across the water while the Moors cowered and ceased their song. My skin prickled as I watched, for a white destrier appeared at the back of the stage and seemed to walk across the water. I knew that I was watching a trick; that there must be a concealed walkway just below the water's surface, but the effect was magical. The horse was carrying a rider dressed in the white robes of sanctity, his face covered by a white hood with only holes for eyes, giving an eerie impression. The rider wore a gold halo at the back of his head and wore a white tabard, with a device I had seen before. A red cross which resembled a dagger at its base; and a cockleshell floating above, the symbol of St James. In his hand the saint held an eerie wonder; a burning cross, artfully coated with flames that burned perpetually without damaging his gauntleted hand. The horse, despite the fire behind his head, walked carefully forth and stepped down from the tank to the delighted gasps of the audience. Then the creature stood obligingly still while the saint drew his sword and smote every Moor who stood before him. Each of the dusky actors must have concealed bladders of blood, for the gore flew around the pit and carmined both the horse's flanks and the snowy habit of the saint. Then, worse still, women and children wearing Moorish beads and bangles ran on to mourn their menfolk, and they were similarly cut down. By the time St James had finished, his white tabard had turned to red. The saint then handed his cross of fire to the thankful king, who received it upon his knees.

I was sickened. So this saint, this paragon and patron of the Spanish, was a Moor-slayer. This order of which Don Pedro was a member, this sacred brotherhood into which he had dubbed Signor Benedick, was the scourge of that fine man from the beach, that beautiful Moor. St James would have looked at Guglielma Crollalanza in the same way that the archbishop of Monreale had regarded her – looked at her broad nose and her
amazing crinkled hair and her full mulberry lips and seen an animal, not a woman.

I had never questioned before when Hero had told me matter-of-factly of the expulsion of the Moors from Sicily. I assumed it had been necessary, military. But the play made me think differently. They had been expelled because they were
different.
I knew a woman who was half Moor, with a white husband and son. Could they be so different from us? And their expulsion had been blessed by St James. I felt sick. I had his fingerbone in the cabinet in my chamber.

The carnage over, the area in front of the tank was cast into darkness, and the blue sea was illuminated once more. The chorus appeared to stand upon the waves and declaimed again. I listened tensely, wondering what was coming, wondering whether anything could be worse. ‘Given such a blessing by Saint James,' sing-songed the chorus, ‘Ramiro vowed to continue his work to scourge the empire of the godless, and he set sail for Albion, to crush the red-haired witch Boudicca for her pagan beliefs.'

Now, I had studied Roman history and knew something was not right. ‘This is singular,' I hissed to Hero, ‘for Boudicca was born before Christ, and Ramiro after.' Hero flapped her hand at me, shushing my objections, and I held my peace. For fiction, as I well knew, is mutable, and many august writers have written of figures from history meeting in their imaginariums. I waited to see the drama unfold.

Before our eyes, a true spectacle appeared. Little ships, dozens of them – perhaps one-tenth of the size of a galleass but correct in every particular but scale – sailed upon the blue lake to gasps from the crowd. And the ships each had their seamen – an army crowded into each, bristling with weaponry and bent upon war. Chief of the forces of Albion was Boudicca; a man dressed as a lady, who had a breastplate crowned with two conical breasts, a leaden white face painted like a whore's, and a
horned helmet atop a rippling mass of red hair. The hair – curled into tight ringlets – reminded me again, sharply, of Guglielma Crollalanza. I looked around the gathered grandees seated on the tiers, but it seemed that neither the lady nor her poet son were here tonight, and I was not surprised; the enmity that I had seen between her and the Archbishop of Monreale spoke of a formidable feud.

Claudio was to the fore again, as King Ramiro, at the helm of the Hispanic ships, now holding the cross of fire before his face. He was being blessed by a priest in a jewelled surplice who looked suspiciously like the Archbishop of Monreale. In the ships of Albion, pagans wearing fustian and sackcloth shook their bristling weapons and a Druid blessed Boudicca with a hazel switch, as a green man looked on. The red-headed queen seemed to writhe in ecstasy at her infidel blessing, waggling her tongue and rubbing her conical breasts most lasciviously. Despite the message the spectacle was wondrously well wrought, for the flotilla of Iberian ships and the pagan longboats looked to be sailing convincingly towards each other on the sapphire lake. The timpani of the unseen musicians whipped up imaginary tempests and they described, with a clash of cymbals, the two fleets meeting together.