Beatrice and Benedick Read Free

do you speak of husbands?’ I asked, suddenly cold in that oven of a courtyard.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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 herprayer 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.

Act I scene iii
Hero’s chamber in Leonato’s house
    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?’
    â€˜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 thedusty 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