Free Beatrice and Benedick by Marina Fiorato

expression which I hoped conveyed modest politeness (without contrition) but to begin with I could not see Don Pedro’s newest knight anywhere.
    I began to feel a hollow disappointment. Perhaps if he was as terrible with a dagger and sword as he’d maintained – I remembered his sally about a parsnip and a stick of celery – then he might decide that it was politic to step aside if he could not bloom among these flowers of Spanish chivalry.
    Amongst all the antique posturing I’d half expected to see broadswords and helms, but all the competitors wore their fencing plastrons of creamy white, with a toughened breastplate, a blade-catcher at the throat and a visor of iron net obscuring the face. This was sport after all, not warfare – these noble babies were as safe here as in their cradles. I might not have spotted Signor Benedick among the uniform throng, but my gaze found him at last by reason of his greater height among the tiny Spanish. I watched him await his turn, and even if he had been of Spanish stature I would still have known him, for he spent his time until his bout balancing his foil on one finger, adjusting his hand all the time to keep the sword in the air as if he were a Carnevale juggler.
    I felt a little ashamed for him amongst all these soldiers. He was a clown, and I did not have high hopes for him in thematch. I was, I felt, about to witness his humiliation; but now the longed-for moment had come, I felt strangely sorry for him.
    Then he was suddenly there, before the loge, his visor under his arm. In his plain white plastron he could have stood up with any man alive, and looked vastly different to the primped peacock of the previous evening. He bowed low, and Don Pedro, anxious not to betray his preference, spoke to him as he had to every knight of either colour.
    â€˜Your name, señor?’
    â€˜Signor Mountanto.’
    The Spanish yakked away like jackals and I curled my lip. It was a poor jest, and one that he had reckoned on only the menfolk understanding –
mountanto,
an upward thrust in fencing, was also slang for a gentleman’s manhood. My scorn was magnified by the fact that he chose to fight for Don Pedro, his new sworn brother. True, the states of Padua and Sicily had little to say to one another, but Signor Benedick had clearly thrown in his lot with the Spanish, and I felt it a small betrayal.
    â€˜Would you like to crave a favour from one of the ladies who so ornament our loge?’ asked the prince.
    â€˜I thank you, Your Highness,’ replied Benedick in ringing tones, ‘but one of these ladies already did me the honour of bestowing me with her favour; after dinner the night before last.’
    The loge rocked with laughter at this bawdy jest, but there was no offence taken, as he was already, it seemed, an acknowledged wit. Not once did he look at me, and no one else could know of the episode of the
settebello,
but I shrank inside, and when he put on his visor and turned without giving me away, I felt nothing but relief.
    Once the competitors stood in the circle of the mosaic, around the inlaid head of Medusa, there were no more names, just the scarlet and the blue. It was blood versus sea, Spain versus Sicily, and I thought now that I had been wrong to call itsport; it was much more serious than that. The courtyard was packed not just with Leonato’s guests, but with the townspeople of Messina, none of whom had much reason to love their Spanish overlords. Many of them waved the Trinacria flag; all of them cheered for blue, and were silent for scarlet. Every dagger and blade wore a foil; this was a serious business dressed as an entertainment. The whole affair felt like a practice, a rehearsal, for a graver matter. But for what?
    As the morning wore on the sun skewed round in the sky and lit the ruby in St James’s reliquary, illumined like a flare, shining out like the grail to the worthiest knight, a prize to covet indeed. And,