Beatrice and Benedick Read Online Free Page A

notice. But the prince kept his gaze on my face as his lips kissed the air above my hand, raking me with his black eyes in a way that made me uncomfortable.
    The Florentine youth, name of Count Claudio Casadei, shook my hand with a grasp as limp and clammy as a wet mackerel; but I smiled warmly at him, trying to ease his nerves.
    Then, last of all, the tall young man was presented as Signor Benedick Minola of Padua. A northerner; I
knew
it. Padua was half a day’s ride from my father’s house and homesickness hit me like a blow.
    He shook Hero’s hand, and then took mine. His grasp was firm and dry, and he spotted my filthy hand straight away,making a little pantomime of looking at my fingers and me and raising one dark brow with questioning amusement. Then, very deliberately, he turned my hand over, to where my palm was clean and white like the Moor’s. He planted a kiss on the very centre of my palm, not a kiss for the air like the prince’s, but a warm, firm salute. He held the inky hand he had kissed in his for an instant, then let go.
    The whole incident had taken no more than a couple of heartbeats, and I am sure that in the flurry of greetings and meetings no one else had noted the episode. But by sleight of hand he had left something in my palm where the kiss had been, and as Don Pedro led the company into the house I opened my hand and looked. It was a single
Scopa
card, the
settebello,
the seven of coins, the most valuable card in the pack. The card which, once played, won the game; and so was known as ‘the beautiful seven’. I turned the card over, but there was nothing writ there, only the pattern and mark of the stationers.
    I looked back at the design on the front – seven circles, rendered in red, blue and yellow, with a flower design on each face. The
settebello.
What did it mean?
    For the first time that day I forgot the Moor. I looked after Signor Benedick of Padua and he looked back at me with a green gaze.
    His lip had a slight stain of ink upon it, like a little bruise.

Act I scene v
The Great Hall in Leonato’s house
    Benedick: I had no stomach for my dinner, but I did want to see Beatrice Della Scala again.
    It was fully a week until the Feast of the Assumption, with its attendant processions, feasts and rituals; but our host Leonato, Governor of Messina, had decided that the time should not go idly by us. He had organised a programme of entertainment so full that not a single day was to be left free of his amusements. Feasts, masques and tournaments were to be laid on for our pleasure, all of which sounded to me more like labour than leisure. But our host, frantic to prove his hospitality could equal that of the greatest courts of the world, would not be denied; and tonight he had promised us a dinner such as we had never tasted.
    I filed into Leonato’s great hall behind the primped and perfumed Spanish and found my place near the salt. The room was a good size, with dirty dogs under the table and hoodwinked hawks in the rafters. The tables were groaning with pyramids of figs, almonds, apples, plums and pomegranates, and decorated with vines twined with poppies. The long boards were ranged as three sides of a square, with musicians sitting where the fourth should be, infecting the air with their cacophony. I spied the lady Beatrice’s golden head almost at once. She was standing at the head of the central table, which was set upon a dais, with her aunt and uncle and cousin, awaiting the entrance of the prince.
    Don Pedro walked to the central place of the high table, where an ornate carved chair anticipated him and a fat cushion waited for his arse. Once he had seated himself, the company settled themselves in their places. The prince was flanked by Leonato’s wife and her daughter, with the governor himself on the other side of his wife, near enough to the prince’s ear to tire the hearer with his book of words.
    Claudio, in his purple surcoat, was