Beatrice and Benedick by Marina Fiorato Read Free Book Online

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.’
    â€˜Are you talking about … a spy?’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜
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?
    I began to smile. Don Pedro clapped me on the back, and, as if he had rung my heart in my ribs like a clapper, the great bells chimed behind me in the cathedral. I rose. ‘I am to collect my young charge at twelve bells,’ I said apologetically.
    â€˜Claudio Casedei is the young count’s name?’ It was not really a question. ‘He is of a wealthy Florentine family, I think?’ It was spoken very casually.
    â€˜The wealthiest.’ I said. ‘The Tournabuoni. And, through his mother’s marriage, the Medici too. His uncle Ferdinando is the …’ I began, and then stopped. Don Pedro slid his dark eyes to meet mine, and I realised with a jolt that my mission had already begun. ‘His uncle is Ferdinando de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and he holds the purse-strings of all Florence,’ I said. ‘And Claudio’s uncle on his mother’s side – whom he is visiting even now, in the cathedral there – is the archbishop of this city of Monreale.’ I was sure that this second piece of information the prince knew as well as I; but the first I thought was news to him.
    â€˜I will go with you,’ said Don Pedro. ‘Our host Leonato has invited us all to a masked ball in his pleasure gardens tonight, and I must visit the tailors in Palermo for a costume. Why donot we go together?’ He looked me up and down, from my Venetian suit of clothes to my Florentine shoes. ‘And while we are there, as you are to join my cavalcade, we will get you caparisoned like a soldier, and mounted like a corsair. We will visit the barbers too,’ he said balefully, eyeing my curls as the Sicilian puppets had eyed the French, ‘for your fleece rivals Jason’s.’
    I mounted the steps to the church with him, and he stopped in the porch under the shade of an enormous palm tree, and faced me, as if we were to be wed. His mind clearly tended that way too, for he asked, ‘And you are not married, or betrothed?’
    The tree did not shade me and the sun was now at his highest; I quailed under his and the prince’s eye. In truth, the lady Beatrice had jolted me, and I knew it would take very little encouragement to make me fall in love with her. But under the prince’s gaze I felt suddenly sure that I must deny this. I shook my head. ‘I have not yet seen that special face that I could fancy more than any