Chapter Text
She had always prided herself in having good enough an eye to spot a fool by a mile in plain daylight, and contrary a popular opinion in Messina, she was not prone to exaggeration. To broaden one’s view, one only needed to find the right point of elevation. Today, it was an apple tree.
During her childhood she had spent so much time hidden in trees, wishing the world would forget about her, that when it finally seemed to happen, when everybody began to accept that everything was to be expected from Hero, and nothing from her, she saw little reason to ever climb down. She often heard Leonato say that to a maid of 17, a tree was much like a husband, and that the silent kind would be the only one that would fit her character and support her boisterous spirits. But Leonato was an old man.
She enjoyed the challenge in electing a branch sturdy enough to support her. It was sound to be kept on your toes, when most people stumbled through life as if in the deepest of sleep, finding the ground under their feet only by accident. She would dance in the air on the tip of a deft arrow if only to spite the aspiring archers of Messina. And she would not marry.
There was no shortage of fools in this land, but the one she could presently see from her observatory wouldn’t have managed to walk a straight line on the edge of a precipice. Benedick of Padua was the loudest and the most conspicuous jester you could find under this sun, and had been for the two years he had lived with his uncle in Messina, awaiting the beginning of his military service. The lad was most ridiculous. He always seemed to be wearing a costume, his clothes more quaint and colourful than a bird of paradise’s feathers, though he sang like a crow: she had seen him howl at a local tavern not long after he moved in, and her ears still complained about it. He had raised his mug at her then, and asked where he could procure such a great hairpiece as hers, for he needed to look his Sunday best, come next mass, or the priest wouldn’t let him kiss his ring. She had raised two fingers to his face, and was left wondering.
She remembered the first time she saw him: his own hair was messy, his shirt wore a lewd inscription, and there was a quiet sort of fear in his look, easily missed, that had captured her attention with an iron grip. Not that fear was so rare a commodity in those parts, with war always at the door, further than even her eyes could see but near still, boiling and smoking and swallowing men, though they always seemed to win, bringing back foreign goods from faraway lands. But Sir Benedick of Padua was afraid of something greater than the shadows thrown on his future by the unforgiving sun. And once seen, this anguish shone through every gesture, at the turn of every inane joke, and never quite disappeared even in the merriest hour. He feared to be known.
And she did know him, she believed. In a singular way.
So great had been her surprise, when she had understood, that she had wanted to share it, using a turn of phrase only he would make sense of, gaily enough that it could pass for a jibe.
“I’ve made it my leisure not to care for any man, and they say it does my complexion a favour, for I am never green in envy nor pink in longing. Pardon me my lord, but I’m finding you of a very equal colour.”
This had earned her a horrified look, and almost immediately he had rebuffed her.
“Pardon me in turn, my lady. Despite what you’re claiming I’ve heard that given the chance you would often speak without catching a breath till you were blue in the face. And so I would like to save you the trouble, and bid your adieu.”
From then on, they would exchange nervous barbs every time they crossed path, which was rather often since Messina was not by any mean a large town, unsure of the other and unsure of themselves.
They both knew the sort of life they were living would be threatened by the natural course of time. They were now of an age where any sort of exchange with the opposite sex came under strict scrutiny, and that had begun to corrupt Benedick’s early popularity. Her own situation was fairly different, for the world was more ready to give up on her and believe her tale of solitude. It was as they whispered: that no maid should be seen in the company of a man, when no man should come short of feminine conquests. She had often pointed the contradiction to Hero, who had shrugged and applied more rouge to her cheeks with an art she admired greatly but from a distance. Her cousin’s insouciance was the only thing she would ever envy, though she loved her dearly, and with more consideration, she sometimes feared, than any man would be able to show.
The weather was always kind in Messina, the fruits always ripe, the prince was fair and the parties were gay: it was easy to forget that walls had a thousand ears. Mothers whispered excitedly, for they were so idle that it seemed the only thing to do; they pulled the strings for that bachelor and that maid to dance under the bower, in the presence of trusted chaperones, and made preparations for the wedding day. The truth of the matter was that war called for men, and that called for mothers, good mothers, safe mothers wilting by their swimming pool, expectant, expecting. They had told her that when she was born, her mother wept. She had vowed never to do so. And Benedick was always so merry that wherever he walked the walls seemed to crack in laughter.
The conversation she could presently hear from her station in the tree wasn't new to her, and she watched his face carefully as he kept a desperate smile tenaciously painted on it. Two of his usual companions, who she knew to be stupid brutes, were teasing him in a way that wasn't gentle – she recognized the barely veiled menaces under the weak quips. And why, they were saying, shouldn’t a gentleman of so fair a complexion, with so little beard disgracing his face win the affection of every lady in town? Certainly that was a great mystery. Were the good people of Padua aware that the beautiful Benedick was finding himself single? Weren’t the ladies of Messina to his taste, then, was he so refined that the sight of a petticoat left him more curious of the lacy design than of the leg it covered? And look, there was a bug on his face, oh awfully sorry, their hand had just slipped, and was that perfume they smelt? But they heard he was always better with swords, wasn’t he, better with swords than with petticoats, so why wouldn’t he fight them on it? And they pushed him a bit too roughly, poked him a bit too hard, a promise in their gestures that soon it wouldn’t be so amusing, soon he wouldn’t laugh.
She had watched him, months before, from another tree, as he leant and kissed the rosy lips of a page of his age, whose fair hair and blue eyes were admired by all of Hero’s friends. The expression on his face had her heart tightened in something that didn’t have a proper name – maybe it was just a memory. She had had a new chambermaid, the year before. She remembered the silky feel of her tresses under her fingers, and the look on Benedick’s face was spelling the same emotion, the same wonder. She remembered when the maid’s parents had sent her away to marry in Florence. In the secret of her room, she had renewed her vows.
She could not ignore the anger in her chest any longer. She knew what to do. What was more, she believed she could help the both of them, if Benedick’s clumsy mind didn’t ruin it all.
Waiting for the moment when the three boys would walk by her tree, she let herself fall to the ground supply and addressed them as if she had always been there, ignoring their jolt of surprise at seeing a maid falling from the sky without so much as a warning.
“Pray, would you free Benedick of your escort? For he and I were to meet here under this tree, and by our agreement two was enough for company. He is late already, and wouldn’t want to tarnish the good opinion of a lady who is gracious enough to listen when he talks. Now be quick on your feet, and do not speak a word of this, for I’m afraid I have found more faults in his latest poem than in the sermon of a drunk vicar and don’t want his reputation to suffer. Though his grammar is poor, he is most gallant.”
The two lads looked at her stupidly, eyeing her long pants before they blinked and recognized a lady of higher rank. They bowed away, confused. Benedick seemed even more astonished, and privately she cursed his poor acting: he was gaping at her so widely that an army of flies could have settled in his mouth and hold court there.
She waited for them to be truly alone, and then raised an eyebrow.
“Watch yourself, Signior Benedick, for one wonders if you’re about to lay a thankful word or an entire egg.”
His mouth was opening and closing mechanically now, which she supposed was something of an improvement.
‘”What did… How are you… Why have you told them such a thing?”
Turning away from him, she sighed a deep sigh and sent a quick prayer to whatever god watched upon maids and bachelors of their kind, wishing that he would see sense.
“I believe I just bought you a new title and brought it to you on a plate of silver, my lord. Use it as a shield from all slanders. After all, it is no small merit to have converted Leonato’s wild niece, who wouldn’t look at a man if he spat in her eye. I advice you to spread that story as widely as you can, which shouldn’t be too much of a task: your voice carries far. I expect, after that, no one will mock you. But I warn you to only speak highly of me, or else I will reveal this deal for the masquerade it is.”
Benedick blinked furiously at her, only beginning to make sense of her words.
“And why would I repeat such a lie? For a lie, it certainly is. I wouldn’t be caught singing love songs under your window if I was a sparrow and you were Spring itself!
“Don’t exhaust your imagination, and call your sense back. I know what words they use around you. I know them of old, as I know where your affections lie, and where mine lead me too. I may not hold you in the highest regard, nor you I, but I think we might serve each other well, if we can bear the tediousness of each other’s company.”
He hesitated, then squinted his eyes at her.
“If your intent is to slander or to tease, I’m afraid you are wasting your time, my lady. I am none of the things you may have heard, nor do I ever intend to be.”
“Oh you are not,” she smiled, “since you are now holding hands with me, or so will everyone soon think.”
She held his gaze, forcing her expression into earnestness to appease him.
“Whatever you and I may be, it was never by intent. You may not be wise, but you do know it as well as I. And if you don’t, I pity you and will weep for your sleepless nights, if they are spent alone.”
This seemed to have an effect on him, for he averted his gaze and looked down in defeat.
“You are the most peculiar lady that ever walked these lands,” he eventually said, as if trying to decide if that was a curse or a blessing.
“So the saying goes. Do we have an agreement, Signior Benedick?”
She would have missed his nod, reluctant and shy, but she was watching him closely. He was not as light-headed as as he pretended to be. It was like looking at a young tree, frail and easily swept by the wind, but with roots spreading for miles under the earth, unseen and untraceable. It picked her curiosity more than she would have liked, and certainly more than she could explain. Not that it mattered so much: she would have to keep a close watch on him now. But she was quite confident that he would stay true to his word.
There was a sense of displacement in his face, of fragility, that she had never observed in any man or woman she knew, some controlled carelessness in his bearing that made her heart ache in kinship. As she turned away from him and reached for a low branch, she noticed he was studying her too. Selecting the reddest apple she could find, she said to him lightly:
“My uncle says a man of honour always seal a deal over fine food, so I hope this will be to your taste.”
She pressed on it until it separated into two roughly equal halves, trying to ignore the way he looked at her hands, and offered him one.
“To masks,” she toasted, biting into the apple’s flesh with gusto.
“...To masks,” he agreed, hesitating for a second before doing the same.
“On my life, I will not shake hands with you, but bring me a lady who will and we shall be friends, you and I,” she added teasingly.
His head was tilted to the side as he laughed at her quietly with a sort of wonder, and said nothing.