Beatrice and Benedick Read Online Free PDF

of it, both times he laughed.’ I poked at the next course set before me – some sort of meat, so rarely cooked that it was still bleeding. In our conversation too, the bloodletting continued.
    â€˜If you are of no profession, you must have other diversions. Do you have no interests, no hobbies to fill your hours? Do you enjoy music?’ She nodded to the gap in the tables, where her uncle’s musicians were torturing their instruments for our pleasure.
    â€˜I think it strange that they should serenade us upon sheep’s guts while we eat the rumps. No,’ I decided, ‘there’s not a note of theirs that’s worth the noting.’
    â€˜And what of poetry?’
    I shrugged. ‘I am a man who speaks plainly. I cannot understand one word in ten that your uncle says. His words are stranger than his dishes.’
    She laughed then, and I enjoyed the sound not just for its pleasing aspect but for the respite it bought me from her attack. I was beginning to feel like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at me.
    â€˜Are you a good horseman?’
    â€˜I know which end points forward, and which back.’
    â€˜You are a pilgrim then, and walk the silver road with a shell in your hat?’ She was making fun of me.
    â€˜You sound like my young friend Claudio; he is quite thedevout. I will answer you as I answer him. God has no quarrel with me and I have none with him – we let each other alone.’ I adopted a rich, rolling voice like her uncle. ‘The God of
love
, who sits
above …
quick, ask me the poetry question again.’
    She smiled but asked a different one.
    â€˜Are you a swordsman, then?’
    â€˜I refer you to my reply upon the subject of horseflesh; I know one end from the other.’ I relented. ‘I learned, of course; but if you give me a rapier and a dagger, and my enemy a parsnip and a stick of celery, he will come out the victor.’
    â€˜So you have never taken commission for a soldier?’
    â€˜No, but I think
you
should. Do you catechise your brother like this?’
    â€˜Signor Benedick,
we
are not brother and sister.’
    â€˜No,’ I said, looking into her lovely face, her features alive with argument, ‘that we are not.’
    â€˜But life in armour holds no attraction for you?’
    I threw up my hands, in a mock gesture of surrender. ‘You are hard on me, Lady Beatrice. Would it make you kinder, I wonder, if I was on the way to be lain low by some axe-wielding German, or scimitar-swinging Saracen?’
    She seemed to be considering this. ‘It is one way to measure a man, by his length on the battlefield.’
    â€˜And you find me wanting?’
    She looked at me very directly. ‘I have not yet made up my mind.’
    Outfaced by her honesty, I took a drink of my wine. It was thick and red and sour like blood. ‘More often than not soldiers are younger sons, bored by their homely hearths, looking for action. Hotspurs, roaring boys.’ I banged down my cup. ‘If I want to let off steam in an iron coat, I will put a kettle on the fire.’
    â€˜Ah, well.’ She sighed gustily and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Then I cannot give you a gage, if you are not a knight.’
    â€˜A what?’
    â€˜A gage; a favour that a lady gives a knight to wear when he rides into the lists. Usually a ribbon or a flower. Or sometimes,’ she said with delicate emphasis, ‘a
playing card.
’
    There it was. She had mentioned the
settebello
card at last, but I had lost the advantage of my gambit. She had kept it in her hand, masterfully waiting, and only played it when I was already annoyed. I lost my head. ‘Lady Beatrice. I was lucky enough to be born to a wealthy family. I do not have to till the winter fields like some peasant, nor slave under a hot sun. I take the view, and you may not admire me for it, that as long as I am no trouble to any one I may do as I like. I eat