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When Beatrice was quite small, Beatrice's Mama liked to say, "When you were born, the fairies flew in over your cradle and gave you three blessings." She would tap Beatrice's brow and say, "The first fairy gave you a clever wit."
"The Black fairy," Beatrice would giggle, because clever wits were black as tar. She could just see that Black fairy with her black robes and quick black wings fanning the cold winter air. Winter made everything want to be quick. Just as summer made Beatrice want to be slow and lazy.
"That's right." Beatrice's Mama would give Beatrice a quick tickle. When Beatrice curled up to protect her belly, her Mama would hug her and hold her hand over Beatrice's heart as she uncurled. "The second fairy, she gave you a kind heart."
"The Red fairy," Beatrice would shout! Because she loved the Red fairy best. She could just see her with her burning heart and blazing smile.
"That's right." Beatrice's Mama would lay a thousand kisses on Beatrice's face.
Finally, Beatrice couldn't take it another moment more. "Mama, Mama, Mama. What about the third fairy. What did she give me?" Although, she'd heard this a thousand times.
"Why that third fairy, she gave you good cheer. Then she picked you up and gave you a toss, and where any other baby might have cried out in fear," just then Mama would always pick Beatrice up.
"I laughed at the Yellow Fairy," laughed Beatrice. She'd close her eyes as her Mama flew her about. She could see that Yellow fairy bright as a sun beam and curled up as happy as a cat with a treat.
That's what Beatrice's Mama would do when Beatrice was quite small.
~~~~
When Beatrice was nine, she went to Hell.
Oh, first she and her Mama had to move into Uncle Leonato's home.
Uncle Leonato and Uncle Antonio talked in awkward booms about how they'd have chosen differently for Mama's husband, if they had been in their Father's place.
Aunt Innogen and her Ladies would whisper about Father.
Everyone talked about Father when they thought Beatrice and Mama weren't there to hear. He'd gambled away Mama's dowry. He'd sided with the wrong Master, and been sent into exile. He'd given Mama a sickness. The same sickness that made Beatrice's little sister be born too early. The same sickness that meant no gentleman would want Mama, were she even free to be so taken up.
Beatrice could have her pick of whispers. She felt her skin grow thick on them. She determined to make her cousin, Hero, into her little sister. Beatrice stuffed silence into a room by busting in and making herself into a loud fool. She capered and she laughed, until she made her Mama laugh.
That thick skin and those blessings turned out to be quite fortunate when Beatrice went to Hell.
It didn't start out that way. She certainly had no intention of going there.
At first she was merely very lost in a dark woods and she didn't know where the path was. She hadn't meant to lose herself.
There had been a picnic with pomegranates, which she loved to pick at until her hands were bloody with fruit. But while Hero didn't mind fruit mixed with lectures about virtue, Beatrice argued that it wasn't as if Proserpine had had any say when Hades carried her off.
Later she blamed the fact that Mama had been too ill to come with them. Mama was always careful to remind Beatrice that they relied on Uncle Leonato and Aunt Innogen's generosity and to measure the sharp bite of her words.
Instead she'd let fly her too quick tongue and too quick words, and after the shouts that followed went to pick wild flowers as if to prove the point.
She couldn't stop her war of words in her head. She kept arguing as she went down the path. The flowers in her hand grew hot and lost most of their petals.
That was how she got lost.
She was arguing when she encountered the three lionesses, who were having some sort of meeting in a meadow. They stared at her. She stared at them.
She thought very quickly. She jumped up on top of a stump. She waved her cloak over her head and she yelled.
The lionesses stared at her for a long moment, as if not certain of what to do. Then like a ripple of water in a pond, they became three yellow women with curling crowns of black hair. Their faces looked much like the lionesses had done with flat noses and yellow eyes. Beatrice was astonished. They looked much like she'd always imagined the Yellow fairy to look, though Mama had long ago stopped talking about blessings and fallen into weary chides.
The first Lion woman scratched the earing in her furred ear. She was dressed for the parlour. "Beatrice, your wits should be well flown from your head."
The second Lion woman stretched. She was wearing armour and in her hand was a sword. "Beatrice, your heart should freeze you. You should put all your hope on the idea that we will not see you if you are as small as can be."
The third Lion woman purred her words. "Beatrice, you should have run in fear." That woman was dressed for work in the fields.
Beatrice had been walking for hours and she was hungry and now lionesses were becoming women, who resembled fairies that had never blessed her and tossed her in the air, because she no longer believed in fairies.
It was too much. She put her hands on her hips. "If being frightened would keep me from being eaten, then I would have been. If being small would have kept me safe, then I'd have been small. If fighting made any sense, I would have. But the cats in the barn are afraid of shadows." She put on a sunny smile. "I can make a really long shadow."
The first Lion woman clapped her sharp hands thick with rings. The second Lion woman grinned wide teeth and saluted with her sword. The third Lion woman roared a laugh.
"Beatrice, we can't take you home."
"Beatrice, we won't take you home."
"Beatrice, you have no home."
This was said with a smile that made Beatrice think of the cats in the barn playing with a mouse. Beatrice didn't flinch, because it was only the truth. She lifted her chin. "Good, I don't want to go home. I want to find a cave for Mama and me to live in, where we'll be hermits and be fed bread by ravens." Beatrice desperately wanted to go home and climb into bed with Mama and be safe against the world. So she said, "That's why I must be going."
The first Lion woman said, "We're here because your mother is praying desperately for you."
The second Lion woman said, "She is afraid for you, but you cannot go back the way you came." She pointed across the meadow with her sword. There was a cave there. Beatrice wasn't sure how she hadn't noticed it before, but she supposed it was on account of the lionesses.
"It leads to the one who is praying for you if you follow the right path." The third Lion woman handed Beatrice a torch, which Beatrice took because a Lion woman was handing her a torch.
Beatrice went to the mouth of the cave, which was gently exhaling into the night. There was a sign above the cave mouth. It read, "I was made by the Primal Love that Moves the Sun, the Moon and the Stars. Abandon all Hope all Who Enter Here." She turned back. "Are you sure this is the right cave?" but the Lion women were gone.
Beatrice squared her shoulders and went in, holding her torch high. Then lower, because holding it high made her arm ache. She went a long way down the tunnel, until the cave became a wide cavern. So wide and high there was no seeing its edges.
There were a lot of people sighing and crying in the dark.
She made jokes as she went. Mama said it was better to weep with joy, than to laugh at weeping, but Beatrice knew how to making weeping people laugh. She was able to cheer up a lot of people in the dark.
She came to a sort of fenced in area where there was light and grass, and great many very important dead pagan people sitting around talking philosophy.
Beatrice was not foolish. She had a pretty good idea she was in Hell, which she decided was what came of doing what Lion women said to do. She resolved to never make that mistake again.
Beatrice badgered Electra in her robes and Caesar in his armour into going out there and getting those sad people some lights and a comfortable place to sit. It was as if they thought being dead meant they could just stop helping people.
By the time she left, Saladin, Hector and Aeneas were making torches, while Euclid and Democritus argued how best to distribute them.
Zeno told Beatrice, "You should stay. You'll never reach where you're going anyway. I can demonstrate this truth mathematically."
Laozi broke the stick Zeno was using to demonstrate the flight of an arrow. "How many times must I tell you, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step?"
Penthesilea in her armour said, "It's not a thousand miles," after seeing Beatrice's expression. She pointed to the leftward path from the crossroads. "You must go that way to go deeper and out."
Beatrice did not particularly want to keep going deeper, and Zeno and Laozi were getting a little pushy.
Penthesilea said to her fellow Amazon, Camila, "It's not right that a girl not yet blooded in battle wander so alone. I will go with her."
Camila laughed. "And this is in no way has anything to do with going to see your love on the way."
Penthesilea laughed and took up the torch from Beatrice's hand. It was heavy, and Beatrice was tired of carrying it. She gave it up with a simple thanks. Penthesilea's sword also glowed, so it was if she had two torches. Penthesilea whistled and her lean hound dog, Hecabe, bounded after them.
They walked companionably for a very long time, until they came over a ridge and onto a very windy plain. Above, Beatrice saw people whipping about on a great wind. She recognized quite a few of them from the romance stories that Hero's nurse wasn't supposed to be reading them.
Penthesilea pointed out one or two. "There floats Iseult the Blond with her Tristan, while in the field of the lovelorn Iseult the Brown yet lies weeping. There soars Cleopatra with her Anthony." She scanned the sky with an eagle gaze as if searching for a particular prey. "Ah, and there flies Achilles, who by some account fell in love with me the moment he killed me. Ha! If such were true then Eros would have been at difficulty keeping up with every death upon that plain, and well Hector can tell that tale. For there in Achilles' arms clings his Patroclus, and neither a love of mine or Hector's." Hecabe panted in agreement.
Beatrice spotted her cousin, Francesca, and Francesca's brother-in-law, Paulo, whipping around, quite naked except for a winding sheet. She called out, "Francesca!" She was overjoyed to see someone that she actually knew. The words flew out before she recalled that Francesca had been murdered by her husband, Guido after being found with Guido brother, Paulo the handsome. Aunt Innogen and Uncle Leonato had used her death to further lecture poor Hero on her virtue until Hero trembled with worry. Mama said that they were just trying to keep Hero safe, but Beatrice didn't like it.
Beatrice's fists curled at the memory. She yelled, "Your children are with their grandmother in Ravenna." She couldn't very well report that Guido had come to a bad end. He was living well as the high magistrate in Pesaro.
Francesca and Paulo flew closer. Paulo was crying into Francesca's shoulder and wouldn't look at Beatrice, which was silly.
Beatrice, with her arm around Hecabe, said, "If I were older and a man and…"
Francesca bared her teeth in a smile. "My husband's death follows him on close heels and he's farther to fall that I, having been all the higher." She ran her hand along Paulo's back as his crying increased. "Shhh… peace, my love. He'll soon fall and into the hell of his own making."
Beatrice shifted awkwardly. "That's good, I suppose." She cast about for something else to say. "But, it was foolish thing to do. Have an affair with your husband's brother, just because he was handsome." Beatrice hadn't meant to say it. But she'd met Paulo when he was alive and not crying continuously. He was pretty, but he wasn't that bright.
Paulo clung to Francesca and Francesca comforted him as Beatrice had so often seen her do with her own children. Francesca said, "We've only each other for company now for all eternity."
Beatrice didn't say, "Oh, but he's silly," and she didn't say, "but what about all the other people flying around," because she didn't say everything that came into her head.
Hecabe howled mournfully. Penthesilea said, "Beatrice, the hour grows late."
Beatrice bid them farewell.
After a long way across the howling plain, the path dipped into a swampy marsh. At a long low dock, a ferryman glared at them from his skiff.
Penthesilea said, "Charon, put aside sullenness. You must carry this one across the swamp. Her way is paid with her Mother's prayers."
Charon grumbled, "A prayer and two coins will buy but one treat for your dog."
Beatrice plucked two buttons from the neck of her dress and held them out. "These buttons both cost two coins a piece for they are true brass, and are easily worth three treats." She dropped them in Charon's hand and went to sit in Charon's skiff. At his look, she crossed her arms.
Penthesilea climbed into the skiff and sat in the prow holding the torch and her sword. Hecabe stepped in wonderfully delicate for such a long limbed hound and didn't rock the skiff at all.
Charon grumbled and set to rowing.
Beatrice was more than willing to help row. As she dipped her oar, she spun story upon story.
Charon was laughing so hard by the time they'd crossed that he gave her back her buttons and a dozen coins besides. As he helped her onto the farther shore, he said, "T'aint as if I've a place to be a spending them. Few enough travellers with wares to sell."
On that farther shore, they set off through a cemetery full of burning crypts. People kept popping out of them and arguing with each over heresies. Several times Penthesilea held Beatrice back from getting involved. Penthesilea said, "The Trojan war was over love and honour and wealth, and it lasted over a ten years."
Beatrice gripped her hands and her lips and didn't argue with all the people who were wrong.
Finally they came to a great iron gate in the midst of a great black stone wall.
She called up to two figures standing over the gate, all wreathed in smoke, "Hello!"
A grumpy old man from one of the burning graves sat up and glared at her.
She supposed he'd been sleeping. As it was, she was growing very weary. It was long past when she would normally have been in her bed.
Penthesilea breathed in softly. "The Gorgons. But where is Medusa?"
The figures on the gate had stepped out of the smoke. The women were blood stained and they had snakes in their hair. Their bronze wings strongly beat the air.
The Gorgons scratched their own breasts with their long nails. They were weeping.
Penthesilea said, "The one on the right is Stheno the Forceful. The one on the right is Euyrale the Far Roaming. But where is their sister, Medusa the Queen and Protector?"
Their tears were a song that played a melody on Beatrice's heart. "Why are you crying?"
Stheno, her tears streaked with blood, said, "In an evil hour, we didn't stop Theseus in his attempt to kidnap Proserpine."
Beatrice looked to Penthesilea, "I thought Hades kidnapped Proserpine."
But Penthesilea had gotten down on bended knee before a veiled woman with serpent hair, who said, "Theseus as a son of…" the coils of copper veiling her eyes jangled and the woman's lips pursed around a word that she spat as her locks hissed, "Neptune, he felt that it was for his des deserving bed that he and should have a daughter of Zeus for his bride. One for himself and one for his friend, and half-brother, Pirithous. Having for himself already kidnapped fair Helen, who he'd well despoiled, so he came he here to gain for his friend, Pirithous, our Queen Proserpine. When that solemn Queen already exhausted by the hurley jerky cinque pace of the wedding into which her Father, if not her Mother had given her, lay in weary repentance."
The women upon the gate called out. "Medusa, come, so you can turn this child to stone."
"Hush, sisters," said the veiled woman, "I am here already. This child is no danger to our Lady, who we guard. But quiet your voices. You know full well our Lady is sleeping." She smiled at Beatrice. "We were sent by her mother, Ceres, and guard our Lady somewhat better than her first handmaidens did."
"But what," Beatrice cracked a yawn for she was very tired and had been walking for a very long time, but she forced the words out of her cracking jaw, "what happened with Theseus and Proserpine?"
Medusa placed a light caress to Penthesilea's cheek and urged her to stand for a brief kiss. Then in a smooth dip, Medusa picked up Beatrice in a mighty steel girt arm and with the other easily opened the great iron gate. She smiled beneath the spinning coils of copper over her eyes. "I turned Theseus and his friend to stone." The serpents of her hair waved in the direction of a man in ancient garb standing frozen in the inner courtyard, his eyes wide in terror. "There stands Pirithous. Alas, that Hercules rescued Theseus with a combined drop of the blood of my sons, Pegasus and Chrysaor."
Beatrice blinked and snuggled into Medusa's comforting embrace. She could still see the light from Penthesilea still holding her sword and the torch. Hear Hecabe panting. Beatrice tried to struggle back from sleep's grip. "Hmm… I need to get back to my Mama. She is not well."
Penthesilea said, "Never fear, for good or ill, the dead can always see the living. Even when we are from their eyes."
Medusa brushed a kiss upon Beatrice's brow, as she climbed up a spiralling staircase in a narrow tower. Beatrice felt the flick and slide of Medusa's hair. She wondered why she wasn't afraid, but decided maybe there had been a fairy after all, and she laughed at sleep.
She didn't even start when Medusa laid her down in a bed beside a sleeping girl only a few years older than herself wearing a crown of springtime flowers. She knew this must be Proserpine of the spring.
Medusa pulled the cover over Beatrice's shoulders. "Sleep, little one." Penthesilea blew out the torch and sheathed her sword. Beatrice's eyes fluttered shut. She sank into that soft bed and into sleep.
Only blinking awake in the bowl of a burned out tree in the woods that she'd long ago left behind to see her Uncles' worried faces.
Uncle Leonato said, "Thank God that we have found you. At least, we haven't lost you both on this terrible night." Uncle Leonato gathered her up into his arms. He kissed her brow where Medusa had done.
Uncle Antonio, clutching the same torch Beatrice had carried into Hell, said, "These woods are not safe for a girl on her own."
"Wasn't alone." Beatrice struggled to place words on her sleep leaden tongue. "Medusa was with me, and Penthesilea, and Charon."
"Don't speak nonsense, Beatrice. Why…" asked Uncle Antonio.
Uncle Leonato cut him off, "Antonio, cease your chides. We've safely found our little one." Uncle Leonato squeezed her tight. "And that is all that matters now."
Beatrice dropped once more into sleep and from there into considering Hell nothing more than a dream. Come the morning, she had far more sorrowful concerns to worry about than dreams.
~~~~
When Beatrice was eighteen, she went to Purgatory.
Beatrice had not meant to make that journey.
She had first merely meant to leave the solar where Hero, two years her junior, was earnestly was explaining the actions of men, and in particular one man, who surely hadn't meant to trifle with Beatrice's heart, and they had no way of knowing if Uncle Leonato would have approved the match as well, though surely he would have because Messina, so often traded between conquerors, needed to be in the good favour of their new lord, Prince Pedro of Aragon, and surely this meant that Hero's Father would bless the union that she longed for having seen the object of her love some three times at church with his uncle, who was accounted a good man.
On Beatrice's reply upon the subject of good men, Hero burst into tears, which made Beatrice feel like one who kicks a dog, who has disturbed their sleep for the flight of a moth, and now gazes with mournful and much loved eyes.
Beatrice had not meant to do more than pace about the infinitely crowded courtyard of her Uncle's villa when she chanced to see a certain Senor Benedict, a certain Senor Mountanto. But as she opened her mouth to exchange sharp words, it seemed all she could hear was her dear Mama's voice, dead these last nine years, chiding her to silence. She wanted nothing more then, but to feel her Mama's arms once more, but all reason told her this desire was in vain.
Beatrice had not meant to do more than take a march down the beach stretching to the south of Messina for what she hoped would be an hour or two of solitude to ease the aching of her jaw from enforced smiles over nothing.
Nothing. No thing. A gest then for all that Senor Benedict had spoken of hearts with a woman who had no dowry. In what could have been nothing but a quest for a nothing to plant a flag within for all Hero would excuse this or that fault with the patience of an enforced saint. While ladies of their company whispered about the lot of a woman with nothing but her person to recommend her, and that accompanied with a razor tongue too sharp by far.
Beatrice put one foot in front of the other and consoled herself that at least there she might console herself. She'd never given anything away but her heart. She felt sun-burnt with self consolation. She was all over burned with stewing in what she was not thinking about.
It was the sudden shadow from the sun that had her glance up. For there were no mountains anywhere near to Messina. Ports and ships and monuments, but no mountains. She looked up quite expecting to see a monument. Perhaps the one to the ancient Mamertines, who had peopled Messina by the virtuous act of killing all the men and taking up the women as brides.
Instead she faced a sort of triply tiered mountain like a sort of green wedding cake with one tier a top the other. From the top of this mountain, she saw red robed cherubs armed with long bows or clutching burning hearts flit about like swallows at their muddy nests.
She was gawping like a child, when a woman in Roman attire stood up from where she'd been sitting upon a marble bench. "Oh, dear heart, let me ease your sighs." In the most astonishingly familiar way, this woman set to dabbing Beatrice's face with a damp flannel cooled in a nearby stream. Beatrice was so amazed, she could only stare at her, as the woman said, "Beatrice, your Mother sent me to meet you for she saw you lose the spark in your heart." She tugged and tidied at Beatrice's clothing. "There now, that much better."
Beatrice remembered what had once been a dream to her. That she had once walked through Hell accompanied by an Amazon. That didn't help her understand why a dead Roman woman, for it seemed to her that the mountain currently casting a shadow must be Mount Purgatory, was flapping a flannel in her face. Beatrice said, "You have the advantage of me, and I have such a manner that I prefer the advantage always to go the other way. Which is to say, who are you?"
"Oh, where are my manners," the woman tucked the cloth into her girdle. "I'm Marcia." At Beatrice's blank look, she sighed and said, "I'm mostly famous for having been married and then divorced and then married again to Cato the Younger with an intermezzo wedded life with an elderly wealthy man." She shrugged, "Though in my day, I was reputed for my skill at managing my estate through civil war." She patted Beatrice upon her shoulder. "Now then, no more tears, dear. We have such a long way to go if we're going to climb up the mountain. Laozi sends his best by the way and wants you to know that a journey of a thousand miles still starts with a single step."
"I'm inclined to think that…" Beatrice began slowly, "advantage continues to flow like a river away from you and still quite knocking me over. Why should I have to climb any mountain? Surely the better course would be to retrace my steps." Beatrice turned and found rather than a long beach with Messina in the distance, there was only the lapping waves of the ocean. "Oh." Several curses fought together at the gates of her lips for escape and therefore she was silent.
"Yes, your dear Mother told me of your habit of walking through soft spots in the world. But never mind." Marcia beckoned. "Let's be going."
Beatrice laughed. Because really, what else was there to do, but laugh.
They went up a path leading away from the shore, until they came to a field full of sad faced women and men sprawled in the grass clutching various objects. Dirty ribbons and wilted flowers and the like.
One such was a particularly doleful looking woman, quite charred in her dress, who sighed at their approach. "Comes yet, Aeneas?"
Marcia said, "Oh, Dido. I've told you before. He's not coming. You should move on. Come with us up Mount Purgatory, where misdirected love may be ahhh…burned away." At Dido's stern expression, Marcia said, "Still too soon? Very well." Marcia kissed Dido's cheek, and on taking a few steps away from her whispered to Beatrice. "This the field of the lovelorn." She looked Beatrice over. "Are you feeling a profound urge to sit and contemplate the colour of your lover's soul?"
Beatrice looked about the field, and all the tear stained faces and the air rent with sighs. "I'd rather lead a merry band of apes to meet Satan himself than stay here."
"Oh, don't worry, that old goat wouldn't have you," Marcia patted Beatrice's arm.
Dido called after them. "Do not mock my love, Beatrice. Your Hero will spend as long here as I and for less reason."
Beatrice was so thrown by this remark that she almost turned around to question her further.
Marcia plucked at her sleeve. "Oh, but do be careful. You almost stepped on Dante Alighieri."
Beatrice carefully stepped over Dante, who was weeping in the grass, and resolved to speed her way through this place. Dido couldn't know the future, but then again, she had known Beatrice's name. Beatrice would feel better when she could see Hero again, and assure herself of the wholeness of Hero's heart.
They came to a high marble wall set with three gates. The first gate was of gold. A red cherub stood there holding a bow of gold. The second gate was of silver. This gate was likewise guarded by a red cherub holding a silver bow. Before that cherub sat a plate with two burning hearts upon it. The third gate was marvellous to behold and was made of lapis lazuli and coral. The red cherub who guarded that gate was armed with a bow of ivory and horn.
As Beatrice marvelled at the third gate, Marcia tugged upon her arm. "Come along, dear. The lessons behind that gate hold no meaning for you. You are meant for the Silver gate."
The cherub with the silver bow gestured at a burning heart and then to Marcia, who took that heart with a gleeful toss of her head.
Beatrice stared at the heart the cherub was gesturing for her to take. She said, "I am already quite pleased with the heart presently beating in my chest and have no need of a burning one."
"You're supposed to eat it, dear. It's a very tasty metaphor." So saying, Marcia ate the heart she was holding in three bites. "Also, they won't let us in without consuming it."
Beatrice very dubiously took the heart and bit into it. Her eyes widened. It tasted like cinnamon and sugar. Without much further thought, she ate the rest of it down.
The cherub smiled beatifically at them and waved them in the gate.
Once inside, Beatrice glared with some dismay at the carvings on the marble floor. There were bronzed spinsters weeping at looms and aged aunts begging for a place at a table. Prideful wives berating their henpecked husbands. Even worse, scenes from a story Beatrice well knew. A cautionary tale of a prideful woman who scorned her lover and was condemned through the afterlife to run before him as he hunted her with his dogs. While Aunt Innogen yet lived, this story and its sisters was one Aunt Innogen had often read to Hero and Beatrice.
Her thoughts were shattered by a pleasant contralto voice. "Christine of Pisan is that you? No, I see that I must wait longer yet for a companion at my task." Beatrice turned around to where a rumpled woman in spun wool next to a vast mound of knapsacks. The woman said, "Deborah I am and over the tribes of Israel I was once a judge. Therefore some call me Lady Reason. I am here to say that if you stare at the carvings that are beneath your feet, you cannot look up. That is why I take from the ladies that come here these knapsacks that they've been given all their lives that force their gaze down."
Beatrice looked at the walls and found the images much more to her liking. There were women seated together in salons in conversation or together weaving, baking, or gleaning the fields, at the work of their lives alongside men. Wives and husbands equally yoked to wedded carriages. Queens with their Kings ruling justly over courts. The carvings went on and on around the curve of the wall.
Deborah tilted her head and eyed Beatrice critically. "You yet live, so I cannot take your knapsack from your back." Deborah looked at Marcia. "It is a hard thing to go up a mountain with a heavy weight on your back."
Marcia laughed. "So, you've shared the last dozen times I've made this trip upon a dead Mother's behest. I expect you'll share it the next dozen times. Though, I'll admit, I do like to hear it.
In that moment, Beatrice felt that knapsack upon her back. She wondered how heavy the weight on her dear Hero's back must be.
They conversed awhile on the tier that Deborah called, "The Tier of the Worth of Ladies, which some ignorant souls would call pride, but I call a knowledge of our own value, and of our value to each other."
But Beatrice, knowing that time was precious, and growing worried about Hero on the echo of Dido's words, urged that they move on.
Next they climbed up a set of stairs to the second tier, where they were greeted by a woman in threadbare linen. "I am Cassandra. I hailed from Troy. Some call me Lady Rectitude, because I spurned Apollo to my cost, but… I see you are already not listening to me. I do wonder that I bother to open my mouth."
Beatrice was looking at the women walking about with their eyes covered with red cloth listening to stories of envy and generosity. Aglauros, who transformed to stone on the tide of her jealousy of her older sister, Herse. Countered with Mary, Mother of God, urging her son to transform water into wine for a wedding.
Beatrice had always been fond of a ridiculous miracle. "That, there is no doubting, was a miracle that saved much on the expense of the wedding."
"Christians do like their drunkard's miracle," said Marcia. Miming the tipping back of a heavy tankard. "Though to my mind, the three Oenotropae did it better. Those ladies turned not only water into wine, but grass into wheat, and berries into olives."
"If it wasn't for a wedding," said Beatrice, rolling her eyes, "I'll admit no greater miracle than water into wine."
"What of funerals or christenings?" asked Marcia.
"Please," said Beatrice, "You must give me better meat to grind than that. The answer…"
Cassandra sighed. "Be kind to other women. Listen to their words and their troubles. Do not listen always to the sorrows of men. Are you listening?"
Beatrice gave Cassandra a hug, for that poor woman needed it. When Cassandra was feeling better, Beatrice and Marcia climbed to the next tier.
They arrived at the top of the mountain cake, and were immediately faced with a garden of statues. They were not lightly hewn, but were of massive grey stone. They showed all forms of love. There were lovers, it was true, and Beatrice hardly knew where to look for their carnality. But there were also Mothers with babies, Fathers and daughters, Mothers and sons. Brothers. Sisters. Friends. Even one figure cloaked all over in robes, simply reading a book all alone.
Beatrice looked around for the woman who would greet them, but Marcia stayed her search saying, "The one who will be called Lady Justice has yet to die, and so cannot greet us. Let us make our way through the garden, then I must leave you.
Beatrice exclaimed, "Oh, but I have enjoyed our climb."
Marcia laughed, "You will be greeted by someone who you wish to see far more than I." So, saying, she guided Beatrice to a wall of fire and with no fanfare, pushed her to walk through it. As she passed through, the fire seemed no heavier than a mist.
On the other side, Beatrice's Mama was waiting in great chariot pulled by many wondrous attendants about which Beatrice could not give a single fig. Not one single fig, for she had cast herself onto the chariot to embrace her Mama. Tears streamed down both their faces, and words failed Beatrice's ready mind.
Finally, they pulled away enough to look at each other. Beatrice's Mama said, "Look at you, so grown. When you were little, so often I cautioned you against expressing the gifts those fairies granted you. Now unable to speak to you, my heart swells with pride to see them so expressed. For the sake of my pride, if not your own," she rested her forehead against Beatrice's, "engage in a merry war of wits with anyone who would trifle with your heart."
Beatrice whispered back, "No sooner had you asked it of me, but I was late in complying with your request."
They stood for a long wondrous time in that chariot. But even not wanting to leave, Beatrice knew she must. She said, "What now? Shall I faint and on waking find myself on the seashore?"
Her Mama shook her head and clicked her tongue at the wondrous steeds, a flying horse and a flying boar presently in the traces of the chariot. "I'll carry you to the outside of the solar you abandoned and it will be as if you were sitting in the courtyard all this time."
So, it was that Beatrice found herself, after one more embrace, leaping down into the courtyard of Uncle Leonato's villa. She walked briskly back to the solar, where her embroidery lay abandoned.
She straight away hugged Hero, who blinked in amazement. "What brought on this sudden embrace? What has lifted your spirits?"
Beatrice opened her mouth to say, but on doing so thought better of it. She said instead, "I cannot tell you how I long to hear the virtues of the young soldiers of the Prince of Aragon installed in Messina.
Hero began somewhat hesitantly. "Is this a trick where with a word you will remove my head as a bear swipes a paw?"
Beatrice gave her one more hug. "It is neither a trick or a joke." She laid her hand upon her own heart and said, "I promise." She sat down next to Hero and listened to what was in Hero's heart.
~~~~
When Beatrice was twenty-seven, she did not go to Heaven. This was fortunate for she had no intention of going there just then. Certainly, she had every expectation for a later date, but at that age, she accounted herself well blessed to be upon the earth.
That year, she admitted her cousin, Hero, as a lady to her household in Athens, where she and Benedict ruled at the pleasure of their King of Aragon and his Greek Queen, Camilla.
Hero wept, and Beatrice held her. Beatrice did not ask her Benedict to kill Claudio as she had done in the past. She did not rage against the world that she was not a man, and therefore must die a woman of grieving. By her mother-in-law's account, a woman's path was from maiden to mother to crone. Beatrice's empty nursery barred that path.
Hero had no such empty nursery. She brought her daughter, Maria, newly blinking on the world, but had been forced to leave behind her sons with their Father. The weight of the law being that they belonged to Claudio. To their Father when he grudged that his children were his and not spinning wild imaginings based on Hero's many kindnesses to every stranger and sinner that she met.
Hero scrubbed at her face. "Once I let someone into my heart, it's not in me to cast them out. No matter the hurt and jerk of their actions. I must believe in the goodness of each soul. We can be guided by love." She sighed, "Oh, but you'll grow weary of my weeping. I'll burn out your patience," Hero trembled like a deer too long still in a field. Still Beatrice was happy to hear her say, "You field of patience was never great."
"My hay field of patience, no. But my stubborn love is like a mountain under that yellow field." She raised her eyebrows. "I've seen you through a funeral and back from the dead. What is a little watering to the hay fever of my patience?"
"It was a lovely funeral," said Hero with a soft smile. "I was mourned by all Messina. The church almost caught on fire with the candles."
"Better that funeral march than the wedding dance that came after," said Beatrice, who then had cause to curse her own tongue, as she had to begin again.
Beatrice saw then three Virtues: Faith, Hope and Charity, in the finest silk spun from the heart. They stood at the three doors into her courtyard, as Beatrice held lavender to her dear cousin's nose to remind her of spring, and turned her face to the sun to remind her that it still shown. As Beatrice held dear Maria when Hero wept for the children, who were not with her, and comforted Hero over the fate of the child suckling at her breast if Maria's Father would not acknowledge her. As Beatrice spoke a constant tide of words to provide Hero with a line to hold onto.
She had expected those Virtues at her doors. She was by now well practiced at seeing what others did not.
When Hero returned to Claudio on the weight of a well worded message, Beatrice expected that as well.
Beatrice could have cursed Hope, but she had her own hopes in the tide of the world. She could have cursed Faith, but she had her own faith in the path she was on. She could not have cursed Charity. It would have been too hard, even for her.
Beatrice took the same comfort she always did from her Benedict. If he did not see the Virtues watching, it did not matter. Beatrice breathed in the scent of lavender he held to her nose, let him turn her face to the sun, and felt his wave of nonsense words wash over her and held tight to the healing tide of time.
~~~~~
When Beatrice was thirty-six, she did not go to Heaven. Though as before, she certainly hoped to one day be admitted.
Her Benedict and she had been granted the somewhat dubious honour of the County of Girona. The dubiousness of that honour was that the city of Girona was the first line of defence for Aragon against any attack by the house of Anjou to the North. "But such is the gentle blessing of the favour of princes," she told her ladies as they counted the stores in the third month of the siege.
What she did not tell her ladies was that the fault was not always in the music when a Prince, having lost a fecund wife to the grave, renews old proposals in a new way and is turned aside yet again with a merry laugh. One jest too many it would seem for the pride of princes.
That night as she lay in her wedded bed. She said, "I've laughed, while keeping one eye on the dance list. Wooing, bedding and repenting, is as a Galliard, a Volt, and a Maypole. The first pursuit is full of jumps and leaps and hops, like a Galliard, and as immodest the bedding as the Volt, full of embraces that lift the lady to ever greater heights, then comes round repentance, with her rounded belly, though such will never…"
Benedict stopped her with an encroaching leg and a laugh. "We've agreed that any fault in that regard lies with me. Now as well you know, horns don't suit my thinning hair. Let the Anjou be at his Sarabands at our door. No Maypole ribbons for you, and no Hornpipe steps for me. I prefer the Buffoon."
Beatrice sighed, "A merry war of wits is more to my liking than actual war."
Benedict stroked her arm. "It is a strange King, who sends both Uriah and Bathsheba to the front."
She lightly swatted his chest over his heart. "Cassandra, love, not Bathsheba."
He kissed her nose. "If you're Cassandra, then I'm not listening." She laughed and left words for kisses.
In the ninth month of siege, and a reverse pregnancy a siege was for the cupboards to be so bare on the morning of Good Friday, Beatrice fearing to watch her Benedict's go outside the city walls to gain them supplies, and therefore stole to the walls before he left so that she must watch him, chanced to see three ravens alight upon the field of battle. These ravens turned into women with night black hair and withered aspects.
They greeted each other. "Here we meet again, in thunder, lightning and in rain."
"Hurlyburly's not yet done."
"Where the battle's lost, but there's much that could be won."
They grinned up at Beatrice where she stood. "Hail, Countess of Girona. Hail, Countess of Barcelona, and Queen of Aragon besides."
On these words, Beatrice raced through the city in sudden fear. Only to find her Benedict preparing to head out the Western gate upon his raid and not yet making witticisms with Saint Peter.
At Benedict's look, she gathered her wits, because she was not about to relay what she'd seen, "What if it were a merry war of wits after all?" as her mind cast for any way to turn aside the Raven women's words.
They called a truce and with her Ladies in their best dresses, Beatrice spent some eight hours trading witticisms with the Duke of Anjou. This wit became an Easter truce, which prolonged into a sort of measured ball of ever gathering wits.
So at thirty-six, Beatrice did not enter Heaven, nor did she become Queen of a newly proclaimed King of Aragon. That year ended with Beatrice with her Benedict in Girona as new borders were drawn upon the map, and they gained for their king a new bride of Provence.
The Mediterranean as his lake would have to be enough for their King.
~~~~
When Beatrice was forty-five, she did not go to Heaven.
Her wit was declared divine and her love was declared the closest thing to heaven by Prince Mathias of Aragon, who had been sent to Sardinia to take the governorship of that new addition to his Father's kingdom. As Benedict had been given the Sardinian port of Sassari to govern, they saw much of the young prince.
Beatrice wondered when sixteen had become so young. Beatrice stared at Mathias in some astonishment as he gave her his latest poem. She said, "Prince Mathias, perhaps you should read more Aragonese poets and fewer from Provencal."
Her Benedict snorted. "As long as they are not Barcelonan poets," and smacking his lips to imply the rude kisses Barcelonan poets preferred, was no help at all.
Beatrice found nine Muses crowding her inner courtyard giggling in their robes of red, yellow and black. She scolded them. "Have you no more fit objects for his affections? Some washer maid? But no she'd be seduced by his position in a trice." The Muses giggled at her. "One of my younger ladies then, but no, any Father would urge them into his bed out of ambition." The Muses clutched at each other in laughter. "Hero's daughter, Maria, come to stay with us, oh, but no. She has her Mother's heart. If ever the prince climbed in, she'd never remove him." The Muses laughed in gales around her. Beatrice said desperately, "One of the younger married Ladies then. Oh, but…"
"No," laughed all nine.
Beatrice did not tell the Muses that she hated them right then. She turned around on her toe and went back to where she could be some Prince's guiding light to a moral life or some such nonsense.
She said over her shoulder, "I'd better not die tragically. Forty-five is not as old as it once seemed to me."
The Muses only response was laughter.
~~~~
When Beatrice was fifty-four, she did not go to Heaven. She went to Venice, which stank to high Heaven.
For Hero's sake, she escorted Hero's youngest daughter, Innogen, there to be married to Antonio, a young gentleman of Venice. Oh, how she wished Hero could be here to see the event, but that was a sorrow of long burial and many masses sung. She longed to joke with Hero about her two funerals, but she could not. She could only go to Venice.
Beatrice hadn't entirely liked the match at first. There was little to trust in Venice. Most god-parents had little say in these things, but she'd had more than most.
When she met, Portia, the groom's mother, she relaxed.
Beatrice said, "I'll be as blunt as my tongue is sharp. Innogen's hand may be given into your son's care, but before that happens, what I need to know is what care will he take for her heart. For if he'll take none, I'll take this dove back, and your ships can want for a port for all the care I'll give."
That calm lady only smiled.
Portia said, "Sharp, but drawing no blood." She spread her hands. "I'll warrant that my Antonio knows the quality of mercy, and the hazard of love." She mimed a scales. "It is a hazard that goes both ways. All who play that game must learn their own balance."
Words that Beatrice saw played out in Portia's household. That palazzo seemed somewhat oddly split between Portia, her husband Bassanio, and Bassanio's dear friend, Antonio the elder. But the working of it spun merrily along. Beatrice could well see no jealously there lingered, but much love from each side of that triangle.
After which, Beatrice had much to hear from Maria of all Antonio's good qualities, and could not disagree with what she said. She did insist that that betrothal take some months, for there was much to arrange, and both set of hearts was too important to cast on too slight knowledge.
If at the wedding, the wine ran quite low, and the calm Portia tugged at her own hair, Beatrice said, "I will see if I can find some hidden barrels. You tend to the tenor of the day, and for the sake of God in Heaven, shorten the speeches. That and the wine will have everyone asleep at the table."
She went to the kitchen where Oeno poured water into wine and Spermo kneaded grass into bread. Beatrice held back Elais' hand to steal some berries before they were turned into oil.
When Portia saw the earthen jugs of wine hauled up, she stared at Beatrice in amazement. "You are a miracle worker. I could have sworn the wine was gone."
Beatrice ate a berry. "I'm no miracle worker. I've merely been blessed to know some who are."
~~~~
When Beatrice was sixty-three, she did not go to Heaven. Though her heart was heavy at those who had gone before.
They buried Hero's youngest son in the deep earth far from home. She wept into her Benedict's arms and was mostly silent for a turn of time.
She walked in the field where the Asphodel grows and did not fall through a soft spot in the world to see a child she'd treated as her own again.
She did see the Kindly Ones with their blood smeared whips. They tempted her with scorpion flail words. She turned away saying, "They say revenge is a dish best served cold. Too cold for me. I run hot in my humours." She went home and held her Benedict in his own grief.
They welcomed Hero's third grandchild into the world. The daughter of Maria and Pietro, a kindly landowner of Sardinia. That happy couple had named the girl Beatrice. Beatrice the blond for her blond hair at birth. On the news, Beatrice, who must surely be Beatrice the brown…
"More silver than salt, love," said Benedict.
"At least I have hair," said Beatrice.
"The better to reflect your silver glory."
…Beatrice the silver and Benedict the bald stayed up late into the night welcoming carousers going home with the news of a perfect little girl entering the world.
When Beatrice visited her namesake, she left the window open and welcomed the Green and Gold and Red fairies in with their blessings. Though, she had to laugh when she realized that fairies whisper blessings, and god-parents can only be left to guess what they are.
~~~
When Beatrice was seventy-two, she went to Heaven.
But though she quite longed to see Benedict and her Mama and so many others, she had something she needed to do first.
She went to the foot of Mount Purgatory to the field of the lovelorn, where dear Hero wept clutching all of Claudio's letters. Beatrice sat down next to her in the field and held her. She said, "When you're ready, we will go up the mountain and through the Silver gate. There's a weight on your back that you cannot even see. Lady Reason will take it from you. There's a Lady Rectitude who will understand you. I think even a Lady Justice. I think I met her when her son married your daughter, Innogen. She'll love you as I do. If not she, then I'll be your Lady Justice."
Hero wept. "Once I let someone in my heart, I cannot let them go. Not now, when he's fallen so far. How could a just God condemn Claudio so? There's goodness in his heart. I know it."
Beatrice had an opinion on that point, but was more trained in strategy than to say it. "You're sitting at the foot of the mountain. If there are answers, they aren't here. After all, you've seen your own funeral twice," which startled a laugh from Hero, "let's enact a third and sing masses to your love." Beatrice smiled at watery faced Hero.
Hero said, "You'll weary of my tears."
Beatrice rolled her eyes, "Though I am not known for my patience, you know me well enough to know that I can be stubborn. I will keep up such a gentle rain of words on you that you will seek shelter up that mountain to be free of them."
"Do you have room for others in this rain?" said the three Charities.
"Oh, there's always room at the inn, we just happen to like sitting in the manger with the dogs," said Beatrice, who smiled and holding Hero's hand, began her rain of words.