The Serpent of Venice (39 page)

“Fortunato,” the doge pleaded. “We did not know about your queen.”

“You know now, and I’m off to your prison. Quickly now, while you still have walls. A thimbleful.” I held up one of the paper cylinders I’d tucked in my belt.

“Plead mercy to the Moor. We did not know. We made him our general.”

“Arrest Iago,” I said.

“Arrest him!” said the doge. Guards moved on Iago and as he reached for his sword I held one of my daggers at the ready to throw. “I will kill you where you stand, you villainous wretch.” He let the guards take his arms.

Now the onlookers had calmed in their escape and had turned back to watch.

“Issue pardon to Shylock, and restore his fortune.”

“It is so decreed,” said the doge, the council nodding like pecking chickens. “The nine thousand ducats are so awarded to Shylock, and he is absolved of all charges. Now, please, Fortunato, go to Othello, plead mercy for Venice.”

“Don’t call me Fortunato.”

“Pocket, please! Mercy.”

“Antonio has already taken the gold,” said Shylock.

“We will call him back,” said the doge. “He conspired with Iago, he will be arrested, now go. Save the city.”

I turned to run out when a familiar voice boomed through the gallery.

“Your Grace! Senators!”

The crowd parted and Othello strode through, fully draped in golden-and-white-striped silks, a great golden silk veil trailing from a bronze Saracen helmet, his jewel-sheathed scimitar in a yellow silk sash at his waist.

The doge came around the table and fell to his knees.

“Oh please, Othello, General, please spare the city, Venice is and shall be true to you. Do not destroy the city. We did not know.” The doge bent until his stupid hat touched the ground.

Othello looked at me. “Fool?”

“Moor,” said I. “Smashing togs.”

“What are you up to?”

“Stay the dragon powder, Othello,” said the doge. “Please, spare the city.”

“Oh, that?” said I. I sheathed my dagger. “Just having you on. We only had what I carried with me today. I have to go catch Antonio. Ta!”

TWENTY-FIVE

Arise! Black Vengeance!

I
ran out the door, under the eye of many confused onlookers. I spotted Drool, towering above the fray near the canal, and Bassanio helping Antonio load the chest of gold into a gondola.

“Drool, stop them!” I cried, but the ninny took too long to see the target of my instruction. Bassanio was pushing the gondola away from the walkway, Portia pulling him back toward the court as the boat moved away. Antonio stood amidships, grinning at me.

I shouldered my way through the crowd, drawing a dagger and plunging the pommel into my purse as I moved. When I reached the edge of the water, clear of the crowd, I flung the dagger.

It whistled over the water and thunked into the wooden seat by Antonio’s feet.

“You missed,” he said.

“Yes,” said I. “Blast and damn. Toss that back, would you, mate?”

Antonio bent down and worked the dagger out of the wood. He smiled rather smugly as he stuck it in his belt, confident he was out of knife-throwing range, but then looked at his hand. “It’s sticky.”

“Yes it is, innit?” I called. “Ta!”

The wave moved in a chevron up the center of the Grand Canal’s chilly water.

“Wot’s that?” said one onlooker, pointing to the dark missile moving under the water at the apex of the wave.

The others gathered and watched. Antonio followed their gaze and saw the thing moving at him. He looked around, looked at the gondolier, realized there was nowhere to go.

I will give him credit, he wasn’t the nancy-boy coward I’d thought him to be. He drew my dagger from his belt, crouched, and faced the oncoming wave.

She was like a column of silky tar erupting from the water, her skin shining where the sun hit it. She took his knife arm at the shoulder in her jaws and rolled him over backward into the water, his bones audibly snapping and her front claws disemboweling him before they hit the water on the other side of the gondola and he was carried down in a blossoming red stain in the green water to be seen nevermore. There had been no pause, no break in her momentum; she went through him in the leap as if she might surface again a few yards away and take another merchant, then another, as fluid and natural and irresistible as the sea—an elegant terror—a beautiful monster.

The gondolier had dropped to a crouch on his platform as the gondola lurched sideways with the dragon’s impact, then righted itself. He stood and stared at the red stain in the water, like all of those on the shore, not believing what he had just seen.

“You’ll want to paddle in this way, mate,” I called to him. “Before she comes back.” He leaned into his oar and the gondola shot toward us.

I looked around, caught Shylock’s eye. “Drool will help you wash the blood off your gold and carry it home.”

I turned to look for Jessica and saw Bassanio, hiding his face in Portia’s shoulder as she embraced him. I went by him, squeezed his shoulder. “He loved you, lad. Truly. He was a bloody villain, but that was the one true bit about him.”

The crowd gave me a wide berth for some reason, and I moved through them until I spotted Jessica, sneering at me from under the boy’s hat she was wearing to hide her hair.

“Bit gaudy, innit? I suppose that wet and shiny type has a tawdry appeal to certain lowlifes.” She grinned.

Iago could hear another prisoner down the corridor moaning and shouted for him to shut up.

They’d put him in one of the cells in the Bridge of Sighs, which linked the doge’s palace to the prison, three stories above the canal. He was chained to the wall, but by only one leg iron, the chain long enough to allow him to pace his entire cell. The chain was unnecessary, he thought. There was only one small window above the level of his head, too small for a man to fit through, and then a cupola with four vent windows at the center of the arched ceiling, large enough for a prisoner to fit through, but entirely too high for even an unfettered man standing on another’s shoulders to reach.

When, on his third day of incarceration, the guard announced that he had a visitor, he half-expected it to be Othello, there to curse him in person, perhaps even one of the men of his barracks, but when a pretty dark-haired woman appeared outside the cell, her green silk gown a respite for the eye in this gray stone world, he was taken aback.

She carried a basket, the neck of a bottle of wine protruded from a nest of linen, and the smell of freshly baked bread was tall in the air.

“I know you,” said Iago. “You were at Belmont the day they found Brabantio in the cellar.”

“You remembered,” Nerissa smiled. “I had been seeing your friend, Rodrigo.”

“Oh yes, of course. Nerissa.” Iago’s mind was a blaze looking for fuel. How could he use this to his advantage?

“I do not know you, signor,” said Nerissa. “But Rodrigo always spoke highly of you, and how you had helped and advised him.”

“Ah, Rodrigo, a good mate. He is missed.”

“Well, I thought I would bring you some food, comforts from the outside. And because of Portia’s favor with the doge, they allowed it.”

She looked to the guard who had been standing by. He unlocked the door and let Nerissa hand the basket in.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” said the guard. “There’s no blade concealed in there, and when the wine is finished you’ll hand that bottle back through the bars before this door opens again. Weren’t for the command of the doge, we’d not allow that nonsense.”

“You are very kind, lady,” said Iago. “Rodrigo was a lucky man to have earned your attention.”

“I was very fond of him,” said Nerissa.

The guard signaled with a nod that it was time for her to go and she smiled. “I do hope you enjoy this. The wine seller said to drink the wine last. He says it will somehow best complement the cheese and sausages in that way.”

“I will, lady. Again, thank you.”

Iago retreated to the stone platform that served as his cot, and searched the basket. As the guard promised, there was no knife, only a wooden paddle for spreading soft cheese on the bread. The bread and salt, sausages and cheese, dried fruit and fish tasted of the outside, of freedom, which he had never craved before, not knowing he had enjoyed it. All of it reminded him of defeat, of shame, of infamy, and all brought about at the hands of the annoying little fool.

As the light through the windows turned pink with the sunset, he pulled the seal from the wine. The cork was flared and could be removed by hand, but had been sealed on with lead foil, which he tore off with his fingernails. Even so, the thin lead clung to the bottle, adhering to the sticky resin that smelled of pitch. No matter, he wiped his hands on his trousers, flung the cork to the corner of the cell, and drank. The wine was fortified, strong, and warmed him going down, smoothing the jagged edge of his anger, but sending him into a morose self-pity as he drained the bottle.

He was dozing when he heard the rustling on the roof. His head ached and his mouth tasted of tar, the cell was cold and he reached for the wool blanket they had left him. Shadows were breaking the cold blue moonlight streaming in from the cupola and he looked about for the source of the noise.

His mouth tasted of tar. The wine bottle had smelled of pitch . . .

He watched as liquid night filled the window, then slid down into his cell.

CHORUS:
Piteous screams did fill the night, out the windows and over the canals, for no quick death was gifted to Iago with his basket. The screams were ignored, as always were the calls of fear and sorrow that give the Bridge of Sighs its name. She lingered there, in the cell, much of the night, toying with him like a cat with a mouse, careful to keep him active by not using her dreamy venom, eating one part of the scoundrel and then another, slowly, until just before dawn, her belly full, the serpent of Venice slipped out the cupola window, down the wall, into the canal, and away.

In the morning, when the guard came, he found only Iago’s high boot chained to the wall, his foot and leg to the knee still inside, and nothing else but a great red slick and a serpentine smear of blood painted up the wall and leading out the high windows.

Drool and I were sleeping on the floor in Shylock’s great room, before the fire, when she came to me. I had no doubt, this time, whether she was dream or ghost as I felt her touch on my cheek. My Cordelia. Her hair was down and she wore a silver-and-black silk shirt from my motley, nothing else.

“It’s you?”

“Well done, fool,” she said.

“You from the start, wasn’t it, pulling the strings with Viv? Directing her, keeping me safe.”

“You know what they say, ‘There’s always a bloody ghost.’ ”

“You’re wearing my shirt.”

“The symbolism is bloody ominous, innit?” She grinned, giggled.

“But you’ve no knickers on.”

“Imagine that. Do you think me wanton?”

“Not for me to say, but one hopes.”

“Oh, that’s right, you’ve never shagged a ghost, have you?”

“Well, a few who would go on to be ghosts, but strictly speaking, no.”

“Then get your kit off, fool. Queen Cordelia is going to have her otherworldly way with you.”

“If you insist, but we’ll have to be quiet so as not to wake up Drool. Ghost bonking unsettles him.”

“This will be good-bye then, puppet. I’ve ticked everything off my spirity list.”

“I’ve missed you. I miss you. I am inconsolable.”

“Just as well then that I’m not here to console you, but to shag the bells off of you.”

“I’ll always miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too, love, but you can carry on now. You’ve got Jessica.”

“But you said don’t shag the Jewess.”

“I didn’t want her to distract you while you were avenging me. She’s lovely. Take care of her.”

“Then you don’t mind?”

“Jettison the codpiece, you rascal, there’s squishy haunting to be done!”

TWENTY-SIX

Off Jolly Rogering!

W
e stood at the dock, duffels full of gear at our feet, a longboat with sailors at the oars waiting to take us to the ship.