The Serpent of Venice (25 page)

“Yes, well, a common pirate who had a good day, innit? Annoyingly earnest, too.”

“Speaking of, he told me that you had something you should tell me.”

“Yes, well, for now we should set our sights on liberating Drool.” We were nearly to the fortress; its main gate faced away from the harbor, toward the hill. I chose to approach a guard at a small portal in the side, who looked to be nearly falling asleep on his lance, but as we approached I could smell the soured wine stench coming off him as if he’d been painted in the blood of the grape.

“Shouldn’t we find an officer?” Jessica inquired.

“Always bribe at the highest amount you are willing to pay, at the lowest level of command. Resentment is as good as gold when loyalty is being sold.”

As we approached the soldier, the iron-clad door he guarded flew back on its hinges and a dozen armored men carrying spears and crossbows came through. The scruffy, hungover guard did his best to stand at attention while they passed, then slumped on his spear again. The patrol made its way around the fortress and out onto the breakwater from which we had just come. They were actually patrolling the bloody harbor on foot.

“Fuckstockings, our boat,” I whispered.

“The boat’s no threat to them. They may not even see it. Let’s get your bloody monkey and go.”

I nodded, then approached the sentry. “Beggin’ pardon, yeoman, would you happen to know if there’s an enormous simpleton with a monkey being held in here?”

“Might be, what’s it to you?”

“Well, the nitwit is this poor boy’s father, and we’re hoping to bring him home.”

“What’s the monkey, his little brover?”

“Half. We are a poor family, and—”

“Four ducats,” said the guard.

Jessica elbowed me with a great nodding grin and started to dig into her leather bag of gold. We’d expected a bit more resistance and a much higher ransom.

“But there ain’t no monkey no more. I traded him for a jug from Giotto the wine seller on the piazza, a month ago.”

“You traded Jeff for a jug of wine?” I was reaching into the small of my back for a dagger. Yes, admittedly he was an obnoxious creature, but by the tucked balls of St. Cinnamon, Jeff was
family
!

Jessica grabbed the wrist of my knife hand and held it steady in mid-draw.

“Please, sir,” she said in her best boy voice. “If you could just fetch my old da, I’d be ever so grateful.”

She opened her hand and the gold coins fanned on her palm, then she snatched them to her chest when the guard reached for them. “If you would, sir.”

“Well, all right,” he said. “But you can’t tell no one I gave him to you. I’m going to tell the captain he died, so keep him out of sight.”

He went through the iron door and closed it behind him.

“Are you daft?” said Jessica, throwing my knife hand away from her.

“He traded bloody Jeff for a jug. My people have suffered enough injustice.”

“Here’s a tip for you, oh, wise fool, do not dirk the man who is about to free your apprentice for a hundredth of what you expected to pay. Let the bargain be your revenge.”

“You are indeed Shylock’s daughter.”

“Just don’t be a fool—well, sorry—don’t be foolish,” she said. “We know
who
he sold your monkey to, and we know
where
to find him. So we go to Giotto the wine seller in the piazza, buy him back, then find an inn and lie low until tomorrow night when we make our escape.”

“Lying low in Genoa with Drool might not be as easy as you think.”

Just then the door opened.

“Holy ripened fuckcheese!” said the Jewess, dropping all pretense of her boy voice as Drool unfolded out of the door and she backed away. She had learned to properly swear since we’d been together. I was somewhat proud.

“Boy’s happy to see his father,” I explained to the guard.

“Pocket! My friend! My friend!” The enormous oaf swept me up in his arms and squeezed the breath out of me, while inflicting me with most slobbery affection.

“Stop licking, Drool. Put me down and go hug your son.”

“Huh?”

I heard the coins clink into the hands of the guard and Jessica say, “Well, we’ll be off then. Cheers!”

I took Drool’s hand and led him quickly down the wall of the fortress and around the corner.

“You might have warned me,” said Jessica.

“I told you he was large.”

“I told you he was large,” said Drool in my voice, mimicked note for note, exactly.

Jessica spun around. “What was that? What was that?”

“He does that, too,” said I. “It’s his gift, nature’s way of compensating him for being an enormous, beef-brained child. He can remember whole conversations, hours long, and recite them back, word for word, in the voice from which they sprouted, and not have a fluttering notion of what he’s been saying.”

“Sounds bloody spooky to me,” said Jessica, putting a bit more distance between herself and Drool.

“They took Jeff, Pocket,” said Drool.

“I know, lad, we’re getting him. Jess, you go to the piazza and buy Jeff from the wine merchant. I’ll take Drool and the gold back to the boat to wait.”

“The gold? You’re not taking my father’s treasure.”

“Can’t have a girl running about a strange city by herself with a bag full of gold and jewels, can we? Unless you’d rather stay with Drool while I go.”

She looked the grand buffoon up and down and handed me the heavy leather bag. “You might pull the boat out a bit if the patrol comes by. I’ll wave from the breakwater for you to come in and get me.”

“The lad are a lass, then?” said Drool.

“Jess is Jessica, Drool,” said I. “Bow proper to the lady.”

“Milady,” he said, bowing. “Not my son, then?”

“No, seeing as she’s a bloody girl and not ten years your junior, she’s not your bloody son.” I forget at times just how impenetrably dense Drool can be. But I had missed shouting at him.

“Can I have a wee peek at your knockers then?” Drool asked the girl.

“Drool!” I scolded.

“Sor-ry,” he sang. “
May
I have a wee peek at your knockers?”

“No, I don’t have to prove anything to you.”

“Oh, he’s not asking for proof, he asks that of all the girls.”

“Give me ten ducats from the bag,” said Jessica. “I’ll go buy your monkey back.”

“Jeff likes to bite a lady on her bosoms,” said Drool. “Sometimes the bottom.”

I nodded as I handed her the coins. “Do be careful. Leash him, and don’t let him at your hat. He has a weakness. We’ll meet you at the boat, then Drool can row us up the coast and we’ll sleep rough on a beach or something until tomorrow night. I don’t think we’ll stay safely hidden in Genoa with a monkey and this great drooling draft horse.”

“I can’t wait until Lorenzo comes and rescues me from you scurvy rascals,” said Jessica. Then she turned on her heel and walked off to the city.

“Who are Lorenzo?” asked Drool.

CHORUS:
On the isle of Corsica, the port town of Bastia, the once captain, Michael Cassio, stripped of his rank, position, and favor of his general, did mourn his fate, and was sulking at a table in his quarters, when Iago visited him under pretense of offering comfort.

“I’ve brought wine!” said Iago, coming through the door without so much as a knock.

Cassio moaned. “No, the devil drunkenness hast lost me my reputation, and in the doing made me despise myself. Never! I shall never drink again. I have lost that part of myself that is immortal, my reputation.”

“I know,” said Iago. “I was just fucking with you. I don’t have wine. Ha, bruised reputation is a false and trifling injury, and one easily mended. The way you wail I would have thought you’d received a real, bleeding wound in the melee. You didn’t, did you?”

“No, no injury. Truth be told, I remember a mass of things but nothing distinctly. I am aggrieved that your second, good Rodrigo, was slain, but it was not I that did the deed. Of that, I am sure. But even that I do not remember is an affront to my good commander, Othello, whose trust I have broken with a single drunken debacle, the damage of which I cannot repair.”

“Good Cassio, as your friend, I wish that such misfortune had not befallen you, but it is not so dire that it cannot be forgiven, your honor and position restored. You did not kill Rodrigo, so what is your offense, a single drunken night? One night of riotous drinking and memory-clouded barking at the moon? Go to the Moor. Ask him, and he will restore you.”

“I have gone, begged, but he denied me.”

“Go to him again. Surely when the heat of anger has cooled and Rodrigo’s true killer is found, Othello will restore you. Who is to say that you were not defending Rodrigo when he was attacked? In fact, say that. The Moor is a soldier, he knows that victory is not always the reward for valiance. Go to him.”

“He will not see me.”

“I see.” Iago scratched his beard, and paced as if pondering, then snapped to, as if hit by the full impact of a weighty solution. “Othello has presented you with his hardened side, that part of him that is forged by war and by necessity, ruthless, turning away that side which we know to be just and compassionate. But of that side, he is not the commander, but has ceded that position to his lady. She knows you, has shown deference and respect to you.”

“She knows me and has always been kind.”

“Then go to her. Confess yourself freely to her, and ask that she appeal to that part of her lord who would forgive you, restore you, and lay faith once again in your abilities. Surely the loving kindness she holds for the world will mend the rift between you and the Moor. Go to her, in private, out of sight of Othello, so your case would appear pled by her unbidden. Be honest and true, forthright and contrite, yet stealthy and discreet, and surely the Moor will invite you back again into the fold.”

Cassio had been nodding as Iago spoke. “I think you advise me well. A true kindness that you would counsel me so, when you have only just lost your friend. Thank you, good Iago.”

“I do only what would any man for a good commander, what you would do for Othello. But I must be off to pay the carpenter to build the box for Rodrigo’s burial.
Adieu!
”

“
Adieu,
Iago.”

CHORUS:
Into the night went Iago, the gears of treachery grinding between his ears, works of an infernal machine, its brake broken, a runaway scheme engine gone awry . . .

“Ha, who can say I am evil, when I have given such good advice? For what I told Cassio is true; the best way to win back Othello is through Desdemona, who has a sweet and forgiving nature and has precious influence over the Moor. Even now, I go to see my own wife, to assure the success of Cassio’s suit. You call me villain? I, who have only just lost my dearest friend to some demon of the night? Poor, grieving Iago, a villain?”

CHORUS:
You said villain, not I. I merely wipe the mist from the mind’s eye with simple descriptive strokes, no more.

“If you think me villain, follow me into the dark, glib Chorus. Listen to my bones tremble as we are pursued by the dark nature I have conjured with my sins. Oh, it has taken form, and it turns on me, even as it took Rodrigo and nearly shredded an oaken door to get at me. If you would call me villain, face the dark thing that pursues me, that is born of my hate, my ambition.”

CHORUS:
You think the creature in the dark is born of your ambition? After I’ve just constructed a perfectly lovely metaphor about your mind being a gristmill of bloody evil? A villain you may be, but a lunatic you are most assuredly.

“Come with me, into the night, Chorus. Stay close. Comfort me.”

CHORUS:
And thus the knave did think a humble narrator dim-witted enough to serve as decoy for the creature. Alas, as was most often the case, Iago was in thought, intention, and execution deeply fucking wrong, and off he went to find the fair Emilia.

The rowboat that had seemed absolutely spacious when Jessica and I were rowing it in suddenly seemed small and inadequate with Drool’s hulking form at the oars. It did not help that the lummox could not swim and so flinched at every wave. I’d had him row several hundred yards out from the breakwater to avoid the attention of the patrol, so we sat, pretending to be fishermen, I suppose, that is, sitting in a boat looking at the water, waiting for something to break the bloody boredom.

“Jessica are a fit bit of stuff, yeah?” said Drool.

“A half hour ago you thought she was a boy, now she’s fit?”

“You have a go at her, Pocket?”

“No, I am still bereft from the loss of Cordelia, and Jessica is engaged, although that may be a bit of a false promise, but I have not had a go at her.”

“ ’Cause Lorenzo would be cross with you?”

“No, because I have promised the ghost of Cordelia.”

“I shagged a ghost once. It were all right, until I got scared. You have a go at her?”

“No, I didn’t have a go at her. I’ve been dead. Not really dead, but unwell. Injured. Betrayed, disparaged, much abused, and somewhat plagued by a sable-colored melancholy.”

“Aye, she sounds fit. You have a go at Sable’s Melon Jolly?”