The Serpent of Venice (5 page)

“His arm bones were splintered. I’ve seen a man’s hand twisted off by a runaway anchor chain. The bones looked like that.” Iago reached into his belt and held forth a long, wickedly curved black tooth, half the length of his thumb. “No, Antonio, it was not rats. This was in what was left of his buttocks.”

“His arse was eaten?”

“A bite.”

“And Portia saw this?”

“The servants had warned her off. They feared what might be in the dark. I was the first to look at him. I wrapped him together in his robe before anyone came. I told them he had fallen and was eaten by rats. I secreted the mason’s tools in a deeper chamber. No one will question it.”

“Then you think the fool is still walled up in the cellar?”

“The wall was intact. You sent away that great simpleton who attended the fool, did you not?”

“I sent a forged note from the fool sending for him the next day. My protégé Bassanio arranged to put the giant and the fool’s monkey on a ship to Marseilles and paid their passage. You think the natural
^*
could have done this?”

Iago stroked his beard. “No, he is strong enough, but what was done to the senator requires a savagery beyond that of a simpleton enraged, even if he’d had a weapon of tooth and bone. It was an animal.”

“The monkey, then?”

“Yes, Antonio. The senator’s head was torn from his body and his liver eaten by a tiny fucking monkey in fool’s motley.”

“Jeff,” said Antonio.

“What?”

“The monkey is called Jeff.”

“Forget the monkey! What is this fascination you have with the monkey? Why didn’t you just keep the monkey?”

“I needed to make the fool’s departure appear genuine, didn’t I?” said Antonio. “No one would go away without his monkey. Besides, I am a respected merchant of Venice. I cannot have a monkey, it would seem frivolous.”

“Psssst, beg pardon, signor,” said one of the spice merchants, leaning out of his booth. “But I might be able to procure a monkey for you.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” said Iago.

“Very discreet, signor,” said the spice seller, affecting a conspiratorial whisper. “You can keep it, or just have it for the night, if you’d like. My man will come take it away in the morning.”

“No,” said Antonio. “I have no need—”

“How much did you hear?” Iago said to the spice man.

“I know nothing of Antonio’s desire to fuck a monkey.” Innocence blossomed on the spice seller’s face, blissful ignorance gleamed in his eye.

“I do not—” Antonio had taken off his floppy silk hat and was fanning himself with it, sweat having suddenly leapt out onto his brow.

“Beyond the monkey fucking, what heard you?”

“Nothing of a headless senator,” said the spice man.

“Pay him,” said Iago to Antonio.

“I don’t want to—”

“Twenty ducats?” Iago raised his scarred eyebrow to the merchant.

The spice seller shrugged, as if perhaps, in some land, a land where his children were not hungry and his wife was not so demanding, twenty ducats might possibly be enough to make him forget what he had never really heard, but here, in Venice, now, well, signor, a man has expenses, and—

“Or I can kill you now,” said Iago, dropping his hand to the hilt of his dagger.

“Never was there a more perfect price than twenty ducats,” said the spice man.

“Pay him.” Iago kept his hand on his knife and continued to regard the spice man as Antonio dug into his purse for the coins.

“And if word of what was said here passes your lips, your life is forfeit, as are the lives of your family.”

“How do I know you won’t kill me anyway?” said the spice man.

“Because Antonio has given you twenty ducats,” said Iago. “And Antonio is an honorable man.”

“I am,” said Antonio. He counted the coins into the spice man’s palm. “An honorable man with no interest in monkeys.”

Iago draped his arm around Antonio and led him to another corner of the square.

“He may require killing, anyway.”

“If you’re going to kill him anyway, I might have saved twenty ducats.”

“Twenty ducats is your fine for being shite as a conspirator. ’Twas foolish to meet on the Rialto.”

“How was I to know you were going to speak of murder? Why must I always be the one to pay?”

“Money is your charm, Antonio, one which we may well need in abundance to purchase the power we’ve lost with Brabantio. Another senator of the council of six.”

“If I commanded the wealth to purchase a senator, I wouldn’t need a war to pad my fortune. And none of the existing five council members favors our cause; they were all stung by the defeat to the Genoans. I fear our cause is lost.”

“Not if we can retain Brabantio’s seat.”

“Perhaps a year ago we might have put a candidate up for vote, spread our bribes around, but when the doge declared senate seats inheritable, our chances were lost. Brabantio’s seat would go to his eldest son, but since he has no son, it will go to the husband of his eldest— Oh my.” Antonio ducked out of the soldier’s embrace and backed away.

“It goes to the Moor,” said Iago. “Brabantio’s senate seat will go to Othello.”

Antonio looked around, hoping his friends might magically appear out of the crowd to rescue him from Iago’s wrath, which the soldier wore in a hardened scowl. “If you’d like, you can go kill the spice merchant, now. I’m not much for killing, but I’ll make a splendid witness.”

Iago held up a finger and Antonio fell silent. “If the first daughter’s husband will not do, we must make the second daughter the first.”

“Portia?”

“Aye, she knows us. She trusts us, she would do our will.”

“But she is not married, and Othello and Desdemona are even now on Corsica. Surely the doge will call them back.”

“Call his general from the field? We shall see. But word will be sent with a trusted lieutenant. Can you find a suitor to Portia to be our senator?”

“I know someone—the young man I mentioned, Bassanio, would be perfect—he has his eye on Portia already. He is handsome and controllable, and he owes me.”

“Good, arrange it. I will see to Desdemona and the Moor. I am off to the doge, then I’ll arrange the journey to Corsica.”

“But how do you know the doge will send you?”

“Did I not tell you, Antonio, that my own wife serves as one of Desdemona’s ladies?”

“No. You sent her there?”

“When the Moor chose Michael Cassio as his second in command over me, I had to keep friendly eyes upon them.”

“Well planned, Iago. What will you do in Corsica?”

“Do not ask, good merchant, if you wish to stay a clean and honorable man.”

“Oh, I do. I do.”

“Then I’m off to the senate, with the news,” said the soldier.

“Wait, Iago.”

“Yes.”

“If money is my charm, and you have none, and power was Brabantio’s offer, and you have none, what do
you
bring to this enterprise to justify a third of the profits?”

“Will,” said Iago.

“Well, get on with it, thou shit-breathed carbuncle! I don’t have all day.”

When you start shouting at things in the dark, you’ve essentially given up, haven’t you? You’re more or less saying, “Well, I know I’m fucked six ways to doom, and I’m frightened out of my wits, but I’d prefer we get this over with quickly and with as little pain as possible.”

But the thing in the water did not snap off my head, and my arms began to tremble until I could hold myself no longer. I let loose a great scream, relaxed my arms, and fell onto the slack of the chains like a plunging marionette, nearly wrenching my shoulders from their sockets and the skin from my wrists when the shackles went taut.

I continued to scream until my voice broke and what breath I had came with a desperate animal yowl that filled the chamber, the darkness, the very reaches of my imagination. All life became the instant before the bite, the slash, the sting from the thing unknown.

Nothing.

I hung slack in my chains and the water settled, a low wail drooled out of my lungs—hope hissing away. I would die now.

Water droplets tapped on the ledge by my hand and echoed like slow, distant clapping—Charon at his oar, applauding the pathetic efforts of his next fare to the underworld.

Something—a fin, perhaps—brushed my foot and I resumed my scream, kicked at the thing, which enveloped my legs, holding me fast, moving around and up my knees, thighs.

My bladder let go, and for the first time since I was a boy, I prayed. “God, save me, thou pompous great prick!” (Did I say I had not been on speaking terms with God for some time? Only polite to acknowledge our mutual resentments, innit?)

The creature, while bear-bonkingly strong, was not spiny, nor was its skin rough like the sharks I had seen at the Rialto fish market, but smooth—slick—it slipped around me as if I were being strangled by a great, slippery cord. I began to lose consciousness, some dreamy flowing of the mind from the terror—vestiges perhaps of the creature’s poison. Off I drifted, welcoming oblivion, as a set of barbs pierced my hips and the monster fastened itself upon my man-tackle.

^*
A natural was a jester who came to his profession by way of a physical or mental anomaly—a dwarf, a giant, Down syndrome, etc. Naturals were thought to have been touched by God.

FIVE

Ladies of the Lagoon

I
n the sumptuous Villa Belmont did Portia Brabantio abide, a fair-haired, newly orphaned lady with the ripening of twenty-two summers upon her bosom, a wit as sharp as a dagger, and a beauty that had been praised on all the islands of Venice, particularly by those signors hoping to gain access to her knickers. Waiting upon the lady was her maid Nerissa, a raven-haired beauty half again as clever as her mistress, and as good a friend as money could buy. The two had been together since they were little girls, and so loved and hated each other like sisters.

“By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is weary of this great world.” Over her hair Portia wore a net of gold punctuated with pearls, which she picked at as if they were opulent lice.

“Well, buying shoes can be taxing, especially when you have only one maid to carry your parcels.”

“Not from buying shoes,” said Portia, lifting her gown to check that she was wearing new shoes and that all the travel and her father dying while she was gone had not been in vain. “I haven’t been sleeping well since we returned from Florence. I wake thinking I hear screaming deep in the bowels of the villa—the sound of someone suffering, but when I sit up in bed, I hear nothing.”

“Perhaps if you did something during the day, milady—lifted a finger, maybe two, in care of yourself—exhaustion would pleasantly overtake you and your slumber would be filled with sweetest dreams.”

“Dancing?” ventured Portia. “I do so prefer dancing to suffering, don’t you, Nerissa?”

“You speak as if one must choose one over another, but as any gentleman who has turned you around a ballroom can attest, dancing and suffering can be partners in step.”

“Oh, sweet Nerissa, I shall miss your loving snark when I am married and you are safely installed in a nunnery giving good service to priests and pirates, or in a brothel bearing the gentle jumps of rascals.”

“Would it were so, but I fear I shall ever be here at Belmont, blowing dust and clearing the cobwebs from milady’s nethers, your father’s puzzle having verily assured your spinsterhood.”

They tittered through gritted teeth, then Portia flung her needlepoint off the veranda as if it were a pie made from leprosy, then plopped down on a marble stool by the table, her legs askew, elbow to thigh, hand cradling a troubled chin.

“Oh balls.”

“Milady?”

“You’re right, of course,” said Portia. She scowled at three jewel chests that were laid out on the table. “I know you’re right. No man is going to pay the bride price and pass Father’s sodding test. Three thousand ducats? It’s absurd.”

“Your father set the price and the test to see you married better than Desdemona.”

“And yet she shall have Belmont, her Moor shall have Father’s seat on the senate council, and I shall have one of our shoddy estates on the mainland—and for my bed, some rich old prat who’s good at puzzles.”

Nerissa walked around the table, running her hand over each of three jewel chests: gold, silver, and lead. “Perhaps once your suitors have proved they have the bride price, you can pick the one you fancy and we will steer him to open the right chest.”

“That’s just the point, I don’t know which chest holds my picture, and therefore the right to my hand. Father’s wax seal is on each of the locks, we cannot test them. I might have to marry the first man with three thousand ducats who chooses a key, or I may hand the key to the man I favor, only to have him pick a chest that holds some false treasure. Father vexes me from the grave. How did he think that such a test would lead me to a better man than wed my sister when the game is so bloody random?”

“He thought to guide your choice himself, while seeming to show no favor. I heard him say that he thought Desdemona married the Moor as much to defy his will as for any love of the general. With the bride price, he could assure that your suitors would be gentlemen of means, then with the chests he could steer the one he favored to the right chest, without spurring a rebellious spirit in you.”