The Serpent of Venice (9 page)

A fever came upon me and I was five days hiding and recovering in Jessica’s bedroom before I was ready to reemerge upon Venice’s stage. When Jessica brought me her hand mirror I scarcely recognized myself and I had little doubt I could pass through the streets of Venice without being recognized, especially as Brabantio had stripped me of my trademark motley and bells. I have always been thin, but now my cheeks were drawn from my time in the dungeon and the fever that followed, and a mossy brown beard shaded my face in wisps. Still, I would need more disguise than time’s wear and tear to move among mine enemies, and I would need Jessica’s help to obtain that.

Jessica sat across the room by the window, preparing some sailcloth sailor’s trousers she had bought for me at the docks.

“Jessica, love,” said I. “You might hold up on the sewing for a tick.”

“Bollocks, they’re a good foot too long. You want to trip and break a leg so you can’t do any chores, don’t you?”

“Not at all,” said I. “I am prepared to be your faithful servant, but before you present me to your father, there’s something you should know. I haven’t been entirely honest with you.”

“What, you’re not the deposed King of England, what once shagged a holy woman through a hole in a wall?”

I had shared some of my history with the girl, much of it while in the delirium of fever, but nothing about my previous tenure in Venice. Well, I didn’t know her, did I? A gentleman does not begin a conversation with a young lady he’s just met by saying, “
Oh, well, I’ve been having it off with the fish girl while buried alive in the senator’s cellar, and you?”

“No, that bit’s true,” said I. “But I am not, actually, a troubadour who was shipwrecked while on my way to entertain the seventh Earl of Bumsex.”

“You don’t say? That would explain the chains we chiseled off you, then? Why, yes, that makes sense, now, doesn’t it?” She scratched her head and looked out at the sky, as if receiving a revelation from the heavens. As lovely as she was, sarcasm did not wear well on her. Still, she was a bright girl, and in our short time together we had built a bond of petty resentments that usually takes a lifetime to develop. She turned to me then. “Pocket, I am inconsolable in my disappointment.”

“And there are men in Venice who would do me great harm if they knew I was alive.”

“Is it because you’re a shit?”

“I’m not a shit.”

“Then why do they want to do you harm?”

“I have been unfairly judged.”

“Over what have you been unfairly judged?”

“I know not, for many have said that I am charming and kind.”

“Really? Many have said that?”

I nodded, woe sloshing heavily upon my brow. “Unjust suffering and horrendous hardship have been inflicted upon me, for little to no reason.”

“I know, I know.” She patted my hand. “It brings water to my eyes when you talk of your dear Cordelia. I hope that my Lorenzo loves me that much someday. So why do these fellows want to hurt you?”

“For merely doing what I was tasked to do by my queen.”

“It’s because you’re a shit, isn’t it?” Still a compassionate tone and the reassuring pat on the hand.

“No, it’s—I—the evil that men do—” Oh bugger all. “Yes, it’s because I’m a shit.”

“There, there, Pocket.”

“But a shit in the name of the crown!” I added, queen, country, and St. Bloody George implied in my voice.

“Though a shit nonetheless.”

“The only difference between a pirate and a privateer is a flag, you know?”

“Do you have a flag?”

“Don’t be literal, love, people will think you’re simple. Venice’s own general, Othello, was little more than a privateer when the city found him, and now he is a hero of the republic.”

“Yes, and when you save the city from total destruction, you, too, will be regarded as a hero, which will—and I’m only guessing now, as I’m just a Jewish girl and know little of the sophistications of the ruling class—require you to wear some sodding trousers.”

“Well, that’s what I’m getting at, pumpkin. Have you a pair of chopines?”

Chopines were the wooden platforms that Venetian ladies, and even some gentlemen, wore strapped to their shoes to hold them above the mud, muck, and flotsam that filled the streets during rains or a high storm tide. Some ladies, to ensure that their gowns, made of the finest fabrics available from the most distant and exotic ports in the world, remained unsullied by street sewage, wore chopines longer than their own shins, and required a footman on either side to balance them, so they could walk to a ball or humble themselves at mass each Sunday. Taller chopines tapered from the bottom of the foot to save weight, then widened into a false foot where they met the ground. A nimble fool and skilled acrobat, trained and practiced in the use of stilts, might, with trousers properly tailored, pass for a foot taller than he was, on a proper pair of chopines.

“I have a smaller pair. None so grand as the senators’ wives wear.”

“Perfect. Bring them.” I would meet my enemies in Venice eye to eye this time.

“And then I can ready your trousers?”

“Almost. I’ll also need three throwing daggers and a cracking-huge codpiece.”

“Not bloody likely, thou fluffy puppet,” she scoffed at me. Scoffed!

“Ill-tempered nymph. Don’t your people have a red tent they send you to when you’re like this?”

“I’m not like that. You are annoying.”

“Your compassion hasn’t the endurance of a mouse fart?”

“Nourished by charm, it has wasted away since your arrival, puppet.”

EIGHT

A Pound of Flesh

I
don’t think you should be in the house when he comes home,” said Jessica. “No one is supposed to be in the house.”

We stood on the walkway in front of Shylock’s house. I wore Jessica’s chopines strapped to my feet under my newly tailored sailcloth trousers and I now stood a bit taller than the girl. I walked around on the cobbles and found I quickly was able to affect a natural gait on the platforms, which were only three-quarters of a foot high.

Except for soldiers and sailors, most Venetian men wore leggings under a long tunic, after the Byzantine style, sometimes belted, but my sailcloth trousers would attract no attention, as not much of them showed under a long, moth-eaten wool gabardine Jessica had liberated from her father’s closet. With my floppy yellow hat, I looked every bit the unkempt Jew.

“Here he comes,” said Jessica. Two men had rounded the corner a dozen houses away, and were coming up the walkway, both wearing garb similar to my own, the dark gabardine and yellow hats, and sported long gray-streaked beards.

“Father is the shorter one,” said Jessica. “That’s his friend, Tubal, with him. He lives down the way.”

Indeed, as if she had cued it, the two stopped, and after exchanging smiles and nods, the taller man went into his house. Shylock continued down the walk, not looking ahead enough to notice us yet.

“Is that you, son?” came a voice from behind us. I turned to see Gobbo tapping his way toward us.

“It’s the old blind loony,” I whispered furiously. “Quick, push him in the canal before he cocks everything up.”

“My boy? Is that you?” said Gobbo.

“Humor him,” said Jessica. “There’s no time.”

“Top of the morning, Da,” said I. “Thou stumbling stump of stink.”

“Pocket!” scolded Jessica.

“Well, for fuck’s sake, girl, he’s blind in a city where the streets are full of water—how is it he hasn’t stumbled in for a bath in the last half century or so?”

“Boy?” said Gobbo. “My, you sound like you’ve grown. Let me feel your face.”

He blundered toward me, his long cane dangling from a lanyard on his wrist, his hands waving in the air before him like the antennae of a crusty lobster.

I stepped aside, deftly I think, and said, “Touch me and I will hold you underwater until you dissolve.” I was feeling much better, and strong enough, I thought, to properly drown a feeble blindster.

Bumbling past me, Gobbo’s left hand found a perch on Jessica’s breast, while his right settled on Shylock’s face.

“Well, boy, you’ve got your mother’s knockers but—Lord loves a joke—my face.”

Jessica gathered Gobbo’s arms down to his sides and herded him over to the wall. “Signor, Gobbo, please rest here in the shade while I tend to my father’s business.”

“What is this?” said Shylock, waving from Jessica, to me, to Gobbo, in a tight, repeated succession. “This? Them? In front of my house? My house. Daughter, what is this?”

Gobbo safely deposited against the wall, away from the water, Jessica approached her father, head bowed. “Oh, Papa, such good news, this is, is what this is. This young Jew has agreed to be our slave. He will clean and fetch for us, carry our burdens, perhaps we can even buy our own boat and he can row you to the Rialto.”

“Shalom,” said I, exhausting my Hebrew in two beats.

Shylock leaned in close and looked me in the eye. “What is your name, boy?”

Realizing, somewhat late I’d say, that we should have thought of this before, I improvised. “Lancelot,” said I.

“Really?” said Jessica, letting her features drop as slack as a curtain.

“Lancelot is not a Jewish name,” said Shylock.

“He’s not been raised with the traditions,” Jessica said, recovering. “Only his mother was a Jew.”

“She was?” said Gobbo. “And that minx always pretending she was buggering off to mass. Aye, lad, your mum was a love, she was.”

“Jews do not own slaves,” Shylock said.

“But that is the beauty of it, Papa.” Jessica stepped between Shylock and Gobbo. “The law only says that we may not
buy
or
sell
slaves; we are not buying him. He’s delivering himself to us.”

Hearing it out loud, I realized it was a rubbish ploy, but I needed a place to live, to hide, and I needed to get back into the city undercover to find out what had happened to my apprentice, Drool, and my monkey, Jeff.

“Well, Signor Lancelot Gobbo, Moses did not lead our people out of slavery so we could bind one another in slavery. Good day.”

“Not a slave, signor,” said I. “Who said slave? Silly girl. I would be your employee. But I could do all of those things, plus more. I could help you with your accounts. I know maths and I can read and write.”

“You know maths and you can read and write? Well . . .”

“Latin, Greek, and English, plus a smattering of Italian and fucking French.”

“Fucking French, you say? Well . . .”

“
Oui,”
said I, in perfect fucking French.

“And what would you wish to be paid for such services, Signor Lancelot Gobbo?”

“Only room and board, signor. A roof over my head and a hot meal.”

“A slave works for only room and board.”

“And a farthing.”

“A farthing? Room and board and a quarter of a penny would be your pay? Well . . .”

“Per week,” said I, pressing my terms. I saw a light flicker in Shylock’s eye, for although he would not be a slave owner, he could not resist a bargain.

He nodded, as if doing the figures and approving them in his head. “Well, then, Signor Lancelot Gobbo, I shall retain your services for a week, as a trial. You shall accompany me to the Rialto this afternoon—carry my box of papers, inks, and quills. I wish to purchase a cask of wine as well. You can carry it home for me. For this and like services, you shall receive room and board plus one farthing for the week. Are we agreed?”

“Oh yes, signor,” said I. I bowed.

“Meet me here after lunch.” Shylock pushed past Jessica and went into his house. “I would have my lunch, daughter,” he called over his shoulder.

Jessica whirled on me and whispered furiously, “
Lancelot?
Where did you get bloody
Lancelot
?”

“I thought it would explain away my English accent.”

“We all have English accents, you knob.”

“I know,” said I. “And in an Italian city. Don’t you find that strange?”

She shuddered with frustration. “Well, you’re in, at least. You’ll have to sleep downstairs in the kitchen now, though.” She reached into her bodice and retrieved a parchment, folded tightly and sealed with wax, the sign of the menorah pressed into it. “When you are on the Rialto, slip away and give this to Lorenzo. He will be with Antonio and his other partners. Ask about, everyone knows him. Give him this note. You must not fail.”

“I’ll need a year’s pay in advance,” said I. “I’m going to buy me ol’ da some lunch.”

“Ah, what a good boy he is,” said Gobbo. “Bread and fish will have to do, though. Can’t find a banger in this city to save my life. It’s like all the pork’s floated off, innit?”

“He doesn’t know where he is, does he?” I whispered to the girl.

She shook her head. “Walked off a ferry two years ago and has been wandering around the island since, thinking he’s in Venice proper. No one’s had the heart to tell him. We keep him fed.”

“Did it occur to you that his real son might be in Venice, actually missing him?”

“Oh bugger,” said she. “I never thought of that. Well, he’s your bloody father, you help him.”

An hour later I’d fed old Gobbo and on a series of fine paving stones by the dock had managed to hone a razor’s edge onto an old fish knife I’d nicked from Shylock’s kitchen. It was shit for throwing, with its thin blade and heavy oak handle, but it would thread through a man’s ribs in a pinch, open an artery if deftly flicked, and more important to my purpose, razor the seal off a letter with such subtlety that it could be replaced and leave the intrusion undetectable. I’d resealed Jessica’s letter with the tip of my blade heated on the food-seller’s brazier, leaving her seal still pristine in the wax, but its content still troubled me. There would be no time to craft clever speeches and complex plans to undo my foes. I would have to find revenge on the fly, make action my eloquence.