The Serpent of Venice

by Christopher Moore

  “Oh, Bassanio,” said she.

  “Dear Portia,” said he.

  “The day, the time, the moment is upon us, and I have wished nothing but that you be here, with me.”

  “And I with you. Please rise, lady.”

  She did not rise.

  Nerissa, still standing on the bottom step, looked over the head of the lovers to Gratiano, who she had not remembered as being quite so handsome. He smiled and returned her eye roll.

  “I would have you know,” said Portia, “if I were not bound by the legacy of my father, all that is mine would be yours, as would I, but these naughty times put bars between owners and their rights, for surely, without cruel lottery, my heart is yours already.”

  “And mine yours, sweet Portia. Arise!”

  Nerissa now giggled, and covered her mouth coyly as she exchanged glances with Gratiano, his eyes following the twin moons of her rising décolletage, her gaze tracing the grand arch of the feather in his hat and falling to the hilt of the bejeweled dagger he wore in his belt. The game was afoot.

  “I would have you tarry, extend the time we have together, a week, a month, even two,” said Portia. “For once you have made your choice, should you not choose right, then bound by your agreement, we shall never speak again.”

  “Then let me choose, lady, for I wait as if stretched upon the rack.”

  “Very well, the gentlemen will show you to the caskets.” Portia gestured for the lawyers to lead Bassanio to the terrace.

  “You are coming, lady?”

  “I’ll be along. You go ahead.”

  The lawyers unlocked the door and led the two young merchants to the terrace.

  Nerissa stood over her mistress, trying not to laugh. “You’re stuck, aren’t you?”

  “These Florentine shoes are shit,” said Portia.

  “Are you not wearing any knickers?”

  “Of course I’m wearing knickers. Do you think me wanton? I’m stuck because I haven’t the strength to lift myself out of this position—now help me.”

  Nerissa looped her arms under her mistress’s arms and pulled her to her feet, so they stood there in a rather awkward embrace.

  “Even through silk, the marble is cold on one’s lady-bits, though,” said Portia.

  “Warmed soon by a handsome merchant husband,” said Nerissa with a note of hope that was not altogether false. If she could charm Bassanio’s tall friend, perhaps Portia wouldn’t dismiss her out of jealousy after all.

  “Oh, Bassanio is so handsome.”

  “As is his friend.”

  “Do you fancy him?”

  “Do you jest? I was lucky not to be sliding on the slippery floor next to you.”

  “That is not why I slipped.”

  “Let us go join him, lady. There’s rumor that he was given the secret to the casket that holds your portrait. You may be a bride by evening.”

  They glided to the terrace, hand in hand, like dancers, and were met by the smiles of the men, except for the lawyers, who never smiled unless actively fucking someone, as was the credo of their trade. Bassanio already held a black key in the air and stood before the lead casket.

  “You’ve chosen already?” said Portia, surprised, yet pleased, yet anxious.

  “Oh, lady, the world is deceived by fair ornament, by gaudy gold, hard food for Midas, or silver’s pale shine, that common drudge that is passed ’tween man and man, when the weight of beauty is what must be measured. I choose base lead.”

  “Did he just call you fat?” whispered Nerissa.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” said Portia.

  Bassanio unlocked the casket and looked in, the lid obscuring the contents to all others except Gratiano, who stood beside him.

  “What find I here?” Confusion.

  “The picture is flawed,” said Portia. “The artist had been drinking, I’m sure of it. I told Father we should do another—”

  “A fool’s head,” said Bassanio. “A puppet.” He lifted it from the chest with both hands, holding it as delicately as if he were cradling a baby bird.

  “Look, there’s a scroll,” said Gratiano, who plucked it from the casket and read aloud.

  “ ‘The lesson of this cask of lead.

  Taught by greed of a father dead.

  Turns a lover into merchant’s tool.

  Who plays for love, but is made a fool.’ ”

  “Oh, well played, fool,” whispered Nerissa. “Well played, indeed.” She left Portia to weep and followed them out to their gondola to make sure Gratiano knew that he, in particular, was not forbidden from returning to Belmont.

  “Lady, I forgot to give you this,” said I, handing Desdemona the tiny portrait of her sister, which had been painted on a marble amulet. We stood at the dock, ready to board our ship to Genoa, a small merchantman fitted for only eight oars, and a crew of twelve. It was the fastest, lightest vessel that Othello would trust to the journey.

  “Oh, how kind,” said Desdemona. “I shall treasure it. I do miss my sister. She must be terribly sad with Father’s passing.”

  “Despite his being a wicked old scalawag, eh?” said Jessica. The Jewess had somewhere procured a pair of high leather boots, turned down on the thighs, and a wide belt with a brass buckle.

  “Stop being piratey,” said I.

  “Arrrrrr,” she arrrrrred.

  “Fathers and daughters do often love with barbed embrace,” said Desdemona. “The love is true, if sometimes untender.”

  Jessica swallowed hard. “That is well true, lady. Apologies.”

  “It’s nothing,” said Desdemona, patting Jessica’s hand. “And we have a gift for you, Pocket.” Desdemona stepped aside and Emilia came forward with a cloth bundle, tied with string. I dropped it to the dock and released the bow. Inside lay a black silk jester’s hat with silver bells, and below it a doublet and tights of black satin and velvet argyle. It had been some time since I’d seen the all-black motley.

  “It is as you were when you arrived in Venice,” said Othello. “The black fool you said they had called you before you came to us. We had it made. Wearing your motley again should be enough to remind everyone of your incurable silliness.”

  “Well, I’ll need a cracking big codpiece to be true to form.”

  “We’ve forgotten that, but a pair of soft boots with curled toes and bells are being made as well; they will be ready by your return. I am sorry, a puppet maker we were not able to find on the island.”

  “The puppet Jones yet perseveres, kind Othello. And I suppose I could have one of your codpieces enlarged. At any rate, my thanks, to you and most delicious Desdemona.” I bowed over her hand. “I left another gift at the Citadel for you, lady. Emilia will fetch it for you from our quarters, I hope.”

  “And I will have a pretty dress for you when you return, Jessica,” said Desdemona.

  “Oh, lady, that is most generous. I would not have my Lorenzo see me thus transformed into a boy.”

  “Take comfort, love is blind, and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that they themselves commit. Your Lorenzo would be proud to see you so coifed in courage, coming to the rescue of a friend.”

  “Thank you.” Jessica embraced Desdemona in a manner most unlike a pirate.

  “Safe journey, black fool,” said Othello. “My most skilled navigator will command your ship as pilot.” The Moor gestured to an officer I hadn’t met, tall, with a ginger beard, who clicked his heels. “Lieutenant Montano.”

  “But where is Cassio?” I inquired.

  “Sad tidings,” said Desdemona, looking at her shoes.

  “Cassio is in the brig,” said Othello. “Still drunk from last evening, where alarm was raised for a drunken brawl and Cassio was found standing over the body of Iago’s second, Rodrigo, who had been beheaded and mutilated.”

  “Cassio a murderer?” I asked.

  “I think not. His sword was clean and this killing was not the doing of a blade, but he is still too drunk to tell the tale and ther
e is no doubt he was a part of the mayhem.”

  “Beheaded? Mutilated? This was by the harbor then?”

  “No, just beneath the south wall of the Citadel.”

  I did not care to hear more. Of what had happened to Rodrigo, I had little doubt, until I learned it was not near the water. Had my mermaid grown legs? I shuddered at the thought.

  “I’m sure, when he sobers up, you’ll find him not guilty and as dull as dirt. We must be off. Come, Jessica. Adieu, my friends.”

  I scampered up the ramp and Jessica joined me at the rail as the pilot boarded and called to cast off.

  “Why all the gifts and good wishes?” Jessica asked.

  “Because they don’t think we are coming back, love.”

  “Blast,” said the dread pirate Jess.

  “Stay back from the edge for a bit, would you, matey?” I watched the water for the deadly shade.

  SEVENTEEN

  A Fool’s Ransom

  Genoa,” said Montano, pointing to an orange point of light in the distant dark that for all I could see might have been a sinking star or a bloody dolphin carrying a candle. “We can’t take the ship any closer. There’s a lighthouse on a point at the mouth of the breakwater. Steer for that light. Just beyond her is the harbor. Don’t take your boat into the harbor if you can’t stay with it, though.”

  “Aye,” said Jessica. “Lest a scurvy bilge rat plunders it and takes the bounty in grub and grog, eh, me hardies? Arrrr.”

  “You know that’s utter nonsense,” said I. She’d been at it for the entire four days’ voyage to Genoa.

  “It is not. It’s piratey,” she said.

  “We don’t really talk like that,” said one of the sailors, who was helping us get our gear into the rowboat.

  “You’re just common Jack Tars, ain’t ya,” said Jessica. “Not proper pirates.”

  “We were pirates under Othello, before we joined the Venetian Navy,” said the other. “Same job, different flags.”

  “The lad’s learning new languages,” said I. Actually, I preferred her pirate nattering to the hope-filled fairy tales of her never-would-be life with Lorenzo. “Go ahead, say something in Hebrew, Jess.”

  “Shabbat shalom, ye scalawag salts.”

  “Look behind you, Pocket,” said Montano, before I climbed down into the boat. “See those three bright stars? Memorize ’em. You leave from the lighthouse at dusk, two nights from now, we’ll be right here. Steer for them stars, keep the lighthouse at your back. There’s a lantern and flint and steel in the boat. Light a lantern once that lighthouse looks the same size it is now. We’ll find you.”

  “What if it’s foggy?”

  “Well, you’re right fucked then, aren’t you? We’ll come around again two nights after that. Go now, it’ll be dawn by the time you get there.”

  “It’s a good six hours before sunrise,” said Jess.

  “Aye, get to them oars, lad,” said one of the sailors.

  I climbed down into the boat and after they handed in the last of our gear, including the heavy leather bag that we’d transferred Shylock’s treasure into, we pushed off. Jessica and I sat hip to hip on the seat, each with an oar, and we pulled and complained until our hands were blistered and our voices raw, then pulled and complained some more, yet I did not breathe easy until the rowboat was beached beneath the lighthouse and we stood on the narrow path atop the breakwater, watching the sun rise over the hills above Genoa.

  I had not seen the mermaid’s swift shadow for the entire journey, but I could feel her presence like the raising of the hairs on your arms before a lightning storm. Why Rodrigo? Why not Cassio, who was clearly there when the slaughter took place, although he couldn’t remember anything but his shame? And if Viv could move out of the water, something I’d little suspected since I’d accused Jessica of being a mermaid changeling, why not tear into the city like a starving orphan into an unguarded larder? I’d assumed that Brabantio, found mutilated in his cellar, had tottered down another passage like the one he’d walled me up in, to the water, where’d she’d struck, but now I wondered if she might not have come in the front door.

  “That there is the prison,” I said, pointing to a cracking huge stone fortress that squatted over the harbor. Othello had shown me where it would be on one of the charts, but there would have been no missing it.

  “A bit grand for a prison, don’t you think?” said Jessica.

  “Was a royal’s palace before, no doubt,” said I. “That’s how it goes. Bit of a revolution, royalty gets imprisoned in the castle, next lot of royals comes along, doesn’t want to live in a sodding prison, builds a grander castle down the way, the old one’s turned into a prison, and so it goes.”

  So it had gone with the White Tower, where I’d first been made the royal fool to Lear, and later the royal consort and kind-of-a-king to Cordelia. Genoa was no London, though. She was a seafaring town like Venice, if Venice had been built up the side of a hill instead of in a bloody swamp. The masts of the ships in the harbor were as thick as bristles on a boar’s back. And as Othello had said, the harbor was fortified: catapults and ballistas at the mouth of the harbor, arrow loops in the lighthouse tower, and a fortified battlement just below the lights; a massive winch that could raise a chain with links as big around as my leg across the harbor entrance that no wooden ship would be able to break. No, the prison had not been a palace, it had been a fortress, and could be pressed into defending the harbor at the sound of a trumpet. For all I knew, they had trebuchets that could be raised on the roof that could hit any ship trying to reach the harbor mouth. At the opposite side of the harbor lay a shipyard every bit as large as Arsenal in Venice; even at dawn, the hammer blows were rattling across the water in a furious tattoo, and a dozen war galleys were growing into tall wooden frames from which they would slide onto the seas. So this was the other side of the war for the seas that Venice had been fighting for fifty years?

  “Othello defeated this lot?” said Jessica, taking it all in.

  “Well, not entirely, but he sent them away licking their wounds.”

  “No wonder Desdemona turned away Venice’s darlings for him. A hero, he is!”

  “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 wi
th 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.