The Serpent of Venice

by Christopher Moore

  “So your mates sank Antonio’s ship, eh?” I inquired.

  “No, they reported that it is most difficult to sink a ship that is hold-to-rail filled with seasoned oak.” The Moor dazzled his pirate grin then. “But I am told it was two days burning to the waterline and was still smoldering on the horizon when my ships departed.”

  “You don’t think the doge’s council might get their knickers in a knot about you sinking a Venetian merchant ship?”

  “What can they say? The pope forbids Christian nations from trading with the Mamelukes, by threat of excommunication. My ships were enforcing a papal bull. Saving souls.”

  “Well, if that’s not the duck’s very nuts, pirate business by Christian bull? Jessica will be thrilled.”

  “Then for your part of our bargain, fool. You told the girl about her fiancé as you promised?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes. She knows.”

  “And she hates you now, I presume.”

  “I didn’t tell her that he was a scoundrel, or that he was slain by my hand, but instead that he died gallantly defending me from his murderous friends.”

  The Moor considered it, looked at me askew, as if doubt was pushing his pointy beard to the door. “I think you have more affection for her than you would say.”

  “There’s no room for that. My heart is full of grief for my Cordelia and a desire for revenge. She’s an annoying reminder of the folly of having hope.”

  Othello went to a chair at the table and sat down, a heavier weight than commanding a navy seeming to fall on his brow all at once. He said, “I do not understand women, Pocket. I have these many years in the field come to understand the nature of men, but women are yet a puzzle. Desdemona confounds me.”

  “Ah, so she moors the Moor, so to speak. I had a tryst with a tart who confounded me, left me tied in a dungeon once for two days, starkers, without food nor water. Just ask her to loosen the ropes next time she confounds you.”

  “Confound does not mean ‘tie up.’ I mean she confuses me.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s different, isn’t it. But I have known many women—many women indeed, and it is in their nature to confound us, Othello. They are all by their natures lovely lunatics. But among them, Desdemona is more lovely and less loony.”

  “Is she so lovely if she is untrue?”

  “Desdemona?”

  “Yes.”

  “Untrue to you? Cheating with another?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bollocks!”

  “Yet I have my suspicions.”

  “You have no proof?”

  “Others have made comment.”

  “If this is about the nun suit, that was my idea entirely.”

  “Not the nun suit. The nun suit was—”

  “Smashing! I knew you’d like it. You should have her confound you while wearing the nun suit—say stern things to you in Latin while shagging your bloody brains out.”

  “Confound does not mean that!”

  “Fine. So you would accuse your lady of being untrue—your lady, who did throw all of Venice away for you, stood up to the most powerful men in the republic, for you, Moor; she you would accuse, without any evidence but the comment of another, yet Iago, who you know to be a villain, a cutthroat, and a traitor—for him you need proof beyond my word? Respect my judgment in this, Othello, if in nothing else, or thou art a fool.”

  “I saw her on the balcony talking to Michael Cassio. She came to me, made a case for me to forgive him.”

  “That is because she is kind, and just, and forgiving, and has been wrongly judged for mere appearances, because she loves you, she wishes you to be kind, and just, and forgiving as well. You will have to get your own moniker, Othello, the Black Fool is mine, but thou art surely a fool.”

  The Moor let his head slip from his hands and his forehead thumped against the table. “I am a fool,” he said.

  “You can’t switch sides now that I’m winning.”

  “No, you are right, I am surely a fool. I have wronged my love with my suspicions. I don’t know what to do. I am a warrior, my speech is rough and not so polished as yours.”

  “You always say that, but I think we both know you could talk the tits off a tavern tart.”

  “I mean that asking forgiveness is not in my experience. What did you do when you wronged your Jewess?”

  “First, she’s not my Jewess, she’s a Jewess, and I did not, strictly speaking, wrong her, although she is angry at me for delaying telling her about Lorenzo.”

  “And yet you were merely trying to spare her pain.”

  “Exactly! And she’s still somewhat unhappy that I spent all of her father’s gold.”

  “For which the Genoans freed an important prisoner.”

  “Which apparently does not hold the weight for her it does for you and me. Speaking of such. Let me fetch the Venetian I rescued.” I went to the wide double doors.

  “Forgiveness?” the Moor insisted.

  “It’s best to blame it on your monkey, if possible. Now, let me get the Venetian.”

  “Aren’t you going to put on some trousers first?” asked the Moor.

  “He’s just outside, waiting on a bench with Drool.”

  “All this time he has been waiting?”

  “Well, he’s been in prison with Drool for three months, a few minutes on a bench isn’t going to send him round the bend.” I peeked out the door and called, “You two, come in. The general needs to see you.”

  Marco Polo came in first, followed by Drool, both rudely ignoring the presence of the high general of Venice, distracted, it seems, by the fact that I was naked. “Oh fuckstockings. Fine, I’ll put on some trousers. I’m wearing my daggers, aren’t I?” (I was. Little point having my fool suit fitted if I couldn’t conceal my daggers underneath.) “A gentleman can’t even discuss fucking philosophy without you puritanical twats casting judgmental glances at his tackle d’amore.”

  “ ’At’s fuckin’ French, innit?” Drool explained to Othello. Then as if seeing the Moor for the first time, he said, “The dragon Pocket shagged were black, too.”

  The Moor lifted his head from the table. “What?” He stood to receive the explorer.

  “Ignore him, he has rabies. Othello, Marco Polo. Marco Polo, Othello,” I said, hastily, as I pulled on the sailcloth trousers I’d removed for the benefit of the tailor.

  The explorer and the general exchanged pleasantries, and acknowledged the reputation of each, then, before they began to trade stories of all the places they’d been and the people they’d seen, I said, “Polo, give me that lacquer box out of your rucksack. Othello, you must see this. I thought of the trebuchets you wanted to put on your ships.”

  Polo retrieved the red lacquer box emblazoned with the black dragon and I waved it away. “Not that one, the other one. Are you mad?” He handed me a black lacquer box, larger than the other, about the size of a large man’s foot. I worked the top off, and from a padded compartment, I pulled four round paper packets, each no bigger than a fingertip. I threw one at the floor at my feet, and jumped when it snapped in a small explosion and a puff of smoke. Another I threw at Drool’s feet, and he cowered at the noise and smoke. I did a backflip and snapped the last two to the floor as I landed, with a distinct and ear-ringing bang.

  “They call it dragon powder,” said Marco Polo. He looked at me. “Although it has nothing to do with dragons.”

  Othello watched, waited, said not a word. I brought the box to him and pulled up a pinch of the black powder from another compartment in the box. “Not impressive, I know. Just a few grains of this, in a packet with some fine gravel. When the gravel hammers the powder, it ignites with a snap. A magician’s trick, right? But imagine a larger amount, contained.”

  I pulled from the box a small cylinder of paper, as big around as my thumb, Chinese characters drawn on the paper. From the cylinder protruded a waxed cord, impregnated with the black powder. “Now, just this amount, watch this.”

  I
spotted a Turkish vase as high as my chest, in the corner, and from the bowl on the table I grabbed a melon. Then spinning it on my finger as I went, I lit the wick of the paper cylinder, which hissed and threw out sparks as it burned. I scampered to the vase, dropped in the sizzling cylinder, then fit the melon in the mouth of the vase and hastily backed away.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” said I. “It will be loud. I was startled when Polo showed us.”

  “I weed meself,” said Drool.

  In a second there was a deafening bang and the vase disintegrated into shards that peppered the room, including us. The melon calmly dropped to the spot where there had once been a vase, but now there was but a sunburst of porcelain dust and a dented melon.

  Othello shook his head, trying to clear his ears, as each of us tried to make some adjustment to the high-pitched ringing we were all hearing. “So,” said I. “That is not, precisely, how I thought it would work, but you can see the potential. That was barely a spoonful of the powder, and compressed only in paper. If you were to pack it into a great steel or stone ball and fling it at your enemies with one of your war machines, I trust it might be days before the surprise was wiped from their faces.”

  “The Chinese send self-propelled tubes made from bamboo hundreds of yards into the air with it,” said Marco Polo. “It could make a fearsome weapon for war.”

  “I see that,” said Othello. “I would not want to fight an enemy who had mastered this powder first.”

  “Which is why no other soldiers in the West have yet seen it,” said I.

  “And the Genoans did not make you tell them of this?” Othello asked Polo.

  “They did not know to ask. Only a few friends in Venice have ever seen it, and then it was only a novelty at a dinner party. The Genoans only wanted to know if my family had money and if they would pay for my return. Anything more I might have told them only Drool heard.”

  “It were lovely,” said Drool.

  “You were in prison, you nitwit,” said I.

  “Aye,” said Drool, a dreamy look in his eye.

  Othello went to the table and looked at the lacquer box, with its compartments, fitted the lid on it, then ran his finger around the edges of the box while thinking. “No city could stand under a siege armed with weapons made of this.”

  “No,” said I. “Not for long.”

  “A general who has this has the lightning hand—if his cause is not just, he would be a devil.”

  “Aye,” said I. “A general who wages war for a republic whose cause is not just would make devils of soldiers, and turn honor to evil.”

  “I think you are not so much a fool as I thought.”

  “And neither are you, milord.”

  “I think it’s time for you to return to Venice, Pocket.”

  “Aye,” said I.

  “I will have a ship readied for you.”

  “Signor Polo, will you fetch Jessica and tell her to be ready? Bundle her up if you must. I suspect we’ll sail on the tide. Drool, go to our quarters and ready our gear.”

  Othello nodded, exchanged farewells and thanks with Marco Polo, and wished them on their way, while I stayed behind.

  “I’ll be along presently,” I called.

  “Othello, have I told you about how the bishop of York ordered me hanged when I was only a lad, barely sprouting a beard?”

  “No. A bishop, you say? How did you escape?”

  “I didn’t. I was hanged. And then freed to follow my fancy, find my fortune, and become a fool and a king.”

  “Because you were hanged?”

  “The abbess at the nunnery where I grew up knew I would never escape the fate pronounced me by the bishop, so he put a heavy belt around my waist, rigged a noose so it appeared to go around my neck; but my weight was held by the rope tied to the belt under my shepherd’s tunic. Then, in the morning, under the watch of the entire village, he had me hanged in the barn, with priests to witness that the deed had been done. When they left, Basil cut me down, gave me coin, and sent me out into the world a free spirit. Really, all that bollocks about resurrection had some sound fucking reasoning in it after all.”

  “Your abbess was a man?”

  “Mother Basil, as sturdy a blue-bearded bloke as you’ve ever known, but he found life dressed as the nun in charge a much more pleasant way to pass these dark ages. He told me that he, himself, had died, in much the same way, which freed him to his avocation.”

  “And you tell me this why?”

  “Because even now, I am dead to Venice, which frees me to find and free my apprentice, and avenge my Cordelia. You will only know your true enemies, Othello, when they reveal themselves by killing you. Because you are my friend, I would have you pick the time and the circumstances for your defeat. If I am wrong, then you can have a laugh at my expense.”

  The Moor took me by the forearm and slapped my back in the manner of comrade warriors.

  “Good-bye, silly fool.”

  “Adieu, thou sooty-bosomed devil,” said I.

  TWENTY

  The Art of Persuasion

  CHORUS: With the fool’s words still echoing in his ear, Othello did call to his chart room Iago, who thought the moment was upon him to take the command and position of the shamed Michael Cassio, but instead of promotion, he was met with the Moor’s ire.

  “Iago, if thou slandered Desdemona only to torture me, and there is no proof of her betrayal, then never pray again for mercy, and never hold thyself safe from any violence, for the pain you have brought upon yourself cannot be more dire than the fate you have set if these doubts you raise be false. Am I plain enough in my speech?”

  Iago reeled—this, after having thought this battle already won. “By my troth, my lord, I am not spinning tales, but merely adding facts like an arithmetician.” He counted his points on his fingers. “She deceived her father, did she not? She turned down all the fairest young men of Venice for you, did she not? You have seen her meeting in secret with Cassio, have you not? Why, you can almost smell her rank and foul dispositions, her affinity for dark, unsavory pursuits in the bedroom, so depraved that even her father thought her bewitched. Mind you, I don’t mean to say that she was always a degenerate strumpet, only that those who show such habits constantly would be considered so. Methinks she is only a sometimes slut. I worry that she only chose you over those pretty Venetians out of twisted rebellion against a father, and now, in comfort and boredom, might revert to her true sometimes nature.”

  “You’ve planted thoughts of my love’s deceit, and you have no proof.”

  “Would you have me arrange for you to watch while they are at it? Can I give you that proof? Would I find them flagrantly fucking as drunken monkeys for you to watch, would you then be satisfied?” Iago thought himself well-suited to play the role of the wronged in this affair.

  He went on: “Some nights ago, Cassio was down with toothache, so I did give him a potion for pain given me by the apothecary. It put him in a dreamy sleep; while I still sat in his quarters, he talked in his sleep, saying, ‘Desdemona, we must hide our love from the world. Kiss me hard, love, and curse the Fates that gave you to the Moor.’ ”

  “Dreams and delusions,” said Othello. “Cassio babbles nonsense with his first flagon of ale, much less a pain potion.”

  “Tell me, then, have you seen a handkerchief with strawberries embroidered upon it?”

  “I have. Such a cloth was my first gift to Desdemona, a legacy of my mother.”

  “It looked like the favor of a woman. Today I saw Cassio wipe his beard with such a handkerchief.”

  Othello spun on his heel and spoke as if calling out to an inattentive god. “If it be so, then killing the Florentine once would not be enough, for I would slay him a thousand times and not quell the hurt in my heart. My love turns to anger, my anger calls for blood. Oh, arise black vengeance from thy hollow hell, thy hate is become the tongues of venomous serpents.”

  “I felt a selfsame darkness rise within me, for what man bet
rayed by his wife can feel any other way. But hold thy vengeance, Othello. Have patience. Let me be your sword, good General.”

  “So shall you be, but on your honor, report to me within three days that Cassio no longer lives.”

  “I will do so, sir, consider Cassio dead, but I beseech thee, let Desdemona live. She may yet be innocent.”

  “Damn her, lewd minx! Oh damn her, damn her! I spare her now. I withdraw now, but find me a means of swift death for her before I again see you, and surely, for this service to honor, you shall be my captain.”

  “I am your own forever. You shall have your proof, then your will be done.”

  CHORUS: Thus Iago went from fearful suspect to gleeful celebrant and his greatest enemy became the laugh he had to fight down as he hurried from the command room. Much relieved, he left the Citadel directly to arrive, hat in hand, his most gallant and gracious false face on display, at the door of the courtesan, Bianca.

  She answered the door in a plain linen gown, hair disheveled, the unapologetic yawn of a day sleeper forced to have discourse with deranged people who inexplicably preferred morning at the beginning of their day rather than, properly, at the end. She was tall, dark of hair and eye, with a fine jawline, lips that evinced a bit of a pout, even in her smile, and a delicate thin nose.

  “What?” she said with another yawn.

  “Good day, lady, I am sorry to rouse you at the very crack of noon, but I am here on behalf of my friend Michael Cassio.”

  At the sound of Cassio’s name she shook off her torpor and fixed her robe. “Cassio? I have not seen him for a week. I heard of his troubles—on his way to see me, I was told.”

  “Indeed, indeed. And I fear he did not want you to see him in his shame, but his talk of you is constant, and I know he has purchased a small gift for you to show his affection, but as I said, he is taken with a melancholy that will not allow him to venture to your door.”

  “Oh my. My poor Cassio. I wondered.”