The Serpent of Venice

“Your master fired me, didn’t he?” said the obstinate boatman. “I don’t think any favors are owed.”

I might have argued—convinced him of payment later and a return to Shylock’s good graces, but I had no gut for guile or persuasion. “Look, I’ll give you this smashing dagger. It’s got a fake jewel in it.”

The boatman eyed the dagger. It had a wide hand guard with jewels, probably colored glass, at the tips, as well as one set in the pommel. Rather garish, considering it was unlawful to carry unless one was a soldier, but as Salanio had said, shortly before his talking bits were detached from the rest of him, everyone had knives.

“A bloke would have trouble if a gendarme found that about his person,” said the gondolier.

“Well, you can sell it to a cutthroat on the docks, can’t you? Look at the bloody thing. It’s like new. There’re at least a dozen dirkings left in it, and that’s not even counting stabbing the odd apple or orphan.”

“Blimey, you’ve a gruesome tongue for a Jew.”

“Aforementioned bad night, innit? Now, the dagger for fare to Giudecca, or you may hold it as security until I receive pay from my master, and I’ve another job for you tonight as well, for which you’ll be paid ten times your normal fare.”

The boatman pushed down on his oar and the blade breached the surface and dripped. “Ten times my fare? To where?”

“The Villa Belmont. You know it?”

“Everybody knows it. And any gondolier will take you there. Why ten times the normal fare?”

“We don’t land at the dock. Back of the island. Midnight. No lantern or torches on your boat. You let me off, wait an hour, and bring me back. That’s all.”

“An hour? You burgling the place? I can’t be part of that. Every time I row under the Bridge of Sighs I can hear the prisoners wailing. I couldn’t take that. I’ve a wife, you know.”

“No, no, nothing of the sort. You’ve heard the late senator’s daughter is to be married?”

“Princes from all over coming to pay her suit, I hear.”

“Well, before she’s wed, she wants to shag a Jew, just to see what it’s like. She’s heard that the circumcised member is a sexual delicacy that will drive a lady to mad heights of ecstasy.”

“That true?”

“ ’Course not. Tankard of turtle toss, that is, but I’m not going to be the one to talk her out of it.”

“A fine lady like Portia’s going to shag a scruffy little Jew like you?”

“Ten times your normal fare,” I sang in an ascending scale.

“And I keep the dagger?”

“Cradled like a babe to your breast,” said I.

“Deal!” called the boatman. “Hop aboard.”

Astonishing, the level of complete bollocks a Venetian will buy for the promise of coin. Greed is a festering chancre on the merchant soul.

As the gondolier worked his oar, the sea breeze blew some of the fog from my mind. I would have to do my business at Belmont, then somehow find my way to Genoa and ransom Drool, and in the meantime there was Iago’s undoing to attend to as well. I wondered if the soldier might not try to murder Shylock at Antonio’s house on Michaelmas, before he left for Corsica. His intent had surely been to remove the Jew, to free Antonio from his bond, but would he do it so early in the intrigue, or perhaps wait to see the outcome of Bassanio’s attempt to marry Portia and ascend to the doge’s council? If he succeeded, and gained access to Brabantio’s family fortune, the three thousand ducats would be as a star in the dusted heavens to what they stood to gain, but all was in the timing. And was I not going to see to Bassanio’s failure myself? Was I hastening Shylock’s assassination by pursuing my own scheme?

Clearly, I needed breakfast, then rest, if I was to storm Villa Belmont at midnight.

A group of Jews was waiting for the ferry on the docks at Giudecca. Among them I spied Tubal, and I hoped I’d be able to slide by him without notice, but the gondolier steered his boat into the very slip by which Tubal stood.

“Lancelot Gobbo,” called the old man. “I would have words with you.”

“A moment, signor,” said I. I looked to the boatman. “Meet me here, at midnight, as the bells of St. Mark’s toll.” The gondolier nodded and patted the dagger he’d hidden under his shirt.

I jumped up onto the dock by Tubal. “Aye, sirrah!” said I, snapping to attention, bloody pert and nimble spirit of mirth that I am, despite being much abused and still slightly drugged.

“You left yesterday before the gold was delivered, and the chest was short the count by a ducat.”

“Well, it was all there when I left. Did you ask the two huge Jews who were with me?”

Tubal stepped back and looked me over, from the cuffs of my raggedly cut sailcloth trousers to my now too long gabardine, to my impaled and bloodstained yellow hat.

He said, “Weren’t you taller yesterday?”

“Ate a bite of ham and woke up badly beaten and a foot shorter,” said I. “Bloody Torah’s not fucking about on that bit—a bloke needs to stay off the pig if he knows what’s good for him.”

“It would appear. Perhaps, though, you’re worn down from spending my gold.”

“Oh, sod your sodding ducat, Tubal. If you were so worried about your gold, you should have never let it out of your sight, delivered it yourself instead of trusting me and the great Hebrew oxen brothers. Look at me: I couldn’t look any more untrustworthy if I was wearing a pirate hat and being followed by a choir singing scoundrel songs. And them two—”

“Ham and Japheth are strong and take the risk to their persons even as I take the risk to my fortune. I have seen people of our tribe slaughtered over a rumor they carried plague, over being on the wrong side of a river at nightfall. A Jew does not get to be an old Jew by putting a three-thousand-ducat reward on his own head.”

“But isn’t that just what you’ve done to Shylock by funding his loan to Antonio?”

“Not so, he is protected by the law. If Shylock dies, the bond is due his heir, and

since he has no sons, that would be his daughter.”

It seemed that Iago, the soldier, did not know this subtlety of the law. Once he found out, the danger would not be only to Shylock, but to Jessica.

“I nicked your ducat, Tubal, used it for good deeds, and will see it returned to you presently with interest, but for now, do bugger off, as I’ve business to attend to.”

“You—” Tubal had raised his finger and was shaking it to prime his lecture, but I ducked under his arm and was in the narrow alley across the island before the rant could commence.

Off to find Jessica. Another calamity threatened, another rescue to be attended to—what a bawdy bitch is fate when the best bit of a bloke’s day is a brace of bloody mermaid murders.

TWELVE

To Belmont and Beyond

Hold still, thou squirming rat,” said Jessica, cruelly stabbing me.

“Stop poking me with the needle, thou vicious harpy,” said I.

By now Viv’s venom had subsided and I could feel the stinging of the knife wound on my ribs and the claw punctures in my sides, as well as the needle being driven in me by the sadistic madwoman.

“Stop being such a coward. One more stitch and the wound will be closed.”

“Coward, am I? I suffer great bodily injury to deliver your message and return with glad tidings and I am a coward?”

“I’ve made consideration for your glad tidings, which is why I am tending to your wounds instead of letting you die from fever when they fester.”

How could I tell her that not only was she not going to elope with her beloved, but that he was quite headless at the bottom of the sea? It would be no comfort to her to know that he had been a scoundrel intent upon stealing her favor and her father’s fortune. So, I had told her a different tale, and she was ready to sally forth into the arms of her bright and hopeful future. She had not been so gleeful when I’d first told her.