The Serpent of Venice

The lawyer shuffled forward and drew a key from his purse and handed it to the prince.

“Take it,” said Portia. “And if my picture lie there, then I am yours.”

The Moor took the key, unlocked the casket, and pushed back the lid.

“Oh hell!” said the prince. “What have we here?” He lifted from the casket a miniature death’s-head. A scroll protruded from the skull’s eye. The prince replaced the skull in the casket, removed the scroll, unrolled it, and read:

“ ‘All that glitters, is not gold;

Often have you heard that told;

But my outside do behold;

Gilded tombs do worms enfold;

Had you been wise as you’ve been bold;

Your answer would be here inscrolled;

Fare you well; your suit is cold.’ ”

The prince stared at the parchment and let it snap back to form. “Then this is all? All of nothing.”

“Make of yourself a gentle riddance,” Portia said, with feigned disappointment, as she turned and looked out over the garden to conceal her grin.

The prince reeled with a flourish of his robes and walked off the terrace, his entourage in rank behind him.

“Draw the curtains, Nerissa.”

“Bit harsh, don’t you think?” said Nerissa. “Three thousand ducats for a death’s-head?”

“Let all of his complexion choose so wrongly.”

A fanfare played from the front of the house as the prince exited.

“I’m going after him,” said Nerissa, hurrying to the door.

“Nerissa! I forbid you to fancy him.”

Nerissa knew that as soon as Portia found the arms of her Bassanio, she’d be cast out on her own. Too many years had she acted as the gentle cushion to the suitors rejected by both Brabantio sisters (like Rodrigo, who evidently had buggered off to Corsica, still in pursuit of Desdemona) and Portia would never allow her more accommodating maid in proximity to Bassanio. Nerissa was going to need a cushion herself when Bassanio guessed the correct casket on the morrow. One of twenty wives of a prince seemed like a quite comfortable cushion on which to land.

“Sod fancying him, I just want to have a look at his sun-burnished trumpet.”

“Thou art a hopeless slag, Nerissa.”

“Not true, I am full of hope.”

Jessica and I came down the ramp from the ship so close behind Iago and Rodrigo that I could almost smell the treachery coming off them.

Jessica had, by now, learned to walk without the slightest sway to her hips, while I had minced my steps more fitting to the humble shuffle of a nun, for so was I dressed, in wimple and veil, in such a nun suit as we had been able to fashion from the clothes in Jessica’s rucksack. My beard now shaved and my Jew kit betrayed, the veil was a necessary accoutrement for my disguise; of leper or nun, I chose the latter.

We followed the two soldiers down the dock through the fray of sailors and stevedores resupplying the ships in the harbor. The Genoan fleet had been decimated by a storm on their voyage to attack Corsica. Othello easily turned the remaining force away and had fortified the harbor with archers, ballistas, and catapults ever ready on the breakwater.

Iago stopped at the street and hailed a soldier on horseback.

“Ho there, Sergeant, where might I find General Othello? I bring news from Venice.”

“He is at the Citadel, Lieutenant,” said the soldier, recognizing Iago’s rank from the crest on his dagger. “The general’s second, Captain Cassio, is just round the corner. I’ll fetch him for you and he can take you to the general.”

The soldier rode off and a minute later Michael Cassio stepped out of a white stucco building across the street and strode across the sunbaked pavers in his high boots to meet Iago. They exchanged salutes. Cassio was taller, younger, more handsome and clear of eye than Iago, the very model of a gentleman soldier, with such a bright and open nature that I shivered to see him standing guileless and unguarded before Iago, who, with the rise of his scar-broken eyebrow when he smiled, revealed the inner turning of gears grinding deceitful plots.

“Good Iago, you have news from Venice? Another attack on the city?”

“Nothing so dire,” said Iago. “But I am tasked by the council to deliver my dispatch only to Othello and his lady.”

“Desdemona,” sighed Rodrigo, casting a wistful gaze to the clouds.

“His lady?” said Cassio. “Then this is not news of war?”

“You will know at Othello’s discretion, Captain, but I am bound by orders.”

“Quite so.” Cassio tossed his head toward a great stone-and-plaster fortress that loomed over the town. “The Citadel is a short walk. I’ll take you myself. I’ll send a cart back for your things.”

“Pardon, good captain,” called Jessica, in her best boy voice. “Could you spare a moment for a word with this holy sister of mercy?”

I had retreated to the edge of the dock by a great mooring post. I peered out into the harbor, looking not at the ships and birds diving overhead, but for a shadow beneath the turquoise waves, and there, perhaps three hundred feet out, she swam. I closed my eyes and looked for the blue patterns of her thoughts, but there were none. Spare this one. Leave him his head, I thought. Not this one. Could she hear me? For Cassio’s sake, I hoped so.

“Yes, Sister?” said Cassio, stepping up beside me.

“Act as if nothing is out of order. Iago must not see you react. I am simply asking for shelter for myself and the boy,” I said in my own voice, undisguised.

“What?”

I stepped back from the edge so only Cassio could see my face, then raised my veil, winked, grinned, and held my finger to my lips to signal silence.

“You know me,” said I. “I am the fool Pocket.”

“You stood for Othello before the council.”

“I am here to help the Moor again. I must see him, but on our lives, Iago and his friend cannot know my true identity. Do you trust me?”

He nodded, just a twitch.

“Fine then, old mother,” Cassio called, rather more loudly than was required. He headed back to Iago. “You and the boy may follow us to the Citadel, give blessings to and receive alms from the lady and her retinue.”

I thought back to when I had first met Cassio, on that night when Brabantio had led us through the streets of Venice to the palace of the doge, to accuse Othello of bewitching his daughter.

“I’m going to dive in and begin the killing,” I told Cassio. “If I fall, stain the canals red with their blood until the city shatters with the cries of their widows and orphans.”

“Or, if you’d put one of those daggers up, you can lean on me and we’ll follow them to the doge’s palace as Othello commanded.”

“Well, yes, I suppose we could do that, too, if you’re going to be a little nancy about it. But if I have to stop to be sick, carry on with the killing and the weeping widows.”

By the time we reached the palace, many of Brabantio’s mob had wandered off, having realized that the Moor was not going to be immediately hanged, and that, indeed, there were a half dozen well-armed men and a queasy fool with a quiver of daggers who would prefer the Moor remain unhanged.

We entered the main hall of the doge’s palace, where the doge sat on a dais in the center of the Council of Six; one chair sat empty: Brabantio’s.

“Ah, valiant Othello,” said the doge as he stood and opened his arms to welcome the Moor into the hall. “We must straight employ you against the Genoans, who have moved on to Corsica.” The doge then spied Brabantio, who stormed into the room, robe flying, slamming a great walking staff into the floor as if he half-expected the earth to open and unleash Venice’s wrath upon the Moor. “Welcome, gentle signor,” said the doge. “We lacked your council tonight.”

“And I yours, but I have been tending a broken floodgate of o’erbearing sorrows.”

“What is wrong?” asked the doge.

“My daughter! O, my daughter!”

“Dead?”