The Serpent of Venice

“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.