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“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.
