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“I do not—” Antonio had taken off his floppy silk hat and was fanning himself with it, sweat having suddenly leapt out onto his brow.
“Beyond the monkey fucking, what heard you?”
“Nothing of a headless senator,” said the spice man.
“Pay him,” said Iago to Antonio.
“I don’t want to—”
“Twenty ducats?” Iago raised his scarred eyebrow to the merchant.
The spice seller shrugged, as if perhaps, in some land, a land where his children were not hungry and his wife was not so demanding, twenty ducats might possibly be enough to make him forget what he had never really heard, but here, in Venice, now, well, signor, a man has expenses, and—
“Or I can kill you now,” said Iago, dropping his hand to the hilt of his dagger.
“Never was there a more perfect price than twenty ducats,” said the spice man.
“Pay him.” Iago kept his hand on his knife and continued to regard the spice man as Antonio dug into his purse for the coins.
“And if word of what was said here passes your lips, your life is forfeit, as are the lives of your family.”
“How do I know you won’t kill me anyway?” said the spice man.
“Because Antonio has given you twenty ducats,” said Iago. “And Antonio is an honorable man.”
“I am,” said Antonio. He counted the coins into the spice man’s palm. “An honorable man with no interest in monkeys.”
Iago draped his arm around Antonio and led him to another corner of the square.
“He may require killing, anyway.”
“If you’re going to kill him anyway, I might have saved twenty ducats.”
“Twenty ducats is your fine for being shite as a conspirator. ’Twas foolish to meet on the Rialto.”
“How was I to know you were going to speak of murder? Why must I always be the one to pay?”
“Money is your charm, Antonio, one which we may well need in abundance to purchase the power we’ve lost with Brabantio. Another senator of the council of six.”
“If I commanded the wealth to purchase a senator, I wouldn’t need a war to pad my fortune. And none of the existing five council members favors our cause; they were all stung by the defeat to the Genoans. I fear our cause is lost.”
“Not if we can retain Brabantio’s seat.”
“Perhaps a year ago we might have put a candidate up for vote, spread our bribes around, but when the doge declared senate seats inheritable, our chances were lost. Brabantio’s seat would go to his eldest son, but since he has no son, it will go to the husband of his eldest— Oh my.” Antonio ducked out of the soldier’s embrace and backed away.
“It goes to the Moor,” said Iago. “Brabantio’s senate seat will go to Othello.”
Antonio looked around, hoping his friends might magically appear out of the crowd to rescue him from Iago’s wrath, which the soldier wore in a hardened scowl. “If you’d like, you can go kill the spice merchant, now. I’m not much for killing, but I’ll make a splendid witness.”
Iago held up a finger and Antonio fell silent. “If the first daughter’s husband will not do, we must make the second daughter the first.”
“Portia?”
“Aye, she knows us. She trusts us, she would do our will.”
“But she is not married, and Othello and Desdemona are even now on Corsica. Surely the doge will call them back.”
“Call his general from the field? We shall see. But word will be sent with a trusted lieutenant. Can you find a suitor to Portia to be our senator?”
“I know someone—the young man I mentioned, Bassanio, would be perfect—he has his eye on Portia already. He is handsome and controllable, and he owes me.”
“Good, arrange it. I will see to Desdemona and the Moor. I am off to the doge, then I’ll arrange the journey to Corsica.”
“But how do you know the doge will send you?”
“Did I not tell you, Antonio, that my own wife serves as one of Desdemona’s ladies?”
“No. You sent her there?”
“When the Moor chose Michael Cassio as his second in command over me, I had to keep friendly eyes upon them.”
“Well planned, Iago. What will you do in Corsica?”
“Do not ask, good merchant, if you wish to stay a clean and honorable man.”
“Oh, I do. I do.”
“Then I’m off to the senate, with the news,” said the soldier.
“Wait, Iago.”
“Yes.”
“If money is my charm, and you have none, and power was Brabantio’s offer, and you have none, what do you bring to this enterprise to justify a third of the profits?”
“Will,” said Iago.
“Well, get on with it, thou shit-breathed carbuncle! I don’t have all day.”
When you start shouting at things in the dark, you’ve essentially given up, haven’t you? You’re more or less saying, “Well, I know I’m fucked six ways to doom, and I’m frightened out of my wits, but I’d prefer we get this over with quickly and with as little pain as possible.”
But the thing in the water did not snap off my head, and my arms began to tremble until I could hold myself no longer. I let loose a great scream, relaxed my arms, and fell onto the slack of the chains like a plunging marionette, nearly wrenching my shoulders from their sockets and the skin from my wrists when the shackles went taut.
I continued to scream until my voice broke and what breath I had came with a desperate animal yowl that filled the chamber, the darkness, the very reaches of my imagination. All life became the instant before the bite, the slash, the sting from the thing unknown.
Nothing.
I hung slack in my chains and the water settled, a low wail drooled out of my lungs—hope hissing away. I would die now.
Water droplets tapped on the ledge by my hand and echoed like slow, distant clapping—Charon at his oar, applauding the pathetic efforts of his next fare to the underworld.
Something—a fin, perhaps—brushed my foot and I resumed my scream, kicked at the thing, which enveloped my legs, holding me fast, moving around and up my knees, thighs.
My bladder let go, and for the first time since I was a boy, I prayed. “God, save me, thou pompous great prick!” (Did I say I had not been on speaking terms with God for some time? Only polite to acknowledge our mutual resentments, innit?)
The creature, while bear-bonkingly strong, was not spiny, nor was its skin rough like the sharks I had seen at the Rialto fish market, but smooth—slick—it slipped around me as if I were being strangled by a great, slippery cord. I began to lose consciousness, some dreamy flowing of the mind from the terror—vestiges perhaps of the creature’s poison. Off I drifted, welcoming oblivion, as a set of barbs pierced my hips and the monster fastened itself upon my man-tackle.
* A natural was a jester who came to his profession by way of a physical or mental anomaly—a dwarf, a giant, Down syndrome, etc. Naturals were thought to have been touched by God.
FIVE
