I, Iago Read online

  Even as I said the words, I knew I was not capable of such a sea-change. But it felt good to make a pretense of it.

  “If thick-lips gets away with this—” Roderigo said, staring across at the darkened house. Nothing was going to penetrate his skull unless it had to do with Desdemona.

  “Call up to her father,” I urged. “Rouse him from sleep. Don’t let Othello succeed with this—tell Brabantio to hunt him down.”

  “He’s probably already had her by now,” Roderigo said.

  “So you’re going to sulk and let him enjoy his win?” I demanded. “He may have plucked the flower, but even if it cannot be put back in the bush, it can still be taken from him.”

  Roderigo’s face brightened. “That’s true,” he said and began to run toward the bridge. “Come! Let’s set Brabantio on him!”

  I followed him, hoping my impulsiveness wasn’t starting something that I would grow to regret. I had no sense of duty to Brabantio; I only wanted, childishly, to spoil Othello’s joy, as he had spoiled mine.

  We crossed the wooden Rialto Bridge, its shops shuttered for the night, and moments later I was directly under the portico of Ca’Brabantio. Brabantio knew me as Othello’s man, so I could not let him see my face. Roderigo stood a little to the side so that he could look up at the balcony.

  “He’s asleep, and likely drunk from the festivities,” I said. “Be loud.”

  “Senator Brabantio!” Roderigo called up. Rather absurdly, he knocked upon the nearest stone column, as if it were a door. “Senator Brabantio! Wake up.”

  That would never do. I opened my lungs and hollered, so loud I could not be recognized, my voice was so distorted: “Wake up, Brabantio!” I grabbed my nose between thumb and forefinger to further disguise my voice. “There are thieves in your house, they’ve stolen your daughter! Thieves! Thieves, I tell you!”

  Immediately, with a screeching of wood, the shutters were shoved out. Roderigo suddenly looked frightened. He glanced at me unsurely; I gestured him to speak.

  “What is all the racket about?” I heard the senator demand, directly above me.

  Again, Roderigo stared at me. Again, I gestured him to speak. “Er . . . Senator, is your family home?”

  “Are your doors locked?” I shouted up, nostrils still clamped shut.

  “Who wants to know?”

  Roderigo tensed and appeared to be trying to make himself physically smaller. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.

  “You’re robbed, Senator!” I shouted. “Go check your daughter’s chamber!” I paused but heard nothing from above. “This very moment, even now, an old black ram is tupping your white ewe!”

  Roderigo gave me a chastising, disgusted look for that; from above, I heard Brabantio huff again with aggravation.

  “You’re mad,” the senator declared disparagingly.

  Roderigo looked at me; for a third time, I gestured him to speak. “Er, Senator,” he called up, again tentatively. “Do you know my voice?”

  “No,” Brabantio said with such disinterest I thought he might dismiss this as a prank and return to bed. “Who are you?”

  Roderigo glanced at me for confirmation; I nodded.

  “It’s Roderigo Rosso, Senator.”

  Brabantio groaned. “You must be drunk. I told you to leave my house alone and my daughter in peace. I’ll set the watch on you.”

  “Oh, no, sir, I beg you, Senator—”

  “I’m warning you, Roderigo,” Brabantio said. From the subtle change in how his voice echoed—and from the wide-eyed stare Roderigo was suddenly frozen into—I guessed the senator had finally seen the merchant, in person. “I can put you in a lot of trouble for harassment. Remove yourself immediately and never show your face here again.”

  “I beg you, Senator, listen to me just a moment—”

  “You’re telling me my house is robbed, while I’m in it!” Brabantio huffed. “This is Venice, man, such things do not happen here. Go home and leave me in peace.”

  “Senator Brabantio, I swear I’ve come to you in total goodness—” Roderigo implored; I intervened.

  “You obstinate fool!” I shouted. “We have come to help you and you’re treating us like ruffians—you deserve the bad fortune we’re trying to protect you from, you ass!”

  “How dare you speak to me that way?” Brabantio demanded irritably. “Who is that—where are you, whoreson?”

  I could not risk his recognizing me. I squeezed my thorax with my free hand, to further disguise my voice. “I am one, sire, who comes to tell you that your daughter and Othello are at this very moment making the beast with two backs!” Silently, I thanked the whores of my Arsenal days for expanding my licentious vocabulary.

  Finally I had his full attention: “You villain!” he hollered into the darkness. “Roderigo, you shall answer for this assault upon my daughter’s dignity!”

  Roderigo took a deep breath and found himself a little courage. “I’ll answer anything you like, Senator. I’ll answer your questions about how your daughter snuck away from here in a gondola while you were at the feast, and went to the Arsenal, and is at this moment in bed with Othello in his apartments at the Saggitarius building there. But don’t take my word for it, Senator. Go to her room and check for yourself. If I am lying, arrest me. Whip me, even. Kill me.”

  He looked to me for approval. I clasped my hands together in a gesture of valor.

  I heard a scuffle above and then Brabantio’s voice, more distantly and echoing, clearly back in the house: “Lights! Wake Desdemona! Light, I say—why is there nobody here to light a lamp?” . . . and by then his voice had faded into the house.

  Roderigo joined me under the portico. “Well, then,” he said, eyes shining. “No turning back now, eh?”

  No. There wasn’t. I felt my own face ablaze with energy. “Good man.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll leave you now.”

  His excitement immediately withered. “What?” he demanded. “No, we’re doing this together!”

  “I’m Othello’s man,” I reminded him. “And I am happy to help you, but I cannot release myself from his service, no matter my anger. If I’m found in conspiracy against him, it will not only ruin me, but it will also demoralize the army command, and for the good of Venice I cannot indulge in that. We head to Cyprus soon. He needs me, and I need him to need me. So I cannot remain in this now. Take Brabantio to the Arsenal. But if you see me there with Othello, you must pretend I’ve had nothing to do with this business tonight. Do you understand?”

  Roderigo nodded solemnly. “You want to destroy from within,” he declared.

  I had not considered that. “Perhaps,” I said.

  Chapter 32

  RUNNING THROUGH DARK and twisting alleyways took as long as a leisurely walk in daylight. And raising Othello from his wedding bed would be a challenge, as I would sooner have cut off my own foot than set it in the marriage chamber. Once I reached the Arsenal, I convinced a red-faced page to inform the general I had arrived in crisis.

  A few moments later, pulling on his loose-cut breeches, bare-chested and smelling of sex, Othello trod heavily down the stairs and outside to meet me on the terrace between the gate and the Sagittary.

  “And what is the crisis, Ensign?” he asked, a coddling parent.

  “Brabantio knows,” I said. “He’s sending men in this direction.”

  Othello did not look the least alarmed.

  “He spoke so abusively of you, I wanted to hurt him,” I tried.

  “Thank God you didn’t,” Othello responded, almost jovially.

  “He’s out for you. Are you married indeed? Because he is set on annulling it—by divorce if possible, by widowing his daughter if he must. And the law is on his side in this, for he is a patrician and you are not. You are in danger, sir.”

  Othello shrugged, refusing to rise to the alarm. He leaned his bare back against the stone wall of the building and crossed his arms. “I’ve done enough service for the state that the co
mplaints of one senator will not spell my demise,” he assured me, almost condescendingly. “You know that, Iago. I understand his anger, but we would have courted openly if his people allowed it.” He stood straighter and pointed, without concern, to something behind me. “What are those lights?”

  I glanced over my shoulder. The porter had allowed a small party through the gates. One man holding a torch rushed toward us across the small paved area, followed by two others.

  “It’s Brabantio and his men. For heaven’s sake, go inside.”

  Othello shook his head. “No,” he said. “I have nothing to hide now, so better just to meet directly and discuss it.” He frowned a little, staring. “Are you certain that’s Brabantio?”

  “Who else could it be?”

  It could be—indeed, it was—Lieutenant Michele Cassio, making his first appearance wearing my sash.

  “Good evening, friend,” Othello said warmly as Cassio’s torchlight blended with the wall sconce outside the Sagittary door. “What’s the news?”

  “The doge requires you back at the palace instantly, sir,” Cassio said, his face flushed from running, his voice coming out in gasps.

  How remarkable: Brabantio had gone, not to Othello’s home, but to the doge’s, and the doge was taking immediate action against a heathen upstart! What an efficient and swift end to the affair.

  So there’s an end to it, I wanted to say, that is what you get for your duplicity.

  This consequence never entered Othello’s mind. “What’s the matter?” he asked Cassio.

  Cassio took a gulp of air, and then, collecting his Florentine self, said, “It’s got to do with Cyprus, General. Just before the ceremony tonight, a galley came in from Cyprus with an alarm that the Turk was planning an attack, and an hour later they were followed by another galley that had set out a day after them but made up the difference—and that one said the Turks were just refortifying Rhodes, but by the end of the festivities, they had been overtaken by yet another galley with the message that no, it was for Cyprus after all. I had stayed late because everyone was congratulating me, and as I was about to depart, the doge’s secretary asked me to stay until they knew more. The Council of Ten has been called into emergency session, and the doge sent three different messengers to find you and call you in at once.” A discreet pause. “I volunteered to be the one to check your lodgings,” he said in a lower voice.

  The two of them exchanged a knowing glance that sickened me. “A good thing it was you,” Othello said softly. I wanted to spit. “I need just a moment inside, and then I’ll come with you.” He leapt up the steps and entered the building.

  Cassio and I found ourselves standing in the torchlight with a brace of the doge’s guards. We both knew Othello was going up to tell Desdemona why he had to leave her bed.

  “Good thing you knew to look for him here, eh, Michele?” I said heartily.

  Cassio glanced uncomfortably at the doge’s men. “Well, it is the middle of the night, and this is where he sleeps,” he pointed out.

  “And tonight, of course, he’s not sleeping alone,” I said, grinning. “If he can keep it all lawful, he’s a made man, no?”

  Cassio turned his back to the guards. “I do not understand,” he said in a deliberate tone.

  “He’s married,” I announced loudly. The two guards blinked in amazement and turned to each other with questioning faces.

  Cassio anxiously cleared his throat in a feeble pretext of offhandedness. “Is he really?” he said. “To whom?”

  I heard Othello’s quick but heavy tread descending the stairs. You cowardly whoreson, I wanted to say to Cassio. Even now, when it is done, and you suspect I know you know—even now . . . instead of saying what I wanted to, I met his false innocence with my own. “Why, surely you’ve guessed it, he’s married to—” But then Othello stepped between us down the stairs. “Come, Captain, will you go?” I asked, turning my attention to the general.

  Cassio almost sagged with relief. Oh, you but wait, I thought, you won’t escape this unscathed. You’ll be called to account yet.

  “Let’s go,” Othello said, and as a pack we moved the twenty paces or so to the gate. The porter, saluting, let us out.

  The moment we crossed down the steps, a fast-moving cluster of men erupted from the alley that connected to the Calle Largo, their skittish movement illuminated by a drove of torches held aloft.

  “That’ll be more of the doge’s men looking for you,” Cassio said and raised his hand in greeting.

  With a thrill, I recognized the stout form of Senator Brabantio and the lanky one of my childhood friend. Every man among them brandished both torch and drawn sword. “No, it’s Brabantio!” I said. “General, be careful, I warned you he is out for blood.”

  Othello’s eyebrows raised slightly when he saw all the blades. “You there!” he called out. “Stop where you are. Do not approach with weapons drawn, I am your general.”

  “It’s him, Senator! It’s the Moor!” Roderigo’s voice rang. He grabbed Brabantio’s arm, and Brabantio clapped a hand over it. Apparently on their way here, the senator had changed his opinion of the Pepper King.

  “Take him down!” Brabantio cried. Roderigo and the men with them leapt toward us. Instinctively, Othello, the doge’s men, and I all drew our own swords; a heartbeat late, Cassio did too.

  None of our accosters wore uniform garb. That meant they were militia, not constables; Brabantio had called upon his neighbors to form a posse comitatus. Militia men are famously uneven in their skills, and I had no intention of shedding blood tonight. So I chose the safest target: “Hey, you, Roderigo! Come, sir, I’m for you!” I waved my blade in front of his face in a series of brief arcs, which seemed to bedazzle him.

  Othello’s voice was both parental and commanding. “Put up your swords—all of you, both sides.”

  Nobody sheathed, but I ceased my flourishing, and rested my tip on Roderigo’s chest. His face was even more flush with excitement now, and I worried he might burst into a giggling fit at my pretense of violence.

  “My dear Senator Brabantio,” Othello continued, bowing his head respectfully. “You shall command me with the wisdom of your years, not with the swords of your henchmen.”

  “Thief!” Brabantio shouted in Othello’s face. “Where are you keeping my daughter?” Without waiting for an answer, he demanded, “Have you used your heathen magic to enslave her with lust?”

  Othello blinked, once, slowly. “Do you mean that?” he asked.

  “That girl does not have a marrying hair on her head!” her father railed. “She has shunned every Venetian gentleman who’s asked for her, no matter how wealthy or handsome—there is nothing in her being that would prefer your ugly black face to any of them. You’ve drugged her, or taken her by force, and I’m arresting you for rape. Gentlemen!” he shouted to his companions. “Grab him! If he resists you, kill him.” His face was purple in the yellow torchlight.

  Almost abashed, two men handed off their torches to a third and stepped toward us. Othello, calm throughout the tirade, simply held up one hand. “Cease this nonsense,” he said gently, but with such authority the men froze. “All of you, put up your swords, put down your fists. I assure you, Senator, if I felt any need to fight, I’d have done so by now and you would all be lying senseless on the ground. Your charge is unfounded, but I shall do you a courtesy and answer to it, to your satisfaction. Where shall I go for that?”

  “To prison,” Brabantio snapped. Othello’s effortless intimidation of his militia made him less cocksure. “Rot there until the courts hear my case against you.”

  “I can do that,” Othello said reasonably. “But then you shall have to explain to the doge why I am not answering his very urgent request that I come to him immediately.”

  Brabantio started, and looked at those of us surrounding the general.

  “It’s true, Senator,” Cassio said. “The doge has convened an emergency council. No doubt but a messenger is at your house right now
to call you to join them, too.”

  Brabantio blinked, then pressed thumb and forefinger against either eyebrow, as if in pain. “What?” he whispered. “The doge has called a session in the middle of the night?” He stared at Othello as if the Moor had staged this diversion. “Bring him with us,” he ordered the militiamen.

  “I am going there anyhow,” Othello said pleasantly. “In fact, I will travel with you, if you like.”

  “Do not think this means I’m rescinding my accusations,” Brabantio warned. “This is not nothing, my charge against you. Every member of the Council will share my outrage, and then it will be the worse for you, you . . . you . . . Moor. Not one man in the state of Venice will abide a foreign black heathen siring the next generation of our senators.”

  “I am sure we may discuss that once the doge’s business is resolved,” Othello said. “Shall we go, Senator?”

  THE ASSEMBLY OF men began to move into the darkness. I saw Roderigo hesitate, then resolutely follow after.

  Chapter 33

  BRABANTIO SHARED A GONDOLA with Othello and glared at him the entire hurried ride to the Doge’s Palace, but he did not speak again. Othello could surely feel the glare but seemed indifferent to it. He was now the general, answering his prince’s summons on a military crisis; even the blushing Desdemona was a dull glimmer in the back recesses of his mind.

  We were led by the doge’s guards straight up to the Council of Ten. Every seat but one around the table was occupied. The Doge, Girolamo Priuli, sat at the head, wearing his ceremonial finery from earlier in the evening—every article from cap to boots in gleaming white and gold, but looking wilted now. Even his thick beard, a hint of chestnut still showing through the grey, looked wilted. His dark eyes had bags under them. He was exhausted. I’d never seen him close before, and I’d certainly never seen him look so human.

  Othello strode to the doge’s right side and bowed deeply, hand on heart. Without preamble, Priuli announced, “Othello, the Turks are planning to invade Cyprus with at least one hundred galleys. We are sending you there at once.” Only then did he look up and notice anyone else in the room. “Ah,” he said. “There you are, Brabantio. We sent for you earlier. We could have used your counsel.”