I, Iago Read online

  Near the Arsenal—a part of the city I had never ventured into—a series of side streets led me to a goodly campo, beside an inn called the Dolphin. Off the far right corner of the campo was the Arsenal’s water gate. But directly ahead of me, the paved yard led to the Arsenal’s sole doorway: a large iron gate in a brick wall, with stone lions flanking either side of it.

  For centuries, this has been the most guarded door in the entire Venetian empire. Citizens have easier entry to the Doge’s Palace than to the storehouses of the Republic’s armaments. Beyond that wall lies all the munitions of our state, from rifle shot to warships. And gunpowder. Lots of gunpowder. I was about to be among the favored few allowed within. This was something most of those young gentles hobnobbing in the Piazza could not claim.

  With clammy palms clinging to the satchel as if for comfort, I crossed the sun-baked campo. My heart beat harder with each step. Finally I reached the steps leading up to the door. I took a deep breath, heaved a steadying sigh, and climbed the steps, feeling my garments sucking at my skin with sweat.

  A young guard in a red-and-white jerkin brusquely asked my name and I gave it, surprised to hear my voice tremble. The Arsenal entrance swung open to receive me.

  The guard, not much older than myself, and proudly hefting an arquebus as well as sword and dagger, squired me over the high-arching Arsenal Bridge. There were large, intimidating guards posted in pairs on either end of it. We crossed between two tall brick buildings; when we emerged from the shaded canyon between them, to our left opened out a huge man-made boat basin, at least ten times the size of Piazza San Marco. My jaw fell slack. About a dozen galleons sat moored in there; they looked like sparrows in an enormous puddle, so vast was the basin.

  To our right, fronting this basin, was a row of enormous brick buildings full of men, lumber, and loud mechanical devices: they were actually building ships!

  I tamped down my eagerness, because I was a man now, and men do not get giddy about such things.

  We walked to the end of the basin past the different groups of men who were building ships, then turned left to skirt the basin, and then shortly after that, turned right across a small wooden bridge into a walled triangle of brick buildings and open courtyards. From reading father’s educational leaf, I knew that this was to be my home for the next three months.

  The barracks was the least ornate building I had ever entered in my life. There was not one decorative flourish to the architecture, no devices anywhere to suggest that those associated with the building had time or money to waste on nicety. It was functional, and nothing else. I noticed this detail with unexpected pleasure, almost a thrill. This building, like myself, had no time for artifice. For certain, military life would be likewise, and however dilatory, I would finally feel at home somewhere.

  Inside, a corridor led down to a mess hall, but to our immediate left there was a spiral stairway—spiral! Small, compact, efficient, no broad swaths of carpeting, no murals, no alabaster handrails, no broad concourse to accommodate womanish costumes. Climbing that stairway, I fell in love with military life.

  Briefly.

  My enthusiasm was dampened immediately by what awaited me in the dormitory. Perhaps because I did not have a servant to help me with my load, I had arrived last, and there were nine other youths my age making up their sleeping cots.

  “. . . just a bit trashy, isn’t it?” one snickered to another. “They might have warned us of that.”

  They all wore brightly dyed silk jerkins—canevazze mostly, by my guess—and breeches; jerkin and breeches slashed with crosses or stars, showing white taffeta beneath. I, in sharp contrast, wore a jerkin with a better weave than theirs but of much simpler tailoring, and no slashes at all. I looked, almost literally, like the black sheep of the herd.

  I glanced quickly at the faces and realized at once that I would make no friends here. Not that I would have known what a friend’s face looked like, but I know complacency at a glance, and these fellows fairly radiated it. At a guess I’d say that all of them had come from families like mine—well-off merchants—although I was mystified why so many well-off merchant families would send their sons, in peacetime, to become artillerymen.

  They all glanced at me with passing interest and then returned to carping about the state of our lodging. The room was small and high ceilinged, which made it seem even smaller. Lacking windows, it was lit by stinking pitch-torches and one oil lamp. As well as the cots, there were two tables, one with jugs lined up on it, the other with stacks of paper. There were no stools, chairs, chests, or closets, no tapestries or carpets—it was completely naked of decoration. And it was blessedly cooler than outside, but I was the only one who seemed to appreciate that. The rest of them looked sullen.

  Eventually one of my fellow students, whom I mentally titled Brawny Lug (for he was brawny, and a lug) pointed out that this was an excellent chance for us all to live like Real Military Men, and we should welcome the opportunity to prove that we were tough enough to survive without drapes and plaster and upholstery.

  If I had made this observation, I’m sure I’d have been sneered at, reviled for preachiness, and so on. But Brawny Lug was just the fellow to make the point, and from his mouth this suddenly became a brilliant idea, one to be embraced.

  I rolled my eyes and set about to make up my hard little cot. I knew how to do this no better than any other youth there, and my cot looked just as lumpy as did theirs.

  As I finished, the Campanile bells tolled from afar, by the Doge’s Palace, and within a minute after that, a handsome, broad-shouldered man in his prime years came up the stairs, an attendant youth to either side. They stood at sharp attention by the doorway as he stepped farther into the room. All three wore red-and-white jerkins, with the winged lion of San Marco, emblem of our Republic, sewn over their heart. Between the thumb and first finger of his left hand, the captain fidgeted with a stone about the size of a peach pit.

  “Attention,” he said.

  He did not speak it in the smart speech of childhood military play-acting. He said it rather almost as a casual suggestion. Expecting a different demeanor, none of us leapt to obey.

  “Attention!” he repeated, loud and fierce. Instantly we all stiffened and attempted sundry awkward shows of obeisance—one put his hand on his heart, several bowed, I saluted, and four who were clumped together scrambled to present themselves in a straight line.

  His green eyes glanced coldly over all of us. “From now on,” he informed us, resuming the quiet tone, “you will listen and attend me without my having to shout at you. It is a waste of my energy to shout. I am here to make you expend effort, not the other way around, is that clear? Say yes, Captain, if it is.”

  “Yes, Captain!” we all shouted in unison.

  “Don’t yell at me,” he said calmly. “That is equally a waste of your own energies. Speak at a normal level, but clearly and respectfully. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Captain,” we all said at once, with half the volume.

  He nodded, his finger still worrying the stone. “Better. On behalf of the Alberghetti family, I welcome you to the Bartolomeo da Cremona training program. You will practice in the ranges here in the Armory, and four times a month you will muster with trained militia on the Alberghetti estate on Giudecca. Otherwise, for the next three months, except on Friday evenings, you are not to step foot off the grounds of the Arsenal unless in formation in this unit, and your presence is to be known to me or my attendants at all times. There is another unit being trained as you are, here in the Arsenal, so you will see other young men like yourselves attending to business like yourselves. You are to ignore them. You will have no time at all for anything but your own development, the development of your weaponry skills, and your understanding of what it means to belong to the military. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Captain,” we said.

  “Two units of ten young men apiece, and that is just this quarter; there will be more coming through soon after
, and there have been plenty before you. If you understand the most basic mathematics you will know that there are more of you—budding artillery officers—than the state will ever need. I expect that most of you will come to nothing, despite the excellent training I am about to give you. I expect that half of you will not even last the first week. I have no interest in helping you to last here, I am only interested in making sure that if you do, you have come by it honestly. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Captain,” we said. I liked this kind of talk, even though it frightened me to wonder how Father would receive me if I did not last the week. But the captain’s speech was honest, blunt, and practical, and it encouraged bluntness. It had no connection of any sort to Venetian culture outside the walls of the Arsenal.

  “We will now introduce ourselves, and I will assign each of you a daily task for the week, and then we will repair to the mess hall,” said the captain. “I am Master Gunner, Captain Alvisio Trevisan.”

  Immediately after that my attention wandered. I did not care what the names of my fellow students were; I was bad at names and doubted I would ever call out to them anyhow.

  Because I had been the last to arrive, I was also in the farthest cot, and so the last to present myself. Several of the young men received some ribbing or even rebuke from the captain as they announced their family name. No doubt the military, like the frivolous social culture my mother so adored, was full of family insiders, and everybody probably knew everyone else’s second cousin. I was glad my eldest brother had worked on the civilian side of the army, and so there was no risk that my family name would mean anything to anybody here.

  Or so I thought. “Iago Soranzo,” I said, briefly pressing my right fist against my heart, as I’d seen others do.

  I was nonplussed when four of my fellow students exchanged surprised looks, and then turned in my direction tauntingly. I glanced, trying to hide sudden nervousness, at Captain Trevisan, but he looked even nastier than they did. “Soranzo?” he repeated, archly. “As in Paolo Soranzo?”

  My brother. The dead one. The one who had lethally wounded himself right here, in the Arsenal, six years back.

  “Yes,” I said stonily. “He was my brother.”

  The captain stared at me a moment blankly, his fingers neatly shuffling the stone. Then a cruel smile curled his lips. “When I said I doubted all of you would last the week, I did not literally mean I expected anyone to self-expire. Need I change that assessment?” He strolled in my direction along the row of youths.

  “No, sir,” I said, teeth clenching. The entire line was openly leering at me now.

  “May I assume you are apter than your brother was?” the captain asked, moving closer still.

  “I hope so, sir,” I said, feeling my face turn red.

  No sooner were the words off my lips than he chucked the stone at me. He was close enough to me that even if I’d been expecting it, I would have failed to catch it. As it was, it hit me in the ribs; I winced and let escape a pained sound.

  The others laughed.

  “That is no way to convince me you are apt,” said the captain. “Pick it up.”

  I bent over to grasp the stone straight-legged, which brought more blood rushing to my face. Without his asking, I offered it to him, and he took it from me as if I might have a skin disease.

  “Apparently it takes more than stone to destroy one of your family, it takes an actual blade,” he said. “Luckily this is the artillery, and blades are not in common usage here. Not that that stopped your brother, of course.”

  This was permission to the entire group to cackle overtly. A few of the youths leaned in toward one another whispering, as the ones who did not know the story of my brother’s embarrassing demise got some version of it—accurate or not, it did not matter—from the ones who did. The newly informed ones laughed even louder. And the captain let them.

  This was appalling. On the one hand, of course, my very blood cried out to defend a kinsman; on the other, what the captain said about poor clumsy Paolo was true, and it would be insincere of me to proclaim otherwise. And then on the third hand: whether it was true or not, why was I to be punished for Paolo’s mistake? Especially since his mistake had no guilt associated with it but acute humiliation; why was I to be held accountable for it? Is it inhuman of me to feel that I should not be held accountable for my older brother’s haplessness? I did not make him hapless. God did. Or if anyone on earth did, surely it was our parents. They were never held to account for it—but somehow, I was.

  I said nothing. The captain kept looking at me, as if expecting me to say something. I continued to say nothing. Finally he turned away from me and continued to stroll past us all. He began a new speech.

  “We will begin the walking tour of the grounds, and I will assign tasks to each of you as we go. In Iago’s case it is clearly important to keep him from sharp objects”— here of course another swell of nasty snorts—“so he will be the company’s lamplighter. Iago, you will learn where the lamp oil is stored, and you will see to it that there is always enough oil in all the lamps in this building.” He pointed to the table on which sat a row of jars. “You will begin by filling those lamps. I assume you know that oil is extremely expensive and should be used sparingly, and only when and where absolutely necessary.”

  “My father is a lamp oil merchant,” offered a youth who looked even snottier than the rest of them. “He supplies the oil for the whole of the Arsenal.”

  “That’s why you are not being given this assignment,” the captain said dryly. “We would not trust you to be economical in the burning of oil.” Laughter from the group, finally not aimed at me. “All right, then, you have now seen the room where you will sleep and store your clothes. Before the bells strike again you will have learned where you are to bathe, eat, shit, and receive your requisitioned weapons, powder, balls, and match, and most important, of course, you will see where you shall practice. You are expected to become master gunners in time, but most of you will fail and return to your father’s trades, which I gather from your presence here none of you find interesting. In which case you are welcome to remain here as custodians, or perhaps young Iago will simply kill himself off.”

  Again the laughter. It was worse than Father’s silence.

  Chapter 4

  “I HEARD HE cut his cock off,” Brawny Lug said. “Heard he was trying to get the sword out of its case and shwoosh!”—here there was an illustrative gesture that actually implied flattering things about my brother’s anatomy—“sliced it right off!”

  “I don’t believe you heard correctly,” I said as calmly as I could. We had finished the tour of the grounds; I had been given, with a flood of forms and receipts, a large jar of oil that I had to carry with me for most of the tour. The others had been assigned their tasks—food preparation, foundry cleanup, sweeping the captains’ quarters, managing the laundry—and we were now back in the dormitory, waiting to go down for our first shared mess. “If you will excuse me, I must light the lamps now,” I muttered, to avoid any actual conversation. I picked up the jar of oil and turned back to the table.

  “Of course, once he’d castrated himself, he better resembled the rest of his family,” Brawny Lug continued. He was more than twice my body mass.

  “How did you come to be so familiar with my family’s private parts?” I asked, reaching for one of the lamps. “And, for future reference: do you swallow?”

  That was foolish—because now, of course, he would have to break my head against the wall. “You half-witted little ninny!” he hollered and threw his weight forward to rush me.

  I looked up sharply and stepped away from the table with an expression of blank terror, resigned to be smashed straight into the solid rock wall behind me. The guttural gibberish of our spectators grew more guttural and more gibberish. He lowered his head as he approached, a charging bull, his crown aimed right at my belly.

  I took one step to the side.

  He did not notice. He threw himse
lf, magnificently, crown first, straight into the unadorned stone wall. There was a thwack, a groan, and a group intake and exhalation as he slammed to the floor, stunned, at my feet.

  I risked the tiniest cocky grin. “You missed,” I said sympathetically. I shifted the oil jar to my right hip with a conclusive flourish. There was a round of chuckles, and for a moment I knew what it must feel like to be the person my father wanted to turn me into.

  But Lug, it was clear, was about to rise again, and he was going to be furious. I knew this, and so did the octave. They also knew that they’d be sharing mess and dormitory for weeks to come with both the Lug and myself.

  “Get him, lads!” somebody shouted, as if they had all said it at the same time. Before I had a chance to comment on their lack of both originality and spine, eight young men were reaching, even leaping for me. It was cowardly for eight to jump one, but this was not a matter of courage, it was a matter of self-interest, and each wanted to be able to tell Brawny Lug that he had done his share of vengeance on Brawny Lug’s behalf.

  I was cornered, so I used the only thing I had to hand: I hoisted the ceramic jar up off my hip and slopped the lamp oil over all of them. Being slopped this way surprised them; they turned to one another in confusion, as if by seeing another doused youth they might better understand what had just happened to them.

  I reached for the smoky rush light on the wall behind me. “Now you’re inflammable,” I warned them, waving the fiery stubble in front of them. “Come one step closer and you’ll light up like black powder.”

  Eight overexcited, mortified young men stared in outrage, afraid to move toward me, unwilling to back off. There were curses, and then all eyes fell floorward to Brawny Lug, who now was trying to sit up, groaning. I immediately splashed oil on the top of his head. He did not notice, but the others did. For a moment I thought they would all explode at me, torch be damned, and with incendiary panache send us all to purgatory.