I, Iago Read online

  As soon as I said these words aloud, a horrid realization struck me: the Senate, not knowing Cassio had been demoted and I was his replacement, had promoted him instead of me. What if, because his demotion and my elevation had been ordained by a man who was clearly not rational . . . what if they undid all that I had worked to gain? What if they replaced Cassio as lieutenant and made me once again an ensign? They were in essence doing that already by putting Cassio in charge of Cyprus. Damn that Othello—why could he not maintain a veneer of sanity until the Senate had been properly informed that Cassio was shamed and I was elevated? Now I would have to get Cassio demoted a second time, and the one weapon I had to use against him—drunkenness—well, he would not make that mistake again.

  Roderigo was gaping at my news. “Is that true?” he demanded. I nodded. He thought a moment. “That means Othello and Desdemona are heading home to Venice.” He gave me a warning look. “If I do not get satisfaction here, I most certainly will when we’re all back home.”

  “No, no, you misunderstand,” I said. “Othello’s being sent to Mauritania and Desdemona goes with him. The only way to keep him here is by some accident, like the removing of Cassio.”

  “What do you mean, ‘the removing of Cassio’?” Roderigo asked. I felt his grip on my shoulder soften.

  “By making him incapable of taking Othello’s place,” I said. Roderigo still looked cautious. Knowing he would not be capable of it—but that he would be willing to try, and thereby do just enough damage—I explained impatiently, “By knocking his brains out.”

  Roderigo involuntarily let go of me. “You would have me do that?” he demanded, flustered. I knew the man so well, I could tell exactly what ingredients made up his mood right now: he was morally offended, but this was offset by the manly thrill that I—his soldier friend—would think him capable of such an act. Roderigo was the perfect man to do a job I just this moment realized needed to be done.

  “If you want to do yourself a favor, then yes, I think you should consider it,” I said dryly. I once again reached for his right hand; he let me take it this time, and I very firmly lowered it so the dagger was nowhere near me. “You should know, Roderigo, I heard something from one of the envoys, something touching your business very directly. I am unclear on all the particulars, but it has something to do with Cassio’s family and the pepper trade.” Roderigo’s eyes widened in alarm. “I just heard it tonight, and I planned to tell you more as soon as I could get better information in private. I know how much of your trade you had suspended to come along to Cyprus—”

  Roderigo looked horrified. “The whoreson,” he whispered. “I know exactly what it’s about. His family must be the one trying to buy the loyalty of my Egyptian connections.”

  I was grateful to him for so conveniently informing me what lie I was to tell him. “I can get you details within the hour. Speaking of whores, Cassio spends a lot of time with one, named Bianca, and he’ll be eating at her house tonight,” I said. “He doesn’t yet know about the honor the Senate has given him. I can show you the place and you can jump him anywhere between her house and the fortress. I’ll follow him and back you up if you need help; between the two of us, he won’t stand a chance. All right?” I said it as casually as I could, hoping to impress upon him that it is not such a momentous thing to plot a man’s death.

  I was confident he would not kill Cassio. I knew he did not have the skill, even if he thought he had the stomach. The goal was not to murder Cassio, but to render him useless as a soldier. “Roderigo,” I said, patting him arm briskly. “Do not stand here looking amazed. I’ll find the envoy who had the news, and meet you in an hour with the details. But it’s suppertime now, and I have to make my excuses at the high table first, so please put away your dagger and let’s get on with our evening—time’s wasting.”

  Roderigo gave me a surly look. “I want to hear more about this pepper business.”

  “And you will,” I assured him. He sheathed his dagger.

  Chapter 48

  I HAD TO HOPE Roderigo’s fear of Cassio—that he was secretly enmeshed in the Alexandrine black market in pepper—posed a serious threat to Roderigo’s livelihood. Even this would not compel Roderigo to kill Cassio, but it would compel him to think he was up to trying. That’s all I needed. Then everything would work itself out well:

  If Roderigo distracted Cassio, I could safely attack Cassio from behind, and wound him in some way that would end his soldiering days without endangering his life—a sliced calf tendon, for example. I knew my skills and dexterity, especially in the dark; I could strike and then disappear unseen. Cassio might strike Roderigo and hurt him a little, but I knew I could get to Cassio before he reached Roderigo.

  If Roderigo suffered some small wound? That was no catastrophe. First, it would make a good yarn to tell his sons, when he finally managed to sire some; second, he had it coming to him for being foolhardy enough to come along to Cyprus. Nothing he could say against me would be taken seriously when it was revealed he was personating a soldier. He would likely get just a hand-slap from Lodovico, who would be preoccupied with demoting Othello. Roderigo would be furious at me, so I would have to return all his jewels, and try to convince him the story about Cassio trying to buy the loyalty of Roderigo’s Egyptian contacts was an honest misconception on my part.

  Meanwhile, Cassio would be too wounded to remain in the army, and Othello would prove himself too unstable to remain in office. That left the new Lieutenenat Iago in an enviable position.

  Yes, this was most tolerable.

  WE MET AT MIDNIGHT, half a block from Bianca’s pitiable house; Roderigo, having feasted on his own terror since I’d seen him, had convinced himself he had to put the Florentine down.

  “Stay nearby, because you and I both know I’ll probably blunder at it,” he said, his hand on the sheath of a new sword. It matched the dagger he had used earlier. Roderigo had heavily armed himself since arriving in Cyprus.

  “I will be right beside you if you need me, brother,” I said and offered him my hand. The memory of our secret childhood handshake overtook my muscles, and I found myself initiating the ritual; Roderigo followed along with me, and a light danced briefly into his eyes that made me confident he could go through with this.

  I felt myself the most magnificent theater-prompter. All the actors were in their proper places, and all would do exactly as I intended, at the moment I intended; then the actors would become the audience, for the desired effect would not be what any one of them expected.

  “Do not think too much about it,” I said to Roderigo as I slipped away into the shadows. “It’s but a man gone.”

  “But a man gone,” Roderigo echoed, trying to look brutishly casual, and failing.

  We waited for Bianca’s door to open, Roderigo standing in the market square, ghost-lit by candlelight that came from several windows of surrounding houses, myself secluded. As we waited, I admit, I had the thought that the most convenient thing for me now would be if by some strange chance, Cassio and Roderigo killed each other off. It would simplify everything. Then I could keep the jewels, and be certain of my military status, and never have to worry about either of them realizing they had been made fools of, and by whom, and plot to take revenge.

  Such a fantasy does not mean I planned for it to happen that way, or even truly wished it to.

  “I hear him coming,” I whispered loudly toward Roderigo as the door to Bianca’s cottage opened. There he was, back-lit, the ostrich feather bobbing.

  “I see him!” Roderigo hissed. I prayed he would not make too much a fool of himself. He backed a few steps in the small plaza, as if this would somehow make him invisible.

  Cassio, in a chipper mood from dinner, sex, and wine, had his guard down as he strode through the dim campo, in the direction of the fortress. I felt sickened watching him: here even in his deepest disgrace, his pretty face assured that he would have a pleasant enough life, and now on top of that he was about to be made the military
ruler of Cyprus, for no good reason but that he’d helped a madman and a pretty ingrate to elope. The man could not even duel correctly. Oh, I hated him in that moment. I hated him more than I had ever hated anyone. I knew Roderigo would not succeed in even scratching him, but for a moment, I really wished my friend could take the Florentine’s head off.

  “Die, you villain!” Roderigo screamed. He leapt toward Cassio in the dark and brought his sword down with energy and a complete lack of precision, nowhere near Cassio’s body.

  Cassio—however much I liked to think of him enfeebled—was a trained soldier. His instincts were quick and accurate, and he had already drawn his own sword, engaged it with Roderigo’s, and disarmed the Pepper King. He raised his sword again, prepared to kill.

  I leapt out from the shadows and lunged at Cassio from behind. I intended a lengthwise cut down the back of his leg. I had not been in battle for months now, had not actually tried to damage human flesh. Perhaps I hesitated.

  In the moment between my leaping forward and my reaching Cassio, Cassio himself raised his sword and then arced it so that it sang through the black night air of the campo to slice with thick, breathless meatiness into Roderigo’s midriff. I heard a sickening shriek as my sword began its downward slash at the back of Cassio’s knee. I tightened my grip on my hilt and slammed the blade down the length of Cassio’s lower leg, somehow skirting all the blood. He fell screaming to the floor of the campo, and I dropped my sword and fled down the small side alley where I’d been hiding, his screams of pain echoing behind me.

  I had to find a light and return again immediately, as if I’d just discovered them. And I had to keep them apart. Most of all, I had to see how badly Roderigo was hurt. I could not think clearly what I needed to do beyond that.

  I went down the small alley and then followed it into another on the left, which in turn went back to the street that led into the market square. Here was an empty watch-station—the far end of a circuit that featured an alehouse at the other end—and there was a torch lit. I could take this torch and return to the square, as if coming to the aid of both men.

  I had not intended Roderigo to be hurt so badly. He was supposed to be able to run off so that I could solicitously look to Cassio, and deliver him to the castle infirmary like the good friend I was. Just as soon as I’d determined that his wound was bad enough to keep him from ever soldiering again.

  But now my childhood playmate lay bleeding on the paving stone in excruciating pain, and of course I could not leave him there. I found my feet breaking into a run despite myself, so anxious was I to get back there and keep the situation controlled.

  As I approached the square I heard a confusion of voices. Loudest of all was Cassio’s, crying out for a surgeon, for help, for a light, crying out that he was being murdered; under his voice was Roderigo’s, saying almost exactly the same thing, but far more fearfully and tearful.

  But there were other voices, and all of them had Venetian accents. As I approached the square, I saw Lodovico and Gratiano huddling together with their small mute collection of armed attendants. They were all at a distance from the two grasping prostrate figures on the ground, watching them as if they were a disgusting, captivating carnival display.

  “Help me!” Cassio shouted at them angrily, holding his hand out; Roderigo lay curled on the ground a few yards off, moaning, “If nobody helps me soon, I’ll bleed to death.”

  “They might be counterfeiting,” Lodovico warned his companions. “It’s suspicious that they’re both lying there as if they’re wounded. I don’t think we should take a step closer to them until there are more people here to help.”

  I’d forgotten how contemptible I found Venetian patricians.

  “What’s going on?” I shouted angrily.

  “Look!” Lodovico’s companion said, pointing at me as if this were a play and he a child watching it. “Here comes someone now! He’s even got a torch!”

  “Who’s there?” I demanded, holding out the torch in front of me and craning my neck to see around it. “Who is screaming?”

  “We have no idea,” Lodovico said. “We were just out for an evening constitutional.”

  “Help! I’m right here, for the love of heaven!” Cassio’s voice hollered in the darkness. “Help me!”

  I held the torch toward his voice. “What’s the matter?” I called out.

  “I think that’s Othello’s ensign, isn’t it?” said Gratiano.

  “That’s right,” Lodovico said—they really were behaving as if they were watching a play. “His name is Iago, he’s an excellent man.”

  Ignoring them, I moved closer to the two prone figures and waved the torch around. “Who’s there? Who’s crying out?”

  “Iago?” Michele Cassio gasped. “Oh thank God, Iago, is that you? I’m badly wounded, give me some help!”

  I knelt beside him, wondering with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach how Roderigo was now going to fit into all of this. “Lieutenant!” I gasped, moving the torch to examine the wound I’d given him. Bloody gristle glistened in the light; near the top of the diagonal slash, something stringy—perhaps ligament?—showed. I had done an expert job. He would probably never walk again without a crutch. “What villains did this to you?”

  Cassio was grabbing his leg, trying to staunch the flow of blood with his bare hands, which were slick and slippery now. He was weakening quickly. “I don’t know,” he grunted. “I struck one, I think he’s here nearby, couldn’t get away.” He gestured toward Roderigo, who was lying in a puddle of his own blood.

  “Treacherous villain,” I spat in his direction, and then turned immediately toward the two patricians, wondering what the devil to do. This had suddenly become a nightmare. “Come over here and help us,” I snapped at them.

  “Help me! Over here!” cried Roderigo, in a failing voice.

  Cassio grabbed my arm and shook it. “That’s one of them!” he said, and with faltering strength, he pushed me toward Roderigo’s form.

  I resisted, and so I stumbled, slipping on the blood and landing nearly on top of the wounded man. Almost too weak to speak, Roderigo grabbed my arm and pulled me close to him. I still held the torch aloft, and I could see his face. Too well. His expression hurt my very soul. I remembered his face screwing up into tears that morning by the canal, when we were boys, when he could not believe my generosity for giving him my share of Galinarion’s bounty. That was among my earliest memories of him, and now here he was making the same expression, in this last moment of our lives together.

  He had lost a lot of blood. Battlefields teach you how to assess odds, and wounds. Given how far we’d have to carry him, with the burden of Cassio as well, even with the paunchy patricians’ attendants as manpower . . . I closed my eyes and shuddered. He would not make it up to the Citadel alive, and there was no other hospital in Famagusta.

  I opened my eyes and shook my head slightly, as if this would somehow calm him. It did not, of course, because he understood the meaning of the gesture. He sobbed, and grabbed my leather jerkin weakly. “No,” he begged.

  I put a finger to his lips and whispered, “Shshshsh.” I would tell his parents some beautiful lie about his death. Over my shoulder, I sensed more than saw or heard the others looking over at us. How could I explain this? What if Roderigo, in the terror of his last moments of conscious life, blurted something out that gave too much away? I couldn’t risk that. He was dying anyhow; he need not take me with him.

  I tossed the torch away from me; it lay spluttering, but still lit, on the pavement. I reached over to Roderigo’s right side, for his new Cyprian sword lying just out of his reach. He is dying anyhow, I told myself again. It was the truth. You cannot murder a dead man. I grabbed him by the bloody shirtfront and lifted his limp body off the pavement. “I will meet you someday in heaven, and explain why I am doing this,” I whispered into his ear.

  I STABBED MY oldest friend straight through the heart with his own blade.

  I bent over cl
ose to him again from the intensity of the thrust, and his last conscious act was to grab the back of my head and pull it closer to his mouth. “Damn you, Iago,” he grunted tearfully. “You inhuman dog.”

  I felt him shudder and then his grip released. I was so glad I could not see his face now, with the torch away from us.

  “Kill men in the dark!” I shouted at his inert form, and let him go, trying to ignore how heavily his head smacked back down on the paving stones. I felt a dreadful pressure behind my eyeballs. “Where’s the rest of the thieves? Why is this town so quiet? Somebody cry murder! There’s murder in the streets!” I shouted, standing up. I spun around, Roderigo’s sword in my hand, and pointed it directly at Lodovico and his companions, who were still cowering. “Who are you, anyhow? Are you here for good or evil?” I had not just murdered my oldest friend.

  “Don’t you know who we are?” Lodovico quailed. I had not just murdered my oldest friend.

  I lowered the sword. “Signior Lodovico?” I said. I had not just murdered my oldest friend. You cannot murder a dead man.

  “He, sir,” Lodovico replied tremulously. “And Signior Gratiano.”

  “I beg your forgiveness,” I said, bowing slightly, awkwardly. With the sword I pointed to the living wounded. “Cassio’s here, hurt by villains.”

  “Cassio!” said Gratiano. “This is Michele Cassio?”

  I ignored them both and returned to Cassio’s side. I had not just murdered my oldest friend. “How are you, brother?” I asked in a hollow voice, a hand on Cassio’s shoulder.

  “My leg’s cut,” he grunted in pained response. “It feels like it has been cut in half.”

  “God forbid,” I said. “Gentleman, light, get the light! I’ll bind this with my shirt.” As Lodovico scampered around the edges of the bloody scene to retrieve the torch, I reached for my collar to begin to untie my shirt. I had not just murdered my oldest friend. I would bind Cassio’s leg. I would carry him myself up to the hospital in the fortress, and later, I would send somebody to collect the corpse of the stranger who had tried to murder him, but whom he—Cassio—had killed in self-defense.