I, Iago Read online

  “Are you in shipping?” I asked. “Could you not easily overcharge him?”

  “I build the ships, sir,” Tasso said, with an affected gallant air, as if he had just bested me in a battle of wits but was too polite to rub my nose in it.

  “Really?” I said, thinking of the sweating, burly men who had awed me, building ships, my first day within the Arsenal walls. “What tools do you use to build a ship?”

  He chuckled indulgently. “By that I mean, of course, I hire men to build ships for my company. I do not build the ships myself.”

  “Then why did you say you did?” I demanded. “Why do you Venetian gentlemen never say a damned thing that you mean? Has it been bred out of you? Your workers—who are men, as much as you are—they build ships. You do not build ships. You enable ships to be built, which is not the same thing.”

  The audience of Bauta masks tittered, and gloved hands applauded me—which again I found odd, and somewhat unnerving.

  I pulled my mask off. Sun-baked as I was, I must have looked very ugly, but I did not care. The audience of diners applauded again, this time heartily, their gilded oysters still sitting on their plates like golden jelly. I stared at them with frustrated bewilderment. A hoarse male voice called out, from the head of the table, “That’s quite a compliment, Tasso, to be treated to the attentions of a known truth-teller.”

  I turned in the direction of the voice. “I’m not complimenting him,” I said.

  “It is a compliment to him to receive your noncompliment,” the speaker explained indulgently. He stood up and I saw him now, a monstrously fat old man, wearing colors too bright for his size. “He is worthy to receive your attention, and your attention, Iago, is exotic here,” he said.

  “What does that mean, worthy to receive my attention?” I was almost spitting now. “I do not want to talk to him, isn’t that clear from how I’m talking to him?”

  “You are talking to him more than to the rest of us,” the elder pointed out, sounding pleased that now he was the one in the bear pit.

  “I do not especially want to talk to the rest of you either,” I said, with an emphatic gesture that tumbled my mask out of my hand to the floor. Roderigo immediately stooped in his chair to pick it up. “There. Does that make you feel special, sir?”

  “I am already special, Iago,” the older man said with unnerving complacency. “I am the man who made you famous.”

  I suddenly recognized the voice. This was Pietro Galinarion, the owner of the famous hen. Seeing my startled expression, he continued, gravely and smug: “I have bragging rights to being the earliest victim of your precociousness. The more popular you and your precociousness are, the better that serves me.”

  The table denizens tittered yet again and applauded. Tasso was beaming beneath his mask. It seemed that Bait the Curmudgeon was the new pastime for bored patricians. I did not want to play.

  THE NEXT QUARTER HOUR I spent in a fog of irritation. I insulted Galinarion; I was applauded. I threw my mask into the punch bowl; I was applauded. I reprimanded the entire table for how mindlessly they were applauding everything; I was applauded. I stormed out of the hall, to applause, and left the grand house through the back steps and the servants’ entrance, imagining Emilia was there to see my righteous indignation, and desperate to find her in the carousing city.

  Roderigo had wanted to follow me, but I gave him a warning glance, and he—alone of all the people there—understood how upset I was. He relented. I appreciated that so much, I almost told him to come after all.

  I STORMED AROUND the streets of Venice aimlessly, trying to walk off my ill humor in the crowded, noisy walkways. People crossed excitedly from one ball to another, singing or shouting out things they would never dared say in sunlight while unmasked. Some stumbled happily down avenues and alleys, staggeringly drunk. There were scores of parties tonight in the city; somewhere, in one of them, Emilia must be dismissing all her suitors. How might I guess at which one to find her?

  Having nothing to go on, deduction was my only hope. We had at least some acquaintances in common, or we would not have been invited to the same party the night before. I presumed that hers was not the wealthiest of families, so I made a calculation: which of our family friends was well off enough to host a Carnival masque, but only one of modest means? Once this would have been Roderigo’s family, but his intrigues now put them in much finer circumstances. So I guessed another family, the Molins. I oriented myself: I was north of Campo San Polo. So I crossed cobbled streets and over bridges with purpose now, heading generally south, to see if there was a party at the Molins’, just west of the campo.

  To my joy, there was. I had no invitation, but it was late enough in the evening that the servants at the entrance were drunk, and they were startled by my military garb. They stood there, staring, as I brushed past them and up the stone staircase, where a pantomime had just concluded in the broad, tapestry-lined, underlit and overheated hall.

  I saw her instantly, through a mass of young partygoers, although she was in the opposite corner of the room. It was the same gown, the same Moretta mask, the same coiffure. All of these things pointed to a modesty of means, which was promising; a wealthy family would never allow a soldier, even a petty officer, near their daughter.

  My entrance was so abrupt, my jerkin so stern-looking, and my appearance taken as disheveled, that the population of the party—less powdered and poofy than the earlier ball—gave me their full attention, assuming I was there to raise an alarm. “Good evening,” I boomed. “Joyous Carnival to all of you!”

  Jollity returned. Cries of “Welcome, Iago!” were interrupted by the drunken demand: “What’s happened to your mask?” from the middle of the hall.

  “I outgrew it,” I retorted. The partygoers tittered slightly, and turned away to resume their own conversations. How refreshing: here, I would not stand out freakishly. These folk were the model of another Venetian tendency I normally disliked but now was grateful for: perfect self-absorption. A few eyes stayed on me out of curiosity, but otherwise I was just another reveler.

  A reveler making straight for a particular woman.

  Emilia seemed startled by the intensity of my approach and glanced to either side, aware that she was literally cornered. I felt my palms sweat and could feel my pulse quicken inside my ears.

  “Good evening, disdainful lady,” I said, with an ironic bow. Behind me I heard servants pulling out trestle tables; supper would be served soon.

  I saw her eyelids blink a few times rapidly through the eyeholes of her mask. “You assume I am disdainful before we’ve even spoken? You must have been chatting with a fellow I met last night.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Really? A fellow about your height and build, hanging about with libertines and slanderers and dullwits?”

  “If I ever meet the fellow, I’ll tell him what you think of him.”

  “Oh, do not, it would break his heart. Although I suppose that way at least he’d lose his appetite, and that would save our hosts a partridge wing or two. I can’t say they’ve overstocked the dining table.”

  “You owe me a dance,” I said abruptly, and felt myself redden.

  She smiled behind her mask; I could see it in the shape of her face. “Are you not at all surprised I knew who you were? You were masked last night.”

  “I am, like yourself, dressed the same as I was last night. You saw the same man walking toward you. Masks never really hide much.”

  “That has always been my opinion too,” she said.

  “Then you may as well take yours off,” I suggested.

  “On the contrary,” she answered, “if it’s not hiding much, there’s not much to reveal, so why bother? The ribbon is all caught up in my hair.”

  I glanced involuntarily at her hair, just behind her ear, at the nape of her neck, and imagined helping her untangle the ribbon from the hair. It was a romantic—in fact, erotic—moment of imagining. Her laughter in
terrupted it.

  “Have you any idea how transparent you are?” she teased. “I know exactly what you’re thinking at this moment.”

  “And do you approve of what I’m thinking?” I asked, knowing she could see me blush.

  “More than my parents would, if they saw me talking to an unmasked wild man who does not fit their merchants’ notion of whom I should be talking to.”

  I felt victorious: my imagined biography of her was accurate. “They want to marry you off to someone boring.”

  “Not a particular someone,” she clarified. “There is an array of someones to choose from.”

  “Then what is the deciding criterion?”

  She shrugged, and looked away into the room. Without my noticing, the pantomime had finished, and now some acrobatic clowns were working their way across the hall. “My parents lack imagination and humor, so they do not value those qualities in me. They would like to find somebody to whom I may be useful, but they can’t quite figure out what I’d be useful for.”

  I was brazen: I eyed her slender, curving body up and down with undisguised desire. “I can think of something you’d be very useful for.”

  To my great relief, she merely chuckled and crossed her arms over her chest, as she had the night before. “So it’s true what they say about you: you really do just blurt out whatever comes into your mind to say.”

  “How . . . do you know who I am?”

  She gestured around the room. “A dozen people called your name when you walked in here, and you wear a soldier’s garb. Of course I know who you are.” She sobered. “I’m sorry for your father’s recent passing.”

  “Thank you,” I said awkwardly, suddenly feeling—ironically—exposed.

  “My father is a wheat merchant,” she said. “His cousin is a very successful designer of Carnival costumes, it is the only reason my family is included in any of these festivities. I don’t belong in this world any more than you do.” She gave me a look that, even through the mask’s expressionless eyeholes, pierced right into my soul.

  “Do you wish you did belong here?” I asked, holding the gaze.

  “Absolutely not,” she said immediately.

  “Then marry me,” I said.

  Chapter 10

  THERE WAS A PAUSE. It was a long one. Emilia looked away. I felt myself first blush, and then turn pale. I could read nothing of her expression from around the edges of the mask, nor from her body language.

  “I’m sorry,” I stammered. “That was a ridiculous proposition. I would try to pass it off as a jest, but that would be insulting to you, and we both know I meant it honestly.”

  “My parents will be looking for me,” she said softly. “They are expecting me to meet them by the door. I hope”—now she looked back at me—“in all sincerity, sir, I hope our paths cross again soon, and perhaps at greater leisure.”

  “Please forgive my—”

  “There’s nothing to forgive,” she said. “You have given me something to think about. Unlike you, I do not blurt out whatever comes into my mind. Women are not allowed such behavior.”

  “So you are not rejecting my proposal?” I pressed, wishing I was not saying the words even as I heard myself say them.

  “For your own sake, I am going to forget you made it,” she said. “If, having overcome your impulse to be somebody’s paladin, and if having gotten to know me with any kind of depth—having a passing acquaintance with my face, for example—you still feel compelled to make such a suggestion . . . proposition me then.”

  IT TOOK ME until noon the next day to get dressed. I lay in bed, disgusted with myself for behaving precisely the way a spoiled young Venetian gentleman would behave if he were mooning over a lady he desired. But I could not stop thinking of her. I did not know her well enough to obsess about anything in particular; I did not even have a face to dwell moodily upon—and yet I could not stop thinking of her. Her voice, her hair, the shape of her body, and her words. Her words, her words, her words. I could not get them from my mind. I lay on my feather mattress beneath silk drapes and stared out at the transom window of my rose-painted room. The sky mocked me with its brilliance. I parsed and reparsed each sentence I could remember with all the skills I’d ever learned as a battlefield tactician. I could not decide what she thought of me.

  I must have looked so hideously ugly, compared to all the others in the room. My face is nothing handsome to begin with, plus between soldiering and neglecting my cosmetic toilette, I am weathered and darkened beyond my age, and I stand out even on the streets in daytime for having not the slightest styled coiffure to my battle-ready hair. Dust-colored curls surround my face, hardly darker than the face itself. I must have looked horrendously unkempt. How ridiculous to imagine that she fancied me. She did not. So there was absolutely no reason to get out of bed.

  On the other hand, she spoke with me more willingly than she had with anyone at the first evening’s party. So perhaps she fancied me a little. But that had been before my mask came off. The night I did not wear the mask, that night she rejected my proposal and did not even allow me the dance I felt I was owed. Given her class, she had far more men to choose from than patrician daughters, who were limited to marrying among those families with the right pedigrees. She could have anyone. Just because two nights in a row there was no man she fancied more than me did not mean she fancied me at all. Nor did it mean she wouldn’t find, before the end of Carnival, some handsome man to fancy. So there was absolutely no reason to get out of bed.

  And even if she fancied me, what then? I could not deserve to keep her interest. When I thought she was a prostitute, it had been easy to banter with her; even when I realized she wasn’t, that breezy beginning to our discourse had allowed me to continue the playful chatter. But the moment I realized my heart was thudding for her, I’d become irritable and clumsy with words, and remained so all the next day until I saw her again—at which point, despite a few rounds of decent repartee (which I recounted to myself ad nauseam to reassure myself that yes, I had been charming for a moment), I was so unbalanced that I demanded that she marry me without my having even seen her face. Extended time in her company would render me ridiculous and speechless, and she would grow disappointed with me, and I would lose her love. So there was absolutely no reason to get out of bed.

  I WAS FINALLY roused for dinner by a servant. We ate with Mother and my silent sister-in-law as Rizardo informed me there was another masque to attend that evening.

  “Really?” I said. “Another one? I cannot believe the accursed superciliousness of this city!”

  “You don’t need to believe it, but you do need to attend,” my brother said curtly. “Especially this one, as it is at the Confraternity. I would appreciate it if you could keep your mask on, or at least not throw it in the punch bowl when you decide to take it off.”

  “I need to get out of this city,” I said. “I need to get back to a posting and play cards with people who get dirt under their fingernails.”

  “I do not disagree,” Rizardo said humorlessly, “but you won’t be doing that before nightfall, so please cooperate with the servants this time and allow them to find you something decent to wear.”

  I did so, but on principle I kept my dagger, sheathed, at my belt.

  THIS MASQUE WAS at the Confraternity of San Rocco, of which my brother and Roderigo were both members. The wealthiest of all Venetian confraternities (or poorest, depending on who was describing it), San Rocco featured two halls large enough for balls; tonight we were to entertain ourselves in the upper hall, which was hung with decorative tapestries that hid, among other things, a wooden altar and several recent painting by Tintoretto (although his better work was in another room—Flight into Egypt, the title of which struck me as an excellent undertaking). The gala was attended by more youths and maidens than I’d ever seen assembled outside a Grecian fresco. I fretted about this because the flirtation levels promised to be astronomical.

  She was there, of course.

>   THIS TIME SHE was surrounded by a conspiracy of young men. And she seemed to be engaging, willingly, in conversation with them. That was disastrous. She was the only female in their troop, which was not true of most other troops of young people scattered around the room. I suddenly could not breathe well. My aging mother had an aging lapdog, who when asleep sometimes would yap helplessly from a dream it could not escape. I felt like that lapdog now. The most I would possibly be able to manage, if I could even get near Emilia, was a yap.

  This was jealousy, and it was new to me. Resentment I was used to, having been weaned on it within the family, but not jealousy. While I had often been unhappy with my lot, I had never actually coveted what somebody else had—until right now, when I was jealous of every man in that group for having her attention. It was the most atrocious sensation I had ever felt, as if some tiny monster were crawling around within my guts while somehow sending spasms of shock through my limbs, my throat, making everything inside me tighten, tight as a drum, twisting everything inside me into a knot.

  Ignoring the screeching actors in an offensive comedy about a Nubian and his albino bride, I forced myself to walk calmly in her direction. The other men sensed but pointedly ignored the presence of a new rival; Emilia herself, though, did look up at me, and stopped in the middle of whatever she was saying.

  “Good evening, Iago,” she said neutrally. “Do you have the pleasure of these other gentlemen’s acquaintances?”

  “If their presence interferes with my having a dance with you, my lady, I can’t say it would be a pleasure to be acquainted with any of them,” I said, the words sounding echoing and far away from my own ears. Stop being an ass, I ordered myself. You sound petulant.

  The men in their slashed and puffed velvet all exchanged glances behind their masks. They knew who I was; I had a reputation now, inflated or otherwise; they had not known I fancied Emilia, but they must know that I was a wild and unpredictable rascal, based on my behavior at the senator’s ball the night before. Or so I assumed.