I, Iago

by Nicole Galland

  WE HAD REACHED the southern tip of arid, rocky Rhodes and sent half the army to settle on a pedunculated islet attached by a land bridge to Rhodes proper. Othello took command of these forces, leaving the admiral of the navy to strategize the naval component of the fighting. From our camp we could be attacked from nearly every side, but in turn, we could attack easily with artillery through a full 360 degrees.

  As Othello’s ablest gunman and his new right hand, it was my duty to establish where among the sun-bleached crags the guns should be set up, the gunners and cannons both, and then to see to it that appropriate powder, shot, and match went where it was meant to go. I did all this efficiently; Othello was pleased, and I delighted, that I seemed to have a preternatural ability to anticipate his next requirement or tactic. We worked together so well that he often entirely ignored his aging lieutenant, Zuane da Porto.

  Zuane was the tallest soldier I had ever known. Long, lanky limbs, a mop of grey hair, and a nose as fierce as an eagle’s beak, he struck me as an aging wild feline who would sooner sleep than fight; but he had in his day been capable of impressive feats. I do not mean to question his honor or integrity, but I think he must have “fallen upward” into his position through family connections. He was competent but lacked all drive or ambition. Da Porto, from what I could tell, was looking forward to retirement more than he was looking forward to engaging with the Turks, and so he was just as grateful as I was that Othello and I seemed almost to share one mind.

  BOTH TURKISH ATTACKS—naval and overland—came nearly within the very hour Othello had anticipated, in precisely the formations he’d predicted. The first thing you learn in the heat of battle is that nothing you learn outside the heat of battle, about the heat of battle, is worth a damn. In training you learn strategy and tactics; in real life, it is more about improvisation than anyone will ever admit. The improvisation may be informed by years of training, but it is improvisation all the same.

  Our first round of artillery did astounding damage to the enemy, and for the first time in my life I saw what gunpowder and shot could do to human beings. Hardly one man in twelve of the Turkish infantry got as far as the land bridge, where our own infantry was waiting with bows and swords to prevent them coming closer.

  In the sea we were not as effective: we wounded many vessels but did not destroy any; our navy set upon theirs but was rebuked in turn by their fire. This was not a great concern to us, for we knew France and the papal army were imminently coming to our aid. So focused was Othello on the ground warfare that it was not until nearly sunset that he realized how very tardy our backup was. The Venetian navy was nearing exhaustion for it.

  AS THE HEAVENS darkened that first night of the siege, the Turkish ships backed away and headed slightly north. It was clear they would make anchor and then disgorge their manpower to meet ours on land; they had done enough damage to our navy. To my ears this was very bad news, but Othello fairly beamed with confidence when it was reported to him.

  “The delay of the French and the papal forces will prove to our advantage,” he informed his captains (and myself and his lieutenant, the two officers who never left his side). We huddled together in the cool night, around a fire pit outside the command tent, where most of us would sleep. Evening insects of springtime sang and echoed all around us, indifferent to the havoc of war-crazed humanity. I found their presence oddly reassuring. “The Turk has now been conned into believing it is only us. They think there is nobody but us to vanquish. And so, when our allies surprise them—as I am sure they will at sunup—they will all be exposed and unready all along the shore, with no time even to set up their own defensive artillery. Our allies will annihilate what is left of their navy, which is now mostly unmanned ships. This is a fortuitous development.”

  HE LIKELY WOULD have been right about that, if the French and papal ships had arrived. But they did not. Ever. In the ferocious fighting that followed all that day, I bitterly imagined them cheerfully snug at port in Marseilles or Genoa, their men all drunkenly toasting the demise of Venice’s navy. Perhaps some of them toasted also to the health of the Holy Roman Emperor’s army, should it indeed take Rhodes City. But in my enraged imagination, few of them cared much about that part of the plan: the important thing was that the armed forces of their powerful neighbor Venice would end up in tatters, having been gulled into a battle we could not win alone.

  IT WAS LATE afternoon on the second day of engagement, and we were in trouble. We were nearly out of powder and completely out of arrows; what was left of our navy managed to protect the army from seaward attacks, but there were few such attacks anyhow, as now most of their fire and steel was attacking us on land. We had cornered ourselves on our rocky hillock, barely keeping the Turks from reaching the land bridge. The smell of blood and pus and oozing bone marrow, the mud that’s made of human innards being ground into grass and clay . . . there is no training to prepare anyone for this. The roar that never ends, that is both fear and ferocity, that is fire and steel and humanity and horses (the Turks had horses) and livestock—Othello was startlingly unmoved by these horrors, being used to them for many years. I was horrified for hours, then numb, and then enraged.

  The general and I were in the command tent, on the highest crag of the islet. We were both covered in grime and dirt and dust and other men’s blood. The maps and charts were forgotten now; this was not the battle he had planned. “All those lives are on my conscience,” he said softly, without guilt, staring out the tent flap at the front. “Somewhere, if not here, we must have a victory that justifies all the tears that mothers and the wives will shed for this.”

  “We must have a victory against our damned allies!” I hissed furiously, collecting the diagrams from the tactics table. Othello looked at me, the black eyes calm in their remarkably white orbs.

  “Iago, we do not know that they are foresworn. You must not hurl accusations without proof. We have no proof. They may appear on the horizon any moment, although we shan’t assume it now. We must retreat while doing the greatest damage to the enemy on the way and preserving ourselves as well as possible.” He saw the color rise in my face. “Are you thinking, my young ensign, that you are shamed not to see victory in your first engagement as an officer?”

  “I’m thinking many things,” I said tersely and placed the collected diagrams into a chest. “That is one of them.”

  “I think rather you have learned more than most men do in a whole lifetime of soldiering,” he said, in an almost paternal tone. “When there is time for reflection, when we are safely aboard ship and bound west back to Venice, you and I will sit in my cabin and drink excellent wine, and you will tell me at least seven things you know now that you did not know three days ago.” He held out his hand. “Are we agreed?”

  His calm and confidence were contagious. I took his hand. I would follow this man anywhere. “Provided we are both alive and there is a boat to carry us,” I said.

  “Well now there must needs be, we have just shaken on it!” the general said, with something like a chuckle. He released my hand and patted my arm. “Come along, I will show you how to make a proper retreat.”

  Chapter 16

  “I LIED TO YOU about the wine,” Othello said. “It is not excellent. In fact, it’s swill.”

  “It is the swill of the gods,” I said heartily, and downed the contents of the wooden cup in one huge swallow that burned the back of my throat. The whole cabin reeked nauseatingly of valerian, used as a disinfectant on my arm. “And is this indeed your cabin, General?”

  We were not on his ship; his ship had gone down at Rhodes. We were in the captain’s cabin of another galleass—the largest surviving ship in the fleet, with the largest captain’s quarters, which Othello and the captain were sharing. All officers were crammed together into cabins and all enlisted men into the berths. There were enough surviving soldiers that the surviving ships—packed tight to start with—could hardly carry them home. The Turks were not pursuing us; word had reached th
em that we were merely a decoy, that the city fortress was under attack from the ships of the Holy Roman Emperor.

  On our nightmare retreat down to the ships, I had learned what it feels like to rip apart a man’s body with my sword, to have a man’s entire life in blood spurt at my face and seep into my clothes; I learned that such horror does not dampen the thrill of victorious survival, that the rush of winning the battle to live comes by forcing someone else to lose. I learned the pain of an unbated blade tearing into my own flesh, although the wound was on my left arm and not deep. I had more than seven things to report to Othello; I easily had seventy, and each one was known to him already.

  “This is the soldiers’ life,” he said, almost dismissively, pressing his favorite scented kerchief under his nostrils. “The mercenaries know this. Few Venetians really understand. Now that you do, son of a merchant, will you continue in the service?”

  “Yes,” I said without hesitation. What we had lived through was a nightmare, but such a vivid one as made any other kind of life a pallid daydream.

  “Do you see why your lovely wife could not come with us?”

  “Yes.”

  “And do you think you can go home to your lovely wife and remain a gentle husband to her, knowing what you now know of the real nature of a soldier?”

  This time I hesitated. Othello gave me a compassionate but knowing look.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Othello considered me a moment in the swaying lamplight, and then he smiled. “I believe you, Iago. I do not mean I believe you’re right, but I believe you mean it. You will never view a masked ball the same way again.”

  “I never liked those balls, I told you that,” I said, adjusting the pungent bandage over my wound.

  “Yes, you sneer at all the Venetian gentility. But now, Iago, besides sneering, you will be jealous of them.”

  “Are you jesting, General? I’ll scorn them more than ever.”

  “No,” Othello said, philosophically smiling. “Most men in your position would, my friend. But, Iago, you are made of different stuff. You and I have the same ore. We earn our lives, we earn our dignity, and we are very proud of that—but sometimes it is tiring. We know,” he said, sitting up now and looking more animated, “we know that we deserve the feather beds and eager mistresses and fine puddings and private chamber music and beautiful clothes and furniture and palaces. We know we deserve it better than any of those who actually possess those things. But we will never have those things, Iago, because it is not in our nature to pursue them. We do not really want them. We want to want them. We know, you and I, we know that if we really wanted those things, they would be ours. Somehow. We would get them. We know that we are men of such integrity and strength and drive, if we wanted something enough, we would find a way to get it. This I know about myself, and I sense it about you too, as I have sensed it about no other Venetian I have met. If only I wanted feather beds, they would be mine. And life would be so easy. But I do not want them, I cannot want them, I cannot”—here he made a contracting gesture—“I cannot make my soul small enough to be content with them. The soldier who pines for a feather bed, he will just be scornful and resentful. But the soldier who cannot pine for the feather bed, he will be jealous of the ability to pine.”

  I sat up, startled. “You’re right,” I said. I had never thought that about myself until he had said it, but the moment that he said it, I realized I’d known it all my life.

  “Of course I am right.” He grinned. “I told you, the same ore, you and I.”

  I shook my head, hardly comprehending that. “Until this battle, my life has been very sheltered compared to yours.”

  “I am not talking about experience, I am talking about the ore,” Othello said, shaking a clenched hand to emphasize the last word. “The very elemental essence of your soul. Now we will go back to Venice, and of everybody in this army, you and I, the two of us alone, will never be at peace.”

  I dearly hoped that wasn’t true. “I intend to be at peace as soon as I am in Emilia’s arms again,” I told him.

  He made an impatient gesture. “I do not mean that.”

  “I am not bloodthirsty, General. I may not crave the feather bed, but neither do I crave another battlefield.”

  “But if you had to pick between the two, Iago—which would it be? If you say the feather bed I know you are lying.”

  “That does not mean I crave a war,” I argued.

  “Then what do you crave?” he challenged.

  “I crave my wife,” I said, feeling my cheeks grow hot. “And not just the way you think I mean.”

  Othello gave me a thoughtful smile. “In that case,” he decided, “I am jealous of you. And, Iago, let me assure you, I am not a jealous man.”

  Chapter 17

  “THE WHOLE OF Christendom hates you,” explained the papal legate phlegmatically, to the bilious Venetian Great Council. The acoustics of the enormous, crowded room made him sound loud but bored. “No nation on earth has any reason to see you prosper, and many are the nations that would celebrate your ruin. Pope Pius himself says this. You have for centuries run roughshod over the entire Mediterranean and never taken any interest other than mercantile in any combined Christian endeavor.”

  “That is nonsense,” huffed Senator Brabantio, his aquiline nose raised so that I, standing on the floor near his dais, could nearly look up his nostrils.

  Othello, Zuane da Porto, and I were attending this extremely tense parley between the entire Patriciate of Venice and representatives of all the states and cities who had not shown up as promised, at the would-be Battle of Southern Rhodes. Although Othello was the primary witness, the huge hall was so overstuffed with patricians that once he finished his official report, he had been herded with da Porto and myself literally into a corner. This at least placed us near a door, and it opened outward into a stairwell, from which some air filtered in.

  “We provided the entire fleet for the Crusade of 1202,” Brabantio was expounding. “We have outfitted and supplied untold pilgrims on their way to protect the Holy Land. We have opened trade routes and secured treaties when nobody else in Europe was able to—”

  “—and thus created a virtual monopoly,” the legate from Rome declared, “of nearly everything. Whatever in the known world travels east to west or west to east, nearly all of it must go through Venetian middlemen.”

  “And so you betrayed us?” Othello demanded, more bemused than angry. I could not believe his calm. In his place, I would have been shrieking with righteous anger.

  “We changed our minds,” the legate said delicately, to which the entire chamber of 2,500 patricians broke out into furious and ill-mannered comments. If this man did not represent the Lord’s Anointed, I suspected someone would have hurled a dagger at him. But interdiction was not in the interest of the Serene Republic, and so order, although challenged and stretched, was not quite broken.

  Othello took one step forward out of our crowded corner perch, in his unusual white dress, the banner of his rank across his body, arms crossed, legs wide, staring furiously at the legate. “This was an action of revolting dishonor, sir, and you may tell His Holiness so. Because we can no longer trust you, you who are our own allies, we must now put our forces back along the Terraferma border in greater numbers than have been there in years, and this means fewer forces left to guard da Màr, and that is bad for all of Christendom, not just Venice. Has Venice not always behaved honorably in military matters? Did Venice not provide ships for His Holiness in ’37 although the battle was not ours? Suleiman offered a pact with Venice against the rest of Europe, and Venice turned it down, on principle, because we were honor bound to protect our fellow Christians no matter how bad they were at defending themselves. We created the Holy League as a favor to you, and look how you have used it against us! Tell me, did the emperor’s army succeed in taking Rhodes City?”

  The legate looked taken aback. “It did not,” he acknowledged, almost sheepish.

 
“Then Rhodes is still with the Turk,” the general scolded, his voice rising. “And mark my word but Cyprus will soon be too, when the Turks realize that Venice will have taken men away from Cyprus, to put them on our western borders, to guard those borders against the nations that ought to be our Christian allies!” He was shouting now, and his bass voice shook the inset paintings that decorated the ceiling. Quite literally, the angels looking down above us trembled at his voice. “If we fall, you will suffer too! Are you all so short-sighted that you do not realize that? Do you not understand that Venice in her grandeur safeguards all of Christendom?” His arms were flailing and his face was that of a man possessed; this was not a side of him I had ever seen before. “Tell your Roman pope and tell your French king and tell your emperor too—if Venice falls, they all fall with us!” He was gesticulating so wildly he seemed not to have control of himself.

  And then I realized he did not, in fact, have control of himself.

  I had seen this before; it had sometimes happened to my uncle, and my priestly brother when he was a boy. I knew what was coming, and I was determined to keep it from happening in the Council chamber.

  “Distract them,” I muttered to Lieutenant da Porto. A distraction was hardly needed at this point, for the assembly of visitors was on their feet and screaming back at Othello as loudly as he was screaming at them.

  “Gentlemen!” da Porto began, stepping forward with his long stride; he was echoed by the doge and half the Council, and I took the opportunity to grab Othello by the arm and drag him back, stumbling, out the door behind us. Fortunately it opened outward and I kicked it closed behind; a sound that, no matter how it may have echoed, was lost in the din of voices within.