Othello’s massive body shuddered and collapsed, nearly on top of me; he was almost too large a figure for the landing, and I think it was pure luck we were not both propelled down the stairway by his seizure.
I had nothing to put into his mouth to keep him from swallowing his tongue, nor could I do anything but hold his arms, so much stronger than mine, and let them flail wildly, as if he lay on ice. He broke into a sweat, so that his white cotton tunic appeared a shade of fawn, pressed against his shivering dark body.
FOR A MOMENT there was silence in the darkened stairwell. A slice of lamplight cut between the door panels back into the Council chamber. I prayed Othello had not harmed himself. This was mostly genuine concern for my friend and leader. But a selfish voice within me also wailed that I could lose my chances of promotion; Othello was the man who made me, and I was more dependent on his power than I admitted to myself.
He regained his senses almost instantly. “Where am I?” he whispered, his eyes darting around nervously in the dark, turning anxiously toward the slit of wan light.
“You’re with me, General,” I whispered. “Iago, your ensign. Do you know me?”
“Iago, yes, where are we?” Impatiently he pulled his arms out of my grip, and shakily sat up.
“We are in the stairway outside the Council chamber,” I said quietly. “Nobody in there realizes what just happened to you.”
He gave me a long, exhausted look, as memory returned. “Oh heaven,” he said quietly, and then swore—I assume—in his native tongue. “Iago, you have just saved me.”
“No, General,” I said. I stood and offered him a hand to raise himself.
“Not the weakness itself, but to let it show itself at such a moment, in such a heat,” Othello said. He sounded shocked. “Yes, that would make the Council pause. This has not happened to me in so many years.” He gave me a worried look, the first time I had ever seen such an expression on his face. “But never under strain in battle, Iago, do you understand me? This has never happened to me on the field, no matter how—”
“I believe you, General,” I said solemnly. “Not one ounce of my faith in you is shaken.” I lowered my gaze. “I have family given to these seizures, and I know that strong emotion brings it on.” I looked back up at him. “And I have seen for myself that even in the worst of battle, you are calm and confident. You remain my general. You remain their general. Go back within and show them that.”
He stood slowly, leaning on me for balance. With a sigh, he adjusted his sweat-soaked clothes.
“Am I presentable?” he asked. I nodded. “Iago.” He sighed again, and clapped both hands around my shoulders. “You are the truest friend I have.” He suddenly pulled me to him and embraced me in so strong a hug I wondered if my ribs would crack. I embraced him back and realized that I was shaking more than he was.
He released me and gestured to the door back into the Council hall. “And now we go,” he said, with his perennial grin, “so I may finish insulting the rest of Europe.”
“They deserve the insult,” I said. “They deserve far worse than that.”
Chapter 18
OTHELLO’S WORDS WERE applauded by the Venetian Council and dismissed as heathen provocation by the representatives of all the other states. Venice was still hated, and was still seen as the bully of the seas, rather than as the best final protector Christendom had from Ottoman infidels.
And therefore, indeed, it was required that we take men from Cyprus and other outposts of da Màr to fortify our Terraferma borders. Just when we should have been refortifying Famagusta in the east, we were instead putting garrisons along our western bounds. Othello oversaw all of this and then stationed himself at the most dangerous part of the border, Rovigo, where neighborly transgression was likeliest.
This was due to the bombastic disposition of the Este family in Ferrara, who had once had Rovigo in their grasp and, allied status notwithstanding, thought they might like it back. Technically, Ferrara was a papal state and, therefore, the Estes should have considered themselves part of the Holy League. But their private army had a way of forgetting such political niceties and would occasionally cross over the border to see if Venice was still in residence. I found it appalling and infuriating that allies would behave this way—neither the pontiff nor the Holy Roman Emperor (the ruling Este’s father-in-law) ever tried to curtail them. I was all for razing Ferrara to stop their dishonorable behavior; Othello, grinning at my “righteous pugilistic enthusiasm,” would not do so.
And so Ferrara, with its imported Flemish painters and excellently constructed lutes, remained smug and intact.
And so I found myself again in Terraferma, in another garrison posting. This time, happily, Emilia came with me. The army garrisoned in a drafty tenth-century castle, and made the best of it.
WE SPENT TWO long years here. They were more eventful than my years on Corfu, but nothing near as awful as what had happened at Rhodes. There were border raids from Ferrara, but no fatalities on our side, and only enough casualties on their side to make them behave themselves . . . until some new commander took control, on their side, who wanted to impress the Este family . . . and then we had to show them all over again that our border was not to be tested. Their raids were infantile and disorganized—combatting them resembled smacking mosquitoes more than fending off warriors—but they were capable of murder, rape, and pillage, and approximately once a month we had to remind them not to do those things.
“I do not like fighting allies,” Othello would say at the end of each of these engagements.
“Venice has no allies anymore,” I would reply. “And I think our government prefers it that way. Fewer compromises that way.”
“But more of these ridiculous squabbles,” Othello would reply.
The duties here were similar to my earlier garrison postings, but the civilized aspect of life was strangely . . . civilized. The fortress was large enough that officers’ wives would usually dress for dinner, as if we lived in civilization, as if we were not soldiers, as if at any moment we would not be called away to shatter another human being’s spinal column. Othello was even petitioned to install chandeliers imported from Murano, to create a semblance of Society.
We protected our women, some thirty-five in all, as diligently as we protected our borders. We protected them from their own anxious imaginations, with Murano glass chandeliers and well-dressed dinners and sometimes dances, and in daylight with courtyard demonstrations of swordplay and archery (not artillery, though—the powder was too dear).
Emilia charmingly transformed the officers’ wives into a little mock Venetian clan, much to the delight (as on Corfu) of the elder patrician commissioners. So once again I had to smile with tight politeness watching Emilia dance with other gentlemen. I was getting better about it. Compared to Corfu. Really I was. Even the evening, two years on, when I found myself in the mess hall, the trestles removed or pushed against the walls, the room well lit by the Murano chandeliers, and half a dozen amateur musicians playing dance tunes . . . and there I was, standing beside one Venetian commissioner, who was smiling at the dancers with nostalgia.
“They make a handsome couple,” he said to me approvingly, as if we were longtime confidants. “Truly, a happy, handsome couple.”
I followed his gaze—to see that he was referring to Emilia and Othello. Emilia was teaching the general a dance step he was slow to learn, and the two of them were laughing together as comfortably as either of them had ever laughed with me.
“They are not a handsome couple,” I said to the gentleman.
He looked confused.
“That lady is my wife,” I announced.
I saw the color rise in his cheeks. “You must excuse me, Ensign, I assumed they . . .” I stared at him. He reddened more and said, “That was presumptuous of me. There is no reason for me to assume that.”
The moment was made either better or worse (both, in a sense) by another older Venetian gentleman, who had been eavesdroppi
ng; this fellow broke into the tense silence with a lunging laugh and the announcement: “Did you think the lady was married to the Moorish general? I thought she was married to Lieutenant da Porto! And Niccolo had a wager with me that she was actually the mistress of the payroll commissioner! How droll!”
“How very droll indeed,” I said, forcing myself to smile.
A week later, a pact was signed between Ferrara and the Serene Republic. We all hastened back to Venice, where I intended never to watch Emilia dance in another man’s arms again.
OTHELLO WAS AGAIN quartered in the Sagittarius building. It was just inside the main gate of the Arsenal; Emilia and I were in the Dolphin, across the campo.
Othello spent hours and days debating with the Senate and the Great Council about how to reassign the bulk of infantry and resources across the great Venetian empire. He was concerned about what he was hearing of the defenses on Cyprus, and particularly its port of Famagusta, the easternmost point of the Stato da Màr. Every day, he came to the Dolphin in the late afternoon. Here, sitting outside on the campo with a bottle of wine to share with me, he would regurgitate that day’s discussions, because he found relief in my sardonic commentary about circumstances he could not control. The Senate had the right to overrule the commander in chief, and often did.
“Today they interviewed an engineer,” he began one day, perhaps a fortnight after our return. The days were shortening, the heat abating, and that year autumn in Venice seemed designed by loving angels. “This man wants to construct glacis around the Citadel of Famagusta, rigged with explosives that can be remotely detonated. That way, when the Turks come running up to the fortress—”
“—assuming the Turks agree to run up to the fortress,” I said. “Assuming they do not, for instance, do something inconvenient like use artillery—”
“Exactly,” Othello said, with a broad sweeping gesture toward me. “I should bring you to these meetings, Iago; da Porto is with me as lieutenant, but that man, I swear, he never says a word. I speak, but I am just one voice. And I do not belittle them as you would. And you would,” he added with emphasis, seeing me about to object. “I know you, brother—you are not two-faced, nor are you a coward. There is nothing you say about someone that you would not say to their face. You would shame them into listening to reason. They are so excited about this remote-explosion idea, it sounds so modern and technical to them, they are completely unable to consider all the reasons why it will not work.”
“By what means do the munitions explode?” I asked.
Othello almost choked on his wine, with what turned out to be a laugh of disgust. “Ropes!” he said. “We tie ropes to explosive devises, that are buried in the dirt of the glacis, just outside the citadel walls—the ropes and the devices both are buried, and the other end of the rope goes through a hole that will be drilled through the twenty-foot-thick walls, so somebody inside the citadel can pull the rope at just the right moment that the Turks are walking over the explosive device—”
“A moment which they themselves cannot see, because they are on the other side of the wall!” I almost hit my forehead on the table from laughing so hard.
“Stop laughing, man!” Othello cackled. “I had to listen to this with a sober face! At least make an attempt to do the same now!” He raised his glass. “To whimsical inventors.”
“May their ideas never make it to Cyprus,” I concluded, joining him in the toast.
“It is frustrating that the senators agree to meet with these fools. I wish that I could always be here to keep an eye on them, even as I am at a posting. There needs to be two of me.”
“I’ll tell you how to do that,” I said, reaching for the bottle to pour us both another glass. “Buy, or perhaps rent, a home here in the city—a large house, a palazzo if you can afford it. Have some designated agent, someone not in the army but whom you trust, live in the house when we are stationed elsewhere, and that person’s work will be to argue on your behalf before the government in your absence. Then when you are in town, you reside in the house and invite lots of patricians to dinner so you can woo them to your ideas.” I grinned at him over my wineglass. “You could even throw a masked ball.”
“You are a devil,” he returned cheerfully. “But I’m glad you are my devil.”
“I am only trying to educate you on the ways of my people.”
“I am always happy to be educated,” Othello said. He gestured expansively in my direction again. “Please you, another lesson.”
“What does the general feel he lacks an understanding of?”
“Well,” he said, exaggerating a thoughtful look. “It seems to take three thousand times as long to say something on the Senate floor as in any other setting. There seem to be formulas for speech that do not accomplish anything but take up time. It is like a coded language.”
“You are exactly right, General,” I said. “It is a kind of code. If you know all the right phrases, it means you are a member of their special circle.” He laughed; I shook my head at him. “I am serious, Othello. That shadowy exclusiveness is part of what I despise about this society.”
He nodded. “But every culture has this. However in Venice it seems so . . . precious, sometimes.” He sat up straighter. “Come, Iago, teach me some of these phrases so that I may be one of them.”
I made a skeptical face. “I think it is a waste of time—”
“Just one phrase,” Othello insisted, smiling. “A phrase I may actually need to use sometime.”
“If the general insists, so be it,” I said. “Let us say we are not in Venice, but posted someplace far from here, which I would very much like. The Senate sends you a message. How do you greet the messenger?”
He shrugged. “This happened while we were on Terraferma. You saw what I did: I said, You are welcome, kindly give me your message.”
“And then what?” I prompted.
“I held out my hand, and whoever it was, a courier, a patrician, whoever it was, they would hand it to me.”
“And then?”
He gave me a bemused look. “And then I broke the seal and read the message. What else should I do when I am given a message?”
“I’ll tell you,” I said. I sat up and glanced around the table for a prop. There was nothing but the wine bottle and the glasses. I gestured to Othello’s favorite kerchief, tied around his neck. “May I borrow that?”
He untied it and handed it to me. I stood up and held it at arm’s length. “Say this is the message. The actual letter that the senators, or the doge, or whoever else, has sent you. Are you watching?”
Othello smiled and gestured me to continue.
I brought the kerchief to my lips, bowed, and kissed the kerchief gently. “I kiss the instrument of their pleasures,” I recited.
Othello threw his head back and roared a great bass laugh. “Come, Iago! You are inventing that!”
Grinning, I sat beside him and gave him back the kerchief. “I swear I’m not.”
“I kiss the instrument of their pleasures? Are you serious? The instrument of their pleasures? And I kiss it? Truly? That is the most lecherous formality I have ever heard. If I ever said that to them, they would be horrified.”
“They would be pleased,” I assured him.
“They would think me a barbarian!”
“They would think you a Venetian.”
He shook his head and chuckled. “This is the strangest culture I have ever fought for,” he said. “Thank Heaven for you, Iago, and also for Emilia. Otherwise this people would make no sense to me at all.”
THE NEXT DAY, at about the same time, I was in our rooms, about to head down to the outside table in anticipation of Othello’s company. Emilia was repairing a tear in one of my shirts and thought she would come outside with me where the light was better. We were startled by the sound of heavy boots, which approached our door and nearly kicked it in, before heavy hands began to pound upon it.
“Iago!” came Othello’s ringing bass voice. “
Iago, are you in there? I need your help immediately!”
I had the door open as soon as I heard his voice. “Come in, General,” I said. Emilia had leapt up and was already moving toward the wine jug to offer him a drink.
Othello stepped into our small apartment, and then pulled up short. He had never been inside the Dolphin. “You live in here?” he asked, in an appalled voice. Before I could answer, he was speaking again. “Iago, you must come with me tonight to dinner.”
“All right,” I said in an expectant tone, and then waited to hear what emergency was brewing.
“. . . and Emilia too, perhaps,” Othello added, considering her.
She and I exchanged mystified glances. “Certainly, General,” she said, with a curtsy. “May I ask where precisely we shall be dining, so I will know how to dress?”
“These senators, they peck at my soul!” Othello said with sudden vehemence. “Do you know, every single night since we have been back from Terraferma, every single evening, I am summoned to be a guest in some senator’s home. How many senators can one city have?”
“That . . . is considered quite an honor, General,” I said tentatively, adding quietly, “although to me it sounds like a Venetian form of hell.”
“I am a curiosity to all of them!” he groused. “Do you think that in the history of this entire Republic, the senators usually vie to have the general of the army—who has almost always been some uncouth barbarian like myself—do you think the other uncouth barbarians were asked to supper with this frequency? No,” he answered in a clipped tone. “I am not Othello to them, I am not even the general of their forces, I am rather something to show off to their neighbors and their servants and themselves. I help them feel pleased with themselves, they are so cosmopolitan and perhaps even brave that they chat with somebody who hardly looks human to them. I am so sick of it, Iago, I am so damned tired of it all. I cannot wait until we quit this damned city again.”
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