“Of course I will,” I said evenly. Emilia made a joyful noise from the corner.
Othello took Desdemona’s hands. “I have one hour of freedom to spend with you, chuck.” He smiled suggestively. “Let’s use it well.” Allowing himself an almost gleeful bass rumble of a laugh, he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder, her long pale hair cascading nearly to his ankles. She laughed, a sound I’d never heard before. She had a lovely laugh, almost as lovely as Emilia’s.
But hearing Emilia’s laughter near the door did not endear her to me at that moment. “Iago!” she gushed, “isn’t this remarkable! And best of all is that I will come with you to Cyprus!”
I did like that, and I managed a smile to show her so. “It’s very late, Emilia. Take a gondola home, and I’ll be there as soon as I can. I have one bit of unfinished business here.”
She beamed at me and put her hand over her heart like a soldier. “Yes, sir, Lieutenant Iago.” She grinned.
My stomach sank into my legs. She did not know yet. I would have to tell her. Later. That would happen later. Right now I had a mission of compassion.
“Good night, love,” I said, returning the salute halfheartedly. “Don’t wait up for me this time. But I’ll be along as soon as possible.”
When she was gone, I turned to face the shadows.
“Well,” I said, “that did not go as planned. I apologize, Roderigo.”
Roderigo stepped out of the shadows. I’d rarely seen that handsome face look so despondent. “Iago.” He sighed.
He was going to want succoring, and I did not have the energy for it. “What is it, my friend?” I said, forcing a sympathetic smile.
“Iago, what should I do?”
I looked at the poor man. I did not regret trying to undo Othello’s marriage, but I did regret, a little, that I’d brought Roderigo into my scheme. The mooning fool would have heard the news eventually, but he would have heard about it far from me. “Go home, Roderigo,” I said, as kindly as I could. “Go home and get some sleep.”
He responded with an insulted expression, and then suddenly, most unexpectedly, he drew himself up tall and erect, almost cocky. “I,” he announced, suddenly a tragic hero, “am going to drown myself.”
With an unexpected intensity of purpose, he marched out the door and started down the stairs.
I followed after him, barely suppressing a snort of laughter in the dark. “What? If you do that, Roderigo, I will remember you without an ounce of affection, as the silliest man who ever lived.”
Without looking back at me, he challenged me, his voice resonant and echoing in the stone stairwell: “Do you think it’s silly to stay alive when life hurts so much and I can oppose the hurt by ending it?”
“Oh, please, stop your poetic nonsense,” I scolded.
At the bottom of the stairs, a boy opened the outer door for us, and Roderigo exited into the Piazzetta. I followed on his heels.
Roderigo began sprinting.
Toward the lagoon.
“Roderigo!” I hollered and broke into a run, overtaking him in three quick strides beneath the column of the winged lion. I grabbed his wrist and jerked him to a standstill. He glared at me, his face red and tear streaked. “Good God, don’t drown yourself! In all our shared twenty-eight years upon this world, I have never heard of one sensible man dying for love. Men die, and worms eat them, but not for love, Roderigo, never really for love.”
“Then what do I do?” he demanded furiously, pulling his wrist free. “I know it’s a weakness to be so obsessively fond of someone, but I haven’t the virtue or the character to rise above it.”
“Must we delve into moral analysis at three in the morning?” I asked. He gave me a look of superior disgust and began heading again—at a brisk walk this time—toward the dark water.
I walked alongside him. His legs were longer than mine and I had to take five strides for every four of his. “Listen to me. You can recover from her, it’s just a matter of willpower, Roderigo. Set your will to achieve something, stick with it, and you will achieve it.” He huffed dismissively and sped up. “There’s nothing fated or mysterious about it,” I insisted. “Life works like that, all the time, every day. Your career is splendid proof that you can do that.”
He kept walking.
I was tempted to just turn away. I hadn’t the energy to console myself tonight, let alone another. But his sudden firmness of purpose unnerved me, and I would never forgive myself if he did himself harm. There were no gondoliers here—there was a night watch, but they would do nothing until someone was actually drowning. If then. So I continued jabbering: “We’d all of us spend all our time eating and drinking and chasing women if we hadn’t the will to resist those impulses. If you can will yourself not to spend the whole day in debauchery, surely you can will yourself to forget about one pretty little virgin.”
“There’s more to it than that,” Roderigo lamented at the waterside. “You don’t understand the depths of my passion.”
He pushed me away as he crouched, preparing to leap into the greasy water; I lost my balance and grabbed his arm, pulling him back onto me as I fell. We collapsed in a scuffling heap on the paving stones.
“Roderigo, what are you doing?” I snarled as he scrambled to his feet. “Be a man, for the love of God! Drown yourself? Over a girl? Don’t be ridiculous!”
He was red-faced. To distract him from turning back to the water, I held up my arm; he took it and helped me to my feet, abashed.
For the first time in our lives, I admired him. He was as upset as I was, for different reasons and in different ways, but by the brightest heaven, he had the courage of his convictions! He had become a man of action: he really would have killed himself. I loved him for that simple, if misguided, courage. In his timorous way, he had more integrity than General Othello; Othello would never have drowned himself if he’d been robbed of Desdemona. Suddenly between the two of them—the two-faced warrior or the wealthy sap—the wealthy sap seemed the more honorable companion.
And the perfect means for undermining Othello’s dishonorable intentions.
I took Roderigo’s hand. “Listen to me. I am your oldest friend, yes?” He nodded. “And no tie binds closer than the ties of childhood friendship, yes?” He nodded but gave me a questioning look. “Then trust me, Roderigo. Perhaps I can get you Desdemona after all.” The questioning look shifted to something between desperation and disbelief. “She won’t stay with him. He won’t stay with her. They hardly know each other. They are each fascinated with the other because they are so different. But familiarity breeds contempt, and before long he will cease to treat her as if she were a princess, and she’ll regret her choice. The trick is to make sure that you, Roderigo, are right there under her nose when she renounces him, and that you appear to be the perfect suitor to replace him.”
I could almost hear gears working in his head as he contemplated this. “How do I do that?” he asked.
“Come with the army to Cyprus.”
“What?”
“Disguise yourself as a soldier—I can easily get you on the rolls of the enlisted men.”
Roderigo thought. Then: “How can I impress her if she thinks I am a common soldier?”
I knew Roderigo so well; I was merely telling him to do something he would have done on his own, if only he’d had the imagination to think of it. “Is winning Desdemona truly the most important thing in your life?” I asked.
He met my eye, put his hand over his heart, and nodded. He was so earnestly sincere, how could I not exert him to see it through?
“Then sell everything you have—your business, your farms on Terraferma, your summer homes, all of it—put money and jewels in your purse and bring it all to Cyprus. Woo her with it there. Let her know you’re really a brilliant, wealthy gentleman in disguise.”
He blinked. “How? As a soldier I’ll never have access to her.”
I smiled. “But I will,” I said. “She has a proven weakness for intrigue
. If I see to it that she receives mysterious packages of jewels and love letters from you, I’ll wager she’ll fall for you. That is how Othello won her over—and he did not even use jewels. Imagine what some fine pearls and rubies will accomplish. I know this much for a fact: she loves intrigue.”
The color rose in his cheeks; I could see it in the lamplight. His breathing grew quick and shallow as his imagination sketched out for him how this could really happen. Suddenly I understood Emilia’s fascination with the secret romance—there is something powerfully seductive in the prospect of helping to make a friend’s fantasy come true.
“Do you really think that this could happen?” he whispered, eyes beaming.
“Attempt it and find out. That is certainly better than drowning yourself, no?” I said.
“And if I do all this, Iago—if I sell everything and come to Cyprus with the army—I can count on you to help me?”
“Roderigo. Have I ever in our lives disappointed you or let you down? I stood up for you against that bully Tasso, I protected you whenever we got into trouble as children. I will look out for you now.”
“But this is much bigger than any of that. You would be in collusion with me against Othello’s interests—you’re his ensign and his confidant—”
“But not his lieutenant, as I should be,” I amended. “Didn’t you hear me ranting against him before? I bear a grudge, Roderigo. I want to see him get his just deserts. If it happens by your cuckolding him, frankly I’d enjoy that almost as much as you would. If we work together, we can accomplish it. Are you with me?”
He nodded, mouth slightly slack.
“Good man. I must get home to Emilia. We’ll talk more tomorrow. Come to the Arsenal. No, my inn, the southern end of the terrace before the gate. Good night.”
“I’ll be there,” Roderigo said, with an awkward attempt at a salute.
“Excellent. Good night.” Suddenly exhausted by the events of this past day and night, I patted him on the arm and began to cross the Piazzetta back toward the Doge’s Palace. I stopped myself and looked back at him. “And Roderigo?”
“Yes?”
“No more talk of drowning, do you hear?”
He grinned. “I swear it,” he said. “I am a changed man.” He turned his back on the murky waters and ran toward the grand Piazza of San Marco. I watched him disappear into the darkness, hugely relieved he would not hurt himself.
My conscience was uneasy, though. Even if Desdemona forsook Othello, she would never take up with Roderigo. I knew that. But it gave him such joy to believe it, and the romance of secretly wooing her gave him more pleasure than his estates or money ever had. He did not need the expensive trinkets he was about to entrust to me. And Desdemona would not want them. I would be doing him a service, in fact affording him great pleasure, by taking them from him. Better his wealth rest in my brotherly custody than wasted recklessly.
Chapter 35
OTHELLO AND CASSIO DEPARTED, on separate galleasses, within hours of the Council meeting. The ladies and I were to set sail two days later in one of five light galleys that convoyed east through the Mediterranean. Altogether there would be five hundred Venetian infantry en route to Cyprus.
In the hurricane of preparation and packing before we rowed out of the lagoon, I told Emilia I had not been made lieutenant. Her response was more confusion than disappointment: it was so enormously, obviously unfair, yet she was incapable of believing the worst of Othello, or even Cassio. She thought it must be a misunderstanding, which could be cleared up once we reached our destination. When I tried to impress upon her that no, I had been cheated, I had been wronged, by somebody I’d loved and trusted, she dismissed my claim impatiently and turned her attentions to helping Brabantio’s wayward daughter pack her trunk. This did not improve my attitude.
ONE COULD EASILY FILL a book with complaints about the exquisite and particular miseries of sea travel. I was accustomed to it now. Even Emilia knew what hardships to expect. But because I was responsible for Desdemona, and knew her to be ignorant of hardship, I was suddenly acutely aware of everything disagreeable about the journey. There is plenty to offend each of the senses:
Nothing but water, in constant motion; no hint of solid land or any other stable object for days or weeks. The light off the water, when above, glaring bright; below, too dark; swinging lamplight causes strange shadows to disfigure otherwise familiar faces.
The creaking of the lines, the wind buffeting the sails, the endless throbbing of the drum to give the rowers their time, until it becomes a constant thrum inside one’s head.
The odor of unwashed men, permeating everything; the acrid cleansing smell of vinegar that smarts the eyes; the mysterious smell of tar.
The dried biscuits and dried fish that make up almost the entire diet; the bitterness of herbal laxatives, which everyone has need of.
Everything sticky to the touch, from salt air; clothes and hair and face and arms, all. The world in constant movement, ever rocking, never resting; almost settling into a rhythm, but never one that can be relied upon for constancy.
Desdemona was wide-eyed but silent the first few days, which I took as signs of shock. Emilia never left her side, even to sleep. Emilia shared her cabin on the afterdeck—while I, a mere ensign, shared my small cabin below decks with five other petty officers.
EVERY DAY OF our voyage east I mused on all the ways there were to extract satisfaction from the men who’d wronged me. I did not dwell overmuch on Roderigo’s hopes, or on his having altered his life at my suggestion, so that he was now crowded in, like almonds in a sack, to one of the infantry galleys. He was in better stakes than if he’d drowned himself.
There was one shortcoming in my plan to use Roderigo against Othello—besides the fact that it would never work. I did not expect it to work, I did not even need it to work. The fantasy of it—Othello, betrayed by the woman for whom he’d betrayed his own better nature—scratched an itch in me that needed scratching. That was enough. I had encouraged Roderigo to pursue Desdemona, not because I believed he would end up with her, but for the charity of giving him a distraction from his despondency. And also, yes, to indulge my righteously vengeful imagination.
But my righteously vengeful imagination was not fully indulged, because Michele Cassio went unpunished in this scheme. My rage at Othello was greater, of course—only a great love can turn to a great hate—but Cassio disgusted me, and he had my place. If I was going to fantasize and seethe, I wanted my fantasies to skewer the Florentine as well as the Moor. So I required a better fantasy.
Cassio was on another ship (in a private cabin, of course, because he was lieutenant), so at least I did not have to see him. He and Othello both took on hideous magnificence in my imagination. Their unrepentant selfishness and duplicity, their disrespect and disregard, Othello’s lack of gratitude and Cassio’s sycophancy—I gnawed these bones as daily diet. Anger was my meat and I supped upon myself. I so enjoyed my wrath that I did not want to ever reach Cyprus; on Cyprus, the dreary daily grind of reality would require me to face the actual men I had (I knew) mythologized to suit my appetite. I preferred to engorge my bitterness on mental obsessions. I was not proud of that, but before you judge me, please do not pretend you have never done such a thing yourself.
OUR THIRD DAY OUT, I went on deck for some air, standing amidships, where the rocking was the least and the drumming not entirely deafening. There was a brief lull as one set of oarsmen relieved another. One of the many shirtless, sweaty men saluted as he walked past me toward the hatchway ladder. “Ensign Iago, sir, an honor to have you on our vessel!” He grinned, looking at once sly and stupid.
I returned the salute on instinct but had no idea what to say in response. “Sailor,” I said, to acknowledge him, doubting this was correct, since he was not, in fact, a sailor, but an oarsman.
I could tell from his expression that I had erred, and that he was delighted by the feeling of superiority this gave him. “Only an oar, sir, only an oar,”
he said. “But we are honored to have General Othello’s right arm on board.”
“And how do you know that I am his right arm?” I asked.
He grinned and winked. “All the men know how close you are, sir,” he said, with another salute—but this one had audacity in it, as if he knew he could get away with impudence as long as he saluted. “You’re so close you occasionally let him borrow your wife, do you not, sir?”
The expression on my face would have stopped an ox. It would have silenced any gentleman of Venice and probably any army man who knew me. But this fellow, whose life was already so miserable he hardly had a thing to lose, was delighted he had gotten a reaction and pressed on: “Do not worry yourself, sir, none of us would dream of asking to borrow her in like manner, she’s safe as glass with all of us. We understand it’s a special arrangement between the general and his officer, sir. We think it’s very big of you, sir.” He grinned again and by then he had passed by me, an equally stupid, grinning oarsman before him and another behind him.
I was so horrified I could not even challenge the fellow, or any of his stupidly grinning cohorts. I just turned away.
I had to find Emilia. I would not tell her of this, but I needed to feel her in my arms. She was in the cramped passageway just outside Desdemona’s primitive cabin. Her scent, the color of her hair, the remarkable shape of her body: these qualities relaxed my soul. She smiled at me and I spent a minute or more running my hands over her lovely curves and covering her face and neck with kisses. She smiled at me and kissed me back. But then, as always: “I must go in to Desdemona, darling; it is not fit for the general’s wife to be left alone on a ship full of lecherous sailors.”
“It’s not only the sailors who are lecherous,” I growled into her ear, my hands squeezing her buttocks and pulling her against me. She made a purring noise, nibbled my earlobe—but then pulled away.
“I must go,” she said softly, and opening the narrow door, she pushed herself through it and out of my view.
FOR SOME FEW HOURS every day, I managed to be sociable with the ladies. Indeed, I came to know Desdemona well enough to understand why Othello might fall in love with her. She lacked Emilia’s wit and humor; when we, the married couple, indulged ourselves in teasing banter, she simply smiled benignly and watched. But in more serious conversation, she was intelligent and thoughtful. And she was calm. Her current circumstances were extraordinary, yet she took them in stride. Her only excitement was the anticipation of being reunited with the man she loved. All the rest of it—being cast out by her father, knowing every tongue in Venice was wagging about her, enduring the hardships of life on a galley en route to a battle far from home against heathens—did not spook her one bit. I was impressed.
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