Cassio immediately burst into laughter. There was a swagger in the laugh, which suited my purposes and also made me more disgusted with him.
“She thinks I’d marry her? I’m just a customer! I’m a Florentine gentleman, Iago, do you really think I’d marry a whore?”
“I’m just telling you what I heard,” I protested.
“You did not hear that.” He chuckled.
“I swear I did, or call me villain,” I said, smiling along with him.
“The little monkey made that up herself.” He grinned. “She thinks herself higher than she is, and more desirable too—I certainly never gave her any cause to think that I would marry her. That’s too much. But you know, everything she does is too much—”
His tone was dropping again, into a confidential one implying he was about to share a naughty yarn. I shuffled a few steps closer to where Othello was hiding, hoping he would hear. Cassio followed my movement without even realizing it, so I took a few more steps closer to the wall.
“If I’m out of her sight for more than an hour, she follows me,” Cassio began. “Everywhere. She’s even threatened to come up to the fortress, like the common women! A few days ago, I was down by the port, talking to some Venetians, and she appeared out of nowhere, just walked right up to me while I was in the middle of a conversation, and did this—”
Laughing lightly, he threw his arm around my neck and sagged his weight against my body. I stepped back in surprise. “Michele—” I said delicately.
“I’m not exaggerating.” He chuckled. “She threw all her weight on me, and started weeping and sighing and taking huge deep breaths, pushing her tits right against me.” He laughed again. “I could not believe the scene she made! But good heaven, if she’s telling people I want to marry her, I’d better cut the whole thing off. It’s getting out of hand.”
“Indeed it is,” I said, looking over his shoulder and hardly believing what I saw. “Here she comes now.”
Chapter 46
CASSIO SPUN AROUND to look into the passageway. It was the woman I’d seen in the house, but with more cosmetic embellishment on her face now, and dressed to reveal far more of her slight form. She very nearly had steam coming out of her nostrils, and she was marching through the underpass as if she were a soldier.
For Cassio, this was an inconvenience. For me, it spelled potential catastrophe: Once Othello saw her, and her behavior toward Cassio, he would probably realize this, not Desdemona, was the woman Cassio was speaking of. And then I’d be in trouble for trying to convince him otherwise.
So the attractive young woman walking toward us was my undoing. And I could not think what to do.
“Look at her,” Cassio muttered to me. “I, marry that?” He raised his voice as she exited the passageway and approached us. “What are you up to, shadowing me everywhere?”
This monkey might be a prostitute, but she had the backbone of a warrior. And she was furious. “The devil take you!” she shouted.
And then she did something I could not have expected, something that once again assured me the gods themselves were overseeing my enterprise:
From her bodice, she pulled out Desdemona’s handkerchief, with the little strawberries on it, and waved it furiously in Cassio’s face. “Where did this really come from? I am such a fool! That was a likely story about your finding it in your chamber and bringing it to me. This handkerchief comes from some finer mistress of yours, and you want me to copy it, so you can make a gift of it to someone else? That’s it, isn’t it! Well, I do not want it. There!” She smacked it so hard against his stomach that he nearly doubled over. “Give it to your hobbyhorse, I’ll none of it.”
The mocking Florentine had vanished; in his place was a simpering lover wanting to make his mistress happy. “Sweet Bianca,” he crooned, reaching down to grab the handkerchief where it had fallen. “Calm down, sweetheart. Calm down!” He straightened, took her face between his hands, and kissed her on each cheek, and then her lips.
Bianca pulled away from his kiss, still glaring. “That’s better. A little,” she said in a steely voice. She gave him an appraising look; she had yet to acknowledge my presence, although she seemed highly aware of me as spectator. “I suppose you’re welcome to come to supper tonight.” The steel softened, and she graced him with a coquettish look. “If not tonight, whenever you’re prepared to.” She snatched the handkerchief from his limp grasp and marched back through the passageway.
Emilia and I had our differences, certainly, but from what I could tell, ours was by far the happiest and healthiest coupling on all of Cyprus.
“You might want to go after her,” I said.
He sighed. “Yes, I better; she’ll start screaming about me in the streets otherwise.”
I nudged him in the arm. “Will you sup with her?”
He blushed slightly, and looked sheepish. “I intend to. She makes it worth my while if I stay after.”
“Go on then,” I counseled. I wanted him out of reach before Othello left his hiding place.
Cassio ran after her; I saw him catch up to her just as she exited the passage and the sunshine lit her brightly again.
That had turned out better than I ever could have devised. I knew the effect it would have on Othello. Men judge more by appearance than reality, for sight belongs to everyone, but understanding only to a very few. Machiavelli. Ironically, a Florentine.
I heard Othello step out of his hiding place.
“How shall I murder him, Iago?” he demanded.
I ignored that. Nobody was murdering anyone, any more than we really killed each other in fencing practice.
“He laughed at what he does—did you see that? And did you see the handkerchief?” I added, in genuine amazement.
“Was that mine?”
“Absolutely,” I said calmly. “And look what he did with it—he gave it to a whore!” I was about to go on about how clearly Desdemona was as wronged by Cassio as Othello was by both of them—therefore giving Cassio twice as much blame, and putting Desdemona in half as much trouble—but Othello interrupted me:
“I want to kill him slowly. I want to spend nine years doing it.” He growled. “A fine woman, my wife! Fair! Sweet! The very model of virtue!”
“Forget about that,” I said. “Just let that go.”
“I will let it go, and her too—I’ll let her go to rot and perish and be damned! She will not live the night! I tell you, Iago, my heart is turned to stone.” He smacked his palm against his chest. “I strike it and it hurts my hand.”
I was about to point out the irony of a stone-hearted man being eaten up with passion. I wanted to see if he had any sense of humor left. If he did, there might be hope for him. But as I opened my mouth, the stony-hearted man crumpled over on himself with a new emotion: grief.
“There is no sweeter creature in the world,” he said, his voice cracking.
“Stop this,” I begged. “If you love her that much, forgive her. Or at least, confront her first.”
“I won’t! I’ll hang her,” he announced. “I must not love a loathed enemy. Of course I’ll hang her—but the fact that I’ll hang her, and rightfully too, does not mean she isn’t a remarkable woman. She could charm the savageness out of a bear—”
But can she charm it out of you? I wondered.
“Oh, but the pity of it, Iago. Oh, Iago . . . the pity of it, Iago.”
This was getting tiresome. “If you love her despite it all, then let her be. If she is unfaithful—if she is—you’re the only one it touches.”
“I’ll chop her into pieces!” he shouted to the sky. He grabbed both my arms above the elbows, his face inflamed with passion. He was frightening. “Get me poison, Iago,” he said. “I’ll do it tonight. I’ll do it before we’re alone together in a room, I won’t let her near me, she is so charming she’ll unman me. It will be tonight, Iago.”
I stared at him a moment in amazement. I had never once wished Desdemona dead, but I had wished her out of my life, a
nd here he was, offering exactly that. By heaven, I’m talented, I thought. This ability of mine was some new weapon that no army had ever thought to nurture and exploit. I was the most valuable man the army had. I could make this man, unflappable in battle and besotted with affection, determined to kill his wife on mere suspicion, and I’d achieved it in less than a day. That was extraordinary. I could do anything. Anything. I could bend any living creature to my will. The world was my oyster: Othello was intent on killing Desdemona.
Which did not mean I wanted Desdemona to die. I did not. So I could not give him poison; he would use it.
“Do not do it with poison,” I said, thinking fast. He himself had said—and it was obvious to anyone who’d seen them—that her presence, her proximity, her touch, still had the power to undo his will. In my omnipotence, I would give her the power to save herself: “Strangle her in her bed,” I said.
He would touch her, and he would melt; she might not come out of it unbruised, but she would survive it. He could never touch, actually hold, that flesh he was so enamored of, and destroy it. I had not realized it until today, but he was a man ruled entirely by his passions—and sexual passion burns hottest of them all. The very thing that made him want to kill her would be the thing that saved her: how sensuous he found her.
“In her bed,” I insisted. “The very bed she has contaminated.”
Othello blinked. “Good,” he said approvingly. “I like the justice of it. Very good.”
An alarm sounded from the fortress walls, announcing a ship approaching the port below.
A loud cannon shot exploded from the water in response.
We looked at each other with the same horrifying thought: the Turks.
And to myself, I thought, Thank God. My experiment, but a day old, was wearying and maddening; the harsh reality of war would slam everything back into perspective, and we could leave all this madness behind us.
Othello and I turned and ran up to the Citadel gate together, instinctively reaching for our swords.
Chapter 47
INSIDE THE CITADEL, we rushed together up to the keep tower. We burst out the door onto the very part of the wall walk where Cassio had let himself get so drunk a week earlier.
Outside the harbor bobbed a single light galley, with the lion of San Marco flapping on its pennant.
It was not the Turks.
“An envoy from the doge, Captain,” said the watch, saluting Othello.
Othello almost sagged with relief.
“Thank you,” Othello said, returning the salute. “Iago, I need you.” He turned on his heel and headed back into the tower stairwell. I followed.
AN HOUR LATER I was in my bedroom, freshly shaved, in a new shirt and military dress. I stood before Emilia. Her eyes sparkled with tears. The lieutenant’s sash was draped across my chest, from left shoulder to right hip.
“You look handsome,” she said proudly. She held her hand out toward me and delicately stroked the sash. “It is a pity for Michele, but it should have been yours anyhow.”
“Yes,” I said. The sash sat well on me. How unfortunate so much madness had been required for this to come out right. I smiled at my wife and held my hands out in invitation. She moved toward me, pressed herself against me, and when I folded my arms tight about her, she embraced me too. Emilia’s embrace was the best feeling in the world. “I love you like life,” I whispered.
WE MET THE Venetian envoy in a formal audience above the sleeping quarters. The room was devoid of furniture but hung with tapestries made of the best silk I have ever seen outside of Venice. There were three to a wall, depicting glorified European images of the twelve months of the year. They were completely out of place here. February and August were both on rods and could be pushed open to lead into other chambers. I never learned where February led, but August opened up into the general’s dining room.
The party that greeted us was six in number: two officials with two attendants each. Their outfits looked almost painfully gaudy and impractical compared to the military dress of the Citadel and the simple peasant garb of the city population.
Whether by design or coincidence, one of the envoys was Desdemona’s uncle, Gratiano; not a senator but certainly a patrician, and one who could not have been pleased that his niece had run off with a foreigner. But he greeted Othello with all signs of good regard, almost more so than his own kinswoman. I could see from Desdemona’s face that she was expecting greater warmth from Uncle Gratiano than she received. Well honestly, I thought, you trick the man’s brother and run off into danger with a savage. What did you expect?
With Gratiano was a man named Lodovico, another patrician I remembered chiefly from gossip and parties.
Having greeted and kissed the cheeks of, saluted, or ignored all of us in the chamber, the party from Venice now turned to business. Lodovico held out a gloved hand, and an attendant opened a leather file, took out a sealed letter, and handed it to Lodovico, who then handed it to Othello. “The doge and senators of Venice greet you. This is the letter we were told to give you if you had defeated the Turks by our arrival.”
Othello took the letter and ceremoniously pressed it to his lips. “I kiss the instrument of their pleasure,” he said with exaggerated formality. His eyes flickered slyly in my direction, and the poignancy pained me: not so long ago, I had taught him to use that very phrase, and we had laughed like brothers. Now I was horrified to think myself kith to such a madman.
He broke the seal and unfolded the paper. We all watched him, spellbound. His eyes blinked, slowly, once. Then rapidly, several times. Holding the letter out with unbent arms, he pointedly turned away from the rest of us as he studied it. I willed myself to look away from him, and turned toward the visitors, intending to make conversation; Desdemona managed to do so first.
“What’s the news from home, cousin?” she asked. She looked even paler than she had this afternoon, and slightly shaken.
“Welcome to Cyprus, sir,” I said. “I’m very glad to see you.”
“Thank you,” Gratiano said, speaking to me rather than to her. She was crestfallen at being shunned. “How is Lieutenant Cassio?”
Desdemona and I, unexpectedly, exchanged uncomfortable glances.
“He lives, sir,” I said, as neutrally as I could.
Both Venetians gave me a curious look; I allowed Desdemona the chance to address her kinsman: “Cousin,” she said, taking a step toward Gratiano and laying one hand tentatively on his arm. He looked at it as if it were a small animal. She lowered her voice. “There’s been a breach between him and my husband. But you will surely fix it.”
“Are you sure of that?” we all heard Othello mutter, his back still to us.
“Excuse me?” Desdemona said tentatively
Othello immediately began to recite formal greetings from the letter.
“He’s just reading something,” Lodovico pointed out unnecessarily. “You were saying? A division between him and Cassio?”
She shook her head. “A terrible one. I wish I could fix it, poor Cassio is—”
Othello swore abruptly, his eyes still on the letter, his back still to us.
“Husband?” Desdemona said, notably more nervous. Othello ignored us all. “Is he angry?” she said quietly to me, sounding desperate.
“I think the letter has upset him,” Lodovico said, almost offhandedly. “The Senate is commanding him home, deputing Cassio to stay in his place.”
This was either the worst news or the best news for my plans; in the surprise of the moment, I could not work out which.
Desdemona breathed an enormous sigh of relief. “I’m glad to hear it,” she said in a confessional tone.
Something snapped in Othello. He turned abruptly on his heels, threw down the letter, and stared furiously at his wife. “Indeed?” he demanded, as if he were accusing her of something.
“My lord?” Desdemona said, taking a step back on reflex. She looked down, and I could see the fabric of her sleeve tremble.
She tried to smile but looked near tears. “My sweet Othello, you mistake—”
He smacked her.
It was very abrupt, and very harsh, without warning—his arm came up, and he backhanded her against her right cheek with all the strength he would apply to a boxing strike. “Devil,” he said under his breath, almost casually, and turned away.
Desdemona dropped, too stunned at first to make a sound; I knelt to help her up, out of instinct; Lodovico knelt beside her too.
I put an arm around her, and at my touch, she began weeping. “I did not deserve that,” she said.
No, she did not. I felt righteous indignation toward the brute that hit her, that he should be so easily moved to strike out.
Lodovico, seeing I had her weight, stood up sharply and turned to follow Othello, who had crossed the room. “Good sir,” he said, trying to keep himself civil. “Nobody in Venice would believe what I just saw.” Othello shrugged, insolently meeting Lodovico’s gaze. The patrician was astounded. “Apologize to her,” he insisted, “she’s crying.”
“Crocodile tears,” Othello replied contemptuously. Desdemona squeezed my arm to thank me, and then, not quite steady on her feet, took a few embarrassed steps toward her husband, holding her arms out hopefully. “Out of my sight,” he said viciously, and turned away.
She took a ragged breath, and then tearfully, almost in a whisper, responded, “I will not stay to offend you.” She turned to leave.
Lodovico looked at me in amazement, as if for help; I shook my head and glanced away. “General, I beg you, call her back,” he urged as Desdemona reached to part the curtain into the stairwell.
“Madam,” Othello said sharply, not looking at her.
Desdemona immediately turned around with a pleading, hopeful expression. “Yes, m’lord?”
He did not look at her; he looked rather at Lodovico, with an expectant expression. “Well?” Othello demanded after a moment. “What do you want with her?”
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