The Serpent of Venice

by Christopher Moore

  “His will is done now. Tomorrow I have to stand before the court and answer Shylock’s bond with a pound of my flesh.”

  “Then Shylock shall have to be removed as well.”

  “But you have no men, no forces, and neither have I. I cannot send Bassanio to do such dread deeds. It is not in his nature. He is already distraught at the deaths of his friends.”

  “Calm yourself, merchant. This is my business. I still have some of Rodrigo’s fortune cached away at Arsenal, and between his gold and my will, forces will come to our aid before morning.”

  “Oh, Nerissa, I am beside myself with worry.” Portia fussed at her dressing table while Nerissa arranged her shoes into mismatched pairs in the closet. “I sent Father’s lawyer, Balthassar, to Padua a week ago with a letter to our cousin, Bellario, who is a doctor of law, and I fear he will not return with the response before the morning. If he does not, I know not how we will aid Bassanio in saving his friend Antonio.”

  “How would we aid anyway? All the funds of the estate are out of your reach, lady. And even the funds by all the suitors have stopped coming with rumors that there could be no winner among the players.”

  “We shall help them by pleading the case, Nerissa. As a doctor and clerk of law.”

  “But, lady, only men may be doctors of law.”

  “That is so, and so shall we be men. We shall dress as men, with jeweled daggers at our waists to show our authority, and great empty codpieces, where the court thinks our brains and abilities reside. I will turn feminine mincing steps into a manly stride, and speak with a voice that breaks like one passing from boy to man. And I’ll wager, when we appear as men, I’ll be said to be the prettier of the two.” She giggled.

  “No doubt, sweet Portia, and your brash nature and unfounded self-confidence shall further convince all that you are the better man.”

  A servant appeared in the doorway then, and cleared his throat.

  “Lady, a visitor at the door for you. He asks that you meet him at the servants’ entrance.”

  “A gentleman?” said Portia. “Well, show him into the foyer and I will make an entrance.”

  “No, lady, not a gentleman, and the caller is for Miss Nerissa. He is a clown.”

  “A clown?”

  “Yes, mum. The visitor wears the motley of a fool. He would not give his name.”

  “I’ll be right down,” said Nerissa.

  She was gone for perhaps half an hour, in which time Portia noticed that she was having a particularly difficult time choosing shoes for dinner.

  When she returned, tears streaked Nerissa’s face. “Portia, oh lady, I’m so sorry. Your sister.”

  “What? What, Nerissa?”

  “Desdemona is dead.”

  As the gondola from Belmont glided up to the landing at Shylock’s house, I could see one of Tubal’s huge Jews, I know not which, eclipsing the doorway. Not alarming in itself, except I could see his heavy club dangling from a lanyard at his wrist, and we had approached at such an angle that I could see the other huge Jew poised at Shylock’s side door, ready to shoulder through it.

  “Not a word,” said I to the gondolier. “Throw my bundle on the landing after me.” I plopped a coin down by his feet, and ran the length of the boat, leapt, and landed on the cobbles, coming up from a roll with one of my daggers in hand just as Jessica was opening the door.

  I sent the dagger flying into the back of the thug’s knee, and when he bent over in pain, I sailed feetfirst over his back, into the house as Jessica stepped back in alarm. I had landed on my hip on the table, which I slid across, drawing another dagger as I landed on my feet.

  “Drool! Side door!” I called, just as the side door exploded inward and banged back on its hinges. I sent the dagger straight to the oaf’s thigh and he tumbled into the house, leading with a long butcher knife. Drool had been sitting by the fire and now stood over the huge Jew as surprised as if he’d just discovered a live snake in his breakfast porridge.

  I turned to face the attacker I’d wounded at the door. My friend Kent had taught me that, as a rule, with men of great size, it was more important to stop them first, rather than try to kill them in one blow.

  I held my third dagger by the blade, poised to throw. “This one in your eye, boy,” said I. “Do twitch and I will send thee to a porkless Hebrew hell with stunning swiftness.”

  He stopped struggling to gain his feet and froze on the spot; good fortune, for I was not sure that I would hit the mark, so long out of practice I was. If I’d missed, he might have bludgeoned us all to death. I heard Jessica’s intake of breath as she looked over my shoulder toward where the other huge Jew had fallen and was rising.

  “Drool, hit him!” I called.

  I took my eyes off my own huge Jew just long enough to see Drool smash a heavy, three-legged stool across the knife-wielding brother’s head, showering the room with splinters, kindling, and a fine spray of blood. The downed brother went limp on the floor, quite unconscious, perhaps dead.

  I held my dagger fast. “Drool, fetch my dagger from that chap’s thigh. And come get the other one from this one’s knee.”

  “Jones!” said Drool, noticing that I was again in possession of my puppet stick, which I’d shoved down the back of my jerkin for the gondola ride. “Me wee friend.”

  “Get the knives, you great slobbering dreadnought,” said the puppet Jones, a bit breathless from the tumbling and whatnot.

  Drool went around the table, a bloody knife in one of his hands, and regarded the huge Jew who stood in the front door. “It will hurt when I pulls out the knife,” Drool said to the huge Jew with no menace whatsoever. “Sor-ry.”

  The huge Jew seemed as disturbed by the sight of a man-shaped creature larger than himself nearly as much as he was by the blade in his knee.

  “He and I will both kill you if your club hand moves, Ham, so be brave lest you be twice slayed.”

  “I’m Japheth,” said the giant Hebrew.

  “I don’t give a jostled jeroboam of monkey jizz, you yellow-hatted buffoon. If you move, you die.”

  Japheth gasped as Drool pulled the knife from his leg. Drool stepped back just as Jessica came around from the side with a half-full wine bottle, which ended its arc by bouncing off the huge Jew’s forehead, unbroken, sending him back a few steps from the door.

  “Well done, love,” said I. “Can’t account for the thickness of his hat nor the density of his great noggin, but a normal bloke would’ve been right well brained.”

  She smiled and curtsied, despite that she was still shaking a bit from the adventure.

  “Take your brother and go home,” said I to Japheth. “Tell Tubal what happened here and that there are no more layers between him and his mayhem. If two hours pass and he is still on La Giudecca, he and his whole family will be floating dead in the canal by morning, and you two with them.”

  Japheth, limping pitifully, made his way around the outside of the house and dragged his brother out the door. Ham groaned as he was moved, so evidently Drool had not killed him.

  “Ta,” said Drool as Japheth carried his brother away.

  “Drool, there’s a bundle of clothing out on the landing; would you fetch it before the tide takes it, please?”

  “That were smashing, Pocket.”

  “Go, lad. We’ll need that bundle.”

  Shylock stood in the middle of the room, unmoving, where he had been when I’d sailed sideways into the room.

  “So,” said I. “Marco Polo found his way back to his family?”

  “Yes,” said Shylock, still a bit dazed. “He returned my ducats with interest.”

  “Lovely. And he left the boxes for me?”

  “Yes,” said Jessica. “As you asked.”

  “Tubal has been my friend many years. And he sent these boys to kill me? He would not have done this for spite. He must have been paid.”

  “No shit, Shylock,” said I. “It was business.”

  “You are more agile than I thoug
ht,” said Shylock, nodding to himself sadly.

  “Treated by a wizard with syrup of cat, he was, givin’ him magical quickness,” said the puppet Jones.

  “Really?” said Jessica, her eyes wide.

  “Nah, havin’ you on. I’m just a wooden-headed ninny,” said the puppet, tapping the Jewess on the bottom with a jingle of his hat bells.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The Trial

  CHORUS: When war makes commerce and commerce is law, profit rules prudence and justice is flawed. Behold now, the court of Venice, a grand edifice on the Grand Canal, and among the lawyers, senators, citizens, and those seeking justice, stand foreign traders and dignitaries, here to see the rule of law in action, the backbone of the republic, the insurance of their fair trade with the watery city-state. And here, too, amid costumed fools and cross-dressed maids, Shylock seeks to satisfy sweet revenge dealt by a sword forged of irony.

  “Who are that?” asked Drool. We stood with Jessica in costume at the very back of the court.

  “Just a grandiose nutter who can’t help himself bursting through the fourth wall like a great dim-witted battering ram,” said I. “Pay him no mind.”

  A bailiff was calling all to order at the front of the room, where the high council of six senators sat on a dais, with the doge at the center, wearing a grand gold-and-silver robe and a hat that looked more than anything like a white, gold-trimmed codpiece inverted on his head.

  “Is Antonio Donnola the merchant here?” asked the doge.

  “I am here,” said Antonio, coming through the great arch behind us, flanked on one side by Bassanio, and on the other by Iago. Iago? What was Iago doing walking about free like a roaming plague in boots? And armed, for fuck’s sake.

  “I am sorry for thee,” said the doge. “You come to answer a stony adversary, an inhuman wretch incapable of pity, void and empty of any measure of mercy.”

  Well, that seemed a somewhat prejudiced portrayal of Shylock—if I were one of the foreign merchants watching this for a taste of Venetian jurisprudence, I would think, “Well, you don’t want to wear a yellow hat to trial, or these fucks will most certainly throw you to the dogs.” The puppet Jones twitched under my costume, begging to be allowed to shout it out.

  “I have heard, Your Grace, he is resolved to his course, and I have no lawful means to carry me.”

  “Call the Jew Shylock,” commanded the doge.

  “Shylock,” called the bailiff, and Shylock trudged through the door in his normal dark gabardine and yellow hat, his appearance differing today only in that by his purse, at his belt, hung a long carving knife in a leather sheath.

  “Let him stand before me,” said the doge.

  Shylock passed one of the many bronze braziers lit around the room to warm it on this bitter day, to a spot before the dais.

  “Shylock, the world thinks, as do I, that you pretend this cruel malice, and in the last moment, you will relent and show mercy. All believe, despite your protestations, that you will be touched with human gentleness and love, and forgive not only a pound of this merchant’s flesh, but a portion of the principal, taking pity on his recent losses, which would ruin even the most royal merchant, and would spur mercy from even the rough hearts of the most stubborn Turks and Tartars. We all expect a gentle answer, Jew.”

  Shylock cleared his throat and stood straight for only the second time I had seen him such. “Your Grace, I have stated my intent, and by your holy Sabbath I have sworn to have the forfeit of my bond. If you deny it, let danger light upon your city’s charter, for the law is your foundation—your only surety of value to offer these merchants from all nations who trade with you. If you ask me why I would have a pound of carrion flesh, I will not answer, but instead ask you, why do some men lose their urine at the sound of bagpipes?”

  “Cracking non sequitur,” I said to Jessica. “That should send the doge to scratching his knobbish hat.”

  “That’s a bollocks reason!” shouted Bassanio.

  “I am not bound to please you with my answers,” said Shylock.

  “Do all men kill the things they do not love?” asked Bassanio.

  “What, wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice?” said Shylock.

  At this last answer, it was not Bassanio, nor even Antonio who reacted, but Iago, who had seemed bored with the proceedings until now, who suddenly whipped his gaze around to Shylock, his features locked in disgust, as if they’d been frozen in place by a Gorgon.

  I grinned. Well done, Jew. They knew, at least Iago knew, what had happened to Antonio’s cohorts. Antonio looked to be in a daze, like a man who has been stunned by the sight of a massacre, or the rescue therefrom.

  “Very well, then,” said Bassanio. “For three thousand ducats, here is six.” From behind us, two servants carried in a casket of coins as big as a man’s chest and set it on the floor before Shylock with a heavy clink.

  “Take it, take it, take it, Shylock.” I thought I was chanting in my head, but someone shushed me, so perhaps I had been thinking aloud.

  “Not for six times six thousand,” said Shylock. “I shall have my bond.”

  “How should you ever hope for mercy, having shown none?” asked the doge.

  Or sense? thought I.

  “What mercy shall I need, having done no wrong?” said Shylock. “You have among you many a purchased slave, which you work like your dogs and your mules, and keep in quarters fit for animals. Shall I say to you, ‘Let them be free. Let them marry your heirs. Let them live in your houses, eat as well as you, let their beds be as soft as yours.’ And you say, ‘They are our slaves, we will do as we will.’ And so I say to you, the pound of flesh which I demand is mine. It is bought and paid for dearly and I will have it. And if you deny me, there is no validity in the decrees of Venice, and the city and her trades cannot be trusted. I would have justice. I would have my answer.”

  I whispered to my right, where Jessica stood dressed again as a boy, her pirate kit somewhat subdued by a long, unadorned cloak. “Your father is so stubbornly unmovable he would make stones gloat at their ability to dance.”

  “Why do you think I was going to elope?” she whispered back. “But he is not so different from you in your own revenge, except he would have his witnessed by all of Venice.”

  “Upon my power,” said the doge, “I would dismiss this court, unless Bellario, a learned doctor of the law I have sent for, comes to determine this.”

  The bailiff spoke up: “My lord, a messenger from Padua arrives with a letter from Bellario.”

  “Read the letter,” commanded the doge.

  The bailiff unfolded a parchment and read, “ ‘Your Grace shall understand that I am very sick, and cannot heed your call, but when your summons arrived, I had as my houseguest a young doctor of law from Rome, called Balthassar. I acquainted him with the case between Antonio and the Jew, and he is furnished with my opinion, bettered with his own learning, the greatness of which I cannot commend enough. Let not his youth be an impediment, for never have I seen one so young with such a body of knowledge.’ Signed Bellario.” The bailiff folded the paper.

  “Where is this doctor?” called the doge.

  I heard steps behind us and turned to see Portia, dressed all in black, the robes of a lawyer, a false beard and mustache fixed upon her face, followed by Nerissa, who was dressed in similar clothes, wearing the hat of a clerk, and carrying a secretary’s box, much like I had carried for Shylock in those early days.

  The duke held his hand out to Portia, and she bowed over it as stoutly as any boy. When Nerissa had told me of their plan, I thought it would never work, but I would have believed Portia a young man if I did not know better. Fine of features, to be sure, and Nerissa had disguised her girlish curves by draping her robe and having her wear high boots so the curve of her calves did not show.

  “You know the case, and Bellario’s judgment?” asked the doge.

  “I do, Your Grace,” said Portia. “I am informed thoroughly of the case. W
hich is Antonio and which is the Jew.”

  “I don’t know, love,” I whispered to Jessica, “perhaps the one wearing the bloody bright yellow Jew hat who is sharpening his knife on his boot.”

  Jessica giggled, far too girlishly for her disguise, and I was forced to elbow her in the side, at which she giggled more, but silently, as she elbowed me back.

  Before I could respond, Nerissa shoved into the space between me and Drool. “You look fetching,” she said, making no effort whatsoever to sound like a young man.

  “As do you,” I whispered. “Smashing beard. Strapping down those bosoms seems sinful, like hiding your light under a bushel, innit?”

  “Shhhh,” she shushed.

  “Is your name Shylock?” Portia asked the Jew.

  “Shylock is my name. Murray Shylock.”

  “Murray? Bloody Shylock’s Christian name is Murray?” I said to Jessica, who shushed me from that side.

  “Not really his Christian name, though, is it?” said Nerissa.

  Jessica shushed us both.

  “Of strange nature is this suit you follow, Shylock. Yet Venetian law cannot impugn you as you proceed.” She turned to Antonio. “You stand in his danger, do you not?”

  “Aye, he says so,” said Antonio.

  “Then must the Jew be merciful,” said Portia.

  “On what compulsion must I?” asked Shylock, now honing his knife on the leather sheath with great flourish.

  “The quality of mercy is not strained,” said Portia, pacing as if lecturing a class. “It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven, upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed. It blesses him that gives and him that receives. It is an attribute to God himself, and earthly power does show most like God’s, when mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, consider this: All of us pray for mercy, and that same prayer teaches us all to render deeds of mercy. So must you mitigate your plea with mercy, or this strict court of Venice will render the full sentence against the merchant.”

  “I crave no mercy, my deeds fall upon my head,” said Shylock. “I crave the law, the penalty for my bond.” Two swipes of the knife on the leather sheath.