The Serpent of Venice

  I was good on the chopines, but not so good that I could escape the two young knaves. Just as I reached the arched bridge they each caught me under an arm and I was yanked back off my feet. Then Sal threw me against the rail. I might appear taller, but I was still slight, and half the weight of the stout Venetian who was manhandling me.

  “What did you hear, Jew?” asked Lorenzo.

  “Something about you praising Jessica as being as beautiful as a swordfish, or some rot.”

  “You’re lying,” said Lorenzo. He looked to his friend. “Hold him, Salanio.”

  “Well, good, we’ve cleared that bit up,” said I, meaning at least I knew which of the Sals was attacking me. Perhaps Bassanio would intervene on my behalf, since I was the one, true master of the imaginary Hebrew thieving monkeys who would assure his betrothal. I looked back, but no one was coming out of the brothel to help me. No one was coming out at all.

  Salanio put his forearm against my throat and bent me back over the stone railing of the bridge, then put a long fighting dagger to my cheek.

  “You’re not supposed to carry weapons,” said I.

  “And yet we all do,” said Salanio.

  “Jessica can’t know about my plan,” said Lorenzo to his fat friend.

  “And so she shan’t,” said Salanio. “Die, Jew!” He loosened pressure on my throat to rear back for the blow, then thrust the dagger at my chest. I felt fire across my ribs, but my great gabardine coat had saved me. Just as the chopines made me taller, so the big coat made me look wider, and Jessica had padded the shoulders to make it hang so. He had but slain my yellow hat, tucked away, and grazed my ribs with the blade, yet I screamed as if murdered indeed, and bent over as if catching my spilling guts. Then, as the knaves backed up a step to survey their murder, I leapt into the air, knife in chest and all, turned a backflip over the bridge railing, and plunged feetfirst into the black water of the canal.

  The water was still warm with summer’s heat, and not terribly deep, but I knew if I should surface right under the bridge I would deliver myself into the hands of my enemies for the coup de grace. I am a good swimmer in better circumstances, trained by Mother Basil, the abbess at Dog Snogging, who would toss me in the Ouse River weekly to assure that I never met the same fate as my poor mother who drowned herself in that river.

  I kicked, to level myself and swim underwater, far enough, I hoped, to surface by one of the stone walls of the canal, where I might escape in the dark. But even as I kicked, I did not move. The chopines were stuck fast in the mud on the bottom. I struggled to pull up one foot, only to have the other drive deeper, and the oversize gabardine, which had been pulled up over my head when I hit the water, was now sodden and constraining my arms as well. I bent and struggled with the straps that held Jessica’s boots to the stilts, but they’d been tightened fast, and my chest was already beginning to convulse, trying to pull in air that was not there. Perhaps I could get my feet out of the boots? I pulled at them, even as the panic rose in my throat, and I spasmed three quick times before I let out a few bubbles, but willed myself not to inhale and suck in my doom. Even so, the strength fled from my limbs and I began to feel my mind close like an iris. I could see a single torch or lantern somewhere above the water, just a quivering orange dot that faded as I lost consciousness.

  Then the claws bit into my sides and the last life’s air that had been drooling out of my mouth exploded in a scream. It felt as if I were burning in the water, pain ripped down my sides, and I was moving, being dragged at such a speed under the water that my ears popped. I’m being dragged to Hell, was my last thought as my scream ran out to an airless croak and I was catapulted out of the water and up against a stone wall, which I slid down, settling into a human puddle on the landing under a bridge, nearly fifty yards from the one where I had been stabbed.

  As I gasped in the air, which burned like ice-cold water in the belly of a heat-stroked sailor, I felt a pleasant wooziness, an almost drunken euphoria, fill my limbs. I heard voices, as if they were distant echoes, and looked down the canal to see Salanio standing at the top of the bridge, calling down to Lorenzo, who stood on the landing below.

  “Do you see him?”

  “No.”

  “Look for bubbles. There should be bubbles if he’s drowned,” said Salanio.

  As I watched, the canal changed from a flat, black-mirror glass to a chevron pattern, a wave, caused by something moving just under the surface, something large and fast and certain. No churning, no wake, just the irresistible arrowhead of water, leaving its rays behind it to wash against the walls of the canal. I smiled, my head drooped, and I began to drift away. I had felt this lazy numbness before, in the dungeon, when her claws had pierced my flanks.

  Then something broke the water underneath the bridge, like a waterspout, the great fountain that rises when a full barrel is dropped to the water from a tall ship and the sea leaps out of its boundaries. To me it was a blur of silvery black and wet motion, then Lorenzo was gone from the landing and the canal surface was settling around the spot where the violence had been born and returned.

  “Lorenzo!” Salanio called. “Lorenzo!” He was leaning out as far as he could over the railing, but he could not see his friend. He ran down the bridge, around the railing, and down the steps to the gondola landing. “Lorenzo?”

  He could see that something had disturbed the water there, he had, in fact, heard it, but it had been so fast he hadn’t seen it. It had been so fast that Lorenzo hadn’t had time to scream.

  Salanio got on his knees and leaned close, trying to peer down into the dark water.

  His face was only a foot from the water when the claw broke the surface and snatched off his head. Quick as that. His headless body, neck still spurting tarry trails of blood, rolled forward into the water and something dragged it quickly under.

  I suddenly felt it prudent to be up, off the landing and onto the paved walkway—in fact, the second or third floor above the canal would do right now. I tried to climb to my feet, but could barely drag myself to the stairs, and all the time I watched the spot where Salanio had been dragged under. Then up it came.

  The headless man—the meat that had been Lorenzo, I could tell by his doublet—was being propelled down the middle of the canal, half out of the water, a great wave driven before it. I scrambled to get up the stairs, away from the water, crawling, one step at a time, a burning returning to my ribs where the knife had striped them. I rolled onto my back, expecting, well, I don’t know, what? Death, I suppose. Mad, panicked grasps for what I wanted to be my last thought, because it would come fast, so fast—but the body stopped, as if it had a second thought, and slowly sank. The water flattened, settled. I was not going to die tonight. Not here.

  Oh, Viv. Thou venomous sea-wench. Thou wondrous, terrible force. Oh, Viv.

  I could feel her, my mermaid, a presence there, under the water, even as I had felt her presence in the dungeon, I now realized, more and more as the time had gone by. Those strange blue visions, like phantoms in my mind, those had been her. She was not going to kill me. She had thrown me up on this landing, just as she had done in front of Shylock’s house, to save me from drowning.

  Oh, Viv, thou wicked, wicked thing. Thanks be to you, mermaid.

  The chopines were gone from my feet, no doubt still stuck in the mud under the bridge, Jessica’s boots still strapped to them. I tried to roll up my wet sailcloth trousers, but ended up cutting them off with Salanio’s dagger, which had snagged in my coat. Once I could walk, I padded barefoot up the courtyard to the Grand Canal. Before I reached the Rialto Bridge I stopped and looked back at the water.

  They must never be found. Never, I thought.

  The blue-white images of bones underwater flashed across the black water, as if drawn on glass in front of my eyes. When I closed my eyes, I could see them clearly—two human skeletons, deep, deep underwater, lampreys and hagfish sucking them clean.

  No, Lorenzo and Salanio would not be seen again.
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  CHORUS:

  And so, the sodden and wounded rascal,

  Now again as short of stature as of wit,

  Friendless and heartbroken,

  As poor in purse as he was in character,

  Having betrayed fair Jessica’s kindness,

  And after gleefully fornicating

  With an abomination of the deep,

  The fool, Pocket, craven fish-fucker—

  “I still have Salanio’s dagger,” said I. “And it’s razor sharp, if you would prefer to narrate as a castrato for the duration.”

  CHORUS:

  And so the noble fool, Pocket,

  Did lay his plans to breach Villa Belmont,

  And undo Antonio’s plan for his protégé,

  Then make way to rescue from prison

  His companions, the estimable Drool and Jeff.

  “Now you’re just groveling, you pernicious lickspittle,” said I as I made my way into the square at St. Mark’s. It was too late to find a ferry to La Giudecca, and too early to try to catch a ride with a fisherman, so I curled up in an alcove by the great cathedral and dozed, riding the dreamy waves of Viv’s poison in my blood until the bells rang at dawn, calling the faithful to mass.

  Gondolas had begun to arrive at the landing at the docks at St. Mark’s, and I spotted the gondolier who had taken Shylock and me to the Rialto yesterday.

  “Oy, boatman,” I called. “Remember me? Shylock’s secretary.” To aid his memory, I put on my wounded yellow hat, which was stained with a bit of my blood as well as bearing its own stab wounds.

  “Aye,” said the gondolier, who was buffing his oar in an unsavory manner. “Wasn’t you taller yesterday, though?”

  “Rough night,” said I. “Say, mate, could you give us a lift to La Giudecca gratis? The dice turned against me. I’ve not coin left to my name.” I lifted my bare foot to show him that I’d lost even my shoes. It was a pitifully sad sight. Pitiful. I felt tears welling.

  “Your master fired me, didn’t he?” said the obstinate boatman. “I don’t think any favors are owed.”

  I might have argued—convinced him of payment later and a return to Shylock’s good graces, but I had no gut for guile or persuasion. “Look, I’ll give you this smashing dagger. It’s got a fake jewel in it.”

  The boatman eyed the dagger. It had a wide hand guard with jewels, probably colored glass, at the tips, as well as one set in the pommel. Rather garish, considering it was unlawful to carry unless one was a soldier, but as Salanio had said, shortly before his talking bits were detached from the rest of him, everyone had knives.

  “A bloke would have trouble if a gendarme found that about his person,” said the gondolier.

  “Well, you can sell it to a cutthroat on the docks, can’t you? Look at the bloody thing. It’s like new. There’re at least a dozen dirkings left in it, and that’s not even counting stabbing the odd apple or orphan.”

  “Blimey, you’ve a gruesome tongue for a Jew.”

  “Aforementioned bad night, innit? Now, the dagger for fare to Giudecca, or you may hold it as security until I receive pay from my master, and I’ve another job for you tonight as well, for which you’ll be paid ten times your normal fare.”

  The boatman pushed down on his oar and the blade breached the surface and dripped. “Ten times my fare? To where?”

  “The Villa Belmont. You know it?”

  “Everybody knows it. And any gondolier will take you there. Why ten times the normal fare?”

  “We don’t land at the dock. Back of the island. Midnight. No lantern or torches on your boat. You let me off, wait an hour, and bring me back. That’s all.”

  “An hour? You burgling the place? I can’t be part of that. Every time I row under the Bridge of Sighs I can hear the prisoners wailing. I couldn’t take that. I’ve a wife, you know.”

  “No, no, nothing of the sort. You’ve heard the late senator’s daughter is to be married?”

  “Princes from all over coming to pay her suit, I hear.”

  “Well, before she’s wed, she wants to shag a Jew, just to see what it’s like. She’s heard that the circumcised member is a sexual delicacy that will drive a lady to mad heights of ecstasy.”

  “That true?”

  “ ’Course not. Tankard of turtle toss, that is, but I’m not going to be the one to talk her out of it.”

  “A fine lady like Portia’s going to shag a scruffy little Jew like you?”

  “Ten times your normal fare,” I sang in an ascending scale.

  “And I keep the dagger?”

  “Cradled like a babe to your breast,” said I.

  “Deal!” called the boatman. “Hop aboard.”

  Astonishing, the level of complete bollocks a Venetian will buy for the promise of coin. Greed is a festering chancre on the merchant soul.

  As the gondolier worked his oar, the sea breeze blew some of the fog from my mind. I would have to do my business at Belmont, then somehow find my way to Genoa and ransom Drool, and in the meantime there was Iago’s undoing to attend to as well. I wondered if the soldier might not try to murder Shylock at Antonio’s house on Michaelmas, before he left for Corsica. His intent had surely been to remove the Jew, to free Antonio from his bond, but would he do it so early in the intrigue, or perhaps wait to see the outcome of Bassanio’s attempt to marry Portia and ascend to the doge’s council? If he succeeded, and gained access to Brabantio’s family fortune, the three thousand ducats would be as a star in the dusted heavens to what they stood to gain, but all was in the timing. And was I not going to see to Bassanio’s failure myself? Was I hastening Shylock’s assassination by pursuing my own scheme?

  Clearly, I needed breakfast, then rest, if I was to storm Villa Belmont at midnight.

  A group of Jews was waiting for the ferry on the docks at Giudecca. Among them I spied Tubal, and I hoped I’d be able to slide by him without notice, but the gondolier steered his boat into the very slip by which Tubal stood.

  “Lancelot Gobbo,” called the old man. “I would have words with you.”

  “A moment, signor,” said I. I looked to the boatman. “Meet me here, at midnight, as the bells of St. Mark’s toll.” The gondolier nodded and patted the dagger he’d hidden under his shirt.

  I jumped up onto the dock by Tubal. “Aye, sirrah!” said I, snapping to attention, bloody pert and nimble spirit of mirth that I am, despite being much abused and still slightly drugged.

  “You left yesterday before the gold was delivered, and the chest was short the count by a ducat.”

  “Well, it was all there when I left. Did you ask the two huge Jews who were with me?”

  Tubal stepped back and looked me over, from the cuffs of my raggedly cut sailcloth trousers to my now too long gabardine, to my impaled and bloodstained yellow hat.

  He said, “Weren’t you taller yesterday?”

  “Ate a bite of ham and woke up badly beaten and a foot shorter,” said I. “Bloody Torah’s not fucking about on that bit—a bloke needs to stay off the pig if he knows what’s good for him.”

  “It would appear. Perhaps, though, you’re worn down from spending my gold.”

  “Oh, sod your sodding ducat, Tubal. If you were so worried about your gold, you should have never let it out of your sight, delivered it yourself instead of trusting me and the great Hebrew oxen brothers. Look at me: I couldn’t look any more untrustworthy if I was wearing a pirate hat and being followed by a choir singing scoundrel songs. And them two—”

  “Ham and Japheth are strong and take the risk to their persons even as I take the risk to my fortune. I have seen people of our tribe slaughtered over a rumor they carried plague, over being on the wrong side of a river at nightfall. A Jew does not get to be an old Jew by putting a three-thousand-ducat reward on his own head.”

  “But isn’t that just what you’ve done to Shylock by funding his loan to Antonio?”

  “Not so, he is protected by the law. If Shylock dies, the bond is due his heir, and
since he has no sons, that would be his daughter.”

  It seemed that Iago, the soldier, did not know this subtlety of the law. Once he found out, the danger would not be only to Shylock, but to Jessica.

  “I nicked your ducat, Tubal, used it for good deeds, and will see it returned to you presently with interest, but for now, do bugger off, as I’ve business to attend to.”

  “You—” Tubal had raised his finger and was shaking it to prime his lecture, but I ducked under his arm and was in the narrow alley across the island before the rant could commence.

  Off to find Jessica. Another calamity threatened, another rescue to be attended to—what a bawdy bitch is fate when the best bit of a bloke’s day is a brace of bloody mermaid murders.

  TWELVE

  To Belmont and Beyond

  Hold still, thou squirming rat,” said Jessica, cruelly stabbing me.

  “Stop poking me with the needle, thou vicious harpy,” said I.

  By now Viv’s venom had subsided and I could feel the stinging of the knife wound on my ribs and the claw punctures in my sides, as well as the needle being driven in me by the sadistic madwoman.

  “Stop being such a coward. One more stitch and the wound will be closed.”

  “Coward, am I? I suffer great bodily injury to deliver your message and return with glad tidings and I am a coward?”

  “I’ve made consideration for your glad tidings, which is why I am tending to your wounds instead of letting you die from fever when they fester.”

  How could I tell her that not only was she not going to elope with her beloved, but that he was quite headless at the bottom of the sea? It would be no comfort to her to know that he had been a scoundrel intent upon stealing her favor and her father’s fortune. So, I had told her a different tale, and she was ready to sally forth into the arms of her bright and hopeful future. She had not been so gleeful when I’d first told her.