I, Iago Part 1

I, Iago.

Nicole Galland.

Paterfamilias.

Prologue.

THEY CALLED ME "honest Iago" from an early age, but in Venice, this is not a compliment. It is rebuke. One does not prosper by honesty. One does not rise in the social ranks. One does not curry favors. Honesty causes upset, and Venice is serene. The Serene Republic. It says so right there on the seal of state, which I could read when I was two, or so claimed the governess who struggled to keep up with my precociousness.

I am the fifth son born into a family where even a second son is redundant. My eldest brother, Rizardo, learned the family business, which he would inherit someday, along with the family home and the family riches. The second-born, lacking all imagination, of course became a priest. The third and fourth did not amount to much: one died in infancy; the next made it to maturity with military aspirations, but when I was ten years, he wounded himself so severely in cadet training that he bled to death. An artillery man, he had been cleaning his ceremonial sword when it slipped from his grasp, and the blade gouged him deep near his groin.

A tragedy, of course. But young as I was, I found in it a poignant irony, and said so one too many times in father's hearing. I was whipped for my candor. And then I was informed that it fell to me to restore the family's military honor. Clearly I would never make it as a courtier, a merchant, or any other trade that required me to don a false front. I was, said father irritably, too blunt and honest for anything but warfare.

Chapter 1.

IN VENICE, EVERYTHING is a compet.i.tion. The higher up the social scale you climb, the more rarefied the compet.i.tion becomes. Thus among the upper echelon, whose houses are all equally gaudy and overdecorated, whose wives are all equally lamed by the weight of their jewels and gowns and hairstyles and footwear . . . among this circle of dandies, the prosaic is glorified beyond all reason. At the time of my brother's demise, the rage among these fine gentlemen was the owning of hens.

There were any number of categories for compet.i.tion, in this scintillating hobby: how many hens, how lovely, how large, how small, how cute, how ugly, how elaborately gilded the coop, how pristine the pedigree, and so on. But the ultimate glory of the hen-keeper was the aphrodisiacal potency of his hens' eggs. The master of all egg maestros, one Pietro Galinarion, possessed one hen whose ovum, eaten raw and singly, accomplished things that gentlemen spoke of only obliquely, with knowing, pleased expressions. These eggs were too precious to sell. Galinarion occasionally doled them out as treasured gifts, and even used them in lieu of money at cards. I overheard of their existence in the late-night chatter among my eldest brother and his companions.

I knew the word virility and I was almost certain I understood the premise of the eggs. That "almost" fueled a burning curiosity. Roderigo understood only that the eggs were coveted-but that was enough to make him curious too.

Poor Roderigo. He was so earnest, and trusting, and he adored me. We'd met in the crib. Our mothers shared a wet nurse: his family was too poor to keep a nursemaid, even for their sole offspring; mine was rich enough, but by the time the fifth son came along they could not be bothered to spend the money. His father was a failing spice merchant, mine a setailo, a thriving silk trader.

Roderigo and I did nearly everything together.

"BUT WHY AM I the one who must steal all the supplies for the break-in?" he demanded, wiping his nose with his sleeve. His legs hung over the side of the paving, and his feet dangled a foot or two over grey-green ca.n.a.l water by the Saoneri bridge. "Why don't you have to do any stealing?"

"It's not stealing," I reminded him. "It's borrowing things under a false pretense, but you're returning all of it. It's not stealing, it's lying."

"Why must I do all the lying, then?"

"Because you are an heir," I explained patiently, brus.h.i.+ng aside my envy of this t.i.tle. Drawing on what I had observed pa.s.sing between my father and my eldest brother, I explained, "Heirs must be able to lie convincingly, so that when they are grown men, they will be able to operate smoothly in good society. This is important practice for you. There is no need for me to learn to lie. I would not rob you of an opportunity to practice an important skill that will be valuable to you when you're a great Venetian merchant."

He considered this for a moment, then nodded, satisfied with my reasoning.

"So after we get up there, then what?" he asked.

"We'll eat the egg, of course. We'll crack it open and split it," I said. "Or if you're too chicken, I'll do it."

Roderigo's face broadened with a huge grin. "Too chicken to eat an egg! That's funny, Iago! You're so clever." He punched me on the arm. He was the only boy my age whose punches didn't make me wince. I smiled and punched him back.

"So you'll eat it with me?" I pressed. "And then we'll keep the sh.e.l.ls as proof we did it."

"And then we'll start a secret fellows.h.i.+p!" he announced, leaping up with excitement. The slime of Venice stained his already stained breeches; he did not notice. "And the only ones who may join are the ones who can accomplish what we did!"

We agreed upon a time the next day to do it, and swore each other to silence with our secret handshake, invented by me and known only to the two of us. Then we parted ways, each terrified and eager to embrace the hardened life of a juvenile criminal.

THE NEXT DAY we approached the tall iron gate built into the fence that surrounded the Galinarion garden. It was latched on the inside but not locked in daylight hours; by perching on Roderigo's shoulders I was easily able to reach up, slip my slender hand and wrist through the rails, and unlatch it. Roderigo knelt, and I climbed off his shoulders; we each carried a coil of hempen line that he had borrowed from the stores his uncle sold to mariners. To the end of each line we tied another borrowed item: a small grappling hook, the sort used by the navy to teach maneuvers in mock battles out in the lagoon. Emulating the champions of cla.s.sical romances, we intended to hurl the grappling hooks up the full height of the building and scale the walls.

Inside the gate, we found ourselves in an unoriginal, but sumptuous, garden. It contained statues depicting pagan G.o.ds and fountains depicting pagan Venetians, and a few actual plants. In the center was a well.

Roderigo stared about with a slack jaw and glazed eyes.

"Come along," I said urgently, heading straight toward the tall stone house. There was a wooden staircase obtusely zigzagging up the right half of the three-story building. It led straight to the roof. We would not even need the lines and grappling hooks!

It was about dinnertime, and n.o.body was out here. We climbed a short flight of steps, which took us to the first elevated floor, and heard through the closed door the clanking efficiency of a kitchen. Up the next set of steps, to a heavier and more ornate door to the main hall, where Galinarion would be dining. The next flight went up to the bedrooms, and the final one-more of a ladder than a stairway-took us straight to the roof. The hardest thing about getting to the top was keeping the coils of line neat upon our shoulders.

A usual Venetian roof is shallow gabled, tiled with tight red brick. There is commonly a cistern in one corner, with pipes running down to the kitchen. I have been on our own roof (smaller than this one), and I thought I knew what to expect.

But this roof was flat, canted slightly to slough rainwater into the ca.n.a.l below. It was laid out just like the garden beneath, in miniature, with small wooden statues in lieu of the large stone ones below. The central well's rooftop equivalent was a round storage bin, by the smell of it containing dried corn. Directly across from us was the henhouse. It was designed to be a perfectly scaled miniature of the house upon which it sat. One half of this henhouse was made of wood, but the other half was made of gla.s.s, creating an outrageously expensive solarium for a single hen. There were wire-covered vents in the gla.s.s, but there was no open-aired coop for the legendary fowl at all.

We trekked gingerly across the roof, not wanting to alert whoever might be on the floor below. The henhouse waited quietly. We flicked the latch open and invaded.

"We've made it!" Roderigo whispered gleefully.

"It should have been more difficult," I countered. "That was too easy to give me any sense of accomplishment."

"Don't cheapen the pleasure, Iago," Roderigo begged. "Who cares if we've earned our success, or merely lucked into it?"

I care, I thought, but said nothing lest I sound like a moralizing parent.

The hen-the most famous hen in all of Venice, perhaps the world (considering the relative anonymity of domestic fowl outside of Venice)-was sitting in a nesting box covered with gold leaf and ornate arabesque decorations about two feet off the ground. Given the famed magnificence of her ovulations, she was not especially feminine. Her eyes were cold and dull, her feathers were a mottled grey and white. There was no fancy or no finery to her. I respected her simplicity. It was not her fault that she'd been made the heroine of a bored patrician's farce.

For the first time I was a little nervous. We had a clutch of hens, each nearly identical to this one, but the cook always collected the eggs. Would she peck at me? Would she cluck and squawk and make a fuss when I reached in for the egg?

"Shoo," I said and waved a hand at her. She made a wonderfully guttural sound, delicately grouchy, and settled farther into the box.

"She doesn't want to move," Roderigo said with spectacular powers of observation. "You can take the egg out from underneath her, and she'll let you. I've seen my mother do it all the time at home."

I reached under her, enjoying the silky softness of her warm feathers. I could feel the structure of her body-bones? sinews?-against the back of my hand as my fingers tentatively groped beneath her. She allowed me the grope and complacently repeated her guttural hum as she felt me under her.

And then I was holding the famous egg. It was warm in my palm, as I was not used to feeling eggs. I felt a strange thrill in the pit of my gut.

"Shall we eat it here? Or shall we go someplace public so people may watch us?" asked Roderigo, wide-eyed.

"It's just a regular egg," I said.

He pulled his head back a little and tried to stop gaping. "If we want to prove that, surely we need witnesses?"

"Who is going to believe two boys?" I asked. "We're just proving it for ourselves. Isn't that enough, Roderigo?"

This, I think, had not occurred to him, but dutifully he fell in line. "Well of course it is," he said, with a frowning nod. The eager beam returned to his face; he even rubbed his hands together. "All right then," he said. "Let's have at it."

There was a gold-embossed drinking bowl for the little fowl. I reached over with both hands and cracked the egg on the side of the bowl. The hen watched me, disinterested. Roderigo watched me, fascinated. The sh.e.l.l broke neatly, and a drop of transparent sludge ran down the side, the tiniest sliver of eggsh.e.l.l clinging to it. The jelly of the egg white glistened like molten gla.s.s in the dappled light of the solarium.

Roderigo imbibed first and announced "uck" from his throat. I dumped the rest of it down my own throat and swallowed as quickly as I could, thinking intensely about candy. It wasn't as bad as I'd feared.

Roderigo wiped his mouth and fingers on his clothes; I used a handkerchief with my eldest brother's mark upon it. I had set the sh.e.l.l aside; now I picked each half up and daintily wiped them clean, then couched one half-sh.e.l.l within the other, and lay them in the center of the kerchief. Carefully, I tied the corners together and lifted the small bundle by this lacy knot.

"And so, that is that," I said.

"That is that, indeed," he agreed.

WE DESCENDED JUST as uneventfully as we had climbed. Perhaps because we had now actually committed the act, my pulse was quicker and my hearing more acute as we stepped down into the garden. Roderigo, out of habit, glanced at me for guidance before beginning the obvious next step, which was to walk straight across, past the well, to the still-unlatched gate. I nodded and gestured; he nodded and smiled. He began to walk. I followed, sh.e.l.ls cupped gently in the handkerchief, which was cupped in my left palm.

Roderigo approached the well, and my gaze flickered ahead to the gate, briefly. As I looked away, my mind registered that the gate had been relatched, and alarmed, I instantly looked back.

"And here are the little varlets left my gate open," growled the craggy-faced stranger, erupting from the far side of the well. He grabbed Roderigo by both arms, and Roderigo screamed.

I leapt back, startled.

"You're going nowhere," the fellow warned me. He was dressed as a gardener. He was glowering but not really threatening, and so clumsy-looking that I knew I could outrun him. Leaving Roderigo in the lurch would have been dishonorable, which does not mean I didn't consider it.

But I had a better idea: "Glad you caught us," I declared, defiantly. "We almost got away undetected. That would have been quite bad for you later on, when we reported to your master that we successfully broke in."

"Well now I'll be reporting to my master that you unsuccessfully broke in."

"Of course you will," I said. "Roderigo, calm yourself. The fellow's only doing his duty. Let's get it over with."

I RECOGNIZED PIETRO Galinarion by sight but did not know him so well as Roderigo did; Galinarion did business with Roderigo's father. He was rotund but he was handsome, and perhaps the bulk was muscle. His hair was curled and nicely styled; powder paled his face and hands; he had delicate fingers for his size, with fingernails exactly long enough to keep him from the sort of escapade we had just been caught at. He was eating in his grand hall, replete with chandeliers descending from a painted ceiling full of naked angels. The walls were of marble-painted panels largely covered with Persian tapestries, the floor of real marble laid out in a serpentine motif.

Galinarion's fellow diners were imitations of him but generally more wan, or in other senses diminished: one was shorter, one thinner, one less ribboned in his costume. There were five of them. As if they had been practicing synchronized feasting, every man of them held a knife with a bit of meat stabbed on it near his mouth, and froze like that as we were brought in. They lowered these utensils, the morsels untouched, again in unison, and watched the gardener triumphantly and indignantly present us.

"Roderigo," Galinarion huffed, astonished. "Tell me what mischief you've been up to, son."

Roderigo gaped as if at indoor lightning. He opened his mouth. No sound came out.

"Roderigo!" Galinarion repeated, plucked brows crinkling over powdered nose. "Answer me, boy. Or I'll summon your parents and ask them to tan your hide in front of me."

The other men around the table hummed with laughter, and-again, synchronized-finally put the meat into their mouths and began to chew. Roderigo still could not speak. I feared he had wet himself, but I did not wish to add to his humiliation by checking.

"You there, then!" Galinarion snarled, pointing at me with his knife. I must have jumped, or looked alarmed-something to afford the table mirth. What cretins, I thought, to find amus.e.m.e.nt in the terror of those smaller than yourselves.

"Yes, sir," I said smartly, and executed a courtly bow. This made the gentlemen of the table nearly choke on their meat, they were so amused.

"Who are you?"

"My name is Iago, sir."

"What were you doing in my garden without my permission?"

The table quieted itself in antic.i.p.ation of the answer. Roderigo squinted and appeared to be praying silently.

"We were just coming down from your rooftop, sir, where we had stolen an egg from your hen," I said.

Galinarion sat up very straight, and his eyes opened very wide; the other men made amused ooooo-ing noises until he held his hand up, commanding silence.

"Those eggs are priceless, boy." He held his hand out. "Return it to me at once."

I held up the handkerchief with the sh.e.l.ls in it. "I'm afraid this is all I can give you now, sir. We ate the raw egg between us, because we'd heard your eggs were special. I suppose we heard wrong."

Galinarion went red beneath the dusting of powder on his face, and his guests banged the table with the meat of their fists, howling. Roderigo made a small noise, and I felt him gaping at me, terrified. His breath began to shake, and I feared he would burst out sobbing.

For what felt like eternity, Galinarion glared at me, furious accusation on his face. The fury was so venomous that the table spontaneously quieted itself, sensing something hideous about to happen, hideous beyond the scope of even their perverse and petty mirth.

Suddenly, this was no entertaining escapade, but a catastrophe. It was within this patrician's rights to beat me savagely or imprison me, and my parents did not know where I was. He raised his impressive bulk out of his chair and took a threatening step in my direction.

Then abruptly, he sat back down . . . and burst out laughing.

His laughter was forced, like water through a fountain. It was so intense that his guests responded to it as to an order; they all laughed as well, although with less intensity and much bemus.e.m.e.nt.

"You little liar!" Galinarion harrumphed. "This is some prank one of my rivals has set up to discredit the worth of my hen!" He looked around the table, pointing at each of them in a grand, nervous gesture. "Which of you did this? Confess now! A very worthy prank, and neatly done, but you cannot unman me with it! Come now, which of you has set these boys on me?" They all continued guffawing, pointing at one another with good-natured accusation, shaking their heads in good-natured denial. Finally Galinarion turned back to me, still trembling with furious laughter. "Well, boy, tell me, don't be afraid, which of these gentlemen bribed you to try to make a fool of me? What are these then, the sh.e.l.ls of some other eggs, eh?" He reached out for the kerchief, and I gave it to him.

"None of them bribed us to do anything," I said, raising my voice to be heard above the raucous chuckling. "We did it ourselves. We're boys. It's the sort of thing boys just do."

This brought a new wave of louder and more genuine laughter from the group.

"Precocious little wh.o.r.eson, isn't he?" one cheered as two others echoed me, using a childish lisp I did not have.

"Well if it's none of you, it must be that wh.o.r.eson da Chioggia! He is always trying to start a feud with me, he is so hopelessly jealous of my hen and all my other treasures. Admit it, boy, was it da Chioggia?"

"No," I said, impatient now that I realized we were out of danger.

"Of course it was. Well, never mind, this will yield a ducat for you each. Go back to him and tell him that you've failed. Give him my heartiest congratulations, though, for it was quite a good idea." He turned back to the table. "Have boys eat such eggs as those! One wonders what he does with his own boys when the lamps are low!"

This signaled the greatest laughing swell of all. Rea.s.sured that none of his guests now believed we had eaten his eggs without being transformed into young satyrs, he summoned his steward to hand us each a ducat from a velvet purse, and then shooed us away.

"May I have my handkerchief back, sir?" I asked.

He chucked it at me as if we were bosom chums.

The gardener, annoyed that his arrest had come to nothing, grabbed us each by the collar and trundled us through the great house, down the stairs, deliberately trying to take us off our balance, which he managed to do with Roderigo several times. We went through the kitchens and out into the garden, where he'd apprehended us. He expelled us from the back gate as if we were rodents.

Finally Roderigo and I looked directly at each other. "You are the most remarkable person I know," he said in an awed whisper.