I, Iago Part 6

Roderigo had wanted to follow me, but I gave him a warning glance, and he-alone of all the people there-understood how upset I was. He relented. I appreciated that so much, I almost told him to come after all.

I STORMED AROUND the streets of Venice aimlessly, trying to walk off my ill humor in the crowded, noisy walkways. People crossed excitedly from one ball to another, singing or shouting out things they would never dared say in sunlight while unmasked. Some stumbled happily down avenues and alleys, staggeringly drunk. There were scores of parties tonight in the city; somewhere, in one of them, Emilia must be dismissing all her suitors. How might I guess at which one to find her?

Having nothing to go on, deduction was my only hope. We had at least some acquaintances in common, or we would not have been invited to the same party the night before. I presumed that hers was not the wealthiest of families, so I made a calculation: which of our family friends was well off enough to host a Carnival masque, but only one of modest means? Once this would have been Roderigo's family, but his intrigues now put them in much finer circ.u.mstances. So I guessed another family, the Molins. I oriented myself: I was north of Campo San Polo. So I crossed cobbled streets and over bridges with purpose now, heading generally south, to see if there was a party at the Molins', just west of the campo.

To my joy, there was. I had no invitation, but it was late enough in the evening that the servants at the entrance were drunk, and they were startled by my military garb. They stood there, staring, as I brushed past them and up the stone staircase, where a pantomime had just concluded in the broad, tapestry-lined, underlit and overheated hall.

I saw her instantly, through a ma.s.s of young partygoers, although she was in the opposite corner of the room. It was the same gown, the same Moretta mask, the same coiffure. All of these things pointed to a modesty of means, which was promising; a wealthy family would never allow a soldier, even a petty officer, near their daughter.

My entrance was so abrupt, my jerkin so stern-looking, and my appearance taken as disheveled, that the population of the party-less powdered and poofy than the earlier ball-gave me their full attention, a.s.suming I was there to raise an alarm. "Good evening," I boomed. "Joyous Carnival to all of you!"

Jollity returned. Cries of "Welcome, Iago!" were interrupted by the drunken demand: "What's happened to your mask?" from the middle of the hall.

"I outgrew it," I retorted. The partygoers t.i.ttered slightly, and turned away to resume their own conversations. How refres.h.i.+ng: here, I would not stand out freakishly. These folk were the model of another Venetian tendency I normally disliked but now was grateful for: perfect self-absorption. A few eyes stayed on me out of curiosity, but otherwise I was just another reveler.

A reveler making straight for a particular woman.

Emilia seemed startled by the intensity of my approach and glanced to either side, aware that she was literally cornered. I felt my palms sweat and could feel my pulse quicken inside my ears.

"Good evening, disdainful lady," I said, with an ironic bow. Behind me I heard servants pulling out trestle tables; supper would be served soon.

I saw her eyelids blink a few times rapidly through the eyeholes of her mask. "You a.s.sume I am disdainful before we've even spoken? You must have been chatting with a fellow I met last night."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Really? A fellow about your height and build, hanging about with libertines and slanderers and dullwits?"

"If I ever meet the fellow, I'll tell him what you think of him."

"Oh, do not, it would break his heart. Although I suppose that way at least he'd lose his appet.i.te, and that would save our hosts a partridge wing or two. I can't say they've overstocked the dining table."

"You owe me a dance," I said abruptly, and felt myself redden.

She smiled behind her mask; I could see it in the shape of her face. "Are you not at all surprised I knew who you were? You were masked last night."

"I am, like yourself, dressed the same as I was last night. You saw the same man walking toward you. Masks never really hide much."

"That has always been my opinion too," she said.

"Then you may as well take yours off," I suggested.

"On the contrary," she answered, "if it's not hiding much, there's not much to reveal, so why bother? The ribbon is all caught up in my hair."

I glanced involuntarily at her hair, just behind her ear, at the nape of her neck, and imagined helping her untangle the ribbon from the hair. It was a romantic-in fact, erotic-moment of imagining. Her laughter interrupted it.

"Have you any idea how transparent you are?" she teased. "I know exactly what you're thinking at this moment."

"And do you approve of what I'm thinking?" I asked, knowing she could see me blush.

"More than my parents would, if they saw me talking to an unmasked wild man who does not fit their merchants' notion of whom I should be talking to."

I felt victorious: my imagined biography of her was accurate. "They want to marry you off to someone boring."

"Not a particular someone," she clarified. "There is an array of someones to choose from."

"Then what is the deciding criterion?"

She shrugged, and looked away into the room. Without my noticing, the pantomime had finished, and now some acrobatic clowns were working their way across the hall. "My parents lack imagination and humor, so they do not value those qualities in me. They would like to find somebody to whom I may be useful, but they can't quite figure out what I'd be useful for."

I was brazen: I eyed her slender, curving body up and down with undisguised desire. "I can think of something you'd be very useful for."

To my great relief, she merely chuckled and crossed her arms over her chest, as she had the night before. "So it's true what they say about you: you really do just blurt out whatever comes into your mind to say."

"How . . . do you know who I am?"

She gestured around the room. "A dozen people called your name when you walked in here, and you wear a soldier's garb. Of course I know who you are." She sobered. "I'm sorry for your father's recent pa.s.sing."

"Thank you," I said awkwardly, suddenly feeling-ironically-exposed.

"My father is a wheat merchant," she said. "His cousin is a very successful designer of Carnival costumes, it is the only reason my family is included in any of these festivities. I don't belong in this world any more than you do." She gave me a look that, even through the mask's expressionless eyeholes, pierced right into my soul.

"Do you wish you did belong here?" I asked, holding the gaze.

"Absolutely not," she said immediately.

"Then marry me," I said.

Chapter 10.

THERE WAS A PAUSE. It was a long one. Emilia looked away. I felt myself first blush, and then turn pale. I could read nothing of her expression from around the edges of the mask, nor from her body language.

"I'm sorry," I stammered. "That was a ridiculous proposition. I would try to pa.s.s it off as a jest, but that would be insulting to you, and we both know I meant it honestly."

"My parents will be looking for me," she said softly. "They are expecting me to meet them by the door. I hope"-now she looked back at me-"in all sincerity, sir, I hope our paths cross again soon, and perhaps at greater leisure."

"Please forgive my-"

"There's nothing to forgive," she said. "You have given me something to think about. Unlike you, I do not blurt out whatever comes into my mind. Women are not allowed such behavior."

"So you are not rejecting my proposal?" I pressed, wis.h.i.+ng I was not saying the words even as I heard myself say them.

"For your own sake, I am going to forget you made it," she said. "If, having overcome your impulse to be somebody's paladin, and if having gotten to know me with any kind of depth-having a pa.s.sing acquaintance with my face, for example-you still feel compelled to make such a suggestion . . . proposition me then."

IT TOOK ME until noon the next day to get dressed. I lay in bed, disgusted with myself for behaving precisely the way a spoiled young Venetian gentleman would behave if he were mooning over a lady he desired. But I could not stop thinking of her. I did not know her well enough to obsess about anything in particular; I did not even have a face to dwell moodily upon-and yet I could not stop thinking of her. Her voice, her hair, the shape of her body, and her words. Her words, her words, her words. I could not get them from my mind. I lay on my feather mattress beneath silk drapes and stared out at the transom window of my rose-painted room. The sky mocked me with its brilliance. I pa.r.s.ed and repa.r.s.ed each sentence I could remember with all the skills I'd ever learned as a battlefield tactician. I could not decide what she thought of me.

I must have looked so hideously ugly, compared to all the others in the room. My face is nothing handsome to begin with, plus between soldiering and neglecting my cosmetic toilette, I am weathered and darkened beyond my age, and I stand out even on the streets in daytime for having not the slightest styled coiffure to my battle-ready hair. Dust-colored curls surround my face, hardly darker than the face itself. I must have looked horrendously unkempt. How ridiculous to imagine that she fancied me. She did not. So there was absolutely no reason to get out of bed.

On the other hand, she spoke with me more willingly than she had with anyone at the first evening's party. So perhaps she fancied me a little. But that had been before my mask came off. The night I did not wear the mask, that night she rejected my proposal and did not even allow me the dance I felt I was owed. Given her cla.s.s, she had far more men to choose from than patrician daughters, who were limited to marrying among those families with the right pedigrees. She could have anyone. Just because two nights in a row there was no man she fancied more than me did not mean she fancied me at all. Nor did it mean she wouldn't find, before the end of Carnival, some handsome man to fancy. So there was absolutely no reason to get out of bed.

And even if she fancied me, what then? I could not deserve to keep her interest. When I thought she was a prost.i.tute, it had been easy to banter with her; even when I realized she wasn't, that breezy beginning to our discourse had allowed me to continue the playful chatter. But the moment I realized my heart was thudding for her, I'd become irritable and clumsy with words, and remained so all the next day until I saw her again-at which point, despite a few rounds of decent repartee (which I recounted to myself ad nauseam to rea.s.sure myself that yes, I had been charming for a moment), I was so unbalanced that I demanded that she marry me without my having even seen her face. Extended time in her company would render me ridiculous and speechless, and she would grow disappointed with me, and I would lose her love. So there was absolutely no reason to get out of bed.

I WAS FINALLY roused for dinner by a servant. We ate with Mother and my silent sister-in-law as Rizardo informed me there was another masque to attend that evening.

"Really?" I said. "Another one? I cannot believe the accursed superciliousness of this city!"

"You don't need to believe it, but you do need to attend," my brother said curtly. "Especially this one, as it is at the Confraternity. I would appreciate it if you could keep your mask on, or at least not throw it in the punch bowl when you decide to take it off."

"I need to get out of this city," I said. "I need to get back to a posting and play cards with people who get dirt under their fingernails."

"I do not disagree," Rizardo said humorlessly, "but you won't be doing that before nightfall, so please cooperate with the servants this time and allow them to find you something decent to wear."

I did so, but on principle I kept my dagger, sheathed, at my belt.

THIS MASQUE WAS at the Confraternity of San Rocco, of which my brother and Roderigo were both members. The wealthiest of all Venetian confraternities (or poorest, depending on who was describing it), San Rocco featured two halls large enough for b.a.l.l.s; tonight we were to entertain ourselves in the upper hall, which was hung with decorative tapestries that hid, among other things, a wooden altar and several recent painting by Tintoretto (although his better work was in another room-Flight into Egypt, the t.i.tle of which struck me as an excellent undertaking). The gala was attended by more youths and maidens than I'd ever seen a.s.sembled outside a Grecian fresco. I fretted about this because the flirtation levels promised to be astronomical.

She was there, of course.

THIS TIME SHE was surrounded by a conspiracy of young men. And she seemed to be engaging, willingly, in conversation with them. That was disastrous. She was the only female in their troop, which was not true of most other troops of young people scattered around the room. I suddenly could not breathe well. My aging mother had an aging lapdog, who when asleep sometimes would yap helplessly from a dream it could not escape. I felt like that lapdog now. The most I would possibly be able to manage, if I could even get near Emilia, was a yap.

This was jealousy, and it was new to me. Resentment I was used to, having been weaned on it within the family, but not jealousy. While I had often been unhappy with my lot, I had never actually coveted what somebody else had-until right now, when I was jealous of every man in that group for having her attention. It was the most atrocious sensation I had ever felt, as if some tiny monster were crawling around within my guts while somehow sending spasms of shock through my limbs, my throat, making everything inside me tighten, tight as a drum, twisting everything inside me into a knot.

Ignoring the screeching actors in an offensive comedy about a Nubian and his albino bride, I forced myself to walk calmly in her direction. The other men sensed but pointedly ignored the presence of a new rival; Emilia herself, though, did look up at me, and stopped in the middle of whatever she was saying.

"Good evening, Iago," she said neutrally. "Do you have the pleasure of these other gentlemen's acquaintances?"

"If their presence interferes with my having a dance with you, my lady, I can't say it would be a pleasure to be acquainted with any of them," I said, the words sounding echoing and far away from my own ears. Stop being an a.s.s, I ordered myself. You sound petulant.

The men in their slashed and puffed velvet all exchanged glances behind their masks. They knew who I was; I had a reputation now, inflated or otherwise; they had not known I fancied Emilia, but they must know that I was a wild and unpredictable rascal, based on my behavior at the senator's ball the night before. Or so I a.s.sumed.

But to my surprise, each nodded, as if sharing an unspoken thought, and each took a step back from Emilia, giving me s.p.a.ce to approach closer to her.

"If the lady is spoken for by a gentleman of your standing, we yield the floor, of course," one of them said, speaking for all. With delicate bows and gentle kissing of her hand, the men all quickly excused themselves, leaving Emilia and myself alone. I was astonished.

She looked up at me, her eyes glittering sharply behind the mask. "That is an efficient way of getting rid of your compet.i.tion."

"Are they my compet.i.tion?" I demanded.

"They had all hoped to dance with me, if that is what you mean."

That's not what I mean, I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue, not wanting to add petulance upon petulance. I heard my own breath inside my skull, quick and shallow; I felt unwell, and if it were not for fear of losing her company, I'd have sought an empty room somewhere to lie down. I managed to pull my wits about me and said, holding out my hand, "Allow me to make it up to you by dancing with you now."

She thought about it for a moment. Then she held out her gloved hand and laid it gently on my ungloved one. The pressure of her fingers touching me was the most remarkable sensation of my entire life. She rose from the bench at which she had been seated. We walked together past several Persian tapestries onto the polished dance floor, where a chiaranzana was just beginning. We did not speak; it was as if we had tumbled forward through time and were already a married couple in a pother at each other.

Two dozen other couples joined us, all masked and gloved, which created the eerie effect of phantoms congregating. All I could remember of this dance was that the first verse was exclusively with one's partner, but then it became an ensemble affair, in which each refrain briefly separated the partners to dance with others. "You may need to remind me of the steps," I said grudgingly under my breath. "While all your other wooers have been practicing this vanity, I have been defending our borders in the wilds of Terraferma where we have no such niceties as ballrooms."

She turned her head to look at me directly, and I could see her gaze soften. "That's very brave of you, Iago," she said. "To step out on the dance floor knowing you might blunder. That takes courage."

"Do you think after five years of military duty, a blundered dance step will really try my courage?"

She drew her chin back, chastened. "I suppose not," she said. Then, in a slightly archer tone, "In that case, I suppose you shall not need my a.s.sistance after all, for what's a few fumbled dance steps among friends?"

"For the sake of the other dancers, who will be inconvenienced by my blundering, I beseech you to a.s.sist me," I said.

"Of course I will," she said, in a tone of casual affection. I melted for her all over again.

We began the dance; the steps returned to me more readily than I'd expected from my awkward adolescent years, despite the sackbut being piercingly too sharp.

"You're doing very well," she said after a while. My pulse quickened.

"As well as your other suitors?"

"Absolutely. No difference."

"Am I like them in other ways as well?" I pressed. "Am I just another possibility who has not yet retreated or been turned away by you?"

"That is a conversation for after the dance, I think," she said.

"Oh, no, lady," I said. "I will not survive this dance if I must worry both about my footing on the dance floor and also my footing with you."

"Fair enough," she said. She took a slow breath in. "You want to feel special," she began. "You want to know that I like you above all others."

"I know what I want," I said churlishly as we pressed our raised palms together and pivoted around them. "I want to know what you want."

"The others are attractive," she said thoughtfully. We turned away from each other and then back again, to the music. "Some of them have handsomer features than you do, and most of them have better fortunes."

"I know that too," I huffed. "That is not what I asked you."

At that moment in the dance, we had to turn away from each other to dance with someone else. It was torment.

"And?" I said, as soon as we were back together.

"And none of them have disappointed me."

I felt a sick feeling in my stomach. "How have I disappointed you?" I asked; it came out as a strangled whisper.

"I expect nothing from these other men," she said as we once again pivoted around kissing palms. "But I thought I could rely on you to always show me your true face, and here you are tonight wearing a mask."

"I will remove it as soon as I find a punch bowl in which to deposit it."

I could see her smile behind her mask again. "I heard about that," she said. "You certainly do know how to get your name around." We turned away and then back toward each other, hands still touching.