“I am a tenderhearted fool, so I suffered bruised feelings when she used me roughly and left me hanging there in the dark, but not mortally, no.”

“Why do you suppose that is?”

“My roguish charm and clever wit, no doubt.”

“No, that’s not it. Maybe you just taste bad. English food . . .”

“Marco!” I cried, fixing the explorer with a critical gaze.

“Polo!” Drool answered from another part of the ship.

“Marco!” I repeated.

“Polo!” called Drool in the voice of a child.

And that continued for quite a while until the adventurer admitted that it is an accepted fact among monsters and giants of all stripes that Englishmen are delicious.

It was of no little concern to Iago that Brabantio’s potion had not made the Moor quick to anger, yet slow to move in a fight, as planned, but instead, agreeable, sentimental, and not a little sloppy. Iago crouched there, under Michael Cassio’s window, with the high general of Venice, listening to the sounds of lovers wafting through the shutters.

“The fiend!” said Iago. “He uses her like a base strumpet, listen to them.”

“I knew a caulker’s mate in Barcelona who played the base strumpet as we supped each evening,” said Othello dreamily. “Ballads as sad as a lost calf lowing for its mother.”

“A strumpet is not a musical instrument, my lord. Cassio uses your lady like a common whore.”

“And who could blame him?” said Othello, tilting his head as if listening to a sweet melody. “She is the soul of beauty, the very heart of kindness, the soft bosom of most soothing touch—and has a bottom to launch a fleet for—go to war over.”

One hopes, thought Iago. Thinking now that he might have better served his plan to just cut Othello’s throat in the dark and blame it on Cassio, rather than use this unpredictable potion.

A rhythmic feminine yipping beat into the night from the window, counterpoint to low masculine moans.

The Moor’s eyes rolled back in his head and from his crouch beneath the window he rolled back onto his back on the cobbles until he was staring wide-eyed at the sky. “A bottom so fine as to make the lovers’ moon hide its silver face in shame and never shine again.”

The Moor closed his eyes and went limp.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said Iago. “My medicine has worked too well.”

“He dead?” said a fisherman who had been out casting his nets by lantern light and had come up the street with annoying stealth.

A shutter creaked open two floors above, spilling lamplight into the night. Out popped a boy’s head. “Oy, zat the Moorish general you kilt? Oy! This bloke kilt the Moor, and I only just seen him for the first time.”

Suddenly shutters clattered back on their hinges, lamps were lighted, and Iago found himself crouching over his commander under an audience of dozens.