So it came to pass that on the evening that the fool received news that his lady, Queen Cordelia of Britain, France, Belgium, et al., had perished of a fever, he was in attendance at a ball at the palace of a senate councilman on the Grand Canal and received no comfort from the Venetians at court except wine and silent scorn. Overcome with grief, the fool cast himself in the canal to drown, but was yanked out by the scruff of the neck by a soldier . . .

He lay there on the pavers for a long time, in a puddle of canal water, weeping, great gasping sobs at first, then commenced a breathless trembling, as if breath itself was born of a pain he could not bear. A thread of crystal drool ran from the tragedy of his face, shimmering in the torchlight as if the only thing keeping his soul tethered to earth. The Moor, in his fine blouse of golden silk, crouched over the fool, saying nothing.

A breath finally squeaked out of him, a whisper as weak as a fly dying on a windowsill. “She is dead. My love.”

“I know,” said the Moor.

“You don’t know love. Look at you. You’re a soldier—a hard, scarred, killing thing—a weapon. You’ve had an alehouse whore or the odd widow of the conquered, maybe, but you don’t know love.”

“I know love, fool. Love may not be mine, but I know it.”

“You lie,” said the fool.

The Moor looked at torchlight reflecting on the canal and said, “When a woman looks upon one’s scars with wonder, and sees not the glory of battles won, but sheds tears for the pain of injury suffered, then is love born. When she pities a man’s history and wishes away his past troubles with present comforts, then is love awakened. When that which makes a warrior hard is met with beauty offered most tender, then can he find love.”

The fool said, “She sees past your handsome exterior to the dark, twisted, broken beast that your years have made of you—the libidinous little creature that you are at heart—when she takes you not in spite of, but because you are the cheeky monkey, that is love?”

“I’m not saying that, I—”

The fool rolled to his knees before the Moor and took him by the front of his shirt. “You do know! Tell me, Moor, if you know love, true love, then why will you not let me drown, stop the pain? If your love was taken from you, I would hold your sword so you could run upon it and I would hold your head while you twitched in your own heart’s blood. I am kind that way. Why do you not do me the same kindness?”

“Because you are drunk.”