“I cannot carry him, too,” said Othello.

Four: How Much for the Monkey?

FOUR

How Much for the Monkey?

Iago was a pillar of leather and steel among the silks and rich brocades of the Rialto merchants. They flowed like anemones in the surf—bargaining, bickering, lying politely and expansively—plucking profit from the flow of goods and services all around. You could buy anything from a pomegranate to a shipping contract on the Rialto. Notaries had set up their desks among the booths to record transactions, whores wagged their rouge-tipped tits from balconies above.

Iago stood with his hand on the hilt of his sword as commerce swirled around him, the odd merchant looking up and wincing as he passed under the soldier’s scowl. Before long, a circle cleared on the pavers around Iago, an eddy in the current.

One of the whores, looking down, said, “That one must have a right stink about him, the way they’re all movin’ away.”

When Antonio stepped out of the fray flanked by two young fops in finery too heavy for the heat, Iago did not offer his hand.

“You’re late,” said the soldier.

“Business beckoned. You didn’t give me much notice,” said Antonio. “Iago, these are my friends, Gratiano and Salarino—they have been trying to coax me from my melancholy with good cheer.”

Iago nodded in turn to each of the two, both taller and more stout than the soldier. Well fed and well kept, he thought. Soft, he thought. “Gentlemen, please do bugger off.”

“Pardon?” asked Gratiano, startled, his floppy hat falling over one eye.

“For a bit,” said Iago.

Antonio stepped between Iago and the youths. “See here, Iago, these gentlemen are—”

“Business,” interrupted Iago.

“Antonio’s affairs are our business as well,” said Salarino.

Iago shrugged. “Brabantio is dead,” he said to Antonio.

“Oh,” said Antonio. To his friends: “You two need to bugger off.”

“Just for a bit,” offered Iago, as the two backed into the crowd, looking more liberated than insulted.

Antonio took Iago by the shirt and hurried him to a nook between the booths of two spice merchants. “Brabantio is dead? When?”

“They found his overripe corpse this morning. Servants followed a foul smell to the cellar. I was brought word by my man, who was on the island. He uses one of Portia’s maids on occasion.”

“Portia has returned from Florence, then?”

“Just yesterday. The Montressor has been missing for two weeks—since the Assumption. The servants at Villa Belmont thought he’d gone to Florence to join Portia, or perhaps to Corsica to retrieve Desdemona from the Moor. They found him so deep in the cellar that the smell hadn’t even risen to the wine cellar.”

“Deep in the cellar? I wondered why I had not heard from him. Then he’s been there since that night, with the fool.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Do you think the fool awakened and attacked him?”