EMILIA AND I RETURNED to Venice near the end of Carnival. I was two years into a three-year contract, and so, until I was posted again, we were quartered at the Dolphin, an inn in the campo just outside the Arsenal gate. The view out our window was almost identical to my first sight of the famously guarded entrance, that hot August afternoon some seven years ago. I marveled almost every morning at what the years had wrought.
IT WAS PLEASING to live in Venice without living under my family’s roof. I liked the city much better when I had only a room, a small closet, and Emilia. Our first week home, we paid dutiful visits to our families. We then burrowed into our lodgings, having brought back the finer outfits from our respective boudoirs.
“We should go out to celebrate Carnival,” Emilia said, running her fingers fondly over the red wool skirt I’d first seen her in, the one dear thing her parents had given her.
“I’m sure the styles have changed insufferably in our two years away,” I said, looking for an excuse. “If you make an appearance wearing that you will be noted as terribly unfashionable.”
“I will be noted as someone who has been abroad long enough for the fashions to change,” she countered, now holding up the skirt with nostalgic admiration. “That, I think, shall make me exotic.” She glanced over toward me and grinned bewitchingly. “Would you not like to parade your exotic wife around at a few balls?”
This was unlike Emilia. Perhaps, as with my time on Terraferma, absence made her appreciate what she’d left behind. My nostalgia had proven temporary. I hoped that hers would too. “The only thing I ever liked about those balls is that I met you there,” I said.
She moved over to the table where I sat with my Aldine octavo of the Divine Comedy. She grinned down at me.
“Indulge me. Let us invent our own divine comedy tonight. If you are hating every moment, I promise to flirt with some masked stranger and make you so mad with jealousy that you will drag me home and ride me ferociously for all night, and I’ll yield to you completely and beg and beg and beg for more.”
“Then why are you not dressed yet, hussy?” I grinned, closing Dante.
WE WORE OUR MASKS, which had each survived Venice in our absence. We had no invitation anywhere. But as an army officer, wearing my ensign’s insignia and jerkin, I was welcomed into almost any party. We decided we would wander through the streets of the Rialto at whim and drop into whatever house emanated pleasing music, delicious aroma, or (if we knew them) the hosts.
The first fete we decided to infiltrate was at the home of a patrician named Gratiano, who lived in the best neighborhood of San Polo. Although not a senator, he had a high-ranking post within the government. His event was enormous, spilling out into the campo in front of his palace. Both indoor and out it was brightly lit with chandeliers and braziers and torches and huge, heavy-scented beeswax candles that must have each been equal to Emilia’s dowry. There was an impressive acrobatic act on the campo as we arrived—not only the traditional human pyramid but also stilt walking and a contortionist. As the acrobats finished, a hundred sets of gloved hands applauded, and a cornet summoned people back indoors. We simply went along with them.
The house resembled the setting of any other ball, except for a trio of young men passed out in a corner, which seemed graceless in such a setting.
“Have you seen him?” a masked woman with a gravelly, elderly voice asked Emilia as we came in. “I just caught a glimpse of him over by the wine. It’s true, what they say.”
“What do they say?” Emilia asked, imitating the gossip’s eager tone so perfectly I almost started laughing.
“They say it’s not a mask at all! They say that is his real face! Can you imagine? So ugly and so dark?”
Emilia and I exchanged glances, and I saw permission glitter in her eye. I reached up to untie my mask.
“I am ugly and dark,” I informed the woman, revealing my face to her.
She looked vaguely affronted, but then said impatiently, “You’re just sunburned. This man is a different color. As if his face was painted.”
“How shocking,” I said, “Nobody ever paints their face in Venice. What could he be thinking?”
“No, it’s not paint,” she explained with exasperation. “That’s what is so incredible. Several young men took bets with each other and tried to wipe the paint off, it will not come off!”
I tried to imagine the humiliation of some poor stranger having his face swiped at by a group of drunken youths. “What did he do?” Emilia asked, reading my thoughts.
“Oh, he would not have it!” said the gossip. She pointed to the unconscious trio near the stairway, whom I’d assumed were passed out from drink. “He smashed each one across the pate and knocked them out!”
“Good for him,” I said at once. I said it aloud in hopes of inflaming the gossip.
“Absolutely!” she agreed. “Just because he isn’t quite human does not mean he should be treated as an animal!”
I felt Emilia stiffen beside me. “What do you mean, he isn’t quite human?” she demanded.
“Well, it isn’t human skin,” the masked lady pointed out. “Human skin is not that color.”
Emilia immediately took my hand and pulled me gently toward the middle of the room. “Iago, I’m very thirsty, please come with me to get some wine.”
“Of course,” I said, and with a small nod to the woman, I stepped after my wife. Safely away from the gossip, immersed in gowns and masks and fragrances and chitchat, I whispered to her in a tone of mischief, “Were you afraid I was going to torment her, or were you simply so sickened you needed to get away from her?”
“Both,” she answered, not amused.
We walked perhaps two dozen paces, down the length of the semicrowded hall; we heard three inane and mystifying conversations about the man whose face was a living mask. I assumed they were commenting on a circus performer.
“They’ve been having trouble with Italians,” an older gentleman was saying to two others and a grey-wigged lady. “Surely you’ve heard about the manipulations and double-crossings. Shamefully, there are no Italians equal to the task.”
“But where did they find him?” the lady asked. “Who gave him the appointment? How do we know he’s not a Turk?”
“He’s much too dark to be a Turk,” one of the gentlemen said.
Emilia and I exchanged glances and slowed our pace.
“Excuse me,” I said as we reached them. “May I ask whom you are discussing? I am just arrived from Corfu and I fear I missed some news while I was at sea.”
“The Senate has approved a new general,” the first speaker said. “He is attending tonight, his first public appearance since he was invested, and he is causing heads to turn.”
“Except for those three drunken louts, I must say he is being very good-natured about the scrutiny he is receiving,” said one of the others.
“We hear he is not wearing a mask,” Emilia said slyly. “Is that why everyone is staring at him?” And with a marvelously wifely glance at me, she added, “Iago, put your mask back on at once. I told you not to take it off.”
The men chuckled, and I, pretending for Emilia’s amusement to be henpecked, hurriedly retied my Bauta mask. “It’s true he is not wearing a mask,” said the second gentleman, “but that is not the cause of the consternation. He is of a different race, and his complexion and his dress make him . . . stand out.”
“We’ve just arrived this moment, so we have not seen him,” I said. “Will we recognize him?”
“Oh yes,” all four said at once. The first speaker added, with a gesture toward my soldier’s jerkin, “You should introduce yourself to him, he is now your commander in chief.”
Emilia pretended to find this terribly exciting. “Oh, my goodness, Iago! Behave yourself and you might find yourself promoted to lieutenant before the evening’s over!”
“Why is he in Venice now?” I asked the man.
“He’s just been officially invested,” he explained. “He’d been fighting in the Levant, for different armies, but always against the Turks, at least a decade now. Last year, he was hired as captain of a Venetian unit out there. He rose in the ranks quite spectacularly, and after this last embarrassment with Orsini and Sforza, the Senate agreed with the Great Council that he would make an ideal candidate for governor-general. He heads to Rhodes next month—”
“Really? I’d heard rumors about trying to take Rhodes from the south,” I said.
“Well then,” said the third gentleman. “If you know about military matters, you should strike up a conversation with him! Poor fellow is being besieged by repetitively meaningless chatter all evening.”
“Does he speak our language?” the lady asked.
“It’s accented, but it’s understandable,” the first gentleman said. He turned to me. “The general might enjoy some conversation of things martial, being so entirely out of place at a gathering of this sort.”
To my side, I heard Emilia take a quick breath in, and her hand tightened around my elbow. “Iago, there he is,” she whispered. “Look at him. How remarkable!”
I glanced at her—her lower lip was hanging slightly slack behind her mask—then turned to look where she was staring.
A dozen paces away from us, taller than the handful of people in the way, stood a tall, broad-shouldered man whose skin was nearly the same color as his tightly curled black hair. The dimensions of his features were bizarre by Venetian standards—still he struck me as decent to look upon, although his color startled me. As if to emphasize his darkness, he wore an unusual outfit of brilliant white—a long loose tunic, over loose wide trousers. Heavy, simple gold chains of different lengths hung around his neck, and incongruously, a white kerchief with lace and embroidery was tied around his throat. There was no other decoration to his costume, save the ceremonial red-and-white banner of a Venetian general, which draped from his left shoulder to his right hip.
“His name?” I asked.
“Othello,” said the older man, respectfully.