MICHELE CASSIO WAS, INDEED, excellent at math. He had calculated things precisely that it was my duty to know in general. His attention to detail was almost cowing—albeit it was abstract detail, idealized detail, theoretical armies and numbers and ships and harvests and bags of burlap. But given the Platonic ideal of people and objects he was working with, he had thought through a great deal. There was some kind of working brain behind that handsome face and bobbing blue ostrich feather.
Over the course of two dull hours, in Senator Brabantio’s study, Michele read aloud his own text, in which he listed the exact amount of weight each soldier’s provisions should weigh (assuming no man cheated and brought extra—such an assumption did not enter into his figuring), and how that would affect the speed of a boat when freighted, compared to the speed of a wagon train over various terrains, adjusting for the extra but varying weight and mass of, for example, horse feed or ballast for the ships. His algebra was quietly elegant. While he said nothing revolutionary, he reaffirmed what Othello, Othello’s civilian superintendent Marco Salamon, myself, and the Senate had suspected: that we should keep all our cavalry on Terraferma and move only men to Cyprus.
But his calculations also showed us that we should move them with more supplies than we would have anticipated. The extra tonnage, freighted, would in the end cost us less resources and manpower than sending an extra ship later with additional supplies.
At the risk of sounding ungracious, that was the only thing of value we gained in two hours of narcotic verbiage.
FAR MORE INTERESTING than listening and responding to Cassio’s figures, to me at least, was our one interruption. Brabantio’s majordomo knocked and, upon invitation, opened the door, carrying on a tray a large silver box, like a casket or a Byzantine reliquary. “This arrived for your daughter, sir,” the majordomo said dryly. “Will you accept it on her behalf? The gentleman awaits personally in his gondola for an answer.”
Brabantio rolled his eyes and made a grunting sound. His manner suggested this sort of thing happened nearly every day. I noticed Othello tense and crane his head to get a better look at the thing.
“Let me see it.” Brabantio sighed. “I need a respite from all these calculations.”
The majordomo set it on the desk before the senator. I barely suppressed a gasp. The casket had gold chase-work on it, and the gold outlined a stylized pepper tree, which had become the emblem of a certain childhood friend of mine.
That casket was from Roderigo.
“Aha,” Brabantio said dryly, holding up the gift and examining it from all sides, as if he were a farmer checking the health of a piglet. “That spice merchant again, I see.” He handed the casket back to the majordomo. “Of course we won’t accept this. The man is not even a patrician, for the love of angels, why does he think I would let him near my daughter?”
I felt Othello’s bright black eyes swivel in their sockets toward me; I met them with my own and as compassionate a look as I could muster. Inside, though, I was strangling sad bemusement: poor Roderigo, now the richest citizen-merchant in all Venice, still pined for women he would never have.
I also felt a shamed kind of relief: nobody here knew the wooer was a friend of mine. Brabantio had just made it plain that in these rarefied circles I had stumbled upward into, Roderigo’s efforts were fit for mockery, not sympathy. How should I interact with him when our paths next crossed, as they unavoidably would, at some social event? I found him increasingly tiresome as the years went by, but the ties of childhood instilled a very deep loyalty.
A FEW NIGHTS LATER, Othello and I were invited once again to Senator Brabantio’s for supper. Emilia was not invited, and Desdemona did not join us—but several other senators did, as well as Zuane da Porto, Othello’s lieutenant, and Marco Salamon, Othello’s civilian counterpart.
Military and civilian have always been rigorously intermeshed in Venice. The commander in chief must answer to a committee of twenty civilians, all patricians in various government committees. The army is lousy with senior senators and retired military men, all functioning as “commissioners,” who constantly watch over all things military. To prevent disgruntled officers from surreptitiously forming private militias capable of threatening the state, patrician superintendents are designated to shadow every officer, from captain general to paymaster. Remarkably, this baroque arrangement has always worked well for Venice, and over the course of nearly a millennia nobody has ever managed, or even seriously attempted, a coup. When the army, Senate, nobles, and richest merchants are all in bed with one another, it creates a marvelous unanimity of purpose. However, it also creates a stupefaction of endless meetings.
The subject today was the refortification of Zara against a Turkish incursion. Zara, just across the northern Adriatic from Venice, was the linchpin of the Dalmatian coast. If the Turks were to seize it, they would be in an alarmingly secure position to attack Venice, the Italian peninsula, and Hungary. It was a very small city, but its famed defenses and location gave it enormous strategic significance. Giulio Savorgnan, who governed there, had sent a long list of what the city required to withstand a Turkish siege. So we would be taking with us lots of explosive devices, artillery, munitions and other arms, baskets and buckets and bricks and carbon and iron, masons, physicians, and of course plenty of hangman’s rope to deter deserters.
“Where is our young Florentine?” I asked, pleased by his absence. “Is not this sort of reckoning his specialty?”
“Cassio’s servant sent word that he was indisposed tonight,” Brabantio said.
“We have no real need of him,” Othello said. “This is not an abstract conversation but the making of specific plans, involving real men and real oceans and real stones.”
Cassio’s servant? I wondered. Michele Cassio had a servant, staying with him in the enlisted men’s barracks? Even if he were from a wealthy family, I found this arrangement odd, but nobody else around the table noticed. So I said nothing and joined the conversation with full attention, as we established the size of the force Othello would be taking with him to Zara, and which officers—in addition to da Porto and myself, of course. We pulled out charts and maps and diagrams, and discussed what specific part of the fortress wall required amendment; we established from where the rock would come; what best route to take to get there; whom to hire for carving and whom for smithing. We attended to details that went unnoticed in Michele Cassio’s meticulous arithmetic: the political leanings of the local masons and their guilds, the religious tensions between Catholics and the Orthodoxy, which families with direct kinship ties to Venice lived on the landward side of the walled city. . . .
THE MEETING ENDED LATE. It had been too long since I had been entirely in male company attending to military matters, and even if the senators were not military men themselves, they understood and appreciated the three of us who were.
Othello, da Porto, and I went by gondola through the close canals of Castello, debarking near the Salizada dei Pignater Bridge. We had then only a short walk along a street that was (thanks to its proximity to the Arsenal) almost as redolent with brothels as was the Rialto. Othello was preoccupied with the results of the meeting, and wore silence like a cloak.
I walked to Othello’s left, da Porto to his right; as we passed beneath one open balcony full of laughing half-dressed women and drunken half-dressed men, something caught my eye, and I glanced up over my left shoulder. One of the brunette whores, her nipples plum-colored in the lamplight, was wearing a soldier’s cap with a bright blue ostrich feather stuck into it.
I looked away shocked, and then looked back again.
The tall, broad-chested young Adonis who was fingering the plummy nipples was none other than Michele Cassio.
He was far too drunk to have recognized me—or so I thought, until our eyes met. My own eyes widened in amazement, and I stopped abruptly. Othello took another preoccupied step or two before realizing he had lost his ensign. He stopped, turned to face me, da Porto behind him.
“Iago?”
I snapped my eyes away from Michele and down onto the cobbled street. “I’m sorry, General, I thought I lost a buckle. I heard something clatter on the pavement. It must have been a noise from within.” Before he could look up and notice Cassio, I began to stride purposefully in the direction of the Arsenal gate. “That was a very useful evening,” I said.
“Indeed,” Othello said. (Da Porto almost never spoke.) “Now we need only establish a departure date, and debate whether or not you will bring your charming wife with you.” He grinned and in the dark, nudged me playfully. “I am sure you do not want to leave her here with the likes of that Cassio around.”
“Oh, General,” I said pleasantly, unruffled. “I may be a jealous husband, but I am confident Emilia is not Michele Cassio’s kind of woman.”
THE NEXT MORNING, I entered Othello’s office in the Sagittary unannounced, a privilege I’d earned. I surprised young Michele Cassio in earnest whispered conversation with him. Their conversation ended abruptly, almost guiltily, upon my entrance. I felt a twinge of unease as I realized something was being hushed, but I assumed Cassio’s embarrassment was due to my seeing him on the whorehouse balcony.
“Good morning, General,” I said. And nodding to the other, “Sir.”
“Iago,” Othello said, welcoming. “Cassio and I have been adjusting some figures for the packing of supplies on the ships to Zara. Your arrival is fortuitous.”
“My arrival is predictable,” I said, trying to sound offhand. “This is when I appear every morning except Sundays. It is my duty to oversee the provisions of the ships, so I am very glad you did not go too far into your discussions without my presence.”
Othello looked bemused. “You are peevish this morning, Ensign. Did you not sleep well?”
“What new information have you got for me, General?” I said. “If there are extra supplies to be ordered, I must delegate my staff to obtain them at once.” I made no attempt to smile at Cassio. “Are you coming with us, sir?”
“No, no,” Othello said. “Michele is staying here, he has some bit of his training to finish yet—funnily enough, Iago, it is his artillery he must improve upon. I would leave you here to train him if you were not so indispensable to me, but as it is, of course, you are coming with me.”
The pleasure and relief I felt at this declaration almost embarrassed me. “Thank you, General,” I said at once; sensing something more was needed, I turned to Cassio and added, “Artillery practice requires precision, which seems to be your strength in many ways, so I am sure you will excel at it quickly enough. And by the time we return, I believe you shall be an officer. But what has happened to your feather, sir?”
Cassio automatically reached up toward his cap for the blue feather. The quill was broken two-thirds of the way up, and the end of it flopped over like a wounded limb. “It was a dancing accident,” he said smoothly. With his Florentine elegance he managed to say this without sounding ridiculous.
“How does one break a feather in a dancing accident?” asked Othello, amused.
After a blink, Cassio explained, “I doffed it to a lady I was partnered with, and it was crushed by the gentleman beside me losing his balance and falling against me suddenly. The feather gave way under his weight but was pinned at such an angle that there was some damage done. I have replacements, of course.” He said this with a reassuring smile, as if we might be concerned he didn’t.
“Why haven’t you replaced it, then?” I asked. “You are point-device in your accoutrement, it seems unlike you to let a broken feather linger in your cap.”
This time the hesitation was longer. “To be honest, I have not been back to my quarters since the accident occurred,” he said.
“Oh, ho!” Othello said with a hearty chuckle. “I thought I smelled stale wine upon your breath when you came in. You have a secret life as a carouser, do you not, Michele?”
Cassio reddened. “Nothing interferes with my duty or my commitment here, General,” he insisted.
“Your clothes are very neat for having been out all night,” Othello commented, with a gesture.
“Perhaps they were not on him for much of the evening,” I postulated dryly.
Realizing he was going to be merely teased, not punished, Cassio reddened further and allowed himself a small sheepish smile. “The gentlemen are astute in their observations,” he said.
Othello turned to me with a grin, his gesture still pointing toward Cassio. “This Michele is a strange fellow,” he said in a conspiratorial tone. “He is so careful to appear proper but then he has nude dancing accidents when none of us are looking. Ha!”
“I would attribute it to his bachelor life,” I said. And with a meaningful look at Michele, I added, “I am sure his blue feather has survived plenty of dancing accidents before this one.”
“I am a bachelor and I don’t have that life,” Othello said.
“Or that feather,” I pointed out.
“That must be it.” Othello chuckled. “Michele, get rid of the feather and do not replace it. It encourages uncouth behavior for an officer, and you will be an officer very soon.”
Cassio instantly snatched the feather from his cap, pulling the cap off his head along with it. “Of course, sir,” he said awkwardly and fumbled to pull the feather loose. It was the first time I had ever seen a Florentine fumble. Venetian despite myself, I enjoyed bearing witness to it. He replaced the cap.
“Give it to me,” Othello said sternly, of the feather. Cassio did so.
With a sudden grin, Othello reached up and poked the damaged quill into his own curly hair. “Let’s see if it brings me your luck with ladies.” He laughed.
I smirked; Cassio managed a nervous little chuckle. Othello pulled out the quill and tossed it on his desk. “Enough of this silliness,” he said. “Michele, you will observe and honor every detail of what we discussed?”
“Of course, General,” Cassio said, immediately the smooth and polished Florentine again.
Again I winced with a twinge of unease. I longed to know what they were referring to, but I was too proud to ask.