AS I HAD ALL WEEK, I attended to Othello in his office. Daily he was briefed on the military and civic concerns of Cyprus, and particularly of Famagusta. Most of it was boring, dreary, officious paperwork and committee meetings, not at all what he was used to or cared for. Throughout the week, Marco Salamon, the paunchy Venetian patrician who was Othello’s civic commissioner, was there, and by the end of the week, Montano was well enough recovered from his wound to sit in as well. The meetings were airless and pointless, and as soon as business was attended to, Othello would excuse himself, with me following him, and spend the rest of the morning with his officers training in arms in the courtyard of the fortress. We all shared mess together in the refectory, and the afternoon was variably spent each day.
THIS MORNING AFTER Cassio’s appearance, the meeting and the boredom were no different. As always, Othello tried to rush through it, and as always, the gentlemen attending him seemed to want to slow the process down, perhaps because they had nothing more interesting to do with their day. And, as always, I eyed the lieutenant’s sash and wondered when he would present it to me.
As it was the end of our first week, I scribed dictation on a summary of events thus far (nothing to report beyond Cassio’s decommissioning, but taking seven pages to do so). Othello signed it; it was sealed; he gave it to me.
“Iago, give this to the pilot of the ship. Send him back to Venice, with our regards to the Senate as we await further orders from them. I believe the army’s presence is useful here, but I do not know that mine is, now that the Turkish threat is past.”
I saluted and took the packet from his hand. Why was he calling upon me to do these trivial tasks? Had he not, back in Zara, sent a page boy to deliver messages to the ship? But, of course, those had been secret missives; this was a matter of state. So perhaps it was an ennobling gesture, to show all the officials of the island that I was his right-arm man. The best way to show them would be to give me that sash.
“When you have done that, Iago, join me on the wall works,” Othello was saying as he pushed his chair back. “Come, gentlemen, show me these famous fortifications.” The perfumed gentlemen—among them, leathery-faced Montano and a famous engineer named Zuan Hieronomo—showed him out. I handed off the letters to a page boy.
I had no interest in tagging along with the officials as they showed Othello a fortress he had already thoroughly examined on his own time, with his own engineers. We already knew the main problem with Famagusta: these towers were at angles, not rounded, and (unlike Nicosia) they did not sufficiently project far enough out to allow room to cover flanking fire. Othello and I together had devised a solution to this, before we had been sent here: wooden curtains that could swing out with artillery attached. Othello now simply had to persuade Signior Hieronomo that this was Signior Hieronomo’s own idea.
To avoid becoming entangled in that conversation, I wandered slowly through the armoring rooms, a level below the general and his sycophants, trying to sort out what to do about Cassio.
EMILIA WOULD HAVE greeted him and taken his message to Desdemona, because I’d told her to. Desdemona would surely have come outside to hear his plea. She would likely be sympathetic, because she knew and liked him, and of course felt beholden to him for helping carry out her elopement. If she agreed to petition Othello, she would win him over. Completely so: not only to reinstate him as an officer but as lieutenant.
I could do nothing to prevent these events from happening. I could only manipulate their meaning. That meant I’d have to call upon the second, uglier part of my revenge fantasy, and make Othello question Desdemona’s motives. I felt my gut clench at the thought.
I need not convince him they are actually lovers, I told myself, only that there is cause to be . . . a little wary. A man so rapturously in love is naturally jealous and insecure—I had been so with Emilia. If I’d had a close friend back then, what words from a confidant would have caused me alarm? Such words, if I could summon them, I’d use with Othello, of Cassio.
Besides, I reassured that small part of me that quailed at my intentions, Cassio does seem taken with her; this may well be an honest warning bell I ’mringing.
I TIMED THINGS WELL and found Othello on the parapets having just bid good day to the magistrates.
“The artillery curtains?” I asked, catching my breath.
“Why, yes, my friend,” Othello said with his winning grin. “Signior Hieronomo is a wondrously inspired engineer—he intended a notion of moveable artillery curtains. Wasn’t that clever? You and I, Iago, we should brush up on our engineering skills, then perhaps we would think of such clever things.”
“Well done, General,” I said. “You are learning how to navigate Venetian waters.”
“Fencing?” Othello said.
With remarkable offhandedness I suggested, “Soon enough, but perhaps we might first repair to the ladies’ wing and say good morning to our wives?”
He grinned. He always grinned in matters regarding Desdemona. I doubted we would catch Cassio still there, but it was worth the try.
We strolled the wall walk around the keep tower and turned onto the wing that housed the bedrooms. Just as we turned the corner, I saw, bobbing in the air below, a bright blue ostrich feather.