CASSIO SPUN AROUND to look into the passageway. It was the woman I’d seen in the house, but with more cosmetic embellishment on her face now, and dressed to reveal far more of her slight form. She very nearly had steam coming out of her nostrils, and she was marching through the underpass as if she were a soldier.
For Cassio, this was an inconvenience. For me, it spelled potential catastrophe: Once Othello saw her, and her behavior toward Cassio, he would probably realize this, not Desdemona, was the woman Cassio was speaking of. And then I’d be in trouble for trying to convince him otherwise.
So the attractive young woman walking toward us was my undoing. And I could not think what to do.
“Look at her,” Cassio muttered to me. “I, marry that?” He raised his voice as she exited the passageway and approached us. “What are you up to, shadowing me everywhere?”
This monkey might be a prostitute, but she had the backbone of a warrior. And she was furious. “The devil take you!” she shouted.
And then she did something I could not have expected, something that once again assured me the gods themselves were overseeing my enterprise:
From her bodice, she pulled out Desdemona’s handkerchief, with the little strawberries on it, and waved it furiously in Cassio’s face. “Where did this really come from? I am such a fool! That was a likely story about your finding it in your chamber and bringing it to me. This handkerchief comes from some finer mistress of yours, and you want me to copy it, so you can make a gift of it to someone else? That’s it, isn’t it! Well, I do not want it. There!” She smacked it so hard against his stomach that he nearly doubled over. “Give it to your hobbyhorse, I’ll none of it.”
The mocking Florentine had vanished; in his place was a simpering lover wanting to make his mistress happy. “Sweet Bianca,” he crooned, reaching down to grab the handkerchief where it had fallen. “Calm down, sweetheart. Calm down!” He straightened, took her face between his hands, and kissed her on each cheek, and then her lips.
Bianca pulled away from his kiss, still glaring. “That’s better. A little,” she said in a steely voice. She gave him an appraising look; she had yet to acknowledge my presence, although she seemed highly aware of me as spectator. “I suppose you’re welcome to come to supper tonight.” The steel softened, and she graced him with a coquettish look. “If not tonight, whenever you’re prepared to.” She snatched the handkerchief from his limp grasp and marched back through the passageway.
Emilia and I had our differences, certainly, but from what I could tell, ours was by far the happiest and healthiest coupling on all of Cyprus.
“You might want to go after her,” I said.
He sighed. “Yes, I better; she’ll start screaming about me in the streets otherwise.”
I nudged him in the arm. “Will you sup with her?”
He blushed slightly, and looked sheepish. “I intend to. She makes it worth my while if I stay after.”
“Go on then,” I counseled. I wanted him out of reach before Othello left his hiding place.
Cassio ran after her; I saw him catch up to her just as she exited the passage and the sunshine lit her brightly again.
That had turned out better than I ever could have devised. I knew the effect it would have on Othello. Men judge more by appearance than reality, for sight belongs to everyone, but understanding only to a very few. Machiavelli. Ironically, a Florentine.
I heard Othello step out of his hiding place.
“How shall I murder him, Iago?” he demanded.
I ignored that. Nobody was murdering anyone, any more than we really killed each other in fencing practice.
“He laughed at what he does—did you see that? And did you see the handkerchief?” I added, in genuine amazement.
“Was that mine?”
“Absolutely,” I said calmly. “And look what he did with it—he gave it to a whore!” I was about to go on about how clearly Desdemona was as wronged by Cassio as Othello was by both of them—therefore giving Cassio twice as much blame, and putting Desdemona in half as much trouble—but Othello interrupted me:
“I want to kill him slowly. I want to spend nine years doing it.” He growled. “A fine woman, my wife! Fair! Sweet! The very model of virtue!”
“Forget about that,” I said. “Just let that go.”
“I will let it go, and her too—I’ll let her go to rot and perish and be damned! She will not live the night! I tell you, Iago, my heart is turned to stone.” He smacked his palm against his chest. “I strike it and it hurts my hand.”
I was about to point out the irony of a stone-hearted man being eaten up with passion. I wanted to see if he had any sense of humor left. If he did, there might be hope for him. But as I opened my mouth, the stony-hearted man crumpled over on himself with a new emotion: grief.
“There is no sweeter creature in the world,” he said, his voice cracking.
“Stop this,” I begged. “If you love her that much, forgive her. Or at least, confront her first.”
“I won’t! I’ll hang her,” he announced. “I must not love a loathed enemy. Of course I’ll hang her—but the fact that I’ll hang her, and rightfully too, does not mean she isn’t a remarkable woman. She could charm the savageness out of a bear—”
But can she charm it out of you? I wondered.
“Oh, but the pity of it, Iago. Oh, Iago . . . the pity of it, Iago.”
This was getting tiresome. “If you love her despite it all, then let her be. If she is unfaithful—if she is—you’re the only one it touches.”
“I’ll chop her into pieces!” he shouted to the sky. He grabbed both my arms above the elbows, his face inflamed with passion. He was frightening. “Get me poison, Iago,” he said. “I’ll do it tonight. I’ll do it before we’re alone together in a room, I won’t let her near me, she is so charming she’ll unman me. It will be tonight, Iago.”
I stared at him a moment in amazement. I had never once wished Desdemona dead, but I had wished her out of my life, and here he was, offering exactly that. By heaven, I’m talented, I thought. This ability of mine was some new weapon that no army had ever thought to nurture and exploit. I was the most valuable man the army had. I could make this man, unflappable in battle and besotted with affection, determined to kill his wife on mere suspicion, and I’d achieved it in less than a day. That was extraordinary. I could do anything. Anything. I could bend any living creature to my will. The world was my oyster: Othello was intent on killing Desdemona.
Which did not mean I wanted Desdemona to die. I did not. So I could not give him poison; he would use it.
“Do not do it with poison,” I said, thinking fast. He himself had said—and it was obvious to anyone who’d seen them—that her presence, her proximity, her touch, still had the power to undo his will. In my omnipotence, I would give her the power to save herself: “Strangle her in her bed,” I said.
He would touch her, and he would melt; she might not come out of it unbruised, but she would survive it. He could never touch, actually hold, that flesh he was so enamored of, and destroy it. I had not realized it until today, but he was a man ruled entirely by his passions—and sexual passion burns hottest of them all. The very thing that made him want to kill her would be the thing that saved her: how sensuous he found her.
“In her bed,” I insisted. “The very bed she has contaminated.”
Othello blinked. “Good,” he said approvingly. “I like the justice of it. Very good.”
An alarm sounded from the fortress walls, announcing a ship approaching the port below.
A loud cannon shot exploded from the water in response.
We looked at each other with the same horrifying thought: the Turks.
And to myself, I thought, Thank God. My experiment, but a day old, was wearying and maddening; the harsh reality of war would slam everything back into perspective, and we could leave all this madness behind us.
Othello and I turned and ran up to the Citadel gate together, instinctively reaching for our swords.