“Come,” said the ensign to his commander, Otello, and the general followed him like he was in a trance. He led the Moor out of the barracks and down to the canal and they took a dark small boat around to the water gate at Otello’s house.
Otello seemed not to be listening as he told him that he finally had proof of the captain’s treachery against him. He saw the Moor looking up at his house.
“It looks so grand from the outside,” Otello said. “But did you know that there are many chambers that are not safe to inhabit? There are walls that are unsound and there are some floors that are rotting. When I was appointed general of the city and given this house I thought it a palace. I, who was used to sleeping in soldiers’ quarters to have my own palazzo! But only slowly did I discover it was granted to me because nobody else wanted to be responsible for the cost of restoring it. I had thought the city had accepted me. Was rewarding me.” He laughed. “Like I believed that she really loved me.”
The ensign said, “We must be silent. Even your servants should not know that we are here.”
“I grew up in a small village of stones and tents, did you know?” Otello said, as if still not hearing him. “Life was cheap. You could as easily be killed for looking at a warrior the wrong way as you could by disease or enemy raiders. You might be killed for the price of a single copper coin.” He looked at his house again and then turned and spat into the waters. “It is only in wealthy cities like this that life is considered worth so much more and to be valued accordingly.”
Then he turned to the ensign. “How much would you consider your own life was worth?”
The ensign looked uncertain and scared for a moment.
“Or how much would the life of my wife be worth?”
“I could not hazard to guess,” the ensign said quickly.
“Many, many hundred gold pieces, I’d wager,” Otello said. “If I had carried her away as a hostage rather than won her heart, I dare say her father would have paid that sum to get her back safely again.”
The ensign steered the boat up against the water gate and tied it securely. “We must be quiet, my lord,” he said.
But Otello said, “And yet, in the village I grew up in, honour had an inestimable worth. You could not place a price on a man’s honour and certainly no amount of gold was considered recompense for insulting a man’s honour.”
“Yes, my lord,” said the ensign in a whisper, trying to bring his thoughts to a close.
“But in this city honour is worth nothing,” Otello said. “It can be besmirched without a second thought. Perhaps that is why so many citizens like to go masked, because they are constantly losing face to even their closest friends and family.”
“My lord does not deserve the way he has been treated,” the ensign said. “He has been raised up by the city when they needed him and cast down now they no longer value him. The same way your captain pretends to be a loyal friend, but is wooing your wife all the while.”
Otello turned and reached out a strong black arm, seizing the ensign by the neck. The man squeaked and gurgled. “You shall not put voice to these thoughts that plague me,” he said. “It is bad enough to have them flying around in my head.”
“I take them back,” the ensign said quickly.
“If only you could,” said Otello. “Once spoken, words cannot be re-caged. They are not doves to fly away over the mountains. They stay like mosquitoes, buzzing around your ears.”
“My lord,” said the ensign, worried he had been drugging the Moor too much and his madness was likely to be unpredictable, even dangerous to him. “You should not dwell overly on this. It only causes you pain.”
“If I am not to dwell on this, then why have you brought me here?” he asked. “Would you be a better friend if you had never told me of your suspicions and left me to stand on the outside of my palazzo believing it to be sound and beautiful within?”
“That is for my lord to ultimately decide,” the ensign said, starting to sweat a little with anxiety. “I am only the instrument of truth.”
“Yes,” said the Moor, seeming to focus a little more properly now. “The truth. It is time to know it.”
“Yes, my lord,” said the ensign and led the general into his own rear courtyard. They were in the garden and the ensign put a finger to his lips. The Moor just nodded. The ensign led them across to a garden house that had a white latticed wall on one side. The two men stood in the shadows inside. Disdemona was on the far side of the garden, sitting on a chair reading a book.
“How beautiful she is,” said Otello. “I find it hard to believe any treachery ever filled her heart to see her like that.”
The ensign put a hand on his general’s to warn him to be quiet. “Such is the skill of her treachery,” he said softly, “that it is not easily seen.”
The two men stood silently for some time, watching Disdemona ask a handmaiden to fetch her a drink and then resume reading in solitude again. “How did you know she would be here?” Otello asked in a whisper.
“It is her habit to read in the garden at this time each day,” the ensign said. “The hour when callers are most likely to come.”
Otello just nodded and they waited. As a hunter in a hide might wait for his prey. As a warrior in ambush might wait for the enemy. As a doubting husband might wait for any sign of his wife’s unfaithfulness.
Finally their prey, their enemy, the proof of unfaithfulness arrived. A handmaiden came to bring news to Disdemona, obviously of a caller, since she put her book down, smoothed her dress and hair. Otello felt the blood pounding in his temples at this sight of her preening herself.
Then the captain entered the garden and came and stood before her. She offered him her hand and he took it, seemingly to linger overly long with it. She patted the seat beside her but he did not sit, he dropped to one knee as if he was going to offer her a present of great worth. And with a grand flourish he reached into his breast and pulled out a white kerchief with red strawberries on it.
Otello stopped breathing. The ensign felt the air around him start to boil. Disdemona jumped to her feet and took the kerchief from him and pressed it to her bosom. As if she was pressing him there. And then she took his hands in hers and drew him close to her.
Blood filled Otello’s eyes and left him blind to anything other than what he chose to see. The ensign leaned closer. “Leave the captain to me. I will kill him to avenge your honour and prove my loyalty. But Disdemona I will leave in your hands.” And he watched with bitter pleasure the way the Moor’s large hands opened and closed, as if they were around her thin beautiful neck already.