Free The Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore

“Bread and cheese, you said? Wine?”
    “I’ll fetch some. You’ll need some salve for those scrapes on your wrists and gouges on your bum, too, or the wounds will fester.”
    “Fine, but no touching the willy. I’m grieving and I’ve been used roughly, so I’m in no mood for sport.”
    “Fine, we’ll simply have to pass you off as Hebrew, but you’ll have to put on some trousers or something before I show you to Papa. Besides, I want nothing to do with your scrawny willy. I am in love with the most wondrous man called Lorenzo.”
    “And a lucky young Jew, indeed, is this Lorenzo.”
    “Oh, he’s not a Jew, he’s a Christian. He is a merchant, learning his trade under Signor Antonio, one of Venice’s most prominent traders.” She rolled her eyes to the ceiling and hugged herself at the thought of her beloved Lorenzo.
    “Antonio? Antonio Donnola?”
    “Yes, you know him?”
    “No. But I know of him.” Had I gone so far, through so much, to end up in the nest of one of my murderers? For surely as far as any of them knew, I was dead.
    I feigned a yawn and sat back on the pillows. “Dear Jessica, if I am going to be a proper Jew and slave before your father, I will need to eat and then sleep. But let’s not tell anyone how you came to find me, or that I am here at all. In thanks for my rescue, I will serve you, but as a new Jew, freshly hatched. Agreed?”
    “Smashing! Yes, yes, agreed,” she said. “With you to do my chores I’ll be able to sneak away to see Lorenzo more.”
    “Lorenzo, especially, must not know how you found me.”
    “But it’s so exciting, I simply must—”
    “I’ll tell him I woke to find you fondling my naughty bits.”
    “Well, fine, then.” She pouted. “What about him?” She tossed her head toward Gobbo.
    “Gobbo,” I called.
    “What? What?” said the column of rags. “Who’s there? Have you seen my son?”
    “He’ll be fine,” said I.

    A fever came upon me and I was five days hiding and recovering in Jessica’s bedroom before I was ready to reemerge upon Venice’s stage. When Jessica brought me her hand mirror I scarcely recognized myself and I had little doubt I could pass through the streets of Venice without being recognized, especially as Brabantio had stripped me of my trademark motley and bells. I have always been thin, but now my cheeks were drawn from my time in the dungeon and the fever that followed, and a mossy brown beard shaded my face in wisps. Still, I would need more disguise than time’s wear and tear to move among mine enemies, and I would need Jessica’s help to obtain that.
    Jessica sat across the room by the window, preparing some sailcloth sailor’s trousers she had bought for me at the docks.
    “Jessica, love,” said I. “You might hold up on the sewing for a tick.”
    “Bollocks, they’re a good foot too long. You want to trip and break a leg so you can’t do any chores, don’t you?”
    “Not at all,” said I. “I am prepared to be your faithful servant, but before you present me to your father, there’s something you should know. I haven’t been entirely honest with you.”
    “What, you’re not the deposed King of England, what once shagged a holy woman through a hole in a wall?”
    I had shared some of my history with the girl, much of it while in the delirium of fever, but nothing about my previous tenure in Venice. Well, I didn’t know her, did I? A gentleman does not begin a conversation with a young lady he’s just met by saying, “ Oh, well, I’ve been having it off with the fish girl while buried alive in the senator’s cellar, and you?”
    “No, that bit’s true,” said I. “But I am not, actually, a troubadour who was shipwrecked while on my way to entertain the seventh Earl of Bumsex.”
    “You don’t say? That would explain the chains we chiseled off you, then? Why, yes, that makes sense, now, doesn’t it?” She scratched her head and looked out at the sky, as if receiving a revelation from