Free The Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore Page B

walked around on the cobbles and found I quickly was able to affect a natural gait on the platforms, which were only three-quarters of a foot high.
    Except for soldiers and sailors, most Venetian men wore leggings under a long tunic, after the Byzantine style, sometimes belted, but my sailcloth trousers would attract no attention, as not much of them showed under a long, moth-eaten wool gabardine Jessica had liberated from her father’s closet. With my floppy yellow hat, I looked every bit the unkempt Jew.
    “Here he comes,” said Jessica. Two men had rounded the corner a dozen houses away, and were coming up the walkway, both wearing garb similar to my own, the dark gabardine and yellow hats, and sported long gray-streaked beards.
    “Father is the shorter one,” said Jessica. “That’s his friend, Tubal, with him. He lives down the way.”
    Indeed, as if she had cued it, the two stopped, and after exchanging smiles and nods, the taller man went into his house. Shylock continued down the walk, not looking ahead enough to notice us yet.
    “Is that you, son?” came a voice from behind us. I turned to see Gobbo tapping his way toward us.
    “It’s the old blind loony,” I whispered furiously. “Quick, push him in the canal before he cocks everything up.”
    “My boy? Is that you?” said Gobbo.
    “Humor him,” said Jessica. “There’s no time.”
    “Top of the morning, Da,” said I. “Thou stumbling stump of stink.”
    “Pocket!” scolded Jessica.
    “Well, for fuck’s sake, girl, he’s blind in a city where the streets are full of water—how is it he hasn’t stumbled in for a bath in the last half century or so?”
    “Boy?” said Gobbo. “My, you sound like you’ve grown. Let me feel your face.”
    He blundered toward me, his long cane dangling from a lanyard on his wrist, his hands waving in the air before him like the antennae of a crusty lobster.
    I stepped aside, deftly I think, and said, “Touch me and I will hold you underwater until you dissolve.” I was feeling much better, and strong enough, I thought, to properly drown a feeble blindster.
    Bumbling past me, Gobbo’s left hand found a perch on Jessica’s breast, while his right settled on Shylock’s face.
    “Well, boy, you’ve got your mother’s knockers but—Lord loves a joke—my face.”
    Jessica gathered Gobbo’s arms down to his sides and herded him over to the wall. “Signor, Gobbo, please rest here in the shade while I tend to my father’s business.”
    “What is this?” said Shylock, waving from Jessica, to me, to Gobbo, in a tight, repeated succession. “This? Them? In front of my house? My house. Daughter, what is this?”
    Gobbo safely deposited against the wall, away from the water, Jessica approached her father, head bowed. “Oh, Papa, such good news, this is, is what this is. This young Jew has agreed to be our slave. He will clean and fetch for us, carry our burdens, perhaps we can even buy our own boat and he can row you to the Rialto.”
    “Shalom,” said I, exhausting my Hebrew in two beats.
    Shylock leaned in close and looked me in the eye. “What is your name, boy?”
    Realizing, somewhat late I’d say, that we should have thought of this before, I improvised. “Lancelot,” said I.
    “Really?” said Jessica, letting her features drop as slack as a curtain.
    “Lancelot is not a Jewish name,” said Shylock.
    “He’s not been raised with the traditions,” Jessica said, recovering. “Only his mother was a Jew.”
    “She was?” said Gobbo. “And that minx always pretending she was buggering off to mass. Aye, lad, your mum was a love, she was.”
    “Jews do not own slaves,” Shylock said.
    “But that is the beauty of it, Papa.” Jessica stepped between Shylock and Gobbo. “The law only says that we may not buy or sell slaves; we are not buying him. He’s delivering himself to us.”
    Hearing it out loud, I realized it was a rubbish ploy, but I needed a place to live, to hide, and I needed