Genoa,” said Montano, pointing to an orange point of light in the distant dark that for all I could see might have been a sinking star or a bloody dolphin carrying a candle. “We can’t take the ship any closer. There’s a lighthouse on a point at the mouth of the breakwater. Steer for that light. Just beyond her is the harbor. Don’t take your boat into the harbor if you can’t stay with it, though.”

“Aye,” said Jessica. “Lest a scurvy bilge rat plunders it and takes the bounty in grub and grog, eh, me hardies? Arrrr.”

“You know that’s utter nonsense,” said I. She’d been at it for the entire four days’ voyage to Genoa.

“It is not. It’s piratey,” she said.

“We don’t really talk like that,” said one of the sailors, who was helping us get our gear into the rowboat.

“You’re just common Jack Tars, ain’t ya,” said Jessica. “Not proper pirates.”

“We were pirates under Othello, before we joined the Venetian Navy,” said the other. “Same job, different flags.”

“The lad’s learning new languages,” said I. Actually, I preferred her pirate nattering to the hope-filled fairy tales of her never-would-be life with Lorenzo. “Go ahead, say something in Hebrew, Jess.”

“Shabbat shalom, ye scalawag salts.”

“Look behind you, Pocket,” said Montano, before I climbed down into the boat. “See those three bright stars? Memorize ’em. You leave from the lighthouse at dusk, two nights from now, we’ll be right here. Steer for them stars, keep the lighthouse at your back. There’s a lantern and flint and steel in the boat. Light a lantern once that lighthouse looks the same size it is now. We’ll find you.”

“What if it’s foggy?”

“Well, you’re right fucked then, aren’t you? We’ll come around again two nights after that. Go now, it’ll be dawn by the time you get there.”

“It’s a good six hours before sunrise,” said Jess.

“Aye, get to them oars, lad,” said one of the sailors.

I climbed down into the boat and after they handed in the last of our gear, including the heavy leather bag that we’d transferred Shylock’s treasure into, we pushed off. Jessica and I sat hip to hip on the seat, each with an oar, and we pulled and complained until our hands were blistered and our voices raw, then pulled and complained some more, yet I did not breathe easy until the rowboat was beached beneath the lighthouse and we stood on the narrow path atop the breakwater, watching the sun rise over the hills above Genoa.