Whatever she had received, the creature stopped, about five yards from the boat, then surfaced and stood out of the water half again as tall as a tall man, so black that she nearly soaked up the light. A thick, serpentine body, for she was a serpent, her head—jaws—wide and square, with long whiskers at either side, nostrils that snapped open and took breath, audibly, but gills down her neck. She had short arms, front legs, with web talons, and from the tip of each heavy black claw, each as long as the blades of my daggers, emerged a fine, translucent, needlelike claw that dripped a milky venom. She hovered there, held aloft by her rear legs paddling and a great tail swishing below the surface, looking at us, emerald eyes set back on the sides of her head glistening in the sun, set in the unscaled skin like the small whales the Venetians call the blackfish. She turned her head to the side so she might get a better look at us, then slid back into the sea and dove down until we could see her no more.

“Pocket?” said Drool, some of the alarm gone from his voice now.

“Aye, lad. Don’t be afraid. She won’t hurt you.”

“Pocket, that weren’t no mermaid.”

“No, lad, I don’t know what that was.” Of course I knew what it was. I am English, am I not? I was raised in the bosom of the church, was I not? You couldn’t count a half dozen church windows, tapestries, or altarpieces in all of Blighty that weren’t emblazoned with St. George and his bloody dragon.

Then Drool spoke in a voice that I did not recognize. “The Khan told me, on pain of death, I was never to speak to outsiders of the black dragons, who were gods to his people, and whose venom could be distilled into a black tar that made men’s heads swim as if in the most pleasant of dreams. Yet as our caravan left the Khan’s kingdom, I paid a village fisherman to catch me a very small, perhaps newly hatched serpent, which I was able to smuggle back to Venice in my rucksack, keeping it damp in a bundle of wet cloth even while crossing the wide desert.”

“What is that, Drool? Whose story is that?”

“Bloke what was in my cell with me. He was on the ship when they sunk it. He were the dog’s bollocks, Pocket, told stories near good as you.”

“Row, Drool. For the lighthouse.”

“We gettin’ Jeff and that girl what looks like a lad?”

“No, foolish fool, we are going to get your cellmate out of prison.”

“Smashing! You can tell me mate the story of how you shagged a dragon.”

Act IV: The Green-eyed Monster

ACT IV

The Green-eyed Monster

If any wretch hath put this in your head,