He stopped struggling to gain his feet and froze on the spot; good fortune, for I was not sure that I would hit the mark, so long out of practice I was. If I’d missed, he might have bludgeoned us all to death. I heard Jessica’s intake of breath as she looked over my shoulder toward where the other huge Jew had fallen and was rising.

“Drool, hit him!” I called.

I took my eyes off my own huge Jew just long enough to see Drool smash a heavy, three-legged stool across the knife-wielding brother’s head, showering the room with splinters, kindling, and a fine spray of blood. The downed brother went limp on the floor, quite unconscious, perhaps dead.

I held my dagger fast. “Drool, fetch my dagger from that chap’s thigh. And come get the other one from this one’s knee.”

“Jones!” said Drool, noticing that I was again in possession of my puppet stick, which I’d shoved down the back of my jerkin for the gondola ride. “Me wee friend.”

“Get the knives, you great slobbering dreadnought,” said the puppet Jones, a bit breathless from the tumbling and whatnot.

Drool went around the table, a bloody knife in one of his hands, and regarded the huge Jew who stood in the front door. “It will hurt when I pulls out the knife,” Drool said to the huge Jew with no menace whatsoever. “Sor-ry.”

The huge Jew seemed as disturbed by the sight of a man-shaped creature larger than himself nearly as much as he was by the blade in his knee.

“He and I will both kill you if your club hand moves, Ham, so be brave lest you be twice slayed.”

“I’m Japheth,” said the giant Hebrew.

“I don’t give a jostled jeroboam of monkey jizz, you yellow-hatted buffoon. If you move, you die.”

Japheth gasped as Drool pulled the knife from his leg. Drool stepped back just as Jessica came around from the side with a half-full wine bottle, which ended its arc by bouncing off the huge Jew’s forehead, unbroken, sending him back a few steps from the door.

“Well done, love,” said I. “Can’t account for the thickness of his hat nor the density of his great noggin, but a normal bloke would’ve been right well brained.”

She smiled and curtsied, despite that she was still shaking a bit from the adventure.

“Take your brother and go home,” said I to Japheth. “Tell Tubal what happened here and that there are no more layers between him and his mayhem. If two hours pass and he is still on La Giudecca, he and his whole family will be floating dead in the canal by morning, and you two with them.”

Japheth, limping pitifully, made his way around the outside of the house and dragged his brother out the door. Ham groaned as he was moved, so evidently Drool had not killed him.