The boatman pushed down on his oar and the blade breached the surface and dripped. “Ten times my fare? To where?”

“The Villa Belmont. You know it?”

“Everybody knows it. And any gondolier will take you there. Why ten times the normal fare?”

“We don’t land at the dock. Back of the island. Midnight. No lantern or torches on your boat. You let me off, wait an hour, and bring me back. That’s all.”

“An hour? You burgling the place? I can’t be part of that. Every time I row under the Bridge of Sighs I can hear the prisoners wailing. I couldn’t take that. I’ve a wife, you know.”

“No, no, nothing of the sort. You’ve heard the late senator’s daughter is to be married?”

“Princes from all over coming to pay her suit, I hear.”

“Well, before she’s wed, she wants to shag a Jew, just to see what it’s like. She’s heard that the circumcised member is a sexual delicacy that will drive a lady to mad heights of ecstasy.”

“That true?”

“ ’Course not. Tankard of turtle toss, that is, but I’m not going to be the one to talk her out of it.”

“A fine lady like Portia’s going to shag a scruffy little Jew like you?”

“Ten times your normal fare,” I sang in an ascending scale.

“And I keep the dagger?”

“Cradled like a babe to your breast,” said I.

“Deal!” called the boatman. “Hop aboard.”

Astonishing, the level of complete bollocks a Venetian will buy for the promise of coin. Greed is a festering chancre on the merchant soul.

As the gondolier worked his oar, the sea breeze blew some of the fog from my mind. I would have to do my business at Belmont, then somehow find my way to Genoa and ransom Drool, and in the meantime there was Iago’s undoing to attend to as well. I wondered if the soldier might not try to murder Shylock at Antonio’s house on Michaelmas, before he left for Corsica. His intent had surely been to remove the Jew, to free Antonio from his bond, but would he do it so early in the intrigue, or perhaps wait to see the outcome of Bassanio’s attempt to marry Portia and ascend to the doge’s council? If he succeeded, and gained access to Brabantio’s family fortune, the three thousand ducats would be as a star in the dusted heavens to what they stood to gain, but all was in the timing. And was I not going to see to Bassanio’s failure myself? Was I hastening Shylock’s assassination by pursuing my own scheme?

Clearly, I needed breakfast, then rest, if I was to storm Villa Belmont at midnight.