“Fine, I shall debark my own dogs,” but even as I said it, I felt a twinge in my scalp and I saw in my mind’s eye that no, there were no hounds on the island. She was there, under the oiled iron waves, under the gondola, and she was showing me that there were no dogs.

I leaned over the rail and stared into the water, trying to see below the inky surface. “Well, that’s helpful, Viv, but you’re a long way from providing bloody comfort with that bit about their being delicious.” Then I pushed back from the railing, lest the siren snatch the head from my shoulders as she had my enemies’ the night before. “Thanks loads, though, love.” I shuddered.

“Bloody barking,” said the boatman.

“No, there are no dogs,” said I.

“Wasn’t talking about the dogs, I was talking about you talking to the fishes.”

“Just find a place you can land or let me off,” said I. “I’m not swimming in.”

I wore a pair of black wool tights and a black linen shirt that Jessica had tailored for me out of a trunk of Shylock’s castoffs, over which I wore a wide belt pilfered from the lady’s own closet. I’d knocked the heels off a pair of Jessica’s shoes of soft leather and they fit me well enough I might climb in them as well as move on stone floors with stealth.

I’d managed to put together a kit of another fine filleting knife I honed myself to a razor edge for removing the wax seals, as well as a coil of rope and a padded grappling hook made from a gaffe that I’d bought from a fisherman with money from Jessica. In my youth, before I’d been picked to be the king’s fool, I’d worked as a performer in a traveling circus, where the leader of the troupe, a vile Belgian called Belette, trained me, first as a cutpurse, and later as a second-story man, once he saw that I was agile enough to scamper up the side of a building, slip in through an upper window, and unlock the front door for my fellow thieves who waited outside. Jessica knew a goldsmith on the island who was happy to loan her a selection of his tools, which would provide me with lock picks fine enough for anything I might encounter. The locked veranda where the suitors’ caskets lay, nor the locks themselves, would be little challenge.

I made the boatman circle the island twice to assure that the only servant on watch was a single man at the front dock, then he found a small swath of sand, barely wide enough for the gondola to knife its way between the rocks, where he was able to land the boat.

“Wait here. I don’t know how long, but if the sky threatens dawn, go on without me.”