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“Sir, I don’t profess to know what your real purpose is, but I know its effect, so I would be obliged if you would remove your person and allow us to finish our wine in private.”
    But Hugh had taken the bait. “All right, I’ll go there—we both will!” he said recklessly, dragging Gervase into it as well.
    Having clearly achieved what he came for, Sylvanus pattered away without further ado, and as the street door closed behind him, Gervase looked uneasily at Hugh. “We aren’t going anywhere at dawn, Coz. You may have been incited into scrambling around Italian groves, looking for mythical diadems, but you can leave me out of it.”
    Hugh grinned as he stubbed out the remains of the cigar. “You’ll come,” he said with quiet confidence.
    Gervase would have felt more uneasy still if he’d known that in the street at that moment Sylvanus was with Teresa, in whose native tongue he was as fluent as he was in English, but then his race was fluent in every known language, except that of cats and dogs. His tone was piqued, for this was not the first time he’d come at her bidding, and he felt imposed upon. “Teresa, if I do what you want, I must have your word that my indebtedness will be discharged once and for all. Do you promise?”
    “Of course, Sylvanus,” she replied.
    “I do not like your demands of me, you know,” he grumbled, his head revealed for a moment when his hood was blown back by a sudden breeze. He was middle-aged, snub-nosed and ugly in a rather appealing way, with pointed ears, and two stumpy little horns sprouting from his forehead.
    “You have my word I will not do it again,” Teresa said soothingly.
    “If my master should discover...” Sylvanus made an anxious bleating sound, for he knew that in becoming embroiled in Teresa’s scheming he was guilty of the utmost folly.
    Teresa rightly thought he was on the point of trying to wriggle out, so she spoke swiftly. “Remember that I saved you from drowning. You owe me, Sylvanus!”
    He scowled, forced to recall his terror when he had fallen into the deep pool in the grove. Yes, he did owe her his life, for his kind was supposed to haunt water, and therefore to have no fear of it, but he was terrified of it and couldn’t swim! Worse still was his dread of his master’s fury should this business with the Englishmen come to light.
    “Provided you do it as we agreed, no one else will ever know anything.” Teresa was persuasive, being determined to have her revenge for what had been done to her tonight.
    Sylvanus shuffled reluctantly, “Oh, all right,” he said at last.
    “It must be both of them, mind, for the duke did but carry out what his equally vile cousin has thought of doing ever since they entered my mother’s house. They are as bad as each other and must both be punished.”
    Sylvanus was a little perturbed. “Are you quite sure it was the duke who assaulted you? I mean, he doesn’t seem the sort of man who would stoop to such a thing, but his cousin, oh, yes, he is one I can well imagine would force himself upon a woman.”
    “It was the duke—I recognized him,” Teresa insisted.
    Sylvanus gave in reluctantly. “Very well, if you are so certain...”
    “I am.”
    “It will be done at dawn.” A wind sprang up along the Riviero de Chiaia, and Sylvanus glanced toward the wooded heights above the city. “It’s time I went back to sleep. I shouldn’t be down here at all, and without sufficient sleep I’m not as vigilant as I should be.”
    He turned to push his way through the crowds. As he went, the hem of his sweeping cloak lifted, revealing his rough brown goat fur and cloven hooves, for Sylvanus was a faun, and the master he served was great Bacchus himself. Fauns were able to cause uncontrollable desire between men and women who might otherwise loathe each other, and they could turn men to stone; at dawn he would be lying in wait for the two Englishmen, ready to use the latter power to exact a terrible fate