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to overpower even that of the creature's corpse.
    ‘I heard,’ his friend said, ‘that some charlatans sew the body of a human to the tail of a fish to make it look like a mermaid.’
    The sweating man peered closer. ‘That's no fish's tail. It's not got scales.’
    ‘It'll be a seal, then. They've joined a human babe to a seal.’
    ‘It's got no fur neither,’ he said impatiently ‘and there's no join. If anyone could see a stitched-on tail, I could; after all, I've been stitching cloth since I were a babe myself.’
    ‘So what is it, then?’
    They asked the same question of Zophiel outside, loudly, with the aggression that comes from uncertainty.
    Zophiel looked down his pale thin nose at them, as if the question had been asked by a simpleton. ‘As I told you, it's one of the merpeople, a merchild.’
    Onion-breath gave a mirthless guffaw as if he had been told such things many times before and didn't believe a word of it. ‘So how come it's got no scales on its tail?’ He glanced round at the small crowd with a smirk that said, answer that one, if you can. He was spurred on by many encouraging nods and winks. Townspeople are always eager to have a stranger confounded.
    ‘You admit it has a tail, then?’ Zophiel asked coolly.
    The smile on Onion-breath's face waned. ‘But not a scalytail, and it's got no hair on its head neither. I thought mermaids were supposed to have hair, yards of it.’
    ‘Do you have any children, my friend?’
    The man hesitated, uncertain where this line of argument was leading. ‘I do, for my sins, three fine lads and a bonny little lass.’
    ‘So, my friend, was your daughter born with hair?’
    ‘When she were a mite she were as bald as her grandfather is now.’
    ‘But she has a fine head of hair now, I wager.’
    The man nodded.
    ‘There you are then, her hair grew in. It's the same with merpeople. They are born as smooth and hairless as you or I, and the hair and scales grow in later.’
    The man opened and closed his mouth, but seemed to have no answer.
    Zophiel smiled, though the smile didn't reach his eyes. ‘You're a wise man, my friend. People of lesser intelligence would not think to ask such questions and I'm not surprised that you didn't know the answer. Many of the greatest scholars in our land are ignorant of such things because merbabies are seldom seen, only the adults. The infants are kept hidden far below the waves in deep sea caves until they are old enough to swim to the surface. It's a rare thing to see one. Far more rare than seeing a mermaid, which is rare enough. Why, I doubt any merbabies have been seen for five hundred years, maybe more.’
    There was a moment's hesitation as the crowd digested these momentous facts, then, as one, hands flew to purses, struggling to part with coins as fast as Zophiel could take them. Every man, woman and child who still had money to spend was desperate to part with their last penny to see this rarest of all rare creatures. Even old Onion-breath beamedas if he had personally discovered the merchild. Zophiel knew just how to work a crowd.
    As it happens, we'd all been doing pretty well that day. The Bartholomew Fair was busier than usual. With markets closing along the south coast, the merchants were pushing inland. After all, as they said, life goes on. We all have to eat until we die. So the merchants were shouting one another hoarse and the crowd was just as excited. Wine and spices, salt and oil, dyes and cloth fairly flew off the stalls. ‘Buy now,’ the merchants urged, ‘it may be months before we can get another shipment in. Stock up while you have the chance.’ And they bought as if they were preparing for a siege.
    I'd done all right too, sold half a dozen fragments of the bones of St Brigid, guaranteed to keep the cows in milk, and several ribs of St Ambrose to hang over the bee skeps to ensure that the combs would be bursting with honey come autumn. The farmers needed all the help they could get. The