Serpent Never Sleeps Read Online Free Page A

nothing Greek or Roman, and I have done one about Malik al-Kamil, sultan of Egypt, and the English crusaders."
    She got up to let the cats into the wine cellar, which lately had become the home of a horde of long-tailed, green-eyed vermin. As I went on with my breakfast, I gave serious thought to the question.
    Truthfully, she was presenting the masque for one reason: to raise funds for the Jamestown colony in Virginia, which was in the gravest danger. Settlers were dying like summer flies—three and four a day from ague, starvation, and Indian arrows. Pitifully, fewer than a fifth of the one hundred ten who went out in 1607, just two years before, were still alive.
Another winter and nobody would be left. Like Sir Walter Raleigh's settlement in Roanoke, the colony would be nothing save ashes and sad memories.
    But the countess's concern about Jamestown and its dying settlers did not arise from a soft heart. It came from a very hard head. She owned shares in the London company that furnished the ships, collected the settlers, and sent them off on a four-thousand-mile journey across the sea. Shareholders hoped to gain profits from the plentiful resources in the New World. They knew of the vast tracts of fertile land, forests, winding rivers, clear lakes, rolling hills. They also expected to receive gold, and lots of it, and shiploads of silver, too.
    Friends and enemies alike mistook Diana. The sly smile, the pretty dimples, the childish voice, all were apt to deceive. But beneath the mounds of pink flesh her spine was made of Damascus steel, and in her veins, it often seemed to me, flowed the blood of a dragon.
    She was born a commoner and a beauty. Before fat engulfed her, when she was only plump, she caught the eye of the earl of Foxcroft, a very wealthy man who had made a fortune gathering slaves along the African coast and selling them to the Spanish planters in the West Indies.
    When the earl broke his neck chasing a little red fox, he left his fortune and a fleet of three seaworthy ships to Countess Diana. Instead of selling the fleet
and living a life of leisure at Foxcroft, she surprised many by continuing her husband's practice of gathering slaves along the African coast. In a short time she had doubled the number of ships and the business among the Spanish sugar cane growers in the West Indies.
    The problem now was money. Seven ships lay anchored in Plymouth Bay, one of them furnished by the countess. Five were provisioned and ready to sail, but two were empty. At least seven provisioned ships were needed to rescue Jamestown's starving settlers. Countess Diana's purpose in giving the masque was to sell her guests shares in the Company of Adventurers and Planters of the City of London for the First Colony of Virginia, as it was called.
    Now she was at the cellar door, having trouble with the cats. They were full of smoked herring and did not wish to stalk green-eyed rats as big as they were. Instead of calling a servant, she called me, and the two of us got one of the cats into the cellar whilst the others escaped.
    We went into the Great Hall, sat by the fire, and talked until noon about the theme for the masque. Some twenty years ago, Sir Francis Drake had sailed from Plymouth. He raided the Spanish coast and returned with goodly treasures, a Spanish galleon in tow. There was no better theme for raising money than to celebrate Sir Francis and his daring feat.
    As we talked, firelight shone on the king's ring.
Though the countess wore the ring, I could see the serpent feigning sleep beneath the tree. Already I felt the kingly power that James had breathed upon it.
    Countess Diana, aware that I was absorbed by the ring, held out her plump hand. "How beautiful," she said, turning it on her finger. "The gold-chased band, the green stone, which I deem to be an emerald."
    "A most lovely ring," I said offhandedly, in no way letting her know that I was determined to have it back. That it had suddenly changed my