Fools' Gold (12 page)

Without exchanging another word they both thought – yes, whatever is ahead of us, we can never make a new life together – and quietly, they released their clasped hands.

‘We can’t neglect our mission.’ Brother Peter came into the room and saw them turning away from each other. ‘That’s the main thing. That’s the only thing. I am glad that you have traced your father, Luca. But we must remember that we have work to do. We have a calling. Nothing matters more than tracing the signs of the end of the world.’

‘No, I won’t forget what I have come here to do,’ Luca promised. ‘But since Milord commanded us to trade and even gamble, this is a chance for me. I need to earn some gold on my own account. I will need a small fortune to ransom both my parents.’

‘You might get it by trading,’ Ishraq remarked, coming into the room. Isolde shot one guilty look at her. ‘If you were to buy English nobles now, everyone says they will be worth twice what you pay for them, by only next month. This is a way to make money which is like magic. You buy now, and you sell in a month’s time and someone gives you twice what you paid.’

‘But how?’ Isolde asked nervously, directing the question to Luca. ‘I see that it happens, I see that half of Venice is counting on it happening – every day a little profit is added. But how does it happen?’

‘Because everyone wants the English nobles, and they think that there are more buyers than coins to be bought,’ Luca said. ‘It is like a dream. Everyone buys expecting to make a profit and so the value goes up and up. It could be anything that they are running after. It could be nobles or shells, or diamonds or even houses. Anything that can be exchanged for money – so that its value can be seen to increase. If more people want it, they outbid each other, and the price rises.’

‘But one day it will burst like an over-full bladder,’ Ishraq predicted. ‘The trick is to make sure that you have sold before that day arrives.’

‘And how do you know when that day comes?’ Luca asked her, and was surprised to see the anxious look that passed between the two young women.

‘Why, I was hoping you would know,’ Isolde confessed. ‘We have bought some nobles.’

‘You have?’ Luca laughed. ‘You are speculators?’

The girls nodded, wide-eyed as if they had frightened themselves.

‘How much?’ Luca asked, sobering as he saw how serious they were.

‘Ten and a half nobles,’ Isolde confessed.

He made a soundless whistle. ‘How did you get them?’

‘I sold my mother’s rubies,’ Isolde confessed. ‘Now of course I am afraid that I will never be able to buy them back.’

‘Will you tell us when you think we should sell?’ Ishraq asked him.

He nodded. ‘Of course, I’ll do my best. And we’ll be in the market every day, watching the prices.’’

‘And they are gold, solid gold – we tested them,’ Ishraq reminded him. ‘Whatever happens they can’t fall below the value of gold.’

‘Perhaps Luca will win his fortune?’ Brother Peter said, turning to them with a letter in his hand, deaf to their conversation. ‘Luca, you have been invited – actually, we have all been invited – to an evening’s gambling, in a neighbouring palace, the day after tomorrow. A letter of invitation came while you were out. Our name seems to have got about already, and the lies we have told to pass as a wealthy family. There was an invitation to a banquet also.’

The two girls looked up.

‘Shall we go?’ Luca asked.

‘I think we have to,’ Brother Peter said heavily. ‘We have to mix with people who have these gold nobles to discover where they come from and how much English gold is circulating. Milord himself said that we would have to gamble to maintain the appearance of being a wealthy worldly family. I shall pray before we go out and when we come back. I shall pray that the Lord will keep me from temptation.’

‘For any woman is certain to fling herself at him,’ whispered Ishraq to Isolde, prompting a smile.

‘And shall we come?’ Isolde asked. ‘Since I am to play the part of your sister?’

‘You are invited to visit with the ladies of the house.’ Brother Peter handed over a letter addressed to Signorina Vero.

‘They think I have your name!’ Isolde exclaimed to Luca and then suddenly flushed.

‘Of course they do,’ Brother Peter said wearily. ‘We are all using Luca’s name. They think I am called Peter Vero, his older brother.’

‘It just sounds so odd! As if we were married,’ Isolde said, red to her ears.

‘It sounds as if you are his sister,’ Brother Peter said coldly. ‘As we agreed that you should pretend to be. Will you visit the ladies while we go gambling? Ishraq should accompany you as your servant and companion.’

‘Yes,’ Isolde said. ‘Though gambling and a banquet sound like much more fun than visiting with ladies.’

‘We are not going to have fun,’ Brother Peter said severely. ‘We are going to trace false gold and to do this we will have to enter into the very heart of sin.’

‘Yes indeed,’ Isolde agreed but did not dare look at Ishraq whose shoulders were shaking with suppressed laughter. ‘And we will do our part. We can listen for any news of gold while we are talking to the ladies, we can ask them what their husbands are paying for the gold nobles on the Rialto and where they are getting them.’

Next morning, Freize, Luca and Brother Peter went again to the Rialto Bridge to see the money changers. ‘How will we know how much gold they keep by them?’ Brother Peter asked anxiously, as the gondola wove its way through the many ships. ‘We need to demand enough to make them go to their suppliers, so that we can see where they go. But how shall we know how much to ask for?’

‘I saw only one chest behind the Jewish money changer, when we went before, I don’t think he carries many coins into the square. But I don’t know what he might keep at home,’ Freize said.

‘Brother Peter has shown me the manifest for the cargo that Milord has given us,’ Luca volunteered. ‘It’s due to come in from Russia next week. We’ll get a quarter of the cargo of a full-sized ship. We are talking about a fortune.’

Freize whistled. ‘Milord has this to give away? What’s the ship carrying?’

‘Amber, furs, ivory.’

‘How is Milord so wealthy?’ Freize asked. ‘Is he not sworn to poverty like the brothers in our abbey?’

Brother Peter frowned. ‘His business is his own concern, Freize; nothing to do with you. But of course, he has the wealth of the Holy Church behind him.’

‘As you say.’ Luca adjusted his view of his mysterious master yet again. ‘I knew he had great power. I didn’t know he could command great wealth too.’

‘They are one and the same,’ Brother Peter said dolefully. ‘Both the doorway to sin.’

‘Indeed,’ Freize said cheerfully. ‘And clearly, none of my business, dealing as I do with petty power and small change.’

‘We’ll say that we want to trade the cargo for gold, as soon as the ship comes in,’ Luca decided. ‘We’ll ask them if they keep enough gold in store. I’ll show them the manifest if I need to. We’ll have to match our words to what seems most likely and make it up as we go along.’

Brother Peter shook his head. ‘I am lying every time I draw breath in this city,’ he said unhappily.

‘Me too,’ Freize said without any sign of discomfort. ‘Terrible.’

The gondolier drew the craft up to the water steps and held the boat alongside the quay. ‘Shall I wait?’

‘Yes,’ Luca said as he stepped ashore.

‘The ladies will not need the gondola?’

‘The ladies will not go out,’ Brother Peter ruled. ‘They could only go to church in our absence, and they can walk to San Marco.’

The gondolier bowed in obedience, as the men went up the quay steps to the busy square. Freize looked around at once for the pretty girl who gambled with the cups and ball. She was kneeling before the game, a square of pavement sprinkled with white sand, the three cups tipped upside down before her. Her taciturn father was standing nearby, as always.

‘I’ll just be a moment,’ Freize excused himself to Luca and Brother Peter, and went over to her. ‘Good morning, Jacinta,’ he said and was rewarded by a bright smile. ‘Good morning, Drago Nacari,’ he said to her father. ‘Are you busy today?’

‘Busy as always,’ she said, smoothing the sand and setting out the cups. Freize watched as she put the cloudy marble under one cup and then swopped them round and round, swirling them quickly until they came to rest. He watched for a few times and then he could resist temptation no longer.

‘That one,’ Freize said with certainty. ‘That one, I would put my life on it.’

‘Just put your pennies on it,’ she said with a quick upwards flash of her brown eyes. ‘I don’t want your life.’

‘It’s the right-hand one,’ Luca said quietly beside him. ‘I was watching. I am certain.’

‘Whatever you think,’ the girl said. ‘Why don’t you both bet?’

Luca put down a handful of small coins on the right-hand cup but Freize put down all the contents of his purse on the centre cup.

She laughed as if a customer’s winning gave her real pleasure, and she said to Freize: ‘Your friend has quicker eyes than you! He is right.’ She scooped up all the money before the central cup that Freize, and most of the crowd, had chosen, and to Luca she counted up his piccoli and handed him a quarter English noble. ‘Your winnings,’ she said. ‘You get your stake back three times over.’

‘It’s a good game to win,’ he said, taken aback to have one of the English coins passed into his hand as if it were ordinary currency.

She misunderstood his hesitation. ‘That’s a quarter English noble. It’s as good as a half ducat,’ she said. ‘It’s a good coin.’

‘I hope you’re not questioning the gold coins?’ someone asked from the crowd.

‘Not at all. I’m just surprised by my good fortune,’ Luca said.

‘It’s a rare game to win,’ Freize grumbled. ‘But a clever game, and a pleasure to watch you, Jacinta.’

‘Have you come to see Father Pietro again?’ she asked. ‘For he doesn’t come till the afternoon.’

‘No, my master here is a trader. He is arranging to sell a great cargo that will come in any day now,’ Freize said glibly. ‘Silks. Wouldn’t you love a silk dress, Jacinta? Or ribbons for your shiny brown hair?’

She smiled. ‘Oh very much! Shall you gamble them on my cups and ball? A dress for me if you lose three times over?’

Freize grinned at her. ‘No I shall not! You would get a wardrobe full of dresses, I am sure, a ship full!’

She laughed. ‘It’s just luck.’

‘It’s a very great skill,’ Luca told her. He lowered his voice: ‘But I will tell you a secret.’

She leaned forwards to listen.

‘I did not see that the marble was under the right-hand cup – your hands move too swiftly for me to see. I should think you are too quick for almost anyone. But I guessed that it would be the right-hand cup.’

Her eyes narrowed, she looked at him. ‘A lucky guess?

‘No. A guess based on what I could see.’

‘And what did you see?’

‘You’re right-handed,’ he told her. ‘And the strongest move is to push away, not pull towards. When you move the cups around, you favour the cup with the hidden marble, and you favour the movement to your right. Three times out of the seven that I watched, you sent the cup with the marble to your right. And at the end of the day, when you’re a little tired, I should imagine that you favour your right even more often.’

She sat back on her heels. ‘You counted where the cup ended up? And remembered?’

Luca frowned. ‘I didn’t set out to count,’ he explained. ‘But I couldn’t help but notice. I notice things like patterns and numbers.’

She smiled. ‘Do you play cards?’

Luca laughed. ‘You think I could count cards?’

‘I’m sure you could,’ she said. ‘If you can count cards and remember them you would win at Karnõffel. You could play here, on the square. There is a fortune to be won – everyone here has money in their pockets, everyone believes that they might be lucky.’

Luca glanced back to Brother Peter, who was waiting for them with an air of wearied patience. ‘I don’t gamble, my brother would not like it. But it is true that I would be able to remember the hands.’

‘If you learned a set of numbers, how many would you be able to remember?’ she asked.

He closed his eyes and imagined that he was a boy running down a portico with colonnades of numbers flicking past him. ‘I don’t know, I’ve never tried. Thousands, I think.’

‘Sir, do you see numbers in colours?’

It was such an extraordinary question that he hesitated and laughed. ‘Yes, I do,’ he confessed. ‘But I think it is a rare illusion. An odd trick of the eye, or perhaps of the mind. Who knows? Of no use, as far as I know. Do you see numbers as colours?’

She shook her head. ‘Not I. But I know that some people who can understand numbers see them in colours or as pictures. Can you understand languages at first hearing?’

He hesitated, shy of boasting, remembering the bullying he suffered when he was a child for being a boy of exceptional abilities. ‘Yes,’ he said shortly. ‘But I don’t regard it.’

She turned and summoned her father to come closer with a toss of her head. Drago Nacari came over and shook Luca’s hand in greeting. ‘This is my father,’ Jacinta introduced him. To her father she spoke in rapid French: ‘This young man has a gift for numbers and for languages. And he is a stranger new-come to Venice, and he came to us today.’