Fools' Gold (20 page)

A woman went past her and flicked Carintha’s earring, making it dance. ‘Delightful,’ she said. ‘Amusing.’

‘And where does your husband get the English nobles from?’ Isolde asked lightly. ‘Since the English themselves don’t have enough?’

‘Oh, the
most
amusing Jewish banker,’ Lady Carintha volunteered. ‘You would not think, to look at him, that he had a penny to rub, one against the other. But he supplies my husband with English nobles, and so I get my pretty earrings!’

‘Convenient,’ Ishraq remarked.

‘But as for you two lovely girls,’ Lady Carintha went on to Ishraq, ‘it doesn’t matter that you have no money with you. You can borrow from me and repay me next week. I shall be your banker. I should think that your credit is good enough! We all hear that the handsome young man has a ship coming in from Russia any day now! And your young lady is a great heiress, is she not?’

‘Unimaginably so,’ Ishraq said, honest at last. ‘You could not imagine her fortune. Not even I can truly describe it.’

The party for the ladies broke up at about ten o’clock, and they left by the outer staircase while the party for the gentlemen was still, noisily, in full swing on the first floor. Clearly – as the women rouged their lips and tied masks on their faces and slipped away in their gondolas – many of them were going on to other parties or to assignations. Lady Carintha was going to join the men who were still gambling. She winked at her friend and Isolde heard her whisper Luca’s name.

‘But we have to go home,’ Ishraq remarked resentfully as Freize helped her into the gondola. ‘When all the world is free to walk around and do as they please.’

‘Let’s get the gondola to drop us on the quay and walk about,’ Isolde suggested quietly. ‘Nobody will know who we are, since we have our masks and our capes, and Brother Peter is not at home to know what time we get in.’

‘Of course!’ Ishraq exclaimed, and turned and told the gondolier to let them get out at the steps in the side canal, they would enter through the side door. The gondolier’s smile and Freize’s silent nod told them at once that neither young man believed for a moment that the women were going straight into the house; but it was carnival time and anything was allowed, even for wealthy young ladies. The gondolier set them down where they asked, and then pushed off with Freize still aboard, to go back to wait for Brother Peter and Luca to emerge from the gambling party.

Arm in arm, the girls sauntered around the streets revelling in their sense of freedom, in walking along the shadowy quays with the silk of their gowns swishing around their ankles, their masks hiding their faces, knowing that they looked strange and exotic and beautiful in this strange and beautiful city.

Almost every doorway stood open and there were lights and parties inside. Every so often someone called to them and invited them to come in and take some wine, come in and dance. Laughingly, Isolde refused and they walked on, loving the sense of excitement and adventure.

‘What a horrible woman Lady Carintha is,’ Isolde remarked as they turned their steps homeward again.

‘Because she said that she wanted Luca, and asked you to let her into his room?’ Ishraq teased. ‘She thinks you’re his sister, she was not to know that you . . . ’

‘That I – what?’ Isolde asked, coming to a standstill.

Ishraq was not at all intimidated. ‘That you would be so offended at the thought of taking her to him.’

‘I was offended. Anyone would be offended. She’s old enough to be his mother. Ugh, with those ridiculous coins in her ears!’

‘It’s not because of her age or her appearance. Besides, she’s not more than thirty. You were upset that she wants to take him as her lover because you want him for yourself!’

For a moment she thought that Isolde would take offence, for her friend had stopped still, and then she suddenly admitted: ‘It’s true! I can’t pretend to you or to myself any longer! I want him so much it’s like a fever! I can think of nothing else but what it would be like if he were to hold me, if he were to touch me, if he were to kiss me. I know I am mad to think like this. But I can’t think of anything else. He asked me to meet him, and I didn’t answer, but I was longing to say “yes”.’

‘It’s
Carnevale
,’ Ishraq said comfortingly. ‘It’s Venice. As you said, the whole city seems to think like this. The whole city has gone mad for pleasure. And he is the most handsome young man that either of us has ever seen.’

‘Do you . . . desire him too?’ Isolde asked, hesitating almost as if she were frightened of the very word. ‘Seriously? Like I do? Are you in love with him, Ishraq?’

Ishraq laughed quietly. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘A little. He’s very attractive, I don’t mind admitting it. But I don’t think of him as you do. It’s not as hard for me as it is for you. I can just look at him and think him absolutely desirable and utterly handsome, and then I can look away. Because he’s not for me. I know that. He doesn’t see me in that way, and there is no possibility of any sort of honourable love between us. And actually, very little chance of dishonourable love either! He is sworn to the Church and I am an infidel. He is in the Order to stamp out heresy and I am born to question. We could not be more different. But you . . .’ she paused.

‘What?’ Isolde urged her on. ‘Me, what?’

‘He’s in love with you,’ Ishraq said quietly. ‘He can’t take his eyes off you. I think if you said the word, he would give up the Church for you and marry you in San Marco tomorrow.’

‘I can’t.’ Isolde gave a little moan. ‘I can’t. And anyway he can’t. He is a novice at his monastery, and Brother Peter told me that I must do nothing that would distract him from the Order of Darkness. He’s one of the few men appointed to trace the signs of the end of the world and warn the Pope himself. If the world is going to end this year it is vital that he does his work and reports to his lord in Rome. His Order is our only defence against the rise of heresy and magic and the end of the world. I should not think of him in any way except as a soldier of the Church, a crusader, like my father was. I should honour him for his work. I shouldn’t be thinking of him like this at all.’

Ishraq shrugged. ‘But you are. And so is he.’

‘I can’t stop myself thinking!’ Isolde exclaimed. ‘And I dream! I dream of him almost every night. But I can never do anything. I would be ruined completely if I did more than kiss him. If I ever get back to my castle I would never be able to marry any man of honour or position if it was known I had been in love with Luca. There’s no point in all the danger we are risking to win back my inheritance, if I have lost my honour. I could never go home to be Lady of Lucretili if I was dishonoured.’

‘If no one ever knew . . .’ Ishraq suggested.

‘I would know!’ Isolde exclaimed. ‘I would be utterly dishonoured. I would never be able to offer my love to another man, I would never be able to marry. I would know always that I was dishonoured, that I was not fit to be a great man’s wife. I have to be able to promise my future husband an untouched heart in an untouched body.’

‘But can you go on like this?’

‘What shall I do?’ Isolde demanded with a wail. ‘What shall I do? When I heard her speak of coming to our house I thought I would kill her. I can’t bear to let her near him. I can’t bear to think of her touching . . .’ Isolde clapped her hand over her mouth to prevent herself speaking. But nothing could stop her thoughts, she closed her eyes as if she could not bear to imagine Luca and Lady Carintha together.

‘If no one ever knew . . .’ Ishraq repeated slowly. ‘If you could love him, kiss him, even lie with him, and no-one ever know?’

‘How could no one ever know? I would know! He would know! You would know!’

‘If it only happened once? Just once. And we were all three sworn to secrecy?’

There was a long silence between the two girls. Isolde took her hand down from her mouth and whispered: ‘What?’

‘If it only happened once. And nobody knew about it? If you and I never ever spoke of it? If you could do it, and yet let it be like an unspoken dream? Would you be satisfied if you were his lover, his first ever lover, and he yours; but he never saw your face, he never said your name, and you never admitted what you had done? Not even to me? It was a secret of the night, of
Carnevale
, and nobody remembered if after Lent?’

Isolde put a trembling hand on her friend’s arm. ‘If we never spoke of it. If it only happened once. If it was like a dream, for I am dreaming of him every night . . . ’

Before Ishraq could answer she saw the house gondola turn from the main traffic of the canal. She dragged her friend back into the shadow of the side of the house.

‘There’s our gondola!’ she whispered. ‘And Luca and Freize and Brother Peter coming home.’

They watched the gondola as it pulled up once again in the side canal, at the side steps. ‘I want to walk,’ Luca explained, his voice slightly slurred from wine. ‘I want to walk around.’

‘You had much better come home and say your prayers and go to bed,’ Brother Peter said.

‘In an hour or so,’ Luca insisted. ‘You go in.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Freize offered.

‘No,’ Luca insisted. ‘I want to walk alone and clear my head.’

Freize took his arm. ‘Are you meeting Lady Carintha?’ he whispered. ‘Because I can tell you now, that’s nothing but trouble . . . ’

Luca pulled himself free, refusing to admit to any assignation, though his heart pounded at the thought of a dark blue dress and mask. ‘I’ll just walk around,’ he said, and stepped unsteadily ashore.

With a shrug, Brother Peter ordered the gondolier to take him and Freize round by boat to the watergate and left Luca climbing the steps to the quayside.

Isolde and Ishraq shrank back against the wall as Luca got to the top of the steps and turned and looked back over the Grand Canal, a big yellow moon high above, the bright stars shining in the darkness of the sky. He stood for some time, listening to the sounds of distant music and laughter.

‘And all in a moment I know that I love her,’ he said simply, speaking to himself but hearing the words fall into the quietness of the night and mingle with the lapping of the canal on the steps. ‘It’s extraordinary, but I know it. I love her.’

He gave a quiet laugh. ‘I’m a fool,’ he said. ‘Half-promised as a priest, fully committed to the Order of Darkness, on a quest, and she is a lady of such high birth that I would not even have seen her if I had stayed as a novice in my monastery.’

He fell silent. ‘But I have seen her,’ he said steadily. ‘And she has seen me. And tonight I understand for the first time what people mean by . . . this . . .’ he broke off and smiled again. ‘Love,’ he said. ‘What a fool I am! I love her. I have fallen in love.
Coup de foudre
. In love, in a moment.’

He opened the door to the walled garden and let himself in. The girls heard his footsteps crunch the gravel and then silence as he threw himself onto the bench beneath the tree.

On the shadowy quayside the girls stood in horrified silence.

‘Was he speaking of her?’ Ishraq said wonderingly. ‘Of Lady Carintha? Has she done what she said she would do? Seduced him, already, and in only one meeting?’

Isolde turned, and Ishraq could see the shine of tears on her pale cheek beneath the dark blue mask. ‘He said that he fell in love tonight,’ she said, her voice low with misery. ‘Fell in love,
coup de foudre
, all in a moment, tonight. With a lady he would never have seen if he had stayed in the monastery. He’s in love with that woman. That painted—’ Isolde bit off her words as another gondola edged to the quayside stairs and Lady Carintha, in a cape and hood of deep blue, with an exquisite mask of navy feathers, snapped her fingers for the gondolier to help her step onto the stairs and up to the quayside.

‘She’s meeting him!’ Isolde exclaimed in an anguished whisper as she and Ishraq shrank deeper into the shadows. ‘She’s meeting him in our garden!’

The two young women stood, pressed against the wall, hidden in the shadows while the big spring moon lit the quayside as brightly as day. Lady Carintha, with her back to them, took a tiny looking glass from the gold chain at her waist and scrutinised her dark blue mask, her smiling painted lips, her blue silk hood and cape. Her gaze went past her own reflection and she saw, in the mirror, the two girls, pressed back against the wall and broke into a quiet laugh.

‘The pretty virgins!’ she said. ‘Walking the streets. How quaint! And I am meeting a third pretty virgin! What a night for a debauch! Will you come with me?’

Even Ishraq, usually so bold, was stunned into silence at the woman’s bawdiness. It was Isolde, with tears hidden by her mask who stepped forward and said: ‘You shall not meet him. I forbid it.’

‘And who are you to forbid or allow a grown man what he shall do?’ Lady Carintha asked, her voice filled with careless scorn. ‘He wants me. He’s waiting for me. And nothing will stop me going to him.’

‘He wants me too,’ Isolde said wildly. ‘He asked me to come to the garden. You can’t come in.’

‘His sister?’ Lady Carintha asked. ‘My! You are a stranger family than I thought.’