Fools' Gold (26 page)

At the back of the room, Ishraq, who disagreed with everything that Brother Peter had said, shook her head and could not stop herself making a little ‘tut’ noise of annoyance.

‘There they are now,’ Brother Peter remarked, seeing the boat swerve through the busy traffic on the canal.

They heard Giuseppe call: ‘Gondola! Gondola! Gondola!’ in his bubbling cry as he turned the gondola across the bows of the other boats and steered it neatly into the house, and then they heard Luca and Freize, talking quietly as they came up the stairs and entered the dining room.

‘Is everything all right?’ Isolde asked Luca, going straight to his side as she saw his slight frown.

He nodded. ‘We sent seven nobles in case he asked for more. It ought to be all right. It’s just that the nobles are soaring against every other sort of coin. The slaver will not know what their value is in Venice when he sells my father in Trieste. It’s going up so fast you have to be at the money changer’s table to see it change. It’s even going up against gold.’

‘How can a coin be more valuable than its ingredient?’ Ishraq asked. ‘How can a gold coin be more valuable than gold itself?’

‘Because people trust the gold noble even more than gold,’ Freize answered her. ‘There was a long queue before Israel, the money changer. People were changing solid gold into nobles because you can pay with a noble anywhere, and now it is worth more than its own weight. People are taking their gold jewellery, their wives’ necklaces, and exchanging them by weight for a gold noble, and then adding more to buy the coin. Buy a gold bar and it could be lead with a gold skin. You don’t know, you have to get it tested. Buy a gold necklace and you don’t know what you’re getting. But all the gold nobles are always good, and they’re all worth more today than they were yesterday.’

The travellers exchanged an uncomfortable glance.

‘This is getting more and more serious,’ Brother Peter said. ‘People will be speculating in gold nobles but only we know where they came from. Only we know that some of them are not pure gold and have been made by alchemy!’

He crossed the room and checked that no one was listening at the door and then gestured that they should all sit around the table. ‘We have to decide what to do. This situation is getting worse and worse. I know you feel tenderness towards the alchemist and his daughter but we are bound to report them at once.’

Luca paused for a moment, almost as if he was reminding himself that he was on a mission, and that he was the inquirer. Slowly, he took the chair at the head of the table. For the first time it was as if he was consulting Brother Peter as his clerk – but not as his mentor. ‘Wait. We have to think this through,’ he ruled. ‘Some things are clear. We can report to Milord, that we have completed our inquiries and we know what has happened here. The alchemist pair came with gold that they had obtained from their patron to trade on the market of Venice. They admit that they released many gold English nobles, but will not say whether this was alchemical gold from the great master John, Duke of Bedford, or whether it was true gold, earthly gold, from the mint that he controlled at Calais.’

‘Agreed,’ Brother Peter said. ‘And I have prepared the report in code, saying just this. It is ready to go once you have signed it.’

‘They also said that the world was round,’ Freize pointed out. ‘And the pretty girl said that she was an old lady. So it might be that they are just mad, poor things.’

‘Peace!’ Luca commanded him. ‘Most scholars believe that the world is round.’

‘They do?’ Freize was scandalised. ‘What about the other side?’

‘What other side?’

‘The underneath. If the world is round, then what about the underneath? The underneath of the ball? What’s it sitting on? That’s the question. Never mind rainbows! And what happens when you go round the middle? If you travelled to the underneath you would fall off.’ He put both hands to his head and gently pulled his own ears. ‘You would be upside down! It makes me dizzy just thinking about it.’

‘Never mind all that. They were talking about something else entirely different.’

‘Why were they talking about the world being round at all?’ Isolde asked, distracted from the most important issue by Freize’s confusion. She leaned forwards and gently took his hands from his ears. ‘Hush, Freize. Be calm. It’s no worse than thinking that if the world were flat, you could travel to the edge and fall off it.’

‘Fall off it?’ he repeated, horrified. ‘There is an edge?’

‘We were talking about rainbows,’ Luca explained briefly to Isolde.

‘Actually, that’s no comfort,’ Freize said quietly to Isolde. ‘Actually, it’s worse. Falling off the edge? Saints save us!’

‘But, to our business with them,’ Luca said, interrupting the digression. ‘They say that after some weeks of trading the Bedford gold they started to make gold nobles of their own, with the Duke of Bedford’s own recipe. And then they released these gold nobles on the market with the others. So we can be sure that there is already a mixture of good English gold nobles and alchemy gold nobles coming onto the market together.’

‘Can you tell one from another?’ Brother Peter asked. ‘Or are they all equally good?”

‘I think people may be able to do so,’ Ishraq replied, worried. ‘They seemed to suggest that their own gold, made from silver and base metal, needed another stage of refining. They said they needed more time.’

‘Lady Carintha had new gold nobles in a necklace,’ Isolde offered. ‘They looked as good as the others. If they were alchemy gold, you couldn’t tell by looking.’

‘But their main work, their greatest work, was not the gold, they said, but life,’ Freize said. ‘They said that. Didn’t they?’

‘They did,’ Luca confirmed. ‘They were very clear that the making of gold was a lesser art, one for greedy men. Their principal ambition was to make, not the philosophers’ stone that can turn everything into gold, but the philosophers’ elixir – to make life itself.’

‘They have a powerful number of dead animals,’ Freize pointed out. ‘In all those jars. And for people making life they have a terrible stink of death in their storeroom.’

‘The young woman said that she was an old woman,’ Ishraq told Brother Peter. ‘She said she was not as she seemed. She said that she was an old woman in a young woman’s body, and that she and the man she calls her father had worked together for many many years.’

There was a little silence.

‘But they said many things that cannot be true,’ Freize reminded them. ‘I don’t even want to think about it.’

‘We have to report them,’ Brother Peter said heavily. ‘I see that they are philosophers, and their work is perhaps valuable, but Milord was clear that we had to find the counterfeiters, and this pair have admitted to making coins. He said that we must report them – and we have to do so.’

‘Give them the rest of today to pack up and go and we will report them after dawn tomorrow,’ Luca ruled.

‘Milord said . . . ’

‘Milord wanted Radu Bey dead,’ Ishraq cut in scornfully. ‘He accused him of being an assassin. Milord only told Luca that it was possible to buy his father’s freedom months after he first met him. He said nothing before Luca knew it already. He could have told Luca how to free his father when they first met, but he did not bother to do so. Milord gives orders but they are not always to our good. Milord can wait a day.’

There was a sharp indrawn breath from Brother Peter. ‘You are disrespectful,’ he reproved her. ‘Milord never ceases in the work of the Order. Night and day he serves God and the Holy Father. He fights the powers of darkness and the infidel in this world and the other. I am sworn to the Order and so is Luca Vero. Milord is the commander of our Order and we have to obey him. We are sworn to him.’

‘But I am not!’ Ishraq insisted. ‘Don’t look so shocked, I am not suggesting that we disobey him. I don’t oppose him. Brother Peter, I don’t oppose your mission, I don’t even argue with you about how you think women should behave, and I have served you well over the last few days. All I say is that we should do as Luca thinks and report the alchemists tomorrow at dawn. It’s what we promised them.’

‘I think so too,’ Isolde agreed, exchanging a quick hidden glance with Luca, as if they had made a promise and would always be a partnership. ‘Tomorrow, as Luca says.’

‘Tomorrow,’ Freize said. ‘That’s fair enough.’

Brother Peter looked from one determined young face to another. ‘Very well,’ he said with a sigh. ‘So be it. But tomorrow at dawn.’

He rose from the table and walked to the door, stiffly dignified, when there was a sudden tolling of the bell in the watergate and a sound of men, a whole brigade of men, running up the marble stairs, their boots hammering on the stone. The door banged open, was held open by the forerunners of the Doge’s guard, who poured into the room followed by an officer, beautifully dressed, holding a silver handgun, cocked and ready to fire. ‘You’re under arrest,’ he said abruptly.

Luca’s chair crashed to the floor, as he pushed it back and jumped before Isolde to shield her. ‘What charge?’

‘We’ve done nothing!’ Brother Peter exclaimed, falling back from the door as the man rushed into the room.

Behind the men, the ashen face of the housekeeper peered in, and behind her, gleaming with triumph, came Lady Carintha, dressed in scarlet, with her husband in tow.

‘This is a private matter,’ Luca said as soon as he saw her. He turned to the officer. ‘Commander, there is nothing to investigate, no crime here. There has been a misunderstanding between myself and the lady, an unfortunate quarrel between neighbours.’ He crossed the room at once, and bowed low and took her hand. ‘I am sorry if I offended you,’ he said. ‘I meant no insult.’ He bowed to her husband. ‘An honour to meet you again, Sir.’

‘He’s no trader,’ she said bluntly to the Doge’s officer, completely ignoring Luca. ‘And I doubt that they are brothers. She is certainly not his sister, and God knows who the Arab slave is. Is she their dancing girl? Is she in his harem? Is she their household witch?’

Amazingly, Ishraq did not fire up to defend herself against the insults, but meekly bowed her head and went quietly to the door. ‘Excuse me,’ she said.

‘Where’s she going?’ Lady Carintha snapped.

‘To my room,’ Ishraq said, her eyes modestly turned down. ‘I am kept in seclusion. I cannot be in this roomful of men.’

‘Oh, of course.’ The officer waved her away, as she drew the veil of her headdress across her face and the soldiers stepped back to let her go past.

‘That’s a lie!’ Lady Carintha exclaimed. ‘She’s not in seclusion, at all. She’s a bold-faced slut. If you let her go, she’ll be running away!’

‘No one to leave the house!’ the officer ordered Ishraq. ‘You may only go to your room.’

Ishraq bowed very humbly, and went up the stairs to her room.

‘Put a man on her door,’ the officer ordered and one of the soldiers followed her at a respectful distance.

‘My dear,’ Lady Carintha’s husband said quietly. ‘We can leave the officer to make his inquiry. Now that you have done such good work of denouncing them.’

‘They’re forgers,’ Lady Carintha said to the officer. ‘Look what she gave me.’

She threw onto the table the purse that Isolde had given her to repay the gambling debts. ‘False gold,’ Lady Carintha accused. ‘Counterfeit coins. Counterfeit English nobles as well, which is worse. Arrest them.’

Isolde was ready to brazen it out. ‘There’s nothing wrong with the gold,’ she claimed. ‘And if there is, I had it in good faith. I bought these nobles in Venice thinking they were good. I would not have paid someone like you in a false coin. I would not have done anything that might cause you to return here!’

‘I don’t come for pleasure, be sure of that!’ the woman snapped. She turned to her husband. ‘See how she speaks to me! Who would ever be fooled into thinking she was raised as a young lady? She’s as fake as the coins in the purse.’

‘Lady Carintha . . .’ Luca said quietly. ‘Let us discuss this as friends. There is no need for ill feeling.’

‘We are honest merchants, a family of honest merchants.’ Brother Peter repeated the lie with so little conviction that it was as bad as confession.

‘Arrest them!’ Lady Carintha demanded.

‘Shall I fetch our travelling papers?’ Freize asked the officer. ‘Our letters of introduction? You will see we have a sponsor, a very important man.’

The guardsman nodded. Freize went to the door.

‘Look at the coins!’ Lady Carintha shouted. ‘Never mind his letters. He can forge letters as well as coins, I daresay.’ She thrust her hand into the purse, and they saw her beautiful face change, the anger was suddenly wiped from her features as she froze, and then her face contorted with a sort of horror.

She pulled her hand out of the purse and they saw her fingers were sticky with some red liquid, almost like blood. ‘My God,’ she exclaimed in disgust. ‘Look at my hand! The coins are bleeding. They are so false they are bleeding like the wounds of murdered men.’

She turned to show her hand to her husband and he recoiled from her – she was so horrific with her fingers reddened as if she had dipped them in an open wound. Every man in the room flinched from her as if she were oozing blood like a murdered corpse.

She felt a strange sensation on her neck, like a crawling insect, and put her clean hand to her ear. The gold noble earrings were dripping blood onto her neck. The gold noble necklace was making a trail of red at her throat as if someone had taken a knife and sliced into her.

‘Clean me!’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘Get it off me.’

Nobody could bear to step towards her, nobody could bring themselves to touch her. They could only watch in terrified fascination as the gold noble earrings drip-dripped blood down her white neck and stained the low-cut lace at the top of her gown.

‘Get it off me!’ she screamed, her fingers slipping at the intricate clasp of the necklace, unable to grip for the red liquid. ‘It’s burning me! It’s scalding my skin! Get it off me!’

Her husband forced himself to step forwards to help, gritting his teeth against his distaste. The officer drew his dagger and put the blade of his stiletto under the clasp of the necklace, careful not to touch the oozing coins.