Fools' Gold (33 page)

There was a moan like a breeze blowing through Piazza San Marco. Someone started crying in fear, and a man walked blankly away from the rear of the crowd, knowing that his homeland would be seized, his family taken into slavery, and his life destroyed, and that there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

‘We are therefore raising a tax on every house in Venice, to help us meet these great debts,’ the Doge said steadily. ‘I, and every member of the Council, will pay, and will loan the city more gold from our own fortunes. I urge you all to pay in full, pay in gold, for the sake of our city and great republic. If you have to use your wife’s jewellery then do so, if you have to take the gold leaf from your furniture then do so, if you have to cut off the handles from your gold gates then do so. I shall take my wife’s jewellery, my mother’s jewellery. I shall take the gold leaf from my throne. I shall take the gold handles from my doors and sell the masterpieces from my walls. We must all surrender our most beloved treasures. This is our time of need; you must answer. God bless you and God save Venice.’

‘Amen,’ the crowd said with one low voice, and the Doge turned on his heel and went bareheaded, back inside the palace.

Isolde turned to Luca, and saw that he was white with shock.

‘Come,’ Brother Peter said shortly, and led the way back to the palazzo.

‘I must go to the Rialto and see Father Pietro . . .’ Luca protested.

‘No! We have to do something first.’

‘Brother Peter?’

‘Come!’

‘What?’ Ishraq trotted beside him, trying to keep up with his long strides. ‘What’s so important?’

‘Milord gave me some orders that I was to open the moment that I learned that the territories were going to default on their tribute.’

‘He knew this was going to happen?’ Ishraq suddenly stopped. ‘Milord knew that the territories would use bad coin?’

‘He can’t have known that,’ Brother Peter strode on, unhesitating. ‘How could anyone know that? But he was prepared for it. He was prepared for anything on this mission. In the event of there being a default he gave me some orders to open. We have to open them now.’

Isolde and Luca were half running to keep up with Brother Peter’s great strides. Luca caught at Isolde’s hand, and kept pace with him. Freize came swiftly behind them.

‘How does he know such things?’ Freize demanded of himself. ‘Those sealed orders? How does he write them ahead of time. Just to torment me?’

Brother Peter pushed through the crowd and paced ahead of them to get to the side entrance and enter the palazzo.

He went without hesitating, upstairs to his bedroom and brought the sealed orders out to the rest of them in the dining room. Luca pulled out chairs for Isolde and Ishraq and then seated himself at the head of the table. Freize dropped onto a stool near to the door. ‘The sealed orders,’ he said irritably. ‘Always. Out they come. Always bad news.’

Brother Peter took no notice of anyone. He broke the seal and spread the paper on the table. He frowned and pushed it over to Luca. ‘You read,’ he said. ‘You can translate the code much quicker than I.’

Luca took the paper, scowled for a moment, and then read aloud.

‘
In the event of the territories failing to pay tribute to the Ottoman overlords, you are to take this note to the Hungarian ambassador, show him the seal, and authorise them to buy the false coins with the gold that they have in store. You are to take this note to the Comarino family and authorise them to use their private gold store to buy the false coins. You yourself are to use whatever coins and whatever gold you have to buy the English nobles at the lowest price you can pay for them. You will not sell any English gold nobles that you have. If the ship comes in after you have read these orders, you will use all the cargo to buy the devalued English gold nobles at the lowest price possible.
’

Luca stopped reading and put down the paper. ‘Has he gone mad?’

‘But everyone else is selling gold nobles, for far less than their value,’ Isolde said. ‘Everyone is selling: not buying.’

‘They have no value,’ Ishraq pointed out.

‘What do we do?’ Luca asked.

‘As he orders,’ Brother Peter said wearily. He rose up from the table and held out his hand for the letter for the Hungarian ambassador and for the Comarino bank. ‘Shall I take these? And you buy the nobles with our remaining gold? And go to a bank and promise them that we will take their nobles in exchange for the cargo, when the ship comes in?’

‘But why?’ Ishraq asked. ‘Why would Milord want us to spend good money on bad?’

Brother Peter’s face was as dark as when he had confessed his pretended shame. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t need to know. I am to obey Milord’s commands and do the work of God though it leads me into the deepest sin. I have to trust him. I have to trust his judgement. I have to obey his orders.’ He glanced up. ‘Will you come with me, Freize?’

‘Of course,’ Freize said with his quick sympathy. He glanced at Luca. ‘If I may?’

‘Go,’ Luca said absently. ‘I’ll go through the treasure chest and take what gold we have left to the money changers. There’s not much, but they’ll be glad to take it in return for the worthless nobles, I don’t doubt.’

‘But why?’ Ishraq demanded. ‘Why would Milord want you to buy the bleeding nobles? When everyone knows they are no good?’

‘I don’t ask why,’ Brother Peter answered her.

‘We’ll help,’ Isolde spoke for her and Ishraq.

‘But I do! I ask why!’ Ishraq exclaimed.

‘I’ll send the gondola back for you,’ Brother Peter said heavily, and they heard him and Freize go down the stairs together to the watergate and call for Giuseppe.

Luca went into his bedroom and drew a great wooden chest out from beneath his bed. The girls followed him and watched as he opened the lid.

‘You have a small fortune here,’ Ishraq whispered as she saw the gold nobles in the little purses.

‘I
had
a small fortune,’ he corrected her. ‘Now it is almost worthless.’

He moved the purses of the gold nobles and found beneath them a single gold bar and three gold rings.

‘I’ll buy your bleeding nobles from you,’ Luca offered. ‘If you will take the low price that Venice has set. At least I can take them off your hands.’

‘No,’ Ishraq said, forestalling Isolde, who was eager to accept. She turned to her friend. ‘It was my mistake to try to make money on this market, but if we sell the nobles at this rate then we have lost your mother’s rubies forever. Let’s hold on to them, bad as they are, and see what happens. Luca’s lord must be planning something. He must have some reason to want to buy nobles.’

‘Nothing can happen!’ Isolde said irritably. ‘You traded my mother’s jewels for fools’ gold. We have to pay the price.’

‘But Milord is doing something else,’ Ishraq said cautiously. ‘He’s buying false coins.’

‘But you don’t know what for? You don’t know why?’

‘I don’t,’ Ishraq said. ‘But I know he’s no fool. I’ll keep our English nobles until he sells his.’

‘When we could have gold instead?’ Isolde said regretfully, gesturing to Luca’s handful of gold rings.

‘If you won’t take this then I have to go to the Rialto and buy dross,’ Luca said. ‘I wish we could write to Milord to make sure it is what he wants. I wish we knew what he plans. For this is madness: throwing good money after bad.’

When the gondola came back for Luca and the two young women, they were ready to go to the Rialto, with their gold and silver coins in their purses and pockets, and the rings on their fingers. The bridge was busy again – the news that the exchange rate for the gold nobles had been fixed by the Doge himself had made people confident enough to open their shops. Only the money changers were still missing, and where Israel had sat there was an obscene scrawl on his board and, in spiky thick letters, the word:
Arrestare

Luca went at once to the mooring post at the foot of the bridge and started forwards when he saw the priest, bending over his little writing table.‘Father Pietro!’

Slowly, the old priest turned to look at the young man and, at the sorrow in his lined face, Luca did not need to ask more.

‘The nobles failed,’ the priest said quietly. ‘Bayeed is not in Trieste; he came to Venice yesterday for repairs to his ship and moored near to the Arsenale. My messenger found him there. So he knew all about the failure of the coins as soon as we did. The nobles bled when he tipped them out of the purse, and then he heard the Doge announce that the whole Ottoman Empire believes that it has been cheated. He thinks that Venice tried to cheat his empire, and that you tried to cheat him. He called me a cheat also. I am sorry, my son.’

‘He is here?’ Luca could hardly believe that his father was in the same city, just one mile away, in the dockyard where the galleys were built. ‘Then I can go to him. I have some gold, I can promise more . . . I can explain!’

Father Pietro nodded. ‘We will try again, in a month or so. When Bayeed’s anger has abated.’

‘But he cannot be angry with us . . . we have all been cheated!’

Father Pietro shook his head, tears filling his eyes, turning his head away from Luca.

‘What is it?’ asked Ishraq quietly, coming up behind Luca and sensing the older man’s distress. ‘What is it, Father?’

Blindly, he reached out to her and she took his hand on her shoulder, as if to support him ‘Wait a moment,’ she said to Luca, who was breathlessly impatient. ‘Wait, let the Father speak.’

The old man raised his head. ‘Forgive me. This has been a blow. This has been a terrible blow. Last year the Ottoman Empire took tribute and traded in pure gold and the best of coins. As they always do. Sometimes they take goods, of course, always they take young boys to serve in their armies. This is how it is. This is how the Christian lands suffer for their defeat by the infidel. This is how the Christian rulers pay for peace: they have to pay tribute in gold and in children. This is our suffering, this is our Stations of the Cross.’ He paused.

‘This year, before tribute time, they let it be known that they would take gold or the English nobles. Then, as the English nobles went up in value, they said they would only take the coins. Everyone works to pay the tribute, the whole country has to pay the tax to give to the Ottoman overlords. They took goods also, and the young men, but this year they only wanted the gold coins. They loved the gold coins, the English nobles.’

‘And what happened?’ Luca asked, unable to contain himself any longer. ‘When did they find out?’

‘The coins bled,’ the old man said simply. ‘Bled like the wounds of Our Lord. Bled into the hands of the murderous infidel. And they swore that they had been cheated. They think they have been cheated by us. They think we gave them false coins on purpose, that we thought the coins would not break down and bleed until they had taken the tribute home and spread them throughout their country, destroying trust in every village market throughout their infidel empire. And so they are angry – beyond anger – and they are sending back the bleeding coins and demanding gold. Every country that has to pay tribute has to find the money all over again, and this time, send gold, only solid gold. It is a terrible burden. It is a terrible price to pay.’

He bowed his head and wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his gown. ‘We cannot pay it,’ he said simply. ‘And so they will take the children. Our children. When we cannot pay the money they will take many, many children into slavery to serve as their soldiers. We will lose our children from their nurseries and their souls from salvation. God help us,’ he whispered. ‘God help us all. People will starve to death to get this tax together. Half of Greece will be ruined and hundreds, thousands, of innocent children will be taken from their mothers into slavery. All of the Christian lands conquered by the infidel will be crucified all over again.’

‘And my father?’ Luca breathed.

Father Pietro rubbed his face with his hands. ‘He will remain enslaved,’ he said shortly. ‘Along with the half a dozen other men who expected their freedom today or tomorrow. Yours was not the only ransom we paid. Bayeed has sent back the false coins and will set sail tonight cursing us for cheats. He accuses us of double dealing, my reputation as an agent for enslaved men is destroyed. My years of service are made worthless. My name is shamed.’