Fools' Gold (37 page)
Authors: Philippa Gregory
‘Did they do it then?’ Ishraq wondered. ‘They really did it? They found the philosophers’ stone that can change everything to gold, and they turned Freize’s penny to gold?’ She nodded to Luca. ‘D’you remember that they said that they had one more step to take and they would be able to refine any matter to gold? Perhaps they did it, on this one coin, and we were in the room where they did it. They made true gold from dross. They really did.’
‘And the Venetians drove them away,’ Isolde said. ‘Sent them into exile with the secret of how to make gold in their pocket.’
‘We gave them the boat!’ Freize exclaimed, his voice cracking on a laugh. ‘We helped them to run away with the secret of a fortune, the secret that alchemists have never yet found.’
‘And not just that. They had the secret of life itself,’ Ishraq reminded her. ‘The philosophers’ stone which makes gold, leads to the philosophers’ elixir, the elixir of life that cures death itself.’
‘And we lost them,’ Luca said, staring at the coin in his friend’s hand. ‘We were standing by the forge where they had made the secret of life itself, and we let them go, and then we ran away. We have been fools indeed. We have been the greatest fools of all.’
Freize tossed the coin high in the air and they watched it turn and glint in the bright sunshine and fall heavily, as a solid gold coin will fall. He caught it with a slap of his hand, shook his head in wonderment, and put the coin back in his pocket. ‘Fools’ gold,’ he said. ‘Fools indeed.’
Ishraq smiled at him. ‘Do you still think you’re lucky?’ she asked. ‘Is it still a lucky penny? Since a woman with the secret of eternal life and the secret of how to make gold gave it to you and then she went away forever? With her secrets safely with her?’
‘Said I had a true heart, and then turned into my grandmother,’ Freize reminded her. ‘Gave a little monster into my keeping which frightened me to death. Strangest girl I have ever kissed. But am I lucky? I would say so.’
Luca clapped him on the shoulder with sudden brotherly affection. ‘Still lucky,’ he said. ‘Always lucky. Not hanged for alchemy, not drowned in the flood. The sun going round him, his feet on a flat earth. A golden penny in his pocket. Freize is born lucky. Always lucky!’
‘Born to be hanged,’ Brother Peter said; but he smiled at Freize. ‘No fool.’
THE END
AUTHOR NOTE
I hope you enjoyed
Fools’ Gold
and that you go on to explore anything that struck you as odd or interesting in the story. Some of it is based on historical truth, some of it is based on old beliefs, and some of it is made up.
Luca, Isolde, Freize, Ishraq and Brother Peter are fictional characters – as are all the other characters they meet in this novel – but the world they inhabit is very like the medieval world of 1454, and some of that wonderful world survives today. You can go to Ravenna and see the rainbow mosaics in the tomb of Galla Placida or you can look for the images online. They are still there, perhaps sunk a little more deeply into the damp soil of Ravenna than at the time of Luca’s visit.
The Venice that Luca and his friends discover is still there too, of course. Though the modern day Venice is served by a railway and an airport, and the islands are built-up and merged one with another, the gardens for which medieval Venice was famous are now squares and quays and pavements, but you can still see the medieval paths and canals and you can visit the Doge’s palace which they were building when Luca was there and is now completed. You can even take a tour through the winding wooden corridors where Luca was led for questioning, and you can see the double sound-proofed door into the secret rooms, and the cell where Freize was held prisoner.
I am going to write more about the lives of Jews in the medieval world but the experience of Israel as a moneychanger was typical of the lives of many of the Jews of Venice. They had to live in a designated closed area known as the ‘ghetto’ meaning workplace, and they suffered persecution – blame for when things went wrong, and exploitation during good years. The villain of Shakespeare’s play
The Merchant of Venice
would recognise the difficulties that Israel expressed in getting Christians to pay their legitimate debts to him, and surviving in a hostile world. But at least Venice was tolerant enough to allow anyone to live and work in their city. In a few decades from the date of this novel the Jews would be expelled from Spain and banned from many other European countries.
The description of the alchemists in this story is based on the history of the times and you can find out more about alchemy from my website. Alchemy was a sort of medieval chemistry – it gave its name to the science – and many of the earliest experiments of what we would now call science were done by brilliant thinkers who would have called themselves philosophers or alchemists. Some of them believed that they had discovered the philosophers’ stone, and have left persuasive accounts of their work.
The Voynich Manuscript
which Drago brings to Luca is a real document – it has still not been translated or understood. I chose not to try to explain away some of these unsolved riddles, I wanted to leave Jacinta and Drago and their work as something of a mystery. And some things are still unknown. And here I have to thank Mr Mark Robinson and Mr Mark Edwards of the Physics Department at St Peter’s School in York, who helped me understand gold density.
At the heart of this book is the dangerous and erratic market for gold nobles. This is a fictional story but the history of capital has included many enthusiasms and scares that have made and lost fortunes. In the western world we are in the middle of a slump which followed a boom right now, and in some ways the bundling of paper debt and the selling of it at an unreal price is like the other events in history which economic writers call ‘a bubble’ – because it always goes pop. I have written before about the great excitement around the tulip market (
Earthly Joys
, 1998) and here I am writing a fiction about a market for gold nobles created and destroyed by Luca’s mysterious boss, Milord.
You can read more about him, and about our four young adventurers, Brother Peter and even the horse Rufino in the next Order of Darkness book which I hope to write and publish in 2014. You can find out the title and when it is due and all about my other books on my website PhilippaGregory.com
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