Fools' Gold Read online

  She smiled at him. ‘And not a young woman either,’ she said. ‘I am sorry to have deceived you. Dr Nacari and I have worked together for many many years, and we have discovered many things together. Among them, an elixir which prolongs life itself. I am an old, old soul in a young body. You, Freize, make this heart beat faster; but it’s only fair that I should tell you, that it is a very old heart. I’m an old woman behind this young face.’

  Freize glanced at Luca and raised his shoulders. ‘This is beyond me, Sparrow,’ he said. ‘Someone is mad here, it might be me or them.’

  But it was Ishraq who spoke next. ‘It’s about the gold,’ she said frankly. ‘We have come about the gold. We have come to warn you.’

  The alchemist smiled. ‘Was it you that broke into our house, Daughter?’

  Freize shook his head in instant denial, but Ishraq met the older man’s eyes fearlessly, and nodded. ‘I am sorry. We are commanded to find the source of the gold nobles. Our master demanded that we pretend to be a wealthy young family and investigate. We followed Israel the money changer and he came to your door. So we knew you had a store of gold nobles.’

  ‘We knew as soon as we came home, that someone had been into the inner room. And the things . . . the dark matter, the mouse in the jar, the coins in the fire, they were all disturbed, just a little, by your presence. Things are not the same when they are watched. Something changes when it has been seen.’

  ‘You knew we had been in the room?’ Freize asked sceptically.

  Luca stirred at the suggestion that an object might sense an observer; but Ishraq simply answered: ‘Yes, I thought you might know. And we took a print of the Duke of Bedford’s seal and a piece of glass from the writing table.’

  ‘The rainbow glass,’ Luca said. ‘The glass that makes a rainbow when the light falls on it. I have been interested in rainbows since I saw the mosaic at Ravenna. Do you know how they are made in the sky? How does the glass do it on the earth?’

  ‘The glass splits the light into its true colours,’ the alchemist told Luca, understanding his longing for knowledge. ‘Everyone thinks that light is the colour of sunshine. But it is not. It is made of many colours. You can see this when it goes through the glass.’

  ‘Is it always the same colours?’ Luca asked him. ‘I saw a mosaic of a rainbow, an ancient mosaic, centuries old, and it was the same colours that we see today. The ancients must have somehow known that light made a rainbow.’

  ‘Always the same colours,’ Jacinta confirmed. ‘And always following the same order. Light appears as clear brightness when all the colours flow together, but if you allow a beam of light to fall on a piece of glass, cut in the right way, it will split the light into its colours and you can see them. Put another piece of glass on the rainbow and you can make them meld together again and become invisible once more. One piece of glass can split the light, and then another makes it whole again.’

  ‘So what makes a rainbow in the sky?’ Ishraq asked.

  Jacinta turned to her. ‘I believe that the drops of water of the rain split the light, just like the glass splits it. You often see the rainbow against rain clouds, or against mist.’

  Luca nodded. ‘That’s true, you do.’

  ‘But the interesting question to me . . .’ Jacinta went on. ‘The interesting question is: why is it curved?’

  ‘Curved?’ Freize asked, utterly baffled, but wanting to join in.

  The alchemist smiled at him. ‘Why would the bow of the rainbow be curved?’ he asked. ‘Why would it not run straight across the sky?’

  Freize shook his head, even Luca was blank.

  ‘Because it follows the line of the earth. It proves that the earth is not flat but shaped like a ball. And the great length of the rainbow proves that the ball is far greater than philosophers think, and round, not humped. It tells us that the earth is round but bigger than we thought. Much bigger than we thought.’

  Freize put his hands down and held on to the table, as if to steady himself. ‘Why would you think such a thing?’ he said, complaining of their imaginations which made the ground heave beneath his feet. ‘Why would you repeat such a disturbing thing? And obviously untrue. Why would you say such a thing, even if you are mad enough to think it? It makes my head spin.’

  Jacinta put her small hand over his as he gripped the table. ‘Because we consider all possibilities,’ she answered. ‘And it is true about the world being round. But of course, people don’t like to think about it.’ She looked up and smiled at Luca. ‘Keep the glass piece,’ she said. ‘And see what light shines through it. Who knows what you will discover?’

  ‘And what about you?’ Ishraq asked. ‘You know, you can’t stay here, counterfeiting coins. This has to stop.’

  ‘You call us counterfeiters?’ The alchemist drew himself up to his full height. ‘You think I am a common criminal?’

  For the first time Ishraq felt uneasy. She looked from Jacinta to the man who had passed as her father and remembered that she, Luca and Freize were three, against the two of them. But there was something about these two that made her wonder if they were safe, even with those odds. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you, Doctor Nacari; but what else am I to think?’ she said carefully.

  ‘We saw the silver piccoli in the hearth,’ Freize said bluntly. ‘We saw the sacks of gold at your watergate. We know that you supply Israel, the money changer, with his gold coins. We assume that you supply others. You’ve got the seal of the Duke of Bedford, we know it’s his seal. Altogether, it looks very bad.’ He turned to Jacinta. ‘It looks as if you are counterfeiting gold. You may be as old as my great-grandmother and the world may be round – though I have to tell you that I doubt it – but I would not have any harm come to a lass with a smile like yours.’

  At once she beamed, as radiant as a girl. ‘Ah Freize,’ she said intimately. ‘You have a true heart. I can see that as clearly as I can see anything.’

  The alchemist sighed. ‘Come in here,’ he said. He opened the door to what had once been the storeroom in the house and the warm rotting smell intensified. He led the way into the inner room and Luca looked around in amazement from the vat of rotting garbage, to the bubbling, dripping glass vessels.

  ‘I won’t deny that we have started to make gold,’ the alchemist said to Freize. ‘There are the moulds for pouring the gold. Here . . .’ He pointed to a great round crock sealed and thrust into the deep heat of the fire. ‘Do you know what they call that?’

  Freize dumbly shook his head.

  ‘The philosophers’ egg,’ he said and smiled. ‘It absorbs an unbearable heat and inside it the metals, pure and impure, melt and blend. When we pour the molten mix into the moulds we make gold nobles.’

  ‘Pure gold?’ Luca confirmed, hardly able to believe it. ‘Because we tested some coins when we first arrived in Venice.’

  ‘Those would have been the first we ever had, from our patron. We didn’t make them. Those were real gold nobles, from the Calais mint. We sowed the market with them. At first we just sold the coins he provided, creating an interest in the market, watching the price rise, and then we started to make our own. We have only just started making our own, from mixed metals. They pass as gold, they are just one step away from being pure gold, they are close, very close to perfect. I need only a little time to make them pure. I have to work on them some more. One last stage of refinement.’

  ‘We can’t do it here, any more,’ Jacinta reminded him. ‘Freize is good to warn us. We’ll have to move on.’

  ‘Yes, I see we must be on our travels again. We will have to tell our patron that we have to find a new home.’

  Ishraq saw the young woman turn from the alchemist with regret, saw her glance at a bell jar on the table. Where the little brown mouse had been on their last visit, there was now another creature, a little like a lizard. Ishraq could not see more than the hairless back and the little outspread legs as the creature slept on its tiny belly at the bottom of the jar.

  ‘Wh