Fools' Gold Read online

  ‘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 demande