Fools' Gold Read online

  ‘I was trying to ransom you,’ Luca said breathlessly. ‘Bayeed refused the coins. But I will get pure gold. I will buy your freedom. I will come for you.’

  ‘Do you know where your mother is?’ His voice was husky, he rarely spoke these days. When they slaved over the oars, obedient to the beat of the pace-drum, they never spoke. In the evening when they were released to eat there was nothing to say. After the first year he had ceased to weep, after the second year he had stopped praying.

  ‘I am looking for her,’ Luca promised. ‘I swear I will find her and ransom her too.’

  There was a silence. Incredulously, Luca realised that he was within speaking distance of his long-lost father and he had so much to say that he could not find words.

  ‘Are you in pain?’ he asked.

  ‘Always,’ came the grim reply.

  ‘I have missed you and my mother,’ Luca said quietly.

  The man choked on his sore throat and spat. ‘You must think of me as dead to you,’ was all he said. ‘I believe I am dead and gone to hell.’

  ‘I won’t think of you as dead,’ Luca exclaimed passionately. ‘I will ransom you and return you to our farm. You will live again, as you used to live. We will be happy.’

  ‘I can’t think of it,’ his father flatly refused. ‘I would go mad if I thought of it. Go, son, leave me in hell. I cannot dream of freedom.’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘No,’ came the stern reply.

  ‘Father!’

  ‘Don’t call me Father,’ he said chillingly. ‘You have no Father. I am dead to you and you to me. I cannot think of your world and your hopes and your plans. I can only think about every day and every night, and then the next one. The only hope that I have is that I will die tonight if possible, and this will end.’

  He turned to go back into the darkness of the prison, Luca saw the scars from the whip on his back. ‘Father! Don’t go! Of course I will call you Father, of course I will ransom you. You can hope! I will never leave you. I will never stop looking for you. I am your son!’

  ‘You’re a changeling.’ Gwilliam Vero rounded on Luca. ‘No son of mine. You said you would ransom me but you have not done so. You say you will come again but I cannot bear to hope. Do you understand that, Stranger? I cannot bear to hope. I don’t want to think of my farm and my son and my wife. I will go mad if I think of such things and live like this – in hell. I have no son. You are a stranger. You are a changeling. You have no reason to ransom me. Go away and forget all about me. I am a dead stranger to you, and you are a changeling boy to me.’

  Luca shook with emotion. ‘Father?’ he whispered. ‘Don’t speak so to me . . . you know I am . . . ’

  Gwilliam Vero stepped away from the light of the grille and all Luca could see was darkness.

  ‘Enough!’ the sentry said flatly. He gestured to Luca to get down from the barrel and go away. When Luca hesitated he put his right hand on the hilt of his long curved scimitar, and felt for the handgun strapped to his belt with the other.

  Ishraq stepped off the gondola and, holding the ring high above her head, came slowly across the quay. ‘Come, Luca!’ she said gently.

  He stumbled down from the barrel, and grabbed hold of it to support himself, as his knees buckled beneath him.

  ‘Come on,’ Ishraq beckoned to him. She saw his face was contorted with shock. ‘Luca!’ she said urgently. ‘Pick yourself up, get back to the gondola. We have to leave.’

  ‘He denied me!’ he gasped. He levered himself to his feet, using the barrel, but she saw he could not walk.

  ‘Be a man!’ she said harshly. ‘You are putting Freize and me in danger here. Now we must go. Find your feet! Walk!’

  The sentry stepped closer and drew the wicked blade from the scabbard. It shone in the moonlight. Ishraq knew that he could behead Luca with one blow, and would think nothing of it.

  ‘Get up, fool!’ she said and the anger in her voice cut through Luca’s grief. ‘Get up and be a man.’

  Slowly, Luca straightened up and hobbled, awkwardly, towards her. As soon as he was within reach she grabbed his arm and put it over her shoulders so that she could take his weight. ‘Now walk,’ she spat. ‘Or I will stab you myself.’

  ‘We thank you,’ Ishraq called towards the sentry, her voice sweet and untroubled. She sent the gold ring spinning through the air to him. She put her arm around Luca’s waist and helped him, as if he were mortally wounded, walk slowly and painfully to the gondola, step heavily on board and sit in silence as Giuseppe cast off, spun the gondola round, and headed back towards the palazzo.

  Isolde was waiting up for them but Luca went past her without a word, into his bedroom, and closed the door. She looked to Ishraq for an explanation.

  ‘I don’t know it all,’ Ishraq said quietly, scowling with worry. ‘We couldn’t hear what his father said, but Luca went white as if he was sick and his legs went from under him. We only just got him back to the gondola, and since then he has said nothing to either of us.’

  ‘Did his father blame Luca for the ransom failing?’

  Ishraq shook her head. ‘Luca said nothing, I don’t know. His father must have said something terrible; it just felled him.’

  ‘Did you comfort him?’ Isolde asked. ‘Couldn’t you talk to him?’

  Ishraq gave her a crooked little smile. ‘I was not tender to him,’ she said. ‘I was hard on him.’

  ‘I’m for my bed,’ Freize said. ‘I was glad to get away from that quayside.’ He nodded at Ishraq. ‘You did well to get him walking. Perhaps he’ll talk to us in the morning.’ He yawned and turned to the door.

  ‘You must be worried for him,’ Isolde said, putting her hand on his arm.

  Freize looked down at her. ‘I am worried for us all,’ he said. ‘It feels as if we are all bleeding in this city, not just the false nobles. Trying to make money in speculation and not in honest work has cost us all, very dear. I don’t think we even know how much.’

  At dawn there was a sudden hammering on one of the bedroom doors. ‘Get up!’ they could all hear Luca shouting. ‘Get up!’

  Ishraq and Isolde lighted their candles from the dying embers of the fire in their room and pattered down the stairs, pulling shawls around their nightgowns. Freize was already on the shadowy stairs, his club in his hand, ready for an attack. Luca was hammering on Brother Peter’s bedroom door.

  ‘Let me see that letter! Show me that letter!’

  Brother Peter unlocked the door and came out, long-legged as a stork in his nightgown. He gave one reproachful look at the young women, turned his gaze from their bare feet and said: ‘What is it? What is this uproar? What’s happened now?’

  ‘The orders! The orders! The sealed orders that you opened yesterday! Let me see them.’

  ‘You read them yourself!’ Brother Peter protested. ‘Why do you need to see them again?’

  ‘Because I have to understand,’ Luca said passionately. ‘Always! You know what I’m like. I have to understand. And I don’t understand this. I was so distressed at the loss of my father that I couldn’t think. I lay down to sleep and in the darkness all I could see before my eyes was the letter from Milord: the orders. Show them to me!’

  Ishraq’s brown eyes were shining. ‘I ask why!’ she repeated to herself.

  Brother Peter sighed and went back into his room. He came out pulling on his robe over his nightshirt, with the letter in his hand. He gave it to Luca and sat down at the dining table with the air of a man tried beyond endurance. The others pulled out their chairs and took their places around the table in silence, while Luca read it, and reread it. Only Ishraq looked delighted.

  ‘What are we to do, when we have bought up the false nobles with all the gold that Milord provided?’ Luca asked, hardly glancing up from the page.

  ‘We are to store it at the bank, and open the orders with our next destination,’ Brother Peter said.

  ‘We are not to test the nobles? To separate the bad from the good?’