Order of Darkness Read online

  ‘Lord love you and bless you,’ the landlady said. ‘And him a gentleman from Rome and everything damp still.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Ishraq assured her. She took their two bowls of stew and some rough bread and started for the stairs. Freize held the door open for her.

  ‘What did he say to you?’ he asked her quietly as she went past him.

  Her head came up. ‘What did who say?’

  ‘The infidel nobleman. He spoke to you in his foreign language. He took you aside to the boat, when you were carrying his package for him. I saw you go with him, but I have no skill in languages. But I saw him speak quietly. I didn’t know what he said to you – nor what you said to him?’

  ‘I didn’t understand him,’ she said quickly. ‘He spoke too fast.’

  ‘So what did you reply?’

  ‘That I couldn’t understand him.’

  There was a second, a split second when Freize saw her dark eyes slide away from him, and he knew that she was lying. ‘Seems to be an important man,’ he said easily.

  ‘Very learned, from what he was saying to Luca,’ she said indifferently, and went from the room and started to climb the stairs.

  ‘Are you serving dinner, or flirting with the young lady?’ the landlady demanded from her place by the blazing fire where she was spooning fat over a roasting duck on the spit.

  ‘Flirting,’ Freize replied instantly. ‘Firstly with the young lady and now – thank the lord she has gone – I can start on my greater quarry: yourself. Shall we go to your laundry room? Shall we say to hell with the duck and will you lock me in and ravish me among the sheets?’

  The lord from Rome ate better than he could have hoped in a village recovering from a disaster, and pushed back his chair and bit into a fresh apple. Luca, and Brother Peter arrived with the fruits and sweetmeats to stand before the dining room table and report as best they could about the Crusade, about the wave, about the slaving galley, and waited for his opinion.

  He sat at his ease, in a robe of beautiful dark blue cloth but with the hood over his head so that his face was in shadow. ‘I’ve heard of this Plato you speak of,’ he said. ‘And I’ve read him. But only in Greek. We have a manuscript in Rome but it’s an imperfect copy. They had a better one in our library in Constantinople, but that’s now in Muslim hands with the rest of the wealth of Christendom, all our great library now owned by the infidel. Brother Peter, you can give me a copy of what the infidel said.’

  Brother Peter nodded his head. He did not explain that the copy had been made by Ishraq.

  ‘You are still travelling with two ladies?’ the lord said. ‘They arrived with you, and they are still here?’

  ‘I have tried over and over again to send them with another party,’ Peter exclaimed. ‘Circumstances have prevented them leaving us.’

  ‘The ones from the nunnery?’ Milord asked Luca.

  ‘Yes. They escaped from the nunnery, as you know, and we met with them on the road. They were in some danger as they were travelling alone. They travel with us for safety, only until they can find another party to join. They were very helpful at Vittorito, as I reported, and again here. The Lady Isolde spoke so well that she all but averted a riot by some ignorant people who were making accusations of storm-bringers. And Ishraq is unusually learned. She was very helpful with the infidel ship; she speaks Arabic.’

  The lord shrugged as if he did not much care about the ladies, but since the light did not penetrate his hood to illuminate his face, Luca could not tell if he approved or not.

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said indifferently. ‘You wrote to me already that the slave is skilled?’

  ‘She’s not a slave but a free woman,’ Luca explained. ‘Half Arab but raised at the Castle of Lucretili. She speaks languages and she studied in Spain. The former Lord of Lucretili seems to have planned to train her up as a scholar. He let her read medicine, and study Arab documents. She is very skilled in many things as you will have seen from my report.’

  ‘What’s her faith?’ the lord asked, going to the main, the only, question.

  ‘She seems to have none,’ Brother Peter said heavily. ‘She does not attend church but I have never seen her pray as a Muslim. She speaks of God with indifference. She may be an infidel, a Muslim or even some sort of pagan. But she’s not Christian. At least, I don’t think so.’ He hesitated and then said the words that would protect her from an inquisition and a charge of heresy. ‘We consider her as a Moor. She obeys Christian laws. She does not bring herself into scandal. She behaves modestly, like a maid. I can find no fault in her.’

  Luca looked at his newly polished boots and said nothing about Ishraq coming into the mens’ room in her nightgown and cape and going up the ladder for the kitten, and coming down again into his arms.

  ‘And where are they going? Didn’t you write that they were going to Buda-Pest?’

  ‘Lady Isolde is the god-daughter of the late Count Wladislaw of Wallachia. She wants to ask his son to help her gain her inheritance from her brother. The new count is at the court of Hungary – his kingdom has been captured by a pretender.’

  ‘Does she know him?’ he asked with sudden intensity. ‘Count Wladislaw? The son or the father? Has she ever seen him?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  The lord laughed shortly as if this were amusing news. ‘How things come about!’ he said. ‘Well, they can travel with you if they wish, and if you have no objection. For I want you to go to Venice. That lies on their way since they can’t go to Croatia in the wake of the wave. You can start tomorrow. If anything occurs, or you hear of anything on your way, you must stop and investigate; but when you get to Venice there is work for you to do. There are stories of much gold on the market.’

  ‘Gold?’

  ‘In coins, gold coins. It is of interest to me because someone, somewhere has obviously found gold, a lot of gold, mined it, and is pouring it into the Venice markets. Or perhaps someone has a store of gold that they have found or thieved, or released. Either way, this is of interest. Also, the gold appears in Venice in coins, not in bars – which is unusual. So there is a forger there, somewhere, tucked away in the Venice ghetto, making very good quality English nobles, of all things, from a new source of gold. Beautiful English nobles with their old King Edward on a ship on one side and the rose of England on another – but they’re perfect.’

  ‘Perfect?’

  He reached inside his robe and brought out a coin. Luca took the heavy gold weight in his hand and turned it over looking at the beautiful engraving, the handsome rose and the lettering around the edge.

  ‘Notice anything?’

  ‘Shiny,’ Luca said. ‘Beautiful.’

  ‘Exactly, it’s too heavy and unworn. Nobody’s clipped them, nobody’s shaved them. They’ve not been passed around and half a dozen petty crooks tried to scrape a paring off them. They’re all full weight.’ In the darkness of the hood Luca could glimpse a small smile. ‘They’re too good for this world,’ he said. ‘And that’s the very thing of interest to us: something which is too good for this world.’

  ‘You want me to investigate?’ Luca asked. ‘You want me to look for a forger or a coiner?’

  ‘I have reason,’ the lord said, without explaining it to him. ‘Get there, mingle with people, buy and sell things, handle the coins, change money, gamble if you have to . . .’

  Brother Peter raised his head and repeated, ‘Gamble?’

  ‘Yes, go and see the money changers, do whatever you have to do to get hold of a lot of these coins and look at the quality. If there is a forger doing extraordinarily good work, then I want to know. Identify him, and write to me at once. Pass yourself off as a young merchant with money to spend on trade. Talk about taking a share in a ship: buy things, spread money around, handle a lot of money, let people know that you are wealthy. Hire a couple of manservants, take this pair of women with you, if they will go. If they will agree to it, pass yourself off as a family, buying a house in V