Order of Darkness Read online

  Confidently, he tossed it into the scales and showed her the weight. ‘Fifty-four grains,’ he said. ‘A full noble is 108. They all are. Always. They are perfect coins.’

  ‘It looks like new!’ Freize exclaimed. ‘As if it were fresh from the mint.’

  The man nodded. ‘As I said, they’re very fine coins,’ he confirmed.

  ‘But how can it be so shiny and fine?’ Ishraq asked him.

  ‘Since it must have come all the way from England, from the royal mint in England?’

  The man shrugged. ‘Actually, it came from the English royal mint in Calais,’ he said shortly. ‘You can tell by the signs on the coin if you look closely.’

  ‘They hardly look like coins at all,’ Freize said, accustomed to the worn and jagged currency that he usually carried, coins that had been snipped and clipped by people wanting to break them down into smaller currency, or worn smooth by years of use.

  ‘Put it away before someone with less discernment takes it off you,’ the merchant recommended. ‘And before you make people think that there is something wrong with it.’ He glanced down the row of tables. Some of the traders were watching them. ‘We all exchange money here, the town depends on trade, like it depends on water. Nobody wants anyone looking at a coin and wondering about its value. A good piccoli buys you a loaf of bread and a fish for your dinner. Tell people that a piccoli is not really worth a penny, but only half a penny, and you’ll only get a loaf and no fish. Faith in the currency is what makes trade in this town. We don’t like people questioning our coins. Our coins are good, these nobles are exceptionally good, everyone else is trading them for more than two ducats. I shall put up my price again tomorrow. You are lucky that I have these at this price today. Take it or leave it.’

  ‘Indeed I wasn’t questioning it,’ Freize said pleasantly. ‘I was admiring it, I was so impressed by the quality. Thank you for your patience.’

  He bowed politely to the money changer and then the two of them turned away and strolled towards the Rialto Bridge. ‘Let me see it,’ Ishraq said curiously. ‘What’s the coin like?’

  In answer, Freize handed it to her. It was as bright as newly minted, newly polished gold. There was a picture of a king in the prow of his ship on one side, and an eight-petalled heraldic rose on the other side. In English currency it was worth three shillings and four pence, a sixth of a pound; in Venice it could be exchanged today for a gold ducat, tomorrow it might be more or less.

  ‘It looks like new,’ Freize remarked. ‘Whatever he says.’

  ‘But who would be minting fake English nobles in Venice?’ Ishraq wondered aloud.

  ‘And that’s the very question that Milord has set Luca to answer,’ Freize agreed. ‘But I can’t help but wonder why Milord is so interested. It’s hardly a sign of the end of days. It’s hardly a holy inquiry. Since Luca is appointed to the Order of Darkness to travel throughout Christendom and find the signs for the end of the world, why would he be ordered to discover the source of gold coins in Venice? I would have thought it was rather a worldly question for an Order that was established by the Pope to discover the date of the end of the world. What do they care about the value of English nobles?’

  He saw, in her downturned face, the same scepticism about Milord that he felt. ‘Ah, you don’t like him any more than I do,’ he said flatly.

  ‘I don’t know him,’ she said. ‘Who does know him? He has never let any of us see his face. He didn’t tell us anything, beyond ordering us to come to Venice in disguise to find out about the coins. He commands Luca and Brother Peter as the commander of their Order but he gives us no reason to trust him. He hates the Ottomans as if they were poison – well, I understand that – they have conquered Constantinople, and he thinks that if they reach Rome then the world will end. But I don’t see how to trust a man who lives his life as if he were always on the very edge of world disaster. His whole work, his whole life is waiting for the end of the world. He’s an angry man and a fearful man, I really don’t like him.’

  ‘And so you let his enemy into our house,’ Freize said gently.

  ‘I let him out of the house,’ she corrected him. ‘I heard the Ottoman Radu Bey on the stairs, I don’t know how he got in. He said he had just visited Milord and I let him out of the house. I didn’t know that he had threatened Milord. I don’t know that I even care if he did.’

  ‘Milord said that the intruder was an Assassin. That he could have been stabbed as he slept.’

  ‘Milord says a lot of things,’ she replied. ‘But it was Radu Bey for sure who got into his room and pinned his own badge over Milord’s heart as he slept. He could have killed him, but he did not. I can see that he and the Ottoman lord are enemies – they’re on either side of the greatest war there is: the Jihad to one, the Crusade to the other – but that doesn’t tell me which is the right side, which is the better man.’

  She had shocked him. ‘We’re Christians!’ he exclaimed. ‘We serve Luca who serves the Church. The Crusade is a holy war against the infidel!’

  ‘You are,’ she pointed out. ‘You four are. But I’m not. I want to make up my own mind. And I simply don’t know enough about Luca’s lord – or about the Ottoman lord either.’

  ‘We have to follow Luca’s lord, we can’t desert Luca,’ Freize pointed out. ‘I love him as a brother and your lady won’t leave him unless she has to. And you?’ He gave her a quick sideways smile. ‘You’re head over heels in love with him, aren’t you?’

  She laughed. ‘I’m not head over heels for anyone,’ she said. ‘I keep my two feet on the ground. He makes my heart beat a little faster, I grant you that. But nothing in this world would send me head over heels, I like to be right side up.’

  ‘One day,’ Freize warned her solemnly. ‘One day you will find that you are head over heels in love with me. I pray that you don’t leave it too late.’

  She laughed. ‘What a mistake that would be! Look at how you run after other women!’

  ‘And on that day,’ Freize predicted without paying any attention to her laughter, ‘on that day, I will be kind to you. I will take you in my arms, I will allow you to adore me.’

  ‘I’ll remember that!’ she said.

  ‘Remember this too,’ Freize said more seriously. ‘Luca is sworn to obey the lord of his Order. I have promised to follow and serve Luca. You are travelling with us. You can’t support our enemies.’

  ‘And what of your friends?’ she challenged him. ‘And Luca’s mysterious errands for his Lord? A servant of the Church coming to Venice in carnival time, ordered to speculate in gold and trade in a cargo? Is this holy work in your Church?’

  The bell of San Giacomo started to ring over their heads and flocks of pigeons fluttered from their roosts in the church tower, interrupting them. ‘One o’clock,’ said Ishraq. ‘And here, I think, is Father Pietro.’

  The two of them watched as an elderly grey-haired man wearing the undyed wool robes of the Benedictine order came from the church, still crossing himself, his forehead damp with holy water, and walked across the crowded square. Traders, merchants and passers-by greeted him by name, as he threaded his way through the crowd, making the sign of the cross over a child who ducked for the blessing, until he arrived at the foot of the Rialto Bridge where a small stone pillar – usually used for hitching boats – served as his seat.

  He took his place, and the servant who had followed him through the crowd set up a small table for writing, unfurled a long, rolled manuscript and presented the priest with a pen. Father Pietro looked around him, bowed his head briefly in prayer and then dipped his pen in the inkwell and waited, pen poised. Clearly, he was open for business, but before Ishraq or Freize could speak to him a little crowd had gathered around him, shouting out the names of missing relatives, or asking for information.

  As Ishraq and Freize watched, the friar looked through his list, noted down new names, reported on ones he could find, and advised the supplicants. For one young man he had great news: his c