Order of Darkness Read online

  ‘That only proves that some of them are good.’

  ‘But why would they make English gold nobles?’ Ishraq asked. ‘Wouldn’t he do better to make gold bars?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Brother Peter said. ‘If you forged gold bars then most of your customers would buy them to have them worked at once, into gold goods or jewellery. That’s when you’d be in danger of them discovering the base metal inside the bar. But if you forge perfect-looking coins, especially some with a persuasive story behind them – English nobles made in the Calais mint to pay the English soldiers – it all makes sense, and you can release the coins onto the market. We know that they are traded against Venetian ducats at two to one. And the money changer said they were rising in price.’

  ‘But we tested them,’ Luca reminded him. ‘Others must test them and find them good.’

  ‘Perhaps they are very good forgeries,’ Brother Peter said suspiciously. ‘At any rate, no one says anything against them.’

  ‘They’re still rising in price,’ Ishraq confirmed. ‘I looked today. They’re up again.’

  Isolde shot her a quick smile. ‘You are a trader,’ she whispered.

  ‘But what would such a man buy instead?’ Luca wondered aloud. ‘Once you have sold your forged gold coins? What do you buy with the profit? How do you take the profit?’

  ‘Jewels,’ Isolde guessed. ‘Small things that you can easily take away if you get caught.’

  ‘Books,’ Ishraq volunteered. ‘Alchemy books so that you can practice your art. Old manuscripts, as we know he has. Precious ingredients for your craft.’

  ‘Horses,’ Freize said. ‘So you can get away.’

  Luca exchanged an affectionate glance with his friend. ‘And because you’d always buy horses.’

  Freize nodded. ‘What would you buy?’ he asked Brother Peter curiously.

  ‘I’d buy Masses for my soul,’ Brother Peter answered. ‘What matters more?’

  There was a brief respectful silence. ‘Well, they don’t look like wealthy people,’ Freize said. ‘There’s the daughter working every morning in the street for handfuls of silver, and she’s not wearing gold bracelets. She said she would gamble with me for a silk dress. She answered the door as if they didn’t have a maid. But they have that big house. It doesn’t add up.’

  ‘How can we find out more?’ Luca puzzled aloud. ‘How can we find out what they’re doing?’

  ‘We could break in,’ Ishraq volunteered. ‘We know that they are out every morning, gambling at the Rialto. The father is always there with her, isn’t he? And Freize thinks they have no maid.’

  ‘They’ve been there every morning that we’ve seen so far,’ Freize said cautiously. ‘And he is coming here this afternoon. They have a manuscript to show Luca.’

  ‘They asked me if I would look at it. I said you might be able to read it, if it is in Arabic,’ Luca said to Ishraq.

  ‘Is it about alchemy?’

  ‘He said it was a mystery to him. But obviously it is something strange. He does not want to take it to the university nor to the Church.’

  ‘Well, I can try to read it with you this afternoon. And tomorrow morning why don’t you go to the square and gamble with them, keep them there, while I go to the house and break in?’

  ‘You can’t go alone,’ Isolde said. ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘No, that would be to walk straight into danger.’ Luca was instantly against the idea.

  ‘And immodest to go wandering round the streets of Venice in carnival time,’ Brother Peter said crossly. ‘We have already agreed that it shouldn’t be done. The young women must stay indoors like Venetian ladies.’

  ‘Carnival time is the very thing that makes it possible,’ Ishraq replied. ‘We can go disguised. I can dress as a young man and Freize can come with me as my servant. You and Brother Peter go and gamble, and since they have never seen Isolde, she can go separately from both of us and act as lookout. If they pack up early or start to come home, she can get ahead of them, run ahead of them, and bring us warning at their house so we can get out and away.’

  ‘You’ll just go in, have a look round, and come away again,’ Luca ruled.

  She nodded. ‘I’ll get in through a window and open the door for Freize.’

  Luca hesitated. ‘Can you do that? Can you climb up a house wall and get in through a window?’

  Isolde smiled. ‘She’s climbs like a cat,’ she said. ‘She was always getting in and out of the castle without the sentries knowing.’

  Luca glanced uncertainly at Brother Peter, whose face was dark with disapproval.

  ‘We are to go gambling in the square while a woman in our care is breaking into a house?’ Brother Peter demanded. ‘And no doubt thieving? While a young lady, a noblewoman, the Lady Isolde of Lucretili, acts as a lookout? Like some kind of gang of thieves?’

  ‘So that we can write Milord’s report,’ Luca reminded him. ‘He told us we were to find out where the English gold nobles were coming from. We’re on the way to discovering the source.’

  Brother Peter shook his head sadly. ‘It’s hard for me to countenance sin,’ he said. ‘Even for a great cause. Milord is our commander and the Order of Darkness is pledged to understand the rise of heresy, the signs of darkness, and the coming of the end of the world. Often, in this work I have had to study terrible sin. But never before have I had to be a party to it.’

  ‘It’s hardly terrible sin, you’re only gambling for piccoli,’ Freize said cheerfully. ‘We might have to do far worse. And anyway – look on the bright side – you might win.’

  The five of them waited in their grand palace for the arrival of the alchemist and his daughter. Isolde was confined upstairs and so she peered down the great marble staircase, hoping to glimpse the stranger when he came up the steps from the watergate. Ishraq was waiting on the first floor in the dining room, which they had equipped as a study, with paper and pens laid out on the dining table. Freize, dressed in a dark jacket and looking like a servant, was ready to greet the alchemist as his boat came into the private quay, and to usher him upstairs. Brother Peter had shut himself in his room to write the report to Milord, and Luca was holding his chip of glass up to the light, and idly measuring and drawing half arcs of rainbows while gazing out over the Grand Canal.

  ‘I think that’s him,’ he said to Ishraq as a small gondola detached itself from the seething traffic of the Grand Canal and turned towards the watergate of the palazzo. Luca crossed to the door with three swift steps. ‘Freize!’

  ‘Ready!’ came the shout from the lowest level of the house. Luca turned and looked upwards to the upper floor and caught a glimpse of Isolde’s smile before she stepped back, out of sight. It was as if she had sent him a message of encouragement, or blown him a kiss; the smile was for him alone, as if she was saying that she had faith in him.

  He heard Freize greet the man and, looking down, saw him leading the dark-robed figure up the stairs to the first floor. Luca went forward to greet him with his hand held out.

  ‘I am Luca Vero,’ he said. ‘Thank you for coming.’

  ‘Drago Nacari,’ the man replied formally. ‘Thank you for inviting me to your home.’

  They entered the room and Ishraq rose up from her seat behind the table. She was wearing Moorish dress: tunic and pantaloons, her scarf covering her hair and half veiling her face. She bowed to Drago Nacari and he took off his hat and swept a bow to her.

  ‘This is my sister’s companion, Mistress Ishraq,’ Luca introduced her. ‘I thought she might be able to help us with your manuscript. She speaks Arabic and Spanish and she is a scholar.’

  ‘Of course,’ the man said. ‘I am honoured to meet you.’

  ‘Did you not bring your daughter with you?’ Ishraq asked.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘She is studying at home.’

  The three of them sat at the great table, Drago at the head, and Luca and Ishraq on either side of him. He was carrying a satchel and he put it on the table, u