Fools' Gold Read online

  Ishraq and Freize exchanged a hidden look as Isolde named the very question that was troubling them.

  ‘He believes that someone may have opened a gold mine and is minting them in secret,’ Brother Peter said. ‘Such a man would be avoiding tax, and avoiding the fines he should pay to the Church. Milord would want to see that the Church reclaimed those taxes. It would amount to a fortune. Or some criminal may be forging them.’

  ‘So do you think the coins are forged? Made to look like English nobles but made from lesser metal?’ Luca asked.

  ‘The money changer said they were from the English mint in Calais,’ Freize explained. ‘But he was very stern with us when I asked him about them – he warned me not to ask questions. He didn’t want anyone saying anything which might spoil the value of the coins.’

  ‘Is the value good?’

  ‘They might be overvalued, if anything,’ Freize volunteered. ‘They were rising in price as we stood there. He said he would put up his exchange rate tomorrow. Apparently everyone wants to trade in them – there were men queuing behind us. Everyone says they are solid gold, without any alloy. That’s very unusual. Most coins are a mixture of precious metal and something lighter. Or good ones are shaved and clipped. But these seem to be perfect.’

  ‘There’s only one way to be sure. We’ll have to test them to see how much real gold is in each coin,’ said Luca.

  ‘How shall we test it?’ Isolde asked. ‘We can’t ask the goldsmiths – as Freize said, they won’t welcome questions about the quality of their coins.’

  Brother Peter looked slightly uncomfortable. He put his hand to the inner pocket of his jacket.

  ‘You’ve got orders!’ Freize said accusingly, eyeing the small scroll.

  ‘Milord honoured me . . . ’

  ‘More secret orders!’ Freize exclaimed. ‘Where do we have to go now? Just when we are settled and have discovered fegato alla veneziana? When Luca is studying at the university, and is going to see Father Pietro? Just when he might find his father? Don’t say we have to leave! We haven’t completed our mission, we’ve not even started! The girls haven’t even bought their carnival clothes!’

  ‘Peace! Peace! We don’t have to move yet,’ Brother Peter said. ‘And if it was an order from Milord, then the fact that you have discovered a Venetian culinary speciality of liver and onions, and that the girls want new dresses, would not prevent us. This is vanity, Freize. And greed. No, Milord simply gave me instructions for our time in Venice. How we are to go to the Rialto when our ship comes in and claim our share of the cargo. How we are to sell it at a profit, a manifest of the cargo it is carrying. And here, a list of the tests we were to make on the gold coins, when we had them.’

  He looked at Ishraq. ‘The instructions are in Arabic,’ he said awkwardly. ‘This is infidel learning. I thought you might read them to Brother Luca, and he would test the gold.’

  Ishraq beamed at him in gleeful triumph. ‘You need my learning, Brother Peter?’

  The older man gritted his teeth. ‘I do.’

  ‘You don’t think that translating a recipe for testing gold will strain my poor woman’s intelligence to breaking point?’

  ‘I hope that you will survive it.’

  ‘You don’t think that such knowledge should be kept to men, only to men?’

  ‘Not on this occasion.’

  She turned to Luca. ‘Do you want me to translate the recipes for you? Will you test the gold?’

  ‘Of course,’ Luca said. ‘We can use the spare room next to mine. We will have our own goldsmith’s assay room!’

  Only Freize caught the shadow that crossed Isolde’s face at the thought of the two of them working all day together in the small room.

  ‘And tomorrow, I will go out and exchange some more coins for gold,’ Brother Peter said. ‘We will have to test a number of coins to be sure.’

  ‘And the lasses can buy new gowns,’ Freize said happily. ‘And masks, and hats. And I shall look through my boxes and see if I can’t find some more coins to turn into English gold nobles. A man could make a small fortune in this town by doing nothing but buying at the right time.’

  Immediately after breakfast, the following morning, Ishraq and Luca were side by side at a table in the spare room off the dining room, quiet with concentration. Luca was staring at half a dozen beautiful golden coins purchased by Brother Peter from the money changers. Ishraq had a scroll of manuscript before her. Carefully she unrolled it, weighted the top and bottom so that it could not roll up, and started to translate from the Arabic into Italian. ‘It says first you have to look, to see if it has been stamped or marked by the goldsmith or mint.’

  Luca squinted at the coins, one after another. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They’re all marked as English nobles, minted by the English at Calais. They’re all marked in exactly the same way. Identical.’

  He made a note on a piece of paper beside him, and then carefully put the paper over the coin and gently rubbed a coloured stick of sealing wax over it. The image on the coin showed through. ‘Now what?’

  Ishraq tucked a curl of dark black hair behind her ear. ‘Check for discolouration, especially wear,’ she read. ‘If another metal is showing through the gold, then this is gold plate, a gold veneer laid over a cheaper metal.’

  Obediently, Luca turned over every coin and looked at the beautifully bevelled edges of the whole coins. ‘They’re perfect. All of them. Same colour all the way round.’

  ‘Bite it,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  She giggled, and he glanced at her and smiled too. ‘It’s what it says here. Gold is soft, bite it, hold it in your mouth for the count of one hundred, and then look at it. If it is gold, your teeth should mark it.’

  ‘You bite it,’ Luca replied.

  ‘I’m the translator,’ she said modestly. ‘You’re the assayer. I am a mere woman. In your faith I think it is me that tells you to bite the apple. Besides, I’m not cracking my teeth on it. You’re the one that wants to know: you bite it.’

  ‘God Himself tells us your sex bit the apple first,’ Luca pointed out. ‘So we’ll both bite one,’ he decided, and handed her a half noble and kept a whole coin for himself. Solemnly, they both put the coins at the side of their mouths, bit down, held the coins, counted to one hundred and then looked at the result.

  ‘I’m amazed!’ she said.

  ‘I can see my teeth marks!’ he agreed.

  ‘Gold then.’

  ‘Write it down,’ Luca instructed her. ‘What’s the next test?’

  ‘We have to scratch it with an earthenware plate.’

  Luca went to the door, opened it and yelled down the stairs. ‘Freize! Bring me a bowl from the kitchen!’

  ‘Hush!’ Freize said, labouring up the stairs. ‘Lady Isolde has half of Venice in her room above us, fitting her with gowns, creating headdresses for her and Ishraq.’

  ‘I need a bowl from the kitchen!’

  ‘Pewter?’ Freize asked, preparing to go on, up the narrow stairs to the attic.

  ‘No! No! Earthenware!’

  ‘Earthenware he says,’ Freize complained to himself. They could hear his footsteps going the long way up to the kitchen and then coming back down. ‘Earthenware, as you asked,’ he said, peering curiously into the room.

  ‘And now go away,’ Luca said hard-heartedly, though it was clear that Freize was aching to join in. To Ishraq he said: ‘Now what?’

  ‘You have to break it. We need a smashed piece of earthenware.’

  Luca slammed the bowl against the edge of the table, and it shattered into a hundred pieces.

  ‘Oh fine, just break it!’ came Freize’s voice from behind the closed door. ‘Don’t worry about it, for a moment. Shall I fetch another for your lordship?’

  ‘And take a piece and scratch the gold with it,’ Ishraq translated. ‘A black scratch means the gold is not real but a gold scratch shows the metal is true.’

  Luca drew the earthenware shard across the