Order Of Darkness - Fools' Gold Part 11

'It might be for scrying,' Ishraq replied. 'Foreseeing the future. If one of them has the gift of Sight.'

'What would they do then?' Freize asked in fascinated horror.

'Look in the mirror, see visions,' Ishraq answered briefly.

Draped around the mirror was a tent-like structure with curtains that could be let down for privacy, and before it was a small table like an altar. Above it, was pinned an illuminated ma.n.u.script in green ink.

'The Emerald Tablet.' Ishraq read the Arabic symbols. She turned to Freize. 'These are the rules of alchemy,' she whispered. 'It says: These are the commandments that guide all seekers of this truth.'

'What does it say?' Freize asked. 'Does it tell you what to do? Does it say how to make gold?'

Ishraq shook her head, her eyes dark with fear. 'I can translate it for you, but I can't explain it,' she warned him.

'So tell me!' he said.

'Rule one,' she read. ''Tis true without lying, certain and most true: that which is below is like that which is above, and that which is above is like that which is below, to do the miracles of one only thing. And as all things have been, and arose from one by the mediation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.'

Freize looked back, over his shoulder at the dead animals on the shelves. 'What does it mean?' he asked unhappily. 'For I can understand nothing but cruelty here.'

'These are mysteries,' Ishraq told him. 'I did say that I can't explain it.'

'You did,' Freize confirmed. 'And you spoke fairly then. Can we go now, d'you think?'

Ishraq looked round. 'We should search for the gold n.o.bles,' she reminded him.

'G.o.d knows what we will find if we open these boxes,' Freize said anxiously. 'Dead grandmothers, if not worse. The lad said there was a golem to guard the Jewish banker. I thought he was joking.'

'A what?' Ishraq asked suddenly intent.

'A golem. A sort of guardsman, a monster with a word of command on his forehead.'

Despite herself Ishraq shivered.

'Let's go,' Freize urged her.

'Wait,' she said. 'We've got to see . . . '

On the table were two tablets of wax with strange insignia drawn on their surface, and under the table, covered in a velvet cloth, was a chest. Ishraq bent down and tried to slide the bolts. They did not move. It was somehow locked.

'Don't,' Freize said bluntly. 'Don't force it open. What if there is . . .' He broke off, he realized he could not imagine what the alchemists might have in a small locked chest.

On the furthest wall a great gla.s.s vessel suddenly released a gush of foul-smelling liquid into a tray. They both jumped nervously at the splashing sound. Then they saw that below the big table was another closed box, broader than the one beneath the altar. This one was unlocked. Ishraq tried it, and Freize stepped forward to help her lift the heavy lid. She glanced at him and saw his face screwed up in a grimace of fear at what they might find. The lid opened. Freize still had his eyes closed.

'Look,' she whispered, quite entranced.

Freize opened his eyes. 'Now, will you look at this?' he whispered, as if it were his own discovery, and he was showing it to her. 'Will you look at this?'

Inside the box was a metal tray with a dozen indentations, almost like a sweetmeat maker would use to make little bonbons. But each indentation was beautifully wrought. They were moulds. Freize squinted to be sure what he was seeing. 'Moulds for coins,' he said. 'Moulds for English n.o.bles. See the shape of them? See the picture on the moulds? The king in the boat and the rose?'

'So they really are coiners,' Ishraq whispered. 'Alchemists, as we have seen; but they are coiners as well. Practising magic and crime side by side. They really are.' She looked around. 'I wouldn't have thought it. But they really are coining gold n.o.bles. So they make them here, at this forge. But where do they keep the coins? Where's the gold?'

'Hadn't we better get out of here?' Freize suggested. 'If they come back and catch us, G.o.d knows what they might do. These are not simple magic-makers, these are a couple of criminals turning over a fortune.'

'Let's be quick,' Ishraq agreed. Freize closed the lid on the box of moulds, looked around the room and saw for the first time, set low on the floor, the arched entrance to the cellar.

'See that?' he pointed it out to her.

'Can we open it?' Ishraq was there in a moment. The half-door was locked. Ishraq looked around for the key as Freize bent down, put the sharp blade of his knife in the keyhole, and turned carefully. There was a series of clicks and the door swung open. Ishraq raised her eyebrows at Freize's convenient range of skills.

'You didn't learn that in the monastery.'

'I did actually,' he said. 'Kitchen stores. I was always hungry. And Sparrow would have faded away if I hadn't fed him up.'

Ishraq bent down to swing the door outwards and peer through. The door was so low that she had to go down on her hands and knees and then lie on her belly and squirm forwards.

'What can you see?' Freize whispered behind her.

'Nothing, it's too dark,' she replied, coming back out again.

He turned to the chimney and lifted down a rushlight, lit it at the fire, and handed it to her. Ishraq thrust it into the dark opening, wriggled her shoulders through and looked down. Freize held her feet.

'Don't fall,' he warned her. 'And don't for pity's sake leave me here.'

Fitfully, the flame flickered, illuminating the dark moving water at the end of the stone quay, immediately below her, and on the stones a glint here, a blaze of reflected light there, and then finally a cold draught of air blew the light out altogether and left her in damp blackness with nothing but the eerie slap of the dark waters to warn her of the edge of the quay.

'What can you see?' Freize's voice whispered from the room behind her. 'Come back! What can you see?'

'Gold,' Ishraq said, her voice quiet with awe. 'An absolute fortune in sacks and sacks of gold n.o.bles.'

Brother Peter and Luca watched the gamblers at their place and then went into San Giacomo church. As they had expected, Father Pietro was kneeling at a side chapel before the flickering flame of a candle placed at the feet of an exquisite statue of the Madonna and Child. Both men bent their knee and crossed themselves. Luca went to kneel in silence beside the priest.

'You do not disturb me, because I was praying for you,' Father Pietro said quietly, hardly opening his eyes.

'I suppose that it's too soon for any news?'

'Perhaps tomorrow, or the next day. You can come to me on the Rialto or I can send you a message.'

'I'll come to you,' Luca promised. 'I hardly dare to pray for the safety of my father. I hardly dare to think that he might come home to me.'

The priest turned and made the sign of a cross over Luca's bowed head. 'G.o.d is merciful,' he said quietly. 'He is always merciful. Perhaps He will be merciful to you and your father and your mother.'

'Amen,' Luca whispered.

Father Pietro looked up at the serene face of the Madonna. He smiled at her, as a man who knows that his work is blessed. Luca thought that a more superst.i.tious man would have thought that the beautiful statue smiled back.

'Thank you, Father Pietro,' he said. 'I thank you from the bottom of my heart.'

'Thank me when your father holds you in his arms, my son,' the priest replied.

Luca and Brother Peter completed their prayers and went to the back of the church and quietly opened the great wooden door and slipped out together.

Luca squinted at the brightness of the sunlight on the square, looked in one direction, and then another, and then quietly said: 'Oh no.'

The place where Jacinta had laid out her game earlier was empty. Drago and his daughter were missing.

And Isolde, their lookout, had vanished into thin air.

Isolde, her long skirt bunched into her hand, was running as fast as she could, through the narrow alleyway, her feet pounding on the damp cobblestones of the poorer streets, speeding up as she crossed a square paved with flagstones. She had watched Jacinta play for a crowd of people and Nacari stand over her and then suddenly, without a word of warning, far ahead of their usual time, they had packed up the game, stepped to the quayside and hailed a pa.s.sing gondola.

Isolde, her breath coming short, hammered over the little wooden bridges, hailed the ferry boats in a panting shout, and then raced down the road from the bridge to where the Nacari's tall house stood by the ghetto, trying to beat them by running the short cut which Freize had described to her, while the gondola went round by water.

She recognised the house at once from Ishraq's drawing and hammered on the door. 'Freize! Ishraq!' she shouted.'Come away!'

In the quiet house, the hammering on the door was shockingly loud. In the storeroom, Ishraq and Freize, locking up the hatch, both jumped in fear at the explosion of noise. Freize's first terrified thought was that the mysterious golem had come for them, as Ishraq started for the hall. 'It's Isolde,' she said.

'Open the door, quick,' Freize said. 'She'll turn out the watch in a moment.'

Ishraq raced along the narrow hall and slid the bolts to throw open the door.

'They've left the square, they could be coming here!' Isolde gasped. 'I don't know where they're going, they took a gondola. I ran as fast as I could.' Her nun's hood had fallen from her head, and her blonde hair was tumbling down around her shoulders. She was panting from her run.

Ishraq at once put her arm around her friend's shoulders as if to leave at once. 'Come on,' she said to Freize. 'Let's go.'

'Not out of the front door, they left it bolted from the inside,' Freize reminded her.

As she hesitated, Isolde glanced down the narrow ca.n.a.l and saw the frightening silhouette of the shadow of the prow of a gondola on the ca.n.a.l wall, just as it was about to turn the corner and see them, on the doorstep of the house. They heard the gondolier cry a warning: 'Gondola! Gondola! Gondola!'

'Too late!' Isolde whispered. 'We'll have to go inside.'

They slipped back into the hall, closing the front door behind them.

'Out through the garden,' Ishraq hissed. 'Quickly, or they'll see us as they come in.'

She drew Isolde through the house as Freize bolted the door to the street.

'My G.o.d, what is that smell?' Isolde hesitated and put her hand over her mouth as they went past the open door to the storeroom. 'It's like death.'

'Quick,' Ishraq said, closing the door and leading the two of them through the living quarters and out through the door into the little courtyard garden.

'You go,' she said. 'I'll lock up behind you and come out through the bedroom window.'

'I'll go!' Freize volunteered. 'You get out.'

He was too late. Ishraq was already racing up the stairs to the upper room. Freize turned to Isolde. 'We'll have to get over the wall,' he whispered. 'The garden door is locked and they have the key.' He cupped his hand for Isolde's shoe. 'Come on,' he said. 'Like getting up on a horse!' Isolde stepped up and he threw her upwards so that she caught the branch of the tree and heaved herself up to the top of the wall. Arduously, Freize hauled himself up beside her, and then paused. They both clung to the top of the wall, and watched horrified, as below them, the Nacaris, father and daughter walked to the garden door, produced a key and let themselves in. They opened the door to the house, and went inside.

'What can we do?' Isolde whispered. 'We have to get her out!'

'Wait,' Freize advised.

Ishraq, in the house, went swift-footed silently up the stairs. She heard the garden door open and the Nacaris come in. She heard Jacinta remark on the coldness of the day and then she heard, frighteningly clear, Drago say: 'What's that noise?'

Silently, Ishraq slid across the treacherous floorboards to the bedroom window and eased herself out. She flung herself down the spiral stone staircase to the garden and saw her two friends, poised on the top of the wall.

'Get down!' she hissed. 'They're in the house. They'll see us if they look out of the window!'

Freize jumped down into the street and reached up for Isolde, who dropped down into his arms as Ishraq stretched for a low bending bough, and swarmed her way upwards. As soon as she was at the top of the wall she too lowered herself down and then jumped clear.

They were facing a small tributary ca.n.a.l and further down the water was a little swing wooden bridge.

'This way,' Isolde said, pulling up the hood of her robe over her blonde hair, and leading the way at a brisk walk. She wiped her face with her sleeve. 'I haven't run so fast since we left Lucretili,' she remarked to Ishraq.

'You always were fast,' her friend said. 'Faster than me. Now I should teach you to fight.'

Isolde shook her head in a smiling denial.

'She doesn't like the thought of hurting people,' Ishraq explained to Freize.

The three of them crossed the bridge and started along the quay on the far side.

'I don't think I will ever have the stomach for fighting,' Isolde remarked. 'I can't bear it. Even that scramble has left me trembling. And now, I'd better walk home on my own.'

'Will you be all right?' Freize asked, torn between his desire to escort her to safety and maintaining the deception of being Ishraq's servant.

'Oh yes,' she said. 'I tremble very easily, but I'm not a coward.'

'I should go with you,' he hesitated.

Ishraq laughed. 'If there's any trouble she can run,' she said. 'She can certainly run faster than you.'

Isolde smiled. 'I'll go on ahead and see you at home.'

Freize and Ishraq strolled home together, along the Grand Ca.n.a.l, Ishraq careful to swagger ahead of Freize like a young prince, right until the moment when they came to the quay which ran to the side door of their house. Then she glanced to left and right, checked that there was no one at the windows and no one on the ca.n.a.l, and slipped down the street and scurried into the side door.

Isolde leaped up from where she had been sitting at the door and hugged her friend. 'Good! I was waiting for you. The others are home too.' She called across the stone hall. 'They're back!' as Freize came through the side door and Luca and Brother Peter opened the door to their rooms.

'Come in,' Luca said. 'How did you get on?'

Brother Peter recoiled in horror from Ishraq's young prince costume. 'She should change her clothes,' he said, covering his eyes. 'It's heresy for a woman to dress as a man.'

'I'll be one moment,' Ishraq promised.

She raced up the stairs, taking them two at a time, just like a boy, and they could hear her hurling her clothes into a chest and scrabbling into a gown. She came running downstairs with her dark hair tumbling down, and only at Brother Peter's scandalised glare did she twist it into a casual knot and pin it at the nape of her neck. Luca smiled at her. Anyone but the old clerk would have been struck by her agile grace in boys' clothes and her careless beauty when she was dressed once again as a girl in a conventional gown. 'I like you in costume,' he said.

'It's against G.o.d's will and the teaching of the church,' Brother Peter said. 'And certainly a doorway to sin.'

'Well, it was useful,' Ishraq defended herself. 'So tell me about the square, was everything all right?'

'Everything,' Luca said shortly. 'We gambled, she won as usual, took a small purse of silver coins for the morning's work and gave them to her father. We spoke to the money changer and he said he would have enough n.o.bles for us when the ship comes in. He says he has made an arrangement and has about a thousand gold n.o.bles to hand. We saw Father Pietro in church. He's had no reply yet. Then it was dreadful when we came out of church and saw that they had left early. And then Isolde was gone too! But I see you're safe. How did you get on? Did you have to break into the house?'