Order Of Darkness - Fools' Gold Part 12

'I got in through an open window,' Ishraq said. 'And then I let Freize in. They may have suspicions, they might have thought that they heard something; but they can't be sure that anyone was ever inside.'

'They don't have a servant well, they can't have one. They daren't have one. The storeroom is completely devoted to alchemy. It reeks of magic and decay. Any servant would report them at once. In the main room, where they study, there were more pages like the one they brought to us. There were about ten pages that I could see, I couldn't read any of them. Plants that are unknown, language that you can't even spell out. And I copied this,' she put the piece of paper in front of Luca. 'I thought it was odd that they should have such a seal.'

He scrutinised it. 'I wouldn't know whose seal it is,' he said.

They both turned to Isolde, whose family had their own crest. She recognised it at once. 'Oh! That's the seal of one of my G.o.dparents,' she exclaimed.

'Count Wladislaw? Of Wallachia?' Brother Peter asked respectfully.

'No,' she said. 'Another one. My G.o.dmother.'

'How many do you have?' asked Freize. 'How many does a girl need?'

She shrugged with a smile. 'My father was very very well connected. This G.o.dmother was very grand indeed. She was the wife of John, Duke of Bedford, Regent of France. She was Jacquetta, the Dowager d.u.c.h.ess.'

'Who?' Freize asked.

'Her husband was brother to the great king of England, Henry V, who conquered France for England. John the Duke was regent in France when the little prince of England came to the throne,' she said. 'When the French rose up under their king Charles VII, he fought them, and he captured their leader, Joan of Arc.'

'Yes,' Luca said, recognising a part of the story that he knew. 'I know who you mean, I've heard of him. He burned Joan of Arc as a witch.'

'The Church judged that she was guilty of witchcraft and heresy,' Isolde remarked. 'But I never met the duke, he died when I was still a baby. They say that he ruled France like an emperor. He maintained a huge army, he had magnificent palaces in Paris and Rouen, he made the laws, he issued coins. After he died, his widow, my G.o.dmother, remarried. She lives in England now, at the court of Henry VI.'

'But why would these street gamblers have the duke's seal?' Brother Peter asked. 'They have forged it, presumably, but why would they want it?'

'Would it be to seal the chests of gold?' Isolde asked. 'That they say is English gold? Chests from the English mint would have the regent's seal on them, wouldn't they?'

Everyone was silent, and then Luca reached across to her and grasped both her hands. Ishraq rescued the paper with the copied seal as it slipped from Isolde's grip.

'Brilliant,' he said. 'That's so brilliant. They seal it with his crest so that it gives credence to the forged gold being genuine English n.o.bles. Because the Duke would have been in charge of the mint at Calais. He would have commanded them to make gold, he would have shipped the gold out to the soldiers. If a chest or even a hundred chests went astray, they would all have had his seal on them. Then, years later, if someone forges gold and wants to pretend that it came from the mint, they mark each coin with the mark of the mint at Calais, and they sell it in boxes sealed with the regent's seal.'

Isolde glowed as he held her hands, the two of them standing, quite still, as if they had forgotten the others in the room.

'But are they really making gold?' Brother Peter asked dryly. 'Before we get so excited about these imaginary chests? Sealed so cleverly with this imaginary seal? And this brilliant guess as to why they have the seal. Is there any gold there?'

'Oh yes,' Freize said smugly. 'Don't you worry about that. There's sackfuls of the stuff. Sackfuls of it. And Ishraq found it.'

'You did?' Luca turned to her.

'We went to the storeroom. The whole place is used for alchemy,' Ishraq said. 'The fireplace is like a forge. We saw silver still in the fire. It had been heated so hot that the chimney was cracked.'

'Why would they do that?' Isolde asked. n.o.body could answer.

'And we found moulds for English n.o.bles,' Freize said. 'It looks like they pour liquid gold into the moulds.'

'And then we found a cellar doorway and the sacks of gold,' Ishraq said, lowering her voice. 'The door is a little hatch from the storeroom, like you'd find leading to a cellar. But instead of a cellar the half-door leads down to the quay. The sacks of gold are on a quay. Beyond is the ca.n.a.l, and a water-door. I should think that they drop the sacks from the storeroom, through the hatch, onto the quayside and then a boatman comes and loads the gold onto a boat.'

'How much gold?' Brother Peter asked. 'How much did you see?'

'I saw two sacks that were open and perhaps four behind them that had been sewn up. A fortune,' Ishraq said.

Luca dropped into a seat at the window. 'Great work,' he said to Ishraq and Freize. 'Great work.'

He turned to Brother Peter. 'So is our mission complete?' he asked doubtfully. 'We were told to find the source of the gold and answer whether it was a theft or gold mined from a new source. We can tell Milord it is a forger, and that we have found the forge.'

'But we don't know how they actually make the n.o.bles,' Freize pointed out. 'We saw the moulds. But we didn't see any gold ore.'

'D'you think that it's possible that they have found a way to refine it from silver?' Isolde asked. 'From the silver they had in the forge? She wins a lot of silver every day. Every day they go home with pursefulls of little silver coins.'

'The coins in the fire!' Ishraq nodded at Freize.

'We must write our report,' Brother Peter decided. 'And we will have to turn them in to the authorities. Milord was clear to me that we must inform the Doge's officials as soon as we had identified the forger.'

Awkwardly, he turned to Ishraq. 'I was ungracious about your disguise,' he said. 'You have done great work for the Order, you were brave and enterprising.' He hesitated. 'And you make a very neat young man,' he conceded. 'You don't look heretical at all.'

'Bonny,' Freize said admiringly. 'She looks good enough to eat.' He was rewarded by Ishraq's surprised giggle. 'And she climbs like a clever little monkey,' he said. 'If you wanted a burglar for a wife she would be the very one.'

'But it does not mean that you can dress up and go out every day,' Brother Peter continued. 'This was an exception. And tonight, in any case, the two of you will go out as modest and elegant young ladies. Our reputation as a wealthy young family all depends on your behaviour.'

'Oh the party!' Isolde exclaimed. 'With all this, I had completely forgotten about it.'

'Keep your ears open for any mention of gold,' Brother Peter ordered. 'And remember that you are young ladies of good family, kept very strictly at home.' He looked at Isolde as if he had more confidence in her playing the part of a well-behaved young lady than Ishraq. 'I am looking to you, Lady Isolde, to set an example,' he said.

Isolde curtseyed modestly and shot a hidden laughing glance at Luca. 'Of course,' she said.

The five of them set out all together in the gondola. Freize would wait for them with the other servants in the servants' room. The gondola would wait at the quay beside the house for them, bring back Ishraq and Isolde from their visit, and then go out again for Luca and Brother Peter. The men thought they would be out till late, perhaps past midnight.

The men were wearing the hoods of their capes over their heads, and dark plain masks over their eyes. Isolde could see only Luca's smiling lips as he looked at her strange beauty. She had a dark blue cape with a dark blue hood pulled over her fair hair. She wore a mask which covered her forehead, eyes and nose, so that her dark blue eyes gleamed at him through the slits of the mask. Blue feathers sprouted from the side of the mask and curled like a high question mark around her head. She looked exotic and strange and lovely. Beside her, Ishraq in black was like a beautiful sleek shadow, only her mouth showing below a black mask which was shaped like a dark moon and starred with silver.

Luca leaned towards Isolde and whispered to her, his mouth against her ear. 'I have never in my life seen anyone as beautiful as you,' he said.

Isolde, quite entranced, turned and smiled at him, her dark eyes gleamed through the slits in the mask.

'Meet me,' Luca whispered to her. 'Meet me tonight. As soon as we can get away from this party.'

The city was in carnival mood, every window overlooking the Grand Ca.n.a.l bright with candlelight and every dark ca.n.a.l and quayside busy with bobbing gondolas. Sometimes they glimpsed a couple entwined in the double seat of a gondola, their hoods drawn forward to hide their kisses, their hidden hands seeking to touch. In some, a pair of lovers had gone into the cabin of the gondola and closed the doorway, leaving the gondolier to idle in the stern, keeping the ship steady in the water as the clandestine candlelight shone out of the slats of the cabin. Brother Peter turned his head away and crossed himself to prevent the infection of sin.

On the quayside, as their gondola approached the palace, they could see a huge crowd, beautifully dressed in the extraordinary costumes. Men dressed as monsters and angels, women in silks of every colour towering high as they stood on the chopines that were the mark of a fashionable lady. Some of them were dressed so brightly, and stood so proudly, that it was clear, even to the young travellers, that the women were showing themselves off for sale. They were the famous Venetian courtesans, and it would cost a man a small fortune to spend a night with any one of them, traded like everything else in this expensive city.

Everywhere people were mingling, talking, flirting behind their masks, sometimes pushing their masks on top of their heads to expose their lips for a stolen kiss, sometimes, turning away into a quiet garden or a darkened doorway. Isolde glimpsed the smiling face of a woman as a man took her hand and led her into the shadows. At the quayside she saw a man lightly step from one rocking boat into another, laughing like a child on stepping stones invited by the wave of a silver glove.

It was irresistibly exciting. Every gondola burned a torch at the stern, or carried a swinging lantern at the prow, and the young women could see that men and women were making a.s.signations on the water, and then their gondolas would slip away together to the darker side ca.n.a.ls, where they would drift side by side so that the women could flirt behind their painted fans, and the men make extravagant promises.

On the white stone quayside the wooden patten shoes of the women clattered like castanets as if they were inviting men to come and dance. Bursts of music came from one doorway and another and they could hear the bright laughter of men and women. Isolde exchanged one longing glance with Luca as if she wished that the two of them could go somewhere alone together and dance and laugh and kiss.

'Isolde,' Ishraq whispered a warning to her. 'Your mask doesn't hide what you are thinking. You look as if you are ready to sin like a Venetian.'

A ready flush rose from Isolde's neck to her cheeks. 'Ishraq,' she said quietly. 'I have to kiss him again. I think I will die if I don't kiss him.'

Ishraq gasped. 'But you said . . . '

The great watergate to the palace stood open, the bright torches reflected in the gla.s.sy waters of the ca.n.a.l as the gondolas queued to enter the palace and leave the guests on the red carpet which stretched extravagantly, to the brink of the lapping dark water.

'It is like a strange other world,' Isolde marvelled. 'So much wealth and so much beauty.'

'So much sin!' Brother Peter mourned quietly.

At last it was their turn and their gondola slid through the archway and drew up to the palace steps. Brightly costumed servants stepped forwards to steady the craft, but before they could get out, Isolde glanced back to the ca.n.a.l and saw a gondola with four beautiful women hesitate at the water entrance behind them, the women exquisitely painted and rouged, and wearing high headdresses and exotic masks. One of them waved a lazy hand to Luca and called out the name of her house. 'On the Grand Ca.n.a.l,' she said. 'Come at midnight when you leave here!'

'Sin all around us,' Brother Peter said, shaking his head in horror.

'I know what I said about never kissing a man before marriage!' Isolde whispered fervently to Ishraq, as she rose to her feet and pulled her hood forwards. 'But that was weeks ago, it was before we pretended to be married. And then he kissed me, so I know what it's like now, and besides it's carnival, and everyone, everywhere we go is courting and making love.

'Don't you see it?' she urged her friend. 'Don't you feel it? It's as if the very air is caressing the skin of my neck, is touching my lips. Don't you feel it? I can hardly breathe for it.'

Isolde stepped out of the gondola and stood at the water's edge. Ishraq was helped on sh.o.r.e and took her hand and held it tightly as they waited for the two men to disembark. 'Isolde, what are you going to do?'

Isolde's dark blue eyes glittered like sapphires through the dark blue of her mask. 'Will you help me?'

'Of course! Always! But not to disaster . . .'

'We'll follow you as you go in,' Brother Peter said, getting out of the gondola and gesturing that the two young women should lead the way up the stairs to the inside of the palace. Isolde, as if recalled to the proper behaviour for a young woman of a n.o.ble family, tightened the tie on her mask and went up the marble steps into the brightly lit house.

They were expected, and at once a lady-in-waiting took the two young women up the sweeping stairs to the upper floor where the lady of the house was entertaining her friends. Menservants greeted Luca and Brother Peter and took their capes and hats, leaving them in their dark masks, and showed them up to the first floor. Freize, always at his happiest when he was heading towards dinner, stepped into the servants' hall at the ca.n.a.l side.

As she climbed the stairs, Isolde looked back and saw Luca swallowed up by the crowd of young men, and heard the rattle of dice and a cheer as someone won a small fortune at cards, and a ripple of laughter from the courtesans who would entertain the men, while the ladies had to go up to the next floor.

'Greetings, how pleasant to meet you.' The lady of the house, Lady Carintha, came forward and took their hands. She was an elegant woman, dressed in dark blue, almost the match of Isolde's gown, except that hers plunged low at the front and almost slid off her broad shoulders in an open invitation. Her shining gold hair was piled up on the top of her head, in a swirl of blue silk, except for three ringlets which fell over her creamy naked shoulders. Her eyes, a calculating blue, scanned the two young women and her rouged mouth smiled without warmth.

'You can take your masks off now we are indoors and among friends.' She exclaimed at their beauty. 'Oh my dears! How you are going to break hearts in this wicked city of ours! One of you so very fair and one so very dark, no man could resist the two of you. Most of them will want both of you together!'

She drew them forwards and introduced them to other ladies, who were drinking wine from brightly coloured gla.s.ses and eating small sweet pastries. 'Some wine?' She pressed a couple of gla.s.ses on them. 'But I daresay I should not praise your looks, for you will have heard it all before. You will have dozens of lovers already, you must tell me all about them.'

'Not at all,' Isolde said, flushing.

The lady laughed and patted her cheek. 'Only a matter of time for both of you, only a matter of moments, I swear it. Indeed! Why not tonight? I can't believe how beautiful you are, and you match so well together. You must always go around together, you are each a perfect foil for the other.' She turned to Ishraq. 'You must have a lover, I am sure! Someone who prefers brunettes?'

Ishraq shook her head, not at all flattered by the woman's cloying warmth. 'No. We have been brought up very carefully. I have no husband.'

'Someone else's husband then?' someone suggested, prompting laughter from all the ladies.

'My lady's brother is very strict,' Ishraq said, hiding her irritation behind a polite smile. 'We go out very little.'

'The older brother, yes! You can see it clearly. No one would invite him for an affair of the heart. But the other brother, the younger one, Luca Vero, now he cannot be so very virtuous? Surely? Don't disappoint me! He is truly a man that turns heads! No one as tempting as that could be monkish.'

Someone else laughed and agreed. 'Turns heads! I'd turn down the sheets!'

'We were looking out of the window at him! We are so jealous of Carintha having him for a neighbour,' one of the ladies told Ishraq, squeezing her elbow. 'We've all laid bets on her taking her own gondola and serenading him! She would, you know. She's quite shameless! If she sets her heart on him, she'll have him!'

They laughed, again, as Ishraq silently detached herself from the stranger's hold.

'You'd open your front door for me, wouldn't you?' Lady Carintha asked, putting her hand on Isolde's arm. 'Open the door and let me run up the stairs to your brother's room?'

Isolde gave a little shiver, but did not shake off the unwelcome caress. 'I am sorry. I would not be allowed,' she said shortly.

'Then he'll have to give me a key himself!' Her ladyship smiled and turned to take a gla.s.s of wine. Ishraq saw Isolde grit her teeth, and tweaked her sleeve to remind her to be polite to her hostess.

'Make sure you tell him that I shall visit,' Lady Carintha turned back and whispered to both girls. 'I am absolutely serious. I had one look at him and I knew who would be my lover for this Carnevale. Good Lord, I might not be able to give him up for Lent!'

Isolde made a little exclamation and tore herself away from Lady Carintha's touch. Her ladyship hardly noticed.

'I've never failed,' she went on to one of her friends, ignoring Isolde's half-turned back. 'I've never failed to capture a young man once I've set my heart on him. Do you think he is a virgin? That would be too delicious! I shall be as innocent as him! You know I think I could tremble. D'you know, I think I could gasp?'

'Surely he can't be!'

'Not with looks like that!'

'Someone must have beaten you to it, Carintha!'

'This is unbearable!' Isolde exclaimed in an undertone to Ishraq.

'Be patient,' she replied. 'We only have to stay for an hour. And have you seen her earrings?'

'What about them?' Isolde said crossly.

'Half English n.o.bles,' Ishraq pointed out. 'Drilled and mounted as earrings.'

There was gambling in this salon too, and conversation, though there was little to talk about but fashion and love affairs. Isolde drew Ishraq away from the spiteful women and towards the gambling tables. There were musicians playing in one corner and half a dozen women dancing listlessly together.

'I am afraid that I have no money,' Ishraq confessed to Carintha, who followed them, sipping greedily from her wine gla.s.s. 'I didn't think to bring any. Though I changed some money only a few days ago. I bought English gold n.o.bles, I changed all that I had into English n.o.bles. Do you think that was wise?'

'Oh! aren't they divine? They're all I use now,' Carintha replied. 'As clean as if someone had washed them for me. Have you seen my earrings?'

'She just remarked on them,' Isolde said.

'Aren't they lovely?' Lady Carintha turned her head one way and another so that they could see. In her ears, dangling from a gold pin, were two half n.o.ble coins. 'I'm having a necklace made of them too. I shall start a fashion. Everyone will want them.'

'They are such pretty coins. Are they minted in Venice?' Ishraq wondered aloud, watching the play at the table and not looking at Carintha at all.

'Certainly not,' she said. 'They are English, through and through. My husband trades in them. They come from the English treasure house at Bordeaux. When they lost Bordeaux last year the French captured their treasury, all the wealth of John of Bedford, the Regent of France. And now they need n.o.bles so badly in England that they are buying them back again. They have no gold at all, poor things. My husband works with all the English merchants and they are buying up n.o.bles by the thousand and sending them home to England.' She laughed. 'And every day, the poor dears have to pay more gold for their own coins because now everyone wants them!'

A woman went past her and flicked Carintha's earring, making it dance. 'Delightful,' she said. 'Amusing.'

'And where does your husband get the English n.o.bles from?' Isolde asked lightly. 'Since the English themselves don't have enough?'

'Oh, the most amusing Jewish banker,' Lady Carintha volunteered. 'You would not think, to look at him, that he had a penny to rub, one against the other. But he supplies my husband with English n.o.bles, and so I get my pretty earrings!'

'Convenient,' Ishraq remarked.