Fools' Gold Read online

  ‘I am an honest man of business,’ the money changer said a little nervously. ‘Your servant will confirm that I gave him a fair exchange for his coins when he came the day before yesterday. And actually, the value has risen already. I would buy the English nobles back from him and give him a profit.’

  Freize nodded, and smiled his open-faced beam. ‘I have no complaint,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’m hanging on to them and hoping they will rise in value again.’

  ‘I have a share in a ship coming in from the East, carrying Russian goods,’ Luca said, leaning towards the money changer so that no-one else could hear. ‘I want to prepare for the sale of the cargo, as soon as it comes into port.’

  ‘You have borrowed against it?’ the money changer asked acutely.

  ‘No!’ Brother Peter exclaimed.

  ‘Yes,’ Luca said speaking simultaneously.

  They exchanged an embarrassed look. ‘My brother denies it, for he hates debt,’ Luca explained quickly. ‘But yes, I have borrowed against it and that is why I want to sell it quickly, as soon as it enters port, and for gold nobles.’

  ‘Of course,’ the man said. ‘I would be interested in buying a share but I don’t carry that many nobles to hand. I keep my fortune in different values. You would accept a payment in silver? In rubies?’

  ‘No, I only want gold,’ Luca said. ‘My preference would be gold coins. These English nobles, for instance?’

  ‘Oh, everyone wants English nobles, they are driving up the price! It’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Perhaps. But that makes them better for me. I want to get them while they are rising in price. The value of my cargo would be perhaps a thousand English nobles?’

  The merchant lowered his eyes to the table before him. ‘A very great sum, Milord!’

  ‘It is easily worth that.’ Luca lowered his voice. ‘Almost all furs.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Squirrel, fox, and beaver. I told my agent to only buy the very best. And some silks, and amber, and ivory.’ Luca spread the cargo manifest on the trader’s table, letting him see the goods that had been ordered.

  The trader nodded. ‘So. If your cargo is as good as you describe . . . ’

  ‘But I will only sell for the English nobles.’

  ‘It would take me a few days to get that sum together,’ the money changer said.

  ‘You could get the full amount?’

  ‘I could. When would your ship come in?’

  ‘It’s due next week,’ Luca said. ‘But of course, it could be delayed.’

  ‘If it is very late you will find the gold nobles have risen in value and I will only be able to pay for the cargo at the current value of the nobles. But I will offer you a fair price for the furs, and I am very interested in the amber. I will pay you a deposit now if you would let me have first look at the goods, and first offer?’

  ‘You perhaps want a pound of flesh as well?’ Brother Peter demanded irritably.

  The merchant bent his head, ignoring the insult. ‘I will offer in English nobles.’

  ‘But where will you get so many coins?’ Brother Peter asked. ‘From these other money changers?’

  The trader looked along the row of little tables. ‘They don’t like to work with me except for an extreme profit,’ he said. ‘And it is not always good for a man of my religion to do business with Christians.’

  ‘Why not?’ Brother Peter asked, bristling.

  The Jewish money changer gave him a rueful smile. ‘Because, alas, if they decide to deny a debt I cannot get justice.’

  ‘Even in Venice?’ Luca asked, shocked. He knew that all of Christendom was against the Jews, who only survived the regular riots against them because they lived in their own areas under the protection of the local lord; but he had thought that in Venice the only god was profit, and the laws protecting trade were rigidly enforced by the ruler of Venice, the Doge.

  ‘It is better for people of my faith in Venice than elsewhere,’ the merchant conceded. ‘We are protected by the laws and by the Doge himself. But here, like everywhere, we prefer to work only with men that we can trust. And anyway, I can get all the gold nobles I need without going to the Christian money changers.’

  ‘You will go to the Arab bankers?’ Brother Peter was suspicious. ‘You will go to gold merchants? We don’t want the whole of Venice knowing our business.’

  ‘I will say nothing. And it does not matter to you where I get the nobles as long as they are good. I go to my own merchant. Only one. And he is discreet.’

  ‘And the English nobles are the best currency, aren’t they?’ Luca confirmed. ‘Though it is surprising that there are so many of them on the market at once.’

  The man shrugged. ‘The English are losing the war against France,’ he said. ‘They have been pouring gold into France to pay for their army in Bordeaux. When they lost Bordeaux last summer, the city was sacked and the campaign funds disappeared. As it happens, the money chests all came here. These things happen in wartime. That’s their sorrow and our gain, for the coins are good. I have tested them myself, and I can get them at a good price.’

  ‘And who is your supplier?’ Brother Peter asked bluntly.

  The merchant smiled. ‘He would prefer Venice not to know his business,’ he said. ‘You will find me discreet, just as you asked me to be.’

  ‘When will you get them?’ Luca asked.

  No one but Luca would have noticed the swift, almost invisible glance that went from the money changer towards the street-gambling girl’s father, who was helping her pack up her game, quite unaware of the money changers. But Luca was watching the Jew as closely as he had watched Jacinta playing the cups and ball game.

  ‘By tomorrow,’ the man said. ‘Or the next day.’

  ‘Very good,’ Luca said pleasantly. ‘I’ll come again tomorrow. Perhaps I’ll have news of my ship then.’

  ‘I hope so.’ The merchant rose from his stool and bowed to the three men. ‘And please, do not speak of your ship with others till we have concluded our business.’

  They crossed the square together and got into the gondola, Freize throwing a casual smile and salute to Jacinta as they went by. The gondolier steered out into the middle of the canal, as Freize said quietly: ‘Put me down on the far side. I’ll stick to the merchant like glue and come home to report later.’

  ‘Take care you’re not seen,’ Luca cautioned him.

  ‘Carnival!’ Freize said. ‘I’ll buy a mask and a cape.’

  ‘Just follow him,’ Luca said. ‘Don’t try to be a hero. Just follow and watch and then come home. I don’t expect us to solve the mystery in one step. Things might not be as they appear.’

  ‘This is Venice,’ Brother Peter said miserably. ‘Nothing is as it appears.’

  As the two men set off for home in the gondola, Freize strolled back to the Rialto Bridge, pausing only to buy a handsome dark red cloak, a matching elaborate mask and a gloriously big red hat in one of the many stalls that lined the bridge. He put them on at once and went down the steep steps of the bridge into the Campo San Giacomo. Jacinta and her father had already finished for the day, and gone away. As Freize looked around he saw the money changer picking up his papers, locking them in his box and gesturing to his young guard to carry box and table away. He himself carried the two little stools.

  With the enormous red hat bobbing gently on his head, and the mask completely obscuring his face, Freize was confident that he would not be recognised, but realised that he was rather noticeable even among the flamboyant carnival costumes, as he watched the money changer weave quietly through the crowds around the Rialto Bridge and make his way inland.

  ‘Now then,’ Freize admonished himself, pulling the hat off his head and crushing the bobbing peak down into the brim and snapping off three overarching plumes, to make an altogether smaller and more modest confection. ‘I think I made the mistaking of buying a hat out of vanity and not from discretion. But if I fold it like so . . .’ He paused to admire the red
uced shape. ‘That’s better, that’s surely better now.’

  Freize followed the money changer and his lad at a safe distance, ready to step into a doorway if the man looked round, but the old man went steadily onward and his page boy led the way, never looking back. They went down one dark street after another, twisting and turning around little alleyways to find the way to little wooden bridges, some of which had to be lowered by the young man for the merchant to cross, and then raised up again so that the water traffic was not delayed. At the larger canals the pair had to wait at the steps leading down to the water for a flat-bottomed boat to ferry them across for the price of a piccoli. Freize stood behind them, shrinking into the shadows, waiting for them to cross and go on their way, before he whistled the boat back to ferry him over. He had to fall back and was afraid then that he had lost them, but he heard their footsteps echoing on the stone quayside as they went under a bridge, following the canal, and he could hurry after them, guided by the sound. It was a long and rather eerie walk, through the quiet dark back streets of the city with every path running alongside a dark silent canal, and the constant sound of the splash of water against weedy stone steps.

  Freize was glad to arrive at a corner, just in time to see them knocking on the side door to a house on the very edge of the Venice ghetto, where the air was smoky and dark and the canals were cloudy with the soil of the tanneries and stained with dye from cloth. All the dirty work of the city was done in this area, and the Jews of the city were confined here at night behind the ghetto walls and a bolted gate. Freize peered around a corner and saw the door of the house open, and in the candlelight that spilled out he saw the pretty young woman, Jacinta, admit the two men into the house.

  ‘The gambling girl,’ Freize remarked to himself. ‘Now that’s a little odd. There’s no great fortune to be made taking small coins from playing cups and ball, and yet – that’s a pretty big house. And the money changer has come here as his first call when he wants a lot of gold nobles.’

  He pulled his big hat down over his mask and waited, leaning back in a darkened doorway. After nearly an hour the Jewish money changer came out, followed by his lad, and the two of them went through the narrow gate into the ghetto. Freize did not dare to follow, knowing that he would be conspicuous among all the dark-suited men who wore the round yellow badge. But he waited outside the gate and watched as the money changer and his boy turned sharply right, into a tall thin house that overlooked the dark canal. Over the doorway swung the three balls, the ancient insignia of the money changer and lender.

  ‘Hi, lad, tell me, who lives in there?’ Freize asked a passing errand boy, who was clattering along the street with some newly forged metal rings for barrels, slung like hoops over his shoulder.

  Freize pointed at the house behind the ghetto gate, and the boy glanced back over his shoulder. ‘Israel the moneylender,’ he said shortly. ‘He has a stall in the Campo San Giacomo, every day, or you can tap on the door and borrow money any time, night or day. They say he never sleeps. And if he ever did, his wealth is guarded by a golem.’

  ‘A golem? What’s that?’

  ‘A monster made from dust, obedient to his every word. That’s why nobody ever burgles his house. The golem is waiting for them. It has the strength of ten men, and he controls it by the word on its forehead. If he changes a letter of the word the golem crumbles to dust. But if the golem attacks you it goes on and on forever, until you are dead.’

  ‘Inconvenient,’ Freize commented, believing none of this. He fell into step beside the young man as they crossed the wider square outside the ghetto. ‘And do you know who lives in that house?’ He pointed to Jacinta’s house, where the moneylender had visited for an hour.

  The boy broke into a trot. ‘I can’t stop, I have to get these to the cooper by this afternoon.’

  ‘But who lives there?’

  ‘The alchemist!’ the boy called back. ‘Nacari, the alchemist, and the pretty girl that he says is his daughter.’

  ‘Are they guarded by a golem?’ Freize shouted after him in jest.

  ‘Who knows?’ the boy called back. ‘Who knows what goes on in there? Only God, and He is far, far away from here!’

  ‘And you are certain that they didn’t see you?’ Luca demanded. Freize was proudly reporting on his work as the group ate dinner together, the doors closed against eavesdroppers. Freize’s plate was piled high: his reward to himself for good work well done.

  ‘They did not, for I didn’t go near the Nacari house. And I am certain that the money changer did not see me, nor his page boy.’

  Luca looked at Brother Peter. ‘And the boy on the street called Nacari an alchemist?’

  Brother Peter shrugged. ‘Why not? He’s a street gambler, we know that for sure. He could equally be a magician or a trickster? A bloodletter, an unqualified physician, perhaps a dentist? A trader in old manuscripts and in love potions? Who knows what he does? Certainly nothing known and certified with a proper licence from the Church.’

  There was a silence. It was Isolde who said what everyone was thinking. ‘And perhaps Drago Nacari is a coiner as well as everything else. Perhaps he’s a forger.’

  ‘We tested the coins ourselves,’ Luca reminded her.

  ‘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. ‘If you sell 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 sho
w 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 gets ahead of them, runs ahead of them, and brings 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?’