Fools' Gold Read online

  ‘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 shore 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 noble 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 canal 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 glasses and eating small sweet pastries. ‘Some wine?’ She pressed a couple of glasses 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 glass 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 nobles,’ 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 glass. ‘I didn’t think to bring any. Though I changed some money only a few days ago. I bought English gold nobles, I changed all that I had into English nobles. 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 noble 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 nobles 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 nobles 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 nobles 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 nobles, and so I get my pretty earrings!’

  ‘Convenient,’ Ishraq remarked.

  ‘But as for you two lovely girls,’ Lady Carintha went on to Ishraq, ‘it doesn’t matter that you have no money with you. You can borrow from me and repay me next week. I shall be your banker. I should think that your credit is good enough! We all hear that the handsome young man has a ship coming in from Russia any day now! And your young lady is a great heiress, is she not?’

  ‘Unimaginably so,’ Ishraq said, honest at last. ‘You could not imagine her fortune. Not even I can truly describe it.’

  The party for the ladies broke up at about ten o’clock, and they left by the outer staircase while the party for the gentlemen was still, noisily, in full swing on the first floor. Clearly – as the women rouged their lips and tied masks on their faces and slipped away in their gondolas – many of them were going on to other parties or to assignations. Lady Carintha was going to join the men who were still gambling. She winked at her friend and Isolde heard her whisper Luca’s name.

  ‘But we have to go home,’ Ishraq remarked resentfully as Freize helped her into the gondola. ‘When all the world is free to walk around and do as they please.’

  ‘Let’s get the gondola to drop us on the quay and walk about,’ Isolde suggested quietly. ‘Nobody will know who we are, since we have our masks and our capes, and Brother Peter is not at home to know what time we get in.’

  ‘Of course!’ Ishraq exclaimed, and turned and told the gondolier to let them get out at the steps in the side canal, they would enter through the side door. The gondolier’s smile and Freize’s silent nod told them at once that neither young man believed for a moment that the women were going straight into the house; but it was carnival time and anything was allowed, even for wealthy young ladies. The gondolier set them down where they asked, and then pushed off with Freize still aboard, to go back to wait for Brother Peter and Luca to emerge from the gambling party.

  Arm in arm, the girls sauntered around the streets revelling in their sense of freedom, in walking along the shadowy quays with the silk of their gowns swishing around their ankles, their masks hiding their faces, knowing that they looked strange and exotic and beautiful in this strange and beautiful city.

  Almost every doorway stood open and there were lights and parties inside. Every so often someone called to them and invited them to come in and take some wine, come in and dance. Laughingly, Isolde refused and they walked on, loving the sense of excitement and adventure.

  ‘What a horrible woman Lady Carintha is,’ Isolde remarked as they turned their steps homeward again.

  ‘Because she said that she wanted Luca, and asked you to let her into his room?’ Ishraq teased. ‘She thinks you’re his sister, she was not to know that you . . . ’

  ‘That I – what?’ Isolde asked, coming to a standstill.

  Ishraq was not at all intimidated. ‘That you would be so offended at the thought of taking her to him.’

  ‘I was offended. Anyone would be offended. She’s old enough to be his mother. Ugh, with those ridiculous coins in her ears!’

  ‘It’s not because of her age or her appearance. Besides, she’s not more than thirty. You were upset that she wants to take him as her lover because you want him for yourself!’

  For a moment she thought that Isolde would take offence, for her friend had stopped still, and then she suddenly admitted: ‘It’s true! I can’t pretend to you or to myself any longer! I want him so much it’s like a fever! I can think of nothing else but what it would be like if he were to hold me, if he were to touch me, if he were to kiss me. I know I am mad to think like this. But I can’t think of anything else. He asked me to meet him, and I didn’t answer, but I was longing to say “yes”.’

  ‘It’s Carnevale,’ Ishraq said comfortingly. ‘It’s Venice. As you said, the whole city seems to think like this. The whole city has gone mad for pleasure. And he is the most handsome young man that either of us has ever seen.’

  ‘Do you . . . desire him too?’ Isolde asked, hesitating almost as if she were frightened of the very word. ‘Seriously? Like I do? Are you in love with him, Ishraq?’

  Ishraq laughed quietly. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘A little. He’s very attractive, I don’t mind admitting it. But I don’t think of him as you do. It’s not as hard for me as it is for you. I can just look at him and think him absolutely desirable and utterly handsome, and then I can look away. Because he’s not for me. I know that. He doesn’t see me in that way, and there is no possibility of any sort of honourable love between us. And actually, very little chance of dishonourable love either! He is sworn to the Church and I am an infidel. He is in the Order to stamp out heresy and I am born to question. We could not be more different. But you . . .’ she paused.

  ‘What?’ Isolde urged her on. ‘Me, what?’

  ‘He’s in love with you,’ Ishraq said quietly. ‘He can’t take his eyes off you. I think if you said the word, he would give up the Church for you and marry you in San Marco tomorrow.’

  ‘I can’t.’ Isolde gave a little moan. ‘I can’t. And anyway he can’t. He is a novice at his monastery, and Brother Peter told me that I must do nothing that would distract him from the Order of Darkness. He’s one of the few men appointed to trace the signs of the end of the world and warn the Pope himself. If the world is going to end this year it is vital that he does his work and reports to his lord in Rome. His Order is our only defence against the rise of heresy and magic and the end of the world. I should not think of him in any way except as a soldier of the Church, a crusader, like my father was. I should honour him for his work. I shouldn’t be thinking of him like this at all.’

  Ishraq shrugged. ‘But you are. And so is he.’

  ‘I can’t stop myself thinking!’ Isolde exclaimed. ‘And I dream! I dream of him almost every night. But I can never do anything. I would be ruined completely if I did more than kiss him. If I ever get back to my castle I would never be able to marry any man of honour or position if it was known I had been in love with Luca. There’s no point in all the danger we are risking to win back my inheritance, if I have lost my honour. I could never go home to be Lady of Lucretili if I was dishonoured.’

  ‘If no one ever knew . . .’ Ishraq suggested.

  ‘I would know!’ Isolde exclaimed. ‘I would be utterly dishonoured. I would never be able to offer my love to another man, I would never be able to marry. I would know always that I was dishonoured, that I was not fit to be a great man’s wife. I have to be able to promise my future husband an untouched heart in an untouched body.’

  ‘But can you go on like this?’

  ‘What shall I do?’ Isolde demanded with a wail. ‘What shall I do? When I heard her speak of coming to our house I thought I would kill her. I can’t bear to let her near him. I can’t bear to think of her touching . . .’ Isolde clapped her hand over her mouth to prevent herself speaking. But nothing could stop her thoughts, she closed her eyes as if she could not bear to imagine Luca and Lady Carintha together.

  ‘If no one ever knew . . .’ Ishraq repeated slowly. ‘If you could love him, kiss him, even lie with him, and no-one ever know?’

  ‘How could no one ever know? I would know! He would know! You would kn
ow!’

  ‘If it only happened once? Just once. And we were all three sworn to secrecy?’

  There was a long silence between the two girls. Isolde took her hand down from her mouth and whispered: ‘What?’

  ‘If it only happened once. And nobody knew about it? If you and I never ever spoke of it? If you could do it, and yet let it be like an unspoken dream? Would you be satisfied if you were his lover, his first ever lover, and he yours; but he never saw your face, he never said your name, and you never admitted what you had done? Not even to me? It was a secret of the night, of Carnevale, and nobody remembered if after Lent?’

  Isolde put a trembling hand on her friend’s arm. ‘If we never spoke of it. If it only happened once. If it was like a dream, for I am dreaming of him every night . . . ’

  Before Ishraq could answer she saw the house gondola turn from the main traffic of the canal. She dragged her friend back into the shadow of the side of the house.

  ‘There’s our gondola!’ she whispered. ‘And Luca and Freize and Brother Peter coming home.’

  They watched the gondola as it pulled up once again in the side canal, at the side steps. ‘I want to walk,’ Luca explained, his voice slightly slurred from wine. ‘I want to walk around.’

  ‘You had much better come home and say your prayers and go to bed,’ Brother Peter said.

  ‘In an hour or so,’ Luca insisted. ‘You go in.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Freize offered.

  ‘No,’ Luca insisted. ‘I want to walk alone and clear my head.’

  Freize took his arm. ‘Are you meeting Lady Carintha?’ he whispered. ‘Because I can tell you now, that’s nothing but trouble . . . ’