Fools' Gold Page 23

  Luca nodded, then his face suddenly clouded. ‘The ransom!’ he gasped. He turned on his heel and hurried to the Rialto Bridge where Father Pietro usually set up his stall. The low post that he used as a stool was empty, half the stalls on the Rialto Bridge were closed. It was as if everyone was afraid to spend money in any currency.

  ‘Have you seen Father Pietro today?’ Luca asked a woman as she was passing by.

  Silently, she shook her head and went on.

  ‘Have you seen Father Pietro?’ Luca asked a merchant.

  He ducked away from the question as if an answer would be too costly.

  ‘We’ll come back later,’ Brother Peter ruled. ‘See if he is here later.’

  ‘It’s the ransom for my father,’ Luca said, trying to escape the feeling of growing dread. ‘They wanted to be paid in English nobles. We sent the money in English nobles as they asked.’

  ‘When did the messenger leave?’ Brother Peter asked.

  ‘Yesterday,’ Luca said blankly. ‘Before dusk.’

  ‘Then perhaps he has kept ahead of the news, and is even now paying the slave owner and your father is safe in his keeping. Certainly they won’t hear that the currency has failed till hours from now. The news has to get from Venice. They might have done the trade already and your father might be safe right now.’

  ‘I should send pure gold, in case the nobles bleed.’ Luca took a step forwards to the bank and then fell back, realising that he could not even obtain gold, the banks did not have it; and that he had nothing to buy gold but the dishonoured English nobles.

  His young face was gaunt with shock. ‘Brother Peter, we put all of Milord’s fortune into the nobles. We are ruined too. We have lost all of Milord’s money and I cannot buy gold to free my father!’

  Brother Peter’s face was sternly grave. ‘We gambled, and we have lost,’ he said. ‘We pretended we were wealthy and now we are poor.’

  ‘I’ll have to wait,’ Luca said aloud to himself. ‘I’ll have to wait. I can’t see what else to do. I swore I would free my father and now . . . I’ll have to wait. Perhaps . . . but I’ll have to wait. There’s nothing else to do.’

  ‘Pray,’ Brother Peter advised him.

  They got home to find Freize and the girls sitting before a simple meal of soup and bread. ‘The market is almost closed,’ Isolde said. ‘The stallholders will only accept silver and the price of everything is sky-high.’

  Ishraq looked ill with shock. ‘They won’t take English nobles, not even if you weigh them against gold in front of them, on the spice scales,’ she said. ‘Even if they can see that the nobles are solid gold they won’t trade with them. You can’t even buy vegetables with them. They say that nobody knows what they are worth, and now they are saying they are unlucky coins. Nobody can tell a coin that bleeds from one that is good. Nobody wants anything. I sold Isolde’s mother’s rubies for dross.’

  Isolde put her hand on Ishraq’s shoulder. ‘Don’t blame yourself,’ she said quietly. ‘We’re no worse off than everyone else in Venice.’

  ‘Everyone else who was greedy enough to try to trade in coins,’ Ishraq said bitterly. ‘I kept those jewels safe through a flood, through a robbery and through the criminals of the nunnery. And then I robbed you myself.’

  ‘Enough,’ Brother Peter said quietly. ‘You have done no worse than the great men of business. We’ll see what gold you can get for the coins tomorrow, when the Doge releases his treasure. You can go out early. Freize can take you to the money changers.’

  Ishraq nodded, her face still downcast. ‘We know what we’ll get,’ she said miserably. ‘One ducat to three nobles. And I sold the rubies when it was almost the other way round.’

  ‘We have work to do,’ Brother Peter said to Luca.

  ‘What?’ Luca said. He found he was exhausted, sick with worry about the ransom for his father. He could not even bring himself to remind Ishraq that he shared her failure. Actually, he had been more foolish than her, trading in Milord’s fortune for English nobles, trying to buy his father’s freedom in forged currency, ruining himself and betraying his father.

  ‘We have to write to Milord,’ Brother Peter ruled. ‘We’ll have to tell him what has happened here. And I will have to put it into code before you sign it. We should get the report sent today. Better that he hears from us than from someone else in Venice.’

  ‘Who reports to him from Venice?’ Freize asked, looking up from his bowl of soup.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Brother Peter replied. ‘But someone will.’

  Luca sat at the table and drew the ink and pen and paper close. ‘I hardly know where to begin,’ he said.

  ‘From the end of the last report. We had told him that we had located the forgers and were going to report them,’ Brother Peter reminded him.‘He is bound to be very displeased that we did not report them.’

  ‘We found the counterfeiters but we let them go.’ Luca listed their mistakes. ‘We put all of Milord’s fortune into English nobles and they are now worth only a tiny part of their former price. We have lost him a fortune.’

  ‘And by letting the counterfeiters go and the currency fail we have ruined many good men and destroyed confidence in Venice,’ Brother Peter added. ‘I have never been involved in such a disastrous inquiry before.’

  ‘What does he do, when he is displeased?’ Luca asked nervously.

  Brother Peter shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never failed so badly. I’ve never been with an inquirer who failed to report a crime, who associated with the criminals and who disobeyed orders.’

  There was a terrible silence. ‘I am sorry,’ Luca said awkwardly. ‘I am sorry for failing the Order, and him, and you.’

  To his surprise, Brother Peter raised his head and gave Luca one of his rare smiles. ‘You need not apologise to me,’ he said. ‘You pursued the truth as you always do – steadily and persistently, with flashes of quite remarkable insight. But the truth is that speculation and profiteering and trade is a rotten business, and it falls in on itself like a rotten apple, eaten out by maggots. Milord knows this as well as you and I. He sent us into a city of vanities and we have seen its ugly side. We have done nothing wrong ourselves, but we have followed his orders in a sinful world. If we had reported the coiners earlier they still might have got away. It was Ishraq and Freize who helped them escape – not us who belong to the Order. And even if we could have stopped them earlier, we would have been too late – they had already released the bad coins into the market by the time we knew.’

  ‘I thank you,’ Luca said awkwardly. ‘You are generous to overlook my mistakes. You wanted to report the forgers earlier, and you were right. We should have done that. And I thank you for saving Freize.’

  Brother Peter turned his head away. ‘We won’t talk of that,’ he said. ‘We won’t put that in the report.’

  Next day Isolde was waiting for Luca in the dining room when he came down to breakfast. ‘I couldn’t sleep for thinking about your father,’ she said. ‘I have been praying that they ransomed him before they had the news about the nobles.’

  Luca’s handsome young face was drawn. ‘I couldn’t sleep either,’ he said. ‘And we will have to wait until Sext to see Father Pietro, if he comes today. He may not come at all.’

  ‘Let’s go to church and pray,’ she said. ‘And then we could walk to the Rialto. May I come with you?’

  Luca shrugged. ‘Since nobody cares who we are any more, I don’t see why you shouldn’t come with me.’

  ‘I want to come with you,’ she said.

  ‘We’ll all go,’ he said, his mind on his father.

  Tentatively, she reached out to him, but he had already turned away to call up the stairs for Freize. His back was turned to her, he did not even feel her touch when she gently kissed the fingers of her hand and pressed the kiss to the cuff of his sleeve.

  The moment that the five of them stepped out of the house it was apparent that some fresh disaster had hit the city. People were gathere
d on street corners, their faces grave. Everyone was whispering as if there had been a death in the city. The gondoliers were not singing, the boats were busy on the canal, but there were no cries of people selling their goods. Everyone had laid aside their bright costumes, there was no spirit of carnival in the ruined city: Lent had come early to Venice this spring, early and cold.

  ‘What now?’ Luca demanded anxiously.

  All five of them walked quickly to the Piazza San Marco and found that many of the merchants were assembled in the square already, and many of the foreign traders, their costumes bright, their slaves around them, were waiting on the quayside before the Doge’s Palace. The balcony before the Doge’s window was draped with flags and standards. ‘Looks like he is going to speak to the people,’ Brother Peter said. ‘We’d better wait and hear what he is going to say.’

  Freize and Luca put the two young women between them, anxious about the push and sway of the growing crowd. ‘What d’you think is happening?’ Isolde said quietly to Luca.

  He shook his head.

  ‘Will it be about the gold nobles?’

  ‘Surely not. Since the Doge has already set the price, what more is there to say?’

  There was the bright shout of a trumpet fanfare and the Doge stepped out from the windows onto the balcony and raised his hand to acknowledge the crowd. Slowly, he took off his distinctive hat and bowed.

  ‘He is a citizen of Venice just as they all are,’ Brother Peter explained. ‘It’s a most extraordinary system. He’s not a king or a lord, he is one of the citizens, they choose him for the post. So he shows that he is in their service. He goes bareheaded to them.’

  In reply, the crowd took off their hats. Isolde and Ishraq made a little curtsey and stood still.

  ‘I am sorry that I have bad news for us all,’ the Doge said, his voice so loud and steady that even the men at the furthest edge of the crowd could hear him.

  ‘As you know, the gold nobles which were being made in this city, without our knowledge or consent, have failed us. The bleeding nobles can be exchanged for three gold nobles to a ducat. At no more than thirty nobles per man a d a y.’

  There was a little whisper that ran through the crowd, but most people had heard the proclamation yesterday, this was old bad news.

  ‘I have today had a public complaint from the ambassador of the Ottoman Empire,’ the Doge went on. At once a complete silence fell on the square, someone at the back moaned and was still. The Ottoman Empire was the greatest power in the world. The uneasy peace between the Ottoman Empire and Venice was essential if the city were to survive. The Ottomans commanded the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea. Their armies had occupied the lands to the east of Venice. If the Ottoman ambassador was unhappy then the city was on the brink of terrible danger.

  ‘It seems that the Christian countries that pay tribute to the Ottoman Empire have this year all paid their debt in gold nobles,’ the Doge said. ‘Alas . . .’ he paused. ‘Alas,’ he said again. There was a low groan from the crowd.

  ‘Alas for us. The Ottomans believe that we have knowingly given them worthless dross. So they say that we have failed to pay them the proper tribute as agreed. They say that we agreed to pay in gold nobles but we have sent them rust.’

  There was a low gasp from every man in the crowd. Failure to pay tribute to the Ottomans would call down an immediate and powerful punishment on all the tribute states. It could cause a renewed war and thousands would die before the unstoppable Ottoman armies.

  ‘Therefore the Council and I have decided that we will redeem the failed English nobles from the Ottomans also, and that we will pay them the same as we pay to you: a third of a ducat for each noble. They will only get a small portion of tribute this year, and we hope that they will understand that this is all we can do.’

  There was a moan like a breeze blowing through Piazza San Marco. Someone started crying in fear, and a man walked blankly away from the rear of the crowd, knowing that his homeland would be seized, his family taken into slavery, and his life destroyed, and that there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

  ‘We are therefore raising a tax on every house in Venice, to help us meet these great debts,’ the Doge said steadily. ‘I, and every member of the Council, will pay, and will loan the city more gold from our own fortunes. I urge you all to pay in full, pay in gold, for the sake of our city and great republic. If you have to use your wife’s jewellery then do so, if you have to take the gold leaf from your furniture then do so, if you have to cut off the handles from your gold gates then do so. I shall take my wife’s jewellery, my mother’s jewellery. I shall take the gold leaf from my throne. I shall take the gold handles from my doors and sell the masterpieces from my walls. We must all surrender our most beloved treasures. This is our time of need; you must answer. God bless you and God save Venice.’

  ‘Amen,’ the crowd said with one low voice, and the Doge turned on his heel and went bareheaded, back inside the palace.

  Isolde turned to Luca, and saw that he was white with shock.

  ‘Come,’ Brother Peter said shortly, and led the way back to the palazzo.

  ‘I must go to the Rialto and see Father Pietro . . .’ Luca protested.

  ‘No! We have to do something first.’

  ‘Brother Peter?’

  ‘Come!’

  ‘What?’ Ishraq trotted beside him, trying to keep up with his long strides. ‘What’s so important?’

  ‘Milord gave me some orders that I was to open the moment that I learned that the territories were going to default on their tribute.’

  ‘He knew this was going to happen?’ Ishraq suddenly stopped. ‘Milord knew that the territories would use bad coin?’

  ‘He can’t have known that,’ Brother Peter strode on, unhesitating. ‘How could anyone know that? But he was prepared for it. He was prepared for anything on this mission. In the event of there being a default he gave me some orders to open. We have to open them now.’

  Isolde and Luca were half running to keep up with Brother Peter’s great strides. Luca caught at Isolde’s hand, and kept pace with him. Freize came swiftly behind them.

  ‘How does he know such things?’ Freize demanded of himself. ‘Those sealed orders? How does he write them ahead of time. Just to torment me?’

  Brother Peter pushed through the crowd and paced ahead of them to get to the side entrance and enter the palazzo.

  He went without hesitating, upstairs to his bedroom and brought the sealed orders out to the rest of them in the dining room. Luca pulled out chairs for Isolde and Ishraq and then seated himself at the head of the table. Freize dropped onto a stool near to the door. ‘The sealed orders,’ he said irritably. ‘Always. Out they come. Always bad news.’

  Brother Peter took no notice of anyone. He broke the seal and spread the paper on the table. He frowned and pushed it over to Luca. ‘You read,’ he said. ‘You can translate the code much quicker than I.’

  Luca took the paper, scowled for a moment, and then read aloud.

  ‘In the event of the territories failing to pay tribute to the Ottoman overlords, you are to take this note to the Hungarian ambassador, show him the seal, and authorise them to buy the false coins with the gold that they have in store. You are to take this note to the Comarino family and authorise them to use their private gold store to buy the false coins. You yourself are to use whatever coins and whatever gold you have to buy the English nobles at the lowest price you can pay for them. You will not sell any English gold nobles that you have. If the ship comes in after you have read these orders, you will use all the cargo to buy the devalued English gold nobles at the lowest price possible.’

  Luca stopped reading and put down the paper. ‘Has he gone mad?’

  ‘But everyone else is selling gold nobles, for far less than their value,’ Isolde said. ‘Everyone is selling: not buying.’

  ‘They have no value,’ Ishraq pointed out.

  ‘What do we do?’ Luca asked.

>   ‘As he orders,’ Brother Peter said wearily. He rose up from the table and held out his hand for the letter for the Hungarian ambassador and for the Comarino bank. ‘Shall I take these? And you buy the nobles with our remaining gold? And go to a bank and promise them that we will take their nobles in exchange for the cargo, when the ship comes in?’

  ‘But why?’ Ishraq asked. ‘Why would Milord want us to spend good money on bad?’

  Brother Peter’s face was as dark as when he had confessed his pretended shame. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t need to know. I am to obey Milord’s commands and do the work of God though it leads me into the deepest sin. I have to trust him. I have to trust his judgement. I have to obey his orders.’ He glanced up. ‘Will you come with me, Freize?’

  ‘Of course,’ Freize said with his quick sympathy. He glanced at Luca. ‘If I may?’

  ‘Go,’ Luca said absently. ‘I’ll go through the treasure chest and take what gold we have left to the money changers. There’s not much, but they’ll be glad to take it in return for the worthless nobles, I don’t doubt.’

  ‘But why?’ Ishraq demanded. ‘Why would Milord want you to buy the bleeding nobles? When everyone knows they are no good?’

  ‘I don’t ask why,’ Brother Peter answered her.

  ‘We’ll help,’ Isolde spoke for her and Ishraq.

  ‘But I do! I ask why!’ Ishraq exclaimed.

  ‘I’ll send the gondola back for you,’ Brother Peter said heavily, and they heard him and Freize go down the stairs together to the watergate and call for Giuseppe.

  Luca went into his bedroom and drew a great wooden chest out from beneath his bed. The girls followed him and watched as he opened the lid.

  ‘You have a small fortune here,’ Ishraq whispered as she saw the gold nobles in the little purses.

  ‘I had a small fortune,’ he corrected her. ‘Now it is almost worthless.’

  He moved the purses of the gold nobles and found beneath them a single gold bar and three gold rings.