Fools' Gold (29 page)

Ishraq rubbed her hair dry, pulled on a dress and tied her hair back. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

The two young women hurried down the stairs and into the main room. Brother Peter and Luca were at the window, looking down to the darkening canal, as the door behind them opened and they turned around and saw Ishraq.

‘Thank God you’re safe!’ Luca exclaimed. ‘What a dive you made! Ishraq, what a risk you took!’ He crossed the room and hugged her to him. ‘You’re still wet!’ he said.

Brother Peter was shaking his head. ‘I suppose you went to warn them,’ he said. ‘Were you seen?’

‘Worse,’ Ishraq said briefly. ‘I am sorry, Brother Peter. They saw me, but I got away; and they arrested Freize.’

‘Freize!’

‘We rowed there together. We went in by their watergate. We could hear the Doge’s men at the front door. The alchemist and Jacinta were trying to get their things, the books and the manuscripts and some herbs and things from their work room. They got into our boat . . .’ Ishraq broke off at the memory of the horror of the young woman with the old, old face and straggling white hair who had rushed past her to get into the boat. ‘Anyway. They got away in our boat. But the men charged in; and they got Freize. I swam for it.’

She stopped again. Somewhere in the water, not far from her as she had dived off the quay, had been the little thing, something like a baby, something like a lizard, something like a frog. She had held the cap towards the water’s edge and seen it jump into the water, seen it dive, the soft skin of its back gleaming palely as it went deep down into the canal.

‘What happened?’ Isolde asked, seeing the expression of blank horror on her friend’s face.

Ishraq shook her head. ‘I don’t know what they were doing there,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what they had done. I don’t know what they had made, in that bell jar of theirs. I don’t know what sort of thing it was.’

‘What sort of thing?’ Luca repeated, taking her hand.

She met his honest brown eyes with a deep sense of relief, as if Luca was the only person that she would be able to tell.

‘Luca,’ she whispered. ‘I want to tell you.’ She hesitated. ‘But I am afraid to even speak. It was horrific – and pitiful. I want to tell you. I can’t.’

Without thinking, he put his arm around her shoulders and walked her away from the other two. When their heads were close together and his arm was tight around her waist, he felt her lean towards him and relax against him, as if he were warm, as if he were safety for her.

‘You can tell me,’ he said. ‘Whatever it was.’

She turned her face to his neck and then raised her mouth to whisper in his ear. She could smell the light clean scent of his hair; he smelled of the real world, of normality, of a young man. She felt desire as if it were the only real thing in a dangerous world filled with mysteries. It was as if the only thing that was real, the only thing that she could trust, was Luca. ‘I think they had made a homunculus,’ she breathed.

He froze at the word and turned to face her. ‘Would that be what they meant by saying they were making life?’

Her eyes dark with fear, she nodded. ‘Perhaps. I don’t know.’

‘What was it like?’

‘Like a tiny man, like a horrible tiny man. I thought it was a lizard but it was a person, a tiny, tiny person. It was in the bell jar. I think they had made it in the jar. Jacinta was trying to get it away, but when the bell jar broke, Freize took it up and passed it through the hatch to me.’

‘Why? Why did Freize save it?’

A ghost of a smile touched her lips. ‘Because that’s what he’s like; because he’s Freize,’ she said. ‘If it called out to him, he would have to answer. It wanted to be in the canal. Freize had put it in his cap. I held the cap to the edge of the canal and it jumped out.’ She shivered. ‘I didn’t throw it in,’ she said quickly. ‘I wasn’t trying to drown it. He told me to set it free. It jumped in and then it dived down, like a fish, and then it was gone.’ She gave a deep shudder.

‘What?’ Luca asked.

‘Luca, it wasn’t like a fish, it was just like a child. I saw its face as it bobbed in the canal. It took a breath and then dived down. I saw its rump and its feet as it went down. Like a child but tiny, as small as a rat, but swimming like a man. Horrible.’

He held her closer as she trembled. ‘And then?’

She raised her head and spoke so that the others could hear her. ‘I dived into the water and I swam round to the side canal beside the Nacari house. I waited in the water. I kept down low. I saw the Doge’s guards bring Freize out in manacles. He was walking all right, he was not hurt; but he looked dazed. They put him into their galley, the guards’ galley with a wooden prison at the back, and I ducked down below the water to let them go past me into the Grand Canal, then I swam out too. I swam for a long time until a fisherman picked me up and brought me back here.’

She turned her face to Luca’s shoulder. ‘It was terrible,’ she said with a little moan of fear. ‘It was really terrible, Luca, being in the water and knowing that the little thing was in the water too. I was afraid he would come on the fishing boat with me. I was watching the oars in case he climbed on board. I was afraid he would follow me home.’

She gave a shaky sob. ‘I kept waiting for the touch of his little hand in my hair,’ she whispered. ‘I thought he would hold on to me and make me bring him home.’

He tightened his grip on her. He held her close, her face against his neck, so that she could not see the horror on his own face, the fear of the unknown, the ancient fear of the creature which is not of earth or air, which is not beast, fish or fowl.

‘What if it’s a golem?’ she breathed.

He composed himself and faced her. ‘There is no such thing,’ he said staunchly. ‘It’s not like you to frighten yourself with imaginary fears, Ishraq! It was a lizard, or a plucked bird, or something like that, and Freize must have imagined that it cried out. It won’t come after you. It can’t have swum. It will have drowned in the canal. It’s nothing. You’re safe.’

He turned from her, as if the matter was closed, and to Brother Peter he said: ‘We’ll have to go and get Freize out. We’ll probably have to say who we are to clear our names. We’ll have to take our papers from Milord. Will you come with me?’

Brother Peter nodded, appalled at the whole situation. ‘I’ll get my cape. The young ladies should go to their rooms, and stay there.’ He looked severely at them both. ‘If anyone comes at all don’t admit them. Don’t say anything, and don’t show yourselves. The Doge’s guard will stay at the watergate but don’t speak to him.’ He scowled at Ishraq. ‘Don’t you go diving out of the window,’ he said crossly. ‘Just wait here till we get back, and try not to cause more trouble.’

The guard at the watergate had been reinforced by a second man and they had clearly been told to take anyone from the household if they wanted to see the city magistrates.

‘Do you think they were waiting for us to confess?’ Luca asked Brother Peter quietly, as the two guardsmen took their seats in the gondola at prow and stern.

‘Yes,’ Brother Peter replied shortly.

‘They were waiting for us to ask to go to the palace?’

‘They would perhaps have ordered us to attend later, after midnight. They mostly work at night. They usually arrest people at night.’

Luca nodded, hiding his growing fear. ‘Do you think that they didn’t believe Isolde is the Lady of Lucretili?’

‘They believed her. But they would still want to question us if they know you have been working with the forgers.’

‘They can’t know that,’ Luca argued, denying his own doubt.

‘They probably do,’ Brother Peter said dourly.

There was no sound for a moment but the slap of water against the gondola’s single oar, and another boatman crying: “Gondola gondola gondola!” as he made a blind turn into a small tributary canal.

‘They will release Freize to us, won’t they?’ Luca confirmed.

‘It depends on three things,’ Brother Peter said dryly. ‘It depends on what he has done. It depends on what they think he has done. It depends on what they think that we have done.’

Giuseppe rowed the gondola just a little way up the Grand Canal and then drew up between the forest of black mooring poles in the canal at the imposing white carved front of the Doge’s Palace.

‘What’s that?’ Giuseppe suddenly demanded, startled, looking down at the glassy waters of the canal.

‘What?’ Brother Peter asked irritably.

He shook his head. ‘I thought I saw something,’ he said. ‘Something like a frog, swimming beside us. Odd.’

‘Help me out,’ Brother Peter said crossly. ‘I have no time for this.’

Flanked by the guardsmen, Luca and Brother Peter went up the shallow steps to the quay, where the waves were slapping like a gabble of denunciations, and then the two men and the guards waited before the great palace doors, where a row of burning torches showed their pale faces to the sentries.

‘I need to consult the Council of Ten,’ Luca said with more confidence than he felt. ‘We are on business for the Pope.’

Boyishly, he feared that the man would simply ignore him, but the sentry saluted and pushed open a low door cut inside the great ceremonial gate, and Luca and Brother Peter ducked their heads and went through.

At once they caught their breaths. They were in a massive courtyard, big enough to house an army, as broad and wide as a square of the city: the heart of the Doge’s Palace. On their left was a great wall of red brick pierced by white windows, new-built and all but completed. Ahead of them was a white stone façade and behind that the towering bulk of the Doge’s own chapel, the massive church of San Marco. On their right was a wall as high as a white cliff, studded with windows. It was the Doge’s Palace, the heart of government, and all the offices. Most of the windows showed a light – the Republic never slept, business was always pressing; and spying and justice were done best at night. The whole courtyard was ringed by a square colonnade studded with huge white towers. Above the colonnade rose a series of narrow windows, placed one set on top of the other in the three tall storeys. It was as if all four walls of the palace were staring down at them with blank accusing eyes.

Two guards came towards them and guided them to the building on their right, and led the way up the stone staircase. Luca found he was growing more and more apprehensive with every step he took. At the top of the stairs, the guard tapped on the huge wooden door, and a smaller door swung open. A man dressed in the black robes of a clerk, seated on a small plain chair at a wooden desk, beckoned them in.

‘I am Brother Peter, I serve the Order of Darkness under the command of the Holy Father. We are ordered to inquire into the end of days and all heresies and signs of the end of the world. This is Luca Vero, one of the inquirers.’ Brother Peter was breathless by the end of his introduction, it made him sound nervous and guilty.

‘I know who you are,’ the clerk said shortly. To the guards before and behind them, he said simply: ‘Take them to the inquiry room. They’re expected.’

One guard led the way through the narrow passage, the other followed behind. Luca was certain that they were being observed, that the lattice work in the wood panelling in the walls served as a window for another room and that an inquisitor was watching them walk by, and judging their anxious faces. Luca tried to smile and stride confidently, but then thought he must appear as if he were playing a part, as if he had something to hide.

The corridor twisted round and round; clearly they were threading between secret rooms, their footsteps muffled on the uneven wooden floors. As they walked, dozens of half wild cats scattered before them, as if these tunnels were their home. Then they stopped before a great door, where a silent sentry stood. The man nodded and stood aside, opened the door only to reveal a second closed door behind. He tapped, it swung open, and Luca and Brother Peter went into the room where three magistrates, wearing dark robes, were seated behind a great polished table. To the side, four clerks were seated around a smaller table. There was a fire in the fireplace for the comfort of the magistrates but it did not heat the room, which was miserably cold.