Fools' Gold (31 page)

Brother Peter dropped to one knee and rested his forehead against the table. ‘That’s the worst of it. That’s why I sent Freize then. I knew they were the coiners of the false coins, and that once you had found the money changer Israel you would find them. I wanted my love potion before they were arrested. That’s why I ordered Freize to go at once, although I knew it was dangerous for him to be found with them. I put him at risk for my own selfish . . . lust.’

The gentleman rounded on Freize. ‘Is that what you were doing there?’

Freize gulped. ‘Yes, just as my lord says.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us at once?’

‘Discreet,’ Freize said. ‘Lamentably discreet. Against my own interests sometimes.’

The three magistrates put their heads together in a swift exchange of words. ‘Release him,’ the leader of the Council said. ‘No charge.’

He rose to his feet. ‘If we catch Drago Nacari and his accomplice the young woman then they will be charged as coiners and counterfeiters and you will have to give evidence against them,’ he ruled.

‘We will,’ Brother Peter promised.

‘In the meantime, we have serious work to do. We are going to have to release reserves of gold to the banks. Everyone is selling gold nobles and everyone wants pure gold instead. The price of nobles is falling to that of piccoli. Our citizens and our traders will lose fortunes in the first hour that they open for business. And now the Ottoman Empire is refusing to take any English coins at all – good as well as bad. We are having to make good what those wicked coiners have done. It will cost us a fortune.’

‘I am very sorry that we did not catch them earlier,’ Luca said. ‘It was our intention, it was our mission.’

The Council nodded. ‘Then you have miserably failed in your mission,’ the leader said icily. ‘You can tell the lord of your Order that you are incompetent and a danger to yourselves and others. And you,’ he turned to Brother Peter, ‘you failed in your vows. You will no doubt confess and serve a hard penance. You seem to be shamed and you should be ashamed. We are very displeased with all three of you; but there are no legal charges as yet. It seems that you are fools but not criminals. You are incompetent idiots but not wicked.’

‘Thank you,’ Luca muttered. Brother Peter was too shamed to speak.

‘Go then,’ the Council leader said, and Luca, Brother Peter and Freize bowed in the contemptuous silence and turned and filed from the room

Not a word passed between them as they crossed the broad quay from the front door of the ducal palace and got into the rocking gondola. Freize gripped Luca’s hand as Luca helped him into the boat, but the two young men said nothing.

Brother Peter drew up the hood of his robe and sat hunched, in the prow of the boat, his back to the other men as they paddled swiftly down the canal, turned in the palazzo watergate and Giuseppe brought the gondola to the quayside.

The guard had already gone from the watergate and there was no soldier on the street door. Luca called up to the girls’ level: ‘Isolde! Ishraq! We’re back!’ and heard the girls cross the floor above and come down the stairs as they went into the dining room.

The two girls came in and looked at the three silent men, at Freize’s bruised face and Brother Peter’s dark expression. Isolde closed the door behind them. ‘What has happened?’ she asked fearfully.

Luca shook his head. ‘I swear that I don’t know,’ he said. He glanced uncertainly at Brother Peter. ‘Perhaps we should never speak of it,’ he said carefully.

Brother Peter rounded on him, exploding with rage. ‘Fool!’ he said. ‘Call yourself an inquirer? And you could not see a lie as wide as that damned canal and twice as deep?’

Isolde recoiled in shock at Brother Peter’s rage but Freize went towards him and bowed, with his hand on his heart. ‘I thank you,’ he said. ‘It was the last thing that I expected you to say. I could do nothing but stare like a dolt.’

‘Indeed, I was certain that you would play the part of a dolt very well,’ Brother Peter said nastily.

Isolde took Freize’s hand and turned him towards the candlelight to look at his damaged face. ‘They hurt you?’ she said quietly. Gently she touched his cheek. ‘Oh Freize! Did they beat you?’

‘Not much,’ Freize said. ‘But Brother Peter here saved me from hanging.’

‘Saved you?’ Luca asked, still shaken by Brother Peter’s abuse.

‘Of course,’ Brother Peter said roundly. ‘Did you really think that I was in the least attracted to that well-hung limb of Satan? Did you really think that I would send an idiot like Freize to a crook like Drago Nacari for a love potion? Do you think that I am a fool like Freize? Like you? To lose my head for a pretty face? And that one not so pretty anyway?’

Luca shook his head, slowly understanding. ‘I believed you when you spoke before the Council,’ he said. ‘Call me a fool, but I believed every word that you said.’

‘Then you had better learn the skill to look into men’s hearts even when they are lying,’ Brother Peter said. ‘For you cannot be an inquirer if you can be fooled by a charade like that.’

‘You lied to save Freize?’ Isolde asked, grasping the main essential. ‘You pretended that you had sent him to the Nacaris for a love potion?’ Her voice quavered on a laugh and she tried to keep her face straight, but failed. ‘You confessed to lust, Brother Peter? And to needing a love potion?’

Brother Peter would not speak while Ishraq collapsed into giggles. Isolde started to laugh too and Luca gritted his teeth to stop himself from joining them. But Brother Peter and Freize were still grave.

‘You laid down your reputation for my safety,’ Freize said to him. ‘I thank you. I owe you my life.’

Brother Peter nodded.

‘You made a great sacrifice for Freize,’ Isolde said, recovering from her laughter as she understood the importance of what Brother Peter had done. ‘You made yourself look like a fool for him. That’s a great thing for you, Brother Peter. That is a great gift you have given for Freize.’

‘And you told a lie,’ Ishraq wondered.

‘I was not on oath, they did not ask me in the name of God,’ Brother Peter specified. ‘And they were quick to believe that a thin old clerk would dabble in such rubbish for lust of a well-used Venetian matron. I would have hoped that Luca might have thought better of me – but apparently not.’

‘I am sorry,’ Luca apologised awkwardly. ‘I should have guessed at once, but I was overwhelmed . . . and I couldn’t think.’

Brother Peter sighed as if they were all of them, equally unbearable. ‘We’ll say no more about it,’ he said stiffly, and left the room.

‘He is remarkable,’ Isolde said as the door closed on him.

‘Saints witness it – he was impressive,’ Luca agreed with her. ‘He was completely convincing.’

‘He admires me,’ Freize said confidentially to Ishraq. ‘He finds it hard to admit, being a man who thinks very highly of himself – but he thinks very highly of me. This is the proof of it.’ He paused. ‘And I think very well of him,’ he said with the air of a man giving credit where it was due.

Venice was seized with panic the next day as soon as the banks opened their doors and the traders set up their stalls. Ishraq and Isolde walked to San Marco, with their purse of gold nobles hoping that they might find someone who would change it into ducats, even into silver, but found all the money changers closed. The church itself was crowded with people on their knees praying for their fortunes, terrified of poverty, terrified that they would be stuck with the worthless gold nobles. The gold coins were sticky with a red rust like blood in every other purse.

Luca, Freize and Brother Peter went to the Rialto by gondola and found the shops were closed and shuttered and the money changers were absent from their stalls. Nobody wanted anything but true tested gold, and there was no gold to be had.

The great banking houses on San Giacomo Square had only one shutter open at each entrance and they were changing gold for limited numbers of coins, so much for each customer, refusing anything which was stained or wet, desperately afraid that their own reserves would run out.

‘I have gold, I have plenty of gold,’ Luca heard one of the clerks say at the window. ‘There is no need to fear. My lord has gone to fetch more from his country estate. He will be back tomorrow. The bank is good. You need not change all your nobles now. You can change them tomorrow. There is no need to press, there is no need to panic.’

‘Tomorrow the value of the English nobles will be as nothing!’ the man shouted back at him, and the crowd behind him elbowed each other out of the way and shouted for their turn. ‘Even worse than now!’

‘I will pay tomorrow,’ the clerk insisted. ‘You don’t have to change them today.’

‘Now!’ the people shouted. ‘Now! Take the English nobles! You were quick enough to sell them! Now buy them back.’

A band of the Doge’s guards came swiftly in a galley, trumpet blowing, and marched up the steps into the square. The officer unfurled a proclamation.

‘Citizens! You are to disperse!’ he shouted. ‘The Doge himself promises that there is enough gold. He himself will lend gold to the bankers. Your coins will be exchanged for gold. We will bring the gold from the Doge’s treasure stores this afternoon. Disperse now, and go back to your homes. This unrest is bad for everyone.’

‘The rate!’ someone yelled at him. ‘It’s no good to me that the banks have gold tomorrow if they won’t buy the nobles at today’s rate. What’s the rate?’

The officer swallowed. ‘The rate has been set,’ he said. ‘The rate has been set.’

‘At what?’ someone shouted.

He showed them the sealed proclamation, holding it high above his head so that it fluttered in the light spring wind. ‘The Doge himself has set the rate that he will pay to all Venetian citizens. He will pay a third of a ducat for every English noble, and so will all the Venetian banks,’ he said.

The crowd was suddenly silent, as if at news of a death. Then there was a long slow groan as if everyone was suddenly sick to the belly. It was a moan as everyone in the crowd realised that the fortune they had made in speculating in the English nobles was gone, had gone overnight. Each English noble was now valued at a third of a ducat, though it had been three ducats only yesterday. The merchants who had bought hundreds of English nobles, trading in good gold, other currencies and even goods, were staring at ruin.

‘So they think that between the good nobles and the bad only a ninth of the coins will be found to be real gold?’ Luca whispered to Brother Peter.

‘They have to buy back the English nobles one way or another, they have to set a rate or nobody will trade at all. The people will bring down the banks with their demands for gold. This crowd isn’t far from riot.’

‘This is terrible,’ Luca said.

Brother Peter looked at him. ‘This is the value of reputation,’ he said. ‘You saw Lady Isolde defend her reputation. You saw me devalue my reputation yesterday.’ He looked at the crowd which was dwindling as the merchants went into their houses, slamming the doors, and the smaller traders walked to stand beside the canal, stunned with shock, trying to face their own ruin in the sparkling surface of the bright waters. ‘This is how the market works,’ he said. ‘Great gains always mean great losses later, and then probably gains again. This is usury. This is why a good man does not play the market. It always brings wealth to a few but poverty to many.’

He grabbed Luca’s shoulder and turned him to face the deserted square and a man sobbing with his mouth open wide, drooling with grief and horror. ‘Look and understand. This is not what happens when the market goes wrong: this is what happens when the market works. Sudden profit followed by sudden ruin: this is what is supposed to happen. This is the real world. The days when a noble doubled in price overnight were the chimera.’

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.