Stormbringers (Order of Darkness) (30 page)

The lord shrugged as if he did not much care about the ladies, but since the light did not penetrate his hood to illuminate his face, Luca could not tell if he approved or not.

‘That’s all right,’ he said indifferently. ‘You wrote to me already that the slave is skilled?’

‘She’s not a slave but a free woman,’ Luca explained. ‘Half Arab but raised at the Castle of Lucretili. She speaks languages and she studied in Spain. The former Lord of Lucretili seems to have planned to train her up as a scholar. He let her read medicine, and study Arab documents. She is very skilled in many things as you will have seen from my report.’

‘What’s her faith?’ the lord asked, going to the main, the only, question.

‘She seems to have none,’ Brother Peter said heavily. ‘She does not attend church but I have never seen her pray as a Muslim. She speaks of God with indifference. She may be an infidel, a Muslim or even some sort of pagan. But she’s not Christian. At least, I don’t think so.’ He hesitated and then said the words that would protect her from an inquisition and a charge of heresy. ‘We consider her as a Moor. She obeys Christian laws. She does not bring herself into scandal. She behaves modestly, like a maid. I can find no fault in her.’

Luca looked at his newly-polished boots and said nothing about Ishraq coming into the mens’ room in her nightgown and cape and going up the ladder for the kitten, and coming down again into his arms.

‘And where are they going? Didn’t you write that they were going to Budapest?’

‘Lady Isolde is the god-daughter of the late Count Wladislaw of Wallachia. She wants to ask his son to help her gain her inheritance from her brother. The new Count is at the court of Hungary – his kingdom has been captured by a pretender.’

‘Does she know him?’ he asked with sudden intensity. ‘Count Wladislaw? The son or the father? Has she ever seen him?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

The lord laughed shortly as if this were amusing news. ‘How things come about!’ he said. ‘Well, they can travel with you if they wish, and if you have no objection. For I want you to go to Venice. That lies on their way since they can’t go to Croatia in the wake of the wave. You can start tomorrow. If anything occurs, or you hear of anything on your way, you must stop and investigate; but when you get to Venice there is work for you to do. There are stories of much gold on the market.’

‘Gold?’

‘In coins, gold coins. It is of interest to me because someone, somewhere has obviously found gold, a lot of gold, mined it, and is pouring it into the Venice markets. Or perhaps someone has a store of gold that they have found or thieved, or released. Either way, this is of interest. Also, the gold appears in Venice in coins, not in bars – which is unusual. So there is a forger there, somewhere, tucked away in the Venice ghetto, making very good quality English nobles, of all things, from a new source of gold. Beautiful English nobles with their old King Edward on a ship on one side and the rose of England on another – but they’re perfect.’

‘Perfect?’

He reached inside his robe and brought out a coin. Luca took the heavy gold weight in his hand and turned it over looking at the beautiful engraving, the handsome rose and the lettering around the edge.

‘Notice anything?’

‘Shiny,’ Luca said. ‘Beautiful.’

‘Exactly, it’s too heavy and unworn. Nobody’s clipped them, nobody’s shaved them. They’ve not been passed around and half a dozen petty crooks tried to scrape a paring off them. They’re all full weight.’ In the darkness of the hood Luca could glimpse a small smile. ‘They’re too good for this world,’ he said. ‘And that’s the very thing of interest to us: something which is too good for this world.’

‘You want me to investigate?’ Luca asked. ‘You want me to look for a forger or a coiner?’

‘I have reason,’ the lord said, without explaining it to him. ‘Get there, mingle with people, buy and sell things, handle the coins, change money, gamble if you have to . . .’

Brother Peter raised his head and repeated, ‘
Gamble?
’

‘Yes, go and see the money changers, do whatever you have to do to get hold of a lot of these coins and look at the quality. If there is a forger doing extraordinarily good work, then I want to know. Identify him, and write to me at once. Pass yourself off as a young merchant with money to spend on trade coming in. Talk about taking a share in a ship: buy things, spread money around, handle a lot of money, let people know that you are wealthy. Hire a couple of manservants, take this pair of women with you, if they will go. If they will agree to it, pass yourself off as a family, thinking about buying a house in Venice. Brother Peter and you can seem as brothers, one of the women, the Lady Isolde, can appear as your sister, her servant can travel with her. Make up a story, but put yourself in the market for gold coins.’

‘You want us to lie?’ Brother Peter confirmed, quite horrified at these instructions. ‘Perform a masquerade? Receive forged coins and gamble with them?’

‘Trade?’ Luca asked. ‘Game?’

‘For the greater good,’ Milord said without a flicker of discomfort.

‘Let me make sure that I understand,’ Luca specified. ‘You want us to set ourselves up, lie about who we are, pretend to be people that we are not, so that we attract these gold, probably counterfeit, coins. We become a false thing to attract a false thing.’

‘Inquirer, you know as well as I that two false things probably create a real thing. Go and pretend your way to a truth. See what you see when you are behind a mask.’

Luca and Brother Peter exchanged a look at these extraordinary instructions. But then Luca spoke of his own interest: ‘The infidel lord said that there was a man on the Rialto who might be able to trace my father,’ he said hesitantly. ‘When we go to Venice, I must find him. I will do it at the same time as I look for this gold. I promise I won’t neglect my work for you, but I have to speak with him.’

‘I thought your father was dead?’ Milord asked casually.

‘Disappeared,’ Luca corrected him, as he always corrected everyone. ‘But the infidel lord had a galley slave who said that he had seen my father on a ship commanded by a man named Bayeed.’

‘Probably lying.’

‘Perhaps. But I have to know.’

‘Well, maybe you can buy him back with this mysterious gold,’ the lord said, a smile beneath his hood. ‘Perhaps you can do the work of the Lord at a profit to the church.’

‘We will need funds,’ Brother Peter remarked. ‘It will be expensive, a masque like this.’

‘I have funds for you. The Holy Father himself is pleased with your work. He commanded me to make sure that you have funds for this next inquiry. I will see you both again, after Prime, tomorrow morning. I leave then. Now I would talk with Brother Vero.’ He paused. ‘Alone.’

Peter bowed and went out.

Peter opened the dining room door abruptly on Ishraq and Freize who were outside in the hall. Ishraq, with the empty dinner dishes in her hands, was openly eavesdropping though pretending to be on her way to the kitchen. Freize was apparently on guard.

‘Can I help you?’ Brother Peter asked with weighty sarcasm. ‘Either of you?’

‘Thank you,’ said Ishraq promptly, not at all embarrassed at being caught listening at the door. ‘You’re very kind.’ She handed him the heavy board.

‘And we were hoping to know – where next?’ Freize asked.

‘You know where next,’ Brother Peter said irritably, taking the burden of the dishes and heading towards the kitchen. ‘Since you have been listening at the door, I assume you know where next: Venice. And Milord says that the ladies may come with us and pretend to be of our party. We are to appear as a merchant family, you two are to appear as servants.’ He paused and looked disapprovingly at the two of them. ‘In order to pass as our servants, you will have to work. You will have to carry dishes perhaps. I do hope it’s not an inconvenience to you.’

He dumped the plates on the kitchen table, ignored the flustered thanks of the innkeeper’s wife, and went up the stairs to the attic bedroom room he shared with Luca and the other travellers. Ishraq and Freize were left alone.

‘A breath of air?’ Freize suggested, gesturing to the front door and the greying sky and sea beyond.

She went out before him and he offered her his arm to walk along the quayside in a quaint careful gesture. She smiled and walked beside him, arm in arm, like a young betrothed couple. She noticed that she liked his touch, his closeness, the warmth of his arm, the gentle support as they walked across the cobbles. She felt comfortable with him, she trusted him to walk beside her.

‘The thing is,’ Freize confided, ‘the thing is, that I heard you with the infidel lord, on the quayside earlier today, and it’s somewhat disturbing, to know that he spoke to you kindly and that you responded. I know that he spoke to you in a strange language – perhaps Arabic. And I know that you answered. Then, when I asked you, you told me that he said something you couldn’t understand. Now, I don’t want to call a young lady a liar; but you can see that I would have some concerns.’

She was silent for a moment.

‘What I want to know is what he said and what you replied. And also: why you told me that he spoke too fast for you to understand?’

They took half a dozen steps before she replied to him. ‘You don’t trust me?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m not saying that. All I’m saying is that I heard him speak to you in a foreign language, and I heard you reply in the same language. But when I asked you, you denied it.’ He hesitated. ‘It would make anyone wonder. We don’t need to talk about trust. Let’s talk about wonder.’

She paused, releasing his arm. ‘You brought me out here to question me?’ she accused him.

‘Sweetheart mine, I have to know. Don’t get all agitated with me. I have to know. Because he is the enemy of the little lord’s Milord. You heard him. He said he was the worst enemy in the world. So I have to take an interest. I am sworn in love and loyalty to the little lord, and he is sworn to the rather quiet lord in the blue hood, and so I am bound to want to know what you are saying to his most deadly enemy.’

‘You don’t trust me,’ she said flatly. ‘After all that we have been through.’

‘Sweeting,’ he said apologetically. ‘Usually I am the most trusting man in the world, ask anyone! I am a great lummock of trust. But here, in these circumstances, I am filled with doubts. I have been thrown about on a great wave, I have been nearly drowned, and now I am troubled by our new acquaintances.’ He spread his big hand to show her his reasons for concern, counting on his fingers. ‘I don’t trust the infidel lord. That’s one. I thought him a most dominant and glamorous character and I have a craven aversion to dominant and glamorous men, being myself humble and ordinary except for moments (I remind you) of great heroism. Two: I don’t trust the little lord’s lord, whose face I have never yet seen, but who seems to frighten Brother Peter out of his wits. He has the ear of the Pope – and that makes him rather important, and I have an aversion to important men, being myself very humble, except (I remind you) for my moments of greatness. He turns up without warning, and he has the best linen and the best boots I have ever seen. That troubles me, since I don’t expect to see a man of the church in the linen of a lord. Three: I don’t always trust your lady given that she is flighty and easily disturbed, and a woman and so naturally prone to error and misjudgment, and today she has been like a caged wolf. I don’t know if you have noticed but she is not even speaking to you? And four: I barely trust myself, what with floods and handsome infidel and miracles, moody girls and well-dressed priests, and so many things that I comprehend as well as the horse – well not as well as him, actually. So don’t, I beg you, take offence that I don’t trust you. You are just one of many things that I can’t trust. You’re number five on my list of fears and worries. Dearest, I mistrust and fear a whole handful of things. Believe me, I doubt everything else long before I would ever doubt you.’

She was not diverted by his list, as he hoped she would be, but turned frosty-faced, without saying a word, and stalked back towards the inn. Freize, watching her, thought that he had never before seen a woman who could walk like an irritated cat.

He saw that he had offended her, and very deeply, and went after her with two long strides and caught her at the door. ‘Don’t be angry with me,’ he said softly into her ear. ‘Not when you were so sweet to me when I came back to you through the flood. Not when you can be so kind to a little thing like the kitten, and so loving and tender to a big thing, a big foolish thing like me.’