Ishraq and Freize exchanged a hidden look as Isolde named the very question that was troubling them.
‘He believes that someone may have opened a gold mine and is minting them in secret,’ Brother Peter said. ‘Such a man would be avoiding tax, and avoiding the fines he should pay to the Church. Milord would want to see that the Church reclaimed those taxes. It would amount to a fortune. Or some criminal may be forging them.’
‘So do you think the coins are forged? Made to look like English nobles but made from lesser metal?’ Luca asked.
‘The money changer said they were from the English mint in Calais,’ Freize explained. ‘But he was very stern with us when I asked him about them – he warned me not to ask questions. He didn’t want anyone saying anything which might spoil the value of the coins.’
‘Is the value good?’
‘They might be overvalued, if anything,’ Freize volunteered. ‘They were rising in price as we stood there. He said he would put up his exchange rate tomorrow. Apparently everyone wants to trade in them – there were men queuing behind us. Everyone says they are solid gold, without any alloy. That’s very unusual. Most coins are a mixture of precious metal and something lighter. Or good ones are shaved and clipped. But these seem to be perfect.’
‘There’s only one way to be sure. We’ll have to test them to see how much real gold is in each coin,’ said Luca.
‘How shall we test it?’ Isolde asked. ‘We can’t ask the goldsmiths – as Freize said, they won’t welcome questions about the quality of their coins.’
Brother Peter looked slightly uncomfortable. He put his hand to the inner pocket of his jacket.
‘You’ve got orders!’ Freize said accusingly, eyeing the small scroll.
‘Milord honoured me . . . ’
‘More secret orders!’ Freize exclaimed. ‘Where do we have to go now? Just when we are settled and have discovered fegato alla veneziana? When Luca is studying at the university, and is going to see Father Pietro? Just when he might find his father? Don’t say we have to leave! We haven’t completed our mission, we’ve not even started! The girls haven’t even bought their carnival clothes!’
‘Peace! Peace! We don’t have to move yet,’ Brother Peter said. ‘And if it was an order from Milord, then the fact that you have discovered a Venetian culinary speciality of liver and onions, and that the girls want new dresses, would not prevent us. This is vanity, Freize. And greed. No, Milord simply gave me instructions for our time in Venice. How we are to go to the Rialto when our ship comes in and claim our share of the cargo. How we are to sell it at a profit, a manifest of the cargo it is carrying. And here, a list of the tests we were to make on the gold coins, when we had them.’
He looked at Ishraq. ‘The instructions are in Arabic,’ he said awkwardly. ‘This is infidel learning. I thought you might read them to Brother Luca, and he would test the gold.’
Ishraq beamed at him in gleeful triumph. ‘You need my learning, Brother Peter?’
The older man gritted his teeth. ‘I do.’
‘You don’t think that translating a recipe for testing gold will strain my poor woman’s intelligence to breaking point?’
‘I hope that you will survive it.’
‘You don’t think that such knowledge should be kept to men, only to men?’
‘Not on this occasion.’
She turned to Luca. ‘Do you want me to translate the recipes for you? Will you test the gold?’
‘Of course,’ Luca said. ‘We can use the spare room next to mine. We will have our own goldsmith’s assay room!’
Only Freize caught the shadow that crossed Isolde’s face at the thought of the two of them working all day together in the small room.
‘And tomorrow, I will go out and exchange some more coins for gold,’ Brother Peter said. ‘We will have to test a number of coins to be sure.’
‘And the lasses can buy new gowns,’ Freize said happily. ‘And masks, and hats. And I shall look through my boxes and see if I can’t find some more coins to turn into English gold nobles. A man could make a small fortune in this town by doing nothing but buying at the right time.’
Immediately after breakfast, the following morning, Ishraq and Luca were side by side at a table in the spare room off the dining room, quiet with concentration. Luca was staring at half a dozen beautiful golden coins purchased by Brother Peter from the money changers. Ishraq had a scroll of manuscript before her. Carefully she unrolled it, weighted the top and bottom so that it could not roll up, and started to translate from the Arabic into Italian. ‘It says first you have to look, to see if it has been stamped or marked by the goldsmith or mint.’
Luca squinted at the coins, one after another. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They’re all marked as English nobles, minted by the English at Calais. They’re all marked in exactly the same way. Identical.’
He made a note on a piece of paper beside him, and then carefully put the paper over the coin and gently rubbed a coloured stick of sealing wax over it. The image on the coin showed through. ‘Now what?’
Ishraq tucked a curl of dark black hair behind her ear. ‘Check for discolouration, especially wear,’ she read. ‘If another metal is showing through the gold, then this is gold plate, a gold veneer laid over a cheaper metal.’
Obediently, Luca turned over every coin and looked at the beautifully bevelled edges of the whole coins. ‘They’re perfect. All of them. Same colour all the way round.’
‘Bite it,’ she said.
‘What?’
She giggled, and he glanced at her and smiled too. ‘It’s what it says here. Gold is soft, bite it, hold it in your mouth for the count of one hundred, and then look at it. If it is gold, your teeth should mark it.’
‘You bite it,’ Luca replied.
‘I’m the translator,’ she said modestly. ‘You’re the assayer. I am a mere woman. In your faith I think it is me that tells you to bite the apple. Besides, I’m not cracking my teeth on it. You’re the one that wants to know: you bite it.’
‘God Himself tells us your sex bit the apple first,’ Luca pointed out. ‘So we’ll both bite one,’ he decided, and handed her a half noble and kept a whole coin for himself. Solemnly, they both put the coins at the side of their mouths, bit down, held the coins, counted to one hundred and then looked at the result.
‘I’m amazed!’ she said.
‘I can see my teeth marks!’ he agreed.
‘Gold then.’
‘Write it down,’ Luca instructed her. ‘What’s the next test?’
‘We have to scratch it with an earthenware plate.’
Luca went to the door, opened it and yelled down the stairs. ‘Freize! Bring me a bowl from the kitchen!’
‘Hush!’ Freize said, labouring up the stairs. ‘Lady Isolde has half of Venice in her room above us, fitting her with gowns, creating headdresses for her and Ishraq.’
‘I need a bowl from the kitchen!’
‘Pewter?’ Freize asked, preparing to go on, up the narrow stairs to the attic.
‘No! No! Earthenware!’
‘Earthenware he says,’ Freize complained to himself. They could hear his footsteps going the long way up to the kitchen and then coming back down. ‘Earthenware, as you asked,’ he said, peering curiously into the room.
‘And now go away,’ Luca said hard-heartedly, though it was clear that Freize was aching to join in. To Ishraq he said: ‘Now what?’
‘You have to break it. We need a smashed piece of earthenware.’
Luca slammed the bowl against the edge of the table, and it shattered into a hundred pieces.
‘Oh fine, just break it!’ came Freize’s voice from behind the closed door. ‘Don’t worry about it, for a moment. Shall I fetch another for your lordship?’
‘And take a piece and scratch the gold with it,’ Ishraq translated. ‘A black scratch means the gold is not real but a gold scratch shows the metal is true.’
Luca drew the earthenware shard across the
face of the gold noble. ‘It’s good,’ he said tersely. He pressed down hard and then looked again. ‘Definitely good.’
‘Now we have to saw it in half.’
He raised his eyebrows at the thought of damaging the coin. ‘I’ll saw one of the quarter nobles,’ he said. ‘I won’t touch the full noble.’
She shook her head. ‘Oh for heaven’s sake! Saw one of each: a noble and a half noble and a quarter noble. Go on, Luca. It’s not as if it’s your money. Milord is paying for all of this.’
‘You have expensive ideas,’ he complained. ‘If you had been brought up as a farmer’s son like me you would not willingly be sawing coins in half.’
She laughed at him, and he did as she requested and soon the coins lay halved on the bench before them.
‘Are they the same colour all the way through?’
Luca picked up a magnifying glass and scrutinised the coins. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There’s no skin on any of them, nor any trace of a different colour inside. They’re yellow all the way through, like pure gold.’
‘So now, it’s the last test: we have to weigh the coins,’ she said. ‘Weigh them very accurately.’
Luca paused. ‘All right. What weight should they be?’
‘A full noble is 108 grains,’ Ishraq said scowling at the manuscript, trying to understand the symbols. ‘It says that density is equal to mass divided by volume.’
‘Hang on a minute,’ Luca said. ‘Say that again.’
‘Density is equal to mass divided by volume,’ she repeated. ‘The test is to weigh pure gold and then weigh the test gold to find the mass. Then the second test is to put it in water and see how much the water level rises. That gives the volume.’
‘Mass,’ Luca repeated. ‘Volume.’ Ishraq thought that he looked for a moment like a troubadour when he sings a particularly beautiful song. The words, which made no sense to her, were like poetry to him. ‘Density.’
‘It says here that we are to take a piece of pure gold and then put it in a measured jug of water and see how much the water rises. Then we do the same with the same weight of our test gold. Gold which has been mixed with other lighter metals will move more water. Gold that is pure is more dense – it will displace less water.’ She broke off. ‘You know, I’m reading the words but I feel like a fool. I don’t understand what we are to do. Do you understand what is meant?’
Luca looked transported. ‘Density is equal to mass divided by volume,’ he said quietly. ‘I do see. I do see.’
He did not bother to shout for Freize but ran up to the kitchen himself and came back down with a clear glass of water. ‘We’ll have to go out to a goldsmith and buy some pure gold,’ he muttered.
‘What for?’
‘So that I know how dense pure gold is. So that I know how much the water rises. So that I can compare it with the coins.’
‘Oh! I see,’ Ishraq exclaimed, suddenly understanding. ‘I have a gold ring, that I know is pure gold.’
‘It’s hollow, it’s in the shape of a ring,’ Luca said, thinking furiously aloud. ‘Doesn’t matter. The central hole has no weight. We are weighing the gold of the ring not measuring the area. Get it.’
‘It’s Isolde’s mother’s ring,’ Ishraq explained. ‘I have carried it and her family jewels for her ever since we left home.’
‘Are you sure it is pure gold?’
She nodded. ‘The Lord of Lucretili would have given his lady nothing less,’ she said.
He did not even hear her, he was looking from the gold nobles to the water in the glass. Ishraq ran from the room up the stairs to the girls’ rooms and lifted her gown, to rip at the hem of her linen shift.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ Isolde asked. She was standing on a wooden chair, a dressmaker kneeling before her, hemming a gown. On one side a tirewoman was making a magnificent headdress and there were carnival masks all around the room, silks, satins and velvets thrown everywhere in a jumble of richness and colour.
‘Getting your mother’s gold ring,’ Ishraq said tersely, tearing at the delicate hem stitches. ‘For Luca to weigh against the gold nobles.’
‘Still?’ Isolde said irritably. ‘You’ve been locked in all morning. And I heard you drop a plate.’
‘Smashed it,’ Ishraq said cheerfully, retrieving the ring and pulling down her dress again.
‘Make sure he doesn’t damage it,’ Isolde said disagreeably. ‘That ring is valuable.’
Ishraq said nothing but raced back to Luca. He was pacing up and down, scowling in thought, he hardly noticed her come in until she put the ring into his hand.
At once he turned and put it on the delicate spice scales that Freize had brought them from the kitchen. He added the tiny weights – the smallest was half a grain of wheat. Isolde’s mother’s ring was just over 121 grains.
‘Write it down,’ Luca ordered Ishraq. ‘The ring is pure gold, 121 and a half grains. Now. How much water does it move?’
Luca lifted it from the scale and put it into the water glass. At once the water rose within the glass. With a sharp piece of chalk Luca marked where the water level rose, and then hooked the ring out with a fork and held it over the water so that every drop fell back into the glass and the water level was the same as before.
‘You are certain this is pure gold?’ he asked quietly.
Ishraq was impressed with his concentration. ‘Certain,’ she whispered.
‘Well, the noble should be 108 grains,’ Luca said. ‘And the noble plus half of one of the quarter nobles should be exactly 121 and a half grains. So the mass is the same. If it is less dense, then it has been mixed with tin or something lighter than gold, and the water will rise higher.’ Gently, without making a splash, he dropped the full coin into the glass of water, and then dropped the sawn half of the quarter noble on top of it.
They both held their breath as the water level rose, sticking to the side of the glass, but definitely rising up and up until it reached the mark set by the ring.
‘The coins are pure gold,’ Luca said in quiet triumph. ‘Someone, somewhere is either stealing English nobles fresh from the mint in Calais, or else they are mining the purest gold, and forging their own.’
The five of them were elated, as if they had found the gold mine itself.
‘So what next?’ Isolde asked. ‘How will we find the mint? How will we find the forgers?’
‘Could we buy so much gold that the money changer cannot serve us from his own store?’ Luca suggested. ‘Then we’ll ask him where we can go to collect it. If he won’t say, we’ll have to watch him, see where he goes to get a chest of gold.’
‘We can take it in turns to watch . . .’ Ishraq started.
Luca shook his head. ‘No, not you,’ he said. He glanced at Isolde and saw her nod in agreement. ‘I am sorry, Ishraq, but you can’t. If we want to pass as a wealthy family then you two have to behave like ladies. You can’t come to the Rialto and spy on the gold merchants.’
‘Really, we can’t,’ Isolde told her.
‘I could go dressed as a common girl. Or dressed as a boy! Isolde has bought a room-full of costumes and masks! It is carnival time, almost everyone is disguised.’
‘It’s not worth the risk,’ Brother Peter ruled. ‘And besides, you should not be wandering the streets exposed to danger. It happens that we are here in the only time of year that women are allowed out of their homes at all. All the women in Venice will dress up in disguise, wear masks, and go out on the streets for the twenty days before Lent, the city is never more unruly than now. They are a most extreme people. This is an exception, a time of utter licence, the rest of the year they only go out to visit privately in each other’s houses or to church.’
‘But as it’s carnival, surely we can go out masked and disguised?’ Ishraq insisted. ‘Even if it is only for these weeks?’
‘Only if you want to be mistaken for the whores of the city,’ Brother Peter said crossly. ‘You would be advised not to go out at all. It is a time of great sin
and debauchery. I would advise you to stay indoors. Indeed, I have to request that you stay indoors.’ He glanced at Luca for his agreement. ‘Since you are travelling with us and have agreed to enact the pretence that we are your guardians, I think it is right that you should give us the power to decide your comings and goings.’
‘Nobody has that power over me,’ Ishraq said quickly. ‘I don’t give it to you, I don’t give it to anyone. I didn’t leave home and then run away from the nunnery to be ordered about by you and Luca.’
Luca flushed. ‘Nobody is ordering you,’ he said. ‘But if we are to keep up the pretence that we are here as a noble family you will have to behave like the companion of a noblewoman. That’s simply what you agreed to do, Ishraq.’
‘I’ll go out masked,’ she promised herself.
‘As long as someone goes with you,’ Luca compromised. ‘Apparently the whole city goes quite mad for the days of carnival. But if Freize goes with you, or the housekeeper, you should be all right.’
‘So can I come with you to the Rialto this afternoon?’ she asked. ‘To see Father Pietro? If I am masked?’
Luca shook his head. ‘This is my quest,’ he said. ‘I go alone.
Freize beamed. ‘I go alone too,’ he said. ‘I’ll go alone with you.’
The two young men left the house together; Ishraq and Isolde, at the upper-floor window, watched the black gondola nose into the middle of the Grand Canal and swiftly cut through the busy waterway.
‘I’m going out,’ Ishraq said. ‘I’m going to get us boys’ clothes so that we can walk around as we please.’
Isolde brightened. ‘Do we dare?’
‘Yes,’ Ishraq said firmly. ‘Of course we dare. We’ve come all the way across Italy. We’re hardly going to be stuck indoors now because a couple of priests think that Venice is too sinful for us to see.’
‘I’ve ordered us both gowns from the sempstress.’
‘Yes, but I don’t want gowns, I want costumes. I want disguises. I want boys’ clothes so that we can go where we like. So no one knows who we are.’