‘Who is he?’ Isolde took Brother Peter by the arm as he bowed his way out of the dining room, and closed the door on the stranger with an air of relief.
‘He is the lord commander of our Order.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘I cannot tell you that.’
‘What is his authority, then?’
Brother Peter looked almost afraid. ‘He is high in the trust of the Holy Father,’ he said. ‘He is trusted with discovering the end of days. The Order walks on the frontier of this world and the next, patrolling the frontier of the Christian and the infidel worlds. There is no man in greater danger. There is no man more fearless.’
‘Is he wealthy?’
‘Of course.’
‘How many men does he command?’
‘Nobody but him knows. And only he knows.’
‘How long have you worked for him?’
Brother Peter thought. ‘Five years,’ he said.
‘What is the name of the Order?’
‘Some people call it the Order of Darkness,’ he said cautiously.
‘Is that the name he calls it?’
He smiled. ‘I don’t know what he calls it.’
‘So it has another name?’
‘Probably many.’
‘Is Luca sworn to it?’ she asked. ‘Sworn as a celibate soldier, or inquirer, or whatever it is?’
‘Not yet,’ he paused. ‘You have to serve, you have to prove your worth, and then you are sworn to it,’ he said. Unaware of what he was doing, he touched his hand to his upper arm.
‘They mark you?’ she guessed acutely.
His hesitation told her that she was right.
‘Show me,’ she said instantly.
He hesitated.
‘Why would you not show me? Are you ashamed of your loyalty?’
‘Of course not!’ he said, stung. Carefully, he rolled up his sleeve and on his upper arm, inscribed into his flesh in a dark tattoo, he showed her the sign of the Order.
She was silent as she looked at it, the dragon eating its tail, the symbol of eternity and the suggestion of circularity – a fear that feeds on itself. ‘Is Luca marked like this? Has the lord had him scarred too?’
‘No. Not yet.’
‘Will he have to swear himself to the Order and then be marked?’ she asked, knowing the ways that men bind themselves to each other.
His silence told her that she had guessed correctly.
‘Brother Peter. I am asking you this in very truth, not as an inquisitive girl; but as a soul in waiting for the Holy Kingdom. Luca is one of the special children of God: do you not think that he should be free in the world? Don’t you think that he should be free to travel and study and call no man master? Don’t you think that he is a special young man with a purity of vision and a wisdom that should not be bound to any other man? Don’t you think that he is gifted and that he should be free?’
He shook his head. ‘You might think that. You might think that he should be free to study and learn, hone his skills, but these are not ordinary times. If these were ordinary times I might agree with you but these are the end of days. The Order may save us from the end of days or it may guide us through. The Order needs men like Luca. He understands things at first sight. He can calculate with numbers as quickly as most men can form words. He may have the gift of tongues and be able to speak any language. Don’t you distract him or try to lead him away. He is vital to the work of the Order. I have seen many inquirers and never one who understands as quickly and compassionately as Luca Vero.
‘You have asked me many questions and I have answered you so that I can tell you this: the work of the Order is the saving of the world itself. It could not be more important. The only thing you should do is to help Luca in his work for the Order. Anything else is the work of Satan. Remember it.’
She bowed her head. He had a moment’s fierce joy that she listened to his instruction. ‘I know there is nothing more important than his work,’ she said humbly. ‘And besides, I don’t have any influence over him.’
Brother Peter nodded, and went upstairs to find Luca.
Luca and Brother Peter spruced themselves up in the attic bedroom as well as they could, given that all the clothes they had were those they were wearing during the flood or had since bought from the limited stores of the tailor of Piccolo.
Luca took his boots down to the kitchen to beg for some oil to polish them. ‘I’ll meet you in the dining room,’ Brother Peter promised. ‘It will look better if we arrive after each other, than if we go in together. Will you tell our lord that you spoke with the infidel?’
‘Why not?’
The clerk shrugged. ‘Clearly, my lord is no friend to him. The moment that he saw him he called for us to arrest him.’
‘The infidel knew the history of the wave. I had to ask him about it. I had to be able to report what might have caused it.’
‘Will you tell Milord that I would not come with you to write down what the infidel said?’
‘If he asks me directly. But I thought you were obeying your conscience? I would have thought you would have been proud to tell him that you refused to speak with his enemy?’
Again Brother Peter shrugged. There was no way of telling whether he would be commended for his discretion in avoiding the infidel, or condemned for failing to do his duty as Luca’s clerk.
‘This is nothing!’ Luca asserted. ‘Whether we spoke to him or we avoided him is nothing to the rest of it! We nearly died. We saw the Crusade. We were on our way to Jerusalem, walking on the bed of the sea. We were driven back by a wave as big as a church steeple that drowned everything in its path. Extraordinary things are happening all around us nearly every day.’
Brother Peter heaved up a pair of ill-fitting breeches and fastened the rope from his gown around them to hold them up around his thin hips. ‘I’ve never known him come out from Rome to an inquiry before,’ he confessed. ‘It makes me nervous.’
Luca hesitated. ‘He has never come out to meet an inquirer at his work before?’
‘Never.’
‘Why would he come for me?’
‘That’s what I am asking myself.’
Freize was to serve the dinner and was in the kitchen, helping the flustered landlady spoon up a meat stew onto trenchers of fresh dark bread. Ishraq and Isolde were to dine in their room. ‘I’ll carry up the food for the ladies,’ Freize offered.
‘I’ve come down for it,’ Ishraq said from the doorway. ‘And I’ll bring the things down again. I knew you would be busy in the kitchen.’
‘Lord love you and bless you,’ the landlady said. ‘And him a gentleman from Rome and everything damp still.’
‘It’s fine,’ Ishraq assured her. She took their two bowls of stew and some rough bread and started for the stairs. Freize held the door open for her.
‘What did he say to you?’ he asked her quietly as she went past him.
Her head came up. ‘What did who say?’
‘The infidel nobleman. He spoke to you in his foreign language. He took you aside to the boat, when you were carrying his package for him. I saw you go with him, but I have no skill in languages. But I saw him speak quietly. I didn’t know what he said to you – nor what you said to him?’
‘I didn’t understand him,’ she said quickly. ‘He spoke too fast.’
‘So what did you reply?’
‘That I couldn’t understand him.’
There was a second, a split second when Freize saw her dark eyes slide away from him, and he knew that she was lying. ‘Seems to be an important man,’ he said easily.
‘Very learned, from what he was saying to Luca,’ she said indifferently, and went from the room and started to climb the stairs.
‘Are you serving dinner, or flirting with the young lady?’ the landlady demanded from her place by the blazing fire where she was spooning fat over a roasting duck on the spit.
‘Flirting,’ Freize replied instantly. ‘Firstly with the
young lady and now – thank the lord she has gone – I can start on my greater quarry: yourself. Shall we go to your laundry room? Shall we say to hell with the duck and will you lock me in and ravish me among the sheets?’
The lord from Rome ate better than he could have hoped in a village recovering from a disaster, and pushed back his chair and bit into a fresh apple. Luca, and Brother Peter arrived with the fruits and sweetmeats to stand before the dining room table and report as best they could about the Crusade, about the wave, about the slaving galley, and waited for his opinion.
He sat at his ease, in a robe of beautiful dark blue cloth but with the hood over his head so that his face was in shadow. ‘I’ve heard of this Plato you speak of,’ he said. ‘And I’ve read him. But only in Greek. We have a manuscript in Rome but it’s an imperfect copy. They had a better one in our library in Constantinople, but that’s now in Muslim hands with the rest of the wealth of Christendom, all our great library now owned by the infidel. Brother Peter, you can give me a copy of what the infidel said.’
Brother Peter nodded his head. He did not explain that the copy had been made by Ishraq.
‘And now I hear you are travelling with two ladies?’ the lord said. ‘They arrived with you, and they are still here?’
‘I have tried over and over again to send them with another party,’ Peter exclaimed. ‘Circumstances have prevented them leaving us.’
‘Who are they?’ the lord addressed Luca, ignoring Brother Peter.
‘The Lady Isolde of Lucretili, and her servant Ishraq,’ Luca confessed. ‘They escaped from the nunnery, as you know, and we met with them on the road. They were in some danger as they were travelling alone. They travel with us for safety, only until they can find another party to join. They were very helpful at Vittorito, as I reported, and again here. The Lady Isolde spoke so well that she all but averted a riot by some ignorant people who were making accusations of storm-bringers. And Ishraq is unusually learned. She was very helpful with the infidel ship; she speaks Arabic.’
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 y
our 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.’