‘Where did you get this purse from?’ The officer spilled the bloodstained coins onto the dinner table, they smeared their sticky redness in a pool.
Brother Peter exchanged one brief look with Luca.
‘I can find out,’ the officer said. ‘I only have to ask in the Rialto and someone will tell me. But it would be better for you if you were to answer me now.’
Luca nodded. Clearly, they would have to tell the truth. ‘We got our nobles from the money changer Israel,’ he said. ‘But I am certain that he thought that they were good. We certainly thought they were good. It was a simple transaction between two honest parties.’
The officer turned his head and spoke briefly to one of his men. At once he left the room and they could hear him running down the stairs.
‘I am arresting you on suspicion,’ the officer said.
‘Of what?’ Luca said. ‘We may have received forged nobles, but so has Lady Carintha. Where did she get her necklace from? It was not from us! We are buyers of coins, not counterfeiters. You can search the house.’
‘We know Lady Carintha, she is a Venetian born and bred, and her husband is a great trader in this city, his name is in the Gold Book. He is on the Council. You, on the other hand, have just arrived and everything about you is strange. Lady Carintha says you are not what you seem, you have been arranging to buy a fortune in gold from one money changer, you speak of a ship that has yet to come in, you are often seen with Father Pietro and you seem to be favoured by one of the greatest enemies of Christendom.’
Luca raised his eyebrows at the extent of the officer’s knowledge. ‘You have been watching me?’
‘Of course. We watch all strangers. Venice is filled with spies. There is a Bocca di Leone for denouncing the guilty in every square. And you have great wealth and dubious friends. You have been under suspicion from the moment you arrived.’
‘He is not a dubious friend. Radu Bey was a chance meeting. He chose to help me trace my father who was captured as a slave of the Ottomans. The city of Venice itself trades with the Ottoman Empire. The Doge himself trades with Radu Bey.’
‘But the Doge does not use counterfeit coins,’ the man returned.
‘He does,’ Lady Carintha said spitefully, pulling her earrings out of her ears and throwing them down on the table with a shudder. They sat in a little pool of redness, oozing wetly. ‘He almost certainly does. His hands will be bloody too.’
‘What?’
‘Since this family arrived, everyone in Venice has gone mad for the English gold. Ask my husband. The price has soared. No doubt the Doge has bought them, no doubt he has sold them on. Perhaps his hands are dirty too. Perhaps we are all going to be ruined.’ She rubbed her stained hands against the skirts of her gown and shuddered. ‘What is this?’
‘It looks like a sort of rust,’ Luca said. ‘Perhaps the metals are breaking down, and rusting away.’
She looked at him and her beautiful face was twisted with jealousy and spite. ‘Rusting gold?’ she said. ‘Against the laws of nature. You and that sister of yours? Unnatural too. As unnatural as forgery. As false as counterfeit coin.’
‘What are you suggesting?’ the officer asked her. ‘Are you saying they are sinners as well as criminals?’
‘God knows what they are guilty of,’ Lady Carintha swore. ‘You should take them in at once. He is false as the most beautiful gold coin, and she passes for a lady but fights like a cat. Who knows what they have done together?’
‘My dear . . .’ her husband interpolated.
‘I want to go home.’ Lady Carintha suddenly became soft and tearful. She turned to her husband. ‘We have done our duty here. I can’t bear it here with these bloodstained coins in this house of wicked strangers.’
Solemnly, he nodded. ‘Do your duty for the Doge and the Republic,’ he said pompously to the officer. ‘The survival of the greatest city in the world depends on our wealth and our trustworthiness. This family – if they are truly a family and not a counterfeiting ring in disguise – have challenged both. They must be destroyed before they destroy us! Arrest them at once and take them before the Council of Ten!’
The two of them were too powerful to be denied. The officer looked from Luca to the stained gold nobles scattered over the table. ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of counterfeiting coins, trading in false gold with a Jew, and incestuous relations with your sister,’ he said. ‘You will have to come with me. In fact, I am arresting you all.’
Brother Peter put his hand over his eyes and made a little noise like a low sigh, but at that moment, the door opened and Isolde came into the room. She was transformed. She was wearing her blonde hair piled high on her head and a tall scarlet pointed headdress on top of it that made her look six feet tall. She was wearing one of her most beautiful Venetian-made gowns in a deep crimson, the slashed sleeves showing white silk underneath. She stood very tall and very proudly. Beside her Lady Carintha looked old and tawdry with her dirty neck and her bloodstained ears.
‘This has gone far enough,’ Isolde ruled. ‘It must stop now.’ At her tone of command the officer hesitated, and Lady Carintha’s husband made a half bow, halted by a sharp hidden pinch from his wife.
‘I am Lady Isolde of Lucretili,’ Isolde said directly to the officer. ‘This is my mother’s signet ring. You can see our family crest. I am travelling with my servant and companion Ishraq, and with this escort: my tutor Brother Peter, a man of unquestioned probity, his scholar Luca Vero and our manservant and general factotum. We decided to pass as a noble family interested in trade in order to travel without being known and for my personal safety.’
‘Why would you do that?’ the officer queried. Lady Carintha stood dumb, clearly overwhelmed by Isolde’s grandeur.
Isolde answered the officer, completely ignoring the woman. ‘My brother has usurped my place at the castle,’ she said. ‘He is passing himself off as the new Lord of Lucretili. I don’t want him to know that I am going to seek help against him from my godfather’s son. That is why we are travelling through Venice. That is why we assumed different names.’
‘And who is your godfather’s son, Milady?’ the officer asked deferentially.
‘He is Count Vlad Tepes the Third, of Wallachia,’ Isolde said proudly.
The officer and all the guards pulled off their hats at the mention of one of the greatest commanders on the frontiers of Christendom, a man who had defended his country of Wallachia from the unstoppable Ottoman army, been driven out, and would, without a doubt, conquer it again. ‘You are the great count’s god-daughter?’ the officer confirmed.
‘I am,’ Isolde said. ‘Actually, I am carrying his crusader sword. He and my father exchanged swords. So you see, I am a woman of some importance.’ She took another step into the centre of the room and looked Lady Carintha up and down with an expression of utter contempt. ‘This woman is a bawd,’ she said simply. ‘She keeps a disorderly house with gambling and prostitutes. She boasts of her own immorality and she quarrelled with me only when I refused to join in her lascivious ways.’
Slowly, Lady Carintha’s husband detached himself from her gripping hand and turned to look at her.
‘I imagine it is well known to everyone but you, Sir,’ Isolde said gently to him. ‘Your wife is little more than a common whore. She has quarrelled with me because I would not let her into this house at night and lead her to the room of this young man of my household, whose spiritual well-being is my responsibility. She wanted to lie with him, she offered to buy time with him by giving me jewellery or an alibi for my own absences, or introduce me to a lover. She said she would make him into her toy, she would have him for Carnevale and then give him up for Lent.’
Brother Peter crossed himself at the description of sin. Luca could not take his eyes off Isolde, proud as a queen, fighting for their safety.
‘She’s lying,’ Lady Carintha spat.
‘When I treated these offers with contempt, this woman attacked me,’ Isolde said steadily.<
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Lady Carintha crossed the room and stood, her hands on her hips, glaring at Isolde. ‘I will slap your face again,’ she said. ‘Shut up. Or you will be sorry.’
‘I am sorry that I have to speak like this at all,’ Isolde said glacially, one glance at Brother Peter as if she was remembering his claim that a lady should not fight for herself. ‘A lady does not tell such shameful secrets, a lady does not soil her mouth with such words. But sometimes, a lady has to defend herself, and her reputation. I will not be bullied by this old streetwalker. I will not be scratched and pinched by such a she-wolf.’ She smoothed back the veil which flowed from her headdress and showed the officer the scratch marks on her pale cheek. ‘This is what she did to me this very afternoon for refusing her disgusting offers. I will not be assaulted in my own home. And you should not work at her bidding. Any denunciation from such as her means nothing.’
‘Absolutely not!’ he said, quite convinced. ‘My lord?’ He turned to Lady Carintha’s husband. ‘Will you take the woman home? We cannot accept her denunciation of this family when she clearly has a private quarrel with them. And this lady,’ he bowed towards Isolde, who stood like a queen, ‘this lady is above question.’
‘And she receives forged coins,’ Isolde added quietly. ‘And gambles with them.’
‘We’ll go,’ Lady Carintha’s husband decided. To Isolde he bowed very low. ‘I am very sorry that such a misunderstanding should have come about,’ he said. ‘Just a misunderstanding. No need to take it further? I would not want our name mentioned to the count, your kinsman. I would not have such a great man thinking badly of me. I am so sorry that we have offended, inadvertently offended . . .’
Isolde inclined her head very grandly. ‘You may go.’
The officer turned to Brother Peter and Luca. ‘I apologise,’ he said. ‘Of course, no arrest. You are free to come and go as you please.’
He bowed very low to Isolde, who stood very still while he ordered the men from the room, and they waited until they heard the clatter of their boots on the stairs and then the bang of the outer door.
There was a sudden total silence. Isolde turned and looked at Brother Peter as if she expected him to criticise her for being too bold. Brother Peter was silent, amazed at this newly powerful version of the girl he had seen before as a victim of her circumstances: clinging to a roof in a flood, bullied in a nunnery, weeping for the loss of her father.
‘I will defend myself,’ she said flatly. ‘Against her, or against anyone. From now on, I am going to fight for myself.’
Freize rowed in determined silence, heaving the little boat through the water, until Ishraq, hunched in the prow, shivering a little in her dripping gown, looked behind and said: ‘Nobody’s following.’
He paused then, and stripped off his thick fustian jacket. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Put this round your shoulders.’
Almost she refused, but then she took it and hugged it to her.
‘You look like a drowned rat,’ Freize said with a smile, and set to the oars again.
She made no reply.
‘A sodden vole,’ Freize offered.
She turned her head away.
‘It was a hell of a dive,’ he said honestly. ‘Brave.’
Ishraq, like a champion of the games receiving the laurel crown, bent her head, just a little. ‘I’m cold,’ she admitted, ‘and I hit the water with a terrible blow. I knocked the air out of myself.’
‘You hurt?’ he asked.
He saw her indomitable smile. ‘Not too bad.’
They found their way through the network of little canals towards the industrial quarter of the city, and rowed slowly along the outside of the steep wall, until Ishraq said: ‘That must be it. That must be their watergate. It’s on the corner.’
The alchemists had no gondola, and their gate was closed, the two halves of wrought metal bolted together. Ishraq was about to pull the bell chain which hung beside the gates when Freize raised his hand for her to wait, and said: ‘Listen!’
They could hear the noise of someone pounding on the outer door to the street, they could hear someone shout: ‘Open in the name of the law! In the name of the Doge: open this door!’
‘We’re too late,’ Freize said shortly. ‘They must have got to the money changer, and he must have told them that he got the nobles here.’
Ishraq listened to the loud hammering. ‘The guard isn’t in yet,’ she said. ‘We might be able to get them away . . .’
Without another word, Freize rowed the boat towards the gate and Ishraq leaned over the prow and struggled to push the heavy bolt upwards. But whenever she pushed against the gate, the boat bobbed away. Finally, in frustration she stepped out of the boat altogether and, clinging to the wrought iron of the gate, her bare feet flexed on the trellis work, she used all her strength to push the bolt upwards. Stretching between the stationary gate, and the one which was opening, she kicked off from the anchored gate and swung, slowly inwards, dangling over the cold waters.
Freize brought the boat up against the opening gate and Ishraq stepped down into the prow and then turned as he took the little boat against the internal quay. She jumped ashore and took the rope, tying it to the ring in the wall.
Now they could hear the noise more clearly, the hammering on the door echoing through the stone storeroom and through the wooden hatch to where they stood on the quay.
‘Sounds like a raid,’ Freize said.
Cautiously, he tried the hatch which led from the quay to the storeroom. It opened a crack and Freize looked in.
‘They’ve bolted the door to the street,’ he said. ‘But I can hear the Doge’s men are breaking it down now. You wait here.’ Freize pulled the hatch from its housing and jumped upwards, getting his chest and belly over the ledge, and wriggled through the low gap. There was a crash from inside the house as he got to his feet, and Freize whirled around to see Jacinta running through the door, her arms filled with rolls of manuscript, a chest of papers in her hand.
She recoiled for a moment, as she saw Freize’s broad frame and the open hatch and then she recognised him. ‘Thank God it’s you!’ she exclaimed. She thrust the papers at him. ‘They can’t have these,’ she said. ‘No one can see these. They’re secret.’
‘Get in the boat,’ Freize said shortly, throwing the papers through the hatch. ‘We’ve got one in your watergate, waiting.’
‘I have to fetch . . .’
They could hear a steady violent thud at the front door as the men took a ram to it and started to break it in. Drago was gathering up small glass jars in his haste, passing them through the hatch to Ishraq, who stacked them pell mell into the bottom of the boat.
‘Come!’ Freize shouted at the pretty girl, who was piling small spice boxes one on top of another to carry away. ‘That door won’t hold! Come now or you will lose everything!’
She raced towards the hatch and handed the boxes to Ishraq on the waterside. Drago was through the hatch already and at the oars of the boat. ‘Come!’ he commanded her.
‘The baby!’ she shouted.
‘Baby?’ Freize repeated, horrified.
There was a crash as the outer door to the street yielded to the battering ram and then shouts as the guard came up against the locked storeroom door. Jacinta dragged a stool across the stone floor and jumped up on it so that she could reach the highest shelf. She stretched out her hands for the bell jar where Freize and Ishraq had first seen a little brown mouse beside a flickering candle, and then, on their later visit, seen the naked lizard-like thing.
‘This . . .’ she said, as the kitchen door burst open and a band of the Doge’s guards hurled themselves into the storeroom. One man threw himself at her, grabbing her around the knees and bringing her down.
The bell jar flew from her hands and smashed on the floor. The young woman screamed, struggled in the man’s grip, writhing like a serpent as her cap fell off and her rich russet hair tumbled down around her shoulders. Freize took hold of the guardsman i
n a strong grip from behind, pulling him off her, so he was facing Jacinta as she wormed out of the man’s grip. Freize saw her, saw her transformed: her long straggling locks of completely white hair, her face gnarled and old, her merry brown eyes pouched under drooping eyelids and her wrinkled lips stretched over toothless gums as she gave a croaky scream.
For one second they were all frozen still with horror, and then the guardsman released her with a bellow of shock, pushed her away from him, thrusting her away like a man in terror. In that moment she was out of his arms, and through the hatch, wriggling like a white-headed snake through the gap, down to the quay, and into the boat, and Drago and Jacinta were gone.
‘Good God!’ the man said. ‘Did you see? Did you see that?’
Freize did not reply, so shocked that he could not catch his breath. Then he saw the contents of the bell jar that Jacinta had tried so hard to save. Amid the broken shards of the glass bell jar there was a little creature. At first he thought it was a lizard, only pale and pink. Then he thought it was a kitten that they had obscenely skinned and left to bleed. Then he saw the thing more clearly. The little being rose up on its hind legs and held up its arms to him, and he heard a tiny piping voice say: ‘Help me! Help me!’
The other guardsmen were pouring into the storeroom and kicking in the wooden frame of the hatch that led to the quay. Among the turmoil of the broken glass and the stamping of leather boots the little thing scuttled in fear and called again to Freize: ‘Help me!’
Compassion overcame his disgust and with a horrified shudder Freize bent down towards the tiny animal which stood no taller than six inches, like a perfectly formed naked man, but with a grimace of fear on its miniature bare face, and a word written in silver across its forehead: EMET.
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