Fools' Gold (15 page)

‘So that we can write Milord’s report,’ Luca reminded him. ‘He told us we were to find out where the English gold nobles were coming from. We’re on the way to discovering the source.’

Brother Peter shook his head sadly. ‘It’s hard for me to countenance sin,’ he said. ‘Even for a great cause. Milord is our commander and the Order of Darkness is pledged to understand the rise of heresy, the signs of darkness, and the coming of the end of the world. Often, in this work I have had to study terrible sin. But never before have I had to be a party to it.’

‘It’s hardly terrible sin, you’re only gambling for piccoli,’ Freize said cheerfully. ‘We might have to do far worse. And anyway – look on the bright side – you might win.’

The five of them waited in their grand palace for the arrival of the alchemist and his daughter. Isolde was confined upstairs and so she peered down the great marble staircase, hoping to glimpse the stranger when he came up the steps from the watergate. Ishraq was waiting on the first floor in the dining room, which they had equipped as a study, with paper and pens laid out on the dining table. Freize, dressed in a dark suit and looking like a servant, was ready to greet the alchemist as his boat came into the private quay, and to usher him upstairs. Brother Peter had shut himself in his room to write the report to Milord, and Luca was holding his chip of glass up to the light, and idly measuring and drawing half arcs of rainbows while gazing out over the Grand Canal.

‘I think that’s him,’ he said to Ishraq as a small gondola detached itself from the seething traffic of the Grand Canal and turned towards the watergate of the palazzo. Luca crossed to the door with three swift steps. ‘Freize!’

‘Ready!’ came the shout from the lowest level of the house. Luca turned and looked upwards to the second floor and caught a glimpse of Isolde’s smile before she stepped back, out of sight. It was as if she had sent him a message of encouragement, or blown him a kiss; the smile was for him alone, as if she was saying that she had faith in him.

He heard Freize greet the man and, looking down, saw him leading the dark-robed figure up the stairs to the first floor. Luca went forward to greet him with his hand held out.

‘Drago Nacari,’ he said. ‘Thank you for coming.’

‘Luca Vero,’ the man replied formally. ‘Thank you for inviting me to your home.’

They entered the room and Ishraq rose up from her seat behind the table. She was wearing her Moorish dress: tunic and pantaloons, her scarf covering her hair and half veiling her face. She bowed to Drago Nacari and he took off his hat and swept a bow to her.

‘This is my sister’s companion, Mistress Ishraq,’ Luca introduced her. ‘I thought she might be able to help us with your manuscript. She speaks Arabic and Spanish and she is a scholar.’

‘Of course,’ the man said. ‘I am honoured to meet you.’

‘Did you not bring your daughter with you?’ Ishraq asked.

‘No,’ he said. ‘She is studying at home.’

The three of them sat at the great table, Drago at the head, and Luca and Ishraq on either side of him. He was carrying a satchel and he put it on the table, unfastened the ties and slid out a sheet of parchment painted with beautiful symbols and plants, and closely written with a clerk’s well-wrought handwriting.

‘Where did you study?’ he asked Ishraq politely. ‘Do you recognise any of this?’

‘I was in the service of the Lord of Lucretili,’ she said. ‘He was a great crusader lord and he took an interest in the people and the learning of the Moors. He took me to Spain to study with the philosophers at the universities. I was allowed to study geography and astronomy, some medicine and languages. It was a great privilege.’

He bowed his head. ‘I have studied in Egypt,’ he said. ‘I read Arabic but I cannot understand this. It is definitely an alchemy text. I know that much for certain. So we may expect certain things.’

‘What things?’ Luca said.

‘A mixture of symbols and numbers and words,’ the man answered. ‘Alchemists have symbols, special signs for many elements, and for many processes.’ He pointed to one symbol. ‘That means to heat gently, for instance, any alchemist would recognise it.’

‘Do you think this is a recipe?’ Luca asked. ‘An alchemy recipe?’

Drago spread his hands. A small gold ring on his finger caught the light. ‘That, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I hope so, of course. I hope it is a recipe for the one thing, the greatest thing, the thing we all seek.’

‘And what is that?’ Luca asked. He was scanning the first page of the manuscript trying to see what words stood out. Nothing was recognisable, he could not even see a pattern.

‘Of course, we all seek the stone,’ the man said quietly. ‘The philosophers’ stone.’

‘What is that?’ Luca asked.

Drago glanced at Ishraq to see how much she knew of the stone.

‘It is the stone which changes base material to gold,’ she said quietly. ‘And water thrown on the stone when it is hot, becomes the elixir of life, it can prolong life perhaps forever, it can make the old young, it can make the sick well. It is the one thing that all alchemists hope to make. It would solve all the troubles of the world.’

‘And you trust me to translate this with you?’ Luca asked Drago Nacari. ‘If we could understand it, this document might mean the end to death and the beginning of limitless wealth for any one of us, for all of us.’ For a moment he thought what he would do if he had the stone and could command a fortune, an unstoppable fortune. He thought he would buy the freedom of his parents, of all slaves. Then he would buy the castle of Lucretili and give it to Isolde. Then he would ask her to marry him, he would be a man so rich that he could propose marriage to her. He broke off from his dream with a short laugh. ‘Already I am dreaming what I would do if I had the stone, and could make gold,’ he said. ‘Why would you trust us strangers with this?’

‘This is only one page of many,’ Drago said. ‘And it’s not a recipe for stewing oysters, it’s not easy. Even if you were to read every word you still would be far from making the stone. To make the stone you would need to study for years. You need to purify yourself and everything you touch. I have been working for decades and only now am I starting to be ready. You may be very clever – Jacinta says that you have quick eyes and a good ear, and, of course, she dreamed of you – but you have not studied for years, as I have done.’

Ishraq smiled. ‘And also there is the question of desire,’ she said.

‘Desire?’ Luca repeated the single inviting word.

Drago Nacari nodded. ‘You
are
learned then,’ he confirmed to Ishraq.

‘If you desire wealth, if you are bound to the world by greed, then you cannot find the stone for you are not pure in heart,’ Ishraq explained. ‘The only man or woman who can find such a thing would be he or she who wanted it for others. Someone who did not want it for themselves. It is the purest thing in the world, it cannot be discovered by someone with dirty hands, it cannot be snatched in a greedy grasp.’

Luca nodded. ‘I think I understand. So let’s have a look at it.’

‘It’s not Arabic,’ Ishraq said. ‘Though some of the symbols are like Arabic symbols.’ She pointed to one sign. ‘This one, and perhaps these.’

‘It’s no language that I recognise,’ Luca said. ‘Have you shown it to a Russian? Or to someone from the East?’

Drago shook his head. ‘Not yet. I hoped to be able to understand it on my own, but I have studied it for months now, and I see that I need help.’

‘I don’t recognise these plants,’ Ishraq said. ‘I’ve never even seen them, not in the garden, not in a herbal. Do you know them?’

Luca did not answer her. He was looking at the writing and scribbling something down. Ishraq immediately fell silent, and looked from Luca’s notes to the manuscript.

‘It might be a cipher,’ he said. ‘A code.’

‘Based on what?’ Drago Nacari whispered, as if he feared being overheard.

‘Based on old numbers,’ Luca said. ‘Latin numbers. I, II, III and so on. Look here,’ he pointed to a string of words. ‘These words recur: “or, or, or, oro”. These could be code for numbers. How old is this manuscript?’

Drago shook his head. ‘Not more than fifty years old, I believe.’

‘And who was the author?’

‘I don’t know. I only have a few pages of it. I believe it was written in Italy, but I had it from a scholar who had a library in Paris.’

‘A Frenchman?’

Drago hesitated. ‘No. I had it from an English lord. He was a great philosopher, but he was not the author. He was . . . He was with the English court in Paris.’ He broke off and saw that Ishraq was scrutinising him with a narrowed dark gaze.

‘What was his name?’ she asked bluntly.

‘I cannot tell you.’

‘Was he a wise man?’ she asked. ‘Did he know the language of birds?’

He smiled at her. ‘Yes, yes he did.’

‘What is the language of birds?’ Luca asked curiously.

Drago answered him. ‘It is the coded speech of alchemists.’

‘So this book was owned by an alchemist, and it is not likely to be written in either English or French. More likely to be based on Italian or perhaps Latin?’

‘And it is not a chimera?’ Ishraq asked the alchemist directly. ‘You spend your mornings helping your daughter deceive people. This is not another deceit? Not simply a pretence? We cannot waste our time on a sleight of hand.’

‘My daughter earns her keep,’ he said defensively. ‘And no one is cheated. It’s a fair game.’

‘I don’t criticise her,’ Ishraq said. ‘But it’s an odd occupation for a young woman whose father is hoping to find the secret to make gold from dust, who has studied – as you say you have done – for decades. In the afternoon you pursue the wisdom of ages and in the morning you play with fools.’

‘We did not always live as we do now, we did not always have a patron,’ Drago explained. ‘We did not always live here. We did not always have this manuscript, and the other pages – the recipe for deep transformation.’

‘You gambled for your living before you found your patron?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you gamble still?’

‘By way of explaining our presence here.’

‘Did the patron give you the house and the manuscript together?’ Ishraq asked casually. ‘And tell you to pass as street gamblers?’

‘He did. Two years ago,’ Drago said.

‘And what does he expect for his generosity?’

‘A share, of course,’ Drago said. ‘When we have the answer that he seeks. Most alchemists have a patron, how else could we afford the ingredients? How else could we undertake years of study?’

‘He must be a generous man, for sure a patient man,’ Ishraq said and was surprised to see no answering smile from the alchemist.

He was grave. ‘I don’t know him at all,’ he said quietly. ‘He is my patron. He is my lord. He gives me sealed orders often through a third person. I have only met him twice. He is not a friend.’

‘You don’t like him?’ she asked acutely.

His face was closed. ‘I don’t know him,’ he said.

‘What’s this?’ Luca asked suddenly.

He was pointing to a small pen-and-ink drawing at the foot of one page. Ishraq bent close and saw that it was a dragon, tail in its own mouth, the symbol of Luca’s own Order. His lord had tattooed the first part of the symbol on Luca’s upper arm, as he completed the first part of his apprenticeship. The lord had promised that he would add the rest of the dragon and the detail of its scales until Luca, like Brother Peter, like Milord himself, carried the entire symbol on his own flesh: a different version from this little sketch, but clearly the same symbol.

‘That is the sign of ouroboros,’ Drago said. ‘That is an alchemical sign. It means eternal life, a life that is forever renewed. The dragon feeds on itself, it eats its own tail, it drinks its own blood, it goes on forever. All is in one. One is in all.’

Luca was a little pale. ‘I know this sign,’ he said. ‘It is an emblem for an Order.’

‘The Order of the Dragon?’ the man confirmed. ‘The Order of my patron.’

‘The Order that I am thinking of is known as the Order of Darkness,’ Luca corrected him.

‘Darkness,’ the man repeated softly. ‘The darkness of the first matter, of Al Khem which gives its name to alchemy, the primary material which changes into one thing, and then another, into two and then three, and finally into the stone, into gold. Everything comes from darkness. This Order is well named if it makes the journey from darkness to gold.’