Fools' Gold (6 page)

First, as always, before they did anything else, Brother Peter, Luca and Isolde had to go to church and give thanks for their safe arrival. Ishraq and Freize, as an infidel and a servant, were excused.

‘Go to the Rialto,’ Luca ordered Freize. ‘See if they have heard of Father Pietro. I will come myself to speak with him later.’

Luca, Brother Peter and Isolde, with her hood pulled modestly forward, left the house by the little door onto the paved way beside the narrow canal and turned to their right to walk through the narrow alley to the Piazza San Marco where the great church bells echoed out, ringing for Terce, sending the pigeons soaring up into the cold blue sky, and the gorgeously costumed Venetians posed and paraded up to the very doors of the church itself.

Ishraq and Freize closed the side door on their companions and stood for a moment in the quiet hall.

‘May I show you the rooms?’ the housekeeper asked them, and led them up the wide flight of marble stairs to the first floor of the building where a large reception room overlooked the canal with huge double-height windows leading to a little balcony. The grand room was warm, a small fire burned in the grate and the sunshine poured in through the window. Leading off were three smaller rooms.

The housekeeper led them up again to the same layout of rooms on the upper floor. ‘We’ll take the top floor,’ Ishraq said. ‘You can have the first.’

‘And above you are the kitchens and the servants’ rooms,’ the housekeeper said, gesturing to the smaller stairs that went on up.

‘Kitchens in the attic?’ Freize asked.

‘To keep the house safe in case of fire,’ she said. ‘We Venetians are so afraid of fire, and we have no space to put the kitchens at a distance from the house on the ground floor. All the space on the ground floor is the courtyard and the garden, and at the front of the house the quay and the watergate.’

‘And are you the cook?’ Freize asked, thinking that he would be glad of a good lunch when the others came back from church.

She nodded.

‘We’ll go and run our errands and perhaps return to a large lunch?’ Freize hinted. ‘For we had a long cold night with nothing but some bread and a few eggs, and I, for one, would be glad to try the Venice specialities and your cooking.’

She smiled. ‘I shall have it ready for you. Will you take the gondola?’

Freize and Ishraq exchanged a delighted grin. ‘Can we?’ Ishraq asked.

‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘It’s the only way to get around this city.’ She led the way down the marble stairs to the ground floor, to the waterside front of the house, and their own private quay, where their gondola rocked at its moorings. The housekeeper waved them down the final flight of stairs and indicated the manservant who came out of a doorway, wiping his mouth and pulling on his bright feathered cap.

‘Giuseppe,’ she said by way of introduction. ‘He will take you wherever you want to go, and wait and bring you home.’

The man pulled the boat close to the quay, and held out his hand to help Ishraq aboard. Freize stepped heavily after her and Ishraq cried out and then laughed as the boat rocked.

‘This is going to take some getting used to,’ Freize said. ‘I am missing Rufino already; how ever will he manage without me?’ He turned to the gondolier, Giuseppe. ‘Can you take us to the Rialto?’

‘Of course,’ the boatman said and loosened the tasselled tie that held the gondola prow against the wall of the house. He stepped onto the platform in the stern and with one skilful push of the single oar thrust them out of the house and into the teeming water traffic of the Grand Canal.

Freize and Ishraq sat in the middle of the boat and looked around, as their boat nosed through the crowded canal. Hucksters and merchants were on little ships, coming close to every craft and offering their wares, wherries and rowing boats for hire were threading their way through the traffic, great barges carrying beams and stone took the centre of the canal and rowed to the beat of the drum. Freize and Ishraq, the fair, square-faced young man and the brown-skinned, dark-haired girl in their expensive private gondola, drew glances as the gondolier drew up at the Rialto Bridge with a flourish, leaped ashore, and offered his hand to Ishraq.

She drew her hood over her head and her veil across her face as she stepped on the shore. She noticed that there were serving women, and working women, beggars and store keepers, and women in gaudy yellow with heavily painted faces, tottering along on absurdly tall shoes; but there were no gentlewomen or noblewomen on the wide stone square before the bridge, and at all the windows of the trading houses there were severe-looking men in dark suits who seemed to disapprove of a young woman in the square among the businessmen.

‘Where d’you think Father Pietro might be?’ Freize asked, staring around him.

The square was so filled with people, so noisy and so bustling, that Ishraq could only shake her head in wonderment. Someone was charming a snake for a handful of onlookers, the basket rocking from one side to another as he played his pipe, the straw lid starting to lift, only a dark eye showing, and a questing forked tongue. A row of merchants had their table under the shelter of the broad colonnade, and were changing money from one foreign currency to another, the beads on the abacus rattling like castanets as the men calculated the value. Beside the river, a belated fisherman was landing his catch and selling it fresh to a couple of servants. The huge fish market had opened at dawn and already sold out a few hours later. There was a constant swirl of men coming and going from the great trading houses which surrounded the square on all sides. Errand boys with baskets on their heads and under their arms dashed about their business, shoppers crowded the little stores on either side of the high Rialto bridge, traders shouted their wares from the rocking boats at the quayside; every nationality was there, buying, selling, arguing, making money, from the dark-suited German bankers to the gloriously robed traders from the Ottoman Empire, and even beyond.

‘We’ll have to ask someone,’ Ishraq said, quite dazzled by this, the busiest trading centre in the world. ‘He could be next to us, and we wouldn’t know it. He could be two steps away and we would hardly spot him. I’ve never been in such a crowd, I’ve never seen so many people all at once. Not even in Spain!’

‘Like Hell,’ Freize said matter-of-fact. ‘Bound to be crowded.’

Ishraq laughed and turned away from the river to look for someone, a priest or a monk or a friar that she could ask, when she saw the gambler.

The girl had laid out her game on the stone floor of the square, covering one of the white marble slabs with sand, to make a little area where the play could take place. The crowd had gathered around her, three deep. It was the ancient game of cups and ball: Ishraq had seen it played in Spain, and had been told it came from ancient Egypt; she had even seen it at Lucretili Castle when she was a little girl and a troubadour had taken her pocket money off her with the simple trick.

It was three downturned cups with a little ball hidden underneath one of them. The game player moved the cups at dazzling speed, then sat back and invited the onlookers to put down their coins before the cup where they had last seen the ball.

It was the simplest game in the world since everyone knew where the ball was, everyone had watched as the cup was moved. Then the player lifted the cups and
voila
! The ball was not under the one that the crowd had picked. The player lifted another cup and it was under the second one. The player picked up the pennies of the bet, showed the empty cups, showed the little ball – but in this case it was a most beautiful translucent glass marble – put the ball under the cup again, bade the onlookers to watch carefully, and moved the cups around, two or three times, at first very slowly, and then a dozen moves, very fast.

What attracted Ishraq to this game was the game player. She was a girl of about eighteen years old, dressed in a brown gown with a modest hood; her pale intent face was downturned to her work but when she looked up she had dark eyes and a bright smile. She sat back on her heels when she had moved the cups and looked up at the crowd around her with an air of absolute trustworthiness. ‘My lords, ladies, gentlemen . . .’ she said sweetly. ‘Will you bet?’

Nobody looking at her could think for one moment that she had managed some sleight of hand. Not while they were all watching, not in broad daylight. The ball must be where she put it first: under the cup on the right which she had slid to the left, swirled to the centre, back to the right, then there had been some moving of the other cups as a rather obvious diversion, before she had finally moved it again to the centre.

‘It’s in the middle,’ Freize whispered in Ishraq’s ear.

‘I’ll bet you that it isn’t,’ Ishraq said. ‘I was following it, but I lost it.’

‘I watched it all the while! It’s plumb in the middle!’ Freize fumbled with coins and put down a piccoli – a silver penny.

The girl waited for a moment until everyone had put down their bets, most of them, like Freize, favouring the central cup. Then she upturned the cup and showed it: empty. She scooped up all the coins that the gamblers had put down on the stone before the empty cup, and put them in the pocket of her apron, and then showed them the empty cup on the left, and then finally the glass marble beneath the right-hand cup. Nobody had guessed correctly. With a merry smile which encouraged them to try their luck again, she smoothed the sand with her hand, placed the marble under the left-hand cup and swirled the cups around once more.

Ishraq was not watching the cups this time, but observing an older man who was moving among the crowd, standing close to the group of gamblers. He looked like a betting man himself, his gaze was bright and avid, his hat pulled low over his face, his smile pleasant. But he was watching the crowd, not the fast-moving hands of the girl.

‘That’s the shill,’ Ishraq said to Freize.

‘The what?’

‘The shill – her partner. He might distract the crowd at the exact moment that she makes the switch, so that they don’t see where the cup has gone. But I think she’s too good for that. She doesn’t need anyone to distract the gamblers, so all he has to do is watch the crowd and prepare for trouble. Certainly he’ll take the money when she has finished and walk her home.’

Freize hardly glanced up, he was so fixed on the game. ‘This time, I’m certain, I know where the marble is.’

Ishraq laughed and cuffed his bent head. ‘You will lose your money,’ she predicted. ‘This girl is very good. She has very quick hands and excellent poise. She looks at her calmest when her hands are going fastest. And she smiles like an honest child.’

Freize pushed Ishraq’s hand away, confident of his own skill. He put down a second piccoli before the cup on the left and was rewarded with a little gleam from the girl in the brown gown. She lifted the cups. The marble was under the right-hand cup.

‘Well I—’ Freize exclaimed.

Ishraq’s dark eyes smiled at him over her veil. ‘How much money do you have?’ she asked. ‘For they will happily take it all day, if you are fool enough to put it down.’

‘I saw it, I am sure!’ Freize exclaimed. ‘I was completely sure! It was like magic!’

The girl in brown glanced up and winked at him.

‘It’s a clever game, and you are a clever player,’ Freize said to her. ‘Do you ever lose?’

‘Of course,’ she replied with a slight Parisian accent. ‘But mostly, I win. It’s a simple game, good for amusement and for a few pence.’

‘More than a few pence,’ Ishraq observed to herself, looking at the pile of small silver coins that the girl scooped up.

‘Will you try your luck again?’ the girl invited Freize.

‘I will!’ Freize declared. ‘But I cannot bet my lucky penny.’

With great care he took a penny from the breast pocket of his jacket, kissed it, and put it back. The girl laughed at him, her brown eyes twinkling.

‘I hope it works for you this time,’ she said. ‘For it has not done much for you so far.’

‘It will,’ he promised her. ‘And this time, I shan’t take my eyes off you!’

She smiled and showed him the three empty cups. Freize squatted down so that he was opposite her and nodded as she put the marble on the ground and then the central cup on top of it. Watching carefully, he saw she slid it to the right, and then round to the extreme left, she hopped another cup around it and then she took it back out to the left again. There was a dizzying swirl of cups as she slid one and then another and then she was still.

‘Which one?’ she challenged him.

Freize tipped all the small coins from his purse into his hand and put them down before the cup on the left. All the men around him, who had been watching, put their coins down too.

With a little laugh the young woman lifted the left-hand cup. It was empty. She lifted the middle cup, and there was the shining marble stone.

Freize laughed and shook his head. ‘It’s a good game and you outwitted me completely,’ he admitted.

‘It’s a cheat!’ someone said in a hard voice behind him. ‘I have put down the best part of a silver lira and watched for half an hour and I can’t see how it’s done.’

‘That’s what makes it a good game,’ Freize said to him smiling. ‘If you could see how it was done it would be a trick for children. But she’s a bonny lass with the quickest hands I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t see how it was done and I practically had my nose in the cups.’

‘It’s a cheat, and she should be thrown out of the city as a trickster,’ the man said harshly. He looked like a sulky fool in his masquing costume of bright blue, with a dancing cap on his head and a dangling bell which tinkled as he thrust his face forwards. ‘And you’re probably part of the gang.’

‘The gang?’ Freize repeated slowly. ‘What gang would this be?’

‘The gang who are using her to cheat good citizens out of their hard-earned money!’

Freize looked past the angry man to his friends. ‘Best get him home?’ he suggested mildly. ‘Nobody likes a bad loser.’

‘I should report her to the Doge!’ the man insisted, getting louder, his bell jingling as he nodded his head. ‘I have friends in the palace – I know several of the Council of Forty. I can write a denouncement and put it in the box as easily as the next good citizen. The city depends on honest traders! We don’t like cheats in Venice!’