Fools' Gold Read Free Page A

cause of the great wave in Piccolo, we don’t know what makes thunder, we don’t know what makes rainbows. There is so much that we don’t know. And while we don’t know the answer, people think that these strange tricks of nature are carried out by witchcraft or devils or spirits. They frighten themselves into accusing their neighbours, and then it is my job to discover the truth of it. But I can’t give them a simple explanation, for I don’t have a simple explanation. But here – since whoever made these mosaics knew the colours of the rainbow – maybe they knew what caused them too.’
    ‘But why are you interested?’ Isolde pursued. ‘Does it matter what colour the sunset was last night?’
    ‘Yes,’ Ishraq said unexpectedly. ‘It does matter. For the world is filled with mysteries, and only if we ask and study and go on discovering will we ever understand anything.’
    ‘There is nothing to understand, for it has already been explained,’ Brother Peter ruled, speaking with all the authority of the Church. ‘God set a rainbow in the sky as his promise to Man after the Flood . I will set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be the sign of a covenant between me, and between the earth. And when I shall cover the sky with clouds, my bow shall appear in the clouds.’ He looked gravely at the young women. ‘That is all you need to know.’
    He turned his hard stare to Luca. ‘You are an inquirer of a holy Order,’ he reminded the younger man. ‘It is your duty and your task to inquire. But beware that you do not ask about things outside your mission. You are commanded by our lord and by the Holy Father to discover if the end of days is coming. You are not commanded to ask about everything. Some questions are heretical. Some things are not to be explored.’
    There was a silence as Luca absorbed the reproof from the older man.
    ‘I can’t stop myself thinking,’ Luca replied quietly. ‘Perhaps God has given me curiosity.’
    ‘Nobody wants to stop you thinking,’ Brother Peter said as he opened the low door to the mausoleum. ‘But Milord will have made it clear when he hired you, that you are to think only inside the limits of the Church. Some things are not known – like the change of a man into werewolf, like the cause of the terrible flood – and it is right that you hold an inquiry into them. But God has told us the meaning of the rainbow in His Holy Word, we don’t need your thoughts on it.’
    Luca bowed his head but could not stop himself glancing sideways at Ishraq.
    ‘Well I shall go on thinking, whether your Church needs it or not,’ she declared. ‘And the Arab scholars will go on thinking, and the ancient people were clearly thinking too, and the Arab scholars will translate their books.’
    ‘But we are obedient sons of the Church,’ Brother Peter ruled. ‘And actually, what you think – as a young woman and an infidel – does not matter to anyone.’
    He turned and led the way out and they obediently followed him, Isolde lingered in the doorway. ‘It’s so beautiful,’ she said. ‘As if it were a freshly painted fresco, the colours so rich.’
    There was a little pause before Luca came out, and she saw he was putting something in the pocket of his breeches, under the fold of his cape.
    ‘What d’you have there?’ Isolde whispered to him, as Brother Peter led the way back to the inn.
    ‘The chipped piece of glass,’ he said. ‘I want to see if we can make a rainbow with it, anywhere.’
    Gravely, she looked at him. ‘But isn’t it God’s work to make a rainbow? As Brother Peter just said?’
    ‘It’s our work,’ Ishraq corrected her. ‘For we are in this world to understand it. And like Luca, I want to see if we can make a rainbow. And if he is not allowed to do it, then I will try. For my God, unlike yours, has no objection to me asking questions.’

    Freize was waiting for them back at the inn and they mounted up and rode the little way out of Ravenna