Fools' Gold Read Free Page B

alongside the silted-up canal to the port of Classe. The ferry boat was waiting for them at the stone harbour wall; other merchant ships and the famous Venice galleys were tied up alongside.
    ‘But do you have the courage to get on board?’ Ishraq teased Freize, who had not been on board a ship since he had been swept away by a terrible storm.
    ‘If Rufino my horse can do it, then I can do it,’ Freize answered. ‘And he is a horse of rare courage and knowing-ness.’
    Ishraq looked doubtfully at the big skewbald cob, who looked more doltish than knowing. ‘He is?’
    ‘You need to look beyond ordinary appearances,’ Freize counselled her. ‘You look at the horse and you see a big clumsy lump of a thing, but I know that he has courage and fine feelings.’
    ‘Fine feelings?’ Ishraq was smiling. ‘Has he really?’
    ‘Just as you look at me and you see a handsome down-to-earth straightforward sort of ordinary man. But I have hidden depths and surprising skills.’
    ‘You do?’
    ‘I do,’ Freize confirmed. ‘And one of those skills is getting horses on board a boat. You may sit on the quayside and admire me.’
    ‘Thank you,’ Ishraq said, and sat on one of the stone seats let into the harbour wall, as he led all five horses and the little donkey to the wooden gangway which stretched from boat to quay.
    The horses were nervous and pulled away and jibbed, but Freize was soothing and calm with them. Ishraq would not feed his joyous vanity by applauding; but she thought there was something very touching about the way that the square-shouldered young man and the big horses exchanged glances, caresses and little noises, almost as if they were talking to each other, until the animals were reassured and followed him up the gangway to their stalls on the boat.
    There were no other travellers taking the ship that day, and so when the horses were safely loaded, the four travellers took hunks of bread and pots of small ale for breakfast, and followed Freize on board as the master of the ship cast off and set sail.
    It took all day and all night to sail to Venice going before a bitterly cold wind. The girls slept for some of the time in the little cabin below the deck but in the early hours of the morning they came out and went to the front of the ship where the men were standing, wrapped against the cold, waiting for the sky to lighten. Ishraq’s attention was taken by a small sleek craft coming towards them on a collision course, moving fast in the dark water, a black silhouette against the dark waves.
    ‘Hi! Boatman!’ she called over her shoulder to the captain of the boat who was at the rudder in the stern of the boat. ‘D’you see that galley? It’s heading straight for us!’
    ‘Drop the sail!’ the man bellowed at his son, who scurried forward and slackened the ropes and dropped the mainsail.
    ‘Here! I’ll help,’ Freize said going back to haul the sail down. ‘What’s he doing, coming at us so fast?’
    The two girls, Brother Peter and Luca watched, as the galley, speeding towards them, powered by rowers hauling on their oars to the beat of a drum, came closer and closer.
    ‘A galley should give way to a vessel with sails,’ Brother Peter remarked uneasily. ‘What are they doing? They look as if they want to ram us!’
    ‘It’s an attack!’ Luca suddenly decided. ‘It can’t be an accident! Who are they?’
    Brother Peter, squinting into the half-darkness, exclaimed: ‘I can’t see the standard. They’re showing no light. Whose boat is it?’
    ‘Freize!’ Luca shouted, turning to the deck and grabbing a boathook as the only weapon to hand. ‘Beware boarders!’
    ‘Get the sail back up!’ Brother Peter shouted.
    ‘We can’t outsail them,’ Ishraq warned.
    A galley with a well-trained rowing crew could travel much faster than the lumbering ship. Ishraq looked around for a weapon, for somewhere that they could hide. But it was a little boat with only the stalls for the horses on