‘You want us to lie?’ Brother Peter confirmed, quite horrified at these instructions. ‘Perform a masquerade? Receive forged coins and gamble with them?’

‘Trade?’ Luca asked. ‘Game?’

‘For the greater good,’ Milord said without a flicker of discomfort.

‘Let me make sure that I understand,’ Luca specified. ‘You want us to set ourselves up, lie about who we are, pretend to be people that we are not, so that we attract these gold, probably counterfeit, coins. We become a false thing to attract a false thing.’

‘Inquirer, you know as well as I that two false things probably create a real thing. Go and pretend your way to a truth. See what you see when you are behind a mask.’

Luca and Brother Peter exchanged a look at these extraordinary instructions. But then Luca spoke of his own interest: ‘The infidel lord said that there was a man on the Rialto who might be able to trace my father,’ he said hesitantly. ‘When we go to Venice, I must find him. I will do it at the same time as I look for this gold. I promise I won’t neglect my work for you, but I have to speak with him.’

‘I thought your father was dead?’ Milord asked casually.

‘Disappeared,’ Luca corrected him, as he always corrected everyone. ‘But the infidel lord had a galley slave who said that he had seen my father on a ship commanded by a man named Bayeed.’

‘Probably lying.’

‘Perhaps. But I have to know.’

‘Well, maybe you can buy him back with this mysterious gold,’ the lord said, a smile beneath his hood. ‘Perhaps you can do the work of the Lord at a profit to the church.’

‘We will need funds,’ Brother Peter remarked. ‘It will be expensive, a masque like this.’

‘I have funds for you. The Holy Father himself is pleased with your work. He commanded me to make sure that you have funds for this next inquiry. I will see you both again, after Prime, tomorrow morning. I leave then. Now I would talk with Brother Vero.’ He paused. ‘Alone.’

Peter bowed and went out.

Peter opened the dining room door abruptly on Ishraq and Freize who were outside in the hall. Ishraq, with the empty dinner dishes in her hands, was openly eavesdropping though pretending to be on her way to the kitchen. Freize was apparently on guard.

‘Can I help you?’ Brother Peter asked with weighty sarcasm. ‘Either of you?’

‘Thank you,’ said Ishraq promptly, not at all embarrassed at being caught listening at the door. ‘You’re very kind.’ She handed him the heavy board.

‘And we were hoping to know – where next?’ Freize asked.