Free Fools' Gold by Philippa Gregory Page A

lecture?’ Ishraq was immediately interested.
    ‘At the church there is a priest who studies all things. He is part of the university of Venice, and sometimes he goes to Padua to study there. He was giving a lecture after Sext and Luca waited to hear him. Luca talked to him about the rainbow mosaic in the tomb of Galla Placidia.’
    ‘And what did you do?’
    ‘Brother Peter brought me home. Brother Peter does not believe in women studying.’
    Ishraq made a little irritated gesture. ‘But was Luca impressed with the lecture?’
    ‘Oh yes, he wants to go again. He wants to learn things while he is here. There is a great library inside the Doge’s Palace, and a tradition of scholarship. They have manuscripts from all over the world and a printing workshop which is making books. Not hand-painting them and copying them with a pen and ink, but printing hundreds at a time with some sort of machine.’
    ‘A machine to make books?’
    ‘Yes. It can print a page in a moment.’
    ‘But I suppose neither you nor I can listen to the lectures? Or go to see the books made? All this study is just for men? Though in the Arab world there are women scholars and women teachers?’
    Isolde nodded her head. ‘Brother Peter says that women’s heads do not have the strength for study.’
    ‘ Testa di cazzo ,’ Ishraq said under her breath, and led the way downstairs.
    They found Luca and Brother Peter in the dining room overlooking the Grand Canal. Luca had the shutter on the tall windows closed and had opened one of the laths a tiny crack so that a beam of light was shining onto the piece of glass he had taken from the chapel at Ravenna. He looked up as they came in: ‘I spoke to one of the scholars at San Marco,’ he remarked to Ishraq. ‘He says that before we even think about the rainbow we have to consider how things are seen.’
    Ishraq waited.
    ‘He said that the Arab philosopher Al Kindi believed that we see things because rays are sent out from our eyes and then bounce off things and come back to the eye.’
    ‘Al Kindi?’ she repeated.
    ‘Have you heard of him?’
    ‘When I was studying in Spain,’ she explained. ‘He translated Plato into Arabic.’
    ‘Could I read his work?’ Luca rose up from the table and put down the piece of glass.
    She nodded. ‘He’s been translated into Latin, for certain.’
    ‘You would have to be sure it was not heretical writing,’ Brother Peter pointed out. ‘Coming as it does from the ancient Greeks who knew nothing of Christ, and through an infidel thinker.’
    ‘But everything has been translated from the Greek to the Arabic!’ Luca exclaimed impatiently. ‘Not into Italian, or French or English! And only now is it being translated into Latin.’
    Ishraq showed him a small smug smile. ‘It’s just that the Arabs were studying the world and thinking about mathematics and philosophy when the Italians were—’ She broke off. ‘I don’t even know what they were doing,’ she said. ‘Was there even an Italy?’
    ‘When?’ Isolde asked, pulling out her chair and sitting at the table.
    ‘About 900 AD,’ Ishraq answered her.
    ‘There was the Byzantine empire and the Muslim occupation, there wasn’t really an Italy, I don’t think.’
    Freize helped to carry the dishes down from the kitchen but once the dining room door was shut, he dropped the pretence, and sat down to table with them. Isolde, looking around the table thought that they could very well pass as a loving happy family. The affection between the four young people was very clear, and Brother Peter was like a stern, slightly disapproving, older brother.
    ‘They invented Gorgonzola cheese,’ Freize announced, carving a large ham and passing out slices.
    ‘What?’ Luca choked on a laugh, genuinely surprised.
    ‘They invented Gorgonzola cheese, in the Po Valley,’ Freize said again. ‘I don’t think the Italians were studying the meaning of the rainbow in the year 960. They were making cheese.’ He