Fools' Gold by Philippa Gregory Page A

creating headdresses for her and Ishraq.’
    ‘I need a bowl from the kitchen!’
    ‘Pewter?’ Freize asked, preparing to go on, up the narrow stairs to the attic.
    ‘No! No! Earthenware!’
    ‘Earthenware he says,’ Freize complained to himself. They could hear his footsteps going the long way up to the kitchen and then coming back down. ‘Earthenware, as you asked,’ he said, peering curiously into the room.
    ‘And now go away,’ Luca said hard-heartedly, though it was clear that Freize was aching to join in. To Ishraq he said: ‘Now what?’
    ‘You have to break it. We need a smashed piece of earthenware.’
    Luca slammed the bowl against the edge of the table, and it shattered into a hundred pieces.
    ‘Oh fine, just break it!’ came Freize’s voice from behind the closed door. ‘Don’t worry about it, for a moment. Shall I fetch another for your lordship?’
    ‘And take a piece and scratch the gold with it,’ Ishraq translated. ‘A black scratch means the gold is not real but a gold scratch shows the metal is true.’
    Luca drew the earthenware shard across the face of the gold noble. ‘It’s good,’ he said tersely. He pressed down hard and then looked again. ‘Definitely good.’
    ‘Now we have to saw it in half.’
    He raised his eyebrows at the thought of damaging the coin. ‘I’ll saw one of the quarter nobles,’ he said. ‘I won’t touch the full noble.’
    She shook her head. ‘Oh for heaven’s sake! Saw one of each: a noble and a half noble and a quarter noble. Go on, Luca. It’s not as if it’s your money. Milord is paying for all of this.’
    ‘You have expensive ideas,’ he complained. ‘If you had been brought up as a farmer’s son like me you would not willingly be sawing coins in half.’
    She laughed at him, and he did as she requested and soon the coins lay halved on the bench before them.
    ‘Are they the same colour all the way through?’
    Luca picked up a magnifying glass and scrutinised the coins. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There’s no skin on any of them, nor any trace of a different colour inside. They’re yellow all the way through, like pure gold.’
    ‘So now, it’s the last test: we have to weigh the coins,’ she said. ‘Weigh them very accurately.’
    Luca paused. ‘All right. What weight should they be?’
    ‘A full noble is 108 grains,’ Ishraq said scowling at the manuscript, trying to understand the symbols. ‘It says that density is equal to mass divided by volume.’
    ‘Hang on a minute,’ Luca said. ‘Say that again.’
    ‘Density is equal to mass divided by volume,’ she repeated. ‘The test is to weigh pure gold and then weigh the test gold to find the mass. Then the second test is to put it in water and see how much the water level rises. That gives the volume.’
    ‘Mass,’ Luca repeated. ‘Volume.’ Ishraq thought that he looked for a moment like a troubadour when he sings a particularly beautiful song. The words, which made no sense to her, were like poetry to him. ‘Density.’
    ‘It says here that we are to take a piece of pure gold and then put it in a measured jug of water and see how much the water rises. Then we do the same with the same weight of our test gold. Gold which has been mixed with other lighter metals will move more water. Gold that is pure is more dense – it will displace less water.’ She broke off. ‘You know, I’m reading the words but I feel like a fool. I don’t understand what we are to do. Do you understand what is meant?’
    Luca looked transported. ‘Density is equal to mass divided by volume,’ he said quietly. ‘I do see. I do see.’
    He did not bother to shout for Freize but ran up to the kitchen himself and came back down with a clear glass of water. ‘We’ll have to go out to a goldsmith and buy some pure gold,’ he muttered.
    ‘What for?’
    ‘So that I know how dense pure gold is. So that I know how much the water rises. So that I can compare it with the coins.’
    ‘Oh! I