The King's Diamond (14 page)

We turned into the lane, narrow and sunless, with buildings towering five storeys high on both sides. Arched doorways lined the street, cramped shops with a single barred window each. The place did indeed stink of piss. I stopped beneath a weathered coat of arms, its design long since disappeared. There was no shop sign; nothing to indicate that a goldsmith worked within. I knocked at the door, and when there was no answer I went in. For a few moments I stood still and stared round me in bewilderment. It seemed to me as if I had blundered into some kind of abandoned lumber room by mistake. The walls were lined with shelves, and these were stuffed with wooden boxes and untidy stacks of papers. In between I saw ends of green or crimson silk, slabs of dark brown wax, a bundle of
chisels tied up in string, earthenware pots whose lips were daubed with paint, vials and bottles innumerable and gleaming offcuts of brass and lead, a dish of sulphur and a pile of yellow tallow candles. Beneath the shelves ran a workbench that was similarly loaded with bits of wood and rolls of papers, with here and there a dirty wine cup or two and a glazed dish with some scraps of chicken and bread. On the floor lay a spaniel, asleep, and beside it stood a harquebus and powder horn. Lying on a table next to that was a lute, its round back uppermost, covering a pile of sheet music. I stepped deeper into this marvellous and surprising chamber. Further in, rising up from the midst of the debris, was a figure that made me start back in shock. It was carved out of wood, some three feet tall, and depicted a naked youth with a vicious short-sword in his right hand, while in his left he held up a woman's head. The flow of blood from the severed neck so arrested me that I stood for some moments staring, while Martin shifted behind me and coughed.

From beyond the figure there was a movement, and I saw a man there, sitting at the bench by an elaborate wooden candelabrum and peering at me. He looked to be in his late twenties; he had a bristling black beard, and was scowling from beneath heavy eyebrows.

‘Who are you, and what in the Devil's name do you want?'

He spoke in the rolling accent of Florence, which they say is the purest tongue of all Italy. I took a few steps further into the room. I saw clear signs that I was, after all, in a goldsmith's shop: there was the furnace in the far corner, burning with a throaty purr; the crucibles standing beside it and a bucket of charcoal; the ironbound chest; and, on the workbench in front of the man, the slender anvil like a cobbler's last, the fine knives, hammers and drills, and several curling sheets of gold that had been cut into different shapes. But there was none of the boastful display that I had seen in so many dozens of shops before: no trays of medals or racks of rings, no white cloths with pretty stones and trinkets set out teasingly to seduce one to buy. I picked up a small wax figure of Narcissus, gazing lovingly at
his reflection, and I glanced at a drawing of Jupiter wielding a thunderbolt, roughly sketched out in charcoal; a Hercules binding three-headed Cerberus, who raged and foamed at every mouth; then a design for a brooch in the form of a lily, set with diamonds and enamels. They had the same spirit and life as my Madonna and Child. It was as if the very next moment they would leap into motion, Jupiter would hurl his thunder, Cerberus would snap, the lily shiver in a breeze. This was the workshop of a visionary, an artist who despised appearances, and let wine and chicken bones and divine inspiration mingle together in equality.

I said, ‘I am looking for Messer Benvenuto Cellini.'

‘You have found me,' said the man. He put down the file he had been holding in one hand. ‘Well? Have you come to buy?'

‘I have come,' I said, ‘to put you to work. I have some stones that are calling out for you to cut and set them.'

He turned the wooden candelabrum a few degrees to the left and held up a cone of beaten gold against it. I saw that the candelabra had scrolling leaves running up it, and deer leaping from among the foliage, all cut in relief. This was the model for a masterwork in gold.

‘When?'

‘At once. I must leave Rome again as soon as may be.'

‘Impossible. Entirely impossible.'

‘That I will not believe.'

He did not look up. ‘I have work enough for three months, maybe more.' He tapped the model with his file. ‘This candelabrum is for Cardinal Cibo, the Pope's cousin. After that I have a ewer to make for the Apostolic Datary. You see, you have wandered into the wrong shop, my boy. What is it, a ring? Setting stones is childs' work. There are three or four little places down the street that will see to your needs. Now, if you will kindly step out of my light? And leave?'

I walked up to the workbench, leant on it with one hand and tapped the medal on my hat with the other. ‘Do you recognise this?'

He glanced up, and then put down his file and peered at it more closely. ‘By God, I believe I do. I made that medal for the Bishop of Grosseto, over a year ago. The swine, to part with it. Did he give you it?'

‘I bought it.'

‘Doubly a swine. How much did you pay?'

‘Eighty Genoese ducats.'

‘Hm! I see I shall have to put up my prices. And you travelled to Rome to find me? What are you? Venetian?'

I could see I had flattered him; and his mistaking me for a Venetian flattered me in turn.

‘No. I am English. My name is Richard Dansey, of London. And I think when you have seen my stones you may change your mind.'

‘Well, I shall run my eyes over them.' He stood up. ‘Paulino!'

A boy came in, of perhaps sixteen or seventeen years old. He had curling black hair and a finely cut face, and bore a striking resemblance both to the wooden youth holding the severed head and the wax Narcissus. His face wore an expression of deep and classical melancholy.

‘Bring us some wine – the Florentine. Oh, and Paulino, be a delightful boy and fetch us some of those candied figs.'

Cellini cleared a space on the workbench by the gory statue of the youth. I saw that beneath his feet the figure was trampling on the headless body of a woman. Runnels of blood spurted from the stump of her neck above perfectly rendered breasts. The severed head which the youth held up was wreathed in snakes.

‘Perseus,' said the goldsmith, indicating the figure, ‘slaying the Gorgon Medusa. I hope to fashion it one day, in marble or in bronze, if a patron will pay me. They say the blood from the Gorgon's head, as it dripped on the ground, gave birth to Pegasus, who made the spring of the Muses flow. I like to think that Medusa's blood falling on my work gives it an extra fire.'

Paulino came back in with a stubby bottle and a couple of glasses, and a plate of dried, sugared figs. Then he sank silently down on a stool near the furnace and watched us with his heavy eyelids half-closed. Martin sat some distance away and folded his arms.

‘Now,' said Cellini, ‘let's have a look at these stones. But I promise you nothing. Paulino: light.' The boy came languidly forward, set five candles in the sockets of the exquisitely carved candelabrum and lit them. Then he took a fig from the plate and went back to his place.

I loosened my shirt and pulled the casket out round my neck. Then I set it down beside the wine and unlocked it. I would have only one chance to make an impression. I lifted out first the pair of emeralds and set them side by side, the one shimmering, pale like a meadow, the other opaque, taunting us with its sullenness, yet harbouring a secret gleam somewhere out of sight. Cellini darted forward, then drew back, his eyes fixed on both stones. I saw that I had his attention. I laid out next the four cut diamonds I had bought from the Jew; and after that the amethysts, dark as wine after the rushing water of the diamonds. I followed the amethysts with the fiendish yellow of the jacinths; then the garnets and the balasses with their deeper flame, the golden chrysoprase and the white sapphire. I glanced at the goldsmith's face. He gazed, unblinking, still with the air of a judge who was listening to the witnesses and had not yet made up his mind. Next was da Crema's majestic ruby, wine-red and lustrous, at which Cellini sat up and let out an ‘Aha!' Paulino and even Martin leant forward to see. After it came the sparkling cats' eyes, and then in a row the bewitching colours of the opals. Cellini squatted down on the floor so that his eyes were on a level with the workbench. ‘Yes, yes, yes,' he murmured, as he gazed into the opals' hearts. He had the air of a huntsman, or a swordsman sizing up his adversary, searching for a line of attack. I almost had him. There were few stones left in the casket. I prayed that they would be enough. The clouded sapphires were next; things of little worth, but of a fine
colour, and a few stones that I had bought on the ship in the mist and liked, but had never been able to name. Cellini raised his eyebrows and nodded, as if appreciating the eccentricity of my taste. Last of all I set down in a row Ippolita's seven pearls, and closed the lid of the casket with a snap.

‘Holy Mother of God,' Cellini murmured. ‘My friend, you do need me. And who is to have these marvels?'

‘They are for a great king: to give to the lady he loves in secret.'

The goldsmith took a sip of wine and moved round the stones, nudging one with a finger, darting to one side and drawing suddenly back. I watched him, breathless. Suddenly he said, ‘Your pearls have been to China.'

‘China? I took them for Persian, from the Strait of Ormuz.'

‘In origin, perhaps. But look at how they have been drilled.' He lifted one up. ‘Across the base, not through the centre.'

‘I know. Well?'

‘No European would drill a pearl in that fashion. It would render it useless for the purpose we most prize, stringing them in ropes round the neck. The Chinese do not wear their pearls like that.'

‘No?'

‘They sew them upon their clothing. I have seen them. Oh yes, all wonders come to Rome. Now, I'm no friend of pearls. Fish bones, that's all they are. They do not last like stones. Women pay thousands of crowns for them, only to see them turn old and blind, and wear away into the shape of a barrel. But these: these are not common. We shall find a use for them.'

A wave of exhilaration swept over me. So, I thought: I had him. But I kept silent, in case the fish was not thoroughly hooked. He continued to circle the gems, and then swooped on a pale stone which had been among the collection I bought on the ship out in the mist. He lifted it up. It was almost without colour, a swirling, livid thing like a lightly overcast sky at sunrise. It fascinated me; I had never seen anything like it, and could not give it either a price or a
name. This stone Cellini turned in his fingers in front of the candle flames.

‘Of course, you know what you have there? That is a ruby.'

‘A ruby!'

‘A white ruby. Have you never heard of such a thing? Most white rubies have no value at all. They are as grey and dull as filthy bathwater. The only way you would know them for rubies is by their hardness. But this is of a very different order. Have you held it in the dark? I promise you, it will shine.'

He handed it to me. True enough, it was a wonder the way the light caught and flowed over its surfaces. I had gazed into it on many a night. But the steely sheen of this stone only made me long for the cool waters of that diamond: the diamond I had held so briefly in that cramped room in the silk-dyers' quarter of Venice. There was not a day went by when I did not think of it. I put the white ruby down and sighed. I said, ‘If you could only have seen the stone I let slip.'

He looked up at me with a sideways smile. ‘The one that got away – is that it? I would like to know what could beat these.'

‘It was a diamond: a diamond of the Old Rock of Golconda. Do you know that kind of stone?'

Cellini's face turned serious. ‘I know it.' He brooded for a moment. Both of us knew how the stones on the table before us would have longed for that diamond as a companion. Then he clapped me on the back and laughed. ‘Regrets, regrets! What you have here is quite enough. The Cardinal's candlestick can wait.'

And so we began. All that day and the next morning Cellini and I remained at his workbench with the stones set out, gazing at them. I sat through this in impatience. ‘Great works do not begin rashly,' Cellini said. ‘Believe me, we are not wasting our time.' He lifted up one of the opals. It flashed with different shades, now amber, now sea-green, now dark as wine. He shook his head and sighed, and instead picked up a sapphire. ‘What colour are the lady's eyes?'

I looked down. I hated to confess my ignorance. But I could not afford to lie. ‘That I do not know.'

Cellini put the stone down on the bench and looked at me in indignation. ‘Not know! How can you not know?'

‘If I had waited to find out, I would still be in England,' I retorted. ‘Even now, few men even know that our King is in love. My chance of success lies in speed.'

Cellini waved his arms in exasperation and walked round the bench.

‘But do you understand nothing? How infinitely diverse are women? Consider this ruby. Suppose I set it in a cross to hang about the neck. Will it sit in splendour like a cathedral on a plain, or will it be pinched and shaded between two mountains? And these pearls, suppose we make a rope of them: though the way they have been drilled makes that nigh impossible. Will they hang straight like a long cascade, or tumble, as it were, and break their fall against rocks? And what colour is her hair? And her skin? Does she blush? Does she wear paint? You tell me you know none of these things! Santa Maria Vergine!'

‘I know all that. And so what are you telling me? That I should give up? I know very well what risks I am taking. You must compensate for my ignorance with your art.'

Cellini sat down on his stool again and pushed the stones aside in annoyance. ‘Supposing the fine Signor with the Venetian accent tells me what his own ideas are for his stones.'

My ideas. Night by night, notions and fantasies had woven themselves round the stones as I held them up to the candle, though to that moment they had refused to settle into definite forms. I lifted out one of the clouded sapphires. Its blue was exceptional, pale and lucid; but over its surface forking down into its depths ran blemishes, mists, blurs. To cut these out would mean leaving little behind. I put it back down with the others, and set them out in a line. There were eleven of them. I said, without even realising it, ‘The sea.'