The King's Diamond (19 page)

‘Tell me,' I said to her.

She turned on me, a frown gathering on her forehead. ‘Why should I tell you?'

‘Because you love me.'

She shook her head slowly, comically sympathetic. In exasperation I reached into my bag of comfits and flicked one at her forehead. She let out a cry. ‘Oh! Mr Richard!' But even as she spoke she dropped her mask over her face, dipped her own hand into a bag and pelted me in return. We flung the small, hard sweets at each other wildly. Hannah ducked away from me, laughing, and I ran after her down a side street. Ahead I could see the glitter of the river in the lights of the torches that moved everywhere, carried by the masquers. I had nearly caught her up, and I made a grab for her cloak, when suddenly we were hit by a stinging hail of comfits. Hannah stopped with a shriek and covered her head with her hands.

A voice came from the shadows over the street. ‘Messer Dansey?'

I turned in anger. ‘Who is there?'

A group of men approached in masks with hooked beaks like eagles, and feathers sprouting from their heads. ‘Don't you know me?'

‘A filthy old chicken like you must be Benvenuto Cellini.'

‘Of course. Look after your lady, Messer Richard!'

He reached into his bag and began pelting us afresh. Hannah ran, and I after her. We took shelter behind a low wall. The goldsmith
and his four friends were casting about along the riverside, looking for us. I heard the voice of Francesco Berni, the satirical poet, among them. ‘Sing, my muse, the beard of Messer Dansey; not large, perhaps, but finely curled, and fancy. Where is that Englishman?'

I looked at Hannah. She was out of breath, her mask raised on to her forehead.

‘Ready?' I whispered. Hannah nodded. Together we stood up and began pelting Cellini and the others with rapid accuracy. Cursing us, they ran off up the street. We slumped behind the wall, laughing. When our laughter died away we remained there. I gazed at her, wondering. Soon I would discover all the bewitchments of her secrets; not just that name I so badly needed, but the dreams and the longings, the hidden things that drove her. She looked back at me, and for once her eyes were thoughtful and calm.

‘Dear Hannah, all my success is for you. You know my ambitions. Wealth, renown, the favour of the King. But I no longer want them only for myself. Together we can take King Henry's Court in our hands, and have our triumph. I took a great risk, coming to Italy after gems without full knowledge of the person they are for. If you tell me now, while Cellini is at work, I can have him craft works that will go right to her heart. Please, Mrs Hannah. Tell me the name of the King's mistress.'

She looked down. My speech had surprised her, and for a moment she looked shy: almost innocent. I waited several heartbeats. Then she lifted her eyes to me again, and they were sparkling with mischief. She laughed and clapped her hands.

‘I know what we will do! We shall play cards for it.'

‘Cards?'

‘Yes.' She jumped to her feet. That wild smile was back. ‘Tomorrow, on the last day of the Carnival: Martedì Grasso, when everyone is at the height of madness. What could be better?'

I had a morbid distrust of cards. They were thieves and deceivers.
And as for Hannah, though I desired her, I trusted her less than any person I could name.

I stood up and faced her. ‘What card game?'

She smiled at me, swinging her body from the hips, her hands behind her back. ‘One of my choosing.'

Still I said nothing.

‘Don't be so afraid!' she coaxed me. ‘There's no pleasure in life without a little spice of danger.'

‘If I win, you will tell me?'

She went on smiling, her body swinging, swinging. ‘Yes,' she said. ‘I will tell you.'

I hesitated. Like a swordsman who was almost beaten, I stood cautiously in the position of the guard. I could not read her different moves, her feints, her thrusts. But I had to have that name.

‘Then I accept.'

Hannah ran a few steps away from me along the river, then turned, looking back at me. ‘Only watch out you do not lose. For if you do, Richard Dansey, merchant of London, then God help you.'

She placed the golden cat-mask back over her face, turned away and was gone.

I lay that night in my bed at the inn unsleeping. I could not guess why Hannah was playing this game with me. Just as with Mr Stephen, there was more at stake than met the eye. What did she really feel for me? I felt over and over again the touch of that kiss; but each time it was different, now passionate, now mocking, now hot, now cold. Like the diamond that had teased me so in Venice. Hannah had come looking for me, after the horse race. Surely that must mean she wanted me just as much as I did her. But with her, nothing was certain. In irritation I threw back the coverlet, lit a candle and took out my book of Petrarch, most elegant of poets, whose verse is the finishing gloss of the courtier. With the bells striking midnight outside, I began to leaf through it. And I found that Ippolita had presented me with a monster. Beautiful verse, yes: but this was a poet of mad and hopeless passion, a man who burns and freezes, who loathes life, who wanders like a storm-racked ship guided by no stars, through the night, in a maze, blind, frightened, shamed, fed by love and destroyed by it. I would never let that happen to me.

I threw the book away. There was no question of sleep. I thought ahead to my meeting with Hannah next day. She had challenged
me; and I was pitifully ill-prepared. I shook Martin until he woke up.

‘Get out the cards, and teach me everything you know.'

He yawned and stared in amazement, then took out his battered pack, grumbling. Up until now I had kept well clear of cards. I had a horror of becoming sucked in, the way I had seen happen to others, until, as the poet Berni said, I would not care if I gambled away my eyes, or wagered my own blood, one pint at a time. Martin, on the other hand, was a demon player, and had turned cards into a profitable side-venture. I had the rest of the night in which to learn.

And so we began. Primiera was the game. I was convinced that this would be Hannah's choice. All Venice and Rome were obsessed by it. It was a true courtier's game, more taxing to the mind than chess, so they said; devious, subtle, full of bluffs, feints and swift overthrows. For the first hour I lost. Then luck and skill began to run my way, and I slowly regained almost to the point of breaking even. When the bells all round Rome struck three in the morning, Martin yawned. ‘Well, master? You're a quick learner, I'll grant you that. Have we done enough?'

But I was not content. ‘What other games might she choose?'

Martin blinked blearily. ‘Well, there's gleek, and maw, and noddy, and picardy, and gagne-perde, and ruff and honours, and cent …'

‘Teach me them.'

Martin shook his head in weariness and dealt the cards. It was the very deadest part of the night, silent out in the city, and cold. Martin, though half-asleep, played by instinct and long years of practice. I began to lose steadily. By the time dawn showed through the shutters, I no longer knew whether the six of swords in my hand was worth eighteen points and should be matched with a seven and an ace in primiera, or whether it was Tumbler in gleek and beat Towser, or with another six made four in noddy; and whether it should be thrown away, or hidden, or turned into trump. Our game passed insensibly into nightmare, and I saw Hannah standing over me,
throwing down bizarre cards that held no meaning, her smile breaking into a peal of excited laughter.

I opened my eyes slowly. My head was resting on the hard board of the table. The shuttered windows let in piercing glints of daylight. I lifted my head painfully. Across from me Martin was slumped back in a rush-seated chair like my own, snoring. I shook his arm to wake him.

‘What? What? I'll vie the ruff.'

‘We're finished,' I told him. ‘What's the reckoning?'

Martin blinked, and peered at the row of chalk marks on the edge of the table. ‘You owe me two hundred and ninety-six baiocchi.'

I frowned, and rapped the table in irritation. A baiocco was a slim silver coin, worth roughly the same as one of our tiny English silver halfpennies. At a hundred and nine baiocchi to the Papal ducat, I had lost nearly three pieces of gold. Martin accepted the money from my purse with a satisfied gleam in his eye: to him, this was several months' pay. The gold to me was nothing. I could afford to lose it; but Hannah's secrets I could not. Martin stretched, and stamped off downstairs to fetch my morning dish of frumenty, wheat boiled in milk with cinnamon, and a fresh jug of wine.

‘Another game, master?'

I shook my head. Confidence and decision would serve me better than six more hours' fretful practice. ‘It is high time we went to visit the stones.'

After breakfast we set off. It was a bright day, though cold. I took a roundabout route, walking to clear my head, past the Apostolic Chancellery and down on to the Via Giulia. The streets were strangely deserted. Just beyond the church of Saint Eligius, where the quarter of the goldsmiths begins, I passed a group of soldiers in puffed jerkins with blue and red feathers in their hats. They carried harquebuses, and they were clustered around the doorway to a house. With them were six or seven men with axes and two-handled hammers. A shopkeeper was arguing with the soldiers, and two of
them pushed him back inside with the butt ends of their weapons. I saw the workmen wrench the door off its hinges and throw it down in the street. The soldiers pushed their way into the house, and soon there was the sound of furniture being thrown down and smashing earthenware. I slowed down, peering sideways for a better look, but Martin pulled my arm.

‘Keep walking, master.'

Further along we passed other openings without doors, and three more troops of soldiers. We saw the swing of the axes and hammers, and frightened faces that appeared at windows or balconies and then ducked back inside. We hurried on and slipped into the shop of Cellini. The goldsmith looked up at me with a serious air as I walked over and sat down on my usual stool. I said, ‘What is going on?'

Cellini let the polishing wheel slow to a stop and looked up.

‘War, my friend, war. The Imperials are moving south. There are new proclamations out: all foreigners must register their weapons, all stores of grain are to be declared and recorded, and those suspected of leaning towards the Emperor will have their doors taken off their hinges, so that their houses can be searched whenever the authorities please. And this district –' he nodded down towards the Banchi and the Via Giulia ‘– has a great many Florentines.'

‘But Florence is allied to the Pope.'

Cellini gave me an impatient look. ‘Let me explain it to you. Until four years ago, Florence was ruled in person by Giulio de' Medici. Then he became Pope: our present Holy Father, Clement VII. He left Florence in the hands of his relations, Cardinal Cibo among them.' He nodded in the direction of the candlestick. ‘Yes, my generous employer. Now, of Florentines there are two sorts: friends of the Medici, who are pretty few and growing fewer, and the rest of the city who would like to see the Emperor come and kick the Pope and all his family into the sea.'

I accepted the wine that Paulino set down on the workbench. My head was pounding after last night. ‘Then, in God's name, what
are you doing sitting there? The soldiers will be here at any moment.'

Cellini laughed. ‘They know not to come here. His Holiness and Cardinal Cibo value my services. No, I am a Medici man, like my father. Long live black Alessandro and whoremaster Ippolito! Down with the Republic!'

He bent once more over the polishing wheel, and I sat down to watch, my mind spinning through dreams of cups and swords and trumps, the gem's fire, Hannah's kiss. Benvenuto had already broadened the chrysoprase's principal face to his liking. He was working on the lesser facets around it, that juggle the light and deflect it down, down into the stone's heart, until, meeting the underside, illumination is sent rebounding up again and out. With every cut my excitement quickened.

At last he lifted up the chrysoprase in triumph. It was fully cut. The play of light through it was exquisite. It was paler than an emerald and faintly milky, like a misted morning with the sun shining strong and diffused; so that instead of sending out sparks and flashes the way a hard gemstone does, it possessed an eerie green glow that seemed to light the stone from the inside, with shafts of gold cutting through it. When you turned the stone it became unstable, fickle, beyond any man's guessing. I looked on it for long minutes, and put it down at last with a shiver of pleasure.

I said, ‘Will you set it now?'

Cellini shook his head. ‘First I must fire the enamels. And before that I must pound them. But not yet.' He stretched, and pointed up at the ray of sun slanting into the shop through the window. ‘It is time we made further plans. Well, out with your stones, quick, quick. We cannot count on light like this every day, not at this season of the year.'

Paulino spread a white cloth. I pulled the casket out and unlocked it, and once again we arranged the stones in a line where the early spring sun could fall on them, making them dart out their various
shades in long streams of vermilion, sea-green or gold. For all my absorption with Hannah, I thrilled to see them. Benvenuto crouched down to be on a level with them, then lifted each in turn. He sighed. I too was gazing on them, nudging them with my finger into patterns. I drew aside the balasses. There were seven of them, uncut. They had a fair share of the blood-red and purple of rubies, though they were paler and more dilute. But they were strong, striking stones nevertheless, and of outstanding size; some of them as large as hazelnuts. To assemble rubies of that weight would have cost tens of thousands of crowns. I put them together until they formed the shape of a heart, and dropped some garnets into the gaps. They glowed with a deeper purple fire, making the heart appear swollen with blood. I formed a crack between the stones, and into it I slid the white sapphire. Cellini opened his eyes and leant forward.

‘Good: your heart, I like. And the dart piercing it to its centre: it is an old conceit, but a good one. But not the sapphire. It is too tame. No, that will not do.'

He was right. The sapphire's gentle, milky sheen made it no fit symbol for the violent shock of love. I longed more than ever for the diamond I had lost in Venice, the diamond of the Old Rock, with its chill, blue glints and secret heart: noble, beautiful, exquisite. Like Hannah. No, without that diamond the heart and thorn must remain an unrealised dream. The ray of sun slid slowly up the bench. We pulled the cloth along. Soon the light would be gone for the day, and we would have learnt nothing new about the secrets of my stones. We both drank. As the sunlight spilled off the end of the bench it settled for a last moment on the opals. They flared all at once with every conceivable colour. They were mad, fickle, dangerous. I began to pace up and down, excited. I was seeing visions. Cellini turned to watch me.

I said, ‘Consider this. The King has given his lady the brooch with the ship on it. He has declared himself: his love is a madness, an obsession. He is driven on, over winter seas, following her eyes as if
they were stars. She accepts the gift. She wears it. She is on the point of surrender. But she is afraid.' I darted back to the workbench, arranged the opals in a line and then joined two more on each side, forming a cross.

Cellini frowned. ‘A cross? Are you mad? As a love-gift from a man setting out to commit adultery?'

‘No,' I said. ‘It is perfect. Do you not see? The cross is a promise: just the promise she will want King Henry to make. It will say to her, “You can trust me. I am a man of honour and religion.” So a cross: but a cross set with opals, the most fickle and devious of stones. Because she is also a lover of danger. They will say to her: “This is humanity. This is you, and this is me. Beautiful, fallible, passionate.”'

Cellini shook his head. ‘You really are mad. You do not even know this lady.'

I walked over to the window. By God, I would know her soon enough. In the meantime, there were a few things at least I could see. I said, ‘If she listens to the King's courting for more than a minute, then she surely loves danger. And believe me, she must be afraid.'

The goldsmith stretched and scratched his beard. ‘Hm! An opal cross. I have never seen or heard of such a thing. The symbol of Salvation done in the stones of witchery and sin. It is a true piece of wickedness.' He leant over the opals and smiled. ‘Messer Richard, you are a man greatly to my liking. We shall do it. Only do not let the Pope or his cardinals see it. I do not think they would approve of your theology.'

I clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Hurry and finish those enamels. There is still a lot of work before us.'

I led Martin back out into the street. It was just past noon. Together we walked back along the Via Monserrato and turned into the little square where the Palazzo del Bene nestled in a corner as if waiting for me. Its stucco, which before had seemed so drab a yellow, today flamed almost blood-red in the sun. I let Martin rap on the door, and when Alessandro's chamberlain opened it, stepped inside.

It was plain at once that something out of the ordinary was taking place. The usual cluster of servants in the spacious vestibule was swelled by six or so men in scarlet carrying halberds. My first thought was that Alessandro had somehow fallen foul of the authorities. But these halberdiers were not the rough soldiers I had seen on the Via Giulia. They were the guards of a very important personage, and with them was a pair of monks each bearing a silver cross on a pole some eight feet long, which indicated that the visitor was a great churchman.

At the head of the stairs Mrs Grace came out from the sala where we had dined two days ago, smiled her perfect smile and kissed me on the cheek.

‘Mr Richard! How very fortunate.'

I returned her kiss with a little extra warmth. The closer I drew to Mrs Grace, it seemed to me, the closer I drew to Hannah.

I heard distant voices and girls' laughter. ‘I would not have troubled you,' I assured her, ‘if I had known you had an important guest.'