The King's Diamond (28 page)

I put the letter down and let out a long breath. At last I had it. A name, and with it a face. In my mind I saw Anne Boleyn, wearing on her bosom my opal cross, or my ship, or my green diamond idyll. No beauty, Bennet said, but her wit quick: so much the better. She would appreciate my treasures, and take their beauties for her own.

But the second part of the letter hit me hard. It was what I had suspected for many weeks: Stephen was the man in Rome. I had not written to Bennet since meeting the Cages, and my disloyalty pressed on me with a weight of guilt. If I did not tread carefully I would soon lose my uncle's trust, and I feared what harm might come to me if Cardinal Wolsey came to count me as one of his enemies. But that was just one more risk I would have to take. My new loyalty pulled stronger, and Bennet's own letter confirmed I was right to stick close to the Cages. Stephen was one of the Boleyns, the faction that counted on Anne's place in the King's favour to secure their own fortunes. I was one of that faction now too. I must do Stephen Cage all the good turns I could, and put him firmly in my debt. That was my surest way to Court, as well as to the girl I loved. But my uncle's suspicions and warnings still nagged at me. Just what was Mr Stephen doing here?

I repeated the letter to Martin, and he whistled. ‘You're playing a dangerous game, master, when you don't know who's who, or who makes the rules. Get yourself out of these courtiers' snares, and for God's sake let us go home.'

‘What, when I've just learnt the name of the lady? And who would cut our diamond? No. Not yet, my Martin. Not yet.'

 

The next day, Saturday, the fourth of May, I set off as usual for Cellini's workshop. As I came down towards the river I heard the ringing of bells from Saint Peter's, and from Santa Maria del Popolo to the north, and soon from all round. Benvenuto came out and we stood together, listening, looking out across the Tiber, which surged with a swift, brown flow.

I said, ‘What do you think it is?'

‘Suppose we find out.'

We set off together across the Bridge of Sant' Angelo and up into the Borgo. Here there was a great streaming together of people, running out from the houses to see what was wrong. Through the
crowds groups of soldiers were pushing towards the city walls: the few remaining detachments of Swiss and the citizen militia that had been mobilised by Pope Clement's general, Renzo da Ceri. Near Cardinal Campeggio's palazzo we climbed a stone stair to the ramparts, past men toiling up with casks of gunpowder to the cannon on the towers. From here we looked out over the marshy valley known as the Vale of Hell. Before us was an army. Its bands stretched out, miles long it seemed, to left and right. Banners waved over the different divisions; there were the clustered pikes, the longer straggle of the harquebusiers, the horsemen, and behind them the scores and scores of wagons with their canvas covers. The din of hoofs and the clatter of harness and armour were audible even here. The men around us looked out at the sight, frightened and amazed, and I too was shaken. I knew for a fact this army had been at Florence, a hundred and fifty miles away, only a week ago.

Cellini said, ‘I must see Alessandro.'

As we walked back through the city we saw bands of servants and artisans being herded into companies and issued with weapons. They had a shambling, half-hearted appearance. In the goldsmiths' district, Cellini stopped with this acquaintance and that, and we heard snatches of rumour. No one seemed too much bothered.

‘The walls will defend us.'

‘How do we know that army is Bourbon's? Most likely it belongs to the League.'

‘They say the Imperials are dying of hunger.'

‘They need to be: without the Black Bands we are helpless.'

‘Well, suppose Bourbon does take the city? Things can only change for the better.'

‘True, Rome has been under the priests for long enough. Let the Emperor come from Spain and rule us. Why not?'

We made for the Palazzo del Bene, where Cellini's men stood on nervous guard outside the doors. Bundles and packages filled the entrance hall, and the Cages' servants passed to and fro bringing out
more. I felt a stab of apprehension and hurried up the stairs. In the loggia I found John, a harquebus at his side, talking to Hannah. My suspicions instantly returned, but the smile with which John met me was open and full of innocence. Hannah ran over to my side. She put her head on my shoulder and murmured, ‘This frightens me.'

John, with a smile, withdrew. I stroked her arm. ‘You, frightened? The girl who stood in the path of the wild bulls?'

‘There is more to be afraid of than a few bulls.'

‘No one in the city seems troubled.'

‘But my father is.'

I was about to speak again to calm her, persuade her there was nothing truly to fear. I was enjoying my role as gallant protector. At that moment the door to the saletta opened and we stood quickly apart. Stephen and Grace came out, with Susan stalking after them. Grace squeezed my hand in silence. Stephen, his arms full of papers with dangling seals, had a fierce glint in his eye.

‘The devil! Perhaps you can tell me, Mr Richard, how the Imperials covered the ground so quickly? Forded rivers in flood, marched thirty miles a day. Starving, are they? Too weak to march? Well, they have already sent their trumpeter to the gates, demanding Rome's surrender. Do you know what they carry as their standard?'

I shook my head.

Stephen poked a finger at my chest, still clutching his papers. ‘A gallows. A gallows with a noose, to hang the Pope. That's how Bourbon gave his troops the spirit to march. That's what he's promising them. Lutherans, Moors and Jews. All those the Church persecutes. Well, they will have their revenge if they can. Where's the Pope's peace treaty? Ferramosca saw to that, by telling the Spanish and Germans they could never trust Pope Clement. And where is the army of the League, that should have stopped them from ever coming this far?'

‘Dear Mr Richard,' Grace put in, ‘why do you not come with us? Follow us home to England?'

‘Then you are really leaving?'

‘Just as soon as may be,' answered Stephen. ‘His Holiness!' he spat out. ‘He is just what the popular jibes say of him: the Pope of Ifs and Maybes, the Pope with feet of lead. Tomorrow, he says. Well, tomorrow then. And if not, we are gone.' He caught my eye for a moment, and allowed a smile of complicity to pass over his face. ‘We understand one another increasingly well, I think. I shall look forward to taking our discussions further.' Then he turned abruptly away to confer with Fenton: leaving me with the uncomfortable knowledge that for the price of favour I would be called upon to make further betrayals of Bennet's secrets.

‘But the roads,' I protested to Mrs Grace. ‘Surely you would be safer here?'

‘The road to Ostia runs down the east of the river,' Susan sighed, with the air of one who was instructing a child. ‘The Imperials are to the west. If we leave now we'll be safe.'

‘Consider it, Mr Richard. Please do.' Grace squeezed my hand again, and turned after her husband. I glanced at Hannah, who rewarded me with one of her arch smiles. The temptation tugged at me. I pictured myself setting out for Ostia, sailing home with Hannah, riding across France in that vast and glorious cavalcade that was the Cages' household, with the servants putting up the pavilion for one of their fantastical luncheons wherever we stopped. And Hannah: seeing her every day, and yes, with luck, by night. But then I thought of the diamond, uncut, opaque, misted, its charms still secret, perhaps never to be revealed. How many of its former owners had left it untried, had been deterred for one specious reason or another? And was I to be the same as them, to return home with jewels of wonder, yes, but without the greatest treasure of all? Cellini had set the green diamond yesterday. The Golconda diamond sat even now in his locked chest, waiting.

‘Another few days, Mrs Grace. The danger from the Imperials cannot be so pressing as that. Then, God willing, I will come with you.'

I took my leave, bowing low to them both, and Hannah watched me go with a frown. It would be some time, I consoled myself, before the Cages could be fully packed and ready to go. I wanted to see Cellini, to badger him into returning to his work. But he was busy with Alessandro, discussing whether to put extra crossbowmen in the rear windows. I turned away, fuming. Together with Martin I set out to scour the city for news. We found fear in some quarters, but in most a cheerful confidence. There was no great rush to flee the city, or hide away valuables. The Imperials, it seemed, had no cannon with them at all: everything had been left behind at Siena to allow them to complete so swift a march. They would be unable to bombard the walls. This news heartened me a good deal.

That afternoon the Pope held a special Mass in Saint Peter's. He sat on his throne dressed in a violet cope staring down on us, his eyes bearing their usual expression of proud reserve. He made a long speech, urging his people in his lilting voice to fear nothing. The Imperials had not the strength to capture even a little fortress, let alone a city like Rome. After the first failed attack, they would break up and be seen no more. ‘God in His mysterious providence has led the heretic Lutherans here, to the chief seat of His holy religion, in order to destroy them and make them an example to others. All those who die in defence of the Holy City will have full remission of their sins and immediate entry to paradise, as well as remunerative church benefices for their heirs. Two days: that is all we need. If we hold the walls for two days, they will be gone.'

There was fear, I thought, in the way he glanced about and licked his fleshy lips. But his hearers murmured with appreciation. His Holiness stepped down from his throne and twelve priests in white surplices formed a ring behind him. Each one carried a tall lighted candle. The church fell silent. Then Pope Clement began the
terrible ceremony of the Anathema. He excommunicated the Duke of Bourbon and his accomplices from the bosom of Holy Mother Church, and condemned them all, thirty thousand souls, to eternal fire with Satan and his angels. A murmur of gratified horror ran round the people as the twelve priests dashed their candles on the ground, where they rolled for a few moments until every flame was extinguished.

The next day Renzo da Ceri was seen in his plumed helmet in all quarters of Rome, issuing orders for the positioning of the reserves, pointing to decayed portions of the walls and sending up builders with wheelbarrows of stone and lime. It was a mad burst of haste; I did not know whether to laugh or be afraid, seeing men actually building up the walls while the enemy was camped before them. The men obeyed sluggishly. Renzo could not be everywhere, and when he went away the men threw down their shovels and ambled off to the nearest wine shop. Beyond the walls we could hear the drumming of hoofs and the distant murmur of many men. That army of the damned had not gone away.

Around noon there was a great stir through the city. Cannonfire was heard from the north side of the Borgo, and all the roar and din of battle. The Imperials were attempting to scale the walls. I sat in the Cages' sala with John and the womenfolk, while Stephen stayed alone in his study. We did not speak. At times we could hear Stephen pacing about, kicking the walls, murmuring to himself and then shouting out loud. He was in some great indecision, it seemed. All the Cages' things were packed. But still they did not leave.
Benvenuto, yet again, had abandoned the diamond, and sat up on the rooftop gazing north. From time to time Paulino came down with news.

‘They are drawing back,' he told us at last. We laughed and cheered. The attack had lasted just an hour. It seemed the Pope had been right about the Imperials' feebleness. Mrs Grace summoned in the minstrels, and soon we were dancing, while the bells rang all through Rome, and men ran down the streets shouting, ‘Victory, victory!' Mr Stephen stepped in, his face grave. Without a word he walked out and down the stairs.

‘The Pope,' Mrs Grace whispered. The girls nodded. A proclamation had gone out that morning forbidding anyone to leave the city; but Mr Stephen, I had no doubt, could secure an exemption from the rule if he chose. I offered Hannah my hand. ‘If you would walk with me in the garden?'

Grace smiled her approval. I had the heavy sense that my time with Hannah was short now indeed, whether Mr Stephen obtained what he wanted from His Holiness or not. We made the small circuit of the garden down the single loop of gravel path, past the Roman statues, the lemon trees, the arbour, the vine I had never climbed. She walked with soft, slow steps. We were beginning our second turn round before either of us spoke.

I said, ‘I have found out the secret you tried so very hard to hide.'

Hannah looked up quickly.

I went on, ‘The King's love.'

She looked guarded. ‘You've found out, have you? How very clever you are, Mr Richard.'

‘You must know Anne Boleyn well: she comes of Kent gentry like yourselves. You are a mystery to me, Mrs Hannah. Why would you not tell?'

She stared at me a moment, and then smiled and looked down at her feet as they scuffed along the path. ‘And you are a mystery to me: why you are so much in love with your stones. First one, then
another. Then that one will not do, and you need one still finer. You are a lost man, Mr Richard.'

I protested all over again that I was doing it only for her. ‘When we are home again, and I have my success with the King: then you will understand.'

She stopped, and looked up at me. The skin of her forehead was creased in a frown. I could not read what was troubling her, but the concern in her eyes made her infinitely beautiful. ‘Will I?'

I made no answer. Instead, I stooped forward and kissed her. She gave a little sigh and rested her hands lightly on my shoulders. Her eyes closed before mine. She gave herself up to that kiss; but there was a sadness in it, I thought, a sense that perhaps this was not just one among the first of our kisses, but the last. Suddenly she pulled away. We could hear Mr Stephen shouting from somewhere in the house.

‘Fenton! Fenton! Where are those horses? I told you we needed more! And load the silver in the middle carriage. Armed men to the front and rear.'

Hannah ran ahead of me through the door into the entrance hall. I caught up with Mr Stephen soon after.

‘You are not going?'

Stephen's pale eyes were fierce. ‘At once.'

‘Allow me to wish that you have obtained what you desired from His Holiness.'

It was a last try to tease from him some information. He turned on me. ‘No, by God, I have not. But I had rather return a failure than stay any longer in this deathtrap. The Imperials will be back. If you are ever going to leave this place, it has to be now.'

He turned away. Servants ran across the hall to the pile of bundles. Outside in the piazza I could see packhorses and carts waiting.

Hannah's eyes looked at me in question.

Mr Stephen's talk had chilled me. But I would not let myself believe the worst. ‘Two days,' I promised her. I was calculating. Two
days for the armies to clear and for Benvenuto to cut the stone. That would have to content me. I would have someone else make up the heart in England, and fashion some rings and suchlike out of the remaining stones: I could sacrifice that much of perfection. But I must have that diamond. Hannah looked at me for a long moment, and then she turned from me with an angry toss of her head and ran up the stairs to the sala.

‘Piccolino! Who is looking after Piccolino?'

She had changed in an instant. From the deep, beautiful woman, full of promise and dark melancholy, she was once more a petulant, teasing girl. I looked up at the balcony where she had gone. Over the marble balustrade leant Susan. She had seen it all. She shook her head at me, comical and commiserating. In a rage I walked out into the square. The crowd of packbeasts, men and carts was astounding; only now, in fact, did I appreciate the scale of the Cages' entourage, and the wealth that lay behind it. I saw the minstrels, the music-master and the dancing-master, the gentlewomen, the almoner supervising the loading up of a chest presumably carrying church-plate and altar vessels; the five or six pageboys in grass-green livery, the maids and men loading up chests and rolls of tapestry, tablecloths and carpets; and Beelzebub-Piccolino on his silver chain perched screeching on top of it all.

Martin was silently at my side. ‘Master,' he murmured, ‘I beg you. Why will you not go with them? If we ran to Benvenuto's, paid him and fetched the jewels …?'

I made no answer. Mrs Grace came out of the palazzo, and the girls, and Alessandro with a few more servants. To my dismay the Cages really were ready to go. Stephen bowed deeply to Alessandro, and then clasped him in his arms. Alessandro kissed each of the ladies, ‘in the English fashion'. Grace turned to me a last questioning look, but Hannah avoided my eye and climbed into one of the covered carts with her father. Too late, I bowed, and realised I had lost my chance for that last kiss which custom allowed. The first of
the carts, on which two men with harquebuses rode, moved out of the little piazza and turned into the Via Monserrato. In a few minutes, with a vast rumbling of wheels and snorting of horses and mules, the Cages and all their household were gone. I stood there in the empty piazza staring after them. Never have I felt more desolate, and angry too, both at the Cages for going and myself for my stubbornness in staying behind. Already I sensed I had made a terrible mistake.

 

That night I roved the streets of Rome without purpose. It was a damp night, with a chill air rising from the marshes. I reached as far as the Cow Pasture with its buried triumphal arches and columns, and then turned north beyond the Colosseum to the grottoes. Everywhere cried out to me with Hannah's absence. The very air was heavy with memory and regret: the places we had been, the things we had said and done. The streets were quiet; calmly expectant. Rome had won a victory already, and tomorrow was the day the Pope had promised for Bourbon's final, shameful retreat. Moody, I returned at last to the Palazzo del Bene. Sounds of music came from inside. When I went in, the doors of what had been the Cages' sala were thrown open. Alessandro del Bene was there, with Benvenuto sitting beside him, polishing the barrel of his gun. I saw John, tapping his feet and clapping to the rough country music of a bagpiper and a pair of fiddles, while several of Benvenuto's soldiers were dancing. The grandeur of the Cages' occupancy had vanished like a dream. Among the faces in the candlelight round the walls I recognised a good many of Benvenuto's friends: Berni, and Polidoro, Pantassilea and Diego. I saw Polidoro debating a sketch with the Florentine painter Rosso, making additions to it in charcoal, then laughing and passing round the jug. On the fire a basin of wine was steaming for hippocras. When Alessandro saw me he called me in. Martin went and sat down with a group of servants who were playing cards outside the door. Cellini held up his harquebus to me with a smile.
Its steel barrel was chased in gold, and the serpentine that held the match was carved as a rearing dragon. Naturally it was all his own work.

I said, ‘It seems to me you are enjoying soldiering rather too much. When will you attend to my stone?'

Cellini waved his hand. ‘Dear Richard: always so urgent. Tonight we drink to victory, and the long continuance of art, and her patroness the Church.'

‘The Church!' echoed some of the artists. ‘May she commission frescos and goblets and altarpieces without end. Amen.'

I took a cup of hot wine and sat down next to John, who smiled and raised his cup to mine.

‘I am surprised you're still here,' I murmured.

‘Oh, I would not leave Rome for the world. There are excellent opportunities here for trade.'

He caught my eye and I looked back at him, wondering. And so he was still dealing in his mysterious, invisible goods. But whose side was he working for? He had left Florence in a hurry: so I guessed he had been on the run from the Medici. He had left informants behind there, who forwarded ‘goods' to him as they became known. I suspected he knew Mr Stephen, even before I introduced him. And he had dealings with Ferramosca, who was trusted by the Pope to negotiate peace, even though he was in the pay of the Emperor. John's smile gave nothing away.

The music swelled and the sketches were passed round, nude nymphs, rolicking satyrs, dainty goddesses. It seemed a profanation of the room where Hannah and I had danced, and where I had sat down to the Cages' grandiose feasts. But they were gone: I had made my choice, and put my treasures before my love. Perhaps I had been a fool. But I consoled myself by thinking how soon I would set out on the same road as the Cages. I would travel fast, and overtake them before they believed it possible: and then I would show Hannah that diamond. I allowed myself to relax and drink.

In the silence that night back in my bed at the inn I pictured the Imperials melting away, first one band, then another: their banners falling, the men simply vanishing into the mist, withering under the Pope's curse. In the end I must have slept. When I woke, I heard a noise I could not place. It was a murmur like a swarm of distant bees, mingled with booms of thunder. Martin was shaking my arm.

‘Master, wake up! They are attacking.'

We hurried to the palazzo. There were men up on the roof, peering across the river. It was early, not long after dawn; mist hung in the streets in pale, glimmering strands. I found Benvenuto and Alessandro downstairs.

‘We can tell nothing from up on the roof,' Benvenuto was saying. ‘The mist is too thick.'

Alessandro was hopping from foot to foot in fear. ‘Come with me to the walls, I implore you, Benvenuto. Not knowing is the very worst.'

Cellini's eyes kindled. ‘You want to see it, at the cannon's mouth? Very well!'

I stepped forward. I knew Benvenuto's rashness. If there was any danger, I was not letting him out of my sight. So we set out, with Martin and ten or so of Cellini's soldiers carrying harquebuses. We crossed the Bridge of Sant' Angelo under the walls of the castle and then hurried up through the Borgo. We skirted Saint Peter's, from which came the sound of chanting: the Pope was saying Mass for victory. Between here and the walls was a vineyard belonging to the Pope, and the palace of Cardinal Cesi stood to one side, where I had walked with Hannah just a few days ago among the Cardinal's outstanding collection of sculpture. From three sides now, where the walls looped round, we could hear the crash of repeated harquebus volleys and the roar of the enemy army. They were attacking everywhere at once: from the Valley of Hell beyond Saint Peter's, and westward among the vineyards. We followed Cellini up the stone steps to the battlements. Dead men lay everywhere. It was about an
hour after dawn, and the fog was growing thicker. Shots fell all round us. We crouched behind the parapet while Cellini, with a wild light in his eyes, loaded his gun.

‘Now that we are here, we are bound to fire a shot.'

Each of us followed his lead. I had learnt the working of a harquebus from Mr William on our sea voyages, but I had never fired at a living foe. Upon Benvenuto's word, we stood up and trained our weapons over the wall. What I saw was a white blank with dim shapes moving in it, but from everywhere came the yelling of men, the clangour of their movements and the volleys of shot. I fired at random into the mist and ducked quickly down again. Bullets chipped into the stone around us, and our cannon shot answered from the towers. Alessandro crouched behind the parapet, murmuring over and over, ‘I wish to God we had never come.' In some places, scaling ladders leant against the walls and the enemy climbed, one by one, to be shot down before they could reach us; but others always took their place, with their yells of ‘España, España!' Cannon shots flew overhead, and one crashed into the wall at our side, throwing three men back in a welter of rubble and blood. They came from our own guns in the Castle of Sant' Angelo, firing blindly into the mist.

Cellini motioned to us and we crept further along the parapet. The Spaniards and Germans were attacking in bands, all along the walls. It was a marvel how they kept up their fury, with no cannon of their own to answer ours. But their sheer numbers gave them freshness. As one detachment fired off their shots or grew tired, another came up from behind. Around the bend in the walls we came to a place where the ramparts ran lower. Sections were cracked and decayed, and I saw that the rear wall of a farmhouse had been built into them to save expense. The Spaniards were attacking here with greater fury than ever: they had the wit to direct their strength to the weakest point. I whispered this to Benvenuto, and he nodded. We stood up to fire; two of his men were shot down. The fog was as thick
as could be. We were in a world of white, where we could not see more than an arm's length, and yet death was crashing all round us. The shouts of the bands of Spaniards and their volleys of shot echoed, now near, now far, and I felt a sudden exhilaration, as if we were invulnerable. Then the fog blew apart for an instant, and I suddenly saw their ranks, the bristling pikes in dense squares, the harquebuses trained up at the walls hundreds together, and I felt the full fear of our own weakness and the terrible strength of our enemy.