The King's Diamond (30 page)

From outside came a scream, close by, and the sound of running feet. I jerked suddenly upright. I was alert now, and afraid. The soldiers would come back. They would miss their captain; they would find me. I hurried to hide the diamond in the casket round my neck. I lurched to my feet, swayed and went down on my knees, and then crawled across the floor to the chest. I took out the rest of my jewels, and dug deeper too. A purse of coin; the sheets of gold leaf; a pouch of mixed precious stones. These I took, meaning to return them to Benvenuto. I froze. The quick footsteps came nearer. Outside the shattered door a woman ran by with three soldiers pursuing her. Once more it was quiet. I returned to the Spaniard's body and stripped off the cloak, a short soldier's cape, black with russet trim. My own cloak with its silver edging I left behind. I threw aside my cap too, having removed the gold medal of the Virgin, and put on the Spaniard's broad, feathered hat instead. I gathered up the harquebus, powder flasks and shot. Then I looked out of the door. My head was beating. It was dusk. Cannon thundered at intervals from the Castle. A red light suffused the sky.

I ran out, round the corner and back up to the Via Giulia. Bodies lay on the stones, caked in dust and mud: nobles, women still
clutching children. From the church of Saint Catherine of Siena, down the street, came the most horrible screams mixed with men's shouts and gunfire. Blood smeared the church's steps. In the street below lay a great gilded statue of Saint Catherine. The saint lay face-downwards; bloody hand-prints covered her back where the soldiers had dragged her out. Round her were chalices, pattens, jewelled reliquaries and candlesticks, crosses, vases of silver, gold reliefs of the Passion of Christ.

I gazed too long; a German came at me with his sword and I darted back, drawing mine. But he only wished to defend his hoard, shouted something and turned back. I saw him sit down on a small chest and begin pulling at a wizened, severed finger: a holy relic mounted in gold. Earlier that day the faithful had come to kiss it and pray over it. Now the German teased the dead flesh from its gold with his dagger, and threw it on the ground.

I walked on, in a dream. From every house there came the sound of shouts, breaking doors, shots. A cry from above made me jump back. A shape fell in front of me, and landed hard on the stones. It was a girl in nothing but her shift: dead. Blood poured from her head. I choked and ran on. Ahead the firing was more intense. Here was the palazzo of Cardinal Piccolomini of Siena: staunch friend of the Empire. But that meant nothing now. He had refused to pay a ransom, and the Germans had surrounded his house and were exchanging gunfire with those inside. By the English church I saw the statues and the crosses carried away on men's shoulders, bodies on the steps where I had first caught sight of John in Rome. Two dead monks, lying in their own gore; a young nun, caught by three Spaniards and raped in the street before the convent of Saint Brigida. I did not know where I was going, or why; scarcely even who I was. On the Campo dei Fiori the shop doors and windows were shattered, the soldiers handing out fruit and flasks of wine. For these were hungry men, and it was a hard question which they had the greatest greed for, gold, or women, or bread. I took a loaf, and bolted
down a few mouthfuls, then doubled over and was sick in a gutter that stank of blood.

I do not know how, but I was walking again; past the Papal Chancellery, from whose windows flew storms of papers and books. I saw men and women led off bound, prisoners, with the fear of death stamped on every face. I was turning on to the Via Monserrato, drawn along the old, familiar route. I passed a house that still held out, where the soldiers had piled up sticks and furniture outside, already alight, to burn the place down. I turned into the quiet old square with the yellow stuccoed palace; the palace so impregnable; guarded, thanks to Alessandro's care, by an army fifty strong. I looked up at the walls. Bullets had smashed into Polidoro's frescos. A body hung from a window; two more lay in the street. The door stood open.

I went inside. There was the hall I had entered that day with Cellini, drawn by that name, Hannah Cage. There were the stairs where I had bowed to Stephen and said ‘Richard Dansey. Merchant, of London.' Dead men lay there now. That was Alessandro's chamberlain, with a sword cut from his shoulder to his chest. Those two were Cellini's friends, their guns at their sides. The steps were slippery with blood. I climbed them, shaking, holding on to the marble balustrade for support. At the top of the stairs, where the balcony swept round, another body lay, face-down, a bloody gash across the back of his head. He had been running away, and a soldier had slashed him from behind. I turned him over with my foot, and then I cried out. It was the Cages' chamberlain, Fenton. I stared into his white face, the familiar beard, the heavy eyebrows, the open mouth, as if it could ever utter again, ‘Sir, the cloth is spread.'

In horror I pushed open the door into the sala. One of the tapestries had been torn down, the credenza smashed. Chairs and stools lay scattered, and there were bodies everywhere. Close to the door was one of the Cages' minstrels, the man who had had the quickest fingers on the recorder; there beyond him was the music-master who
bent over Mrs Susan as she played the lute, and tactfully corrected her fingering. The door to the saletta was open. Lying across it, her skirts pulled up round her waist and her throat slit, was one of the gentlewomen who had sported with us on the night of the
moccoli
. They were all here.

I went on. I was only waiting to find Hannah. Through the saletta where we had played cards, along the loggia, up the stairs to the more private apartments where I had never been. Up here were bedchambers, and bodies, more bodies. Each door I opened trembling. The waiting maids, the valets; faces so familiar, so taken as a matter of course, lying dead. I pushed open another door, to another bedchamber. Perhaps this was where she had slept. Perhaps, if I had not run after my diamond to Florence, this was where I might have slept too. There was an inner closet opening off it. I opened the door and stepped through.

A heavy blow knocked me to the ground. I lay there, striving to lift myself, my head clogged with dizziness and pain. My limbs no longer had any strength. I heard a voice over me:

‘Kill him.'

I would have been dead already, if it had not been for the Spaniard's thick felt hat. As it was, the blood was running down into my face. I groaned and managed to lift myself on my hands. The voice came again:

‘Kill him!'

It was useless to try to rise. Long before I could reach my sword, a blade would slide into my back. A second voice hissed, ‘You kill him.'

‘No, you!'

There was something strange about these voices. My right hand gave way, and I rolled on to my back. My eyes were a blur. But I could not be wrong: they had been speaking in English. Both the speakers let out shrieks; and then all at once my vision cleared, and I saw standing over me Susan and Hannah Cage, the one holding a roasting spit, the other a flatiron. Hannah dropped the iron and was down on the floor, cradling my head.

‘My poor, poor, poor Mr Richard.'

Susan stepped over me into the bedchamber. ‘Someone could have followed him. Can't you stop dandling him and take him up?'

I tried to rise, and with both girls helping at last I managed. I fell at once into Hannah's arms. I would not let her go; I had found her, that was all I knew. I kissed her hair, her lips, her eyes. She stood motionless, and let me.

‘That's enough!' hissed Susan. ‘Quickly!'

Hannah disengaged herself. The room we were in had been a dressing room, and a place for admiring little ornaments and works of art. Now it had been ransacked. Broken glass scattered the floor. Hannah led me to a ladder reaching up to a trapdoor in the ceiling. Somehow I climbed it, and the ladder was pulled up after us. We were in near darkness up here. A warren of storerooms, servants' chambers and passages wound above the two wings of the palazzo, they explained to me, reached by a number of ladders and narrow stairs.

‘That ladder is the only way down from here,' whispered Hannah. ‘We were on our way to look for food.'

‘Until Hannah nearly murdered you,' added Susan.

‘You would have done it if you'd dared,' countered Hannah.

‘Quiet!' answered Susan. ‘We're getting near. Another shock will kill her.'

They were leading me, bent double, down a dim passage. At the end of it opened out a room that was little more than a big cupboard, cramped under the eaves. Inside it, something moved.

Susan crept forward. ‘Mother. We have found Mr Richard.'

As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw that the figure hunched against the end wall was Mrs Grace. Her black hair was streaked down over her face. She held out to me a shaking hand.

‘Mr Richard! It is very good of you to come. You are welcome. Girls! Find Mr Richard some of those sweetmeats. The almond ones are the finest. I cannot think what has become of our servants.'

Hannah and Susan exchanged looks. I sat clumsily down against the sloping wall. My head was still bleeding. Hannah tore off a strip of her gown and set about bandaging the wound. Susan moved in the
darkness and came back with a shallow silver dish. ‘She's right. The almond ones
are
the nicest. But I would give anything for a loaf of bread.'

At that I smiled, and pulled from my doublet the loaf. Susan fell on it, and divided it at once in four. Eating, and with Hannah's body warm against my side, I felt my strength and my courage return. Grace heaved a satisfied sigh. ‘When Mr Stephen gets back, everything will be arranged.'

Hannah anxiously caught my eye, and I looked at her in question. And so I heard the story of their flight, told by Hannah and Susan in turn. They had set off through the Gate of Saint Paul yesterday afternoon, to cover the fifteen miles to Ostia. Even though no one, officially, was allowed out of Rome, the number of people who had begged or bribed permission to go was surprising. Stretches of the road were flooded, and what with the fleeing countryfolk with their carts, progress was slow. When night fell they were still out in the desolation of the marshes. That was when Stephen had ridden on ahead to scout the road. While he was gone, a party of horsemen had swept down on them, shooting off their harquebuses and veering away, before returning to shoot once more. They might have been Imperials who had somehow crossed the Tiber, or members of the powerful Colonna clan, enemies of the Pope, or simply brigands. The packhorses bolted; some of the servants driving the carts panicked and drove off into the marsh. The whole line of carts that was jamming the road somehow reversed itself and surged back towards the city. Grace and her family were jostled along with them. Bales and boxes dropped from their carts; by the time they got back to the locked city gates they had a good deal less than when they had started. By now it was perhaps two or three in the morning. Hannah and Susan wanted to make another dash along the road to Ostia, but Grace would not hear of it. Stephen was bound to come back for them. She had always known this hasty flight from Rome was a mistake. They spent a cold, unsleeping
night outside the gates, waiting. But Stephen never came. Mist crept up from the pools that lined the road. With dawn, in that thick fog that had so aided the Imperials' attack, Grace ordered them all back to the palazzo: doubtless Stephen was there waiting for them; or would be back soon and make other plans. Stephen would arrange everything.

But Cellini and Alessandro were gone, and the battle was already loud from over the river. They had nothing to fear, Grace protested. After all, England was neutral in this war; it was nothing to do with them. As the sounds of fighting drew nearer, Cellini's men began to desert them. When the Spaniards and Germans swept at last up from the bridges, there were scarcely ten armed men to stand against them. Room by room Grace and her daughters retreated. It was Susan who found the trapdoor; Hannah who snatched up the sweetmeats that had stood on the table by her bed. They had had the greatest trouble with their mother. The firing, the killing of their servants, glimpsed through the windows of the loggia: none of this could Grace truly believe. She wanted to go down to them, declare who she was, explain to the Imperials their mistake. It was only the promise of Stephen's return that had induced her to climb the ladder. There they had crouched, hour after hour, while the killing and looting went on. The soldiers had made a thorough search. They had heard them, shouting to one another and throwing down furniture in disgust; but most of the plunder, of course, was in those boxes hastily unloaded from the carts and stacked in the entrance hall, which the first soldiers had speedily hurried away; the rolls of tapestry, the silver, Mr Stephen's books, the recorders and lutes. At last it had fallen silent. Only at nightfall had the two girls judged it worth the risk of descending in the hope of finding food.

‘And now we have eaten our bread, and the sweetmeats are finished too,' said Susan. ‘Hannah?'

‘I know there are more, down in the stillroom.'

‘Be sure to bring us some of the candied pears,' put in Grace. ‘The ones that were a gift from Cardinal Ceci. But I really think we should wait for Stephen downstairs. He will never find us up here.'

I struggled to raise myself. ‘I must be the one to go out. I can pass as a Spaniard. Promise me you will not leave here.' My head throbbed, and I fell back against Hannah's shoulder.

Susan frowned. ‘He is right. If he can walk.'

Hannah brushed my hair from my brow. ‘Later. First you should sleep.' Already I was drifting into a dark blank. Fire, screams, running feet, the cannons and the drums; they beat round and round in my head, growing fainter, until all that was left was Hannah's gentle breathing, the soft warmth of her body. As I slipped asleep we were passing together through France, laughing at the horrors of Italy, just a few days' travel from home.

I woke suddenly. It was after dawn. A white light penetrated the chinks between the roof tiles above us. Hannah lay asleep on her side. Grace, slumped at the end of the chamber, looked old and drawn; as if only in sleep could she grasp the true dread of our position. I lifted myself on one arm. I felt weak, but my head no longer throbbed. Susan crouched at the end of the chamber closest to the trapdoor. She whispered, ‘There is someone down below.'

I listened. There was the patter of feet, a rummaging, and a scratching sound. I held my breath. Then there came what sounded like a baby's whimpers, and low animal squeaks. Susan turned to me with an impish grin.

‘Beelzebub!'

She pulled back the trapdoor, and the monkey danced up and down, baring its teeth and chattering.

‘We must get him away,' I hissed. ‘He will betray us.'

‘Kill him is best,' said Susan.

‘No!' Hannah sat up. She leant forward fiercely. ‘That is what you always wanted.'

‘What if it is?'

‘Girls!' put in Grace. ‘We shall let Mr Richard decide.'

I was buckling on my sword and taking up the harquebus. ‘Stay here,' I warned them. Susan let down the ladder. I descended quickly, and watched the trapdoor close again above me. Then I turned to look for Piccolino. He could so easily be the death of us, if soldiers returned to the palazzo. But the beast had gone.

I walked out through the chambers that smelt of death, down through the sala, listening all the way. A few sweetmeats would not keep us alive. I had to find some real nourishment. Out in the square a damp fog hung, the same as the day before. Through it came the muted sounds of the Sack, cannonfire from the Castle, gunshots, screams. I pulled the Spaniard's short cape round me and ran north. Along the Banchi, I saw Spanish and German officers trying to gather up their men. But with Bourbon dead, the soldiers simply laughed. ‘We have no master now.' There were Italians in the Imperial army too: Neapolitans, Sienese, Romans who belonged to the vast clan of the Colonnas. His Holiness had burnt their villages and driven away their flocks. Now these men were back. They killed with as much fury as the rest, and where they went they daubed on the walls the single word,
VENDETTA
. Vengeance.

I passed by the house of Juan Perez, the Imperial ambassador, and of Don Martin too, whose palazzo everyone had thought so strong. The doors stood open. Those cannon on Don Martin's roof had not saved him. The dead lay everywhere, new corpses falling across the old. Soldiers squatted in the streets, playing dice over their piles of gold crucifixes and bags of ducats and jewels, and even bound prisoners, a handsome woman or a rich-looking merchant. Some lost all they had in a few throws, and went back to the churches and palazzi for more. The flow of treasure seemed without end. It was an hour, or two or three, before I gathered my senses together, broke into a row of abandoned shops off the Piazza Navona and snatched up sausages and bread and wine. As I was coming back past the little church of Santa Maria in Vallicella, an officer in a crimson sash
stopped me and demanded something in German. I tried to push by, but he repeated it. There was no one else in sight. I swung the harquebus from my shoulder and shot him. I murmured to myself, ‘
Vendetta
.'

When I got back, the Palazzo del Bene was as still and quiet as a charnel house. Flies settled on the bodies, and rose in buzzing swarms as I hurried up the stairs. In the closet I whispered to Hannah and Susan to let down the ladder. Back up in the dimness of the attic I began to shake. There was triumph, exhilaration in being back in that strange pocket of femininity, with not only my Hannah but the other two women relying on me utterly. Mrs Grace smiled. With what looked like a great effort she said, ‘Tell us the news in the city.'

I paused before I answered, ‘Not good.'

‘You must tell us the worst,' said Susan. ‘Does anywhere hold out?'

‘Only the Castle.'

‘You can lead us away from here,' Hannah said. ‘You can smuggle us through a gate, or over the city wall? Can you not, dear Mr Richard?'

Her voice was bright and wheedling, just as if she were teasing me into letting her watch the dwarf race, or finding her a second cup of wine. Slowly I shook my head. I had been out as far as the walls, and I knew that beyond the heart of the city the army still behaved like an army. They had patrols, and regular changes of the guard. They meant to make sure no relief could come to the Pope.

‘In that case,' Susan said, ‘we must get into the Castle.'

I said nothing. To break into Sant' Angelo: if it was beyond the power of thirty thousand besiegers, it was clearly beyond ours.

‘But you will think of something,' Hannah said. ‘Of course you will.'

 

Day by day I crept down from the attic out into the square. First, I always made my way north to the river and gazed across to the Castle of Sant' Angelo. Squat and immoveable it crouched, with its square outer battlements and corner turrets, its massive drum tower, and the taller tower rising inside that. From the top the Papal banner still flew. The cannon thundered, their shots falling on the Pope's own city. As yet the Imperials had no cannon of their own. Soldiers returned fire with harquebuses from the shelter of house windows, but they were no challenge to the Castle's power. His Holiness refused to negotiate, trusting in the Duke of Urbino and the League. Between the Imperial marksmen and the stark castle walls was a bleak region of burnt-out buildings and corpses, the snaking river and the deserted bridge of Sant' Angelo. I saw no hope in that direction.

I turned and hurried into the city on my daily search for food. Some days I did well, and came back with a good supply; some days I found nothing. On the third day Prince Philibert of Orange, who claimed to be general of the army now that Bourbon was dead, ordered the looting and killing to stop. But the soldiers only pillaged all the more, broke into the Apostolic Palace, which the Prince had claimed as his personal residence, and emptied it of all its barrels of wine.

Amid the horror, there were odd islands of normality. Some shops were open, and sold bread for coins; boys hurried through the streets to visit their fathers in the soldiers' many prisons, and cashed bills for ransom money at the banks, until they too were sacked. The brothels were decidedly open for business. I saw a group of Spaniards driving in a column of nuns, their hands bound, and heard the nuns' cries of ‘
Pietate, pietate!
' Pity, pity. At the door, a grinning old bawd took them in and handed the soldiers a purse of gold.