The King's Diamond (31 page)

Shooting still rang out, houses burned, and fresh bodies fell on the piles. But the soldiers were discovering that Romans could be more useful alive. The city was full of hiding places, they reasoned:
secret tunnels, catacombs filled with hidden treasure. How were they to find these out, except by rounding up the citizens and exercising the arts of persuasion? Certain houses turned into grisly torture chambers. I saw men and women hanging from towers by their arms, and the screams from inside spoke of torments worse by far. The poor Cardinals Piccolomini, Araceli and Ceserino, who had always been such friends of the Empire, were led in chains through the streets every day, beaten and mocked by the soldiers. Then they were made to stand on a gallows in sight of the Castle. The Germans swore they would hang them unless the Pope surrendered. But after each day's ordeal they were dragged back to their prisons.

Up in the dark of the attic we sat for long, long hours, unspeaking. There was a kind of intense but chaste closeness; I shared with Hannah the touch of a hand, the sound of our breath. Breaking the silence came the screams of the poor prisoners. To distract our thoughts, I unlocked my casket and passed round my treasures. They had not seen my garden before, with its green diamond meadow and the nymphs' shimmering pool formed by the white sapphire. Grace took it in her hands with a long sigh. She closed her eyes and felt the outlines of the figures with her fingers. She was thinking of other days, perhaps, days at Court while King Henry was still young, and Stephen came wooing her with gifts; gifts almost as rich as the one in her hands. Her face creased and she began to weep. Hannah took her arm.

‘We will get home, Mother,' she promised. ‘We have Mr Richard now.'

Susan was holding up the Ship. In the splintered light through the roof tiles its diamonds glittered and the chrysoprase glowed like an eye. ‘Look!' she said. ‘A stormy sea. Very pretty.' She pointed to the sapphires with their white flaws and blurs. ‘Like mine.' From her neck she drew a chain, from which hung a single blue-white stone.

‘So you had it set,' I said. ‘Benvenuto could have done it better.'

‘Benvenuto was busy. And those diamonds: stars?'

I was growing testy. ‘Yes.'

‘Then it's night. And yet your sea is blue. At night the sea is grey, or black.'

I snatched the brooch back from her hands. I had been so very proud of the thing, the conception of it, the choice of stones and Cellini's work. I had never once seen the incongruity. I said, ‘Does it matter?'

‘No,' said Susan. ‘Not in the least. It's all fantasy anyway. I told you: it's pretty.'

‘Pretty enough to make my name,' I growled. I glanced at Hannah, annoyed. She was smiling, relishing the battle just as she had that first day at dinner when Susan goaded me over my manners.

‘Fantasies,' Susan murmured. ‘What would I give to see a real meadow, or a real ship either.' Suddenly she sat up and turned to her sister. ‘Hannah! Show Mr Richard the gift John gave you.'

I looked at Hannah in astonishment. I had dismissed all my suspicions concerning her and John. Susan, surely, was concocting another of her malicious tales. But Hannah merely tossed her head. ‘If he wishes to see.'

She turned back the lace of her collar to reveal a brooch. The gold of it was thin and ill-crafted; the stone at its centre a showy, red-orange cornelian, semi-transparent. It was a paltry thing, worth not more than twenty crowns, and yet more than I thought John could afford. Indignation made me speechless. She met my eyes with cool defiance, as if she were the injured one, not I. In the end I said, ‘You took this – this thing from John? After refusing from me a diamond?'

Hannah tossed her head. ‘You were so very high and mighty that night. And poor John: such a hangdog look he has. He was in need of encouragement.'

‘Encouragement!'

I had raised my voice. Susan leant forward and hissed, ‘Quiet! Do you two want to see us killed?'

I looked at Susan, her bright, penetrating eyes glinting like a pair of flawed sapphires. Her letter had perhaps not been so mistaken after all. Suddenly I felt Hannah pressing herself up against my arm. ‘I was wrong. Will you forgive me?'

I turned to her and kissed her, there before her mother and sister. I would forgive her anything, over and over. The warmth of her body at my side was proof enough she was still mine.

‘You do right to make amends,' Grace announced grandly, as if she were giving her daughter sound advice in private. ‘I told you Mr John was no fit match.'

As Hannah drew back with another of her mysterious smiles, I looked beyond her to Mrs Grace. This, I thought, cast yet another light on what might have happened while I was in Florence. I pictured Grace pressing Hannah to accept me, the rich jewel merchant; and Hannah, resenting her mother's meddling, throwing herself at John out of spite. It gave me a little more comfort. But I could not so easily forgive John.

‘Christ and all his saints,' muttered Susan. ‘You sit here cooing and squabbling and drawing up love-matches. What are we going to do? Just what are we going to do?'

I gazed into the darkness. I had racked my wits for seven days, but I had no answer.

Still the Sack continued, and the soldiers grew all the time more cruel and desperate. They dug up graves in their wild search after treasure and flung out into the streets decaying skeletons and skulls. They even shovelled their way down into the cesspits and threw barrow-loads of excrement out over the corpses and the blood: sure that if they only searched deep enough they would unearth secret bags of gold. Rats scuttled through the lanes. Already there had been the first cases of the plague. I had seen the old plague-gravedigger going about from house to house, and the doors of infected houses marked with chalk. Day by day it was growing harder to find food. The shops were stripped bare. Men who had fought one another a few days ago over diamonds and gold murdered for a sack of rye. They would steal bread from the hands of a man half-dead with the plague. The poorest in Rome ate the straw and wool from their bedding and dead human flesh: the only commodity of which there was no shortage at all.

And the screams from the prisons. As the booty diminished, the soldiers clung all the harder to their prisoners: as if more tortures, more pain could wring from them a corresponding amount of gold.
The officers, hoping to make their troops obey orders, massacred whole prisonfuls of captives. Some of the lucky ones, who managed to pay their ransoms, were captured again by other bands and forced to pay twice; and that only convinced the soldiers they must be men of wealth, and so they demanded more, and tortured them again. When they judged at last they could squeeze out nothing more, the soldiers dragged their captives into the markets and put them up for auction, and other bands bid for them and led them away to more torments still.

For long hours every day I lay on a rooftop by the riverbank, not far from the Papal Mint, just upstream from the Bridge of Sant' Angelo. The building beneath me had been a spicer's shop; the scents of precious cinnamon and pepper drifted up from the smashed jars, mingling with the pervasive stink of death. It was a dangerous post. The soldiers had barricades at the near end of the bridge, and there was always a troop of them there, watching the Castle and taking occasional shots at it. To them that Castle was a treasure house. The Pope and his gold were in there, and some hundreds of wealthy cardinals, merchants and nobles. It would be the last great prize to fall into their hands. But Sant' Angelo was not quite ready to fall yet. The cannon still fired, and smashed into neighbouring houses whenever the defenders saw signs of movement. I looked across at those bleak walls hungrily. Inside was safety, food, beds; a life without fear or horror. There had to be a way of getting in, and I was determined I would find it.

One night I stayed on later than usual. Just as I was about to slip away from the rooftop and head back to the palazzo I saw a movement, like a spider descending against the castle wall. It touched the ground and scuttled across to the foot of the bridge, where I lost it in the shadows. But a little later there it was again, halfway along the bridge coming towards me, climbing smoothly over the cannon-pocked ruins of the little chapel where condemned men used to be taken to pray before they were hanged. It was gone again. Then
another movement, a shadow vanishing along the Banchi into the city. I scrambled down from the roof and ran after it, casting down this street and that: but there was not a soul to be seen. In frustration I turned back to my watching post, and gazed and dozed until dawn. Just as the sky began to grow lighter I saw a movement once more on the bridge, and that slender figure dodging from shadow to shadow. The mist was gathering, but I could just make out the line of the rope once more let down from the corner bastion of the Castle, and the man pulled up and in. Whoever it was had come and gone.

The next night I kept watch again. It was nearly midnight when I saw that slender line down the Castle wall, and the spider-figure descending it. I climbed swiftly back through the ruined shop. The spy, quick and almost invisible, was already on the near side of the bridge. He padded lightly past the Mint and into the maze of streets. I hurried after him. I saw him dart out into the Piazza Navona, where on the night of the
moccoli
candles had burned from every balcony, and the boys and girls had laughed and thrown water and flour. Now the houses were dark. Stones, planks, bodies lay everywhere. On the corner of the square I stood and gazed round on the empty scene in dismay. It was no use: I had lost him.

I ransacked a baker's shop for food. I found a rat-chewed end of bread that the soldiers had missed, and turned back towards the palazzo. I was in a filthy temper. In the upstairs closet I whispered to the girls. Susan's face appeared at the trapdoor, and she began to let down the ladder. Just then, a scuffling sound in the corner made us both freeze. Out into the dim light hopped Beelzebub. He had something in his paws; it took me a moment to recognise it as a severed human hand. The monkey bared its teeth and tore off a bite. I caught Susan's eye and nodded. At least I could rid of us of that damnable monkey. I put down my harquebus and drew my sword. Beelzebub appeared to sense our intent. Taking the hand in his jaws he ran off through the doorway and away downstairs. I gave chase. Along the loggia he ran, up on the balustrade; then he jumped down and darted
in through the half-open door to the sala. I pushed in after him, and stopped dead.

Sitting still by the light of a couple of dozen candles were six or seven men. They wore plumed hats, and by their sides were laid down harquebuses and pikes. They sat like a row of seamstresses, with the gigantic Flemish tapestries draped over their knees, picking away at the cloth with needles. It was an incongruous sight. Then I understood. They were stripping from these priceless works the lengths of gold thread, winding them on to spools as they went. They had been working at this in silence, and so I had passed them unawares. One of them stood up swiftly and pointed his gun at me. The monkey scampered round them and off down the stairs.

‘And what manner of man are you?' He spoke in Spanish.

‘A soldier.'

I had answered in the same tongue. But I knew I could pass as no native speaker, in a still room, when I was afraid. ‘An Italian,' I added. ‘A friend of the Empire.'

‘What Italian? Roman?'

I spat. To be a Venetian came easiest to me; but the Venetians were the deadliest enemies the Empire had. ‘I am of Genoa.'

He took a few steps towards me, still pointing the gun. ‘Where in Genoa.'

‘Maddalena, where the rope-makers work. The French took all I had. In Siena I joined up and marched with Bourbon.'

‘Kill him,' advised one. ‘He is a liar.'

Another of the men stood up. He spoke in Italian, with the accent of Siena. ‘Prove it.'

My hands were sweating. Fear clawed at me, but I forced my mind to go back to that bright January evening when the
Speranza
had pulled out from the Mole bound for Rome, and the sailors had sung as they hauled at the ropes. I sang, ‘We are of Genoa, we are of Maddalena, we shall never marry, as long as there's another man's wife in the world …'

By the time I finished they were laughing, and then I sang it again, done into Spanish as well as I could manage. Their leader beckoned me over.

‘You have bought your life, and a share of bread and wine besides. The Germans we took them from no longer need them.'

I took the crusts hungrily, and sipped at the sour wine. ‘My thanks. And if the beast had not escaped me, you would have been welcome to a share of my monkey.'

‘Ah!' The leader wiped his mouth. ‘That is the very creature that led us to this house of death. Believe me, there is someone hiding here.'

My heart beat hard. ‘No, after all these days it is impossible.'

The man who had called for my death fixed me with a dark, unblinking eye. ‘Not if someone was helping them.'

I shrugged.

‘I heard something.'

‘My own footsteps,' I offered.

‘Voices. I would swear to it. Women.'

At the word every man looked up. Faces hardened into lines of cruelty and lust.

‘If only there were,' I laughed. ‘Gentlemen, I have business of my own. If I am successful, I shall invite you to a banquet of monkey.' I stood up and walked out of the sala on to the landing. Then I passed quickly through to the loggia and ran up the stairs. My whole air must have breathed suspicion. Where was my soldier's greed? My demand for a share of their gold, my insisting that the monkey, at least, was mine? I was sure they would be after me in moments. In the closet I hissed to Susan to let me up. When she lifted the hatch I grabbed the harquebus and ran up the ladder. Then we pulled it up after us. From down below footsteps sounded on the stairs.

‘Quiet,' I commanded. Beneath us the men kicked through the bedchambers, clattering under beds with swords, overturning
cabinets and chairs. Then we heard them stamping through into the closet. There was a pause; then a voice came in triumph.

‘Up there. There's an opening.'

I whispered, ‘Is there any other way out?'

Susan shook her head. There was the sound of furniture being dragged into the closet. The Spaniards would soon be up. I looked all round the attic. The walls were solid. Through the cracks in the tiles above us the sky was beginning to show the first grey light of dawn.

‘Quickly!' With my arm I knocked a hole in the tiles. They went skating noisily down the roof to shatter far below on the ground. There was the crash of a harquebus going off, and a ball burst up through the floor between Hannah and Grace. Splinters of wood sprayed over us. Hannah let out a cry, and as she cowered towards me there was blood on her face.

‘Up!' shouted Susan. Together we lifted Hannah through the hole. She crouched on the roof, an arm stretched down to help us, and we next dragged Grace standing. Two more shots rang out, and holes opened further off, missing us. Grace was smiling serenely.

‘Where must I put my foot, Mr Richard? Forgive me, but you see this is entirely new to me.'

We hefted her up through the roof and Hannah took her hand. They teetered upright for a moment, black shapes against the sky, and then both of them slid down with a rattle over the tiles, screaming. I yelled, and there were answering cries from the Spaniards, sure of their prey. Another shot rang out behind Susan, and a rotten beam collapsed, shedding a shower of tiles over her head. She shrieked and fell. I pulled her upright, and together we wallowed over the wreckage on to the roof. ‘Hannah,' I was murmuring in my grief. ‘Hannah.'

‘Here!' She was clinging to the sloping tiles, her feet caught on the jagged moulding that ran along the roof edge like a miniature battlement. Behind us I could hear the Spaniards climbing through into
the attic. I leant over to the hole we had made in the roof and fired my harquebus. The cry from below told me I had hit home. Susan pulled me away from the hole. We slid down the tiles to join the others. I took Hannah's hand and we set off, scrambling along the parapet. Grace followed too, lifting the hem of her gown and looking round in dismay. Susan was first to reach the corner of the palazzo, where the roof turned back for the other wing.

‘Where now?'

Down below us, perhaps twelve feet lower, was the roof of the neighbouring house. To reach it would mean jumping over a narrow alleyway. Further off still, and about another fifteen feet down, were the roofs of the shops along the Via Giulia. Susan looked at my face.

‘You think we can't do it.'

‘I know we can't.' I looked back. Grace cowered back against the tiles, vaguely smiling. Hannah, her face bleeding, clung to her mother. Round the corner of the sloping roof ridge was a row of dormer windows. There was no other choice. We would have to re-enter the palazzo. The Spaniards were on the roof: a shot rang across our heads. They must be almost out of shot, I thought, unless they had had the wit to leave a couple of men behind to reload. One by one we climbed round the ridge, with the dizzy drop before us, until we came to the first of the dormers. I smashed the window shutters and dropped into the chamber with my sword before me. A woman lay dead in the middle of the floor. ‘Quickly!' I handed Susan, Hannah and the smiling Grace through the window and we set off at the run. The layout of this side of the palazzo matched the other. Down to the bedchambers, down again to a loggia, and then out on the balcony above the grand stairs. I heard a shout: a man stood outside the Cages' sala, fumbling to reload his gun. We ran on down the stairs, and burst out into the square. Ten or so soldiers were running towards us from the Via Monserrato, attracted by the shots. I pushed the three women into the shadows and shouted in Spanish, ‘Inside! The Germans are
murdering us!' My cloak and my gun marked me as a soldier, and the natural hatred between the two branches of the army did the rest. The Spaniards ran into the palazzo. I heard more firing from inside, and we ran on, down to the Via Giulia, and turned right, heading north. Susan caught me up.

‘Where in the Devil's name are you taking us?'

Until that moment I had not thought. Our only safe hiding place in the city was behind us. But I saw in my mind's eye the figure climbing the rope down the bastion. It was our only chance. Briefly I explained.

‘And he will be there? He will take us inside the Castle?'

‘He must.'

We were at the old Banchi, perhaps halfway to the bridge. Hannah and Susan were swaying on their feet, their legs weak after days of hiding. Suddenly Mrs Grace slid to the ground.

‘Forgive me, I do not know how it is …'

I pulled them aside into an alleyway. Hannah lay down against a house wall. Blood crusted one side of her face. She smiled: and it was a smile of such beauty that it made me shiver.

‘Please,' I begged her. ‘We must keep going. But no more running. We are getting too near the bridge.' Wearily they stood up. ‘Hands before you as if bound,' I urged them. ‘Heads down.' I had seen lines of captives marched about Rome like this, many a time. In the dim light no one would see they were not tied with ropes. We set off again, slowly. We had come perhaps two hundred yards from the palazzo. Behind us we heard another shot. How long before the two bands of Spaniards joined and came after us?