The King's Diamond (27 page)

That very night we rode from Florence, west into the hills away from the armies. Then we doubled back, south and east. The next two days brought us to Cortona, and then over that windswept pass down into the lands of the Pope. The trees were coming into leaf in the hills, and over the plain lay a warm, blue haze. I could think of nothing but Hannah, and the traitor. I had pictured my triumph when Cellini saw the diamond. Now hatred curdled me when I thought of him. It was the first of May when we finally crossed the Tiber by the Milvian Bridge and reached Rome: I had been gone almost a month. A light mist hung in the air. A heavy guard manned the gate, but these were citizen troops, slow and unsoldierly. There was no sign of the Medici Black Bands, or the Swiss.

My rage carried me to the old, familiar palace with its tawny stucco, and the twining paintings of ancient heroes that ran round above the barred windows. I hammered on the door. Two men opened it, strangers. They were carrying harquebuses. A new fear gripped me then: what if the Cages had finished their business and gone? But at the name Stephen Cage they nodded, and I went in. There were more armed men on the stairs, and a pair with halberds
guarded the door to the sala. From inside came the sound of music and a man's laugh. I was shown in. There, on a gilt chair by the fireplace, sat Benvenuto. Susan Cage was with him, and both had lutes on their laps. Benvenuto was a fine player. He plucked out a lively phrase, then waited for Susan to follow, her face puckered and frowning, her notes slower but delicate. Then he laughed, and set her a further challenge, and she muttered in mock dismay. I walked up to face them. If he was this free with Susan, I boiled to think how he had been behaving with Hannah. My sword leapt from my scabbard into my hand. Susan let out a gasp. Cellini nimbly put aside the lute, and in an instant he was facing me, sword drawn.

I sprang at him. He answered my blows with ringing parries. His guard was good; but still he did not attack. Susan jumped up. ‘Oh, you are fools! Stop! Stop!'

The doors flew open, and the two men with halberds ran in. I circled round to face them.

‘Leave us be,' said Cellini. ‘This is a mere friendly bout.'

The men doubtfully withdrew.

‘You do know,' said Cellini, circling, ‘that I could simply ask my men to kill you. Those soldiers are mine.'

I attacked again, and he dodged. ‘Yours?'

‘The Black Bands have gone. Oh, the Pope dismissed them. Their looting became an embarrassment. Besides that, they were costing him thirty thousand ducats a month.' He struck at me, powerfully and without apparent effort. I was tired, I realised, from my ride, and my parries lacked strength.

‘And the soldiers?'

‘Each house looks to its own defences. My friends and I guarded Alessandro once before, when the Colonnas invaded Rome. Now he has asked us back. I live here, with these charming ladies.'

‘Traitor!'

I deployed the
punta
, the long lunge. It was a deadly stroke. Cellini, however, slid his blade across in the iron gate, just in time.

‘Stop, please!' Susan was laughing, even as she was almost crying. ‘You are too comical. Richard: you remember? “Another man has his finger in the pot.” You should be looking elsewhere than Benvenuto.'

I lowered my sword and looked at her. And so the letter was hers. At that moment the door to the loggia opened, and in walked Grace and Stephen. Behind them came John. At his side was Hannah, with her hand resting on his arm.

‘What! Swords!' Stephen came hurrying towards us, waving his hand as you would to part fighting dogs. ‘Put them up, put them up.'

‘A mere friendly difference of view,' said Cellini. He sheathed his blade. I was looking at John. My amazement and my rage had only a moment to build when Hannah detached herself from him and ran to my side. She hung on my shoulder, and the warmth and weight of her body changed all my feelings in an instant.

‘God be thanked!' she sighed. ‘Everyone is talking of the uprising in Florence. You escaped before it?'

‘No, I was there.' My sword was a sudden embarrassment: I slid it into its sheath. Hannah's eyes shone. Her admiration, her concern and devotion: they were for me and me alone. I darted a glance at John. He strode easily forward and clasped my hand. ‘Old friend. We had almost given you up. But you are like me: you always win through.'

‘And you come in such good time for dinner.' Mrs Grace smiled her cultured smile. She called for Fenton, and soon the old ritual was set in motion, the boards laid on their trestles, the cloth spread; the minstrels trooped in. The silver plates, the gilt candlesticks, the tapestries, all had seemingly been once more unpacked. We sat down. With Hannah's eyes on me, and her breathless questions, the last of my anger drained away. Mr Stephen, too, treated me with grave respect, and wanted to hear every movement of the armies.

‘When I left,' I told him, ‘the Spaniards and the lansquenets had drawn away. With the Venetians in Florence, they will find it a hard city to take.'

Hannah broke in. ‘Oh! What is a – a lanskenay?'

I turned to her, relishing her attention. ‘A lansquenet, my dear Mrs Hannah, is a demon that is bred in Germany, with a sword in his hand and Luther in his heart.' She shivered with a delighted horror, and put her hand on my arm. I thrilled with glory. Still secret, wrapped inside my casket, lay the diamond of the Old Rock. But I promised myself I would not show it to Hannah yet. I would have it cut, and then I would amaze her. She would know then, for sure, how far I would rise when we returned home.

After dinner I walked with her alone in the loggia, and then at last I begged forgiveness: for running away from her that night when we should have met in the garden, for fighting like a beast in the sala, for my vain jealousies and suspicions.

She squeezed my arm. ‘My dear Mr Richard. I hope your gain in Florence was worth the loss of that night.'

‘It was a heavy price. But there will be other nights?'

‘Perhaps.'

Cellini at this moment appeared. He murmured in my ear, ‘If you have cooled down, come with me to my workshop. I think you will be surprised.'

Hannah gave me a last smile: elusive but laced with promise. Cellini and I walked out together into the late afternoon sun. We were silent until we stood in the workshop down by the river, where Cellini unlocked his chest and held up to me a gold pendant on a chain, a disc some two inches broad. There it was: the garden, just as we had planned. There were the reapers in gold relief, their sickles cutting into the corn; there were the meadows, studded with crimson jacinths, as it might be poppies; the shepherd beneath his tree; the nymphs, one undressing, two naked, their feet hovering over the pale, milky pool of the white sapphire. Round its rim hung Ippolita's nine pendant pearls. Every smallest space had been used, and yet the composition did not seem in the least crowded or constrained. Only one thing was missing. In place of the green distant fields that were
to have been figured by the Scythian emerald, there was only an empty socket.

‘It is a marvel,' I murmured. ‘And the emerald?'

Cellini wiped his hand across his beard. ‘The emerald, you say. Well! I tried to cut it, and I couldn't.'

‘Couldn't!'

He held up the stone in his other hand. As he turned it, rounded and smooth, it glinted with a pale, beech-leaf brilliance, shooting out glances of turquoise and amber. ‘Look at it. Have you ever seen an emerald like that?'

I had to admit it, I had not. There had been something all along that was not right about it. It was too pale, too ready to shine, and with colours that were simply too fickle for an emerald. But its beauty had always shouted down my suspicions. ‘You are not telling me it is fake?'

Cellini tossed the gem up in his hand and caught it. ‘That depends what you mean. This is not an emerald. It is a diamond.'

‘A diamond!'

‘Of the rarest kind. It is a green diamond. I have only ever seen one other like it.'

I took the stone greedily from his hands. It was plain to me now. It had a diamond's temperament, its limpid depth and sudden flash of colour; yet all in an emerald green. It was a wonder. I looked up. ‘Will you cut it?'

‘If you want the risk. But the green in a diamond of this kind is most likely skin-deep, no more. It is a virtue which the stone drinks up from its mother rock, but which does not penetrate to its heart. Cut it, and we may have only a drab white stone.'

I gazed at it. Its surface rippled like gently flowing water. ‘It is perfect as it is.'

He nodded, and looked at me with a sideways smile. ‘Paulino, bring us wine. Our friend is in need of it. He went to Florence for a stone, and came back with only a bad temper.'

It was my turn to smile. I took out the casket, unlocked it, and handed Cellini a fold of silk. He unwrapped it and took out the stone: the Golconda diamond of the Old Rock. He lifted it to the light in silence, turned it, round, under, back; he paused, he rotated it again. I let him look in silence.

‘Its main faces are three,' he murmured. ‘After we have cut away the flaw. Its water is good: very good. Pure, limpid, silver-blue. Its shape, yes, the light already invites us where to place the table. And its flash, its fire, they will be of the finest. But it will be ticklish work. Oh, yes. You wish me to attempt it?'

I stood at his elbow, gazing along his line of sight into the diamond. Already I saw it in new ways. The hidden gem inside its smooth outer skin seemed to jump into life. I said, ‘I trust you.'

Cellini laughed. ‘Now you trust me! And what is your plan for this stone?'

‘A thorn. A thorn to pierce the heart.'

Cellini handed me the diamond. ‘You are right. This is a deadly stone. It is a stone men would kill for.' He gave me a sharp look. ‘I have no notion how you afforded it.'

‘Let us just say I still have enough left to pay you.' I took out the blood-red garnets and the violet balasses and amethysts, and laid them beside the diamond. Cellini, with his paper and charcoal before him, was already beginning to sketch.

 

That night I sat drinking with John, back at the Ship. He had ordered a bottle of the finest old romney. ‘My friend,' he protested, his hands spread in appeal, ‘what was I to do? Mrs Hannah was distraught. I merely kept her company as best I knew how. We spoke of no one but you. And then, when Benvenuto recruited his little army, of course I volunteered. And so Susan actually wrote to you in Florence, to warn you I was stealing your place? The little strumpet has pluck.'

I laughed. John was right. Susan was no better than a spiteful child. She envied her sister her happiness; and perhaps she would have liked some of John's easy smiles for herself.

I was impatient for Cellini to get on with his work. But he spent several hours each day at the Palazzo del Bene: Alessandro, he explained, fretted constantly over his defences. There were fifty men quartered there in all, some on the roofs, others in the two gardens which flanked the building's wings, others ready to defend the windows. Fifteen had harquebuses and the rest were armed with pikes, crossbows and swords. There was a good supply of gunpowder, which Cellini ground and mixed himself.

Of Bourbon's army there was no news. It was presumed he still lay at Siena, where he had gone to take on fresh supplies. The majority of Romans thought nothing of the danger. A ragged army a hundred and twenty miles away, that would regard Florence as unfinished business before it ever turned south to Rome? What danger was there in that? The citizen militia obeyed the call to patrol the gates and walls with bad grace. What was the point? Only a few men like Alessandro feared the very worst, and made their own private plans accordingly. Stephen Cage was another who took the threat seriously.

‘We shall be out of this damned city,' he murmured to me, ‘just as soon as we may. Our goods are ready to be loaded up at a few hours' warning.' Then he took his leave for yet another trip over the river to the Pope's palace.

I sent Martin out about the city for news. His Italian had become almost as good as mine; I knew I could trust him as a spy. It was Friday, two days after I returned to Rome, when Martin brought back a letter from the English hostel. It came from Bennet Waterman. I snatched at it with impatience and sat down at once to decipher it.