The King's Diamond (32 page)

Up ahead I could see the barricade before the bridge and soldiers moving in front of it. Beyond, rising through the grey twilight, was the gallows the Germans had put up right where the bridge began; here the Cardinals were made to stand every day in view of the Pope. As we came nearer my heart was pounding. The officer at the barricade turned to us and held up his hand. We stopped. He called out
something in German. Behind me the three women huddled close together. I spoke in Spanish: hostages, to be made to stand on the gibbet. He smiled. Cruelty was a common language; he waved us through.

We were almost at the bridge. Mist rose from the river and blew round us in swirls. Before us was the Castle: grim, gaunt, unsurrendering. Smoke puffed from one of the many embrasures in its great drum tower, and away to the left in the Borgo a cannonball crashed home. Gunfire replied from the Imperials. We walked slowly round the gibbet, its beam and noose hanging above us like death. Hannah glanced up, and nearly fell.

‘Don't look,' I warned her. ‘Keep going.'

Before us stretched the bridge, its paving stones broken up by shot, stones and bodies lying scattered. I led the Cages out from the gibbet into the open. Here over the river the mist was thicker. I prayed it would screen us from the Germans. We passed the first stone pier with its broken statues, then reached the ruins of the chapel halfway across. Still no one had seen us. Then came the third pier, the fourth. We were nearly up to the Castle. The outer wall lay before us, with the portcullis where I had parted from Martin and Cellini. To the right was the round corner bastion where I had seen the rope. But there was nothing there now. We were horribly exposed. And sunrise was not far off. It was late: too late for a prudent spy to be returning. I motioned to the women to duck down below the parapet, just as a shot chipped the stonework by our side. It had come from the Castle.

‘What now?' whispered Susan.

‘We wait.'

Hannah looked white as death. Grace, crouched behind the stones, was trying to pat her hair back into order. I would not betray to them how desperately we were placed. We would be trapped here in the growing light. Perhaps we could crawl down beside the bridge to the riverside. But to stay hidden all day, with the eyes of both the
Imperials and the Castle on us: it was more than I could ask of my luck.

‘And what, in the name of all mad and unlikely things, are you poor fools doing here?'

The voice came in a whisper, from just beyond the parapet. I peered round it in disbelief.

‘John?'

‘The same.' There was his open, smiling face. I had never been more glad to see him. He was dressed in black, with a black cape. His tall frame was like a shadow: a shadow, I guessed, that passed spider-like down a rope and silently into the city. He scuttled round the parapet to join us where we were hiding. I said, ‘And so you are still trading in the same sort of goods. But I thought you were the Emperor's man.'

‘These days His Holiness pays higher. And the Empire has a nasty habit of killing its friends along with its enemies. Mrs Grace! How delightful.' Grace took his hand and they kissed. ‘And Mrs Hannah and Mrs Susan. Enchanting.'

Susan glared at him. ‘You might have told us we were trusting to him for this rescue.'

‘Susan,' her mother rebuked her. ‘Do not be churlish. Mr John, after we have rested I believe we may walk a little further. You will join us?'

John peered round the parapet. The mist was a thick white veil over the bridge; but from the Castle we were an easy mark.

‘We are late,' he murmured. ‘Follow me quickly.' He set off running, bent double, round the foot of the Castle. Another shot glanced off the stones, coming from the far bastion. I urged the Cages to their feet and we hurried after John. Round the angle of the Castle wall we were safe from that lone marksman. We leant against the wall, which reached high above us through the mist to the overhanging battlements. John whistled softly. Like sorcery, the slender line descended. He grasped the end of the rope.

‘I am sorry, but I must go first. Anyone else they would kill. I will make my explanations and then pull you all up. I am valuable to them: they will not say no.'

He jumped and clung to the rope, and was swiftly hauled up and out of sight. We waited in the silence. Above us the mist blew in wreaths. Suddenly the rope dropped out of the whiteness and hung, swaying. I said, ‘Mrs Grace must be next.' I tied a loop in the rope's end for her to sit in; but Grace was shaking her head.

‘Oh, no. If we go up there Mr Stephen will never find us. When we have had our walk, we must go back to the palazzo.'

‘Mother,' Hannah begged. ‘You must go. Mr Richard knows what is best.'

A heavy silence hung over Rome. We could hear the rushing of the river against the bridge piers, and a distant cry from a prison. Suddenly there was shouting back across the bridge: Spanish voices and German. Our pursuers from the palazzo, I guessed, were at the barricade.

‘You go,' said Grace. ‘I shall wait here for Stephen.'

She sat down on the ground. I knelt swiftly at her side.

‘My dear Mrs Grace, if Stephen returns to Rome, and he has the power, the Castle is the very first place he will visit.'

Grace looked up. ‘Do you really think so?'

‘I know it.'

‘Very likely he's waiting for us inside.' This was from Susan.

Grace looked at her in suspicion. ‘If Mr Richard says we must enter the Castle …?'

‘I do,' I said, helping Susan to seat her in the loop of rope. I gave it a tug, and she rose up into the mist.

Hannah was slumped against the Castle wall. I said, ‘The two of you must go together.'

Susan looked at me with her grave, pale eyes: so different from the laughing depths of her sister's. ‘You surely don't trust him? That
man is no true friend of yours. If we go first, you will never see the inside of the Castle.'

‘I will follow you. Go!'

The mist was parting in strands. The tower of the Palazzo Altuiti, a Spanish outpost just downstream, glowed yellow as it caught the early sun. Susan stepped into the loop of rope and put her arm round her sister. Then the two of them rose swiftly up through the clearing fog. I saw where the rope vanished into a narrow window just below the ramparts, perhaps twenty feet up. Susan and Hannah were within a man's height of it when shots rang out from beyond the bridge. Bullets chipped the stone around the window, where arms reached out to pull Hannah inside. Susan hung for a moment, glanced down at me, and then leapt for the window as a shot grazed the sill. They were in.

I waited, my eyes on the window. The moments passed. Soon I would be helpless, a mark for every sharpshooter on the riverbank. I fretted with anger, dread, amazement. Susan could not be right. And yet I was learning that those pale eyes very often saw true. It began to seem possible: John would leave me to die. He had Hannah, and he had no need of his friend. He would explain with tears in his eyes that it was too dangerous to let down the rope yet again; that it would be a breach of his duty to the Pope; that he would regret it for the rest of his days, and do all he could to comfort the bereaved and charming Mrs Hannah.

On the bridge the broken torsoes of the statues were becoming visible through the blowing mist. There was a slap from up above, I turned, and there at last hung the rope. I leapt for it and began climbing at the same time as it pulled me upwards in a series of jerks. In an instant I was above the mist, the sun shone clear and from over the river came the crash of gunfire. Bullets hit around me, and chips of stone stung my face. I looked up. The window was still some feet above my head. I pulled myself higher up the rope. Another shot landed in the stonework next to me, and a lump of rock hit me on the
shoulder. My hands slipped. I swung for some moments in the air. Just above my head, I saw Susan at the window. Then the rope jerked upwards. As another shot hit beside me, Susan reached out and pulled me roughly in over the sill. I fell forward and dropped against the wall. Beside me Hannah lay motionless. Her gown was soaked in blood.

I grabbed her hand, wiping it clean, weeping, touching her face and hair. She answered me with a ghost of her old teasing smile.

‘I am not quite dead yet, Mr Richard.'

She gestured to where a barrel-chested soldier lay with a gaping wound in his neck. He was dead. Blood was pooling round him on the floor. ‘They hit him just as he was pulling us in.'

John threw down the rope and knelt before us.

‘My friend! Thank God. When Matteo here was shot I had not a notion how I could pull you up alone. It was fortunate Mrs Susan was here to help me. Come!'

I paused. Could he be lying? It was true, Matteo was a bull of a man, well able to hoist that rope single-handed, while John was sparely built, like myself. Again, suspicion of my old friend gnawed at me. But surely John's rivalry would not go so far?

John and I supported Hannah between us. She was weak with exhaustion; thankfully the blood on her gown, it seemed, was not hers but Matteo's. Grace and Susan followed. John guided us down a winding stair and out of the corner bastion into a small courtyard. Before us rose the great drum tower itself. Through a door at its base
we entered a vaulted passage lined by massive stone blocks. John led us on, up a ramp which climbed steeply, winding its way deep into the stone. I truly felt that I was in a tomb: for the entire Castle was no more than an ancient mausoleum, the conception of an emperor who had wished to be buried like a pharoah in his pyramid. Up and up the walkway turned. Torches burned in the walls. We passed an airshaft, down which shots and voices echoed from far above. At length the ramp ended abruptly in a fresh ascent which cut in a straight line through the Castle's heart, over the burial chamber itself, which it crossed by means of a soaring drawbridge guarded by sentries. Here, and in the grain silos and even the dungeon cells let into the Castle's walls, huddled the poor Romans who had managed to press inside before the portcullis fell. Women and children, many of them; babies' cries resounded up and down the passages and shafts. This ramp led us to stairs, which turned and at last brought us up to daylight.

We emerged into a long courtyard filled with activity. Along one side stretched an armoury, from which men were carrying casks of powder and cannonballs. From here stairs led up to a curving line of battlements where cannon fired at intervals, pounding against the city. On the other side of the courtyard rose the rectangular tower at the centre of the drum, and, high at its top, the Papal banner of the crossed keys. Little knots of priests stood about, watching. I turned anxiously to Hannah. She smiled faintly. John disappeared through a doorway in the tower, and came out with a liveried chamberlain, who offered to take the Cages to the place where noble ladies were lodged. ‘You will find Martin with Benvenuto,' John added. ‘At the top: at the Angel. Up to the battlements, and then keep climbing. As for myself, I am overdue with His Holiness.'

I clasped John's hand, and with a pang saw Hannah led away through the door. But we were safe: I feared nothing now. I took a turn or two around the courtyard, breathing the fresh, good air which blew on a light north wind from the mountains, sweeping
away the fogs and the stink of death that hung everywhere down in the city. I ran up to the ramparts, then turned and entered the tower. Inside was a labyrinth of rooms, curtained off into makeshift quarters for cardinals and nobles. Tortuous stairways led me higher and higher, until I came out on the topmost terrace, the Angel, as it was called, though the great marble statue of the Archangel Michael that had stood here, raising its bronze sword over the city in protection, had been shattered by lightning some years back.

In the clearing mist I could see far out over the river, the city, and the plain and mountains beyond. The roar of gunfire was tremendous. There were five cannon here, two of them massive demiculverins some thirteen feet long, and three of the smaller falconets, about as long as a man, mounted so they could swivel. The shot stood in little pyramids, and men ran round fetching powder, measuring it out with ladles and then, with the aid of brass funnels, pouring it into the chambers of the guns. Between them strode Cellini, his eyes on fire, roaring at the men, then aiming the guns himself and putting the fire to the fuse. Martin was with him, and Alessandro too. As another report shook the stone beneath my feet I came up behind them. They turned and saw me. Their faces showed disbelief, then the astonishment of catching sight of a ghost, and then delight. I ran forward and embraced them.

‘Master! We had you marked as a dead man, sure.'

I smiled, enjoying their amazement to the full. ‘I simply went to fetch my jewels.'

‘And you have them?' Cellini asked.

I patted my chest.

‘Well, you have the luck of the very Devil. But that luck might yet be about to run out.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Later,' said Cellini. ‘We have work to do.'

He sent a boy down to fetch food, and I sat against a pile of cannonballs, exhausted, savouring the fresh bread, cheese and wine
while Cellini worked the guns. Harquebus shots whisked over our heads, and heavier fire too. The enemy had brought up cannon from the Borgo, and from time to time a ball crashed into the walls beneath us.

At nightfall Benvenuto led me at last to a small chamber right by the Angel which he shared with Martin. I felt weak, and still elated with my escape. I laid before them my hoard: the finished jewels and the unset stones; and I tossed across to Cellini his own property, the sheets of gold, the gems, the coin. He raised his eyes in appreciation.

‘This is more than I ever thought to see again. My thanks. But all these fine things may not remain ours for long.'

I felt a sinking in my stomach. I had an inkling then of our situation. We were besieged. The castle was full of the helpless: many hungry mouths but few fighters. I remembered those soldiers who had run out from the gate in the moments before the portcullis fell, and snatched what food they could from the nearby houses. It was proof enough that the Castle was ill-provided. After all, no one had conceived that Rome could ever fall. How many fighting men were here? A few hundred? A thousand at most, against thirty thousand outside.

‘I see you are beginning to understand,' said Cellini. ‘The Abbot of Najera has been here, commissioner-general of the Imperial army, treating with the Pope for terms. But His Holiness cannot make up his mind. The pen is in his hand to sign the surrender, and then your friend John, out on his spying trips, brings in a fresh rumour that the Venetians are only two days away, and His Holiness lays down the pen and begs for a little longer to decide. Some days he is all blood and thunder: he will see Rome consumed in fire before he gives in to the godless, he says. And when he has finished here, he will go and smite the Florentines. Oh yes, haven't you heard? They've had another revolution, thrown out his relatives and burnt His Holiness in effigy. Other days he weeps, and says he will be the
last of the line of the Popes, and it is God's judgement on us all for our sins, and for his own folly in particular. And who is to contradict him?'

‘The Venetians are always two days away,' Martin put in gloomily. ‘Yet they never come.'

‘Why should they?' said Benvenuto. ‘Pope Clement has always betrayed them. Put away your jewels. Do not count on them as safe quite yet.'

‘Only make sure you stay alive,' I told him. ‘I shall call on you to finish your work one day.'

It was the eighteenth of May. For twelve days I had lived in the inferno of Rome. I raged to think all my cunning and luck might yet be in vain. That night I slept in a welter of nightmare. Early next morning I went looking for Hannah. I found the Cages in a corner of one of the antechambers at the foot of the tower. Hannah lay in a pallet bed, with Grace and Susan sitting at her side. She had colour in her face again. Over one eye I saw the cut she had got from the wood splinter in the attic. Cleaned of blood, it did not look threatening.

‘She is recovering well,' said Susan.

I crouched down and took Hannah's hand, and for some time I merely gazed on her without speaking.

‘Stephen went ahead,' Grace commented. ‘He was only to have been gone a moment. And then we came here. It is so great a pity Stephen is not with us. It would have been a perfect time to advance his business with His Holiness.'

I glanced at her sharply. I longed to question her; for all my guessing and wondering, I had still not seen to the heart of Stephen's business.

‘She remembers nothing,' Susan whispered to me. ‘Those twelve days have gone.'

‘If only he escaped the hands of the soldiers,' Grace resumed. ‘If he got safe to Ostia.'

She was growing more lucid. I said, ‘There is a good chance of that.'

Grace put her hand on my arm in thanks.

‘Dear Mr Richard,' Hannah murmured. ‘We owe both you and John so very much.'

I felt a twinge of displeasure. I had not come through all those dangers to be a mere sharer in the glory with John. But how could I deny he had saved us? What was more, he had saved me, when he might easily have found an excuse not to. But then, how much stronger his position was now, the generous saviour of us all. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask if he had been to see her. But that would have been to betray my jealousy and spur Hannah to yet more teasing. She smiled back up at me with a glint of mischief, as if understanding all I thought.

 

The days went by. In the week since I had joined the besieged I had become a soldier: I spent my hours with Cellini at the Angel. I mixed and measured the powder, I rammed the wooden tampions down the gun muzzles and carried the shot, the five-inch balls for the demiculverins and the two-inch for the falconets, and I ran the guns forward ready for firing. Cellini was the captain, and he took to gunnery with as much zeal as goldsmith work. He sighted each gun and fired, picking off the Imperials as they worked digging trenches around the Castle. Often a cardinal or two stood behind us in their red capes and birettas, watching our guns and murmuring a blessing when one of them scored a hit. Sometimes there were nobles with them. I bowed to those I knew: Gregorio Casale, old Cardinal Campeggio, Cardinal Cesi. They returned my courtesies with sad smiles. No one had believed it could come to this. From up here you could see the whole city: the smoking ruins of the palazzi, the streets clogged with the dead, and troops swarming everywhere in their hungry bands.

One morning Pope Clement himself appeared on the terrace. His face, with its heavily lidded eyes, was crumpled and haggard. He
wore a ragged growth of beard: from the first day of the siege he had refused to shave, in mourning for the Holy City. As he passed by, Benvenuto threw himself down on his knees.

‘I beg absolution, Holy Father, for the many men I have killed in defence of the Church.'

The Pope bent over him and made the sign of the cross in the air, pardoning him at the same time for however many more Spanish and Germans he might send to Hell. I wished I could have begged the like forgiveness. But I had killed for more personal motives: for my gems and for love. Still the jewels sat in my casket, the diamond as yet uncut. And perhaps they would not remain mine for long.

Down below, the system of trenches and cannon ringing the Castle was almost complete. John continued to slip out, passing invisibly between the two sides, weaving over the river and back again, up to the Papal palace where the Prince of Orange and the other Imperial generals held their councils of war. The danger of it amused him vastly; but he told me that before long even his own secret sallies would become impossible. ‘The trenches are one thing,' he told me. ‘But we should be more afraid of the mines.' The thought chilled me: that the enemy might even now be tunnelling beneath the Castle, and could at any moment bring us down with gunpowder.

The Imperials were sure of victory. The Germans paraded about in looted vestments from the cardinals' palaces, and sat down to a mock conclave in front of the trenches. At the end they sprang up, shouting, ‘Luther is pope! Luther is pope!' And indeed, anything seemed possible. There were whispers in the Castle that Clement would be taken away to Spain, a prisoner, and poisoned there. The cardinals, scattered across Europe, would never see Rome again. They might meet in little conclaves, electing petty anti-popes, one in France, one in Germany, one in Spain. Martin Luther might truly become the strongest voice in Christendom. Many put the blame on Cardinal Pucci, whose ruthless extortions, men said, had driven Germany into Luther's arms. But Pucci blamed Cardinal
Salviati, who had advised Clement to ally with France, and Salviati blamed the generals, in particular Renzo da Ceri. Renzo himself walked about the terraces upright and silent, as if to say: ‘None of this is my fault. I wash my hands of it.' Every night I helped Benvenuto to light three beacons at the Angel, and we fired off three cannonades: the signal to the Duke of Urbino that we had not surrendered.

Some days I walked with Hannah in the garden that occupied a tiny courtyard beside the Papal apartments. Vines crept up over the battlements, and lemon trees basked beside the furnaces for the Pope's private steam bath. It was a little fantasy, this garden: a pretence that we were still living the life of three weeks before. We seldom spoke. I thought of the jewels that hung round my neck and the greed for fame that had kept me in Rome past the moment of safety; and Mr Stephen's mysterious business, that had condemned Hannah likewise. In a simpler world we might have escaped.

 

As the end of May approached, the Castle's first case of the plague was reported among the poorer folk, hiding down in the dungeons. Bread was growing scarce. The Duke of Urbino was close: eight miles off, some said. But he had no provisions, and he lost deserters every day to the Imperials. One night, just after Cellini and I had fired the signal guns, one of the Pope's chamberlains stepped into our chamber. This was a Frenchman known as Cavalierino; Clement used him for all his most secret affairs. There were two soldiers with him. He told Benvenuto he must come with him at once. I watched him go with anxiety. The Castle had become a nest of whispers and accusations. Cellini was outspoken; his enemies, it seemed, had succeeded in turning the Pope against him. I spent a restless night with Martin. We sat and listened to the flapping of the great banner in the wind above us, and the occasional crack of gunfire, and played at cards. To lose Benvenuto knocked away a good deal of my remaining hope.