The King's Diamond (7 page)

They followed me on to Broken Wharf. At the door to the warehouse we passed Martin Deller, sitting on a barrel with his wooden cudgel across his knee, keeping watch on the comings and goings of the wharf. He watched us through half-lidded eyes, and nodded. We
stepped inside the old, familiar dimness, heavy with mingled scents, cinnamon, cloves, pepper. Thomas said, ‘And what of you and your trade?'

I still had not dared reveal my new trade to my mother; and that meant it was not safe to tell Thomas or John either. Instead I spoke to them of the alleys and courts of Lisbon, the wonderful bargains we struck, Mr William's skill in trade, my own attentiveness and submission. I knew what I was telling them must sound vague and only half-truthful. It was the story of Mr William, not of myself. Thomas knew well enough that I dreamt of dealing in gems, though I had rarely spoken of it. I tapped the cases in irritation. I ached to tell them everything: the stash of gemstones that even now rested in the little casket, locked in the chest in my chamber, the bag of gold and silver that nestled by its side. Thomas and John were walking on together down one of the dim corridors between stacks of barrels. The sense of isolation was dreadful. I called out to them.

‘Wait! I have something to show you.' I ran back out, round the corner into the house and up to my chamber overlooking Bosse Lane and the cracked stone court of Terra Incognita. Breathless, back with them, I opened my casket and set out on a barrel head the small hoard of stones I had brought back with me from my latest voyage. William and I had ranged as far as Naples, where I had acquired a batch of large citrines, showy things that the goldsmiths loved to carve; then there were a couple of Arabian rock crystals, six-pointed, and four or five brilliant red cornelians. John whistled. Thomas reached out a hand to cover the stones, and peered over his shoulder.

‘Our mother will kill you if she finds out.'

‘But you are not really making money?' John pressed me. His face wore the old, challenging smile, that had a good tinge in it of envy. In reply I set before them my purse, heavy with coins that had all grown out of that first sixty crowns.

‘We shall never tell,' Thomas said. ‘Now, put them away.'

I tossed a cornelian up in the air. ‘Why should I? What makes you so afraid?'

Thomas looked at me. ‘You have spent too long off with the seagulls, dear brother. You forget how things are, back here on dry land.'

‘Well, and how are they?' I was beginning to be angry.

Thomas stood up. ‘Come with me, and you will see.' I gathered the stones reluctantly back into the casket and followed him, down to the darkest end of the warehouse. We passed the various goods Mr William had bought on our last venture, the Lisbon spices, the French woad that was a cheap equivalent to indigo, the Turkish rugs. At the far end Thomas stopped at a case I did not recognise, marked in a curling hand, ‘Damascus silk'. I had heard of no such thing coming in. Nothing of the kind would be carried by our other agents, who worked the shorter routes to Flanders, and I was certain it had not been in the holds of the
Rose
. I kicked the case: it was heavy. I turned to the others.

‘So it is the old game. Is Thomas daring us to have a look? Shall we?'

I drew out my knife, and John, with a sombre smile, did the same. We worked away at the lid, casting glances back towards the door, where Martin still sat. At last it sprang clear. Inside were a few folds of crimson fabric, but underneath lay something hard. John pulled back the silks to reveal stacks and stacks of books, bound in pale new leather. I stared at them in surprise. The firm of Dansey had never dealt in such things. Books ranked among the goods my mother regarded as poor investments, like gems. And what book could be worth the trouble of bringing from overseas? John picked one up and opened it. The titlepage was covered in strange swirls of foliage. At its foot was a crucifix: but in place of Christ, there was a serpent twining up the cross, and on its head sat the Pope's triple crown. Thomas said, ‘Well? Have you forgotten your Latin so soon? Or is it too dark for you? Darkness is best for such things, I promise you.
This is
On the Babylonish Captivity of the Church
. And the author is Martin Luther.' John dropped it as if he had been stung.

To be caught merely opening such a book meant arrest, imprisonment in the Lollards' Tower by Saint Paul's where the heretics go, interrogation by the Cardinal; excommunication and death at the stake. Rumours ran round of the fearsome contents of these books, of the fiery rhetoric that smashed down all you thought was sure. They said that if you once read a book of Luther you would never be the same again. We stood for some moments, staring down at them. Then I reached out my hand, touched the leather of the fallen book and picked it up. The others watched me intently. I flicked beyond the serpent on the cross, and read as quickly as my Latin allowed, jumping from page to page. The Pope was portrayed as a ruthless huntsman, demon of tyranny and avarice, the greedy shopkeeper who released souls from Purgatory for gold. I saw the powers of the priests one by one refuted. There was no such thing as the Last Rites. The priests had invented it for profit, twisting the meaning of an apocryphal verse. Priestcraft has no power to conjure the blood and body of Christ into the sacrament; the Communion is an act of Faith, and no mere Work of man. Confession too had to be Faith, not Work; the task the priests set us, contrition for all our sins, is impossible; our sins are so great, so far beyond the reach of our memories and minds. Even the best works of our lives, of which we are proudest, will turn out on examination to be terrible sins. None of the tyrannical ceremonies of a rotten Church can save us; only Faith, Faith, Faith. I read on, amazed, until Thomas struck the book from my hands.

‘That is enough. Now do you see?'

I was beginning to. My mother had no love of Luther, I was sure. But there were many in London who would pay handsomely for those books, and few who dared bring them into the country from Germany where they were printed. The profit for her in that deadly case of books was large and certain: always provided she did not get
caught. It was a sign of just how confident she was in her own power, and how far she was prepared to take her policy of ruthless and finely judged risk.

Thomas put the lid in place and began forcing the nails back in with the haft of his little knife.

‘You think you can simply strike off on some trade of your own?' he hissed. ‘She is the one who decides what is bought and sold. She chooses the risks, and takes them. What will you do if she cuts you off? I promise you, she'll do it.'

‘What makes you so sure of that?'

Thomas looked down. ‘Because she has threatened me with it. And I am the one she calls her favourite.'

That sobered me. I could not imagine what peaceable Thomas might have done to stir that degree of anger in the Widow of Thames Street. Thomas and John met one another's eyes. That veil of secrecy was back. I was as far apart from them as ever. When the last nail was in the lid we turned swiftly away and made for the door. Martin watched us leave with a stony expression.

‘I don't envy you,' said John. ‘Not with your family. I had rather take the clapboards, stockfish and pig iron, even though they do bore me to death and beyond.'

He turned away across the stones towards Timber Hythe. It was beginning to rain. Thomas made for the door of our house. ‘Are you coming?'

‘Soon.' I was thinking hard. Thomas was right. But yet, in our mother's recklessness, I saw my moment of opportunity. I walked quickly back inside the warehouse, crossed to the stairs at the far end, and climbed to the counting house.

Miriam Dansey looked up at me in surprise. She had a sea chart of the western Mediterranean spread out before her, the jagged coasts thick with place names, the open seas scored by myriad compass lines. Without any ceremony I set my casket down on the table, turned the key and opened it up. In the light of her two candles,
the cornelians and the citrines gleamed like burning coals. My mother stood up slowly, her eyes fixed on the stones. Then she reached out a long forefinger, poked at them and drew it back as if they were scorpions. At last she looked at me, her face white, the skin around her mouth twitching.

‘Christ and all his angels!' She flicked the casket shut. ‘I should have forbidden you to travel. I should never have trusted you off and alone. You are just a baby. No: worse, and I know where you had this mischief from. Dead? No, he is not dead. I am looking at him.' She shouted beyond me, down the stairs to the warehouse. ‘William! William! Where is he? What was the fool thinking? I told him to watch you and keep you out of folly!'

‘What about you?' I answered. ‘Do you not think those books in the warehouse just a little bit reckless?'

She sat down again and glared at me with her steely eyes.

‘I see Martin has been somewhat lax in his guard duties,' she said quietly. She rapped the table with her hand. ‘Those are entirely different. Everyone knows what they are worth. We buy in Antwerp for a crown, and sell here for three. Cash trebled in less than two weeks. Pure profit, if no one talks. And they won't,' she added, with a fierce narrowing of her eyes. ‘But these!' She lifted the lid again and took out one of the stones, a pale, gleaming citrine the size of a walnut. ‘This might be anything. Yellow glass.'

In reply, I took out my purse, loosened the strings and poured a cascade of silver and gold over her map. The effect was pleasingly dramatic. Covering the coastlines of France, Spain and the Barbary Coast were a dozen or so angel nobles, discs of gold an inch broad worth six shillings and eightpence each. There were nine of the larger royals or rose nobles, at ten shillings, and mixed among them some thirty gold crowns, at four shillings and twopence each, as well as gold half crowns and a good number of silver shillings and groats. My mother's eyes opened in surprise. She leaned forward, and stirred the coins with her finger. Then she looked up.

‘You made this? Out of gems?'

‘Nothing but.'

‘Hm!' She drew back. She tried not to show it, but I knew she was impressed. Money spoke to her, whatever its source. ‘Well, you may risk your coins if you choose. But Mr William's is the real trade, and you will learn it. Come back in a year, and show me what you have then. If you have anything left at all.'

For the moment, I was content to obey my mother. I was growing, I thought to myself, maturing just like a gemstone deep in the bowels of the earth, that advances slowly to its perfection. I was acquiring a good grasp of Italian, and fair Portuguese and Spanish: accomplishments of value, since few enough men abroad would trouble to learn a lesser tongue like English. My eye for stones was getting sharper with every trip, and my reserves of coin were growing too. Soon I would be able to buy one or two of the dearer stones. It was time I began to look ahead to the next stage in my ambitions. I had set myself to become a merchant in jewels: not a mere retailer who brought in stones to Breakespere and Wolf and Heyes, but a man of standing who dealt directly with the Court. That meant somehow getting close to that wondrous, gilt and tinselled world. Just as for Thomas, I thought, my best hope lay with our uncle.

Bennet Waterman thought very highly of himself these days. He was one of Cardinal Wolsey's audiencers: a legal clerk who prepared chancery bills, and generally took on any business that the Cardinal's labyrinthine affairs required. It brought Uncle Bennet within a breath of the Court. He wore a velvet gown with silk lining, and a
silver brooch with a small garnet in his hat. When Cardinal Wolsey was in residence at York Place, his vast house in Westminster, Uncle Bennet often took a boat down the river and paid us a visit on Thames Street. In the winter draughts of our candlelit parlour, while my mother and Mr William discussed the latest tariffs on pepper, Uncle Bennet took Thomas and me aside, his portly belly creaking after one of our generous but plain dinners. He enjoyed playing the courtier before his sister; and even though she might scoff at his posturing and airs, he was a connection she could not afford to despise, at least for the sake of Thomas.

‘Ah, King Henry. He is the flower of chivalry, my boy. Have I told you how he came to marry Queen Katherine? He was only eleven when he became betrothed. She was seventeen, the widow of his poor brother, Prince Arthur. For six years after that their engagement lasted, while the late King fussed and grubbed and tried to prise her dowry out of Spain. He would never let his son go, you know. They say he envied him terribly, for his looks and his strength. He kept him locked up, like some poor virgin in a tale. But when King Henry the Seventh died, what did our young King do? Married her at once. Dowry or no dowry. No knight out of an old romance could have done fairer.'

That Christmas of 1523, when I was back in England after another voyage with Mr William, Uncle Bennet smuggled me into a general audience in the King's great hall at Westminster. He whispered to me to keep close by his side, and not to draw attention. I stood among the pages and lesser followers of the Cardinal, and looked at the ranks of great personages where the various factions and powers of the Court were on display. My heart was beating hard. I had never before been this close to the King. There he sat, immobile, a daunting and powerful presence: our sovereign lord, King Henry the Eighth. He was in his early thirties, as handsome a man as there was in the world, large-limbed, with a long, lean face, bearded, even though the common English fashion was to go clean-shaved. He
darted his gaze about the hall. He was in a towering temper: news had just reached England that the Turks had driven the Knights of Saint John from Rhodes. An envoy from the Pope was before him and his powerful voice thundered repeatedly, ‘I am Defender of the Faith!' The title was a gift of the Pope in which Henry took great pride.

As he was speaking, I took in every aspect of his appearance with a goldsmith's eye. His black velvet cap had a badge in it bearing a large, pyramid-cut diamond. His shirt collar was of gold thread set with emeralds; his doublet was sewn with gold in a lozenge pattern, and at every crossing a cluster of pearls. Round his neck was a gold chain set with great table-cut sapphires and amethysts; a heavy pendant hung from this chain, and in it shone four dark rubies. At his belt was a dagger, its sheath set with yet more stones. He wore rings on the forefingers of both hands, one an opal, one a diamond; and over his crimson silk hose, below his right knee, was the Garter, enamelled and set with pearls. When he moved, a sparkle of jewels darted from his chest, his fingers, his legs, just as if he were God himself seated in his glory.

Beside him sat Queen Katherine, almost forty, with a plump, heavily painted face and a jutting chin. At her bosom she wore a gold cross and several chains of rubies and pearls: doubtless a part of the wardrobe she had brought from Spain. I knew from my friends on Goldsmiths' Row that she seldom bought anything new. Seated with her was the Princess Mary, a small, half-pretty seven-year-old with dark eyes, the only surviving child of Henry and his Queen after fourteen years of marriage. It appeared more and more likely that she would one day be Queen Regnant herself, and so an aspiring merchant would do well to cultivate her favour. But that was far in the future. The real prize was the King.

I knew that Henry acquired mountains of gems each year, and that he had made Cornelius Heyes and the others rich. The trade was there, but how to break in on it? Everything flowed through the
hands of those few great goldsmiths. If I only had a patron at Court. I looked along the ranks of the great courtiers. There was Cardinal Wolsey, with two tall priests carrying the silver crosses, nine feet high, that represented his authority as Papal Legate and Archbishop of York. His pride was immense. At a distance stood his almoner, his chamberlains and treasurers, and then in a gaggle round us the constables, the audiencers, the clerks, and even the official whose job it was to melt the Cardinal's sealing wax. I suspected that Uncle Bennet, a humble lawyer, did not have as much influence with the Cardinal as he liked to pretend.

Then, across from the Cardinal, were the other, rival, powers at Court: there was the wise and ironical Sir Thomas More, who had just been made Speaker of the House of Commons; and stern Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, the tough old soldier and veteran of Flodden who had spent years watching, greedily and in vain, for the fall of the Cardinal. He was a figure of little practical power, though much patronage and grandeur. To enter the graces of any of these men was almost as difficult as approaching King Henry himself. What I needed was a chance, an advantage, a piece of luck.

 

In 1524, on the anniversary of my visit to my mother, I once more opened my casket to her. By now my collection included a small but perfect sapphire, which I handed to her as a gift. She rolled the stone under her finger, then pushed it back to me over the table.

‘Keep it,' she said. ‘Sell it. You may yet need your pennies. Carry on, my Richard. You have not persuaded me yet.'

Somehow, the old band was never all in London at the same time. In the autumn I was home once more. But by then John had left for Hungary, on a venture concerning salt. The great mines there were threatened by the savage advance of the Turks, and the house of Lazar was looking for a swift profit before the market was closed to them.

‘He has found his adventure,' commented Thomas, as we sat together on the wharf, his eyes on the moving swirls of the river. ‘If he lives through it.' Thomas was more and more downcast these days. Still he was reading with the Franciscan. The Cardinal's college was not yet ready; the monasteries destined for funding it refused to disband.

‘Can you not find a place somewhere else?' I prompted him.

He shook his head. ‘Our mother says wait. A little longer.'

The next summer, 1525, I turned twenty. Over these years I boiled with discontent. Ventures with Mr William had lost their savour for me. I had learnt all that I could from him, and my profits were slow. The Portuguese had no real interest in gems, even though their ships touched in at all the best markets: Surat, Calicut, Pegu. No, ‘Let it be spice,' declared their King, chief grocer of Portugal, and spice it was. The city I longed for was Venice: that was the place for stones, as well as every other luxury that could give life opulence and wonder. When the day came to display my treasures to my mother again I poured out before her opals and amethysts, garnets, jacinths and pearls, and threw down my three purses of gold beside them with a loud chink. She raised one eyebrow.

‘If you would only lend me a little money,' I protested. ‘If you would let the
Rose
trade a little further.'

She sat back in her chair and stared at me with her ice-blue eyes. ‘And why should I “let” you do anything of the kind? As long as you follow the firm of Dansey, my boy, Naples is our furthest port. Between London and there we can find all that we need.'

But her eyes as they lingered on my jewels had a thoughtful gleam. With the right proposition I believed I might just win her over.

I pestered Uncle Bennet for openings at revels and mummeries, audiences, maying, processions, pilgrimages, feasts … He was a hard man to catch up with, that summer; he was involved in Wolsey's great visitation of the abbeys, that squeezed so much gold from the abbots and raised so many angry murmurs. Nevertheless, he obliged
me when he could, half out of liking for me, I thought, and half to prove his importance to my mother.

As winter came, the Court stayed out of London. The plague was running fiercely, and we crept about, all of us, with herbs clasped to our faces, keeping well clear of anyone we saw on the streets. ‘The King is keeping Christmas in the country at Eltham Palace,' Bennet told us. ‘The Secret Christmas, they are calling it. Still, I believe I can smuggle you in, if you have a mind to it.' I arrived there by night, and Bennet helped me to slip into the Great Hall, mingling with the servants who were serving gold cups and bowls of wine. I stopped in the doorway in amazement. The hall was a forest: trees of green damask stood in groves, and from their branches hung leaves of beaten gold and bunches of gilded acorns that flashed in the glare from the burning torches. Between the trees were wondrous beasts, antelopes and oliphants and lions made of canvas with gold crowns and tails of iron wire, and jesters dressed as wild men who leapt about in masks draped with ivy, letting out shrill shrieks and hoots. Laughter and music filled the room. Round the forest were bowers of silken roses, and through these the King and his courtiers danced to the sound of shawms and violins. They were in masks too, gilded and smiling, the men all with beards of gold thread. The couples dipped their heads beneath the hoops of the arbours, the ladies' pearl chains clinking on their bosoms. It made me burn with longing as I watched from my place among the butlers and pages, and the bowls of steaming wine. Why should I be apart from all this? What iron law kept me a tradesman in bales of woad and boxes of spice, while these golden creatures taunted me with their laughter? In an instant I grabbed up a mask that was lying by the wine, and slipped among them. The dancers separated and whirled beneath the arbours, and I was swept after them, the fiddlers skipping among us and the wild men chattering, the men and the ladies gasping and laughing.

One girl especially I noticed, wilder and freer than all the rest, flinging her head back as she spun round, the black hair streaming
from beneath her hood. She was strong-hipped and tall; her breasts pressed against the white cambric stomacher stretched across the opening of her sea-blue gown. Around her neck she wore two ropes of good pearls of the Orient, which descended her bust and vanished down beneath her bodice. When the dancers separated briefly I darted after her through the glittering trees and caught her hands. Her eyes, dark brown behind the gold of her mask, sparkled with surprise. We swung together between the trees, while the shawms bayed and the violins sang. I was, in that instant, one of them, a blessed, golden being in a world of beauty and gems. I swung her fast, and she put her head back and laughed. But the music was dying already, and the dance swaying to a halt. We stopped at the foot of an arbour of paper roses. They had become torn by the violence of the dance, and lay scuffed underfoot.

The girl said, ‘Are you not going to let go of my hands?'

Already I was behaving like a fool, and showing I was no courtier. ‘Only if you show me your face.'

I released her hand, and just as she lifted off her mask, so I did mine. Her face was round, soft, alight with excitement: an excitement so far from the world of trade that it made me gasp. She cared for nothing, nothing but the pleasure of the moment and the delight of being alive. She gave me a sense of infinite promise. With a girl like this beside me I could go anywhere, become anything. Even as I was thinking these thoughts, I saw the girl's face change, and take on a curious smile. And yes, I saw it too. I had not seen that face for six years, but there was no doubt whatsoever. The girl was Hannah Cage. She threw back her head and laughed.

‘The boy who played in the street! What, have you inherited a dukedom?'

The music began again, I slipped my mask back on to hide my annoyance and took her hand. We whirled together back into the figures.

‘Not yet,' I told her. ‘And you? You left home? Married?'

My heart began to pound as I asked it. She laughed.

‘My father bought us a finer town house. Away from the stink of the river. Married! To marry me they would have to catch me. And courtiers are so horribly slow.'

‘But I caught you. Did I not?'

‘For a short time. But I am going somewhere I do not think you will find me.'

A jester tumbled and shrieked in front of us with a jangle of bells. I relaxed my hold for an instant and Hannah broke away, to vanish back into the dance. I ducked under the trees and ran after her; in a clearing I looked left and right, darted to the left towards the door of the hall, and then ran right up against my Uncle Bennet. He frowned in displeasure, and shook his head. I was furious and shamed. He was right: if I was caught, he would be the one to suffer. The chase was over. For the moment.

 

After Christmas, the plague began to ease. Bennet told me the King was moving his Court a little closer to London, and would be holding a great joust for all the nobility at his palace of Greenwich on Shrove Tuesday, to mark the beginning of Lent. ‘But this time,' he added sternly, ‘you must be discreet.' I thanked him. My meeting with Hannah Cage had made me greedy for more. And besides, if I was ever to break into the Court world I knew I had to keep watch, and follow the King in all his doings the way a thief follows his prey. So there I stood, on the morning of the sixth of February 1526, in the midst of the crowd at the Tiltyard, the open field that runs all down the eastern flank of the palace of Greenwich. Behind me rose its towers and pinnacles, while beyond began the low houses of the village, crouching like beggars at the King's gate.