‘All is not lost, my Richard. I have one more sale to make.’ He loosened the strings and showed me three pale green stones. ‘Persian emeralds,’ he whispered. ‘From a Maltese I met in Naples.’ He crossed the road to the shop of Christian Breakespere and went inside. I followed him. He tipped the stones out on the table with a grand flourish. In that first instant I could see that something was wrong. They sent out their beams too easily, barely staining the cloth with a pallid, even glare. Their sheen was all of it on the surface, and not in the depths. The old goldsmith peered forward. He liked my father. But he frowned and shook his head.
I could have wept with frustration. I snatched up one of the stones. Even its touch was wrong. It warmed swiftly in my hand, instead of keeping that coolness which they say makes emeralds a sure charm against fevers. I held it up to my father. ‘Do you want to see how far this is from being an emerald? Do you?’ I crossed to the lapidary’s wheel at the back of the shop, set it running with the footpedal, and held the stone against it using the smallest of the iron tongs. Instead of enduring the touch of the emery, and gaining from it a new perfection and depth, this stone shattered at once into powder.
‘Glass,’ I commented. ‘Beautiful green glass.’
My father went stumping off back to Thames Street, singing below his breath. I followed, angry, and pained for him too. Any man in the world, I thought, could have told the difference between those pebbles and the real thing. In the counting house he entered his sales in the ledger with perfect calmness: Emeralds. Bought, £38.9s.6d. Sold, £0.0s.0d. It was his worst calamity yet. The nutmeg, indigo and pepper sold for little more than he had paid. Mr William’s saffron made something, but the costs of hiring ships, of inns and port fees and commissions, took up most of it.
Then there was my mother to face. ‘You are a madman, a madman,’ she screamed, aiming slaps at his face, which my father dodged with a sheepish smile. ‘Will you believe everything you are told? Are you an infant? Buy what you hate, not what you think you love. Then you will not be deceived.’
My father never replied to her tirades. But I knew the loss had hit him hard. Some days later he took to his bed. He was trembling, pale and in a sweat, though he promised us there was nothing wrong, nothing at all. The doctor declared he was suffering from a too thick crowding of the humours on his brain. He slid a lancet into his arm, drew off a good half-pint of blood, and prescribed a course of vomits and a purge of rhubarb and brimstone. For weeks his sickness ebbed and flowed. Sometimes it appeared to leave him, and he got up and went back to the counting house, where he prowled around, talking to himself, throwing out fresh ideas for ventures. But after a few days the fever always returned, and after each attack there was less of him. By the start of Lent it was plain he would never rise from his bed.
‘One more voyage,’ he whispered, as he lay in the dusky chamber that looked out towards Labour-in-Vain Hill. ‘Just one more, and I could still have my triumph.’ He looked up at us with a smile of feverish elation, as if the great venture that had always eluded him was at last within reach. After that he slipped into rambling murmurs and sudden cries which no one could understand. A month later he was buried in the little churchyard of Saint Mary Summerset, almost facing our door. We stood in line by the graveside, and then left the chantry priest to say a Mass for my father’s soul.
When we returned home, my mother beckoned Thomas and me to follow her, and William Marshe fell in behind us. None of us knew what would become of the business. I had heard it whispered that Mr William had mortgaged his warehouse to lend money to my father. She led us, unspeaking, down the narrow alley to Broken Wharf. Our footsteps echoed harshly as we trooped in procession between the warehouse’s hidden treasures, and climbed the wooden staircase that led up to the counting house. This was a room that stretched along the whole of the southern end of the warehouse, with a long rank of diamond-glazed windows like the great cabin of a ship, looking out over Broken Wharf and the wash and gurgle of the Thames.
On the left was the brick hearth, the fire unlit. Shadows clung round the shelves bearing the company’s ledgers, with their page ends turned outwards and the different dates and ventures inked across the body of their pages: Lisbon Receipts, 1519 to 1523; Ventures in Spice; Tolls and Imposts – Imperial; Customs and Subsidies of the Port of London. Once we were all inside, my mother seated herself for the first time in the high-backed chair that had been my father’s, with her hands spread across the broad, polished surface of the oak table.
‘My husband has made me his heir,’ she told us. ‘There are small bequests for Richard and for Thomas.’ We looked at one another. Many women, on inheriting their husbands’ affairs, sell them quick, or hand them over to some agent to manage; especially if those affairs were in as tottering a condition as we supposed ours must be. But we did not reckon with my mother.
‘Martin!’ she called. Into the room came Martin Deller, broad-shouldered, most trusted of the various strong-armed watchmen who guarded the warehouse. He had been in the family’s employ for years. I had seen him, in the dusk and early dawn, prowling the wharves without a lantern, moving with surprising stealth. I knew my mother relied on him absolutely. He carried with him a small chest, covered in red-and-white striped velvet, that had stood at the foot of my mother’s bed. I had never seen it opened, but had always supposed it contained lace collars or hoods, or stuff of that sort. Martin set it down heavily next to the table. My mother unlocked it and threw it open. It was filled with gold, bills and bonds: the proceeds of her many half-secret ventures. She looked from me to Thomas to William Marshe, and said, ‘The way we do business is about to change. We are going to buy a ship.’
Her plans, it seemed, had been laid well in advance; she had even picked out a vessel. The Rose was a great ship of some seventy tons. She carried a crew of forty mariners, whom we would have to recruit from the waterside taverns of the City, and had a pair of brass falconets against pirates, as well as a murderer, a light swivel-gun that could clear the decks if she were boarded. Next day William inspected her where she lay downriver, and declared her tight and well-bowed: ‘With a good wind, she will truly cut a feather.’ My mother nodded in satisfaction. She trusted William, as she had never trusted my father. And so the papers were signed, and bills of exchange handed over. She became ours in the spring of 1521, just before I turned sixteen. A few weeks later, my mother called me into the counting house. She sat stroking her chin with the feather end of a pen. It still surprised me to see her there. My father had been dead for only three months, but already she had transformed herself into that cool and independent business machine, the Widow of Thames Street.
She looked me up and down with a smile: the kind of smile she wore when she was appraising an enterprise which had so far turned out neither well nor ill. From outside the window could be heard the clunk of a ferryman’s oars, the whistling of some of our men moving about the wharf, and the suck and wash of the river.
‘Richard,’ she said at last, ‘your schooling is at an end. At the month’s close I am sending you to Lisbon, with Mr William. On a venture.’ My heart jumped. This was it: the beginning, the first opening of the door. I knew, of course, that this would be her kind of venture, and not mine, and that William would be in charge; but that did not daunt me. I had my plans. And with my small inheritance, I was ready to begin to put them into action.
On a summer’s afternoon Thomas, John and I left the schoolroom and walked in silence down Labour-in-Vain Hill together for the last time. At the angle in the lanes outside our door we stopped, and all three of us clasped hands. I had always thought of this crossroads as a place where different ways met. Now I saw it as a place where they parted. Thomas repeated the Latin verse our master was so fond of:
‘O dulces comitum valete coetus,
longe quos simul a domo profectos
diversae variae viae reportant.’
John rolled his eyes, and did a good imitation of our master’s thin, sharp
voice, that for all its severity could be strangely sentimental. ‘You are ignorant, and I shall beat you. The sense is: “Sweet band of friends, farewell. Together we set out from our far home, but many diverse roads lead us back.”’
Thomas nodded with gravity, and clasped our hands more tightly.
‘Swear,’ he said. ‘Swear that whatever roads lead us apart, one day we shall meet again.’
John laughed, and I did too. To us it was a curious oath. True, John was about to begin a life of voyaging as I was, following his father’s ventures into the Low Countries and the Baltic in search of timber and salt. But doubtless our future would have in it many meetings. Why should it not? Thomas, however, was serious.
‘Swear. By the Holy Virgin, we shall meet again.’
We each repeated the words. I let my hand fall from theirs and turned away. My mother had asked me to meet her in the counting house the moment I came home, to receive her detailed instructions for the voyage. A new life lay before me, and I swore an oath of my own: that I would snatch the chances offered to me, and turn them to my own ends.
4
Six weeks later I was standing in the steerage house on board the Rose as we passed the yellow stone fort and the monastery of Belém on the approach to the Roads of Lisbon. It was a hazy evening. The ship glided into harbour slowly, while I gazed ahead in excitement.
At my side stood Mr William. At sea, he had revealed a different side to himself. He was no longer the rather bedraggled tame dog who followed my mother round and took orders from the House of Dansey. With every mile we drew away from London, he stood a little taller. I saw that he understood gunnery and navigation, how to plot a course and calculate a latitude with the astrolabe, as well as possessing a fair grasp of the curiously pleasing Portuguese tongue. All these things I set myself to learn.
When we landed, William left the ship’s master to unload the woollen stuffs we were bound to carry on the outward run, and set off like a hound, sniffing round the merchants’ offices in the lanes behind the great market square that fronted the harbour, asking questions and greeting old friends. I saw one man after another shake his head and cross himself on hearing of Roger Dansey’s death. William patted them on the arm, nodded at the news he was receiving in return, and moved on. I saw in his strategy something of my father’s charm, his absolute attentiveness to the man he was speaking to, that made each one feel he was the most favoured being in the world. I was determined to watch Mr William’s methods closely, and learn fast.
These were the days of Portugal’s pride: King John the Pious, better known as Spicer John, was sending his trading ships round Africa to the Indies. There they dealt in nutmeg from the Moluccas, pepper from Serendip, ginger and cinnamon from India. The Portuguese were cutting the Arabs and Turks out of this trade altogether. They had burnt the city of Aden to the ground, and William told me that Cairo and Venice were both feeling the pain. The government’s Casa da Índia held a monopoly on every peppercorn and cinnamon stick in Lisbon, and they set their prices as high as they pleased. But, William explained, there were certain dark dens where goods came to rest that had slipped off ships unknown to the King’s Customs; all it took was a little ingenuity and boldness to find them.
Where William went, I followed. He led me through coiling streets as narrow as any in London, where dogs ran out into blinding sunlight and then back into opaque shadow, and women called out their wares: wine and honey, almonds, figs, fishing nets and twine. We stepped inside a Moorish courtyard ornamented with round brick arches, and a fountain playing in its middle.
‘It was your father discovered this place,’ William whispered to me, ‘and he was the one talked to them until they trusted us. Never think ill of him, Richard. You know he used to say it is not the profit that counts, but how you make it. Your mother thinks I am a cleverer merchant than he was. But if Roger Dansey had never made his losses, I could not have made my profits.’
I pictured them together. I imagined my father, with his quick imagination, his charm and his thirst for wonders, penetrating into every crevice of these lanes. I liked to think of him snatching the best bargains from under the noses of the competition. But I suspected that Mr William had been propping the business up for years; that without his sense, my father would have brought home many more of his profitless cargoes.
While a servant poured us wine, William negotiated with a lean, dark-faced Moor concerning two bushels of cinnamon and one of cloves. He came away rubbing his hands in satisfaction. ‘Done! We shall come back with our men to fetch them after dark. True cloves come from only two islands in the world, my boy. We were lucky to find them at the price, excellently lucky.’ He stretched. ‘A good day’s business.’ He patted his chest, and looked at me with a glint in his eye. ‘Now, my dear boy, it is time we found a brothel.’
I started involuntarily: this animated, cheerful figure was so far from the Mr William I knew at home. With his arm about my shoulder he guided me through yet more alleys to a low doorway which he appeared to know well. I wondered if my father, too, had visited this place. Inside we had our choice between six or seven ageing whores, tricked out as shepherdesses or heathen goddesses, each one clutching a wooden lyre or a milkmaid’s pail, as a badge of sophistication or innocence.
‘Is this not fine?’ William asked, as we climbed the stairs with our arms around our chosen nymphs. ‘You must learn to enjoy the sweets of travel, my Richard, as well as suffering the pains. Richard, allow me to introduce you to Woman.’ Then, as we slipped together into a darkened room, he murmured, ‘Only promise me one thing: never, never tell your mother.’
I did not tell him that John and I had already explored the bath-house on Stew Lane. The whores of Lisbon were in much the same mould, and left me displeased and brooding, wishing to go back and begin again, yet knowing that the next time would be no better than the last. On the couch next to mine, William lay back with a sigh. He was entirely satisfied. The present, with its simple pleasures, delighted him. I rolled over, and felt my purse beneath me. It had in it sixty crowns: all the inheritance that had become mine on the death of my father. I was itching to break free from Mr William and begin to spend. But it would not be easy. He had kept me close every moment, and what I planned would have to be done in secret. No breath of it must get back to my mother: not yet.
The following day we were back in the alleys. William turned to me at a street corner and told me his next associate was of a wary turn of mind, and it was better if he visited him alone: could I forgive him if he left me for an hour or two? My heart jumped. I watched him out of sight and set off swiftly by myself. I knew exactly where I was headed. While following loyally on William’s heels, I had kept my eyes open. First I went to a money-changer down on the quayside, and turned in my crowns for Portuguese cruzados. Then I plunged back into the lanes and made for a certain small shop we had passed the day before, in the shadow of the vast, fortress-like Cathedral. I went in. There, just the same as on Cheapside, were the shelves with their white cloths and the ranks of gems that gleamed in the brilliant southern light, fresh in from the Indies, from Burma and Serendip and Bengal. As I looked along them, holding this stone or that up to the sun, I felt the thrill of a deep passion for beauty satisfied. I saw diamonds. I saw Oriental rubies, Persian emeralds and pearls. But I could not yet venture that high. I forced myself to look instead at the lesser stones, the beryls and cats’ eyes and cornelians. These stones were within my grasp; but even here it would be prudent not to lay out all my money at once. Buy modestly, and risk little the first time. So spoke my mother’s voice within me. But my eyes strayed upwards again to the shelf with the nobler gemstones on it, and fixed on a topaz, of a perfect sunshine colour, without a cloud. The shopman showed me its weight, eight carats, a good size. It was of Ethiopia, I was almost certain: home to the best of this kind of gem. A topaz is almost diamond-hard, and brilliant. If you put it in the fire to leach its colour out, it will make as close an approach to an Indian
diamond as you will find. But this stone had no need of adulteration. To my eye, it already surpassed a lesser diamond in beauty. Its price stood at a hundred cruzados: I had a mere seventy-one. I began to bargain. I was stern, then teasing; I lifted the topaz and frowned, pretending to see a flaw, then turned and walked away; but I came back. Some of these tricks I had seen William perform; others welled up naturally, leaving me both excited and alarmed. The shopman’s offer came down to ninety, then eighty, then seventy. My palms were sweating. I could buy it. But that would be the end of my inheritance: more than twelve pounds sterling, perhaps eighteen months’ salary for a poor priest or a clerk. If I was wrong, I would never see that money again. I knew in that instant that my life could branch in two ways. One way led to safety, ease, and dullness. The other would lead to danger and worries and, yes, if I had enough luck and skill, my heart’s deepest desires. I also knew that if I quailed at the risk now, I would never again buy a single stone. I nodded quickly, and counted out the gold.
I was in an agony of expectation until William could complete his buying. He bought furtively and cheap: and that meant he bought slowly. A cask of saffron here, three crates of pepper there. A month passed before the Rose’s holds were sealed and we put out once more, and heard the chanting of the Hieronymites in their monastery die away on the breeze as we turned our prow out to sea.
Back home in London I lost no time before taking my topaz to Christian Breakespere. It was of a shade I thought would please him; his shop always had in it a good number of stones with the shades of autumn sun, yellow opals, garnets, amber. The old man lifted the stone in his tweezers and held it to the light so that it took fire, and stained his hand with gold. Then he lowered it and looked at me with his gentle smile.
The King's Diamond Page 5