Stephen’s voice suddenly boomed at me from the head of the table. ‘And how is trade in Italy? Do the prices please you?’
I glanced back at him, but I could not reply for rage. At last, at long last, I was sitting down with the choice and high company I had watched for so many years. And they despised me. I had relied on the manners and clothes I had acquired in Venice to give me the stamp of nobility; but with the Cages this counted for nothing. Susan, clearly, had marked me down as a clod who could be made to believe anything. She had even seized a spaniel from under the table and ostentatiously wiped her fingers on its coat, glancing at me archly to see if I would follow her. Hannah was watching me with her provoking smile. She leant across the table to me and murmured, ‘You must forgive my family. I feel sure there is rather more to you than there seems.’
I leant towards her. ‘By God, you will find out that there is.’
‘In that case, amuse me,’ whispered Hannah. ‘You have no notion how dull life is here. Surprise me. I do not think you can.’ She leant back with a lift of her eyebrows and a witching smile.
I wiped my lips with my napkin, put it back on my shoulder and looked Stephen Cage in the eye. ‘My thanks to you for asking. My trade is flourishing.’ I turned my gaze to take in the rest of the table. ‘Perhaps you would care to see.’
The servants were removing the dishes. The heron departed, its wings broken, its sides stripped bare, its neck collapsed on to the edge of the platter. Its substantial remains would be offered to the poor, who were doubtless already lining up at the door on the piazza. In its place the servants set down little custard tarts or doucettes, steaming dishes of almond cream, sugared dates and raisins, and offered us cups of hot hippocras.
Everyone turned to look at me. Hannah moistened her lips with her tongue and leant forward, folding her arms beneath her bosom with a faint clinking of her pearls. Cellini lowered his thick eyebrows and shook his head at me in warning. I ignored him. My blood was up. Stephen’s insults and Hannah’s disdain burned like a knife in a wound. I was not going to let these aristocrats beat me. I pulled at the chain around my neck, hoisting my grease-polished casket from its hiding place under my clothes. My fingers shook; I was aware of the indelicacy of what I was doing. But then I had pulled it clear of my collar and laid it down on the table among the dishes.
Mrs Grace looked down the table at me in surprise. Stephen’s expression was bland and impassive. He expected nothing from me of any interest. I retrieved the little key from my belt, inserted it in the mouth of the cupid and opened the lid. My various stones were wrapped in folds of silk to keep them apart, for not all gems are of equal hardness: a ruby will mar a sapphire, and a sapphire scratch a jasper. The first to meet my fingers were the four blue-white diamonds. I lifted them out and set them on the table beside a dish of ginger comfits. They had been well cut. They sparked and flamed, while beneath that outward dance of colour their native water shimmered, icy cool. Hannah’s eyes were alight. From the upper end of the table, Mr Stephen peered down for a better sight, suddenly arrested.
The next stones I set down were larger than the diamonds, and flashed with many several points of flame, amethystine, sulphurous, lightning-blue, changing from one moment to the next. The sight of them thrilled me, as it always did. I stroked my chin, winding my finger into the strands of hair I had been trying to cultivate into a beard in the Italian fashion. Hannah, to my satisfaction, let out a long-drawn ‘Ohhh’. Even gawky Susan craned forward on her elbows for a look, making the trestle table wobble.
‘What are they?’ asked Hannah.
‘Opals. Do they please you?’
‘So many colours.’
We gazed on them. The reds, the golds, the greens: one grew into another; and while it lasted, each shade appeared so real. I looked up at Hannah. ‘But if you break an opal, all its colours are lost.’ Grace’s eye was turned on the stones, sharp, acquisitive, precise. She was valuing them; and, I hoped, revaluing me. I lifted out next Ippolita’s pearls.
‘So round,’ Hannah murmured. ‘So smooth and fine.’ She was leaning towards me over the table. I became aware of the brightness of her eyes and the closeness of her body, her arms drawn together in front of her, the fall of her hair from beneath her hood.
‘They are in their perfect youth,’ I replied.
‘Oh!’ She darted me a glance. ‘Do pearls grow old, like us?’
‘Surely they do,’ I answered, looking straight into her eyes. The pupils were black and bright as a table-cut diamond, their irises as brown as sardonyx. ‘If they are not teased forth from their homes by those who love them, in the end they yellow and die: unadmired and alone. And that is a terrible thing.’
For a moment Hannah held my gaze, and her mouth broke into a smile, showing her strong teeth. Then she lowered her eyes to the pearls, which she began rolling lightly on the tablecloth under her fingers. I glanced along to the top end of the table. I had their utter attention. I sensed, after this, that it was time to display my pale Scythian emerald. Like a garden, an emerald of this kind will always refresh the eye, no matter how glutted it is by other glories. It shed its cool, green rays over the table. After the excitement of the other stones, I felt their mood shift to a more tranquil wonder. I let them look on it for a minute, and then, like a green-gold sun, I brought out my chrysoprase, and then my scatter of pebbly, clouded sapphires, as it were a shower of hail. I held that whole table of noble men and women in the palm of my hand. I had stolen from the stones a part of their enchantment. It was time to sweep them on in a rush of wonders, and so I set out the grey-green cats’ eyes, the dark Persian emerald, the white ruby, the amethysts, the jacinths, the balasses, the garnets. Each stone was hotter and brighter than the last, and was met by a fresh murmur of delight. I kept my greatest treasure until the end, the brilliant ruby, as large as the end of your finger. I set it down among the others, and let its fire shoot out across the whiteness of the cloth.
There was silence. Our doucettes and our hippocras steamed on the table, forgotten. Even Cellini leant forward, gazing without blinking. Hannah glanced from the stones to my face, and down again. Her eyes shone. She breathed fast through her nostrils, and sweat glimmered on her upper lip. She had set me a task, a challenge: she had thrown up a barrier between us and I had smashed it down. There was a nakedness about her as she looked at me. If there had been no one else present I swear I could have reached across the table and kissed her, and she would have been mine.
‘By Saint Anthony!’ Stephen exclaimed at last. ‘That ruby alone must be worth five hundred crowns!’
‘It will be worth very much more than that when I have brought it to its full perfection,’ Cellini said. ‘It must be cut and set: then you will see a wonder.’
Little Susan still peered forward at the stones, her hard, green-blue eyes unblinking. She said, ‘Give me one.’
Grace frowned down the table. ‘Susan! Be quiet!’
Hannah glanced from her mother to Susan, and then back at me. Her eyes were laughing, her chin puckered to hold herself in: as if she could barely wait to see what I would do, and how I would go about suppressing her sister. I raged at what this nasty girl had done. My enchantment was broken. The barrier between Hannah and me was back: a new challenge had been set. And what was I to do? To give in would show weakness and make me Susan’s creature. But to refuse would prove me a mere merchant, small-minded and mean. My eye swept over my stones and rested on the very least of my sapphires, a cracked and clouded pebble fissured like mouldy cheese. I picked it up and flicked it across the table towards little Mrs Susan. She whooped and swatted it with her hand as you would a fly. I saw Hannah’s eyes light up with surprise, and she laughed. I had passed the test: I had shown in a single instant an aristocrat’s disdain and an aristocrat’s greatness of spirit. Then I selected one of my four diamonds, a stone of Bengal of the purest pale-blue water, and a rose-pale amethyst that was its equal in value, and a vivid Bohemian garnet. I pushed th
em across the table to Hannah.
‘Choose. Whichever you please.’
She smiled with a flash of her teeth. I had her: surely, surely I had her. Or so I thought.
‘But, Mr Richard,’ she said, ‘if I am to accept a gift you must offer me something that is worthy of me.’
She pushed the gems back towards me. I stared at her in disbelief. She was free of me again, off and away. She smiled at my confusion. I had mistaken altogether the depth of her resource; she was not a creature to be caught so crudely as that. Susan looked up from admiring her sapphire and pointed a finger at me. ‘Ha, ha, ha! Did that sting?’
At this, Grace and Stephen exchanged uncomfortable looks, and Stephen waved a quick hand at the almoner, who bowed his head and murmured the words of the grace. ‘Benedictus Deus in donis suis, et sanctus in omnibus operibus suis …’ The dinner was over. Mrs Grace rose abruptly from the table and bore down menacingly on the two girls. ‘Susan. Hannah.’ They stood obediently and turned away, to run across the sala to where the spaniels were curled in front of the fire. Almost blinded with rage I began pitching my stones back inside the casket. Grace glided up to my side with a gracious smile.
‘Please forgive my girls, Mr Richard. We brought them to Italy to acquire polish. I fear we shall need to stay somewhat longer.’
I stood up and bowed. ‘Please do not think of it.’
The servants brought the ewers, basins and towels for yet another ceremony of hand-washing. Mr Stephen beckoned to one of the pages. ‘My good boy, another cup of hippocras for Mr Richard.’ As the pages brought the wine and fresh wafers, he guided me towards the fireplace with an arm on my shoulder. Plainly, in his eyes, I was no mere tradesman any longer but a person of importance and interest. I ought to be building on this, hinting at my pressing need for an introduction to King Henry; but at that moment all I wanted was to break away.
The two girls were rubbing the spaniels’ ears, whispering together and laughing. How could I approach Hannah now, after my defeat? We were separated by ten feet or so of shimmering russet-and-blue Turkey carpet, but she might as well have been a hundred miles away. She bent over the ears of her dog, murmuring, ‘Sugar comfit, poor little lady.’ Beneath that indifference no doubt she was savouring her triumph. Or was she waiting, maybe, or even hoping, for my next attack? No, I was just flattering myself to think so. I raged, looking at her. My gems had worked their enchantment on everyone else at that table. Even Susan was sitting and holding her misty sapphire up to the light. Hannah alone had slipped free.
Stephen still stood at my side. ‘Dansey,’ he pondered. ‘Dansey, let me think. Your mother was born a Waterman. You have an uncle? A secretary to the Cardinal of York?’
I looked at him in surprise. ‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘Bennet Waterman.’
‘Hm! A position of great trust.’
‘I believe it is.’
I stood looking at Stephen, suspicious. Was he a friend of Wolsey’s, or did he belong to that group of courtiers who opposed him? My skin prickled at the thought that I might just be face to face with the secret ‘man in Rome’ of Bennet’s letter. If so, he was my family’s enemy. But that was far too great a leap to make. I decided I would say nothing of this meeting to Bennet. At least, not for the moment. Stephen’s face took on an impenetrable expression, as if he was keen not to say too much. He nodded slightly to his wife. Mrs Grace came bustling up to my side.
‘You must tell us all about your venture. You have your own ship?’
‘My mother owns a ship,’ I answered. ‘I do not need one. A merchant in gems does not carry bulky cargoes.’
‘Of course he does not.’ Mrs Grace moistened her lips with her tongue. ‘And is this your first venture, Mr Richard?’
‘Not my first. But my first venture alone.’
‘How very fine. You are staying in Rome long?’
‘I shall stay as long as I need to,’ I replied, with my eyes on Hannah.
‘Good! Tomorrow evening is the racing on the Corso: the wild Berber horses of North Africa. There will be scaffolds set up for persons of quality, to afford a better view of the ground. Perhaps you would join us in ours?’
My heart jumped, and I turned to look at her. ‘It would be a delight to me.’
I darted another quick glance at Hannah. Her eye was on mine, thoughtful and challenging. The chase was on once more.
12
‘Are you completely and utterly out of your mind?’
Cellini slammed down a bundle of chisels, files and knives on top of the papers piled beside the gorily dripping head of Medusa. ‘You would have given away a diamond? Does our work mean nothing to you? Where would you find another to match the three that were left? Or is the ship to be guided by three stars, and one empty hole?’
It was early the following morning. Martin and I had just stepped into Cellini’s workshop, to find him sitting before the polishing wheel. He was holding up the gold disc with the image of the ship at sea, turning it so that it caught the light in different ways. I was not prepared for his anger.
‘If it had worked,’ I growled, ‘I would have won something of much greater value than I had lost.’
‘Indeed! And did you never think how mad it was, to throw your stones about like that? How many people now know that you carry a fortune of jewels around your neck?’
‘A family of English courtiers. What of that?’
He took several small pots and jars down from the shelf and set them beside the tools.
‘About forty servants, and all their friends, and their friends’ friends. You are a marked man. You had better know how to use your sword.’
I put my hand to its hilt. I was growing annoyed, and felt more disposed to fight than to argue. ‘Do you want a demonstration?’
‘Later. Now I have to work. Let us see what can be done with this chrysoprase, while we still have it. Hand it to me.’
I took the casket from round my neck and opened it up. Inside, the stones were in confusion. Benvenuto was right: I must have been mad last night. I nested them properly in their different wrappings, and handed him the chrysoprase. It shone with a pale springtime green that showed its kinship to the emerald, mingled with those shafts of gold that gave it its name, chrysoprasos being, Benvenuto told me, merely Greek for ‘the golden leek’. Cellini set it on its place in the ship. In that early morning light it had a ghostly sheen: as if the helmsman were following some marshlight or jack-o’-lantern, that would lead him into danger and dismay.
‘Women,’ he said, as if reading fresh wisdom in the stone. ‘You should forget them, my friend.’
He picked the chrysoprase up again, turned it a few more times, and then put it down.
‘Well! In the ordinary way I do not call a chrysoprase a gem. They are soft, misty things, like milk, not water. Diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, rubies: those are the stones for princes. But this one will do very well.’
He opened up one of the jars and removed a little pinkish-yellow powder with a tiny bone scoop. This was tripoli-earth, such as I had seen used many a time in London. I leant forward. He mixed the powdered earth with a few drops of oil to make up a paste, and rubbed this over the surface of the polishing wheel. Then he inserted the chrysoprase in a tanaglietta, or dop, as the jewellers call it at home, a rod with a soft leaden grip to hold the stone. He set the wheel spinning with the foot-pedal, cranking it up to a furious speed, took a last look at the uncut stone on its rod to judge the point of attack, and lowered it over the wheel.
This stage of the goldsmith’s work always filled me with a mixture of wonderment and fear. Moment by moment you saw the brilliant gemstone emerge and shake off the dull, even roundness it had borne for untold centuries underground. But it was fraught with danger. I had seen Christian Breakespere’s old hands fumble, and an emerald of price slip from the end of the dop in a splinter of fine powder: ruined. Every few minutes Cellini lifted the stone from the wheel, then gently put it back again. He was grinding the singl
e flat surface on its crown that is called the table. I watched, breathless, impatient for the gem, and for my coming meeting with the Cages.
All that day he worked, until the light began to dim and we heard sounds of music and the shouts of masquers from outside. Cellini let the wheel slow to a halt.
‘That’s enough. If we do not hurry, we shall be late.’
He lifted the gem, still on its dop, and held it up to the last rays of evening sun. It was only half-faceted. The clouds about its surface were parting, allowing seductive glimmers of green-gold from within. I tore myself from it with difficulty. Benvenuto crossed to his chest and locked the gem away.
I stood up. ‘You are coming too?’
‘To the race of the Berbers?’ Cellini smiled his devilish smile. ‘I would not miss it. Paulino!’
The boy got up from his corner near the furnace, went out and returned with a tray of small white balls.
‘Tonight is the Battle of the Confetti,’ said Cellini. ‘I would not like you to meet your enemy unarmed.’
‘Confetti?’
‘Comfits, master.’ It was Martin’s voice. I turned in surprise. I had not realised he understood Italian that well. ‘Almonds, in a coat of hard sugar. The Cages’ servants told me about them. Every household in Rome has been preparing them for tonight. It’s a rough sport.’
Paulino held out the tray with an enquiring lift of his brows.
‘Put them in a bag,’ I instructed Martin. ‘Benvenuto, my thanks.’
We left the studio together. As we stepped out into the darkening street Cellini murmured in my ear, ‘Be warned, my friend. She is a dangerous woman.’
‘I have known that for a long time.’
I turned to find Martin close behind me, frowning. Disturbed, I strode quickly on down the street. It was a mild night, carrying the promise of spring, though cool gusts still fanned up from the river.
All round us was laughter and the sound of lutes and shawms and drums. Great numbers of people were out, cardinals on their mules, noblewomen in litters and great streams of young gentlemen masked as devils or long-nosed satyrs swathed in black capes. They all of them carried bags of comfits, which they hurled at one another in stinging showers. Children darted everywhere underfoot to retrieve them. They were as hard as slingstones, those comfits, and hit with a smart. I started angrily at these attacks, but I did not retaliate. I was saving our weaponry for a very special foe.
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