The King's Diamond

by Will Whitaker

  Hannah turned her eyes on me. ‘Susan is handing you the Conjuror: the lowest of the Triumphs, and the only one besides the Angel to carry a score. It is one of the Seven Tarocchi, and counts five points. If you can beat my card, you can have it.’

  I pondered hard. I had to beat her. Hannah’s card, the tower or House of the Devil, had not been among those the two girls had mentioned. I looked at my remaining Triumphs. I held the Star, Love, Death, and a pair of females who must be Virtues. Where in the sequence did Hannah’s burning tower stand? Fire falling from the sky, divine vengeance, consigning man to the devil and damnation. This, surely, was the card that linked heaven to man. I would gamble my Star was higher. I eased out from my hand the naked woman bearing over her head the silver star, and set it down over the Conjuror and the Tower.

  For a moment no one moved. Then Hannah nudged the cards towards me, with a glacial look at her sister. ‘Take them.’

  I lost for a while, then took back the lead with my king of coins. We were playing fast, all of us, driven as if by some devil to win. From Hannah came the Angel, highest card of all, carrying off my Death and Susan’s Sun. Susan struck back with some wily Triumphs. Her Traitor, hanging upside-down from a tree, brought down my cavalier of cups and Hannah’s queen.

  ‘Traitor,’ murmured Hannah, as Susan greedily scooped in the cards. ‘How very apt.’

  Then Hannah’s queen of batons came up against my king. He was shown seated, white-bearded in a green mantle, holding in his hand a rugged club. I could not resist a yelp of delight. But Hannah’s hand covered the cards before mine. My fingers were on hers, and our eyes met: hers stubborn, and with a hint of that wild smile of amusement.

  ‘Come, come, Mrs Hannah,’ I said. ‘Let me have them. A king is master of his queen.’

  ‘Not in this game,’ said Hannah. ‘The kings of swords and batons are the two Pilgrims: i Pellegrini. They are sad little things that wilt before their women.’

  I still held her eye. ‘Mrs Hannah, you are inventing every word of it.’

  ‘No,’ said Susan. ‘She’s not. That trick really is hers.’

  Slowly I released my hand. Hannah took the cards with a smile. We were down to seven cards each. I had a fair-sized pile of won tricks in front of me, but I had been prodigal with my high cards, and I had few left. I won the next trick and played my cavalier of coins, counting on both of the others still holding coins. But Hannah’s She-Pope beat me. I cursed under my breath. Susan took the next two tricks; then Hannah took back the lead and put down a nine of coins. I swooped across the table and grabbed her by the wrist.

  ‘So you do have a coin in your hand, and yet you trumped my cavalier! You are a cheat, Mrs Hannah, a cheat, a cheat.’

  She looked at me with an amused smile. ‘So you noticed. I didn’t think you would. Now we are even.’

  I released her hand. We had only two cards each. Hannah, without a pause, snapped down the ten of batons. Susan trumped it with a woman in white holding scales and a sword: Justice. I still held one Triumph. It had on it a woman, blindfolded, and a wheel with one figure climbing it, another falling. Fortune and her wheel. But did it rank above Justice, or below? If I played it and won, I had a chance at catching all those last six cards. The cautious path would be to keep my Triumph for last. But when did I ever opt for caution? And I had a shrewd notion that the inventor of these cards believed luck reigned high. I set down my Wheel of Fortune on the other two cards. Hannah and Susan looked at me. Hannah’s brows furrowed.

  ‘Hm! You continue to surprise me, Richard Dansey. That is yours.’ I gathered them in, chuckling. I looked down at my last card, bearing a goblet wreathed in roses. The ace of cups. Hannah caressed her own single card, running her finger along its edge. ‘Let us see what you have, Mr Richard. Play!’

  I slapped down my golden ace. A lovers’ cup. Hannah hesitated. Then, with a huff of irritation she tossed down her card. It was a queen: noble and warlike, robed in crimson and silver. In her hand was a sword. I smiled.

  ‘Not so fast,’ said Hannah. ‘Susan, show us your last card. And let it be a Triumph.’

  Susan raised her left eyebrow, looked at us each in turn, and slid forward a jester in cap and bells, playing on a pipe and beating a drum. I let out a cry of anger. I had lost the trick. The reckoning must be close. I was convinced that that queen of swords would make the difference between victory and defeat. But then Susan whisked her card back again, and put it on her own pile, leaving the other two behind.

  ‘The Fool,’ said Susan. ‘No, he is no Triumph. He can neither capture nor be captured. He joins the party, makes his excuse, and leaves. But he is valuable, even if he has no power. The Fool is the Seventh Tarocco: five points to me.’ She nudged the queen and the ace towards me. I gathered in the cards, and glanced across at Hannah. She was frowning and biting her lip. We all looked down at our three piles of cards, pale green against the white of the cloth. Hannah reached for my pile.

  ‘No. I’ll be the one to count,’ said Susan.

  Hannah let her, but kept an eagle eye on her quickly moving fingers as she counted off the cards in batches of three, picking out those that scored. I watched, jealously, though I understood little of the bizarre reckoning system.

  ‘Thirty-one,’ said Susan. ‘Agreed?’

  Hannah gave a slight nod. ‘And yours?’

  Susan went through her own pile. ‘Twenty. Misery me.’

  Hannah turned over her cards and counted them out, while Susan peered at her in suspicion. When Hannah had gone through the last of them she put them down and said nothing.

  ‘Twenty-six!’ said Susan. ‘You’ve lost, you’ve lost!’

  I leant forward with my elbows on the table and smiled. ‘And now, my sweet Mrs Hannah, you are bound to tell.’

  From Mr Stephen’s private anticamera the murmur of voices grew louder. Mrs Grace and the gentlewomen laid down their sewing and looked up. Hannah squared up the cards with angry flicks of her hands. ‘You cheated,’ she hissed at me. ‘You’re a cheat, cheat, cheat. We take off five for that king you stole. Those points are mine.’

  ‘Since we’re talking of cheating,’ I whispered back, ‘what about my cavalier of coins? Give me that and take the king. You’ll see I still come out ahead. Isn’t that right, Susan?’

  ‘Not at all,’ whispered Hannah. ‘If I had won that king the whole course of the game would have been different.’

  ‘What about me?’ interrupted Susan. ‘I cheated too. You were both too wrapped up to notice.’ Hannah turned on her, mouth open in outrage.

  The door to the anticamera opened and we heard slow footsteps approaching. Mrs Grace moved into the middle of the room and swept a deep curtsy, drawing back the edges of her skirts with both hands.

  ‘My lord Cardinal.’

  We rose hurriedly from the table. Cardinal Campeggio was a tall, stooped man in his mid fifties, with the long, sad face of a bloodhound. He wore a scarlet mantle and biretta. Round his neck hung a jewelled cross on a gold chain. His eye picked me out immediately as the stranger in the room. I approached him and went down on one knee. He offered me his hand, and I kissed the gold ring on his swollen fingers. I recognised on it the Medici balls and Florentine lilies of Pope Leo X, our present Pope’s cousin, who had advanced Campeggio to the cardinalship. On his little finger was a very fine citrine in a ring, carved with a face in profile. It was an exquisite work. He must have detected my eye on it.

  ‘Ancient Roman,’ observed the Cardinal. ‘Nothing we moderns do can equal them. And so you are an Englishman too, and I believe you understand something of stones.’

  ‘I have some knowledge, your lordship,’ I admitted. Vostra signoria was the correct address for a cardinal; I thanked Ippolita for that piece of instruction. I went on kneeling before this man who had been a great churchman and Papal Legate while I was still a child. His mild, sad eyes, I thought, missed very little. His gaze rested on me.

  ‘And I believe also that your family is c
lose to Cardinal Wolsey: a man for whom I have the very highest regard.’

  This, I knew, was some way off the truth. Campeggio and Wolsey were old rivals. Wolsey had taken the opportunity of Campeggio’s visit to England to have himself made a legate, and by that means had stolen a good deal of Campeggio’s power. But I guessed Campeggio was privy to Mr Stephen’s hidden business, and Stephen must have told him I was close to Wolsey’s secrets. To be seen like this with Stephen Cage by one of Wolsey’s men was possibly a deep embarrassment for the Cardinal. He appeared anxious, at any rate, for Wolsey to be pacified, and that only stirred my suspicions all the more. Was this gentle, sombre old man also a part of the ‘web’ that Wolsey feared so much? Stephen, behind the Cardinal, watched us with a cold smile.

  Campeggio withdrew his hand and I got to my feet. Mr Stephen came up behind him. He stopped beside me for a moment and gave a private nod. Hannah picked up the cards and crossed to the chest to put them away. ‘Cheat,’ she whispered as she passed.

  We walked through to the sala, where tables were set out and the minstrels playing. Dinner was more stately and sumptuous than ever. Trumpets sounded, and the dishes entered in procession – capons stuffed with whole cheeses, pigeons in verjuice, pork in ginger and a pie made out of the lungs of kids – a final day of feasting before the austerity of Lent. As the last of the platters were set down, talk turned to the war. The Duke of Bourbon’s Imperial army had left Piacenza, it seemed, and advanced to the foot of the mountains north of Florence.

  I felt my heart beat faster and my palms sweat. Florence! So the war had moved down into central Italy, pushing right past Venice and the Pope’s other allies in the North: a thing no one had believed could happen.

  Alessandro del Bene laughed nervously and dabbed at his mouth with his napkin. ‘But the Imperials are still two hundred and fifty miles off. They are hungry, the rain has swollen all the rivers, and there is snow in the mountains. They are in no condition to cross them. Thank God they are so far from Rome, with Florence in between, and the Venetian army in the field too. And then again, peace is certain to be made soon.’

  ‘Well!’ said Mrs Grace brightly, taking a morsel of roasted piglet on her fork. ‘It is so gratifying to hear good news.’

  I saw Campeggio look aside. I said, ‘I perceive that your lordship suspects more than he is saying.’ I spoke before I had realised. The whole table turned to look at me: Stephen and Grace shocked, Alessandro freshly alarmed; while Hannah for the first time in the meal turned and looked at me with interest. Campeggio’s face wore a faint smile, as if he were pleased that someone had seen through Alessandro’s comforting half-truths.

  The Cardinal nodded slowly. ‘The Emperor’s army is unpaid. It cannot possibly be disbanded without money, and where is it to come from? They know Rome is rich with treasure. Bourbon’s army numbers thirty thousand, Lutheran mercenaries from Germany and Spanish moriscos, many of them Muslims from Alicante; all of them hate the Pope. Believe me, we are in greater danger than most of us care to admit.’

  We sat in sombre silence. Campeggio’s talk chilled me. How long did I have before I should cut Cellini’s work short, and bolt for England? If only the army would keep away until he had finished, until I had that name, until I had Hannah. I leant close to her and whispered.

  ‘Hannah. You have heard what the Cardinal said. Will you not tell me the name?’

  Without looking at me she whispered back, ‘No. I won’t.’

  ‘Why don’t you play again?’ suggested Susan.

  Hannah turned on her. ‘And have him cheat again? No. Impossible.’

  I lost all patience. If we had been alone I might have hit her. Instead I hissed at her, ‘Why, Mrs Hannah? Tell me why!’

  Instead of answering she signalled for wine, and drank deeply. As she handed back the cup her eyes suddenly lit up and she clapped her hands. ‘I know! We’ll settle this tonight.’

  Susan twisted her face into a squint of disbelief. ‘You don’t mean the moccoli?’

  ‘Just so,’ said Hannah, turning to me with a smile that sparkled with mischief. ‘We shall let the moccoli decide. Oh, and, dear Mr Richard, bring a candle.’

  I looked from one to the other. ‘A candle?’

  ‘Just a candle,’ said Hannah.

  Both girls smiled, met one another’s eyes, and burst into laughter.

  14

  As I came away from the Palazzo del Bene it was already growing dark. I walked quickly through the streets, oppressed by a sense of urgency. From down the alleys off the Via Monserrato Martin and I could hear occasional shouts and running feet, and there was the glitter of torches passing along a street end, or across the opening of a piazza. The city seemed to brood with a sense of expectation. I headed straight to find Cellini.

  As I stepped inside his studio I was hit by a blast of heat. From the deepest part of the workshop came the roar of the furnace and a momentary flash of flame as Paulino opened the iron door with a hook. Cellini strode about in the glare of the fire wearing his leather apron and holding a pair of iron tongs, which he slapped against his leg.

  ‘More coal! Don’t slack now, damn you! I’ll not have your slowness mar my work!’

  I laughed. ‘Benvenuto, when you are dead you will make such an excellent devil!’

  ‘I shall see Lucifer one day, I promise you,’ Cellini growled. ‘I know a priest who can raise him up. He knows the charms, and the amulets, and the perfumes to burn. He can call out all the demons of Hell any night he pleases. By God, I dare stand before the Devil face to face. Does any man say I do not?’

  He turned on us, beard bristling, eyes red from the smoke.

  ‘Not I,’ I answered. He turned back to the fire, peered inside its depths and grunted. Then he used the tongs to pick up an iron plate from the workbench. On it was the golden ship. In the indentations of the pattern were deposited the tiny heaps of coloured powder that would melt into enamel in the heat. He brought the plate nearer to the furnace, and nearer, then held it steady, while the glare of the fire glanced off the gold, and the powders started to fuse. I watched, struck silent.

  ‘Be ready with the bellows!’ he shouted to Paulino. He slid the disc of gold into the furnace. I caught my breath to see that thing of beauty go into the flames. I knew that for this stage of the work the fire must be just as hot as the enamel and the gold can bear, and that a moment’s misjudgement would ruin the whole work.

  ‘I hope to God you made that fire fresh?’ murmured Cellini. ‘The charcoal clean?’

  ‘Yes, master,’ answered Paulino. He darted him one of his looks replete with devotion and sadness, hurt to the quick that his master could have doubted his care.

  ‘Just be ready with those bellows,’ said Cellini.

  I peered past him, straining to see what was happening inside the fire.

  ‘Ready as I take it out!’ roared Cellini. ‘Now!’ He whisked the plate from the furnace and held it in front of the boy, who went to work furiously with the bellows, sending out creaking gusts of air that blew puffs of smoke spiralling off into the room while Cellini lowered the plate on to an iron grille. After a few minutes he told Paulino to stop.

  ‘Good,’ he murmured. ‘I don’t think even old Arseface himself could have done any better.’ Caradosso, or Arseface, had been the nickname of Ambrogio Foppa, the greatest craftsman in gold and enamels of his generation. He had died last year, a very old man. I peered in eagerness at the brooch. The waves beneath the ship glowed with the glassy blue of cobalt, all the more brilliant for its background of gold that shone through the half-transparent enamel like sand in shallow water. The ship’s timbers had been picked out in streaks of orange and red, while the sails were a ghostly pearl-white. Cellini had left the sky as virgin gold, deeply scored with incisions to mark the angry clouds boiling around the four stars. Only the sockets for the gems remained to be filled.

  ‘Perfect,’ I breathed.

  ‘A little polishing with tripoli,’ said Cellini modes
tly. ‘That is all it needs. And now!’ He wiped his hands and took off his apron. ‘It is a windless night: perfect for the moccoli. Paulino: the candles.’

  I saw to my alarm that Cellini was putting on a padded doublet, of the kind worn to protect the body against dagger thrusts. I tapped at his chest. ‘Just what is this about? Are you afraid of assassination?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Cellini. He waved his hand. ‘It is the moccoli, the moccoli! A moccolo is a candle-end. Everyone carries a candle tonight. It is the last game of the Carnival. You have to dowse the other man’s flame, by any means you like, and keep your own alight.’

  I nodded, perceiving at last Hannah’s challenge. At this sport, cheating was impossible, because absolutely anything was allowed.

  ‘So,’ said Benvenuto. ‘Take these, then, and join us.’ He held out to Martin and me a pair of masks, hawk-nosed and evil-eyed, and Paulino handed us each a long candle which he lit with a spill from the furnace.

  Out in the street we saw eight or nine people heading towards us, fantastical characters in masquing costume, shouting and waving. Each of them carried some form of light: a wax taper, a long church candle, even a three-branched candelabrum.

  ‘Ah!’ said Cellini. ‘And here are our friends. Tonight, it is safer to hunt in a group.’

  I saw one in a sheepskin like a brigand; another an emperor in purple velvet and cloth of gold, with a feathered pasteboard helmet. There were courtesans too, one dressed as a she-fool with bauble and bells, another an Amazon, naked-breasted with bracelets in the form of wild silver serpents round her arms. This was Pantassilea, who had once been Cellini’s mistress. A lady smothered in silken flowers gave me a roguish smile which I began to return, until I recognised her as a Spanish boy named Diego, who sometimes worked for Cellini as a model. There was Berni with his wicked grin, Bacchiacca, a Florentine painter who specialised in vast scenes for wall paintings and tapestry designs, and Polidoro da Caravaggio, with a number of young noblemen: Cellini’s whole crew. All of them wore masks, grotesques in gold or silver plaster with beards or horns and staring eyes and grimaces.