The King's Diamond

by Will Whitaker

  We set off, heading away from the river. Masquers swarmed in the streets, each with a candle, or two or three. The balconies on all the buildings were crammed with life, young people and old, who shouted down at the masquers and threw water, or lowered handkerchiefs on strings so as to quench their flames as they walked past underneath. Everywhere was laughter, and sudden attacks, and street-vendors walking between them holding out candles for sale and calling, ‘Moccoli, buy your moccoli.’ Over it all there went up the savage chant, ‘Death, death, death if you lose your candle-end!’ We fought as a band, roving among the crowds, darting up upon groups of men and girls, knocking the candles from their hands and then flourishing ours at them.

  I took no part in this. I was scanning the crowds for any sight of Hannah. On every side there were the shouts and screams of the beaten and the hoots and laughter of the victors. I saw groups of boys, their candles spent, hurling oranges and eggs into open windows, while those inside tipped showers of flour out over them in revenge.

  We passed the church of Santa Maria in Vallicella and carried on, out into the Piazza Navona. Down all the length of the piazza, round the abandoned booths of the meat and vegetable markets, the lights darted and struck. As I stood and looked around, a masked figure stole up to my side. I jumped back, ready to defend my flame.

  ‘Messer Richard.’

  The eyes glinting behind the mask were those of Alessandro del Bene.

  ‘You!’ I said. ‘Hannah Cage: is she –’

  ‘She is waiting,’ said Alessandro. ‘At the Ruins.’

  ‘But which?’

  ‘The Campo Vacino.’

  ‘To the Ruins, to the Ruins,’ the others picked up. We headed east, down narrow lanes and past rearing columns, and along the blank wall of the ancient theatre where Hannah had accosted me after the horse race. I peered into every shadowed doorway, convinced her attack would be sudden. Perhaps Alessandro was in league with her, and was leading me into an ambush. Before us rose the Campidoglio: a rocky hill on which the ancient citadel of the Romans had stood. A thousand years ago this had been at the city’s heart. Now, crowned with drab houses and the tall bell-tower of a church, it marked the very edge of modern Rome. We circled the foot of the hill past an old, weathered triumphal arch, mired up to its knees in soil and filth, with trees growing out of its top. Beyond it, desolate and haunted, stretched the barren marsh known as the Campo Vacino, or Cow Pasture. Beneath its damp grass lay the Forum of the Romans. Here they had held their markets and worshipped their gods, and their statesmen had delivered the orations which our master on Old Fish Street had tried so hard to beat into us. A second triumphal arch stood further off with a church built into its wall, while behind loomed the broken curve of the Colosseum, vast and forbidding.

  Across the marshy grass candle flames moved in the darkness, darting in and out between columns and the broken-down walls of temples, suddenly casting a tiny illumination over some ancient carving, or a solitary white ox, lying on the grass, watching. There came shouts and shrieks as someone was caught and his light extinguished. The scene resembled some haunted revel of spirits. As Martin came up beside me he crossed himself.

  I peered about for any sign of Hannah. At least, I thought, our band gave me some protection against sudden attack. But at that moment Berni snuffed out the flame of the boy-woman Diego with a whisk of his cloak, and ran ahead over the grass, singing, ‘Lost his candle! Lost his candle!’ Diego let out a shrill shout and ran after him.

  The rest of Cellini’s crowd, laughing, chased them towards a low wall of marble blocks. Our band, that had fought so far as one, turned on itself. Pantassilea pushed Berni and swooped on him, leaning out and blowing at his candle. Berni, extemporising his verses all the time, danced round her like a fencer: not to blame if he snuffs her flame; play the game. Benvenuto feinted at me and dived round Pantassilea, as the courtesan rapidly lost her temper. A girl dressed as the huntress Diana who had been clinging to Polidoro’s arm darted towards me with her little candle. She was a slight, dainty thing, with a bow slung over her shoulder and a silver moon in her hair. I dodged her, whisked round, and knocked her candle from her hand. She let out a small cry, and I laughed.

  Suddenly from over the wall behind us there was a fiendish yell. I turned to see some six or seven shapes leaping at us, masked as devils and wearing heavy cloaks. In their right hands were flails, roasting spits, streamers of cloth, while in their left they carried their candles, full-length church lights that burned strong. They plunged among us. The older men, Polidoro and Bacchiacca, stepped back from this new fight, but Alessandro, Cellini and some of the others joined in with a will. The space in front of the ruined wall turned into a whirling dance of masked figures and flames. I dodged a woman who thrust her candle at me, and jumped back in time as she shot out two yards of crimson silk which nearly caught my flame. All the while I was scanning among our attackers. Most of them were women, but they fought like demons. I saw one slice through the air with an iron spit and lop the head off the candle belonging to Giovanni Balbi, nephew of the transvestite Bishop of Gurk. Balbi let out a cry of dismay and fell backwards into a reedy pool with a splash. The woman tipped her head back and laughed. I knew that voice, with its throaty purr of excitement. Hannah’s black hair streamed from behind her horned mask, which grinned, pale as a skull. I moved round the fighters to get nearer.

  Already many of the skirmishes were over. Cellini’s flame was still burning but Alessandro’s was out, and so were several of the women’s. I saw a skinny she-devil who was the image of Mrs Susan wandering about with a smoking candle-end, saying, ‘Give me a light, a light! God damn all of you!’ Diego danced round her, chanting, ‘Lost her candle, lost it, lost it!’ Others of them were taking their masks off, the fight over, kissing or exchanging playful buffets of revenge. I recognised two of the Cages’ gentlewomen talking together, their faces animated; they were younger and more spirited than I had thought. Martin’s candle was still burning. He sat down next to a girl who looked like a maid and slapped a hand on to her knee.

  Hannah, left without an adversary, drew back into the shadows. I followed her. Just beyond the pool Balbi had fallen into were some more ruined buildings: dark, looming shapes jagged as dragons’ teeth, with odd blocks of masonry strewn about everywhere underfoot. I picked my way cautiously forward. It would not do to stumble and lose the contest through my own clumsiness. Holding my candle behind me to keep it safe, I peered round a corner into the darkness. At the end of a short passage between two walls I saw Mrs Hannah. She was sitting on a fallen section of column, and to my astonishment I saw that Cellini was with her. He was sitting with his right arm round her shoulder. In his left he still carried his candle. Hannah held her own, also still burning, cautiously out of reach. Her mask was lifted from her face, and she was smiling.

  ‘Come now, Signora Hannah,’ Cellini was saying. ‘I have known you a lot longer than Messer Richard has. Why do you not allow me just one single kiss? Is that not what English girls do when they meet their friends? Why so very cruel?’ He stroked her hair. Hannah was regarding Cellini with just that same wild smile of danger she had worn last night after I pulled her clear of the bulls and kissed her. It was a smile I considered mine, and mine alone. I sprang forward in a rage, swapping my candle into my left hand ready to draw my sword.

  Cellini drew his arm from round Hannah’s back and sighed. ‘She loves you, Englishman: it is the only explanation. Women do not say no to Benvenuto.’

  My anger cooled at this, and I looked at Hannah. Her cheeks were puckered in a near-smile, and her eyes flashed with amusement. She was enjoying the spectacle: she would neither confirm what Cellini had said nor deny it. While the goldsmith kept his gaze on me, gauging whether his soft words had had an effect or whether he was going to have to fall back on his sword, Hannah’s hand came up, still holding the spit, and whisked his candle out of his hands. Its flame vanished in the grass. She let out a wild laugh, jumped from the fal
len column to the top of the wall and was gone.

  ‘Ten thousand devils!’ roared Cellini. ‘Take her! I want no woman such as that!’

  I hurried past him and vaulted over the wall, blindly into the dark. I landed heavily on the grass and bumped against a body. Hannah was right there: she had been waiting for me. Before she could react I pinioned the hand that held the spit against the wall with my body. Her right arm, with its still-burning candle, was stretched out straight, beyond my reach. I had my own candle in my left hand, held at full length for safety, while my right clutched her shoulder. It was stalemate: neither could reach the candle of the other. I brought my face close to her ear.

  ‘My dearest Mrs Hannah. Why do you not simply tell me the mistress’s name?’

  She looked back at me, defiant, breathing hard. ‘Because I choose not to.’

  ‘Then why did you not just say no? Instead, you go to all these lengths. You challenge me. You fight me. You trick me. Mrs Hannah, I think you are in trouble. The more you battle against me, the more you are ensnared. Very soon, you will be mine.’

  ‘You are wrong!’

  She tried to pull free. Her face was twisted round just in front of mine. I saw to my amazement that she was afraid. Something was driving her, pursuing her, goading her into her mad attacks and escapes. But in her deep soul she wanted to be free of it. And I was the man who would free her. I leant forward and pressed my lips against hers. She was surprised; her wide open eyes stared into mine. Then they slowly closed. Her breaths came quick. I felt her lips part, and moved my mouth closer over hers. But even as I did so, my hand stole further round her back, over her shoulder blades, down her arm, seeking for her elbow; next would be her wrist, which I would grip, and shake that candle from her grasp.

  From far away over the city a bell rang out, one, two, three times. There was a pause, and it rang three times again, and then three times more. It was the Angelus: the end at last of the Carnival and the start of Lent. I let my pressure on her mouth ease, while my hand stretched out to reach those last few inches down her arm. I was almost there. Suddenly, with a jerk of her head she broke the kiss, and her hand with the candle swept round. With the butt-end of her candle she aimed a blow at mine that dashed it out of my hand and put it out, while her own flame carried on, up between our faces, until all I could see was fire. I heard the fizzle of her flame as it caught the thin hair on my cheek and went out, and I smelled the stink of burning flesh even before I felt the pain. I gasped and fell back against the wall with my hands to my face. The last chimes of the bell echoed round the ruins, and I heard Hannah run away, laughing.

  PART 4

  The Golconda Diamond: a Thorn in the Heart

  My galley charged with forgetfulness

  Through sharp seas in winter nights doth pass

  ’Tween rock and rock.

  SIR THOMAS WYATT, SONNET V, AFTER PETRARCH

  15

  Light fell slantwise from the plain glass windows of the little church of Saint Thomas of Canterbury, sliding down over the terracotta tiles of the floor and gleaming off their pale gold decoration of angels holding scrolls. The choir of some two dozen boys and men, seated in two ranks just below the altar, began to sing.

  ‘Reminiscere miserationum tuarum, Domine …’ Remember, Lord, thy mercies. May our enemies never master us. Save us from all our straits. Into the church advanced in procession the Master and Brethren of the Hospital of Saint Thomas, the hostel for English pilgrims in Rome that adjoined the church. This place formed a private domain for English visitors to the city of the popes, where they could meet and exchange news of home. The Master of the Hospital, an English priest named Paul Ballantyne, was dressed in the violet chasuble and stole proper for the season. It was the second Sunday in Lent; the Sunday that is known as Reminiscere. Remember.

  It was impossible for me to forget. The pain was there to remind me, whenever I moved my face, despite the poultice of ambergris and lard applied by the apothecary from the Spicery in Trastevere, the best place in all Rome for medicines. I glanced up the aisle towards the stone altar that was spread with a white silk cloth. In the front rank of the congregation, in a box of their own, sat the Cages. Stephen was on the left, his broad back covered in a thick cape edged with fur. Next to him, with Susan and Grace on her other side, was Hannah. She wore a russet gown embroidered in gold, and covering her hair and her hood was a veil of pale yellow silk. I saw her dip her head devoutly as the priest went by. During the responses I strained to make out her voice among the others. She was lost to me, just as surely as the Golconda diamond I had lost in Venice, which had teased and shone for me just as Hannah did, for so very brief a time.

  This was my third trip to the church since the night of the moccoli. My first had been the very next day, Ash Wednesday, when I had knelt to have my forehead marked with the holy ashes, emblem of repentance or regret. And, by God, how I did regret. I regretted I had not moved quicker, or kept my candle higher; then again, I regretted having tried to trick her while we kissed; I regretted not having thrown my candle in the grass and given her her victory for nothing, instead of fighting for it and losing. I regretted my anger and shame, that prevented my going up right now, past where their household sat, their chamberlain, the almoner and the gentlewomen, sweeping my bow to Mr Stephen in the old, familiar way, and slipping back into their family. But I could not bear the thought of the two girls’ smiles, their gloating comments, their clucking over my burnt cheek; Hannah’s effortless pride. That girl haunted me. My days were blank until the following Sunday, when I knew I could see her without being seen.

  As the service came to an end I slipped out into the aisle so as to be among the first to leave. If it had not been for the Cages, I would have shunned the English church entirely. It carried with it too many reminders of home. Among the pilgrims in the congregation there were a good many merchants, ill at ease in a foreign city, many of them speaking scant Italian and all of them more at home on the Thames. Their plain, solid faces seemed to say to me, ‘You are one of us after all. You never belonged with those high Court gentry. See what a fool they have made of you. Come back to us. Thameswater is in your blood.’ I took a last, thirsty look at the back of Hannah Cage’s head, and stepped out of the church with both sadness and relief. Then I set off at a brisk pace across the little square of Saint Catherine of the Wheel, aiming to put Saint Thomas’s behind me as swiftly as I could. A chill wind was blowing up from the Tiber and a few specks of rain fell. I would go back to my inn and eat a silent dinner of dry, salty Lenten stockfish, and then, perhaps, spend the afternoon walking about Rome in the rain.

  ‘Richard! Richard Dansey?’

  I kept on walking.

  ‘Richard? By God, I know it is you.’ The voice was English, and familiar. I turned round. Hurrying after me from the direction of the church was a young man of my own age, tall and long-legged, dressed in a rather shabby blue doublet. He had a cloak and sword, and a cap of blue velvet on his head, which sported a red ostrich feather, broken halfway along its length. I stared in astonishment as he came up to me, smiling.

  ‘John!’ I shouted. ‘John Lazar!’

  We embraced. It was three years since I had last seen him; almost six since our childhood band of three clasped hands in the street outside our house on Thames Street. John laughed and hugged me round the shoulder. ‘Now that I have you I will not let you go. A bottle? For the sake of old times?’

  Tired and sick at heart as I was, I managed a smile. ‘A bottle would be perfect.’

  ‘And is this your servant?’ He peered at Martin, who walked along beside him, looking at his tatty clothes in suspicion. ‘Do I not know you?’

  ‘I remember you, sir, yes,’ said Martin. ‘A great raider of our warehouse, if I recall rightly.’

  ‘Good man!’ said John, and put his other arm through Martin’s. It appeared that John had no servant of his own. Linked like this, we carried on down the Via Monserrato and out into the large squ
are that lay before the palazzo of the Farnese. It warmed me to be in John’s presence again. His confident step put fresh life into me.

  ‘About this bottle,’ John was saying. ‘We have two choices. Either I shall pay, in which case we can afford about a thimbleful of sour beer, or else you pay, and we may fare rather better.’

  I laughed. ‘I will pay.’ John and I had been equals and rivals all our lives. It flattered me to think that my fortunes had overtaken his. Also, God knew, I needed a confidant. I did not trust Cellini to hear of my sufferings, and Martin was no use. While he was dressing my wound that night of the moccoli he had said only, ‘She is a bad woman, master. Perhaps now you’ll leave her alone.’ Since then he had kept a watchful eye on me. He knew, as well as I did, that to forget Hannah Cage was impossible.

  ‘Where are you staying?’ John enquired.

  ‘At the Ship. In the Campo dei Fiori.’

  John’s cheerful face broke into a smile. ‘Then we’ll chart a course.’

  It was a relief to be guided back to my own inn, and to let my old friend do the talking.

  ‘But you must explain to me everything,’ he said. ‘You are here to trade? And what clothes! Look at the silver on those buttons! And what is that stitched along your collar? Not pearls? The firm of Dansey is doing well for itself. Where is Mr William?’

  ‘Back in London, I hope. This venture is all my own.’

  He opened his eyes in appreciation. ‘No! In that case, two bottles!’

  I let John step first into the warm dimness of the inn. The Ship was laid out a little like a nobleman’s house, with vestibule, sala and private rooms. This sala was a far step from the grand room of the Cages, though. It was long and low, with massive oak beams painted with red and yellow flowers, and ranks of trestle tables. Like many of the inns in this part of Rome, the Ship was owned by a wealthy courtesan who ran it as a sideline to her other business. We sat down together at one of the tables slightly apart from the other diners. Instead of my penitential stockfish I ordered us a carp, luxuriant in oil and honey and raisins, and a sweet Sicilian wine to go with it.