The King's Diamond

by Will Whitaker

  ‘To the old band,’ said John, raising his cup.

  ‘To the old band.’

  ‘How did the verse go? “Sweet band of friends, farewell: together we set out; but far and various roads will bring us home.”’

  ‘Something of that kind.’

  ‘Beautiful times. Do you remember the oath Thomas made us swear? To meet again, the three of us? Well, I have been off and away in Hungary, inspecting salt mines. And, by God, what a ruinous venture that was. We got out a whisker ahead of the Turks, pater and I, with the Janissaries and the Vayvod of Transylvania on our tails, and heads rolling like cabbages.’ He reached for the bottle and poured himself another full cup.

  I wondered whether John was telling the whole truth. I looked at the broken feather in his cap, the frayed, stained clothes. No, he had broken from his family, just as I was doing; though his break, I guessed, had been more abrupt and less carefully planned than my own. I smiled faintly, and looked down. He leant forward across the table.

  ‘But surely you are not here to deal in jewels?’

  I took a sip of the wine, and a mouthful of carp. ‘Naturally.’

  ‘On your own account? Are you thriving? But this is marvellous! Well? Do you have something? Let me see, let me see.’

  He took the bottle and poured me more wine. I looked from side to side down the long room. A couple of tables away sat eight or nine rough-looking men. They had the air of soldiers, or the idle bravos that made up the retinues of noblemen, all full of swagger and sword-fights over nothing. I did not care for men such as that to know my business.

  ‘After we have eaten,’ I said quietly. ‘I shall take you to a place where I can show you.’

  John’s pale blue eyes gleamed. ‘Most interesting.’ He lifted his cup again. ‘To profit.’

  We drank, and John snapped his fingers for the second bottle. It was late before we set off arm in arm back the way we had come, past the English church, heading for the Vicolo di Calabraga. Martin knocked at Cellini’s door. After a time we heard the drawing back of locks, and Paulino came and opened it. Deeper in the workshop several candles burned. John followed me in, looking sharply round the shop. Cellini was sitting at his bench, holding in his hands the opal cross. He had been working on this for nearly two weeks. With my moody wanderings about Rome since the night of the moccoli I had scarcely paid any attention to how his work had been progressing.

  I said, ‘What’s this, Benvenuto? Working on a Sunday?’

  ‘This is not work,’ he murmured, nudging one of the stones with a scalpel. ‘It is pleasure. Pure, sinful pleasure. Look!’

  He held up the cross. It was only a couple of inches long, but the stones blazed with such light and colours that they stopped me where I stood. The opals teased me, shimmering in ripples of ghostly green beneath their skins, the hues shifting as I came nearer, darting out like bold words from a girl, each one promising much, then instantly withdrawn. I saw that Cellini had placed one opal in the centre that was almost black, but which flashed with sulphur, carmine, and the pale green of burning oil; as if there were a fire in it deep inside. The stones were set perfectly: not too deep, the way many goldsmiths do, thereby hiding their glory; they were clasped just as high as was safe without the risk of losing them. It was a thing of utter and hopeless bewitchment.

  John, standing at my elbow, let out a whistle. ‘May I hold it?’ He spoke in Italian, fluently and with a Tuscan accent like Cellini. With a twinge of unwillingness I handed it to him. ‘Meraviglioso,’ murmured John. The syllables rolled beautifully from his tongue. He made me feel as if I were the one who was the outsider, me with my drawling Venetian speech, the word endings cut short as in French. Cellini too had detected the accent, and turned to him sharply.

  ‘And what manner of a man are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Another Englishman,’ said John, looking up with a smile, and setting the cross down on the bench. ‘A simple wanderer on the roads of life.’

  ‘That, I doubt,’ said Cellini.

  ‘A merchant, then,’ said John, waving one hand, as if grasping in the air for answers. ‘With packhorses loaded down with ambergris and ivory, and many a rich argosy on the seas.’

  ‘I think you are a damned fuoruscito,’ said Cellini. ‘An exile from Florence, an enemy of the Medici. One of those who would like to see the Pope’s family kicked out. Lovers of liberty, as you call yourselves.’ Cellini scowled. ‘Malcontents. Rebels. I know the look of you, Englishman or not. You have fugitive written on your face, your clothes, the way you look round as if you don’t know who might be coming at you. You’d like to see all the princes and bishops in the world laid low, and no grandeur or marks of rank left anywhere. That’s the sort of man you are, isn’t it?’

  ‘Exile,’ repeated John pensively. ‘Fugitive. Rebel. I have been called all those names before.’ He picked the cross up again, gazed at it, tossed it from one hand to the other and set it back down again. ‘No, it’s true about being a merchant. I did have some goods. I had been dealing in this and that; but circumstances constrained me to leave most of my stock behind in Florence and run away south. No, my friend, I’m a great lover of grandeur and rank. I only wish I had a little more of them myself.’

  John smiled roguishly. He had always had charm, even as a daring, pale-haired boy of twelve, caught in the act of some petty theft or trespass, wide-eyed, talking his way clear of trouble. With the years his manners had gained in ease and poise. Cellini suddenly laughed. ‘Well, let it be as you say. Paulino, if you please! Wine.’

  We sat down together round the bench. John pointed at the opal cross. ‘This is for no common customer. I am guessing at the King?’

  I said, ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Well, it is a fine beginning. It will start you on your way, when you get it home to London. Of course, if you had more …’

  ‘But I do.’

  ‘No!’

  His incredulity flattered me. I turned to Cellini.

  ‘Benvenuto, be so good as to show him the Ship.’

  Cellini hesitated, then crossed to the chest and unlocked it with the steel key he wore on a light chain round his neck. He lifted out the finished brooch with both hands, carried it over and laid it down on his bench. There it lay, a living picture in gold, with its enamels, its gold-green chrysoprase, its four diamonds, its nine clouded sapphires. For some minutes we all gazed on it, saying nothing.

  ‘The ship of state,’ murmured John, ‘the kingdom in miniature? No, I do not think so. There is more passion in it than that. This is a ship blown by sighs, watered by tears, guided by a girl’s eyes. It is a lover, I think. A fine gift for one’s mistress, perhaps? And they do say the King is in love.’

  I put a hand quickly on his arm. ‘John,’ I said, speaking in English, ‘if you know who the King’s new mistress is, you must tell me. I am begging you.’

  John spread his hands. ‘My friend, if I knew I would tell you. But I have been gone from England myself this year or more.’

  It needled me, his confidence that, if he were back home, he would know. But after all, I knew very little now about my old friend. His connections might very well exceed what you would expect from his appearance. I looked once more at his clothes, the threads hanging loose from the edge of his cloak, the well-worn boots.

  ‘I know,’ he said, switching back into Italian. ‘I have seen troubled times. But so have you, from the look of things.’ He gestured at the half-healed burn on my cheek. Cellini snorted.

  ‘Ask him how he got it.’

  ‘No, no.’ I tried to push him away, but John peered more closely at my face.

  ‘Merciful Jesus,’ he murmured. ‘It looks like you have had a fight with the Devil.’

  ‘Near enough,’ said Cellini, drinking. ‘It was a woman.’

  I pulled away and put my hand up to cover the wound. ‘She is such a woman as neither of you two will ever touch.’

  Cellini laughed. ‘Listen to him! After all that has happened, he
is more in love than ever. Well, this is no time for your love yarns.’ He picked up the opal cross and the ship and placed them safe in one of the compartments of his chest, which he then closed and locked. ‘It is high time we settled our next move.’

  John gave me a look of polite puzzlement. I smiled, delighted to be able to surprise him yet again. I pulled out the casket from under my shirt, and laid it open on the bench. He leant closer to look.

  ‘By Saint Anthony’s pigs, you do have more.’

  I lifted my treasures out one by one and set them on the cloth. The sight of them both thrilled and lifted me. We sat and gazed, and moved the gems into this pattern and that across the cloth, and drank the rich Tuscan wine. The daylight was poor by now; but you can learn something of a fine stone even when it is in repose.

  John picked up the pure, pale Scythian emerald. ‘That really is rather fine,’ he said. ‘The last time I saw that casket of yours it had nothing in it but a few rock crystals. You will be back home when? Before the summer?’

  I frowned, tugged my lip and gazed into the stone. The emerald’s cool depths were a tonic to me. I wished I could forget everything else: the need for haste, the chance that I might delay too long and miss my moment. I had hoped to be back in England long since, certainly well before the summer. Today was the seventeenth of March. I ought to be setting out, but I could not leave with Cellini hot at work and half my stones still unset. And I loathed the thought of ever leaving at all. What? Sail away from Hannah, without a word? No, I was bound here, even if all I ever saw of her were those weekly glimpses in church. And so I avoided John’s eye, my glance fixed on the emerald, and said, ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Summer,’ said John, turning the stone in his fingers. ‘The King’s lady will be taking her pleasure in her gardens. I see bowers, roses, green arbours, mayblossom, fresh young shoots. All done in gold and sapphires and pearls. Yes?’

  ‘By God,’ said Cellini, and snatched the stone from him. He held it up to the light. ‘And the emerald is a distant meadow. We shall have reapers round it, shepherds, fauns. In the foreground?’ He lifted up the pale, milk-coloured sapphire. ‘A pool. Naked nymphs, bathing, lifting their feet over the brink. I see a pendant. I hope to God this lady has small breasts.’ He put the emerald back on the bench with the sapphire beside it, drew out a sheet of paper and a charcoal pencil, and began to sketch in rapid, furious lines, frowning at the stones as he worked. ‘Your friend,’ he murmured to me, ‘is rather useful.’ I turned from him, content to leave him to his work. My mind was ill at ease.

  ‘Drink, my friend,’ said John, raising his glass to mine. ‘And laugh at misfortune. That is what I do. Now, supposing you tell me that love story.’

  I managed to laugh. ‘It has a poor ending.’

  He waved a hand. ‘Who said it has ended?’

  And so I unfolded the story to him, starting with the first mocking glint of Hannah’s eye at that dinner when I laid out my stones and she refused the gift of my diamond, passing through her challenge, our fights, our kiss amidst the violence of the moccoli, and my conviction that, despite everything, she needed me, and a sad loneliness sat in this wild girl’s heart. I finished with my last, mournful visit to the church of Saint Thomas of Canterbury earlier that day. Just one thing I omitted: her name. John gazed at me with his pale eyes. The only sound was the scratching of Benvenuto’s charcoal pencil.

  ‘My dear, dear Richard,’ he said at last. ‘I pity you, I do. You really have encountered a siren. Beware woman, Richard.’

  I stood up in impatience. ‘And so that is it? Your advice is the same as Benvenuto’s and the rest? Give up on her?’

  John sprang to his feet and took my arm. ‘By no means! Is that what your friends have been telling you? By God, Richard, go back to her. Fight for her and win her. What else?’

  ‘Beware woman, you said.’

  ‘It is just a little too late for that,’ John said with a laugh, leading me back to the workbench and pouring us more wine. ‘By God, this Tuscan is good. No, Richard. The way with women is steer clear, or else conquer.’

  I drank. I could feel the wine throbbing in my temples. ‘But will she have me?’

  John laughed and waved a hand in dismissal. ‘Oh, she will huff, and put her nose in the air, and I dare say she will laugh at you at first, and ask which is slower to heal, your burnt cheek or your sulks at losing the game. But if you are a true lover, you must bear it.’

  ‘And you really think I will win her?’ I was beginning to feel my hopes and my courage returning.

  ‘With me to help you?’ John said. ‘Not a doubt of it.’ He smiled, the warm old smile that had just a hint of challenge in it, and held out his hand. ‘What do you say? Do you dare it?’

  I hesitated. Just how much had passed between John and Hannah during those months when I was off in Lisbon, and he and Thomas had stood and looked up at her window? It flashed into my mind how we had fought over her as boys, and John had promised to win her. But I did not think I could go back and brave Hannah’s scorn without him at my side.

  I grasped his hand. ‘I dare it. By God, I do.’

  John laughed, embraced me, and then stood back, his hand still clutching mine.

  ‘The old band is back together,’ he said, ‘or the heart and bowels of it, at any rate. Trust me: I know these girls. Now, take me to this palazzo.’

  I caught for a moment Benvenuto’s eye as he looked up from his drawing. He could not have followed our talk, since we spoke in English. But his look seemed to say he had caught the sense of what we had been saying, and saw no good in it. I turned away from him in irritation. To John I said, ‘Come with me, then. Now, at once.’

  I wanted to make my assault on the palazzo while the wine and John’s words still gave me courage. Because in truth I was full of foreboding. As I climbed those marble stairs up from the vestibule of the Palazzo del Bene, with my friend at my side, I could not remotely predict the reception waiting for me. One moment I came out in a cold sweat of anger and indignation at how she had treated me, the next I prayed only that she would show a little mercy with her taunts, the next I burned with shame at the humiliation of my return. It was only John, outdaring me with his easy gait, who made me reach the top of those stairs and stand waiting before the carved pilasters while the Cages’ chamberlain, Fenton, knocked on the door to the sala and held it open.

  Inside, the room presented an appearance of dusky calm. The shadows were growing deeper, but the servants had not yet lit the candles. A fire was burning despite the gradually warming season, and its light glinted across the marble paving and the blue-and-crimson Turkey carpets. The tapestries with their gods and goddesses hung dark and sombre, the gold thread sparking fitfully like the eyes of half-sleeping beasts. In one corner a hawk shifted on its perch with a faint ringing of bells. John cast his eyes round the room in surprise and drew in his breath. I had forgotten the splendour of the place. But that meant nothing to me. Just beyond the fireplace, Hannah was sitting with her sister and a couple of the gentlewomen. Susan was bending over a lute, and as we walked forward she struck a chord of surprising beauty. I saw that she knew a lot more of music than she pretended. Hannah, her feet tucked up beneath her like a coiled snake, kept her place with her finger in a small book, while her head rested listlessly on her other hand. A strand of hair wandered down from among the pearls on her head and across her cheek. At our approach she slowly turned her head, and when she saw me her face broke instantly into a smile. It was so warm, so natural, so open that I almost choked with love for her. I crossed quickly the remaining expanse of marble floor and carpet, and went down on my knee beside her chair.

  ‘My dearest Mrs Hannah!’

  She touched my cheek with her hand, tenderly. There was not a hint of triumph.

  ‘Your poor, poor face. Will your beard grow again?’

  I took her hand in mine and kissed it.

  ‘It is growing already.’

  We were lovers at last; just as
if our last moment together had been that kiss among the ruins, and not the violence that followed it. I simply gazed at her, and smiled. I had not a single notion what to say. John’s voice came from behind me.

  ‘Mrs Hannah. I might have guessed Richard would not forget you.’

  Hannah’s eyes opened wider and she looked between us, recognising us again as a pair. Her mouth began to curl in amusement. She must be picturing us as we were, fourteen-year-old urchins capering in the street. John, though, was a master of tact. He turned to Mrs Susan and threw himself down beside her in a kneeling posture mimicking my own.

  ‘And who is this delightful being?’

  Hannah’s face puckered into laughter, joined by the rest of us. Susan glared at John and swung her lute round so that its pegs nearly caught him on the nose. John sprang back on his heels like an acrobat and jumped to his feet. At that moment the door through to the saletta was opened, and in came Stephen and Grace Cage. I stood up swiftly and bowed, deeply and with all the grace I knew.

  ‘Dear Mr Richard!’ Grace bubbled as she took my hand and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Why have you been so long away from us? We were all so very concerned.’

  ‘We had begun to fear some calamity,’ added Mr Stephen, returning my bow with a true Court curtsey, left leg and left hand back, right hand across the waist as the head dips. To have a man of the rank of Stephen Cage drop a bow such as that to me meant a very great deal.

  ‘A small indisposition,’ I said, with a glance down at Hannah, whose face smiled with warm mystery back up at mine. ‘No more.’

  ‘But you are back with us now,’ oozed Grace. ‘And your friend?’

  Before I could present him, John stepped forward with a small ducking bow like an actor’s, and swept off his broken-feathered hat.