There was fear, I thought, in the way he glanced about and licked his fleshy lips. But his hearers murmured with appreciation. His Holiness stepped down from his throne and twelve priests in white surplices formed a ring behind him. Each one carried a tall lighted candle. The church fell silent. Then Pope Clement began the terrible ceremony of the Anathema. He excommunicated the Duke of Bourbon and his accomplices from the bosom of Holy Mother Church, and condemned them all, thirty thousand souls, to eternal fire with Satan and his angels. A murmur of gratified horror ran round the people as the twelve priests dashed their candles on the ground, where they rolled for a few moments until every flame was extinguished.
PART 5
Ruby of Serendip: a Stone to Heat the Blood
Fortune is all-powerful:
That I believe,
For to fight her none has strength;
… But Fortune is God’s will, as some have said?
That I cannot think.
God then would be unjust, fickle,
… Harsh and cruel as She.
ANTONIO FILEREMO FREGOSO, DIALOGUE ON FORTUNE
19
The next day Renzo da Ceri was seen in his plumed helmet in all quarters of Rome, issuing orders for the positioning of the reserves, pointing to decayed portions of the walls and sending up builders with wheelbarrows of stone and lime. It was a mad burst of haste; I did not know whether to laugh or be afraid, seeing men actually building up the walls while the enemy was camped before them. The men obeyed sluggishly. Renzo could not be everywhere, and when he went away the men threw down their shovels and ambled off to the nearest wine shop. Beyond the walls we could hear the drumming of hoofs and the distant murmur of many men. That army of the damned had not gone away.
Around noon there was a great stir through the city. Cannonfire was heard from the north side of the Borgo, and all the roar and din of battle. The Imperials were attempting to scale the walls. I sat in the Cages’ sala with John and the womenfolk, while Stephen stayed alone in his study. We did not speak. At times we could hear Stephen pacing about, kicking the walls, murmuring to himself and then shouting out loud. He was in some great indecision, it seemed. All the Cages’ things were packed. But still they did not leave. Benvenuto, yet again, had abandoned the diamond, and sat up on the rooftop gazing north. From time to time Paulino came down with news.
‘They are drawing back,’ he told us at last. We laughed and cheered. The attack had lasted just an hour. It seemed the Pope had been right about the Imperials’ feebleness. Mrs Grace summoned in the minstrels, and soon we were dancing, while the bells rang all through Rome, and men ran down the streets shouting, ‘Victory, victory!’ Mr Stephen stepped in, his face grave. Without a word he walked out and down the stairs.
‘The Pope,’ Mrs Grace whispered. The girls nodded. A proclamation had gone out that morning forbidding anyone to leave the city; but Mr Stephen, I had no doubt, could secure an exemption from the rule if he chose. I offered Hannah my hand. ‘If you would walk with me in the garden?’
Grace smiled her approval. I had the heavy sense that my time with Hannah was short now indeed, whether Mr Stephen obtained what he wanted from His Holiness or not. We made the small circuit of the garden down the single loop of gravel path, past the Roman statues, the lemon trees, the arbour, the vine I had never climbed. She walked with soft, slow steps. We were beginning our second turn round before either of us spoke.
I said, ‘I have found out the secret you tried so very hard to hide.’
Hannah looked up quickly.
I went on, ‘The King’s love.’
She looked guarded. ‘You’ve found out, have you? How very clever you are, Mr Richard.’
‘You must know Anne Boleyn well: she comes of Kent gentry like yourselves. You are a mystery to me, Mrs Hannah. Why would you not tell?’
She stared at me a moment, and then smiled and looked down at her feet as they scuffed along the path. ‘And you are a mystery to me: why you are so much in love with your stones. First one, then another. Then that one will not do, and you need one still finer. You are a lost man, Mr Richard.’
I protested all over again that I was doing it only for her. ‘When we are home again, and I have my success with the King: then you will understand.’
She stopped, and looked up at me. The skin of her forehead was creased in a frown. I could not read what was troubling her, but the concern in her eyes made her infinitely beautiful. ‘Will I?’
I made no answer. Instead, I stooped forward and kissed her. She gave a little sigh and rested her hands lightly on my shoulders. Her eyes closed before mine. She gave herself up to that kiss; but there was a sadness in it, I thought, a sense that perhaps this was not just one among the first of our kisses, but the last. Suddenly she pulled away. We could hear Mr Stephen shouting from somewhere in the house.
‘Fenton! Fenton! Where are those horses? I told you we needed more! And load the silver in the middle carriage. Armed men to the front and rear.’
Hannah ran ahead of me through the door into the entrance hall. I caught up with Mr Stephen soon after.
‘You are not going?’
Stephen’s pale eyes were fierce. ‘At once.’
‘Allow me to wish that you have obtained what you desired from His Holiness.’
It was a last try to tease from him some information. He turned on me. ‘No, by God, I have not. But I had rather return a failure than stay any longer in this deathtrap. The Imperials will be back. If you are ever going to leave this place, it has to be now.’
He turned away. Servants ran across the hall to the pile of bundles. Outside in the piazza I could see packhorses and carts waiting.
Hannah’s eyes looked at me in question.
Mr Stephen’s talk had chilled me. But I would not let myself believe the worst. ‘Two days,’ I promised her. I was calculating. Two days for the armies to clear and for Benvenuto to cut the stone. That would have to content me. I would have someone else make up the heart in England, and fashion some rings and suchlike out of the remaining stones: I could sacrifice that much of perfection. But I must have that diamond. Hannah looked at me for a long moment, and then she turned from me with an angry toss of her head and ran up the stairs to the sala.
‘Piccolino! Who is looking after Piccolino?’
She had changed in an instant. From the deep, beautiful woman, full of promise and dark melancholy, she was once more a petulant, teasing girl. I looked up at the balcony where she had gone. Over the marble balustrade leant Susan. She had seen it all. She shook her head at me, comical and commiserating. In a rage I walked out into the square. The crowd of packbeasts, men and carts was astounding; only now, in fact, did I appreciate the scale of the Cages’ entourage, and the wealth that lay behind it. I saw the minstrels, the music-master and the dancing-master, the gentlewomen, the almoner supervising the loading up of a chest presumably carrying church-plate and altar vessels; the five or six pageboys in grass-green livery, the maids and men loading up chests and rolls of tapestry, tablecloths and carpets; and Beelzebub-Piccolino on his silver chain perched screeching on top of it all.
Martin was silently at my side. ‘Master,’ he murmured, ‘I beg you. Why will you not go with them? If we ran to Benvenuto’s, paid him and fetched the jewels …?’
I made no answer. Mrs Grace came out of the palazzo, and the girls, and Alessandro with a few more servants. To my dismay the Cages really were ready to go. Stephen bowed deeply to Alessandro, and then clasped him in his arms. Alessandro kissed each of the ladies, ‘in the English fashion’. Grace turned to me a last questioning look, but Hannah avoided my eye and climbed into one of the covered carts with her father. Too late, I bowed, and realised I had lost my chance for that last kiss which custom allowed. The first of the carts, on which two men with harquebuses rode, moved out of the little piazza and turned into the Via Monserrato. In a few minutes, with a vast rumbling of wheels and snorting of horses and mules, the Cages and all their ho
usehold were gone. I stood there in the empty piazza staring after them. Never have I felt more desolate, and angry too, both at the Cages for going and myself for my stubbornness in staying behind. Already I sensed I had made a terrible mistake.
That night I roved the streets of Rome without purpose. It was a damp night, with a chill air rising from the marshes. I reached as far as the Cow Pasture with its buried triumphal arches and columns, and then turned north beyond the Colosseum to the grottoes. Everywhere cried out to me with Hannah’s absence. The very air was heavy with memory and regret: the places we had been, the things we had said and done. The streets were quiet; calmly expectant. Rome had won a victory already, and tomorrow was the day the Pope had promised for Bourbon’s final, shameful retreat. Moody, I returned at last to the Palazzo del Bene. Sounds of music came from inside. When I went in, the doors of what had been the Cages’ sala were thrown open. Alessandro del Bene was there, with Benvenuto sitting beside him, polishing the barrel of his gun. I saw John, tapping his feet and clapping to the rough country music of a bagpiper and a pair of fiddles, while several of Benvenuto’s soldiers were dancing. The grandeur of the Cages’ occupancy had vanished like a dream. Among the faces in the candlelight round the walls I recognised a good many of Benvenuto’s friends: Berni, and Polidoro, Pantassilea and Diego. I saw Polidoro debating a sketch with the Florentine painter Rosso, making additions to it in charcoal, then laughing and passing round the jug. On the fire a basin of wine was steaming for hippocras. When Alessandro saw me he called me in. Martin went and sat down with a group of servants who were playing cards outside the door. Cellini held up his harquebus to me with a smile. Its steel barrel was chased in gold, and the serpentine that held the match was carved as a rearing dragon. Naturally it was all his own work.
I said, ‘It seems to me you are enjoying soldiering rather too much. When will you attend to my stone?’
Cellini waved his hand. ‘Dear Richard: always so urgent. Tonight we drink to victory, and the long continuance of art, and her patroness the Church.’
‘The Church!’ echoed some of the artists. ‘May she commission frescos and goblets and altarpieces without end. Amen.’
I took a cup of hot wine and sat down next to John, who smiled and raised his cup to mine.
‘I am surprised you’re still here,’ I murmured.
‘Oh, I would not leave Rome for the world. There are excellent opportunities here for trade.’
He caught my eye and I looked back at him, wondering. And so he was still dealing in his mysterious, invisible goods. But whose side was he working for? He had left Florence in a hurry: so I guessed he had been on the run from the Medici. He had left informants behind there, who forwarded ‘goods’ to him as they became known. I suspected he knew Mr Stephen, even before I introduced him. And he had dealings with Ferramosca, who was trusted by the Pope to negotiate peace, even though he was in the pay of the Emperor. John’s smile gave nothing away.
The music swelled and the sketches were passed round, nude nymphs, rolicking satyrs, dainty goddesses. It seemed a profanation of the room where Hannah and I had danced, and where I had sat down to the Cages’ grandiose feasts. But they were gone: I had made my choice, and put my treasures before my love. Perhaps I had been a fool. But I consoled myself by thinking how soon I would set out on the same road as the Cages. I would travel fast, and overtake them before they believed it possible: and then I would show Hannah that diamond. I allowed myself to relax and drink.
In the silence that night back in my bed at the inn I pictured the Imperials melting away, first one band, then another: their banners falling, the men simply vanishing into the mist, withering under the Pope’s curse. In the end I must have slept. When I woke, I heard a noise I could not place. It was a murmur like a swarm of distant bees, mingled with booms of thunder. Martin was shaking my arm.
‘Master, wake up! They are attacking.’
We hurried to the palazzo. There were men up on the roof, peering across the river. It was early, not long after dawn; mist hung in the streets in pale, glimmering strands. I found Benvenuto and Alessandro downstairs.
‘We can tell nothing from up on the roof,’ Benvenuto was saying. ‘The mist is too thick.’
Alessandro was hopping from foot to foot in fear. ‘Come with me to the walls, I implore you, Benvenuto. Not knowing is the very worst.’
Cellini’s eyes kindled. ‘You want to see it, at the cannon’s mouth? Very well!’
I stepped forward. I knew Benvenuto’s rashness. If there was any danger, I was not letting him out of my sight. So we set out, with Martin and ten or so of Cellini’s soldiers carrying harquebuses. We crossed the Bridge of Sant’ Angelo under the walls of the castle and then hurried up through the Borgo. We skirted Saint Peter’s, from which came the sound of chanting: the Pope was saying Mass for victory. Between here and the walls was a vineyard belonging to the Pope, and the palace of Cardinal Cesi stood to one side, where I had walked with Hannah just a few days ago among the Cardinal’s outstanding collection of sculpture. From three sides now, where the walls looped round, we could hear the crash of repeated harquebus volleys and the roar of the enemy army. They were attacking everywhere at once: from the Valley of Hell beyond Saint Peter’s, and westward among the vineyards. We followed Cellini up the stone steps to the battlements. Dead men lay everywhere. It was about an hour after dawn, and the fog was growing thicker. Shots fell all round us. We crouched behind the parapet while Cellini, with a wild light in his eyes, loaded his gun.
‘Now that we are here, we are bound to fire a shot.’
Each of us followed his lead. I had learnt the working of a harquebus from Mr William on our sea voyages, but I had never fired at a living foe. Upon Benvenuto’s word, we stood up and trained our weapons over the wall. What I saw was a white blank with dim shapes moving in it, but from everywhere came the yelling of men, the clangour of their movements and the volleys of shot. I fired at random into the mist and ducked quickly down again. Bullets chipped into the stone around us, and our cannon shot answered from the towers. Alessandro crouched behind the parapet, murmuring over and over, ‘I wish to God we had never come.’ In some places, scaling ladders leant against the walls and the enemy climbed, one by one, to be shot down before they could reach us; but others always took their place, with their yells of ‘España, España!’ Cannon shots flew overhead, and one crashed into the wall at our side, throwing three men back in a welter of rubble and blood. They came from our own guns in the Castle of Sant’ Angelo, firing blindly into the mist.
Cellini motioned to us and we crept further along the parapet. The Spaniards and Germans were attacking in bands, all along the walls. It was a marvel how they kept up their fury, with no cannon of their own to answer ours. But their sheer numbers gave them freshness. As one detachment fired off their shots or grew tired, another came up from behind. Around the bend in the walls we came to a place where the ramparts ran lower. Sections were cracked and decayed, and I saw that the rear wall of a farmhouse had been built into them to save expense. The Spaniards were attacking here with greater fury than ever: they had the wit to direct their strength to the weakest point. I whispered this to Benvenuto, and he nodded. We stood up to fire; two of his men were shot down. The fog was as thick as could be. We were in a world of white, where we could not see more than an arm’s length, and yet death was crashing all round us. The shouts of the bands of Spaniards and their volleys of shot echoed, now near, now far, and I felt a sudden exhilaration, as if we were invulnerable. Then the fog blew apart for an instant, and I suddenly saw their ranks, the bristling pikes in dense squares, the harquebuses trained up at the walls hundreds together, and I felt the full fear of our own weakness and the terrible strength of our enemy.
The Imperials milled about at the very foot of the walls, and one of the Papal captains handed out iron balls with fuses, fire bombs, which we lit and threw down. The explosions and cries from below told us we had done some good; but more me
n came scuttling up through the vineyards to creep between the piles of stinking refuse that had been thrown from the walls. Out beyond their first ranks we glimpsed a figure in white riding about on a horse, shouting out encouragement. Shots fell around him, and when the fog blew past we saw him at the foot of a scaling ladder, encouraging his men to follow. A murmur ran along the battlements: ‘Bourbon. The Duke of Bourbon.’
‘That’s the man to hit,’ growled Cellini. We all of us trained our guns down into the fog. He was climbing the ladder, and the Spaniards came roaring up behind him; we fired, and then again. Next we heard sounds of confusion and the firing of the enemy diminishing, and through the smoke and the fog I saw the Spanish fall back, carrying the man in white with them, his surcoat drenched in blood.
‘I killed him!’ Cellini was shouting. ‘I killed Bourbon!’
‘Any one of us could have fired that shot,’ I corrected him.
‘Don’t be a fool,’ growled Cellini. ‘None of the rest of you could hit an ox.’
I resented this; I had practised at sea until I had a fair aim. ‘Benvenuto,’ I hissed, ‘why do you forever need to be the first and the best?’ John caught my eye. He too had shown himself handy with a gun, and fired and reloaded wearing a calm smile. But there was no time to quarrel. A cheering was springing up round us, the firing was falling silent, and many of the men on the ramparts actually jumped down and began running off into the lanes between the houses, shouting ‘Victory! Victory!’
‘Now, in the name of God, can we go?’ Alessandro picked himself up. He was still shaking.
None of us answered. I peered into the fog. The ladders were abandoned. I saw bodies scattered on the ground, plumed helmets, dead men’s beards lifting in the light breeze that blew the fog in swirls, the wounded trying to rise. I did not trust what I saw. Martin was at my side. He had no weapon, but had been helping me to reload my gun. Horses’ hoofs could be heard out in the fog. The cannon of Sant’ Angelo still fired, their shots landing at random in the vineyards and the marsh. Martin and I looked at one another, and our looks both said the same: they will not give up.
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