The King's Diamond

by Will Whitaker

  ‘There,’ he murmured. ‘I have you now. That is your weakness.’ He tapped the side of the stone. Never taking his eyes from it, he pinioned it in a vice to keep it firm. Then he took a second diamond, one of those gems of his that I had rescued from the chest. He clenched this in a dop, and using it he scored a narrow line across my diamond. I caught my breath: I could almost feel the diamond’s pain. It was a virgin stone no longer. Now there was no turning back. I watched with my heart pounding as he took a fine steel blade and a mallet. The diamond waited for his blow. Cellini paused, frowned, gazed again on the line. He lowered the blade, and with one blow of the mallet struck the stone.

  I jumped up with a gasp. On the bench lay glittering shards of powder. But the diamond: the diamond was there, one side struck clean away. Its flaw had gone. There it rested in its nakedness, its cool blue water washing my eyes as I gazed on it, revealed at last, beautiful and pure. It seemed to look up at us in amazement, gratitude, even love. Cellini snatched it and held it to the light.

  ‘There! By God! Did I not tell you I was the man to do it? Did you ever see such a stone?’

  I took it from him. ‘No,’ I murmured. ‘I never have.’

  Now he set about the faceting. For this he gathered up the powder, and together with oil he made a gritty paste which he spread on the surface of the wheel. This he set spinning with astonishing speed. Then, with intense care, he lowered the diamond over it, mounted on the end of the dop. A few seconds’ contact, and he lifted it again, frowned and then continued. Over the following days the principal face, the table, emerged. The diamond acquired a dull, sleepy glow. You might see inside, but the light echoed around against the still rough faces, like in a dream. It seemed as if its bewitchment has been lost. At the next cuts, four sloping facets surrounded the table and the stone began to wake, and cast the light around it. Slowly it advanced, slowly: to what end, I still could not fully imagine.

  But Cellini could not work on the diamond for long at a time. After a while he would look up from it, drained but exhilarated, and say, ‘That is enough. The stone is tired.’ Then he would stoke the furnace and throw on more treasures, and remove another of the thin, golden bricks from below, glistening, streaked with coal and ash. Sometimes he darted out on to the terrace, even in the middle of the night, and aimed and fired off one of his guns. At other times he turned his mind to the rest of my stones. There were few left, after I put aside those reserved to accompany the diamond in the pierced heart. I had my dark emerald, the greenish cats’ eyes that shot out colours almost as various as an opal, and last the two rubies: the one, pale and strange, almost pure white; the other noble, majestic, fiery and deep.

  I nudged the stones with my finger. ‘We must be quick.’ June had come. I felt time pressing against us. My refuge had become a prison. The Castle would not hold out much longer. But somehow I would leave this place. Yes, and Hannah Cage and my jewels along with me.

  ‘Quick: yes. Then after all our flights of fancy I think we must come down to something simple. A ring?’

  ‘Yes. The dark ruby.’ It was a stone to heat the blood, to bring love and lust boiling up together. It needed no embellishing. I pushed forward the deep Persian emerald. ‘Let this be a sister to it.’

  ‘A second ring: so. And your cats’ eyes, and the white ruby?’

  I prodded them with my fingers. So pale they were; yet powerful. The deceitful snares of virginity. I thought of Bennet’s letter, and his description of the King’s lady. I pictured her dark eyes, her private smile at the way she had snagged the King and held him fast. ‘Make a truelove knot,’ I told Cellini. Coils of gold. The stones caught in them, like flies in a web.’

  He lifted his dark brows. ‘Is that your opinion of the lady? What a pity you still do not know her name.’

  ‘But I do.’ I smiled at his surprise. From my casket I took out Bennet’s letter, and read out to him in Italian the portion that concerned the mistress. When I had finished Cellini stood up and stretched.

  ‘Well, my lady Anne Boleyn, if jewels are a proof of constancy, you will have nothing to complain of from your King. And now, my dear Messer Richard, which of the Pope’s valuables shall we send to the fire, to fashion the tokens of the English King’s love? This?’ He lifted up the triple crown itself, and held it over the furnace. The flames flashed on the points of each coronet, and lit up the faces of the saints: Peter with his keys, John astride his eagle, Mark and his winged lion, patron of the Venetians who never came. Then he lowered it into the fire, where it sat in majesty on the coals for many minutes. Finally its shapes blurred and the crown sank, formless, while a stream of gold ran down into the pan below.

  Cellini worked fast. The din of the bombardment from the Imperials’ new cannon batteries gave him fire, and he leapt from his guns to the furnace to the workbench without rest. In a short time the two rings were ready for their stones, and the truelove was finished. The twists of rope in the knot that bound the cats’ eyes and the white ruby were exquisite; and nested among them Benvenuto crafted a repeating pattern of the letters H and A. The gold heart too was ready for its gems. He set in it jacinths, amethysts, garnets: stones heavy with blood. Just off centre, a space waited for the diamond.

  Little by little, the cutting of the diamond of the Old Rock advanced. New facets extended beneath it, enfolding it all round, giving it the infinite reflections and echoes that break the light and send it flashing back up and out. When I held the finished stone in my fingers I saw that it had come at last into its glory. You could see in it the flare of the waterfall mingled with the blaze of fire and the myriad glints of colour that are possessed by no other stone, nor any other created substance on earth. It had thrown off its innocence; but it had acquired something so much greater in its place. It knew how to sparkle with every turn, without pause, yet without a moment’s repetition. It darted out citrine, amber, emerald; its waters played in its depths, then resolved themselves into a sudden fire which leapt and shrank back; and then, as I turned it to gaze directly upon its table, it became suddenly a creature of dark mystery, and I saw well-like depths, brooding caverns, night-time seas about whose edges danced always that shifting mockery of flames. Finally Benvenuto set it among the other stones in the heart: a baleful, beautiful thorn.

  ‘Superb.’ On a sudden impulse, I snatched up the heart and ran with it, down the steps past the treasury, and across the courtyard to the chamber occupied by the Cages. I burst in on them. The three women were seated. Grace was reading aloud from a book of verse. It was Ariosto’s epic, infinitely long, full of pursuits and escapes almost as fantastic as our own. They looked up. In my excitement I grabbed Hannah by the hand and pulled her outside into the courtyard. From the many doors of the armoury men passed in and out, carrying munitions up to the gun galleries. She was laughing as I dragged her by the sleeve. ‘Why? No, why, what is it?’

  ‘Not until we are alone.’

  I pulled her towards a door in the corner of the courtyard. It was ajar. Inside we were in a small storeroom, among kegs of powder, sacks of fine hail-shot and lengths of brimstone-soaked matchcord for firing cannon. A narrow window looked out towards the Imperials’ trenches. In its light, I opened my cupped hands and showed her the heart. Smiling, teased by my secretiveness, she peered forward. The heart flamed, bloodied and passionate. Slicing into it from the side ran the diamond. Its edges leapt with flame, while its principal facet remained a void of mystery. Hannah gazed at it for a long time, and then she looked up at my face. Her eyes had caught the expression of the stone. They flashed, dark and fathomless.

  ‘Now do you see?’ I asked her. ‘Now do you understand?’

  She put her hands up to my face. I stepped towards her, took her in my arms and kissed her. Above us the cannons bellowed, and the stonework round us shook. I caressed her hair, her throat, her neck. She slid down beneath me on to a pile of sacks, her arms outstretched. I was pulling at the strings across the front of her dress, running my hand over
her shoulders and her breasts. I hurried to see to my own clothing: lifted off my sword belt, unhooked my doublet and pulled up my shirt. Hannah, smiling, helped me. She knelt then, and we kissed still while I pulled over her head her smock. Naked, she waited for me, feet curled under her, smiling, resting on one arm. Her black hair fell over the whiteness of her shoulder. She was entirely at her ease. She breathed with mysterious power, just as surely as she had when first I knew her, smiling down on us from her window, or when I first saw her in Rome, laughing at Susan and the monkey. Like my stone, with the veil removed she only teased me the more. I threw off the last of my clothes and crept alongside her. As our skin touched she rubbed one leg alongside me and put her arms around my neck.

  A shot crashed into the castle wall behind us. Dust trickled down from the ceiling and settled on our bodies. Hannah laughed. If we were to die, we would die. We were strong: we would walk into the dark together. As our ecstasy began, all our moments together fused into one. Hannah lying beneath me, head tipped back, her breasts pressed against me, was Hannah standing on the riverbank in the dark, swinging on her hips, twirling her mask by its string and saying, ‘I know! We shall play cards for it.’ She was Hannah in the ruins, Hannah deep underground in the grottoes of the ancients, and in the dark of the attic of the Palazzo del Bene; Hannah who bet on the dwarf Calandrino and won; Hannah who told me there is no pleasure without danger.

  With a long gasp she fell back against the sacks. I kissed her again and again, on the face, on the shoulders and neck. She lay and looked at me with her amused smile. She was laughing at me again: but for what? It was then that I looked up and listened. The guns had stopped. Over Rome there hung a deep and deathly silence.

  24

  I let Hannah step out of the storeroom first. When I left a few minutes later, with my casket safe again beneath my shirt and my sword at my side, a Papal official who had been lingering at the foot of the tower came up to me.

  ‘Messer Richard Dansey? His Holiness wishes to see you.’

  I blinked in surprise. ‘You must be mistaken.’

  ‘There is no mistake.’

  I followed him, hardly knowing where I went. The touch of Hannah’s skin was fresh upon me. I was still in a world of glory, far above mortal concerns such as war, sieges, death. But as I stepped inside the outer hall of the Pope’s apartments, I began to be a little afraid. I could not conceive the purpose of this summons.

  We passed through into a second barrel-vaulted room, where knots of bishops and cardinals stood around the walls, whispering. At the next door, a low opening in the monumental stone walls of the castle, two Swiss guardsmen stood with their halberds. A chamberlain with a gilt staff stepped out, took my sword, and motioned me in. I entered a modest-sized hall with a painted ceiling. At the far end sat Pope Clement VII, in his scarlet cope and skullcap. His fingers, bare of jewels, rested on the arms of his throne. His face above the fresh straggle of his beard was drained and grey. Standing close to him was Cardinal Farnese. He was a crafty old man who had lived a wild life in his youth. He had fathered a flock of bastards, and even spent time in the dungeons beneath our feet for forging a Papal bull. He had advised the Pope months ago to flee from Rome, and for that, perhaps, Clement was the more inclined to listen to his advice now.

  I saw also the sad, old bloodhound face of Cardinal Campeggio. He was one of those who spoke loudest for conciliation, rather than further acts of war. The younger Cardinal Salviati, Pope Clement’s cousin, stood beside him. There was no one else in the room. I advanced towards the Holy Father, prostrated myself before him in the proper manner and kissed his scarlet-slippered feet. He gestured to me to rise. Tears were in his eyes. He tried to speak, but his voice choked. He closed his eyes. Then he said, ‘I have signed the capitulation.’

  My stomach sank. I had everything: I had the world. The richest gems ever to be seen in London; and I had Hannah. All this I was about to lose. Pope Clement waited for some moments with his eyes closed. Then he looked at me again. The curve of his mouth still spoke of his old, cold cunning. I saw that after all this man was far from having given up the fight. He said, ‘You are intimate, I believe, with Stephen Cage?’

  I said, ‘While he was in Rome I had the honour to see him often, and dine with his family.’

  Clement nodded. ‘Mr Stephen is gone: perhaps dead. But you, you have survived. Cardinal Campeggio tells me he believes you are a most unusual young man. So: are you ready to serve me? And serve Mr Stephen’s cause?’

  I bowed. ‘I am at Your Holiness’s command.’ My heart was pounding. I could not conceive what was coming next.

  Pope Clement leant forward. ‘Signor Casale leaves tomorrow for Venice, and after that for England, bearing letters from us and from Cardinal Farnese, to Cardinal Wolsey and your King.’ He paused. ‘In the midst of these terrible crimes committed against God and the Church, we look only to England. Would that we had never trusted to the promises of our other allies.’

  He fell silent again. His nostrils flared in an expression of unqualified hatred. I said, ‘My master, the King of England, is conscious of the title Your Holiness’s predecessor conferred on him. He will act as becomes the Defender of the Faith.’

  What was I saying? I was talking like an ambassador: as if I came in the King’s name, with the King’s own instructions and credentials. The Pope’s eyes flicked upon me.

  ‘You understand, then, the full nature of Messer Stephen’s errand?’

  It would not do to hesitate. I had advanced this far into the business of princes and kings, and I was not about to turn back. I bowed. Meanwhile my mind raced, trying to piece together a clue here, a word there.

  ‘Then you will know that he left Rome discontented, without receiving an answer. This was remiss of me.’ Suddenly his eyes beneath their drooping lids took fire. ‘English neutrality in this war must end. It must!’ He slammed the arm of his throne with his hand. ‘My friends desert me. Heretics mock me in the streets of the Holy City. And I must pretend to treat with them; pay their war expenses, speak with mildness. They even demand that I rescind my excommunication and pardon them all from Hell. And that,’ he murmured, his fist tightening, ‘is a thing I shall never do.’

  My spine shivered as I listened to him. His hand unclenched; his face became once more without expression, hanging between a smile, a scowl, and the curled lip of disdain.

  ‘Find Mr Stephen, if he still lives,’ he whispered to me, ‘and tell him this: “The time may soon come.” Exactly those words. Nothing more. You understand me?’

  My mind was racing. Stephen’s mission, undoubtedly, was to press Pope Clement to consent to King Henry’s divorce; or rather, to ask him to agree that the marriage to Queen Katherine had been null from the very start. Clement had temporised, delayed answering, kept Stephen kicking his heels in Rome for week after week in disappointed hope, until finally, just too late for safety, he had left. This divorce was a thing Clement could not easily agree to. It would be a harsh blow to the papacy to concede that a Brief of Dispensation granted by a former pope was a gross error, without validity. Only his desperation for the English alliance could drive him even to consider it.

  And then I thought about Stephen, the secrecy in which he wrapped himself, the pilgrim’s badge in his cap, the absence of any official status as ambassador from the King. Wolsey feared Stephen. Why, if he was labouring for the divorce just the same as Wolsey himself?

  And then I saw it. It came to me in an instant, with Bennet’s words before me, announcing the name that very soon all England would know. Anne Boleyn, Stephen’s cousin. Stephen Cage was not Wolsey’s emissary, but Anne’s and the King’s. Stephen’s presence in Rome was a sign that King Henry no longer trusted Cardinal Wolsey to push through the divorce. Why not? Because when Henry obtained his freedom from Queen Katherine, he would not be looking to the French King’s sister for a wife, but to Wolsey’s deadly enemy and his own true love, Mrs Anne.

  A thrill ran up my back.
This truly was, as Wolsey called it, a Great and Secret Affair. And I found myself at the heart of it. If I was right, I understood more of this matter than either Wolsey or Pope Clement. Stephen Cage must have talked to His Holiness about the powers of popes to dispense, the division between divine law and Papal jurisdiction, the interpretation of Scripture. He would not have told him that King Henry was in love: in love with a woman dark-eyed, slender, with a flashing wit and temper; a woman who was not his wife. No, in all these secret debates, the name of Anne Boleyn must have remained the deepest secret of all. And so Wolsey laboured for the divorce, believing in his French match but fearing and half-guessing he was only playing into the hands of his enemy, Anne. Meanwhile King Henry had told the truth of his intentions only to the closest members of the Boleyn clan. I felt my face flush, and I fought to keep my mouth from curving into a smile. My own chances were opening up, richer and grander than I had ever imagined. I was carrying love-gifts for no mere royal mistress, but for a woman who would be queen. I looked up at the Pope. His face, expressionless, waited for my reply.

  I said, ‘I understand Your Holiness. But if Mr Stephen should be dead? To whom should I deliver the message then?’

  Pope Clement lifted one eyebrow. ‘Naturally, to your King.’

  Richard Dansey, emissary to King Henry. The style of that pleased me. But all of this was nothing unless I could escape from the Castle. The Pope took up a large sheet of paper from a table at his side.

  ‘These,’ he said, ‘are the terms of the surrender. I am bound to pay four hundred thousand ducats to the Imperials. Until it can be raised, hostages will remain in the Castle, under guard. But the garrison, and most of those who took shelter here, are free to go.’ He looked at me with a slight smile. ‘Your name, Richard Dansey, is among those who will be permitted to leave.’