The King's Diamond (10 page)

Even from the window of our lodging, on the narrow little square called the Campiello del Sol just a few lanes away from the Piazzetta of the Rialto, I made fresh discoveries. Every morning before dawn, I saw an old man and a boy of about fifteen come trudging up from the canal at the end of the square, each carrying a pair of buckets on yokes over their shoulders. They poured the contents down the well in the middle of the square, then went back for more. After six or seven trips they vanished. One morning I went down and asked them what they were doing. The old man told me they were
acquaiuoli
, who carry water from Terraferma, as Venetians call their territories on the Mainland, to fill the various wells of the city. Every morning they crossed the lagoon in the mist, past the great ships lying at anchor, and crossed back again to the city.

I said, ‘And do these great ships pay a toll to the Republic on all their goods?'

The old man looked back at me unblinking. ‘Not always.' I gave him half a ducat, and asked him to remember me.

One evening, after the gates of the Ghetto had been shut, Martin and I were making our way back home. I was feeling tired and cast down, and that made me miss our usual path. Dusk was closing in. Lights burned in front of some of the doorways, but long stretches of the alleys were dark. The next canal, by my reckoning, ought to have been the Rio di San Cassiano, and we should cross it by the small wooden Ponte dei Morti, the Bridge of the Dead, that leads past the cemetery and bell-tower of San Cassiano itself. But the alleyway twisted and turned, and then came out at a narrow bridge which I had never seen before. From across the canal came a burst of feminine laughter. There, in a blaze of light from cressets in the walls, I saw a sight to make me stand still and blink. In every window of the houses opposite there were women: naked, beautiful women. Some of them were leaning out over the canal, cradling their breasts, whose nipples were picked out in carmine. Others stood full height, looking up and down the alley, their hair decked in pearls, while their more intimate charms were shaved in the Oriental fashion. A few were even perched on the window ledges, their bare legs dangling in the air. When they caught sight of me all of them began calling and beckoning to me to come up, come and have a taste of Paradise.

I climbed the steps up to the centre of the bridge, bowed and swept off my hat. It was time, I thought, to drown my worries.

‘Ladies,' I said, ‘I am entirely at your service.'

I crossed over the bridge and knocked at the doorway beneath the dangling legs. A stately old woman answered it, and looked me up and down suspiciously. My clothes did not speak of great wealth, and she was about to shut the door on me. I lifted up my purse with a chink of coins, loosened the strings and handed her half a ducat. Her face broke into an avaricious smile, and she bowed to let me in. I pushed past and bounded up the curving stone stairs.

‘What about me?' came Martin's plaintive voice from below.

‘Amuse yourself,' I called back, and burst into the room overlooking the canal. There was a chorus of little shrieks, and the girls rushed to cover themselves with a variety of silk veils and shifts. About the room were four daybeds ornamented with scrollwork and piled with cushions and bolsters, each enveloped in a silken canopy like a tent, hanging from hooks on the ceiling. There was not another man present. I looked from one girl to another, scarcely able to believe my luck. They stood with their eyes cast down, timidly smiling: the picture of modesty, as if they were virgins just arrived from the country who had been innocently airing their nakedness at the windows on account of the excessive heat. I swept off my hat and bowed.

‘Richard Dansey, of London.'

They looked up at me.

‘Dardania.'

‘Ippolita.'

‘Angelica.'

‘Armida.'

Their names spoke to me of the ancient paradises of the gods; their looks, the slight bows and curtseys they made, still holding the shifts up to their bodies, all enflamed me beyond endurance. All the frustration of my search for gems translated itself instantly into desire. I looked from one to the other. How to decide? Ippolita was tall, like the Amazon queen she took her name from. She stood resting a long leg on an inlaid coffer. Armida was delicate, Angelica round as a pudding, Dardania slender and proud. In the end it was the challenge in Ippolita's eyes that decided me. I beckoned her to me. She smiled coyly, and led me to one of the daybeds. She lay down on her side at one end with her light blue veil covering her, like a lazy Venus in a painting, waiting for me. A little chain of pearls in her hair, drawn up in a curve, gleamed in the lamplight like water drops. I tossed my purse down next to the pillow with a loud jingle of gold, and my dagger along with it: defying them to try to steal. Then I undressed to my shirt, while Angelica poured sweet wine
into two glasses which she placed on an inlaid table, and Dardania and Armida set down a variety of meats intended to inflame our passions: eggs dressed with truffles, asparagus tips, and almonds and pine nuts in aniseed and honey. Ippolita ate with delicate nibbles and tiny sips of wine, darting provoking glances at me from her large, dark eyes. At last I could bear it no longer. I threw aside the plate of nuts and yanked on the gold tasselled ropes of the canopy. The curtains fell closed. I pulled off my shirt and knelt in the near-darkness opposite my Amazon, naked. Her eyes shone, wicked with danger and untried possibilities. She twitched aside the veil, rolled over like a cat and crouched facing me.

‘Now,' she said, ‘let us see what you can do.'

She sprang at me. She dived, she wriggled, she clasped and foined, she drew back, she leapt, she bit, she licked, she laughed. I gasped in amazement; I was out of my depth. Ippolita was a different creature entirely from the bored trollops of Stew Lane, or even those gaudier creatures of the back streets of Lisbon. But I set myself to learn fast. I answered caress with caress, attack with attack, and for each new device of hers I made sure to invent two more of my own. As we wrestled and grasped, the pearls in her headdress shook and clicked. They were fine, I thought: very fine. I promised myself a closer look, but even as I formed the thought she leapt upon me to play the cavalier, digging her heels in my thighs and sitting upright with a rhythmical swing of her breasts that mesmerised me as we approached our desire. Then, after we had refreshed ourselves with wine, I took the saddle myself. I pressed my face into her musk-scented hair, and so I found my eyes brought suddenly up against those pearls. They were of a good size, perhaps three carats or more, well rounded, with a pinkish-blue blush. That sheen proclaimed they were still in their bright youth: for pearls, unlike true gems, decline and wither with age. Persian, I judged, from the rich fisheries of the Straits of Ormuz. There were seven of them. I paused in my assault and lifted myself on my arms.

‘Where did you get those pearls?'

‘From a noble,' she gasped. ‘Who couldn't pay. God curse you! What's the matter? Will your sword not fight?'

I sprang back to the attack. The smell of her, the gleam of the pearls, woman and pearls, woman and pearls, the delight of Ippolita and my greed for her treasure merged in a single exquisite emotion. As my mouth drew close to her ear I whispered, ‘I'll give you a hundred ducats for them.'

She arched her back, bit my neck and hissed, ‘Two hundred.'

I twisted and swooped. ‘A hundred and twenty.'

‘Oh! Oh! Oh! And fifty.'

I rolled her on top of me to drink the last drop of delight and whispered in her ear, ‘Done.'

I went home euphoric. The smell of Ippolita was still about me: and I had made my first purchase. But lying in bed back in our lodging I began to doubt what I had done. What if it had only been the spell of the wine, the exotic foods and the delicious taste of my Amazon that had seduced me? By the light of a single candle I opened the casket again and got out my scales. They were true jewellers' scales, which I had bought before leaving home. They had no stand; instead they hung from the finger and thumb, with two pans, on to one of which the tiny weights were lifted with tweezers. My pearls were of a good, even weight, some three and a quarter carats each, and of a good roundness. They were pierced, of course; but it surprised me to see that they had not been drilled right through their centres in the usual fashion, but in a shorter line across the base. Drilling pearls is always dangerous work; this must have been infinitely harder. It was this oddity that had caused the pearls to hang in so bewitching a fashion in Ippolita's hair.

I crossed to the window, still holding the pearls. Dawn was beginning to break. I heard the water-carriers making their usual way up from the canal, and then the whoosh of their buckets emptying into
the well. As the sun rose, for the first time I saw the pearls' true glory. They had a deep and subtle sheen, like cream tinged with rosewater. The light played on them, hinting at transparent depths. And yet there were none, for the entire mystery of a pearl, unlike a gem, lies in its surface. I had been right: they were worth many times what I had paid.

‘Martin!' I called, as my servant came padding through from the outside room, bringing hot water. I held out the casket and let him see them, seven silver orbs against the blue silk I had folded inside to keep the stones I bought safe and separate.

‘What do you think of that?'

Martin leant over and sniffed. ‘You bought from the whores?'

I snapped the lid shut in annoyance. ‘I'll buy from the Devil if I have to. Do you doubt me?'

‘No, master,' said Martin with reluctance. ‘If you say they're real, I believe you. That's all very well. But what next?'

‘Today we walk,' I retorted briefly. ‘And tonight, back to the Bridge of Nipples.' That truly was the name of that narrow little bridge: the Ponte de le Tet'; and a better-named bridge I have yet to see.

‘Is that your plan?' Martin asked me in disgust. ‘To lie with a different trollop every night? For how long? Until all your money is gone?'

It was my mother speaking, loaded with disdain. For a moment I wavered. What if they were right? What if all I was capable of was squandering her money and creeping home, the chastened prodigal, never to attempt to rise again? But then anger welled up in me: anger at the slander and injustice of it, and at this hulking spy who dogged my every move. I walked up close to Martin, took hold of a fold of his shirt and flung him back against the wall. ‘I hope my mother is paying you well,' I hissed at him. ‘Because you are taking a risk. What were her orders? To force me to make a mistake? To drive me home again as soon as you could? Well?'

Martin looked back at me stolidly. ‘I am here to guard you, master. And to be of service.'

I let him go. Of course he would admit to nothing. I should have kept my temper. I said, ‘I will lie with as many courtesans as it takes, and do whatever more I have to, until I find what I am looking for.'

On my daily prowls through the city, I mixed with the merchants in the Piazzetta before the ancient church of San Giacomo; I walked the Merceria, that wound up from Saint Mark's towards the Rialto. And as I walked, I heard rumours that unsettled me. That summer, war had returned to northern Italy. Pope Clement had raised a force of eight thousand men, and sent them north to join with the armies of Venice and France. This confederated army had captured Lodi and Cremona from the Emperor's Germans and Spanish, and was set to march on Milan, the Imperial stronghold in the North. For some days there was great excitement, and everyone talked of a quick victory for the League. But I heard other news too, whispered by merchants who had returned from the western fringes of Venice's territory. There were great disagreements, it was said, between the Duke of Urbino, Venice's general, and the Papal commanders. The Duke wanted to advance at once and crush Milan; but the Pope's generals feared that would open the way for the Imperials to move south. In fury, the Duke had written to His Holiness to have his own orders approved; and meanwhile the army could do nothing. All this news I relayed to Uncle Bennet in ciphered letters. I hoped I might be raising my uncle's importance in Wolsey's eyes: and any increase in Bennet's standing at Court was good for my chances too.

Then came word that the Pope's army had suddenly detached itself and marched back south. Left alone, the Venetians and French had been obliged to retreat. At the same time, the Emperor's great general, the Duke of Bourbon, had landed with an extra ten thousand men from Spain. There was fear and dismay everywhere. The League was finished, some said. Pope Clement was notoriously indecisive and treacherous. He might make peace with the Emperor at any time, and leave his allies in the lurch. France was weak,
Florence would surrender if the Pope did, and that left Venice to stand alone. The older folk remembered twenty years ago, when Venice faced an alliance of the Pope, Emperor and sundry other states.

‘But the city can never be captured, surely? The lagoon and the war galleys protect us?' I put this to Matteo Pasini, the old barber-surgeon who was the host where I lodged.

‘Venice cannot be captured!' he echoed. ‘True, but she can be ruined. In 1510, when the Emperor smashed our armies, there was not a merchant left on the Rialto. The state banks closed. There were three million ducats on their books, owed to the people of Venice. But the money was gone: spent on armies that lay dead from the fight to defend our territories. You could see the burning towns over on Terraferma from the bell-towers. Bills and bonds were worthless. It could happen again, believe me. Whatever it is you have come here to buy, my friend, I advise you to work fast.'

I wrote letters; I fretted and fumed. I was half inclined to go straight back to the Fugger agent and cash the rest of my bills, while there was still gold to be had. But I would be a fool to load myself with two thousand ducats more, when I was still unable to spend what I had. It was more urgent than ever that I keep up my search. Even now, on my hard, profitless journeys through the city, I thanked God I was not in London, and that I was free, for the moment at least, of the House of Dansey. But I wished more than once Mr William had been here, or that I had his experience.

The courtesans' world teased and inflamed me. I was fascinated by the thought of noblemen who could part with pearls for so far below their true value. I went back again and again and saw them in their gondolas, gliding up below the ladies' windows by the Ponte de le Tet': true courtiers, I thought, with their jewelled sword hilts and crimson doublets slashed with gold. They stood in the prows and gazed up with one finger keeping the place in a book of Petrarch's sonnets. ‘What feeling is this,' they crooned, ‘if it be not love?' and ‘I
swear to God you are cruel!' and ‘My lady, will you murder me, when I am so loyal a slave?'

When I met them later, drinking with the ladies before retiring inside one of the canopies, they looked me haughtily up and down. I saw the rubies on their fingers, the diamonds in their hat badges, the pearl buttons. Ippolita watched my eyes with a smile. When I was alone with the ladies she said, ‘You want to buy, and buy cheap? The place you want to be is a casin.'

‘And what,' I growled, ‘is a casin?'

‘A casin, in the Venetian tongue, or casino, as they call it on Terraferma, is a place where nobles go to gamble. But looking as you do, they would not even let you through the door.'

‘You need to lose that hat,' said Armida, standing up and casting it aside with distaste.

‘And this cloak is more like a pedlar's,' said Dardania.

‘And what a poor little dagger you have,' said Angelica. ‘Gentlemen carry swords.'

‘This shirt disgraces you,' said Ippolita, pulling it off. I tried to fight her away, but Armida came up behind me and took a firm grip on my breeches.

‘So do these.'

‘And these,' added Dardania, peeling off my hose.

‘And most certainly these.'

I tried to dodge aside. ‘What in the Devil's name is wrong with my drawers?'

Ippolita gave the final pull. ‘They should be of silk. Embroidered.'

They had stripped me. Ippolita dropped my undergarments on the pile along with the rest, with a grimace of distaste. I was angry, but I was laughing too: I felt strangely cleansed, as if my old life had been peeled away from me along with those clothes, the brown jerkin, the kersey breeches, the wool stockings and unadorned linen shirt. Before me lay the unknown. The courtesans evidently thought the same.

‘Look at him,' Armida smiled. ‘Naked he stands, before the entry to a new world.'

I stooped down to my purse and tossed them a scatter of ducats. ‘Ladies,' I said, ‘I would take it as an honour if you would be my guides.'

And so they began. Two days later it was the Feast of Saint Michael, Michaelmas, as we call it, at the end of September. On a church holiday no courtesan may practise her trade, and so the ladies conducted me to Saint Mark's. The great square was packed with fine folk pressing for a view of the Doge as he passed in procession, dressed in crimson with an ermine mantle on his shoulders and the pointed cap on his head that is known as the Horn. Over him, keeping off the sun, was held a vast ceremonial umbrella all of gold brocade. This was the legendary Andrea Gritti, with his short white beard and fierce scowl, who had been the captain-general who fought Pope Julius and reconquered Padua for the Republic. Now he was leading Venice in her war against the Emperor. The bells rang, and along the piazza tapestries hung from every window. Monks dressed in white followed the Doge up to the five lead-sheathed doors of the church, before which flew three vast banners all of gold thread, depicting Saint Mark and the lion.

Together with my ladies I pressed through the crowd inside the church. I stood and stared at the mosaic-work and gold on every wall, the columns of coloured marble and pulpits roofed in gold, the statues of the saints too many to count. As Mass began, I looked about at the greatest wonder of all: the ladies of Venice. They sat high above us, in the galleries for the nobles. It would cheer a dying man's heart to behold the quantity of diamonds they wore, the emeralds and sapphires of such size as I had hardly seen, the pearls about their necks and in their hair, and most of all the flash of the gems in their rings when all in a single movement they put their palms together to pray. A single one of these ladies might wear five hundred ducats on her fingers, and another thousand about her throat. My
own four guides wore not a single jewel, as the law commanded of courtesans when they go abroad: so jealous are the Venetian ladies of the adornments that mark them out as noble.

Dardania plucked my arm and hissed in my ear to leave the women alone. It was the men I was here to watch: how they stood, how they sat, the hang of their cloaks, the way they doffed their hats, the cut of their doublets, the way their sword scabbards swung as they walked. They were dressed mainly in black: black stockings, black doublets and gowns slit at the elbows to allow their arms to come free of the long, trailing sleeves. Everything about them was elegant, with just a few flashes of true opulence: the gold buttons here, the silver lining showing through the slashed doublet there, the gold medal in the hat, the jewelled ring on the finger. That, said Ippolita, was the true polish I must cultivate: not the raffish carelessness of the men who visited my ladies at night.

Early next day, before the courtesans resumed their trade, we met again. They ushered me into a gondola. As we skimmed along the Rio di San Cassiano, I amused myself trying to steal kisses from the ladies. But their minds were entirely elsewhere.

‘Do the three Milanese women at the sign of the Angel Raffaele still make the best lace?' asked Dardania.

‘Of course they do,' said Armida. ‘And close by is the place for the best cambric.'

‘You mean the Calle dei Preti?'

‘Naturally. And we shall need a silk-draper, and a hat-maker, and a cutler.'

I gave up. When we put in at the Rialto Bridge I let the ladies guide me from one shop to the next. I ordered a black velvet doublet, slashed with cream-coloured silk, maroon silk hose, a cap with short ostrich feathers frothing all round its brim, new shirts with lace at the collar, and a rapier of Spanish steel, for which I chose a silver guard and a black leather scabbard. All this, you may imagine, required a shower of ducats from my purse. Martin looked on with apprehension.

‘They are using you,' he told me, late that night as we walked home from yet another session above the bridge. ‘Their only chance of real comfort is to find a patron, someone to set them up on their own. Someone like you. I warn you, master, they will bleed your purse dry.'

I shrugged him off in annoyance. Soon I would be a nobleman, to all appearances. And to those who dress richly, it seemed to me, riches must necessarily come. I worked hard at the accomplishments that completed the part: including Italian as it is spoken in Venice.

‘Not “angelo”,' said Armida. ‘Anzolo.'

‘And not “Venetsia”,' Dardania corrected me. ‘Venezzsia – zzs.' When I tried to copy it, that sound which Venetians spell with an ‘x', they all fell back, laughing. They made me stand on a napkin, too, and practise my bows. I swept off my hat, overbalanced and broke a glass, at which they laughed more than ever. Late at night when the clocks struck three, and all courtesans were bound to shut their doors, I made my way home, tired and bad-tempered.