The King's Diamond (16 page)

One morning he put down the file and scalpel he had been using on the bronze mould and held it up. ‘Finished.'

There were murmurs of approval from the men in the shop, ‘Bravo, Benvenuto,' and applause.

‘Now, Messer Richard from London, what do you think we will do next?'

I licked my lips. I had waited night and day, through all Cellini's careful preparations and wild debaucheries, for just this moment. ‘Time for the gold.'

‘Gold! Ah, yes. But what gold? Any gold? You think you know a lot. Well, we shall take a plate of gold that has been
ricotta
. Yes, gold twice cooked, like the cheese. And gold of a certain fineness. Under twenty-two carats and a half, and the gold will be hard, sluggish, unwilling to work. Above twenty-three carats, and it will be too sweet, as we say: too ready to oblige. It will flow where we do not want it to flow, and lie there like a trollop, fat and without spirit. Paulino: bank up the fire.'

Benvenuto unlocked the large iron chest in the corner and took out a tablet of gold. He weighed it, and recorded the result down to the last grain. Then he set down on the workbench a flat, black stone and a clutch of gleaming needles, threaded together on a string. I watched with attention. They were touch-needles; the first was of pure silver; the next, twenty-three parts silver to one part gold, the next twenty-two to two and so on, until the twenty-fifth was pure gold. Cellini rubbed his lump of gold against the touchstone leaving a streak of colour, and then tried the different needles against it until he achieved a match. Then he weighed out a tiny knob of silver, while Paulino brought out a crucible, well cleaned, and tongs, and opened the door of the furnace. Cellini himself set the gold and silver inside. All of us in that room waited in reverence, unspeaking, while the gold transformed itself into a liquid, brilliant in its beauty, deadly hot, ready to serve Cellini's will. When it was properly molten he lifted it from the furnace with the tongs and poured it out into a disc-shaped iron form to cool. Then he tested it again using the needles and stone. I watched, hardly able to breathe.

‘It is ready.'

He laid the thin disc of gold over the bronze mould and set to work, massaging and pressing it, now with a chisel made of heather-wood, now with a scalpel, easing it with infinite gentleness into all the figure's folds, taking care always to draw the metal into an even thickness, and guarding against cracks. Gold, for all its beauty, is soft: you could have twisted that disc of metal with your fingers. Having pressed the gold into shape all round, he began a second massaging, where he knew the pattern was finest, teasing the metal into the fissures in the bronze with a forward and then a backward pressure. It was the work of several hours, but Cellini did not once pause or look up. At last he laid down his tools and said, ‘Now let us see if I have been wasting my time.'

He prised the gold away from the dull brown of the bronze and lifted up the finished disc. The room fell silent; I gazed at it in
wonder. The ship leapt through the curling waves, sails and ropes taut. It was less than three inches broad; but it was urgent, driven, haunting, obsessed. Beneath the ship were nine small sockets for the sapphires. Above it was space for the four diamonds, and at the very centre, in the ship's hull just beneath where the helmsman stands, was a single large gap that would take the chrysoprase.

‘Well?' said Cellini.

‘It is magnificent,' I said. But even as I said it, a malaise was spreading over me. The noblemen in the studio came past me and clapped Benvenuto on the back.

‘A miracle!'

‘Superb!'

‘You are a master!'

The goldsmith kept his eyes fixed on me. I glanced aside. ‘Martin!' I called. ‘Run to the tavern down the lane and bring us back a jug of their best wine.'

Martin, who never ran, gave me a sombre look and set off. I looked again at the wondrous ship. It daunted me: it made me angry at the lowness of my rank, compared with the beauty of the gold. I felt that I myself was such a ship, carried on, on, through winter seas. Where to? What lay waiting for me at journey's end?

Martin poured the wine, and I joined the circle about Cellini's bench.

‘You are a match for Raphael,' one man was saying. ‘Almost divine. Your fortune is made, Benvenuto. The Pope's other goldsmiths will burst their spleens with envy.'

There was laughter, a raising of glasses, more wine. But Cellini still kept his fierce eye fixed on me. ‘Englishman. What is the matter with you? You look like a man about to be hanged. My work displeases you?'

I looked up at him. ‘It pleases me, all too well.' I glanced round the circle. There were five of them with us, aristocrats with their gentle smiles, neat beards, pearl earrings, rakishly tilted feathered hats. And
that was just the trouble. Here in Rome I mixed with counts and marchesi, but in England I would come down to earth hard. I knew no one. I would be the Widow Dansey's son, of Broken Wharf, and that was all.

‘Forgive me,' I said. I was unwilling to speak; but Cellini's eyes bored into me, and he deserved my honesty. ‘It is nothing of your doing, Benvenuto. But in London it is not my good fortune to mix in such exalted company as here. No one will believe that such a one as I could have such a treasure to show the Court.'

Cellini snorted. ‘This man's improvidence astounds me. Do you truly know no one at the English Court?'

I hung my head, readying myself for their laughter. But the nobles did not laugh. They leant forward, and all began to talk.

‘My dear Messer Richard, there is no difficulty in that.'

‘Sir John Russell is in Rome, to negotiate for peace with the Empire. King Henry's ambassador: we can present you to him at any time.'

‘And Thomas Wyatt is here, Sir Harry Wyatt's son: no courtier is more perfect.'

I looked up. ‘And you know these men?' I was almost gasping with amazement.

Cellini laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. ‘My friends know everyone. Alessandro here even has an English courtier lodging in his house. He has been here for months, with his wife and daughters. What is his name? You would present my friend to him, would you not?'

My head was ringing. Russell, King Henry's most trusted diplomatic agent. And Wyatt: poet, connoisseur, and was he not also clerk of the King's jewels? The influence these men possessed staggered me.

Alessandro del Bene, a perfumed young noble in a crimson doublet, kissed his hand to Cellini. ‘I would do a thousand harder things, Benvenuto, to please you.' Alessandro belonged to one of the
great banking families of Rome. His ancestors had been driven out of Florence over a plot, and so Cellini liked to tease him and call him ‘that damned exile'. He had a lucrative post in the Papal Treasury, and owned a part share in the sheep-pasturing monopoly throughout the Patrimony of Saint Peter; sinecure jobs which left him a good deal of leisure for the pursuits proper to nobility. But he was a shrewd courtier for all that. He turned to me. ‘The man's name is Stephen Cage. But what his business is here, I really cannot say.'

The name stopped me dead. My mind jumped back a year to that grove of paper flowers in the great hall at Eltham, and Hannah Cage's words: ‘I am going somewhere I do not think you will find me.' How wrong she would find she had been.

I said, with inward relish, ‘Stephen Cage.' Why did I care so very much for that black-haired girl who had laughed at me? She was the essence of the world I hankered for. Her ease, her pride, her disdain; they were qualities she shared with the finest gems. And I had the chance to step into her world, into her very family. A Roman nobleman would present me to her with proper ceremony and I would make my bow to her as an equal. I felt my palms sweat, and the colour rise in my face. But her father? Could he present me to the King? What did I really know about him?

Martin started towards me. ‘Master,' he whispered. ‘Surely, Thomas Wyatt, or else Russell …?'

I shook my head. ‘No. Stephen Cage.' I faced towards Alessandro. ‘If you would be so kind?'

He bowed, and Cellini sealed it with his ringing laugh. ‘Then that is all settled. Paulino! Another bottle! It is too late to go back to work now.'

Next afternoon I set out with Cellini down the Via Giulia. It was Sunday, the third of March, just two days before the Tuesday that would mark the end of the Carnival. There was music everywhere, and actors in masks danced through the streets. My heart was beating hard. The last time I met Hannah I had been nobody, and she had treated me with little more than amusement. But this time things would be different. I had mixed with nobles, both here and in Venice. I had the courtier's bow and the courtier's clothes: with my black velvet Venetian doublet, my silver-hilted sword and my hat with its feather and medal, I could cut a figure in any company.

Before long we turned left into a small, crooked piazza. On our right, forming almost two whole sides of the square, was a yellow stuccoed building four storeys high. Between each line of windows ran a frieze of ancient Roman battle scenes, painted in fresco. We stopped before the door.

‘The Palazzo del Bene,' Cellini said. ‘Those friezes were done by Polidoro da Caravaggio a couple of years back. You remember him? Another one of Raphael's boys.'

A servant let us into a spacious vestibule paved in white marble with a staircase leading up from it to a pair of balconies. It was grand, and careless of its grandeur. I drew myself up and brushed back the feather in my hat.

‘
Benvenuto
!'

Alessandro del Bene was coming down the stairs towards us accompanied by a man of about fifty, tall, lean and quick in his movements, and clean-shaven in the English style. Alessandro embraced Cellini, and then gestured to me. ‘Here is the man I have told you of, who has brought Benvenuto such wonders.' I bowed carefully, graceful and low. ‘Richard Dansey, merchant of London.'

Alessandro continued, ‘And this is Messer Stephen Cage. A great man at the English Court.'

The man before me was expensively dressed in a doublet of Venice gold and scarlet, and in his hat he wore a gold medal resembling my own. Inside I was exulting. This was it: I had as good as arrived at King Henry's Court, and the impression I was creating was surely exactly right. Stephen Cage looked at me a long moment, then returned my bow, swift and offhand, and waved a deprecating hand at Alessandro.

‘Great man at Court? Hardly that, hardly. A pilgrim, merely.' He spoke good Italian. He touched the medal on his hat, which showed the two saints Peter and Paul, one with his keys, the other with a drawn sword: the emblem of a visitor to the two tombs that are the holiest places in Rome. I gazed at him, calculating. What if I had blundered after all, and in my keenness to have a fresh sight of Hannah Cage I had allowed myself to be introduced to an Englishman who had no influence at Court at all?

Mr Stephen ushered us up the staircase to the right-hand balcony, and stopped before a grand doorway with another slight bow.

Alessandro came up to my side. ‘I have given Messer Stephen half my palazzo for his household,' he whispered. ‘Tonight we dine at his table, not mine.' I stepped through the doorway, and had to suppress
a gasp. We were in a grand sala that stretched the whole length of that wing of the palazzo. Enormous tapestries shimmered from the walls with riots of pagan deities, shepherds and cornucopias all picked out in gold and silver thread. In the centre of the room was an L-shaped arrangement of tables, spread with rich Turkey carpets and white linen cloths over the top. Beyond it I saw a carved walnut credenza from which silver flagons and basins glimmered, of the kind I had seen destined for the King on Goldsmiths' Row. A fire burned in a vast hearth carved with busty nymphs, while four musicians sat on silk cushions in an alcove, playing a rapid, cheerful air on recorders and a violin. The whole room breathed with comfortable, easy opulence.

Suddenly I heard a peal of female laughter from beyond a door in the far wall. The door flew open, and five or six spaniels ran yapping into the room, chasing after a monkey dressed in a scarlet-and-yellow coat. Round its neck was a rope of large and valuable pearls. A group of women pressed through after the dogs. And there she was: Hannah Cage. Her lips were pulled back from her teeth in a wild smile, while her eyes, dark brown and sparkling with mischief, followed the monkey as it ran round the room, pursued by the pack of dogs.

A second girl ran past and then turned on her. ‘Hannah! Stop it! Make it give them back!' She was younger, perhaps only seventeen; slight and fairish-haired where Hannah was full-figured and dark.

‘First you'll have to catch it, sweet Susan.'

Susan threw herself down and disappeared under the table where the monkey had taken refuge behind the cloth. ‘Come here, Beelzebub, come now, do.'

The monkey ran out in front of my feet and I grabbed at its chain. Yanked backwards, the beast hopped in front of me, baring its teeth while the dogs snapped round it.

‘So you really did follow me here. I am rather impressed.'

I looked up to find Hannah staring levelly into my eyes. She had spoken softly, so no one else could hear. I handed her the monkey's
chain and bowed: formally and low. Susan at that moment crawled out from beneath the table and snatched the necklace from the monkey.

‘Susan! Stop that immediately!' A lady advanced towards us. Stephen put a hand on her arm, ignoring his daughters, as if the affair of the monkey were a common occurrence and not worthy of his notice.

‘Meet Richard Dansey,' he introduced me. ‘A dealer from home.'

‘Merchant,' I corrected him in annoyance. ‘Of London.'

‘Merchant,' Stephen repeated, with a politeness that I found even more irritating. He turned to the lady at his side. ‘My wife, Grace Cage.'

Mrs Grace smiled at me, with rather a forced quality. She was some years younger than her husband, with an ample figure and hair that was still thick and dark. I sensed I was in the presence of a real aristocrat with Mrs Grace. I found out later that she was a cousin of the Duke of Norfolk, and of a shade finer breeding, therefore, than Mr Stephen himself. She curtseyed and came forward to be kissed in the good old English style of greeting that even the highest-born observe: a custom that the French and Italians look upon with astonishment. She just touched her cheek to mine, and drew back.

‘And these are my daughters,' Stephen finished in a tone of resignation. ‘Hannah and Susan.'

I caught Hannah's eye and she smiled archly. It was our secret, those times we had met before. I bowed to her again, with a sweep of my hat and my left hand on my sword. Then, how did I dare it? I came forward for my kiss. And she gave me it, full and willing on the cheek. I caught the momentary scent of musk from beneath the crimson silk of her dress, and then she stood back with a look of wicked amusement.

‘What sort of merchant? Not salt fish, I hope?'

Before I could reply, little Susan darted in front of me for her kiss, lips puckered comically in her flat, freckled face. She gave me a peck
at the edge of my mouth and then turned away with a grimace, as if she had tasted something nasty.

Servants came flocking round us carrying silver basins and ewers. I looked round uneasily, and did my best to copy the others, holding my hands out while a servant poured warm water over them, and a pageboy waited on bended knee with a towel to dry them. All this ceremony was an amazement to me: I knew it ought to be done, and was done in the houses of the noble-born or the royal. But I had seen nothing of this sort at the casins of Venice or the artists' parties of Rome. Cellini, on the other hand, seemed perfectly at his ease. Having claimed the ‘English liberty', as he put it, to kiss the ladies all round, he was washing his hands and joking with Mrs Grace. Hannah brushed past me and whispered, ‘This time you really do look like a gentleman, Mr Richard. I wonder if you can keep it up.'

I bowed to her. ‘Mrs Hannah.' I knew the correct form of address for a young gentlewoman. I would prove myself to her, right enough; and for a start I was determined she would not detect a single lapse in my manners.

Stephen Cage took my arm and guided me to the table. He seated each of us in turn, placing the ladies inside the L and the men facing them on the outside, in the fashion common in Rome. I found myself on Alessandro's left hand, close to the angle in the table, looking straight into Hannah's shining eyes. On my left sat Cellini, facing little Susan, while on the other branch of the table were Mr Stephen and his wife, as well as a priest who must have been the Cages' almoner, with responsibility for the family's charity. He set down a little silver dish to receive the first loaf of bread for the poor, and murmured a few words of benediction in Latin, which thanks to the music, which was still playing, no one save God could hear.

‘Messer Dansey, Richard Dansey,' Stephen mused, looking me up and down with sharp eyes. ‘Merchant. I ought to know you: or your family, at any rate. Now I have it!' He snapped his finger and pointed at me. ‘The Widow of Thames Street?'

I nodded, annoyed. To be recognised even here, and marked with the taint of home: it was galling. ‘She is my mother.'

Stephen smiled. ‘Oh, she is known. Her business dealings are ingenious, most ingenious. Spice, dyestuffs, even a little usury on the side.' He turned to me with his half-closed, mocking eye. ‘And you? Are your ventures of a similar kind?'

The subtlety of his contempt stunned me. How was I to make any impression on this man? I saw my introduction at Court vanishing into air, along with any interest Hannah might ever have had in me. I said, ‘Mine are ten times more ingenious than hers.'

Stephen grunted, and Grace glanced in my direction with a slight smile. The dishes were brought in, a dozen of them at least: fowls and small game birds and pies all on silver platters. At the centre of them, just beside a vast gilded salt cellar modelled as a group of bathing nymphs, was set down a majestic heron. Its grey wings were spread wide, its head and neck bent round as if in life, with the black crest quivering behind its lifeless eyes. ‘Slain by my own hand,' Mr Stephen was explaining. ‘Crossbow: in the marshes.' One of the servants leant forward to carve the bird's breasts into slices in a few effortless strokes, executed in perfect time to the music. I gazed on this spectacle like a man struck dumb; there were nuances of luxuried living here I had never even dreamt of. Susan, seeing me, put her hand to her mouth and laughed.

I met for an instant Hannah's gaze, but she betrayed nothing. She ate with perfect confidence and ease, casting a bored glance over the table. When she wished for a drink of wine she summoned a servant with a lifted finger, took the cup, drank, and returned it. She used her fork just as if she had been accustomed to this curious Italian device all her life; she wiped her full lips on her napkin after every mouthful, she took salt from the gilded nymphs with only the very tip of her knife, and sampled just a little from each of the many dishes, missing none of them.

I was determined to keep pace, and show myself no mere tradesman. But the meal was a trial by ordeal. After drinking I had placed my cup on the table in front of me: my first false move. I looked down at the dishes before me in dismay. In between the platters bearing the various joints of meat and roast birds were silver dishes holding a dozen different sauces. The green verjuice, sharpened with pepper and garlic, was apparently meant for the heron, and the mustard was for the pig's brawn, but where did the ginger jelly belong? I saw Susan solemnly spooning it over the black lampreys, and did the same, only to have her fall back in her chair and point at me in laughter. Hannah gave her sister a kick under the table. She leant forward and said, ‘It is really no disgrace to be ignorant, Mr Richard. That one is for the sugared herring.'

Stephen's voice suddenly boomed at me from the head of the table. ‘And how is trade in Italy? Do the prices please you?'

I glanced back at him, but I could not reply for rage. At last, at long last, I was sitting down with the choice and high company I had watched for so many years. And they despised me. I had relied on the manners and clothes I had acquired in Venice to give me the stamp of nobility; but with the Cages this counted for nothing. Susan, clearly, had marked me down as a clod who could be made to believe anything. She had even seized a spaniel from under the table and ostentatiously wiped her fingers on its coat, glancing at me archly to see if I would follow her. Hannah was watching me with her provoking smile. She leant across the table to me and murmured, ‘You must forgive my family. I feel sure there is rather more to you than there seems.'

I leant towards her. ‘By God, you will find out that there is.'

‘In that case, amuse me,' whispered Hannah. ‘You have no notion how dull life is here. Surprise me. I do not think you can.' She leant back with a lift of her eyebrows and a witching smile.

I wiped my lips with my napkin, put it back on my shoulder and looked Stephen Cage in the eye. ‘My thanks to you for asking. My
trade is flourishing.' I turned my gaze to take in the rest of the table. ‘Perhaps you would care to see.'

The servants were removing the dishes. The heron departed, its wings broken, its sides stripped bare, its neck collapsed on to the edge of the platter. Its substantial remains would be offered to the poor, who were doubtless already lining up at the door on the piazza. In its place the servants set down little custard tarts or doucettes, steaming dishes of almond cream, sugared dates and raisins, and offered us cups of hot hippocras.

Everyone turned to look at me. Hannah moistened her lips with her tongue and leant forward, folding her arms beneath her bosom with a faint clinking of her pearls. Cellini lowered his thick eyebrows and shook his head at me in warning. I ignored him. My blood was up. Stephen's insults and Hannah's disdain burned like a knife in a wound. I was not going to let these aristocrats beat me. I pulled at the chain around my neck, hoisting my grease-polished casket from its hiding place under my clothes. My fingers shook; I was aware of the indelicacy of what I was doing. But then I had pulled it clear of my collar and laid it down on the table among the dishes.