The King's Diamond (23 page)

‘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.

‘John Lazar. Merchant. Of London.'

It was an introduction so close to my own first appearance at the Cages' that I felt a prickle of displeasure. I did not like my hosts to be reminded of that moment. Only now did I see how unfitting my old friend's raggedness was to our surroundings. But I need not have worried. I, at least, was firmly back in my old place in the family.

Grace's lips narrowed, and Stephen gave John a piercing stare. His eyes registered surprise, and for a moment I would have sworn that Stephen Cage knew John from somewhere before. Then he tilted his head at John with a grunt. ‘You are welcome,' he said. ‘For Mr Richard's sake.'

John smiled amiably and bowed once more, as his quick eyes darted over the carved and inlaid credenza, the niche with its gold-tasselled seat, the brilliant Turkey rugs draped over the trestle dining tables stacked neatly away against the far wall.

That evening we sat together: myself, Hannah, John and the elder Cages, while Susan and her music tutor performed airs on their lutes. We played a silent game of glances, Hannah and I. I looked up at her, caught her looking at me, then glanced down. I looked again; she turned away, smiling, knowing I was watching, then turned on
me, and both of us gazed for a few moments, teasing one another, then broke away.

At last Susan put down her lute. The minstrels came in and began to play on two recorders and a shawm, accompanied by the swift beating of a drum. Mrs Grace held out her hand to me, and we all of us danced. The air was a
saltarella
, with a step, a hop, and two steps, all joining together in the round, then breaking into couples to recombine in different ways. The dance went faster and faster. Mr Stephen showed a surprising talent at the quick steps, throwing out his arms in wild gestures, his face comically composed. John managed the steps with ease, taking the arm now of Hannah, now of Susan, now of Grace. I had danced scarcely at all since that night at Eltham Palace when I swept along with Hannah under the tinsel trees and paper bowers. In Venice Ippolita and the rest had laughed at my efforts, and I had given it up. But I threw myself into it now with gusto. It was really not so very different from fencing, with its quick springs and feints, then closing suddenly with your adversary.

As I linked arms briefly with Hannah she whispered, ‘Do you love me madly?'

‘Yes,' I whispered back, and swung into the arms of Mrs Grace.

‘Dear Mr Richard. Now that we have you back with us, we will not easily let you go. You will come to us again tomorrow?'