The King's Diamond (2 page)

Over the years, de' Bardi lost much. His wife left him, and then his mistress. When his family became caught up in the wars of the Borgias, he lost almost everything else; but still he kept hold of his stone. Every night for forty-three years he took it out of its casket and gazed upon it. Those glimpses he allowed himself into its heart were a secret bond, a love that was greater than any he had known.

Only as he lay dying did it finally leave his hands. At his side knelt a young Englishman, a merchant in jewels.

‘Who will wear the diamond when I am dead?' murmured the old man.

‘A king's lady,' answered the Englishman. ‘The most beautiful woman in the world.'

The Englishman rode away south to Rome with fierce exhilaration. He had almost paid for this stone with his life. But a diamond such as this drove away all fears.

He turned the stone in his fingers once again. Since his return to Rome, another man had given up his life for the diamond of the Old Rock. There lay the body in the corner, over by the open chest in a pool of blood, its left arm thrown out, its right clasped over the hilt of a sword. A bloody stain on the back of the green velvet doublet showed the force of the sword thrust that had passed clean through his chest.

Again he caught that deceptive gleam for an instant, and once more lost it. It was exasperating how that window into the diamond's heart was so small, so elusive. He was weak and lightheaded with hunger. His temples throbbed, and yet he felt strangely detached. Nothing in the world save his stone really seemed to matter. At last he had time: time to turn the gem, slowly, lovingly, to see the beginnings of each change, the opening of that chink that led down into its depths, the plunge of the light, the smile of the breaking colours, and then the sudden drawing of the veil across its surface. He could imagine himself dying like this.

Dimly he perceived that he must fight the pull of the stone that whispered to him to stay, look, drink from my waters, just another hour. From outside the room there were the sounds of shots, and running feet. He knew that if he was to live he must leave this place, with the dead body lying in its blood beside the chest. Soon it would be too late. Hunger and thirst would leave him too weak to walk, and too weak to choose. But just a little longer first. Catch the gleam in the stone one more time, and again, and again.

Hammers rang on anvils, and sparks sprayed from the forges out across the stones. Men in flame-blackened aprons held lumps of glowing iron in the fires, then drew them out, refashioned them with more ringing blows, and plunged them into barrels of water with a rush of steam. I watched the new-made halberd heads, the sword blades of their various kinds, the boarding axes that are used in sea-fights. Under the arches of the Arsenal, I could see men forming the finer parts of guns, the twisted serpentines that held the match fuse, and the powder pans, bending the soft metal with their tongs, and I saw the silvery molten lead poured into moulds for bullets. The finished weapons were carried down towards the quay, to be loaded on the Spanish galleys anchored in the harbour, ready for war.

I was in my room in the Angel Inn, late on a cold January afternoon. Since morning I had sat here, unmoving, gazing out at the forges of the Arsenal, fighting a furious battle with my thoughts. ‘Go home,' a voice seemed to say. ‘Any man of sense would say you have done enough. See what you are in the midst of. Destruction may come to Genoa any day now. Get out of Italy by the safe route, while you still can.' Genoa was a Republic split in two, always prone to
revolutions. At the moment, it sided with the Emperor. But the city's greatest prince, Andrea Doria, was an admiral in the pay of the French and the Pope's Holy League, and his galleys hovered out in the blue distances of the Mediterranean, waiting to inflict a stinging blow against the merchant ships of the city that was once his own.

But the road north still lay open. Just two days' ride would take me across the border into the Duchy of Savoy, a region still untouched by the carnage of war. After that I would cross the mountains into France: calm, peaceful France. There were no armies there, roving and looting at will, no plague, no famine; there would be bandits and wolves, perhaps, but they were no more than the common dangers of European travel. A few weeks would bring me to English Calais, that comforting outpost of home planted on the edge of the Continent, and then it would be over the Channel and back to London.

I pictured myself back home on Broken Wharf by the bank of the Thames, climbing the creaking old stairs to the counting house and stepping inside. Here my mother, Miriam Dansey, known to all London as the Widow of Thames Street, directed her many ingenious business endeavours. I imagined laying before her my haul, the emeralds and sapphires, the great ruby, the amethysts and all the rest. I imagined her with her trading partner, William Marshe, the two of them drawing in their breaths and raising their eyebrows in wonder. Yes, I would have a triumph, of a kind. But I would know in my own heart that I had failed. I would have to take my gems to be cut and set by one of the London goldsmiths. I knew these men, and I knew that my stones, that had the capacity to be so extraordinary, would come out looking like all the other trinkets fashioned on Goldsmiths' Row. I might make a profit on my venture, yes, but it would be small, and I would have lost the glory I longed for, that would come only if I could astonish and dazzle a king.

There was another way. I could turn south, and head for Rome. Rome: opulent capital of Christendom, where the finest goldsmiths,
artists and dealers in luxuries flocked to make their name and fortune, and supply the endless appetites of His Holiness, Pope Clement VII, his cardinals and nobles. Rome: the seat of a mighty temporal power, for Pope Clement held absolute sway over all central Italy, as well as numerous cities in the north, and commanded Florence through his Medici relations. Rome. Only there would I find the craftsman truly worthy to work on my stones. In my dreams I saw the golden swirls and figures that must surround the gems. I saw something nobler than the common run, something alert and alive, something I had never seen in London.

As I sat, my servant, Martin Deller, paced up and down behind me. He was some ten years my elder, stocky and dark, a useful man with a dagger who had helped me out of trouble more than once. He was also, to my frequent annoyance, the voice of conscience and caution.

‘Please, master! We have had good luck. Let's leave while we can for home.'

He was right. Plainly he was right. It was a wonder how we had crossed from Venice overland: first past the army of the Pope's Holy League camped at Cremona, which they had recently won from the Emperor's Spaniards, then across into the Duchy of Milan where this war had first begun. This was Imperial territory. We found the farms broken up, the fields burnt. The Emperor's army, starved of pay and plunder, roved the shattered countryside in bands, robbing travellers of whatever they could get. We had travelled by night and hidden in the day, winning through by a mixture of my boldness and Martin's sense.

The patch of sun on the wall of the Arsenal opposite had shrunk upwards as far as the parapet. It was drawing towards evening. At sunset the
Speranza
would sail. Few ships were putting out for Rome in these days of war. If I was to strike south, this would be my only chance. Perhaps she had sailed already. And that was best, I argued to myself: by far the best. The time had come to call enough, and
turn for home. I faced Martin. I was on the point of telling him to unpack the trunk again, and order horses for tomorrow and a guide for the journey inland.

‘Well, master?'

A sudden, sick rage swelled up in me. Was I to give up now on the triumph I had sworn I would have, all those months before, when I folded my bills of exchange into the casket round my neck and climbed the boarding ladder on to our family ship, the
Rose
? Now, when I had a casket of gems the like of which had scarcely been seen? Was I to betray them? My blue diamonds of Bengal called out to me, my sapphire that was the colour of pale skimmed milk sighed to me, my fiery garnets and the great dark ruby flashed with rage. This venture had never been for those easily daunted by fears. No, there comes a time when the stakes double: a time when you must either gamble and go on, or else give in, and admit you should never have played at all.

I stood up briskly and walked towards the door. My sword was swinging, my hat already on my head. ‘Pick up the trunk,' I ordered Martin. ‘We are going.'

I walked out of the inn beneath the painted angel with its wings spread, and into the crowds. I could hear Martin's breath behind me as he struggled to keep pace with my trunk on his shoulder.

‘Wait! Master, please! Will you not consider a little longer?'

I did not look back. I skirted the Arsenal, heading east round the broad bay, a mile wide, that forms the harbour at Genoa. Now that I had decided, I was determined not to lose a moment. I pushed my way through the crowds past the wooden piers where the lesser vessels put in, the lighters and flat-bottomed shallops. Here, winebarrels bumped and thundered, and three men rolled a hogshead up the ramp to the roadway in front of me. I dodged round it with a curse. There was the rich scent of oil, spilling in drops from great jars borne on men's shoulders, and the stink of hemp, its stiff fibres tied in rolls, ready for the rope-makers that twist the long cables in
the alleys behind the port. As I hurried on, a mournful chanting struck up from the belly of one of the war galleys out across the bay. Strange and sad, this Mahometan song of the Turks chained at their oars: for that is the rule of the sea, that when a Christian ship lays hold of a Muslim, all her crew become slaves, and when they take a ship of ours we suffer the same.

At the fish market I stopped, impatient, while Martin caught up, the trunk bobbing above men's heads in the thick of the crowd. Red mullet stared up at me, glass-eyed, out of open crates, and a woman in a white linen bonnet chopped the heads from eels and cast them down on the stones, where gulls swooped and flew off with them, crying. Music burst from one of the taverns, a fiddle and pipes, and I heard the clack of the dice, a harlot's laugh, the slap of cards on a table. As Martin came out from the press, I turned and hurried on.

West over the hills the sun broke out briefly through the clouds. It was close to setting. At the last of the wooden piers grain was being landed, passed from shoulder to shoulder in sacks and poured out into bushel measures, sending up clouds of chaff. The men laughed and joked at their work. No one could say how long this plenty might last, or when the galleys of the League might close the sea once more and attempt to bring Genoa to obedience through starvation. I pushed past, bounding up the six stone steps on to the Mole, whose curving arm reached out into the deep water of the bay. The wind blew with full force here, and I reached a hand up to steady my hat. It was a soft bonnet of black Lucca velvet, which had in it a gold medal of the Virgin and Child, in the latest aristocratic fashion. I had paid eighty Genoese ducats for this medal. But it was more than a costly ornament. It was the guiding star of my voyage.

All along the Mole on the sheltered side towards the harbour lay the great ships, bound on far and weighty ventures. Their masts rose tall, clustered like forest trees, flying the flags of all those nations aligned with the Empire. There was the red cross of Genoa, the black and white of Siena, the red, white and yellow tricolor of Spain.
The wind made the ships pull on their ropes and the waves slap against the stone. I ran along the Mole, hunting in agitation for the gilded names on their sterns.

I had sat last night in the Angel with the
Speranza
's owners, a pair of Genoese brothers named Piero and Federico Fieschi. I had bought them wine and discussed terms of payment for this voyage: ten ducats they asked, for the two hundred and fifty sea miles to Rome. All risks were my own. Piero had looked at me in question. The price was high: some thirty shillings for a journey that should have cost less than ten, even supposing I needed cargo space in the hold. I told them the sum was acceptable; but I could answer at that time neither no nor yes. They went away displeased. ‘Remember,' Federico warned me, ‘we sail tomorrow, without fail.'

Ahead, men shouted from the decks of one of the ships. Her yards were raised high and clear, slanting out over her sides, and a wooden crane swung goods out from the Mole and down into her holds. Plainly she was loading up to depart.

On the quay Piero Fieschi was standing among a band of five or six men. They had the air of old established merchants, all of them, with grizzled beards and gowns trimmed with rabbit fur and sable. They thought nothing of standing there in that chilling wind, watching with serious eyes as every last bale and crate was winched up from the Mole. Their grave faces showed they knew the risks, putting to sea in times such as these. Doubtless they had prepared well in advance. They would have their servants on board, numerous and well armed. No doubt they had insurance too for their valuables, so that, even if they perished, their heirs would profit. It gave me a sudden sense of my own vulnerability. I had taken none of these precautions. I realised, too, the hastiness and lack of dignity of my entrance. Still out of breath, I swept off my hat and bowed.

‘Richard Dansey, Merchant, of London.'

They bowed in turn and presented themselves with their nations of origin: Milan, Lucca, the Duchy of Ferrara. Their eyes lingered on
me. Plainly I was a mystery to them. I must have seemed a mere boy, with my light, sand-coloured hair and my beard that was little more than a wisp of down. I was still only twenty-one, and although I was tall, and had gained some skill with a sword, I was not of a powerful build. Too young to be a merchant, in their eyes, and not dressed like one, either. My clothes had more the air of a fashionable young noble's. I wore a purple doublet slashed with white cambric, my shirtbands falling over it from the neck, each garnished with lace and ending in a gold button. My black wool cloak was edged in silver, and my rapier too was silver-hilted.

Piero Fieschi stepped forward from among the merchants with his partner and younger brother at his side. I held out to them the purse I had prepared hours earlier, containing ten gold ducats. Piero looked at me in astonishment.

‘Messer Dansey! We sail at once: but do you have no goods to load?'

Martin came panting up behind me. Fieschi glanced at the trunk on his shoulder, clearly pondering whether it might contain anything of value. Martin swung the thing roughly down on to the stones, and sniffed. Fieschi appeared to dismiss the idea. He gestured to the knot of merchants. ‘Our companions have loaded silks of Lucca and Genoa, and we have a solid stack of salt barrels belonging to Messer Pinotti here, of Milan: most welcome for ballast. But you, nothing? Truly nothing? You tell us you are a merchant: how will you turn a profit?'

‘I have my means.' I smiled, delighting in their disappointed curiosity, and turned from them with a graceful bow. I stepped from the Mole to the wooden rungs of the entering ladder nailed to the
Speranza
's waist, and pulled myself on board. Martin swung the trunk up on deck, hauling himself after it. While he asked in his London-accented Italian where he should stow my trunk, I strode around the decks, enjoying once more the feel of the planks beneath my feet and the smell of pitch in my nostrils.

The
Speranza
was a great ship of perhaps a hundred and twenty tons, slightly larger than the Dansey family vessel, the
Rose
, which I had left behind at Bruges in August. Peering down the open hatches I saw she had at least two orlops, between-decks where a man could not stand upright; here the goods were being shunted from the hatches and lashed into place. Furthest aft was the roundhouse or great cabin, from which several smaller cabins opened. In one of these I found Martin, sitting on the trunk and mopping his portly face, and cursing gently at the run I had led him through the port. I heard the rattle of the hatch cover as it was fastened into place, and the clank of the capstan as the sailors began warping the
Speranza
out into the bay on her anchor. All at once they broke into a song, a bawdy affair in local dialect, praising the part of the city known as Maddalena, which had the fairest churches, the richest markets, and the greatest number of brothels.