The King's Diamond (18 page)

‘Minotauro! Minotauro!' yelled Alessandro, as the first three horses dashed into the square, then turned at bay and bolted this way and that. ‘Where are you?' Several more ran in after them, bumping and falling together. ‘The devil,' shouted Alessandro. ‘Look at him, tumbling in the dust, after eating my gold.' Men ran out, darting round the whinnying, stamping horses and snatching at their bridles to catch them. I heard their shouts as they tried to keep clear of those hoofs, and the screams of others as they were thrown down to the ground.

‘This is the Recapture,' said Stephen. ‘The finest part of the race. Also the most dangerous.'

I glanced along at Hannah. She was holding her mask by its edge, tapping its golden rim against her chin. Her face was rapt with wild excitement. I cursed my luck that I was not sitting at her side.

‘Over too quickly,' said Stephen. ‘But there are more races to come.'

‘Horse races?' I asked.

‘I believe they are races of … other sorts.'

‘They are hardly proper,' said Grace. ‘Persons of quality watch the race of the Berber horses, and then they go.'

For a moment husband and wife looked at each other. Tension flared between them. Mrs Grace's eyes, dark like Hannah's, shone above her pinched nostrils, while Mr Stephen drew in his breath, his lips parted from his teeth. Then Stephen looked down with a grunt. ‘Hm. Indeed. In fact, I do have some papers to read. But we shall meet again, Mr Richard. No doubt of it.'

Grace turned to me, brushed back a wisp of her black hair and smiled her exquisitely elegant smile. This was my dismissal, it seemed. I rose and bowed, and climbed back down the wooden steps to the street, where Martin fell into pace behind me. The sun was close to setting, and a chill, misty air was creeping through the city with the twilight. But I did not have the heart to return to my inn. I was nervy, ill-tempered, wound to breaking point with disappointment, and turning over in my mind how I could contrive to get back to see Hannah. And so I wandered the city. The streets were still filled with rowdy masquers, calling out to each other from behind the faces of foxes or goats, guessing at one another's names or hurling comfits. Without a mask I felt strangely naked and without defence.

‘Messer Dansey!' It was a woman's voice, hailing me from behind, almost drowned by the music and shouts of the masquers. But surely, surely I could not be wrong. I turned and scanned the crowds,
black-cloaked or particoloured, in turbans, crimson hoods or silver paper crowns. The groups parted, revealing for a moment a stationary figure in a black cape down to the ground, and a golden mask shaped like a cat's muzzle with slit-eyes. A strand of black hair wound down from her hood across it. I sprang after her, but a group of acrobats dashed across my path, doing handstands and high leaps into the air, followed by a troop of buffoons on stilts. When they were out of my way, the cat mask had gone.

‘Mr Richard!' She was standing across the street this time, in the shadow of a colonnade. We were in the Via delle Botteghe Oscure, the street of the dark shops that are all built into the ruined foundations of an ancient theatre. I darted over the road and ran along the overhanging wall with its dingy orange stucco dropping off the ancient stone, peering into every one of its green, mossy recesses. Martin stood still, watching me with a frown.

‘Don't stand there!' I snapped at him. ‘Help me to look!'

‘Mr Richard!'

I spun round. She was over the street again, calling from the colonnade of a palazzo. This time I ran straight across to her, caught her by the arm and pulled down the mask. I was staring into Hannah's mocking smile. She was alone: wherever her parents and their grand household were, Hannah had somehow given them the slip.

‘Where were you hurrying off to?' she teased me. ‘All the amusement is back at the Corso.'

‘And you came to fetch me?'

‘Why not, Mr Richard?'

‘My dear Mrs Hannah. So something about me is worthy of your notice after all.'

‘Do you think so?' Her smile took on a gleam of danger. ‘Anything is possible. But really I simply hate to see anyone go trudging home like a whipped dog when the best part of the entertainment is just beginning.'

She glanced at my hand where it touched her gown. Then she lifted the mask back to her face, becoming infinitely wild, a golden beast in a black pelt. I told Martin, ‘You may go back to the inn.'

Martin, however, was immovable. ‘Master,' he murmured. ‘If you had heard the way those men of the Cages talk about you and your jewels, you would not wish to be out alone. You're the man made of diamonds, the man with a million ducats round his neck.'

‘Go back,' I snarled at him. ‘I'll be safe enough.' He looked as if he were about to argue, but I turned my back. Together, Hannah and I pressed on through the crowds. It was almost dark now. Along the Corso hundreds of torches flamed, making an alley of fire. Hannah turned to me and lifted her mask.

‘The horse race was the tame one,' she said. ‘If you want to see something truly wild you have to stay up for it.'

From the northern end of the street we heard the roaring of many men, together with a tremendous animal bellowing. Suddenly we saw rushing towards us in the torchlight a dozen wild bulls, each as black as night, tossing their long, curved horns this way and that. Hannah came forward to the very edge of the roadway where the canvas barrier had been torn down beside an ancient column, watching fearless as the bulls came rushing towards us. I was proud then to be standing at her side, just as motionless as she was. They were nearly upon us, when a single bull broke away and began bucking along the edge of the street, tossing its horns, looking for someone on whom to take out its rage. Still Hannah did not move. Its rolling pink eyes picked us out. At the very last moment I took her by the shoulders and pulled her back behind the column. As the bulls thundered past, I pressed her against the stone. The noise of their hoofs was deafening. Her face was alight and alive, with just a slight smile of mockery, maybe, that I had been the first to draw back. I leant towards her and pressed my lips against hers. She was surprised; her wide open eyes stared into mine. Then they slowly closed. The sound of the bulls' hoofs diminished. I could feel her
lips soften, and as my tongue pressed they parted, and a little flick of her tongue darted out against mine. The touch of it enflamed and astonished me. If I had never loved her before, I loved her then. But even in that same instant there was a doubt. What if that lick was a tease, a taunt? I could not say if she had truly abandoned herself, and if this was a moment of shared intoxication and delight. There is only one cure for these kinds of doubts. I put my arm behind her back and ran it up into her hair. I felt her mouth beneath mine twist into a smile, and she stepped away from me to one side. I moved closer, putting my arm round her again. She wagged her finger at me in reproof.

‘Dear Mr Richard! Before you take any further liberties you ought really to tell me who is my rival.'

The word stopped me dead.

‘Rival?'

‘The lady who is to have all those jewels. Or are you telling me you really are just a tradesman? You buy, you sell, you make a profit?' That face of hers, so close to mine, was maddening: the slow pucker of her cheeks, the spreading smile, the dance of those deep brown eyes.

‘Oh, I shall make a profit. Never fear.'

All about us the crowds were surging northwards along the Corso. Hannah swung herself round the pillar and set off after them. I ran to catch up. She cast me a disdainful look over her shoulder.

‘And you put all that passion merely into making money? How you disappoint me.'

I hesitated. Since arriving in Italy I had kept my plans secret from everyone save Cellini. But how could I let her see me either as a dirty tradesman, or as a lover of anyone but her?

‘No,' I said. ‘You are right. There is a lady who is to have them.'

‘Aha!' She smiled. She had me now, she thought: she could tease me without end for wooing her while I bought gems for another.

‘But the lady is not mine. She is the King's.'

Hannah clapped her hands and laughed with glee. ‘So that is it! What a very clever man you are, Richard Dansey. And if I know the lady in question, she will be exceedingly well pleased.'

I stood rock still and swung her round to face me. ‘You know?' I whispered. ‘You know who she is?'

There it was: everything was out now, not only my innermost ambitions, but the appalling fact of my ignorance as well. Hannah's eyes opened wide, she put her hands to her mouth and she drew in her breath as if she had just heard the most tragic news of her life. ‘Oh, my poor Richard Dansey.' Then she laughed out loud, doubling her body over at the waist. ‘And you really, truly do not know? But everybody knows who the King's new love is!'

‘Who is it?' I asked urgently. ‘Hannah, tell me who it is.'

Still she kept laughing and wiping her eyes. ‘Mercy. No more. You will kill me with laughter.'

I took her hands in mine. I kissed those hands, three, five times. ‘Dear Mrs Hannah, sweet Mrs Hannah. Tell me who she is.'

‘What,' she said, mastering her laughter a little and looking into my eyes, ‘betray a secret? Oh, no.'

I clenched her fingers. ‘But you said yourself it was no secret at all.'

She leant her soft, teasing face close to mine so that our noses almost touched. ‘Everyone may know,' she whispered, ‘but no one is supposed to tell.'

I gazed at her: astonished, enraged, and loving and desiring her all the more for the way she tormented me. Feet raced past us. Dimly I heard voices shouting, ‘The dwarfs! The dwarfs!'

Hannah put her finger on my lips, and slipped past me and out on to the Corso. With a glance back she called, ‘Quickly, Mr Richard! We cannot miss the dwarfs.'

I followed her, steaming with impatience, until at last we reached the Piazza del Popolo. The crowds were thicker than ever here. The city wall ran along the far side of the square, with a strongly fortified
gate set in it; beside it was the handsome church of Santa Maria with its slender bell-tower, that had been paid for by all the people of Rome. In the middle of the square were gathered forty dwarfs, dressed in the liveries of their masters: for there is not a noble house in Rome that does not keep one or two. Hannah was standing already at the front of the crowd.

‘There, look!' She pointed. ‘Do you see that one in white and black, with his beard stained red? That is Morgante, Alessandro's dwarf. How much do you think I should bet on him?'

‘Whatever you please.' The last thing I cared about at that moment were dwarfs. Hannah took out a few ducats from the small pouch at her side. She looked up at me in reproach.

‘Mr Richard! This is Rome, the capital of the Christian world! The least you can do is show a little interest in its traditions. Or do you think my money would be safer on that tall one with the crimson lions, the one with the bells?'

Some of the dwarfs were dressed as jesters, and served their masters as buffoons, singing and dancing and doing tricks. Others, serious and proud, were almost aristocrats themselves: they could dispute with cardinals on theology, they knew all the courtier's graces, his compliments and bows and witty speeches. Many of them, plainly, were well known and loved. They strutted round waving and kissing their hands to the crowd, who frantically chanted their names.

‘Moretto! Moretto!'

‘Carafulla!'

‘Tattamella!'

‘No,' said Hannah. ‘I shall bet on Calandrino. He is the most handsome. He belongs to Jacopo Cardelli, the Papal Secretary. Cardelli keeps him as a chaperone for the daughter he has had by his concubine. He says it's just as good as having a eunuch: no girl could be seduced by a dwarf. I think the man's a fool, don't you?'

‘Hannah!'

She slipped away and ran up to a man in a feathered hat who was standing on a scaffold near the centre of the square shouting out odds. She handed up to him her ducats and took away a slip of paper. Almost at the same moment there was the crack of a whip, and the dwarfs were off, sprinting down the Corso in the same direction as the horses and the bulls, while the crowd cheered and shouted them on. Despite myself, my eyes followed them as they ran off, bells jingling, feathers nodding: bizarre and yet strangely thrilling.

I turned to find Hannah peering down the Corso after the dwarfs. She had her mask down again. She appeared to have forgotten me completely.

‘The King's lady. Please. Tell me who she is.'

She turned, and eased aside her mask for an instant, just long enough to utter a single word.

‘No.'

‘If you will not give me her name, at least tell me what she is like. Is she tall or short? Quiet? Witty? Does she wear pearls? Rubies? Diamonds? And her eyes, sweet Jesus, Mrs Hannah, you have to tell me the colour of her eyes!'

‘Poor Mr Richard, so driven by his ambitions. Can you not forget them even for a moment?'

From the far edge of the square came a confused sound of laughter and cheering, and calls of, ‘The old men!'

Hannah pulled me by the hand deeper into the crowd. ‘Come on, come, come, come, come. A new race!'

Laughing, yet angry, I allowed her to lead me. The man in the feathered hat called out, ‘Calandrino! Calandrino the winner of the dwarfs!'

Hannah went up and collected her money, then came back to me with an arch smile. I said, ‘Have you bet again?'

‘Not this time. I always stop while my luck is good.'

The old men jostled into line, shoving and cursing each other, white-bearded, bald and deadly serious. The crowds screamed with
laughter as they set off hobbling down the Corso. At once we heard a braying and screeching from behind, and suddenly the square was filled with wild donkeys, dark bristly creatures with bared teeth and mad eyes. Grooms struggled to keep hold of their halters, and then off they went, bucking and kicking after the old men. Hannah and I laughed with the others. I was catching the exhilaration of this, the madness of making any living thing race that could be caught and forced into line and goaded into moving. But still I had to know that name.