The King’s Diamond. Will Whitaker

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СКАЧАТЬ King Henry himself. What I needed was a chance, an advantage, a piece of luck.

      In 1524, on the anniversary of my visit to my mother, I once more opened my casket to her. By now my collection included a small but perfect sapphire, which I handed to her as a gift. She rolled the stone under her finger, then pushed it back to me over the table.

      ‘Keep it,’ she said. ‘Sell it. You may yet need your pennies. Carry on, my Richard. You have not persuaded me yet.’

      Somehow, the old band was never all in London at the same time. In the autumn I was home once more. But by then John had left for Hungary, on a venture concerning salt. The great mines there were threatened by the savage advance of the Turks, and the house of Lazar was looking for a swift profit before the market was closed to them.

      ‘He has found his adventure,’ commented Thomas, as we sat together on the wharf, his eyes on the moving swirls of the river. ‘If he lives through it.’ Thomas was more and more downcast these days. Still he was reading with the Franciscan. The Cardinal’s college was not yet ready; the monasteries destined for funding it refused to disband.

      ‘Can you not find a place somewhere else?’ I prompted him.

      He shook his head. ‘Our mother says wait. A little longer.’

      The next summer, 1525, I turned twenty. Over these years I boiled with discontent. Ventures with Mr William had lost their savour for me. I had learnt all that I could from him, and my profits were slow. The Portuguese had no real interest in gems, even though their ships touched in at all the best markets: Surat, Calicut, Pegu. No, ‘Let it be spice,’ declared their King, chief grocer of Portugal, and spice it was. The city I longed for was Venice: that was the place for stones, as well as every other luxury that could give life opulence and wonder. When the day came to display my treasures to my mother again I poured out before her opals and amethysts, garnets, jacinths and pearls, and threw down my three purses of gold beside them with a loud chink. She raised one eyebrow.

      ‘If you would only lend me a little money,’ I protested. ‘If you would let the Rose trade a little further.’

      She sat back in her chair and stared at me with her ice-blue eyes. ‘And why should I “let” you do anything of the kind? As long as you follow the firm of Dansey, my boy, Naples is our furthest port. Between London and there we can find all that we need.’

      But her eyes as they lingered on my jewels had a thoughtful gleam. With the right proposition I believed I might just win her over.

      I pestered Uncle Bennet for openings at revels and mummeries, audiences, maying, processions, pilgrimages, feasts … He was a hard man to catch up with, that summer; he was involved in Wolsey’s great visitation of the abbeys, that squeezed so much gold from the abbots and raised so many angry murmurs. Nevertheless, he obliged me when he could, half out of liking for me, I thought, and half to prove his importance to my mother.

      As winter came, the Court stayed out of London. The plague was running fiercely, and we crept about, all of us, with herbs clasped to our faces, keeping well clear of anyone we saw on the streets. ‘The King is keeping Christmas in the country at Eltham Palace,’ Bennet told us. ‘The Secret Christmas, they are calling it. Still, I believe I can smuggle you in, if you have a mind to it.’ I arrived there by night, and Bennet helped me to slip into the Great Hall, mingling with the servants who were serving gold cups and bowls of wine. I stopped in the doorway in amazement. The hall was a forest: trees of green damask stood in groves, and from their branches hung leaves of beaten gold and bunches of gilded acorns that flashed in the glare from the burning torches. Between the trees were wondrous beasts, antelopes and oliphants and lions made of canvas with gold crowns and tails of iron wire, and jesters dressed as wild men who leapt about in masks draped with ivy, letting out shrill shrieks and hoots. Laughter and music filled the room. Round the forest were bowers of silken roses, and through these the King and his courtiers danced to the sound of shawms and violins. They were in masks too, gilded and smiling, the men all with beards of gold thread. The couples dipped their heads beneath the hoops of the arbours, the ladies’ pearl chains clinking on their bosoms. It made me burn with longing as I watched from my place among the butlers and pages, and the bowls of steaming wine. Why should I be apart from all this? What iron law kept me a tradesman in bales of woad and boxes of spice, while these golden creatures taunted me with their laughter? In an instant I grabbed up a mask that was lying by the wine, and slipped among them. The dancers separated and whirled beneath the arbours, and I was swept after them, the fiddlers skipping among us and the wild men chattering, the men and the ladies gasping and laughing.

      One girl especially I noticed, wilder and freer than all the rest, flinging her head back as she spun round, the black hair streaming from beneath her hood. She was strong-hipped and tall; her breasts pressed against the white cambric stomacher stretched across the opening of her sea-blue gown. Around her neck she wore two ropes of good pearls of the Orient, which descended her bust and vanished down beneath her bodice. When the dancers separated briefly I darted after her through the glittering trees and caught her hands. Her eyes, dark brown behind the gold of her mask, sparkled with surprise. We swung together between the trees, while the shawms bayed and the violins sang. I was, in that instant, one of them, a blessed, golden being in a world of beauty and gems. I swung her fast, and she put her head back and laughed. But the music was dying already, and the dance swaying to a halt. We stopped at the foot of an arbour of paper roses. They had become torn by the violence of the dance, and lay scuffed underfoot.

      The girl said, ‘Are you not going to let go of my hands?’

      Already I was behaving like a fool, and showing I was no courtier. ‘Only if you show me your face.’

      I released her hand, and just as she lifted off her mask, so I did mine. Her face was round, soft, alight with excitement: an excitement so far from the world of trade that it made me gasp. She cared for nothing, nothing but the pleasure of the moment and the delight of being alive. She gave me a sense of infinite promise. With a girl like this beside me I could go anywhere, become anything. Even as I was thinking these thoughts, I saw the girl’s face change, and take on a curious smile. And yes, I saw it too. I had not seen that face for six years, but there was no doubt whatsoever. The girl was Hannah Cage. She threw back her head and laughed.

      ‘The boy who played in the street! What, have you inherited a dukedom?’

      The music began again, I slipped my mask back on to hide my annoyance and took her hand. We whirled together back into the figures.

      ‘Not yet,’ I told her. ‘And you? You left home? Married?’

      My heart began to pound as I asked it. She laughed.

      ‘My father bought us a finer town house. Away from the stink of the river. Married! To marry me they would have to catch me. And courtiers are so horribly slow.’

      ‘But I caught you. Did I not?’

      ‘For a short time. But I am going somewhere I do not think you will find me.’

      A jester tumbled and shrieked in front of us with a jangle of bells. I relaxed my hold for an instant and Hannah broke away, to vanish back into the dance. I ducked under the trees and ran after her; in a clearing I looked left and right, darted to the left towards the door of the hall, and then ran right up against my Uncle Bennet. He frowned in displeasure, and shook his head. I was furious and shamed. He was right: if I was caught, he would be the one to suffer. The chase was over. For the moment.

      After Christmas, the plague began to ease. Bennet told me the King was moving his Court a little closer to London, and would be holding a great joust for all the nobility СКАЧАТЬ