The King's Diamond Read Free

did it finally leave his hands. At his side knelt a young Englishman, a merchant in jewels.
    â€˜Who will wear the diamond when I am dead?’ murmured the old man.
    â€˜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.

PART 1
Topaz: a Perfect Sunshine Stone

    Now my trembling mind yearns to wander,
Now my joyful feet spring with eagerness.
Sweet band of friends, farewell;
Together we set out from our far home,
But many diverse roads lead us back.
    CATULLUS, POEM 46

1
    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 torevolutions. 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