No doubt the foreman could too. But when he turned back to face her, he was wearing a wide smile. He didn’t run his eyes over her threadbare pinafore or comment on her too-big boots. Instead he extended a hand and said politely, “I’m Edward Hepplestone.” He tilted his head at where Freddie and the navvies were digging. “Sorry if I sounded a bit gruff. It’s just that I’m under a bit of pressure to finish this job and move to the next. We’re a few weeks behind, you see?”
“Esther Murphy,” she replied, feeling his warmth as she put her small hand into his larger one and he shook it. With his touch, she tilted her chin a fraction, as she imagined a proper lady might.
He smiled—relaxed and easy—and she noticed how the smile reached all the way to his eyes. They stood studying each other in silence for a few beats before the spell was shattered.
“Sir! Sir!” called Danny.
“What is it?” said Edward, clearly annoyed at being interrupted.
Essie stepped sideways so she could see over Edward’s broad shoulder to Danny, who was shouting and waving his arms.
Freddie dropped his pick and reached down to pull out a clump of dirt bigger than his head.
Essie swallowed and blinked, not trusting what she saw.
When she looked again, Freddie was holding his find above his head. Dripping like water from the soil were loops of gold chains, giant green stones, cameos, some buttons and rings, a gush of sparkling colored gemstones, and what looked from a distance to be some small jeweled silver hooks.
The navvies tossed their picks and shovels aside and clambered across to Freddie from their section in the cellar, rubbing their hands together and craning their necks over the man in front of them to get a closer look, theorizing about what had been found.
“A green stone as big as m’fist!”
“Chains of flowers as long as your arm.”
“Looks like a perfume bottle.”
“I swear on my life—they’re diamonds. Handfuls of ’em.”
Among the chaos and high-pitched chatter, the navvies pulled clumps of soil from the debris. Mr. Hepplestone had rolled up his sleeves, and was squatting and pointing into the hole—shouting at everyone to leave the soil where it lay. At one point, he looked up and squinted across to where Essie stood just to one side of the jostling navvies. He raised a hand and gave her a small smile.
But was it meant as a friendly gesture or as an instruction for her to leave?
Essie lifted a hand and waved back, but then noticed Freddie and Danny staring at her, Freddie frowning and Danny looking a little forlorn.
“Best be getting along, Es,” said Freddie as he blocked her view of Mr. Hepplestone. “You’ll be needing to get the girls from school. The lads are getting a bit—”
Before he could finish she was knocked in the side of her head by two men shoving each other.
“Hey! Watch the lady,” said Danny, giving one of the navvies a push.
But they ignored him.
“Give it back. I saw it first.”
“Pity your fat hand didn’t grab it!”
The filthy pair sounded like the twins fighting over Papa’s medals as they played cross-legged on the floor.
Danny offered to fetch a cool cloth for Essie and find somewhere for her to sit, but she assured him she was fine as she turned to walk away down Cheapside. Rubbing the side of her head, where a bit of an egg had developed, she glanced back over her shoulder at Danny, who was still watching her. She gave him a smile, and then looked across to where Mr. Hepplestone stood knee-deep in the pit, his dark hair curling over his collar and the muscles in his arms visible beneath his rolled-up sleeves. He didn’t notice her leave.
Chapter 5
Kate
LONDON, PRESENT DAY
Kate’s stomach growled and she looked at her watch: 3:30 p.m. She had been taking notes all day without a break, interviewing Saanvi and Gayle while Marcus set up each shot.
It was almost time to go—their security pass required them to leave by 4 p.m.—but she wanted to squeeze in a couple more pieces.
To their left was a gold pomander, or scent bottle, studded with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and spinels. Kate imagined an aristocratic woman holding this bottle under her nose and sniffing ambergris, clove oil, and cinnamon to mask the stench of rotting corpses blackened by the plague as she traveled through London in her carriage.
And there, sitting quietly on the last pedestal, was a tiny diamond ring: a solitaire.
The diamond was set into the gold bezel, and the gold band had been coated with white enamel. The ring was so simple. So small. Was it a mourning ring, or did it symbolize love?
It struck Kate that if she were to choose an engagement ring it would look something like this. She swallowed, feeling dehydrated and dizzy as memories of Jonathan continued to press down with the hot air in this tiny room. She could smell the linseed and oak in Jonathan’s hair as he finished sanding and installing the last of the kitchen cabinets in her brownstone, then lifted Kate onto a benchtop and proposed. Those warm eyes and impish smile . . .
Kate had accepted the proposal but was secretly disappointed it had not been accompanied by a ring. It turned out that the dreamy little girl sitting at Essie’s dressing table rummaging through beaded necklaces and colorful earrings had not disappeared completely underneath the tailored suits and silk shirts.
Jonathan must have read her feelings in her face, and who could blame her fiancé for looking bewildered? “But I thought you’d know exactly what you wanted. That’s why I didn’t—”
She’d stopped him midsentence with a long, slow kiss. Drew him closer with her legs and wrapped them around him as she ripped his work shirt off, showering them both with sawdust.
She took a deep breath.
Kate stepped back from the pedestal and tried to blink away her tears. Her grief felt exposed under the harsh fluorescent lights. She had managed to sign the divorce papers before she left, but she hadn’t yet mailed them back to Jonathan’s lawyer.
“Are you okay?” Marcus glanced up from the emerald watch he was studying from every angle, as he tried to position his lights and lightbox for a few more shots.
Saanvi stepped toward Kate and put a steadying hand on her arm.
Embarrassed, Kate shrugged and lied, “Jetlag. Sorry!”
Marcus held her gaze for a beat, brows creased with concern. “We can finish this tomorrow, if you like.”
“I’m fine, honestly. I don’t want to miss a thing here . . .” She stretched and examined the table, taking in the cameos, the salamander, the emerald watch . . . the pomander.
Where to start?
Every story needed a big opener. The emerald watch seemed the obvious choice, but her eye kept being drawn back to the little black-and-white ring. The simplicity of it touched her.
At Kate’s nod, Saanvi picked it up in her gloved hand and held it under the light. As the ring turned and the diamond flickered like a flame Kate wondered why this simple ring had been buried in a damp cellar with the much more valuable pendants and the watch.
The diamond was table-cut and clear. Kate used her eyepiece to scan the stone for variations. Flaws. Nowadays a diamond could be filled and baked, then sent off for certification that it was perfect; the rough would be brilliant-cut to throw sparkle around the room.
Kate made careful notes.
3–4 ct, late 16th century or early 17th century?
Small gold band. Possibly for child or small woman. Champlevé enamel. Mannerist style. Black flowers painted onto white. Pansies? Forget-me-nots?
Engagement, or memento mori ring?
What promises were made with this ring? How had it ended up in the Museum of London?
“Saanvi, do you know where this stone is from?”
The conservator smiled. “That I can tell you,” she said. “We’ve had this stone tested alongside some others, and we know the rough was from Golconda. So this ring”—she held it up to the light so
it glowed with the warmth of a candle—“started its life in India.”
The Diamond Rough
GOLCONDA, INDIA, 1630
The boy woke to the screams of his brother. It had been this way since the last moon.
Sachin rose from the straw mat he shared with his father, fastened his leather belt around his waist in a knot, and padded quietly across the dirt to where his older brother Arjun lay in the corner, his hands and feet bound with twine.
Kneeling, Sachin placed a hand gently on the young man’s thigh to calm his thrashing. Next, the boy loosened the ropes from around Arjun’s ankles before cradling his brother’s head in his arms. He kissed the top of Arjun’s head and whispered a prayer to Mahadeva.
Arjun knocked the boy off balance with his closed fists, but the whites of his eyes were like those of a frightened animal. He whimpered and tried to curl himself into a tighter ball.
Sachin could smell dried piss on his brother’s skin. He stood, then helped Arjun to his feet. He’d take him to the river’s edge to finish his ablutions and pray.
In the opposite corner of their mud hut, his mother and sister were kneeling next to the hearth. The younger woman was rolling out balls of wheat dough and black sugar with the heel of her palm. Their mother was dropping spices into the large clay pot of tea simmering over the coals: a stick of precious cinnamon, a thumb of ginger, a fistful of cloves and cardamom buds. Already the spices were mixing with the smoke and a sweet woody scent filled the hut. Geetha, his eldest sister, would go out to their shared village cow and return with a tiny pitcher of warm, creamy milk to finish their chai.
As they walked outside into the air, Arjun turned his head and sniffed—like a camel might sniff the wind—then visibly relaxed. He giggled as his breath floated up to the clouds, lifting his bound hands to catch the white puffs as though they were butterflies.
Sachin’s chest tightened as he glimpsed the weeping red welts on his brother’s wrists. He wondered if his mother could spare him a little turmeric and ghee to massage into these wounds.
How he wished he could unbind Arjun’s wrists. But ever since his brother had shoved the village Brahmin up against a stone wall when the priest came to offer prayers, their father had promised to keep his eldest son bound up like he was a beast.
The priest said Arjun had the devil’s fever, but he was wrong. Arjun wasn’t evil. He was just scared and broken since the accident in the mine the year before. It was a wonder he hadn’t died, Sachin thought. Arjun had been buried beneath a pile of rubble when the edge of the pit he was working in had collapsed. He hadn’t been the same since.
Nobody met their eyes as they walked past hundreds of huts just like theirs to the river’s edge.
The mountain escarpment loomed up from the foothills, smothered by jungle. The air was thick and humid, and beads of sweat were already forming at his brow. Morning birdsong and the screeches of wild monkeys rang out from deep in the rainforest. Not for the first time, Sachin wondered what it would be like to walk beyond the fringe of these lush trees and vines. To lose himself among the foliage.
What lands—what kingdoms—lay beyond these mountains?
They walked past a wooden caravan pulled by a dozen dusty oxen. The road between the mines, Golconda forts, Hyderabad, and the port of Goa was a steady parade of caravans loaded with cotton, silk, rice, corn, and salt. Others would carry spices with the scent of foreign lands, plus sugar and mace. Mostly the merchants were nomads or Persians. But lately there had been an assortment of foreigners dressed in strange dainty shoes, sweating in long stockings, woolen pantaloons, and waistcoats, curled hair plastered to their foreheads.
These fleshy pink men who stank like pork would walk through this village of mud huts and thatched roofs, cursing and swatting away the goats and chicks in their dusty path. They tried to bribe their way into the mines studded between the riverbank and the foothills, but the merchants and guards would have none of it. These mines belonged to the king of Golconda, and if the foreigners wanted to view the diamond roughs they had to go to the village bazaar with all the other merchants.
An ox flicked its tail, listless, as one of the foreigners ordered bags of millet to be unloaded from his wagon. Sachin had heard that this man with pale skin and sunburned nose and cheeks had paid twenty thousand gold pagodas for a ruby and a handful of rough gemstones at the bazaar. He tried to imagine the weight of that gold, and what it would buy for his parents and siblings. They could have Arjun treated by one of the city healers. Buy a herd of cattle for milking and soft curd cheese. Perhaps a field to sow rice or millet. For certainly his parents were aged and hunched before their time, and had just three pagodas a year to thank for their efforts in the mines.
Sachin walked slowly downhill to where the Krishna River roared over its bed of pebbles. Arjun kept tugging him, eager to reach the water. This shared morning ritual of bathing in the river would be the only happy interlude in Sachin’s day before he kneeled for prayers, then went to work in the pits.
After bathing, Sachin kneeled beside his brother on the muddy riverbank to give thanks before he spent the day digging up the gravel in their new pit. He could hear women nearby winnowing gravel in straw baskets, then tossing it onto the flat bed of prepared dirt for it to dry. As it dried, children would rake the gravel, turning it over and over in the hot air before their mothers would push them aside to beat the gravel with wooden batons. When this was done, the gravel would be scooped into baskets, and the winnowing would begin again.
Sounds of endless scratching filled the heavy, humid air as he started to pray, bowing three times before the statue of the goddess Lakshmi. After prayers, the Brahmin daubed their brows with sticky orange paste of saffron and ghee and pressed seven grains of rice onto each forehead to bring strength and prosperity.
Sachin had lost count of the grains of rice he’d had pressed into his brow. All the gemstone roughs they had picked from their dried and raked beds of gravel had been dark and muddy, yielding only a new turban and a few lengths of cotton.
Sachin and his family washed their hands and feet with water, before the Brahmin handed them their only meal for the day: a scoop of rice on woven sál leaves. This morning they were gifted a copper cup of warm ghee mixed with sugar and cinnamon to pour over the rice.
Sachin looked across to where Arjun was tethered to the nearest banyan tree, curled up asleep in the shade. This was their life now: working the mines for clear stones and yanking their prized son and his brother to the pits like a belligerent goat.
The sun rose higher and the gravel started to grow warmer. Sachin moved quickly to stop the tips of his fingers burning. His throat turned dry. He struggled to swallow, and longed to plunge into the shallows of the Krishna River below.
Arjun lay moaning, hair plastered to his face.
Sachin scooped up a handful of gravel. He let it flow through his fingers, shaking his hands and watching for a hint of light. He did this over and over—until his skin was raw and chafed—before he caught a rough between his fingers. He rubbed the stone on his loincloth and held it up to the light. The guards had spotted him, and they moved closer to ensure he didn’t swallow it.
Sachin nodded, heart starting to race as the head guard produced a banyan leaf and held the stone against the leaf to check it ran clear, not blue. The boy craned for a look, but was given a swift kick and ordered back to work. The guard grinned, and the rough was slipped into a leather pouch on his belt.
The rest of the guards made a wall behind Sachin, peering over him as he resumed sorting through the gravel, hoping for more . . .
Sweat dripped from his brow. If only he could sip some water. Or at least give some to his mother and sister.
Under the tree, Arjun started to stir. He stood and tugged at the twine that bound him to the tree.
The guards turned to watch, laughing. Arjun was nothing more than an amusement for them, like a dancing monkey at the bazaar.
Sachin swallowed, turning fro
m the cruel scene, then spotted a glimmer in the gravel. He shifted sideways to throw a shadow and hide the stone.
Arjun started to moan and kick. He leaned back, breaking his twine, and then ran toward the guards. They left their positions behind Sachin and moved forward to restrain him.
“Shabdkosh! Shabdkosh!”
Devil.
A guard tackled Arjun to the ground and another grabbed his feet. A third pulled his pistol.
Sachin’s father appeared out of the pit and ran across to the guards, placing himself between the pistol and his eldest boy, hands in the air. He raised his voice, arguing with the head guard as the other two tied Arjun to the tree once more.
As his mother put down her basket and hurried over to soothe her son, Sachin crouched down, plucked the clear rough from the gravel, and gasped. This stone was of the clearest water, glowing as if it housed a flame.
He stared, entranced. He’d never seen such a pure light.
Without even a touch of the polishing wheels spinning to the side of the pits, Sachin knew at once that the stone he held was special.
For the first time, he believed the Brahmin’s insistence that the Golconda stones were the most powerful of all. He clasped it in his fist, calling on the power of the stone, of the crown chakra, to protect his brother.
Behind him Arjun moaned and thrashed as Sachin’s mother cried out to the Divine Mother.
The head guard shouted a warning. Father turned to the thrashing Arjun, pleading with his son to be silent.
Sachin lifted his eyelid and slipped the rough into the corner of his eye, then he turned and ran toward his brother. The stone scratched his eyeball and tears started to form but he wiped them away with the back of his arm. This stone would save them.
“Arjun!” Sachin pleaded as he moved closer to his brother.
Arjun’s hands were tied, and he kneeled with his feet bound behind him. His mouth was frothing with spit and his neck strained tight as he thrashed at the soldiers who were kicking and taunting him as if they were at a cockfight.
The Lost Jewels Page 4