The Cartier workshop smelled of leather, metal, and ever so faintly of smoke. Kate made a point to visit once a year; it was a way of absorbing the inspiration and passion that drove the world’s finest jewelers, and to be reminded of all the skilled hands that passed over a jewel or a gemstone. Each time she was struck anew by the care and precision, but also by the sheer audacity of what a bit of imagination and dreaming could accomplish.
Color palettes and vials of colored crystals were arranged along walls. A dozen men and women leaned over microscopes, working with paintbrushes that were so fine they could be used to paint a grain of rice. Desks were scattered with loupes, tiny hammers, and anvils, and traditional suede catches were draped across the desks and laps to collect the slightest sliver of silver, gold, or platinum. Engravers used tiny diamond-tipped shafts to carve patterns into gold bands and watch faces, enamelist apprentices pounded glass into a fine powder in a mortar and pestle before adding water to blend up the enamel paste.
“Dr. Kirby, lovely to see you again.” Madame Parsons, a master enameler, greeted her warmly.
“It’s always a pleasure to visit your workshop,” replied Kate, wishing that she’d blow-dried her mop of curls before meeting this Gallic Anna Wintour with her severe bob, silk blouse, and fitted pencil skirt.
“I have the illustrations here,” the enamelist continued. “We sent you the photos that will be printed in the catalog to accompany your essay, but I’m glad you’ve found a moment in your schedule to see these sketches. The line of the hand is so important. It begins with one person’s dream.”
They spent the next thirty minutes poring over the designs of an elaborate colored-diamond necklace painted with gouache. There were detailed sketches of the necklace from every angle, showing how each diamond sat at the collarbone and caught the light.
“These should be in a gallery!”
“There are over three thousand diamonds in this neckpiece. More than the Maharaja of Patiala’s 1928 commission.”
Kate estimated it would take four years to complete all the cutting, framework, setting, and polishing. “Four years for a single necklace!”
“And it will never be worn in public, most likely.” The enamelist’s eyes sparkled, but she would never be so indiscreet as to disclose whom the necklace was intended for. Kate couldn’t help but speculate . . . was it a Middle Eastern sheik, a French mistress, or a dot-com bazillionaire?
“I wondered if you might have a few minutes to look at these images from the Cheapside collection?” Kate said. She pulled out her phone and scrolled through Marcus’s photos, showing an entranced Madame Parsons the enamel necklaces and buttons.
“Ah.” Her face softened. “I have wanted to see these since I was a little girl tidying up and mixing paints in my papa’s workshop.”
Kate showed her the close-ups of the emerald watch and the pomander before coming to the salamander hat pin. “Look at this salamander—studded with emeralds up the back, but with an enamel underbelly that looks like fur.”
“This salamander”—she tapped the screen—“it is begging you to tell its story. You paint the different-colored enamel—crushed glass—on in different sections, making a distinct pattern . . . like this fur. But there is nothing to separate the edges. It’s trial by fire. We pop it into the kiln at fifteen hundred degrees, but we really don’t know how it will turn out. It’s a risk.” She pursed her lips together and shrugged.
“Ironic, considering that in old legends it was believed that the salamander could survive fire.”
“Exactly! And think of all the people this very salamander has outlived due to civil war, plague, and the Great Fire. London herself has been torn down, burned, and bombed. See how the enamel has rubbed away at the feet? I think it would not have survived four hundred years above the ground. The gold would have been melted down, the gemstones removed and made into something else, non?”
“Perhaps.” Kate wished she had one of Marcus’s details of the black-and-white champlevé ring to show Madame Parsons. Instead she tried to describe it, and showed the enamelist the rough sketch she’d done in her notebook.
“Remember, enameling is a language. Forget-me-nots and pansies. This champlevé ring is a work of love. To paint that pattern would take infinite time and patience. And then it goes in the kiln and perhaps . . . pfft!” She flung up her hands to indicate disaster.
“So, love then. Romantic? It couldn’t be a mourning ring?”
“Black and white. Love and death. Even the rings made for death were meant to remind the living of loved ones. This is what I adore about enamel: it is the most expressive, the most human of the jewelry crafts. It is uncertain—like life itself, non?” She shrugged again and smiled.
Kate smiled back and nodded. “It sure is.”
“This champlevé ring will have a transparency to it, a lightness. That I know for certain because it is made from molten glass. Also, if you look closely, the ring will reveal itself. The black and white will overlap . . . will penetrate one another, if you like? With champlevé, you have to let time take its course.”
Madame Parsons was right. The mystery of the champlevé ring may just be unraveled if Kate could uncover the symbolism—the language—of the black-and-white flowers and how they might have come to be paired with this magnificent diamond.
* * *
Later that evening, Kate sat at her favorite table at Chez Georges, doodling in her notebook and flipping back to the floral patterns of the diamond ring, the words of Madame Parsons ringing in her ears.
Black and white. Love and death. Even the rings made for death were meant to remind the living of loved ones. This is what I adore about enamel: it is the most expressive, the most human of the jewelry crafts. It is uncertain—like life itself, non?
The waiter arrived, and she ordered the duck confit and a huge glass of Chambolle-Musigny. French comfort food—there was nothing uncertain about that!
As Kate waited for her wine, she traced the line of black forget-me-nots, running over her conversation with Madame Parsons. The master enameler’s words reminded her of Essie’s gift on her eighteenth birthday back in the study in Louisburg Square, and the last words she ever uttered to Kate: I think you are perhaps starting to see that not everything in life is black and white.
Like champlevé, life could be challenging and uncertain. Humans were capable of producing great beauty—to commemorate both love and loss. Kate agreed with Madame Parsons, the two were knotted together. The desire to be loved, to connect and to be remembered, carried through jewels and gemstones as they were set and reset. Forgotten and rediscovered. The history of a jewel really had no end. Often, it was a story of second, third, and fourth creations . . .
The pinot arrived and she took a sip, allowing the red wine to warm her throat.
She checked her watch. It was 1 p.m. in New York, and Marcus would be in the middle of a show. His phone would be switched off.
Just to hear his voice, she dialed his number anyway.
As expected, the call went straight to voicemail. “Hey, Marcus here. Or not here. Anyway, leave a message . . .”
She hung up without saying anything and put her phone on silent. Then she reached for a slice of baguette and slathered it with salty butter, took a gulp of pinot, and cursed herself for wishing Marcus were in Paris with her.
The Goldsmith
THE CHEAPE SIDE, LONDON, 1665
Aurelia sat alongside her father at his workbench as he tinkered with a gold ring at his anvil. Above her head, long gold necklaces cascaded from hooks like falling leaves in the morning light, and a velvet bag of pearls sat half open. Ignoring the ting of his tiny hammer, she peered through the shutters across the Cheape Side, watching the street fill with horses and carriages loaded with rotting bodies headed for the pits.
She stretched her arms out and tugged on the shutter to let in the soft summer light. Papa frowned. As a foreigner, her father was forbidden from opening the shutters of his shopf
ront.
To their left, a trio of blazing red rubies sat above the door frame, guarding against the pestilence that had overtaken London. The workshop air was sharp and sweet. Each day Mama sprinkled the room with lemon water to stop the stink from the street creeping in. Mama wanted Papa to close his workshop altogether until this sickness had passed, but Papa insisted on working. What else would he do with his time? Besides, Papa kept his doors open for trade despite the fact that so many Londoners had closed theirs.
“How will I earn the money to feed us, my love, if I do not work?”
Aurelia watched Papa’s eyes light up as he moved the gold ring about on the anvil until he was satisfied. She craned her head toward the sun like a cat, felt her left cheek become warm, and was grateful for these tiny pockets of contentment in their days.
Mama’s steps had slowed since last summer. It had taken less than a week for her brothers David and George to die of the pestilence. She closed her eyes now, recalling the sight of their small bodies wrapped in linen shrouds.
That had been a year ago. Inspectors had since removed the cross from above their door that warned people to stay away. But they still had few visitors.
Papa looked up from his anvil and slid along the bench to where two pieces sat waiting for his attention.
Aurelia picked up the first, an emerald the size of a baby’s fist, and turned it over in her hands, the angles of the green stone icy in her palm.
As she handed it to Papa he pointed to the hinge as he lifted the top piece to reveal an exquisite gold watch face. “I need to be careful. One slip of my rasp could shatter the stone.”
She passed him the leather pouch containing the second item: a perfume bottle hanging from a gold chain tumbled onto the length of leather, and droplets of oil spilled onto the fabric.
Aurelia recognized the tang of the lemon oil and the woody rosemary oil they dabbed on their temples and wrists every morn. Half dreaming, she dipped her fingers in the oil, lifted them to her nose, and picked up faint traces of lavender, rose, and cinnamon alongside the more powerful and earthy ambergris.
Papa turned the scent bottle in his hand. The white opals caught the light, as if the bottle were covered with the lightest of feathers. “Look at the enamel work.” He pointed at the bunches of tiny flowers painted between rubies and diamonds.
“Champlevé, perhaps?” he said to himself, turning the pomander between his thumb and forefinger so the gemstones sparkled with the light. He placed it carefully on the leather.
“I have an idea . . .”
He reached into a locked wooden box on his workbench and produced a faded leather pouch. He unfastened the ties and used a pair of tweezers to lift a clear stone up to the light, turning it from side to side as if he wanted to study it from each angle.
“I’d bet my teeth this one’s Golconda . . . it has the clearest water, see?”
Aurelia leaned in and caught the golden hue as he turned each facet up to the light. “It’s beautiful.”
“I bought it for a pretty penny long before you were born. Old Mr. Shaw bought a bagful of gemstones for a song from a ship’s deckhand after the poor lad found himself in a spot of trouble after returning from Bandar Abbas. He’d done a stint in prison for theft from a passenger. Lost himself to the drink and gambling when he got out. Couldn’t pay his debts. Old Shaw sat on the stones until the whispers had died down along Cheape Side. Luckily, the old man was always so busy he never wanted for extra stock.”
Aurelia pictured the workshop just three shops down from theirs, but five times the size of her papa’s and brimming with twenty lapidaries, cutters, polishers, and jewelers hunched over their benches.
“Who’s it for, Papa?”
He placed the diamond onto the piece of leather spread in front of him and said, “Why, darling, it’s for you. I plan to make it a wedding gift, for when you wed Jacob. Would you not expect a goldsmith to save his finest work for his only daughter?”
He went to the anvil and took the slim gold band off the point. “See how I have already shaped the gold? But I need to measure it on your finger.”
As his daughter tried on the ring that would one day become her wedding band, her father sighed. “I’ll not be able to hallmark or be given assay and touch until I am a master.”
Papa looked down at the pomander with the broken chain glittering on his workbench, turned it over to study the enameling. “I need to make my masterpiece,” he said. “Only then will I have freedom in this land.”
* * *
Amsterdam, September 1665
Dear Aurelia,
My Wanderjahr continues to delight! I cannot believe it has been six weeks since Berg de Jong—the finest jeweler and goldsmith in Amsterdam—has taken myself and my apprentice Dirk Jenk into his workshop overlooking the canal. Each day we sit at a long table under a window, leather catch trays affixed to the desk and resting in our laps, just like at home.
Outside our third-floor window barges float up the canal loaded with tulip bulbs, cheese, and herring. Also, bags of spices and gemstones shipped from the Dutch East Indies and Ceylon. Cinnamon scrolls from the bakery next door mingle with the smell of metal and soldering.
How I miss your mother’s kitchen, filled with the scent of warm appeltaart and fresh bread.
Every morning, two artists tutor us so that we may indeed be worthy of the title “Master Goldsmith.” Currently we are learning to sketch flowers. Yesterday I drew some pansies, starting with the petals and keeping the heel of my hand on the paper until my lines felt confident and unbroken. The flowers reminded me of you with their modest charm and prettiness. Then I added a line of forget-me-nots, in remembrance of those we loved and lost.
I hope you and your mama are keeping well. I know I can rely on you to take care of her and the child she is expecting.
Until next week,
Papa
Chapter 23
Essie
LONDON, 1912
Essie stopped hanging out the washing on a line above the oven to dry, then reached behind and loosened her apron strings. She lifted a damp cloth to her face and took a seat at the kitchen table. She was dizzy—tired in a way she couldn’t fathom.
She still had clothes in the boiler on the stove, but was grateful for the spare minutes of soaking she had until they needed to be hung out. Gertie was reading upstairs, Ma was asleep in the front room, and Freddie . . . Well, who knew when Freddie would be home?
Essie leaned down to unlace her boots and felt blood rush to her head. She sat up quickly and eyed the washing, making some quick calculations in her head.
Two months.
Two months since she’d bled.
Essie’s first instinct was to run to Ma and lay her head in her mother’s lap. But there would be no soothing words on the end of her mother’s tongue. No comforting hands through her hair. Only ridicule and shame. Ma would throw her out as soon as she knew her eldest daughter was with child—hadn’t she said as much many times?
Essie sat taller now, and ran her hands across her belly. Was Essie imagining it, or could she feel a flutter? Certainly her heart fluttered with excitement and her mind filled with thoughts of Edward: his broad hands, the blue corridor in his Mayfair flat, walks in Hyde Park.
She hadn’t heard from him since he sailed for Boston. She’d hoped Edward would write, but understood that he would be preoccupied with work as he was away for such a short time. But if his words were true—and hadn’t they always been—then he was due to be back in London any day now.
She tiptoed to Ma’s room, stole a sheet of paper from Pa’s old dresser. As she walked past her ma—gray-faced, snoring, and slumped in her chair—Essie froze. Her feet tingled with fear.
Was this what lay ahead?
Essie swallowed her fears, ignored the sinking feeling in her stomach, and stepped past her slumbering mother. When she stepped into the kitchen, she penned a letter to her sweetheart.
Dear Edward,
I hope your visit to Boston was rewarding.
When we last met, you promised you would return shortly, and I have been counting down the days.
I need to meet with you soonest. I am with child.
It has been somewhat of a shock, but I am certain of it. I know you would want to hear this news from me directly.
I look forward to seeing you soonest . . .
She hesitated before finishing:
. . . so we can make plans together.
E
Essie tucked the letter into an envelope and sealed it with wax from a candle. After she’d written the address, she paused and with a shaking hand wrote one last word underlined across the front:
PRIVATE
Chapter 24
Meet me outside Fortnum & Mason at 6:30 p.m.
E
“He’s taking me to supper,” Essie confided with a whisper of pride as she read the last line of Edward’s letter to Mrs. Yarwood. She’d previously only permitted herself a glance in the windows at the tearooms with white tablecloths and silver trays piled with cucumber sandwiches, French pastries, and scones loaded with jam and clotted cream. Or perhaps they’d have chicken and mushroom soup, ladled from gold tureens and served with pillowy warm bread rolls and fresh butter. Her mouth started to water . . .
“He said it was important!” She inhaled to steady her jittery breath. “I haven’t seen him since he left for Boston. I wrote to him last week, as soon as he was due to return.” Her voice sounded steadier than she felt. She was giddy at the thought of seeing him. Finally, they would be able to make some plans.
“Then you’d best be borrowing my coat. The one with the fur collar. And some gloves. Return them to me when you get a chance. No rush, love,” said Mrs. Yarwood. The older woman’s voice was soft, but cautious. There was the slightest pinch to her lips.
“Please don’t tell Ma. She doesn’t approve . . .”
Mrs. Yarwood placed a gentle hand on Essie’s shoulder. “Your mother cares for you, Essie. She only wants the best . . .”
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