The gold in the sixteen small bars had come from dozens of places, from smelters in Scythia and breastplates in Egypt. It had adorned standards of kingdoms not even remembered. Its oldest speck was found before man even used bronze to make tools.
It was first spotted glinting in a stream that the people who hunted and gathered grains in the valley called simply “the water.” There were no countries when it was found. There were those who were from the valley, and others. The others had to be repelled.
The man who found it saw the sun glinting back from the water, little shining reflections as though the sun itself hid parts there. He knew what to do. With his hands he scooped up the sand and lay it on a rock, and very carefully, all day long, he picked out what shone from what did not shine.
He could spend the time. The hunt had been good, and there was grain the women and children found in abundance in this valley that had to be protected.
All day, he picked the specks and when he was done he had less than a thin half of a fingernail of the yellow. Many days he came back to this stream looking for the shining specks of sun. Once he found a whole nugget of the yellow metal, and this too he pounded with the other specks; and to hold them together, he pressed them all into a small piece of wood with animal fat. When he died, his tribe put the wood with the pieces of the sun over his eyes so that he might see sunlight in the places he was going, the places after death.
Within a generation, another tribe moved through the valley and dug up all the graves, because they were always a good source of stone knives and spears and other things other tribes buried their people with.
And in his skull, as in the backs of many skulls, they found the gold that had fallen through over the years. And they knew to melt it with the gold they had. And this gold was worn on the bodies of the men to make them strong in battle.
Centuries later, the specks first found in a stream joined other gold hundreds of miles away in earrings that went with a woman in trade, and these earrings lasted a few centuries more until they were melted down to make coins for the great temple in Jerusalem, coins, of course, without graven images, and when the temple was sacked, the coins were melted down to make a drinking goblet, which was melted down for levies to build an army to fight the fierce Scythians, who among all peoples loved gold the most. And this gold, paid a soldier, was taken from his body after a battle and made into a necklace for a warrior, who was buried in it. And when those graves were robbed, the gold went back into the form of coin again, to be paid by a German knight for killing another’s slave, in what was called mangold, the price of which was used to pay off such debts incurred by accident or anger.
And this gold after many years was paid to the great Charlemagne in taxes and melted down again for rings on the fingers of a Norman lady who naturally brought them with her across the channel to England in 1066.
So important was gold to the Norman nobility that by 1327 King Edward had established an assay office in London and assigned to it a royal charter for the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, to regulate all gold and silver in the kingdom, to have provenance over the work of duly charted goldsmiths assuring “such labors of such quality as to do honor to their name and their sovereign.” A British goldsmith was infinitely more important than a doctor and, of course, more rigorously trained.
And so as England waited in the grim days before the Spanish Armada would invade the island, a most worthy goldsmith, Simon Sedgewick, was called to the Tilbury encampment to bring his entire year’s allotment of gold and those tools with which he could form a piece for Her Royal Highness, Elizabeth.
He was escorted by a full company of men with pikes, all whispering the horrible news. The Spanish Armada had already set sail, and some wondered if the London goldsmith had been called to prepare an offering for Phillip II.
But when they reached Tilbury, the camp seemed almost to rejoice. The Queen’s standards were there, and men talked of welcoming the fight and how already several raids on the Spanish coast had been successful and that while the galleons were big, they were exceeding slow.
Sedgewick was taken directly to the tent of Her Majesty, Elizabeth, Queen of England, France, Ireland, and Virginia. And there the soldiers waited, as her captains and lords exited and Simon Sedgewick stayed.
Inside, Sedgewick could not believe he was alone with his monarch. He did not dare think he was going to be seduced, as rumors had the Queen doing to lords or handsome soldiers. Her Majesty wore a simple frock, yet studded with small pearls and emeralds. The tent gloried in her perfumes.
“How still your tongue, good smith?”
“Like the grave, Your Majesty,” said Sedgewick. Would she call a goldsmith for bed when she had thirty thousand younger more active swords in this encampment?
“Then don your smithing apron and make your Prince a work.”
“What work, Your Majesty?” asked Sedgewick. So it was not that. But this was stranger still.
“Anything but a chalice,” she said and put before him a large gold chalice with an enormous sapphire in its bosom and six diamonds at its base. “To this add you your yearly allotment of gold the better to hide, and to the purpose of that manufacture, you may add from any of treasure here, topaz, jade and lapis lazuli.”
Close, he could see how evenly whitened the creams of her face were. But what did she want?
“May I suggest, Your Highness, a great crucifix in honor of our Lord and Saviour for help in victory over God’s Spanish enemies.”
“We do not know if they be God’s enemies, but they certainly are ours. So let us hope we are His allies so that we may deserve this victory. Yet not a crucifix, good smith.”
“There is too much gold in my allotment for any gold ornament or vessel.”
“Cellars take a goodly measure.”
“But they are hollow, Your Majesty.”
“Then make me one as solid as your reputation. And add that of painful memory,” she said, pointing to a ham-sized box with an alabaster lid.
Simon Sedgewick bowed and took the box. Inside was a great ruby on which Christ’s head was engraved. He had heard of this gem, given by Elizabeth’s father to Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn, and then taken back again when he beheaded her, never worn by Elizabeth.
“It is a fitting stone for this cellar you will make.”
Even more strangely, Her Majesty insisted upon waiting until Sedgewick had melted down the chalice itself, after carefully prying the diamonds and the sapphire from the binding wax setting in the gold itself. Inside, protected by old burned cloth, was a scrap of a clay bowl.
“What would you have me do with this poorish bowl, Your Majesty?” asked Simon Sedgewick, holding it up to candlelight. It was, on closer examination, a crude bowl of common baked clay, pink in color on the outside, and dark with strange lacquer in its bottom.
“It does not seem an impressive thing of princes, does it?” she asked her goldsmith.
“No, Your Majesty.”
“Ah well, kings can ride on humble asses and still be kings, can they not?” Elizabeth said, not allowing an answer because she did not want one when she referred to how the Lord of the universe rode into Jerusalem town for the week of His Crucifixion.
It could be, she thought. And it could not be. It did not matter. There was a sense this battle could be won now, and if for nothing else she would never let Phillip II find the bowl again.
“Put the poorish bowl in the bosom of the cellar, make you a listing of every part therein, use no apprentices, and do your work here in this tent. We will secure it shortly.”
Sedgewick never saw her again. A great storm in the channel washed the great Armada into helplessness, destroying Spain forever as a power and launching Britain as an empire, while Simon Sedgewick without furnaces or apprentices to work them crafted a massive cellar of rings, and necklaces, coins and medals, crucifixes, and medallions, and all the things that gold fashioned to stay in the form of a cellar until a ring clamp in a New
York City apartment would hold the pieces separate again underneath an acetylene torch.
It was four hundred years later and a surgeon now was considered more important than a goldsmith, yet these surgeon’s hands were familiar with gold. They had to be to get at the gems.
When Dr. Peter Martins had finished, and all the stones were ready for transport, the hysterical art dealer had come to his apartment and refused to let him leave.
Battissen’s hands had fluttered with the uselessness of it all.
Dr. Martins had tried to reason with him. He had explained quite realistically that the woman had no real claim, that the policeman had no charge that could be substantiated. It was clear, Geoffrey Battissen had been pressured out of reason.
Dr. Martins had tried three times to return Battissen to a rational state. He pointed out how well everything had really worked, how the detective and the woman would have to give up eventually because they had no realistic case, and then as the final proof, Dr. Martins had brought the weeping, threatening, hysterical Geoffrey Battissen into the small workroom that still smelled of the ugly sulphur fumes of the acetylene torch and showed in every separate piece, from diamond, to sapphire, to ruby, why the cellar simply could not be returned. When Battissen had insisted on returning the untraceable valuable pieces in hopes of mercy, turning in Dr. Martins for that same ridiculous mercy, there really was no other option. Battissen’s hysteria had closed them off.
The pointed graver was there and so was the back of Geoffrey’s head. Dr. Martins had gripped the graver in a surgical manner, firm but not knuckle-whitening tight, firm enough for the tissue he had to cut into, actually thrust into, right behind the ear, and up into the posterior cerebral lobe.
Then, of course, to get rid of Geoffrey, who had dropped in place, roughly one hundred and fifty pounds of something that was going to make a worse stink than the acetylene torch. Geoffrey had fit easily into a green plastic lawn bag and was just as easily brought down through the service elevator to the garage beneath the New York apartment and easily driven in the trunk just outside of Queens, where, before heading for Kennedy International Airport, Dr. Martins had left his former partner at a dump to be covered by the rest of the day’s waste from one of the largest cities of the world and set about to sell the gems, which proved infinitely harder than he had imagined.
XXIII
For the heart of a knight must be so hard and unrelenting towards his suzerain’s foe that nothing in the world can soften it.
—WALTER MAP
Queste del Saint Graal, 1225
Spring hinted not with patches of brown grass coming up through the snow, or crocuses in the yard, or the smell of new life around the corner, but with black-coated slush melting into rivulets carrying a winter of trash along the gutters.
Claire Andrews missed home, and it was the worst day to accommodate a visit by Captain Rawson. For some reason, Arthur could not get mad at him.
“He’s just doing his job. That’s what he’s supposed to do. Britain wants its saltcellar back. He goes after it. It’s like sending a gofer out for coffee, except Harry does it all over the world.”
“Lying to you. Pretending to be your friend.”
“He warned me about a couple of things. There’s doing your job and doing your job.”
“Why does he want to see you now?”
“Maybe he likes me.”
“Now, after all he does is phone every so often? You haven’t seen him since Paris.”
“You want to ask him? Ask him.”
“I really would prefer not to be in the same room with him,” said Claire.
“He wants to take us both out. I think he’s leaving New York.”
“He’s your friend,” said Claire.
That was breakfast, and they had been home from England and that awful moment on Westminster Bridge for three days now. Arthur had mentioned that it would be nice to get a bookshelf up on the wall, her wall, the wall from which she had tracked down the Tilbury Cellar hidden by Captain Rawson’s government in a most suspicious manner.
She had promised that she would “make the research area part of the living room, instead of vice versa.” But she hadn’t moved a jot on her wall, and it was still a couch and a few chairs intruding on her research center. She was not home that evening when Rawson arrived, tanned, perfectly groomed, relaxed, and out for a good time as always.
Artie apologized for Claire’s not being present, and when he returned to the living room after dressing for the evening, he noticed Rawson had spilled his drink on the worktable set beneath the wall. He apologized for it. He didn’t know what to wipe up without disturbing the papers. Neither did Artie.
“What do these lines mean?”
“Ask Claire. I’m out of this thing.”
“This one from Jerusalem to Seville to Tilbury. You wouldn’t happen to know that one, would you?”
“Yeah,” said Artie.
“What?” said Rawson.
“It’s pen,” said Artie.
“You’re joking,” said Rawson.
“No, it’s pen,” said Artie with a big smile. Five times that evening, in one way and another, from one pub to another, Harry Rawson came back to that line from Jerusalem, and Artie, even swimming in the same good champagne they amazingly had in New York as well as Paris, was ready for every one. He gave away nothing and played the easygoing New York detective at peace with the world.
Near the end of the evening, when even the Queen’s good captain of the Argyle Sutherlanders was weaving to the moment, Artie pressed him on the thousand-dollar whores.
“You don’t deserve to know. And I won’t tell you. But for me, one advantage is that you do not love them, Artie. To love is the most dangerous thing anyone can do. Most dangerous.”
“You never loved?”
“I suppose, somewhere, sometime, very young.”
“Your parents?”
“I had been away from London for almost eight years. My father, whom I had not seen since Sandhurst, did not delay his return to Venice by one day to have dinner with me.”
“And your mother?”
“Mother told me that when I grew up I would be a great screw for someone. I was five. She was on her way out of the house with her lover of the moment and never returned.”
“You poor bastard,” said Artie.
“No. I am privileged. I am very privileged to have a most interesting life, to drink with a fine fellow like you, and to charge the guns of Balaclava, because while you are galloping full steam ahead, you really can’t think how meaningless it all is.”
“You poor bastard,” said Artie.
“To us poor bastards, Artie.”
“I’m not a poor bastard,” said Artie. “I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”
“Charge,” said Rawson.
The next day, Artie had a hangover, and Rawson, phoning the apartment from his hotel, was unfairly alert and chipper. He wanted to speak to Claire. It was 8:00 A.M.
“Just a minute,” said Artie. He passed the phone across the bed.
Claire angrily shook her head.
“Just act normal,” said Artie, covering the receiver.
“That’s just what I can’t do. I told you that yesterday.”
“You never lied?”
“Lying is not the trouble; acting normal is the trouble.”
“Don’t think about it. It’s only trouble when you feel you’ve got to be perfect and you start analyzing which lie could be unraveled. Other than that, forget it.”
“That’s what I can’t do.”
“Then don’t talk to him,” said Artie, starting to take his hand off the receiver.
“He’ll know something,” said Claire.
“Right,” said Artie.
“Well, don’t you think it’s strange that they send someone in secret for something they own anyhow?”
“What has that got to do with anything now?”
“I’ll be thinking that.”
/> “Don’t talk to him then.”
“I’ll talk to him. Maybe I’ll find out something.”
“You do know that he is on government business, so this is not some game,” said Artie.
“I understand, Arthur. I understand it very well.”
“Don’t get mad, because when you get mad, you’ll do something wild.”
“That’s not so,” she said. But she was certainly mad at Arthur now.
She took the phone and said hello to Harry Rawson while squinting angrily at Arthur. Captain Rawson had a proposal: Why not join forces?
“I think I turned down something like that before,” said Claire.
“I couldn’t help but be fascinated by your research. It’s amazing. Wonderful. I am enthralled. As a matter of fact, I can be a help, you know, if ever you need anything done in England.”
“I don’t understand,” said Claire.
“You know I saw that splendid map of yours yesterday. You really must have done magnificent research, and frankly I was most amazed by Jerusalem.”
“Why?”
“Because what does Jerusalem have to do with a British cellar? I assumed the colored dots were where the gems appeared, here and there.”
“And what were the Rawsons doing with it in the first place? Do you want to explain how you could have an identical cellar to one owned by the Crown that nobody is allowed to see?”
“Yes. Not identical. Family was nouveau riche in the sixteenth century. Everybody’s got to start sometime. They tried to copy what they heard about. I’ve never seen the Tilbury and neither have they. But by now the Rawson cellar is an heirloom, imitation or not.”
“How do I know that?”
“My good woman, it is awfully early to call someone else a liar, and I do have to be about my business. Good day, and good luck, and if you ever do discover something of even passing interest, anything in the list I gave Artie, please do let me know.”
“What else is left?”
“Anything. I doubt you will, however.”
“What’s left? The framework? The poorish bowl? There’s nothing left.”
“Our tradition is left. Even the poorish bowl,” came Rawson’s voice, cool and tolerant.
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