‘Kate. Hello again.’ Lucia Wright kissed her on both cheeks. ‘Isn’t Sophie amazing?’
They both watched Sophie dance like a robot for a few steps while celebrities and pop stars looked on, laughing and clapping.
‘I love her. I mean, look …’ Lucia turned to survey the crowd. ‘She asked to borrow some slides from the museum—she wanted to project London’s jewellery through the ages onto the walls. Watch out for them.’ As she spoke an image of diamond and pearl brooches taken from the Crown Jewels flashed onto the wall in front of them. ‘Oh, and here’s someone I’d like you to meet …’
A short, rotund man was approaching them, smiling shyly.
‘Kate, this is the librarian here at Goldsmiths’, Thomas Green. He might be able to help you with your feature. Thomas, this is Kate Kirby, a brilliant former student. She’s writing about the Cheapside jewels for an American magazine. I’ll leave you to it.’ This last line was shouted over the top of an Eminem grind as Lucia turned and headed towards a group of snappily dressed young men.
‘How can I help?’ Thomas asked kindly and Kate liked him immediately. Librarians were some of her favourite people.
Kate leaned close so he could hear her and asked, ‘I wonder if you could help me identify who owned the site where the Cheapside jewels were found?’
‘Well, that’s a complicated question. We think the cache was dug up at 30–32 Cheapside …’
‘Saanvi gave me the address and I walked past it on my way here,’ Kate told him. It was a stone’s throw from The Goldsmiths’ Company—opposite St Paul’s Cathedral.
‘Did you take the escalator to the basement? It’s right near the Marks and Sparks Food Hall.’
‘I did, but it’s hard to get the seventeenth-century vibe standing between a toilet block and a discount shoe store. The only sense of the past was St Paul’s dome framed between the glass walls of the escalator.’ She wondered how many Londoners knew they were literally pissing on their own history.
‘The problem is, there was more than one tenant on the premises. Rent books show a complex web of letting and subletting. There were local goldsmiths and stranger—that is, foreign—jewellers sharing quarters. Perhaps a group of jewellers combined their working stock in trade and it was those jewels that comprised the hoard dug up by the builder’s labourers hundreds of years later …’
The museum staff had painstakingly identified and catalogued the more than five hundred pieces. It seemed decadent—until you walked into any jewellery store on Bond Street or Park Avenue and counted just how many pieces were on display. And that didn’t include any special stock tucked away in safes.
‘Next week I’ll have another look at the rent books for the 1600s, see what else I can find.’
‘Thank you,’ said Kate.
Mr Green continued carefully, ‘But there’s no record of the navvies who allegedly found the stash. And we don’t know the discovery site for certain. Someone could have been covering their tracks. Made up the location so as not to reveal the true source of the treasure …’
‘If there are no records, then how do you know the jewels I saw at the museum were all part of the same cache?’
‘Good question. We don’t. The workmen were all digging in the same cellar on Cheapside around 1912. They pocketed clumps of dirt and tied up the jewellery in socks, shirts and handkerchiefs. Most of the jewels were acquired for the new London Museum over a number of months by an, ah, antiquarian called George Fabian Lawrence—otherwise known as Stony Jack.’
Kate pulled her notebook out and wrote the dealer’s name on a new page. As she wrote, she asked, ‘Did all the jewels from that Cheapside site go to him? Could the navvies have sold gemstones or jewels to someone else? Or kept them?’ She tried to keep her voice even, but she held her breath, thinking of Essie’s sketches of jewels and remembering the articles and notices she’d read back in Boston: Such articles belong to the City of London … liable to prosecution.
‘How would we ever know?’ He shrugged. ‘It’s possible that we’ll never know every piece. One of the workmen could have given a ring to their sweetheart or sold some gemstones to a dodgy diamond dealer on Cheapside. It was known as Goldsmiths’ Row, so there was no shortage of potential buyers.’
‘So some pieces of jewellery connected with the collection could be anywhere in the world?’
‘Exactly.’ The librarian smiled and excused himself as one of the actors brushed uncomfortably close. Kate suspected the librarian was eager to escape the surging crowds.
‘Was Thomas helpful?’ Lucia was back.
‘Yes. I’ve got plenty to follow up on when I’m back in London in a fortnight’s time.’
‘Back? Where’re you off to?’ asked Lucia.
‘Jane has instructed us to go to the source.’
‘But the jewels come from everywhere—Colombian mountains, Indian valleys and Sri Lankan beaches. Pearls from the Persian Gulf and Scottish Isles …’
‘I’ve decided to focus on a single piece to start with: one of the little champlevé rings.’
‘The black and white solitaire?’
‘Yes. The diamond is from Golconda.’
‘India. Yes, it’s one of our finest diamonds. But no-one knows the exact locations of the mines … and they don’t mine in the area anymore.’
‘I know. I’m taking a slightly different approach. I want to see the bazaar of Hyderabad where the diamonds of Golconda were traded. I’ve read so much about the famous European gemstone merchants travelling through Asia and Persia along the trade routes. Jane wants me—and Marcus—to investigate the source … so I want to get a feel for the place. Try to capture the hands that traded the stone—then created this ring—between India and London.
‘I’m also going to head to Sri Lanka. Up near Ratnapura, where Marcus says he has some contacts he can introduce me to. I’d like to see how the gemstones are mined today. Saanvi said some of the gemstones from Cheapside were possibly from that region.’
‘Sounds fascinating. Very different angle … can’t wait to see what you uncover!’ Lucia glanced at Kate’s earrings. ‘Gorgeous sapphires by the way.’
‘Thanks. They belonged to my great-grandmother.’
‘I bet there’s a lovely story behind them. From the cornflower colour … I’d say Sri Lanka?’
‘Perhaps.’ Kate felt her face grow hot. She knew how ridiculous it sounded. She spent her life flying around the world researching rare jewels, hunting stories, yet she didn’t know the first thing about these earrings. The sapphires were a daily reminder of how little she really knew of her great-grandmother Essie’s story. ‘I don’t really know,’ she muttered, embarrassed.
‘Nothing at all?’
‘My great-grandfather, Niall Kirby, was a merchant seaman who went into shipping out of Boston. These were his gift to Essie on their fiftieth wedding anniversary.’ Had the seaman known of the Ancient Greek belief that the sapheiros was the symbol of sincerity and faithfulness?
‘He died in his sleep soon afterwards, so nobody knows where the sapphires actually came from. I suspect you’re correct, though, and they were picked up for a song in Sri Lanka.’