The area in which they stood was cleared, but it looked like the vines and thick foliage of the rainforest a hundred metres away was creeping back in to swallow the valley. Gemstone roughs were only discovered in this region after they’d been dislodged and washed into the waterways. Streams, rivers and creeks ran through the mountains, leaving deposits of blue, pink and yellow sapphires and pink rubies, cat’s eyes and garnets, as well as a long list of other coloured gemstones—more gemstones than in any other place in the world.
‘Ratnapura: city of gems,’ said Marcus.
Kate looked up into the mountains and marvelled that the exact deposits of all these magical stones still remained a mystery. For reasons she couldn’t explain, this cheered Kate. She loved that Mother Nature didn’t reveal all her secrets.
Marcus ushered them over to a pit, where workers in white shorts hoisted buckets of gravel out with a series of pulleys. Their muscles strained at their necks and back, their skin was shiny with sweat. Marcus approached the foreman, who was expecting them, and introduced Kate and Liv. With the workers’ permission, Marcus started to take photos.
Liv spoke first. ‘I wasn’t expecting it to be so, so … hand-driven. I thought mining was mostly done by machine these days?’
‘Open-cut mines are forbidden,’ said the foreman. ‘At the end of the dry season, all these pits are dismantled and the holes filled in. Revegetated. The government keeps a close watch, too, regulating pay and conditions.’
Kate nodded and moved across to a small dam where a handful of men were winnowing gravel and water through straw baskets, fossicking for gemstones.
The men stopped and struck poses for Marcus as he clicked. A few waved shyly at Liv, and she waved back as she started to fiddle with the lens of her own camera. Marcus had given it to her yesterday. ‘For travelling when you’re done with school. I know it’s cumbersome, but this is the smallest, and you’ve got a great eye, so …’
Liv had given her father the biggest hug. ‘You really didn’t need to. I’m already so grateful for this trip. Beats studying in Sydney with my brothers kicking balls against my door all afternoon!’
‘Pleasure. And I promise I won’t tell your mother how much you’re missing Jacko and Harry.’ He grinned. ‘Can’t fool me, kiddo.’
Marcus dropped to one knee beside Liv to show her how to get a better angle to shoot the pits. He was patient and gave clear instructions, even when Liv started to thrust her camera under his nose in frustration because a light was blinking or the shutter wasn’t working.
‘Try again. You’ll get the hang of it.’
He glanced up at Kate and smiled, cocking his head on a slight angle with just the hint of a raised eyebrow. Kate would miss this look when they flew out on different planes tomorrow.
While she had been wrapping up her final day’s writing in Galle yesterday, an email had appeared in her inbox from an executive at Cartier asking if Kate were perhaps free to meet with their master enameller, Madame Parsons, at one of their workshops later this week in Paris. There was a private commission they wished to record for their archives, some sketches they’d like her to see—with the utmost discretion, of course. Kate realised that this brief meeting would give her an opportunity to talk with a master enameller about the champlevé ring. Perhaps get a different angle for her magazine article—Jane would be thrilled!
Kate would go to Paris, then return to London, before she could finally head home to Boston.
She’d asked Marcus on a whim last night to join her in Paris, but he had to fly back to New York for Fashion Week, and then to Colombia. He was going on from there to Sydney for Liv’s end-of-school celebrations that kicked off in a few weeks.
‘I promised Liv and Jules I’d be there. I missed those precious early moments—I’ll be damned if I’m going to miss this!’ His voice softened. ‘I’m sorry. If I’d known …’ Marcus’s dark eyes had bored into hers.
‘I get it,’ she said with burning cheeks. And she did understand. Marcus dived deep into every moment and held it steady. This was the end of their moment …
She wasn’t surprised. Marcus had shaken something awake in her and for that she was grateful. If she was embarrassed, it was because her mind had overshot into thoughts of the future and the past few years had taught her how dangerous that could be.
As Kate stepped forwards to peer into the pit, she studied the layers of sediment and rock and the shadows on sinewy arms heaving up buckets of gravel. Behind her, the scratching sound of winnowing baskets settled into a rhythm as the mist rolled down the mountains.
Beside her, one of the miners plucked at his basket of gravel like he was picking flowers. So many hands passed over a jewel from the moment it was removed from the gravel. Each time a life was altered.
Kate thought of the tiny black and white ring with the diamond from Golconda. Though it was probably mined in the 1600s, it was likely the pit mines had looked a little like this. She reflected on its journey from the mines, perhaps passing through the thick walls of the Golconda Fort she’d walked with Marcus in India, then being traded in Hyderabad’s bazaar with the call to prayer ringing out from the Charminar across the city. The diamond rough would have been wrapped up in silk or cotton, no doubt, then marched on the back of a bullock chain overland to Bandar Abbas, where perhaps this mysterious Polman bought it, along with other precious gems. He’d attempted to bring them to England on a ship, risking pirates and shipwreck, and had been murdered for his efforts. Somehow the diamond had made it into the hands of an artisan jeweller, who crafted the exquisite champlevé band. Such a beautiful diamond, such a hazardous journey. Kate was following the same journey, with the comfort and convenience of a plane. What both journeys shared was the quest for beauty, for truth.
THE SHIP
BANDAR ABBAS, PERSIA, 1631
Robbie Parker moved along the boom checking folds in the sails, ignoring the steady rocking of the ship. All around him the crew worked to load, roll and store barrels full of tobacco, Shiraz and fresh water below deck.
Behind him, the Discovery’s captain was murmuring with the surgeon about a new passenger.
‘His name’s Polman—Gerhard Polman,’ said the captain as he waved the transport papers.
‘Dutch?’ asked the surgeon.
‘Indeed. But he’s been here for decades. Paid the East India Company a hundred pounds for safe passage to London. Trouble is he’s poorly … and not from the drink.’
Robbie whistled. One hundred pounds was a king’s ransom. Why was this passenger paying so much?
The captain caught Robbie’s eye and gave him a stern look before barking, ‘Help, boy!’ He pointed to the longboat knocking at the prow, where the passenger lay on a stretcher, pale and sweating.
The sailors winched him up to the deck very slowly, careful not to knock him on the rail.
‘Almost aboard,’ coaxed the surgeon as the crew brought the stretcher to rest on the deck. The passenger yelped and clutched at his belly.
The Dutchman’s head tipped to one side and his white shirt caught in the breeze, billowing open at the neck. Beneath the shirt he wore a leather pouch on a string. He moaned, and tucked it away, buttoning up his shirt with shaky hands.