Lucia cut him off briskly as two pink apples appeared on her cheeks. ‘Happy to have you.’ She gave a little cough to clear her throat. ‘And you know Dr Kate Kirby, of course.’
‘Of course! Hello, Dr Kirby.’
He turned towards Kate and gave her a quick peck on the cheek, his unshaven face abrasive against her skin. He smelled of sweat and salt water.
She eyed his crumpled linen shirt and couldn’t help herself. ‘Did you surf here?’
‘Might as well have. Delays at Heathrow …’ He dropped his smile for a moment, eyes apologetic. ‘Hey, I’m really sorry to keep you waiting.’ He casually swung the camera bag onto the table and grabbed a second bag from the security guard. ‘Thanks, mate.’
Lucia was back to business and keen to be on her way.
‘Now let me introduce you to our team.’ She beckoned to the pair of women who had paused in their work at Marcus’s arrival. ‘This is Saanvi Singh, conservator of jewellery,’ Lucia said, introducing the dark-haired woman. ‘And Gayle Woods, curator of medieval arts.’
Marcus and Kate shook hands with each.
‘I was in Geneva last year—your paper on medieval brooch restoration was amazing,’ Kate told the conservator. ‘I’ve been quoting it ever since.’ She smiled. ‘Hope you don’t mind if I pick your brains while I’m here. I’ve got a big list of questions to ask.’
Saanvi blushed and nodded.
Lucia beamed at Kate. ‘Sounds like we got just the right person.’ She turned to Marcus. ‘Jane assured me you two make a great team.’
‘We do,’ said Marcus, smiling. ‘As long as I do exactly what Dr Kirby here instructs.’
Not for the first time, Kate was struck by his easy manner and casual, just-off-the-beach charm. He was comfortable around couture designers and jewellers, but equally attentive to academics and journalists.
‘Now, I can’t let either of you touch any of the jewels,’ Lucia warned. ‘I know you’ve signed the paperwork and all the non-disclosures, but I just have to make that very clear.’
Kate nodded then looked at the photographer.
He shrugged. ‘Sure,’ he agreed.
Kate’s heart started to race as Lucia keyed in the code to enter the safe room. Who knew what stories she was about to uncover? When most people looked at a gemstone or a piece of jewellery they saw astonishing beauty and exquisite devotion from their creators. Love and hope. But her job as a historian was to look past the shimmer and try to work out how each piece was made—and, importantly, why. It was up to her to join the dots between the craftsman and the recipient. Sometimes she found a trail of broken hearts and betrayal. Even murder. It was a puzzle Kate never tired of trying to solve.
She took a deep breath to steady her pulse as she stepped into the vault. Her eyes jumped between three rows of tables covered with velvet displaying ribbons of enamelled gold necklaces, to pools of sapphires and turquoise, from a row of gold buttons and diamond rings to the biggest emerald she’d ever seen, sitting atop a pedestal. The hairs on her forearms stood on end.
‘Boom!’ said Marcus as he entered the room with his camera bag. ‘I get how that person felt when they found the first diamond rough glinting in the light. Gets me in the guts every time.’
‘Me too,’ said Kate as she steadied herself against the closest table with her hand. She didn’t dare admit that sometimes her first glimpse of a famous jewel she had longed to see could be disappointing. Like meeting Tom Cruise and discovering he was much smaller in real life. Or when David Beckham started to speak with a high-pitched voice. How could reality ever compete with the retouched glossy images presented to the world?
But there was no disappointment this time.
Saanvi shot Kate a knowing look and ushered her across to the far table. ‘Hard to believe this collection was buried sometime in the 1600s.’ She waved at the enamel necklaces. ‘Those are pristine. They’d never have survived this long if they’d been worn. The enamel would have rubbed off, and the gold and jewels been sold or reworked and reset. If we start over here, I’ve laid out some of the pieces you requested. The rest are in the room we were just in for checking before they are packed back into storage. Here …’
Kate stepped to the edge of the velvet-draped table, angled the light and leaned down using the eyepiece she pulled from her kit bag to study a pale cameo—a Byzantine pendant. The catalogue image hadn’t prepared her for the soft drape of the robes, the repentant tilt of a head.
‘White sapphire?’
‘Yes. It’s St Thomas. This taller figure with his hands raised is Jesus, proving to his apostle that he was nailed to the cross.’
‘Then rose again.’ Kate longed to run a finger across the relief of St Thomas and the contours of the gold mount. Instead, she reached for her notebook and pen and started to take notes.
The Incredulity of St Thomas—most famously painted by Caravaggio.
She paused …
Here, in the relief of a translucent sapphire, Kate felt witness to something intimate and tender.
Top of pendant is a single natural pearl—piety and hope.
Trust and devotion. Unconditional love and hope.
A talisman for someone to wear close to their heart?
She imagined the Byzantine jewellery workshop crammed between stalls selling squeaky white cheeses, lemon-scented honey cakes, toasted pistachios and syrupy sweetmeats in front of the Great Palace in Constantinople. The lapidary craning over the gemstone in a sliver of light from his open window, whittling away the grooves with a tiny chisel and hammer to carve the hairline before polishing it on a stone wheel.
‘Who’s that?’ Marcus pointed at the teardrop pendant from the far side of the table as he set up his cameras and spotlights.
‘Doubting Thomas,’ said Kate.
‘Aren’t we all?’ he quipped as he screwed a wide lens onto his camera. He’d angled the lights over the jewellery, and a dark shadow obscured his face. There were stress lines at his eyes and across his brow.
Kate turned back to her work and scribbled Doubting Thomas in her notebook, and circled it.
Doubt was never far from her shoulder. Each day she asked, ‘What if?’ in essays and articles. Her life was consumed with questions of the past. Her ex, Jonathan, had said as much the day he’d left her for New Zealand two years ago. He’d decided to take a different path to healing—apparently Kate was no match for pristine mountains and endless fly-fishing.
‘Katie,’ he’d said with his typical surgeon’s plainspeak, ‘you spend all this time travelling around the world chasing other people’s stories. When you’re home, you’re hiding in that library wallowing in the past, looking at other people’s treasures. When are you going to look up?’
But Jonathan could never understand what a joy it was to spend hours deep in books and archives, studying precious jewels that whispered secrets from long ago.
At the opposite table was a trio of cameos made to be worn at the neck: a Florentine portrait; Queen Elizabeth in Spanish Armada-style; and an intricate carving of Aesop’s fable ‘The Dog and the Shadow’. These spoke of seventeenth-century London. Home to immigrants and travelling artisans and craftsmen who crisscrossed the oceans and travelled silk routes, laden with wooden chests and saddlebags filled with spices, seeds and gold.