‘Are you okay?’ Marcus glanced up from the emerald watch he was studying from every angle, as he tried to position his lights and lightbox for a few more shots.
Saanvi stepped towards Kate and put a steadying hand on her arm.
Embarrassed, Kate shrugged and lied, ‘Jetlag. Sorry!’
Marcus held her gaze for a beat, brows creased with concern. ‘We can finish this tomorrow, if you like.’
‘I’m fine, honestly. I don’t want to miss a thing here …’ She stretched and examined the table, taking in the cameos, the salamander, the emerald watch … the pomander.
Where to start?
Every story needed a big opener. The emerald watch seemed the obvious choice, but her eye kept being drawn back to the little black and white ring. The simplicity of it touched her.
At Kate’s nod, Saanvi picked it up in her gloved hand and held it under the light. As the ring turned and the diamond flickered like a flame Kate wondered why this simple ring had been buried in a damp cellar with the much more valuable pendants and the watch.
The diamond was table-cut and clear. Kate used her eyepiece to scan the stone for variations. Flaws. Nowadays a diamond could be filled and baked, then sent off for certification that they were perfect; the rough would be brilliant-cut to throw sparkle around the room.
Kate made careful notes.
3–4 ct, late 16th century or early 17th century?
Small gold band. Possibly for child or small woman. Champlevé enamel. Mannerist style. Black flowers painted onto white. Pansies? Forget-me-nots?
Engagement, or memento mori ring?
What promises were made with this ring? How had it ended up in the Museum of London?
‘Saanvi, do you know where this stone is from?’
The conservator smiled. ‘That I can tell you,’ she said. ‘We’ve had this stone tested alongside some others, and we know the rough was from Golconda. So this ring—’ she held it up to the light so it glowed with the warmth of a candle ‘—started its life in India.’
THE DIAMOND ROUGH
GOLCONDA, INDIA, 1630
The boy woke to the screams of his brother. It had been this way since the last moon.
Sachin rose from the straw mat he shared with his father, fastened his leather belt around his waist in a knot and padded quietly across the dirt to where his older brother Arjun lay in the corner, his hands and feet bound with twine.
Kneeling, Sachin placed a hand gently on the young man’s thigh to calm his thrashing. Next, the boy loosened the ropes from around Arjun’s ankles before cradling his brother’s head in his arms. He kissed the top of Arjun’s head and whispered a prayer to Mahadeva.
Arjun knocked the boy off balance with his closed fists, but the whites of his eyes were like those of a frightened animal. He whimpered and tried to curl himself into a tighter ball.
Sachin could smell dried piss on his brother’s skin. He stood, then helped Arjun to his feet. He’d take him to the river’s edge to finish his ablutions and pray.
In the opposite corner of their mud hut, his mother and sister were kneeling next to the hearth. The younger woman was rolling out balls of wheat dough and black sugar with the heel of her palm. Their mother was dropping spices into the large clay pot of tea simmering over the coals: a stick of precious cinnamon, a thumb of ginger, a fistful of cloves and cardamom buds. Already the spices were mixing with the smoke and a sweet woody scent filled the hut. Geetha, his eldest sister, would go out to their shared village cow and return with a tiny pitcher of warm creamy milk to finish their chai.
As they walked outside into the crisp air, Arjun turned his head and sniffed—like a camel might sniff the wind—then visibly relaxed. He giggled as his breath floated up to the clouds, lifting his bound hands to catch the white puffs as though they were butterflies.
Sachin’s chest tightened as he glimpsed the weeping red welts on his brother’s wrists. He wondered if his mother could spare him a little turmeric and ghee to massage into these wounds.
How he wished he could unbind Arjun’s wrists. But ever since his brother had shoved the village Brahmin up against a stone wall when the priest came to offer prayers, their father had promised to keep his eldest son bound up like he was a beast.
The priest said Arjun had the devil’s fever, but he was wrong. Arjun wasn’t evil. He was just scared and broken since the accident in the mine the year before. It was a wonder he hadn’t died, Sachin thought. Arjun had been buried beneath a pile of rubble when the edge of the pit he was working in had collapsed. He hadn’t been the same since.
Nobody met their eyes as they walked past hundreds of huts just like theirs to the river’s edge.
The mountain escarpment loomed up from the foothills, smothered by jungle. The air was thick and humid, and beads of sweat were already forming at his brow. Morning birdsong and the screeches of wild monkeys rang out from deep in the rainforest. Not for the first time, Sachin wondered what it would be like to walk beyond the fringe of these lush trees and vines. To lose himself among the foliage.
What lands—what kingdoms—lay beyond these mountains?
They walked past a wooden caravan pulled by a dozen dusty oxen. The road between the mines, Golconda Forts, Hyderabad and the port of Goa was a steady parade of caravans loaded with cotton, silk, rice, corn and salt. Others would carry spices with the scent of foreign lands, plus sugar and mace. Mostly the merchants were nomads or Persians. But lately there had been an assortment of foreigners dressed in strange dainty shoes, sweating in long stockings, woollen pantaloons and waistcoats, curled hair plastered to their foreheads.
These fleshy pink men who stank like pork would walk through this village of mud huts and thatched roofs, cursing and swatting away the goats and chicks in their dusty path. They tried to bribe their way into the mines studded between the riverbank and the foothills, but the merchants and guards would have none of it. These mines belonged to the King of Golconda, and if the foreigners wanted to view the diamond roughs they had to go to the village bazaar with all the other merchants.
An ox flicked its tail, listless, as one of the foreigners ordered bags of millet to be unloaded from his wagon. Sachin had heard that this man with pale skin and sunburned nose and cheeks had paid twenty thousand gold pagodas for a ruby and a handful of rough gemstones at the bazaar. He tried to imagine the weight of that gold, and what it would buy for his parents and siblings. They could have Arjun treated by one of the city healers. Buy a herd of cattle for milking and soft curd cheese. Perhaps a field to sow rice or millet. For certainly his parents were aged and hunched before their time, and had just three pagodas a year to thank for their efforts in the mines.
Sachin walked slowly downhill to where the Krishna River roared over its bed of pebbles. Arjun kept tugging him, eager to reach the water. This shared morning ritual of bathing in the river would be the only happy interlude in Sachin’s day before he kneeled for prayers then went to work in the pits.
After bathing, Sachin kneeled beside his brother on the muddy riverbank to give thanks before he spent the day digging up the gravel in their new pit. He could hear women nearby winnowing gravel in straw baskets then tossing it onto the flat bed of prepared dirt for it to dry. As it dried, children would rake the gravel, turning it over and over in the hot air before their mothers would push them aside to beat the gravel with wooden batons. When this was done, the gravel would be scooped into baskets, and the winnowing would begin again.