The Secret Language of Stones

by M. J. Rose

  The next hour passed slowly. We had been in shock, but the longer we waited, the more the reality of what had almost happened to us sunk in. Both of us jumped at the castle’s every creak. Were trees brushing against the window, or had Grigori come back to check on us? Was that a gull crying, or was someone calling out in Russian? What if the people Grigori had mentioned came before nightfall? What if they arrived before the police?

  Finally we heard a car’s tires grating gravel. The Dowager took my hands, closed her eyes, and bowed her head, whispering a litany of words under her breath. Even though I couldn’t understand her, I knew she was praying that help had arrived. Friends, not foes.

  And it had. We were taken to a safe house where we were well taken care of for the next twenty-four hours while the royal household prepared the ship to take her back to Yalta and arranged my passage to France.

  And then it was time to go.

  The Dowager touched my cheek and gave me a wise and sad smile. Around her neck, under her dress, the Dowager wore the emerald egg necklace. But on top of the black satin bodice, the talisman I’d made for her hung on a silken cord. She reached for it and held it tightly in her fist.

  “You know, it was your magic that saved me and gave me hope when all hope had been lost. I will keep your magic orb with me always, but not to use as a gateway to whatever doom my family may or may not be experiencing.” She shook her head. “No, I will hold on to this for the promise it offers of a future, one in which they, like me, have been rescued. And that someday, in this life or the next, I will be reunited with them.”

  Then she took off one of her gold rings we hadn’t needed to melt, and handed it to me.

  “Will you take this as a token of my thanks?” she asked.

  “I would be honored.”

  She kissed me on each cheek and then let me go.

  I was immensely relieved to see her off without our trying to learn the fate of her grandchildren from the talisman. The entire enterprise went against the very purpose of my ability. My job was to bring solace, not stir up turmoil. My hearing the children’s voices would have caused her nothing but pain and sorrow. She wouldn’t have been a mourner asking for closure but rather a woman who still had hope having it dashed. And in not asking me to discover her grandchildren’s fate, she had in turn given me a great gift. I never had to see her face dissolve in agonizing grief, a sight I never would have been able to unsee, never have been able to forgive myself for causing.

  If I’d been traveling alone, I would have been nervous on the crossing back to France, worried that Grigori had found out I’d survived, but the Dowager had arranged with King George to have one of his guards escort me safely home. The return trip proved as smooth a journey as the voyage over had been rough. Little had I known then that Grigori had been the Bolshevik spy I was searching for on the way over.

  Now I dreaded what faced me back in Paris. I was going to need to tell Monsieur Orloff and Anna about Grigori. I’d witnessed their sorrow and watched them mourn when Timur died. But he’d died with honor. I feared this in its way would be worse.

  They listened to my story without emotion, but when I finished, Monsieur broke down. He sat at their dining room table and put his head in his hands and wept like a child. Anna put her arms around her husband and began to whisper in his ear. I stood to leave them, he to his grief and disappointment and she to the job of comforting.

  I’d reached the door when Monsieur called out.

  “Opaline, don’t go.”

  I turned.

  “You should stay with us. Mourn with us. You are part of our family. You’ve suffered too. This has been tragic for you as well.”

  “But I’ve let you down. Because of me, Grigori is gone. You may never see him again.”

  “Because of you?”

  “If I hadn’t discovered what was going on in the castle, hadn’t realized what their plan was, he and I would have returned home. I’d have done what you asked—made the Dowager’s talisman and given her your gift—and Grigori’s trespass would have gone undetected. And I let Timur down. Because of me he died without hope.”

  Monsieur rose and came to me. He put a hand on each of my shoulders and looked into my eyes. I’d never stood so close to him. Never noticed his eyes were the exact same brown diamonds as Grigori’s.

  “Because of you, one of my sons died believing he was well loved. Even if you think you should have given him more hope than you gave him, he didn’t. He loved you, little one, and he believed you were going to be here when he came home.”

  “How do you know—”

  “He wrote to me,” Monsieur interrupted.

  I looked at Anna, wondering why she’d let all this time pass without telling me. But she looked as surprised as I was.

  “Pavel, why have you said nothing before now?” she asked.

  “I didn’t know before now how Opaline felt. That she thought she could have done more.” He turned back to me. “He wrote to me and said how happy he was and how much he loved you and he believed you loved him back. And having read his words,” Monsieur said, “how could I ever be anything but thankful to you? My child was not alone in his last thoughts because of you, darling girl. For that, I will always be grateful. So grateful I must make sure you understand you are in no way responsible for Grigori’s escape. He was his mother’s son. I never really faced that fact, never wanted to see it or admit it. But he was. I’ve always feared one day he would return to her and to the new Russia.” He shook his head slowly, with regret. “No, you aren’t responsible for me losing my son. But you are responsible for saving my sovereign, for protecting the Dowager.”

  He kissed my forehead, and I felt one of his tears moisten my skin. “You are a gem, Opaline. And I am forever in your debt.”

  I went down to my bedroom. Depleted. Exhausted. It was going to take days for me to process what had happened in England. Perhaps years to understand it. But it would have to wait. Now that I had delivered my news, there was only one thing left on my mind. And I did not know how I was going to face it or cope with it. Jean Luc was gone. He’d left when we were in the castle and he hadn’t returned. The talisman around my neck was nothing but a cold crystal bauble, as empty of magick as my soul was of hope.

  I needed to return the books Madame Alouette had lent me. But first I had to finish reading the rest of his columns. I spent the next few days going over and over his words, his phrases, his insights. Grieving for him in a way I’d never grieved for anyone.

  Finally, on Thursday evening, I took the walk he wrote about in his final column, the one he’d written just before meeting his death.

  He’d invited his Ma chère to take a boat ride on the Seine. There were no tourist boats anymore. Not during war. But I found a tugboat and paid the captain handsomely to let me stand on the bow as he took his final trip of the day. So while twilight settled over the city, as the magical l’heure bleu descended, as the boat journeyed on the gently flowing river, I read Jean Luc’s last words and shed the last tears for him I would allow myself.

  Ma chère,

  As the boat takes you down the Seine, look at the people going about their lives on the banks of the river. Life goes on whether we want it to or not. Sometimes here, I think of Paris and am amazed people are still baking bread—even if it’s brown bread—and going to the museum, and walking in the beautiful gardens and washing their clothes and punishing their children. Amazed anything but this hell exists.

  Does something truly exist if we are not there to witness it?

  Just because I cannot see those people going about their business doesn’t mean they aren’t doing it. Just because they don’t know of my existence in this rat-infested watery trench doesn’t mean I’m not here.

  I love the Seine. The river is the heart of the city. And you are the heart of my heart. The water is our lifeblood, mixing, mingling. Th
e bridges are our hands meeting. One side connected to the other. We can’t be together in the flesh, but you can look through my eyes and see what I saw and feel what I felt. You can know that even here, so far from you, I hold your heart in me. Like the precious gift it is. And I will hold it within me always.

  Epilogue

  FEBRUARY 5, 1919

  A brilliant sun warms the winter afternoon as best it can. Through an open window a bird’s song drifts in from the garden. None of the roses are blooming, but the hard tight buds will be appearing soon. Spring is only weeks away. I can hear it.

  The war ended in November, and our world is slowly returning to normal. There are baguettes made of white flour in the bakeries, meat in the butcher shops, men of all ages in the street, and women are dressing up again in shimmering silks with fringes and sequins.

  My great-grandmother is once more entertaining in the grand style she enjoyed before 1914. She plans to enjoy her celebrity as one of the last great courtesans as long as there are gentlemen who still arrive bearing gifts of perfume or jewels in exchange for a delightful evening’s entertainment.

  I haven’t seen Madame Alouette since visiting her home to return Jean Luc’s columns, but every so often, in the pages of Le Figaro, I read about the work she and Madame Ladd are carrying on with the wounded soldiers.

  The stream of grieving mothers and sisters, daughters, wives, and lovers visiting number 130 has stemmed. Our door is now open for customers shopping for jewelry to celebrate life, not grieve death. My wartime services are no longer required, and I have been relieved of my duty of freeing lost souls from their families’ mourning.

  Monsieur and Anna’s youngest son, Leo, returned home a true hero. His presence has done much to relieve the sadness in the Orloff home caused by Grigori’s transgression and defection—old friends have reported seeing him in Petrograd—and the finality of Timur’s death.

  My job is mine for as long as I want it, the Orloffs told me, and when and if I am ready, Monsieur is prepared to fulfill his promise. I keep the idea of a shop of my own, shining like a beacon, in my sights. I want it. I’m almost ready for it. But I feel my work at La Fantaisie Russe remains unfinished. I sense there is an important lesson still to be learned.

  I returned home to Cannes, as promised, a month after the war ended, to study with my mother. This time, I wanted to. I was both anxious and eager to claim my heritage and understand it. Over dinner one night, I gave her back the ruby necklace I’d stolen from her that day at the dock and was surprised when she smiled and told me she’d been happy when I took it. It was a rite of passage for women like us, for Daughters of La Lune, to strike out on their own, she’d said.

  Now back at La Fantaisie Russe, in the glorious Palais Royal, I am alone in the workshop. Monsieur has taken an assortment of bracelets and rings to a client’s home for a private showing. Anna works in the front of the shop. Leo, who’s taken up his old spot at the other workstation in the studio, is down in the vault, overseeing the repairs. The crevice through which I’d seen the Bolsheviks ­meeting—as it turned out the men I’d seen weren’t German spies after all, but Russians working with Grigori—has been cemented over, but the walls need fortification.

  As I sit at my station, setting pearls into a diadem for a wealthy New York socialite visiting Paris and staying at the nearby Ritz Hotel, the bell rings, signaling a customer, and I hear Anna open the door and welcome someone in.

  “I’m hoping you might be able to help me?” A man’s voice. A honeyed voice, deep and rich like caramel.

  “Of course, Monsieur,” Anna says.

  “My mother purchased this here last year. And these gold threads broke. Might you be able to repair it? It’s quite dear to her. It has my hair in it.”

  “But of course,” Anna says, then hesitates. “This is one of our lockets, but how can it be?” She sounds incredulous.

  I put down my tools and take a step closer to the door.

  “How can that be, Madame?”

  “You said your hair is inside?”

  “Yes. My mother brought it here.”

  I take a step closer and peer out. I can see Anna’s back, but not the soldier’s. Only his shadow. I lean against the doorjamb.

  “This was the kind of talisman we made for women who lost loved ones in the war. But you are here, very much alive,” Anna says.

  “Ah yes. Well, there’s an explanation. You see, during the war I was badly wounded. I almost died. In fact, I spent six weeks unconscious. During that time, no one knew who I was. When I’d arrived at the hospital, my identification papers were so drenched and muddied they dissolved when the nurse tried to read them.”

  “And so they told your parents you were—”

  “The rest of my unit had been found dead, so yes, they told my family I’d been killed.”

  “Oh, how lucky for your mama.” Anna’s voice cracks. She is unable to hold back her tears, thinking of Timur, I know, of her lost son who would never be coming back.

  I can’t hold back my tears either. I wipe at them as I step out into the storefront and look at the man standing in front of Anna, holding one of my talismans in his long, lovely fingers.

  The soldier sees me. My eyes meet his. They are midnight navy—the color of a sky full of stars with a full moon shining. The same color as his mother’s.

  Even through the blur of so many tears, I know his face.

  Does he know mine? Does he remember the weeks we’d spent in some kind of miraculous communion with each other? Does he remember that somehow, while his body rested in deep slumber, his soul had left and met mine?

  Jean Luc’s brow furrows. He cocks his head and looks at me as if he is trying to place me.

  I take one more step forward.

  “I made the talisman for your mother, and I’d be happy to repair it.” My voice quivers.

  “Have we met?” he asks me. “Everything about you is familiar. But I don’t know your name.”

  “Opaline Duplessi,” I say, extending my hand.

  “I’m Jean Luc Forêt,” he replies as he grasps my trembling fingers.

  The flow of warmth is immediate. I can see from his expression he feels it too. No, he doesn’t remember, but he hasn’t quite forgotten either.

  We remain there, hands clasped together, like those beautifully weathered bronze hands on the Famille P. Legay tomb in Père-Lachaise. But we are both alive and generating a heat I’d believed I would never feel again.

  It will take some time to figure out what exactly happened and then more time to explain it to him. Or perhaps that isn’t necessary, because all that matters is that we will have the time now. We will have all the time he thought had been stolen from him, all the time we will need to visit all the places he’d dreamed about while at the front. All the time it will take for me to show him I am his Ma chère.

  Author’s Note

  As with most of my work, there is a lot of fact mixed in with this fictional tale.

  Paris during the Great War is described as close to the truth as possible. The bombings, strife, rations, numbers of dead and wounded are all based on fact. You can visit all the streets, bridges, buildings and churches, museums, and cafes I wrote about except for the shop where Opaline works, La Fantaisie Russe in the Palais Royal. However, I did base it on the jeweler Georges Fouquet’s very beautiful boutique, which you can visit in the Musée Carnavalet. The tunnels under the Palais do exist and were used for all kinds of clandestine operations during the war.

  There were indeed laws in France forbidding fortune telling and necromancy so as to prevent charlatans from taking advantage of the grieving, and while there were many types of spiritualism practiced, I am not aware of anyone who worked with talismans the way Opaline did.

  Anna Coleman Ladd’s “Studio of Miracles” did exist and restored dignity to countless men, but there wasn’t a s
culptor there named Denise Alouette. Jean Luc’s mother, like him, is a character of my invention.

  Le Figaro was and still is one of the great French newspapers, but there never was a Ma chère column.

  Thousands of Russian émigrés flooded the city in those early years of the twentieth century, but there wasn’t a jeweler named Pavel Orloff that I am aware of. For generations there were rumors—still unproven—that the tsar sent emissaries from Russia to other countries, well before the revolution, with treasures to safeguard, but the Rainbow Diamond collection I described in this novel does not exist.

  As far as I know, the Dowager Empress never undertook a secret journey to England during that last year of the war. It is true, however, that in her lifetime, she claimed to never believe her grandchildren had all perished along with her son. She always held out hope.

  Acknowledgments

  To Sarah Branham, my amazing editor, for her patience and creativity and insight—if this novel shines—it is because of her.

  To my wonderful publisher and friend Judith Curr for her steadfast faith in my work.

  To the legendary Carolyn Reidy, CEO of Simon & Schuster, whose respect for authors makes all the difference.

  To Lisa Sciambra, Hillary Tisman, Andrea Smith, Suzanne Donahue, Haley Weaver, and everyone whose hands this book passed through—your hard work and creative thinking is greatly appreciated.

  To Alan Dingman for covers that somehow get more and more beautiful every year.

  To Dan Conaway, no writer could have a better agent, and I could have no better friend.

  To Taylor Templeton for her patience and cheer, and everyone at Writers House whose help is invaluable.

  To Inezita Gay-Eckel without whom I would never have found La Fantaisie Russe, and that’s just the beginning. You opened up the magical world of gems to me and became such a dear friend in the process, thank you. And to all the other wonderful professors at L’ÉCOLE Van Cleef & Arpels in Paris. The week I spent with you learning about the art of jewelry-making influenced every page of this novel.