While Fred and Becky didn’t live at the Pearl Exchange, it was their true home. They had built it, nurtured it, and continued to enhance it with the presence of their Third Planet Pearls collection. The huge collection was housed on the top floor of the Exchange.
Hannah barely acknowledged the introductions Archer performed when the Linskys greeted them. She was riveted by the cases of pearl objets d’art, the one-of-a-kind jewelry, and all the rest of the Linskys’ eclectic collection, including the sorting tables just visible through a doorway at the end of the huge room.
“Excuse me,” she said, turning back to Becky. “What was your question?”
Becky laughed and put her fragile but not frail hand on Hannah’s. “I asked if you were interested in pearls. Your eyes tell me you are. Would you like to see the collection?”
“We both would,” Archer said, “but I’m afraid we don’t have time for the full tour.”
Hannah made a soft sound of protest.
Becky smiled. “There are other days, dear.”
Because she didn’t know how to say she might not live to see those other days, Hannah simply smiled in return.
“A short tour, then,” Becky said, pinning Archer with her faded blue eyes.
“A short tour,” he agreed. Becky’s eyes might be faded, but her will wasn’t. Displaying their collection to an appreciative audience was one of the Linskys’ greatest pleasures. He wouldn’t deprive them of it.
Smiling, Becky walked eagerly toward a smooth cherry wood cabinet that was four feet high and divided into drawers that were wide and shallow. The top of the cabinet was clear, beveled glass, giving a view into the contents of the first drawer.
“Pearls were the first and most perfect of all the gems men used to make themselves and the things they prized more beautiful,” Becky said to Hannah. “The oldest pearl fishery we know of started off in Sri Lanka more than two thousand years ago. Others contend that the honor belongs to Persians, who have been bringing up shell in an organized manner for at least that long.”
Hannah looked down into the cabinet and saw what appeared to be irregular gold links forming a chain perhaps sixteen inches long. Small pearls, impaled on thin strands of gold, hung from some of the links.
“Forty-three hundred years ago,” Becky said, “pearls are mentioned as tribute in China. Mother-of-pearl has been found in Babylonian ruins that are more than four thousand years old. Where there is mother-of-pearl, there is, inevitably, pearl itself.”
“Is that how old this necklace is?” Hannah asked, startled. “Four thousand years?”
“No. Unfortunately, pearls are fragile. Buried in places that are either too damp or too dry, pearls die. The necklace you’re looking at has the oldest pearls in our collection. It graced the neck of a Persian aristocrat—probably a priest or priestess—before Christ was born.”
Archer had seen the necklace many times, but the history of it still fascinated him, as did the bottomless orient of the natural pearls themselves. White, ethereal, the luster of the pearls was like a sigh whispered through the ages.
“Why do you say a religious figure wore this necklace?” Hannah asked. It looked more decorative than symbolic to her.
“Odds,” Fred said before his wife could answer. “Throughout recorded history, whether in this hemisphere or the next, pearls were objects of veneration. Priests of both sexes had first call on pearls, except for the supreme ruler—who was likely a priest as well. It doesn’t take a great feat of imagination to see pearls and think of the moon, which was worshiped along with the sun. What is part of a god is also holy. If you own those pieces, you’re holy, too.”
“That’s the fascinating thing about pearls,” Archer said. “They’re symbols of both chastity and carnality, depending on the time and place.”
“A gem for all occasions,” Hannah said with a sideways look at him.
“A gem for all cultures,” Becky corrected. “Once pearl fisheries were established, pearls became the ultimate status symbol around the world. Whether in India, China, or Persia, the more pearls you wore, the higher you were in the pecking order. Romans wallowed in them. Caligula was mad for them.”
“Caligula was mad, period,” Archer said dryly.
“Just because he gave his horse a high appointment and hung a pearl necklace around the equine neck?” Fred asked. “Can’t say I blame Caligula. Most men haven’t the sense of a horse’s butt, much less the whole horse.”
“Cleopatra won a bet with pearls,” Becky said.
“Who had enough nerve to bet against her?” Hannah asked.
“Marc Antony. To prove to him how powerful and wealthy Egypt was, Cleopatra bet him that she could serve a feast that was more expensive than any in history. She sat him down with an empty plate and a goblet of wine. She probably smiled like her pet cat to see him watching her skeptically. Then she took off one of her earrings—a single huge pearl—smashed it, dissolved it in wine, and drank it. When she was finished, she handed the other earring to Antony and dared him to do the same. He conceded on the spot, for the earring she had drunk was worth almost two million ounces of silver.”
“Legend has it that he financed an entire military campaign with the proceeds of the second pearl,” Fred said.
“That was the general Vitellius and it was his mother’s pearl earring, not Cleopatra’s.”
“No, it was Antony, and it was Cleopatra’s pearl!”
Squaring off face-to-face, Becky and Fred started quoting sources, talking louder and louder, and generally having a great time. The higher the volume of the argument rose, the brighter their eyes got and the quicker their minds.
“Which was it, Antony or Vitellius?” Hannah asked Archer quietly.
“Vitellius. Antony took his to Rome, cut it in half, and made earrings for a statue of Venus.”
“Cut it in half . . .” Hannah repeated faintly. “For a statue.”
“It was an act of piety as much as arrogance. Romans were completely in thrall to pearls. The more they got through conquest, the more they wanted. They were insatiable and quite happy to bankrupt themselves for pearls.”
“You sound wistful.”
“I am,” Archer admitted, smiling a pirate’s kind of smile. “It would have been a great time to be a pearl trader.”
“Now isn’t so bad,” she said, looking around. “To see pearls like this at any other time, you would have to have been an emperor or a god.”
A gleam from another display case caught her eye. She looked at the Battling Linskys—no sign of a truce—and sidled closer to the new case. Sealed within its glass walls was a rectangle perhaps eighteen inches by fourteen inches. Its surface was gold. Countless pearls set in the gold depicted the clothes of a saint: headdress, robes, girdle, all glowed with the ethereal inner light of pearls. Rubies, emeralds, and sapphires were scattered about, but it was pearls which dominated, pearls which were the true measure of piety and wealth.
“Where on earth . . . ?” she whispered.
“Either a monastery or the library of a very wealthy man,” Archer said quietly. “It’s medieval, Russian, and one of the finest manuscript covers ever made by man. It fairly vibrates with awe and reverence, with hope for immortal life laced with fear of hell everlasting.”
For a moment all Hannah could think of was Len’s fingers digging into her arm as he screamed at her that the Black Trinity wasn’t finished, couldn’t be finished, or he would be whole. The image of his rage and fear was so vivid that she said his name in a low, husky voice.
“Don’t think about it,” Archer said. “He wasn’t the first man to go crazy and equate the temporal and temporary with the divine and eternal. There is something shimmering just beneath the surface of pearls that brings peace or madness, depending on the man.”
“I know. It’s just . . . sometimes it’s so fresh, as though it happened two seconds ago and the screams are still backed up in my throat.”
Archer reached for her before he rem
embered that all she wanted from him was protection and sex. Comfort wasn’t part of their deal. He put his hands in his pockets and turned toward the next display case. “Give it time. It will get better.”
He walked to a new case. “Here’s another piece of pearl history. Strings of pearls that could have graced the royal treasury of India or Persia any time in the last two thousand years. Probably did, if I know Fred. The traders know that he’ll pay more than anyone else for pearls with history attached to them.”
Hannah turned and focused on the case. There was indeed a mound of natural pearl strands, enough to make a maharajah or a prince weep. “Beautiful,” she said.
And they were, but not to her. Not at the moment. The ugliness of man still overwhelmed her.
“Iran has chests overflowing with strands like this. Priceless, even in the age of cultured pearls.”
Without touching Hannah, Archer led her down a row of cabinets, pointing out some of the highlights within. Pearl-encrusted necklaces from medieval Russia and England. Persian slippers smaller than his hand that were completely covered with seed pearls. A necklace of pearls, diamonds, rubies, and amethysts that had once belonged to a Mogul princess. A tiny gold box completely framed with pearls; it was reputed to have belonged to a mistress of Henry VIII.
“Hardly a recommendation for exclusivity,” Archer added. “He had mistresses the way some men had cups of wine.”
Hannah didn’t say a word. She was still working hard just to cope with the present.
“The interesting thing is that we only associate valuable pearls with salt water,” he continued, pointing to another case, “but modern appraisers of centuries-old jewelry find freshwater pearls again and again. Even today, the best of the freshwater pearls are sold as saltwater gems. We have an enduring prejudice in favor of the sea’s mystery.”
“Exactly,” Fred said as though he and his wife hadn’t spent the past five minutes arguing with each other. “I’ve always said that freshwater pearls beat saltwater gems any day.”
“Ha!” Becky said. “That’s foolishness and you know it. No freshwater pearl on earth can stand against a good South Seas gold.”
“Bull,” Fred roared. “What about that natural pink pearl I bought last year from Tennessee?”
“What about it?”
Archer hid a smile. The Battling Linskys were off and running.
Hannah looked at the old couple and smiled despite the turmoil of her own emotions. Their enthusiasm for an argument was matched only by their enthusiasm for each other; their love was as transparent as tears.
“Becky handles the saltwater end of their business,” Archer said.
“I never would have guessed,” Hannah said dryly.
He looked at his watch, sighed, and knew it wasn’t going to be a short visit. Silently he followed Hannah down the first row of cabinets and display cases. They passed in front of a wall with photographs of the most famous pearls in history, from Western queens to Eastern potentates, all of whom were draped with huge, priceless ropes of natural pearls. There was a photo of the Hope pearl, a monster white baroque weighing in at eighteen hundred grams. There was a nod to Elizabeth Taylor’s La Peregrina, bought for her by her lover and two-time husband, Richard Burton.
La Peregrina was a huge five-hundred-year-old pearl that had been owned by royalty. It was rumored to have been eaten by one of Taylor’s lap dogs; the pearl had emerged from the canine digestive tract a shadow of its former sizable, lustrous self. The picture on the Linskys’ wall was taken before the incident. Afterward, there probably hadn’t been much left to photograph.
“Sad, sad story,” Fred said, materializing at Hannah’s elbow. “Pity she didn’t feed him one of her whacking great diamonds. It would have emerged unscathed. Calcium carbonate is susceptible even to mild acids such as sweat, much less to the horrific acids in a mammalian gut.”
“I heard it was only well chewed, not swallowed,” Becky said.
“Either way, a legendary pearl was lost. I can’t imagine anyone feeding pearls to a pet.”
“I doubt that she fed La Peregrina to the dog.” Archer looked at his wristwatch and added, “It probably scarfed the pearl off a bedside table.”
“Barbara Hutton fed Marie Antoinette’s pearls to a goose,” Becky said.
“What?” Hannah said in disbelief.
“She heard that it was the best way to add luster to pearls.”
“Good God.” Hannah shook her head, appalled that anything so unique and valuable could have such an ignominious end. “So much history and beauty reduced to dog and goose droppings.”
“Look at it this way,” Archer said. “When Rome burned, the cream of the Persian pearls for the last millennium went up in smoke.”
“Stop,” she said. “I don’t want to think about it.”
“Then think about this.” He gestured to a prayer rug whose elegant geometric designs were outlined in pearls. “A devout, and devoutly wealthy, Muslim said his prayers on this five times a day.”
“Elegant and beautiful,” Hannah said. “But it would be like kneeling on frozen peas.”
Archer gave a crack of laughter. His hands reached to touch her, just for a few seconds, but he turned the automatic motion into one of looking at his watch.
“It’s still there,” Becky said tartly. “Is the buckle loose? You keep checking as though you expected your watch to be gone.”
“Guilty,” he said. “Hannah and I are on a tight schedule.”
“Young people. Always rushing from one place to another. Never enough time to appreciate the place where they are.”
“There isn’t enough time on earth to appreciate your pearls,” Archer said.
“Ha. Your collection—”
“Is just beginning,” Archer cut in firmly.
“I still say that if you would trade that South Seas gold paragon for our—”
“Quit tormenting the boy, Becky,” Fred interrupted. He tugged at the string tie he wore. His white shirt was so worn it gleamed like silk at the collar and elbows, but it was clean as a pearl. “He doesn’t want to let go of that beauty, and I don’t blame him. Instead of badgering him, let’s show him the new stuff. I want his advice on one of the lots.”
“I’m flattered,” Archer said.
“You should be,” Fred retorted. “I’m old, but I’m not a fool. I know my eyes aren’t what they used to be, even with magnifying lenses. The boy we hired to color-sort isn’t as good as he thinks he is. He sure as hell isn’t as good as you are.”
“Oh, all right,” Becky grumbled. “We’ll go to the sorting room.”
Hannah didn’t wait for a second invitation. She headed straight for the room that opened off the rows of display cases.
In some ways, walking through the wide door was like coming home. In one important way it wasn’t: Len wasn’t sitting in the corner, staring at her with eyes that weren’t quite sane. Nor was there the chatter and laughter of the Chinese workers who had slowly replaced the Japanese employees in Pearl Cove.
“What are you assembling here?” Archer asked.
He gestured to a sorting table where three groups of pearls were lined up on three different trays. The trays had channels of different sizes to hold the pearls in parallel, horizontal rows from top to bottom. Each tray held a separate color of South Seas pearls: black, gold, white. A nearby table held more pearls of each color, each in a separate tray. Small shipping boxes were stacked in the center. Each contained more pearls.
“That’s the beginnings of a necklace, part of a parure for an old client.” Fred sighed. “Or it will be if we ever get enough of the right pearls. Makes my eyes hurt just to think about it.”
“How many do you need?”
“Fifty of each. Minimum. A hundred would be better. Spherical is preferred. The client can afford it and we have our eye on another acquisition for our museum.”
Archer smiled in silent sympathy.
Hannah went to the table, looked at the
pearls that were being sorted, and glanced over at the nearby table. “Is your first sort for color?”
“Yes,” Becky said. “Since several pieces of jewelry are involved, color is more important than size variations. Luster is a very, very close second. So is shape.”
“May I?” Hannah asked.
Becky looked at Archer.
“I’m told she’s one of the best,” he said simply.
“Go ahead,” Becky said, gesturing.
Absently Hannah nodded. She was already focused entirely on the pearls. Switching on the overhead light, she began with the silver-white pearls. The gradations of color were both subtle and profound, enough for a roomful of philosophers to argue over. Yet she saw the differences as clearly as other people saw the gap between yellow, orange, and red.
Humming softly, enjoying the cool, silky weight of the pearls and the feeling of solving a fascinating puzzle, she sorted the gems. Like a Chinese merchant working an abacus, her fingers flew over the rows of pearls. Unlike an abacus, the pearls were free to jump up or down in the parallel rows.
When the sleeves of the jacket draped over her shoulders kept getting in the way, Archer removed it. She didn’t even pause in her work. In fact, he doubted if she even noticed what he had done. She was wholly caught in the spell of the pearls and the challenge of matching them one by one.
When she was finished, she stepped back. Only seven of the hundred pearls had survived the sort. She had placed them side by side on the top row of the tray. The rest were lined up on the rows below in order of diminishing acceptability of the color match.
“My God,” Fred said, staring.
“Incredible,” Becky agreed. She stepped forward and bent over the tray. “You’re very good, dear.”
“The pearls in the next row are an acceptable match,” Hannah said, “particularly if you’re looking for a bracelet or a brooch to go with the necklace. But I sorted first for the necklace, because that’s always the most difficult.” Rather wistfully she looked at the table where other pearls waited to be sorted.
“Go ahead,” Archer said quietly. “I don’t think the Linskys will mind.”
Pearl Cove Page 29
