by Tobias Hill
For B –
Also to Shimon and Elazar,
Different brothers
A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself
CAMUS, ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’
Contents
1 Sterne
2 Brothers
3 The Function of Pain
4 Three
5 The Love of Stones
Acknowledgements
By the Same Author
Praise
1
Sterne
Years before his murder on the Bridge of Montereau, Duke John the Fearless of Burgundy commissioned a jewel called the Three Brethren. It was the shoulder-knot of a cloak, a triangle of stones connected by crude spurs of gold. It was wide as a piece of armour across the collarbone. The jewel gained its name from its three balas rubies, which were identical in every way.
If I close my eyes I can see them, always. The balases are not true oriental rubies. Instead they are a certain colour of the mineral spinel, the shade lying between rose and blood. These rubies, the oriental and the balas, are both formed of oxygen and aluminium; but spinel also contains a single atom of magnesium, and this reduces its hardness and lustre. In India, where the ruby is the Lord of Stones, there are caste systems of jewels. They are as old and intractable as the orderings of people. In the castes of rubies, the balases are vaisya, the third rank of twelve.
The origins of most medieval jewels lay in Asia, and the source of the greatest balases was Badakshân, on the banks of the Shignân, a tributary of the Oxus. There is no record of how the stones came to Burgundy. Keep going back into the history of stones, and the people begin to fall away. Go back far enough, and there are only stones. There is nothing written of who brought the rubies to Burgundy.
The Brethren of John the Fearless were table-cut gems, big flat stones, the size and shape of tiles in a game of dominoes. Set with three pearls around a central diamond, with a fourth pearl hung from the triangular form, the Duke’s jewel was broad as the palm of an outstretched hand. The diamond was flawless, five-eighths of an inch square at the base. It was cut by the Belgian jeweller Louis de Berquem, and became known as the Heart of Three Brothers. The Heart was the model for De Berquem’s new lapidary design. It was faceted like a pyramid, echoing the growth of a raw diamond.
I close my eyes. I see it again. The beauty of the complete jewel lies in the quality of its stones, the spaced balance of its setting, and in the slight asymmetry of its radial structure. It is strikingly modern in its bold lines and functionalism. It is all gold hooklets and wires and claws. But the Brethren also looks archaic. There are the natural cuts of its jewels, as if the crystals are still alive and growing. And there is the jewel’s geometry. I see the outline of a talisman in the alignment of pyramid, triangle, surfaces, planes.
John the Fearless was the second Valois duke of Burgundy. He was a loose-skinned man with the eyes of a chess player. Of the four dukes, he was the only one who knew how to manipulate an army. At the age of twenty-four he was captured on the bloody fields of Nicopolis, and held for a ransom of two hundred thousand ducats and twelve white falcons by Sultan Bayazid. He learnt caution from the experience, and a degree of cruelty.
Even in paintings, posed, John always looks as if he is planning. He was a political man, an employer of assassins. A wearer of great jewels. Hard to pity, even knowing what waits for him when the sitting is finished, and the painter gone.
In John’s lifetime, no commoner in Europe had ever worn a diamond. He lived in an age when jewels were the international currency of power. The display of stones had more to do with muscle than desire. A great ruby might be beautiful, but the beauty made it functional. It was the means to wage wars, after all, or the motive for waging them. The dowry to avert invasion, or the sacred mystery that justified it. Jewels were still Mysteries, then. It was less than three lifetimes since Louis the Ninth had built the Sainte Chapelle to house the Crown of Thorns. A jewelled relic in a jewel-chamber of stained glass and lancets and spandrels.
When I read the inventories of the Valois dukes I recognise something in myself. The care of the scribes, the precise writing, which is a kind of passion. Love of things, love of power. I see it in the catalogues of John’s uncle, where Valois jewels are recorded carefully, without error, as if they might be weapons or the names of lovers.
Item six; fourteen named rubies.
Item seven; fifteen fragments of the true cross.
Item eight; an ostrich’s egg.
Item nine; a porcupine’s quill.
Item ten; an elephant’s molar.
John Valois was born into a dynasty that accumulated a great number of jewels. His own father had been a vain but practical man: Philip the Bold had married Margaret of Male, whose habits were thought ugly (she was fond of whistling and sitting on grass), but who inherited Flanders and its merchant ports. Burgundy was already rich with wine and salt. John’s father had added wealth on an industrial scale. His ornamentation was famous. To meet an English envoy he once wore a velvet coat with a running embroidery of broom, the pods worked in sapphires, with rosebuds of pearls and twenty-two blossoms of rubies.
It was the first decade of the fifteenth century when John Valois commissioned the Three Brethren. His Burgundy had become a lean, mercantile state. It strengthened every year, and every year its neighbour, France, seemed to weaken. The kingdom was unsteady, with its child dauphin and lost wars. Whereas Burgundy was all strength. All wine and jewels. Burgundy looked as if it might last for ever.
Weakness attracts. The neighbours of France began to lean against it. From England, Henry the Fifth ferried men to the port towns of Calais and Boulogne. In the east, John began to acquire what was there for the taking. He spent years in Paris, joining in its machinations and assassinations. His mercenary armies fought westwards across the marches of France.
He took Paris but never held it. He won battles but not the wars. He could have succeeded, and the history of the Brethren would have been quite different. The jewel might never have been lost. Nevertheless, by 1419 the French dauphin Charles Valois had reached the age of sixteen and not lost his country or his life. He asked to meet his cousin John, and the Fearless Duke accepted. The rulers were to converse on neutral ground. For this purpose they agreed on the bridge at Montereau, where their forces could be divided by water.
A split enclosure was built on the bridge, a structure which could separate the rulers both from those outside, and from each other. The dauphin’s men emptied the bridge houses and crossing. Jehan of Poitiers was with the French as they waited for John to arrive. In his journals he describes a conversation between the future Charles the Seventh and one of his knights, Robert Lord of Trèves:
We noticed, from the behaviour of the said lord of Trèves, that he wanted to detain the king and to speak with him more at length and, as it seemed to us, he was contradicting what the king said. Then the king left him abruptly, and had the said lord of Trèves summoned two or three times to follow him. But he would not go, and remained in the room with us and several others whose names I forget. As soon as the king, then regent, had left, we saw the lord of Trèves flop onto a bed, so we went up to him and asked what was the matter. He replied in these words: ‘Monsieur of Valence, I wish to God that I was in Jerusalem without money or belongings, and that I’d never met this lord here, for I’m very much afraid that he’s been wickedly advised and that he’ll do something today which will be very damaging both to him and to his kingdom.’
There were rules to the meeting. Charles made them, and John kept to them. Only unarmed advisers were allowed into the enclosure. The doors were locked behind them. It was dim inside, and cool. There was the smell of tallow. The sound o
f water. The sound of curlews.
John was a middle-aged man who already looked old. Charles was a king in the skin of a boy. It was forty-two years before he would starve himself to death, unable to eat through fear of poison. For now, the two Valois rulers were equal in every way but rank. It was the Duke who went to the barrier, opened it, and knelt at the feet of the child.
Charles took John’s hand. There are records which say he gave a signal with his eyes; and records which do not. He began to raise his cousin, but the gesture was never completed. One of the dauphin’s men, Tanguy de Chastel, began to move. He took a step towards the kneeling figure, and another. He took an axe from his robes as he came, the haft cut short. He hefted it.
He struck down across John’s head, splitting the bone open. A cry went up, spreading to those outside. The Burgundian army lined the river, but when it tried to reach the Duke it found French crossbowmen hidden in the abandoned buildings. The knights were pushed back, leaving the Duke behind, with the King.
Of the Burgundians inside, only John himself was armed. Now he tried to draw his sword. He was badly wounded, or half-dead, or dying; the blood in his face where the skull was broken. The hand on the sword was thoughtless, I think. The instinct of the body to protect itself. It was only one sword, and much too late. To shouts of ‘Kill! Kill!’ from the French, Robert de Lairé held John’s arms back by the sleeves (of black velvet, with pods of broom and rosebuds of pearls), and Tanguy de Chastel axed him again across the crown of his head.
It took four blows to kill the Fearless Duke. After his murder, his carcass was given up by the French. It was taken back to Dijon, where the body and heart could be buried in the church and the soil.
And the Three Brethren went with them. With the great cloak it was unknotted from the shoulder of the dead man. It was unfastened from the cloak and put away in the vaults of Burgundy, with the fragments of the Cross and the molars of elephants. The jewel had outlived its first owner. It was still perfect in itself. Still unmarked by ownership.
* * *
‘They say that God made men from clots of blood.’
He has a smooth voice, smooth hands, and the critical eyes of a pawnbroker. Now he can see the stones I’ve brought, he looks at them instead of me. I relax. Not too much. His name is Ismet, and he is in the business of jewels.
‘Clots of blood. May I ask where you bought these, Miss Sterne?’
‘No.’
‘I didn’t think so. You know, you remind me of myself.’
When I don’t answer he goes on talking. ‘Yes. You look like you have done this before. Will you drink tea? I can have some brought down.’
‘Not now.’
He talks a lot, I think. More than he needs to, certainly. Just talking as he works, comfortable with the knowledge that he is in his own place and I am not and that he can say what he likes, here. He is wrong about us. We have nothing in common, except jewels.
Spread out between us on the desk is a sheet of paper. On the paper are three rough red stones. They are small as the seeds from a pomegranate. The jeweller picks them up and holds them to his monocle lens, one by one, as he talks.
‘Clots of blood, yes. So they say. I’m not religious myself. I don’t mind if God is a Christian or a Muslim or even a Jew. Still, it’s a pity he didn’t think to work with these. We might all have been so much … more … perfect.’
I wait. Outside the noon muezzin begins. The sound shimmers like a heat haze over western Istanbul. The room has a fan on the ceiling and frosted-glass doors in three walls. On the wall without a door there is a chipped washbasin. Above it at face height is a calendar advertising the Golden Horn Shipping and Air Corporation in English and Turkish. August is a tanned blonde draped in fishing nets and diamonds.
Ismet the jeweller puts down the largest of the rubies and clicks his teeth. ‘This one has fouls. How much did you pay for it?’
‘Enough.’
He grunts. ‘How did you find me, by the way?’
‘Küsav’s.’
‘Küsav’s!’ Derisively. ‘They spend too much time talking.’
While he works and talks, I look at his shoes. I look at his watch, his clothes and his hands. The face. The last thing I do is listen to what he says. It’s harder to lie without words.
Under the desk’s mid-section I can see his legs, spread to support his bulk. The shoes are imported leather, with an expensive shinelessness. The parallels of his trousers are sharp. He wears a good watch, Patek Philippe, nothing loud. An evening watch. The gold is a little heavy for daylight.
Without making a show of it, he looks successful. He is good at what he does, and what he does involves old jewels. It is why I am here. I have been in Istanbul for five days. On two of those five I have been to the Küsav auction house on Has Firin Road, watching the buyers, talking to the warehouse men. When they are not busy working or clock-watching, they tell me about the jewel dealers of Istanbul.
They tell me about Ismet. They say he does well, he buys and sells works from all over the world. Reliquaries from Russia, Mogul necklaces from India. How they are found and how they cross borders are not his problems. If he was a legitimate dealer I would have found him quicker. He would be well known, big in the high street. But then he is not that kind of dealer.
Flight paths thunder overhead. When the vibrations have lessened, Ismet takes miniature electronic scales out of the desk. One by one, he weighs the stones I have brought him. Three times for each stone.
‘Of course, the trade in rubies – the market – what can I say? The bottom has fallen out of it. Last month I had a stone from the wife of a Burmese general, my God, I never saw anything like it. Four carats and no fouls. The colour of pigeon’s blood. A piece like that, pardon me, I could make love to it. But sell it? No. Now it sits in my bank, making nothing. Now I have it round my neck, it weighs not four carats but four thousand and four.’
He peers at the scales’ digital display. I know he wants the rubies. The warehouse men say they are his favourite stone. Even after cutting has removed half their weight, these three gems should be nearly two carats each: a fine size, for rubies. The best of them has no fouls, and their colours are good. I bought them in Sri Lanka from a man much like this, in a room like this. I have been here before, at this point, many times. I have never been here before.
I am following in the footsteps of a great jewel. It has been in Istanbul at least once. A stone from the artefact was sold here three centuries ago, when the shoulder-knot itself was already as old as that again. And great jewels have a way of returning to their past. Anywhere they have been – anyone they have been with – is somewhere they can be again. I sit in the place which is not mine and listen to the slow shock, shock of the ceiling fan.
Ismet switches off the scales. ‘Pretty little things, aren’t they? I’ll give you the best price I can.’
‘I don’t want money.’
He looks at me with his assessor’s eyes, picks up the smallest ruby and examines it again. Even uncut, it winks in the light. A fragment of ruby matrix still clings to the pure stone. For a while Ismet says nothing, only smiles up at the jewel. As if he is holding nails in his teeth. ‘You don’t want money. So what are we doing here?’
‘I’m looking for something. It’s been in Istanbul before, some time ago. I’ve heard that your field is antiquities.’
Shock, shock.
‘Maybe. I have several fields. Maybe. Just don’t tell me you’re looking for the Tavernier blue diamond.’ His teeth are small and white. ‘I already sold it last week to an insurance firm in Tokyo.’
I wait for his smile to pass. He puts the ruby down. Picks it up again. When he’s not talking, he’s a nervous man. ‘So, antiquities. Are you looking for objects, or just information?’
‘Either.’
‘And you’ll pay in rubies?’
‘If you like.’
‘You have something particular in mind?’
‘I’m lookin
g for the Three Brethren.’
He lowers the ruby and looks at me, poker-faced, through the monocle lens. ‘The Three Brethren. I see. Why do you want it?’
‘Why don’t you?’
‘Ah.’ He concedes a smile, the one eye twinkling. ‘Of course I do. Already you know me a little well, Miss Sterne. But I was right.’ He leans forward. ‘We are alike. We understand each other. Yes. I know your kind.’
I stop myself turning my head away. It is an instinctive reaction. As if he has moved too close. He barks a laugh.
‘The Three Brethren. Well, who wouldn’t want it? How long have you been looking?’
‘What do you have on it?’
‘As it happens, quite a lot. Concrete too, very concrete. It won’t come cheap. How much can you afford, Miss Sterne? Or perhaps you are buying for someone else. Japanese or American? You can tell me.’
‘American,’ I lie. It’s what he wants to hear, I think: what he expects. He looks me up and down.
‘American. Right. And they have money, of course.’
I nod. Ismet gets up without speaking. He looks at me again, without expression. Then he goes through the left-hand door. I watch his shadow move beyond the frosted glass. There is the sound of footsteps going upstairs. Distant voices. When he opens the door again his hands are full. In one he has a box and in the other the arm of a younger man. A retrograde image of Ismet, thirty years stripped away. Nephew or son, a gun holstered at his belt. He nods, taking me in, and goes to stand by the exit. Ismet sits.
‘Just a precaution, you understand.’
‘Does he have a licence for that?’
‘The gun? Of course. I never touch them myself.’ Ismet puts the box down. ‘Think of him as a security guard. If it helps.’ With both hands, he opens the box and pushes it across the desk to me.
Inside is a cut jewel, more than half an inch wide, clear and brilliant on black velvet. It is the shape of a halved raw diamond, as if a growing crystal has been split down the middle into twin pyramids. But the facets are not those of a natural growth. The skin is too polished, too caught up in light.
