The Love of Stones

by Tobias Hill

  ‘The diamond.’

  ‘The finest water he has ever seen. The Heart of Three Brethren. Mister Bridge says it is very old. Is something wrong?’

  He felt his mind knocked sideways, tried to stand, and staggered back. Too quickly, the room began to fill with rising figures. His brother’s voice called out to him. The Queen’s face swam up, her mouth an ‘O’.

  He muttered something, a rejection. The beat of his heart was too fast. His body was suddenly an excess, a hulk of muscle. Not making said what he meant to say. He tried to bow.

  ‘My stone. Please.’

  ‘Yours?’

  ‘Majesty, if you will just give me my stone …’

  Daniel’s hand on his shoulder. The women’s voices calling out. The sound of running footmen. Not coming to help him, he knew. Not there to roll out the bloody red carpet. Something seemed to burst in his head, filling his eyes with its shadow, and he sank back into a chair. When he looked up, there was nothing to see but the jewel from the jar.

  It seemed lifeless. The facets had no brilliance. Even in the primitive mathematics of the setting, they were too simple. The pearls had more lustre, the rubies were brighter. Better, he thought; I could have done better. They should have let me cheat myself.

  Victoria Guelph stepped back from him, a small figure becoming smaller. From a distance he watched her raise her hand to the jewel – as if, he thought, she feels herself naked. As her fingers tried to cover it, the diamond caught the light.

  It glared out at him. He blinked, dazed. The image stayed imprinted on his lids, dancing there. It was how he would always remember the jewel. Even after the world itself became frightening, impossible in its thinness, Salman would recall the way the Heart of Three Brothers had opened to him. In the house of Judah the Rabbi this was what he whispered, a knowledge to drown out the sound of Daniel’s mourning. That the diamond had come alive. He had seen it. He had seen it. It had looked at him, cold, human with age. An eye opening in a dead head.

  ‘A fit. Nothing more.’

  ‘A fit? A disgrace is what it was. We can have no more of it. Five footmen. Five, damn it, to hold him down.’

  ‘No.’ Daniel shook his head wearily. ‘No one held him. It was not necessary.’

  George Fox lunged towards him, hissing. ‘And that is not the point, Daniel. Five servants is the point. Five mouths to shut up before they reach Fleet Street. Do you know what this has cost Mister Rundell?’

  It was noon. A fire was still lit in the narrow grate. Daniel sat in front of the office desk, Edmund behind it, white hands dovetailed under his chin. George did the talking, as he paced. ‘An expensive day’s work you had, on behalf of our reputation.’

  ‘My brother says the diamond is ours.’

  George waved him away. Daniel tried again. ‘This is what he believes. He knows his jewels.’ He turned, speaking to Rundell now. ‘Perhaps, sir, if you showed him the spinel. The stone that we sold to you, surely that would set his mind–’

  ‘Now.’ George was in front of him again, pointing. ‘Have a care, Daniel. This is no time for accusations. Not from you.’

  The fire buckled and muttered in the grate. Daniel turned towards it. There were no windows in Edmund’s office, he saw, and wondered how he had not been aware of it before. A miser’s room, the safe made safer. Today the absence of light felt like a withdrawal to him. He thought of the stone. The jewel from the jar or from the palace, Daniel wasn’t sure which. Light in the ridges of its script. To keep one from ghosts.

  He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, George. Truly.’

  ‘Well.’ The shopman sat down. ‘Well then, so am I. When will he be fit to work again?’

  Daniel raised his head. ‘You’ll have him back?’

  Fox scowled. ‘He knows the crown. It’d be no small job to find another who could take his place, so late in the day.’

  Rundell raised his hooked face. ‘Has he slept?’

  ‘Little. Last night he walked.’

  ‘Walking at night, in this winter. There is something loose in him–’

  Edmund waved them both quiet. He blinked across the desk at Daniel. It seemed to him that there was something reptilian in the old jeweller. A dry appetite, slow with torpor.

  ‘Tell your brother –’ he picked up a worn quill, dipped it, began to write ‘– that today is his, but tomorrow he works or goes. If the latter, he breaks his contract. In that case, any moneys owed by us may be forfeit. There is a crown to be made, and your brother will make it. If not, we may be justified in paying nothing, or only some part, of any debt owed for the three – minor – jewels which I have bought from you and your brother.’

  He stopped writing, reached for the sand, and let it skitter across the page. ‘Tomorrow I will know exactly how the ground lies, when my lawyer replies to this inquiry. In the meantime, I hope I make myself clear. Good afternoon to you, Mister Levy. You know your own way out.’

  At the news-stands on Fleet Street the afternoon papers had just been delivered. Daniel bought the Sun and the True Sun, tucking their slight warmth under his arm. Thinking of Rundell, as if he was still with him.

  The Crown Goldsmith had cheated him. He tried to believe it, tasting it for truth. He felt nothing at the idea except anger and a certain curiosity, nothing in comparison to the nausea of loss he had seen in Salman: the flood of panic, as if he couldn’t live without the stone he had already sold. Daniel tried to imagine what there could be left for a man like Rundell to want. But then no one had such an appetite for stones. He had heard George say that. Mr Fox, talking about what he knew best. Want loves want. Why should you be any different?

  The air was bad, the smog worsened by winter fires. Half the shops were shut, as if they had decided winter had become too cold for commerce. On Stonecutter Street Daniel bought apples and yesterday’s bread, sharp cheese and a bottle of sweet wine, hugging the foods inside his coat as he trudged through the mucky snow. Uphill there was light in the window of James Ryder’s, and he pushed inside and waited while the apothecary made up Salman’s opium, his druggist’s cough loud and fumy between the shelves of bottles. Tinctures of saffron and digitalis, wines of aloes and iron, ointments of tar and black pitch. For nausea, for febrile disease, for the relief of nervous dreams. Daniel paid and took what he had up the backstairs to the attic room.

  ‘I hope your walking has made you hungry–’

  Out of breath, he opened the door and froze. A figure stood silhouetted against the window. Its bulk blocked out most of the light. In the dimness Daniel said its name, but softly. Hardly meaning to say it at all. Tigris.

  Salman turned. As he did so Daniel saw that his eyes were gone, his mouth slack. In profile his face was scoured out, so empty it seemed like a violence in itself. Then it had turned on into shadow. Daniel felt a fear rise in him, physical as vomit, and he sat down on the bedclothes, clumsily unbuttoning his coat to the goods inside. Swallowing, opening the newspapers he had no interest in reading.

  ‘For what it’s worth, you have not made the papers.’

  There was no answer. Daniel took out his spectacles, put them on with his cold hands, and began to read aloud. Salman’s stillness at the periphery of his vision.

  ‘The Sun goes on with the fire at the Royal Exchange. The engines were so cold, it was necessary to thaw them before water could be thrown on the burning building. Other excuses etcetera. And in the True Sun, let’s see, we have Spring Heel’d Jack.’ He made himself laugh, not looking up from the columns. Not thinking of the moment he had not recognised his own brother. ‘Who is a monster, it seems. “Spring Heel’d Jack’s reign of terror has been brought to the attention of the Lord Mayor of London.” Blah blah. “Having appeared at Barnes as a white bull, at Finsbury as a dragon breathing flame.” Blah blah. “At Kensington Palace as a white baboon, climbing over the Queen’s forcing houses.”’

  ‘Where is the dragon?’

  Daniel looked up. His brother had stepped up to the bed soundl
essly. His eyes were glassy but his voice seemed sensible. As if, thought Daniel, what I am reading means anything at all. He put the newspaper down. ‘At Finsbury. Salman. How do you feel?’

  He frowned, as if searching for an answer, then yawned suddenly, hugely, and sat down. ‘Well. Better than I have felt in months. What food did you bring? Bread?’

  Daniel watched him begin to sort through the paper packages, tearing them open. ‘Aye. Your tincture also.’

  Salman nodded. ‘I won’t be needing it. Ah. And cheese.’ He took the loaf and broke it in half, shepherding crumbs onto the shop paper.

  ‘You feel well, truly? How long did you sleep?’

  ‘A hundred years. Truly I feel well.’ From his coat he took out a tarnished iron penknife, hinged it open, and began to cut cheese. ‘I walked to the docks last night. And back. The ships were frozen at anchor.’

  ‘I have talked to George and Mister Rundell,’ Daniel went on cautiously. ‘They say the diamond is not ours.’

  ‘They lie.’ Salman glanced up at Daniel, smiled, and went back to the apples.

  ‘They say you must finish the crown. Else our contracts are broken and any money they owe is forfeit.’

  ‘A bluff. They lie and lie.’

  ‘Then you will not stay?’

  ‘No.’ His voice was mild. In his palm, the apple hissed open to a sweet whiteness. ‘I would not leave now for the world.’

  He smiled up at Daniel again, waiting for him to smile back. They sat together in their coats and ate.

  J was a Judas Kiss,

  Which sold the Lord for pelf

  He sneaked away from Jesus Christ,

  And then he hanged himself

  K was the good King’s Crown;

  He wore it on his head–

  She broke off, coughing, the small lungs hacking themselves empty. Daniel leant towards her, but already she was finished, worn out. She sat back on the pew. The sound of her carried on, out from the transept to the nave, the whisperings of the dome, the grey spaces of St Paul’s.

  ‘You must not catch cold, Martha, even for the sake of reading.’

  She shrugged. Her face white. ‘Warmer here than out. Better with the candles. Was I good, sir?’

  ‘Better every week.’

  ‘I like it here. Learning.’

  He smiled at and past her. In the nave, worshippers were putting on coats between the crowds of statuary. ‘Churches are beautiful things, Martha,’ he said softly. ‘But only with people in them. Without us they are nothing but stone.’

  ‘I never came here, before.’ She began to cough again, held it back.

  ‘You mean with your family.’

  He watched her scowl. Reluctant, always, to speak of her own. They had been Catholics, Daniel supposed; their places of worship elsewhere, like his. He lowered his voice. ‘Are they still alive? Could they take you back?’

  ‘I don’t need their taking or giving.’

  He wondered if he should ask more. If that was the way to help her best. There was a tray of candles beyond Martha. The light flickered in her eyes, against her sallow cheeks. By her hand it winked off something metallic, and Daniel leaned forward. ‘What have you there?’

  She made to hide it instinctively, then stopped. On the wrist was a charm bracelet worked out of flat tin. A frog, a crab, a dragonfly. ‘Jewellery. You are getting airs and graces. You bought this?’ he said, already knowing.

  ‘The little Mister Levy.’ Her eyes were smiling now, if not her mouth. ‘Did he not tell you? For Christmas.’ She lowered her arm, suddenly sober. ‘I heared about him.’

  ‘What did you hear?’

  She muttered. ‘Heared he tried to kill the Queen.’

  Daniel breathed out. ‘That isn’t true, Martha.’

  A group of workmen went by, talking in a soft foreign tongue. Martha waited, her face full of anxiety. ‘Then what?’

  He took a deeper breath. ‘There is a jewel the Queen has. My brother believes that it belongs to us.’

  ‘Does it so?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What kind of a jewel is it?’

  ‘A diamond. In a brooch shaped liked a triangle.’ Absently, he traced it out on the pew between them. ‘Rubies, and pearls, the diamond here. It is very beautiful.’

  When his hand stopped moving she looked up. ‘What will you do?’

  ‘We have no proof. I think no one would believe us.’ He shrugged and smiled. ‘Who would you believe, Martha, the Queen or Mister Levy?’

  She looked at him. Surprised, as if she was not used to him saying anything so obvious. ‘Mister Levy.’

  ‘Bless you. Now, where are we up to in this nonsense of an alphabet?’

  It was a hard winter, the worst for years. When Salman dreamed of it, everything began as it was. He would find himself walking on the Commercial Road. It was nearly morning. He could feel the cold against his face.

  The jewel was gone. He arrived knowing this, and also knowing that he dreamed. There was a tightness in his chest, a sensation of vertigo. It was the feeling that came to him in opium trances, and as he walked Salman knew he no longer needed the tincture. It was inside him now, implicit, under his skin.

  He could make out terraces of houses. Honduras and Hardwick Place. Road trees grew above them now. When Salman looked up it was as if he had never seen trees before. Their forms were drawn out by want. Extended between water and light. They were alive, he saw, with immense and cold properties. Like the diamond, he thought, and thinking of it he opened his hand and found it had come back to him.

  There was something wrong with the jewel. Two fractures ran across one another through the pyramid. He touched the point, wanting to make it right, and the stone fell open. Inside it was hollow. He stepped back, dropping it quickly like an insect or scorpion.

  And when he looked up everything had changed. The air had thickened, tinctured with fog. There were noises under the trees. He began to walk, not looking back. He thought of Mehmet and his blood crimes. The jar, full of the smell of rot. The diamond which was not a diamond, but something waiting to be hatched.

  There was a click of claws on the stone pavement. He cried out and began to run. Behind him, under the trees, the sirrusch came on its ruined feet. He cried out again, yammering, and in the attic room Daniel held him, cradling his head. He listened to Salman’s voice, trying to hear what his mind was saying. The jewel haunting his nightmares, taking from him more than he had ever gained from it.

  * * *

  There is a boat out to sea. From the foot of the headland I hear it: the mutter of an outboard motor, coming over the waves without light. The sound keeps pace with me for a while as I walk, until the sea wall gives way to rocks, the rocks to beach, the road underfoot becoming a concrete causeway in a landscape of scrub and dunes. When I hear the boat again it is far away, the lamps of squid fishermen visible back beyond Tosa.

  At its end the promontory rises, the road running out to a patch of levelled ground with the sea on two sides. I can make out a quay, two boats moored, a vending stand shut up for the night. There is no house to be seen. An hour too late, I wonder whether the illumination I saw from Tosa was a ship after all, or a car of lovers out to watch the ocean. Then a light winks through the inland dunes. I move my head back to it and start to walk again. Following its navigation point between hollows and outcrops of sea thistles.

  The wind is behind me. It rises as I crest the last dunes. In the lee it falls away again, so that as I come down towards the house I hear its people. Somewhere children are playing. In the dark almost nothing is left of them but the sand’s scuffle, a yell of laughter, the panting of an animal. Another ten yards and I can see them over the measured darkness of an allotment. Two children, one dog, shadow-dancing.

  It is a clapboard house, the windows shuttered. A clearing out front, a clinker-built dinghy upturned under the shade of a ginkgo tree. At the near edge of the worked ground a man is digging. I see him before he hears
me. A lamp on the porch illuminates his face as he works. It is like something from a painting, a Dutch oil. The fierce expression, its muscles and bones, thrown up into relief. Halfway down the path he sees or hears me and he straightens, his face turning into the dark. It is unreadable by the time I raise my hand.

  ‘Sumimasen.’ I say – Sorry, excuse me, sorry. ‘Sumimasen.’ An Englishwoman pushing through crowds. The man stands with his arms at his sides. Not waving me off, not doing anything, in fact, while I struggle to string together a sentence he might understand. ‘Murasaki-san desu ka? Murasaki-san no otaku desu ka?’

  I can see him breathing. The spade is still in his hand. The blade shines clean from the sandy soil. There is sweat along his temples. He is wearing a blue short-sleeved shirt and trousers, and a Japanese labourer’s cloven shoes. The wind drops between us. In the quiet there is a yell of laughter across the dunes. Somewhere, the chug of a generator. As if the house itself is out to sea.

  I try again, my voice too loud and alien. ‘Murasaki-san no otaku–’

  He sniffs back sweat and walks away, out of the radius of the light. By the corner of the house he squats down. His head dips, hands catching up water from a standpipe. Once he looks round at me, and I catch the whites of his eyes. He strips off his shirt and begins to wipe down his chest and hands.

  I watch him, half-concealed in the dark. When he stands he is taller than me, well over six foot and built like a wrestler, more muscle than sinew. There are curls in his chest hair, hard with salt, although his head is shaven. Even his face is something less simple than Japanese, the nose aquiline between Mongol cheekbones and epicanthal eyes. Features to cut winds on.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  The voice comes out of the dark, reading my mind. I begin to look round, and catch myself. The man’s English is startling. The words are stilted but not broken. The intrinsic grammar forms without effort. ‘London,’ I say, and he walks back to me. His sweat is sweet and peppery. The shirt is bunched in one hand. The spade is gone and I’m glad of it.

  He frowns. ‘No. What company?’