As the hejnal mariacki echoed across the rooftops, Henry Palarae didn’t even look up. It was merely another note in the soundscape of the city that marked the passage of time, but Henry worked on unique objects that would last far beyond the lifetime of the trumpet player, far beyond even his own life. Flesh and blood, skin and sinew rotted away, but bone and precious metal remained. Henry’s only goal was to ensure his work survived many more lifetimes than his own.
He sat in the office at the back of his jeweler’s shop surrounded by bookshelves, sketching a design for a brooch onto thick cream paper. There were still a few tourists wandering outside on the cobbled street, but he would hear the doorbell if any entered to peruse his religious artifacts. He snatched every moment to work on his creations, his hand moving swiftly over the page with the mechanical pencil he used for all his drafting. Some artisans had switched to designing on tablets with a digital stylus, but Henry loved the connection between lead and paper, his lines sweeping across the smooth texture of the blank page as a new creation emerged.
He bit his lip as he finished the brooch and turned to a fresh page in the sketchbook, sensing the glimmer of an idea that he couldn’t quite translate into tangible form yet. Something swirling around the arrow-pierced torso of Saint Sebastian.
But there was no need to rush it.
Henry trusted the emergence of creativity. Something would spark the idea into life, he was sure of it, and in the meantime, he had plenty of less ambitious work to do.
The Palarae shop was small but opulent with carefully chosen religious pieces displayed to enhance their value. A detailed miniature of the Virgin Mary in a gold oval frame dotted with pearls. An ornate crucifix made from silver stolen from Jews during the Second World War, inlaid with tiny rubies representing droplets of the blood of Christ. Glass fronted display cases contained smaller pieces: religious medals, crucifixes and rosaries that honored God in a more affordable way.
An incense burner in the corner filled the air with the same scent as the basilica. It helped remind the faithful why they came to the shop in the first place and also masked the smell of damp that persisted in the medieval quarter.
The Basilica of St Mary inspired much of Henry’s art and he appreciated the God of the Catholics, who reveled in blood and suffering. At least He seemed to, judging by the glorification of such things in the extravagant art of the church. More importantly, the religious liked to spend on beautiful objects and Henry served that need every day.
The jeweler’s shop was just one level of this old house in the medieval heart of Stare Miasto, where artisans had worked on their craft for generations. Several floors of rooms formed the living quarters above, mostly unused since he was an only son with no family of his own. His mother was usually ensconced in the uppermost flat, closest to God. If only He would hurry up and take her. But she mostly left the shop to Henry, and she didn’t interfere with what had become the more ‘interesting’ side of the family business. He worked on those artifacts in the basement levels after dark.
The jeweler’s shop sat in between, and that suited Henry. He had always existed between cultures, at home in many, and at the same time, belonging to none. His Malaysian father had also been a jeweler, arriving in Poland on a cultural exchange where he had met a young blonde goldsmith.
The relationship only lasted a summer, and as his mother was a Catholic, Henry was born under the shadow of shame, kept hidden in his early years because he didn’t look Polish. Some mixed race Malaysian-Europeans had features that combined the beauty of both cultures. But Henry knew he was not so blessed, bullied at school for the way he looked and his bastard outsider status.
His father eventually married the ‘right kind of girl’ and cut off his European-born son. Henry had never been to Malaysia, but then he had no wish to. For all his mother’s guilt, she had only ever encouraged him in his art and since they visited the basilica almost every day, Henry grew up around the extravagance of the Catholic Church. He remained entranced by the gold and riches around him — but also by the portrayals of suffering.
His mother had inherited the house and the jeweler’s business after the death of her father, and now Henry was the last in the family line of goldsmiths. All of them had been skilled artisans, but he intended that his legacy would last the longest.
He turned back to the sketch of the brooch. Something was missing. Henry stood and pulled down a book on Russian Orthodox icons from the surrounding shelves. His great-grandfather had started this library, and it was a precious resource for ideas. Religious art needed to resonate with a long-held tradition, but Henry still liked to bring something unique to each piece.
Shouts came from the street and then the raucous laughter of tourists on their way to one of the local bars. Henry wondered how people could spend their time so frivolously, drinking precious minutes away. He didn’t even like to sleep, a pattern of insomnia he had cultivated since childhood. Back then, he wandered the streets in the early hours of the morning, staying in the shadows, observing the homeless and unwanted, witnessing violent deeds. He crept back into bed before his mother rose for work, his body humming with energy, his mind alive with ideas.
One night, he found the fresh corpse of a cat near the steps of the basilica. It was so thin he could see almost every bone in its body, and the sleek lines reminded him of the shining white fragments within the reliquaries inside the church. Longing to make something so beautiful from the dead, he hid the corpse behind the bins out the back of the house and asked his mother for a space where he could work on his own projects.
“Will it be for the glory of God, Henry?”
He nodded at her words and basked in the smile of pride she bestowed upon him.
“Then take the basement level as your own. It needs cleaning up as it remains as your grandfather left it.” She crossed herself. “May he rest in peace. I prefer to work upstairs in the natural light, so it can be yours. But you need to produce pieces for the shop and if they sell, I’ll give you more freedom and the supplies you need.”
Henry had reassured her of his dedication to the family business and that was the beginning of a new artistic direction.
The cat had been his first subject and over time, he experimented with different ways of removing fur and flesh. After he reduced a corpse down to bone, he experimented with techniques to age it in an attempt to recreate the distinctive patina of ancient relics.
He pulled up the flagstones in one section of the basement to reveal the earth beneath and buried bones there, but it was an inefficient and slow process. On a taxidermy forum online, he discovered the use of strong tea, coffee, or even watered down shoe polish for a darker stain, but it didn’t quite produce the desired effect. Henry even experimented with passing fragments through an animal, which could only be done with the tiniest pieces. He caged a mangy dog in the basement for the purpose, but something about its pitiful eyes made the process distasteful. Dogs did not worship body parts of their species, so they should not suffer for the faith of those who did.
Over time, Henry honed his craft, both in precious metals and in the processing of animal bones that lay within the reliquaries they sold in the shop, and increasingly online for a global market. His mother never questioned the provenance of the bones, only delighting in being able to retire off the profits of his work. He thought she must know what he did, but her silence implied acceptance, so he continued.
But Henry grew bored with his work, longing to create some truly extraordinary pieces and there were darker questions he wished to investigate. Would his aging methods work on human bones? How could he make his relics even more authentic?
Five years ago, a petite American woman with the unmistakable air of wealth walked into his jewelry shop and picked out one of his most elaborate golden brooches with a sliver of bone in the center.
“Do you take commissions?”
Her words marked the beginning of their lucrative relationship, but it wasn’t so much about the money anymore. Dr. Kelley Montague-Breton was his main private client now and Henry truly loved the challenge of creating a perfect replica of the reliquaries she asked for.
He also enjoyed the preparation of the bones.
Kelley sent slivers sourced ethically from her biomedical company, but she would never know the real provenance of the bone he included.
His art was not just in the fine metalwork and finished jeweled pieces; it was in the death of the martyr, whose fragments of bone or drops of blood lay within. The details had to be correct and Henry liked to think that the martyrs he created retained the power of those they replaced. Killing them in the same way was an important part of the process.
As Morgan looked around the basilica, she had to hand it to the Catholics. When it came to iconography and extravagant decoration in praise of God, they won hands down. Jewish synagogues were mostly plain and undecorated, with a focus on interior worship and the power of the written word. This place was almost the exact opposite.
The basilica was an overwhelming explosion of color. The walls were deep terracotta red and high above, the vaulted ceiling was Marian blue speckled with stars. Polished gold frames surrounded images of martyred saints reflecting light from flickering candles. Fresco and paint, carvings and tiles, and swirls of color in every shade of creation covered every inch. The scent of incense and candle smoke filled the air along with the sound of whispered prayers from the faithful who knelt at altars around the edges of the nave, each niche dedicated to a different saint.
Some places of worship felt empty and lifeless, but Morgan could sense the palpable faith here. Perhaps it was the warmth of color surrounding them, or the respite from the cold outside, but she would have loved more time to sit here in contemplation.
The painted vault of heaven on the ceiling above reminded her of the temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor, Egypt, which she and Jake once visited on a mission to find the Ark of the Covenant. A vault of stars on a midnight blue sky still remained there after more than three thousand years. The gods might have changed since then, but the nature of faith remained and humanity had always found the ineffable in the night sky above.
Morgan followed Jake down the nave, their footsteps echoing on the marble tiles. The grandeur of the basilica’s decoration intensified with frescoes of angels and words of faith inscribed on the walls as they approached the main altar.
The fifteenth-century Veit Stoss altarpiece was a national treasure of Poland and one of the largest Gothic altarpieces in Europe. Stolen by the Nazis as part of plundered art and religious objects, it had been hidden in Nuremberg Castle, where it survived heavy bombardment during the Second World War and finally returned to the basilica in 1957. Six panels surrounded a central display, each with carved figures made from linden wood depicting scenes from the life of Mary, mother of Christ. The central panel showed the Dormition in the presence of the Apostles, when the Theotokos, Mother of God, fell asleep before being taken up to Heaven.
Morgan pointed to the top of the altarpiece, where more statues perched in glory. “That’s the Coronation of Mary. She’s flanked by Saint Adalbert of Prague and Saint Stanislaus. We need to find his relic.”
They walked in opposite directions back down the edges of the basilica, examining each of the niches. Morgan found lots of interesting saints, but no Stanislaus on her side. Turning at the end, she noticed Jake had stopped halfway down to examine one altar in more detail. She walked back to join him.
A wooden rail separated the niche from the main nave so they couldn’t get too close, but underneath the statue of the saint, Morgan could make out a gold filigree box with a tiny glass window. A sliver of bone lay inside, a handwritten label with the name of the saint attached with crimson thread.
The King of Poland had martyred the medieval Bishop Stanislaus when his knights refused to cut down the man of God. After his death, they scattered his body parts to be devoured by wild beasts, but legend says that they were miraculously reintegrated.
Jake bent forward as far as he could, squinting at the tiny reliquary for a moment, then he shrugged. “These holy bones all look the same to me.”
Morgan couldn’t help but smile because she knew exactly what he meant. But then, they were not believers and would never understand how the bones of a saint could have such deep meaning.
Her phone buzzed with a message. “It’s Martin. He cross-matched the work of jewelers who specialize in religious objects with the batch of gold. One artisan has a shop just a few streets away.”