Morgan peered into the window of the Palarae jeweler’s shop. While other stores in the area were crammed with lurid goods designed to tempt the tourist masses, this display was artfully arranged with just a few beautiful pieces. Clearly, an artisan jeweler for the discerning religious collector with money to spend for the glory of God.
Jake pushed the door open, and a bell rang inside. Morgan followed him in. The shop had high ceilings and large windows that allowed the late afternoon sunlight to illuminate the treasures within. One wall had religious icons of different sizes, most of the Virgin Mary but some of tortured saints and the crucified Christ.
A man walked out from the back room wearing a three-piece suit of midnight blue, tailored to emphasize his long limbs, and expensive enough to impress potential clients. He was mixed race with Asian heritage, thick dark hair combed neatly into a side parting. While he would easily blend into a more international city, his difference stood out in this more homogenous culture, and Morgan wondered how that might have shaped his life.
“Dzień dobry,” he welcomed them in Polish with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. He exuded an air of confident expectation rather than the deference of a sales clerk. Perhaps this was the jeweler himself.
“Morning,” Jake said.
“Ah, you’re British?”
Jake grinned. “Something like that.”
Morgan understood his smile. They were both untethered somehow, never quite feeling at home. Jake was South African, she was raised in Israel and both of them had British mothers, but their ties to their adopted country were complicated at the best of times.
“Can I help you with anything in particular?” The man pulled a tray out from beneath the counter full of intricate gold rings with religious symbols, some set with precious stones. They glinted in the sunlight that filtered through the windows, reflecting a rainbow of colors onto the Catholic icons around them.
The jeweler clearly knew his potential clientele, as Morgan couldn’t help but bend to look more closely, even though she rarely wore jewelry. She kept one of her mother’s rings in the memory trunk in her attic back in Oxford, but given the active nature of their ARKANE missions, she preferred to remain free of anything that might be lost or used against her.
One sapphire ring was a shade of blue that reminded her of the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Israel. She had swum there with her father under sunny skies back in the days before she knew true darkness.
Morgan reached out a fingertip and touched the ring. It was cool, and she imagined the weight of it on her hand.
“Try it on,” the jeweler said, his tone soft and persuasive.
His words jolted Morgan from her reverie, and she shook her head. “Thank you, but we’re not here to shop.”
She pulled out her phone and swiped to the picture of the Becket reliquary, then held it out to the jeweler. “We’re looking for someone who could have made this.”
The jeweler bent to look closely at the image. “It’s fine work, but if I’m not mistaken, that is a medieval reliquary, not a modern piece.”
“Chemical analysis of the gold traced a batch to this area,” Jake explained. “Perhaps you know of an artisan skilled enough to make such a thing?”
The jeweler shook his head. “I’m sorry, but none of the artisans I know would create a fake.” He put his hands together over his heart. “We are people of faith. Such a thing would not be acceptable to God.”
Morgan found his choice of words unusual, but it was the look in his eyes that made her doubt him. He recognized the reliquary; she was sure of it.
Jake pulled out a card with a contact phone number and laid it on the display case.
“If you think of anyone, please let us know.”
The jeweler nodded. “Of course. Are you staying in the city long?”
“It depends on what we find,” Jake said.
As they walked out of the shop into the street beyond, Morgan turned back to look through the window. The jeweler stood staring down at the card as if he couldn’t quite decide what to do with it. There was something about him that made the hairs on the back of her neck bristle, something in his examining gaze that suggested he knew more than he would say.
Henry Palarae waited until they were out of sight before turning the sign on the door to ‘Closed.’ The woman had looked back for a moment, but they seemed to believe him for now and that gave him enough time to figure out what to do. His heart still pounded from the moment he had seen the picture of the reliquary. It seemed impossible that they had traced him back here, but no matter, it would be dealt with soon enough.
He walked back to the little office behind the storefront, and played the security footage from the encounter on his laptop. He zoomed into the face of the man, frozen in an expression of curiosity as he looked around the shop. Henry was intrigued by the corkscrew scar above the man’s left eyebrow and the way he carried himself, like a big cat with barely restrained power in his muscles. He was clearly ex-military, and in ancient times, he could have fought and won in the arenas of the Roman Empire, one of Henry’s favorite times of history. They truly understood how to martyr the faithful back then. This man’s bones would be strong and stand up well to the aging process, and a glimmer of an idea began to form as to what he might become.
Henry smiled as he emailed the footage to Zale Radan at Anchorite with a few sparse words that he knew the security chief would appreciate: Deal with the woman. Bring the man to me. Usual terms.
The task complete, Henry exhaled slowly. The end of a day up here in the shop meant he could descend to where he truly felt at home. He locked the front door and pulled down the metal security shutters, turned off the lights, and opened the thick wooden door to the basement.
He had to bend a little as he stepped through the small doorway, designed for generations much shorter than his tall frame. It was awkward to fold himself into the medieval building, but that only added to Henry’s sense that he had expanded into the world far more than those before him.
The room below was dim, lit only by an emerald green glow from a single decorative lamp on an oversized table. There was a modern powerful craft lamp next to it used for delicate work, but Henry liked to retain a historical atmosphere when he sat down to create. There was one window high up that opened onto a side street, but he only opened it after the sound of the city sank to a murmur.
The tools of the jeweler’s trade lay on the table — ring cutters, pin setters, shapers, and files of different grades. Some were old, handed down through generations of artisans, each with a lineage of craft that Henry tried to channel in his art. Others were new and his aim was to imbibe them with his own history, so they might be handed on in turn. A pile of sketchbooks sat on one side of the table, the uppermost open to a sketch of a thirteenth-century golden reliquary in the shape of a forearm, dotted with jewels, with a space for the long bone of a saint.
There were more sketchbooks in tall fitted shelving amongst tomes on religious art and the history of precious metals. One wall was constructed of wooden drawers in varying sizes, each with a copper plate etched with symbols that would confuse all but the expert jeweler.
The workshop smelled of old books and metal shavings with a hint of warm leather from the armchair in one corner next to which stood a drinks cabinet. Henry poured himself a generous measure of aged slivovitz and sat down in the chair, pulling another sketchbook onto his lap. He found that the designs he created down here truly reflected his inner self. Perhaps the deeper he descended physically, the more he could access his creative subconscious.
Henry smiled as he sketched the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. Hands bound, taut muscles pierced by arrows — and a corkscrew scar marking a handsome face transfigured with agony.