The Secret Language of Stones

Chapter 26

The next morning, I found Grigori and Yasin Poda having breakfast in the dining room. I couldn’t be certain, but hearing the tone and timber of Yasin’s voice, I assumed he was the man I’d heard talking with Grigori in the garden the night before.

Both greeted me and I sat down. Briggs appeared to see if I wanted tea or coffee. I requested coffee.

“There are strange but delicious things on the buffet,” Grigori said, gesturing to the sideboard, where silver domes covered half a dozen dishes. “We’re to help ourselves.”

Inspecting the chafing dishes, I recognized eggs, tomatoes, and sausages, but needed to ask what the other two contained. One held kippers and another kidneys, I was told.

Nervous about the day ahead of me, I sat back down without taking any of the prepared food. When Briggs came in with my coffee, I asked for some toast but only managed half of one slice.

“Madame Silvestrov,” Grigori said, “is in her suite, dining on her own. We’re on to see her in an hour, at ten, as planned.”

Precisely at ten, Grigori and I stood in front of the Dowager’s door. Grigori knocked; Yasin opened it promptly. Beyond him, I saw a pale yellow sitting room decorated with violet accents. Although it too was a bit shabby, the profusion of flowers cheered it up. Crystal vases of roses and freesia rested on the fireplace, the desk, and the coffee table. I smelled their scent and something darker.

Seated by the window, I saw a young man and a middle-aged woman, both in simple garb. Yasin didn’t introduce either of them, and I assumed they were part of the Dowager’s retinue.

“Have a seat, please, both of you,” he said. “I’ll tell Madame you are here.”

Yasin walked to the door at the far end of the room and knocked.

The Dowager must have answered him even though I couldn’t hear her, because he opened the door. Through the doorway, I glimpsed a small figure in shadow, her back to us, looking out of the windows at the rough sea. Her posture was straight and tall and proud. But the set of her shoulders was defeated. Slowly, she turned to Yasin. Backlit, her face was too dark for me to see. They spoke in hushed tones for a moment. He turned and came back out, forgetting to close the door behind him blocking my view into the other room.

“I’m sorry, Madame Silvestrov isn’t well. The trip proved more arduous than she expected. She prepared this, though.” He looked at the envelope he now held in his hands. I noticed a gold signet ring on his pinkie of the same two-headed eagle Monsieur revered. It drew my attention because of its tarnish. Gold doesn’t tarnish, yet from its color and hue, there was no question it was eighteen-karat gold. Had it been treated? And then, over Yasin’s voice as he continued speaking, I heard an off-key whine coming from the jewelry as if it were crying out.

“Excuse me?” I’d missed part of Yasin’s explanation.

“I said, inside the envelope are the locks from all of the children’s hair, as you requested. How long will it take you to make the charms?”

“I think I’ll be making one talisman incorporating all of the locks. Hopefully I can be done by this evening.”

He stepped forward to hand me the envelope, and as he moved, I saw behind him, into the Dowager’s bedroom. A suite of sapphire-colored enamel objets d’art decorated the desktop. A jewel box, no bigger than the palm of my hand, decorated with the familiar gold double-eagle insignia; beside it, one of the Easter eggs Fabergé was famous for (a larger version of those hanging over and under my chemise). Monsieur had worked on many of the royal eggs, and framed drawings of their designs hung on the walls of our workshop in the Palais. But to see one in person! I stared at the sapphire enamel egg, decorated with the same gold double-eagle insignia, and wondered what treasure it held inside. The last of the trio of objects, a small oval frame, hosted the same insignia at its top. Inside the frame, Tsar Nicholas and his wife and children gazed out, frozen in time by a photographer’s efforts.

I became aware of a low-pitched humming. Not the grating sound of Yasin’s ring, but a sorrowful thrum. And it was coming from the frame.

Returning to my room, I placed the envelope on my desk, arranged my tools, and set to work at the card table.

When the maid arrived at one o’clock to tell me luncheon was served, I asked her to just bring me something light in my room. I wanted to keep working.

A few minutes later, I heard another knock.

“Come in,” I called.

I didn’t glance up as she entered. I was engraving the symbols and didn’t want to interrupt my effort. “You can just leave it on the desk, thank you so much.”

“I’m sorry, perhaps you were expecting the maid? I am not she.”

I looked up then and discovered the Dowager, Maria Feodorovna, at my doorstep. Despite her seventy years, she was quite beautiful, with dark, intelligent eyes, very black hair, delicate features, and iron-straight posture.

“May I come in?” she asked in perfectly accented French.

I lowered my tools and stood. “Of course.”

She smiled and swished into the room, her old-fashioned long black silk skirts harkening back to an era before the war. Reaching my side, she took my hands in hers.

“I wanted to see you alone,” she said. “Without the entourage. I don’t know them well. Yasin arrived to be my escort only a few days before the journey. I’m not comfortable around strangers.”

“Of course.”

“So you are Opaline?” Each word, every movement and glance, bespoke her royalty.

Anna had schooled me in what to do when I met the Dowager, and so I said yes, and then bent into a deep curtsy.

“That’s all right, child. Let’s forgo the formalities for now. I don’t want them to find me afoot. We don’t have a lot of time.”

I rose from my bow, looked into her face, and saw her humanity etched in deep lines around her mouth and swimming in the sadness in her eyes. The woman’s pain, so intense on her lovely face-I felt as if I might drown in it if I wasn’t careful.

“Thank you for risking so much to come to me,” she said.

“I’m terribly sorry for your loss, Your Highness. It’s the least I could do.”

“But it is my loss, and yet you put yourself in danger to help me.” She patted my hand, and I relaxed a bit. As imperious as she first appeared, she showed kindness and empathy. “Let us sit so you can tell me about what you do and how you do it. There are many mystics in our country, some quite famous, others quite infamous.”

She must have been referring to Rasputin, I thought. “I’m humbled, but I’m not a mystic, Madame. My talent is minor.”

“Humility isn’t necessary with me. I don’t find it all that attractive when people make light of their abilities. And from what I hear, you are quite gifted as both a mystic and a jeweler. Monsieur Orloff made some of my favorite pieces. Anyone he’s chosen to mentor must be very talented indeed. And I’ve heard his wife is equally talented in another art form… If she is training you as well, I’m sure you will be of great help to me.”

The Dowager sat in one of the tapestry-covered chairs at the card table in front of the window I was using as a workstation, and gestured for me to take one of the other chairs.

“Show me how you work,” she said.

Even though she sat up straighter than anyone I’d ever seen, her every movement precise and careful, she seemed less a royal and more like a curious grandmother as she pored over my tools and supplies.

I described how I crafted the talismans and then answered her questions about how I came to make the first one. When I explained about hearing the first dead soldier talk to me, she leaned forward a little.

“And how many of these charms have you made? How many soldiers have you spoken with?”

“More than fifty by now.”

She put her hand on mine. “Isn’t that too difficult a toll on you? Aren’t you being emotionally bruised?”

Tears welled up in my eyes. Oddly, no one had guessed. Not even Anna. And I’d never volunteered it. Not even to my mother. My tremendous sense of guilt prevented me from complaining. And now, of all the people asking, offering empathy, it was a woman who’d been consort to the tsar of one of the largest countries in the world and witness to its entire government toppling. She’d lost everything and yet offered me sympathy.

“It’s the very least I can do. Millions of men have died, leaving behind tens of millions of grieving mothers and fathers, wives, daughters and sons. How it makes me feel-” I shrugged. “That’s unimportant.”

“That’s very noble, my child, but you must take care of yourself as well. Listening to the dead has to be very painful. Do they tell you how they died?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do they speak of the suffering they endured?”

“Except for one”-I thought of Jean Luc-“no, no, they don’t. They aren’t suffering when they find me, or I find them. They’re haunted by the grief of those left behind and need their loved ones to let them go, so they, the soldiers, can move on. That’s why they give me messages to deliver.”

The Dowager nodded.

“So they don’t tell you about the pain?”

I understood then what she was asking. She needed to prepare herself for what she might hear if indeed I found any of her grandchildren.

“No, they don’t.”

“I don’t think you could bear it if they did.”

Or you, I thought, but didn’t express it.

“But this one who did tell you, do you know why? What was different about him?”

Ah, how to explain about Jean Luc? What did I even know for certain?

“I don’t know, but rest assured, it’s not something likely to happen again.” My voice broke, and I was embarrassed. No, it wouldn’t happen again. There would never be anyone else like my ghost lover.

“It was so terrible…,” she said. “So terrible you haven’t recovered still?”

How to tell her how difficult it was to hear Jean Luc describe the last attack on him and his men. How for hours afterward I was unable to do anything.

The words of the dead are much heavier than those of the living because each requires so much effort and energy. We take our words for granted. While we live, our minds and our bodies are connected, but once we die and the connection is severed, the soul is awkward on this plane without having a corporeal presence.

Jean Luc said it was like being one with the air, and the feeling, while freeing, was too limitless, too uncontrolled. Ghosts are unhappy creatures, not pleased to be stuck in our realm, uncomfortable and disassociated. Remaining with us is a hardship.

“Do these talismans you make always work?”

“No. A few times I’ve created one and not heard a spirit.”

“Do you know why?”

I shook my head.

She rose and walked to the window, where she stood looking out at the sea.

“I think I’m afraid of what you do,” she said. “We’ve always embraced the mystical in our country. The long winters and dark nights lend themselves to tales of the strange and incomprehensible.” She turned back to face me.

Behind her, in the sky out the window, the sun peeked through clouds, illuminating her from behind. For a moment she seemed to float there, surrounded by a nimbus of opalescent light, very much an otherworldly creature herself.

“At first I hesitated about meeting with you. And even now I’m not sure I want to proceed.”

I didn’t know what to think. Grigori and I had risked our lives to come here and meet with the Dowager. Anger bubbled up inside of me, but I couldn’t show it. This woman had been the tsarina of Russia. The mother of its last ruler. The grandmother of its now uncertain future. She wasn’t like the women who came to me in the shop who knew their sons, fathers, brother, lovers, and husbands were dead. This woman had no idea how many of her loved ones she had lost, had no idea how much deeper her grief would go. Compassion supplanted my anger.

If I were in her place, I might not want to know either.

“We don’t need to proceed, Your Highness. If you’ve changed your mind, we can abort the exercise.”

Her fingers worried a string of marvelous pearls looped twice around her neck, their luminosity and shimmer exaggerated by the black silk behind them. Other than two simple gold bands she had on her ring finger, the strand was the only jewelry she wore.

I knew, because the Orloffs had talked of it many times, how the royal family had been stripped of all their possessions. Their vast stores of money, securities, antiques, artwork, and jewels had all been conscripted by the revolutionaries. The remaining Romanovs were broke. Even those who’d managed to escape with some treasures had little left. Most needed to sell their valuables in order to live.

“In addition to the locks of hair, I brought more keepsakes, the few I still have. I wasn’t sure if they would aid you.”

I watched her withdraw a purple velvet pouch from inside a hidden pocket in her voluminous skirt, open it, and pull out the sapphire enamel box I’d noticed in her bedroom. Twisting the double-eagle insignia, she opened it and stared down into its interior, lost in thought.

I’d never had insights into what people were thinking. Only the dead spoke to me. But I imagined, based on our conversation so far, she was wondering if it would be better to know the worst about her family or be left with hope.

With a sigh, she tilted the box toward me, showing me its contents.

One would have expected emeralds, diamonds, sapphires, and pearls to be nestled in the casket lined with pale robin’s egg blue satin. But none of those would have been worth as much to the Dowager as the items she withdrew.

“This is the first tooth Alexei lost.” She placed it in front of me. Next, she took out a faded coral length of grosgrain. “This is a ribbon from Anastasia’s confirmation bouquet of flowers.”

There were a dozen other small keepsakes, and she described each one to me, lovingly.

“I wanted to make sure you’d have what you needed.” Her voice broke. A tear escaped from her eye and rolled down her cheek. She blotted it with a handkerchief embroidered with a royal insignia.

Anna told me they called her the Lady of Tears. In one lifetime, she’d already witnessed the assassination of her brother King George I of Greece, the premature death of her first fiancé, the early death of her husband in 1894, the abdication and then assassination of her son Tsar Nicholas II, the execution of many members of her family during the Bolshevik Revolution, and the dissolution of her entire way of life.

“Excuse me, I just miss them so,” she whispered.

“I understand, and I am sorry.”

Returning all the items to the box, she composed herself, and once she was again in control, she continued. “So you have what you need, correct? These items will work as a conduit and enable you to make contact with them if they have indeed passed on?”

I nodded, then answered aloud. “Yes, that’s correct. I might only need the locks of hair, but thank you for bringing all these other bits and pieces. I might be able to use them as well.”

“You won’t destroy anything in the process?”

“No, certainly not. What I do is encase a few strands of each child’s hair or a sliver of the tooth or a thread of the ribbon in between sections of a rock crystal, then bind that with gold and lock it together. I give you the talisman to wear on a cord, as well as the key.”

“How long will it take you to make this amulet?”

“I brought everything I needed with me and should be finished by this evening. We can do the reading tonight if it’s all right with you.” As long as it works, I thought. As long as the crystals don’t crack. As long as the stone’s energy intensifies the mementos. As long as the magick has traveled with me across the channel.

The Dowager picked up her exquisite enamel box and caressed it. “I’ve already lost my darling son. My entire beloved country. All I have left is the hope of these children.” She put the box in my hand and curled my fingers around its cold rectangular shape. Then, with surprising strength, she squeezed her hand around mine with such force the edges of the box dug into my flesh, hurting me. “Opaline Duplessi, I hope to God you fail,” she said, and gave me a heartbreaking smile.

I’d seen women weep in my shop, held them sobbing in my arms. I’d heard them speak with grief and anger, passion and pain, pleasure and melancholy about their lost loved ones. But I’d never seen anyone whose smile was as sad, or whose burden as heavy as the tsar’s mother’s in that moment.

She stood.

“Wait, before you go. I have something to give you,” I said.

“I expected you might. My son liked to plan ahead and told me Monsieur Orloff owned a necklace that-”

A knock on the door interrupted her.

“Who is it?”

“Yasin, Madame, there’s a visitor here to see you.”

Leaning forward, the Dowager whispered: “Only my sister and my nephew the king know I am in England. She’s come to visit for the day. I’ll come back later, you can give it to me then. I don’t trust everyone in this house, and we need to be very careful, you and I, yes?”