The Secret Language of Stones

Chapter 28

My instinct was to run the rest of the way down the stairs, but something held me back. My horror? My understanding that I couldn’t fight two men? My shock that Grigori, my sometime lover and certainly my friend, was in the process of committing a violent act against the tsar’s mother?

As stealthily as I could, I crept backward up the stairs. Worried my panic could be smelled. That my pounding heart could be heard. Why were they tying her up? I wanted to help her, but first needed to figure out how to help her. Rushing ahead wouldn’t do her any good if they restrained me as well.

The stairs turned, and I could no longer see into the dungeon. I climbed and climbed up those endless steps. There were servants in the main part of the castle. If I could just get back there, I would find Briggs. Explain. Get him to call the police. Gather the rest of the staff. Take on the two Russians.

Panting, I reached the top of the stairs. Looked around. Of course, nothing had changed. Still lost, I had no idea how to find my way out of the ancient wing of the castle. And I knew if I wandered around for too long, Grigori and Yasin might find me there and suspect I’d seen something.

I forced myself to take deep breaths and assess my options.

I stood in a circular stone room, with ancient tapestries covering most of the walls. Like the rest of this wing, the room appeared abandoned. I turned in a full circle. Trying to see something I could use to help. I focused on the narrow casement windows illuminating the stairs.

Finally, I thought of an idea. Maybe the view would help me figure out where I was.

Peering through the rectangular opening, I looked into fog and incessant rain. Straining through the atmospheric morass, I thought I saw the sea. But that was no help. The whole of the back of the castle faced the sea. I sank to the floor. If I was going to help the Dowager, I needed to understand what I’d witnessed, but first, I needed a hiding place in case Grigori and Yasin came this way leaving the dungeon-they mustn’t find me.

A narrow hallway off the main room led to a series of smaller rooms. I chose the last, empty with only a closed, locked door at its other end. From the dust on the warped parquet, no one had ventured this way in weeks, maybe longer. I sat down on the floor, leaned up against the door, and tried to think through everything I’d seen and what I needed to do.

I pulled the long chain from around my neck and wrapped my fingers around Jean Luc’s amulet. He was no seer, no witch, and no wizard. His voice in my head couldn’t solve this for me. But he’d become, in a way, my strength. My trajectory to the abilities I’d denied for all this time. Only when I spoke to him, when he was by my side, when he made love to me, did I allow there was really more to this plane, to this dimension, to my senses and my talents, than I’d accepted.

But what good would any of that do me now? I hadn’t learned how to harness any of my other abilities. I didn’t even know what skills were available to me. I’d read most of the history my mother had given me. I’d studied some of the spells. But I hadn’t yet begun to practice, and without practice, I remained a neophyte, incapable of effecting any magick.

The only way out of this was through logic and determination. As my fingers fussed with the talisman’s gold chain, I realized I’d twisted it up with the ruby enamel egg necklace. Still trying to think through my dilemma, I disentangled the two.

What did Grigori want? I tried to remember anything unusual I’d overlooked during the planning of this trip. Or on that last morning when we said good-bye. Yes, there had been some tension over Monsieur giving me the necklace. I’d never quite accepted Monsieur’s reason for not letting his son take on this task. Or why he wanted me to hide the emerald eggs from him. And when I’d asked, Monsieur had seemed disturbed by his own admission that he was afraid Grigori wouldn’t be able to hide its existence.

Buy why was its existence so important?

I pressed the spot between my eyes where Anna had shown me my third eye slept. I needed all the insight and intuition it offered now. The answer to this puzzle lay in small moments and odd comments. What had I seen but missed? Not knowing there was a secret, what had I overlooked?

Monsieur’s hatred of the Bolsheviks. Anna’s fear of them. And Grigori… I pictured his face when he’d told me how the Bolsheviks had destroyed the Russia of his father’s generation. I pictured Grigori as he described his mother and her revolutionary poetry. Not ashamed at all, as Monsieur’s son should have been, but proud of her? Yes, Grigori was proud of his mother’s revolutionary roots. When he’d talked about what the Bolsheviks wanted, about who they hated and how determined they were, he’d been angry. So had Monsieur Orloff. But now, thinking about Grigori’s comments differently… he’d never decried the Bolsheviks. He said they’d destroyed old Russia… it would never be the same again… the land his father and Anna wanted to return to had vanished.

But he’d never expressed regret. He’d only spoken facts.

Was it possible? Was Grigori a secret member of the very political party his father and Anna despised? The very opposite of a tsarist sympathizer? A spy in his own father’s house? Had Monsieur Orloff sensed his son’s betrayal on some deep visceral level? Anna too had said things that seemed harmless, but now, if I read them with this new knowledge, they took on an entirely different meaning.

When she said she thought Grigori might find his destiny with me, I’d assumed she meant it in a positive way. What if she hadn’t? What if she’d seen it but didn’t understand it?

If Grigori was in fact a Bolshevik, then coming here to meet with the Dowager suggested what?

What were they planning to do with the empress?

He’d told me the revolutionaries were obsessed with destroying the symbols of the monarchy. But if they’d wanted to, they would have killed her already. So then what did they want?

Monsieur often talked about how the Bolsheviks were in desperate need of money. Suddenly the antiques store took on a changed appearance. Was Grigori helping fund the movement from the heart of Paris? Were the cracks I’d found in the vault’s wall an effort to break through into that treasure trove so he could steal from his father and give the party money?

My imagination spun wildly. This was all a story I was inventing. Like Jean Luc… making it up in my mind.

Except hadn’t my mother proved he wasn’t my invention? And seeing the Dowager tied up was no invention either.

The enamel eggs around my neck-the ruby ones on top of my blouse and the emerald ones next to my skin-began to hum and vibrate. What was the real meaning of the two necklaces? What hadn’t Monsieur Orloff told me? Why had he taken all of the emerald eggs off of The Tree of Life to give to the Dowager? Why those eggs?

I reached inside, pulled out the hidden necklace, and held the eggs up to the window. I’d seen them almost every day for nearly four years, locked in the display case, hanging off the sinewy sculpted silver branches. Now, inspecting them, I looked for anything atypical compared to the other eggs we made. The fine workmanship, a hallmark of Monsieur Orloff’s artistry, was evident. Perfect enameling, refined designs, tiny exquisite stones set in the bands, crossing the eggs horizontally or vertically. My jeweler’s glasses were still in my smock pocket and I put them on. But even when I looked at the work magnified, nothing shouted out.

Then, turning one egg, I examined its back and noticed a miniature lock in the center of the horizontal band. Examining another, I discovered it was locked as well. I looked at a third. All of them were locked. I studied the ruby eggs. Only one was locked. The single egg Monsieur had pointed out up by the clasp. The one with the note folded up inside of it.

Removing the small key from the end of the chain, I opened the ruby egg. As I unfolded the paper, a second, even smaller key fell out. I picked it up, examined it and then the note. All in Cyrillic. But I didn’t need to be able to read it to guess the purpose of the second key.

Refolding the paper, I enclosed it once more inside the egg. The second miniature key was difficult to hold. My fingers covered the ridges and notches, preventing me from fitting it into one of the emerald egg’s locks. Trying to position my fingers farther back, I fumbled and the key fell.

The chamber wasn’t well lit. The casement windows didn’t allow in much light. I couldn’t see the key on the stone floor. Had it fallen in between a crack? Getting on my hands and knees, I searched and finally, after a frantic five minutes, found it a few feet away, where it had bounced.

Picking up the key once again, I held it more cautiously, careful to keep a grip on it. I’d almost maneuvered it into the lock when I fumbled again. This time, I was prepared and tried to catch it. Instead, I watched in despair as it fell into one of the dreaded cracks and disappeared from sight.