Amber Beach (33 page)

“Why?” she asked, before Resnikov could answer. “You
just said it’s a fake.”

“Half the items in museums are fakes. This”, Jake said, rubbing his thumb over the brooch again, “is an artfully carved bit of history from the time before plastic made counterfeiting amber easy and cheap. It would fit right into my collection.”

“Of fakes?” Honor asked in disbelief.

Resnikov laughed out loud.

Jake’s smile showed as a flash of white against his short, dense beard. “Not all of my collection is fake.”

“You are too modest”, Resnikov said. “Your collection of antique carved amber is one of the finest in private hands.”

“What else do you have in the case?” Jake asked.

Shaking his head, the Russian replaced the samples Jake had already seen and took out a box. He opened it and presented the contents with a subdued flourish.

“You may handle it with your customary care”, the Russian said.

Honor leaned forward. “What is it?”

“A pendant, probably”, Jake said, looking closely at the item without lifting it out of the box. “Etruscan style with oversized eyes and the kind of nose we call Roman today. Broken and mended where the boy’s leg lies between the woman’s.”

“Boy? It looks like a girl to me”, Honor said, peering at the carving. “It’s a smaller figure than the other one, with bigger eyes and more delicate features.”

“Cultural bias”, he said succinctly. “Etruscan goddesses, and probably the wealthy Etruscan women as well, had much younger lovers. A mature woman’s face is more fully formed than a boy’s. In any case” – he handed Honor the loupe – “look where the figures are almost joined.”

After a short silence, Honor handed back the loupe. “Right. Definitely not female. Not real delicate, either.”

Jake laughed quietly. “From the position of the figures, this probably was a fertility fetish.”

“Then it is a genuine piece”, Resnikov said with the air of a man stating the obvious.

“I wouldn’t buy it.”

Surprise and something less pleasant flashed across the Russian’s aristocratic face. It made Honor wonder if, like Jake, Resnikov had a gun stashed in his suitcase along with all the other odds and ends.

Jake must have wondered, too. As the uneasy silence expanded, he watched Resnikov’s hands.

Resnikov spread his fine-boned hands on the table as though he would have preferred to wrap them around Jake’s neck.

“What are you saying?” the Russian demanded.

Jake shrugged, but there was nothing casual about the way he was gathering himself for a fight, if it came to that. “There’s something about this carving I don’t like.”

“Explain. But do not question or test the amber substance itself. It is real beyond a doubt. I will guarantee it.”

“It’s not the amber that bothers me.”

“Excellent. Continue.”

“I’m not an art historian”, Jake said calmly, “but there’s something wrong about the drapery or wings or whatever they are on the woman’s figure. It’s hard to tell which on such a small piece.”

“Examine it more closely.” Then, as though hearing the cold anger in his own voice for the first time, Resnikov forced himself to smile. “If you please.”

Jake picked up the amber, set it on the lens of his flashlight, and turned on the beam. Light glowed through the tiny sculpture, setting it afire.

“The crazing isn’t thick”, he said, looking at the network of hair-fine cracks all across the surface that gave a textured
appearance
to the amber.

“If the piece came from a grave, locked away from oxygen and light for all the long centuries, then
crazing
would not develop greatly”, Resnikov pointed out.

Though Jake nodded, he obviously wasn’t convinced. He bent over and examined the small carving for a long minute through the loupe.

“Look at this edge”, he said, straightening. “It’s ragged and the others are smooth, as though a piece was broken off after the carving was finished. Yet the crazing is the same on the ragged edge as the smooth.”

“It could have broken during the burial ceremony.”

“It could have.”

“You do not think so”, Resnikov said.

“No. I think this is a copy of a real piece, a copy that was made without benefit of magnification and baked in an oven or hot sand to simulate the natural aging of time.”

Resnikov took the flashlight and carving. Without waiting for a request, Jake handed over the loupe. Silence condensed in the room while the Russian bent over the amber. He began speaking softly in his native language. The look on his face said that he wasn’t composing love sonnets to the carving.

Unhappily he stuffed the amber back into its box. His lack of care said more than words about how his opinion of the artifact had changed.

“As I said”, he muttered, “I am merely quite good. You are best.”

As he opened his small suitcase wider and reached in for another item, the door leading back to the main cafe swung inward. Jake didn’t have to move his head to see Ellen look around the room. Though her glance was fast, it missed nothing.

“Oh”, she said, as though surprised. “Excuse me. I was looking for the rest room and thought this was the door.” She smiled prettily and withdrew.

The door didn’t quite close behind her.

Resnikov got up, grabbed an extra chair, and wedged the back of it under the doorknob. He secured the alley door in the same way. Only then did he open another box and hand
it to Jake.

Displayed against burgundy velvet, a piece of jewelry gleamed in shades of ivory. In fact, Honor assumed it was ivory, until Jake picked it up with a care he showed only when handling amber – or a lover. He had touched her like that, as though she were distilled of moonlight and time.

“Rosary”, Jake said. “Decade type. Probably sixteenth century. Possibly earlier. Faceted white amber beads with a few ‘pine needle’ inclusions. Quite rare. Excellent metalwork. Gold filigree beads separating the decades. Very fine silver filigree cross. May I have my loupe back?”

Resnikov dropped the magnifying device into Jake’s outstretched hand. He put the glass to his eye and studied the
beads.

“First quality”, he said simply after a time. “I could set a needle to the beads, but there’s no real point.”

“Why?” Honor asked.

“The edges of the facets and the drill holes in the beads all show the subtle wearing down expected in jewelry of this age. Imitation amber doesn’t wear like that simply by moving against the silk strands holding the beads together. True
amber does.”

Jake returned the rosary to its box with gentle care and
an odd smile.

“What?” Honor asked.

“Just thinking about amber and the human mind”, he said. “In all its hundreds of colors, amber’s earliest use was as a talisman, a means of warding off evil and luring good. Paternosters like this were so proudly displayed by their owners
that some orders banned the use of amber in rosaries during
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, saying that simple knotted cords were all the pious needed to count their prayers.”

Honor looked from Jake’s long index finger to his half-closed eyes, gleaming like quicksilver in the dim light. Yet it was his voice that held her, deep and husky, rich with memory and emotion, resonant with a shared human hunger for that which is rare and beautiful.

“I’ll bet the ban didn’t stay in place for long”, she said. “People have always used beauty to celebrate their gods and their own lives.”

“No, it didn’t last”, he agreed. “The amber trade has nourished from the time women who gathered firewood on the shores of the Baltic Sea discovered that the ‘sea stones’ washed up on shore burned more readily than wood.”

“They burned amber?” Honor asked, horrified.

“I can’t prove it, but I’m sure they did. The Baltic climate is cold, wet, and miserable. Anyone who has ever tried to set fire to wet wood couldn’t help but value something that burned as quickly and sweetly as amber. The peasants and soldiers in the amber mines certainly knew it. During the wars, they burned raw amber just to stay alive.”

“My God. Imagine the gems they must have destroyed.”

“No thanks”, Jake said dryly. “I’d rather think of the women who collected firewood and carved up the carcasses brought home by the men. I’m betting those women were the first artists who worked in wood and amber. If they carved in driftwood, it rotted and vanished in a century or two. If they carved in amber, it never rotted. So the same women who burned amber in hearth fires also made rare, extraordinary pieces of Stone Age art, pieces that outlasted their creators, their children’s children, and their culture itself.”

Honor remembered what Kyle had said about the man he called Jay – a collector of Stone Age amber carvings. What Kyle hadn’t said was that Jake’s passion for the amber remains of past cultures was intellectual and sensual rather than simply greedy and possessive.

Resnikov set out another box. This time the piece inside was set off by cream-colored satin. The amber itself was
a
deep shade of cinnamon and radiantly clear along most of its four-inch length. A portion of one end had been left untouched. The rest of the object was carved into the shape of a vaguely tapering, irregular cylinder, with the thicker end embedded in the rough amber.

Honor frowned as she looked at the piece. The shape itself was teasingly familiar. Where it was polished, there was a surge of fluid lines and intriguing, shadowed ripples that made her want to run her fingertips over each curve and hollow. She was reaching out to do just that when she realized why the shape seemed so familiar. Instantly she snatched back
her fingers.

“Go ahead”, Jake said, amused. “It won’t bite.”

“Another fertility fetish?” she asked dryly.

“Probably not. Amber has always been thought of as supernatural. In Baltic lore, an amber necklace was believed to choke anyone who spoke lies. Talismans were carved in various shapes to ward off sickness or accidents or ill wishes. An amber phallus like this one was believed to be the most powerful of all talismans, guarding its wearer against any evil
sorcery.”

“Must have been a patriarchal culture that dreamed that
one up”, Honor said.

“No doubt. Most cultures were.”

“Only after women taught them how.”

Jake smiled. “Hold this while I get something.”

Before she could object, she was holding the palm-sized amber phallus. Once she got past the subject matter, she saw that the workmanship on the carving was both exquisite and accurate. The amber itself was warm to her fingertips. It
wasn’t the first time she had noticed amber’s unique property of feeling warm to the touch, but it was the first time she had blushed over it.

Yet even as she did, she couldn’t help thinking of ways to turn the ancient talisman into decorative art. A brooch, possibly. Or a pendant. Yes, a pendant on a handmade golden chain, with long, elegant vines curling around the phallus, cupping it in the rich warmth of beaten gold…

“Rub it with this”, Jake said without looking up from his briefcase. “See if it will pick up a bit of tissue.”

Still thinking of design possibilities, Honor took the cloth he held out to her and rubbed it briskly over the smooth part of the phallus.

“That should do it”, he said. “Now the tissue.”

She passed the blunt, smoothly rounded tip over a small piece of tissue. The paper lifted and clung to the amber like a hungry lover.

“Lots of electricity”, she said, her tone carefully neutral.

“Some plastics have that property”, he said as he fiddled with his lighter and a pressurized canister of butane. “May I use the needle?” he asked Resnikov.

“If you must”, the Russian said dryly. “I admit that I find the prospect troubling.”

“I’ll do it”, Honor said, looking at Jake with wide-eyed malice. “I’ll be really careful, just like it was still attached.”

Jake shot her a sideways look as he heated the needle with the recharged lighter. When the steel was good and hot, he touched the rough end of the carving very delicately. After a few moments the scent of ancient resin and million-year-old sunshine curled sweetly into his nostrils.

“Not plastic”, he said.

He got out the jeweler’s loupe, turned on a flashlight, and examined the phallus in strong light.

“Ambroid”, he said after a time. “You can just make out
the flow lines and bubbles flattened by the pressure of the
mold.”

“Another fake?” Honor asked.

“To some. To others, merely an ‘enhanced’ form of amber. In any case, the piece isn’t ancient. The technique for creating a big piece of amber out of little chips was discovered in the late nineteenth century.”

Jake gave the piece back to Resnikov, who put it away. Honor watched rather wistfully as the carving disappeared.

“It would make a dynamite necklace”, she said. “Just
think how safe I’d be.”