Donovans 01 - Amber Beach

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 flourished 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