Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

of imagination to see pearls and think of the moon, which was worshiped along with the sun. What is part of a god is also holy. If you own those pieces, you’re holy, too.”
    “That’s the fascinating thing about pearls,” Archer said. “They’re symbols of both chastity and carnality, depending on the time and place.”
    “A gem for all occasions,” Hannah said with a sideways look at him.
    “A gem for all cultures,” Becky corrected. “Once pearl fisheries were established, pearls became the ultimate status symbol around the world. Whether in India, China, or Persia, the more pearls you wore, the higher you were in the pecking order. Romans wallowed in them. Caligula was mad for them.”
    “Caligula was mad, period,” Archer said dryly.
    “Just because he gave his horse a high appointment and hung a pearl necklace around the equine neck?” Fred asked. “Can’t say I blame Caligula. Most men haven’t the sense of a horse’s butt, much less the whole horse.”
    “Cleopatra won a bet with pearls,” Becky said.
    “Who had enough nerve to bet against her?” Hannah asked.
    “Marc Antony. To prove to him how powerful and wealthy Egypt was, Cleopatra bet him that she could serve a feast that was more expensive than any in history. She sat him down with an empty plate and a goblet of wine. She probably smiled like her pet cat to see him watching her skeptically. Then she took off one of her earrings—a single huge pearl—smashed it, dissolved it in wine, and drank it. When she was finished, she handed the other earring to Antony and dared him to do the same. He conceded on the spot, for the earring she had drunk was worth almost two million ounces of silver.”
    “Legend has it that he financed an entire military campaign with the proceeds of the second pearl,” Fred said.
    “That was the general Vitellius and it was his mother’s pearl earring, not Cleopatra’s.”
    “No, it was Antony, and it was Cleopatra’s pearl!”
    Squaring off face-to-face, Becky and Fred started quoting sources, talking louder and louder, and generally having a great time. The higher the volume of the argument rose, the brighter their eyes got and the quicker their minds.
    “Which was it, Antony or Vitellius?” Hannah asked Archer quietly.
    “Vitellius. Antony took his to Rome, cut it in half, and made earrings for a statue of Venus.”
    “Cut it in half . . .” Hannah repeated faintly. “For a statue.”
    “It was an act of piety as much as arrogance. Romans were completely in thrall to pearls. The more they got through conquest, the more they wanted. They were insatiable and quite happy to bankrupt themselves for pearls.”
    “You sound wistful.”
    “I am,” Archer admitted, smiling a pirate’s kind of smile. “It would have been a great time to be a pearl trader.”
    “Now isn’t so bad,” she said, looking around. “To see pearls like this at any other time, you would have to have been an emperor or a god.”
    A gleam from another display case caught her eye. She looked at the Battling Linskys—no sign of a truce—and sidled closer to the new case. Sealed within its glass walls was a rectangle perhaps eighteen inches by fourteen inches. Its surface was gold. Countless pearls set in the gold depicted the clothes of a saint: headdress, robes, girdle, all glowed with the ethereal inner light of pearls. Rubies, emeralds, and sapphires were scattered about, but it was pearls which dominated, pearls which were the true measure of piety and wealth.
    “Where on earth . . . ?” she whispered.
    “Either a monastery or the library of a very wealthy man,” Archer said quietly. “It’s medieval, Russian, and one of the finest manuscript covers ever made by man. It fairly vibrates with awe and reverence, with hope for immortal life laced with fear of hell everlasting.”
    For a moment all Hannah could think of was Len’s fingers digging into her arm as he screamed at her that the Black Trinity wasn’t finished, couldn’t be finished, or he would be whole. The image of his rage and fear was so vivid that she said his name in a low, husky voice.
    “Don’t think about it,” Archer said. “He wasn’t the first man to go crazy and equate the temporal and temporary with the divine and eternal. There is something shimmering just beneath the surface of pearls that brings peace or madness, depending on the man.”
    “I know. It’s just . . . sometimes it’s so fresh, as though it happened