The Ruby Tear by Suzy McKee Charnas
“Look,” Craggen murmured, drawing her attention to another case. “These objects may express what you’re feeling. All of them are also pieces of tokens of loss, very popular after Queen Victoria began wearing black jewelry in mourning the death of her husband. The jet in this brooch is engraved with the shape of a weeping willow tree—a very common motif for mourning pieces.
“What do you mourn, Miss Croft?”
He loomed very near, and suddenly his hands rested lightly on each of her shoulders and turned her toward him, so that she stood in a moment of privacy with him. The room, the softly lit cases full of ornaments, the spectators pointing and whispering over the exhibits, might not have existed. Jess felt the intensity of his concentrated attention like a cloak of warmth falling over her and shielding her from scrutiny.
Except someone was staring at her from across the room.
“Damn!” she whispered. “That’s the guy who’s been following me!”
The Ruby Tear
“Where?” Craggen whipped around like a striking snake.
“He’s gone,” Jess said, startled by the sharpness of his reaction. “It’s just some guy, I don’t know who—but I keep catching glimpses of him, or anyway I think I see him, and then he’s gone.”
“For how long is this?” Craggen took her upper arm in a hard grip and steered her around a corner of the room, out of sight of the doorway. His gaze probed everywhere, checking, she realized, for other entrances to the exhibition, or other watchers already in place.
“Well, for the past few days—”
“And he looks, how?”
“Tallish—I don’t know. He wears a hat pulled down low, and those mirror-lensed sunglasses. I think he has a beard.”
“What color?”
“Blond, or light brown.” She was chagrined to realize that she didn’t really remember the follower all that clearly. “Sort of a hippie type, I guess. Look, there’s no need to get upset about this. I haven’t; I’ve just assumed that he’s an over-enthusiastic fan, and I’d like to see him move on.”
“You’re too casual,” he said, giving her an urgent little shake. “You have laws against stalking for a reason.”
Jess smiled wryly. “I’m not some big star, to be followed around by fanatics—” He gave her another small, quick shake as if to force a new focus on her vision. His alarm communicated itself to her directly through his hands and his fierce stare.
“You don’t need fame to attract dangerous lunatics,” he said. “How have you survived in this city with such naiveté? There have been odd accidents in your theater. You may be the object of your unknown admirer’s unpleasant attentions already, and not even know it!”
She felt an impulse to step into the embrace of his arms and come to rest against him, enclosed in his strength and protected from all comers—
Which was first of all nonsense, and secondly maybe just the effect he was after? Who was he to sneer about ‘unknown admirers’ when he had sent her jewelry before ever meeting her? It was even possible, she realized with a nasty jolt, that he was working for Nick, doing mischief at the theater himself as part of a crazy plan to get her out of the play. He had been there all morning with Lily, she knew, as a sort of unofficial colleague working on the scrim design.
And now who was being paranoid?
With as much dignity as she could muster, she pulled away from him. “That’s just petty harassment, the kind of thing that sometimes happens in a theatrical company because of jealousy, grudges, who knows. And I’m much better suited to judge the seriousness of it than you are, thank you very much.
“As for that guy just now, it may not even be the same person I saw before. I don’t want to over-react. I grew up in a little town upstate, so sometimes the city does still scare me a little, but I’m not neurotic about it. I can’t afford to be, in my business.
“Now, what can you tell me about all these pretty oddities strung on little chains?”
With an angry grunt he turned away, and she thought he might just leave her there and go hot-footing after the supposed stalker. But he seemed to calm down quickly, and rather stiffly returned his full attention to her and to the exhibit.
He explained that the object was a “chatelaine”, a collection of useful items worn chained to a sort of belt-brooch that fastened at the waist, a pretty leftover from the days before ladies’ handbags. So here was a thimble in an engraved silver case, and here a tiny scissors in a scabbard, a minuscule writing pad and a silver-cased pencil.
“They’re like charms,” Jessamyn said, “for a bracelet. My mother collected charms. She’d have loved this.”
“These items are all useful, though,” Ivo said, “and the thimble is of course normal size. The chatelaine of a castle, once upon a time, was its housekeeper, who carried the keys to the many locks at her belt.”
Jess smiled. “I bet the scullions and whatnot liked being able to hear the boss coming by the jingling of her keys!”
The last hint of sternness vanished from Craggen’s face, and he favored her with a smile of peculiar youth and sweetness, touched with the oddest tinge of—was it regret?
“Not many alive today,” he said, “would think of such a thing, or of such people—not the great and imposing men and women of the past, but the lower folk who served them.”
Jess felt a faint flush warm her face. “It’s the actorly imagination at work,” she said. “Someone like me is much more likely to play a servant than a noble lady.”
“Which only shows the shortsightedness of the people who do the casting,” he remarked. “But tell me, isn’t there something here for your sister or your mother?”
“My mother died two years ago. She was in her garden, which she loved, and it happened very quickly. I think I’m over the worst of missing her—as much as you ever get over losing your mom, anyway. Are your parents alive?”
He shook his head but offered no comment. For the rest of their tour of the exhibit he spoke scarcely at all. She had forgotten that Europeans were much less forthcoming about their personal lives than Americans, at least on short acquaintance. She wondered if he would ever feel comfortable enough with her to speak freely about his own family.
She wondered, too, whether she really wanted him to, and whether it was a good thing or not that his presence seemed so powerful that she cared.
When she admitted to being tired of looking at beautiful things, they walked to a quiet bar in a nearby hotel. He bought her a Kir and told her tales of historic jewels, the legendary ones of popular fame: how the diamond called the Great Mogul caused the downfall of one high ruler in India after another; how a shah in ancient Persia was tortured with a crown filled with boiling oil to make him give up the Kohinoor Diamond; how the Hope Diamond was bought from a pawnbroker for what was then, in the mid-nineteenth century, a huge fortune and may or may not actually be the same stone as a fabulous diamond sold to King Louis XIV of France in l698; how a famous ruby in the crown jewels of England turned out to be not a ruby at all but a more common, look-alike red stone called a spinel; and how ambergris was for generations listed as a “marine gem” for its supposed curative powers.
She let his words flow over her without paying much attention to their meaning. His voice was very sexy. She felt like Desdemona, bewitched as the exotic warrior Othello regaled her with his tales of foreign lands.
“What wonderful, terrible stories,” she said. “It’s enough to make a person swear off jewelry forever! I wouldn’t want to be haunted by all the wailing ghosts that must come with a stone like the Kohinoor.”
“People will put up with calamities and restless spirits to own beautiful gems,” he said, pouring himself another small glass of Amaro. “If indeed there are any such spirits, influences, and curses.’
“Curses,” she repeated, remembering what Nick had told her on the phone. Where had all that wild talk come from? Two glasses of Kir had hazed her mind, in a pleasant way, but she did remember. It was a little odd
Well, why just sit here wondering? Why not push a bit and see his reaction?
“I have a friend who says that someone in his family was given a ring, once, that was cursed. It had a skeleton engraved on it, lying on its back as if in a tiny coffin, and not long afterward, the recipient died.”
Reaction? None. Craggen sipped his drink and said nothing.
“This wasn’t a rare or expensive thing, but still . . .” she said, watching him curiously. “Do you know any stories like that? Where the gem itself brings death somehow but not because it’s valuable or special but because somebody wants the death to happen”
“Yes,” he said.
She pressed on, piqued by his reticence.
“We theater people have plays that are considered cursed,” she said, “like poor old—what we call ‘the Scottish play,’ Shakespeare’s one with the three witches. Look, here I am avoiding saying the title just like everybody else, as if I really believed it could be bad luck!”
She made a rueful face. “I guess I can’t take any chances, when I’ve finally worked up the nerve myself to get back on a stage in front of an audience.”
“From what I saw,” he said, “no one would guess you were nervous.”
Ha, she thought; caught you in a lie! But it was kindly meant. She said quietly, “Well, I am. You have no idea how much working in ‘The Jewel’ means to me.”
She felt her eyes brimming: this was something she should be saying to Nick.
“You don’t believe in curses and superstitions?” Craggen inquired casually.
Jess pulled herself together. “No. Even this nonsense at the Edwardian is just spite, not the ghost of some comedian who died and was buried under the stage. Let’s not talk about it. I’ve had more than enough to drink, and I need a night of good, sound sleep before I tackle a couple of big scenes off-book tomorrow.”
He looked baffled, and she explained that the script in her case was the “book,” and that she liked to memorize her lines early in the rehearsal process.
“Especially,” she added, “when I know the playwright isn’t going to be revising as we go along. Some writers keep giving everybody new lines to replace old ones, which gives actors fits, and rightly. It’s not fair to add to the memorization load like that. We have enough to worry about, with so much new blocking and timing from our director. If I didn’t know that Walter Steinhart is first-class in what he does, I’d rebel, so help me. I’d march.”
“Would you? Your contract permits?”
“Of course not!” she laughed. “I’m joking. Even without a contract, I wouldn’t dream of walking out.” She sobered. “None of us would. It would mean letting everybody else down, too. Good colleagues don’t do that to each other.”
“Even when they’re plagued with peculiar ‘accidents?’”
“Especially then,” she said positively. “Look, just how much do you know about all that? Besides what I’ve told you, I mean.”
“Everything,” he said seriously. “Since I can’t reach Nicolas Griffin, I’ve talked more with Miss Anderson. She’s a very accomplished gossip. But I shouldn’t be saying such things.”
A shuttered look came over his face, and a faint and very private smile curled the corners of his mouth. Jess reminded herself that this man wasn’t her contact originally. According to Marie—also a devoted gossip—he’d been spending a good deal of time with Lily; a thought that, discomfortingly, made her heart sink a little.
She said, “Don’t worry about it. Everybody gossips, the same as in any profession I think.”
His eyes brightened again, fully alert and focused on her. “Lily is very professional, very committed to this play. Like you, Jessamyn. I think you theater people are devoted to your work as people used to be devoted to their prayers.”
What an odd, and charming, thing to say! She smiled at him.
He looked away and added, in a more distant tone, “Before you go home to your well-earned rest, let me tell you the best story of a cursed gemstone that I know. One last story, is it all right?”
Jess shook her head helplessly. “First you softened me up with an exhibit of beautiful jewels, and then with bloody historical stories over drinks; how can I resist?”
“Good. This ‘tall tale’ is about a real gem, a stone without price, a treasure—and its fearful history.”
He reached across the table and took her hands gently in his larger ones, like a medium creating a circuit of contact before summoning spirits. Was she imagining it, or did he feel a need to touch her this way, something more than an idle impulse?
“Imagine a time,” he said, “when the great empire of Rome was broken and chaos replaced it. Imagine a great commander, Charlemagne, pulling a shattered European world back together again by intelligence, will, and armed might.
“Imagine that he rewards his faithful warrior knights with fiefdoms and privileges, the standard spoils of the wars of kings. But there is one special treasure he seeks to lodge not with a great noble who dreams of making his own bid for a crown, but a faithful warrior of low estate and no ambition but to serve his sovereign faithfully.
“He finds such a man among his knights, a gruff old fighter, a mere knight, made a Baron on the field of battle but still a nobody to the higher lords. In secret, the emperor entrusts to this man the keeping of a precious gemstone, the Ruby Tear.”
He moved closer, his knees touching hers under the little bar table, and he held her hands like a lover, slowly curling and uncurling her fingers with gentle pressure.
Her protests died in her throat as his voice became rough with emotion. A conviction came to her that he was entrusting to her something precious to him, just as the newly ennobled Baron in his story had been singled out and honored by Charlemagne. She sat still and let him caress her hands in this abstracted way that seemed at once detached, and deeply sexual.
“They say this stone was a tear of blood fallen from the eye of the dragon slain by Saint George; a great and holy treasure. And it was said that so long as the Ruby Tear stayed safe in the hands of that Baron’s family, peace would reign in Europe.”
To lighten the moment (why did he always choose a public place for these breathtaking gestures of unsettling intimacy, for God’s sake?) she said, “That didn’t happen, did it? So what did?”
He let her hands go and sat back in his chair. The mood was broken. The eyes that looked into hers gleamed now with sardonic humor.
“Just what you think. The new-made Baron went home to his domain and continued serving his liege lord. As Catholic Germans, his family were often on the front lines of the fight against the Eastern Orthodox Church, and later the advances of the Turks.
“In one of the many the wars that followed, a descendant of this Baron went off to fight and came home to find treachery and death. Foreign mercenaries, hired to protect the castle in his absence, had turned traitor, murdered his family, kidnapped his wife-to-be, and stolen the ruby given by the hand of Charlemagne.
“But I’ve heard that the descendants of the man who led the traitors have been paying ever since. The returning warrior cursed the traitor and all his sons and successors, and even—they say—pursues him and his today, by the help of some hellish bargain he made with supernatural powers.
“That’s the tale of the Ruby Tear; perhaps you’ve heard it before?”
Jess frowned. It was reminiscent of something she’d heard recently. “Revenge-motivated adventure is a very strong motif in our fiction, and sometimes stolen gems and kidnapped women are involved. We don’t usually put that together with knights in armor and religious wars, except in things like fantasy games. In a way, it sounds almost like a horror movie.”
He snorted with amusement. “So does a lot of history, when you look closely. That’s where your movies get their worst horror stories from, I sometimes think.”
He stopped speaking and sat back, clasping his hands loosely over his stom
Waiting.
She knew she’d missed something important, maybe even failed a hidden test, and for some reason it distressed her out of all proportion. He was so obviously waiting for the penny to drop, but what penny? How much Amaro had she drunk, anyway? She felt strange and unbalanced by this story, but its meaning eluded her. It was like becoming aware of a jagged, lava-filled crack in the ground between herself and a person she had thought stood on the same footing that she did.
Well, she couldn’t just sit there like a tongue-tied fool.
“I can see the story must be important to you,” she began, “but I haven’t come across it before. It’s embarrassing to admit it, but I don’t read a lot of fiction. I read a little history, preparing for the role I’m rehearsing, but outside of that—well, I never was much of a scholar. I didn’t even finish college. I’d been taking acting classes on the side, and I got offered a part. I took it, and that was that. If I’d known that you spend all your time either working for a pittance, or going to acting classes to keep your skills sharp, maybe I’d have stayed in school.”
“So, you were lucky,” he said. “To find work so early.”
She smiled faintly. “I used to be; not so sure about that any more. But the point is, I try to catch up on my liberal arts education, but there’s not a lot of time. My work is very—immediate, you could say. Ephemeral. I try to stay in the present, to keep my performance vivid and energetic.”
There, that felt better—talking of things she knew and understood.
He nodded. “Of course. I just thought that somewhere, sometime, you might have heard such a story, of this magnificent ruby that the rightful owner gave his soul away to have a chance to reclaim.”
“No,” she said. “Thanks for telling it to me.”
His smile was cool. “It was my pleasure.”
* * *
Soaking in her tub later, script in hand, the whole thing clicked into focus. She felt like an idiot. Reading the play for the fiftieth time, she couldn’t help but see how the situation was similar to the story of the Ruby Tear, as seen from the viewpoint of the treacherous thief’s descendants, under siege and trying to protect their ill-gotten gains.