Tuesday Talk with J.G.
Harlond
Once upon a time I had gap year job in a
jewellery and antique shop. I was taken to their workshop to see how jewels
were cut and set, and gradually learned what sort of antiques sold to what sort
of customer. It was a pleasant job, but not what I wanted to do for the rest of
my life. Looking back, however, much of what I learned then has come in very
handy for my historical fiction.
Budding authors are advised to write what they
know: my first novel, The Magpie,
subsequently re-written as The Empress
Emerald, is about Leo Kazan, a young man in colonial Bombay who has a
fascination for all things shiny. I had a basic knowledge of the gems, and what
I knew about India during the Raj came from tales of a great uncle who loved
his time in India. In writing this novel – and without giving it any thought –
I was combining the far away and long ago with personal experience. A technique
I extended for The Chosen Man
trilogy, drawing on my time living in Italy, the Netherlands and Spain with
events that happened centuries ago.
While preparing for my new release, A Turning Wind, (book 2 in The Chosen Man trilogy), I came across
the writing of the French merchant-explorer Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1605-1689). In a spell-binding account of how diamonds were mined in the Golconda
region of India he quotes an account supposedly written by Marco Polo of how
diamonds were found and traded in the area centuries before. It was too good
not to use so I wove it into the opening scene of A Turning Wind, it also sets the scene for what is to come later
perfectly.
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Reviewed by
Discovering Diamonds |
Goa, India,
September 1639
It was a ramshackle affair for such valuable goods. A
makeshift marketplace created out of crimson and brightly striped awnings.
Lengths of scarlet, orange, turquoise, purple and blue formed curtains between
trees; sheltering the splendid commodities from the late summer sun. Vendors were still laying out their wares when Ludo
arrived: gems and trinkets in copper and gold, ivory combs and bangles,
shimmering sari silk and embroidered fringed shawls, all transported from one
coast of India to the other on heads and shoulders. The costly cargo had passed
through the famous alluvial diamond valleys of Golconda, the human caravan
collecting ever more precious gems along the way – a cargo now watched over by
guards with arm muscles that rippled ‘beware’ and vicious knives tucked in wide
belts.
Curious, colourful, magnificent . . . everything Ludo had
hoped for. He was delighted. Yet, wandering among the displays, he began to
wonder why he had come – what, apart from uncut diamonds, he was actually
seeking.
As he finished his first circuit, a white bullock ambled in
pulling a cart laden with clay flagons. Happily over-paying an urchin for a
drink of water then returning the cup, Ludo strolled back among the folding
tables, trestles and floor mats, this time stopping to examine a miniature
chest of drawers decorated with inlaid mother-of-pearl for women’s trinkets. It
was pretty, but no, not special enough to add to his ship’s cargo. Moving on,
he encountered an awkward Englishman dabbing at his forehead with a sodden
handkerchief. The pink-faced sahib
was struggling to keep up with an Indian agent’s heavily accented sales patter
without losing his cherished dignity.
“Let me tell you how they are found,” the Goan agent was
saying as he ran a hand seductively through a wide lacquered bowl of uncut
diamonds. “When it rains, water rushes down the mountains, taking these
precious stones with it and leaving them trapped at the bottom of gorges and in
caverns. When the dry season comes and there is not one drop of water to be
had, when the heat is enough to kill an Englishman as he walks from his door,
brave men risk their lives to collect the stones. But they must go where wild
serpents thrive. Venomous serpents and vast – serpents that crush and swallow
men whole . . .”
Ludo shuddered along with the Englishman: snakes were
another of the reasons he had made no attempt to travel inland during his stay
in Goa.
“. . . but these diamonds are precious not only for the
means by which they are obtained, not only for their special rarity, but for
their quality. Look, sahib, see how
fine they are, how they bring light into our lives. Each one is perfect,
flawless . . .”
The Englishman put a forefinger in the bowl and peered at a
stone the size of a sparrow’s egg, then at another the shape and form of a
woman’s fingernail. The Goan agent took his hand and placed an uncut stone in
the sweating palm then exchanged it for a cushion-cut diamond ring magicked
from among his robes saying quietly, “This is not for everyone to know, sahib, but I should tell you, there may
not be many more of these diamonds. Each year there are fewer. It is said the
serpents now eat them to preserve their heritage.”
Ludo swallowed a grin and gestured with a hand to attract
the agent’s attention. Half-convinced, half-enthralled, and knowingly walking
into an enticement worthy of his own invention, Ludo stepped forward and cocked
his head to one side enquiringly. The agent retrieved the ring from the
Englishman and put it in Ludo’s open palm then whisked a heart-shaped ruby from
thin air and put it next to the ring.
Ludo’s hand was broad but there was barely room for the two
wonderful gemstones. The agent picked the ring from Ludo’s hand, leaving only
the ruby to burn through his palm in the warm light of the coloured awnings.
“A gem worthy of a queen, sahib,” the agent murmured.
“Worthy of a queen . . . it is indeed,” Ludo murmured. This
was what he wanted: this ruby. “But it is too much for a humble merchant such
as me.”
“No, sahib, this
ruby is for you. This is what you
seek.”
Ludo shot him a surprised glance. The agent’s expression was
open, generous, but two black-bead eyes under a startlingly white turban bore
into him, hypnotising him, holding his gaze.
“You must know, sahib,
a
ruby of this quality has such virtues from the Sun that a man living in
ignorance or consumed by sin, or pursued by mortal enemies, is saved by its
wearing. When stones such as this are found they are named: this is ‘Rani
Saahasi’. There is no perfect translation that I know in Portuguese: in English
you could call it ‘Queen of Courage’.
Ludo forced himself to look away, shook his head to clear
his vision and pulled himself back to the multi-coloured market place. But his
fingers clenched the ruby of their own accord: the stone, as red as pomegranate
seeds, as cool as the waters of Kashmir, sang in his palm. He had to have it.
“No,” he said. “No, I cannot risk my small income on a
bauble such as this.”
The Englishman’s jaw dropped. Ludo willed him to move away,
not wanting to risk haggling against the flushed-faced mister as well. The
Englishman stayed exactly where he was.
Reluctantly, Ludo held out the ruby saying, “I seek smaller,
uncut gems . . .” As he spoke a set of long-nailed, hairy fingers plucked the
stone from his palm and the thief escaped round the trunk of the nearest tree.
A troop of other practised thieves appeared above, peering
with the faces of buffoons between the different coloured awnings then
scrambling helter-skelter from branches or shimmying like circus performers
down supporting wooden props. The Goan agent screeched not unlike the unwanted
visitors and grabbed the corners of his open cloth on the low table behind him,
hugging the rapid sack to his bony chest so no more of his valuable goods could
be taken. Suddenly there was a commotion around the bullock cart carrying
water; a thief had upturned the clay cups and made off with a jug, carrying it
awkwardly on three legs for she had a baby on her back. Her sister, meanwhile,
discovered a display of brass incense holders and bells. Seizing as many as she
could, she began to juggle; the bells ringing into the air then clanging to the
soft mud beneath her feet. Then up went a candlestick, and then another and
another, caught by one cousin and tossed to an uncle who, brandishing it as
trophy, bared his teeth at the buyers and headed for home.
But as he went, more of his clan arrived, targeting
push-carts, floor mats and head-rolls; some stealing arm bangles and pushing
them up their thin, hairy arms before running back up the tree trunks into the
branches and awnings, or jumping on tables, scattering wares that had crossed
perilous oceans and scorching plains to be brought undamaged, intact across
mountains and marshes down to Goa.
Ludo started to laugh at the shock and surprise of the
invasion, then stopped as if the scene were frozen in time when the ruby he so
coveted dropped to his feet from above.
“Choke on it, choke on it!” the monkey cursed, for it was
inedible and he did not want it.
Slowly, slowly, hardly believing his luck, Ludo bent to pick
up the gem. His right hand closed over it and it was his.
But it was not.
He started to walk out of the covered square, but his legs
would not move. The ruby held him to the spot, telling him perhaps that a man living in
ignorance or consumed by sin, or worse – pursued by a mortal enemy – is saved
by its wearing. Ludo did not believe he was consumed by sin or that
he lived in a state of ignorance, but he was pursued by enemies, one, possibly
two, or even three if you counted the ridiculous Count Hawk – but he was no
thief. No common thief, anyway.
***
‘Write about what you know’ and what you pick
up along the way . . . My research has
taken me down all manner of exotic rabbit holes, and (reported) truth can be
much stranger than fiction. Quoting Marco Polo again, Tavernier
explains how diamond gatherers supposedly avoided serpents to harvest precious
stones:
“Now it is so happens that these mountains are inhabited by a great many
white eagles, which prey on the serpents. When these eagles spy the flesh (raw
meat men have flung into the valley) lying at the bottom of the valley, down
they swoop and seize the lumps and carry them off. The men observe attentively
where the eagles go, and as soon as they see that a bird has alighted and has
swallowed the flesh, they rush to the spot as fast as they can. (…) When eagles
eat the flesh, they also eat − that is, they swallow − the diamonds. Then at
night, when the eagle comes back, it deposits the diamonds it has swallowed
with its droppings. So men come and collect these droppings, and there they
find diamonds in plenty.”
‘Diamonds in plenty’ – at seventeen I
couldn’t see a future in them; now I cannot imagine how at least two of my
novels could have been written without them.
© J.G. Harlond
Author
of :
About J.G. Harlond
Originally from the south west of England, J.G Harlond (Jane) studied and worked in various different countries before finally settling down with her husband, a retired Spanish naval captain, in rural AndalucÃa, Spain. Despite being ‘rubbish’ at history at school because she wanted to turn everything into a story, she survived the History element of her B.A. and went on to get an M.A. in Social and Political Thought. Her historical fiction, set in the 17th century and the first half of the 20th century, features many of the places Jane has visited – along with flawed rogues, wicked crimes, and the more serious issues of being an outsider. Apart from fiction, Jane also writes school text books under her married name. Her favourite reading is along the Dorothy Dunnett lines: well-researched stories with compelling plots and complex characters. Jane is currently writing about the theft and fate of the Crown Jewels during the English Civil War for the third in her Ludo da Portovenere trilogy.
Find Jane on
Blog http://wp-harlond.jgharlond.com
Twitter: @JaneGHarlond
