The Cloisters(31)

He pulled out a ring from the case and handed it to me. It had engraved vines and the smallest of diamonds that sparkled fiercely despite the lack of sunlight in the store and their diminutive size.

“A platinum engagement ring, circa 1928,” he said.

It slid onto my finger perfectly, its scale delicate.

“It’s lovely,” I said, allowing myself to imagine what it must have been like to own such a clear marker of wealth on the eve of the country’s collapse. A beacon in the dark days that would have been ahead. I wondered if it had been pawned in the wake of the stock market crash, and then passed around from shopkeeper to shopkeeper until it landed here, with Stephen.

He pulled out a small square-cut emerald ring with etched decorations at the corners.

“Even older,” he said, passing it to me.

I slipped it on. I had never had jewelry growing up. I didn’t even buy cheap pieces as substitutes, but I had always coveted a single piece my mother wore—a beautiful gold bracelet with one charm, a wax press made of amber. It had been my grandmother’s, she explained to me, and someday it would be mine. And despite the bracelet’s beauty and the fact I loved how it hung, like a pendulum, from her wrist, the thought filled me with an ineffable sadness. These pieces of jewelry that had ended up here instead of living on someone’s body. The same way the pieces of jewelry at The Cloisters were relegated to a lifetime of coldness.

“What about that one?” I asked, pointing at the gold band with the smooth red stone in the center. I noticed that the small curlicues of gold that held the stone in place were actually serpents, their scales minute and worn with age.

“Ah, you have excellent taste.” Stephen pulled out the ring and held it in one hand while he used the other to shake out his handkerchief with a flourish before placing the ring in his palm, now covered with a simple cotton square.

It was tiny, this ring. Much too small to fit on any finger but my pinky, which it barely fit. On the interior the words loialte ne peur were engraved. Old French, probably from the thirteenth or fourteenth century, meaning loyalty without fear.

“Very old,” he said. “Very old,” as if repeating it to himself.

I flipped over the tag, which read $25,000. How such an item could be lost in this crowded stretch of shop, wedged between rare books and other items, shocked me. I pulled it off and examined the band, which was clearly hand-hammered.

When I went to return the ring, I noticed behind the rows of jewelry a handful of minted coins, their edges cracked where the original die had worn thin. On one, the head of Medusa—her eyes pinpricks, her hair made of serpents—was clearly visible.

“May I?” I reached for the coin and Stephen nodded.

In my palm it was heavier and thicker than a regular coin should be, and I realized it was an amulet with an inscription on the back.

“For settling the womb,” he said as I began to make out the ancient Greek inscription.

“Such unusual things,” I said, almost to myself.

“You should show her, Stephen.” This from Rachel, who was watching us from the end of the shop. “I think she’d like to see.”

Stephen made his way past Rachel to the door through which they had disappeared. He held it open for me to pass.

There were a few stairs, and then a brief hallway that opened onto another room, this one more sparsely populated with glass cases and a handful of manuscripts displayed open to illustrated pages. The curtains were drawn against the potentially damaging light of the day. And arranged within the cases was a wild collection of beautiful objects: brooches and rings, sets of antique playing cards. Older things, even: a set of papyrus, an enamel scarab, a reliquary. It was a museum in miniature.

“Stephen cultivates collectors,” Rachel said from behind me. “He works with a lot of people interested in items that are…” She paused to look down at an open manuscript. “Hard to acquire on the open market.”

“Provenance is not our expertise,” said Stephen, gesturing at the items around him. “Acquiring, however, is. We get all kinds of sellers and buyers in here. Sometimes things come from overseas. Often, the things that come through need to move quickly. I can offer them a home.”

“And does The Cloisters?” I asked.

“Oh no,” said Rachel. “Never. But Patrick, his standards are a bit lower.”

She put the box down on one of the glass cases, and Stephen unwrapped it, pulling out a single card from the stack.

“They’re from Mantua,” Rachel said.

Stephen nodded. “Yes, from a dealer who thought they might have originated in Ravenna. You know how those Byzantine cities were, such liberal use of gold.”

“They’re striking,” I said, looking down at the card that Stephen had laid on the glass—the Mundi card, the World. A card that signified wholeness and completion, a sense of totality. It was the final card in the modern trump sequence.

“A family had found them in the attic of an old country home, in this same box, wrapped with this same ribbon.”

“Is that true?” I asked.

Stephen shrugged. “It is the story.”

“Patrick has been collecting,” Rachel said. “Usually little things: fragments, pages pulled out of manuscripts, small devotional paintings. Sometimes things that are a little more”—here Rachel met my gaze—“unusual. Last year, he came home from Greece with a set of astragali, the knuckle bones of sheep that the ancient Greeks used to tell the future. Over the winter, he purchased a manuscript supposedly written by a haruspex, someone who used the entrails of sacrificed animals to look for omens.” She pointed to the card on the table. “These fall into the latter category of his collecting.”