The Blessing Stone (56 page)

Father and daughter embraced, and everyone cried, none so loudly as Heavenly Ruler who sobbed like a child and wiped his face on his immaculate white sleeves.

That night, as Katharina lay in Lo-Tan’s arms, he whispered to her, “If you wish to return to Adriano as his wife, I understand and release you, for he is your first husband. And if you decide to go to Cathay and search for your father, I give you my blessing. But I pray to Kwan Yin, my beloved Golden Lotus, that you keep me always in your heart.”

But she said, “Adriano and I were never truly married. Not according to our laws. You are my husband, Lo-Tan, and always shall be.” As for the other, her heart was heavy as she said, “A blue stone meant more to my father than his own daughter did. He did not just leave me in a stranger’s care, he
abandoned
me. And if I go after him now, I would be abandoning my own children. But unlike my father, my children mean more to me than an elusive blue stone. I will not go after him. My place is here, with you, with my family.”

The next morning she went to Adriano, who was marveling at all the riches and glory of Zhandu. She took his rough hands in hers and said, “I will not go to Cathay and search for my father. I believe the blue crystal became his obsession, just as he became mine. And I believe that somewhere along the way I lost sight of my true purpose, just as he lost sight of his. My father chose his path, Adriano, and I have chosen mine. I will stay here. But it would bring me great joy if you ended your long journey and stayed in this place. Can you stay here…as my dear friend?” she added, for the fact of her marriage to Lo-Tan stood between them, and both knew they could never rekindle the intimacy they had once shared.

Adriano’s tone was deep and heartfelt as he replied, “When you first met me, Katharina, I was an intolerant man. I carried hatred in my heart for all men of another creed. I used religion as my gauge to measure a man. If he did not embrace Christ, then he could not be a worthy man. And in my arrogance I believed it was my destiny to bring all men to the true God, whether by word or by sword. But when I regained consciousness after the raid by the emerald stream, and found myself in the company of fire-worshippers, I was on the brink of death and they took care of me, they nursed me back to health and treated me with kindness. In another age, I would have called them demon-worshippers, but during my convalescence I saw that they were just people, like people everywhere, striving to survive, living in fear and hope, and worshipping the powers they believed in. I should be happy to stay here and teach the people of Zhandu about Jesus, Katharina, and if they come to accept Him, then so be it. But I am no longer of the belief that one must knock skulls in order to bring people to the true faith, for I am no longer convinced that there
is
just one true faith.”

Adriano went on to say that he had had no right marrying her years ago. He broke his vows and believed that what happened at the emerald spring was his punishment. He had spent the past ten years doing penance for his sin, by seeking the blue crystal and Katharina’s father, and by staying celibate.

Katharina accepted this, but when she saw how the ladies of the court eyed the robust stranger, and giggled and whispered behind their fluttering fans, she wondered how long Adriano’s renewed vow of celibacy would last.

She marveled at the mysteries of fate. What if her mother, Isabella Bauer, had died before Katharina had reached her? What if she had died keeping the secret of Katharina’s birth? Katharina would have married Hans Roth and moved into the house behind the beer stein factory, and she would have lived out her days believing that Badendorf was the world.

She said to Adriano, “I have been disguised as a boy and have lived in a Turkish harem; I have been shipwrecked, kidnapped, sold into slavery; I have been a Christian, a Muslim, and a goddess-worshipper; I have loved a man and lost him and found him again; I have known ecstasy and pain, fulfillment and loss. I have spoken German, Arabic, Latin, and the tongue of the Zhandu; I have traveled to the ends of the earth and seen wonders indescribable. But through it all, Badendorf remained my home. And in a way it still is, with its colorful
marktplatz
and familiar
rathaus,
the river and the forest and the castle. But Zhandu is also my home. And while I doubt I shall ever find my true father, I have a father nonetheless, in Heavenly Ruler. I have a brother in you, Adriano, and a sister and third mother in Summer Rose. Cousins and aunts and uncles do I have now in plenty, here in Zhandu, and a family more extensive than even that of the Roths of Badendorf. And I have Adriana, and Lo-Tan and my children by him. For all these years I searched for my family, and only now do I realize that they have been with me all along. I searched for the blue crystal, but it too was with me all along, in this little painting of St. Amelia. And so here I shall stay, in Zhandu, where I belong.”

Interim

Katharina lived the rest of her life in the isolated mountain kingdom, watching her children grow, taking the throne at Lo-Tan’s side when he succeeded his uncle as Heavenly Ruler. When Summer Rose died and was laid to rest, Katharina grieved anew for the mothers she had loved. And when Adriano died, at the age of ninety-three, the entire populace mourned, for they had so loved his stories.

Two more generations came and went, telling and retelling the stories of Katharina von Grünewald, until finally Zhandu was toppled, not by an invading army but by nature itself—an earthquake so powerful that it brought down the walls and domes and spires of the fabled city, killing all its inhabitants. And then storms came, both rain and snow, delivering mud and boulders and massive sandrifts to the ruins of Zhandu. As decades and then centuries passed, the climate changed and desert sands came to bury the last tip of the last spire so that five hundred years in the future, archaeologists would pick through rubble and try to imagine the city that had once stood here.

Baron Johann von Grünewald did indeed go to China with his sons, after learning from a merchant in Tashkent that the blue crystal had accompanied a consortium of Christian monks intent upon evangelizing the emperor’s court. He never forgot that he had left a daughter back in Germany in the care of a seamstress, and he believed in his heart that he would one day return for her. But the baron was a man born to roam, all he needed was a quest. Like the Grail of Christ that lured other noble-minded men to foreign lands, so was St. Amelia’s Stone his lure. But when he finally found it, in the possession of a royal courtesan skilled in the art of love, and he curled his fingers around the object he had been searching for nearly all his life, its purpose died, and so did his. Still vowing to return home and be reunited with his daughter, Johann von Grünewald died in distant China without ever setting foot in his beloved Europe again.

From China the blue crystal was carried on a spice ship to the Dutch Indies, where the gem, having lost all connection to Christian saints, was named the Star of Cathay by a romantic-minded sea captain who believed it possessed love magic that he hoped would convince a certain young lady in Amsterdam to marry him.

Off the coast of India, the spice ship met with misadventure, the captain was sold into slavery, and the Star of Cathay was taken to a temple in Bombay where it was fitted into the statue of a god, so that it was known for a while as the Eye of Krishna. But when the temple was attacked and ransacked during a religious war, the blue crystal was again liberated and carried north to Amsterdam by a Dutch sea captain who sold the stone to a gem merchant named Hendrick Kloppman. From letters written years earlier by the spice ship captain to the jewelers guild, requesting an estimation of the worth of the stone, Kloppman identified it as the Star of Cathay, and deduced from the letters that the lovesick captain had intended it to go to a certain young lady on Keisersgracht Street. Acting honorably and as a man of conscience, Kloppman sought the young woman out and offered her the gem. No longer young and past all desire for marriage, she accepted the crystal with indifference, saying she had only the vaguest recollection of the unfortunate spice ship captain, and sold it right back to Kloppman for enough money to open her own fabric shop and be independent of men forever. Kloppman traveled to Paris where, hoping to make ten times profit on the stone, he played up the romantic angle of the Star of Cathay, inventing a story about a wizard in the imperial court of China and how he had created the crystal out of northern glaciers and dragon bones, the blood of a phoenix and the heart of a virgin.

There were those in Paris who believed him.

MARTINIQUE
1720
C.E.

Brigitte Bellefontaine had a secret.

It involved forbidden love with a dark-eyed rogue, and as she sat at her vanity table, brushing out her hair and removing her cosmetics, she tried not to think of it, for with each passing day, the guilty burden of the secret grew.

A rude sound brought her out of her thoughts. She looked at her husband reflected in the glass behind her. Henri. Sprawled on the bed and snoring. Drunk again.

Brigitte sighed. There was nothing worse than a Frenchman who could not hold his wine.

And he had
promised.
Tonight, after their guests left, he said, he was going to treat her to a special evening under the stars. “Just like the old days,
ma cherie,
when we were young lovers.” And then the guests had arrived, and the party had gotten underway, and the wine had poured and poured. And now Henri was flat on his back on the bed, wig askew, his waistcoat stained with samples from the evening’s menu: fried codfish fritters and crepes dripping with melted chocolate.

Brigitte set her hairbrush down and gazed wistfully at the piece of jewelry she had worn for the party: a stunning brooch of white gold with a blue crystal at its center surrounded by diamonds and sapphires. The Star of Cathay, that had been so full of romantic promise back in her naive youth.

The Star of Cathay was supposed to bring love and romance into the life of the wearer. Hadn’t the gypsy foretold as much? And it
had
delivered…for a while. On Brigitte’s wedding night—Henri (the man who now snored on the bed) had been a magnificent lover, and seventeen-year-old Brigitte had thought she had died and gone to heaven. But now, twenty years and seven children later, she had all but given up on ever knowing true passion again. Henri was a good man, but he no longer had fire in him. And Brigitte yearned for fire.

Too restless to sleep, she rose and went to the doors that opened onto a balcony off the bedroom. Stepping out into the tropical night redolent with the perfumes of frangipani and mimosa, she closed her eyes and pictured
him
—not Henri but the dark-eyed stranger, tall and noble, of aristocratic features and bearing, impeccably dressed, expert swordsman and roguish lover. He would appear suddenly, unexpectedly, when she was in her garden, or watching the exotic fish in the lagoon, materializing out of the sultry day like the storm clouds that came upon the island swiftly and darkly, drench Martinique with a torrid shower, then dissipate, move on and be only a memory.
He
was like that. And his lovemaking was like a tropical storm—fierce, steamy, irresistible. The mere thought of him sent tremors through her body.

Unfortunately, he didn’t exist.

Brigitte thought she would go insane if she never experienced romance and passion again. But how was it ever to happen? It was unthinkable that she should enter into an affair with one of the local colonists. She had her reputation, and her husband’s, to think of. And as there was no one else, she had resorted to a fantasy lover, a devilish gentleman of her imagination whose name changed according to her mood and the story. Usually he was French, perhaps called Pierre or Jacques, and he came to the island just for one day, meeting her in the grotto where they made passionate love all afternoon, and as he sailed away he promised someday to return, a promise that fed her soul and kept her alive.

Her fantasies served not only to bring love into her life, but to recapture her youth as well, for in them Brigitte was young and slender and beautiful again, turning men’s heads as she had done long ago. Unfortunately, although these fantasies gave her pleasure, they also riddled her with guilt. Brigitte was a good Catholic and believed, as the priests preached, that a sinful deed committed in the heart was as good as being committed in the flesh. Having lustful thoughts outside the bounds of marriage was a sin. If she imagined making love to one of the colonists, then it would be adultery. But was it adultery if the lover did not exist?

She set her eyes to the distant horizon, identifiable only by its absence of stars. Brilliant night sky above, black forbidding ocean below. And beyond…Paris. Four thousand miles away, where her friends, family, and children lived in a world so different from the West Indies that they might as well live on the moon.

Brigitte wished she could have gone with her children. She didn’t miss the cold or the crowding of Paris, but she longed for the cultural and social life. Born into nobility, she had known the company of kings and queens and the finest of French society. She missed the plays of Molie`re and Racine, and the spectacles of La Comédie Francaise, those glorious days when the Sun King lavished money on the arts. But what plays were being staged now? Who was the latest wit? What were the ladies wearing at court? The colonists on Martinique relied on mail from home for all their news, and sometimes it came late or not at all, due to the vagaries of the seas, weather, and pirates. Three years ago they had learned that their great king, Louis XIV, was dead—and had been dead for two years! Now his great-grandson, Louis XV, a boy of ten, was on the French throne.

A night breeze came up, stirring palm fronds and the giant leaves of banana plants, ruffling the muslin folds of Brigitte’s peignoir. As the breeze brushed her bare skin like a lover’s sigh, she felt her ache deepen. And it frightened her. She felt weak and vulnerable. Sending the children away was something all the colonists did, to make sure they grew up as ladies and gentlemen. So Brigitte had sent her lively brood to her sister in Paris for proper schooling in deportment and etiquette. But now that she had done it, she missed them greatly. She had too much time, sunlight, tropical perfumes, and balmy tradewinds on her hands. Henri had the sugarcane fields, the refinery, and the rum distillery to distract him. But with the children gone, and servants to take care of everything else, what else was there for a lady of these islands to do? Brigitte was an avid reader but even that pastime, of late, was reflecting her growing discontent, for her taste ran to pairs of tragic lovers: two French like herself, Heloise and Abelard; two Italians, young but no less tragic, Romeo and Juliet; two English, of long ago, Tristram and Isolde; and a Roman soldier and a Greek queen, Antony and Cleopatra. She devoured these sad, romantic tales as her friends devoured luscious fruits and rum. There was no better sadness, she thought, than sweet sadness. In her private fantasy, she and her lover must live apart, and the delicious ache it conveyed to her heart kept her sighing through sultry afternoons.

She tried to convince herself that dreams were so much more satisfying than reality. Besides, dreams were safe whereas reality could be fraught with peril. Despite Martinique being a tropical Eden, it had its dangers—from sudden, destructive storms, from Mt. Pelée threatening to erupt, from fevers and exotic diseases, and from that worst of dangers: pirates. Only this evening at dinner, when the talk wasn’t about the cost of rum and slaves, the conversation had turned to pirates and, lately, one in particular—an English dog named Christopher Kent. One of her guests, a pineapple grower, had suffered a loss to Kent just days earlier when Kent’s schooner,
Bold Ranger,
attacked the man’s merchant vessel, boarded her, threw the crew overboard and made off with a fortune in gold coin. No one knew what Kent looked like, although the few survivors of his attacks had said he was very tall and looked like the devil.

The night suddenly exploded with shouts from the slave quarters—men wagering on mongoose-and-snake fights. Like the whispering tradewinds and rustling palms, it was the sound of the island calling to her. It made Brigitte think of the native people who had lived here long ago, the Indians with their drums and nakedness, living as God had created them, like Adam and Eve. Their spirits were still here—in the trees and streams and mist-shrouded mountain peaks. New primitives were here now, too, from Africa; more naked people with drums, who filled the nights with their primeval beat and rhythms, chanting and dancing in the firelight.

The air felt heavy, reminding Brigitte that this was the start of hurricane season. She went back inside, closed the double doors, and then went to her vanity table to restore the Star of Cathay to its locked box. The blue crystal had, over the years, become symbolic of the blue seas that surrounded her, the blue sky that covered her. And when she looked into its diamond-dust heart she saw fire and passion.
Her
passion. Trapped, struggling to get free.

She went to the bed and pulled off her husband’s boots. Henri was smiling in his sleep. She sighed again. He wasn’t a bad man, just an unconscious one. As she slipped between the sheets next to him, she closed her eyes and, although her secret fantasies riddled her with guilt, she once again conjured up the image of
him,
her fantasy lover. When she drifted off to sleep she began to dream, and in the dream he reached for her.

Henri Bellefontaine was not unaware of his wife’s recent discontent. After all, she no longer had the children to occupy her time. Henri, on the other hand, had the plantation to run. Bellefontaine grew sugar and exported rum, with side interests in the growing and exporting of cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, which were in great demand in Europe for use in cooking, perfumes, and medicines. Therefore Henri Bellefontaine was very rich, but he was also very busy. But what did Brigitte have? Fancying himself a loving and attentive husband, but mistaking entirely the cause of her frequent sighs and restlessness (homesickness, he thought, and missing their children), he had come up with what he thought was the perfect remedy.

He bought her a telescope.

It stood on a special rooftop platform, a handsome brass spyglass imported from Holland, fixed to a tripod with a complete 360-degree view of the island and beyond. Henri congratulated himself on his brilliance. Brigitte would no longer feel so remote and isolated for the lens brought the world to her fingertips: the horizon, with France—and their children—just over its edge; islands closer in (patches of emerald green floating on hyacinth blue); Martinique’s busy harbors and waterfront settlements with ships coming and going; and finally the seawalls and battlements, narrow lanes and alleyways, and rooftops rising in layers into the hills.

The gesture had touched Brigitte, for Henri
was
a dear man and his heart was in the right place. And it wasn’t as though he had brought her to the most godforsaken place on earth. After all, Martinique was the cultural center of the French Antilles, a rich, aristocratic island famous for its gracious living as well as for its lush, tropical vegetation, deep gorges, and towering cliffs. Their own home was a magnificent plantation perched on a spur on the slopes of Mt. Pelée, a volcano that periodically shot up steam and made the ground rumble, as if to remind the humans below of their mortality. The house was designed in typical Creole style with the main rooms on the bottom floor and the bedrooms upstairs. Surrounding it were green lawns like fabulous carpets, bordered by palm trees whose fronds rustled in the tradewinds. Brigitte loved her tropical home, and she loved Martinique. Nobody knew for certain why the island was named so. Some said it was derived from an Indian name that meant “flowers,” some said it was named for St. Martin. But Brigitte Bellefontaine, with her romantic heart, believed that when Columbus discovered it and found the island so fantastically beautiful, he named it for a woman he secretly loved.

It had become Brigitte’s habit to climb daily to her special rooftop aerie at sunset, her favorite time of the day when work ceased and the evening entertainments began; a time also when changes came over the Caribbean, the luminous sky giving way to a black, star-splashed firmament. Brigitte would give instructions to her kitchen slaves for the evening meal, then she would take a long, languorous bath, put on her underclothes and petticoats, slip into her gauzy peignoir and climb to the roof to watch the sun make its spectacular exit from the world.

As she sipped a small glass of rum, Brigitte kept her eye to the spyglass, sweeping the sea and the bay, the mountains and the clouds, the small fishing villages, and she thought of the coming evening. There would be no guests tonight as it was Sunday. It would be just her and Henri. Would he stay with her, or would the island and its seductions call to him, in the form of gambling in Saint-Pierre? When Henri woke that morning to realize he had fallen asleep before fulfilling his promise, he had been repentant. “
Ma chere! Ma puce!
I am not worthy of thee.” Then he had given her a peck on the cheek and, dressed in his riding clothes, had headed out to inspect the sugarcane fields.

Brigitte saw lights going on in the harbor town, doorways being flung open to the sunset, little boats bringing hungry visitors from anchored ships. She could almost hear the music and laughter, smell the cooking aromas, see the smiles of the people. Circling the glass away from the settlement, she scanned the rich green mountain peaks and ridges rising and falling like ocean waves, tropical jungles ranging in every hue of green known to the human eye. And now to the east, away from the crimson sky, to the quiet, windward side of the island with its pristine beaches and lime-green lagoons and hidden coves—