Page 10 of Pandora

Dora swallows hard. From the very beginning Hezekiah has treated her like an inconvenience. Beyond arranging for a Sunday school education, her uncle had no interest in continuing the classical education Dora’s parents began—when she asked him to teach her about the antiquity trade he laughed, said there was no need to clutter her mind with such things, though he never hesitated to put her to use behind the shop counter. And so everything Dora knows has been built on memory, on keen observation. Where would she go, if not for him?

Though neglectful, Hezekiah has never strictly been unkind to her—Dora’s sketchbooks are purchased by him, after all—but there is no love lost between them. She thought, perhaps, when he brought Lottie home with him one evening that things might change between them. Dora thinks on when she first saw the woman standing in the narrow stairwell of their apartments (not six months after her parents’ deaths), how Hezekiah announced that Lottie had come to live with them. She assumed this woman—decked head to toe in ill-fitting rouge—was to act as a mother to her, that Hezekiah might then treat Dora with a little more warmth, but she had been sorely disappointed. Dora was promptly moved from her comfortable bedroom on the second floor to the cold and dreary attic. And so, if anything, she had felt even more alone.

Where would she go, indeed. The thought sends a cold tug against Dora’s ribs. She has no other family aside from Hezekiah. Her paternal grandparents are long dead, and her mother was raised in an orphanage in Greece. Until Dora can provide for herself she cannot leave, she cannot be free of him. Her only options—the poorhouse, the streets, or the brothels—well, they are no options at all.

The brothels.

Uneasily Dora thinks of the way Hezekiah looked at her. I should think you would be glad of a change of scene. More liberating surroundings. Surely he did not mean...?

Her macabre thoughts are interrupted by the tinkling of the bell. Dora’s gaze shoots to the front of the shop but no, it is no customer, only Lottie who has come from the door behind.

“Missum.”

Dora sniffs, needlessly adjusts the position of the empty ledger in front of her. Lottie folds her arms across her chest and looks at Dora, calculating.

“You’re very pale. Why don’t you take yourself off for a walk? I can see to things here.” The housekeeper hesitates. “An hour or two will do.”

Dora looks into Lottie’s round face, dubious. “You?”

Lottie’s eyebrows lift. “Why not?”

Her request is curious. Lottie has never offered to look after the shop floor before, nor has she ever cared about Dora’s health. But these brief spells of freedom are precious and so Dora reaches for her sketchbook beneath the counter.

She does not need telling twice.

***

At St. Paul’s churchyard, located in the north-western corner, stands Clements & Co., a jeweler and goldsmith of the most eminent reputation. It is accessed by four steep and narrow steps and with her free hand—the other clasps the large leather-bound sketchbook—Dora clutches the iron railings, careful not to step a hole through her skirts as she descends them.

She rings the bell, waits to be admitted by a shiny-faced footman. Inside it is warm, and the pleasant smell of beeswax candles is a welcome scent after the putrid air of the streets.

The walls are trussed up floor to ceiling with glass cabinets decorated with carved and gilded appointments, their contents bright and gleaming, filled to the brim. The cabinets near the entrance house the more everyday ware: sturdy goblets, large serving platters, silver-plated cutlery with ivory handles carved into hunting dogs and wild boar. Nice enough items to be sure, but it is those near the counter that have Dora’s heart fluttering.

Necklaces, earrings, bracelets, rings. Rubies, sapphires, emeralds and diamonds. Opaline glass, seed pearls, cut steel, a tray of Wedgwood Jasperware. Butterfly brooches, harlequin jewels. And there, directly in front of her, is a new piece, something altogether too glorious to be kept locked away.

On a deep blue cushion sits a tiara. Filigree patterning, embellished with round and pear-shaped rose-cut diamonds and at its center a flower, its petals bursting out from its pistil like the rays of the sun. Dora tilts her head, stands on tiptoe, tries to view it from a different angle. Silver-topped, dosed back. As she moves, the diamonds glint and dance. They truly are exquisite. Dora presses her face close to the glass. If she looks very carefully, she can see her reflection in all their tiny facets.

“Beautiful,” she whispers.

“Beautiful indeed.”

Mr. Clements emerges from the back room carrying a tray of rings. A thin, bespectacled man with a thick mop of gray-streaked brown hair that he keeps tightly contained with a ribbon, he reminds Dora of a studious otter. He always wears colors in earthy shades, ties his cravat too tightly, looks as if he has been shoe-horned into his coat. He is one of the few gentlemen of her parents’ friendship circle she has maintained regular contact with, and from whom her passion for jewelery blossomed.

One particular year Dora’s mother, Helen, took her to Clements & Co. every week to admire his displays, and over tea and sweetmeats the jeweler would—for the purpose of documenting her finds—explain to Dora’s mother the difference between gemstones and paste, the best place to source turquoise, how opals came to be. While he and her mother spoke, Mr. Clements would give Dora a tin of beads to play with. It was he who taught her how to tie a clasp and curl a wire, he who gave Dora her own set of pliers and cutters.

All the jewelry her mother owned had been made by Mr. Clements. Gently Dora touches the cameo brooch at her neck, the only surviving piece from her mother’s collection—the rest Hezekiah sold before Dora even realized they had gone. Mr. Clements had made the cameo from a cassis shell Dora found on the beach of Paphos. Simple but elegant, it depicts the regal profile of a woman wearing a wreath of grapes that falls over her shoulder. Her mother always let Dora play with the brooch before she went to bed; she used to turn it over and over in her tiny hands, admiring the etchwork, the coolness of it in her palms. Her mother was wearing it when she died.

“Mr. Clements.”

“Miss Blake. How are you, my dear?”

“Well, sir.” She proffers the sketchbook with both hands. “I have brought more of my designs.”

The jeweler lowers the ring tray. She thinks she sees a look of restraint pass across his face but he has bent beneath the counter, exchanged his ring tray with a square of black velvet, and when he looks at her once more his face is open, affable.

“Let’s see them, then.”

Dora sets her sketchbook down onto the glass counter and opens her reticule. Very carefully, one by one, she produces her designs. Three pairs of earrings—one drop, one torpedo, one ball—constructed of wire and seeds, carved wood and a marble, respectively. A bracelet in mock pinchbeck and garnet made from lace and glass beads, two brooches in the style of Vauxhall glass achieved with broken mirror shards, a ribbon-tie necklace of porcelain buttons she has painted to imitate agate.

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