Review: A Priceless Jewel
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 27, 2014
Catalina Figuroa Da Silva, a Portuguese-Indian from Goa, married to Leonid Kazan, a Russian diplomat, is traveling by train from Goa to Bombay with her six month old infant. By chance she finds herself sharing a compartment with Millicent Cleaver, an Anglo-Indian governess. Catalina initiates a conversation with the reluctant Millicent and shows her the valuable Empress Emerald that her husband has bought for her. It may have once belonged to a Tzarina. At a train stop Millicent volunteers to hold the baby while Catalina goes to the bathroom. Catalina, however has an unfortunate encounter with a thief. The Empress Emerald is stolen and Catalina knocked unconscious.Millicent takes the baby and raises the boy as her own. But when the child becomes an inconvenience she leaves him in an orphanage.Little Leo, despite his loneliness and unhappiness thrives after a fashion. He learns all the skills that make life bearable for an orphan. He becomes adept at stealing, hiding things, languages, socializing superficially but without deep commitment, passing for what he is not, and protecting memsahibs from leopards. He develops keen powers of observation. Eventually he attracts the notice of Sir Lionel Pinecoffin, an English civil servant in charge of England’s security interests in the Raj. Sir Lionel takes Leo under his wing and has him trained to be a jewel dealer and a spy. On one of his spying assignments he gets the opportunity to steal the Empress Emerald.Sent to England at the age of 18, Leo meets Davina, a Cornish girl, at an Armistice Day party and they fall intensely in love. Unfortunately Leo is assigned to go to Russia, where the Bolshevik revolution has recently taken place and he cannot refuse the assignment. Davina has become pregnant, and her family marries her off to a wealthy Spaniard.The Empress Emerald follows two lives that have touched briefly but intensely. The Empress Emerald is a compelling novel rich with intrigue, romance and the history of the early 20th century.