Although the blinds were still drawn, I could see a narrow wedge of sky, the last of the stars fading as the sun gathered strength. I could see Polaris – the North Star, a fixed point in a world that must have baffled the astronomers of 17th-century Holland. They had adhered strongly to the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination, to the idea that every event was willed by God. Salvation could be found in the teachings of the Reformed church, which was only too happy to confirm that true believers could look forward to enjoying God’s bounty in heaven while the damned were destined to endure everlasting punishments in the firepits of hell. Against this theological backdrop, the everyday lives of Dutch citizens must have seemed almost inconsequential – and yet, it was their industry that had given the Church its power. Famine, war, illness, flood: these disruptions could upend a person’s whole existence. They could wipe out a family’s savings in a matter of hours. Only the stars offered any real comfort. No wonder the field of astronomy had drawn so many Dutch scientists and philosophers into its orbit. The cosmos, with its planetary motions and influence on the tides, could be scrutinised and debated without the need to imperil one’s immortal soul. Here, the paradox of free will and theological determinism could be conceptualised as a risk-free exploration on the influence of matter.

I wondered if the dress should have stayed where it was, destined to rot at the bottom of the seabed. What might we have gained in bringing it to the surface? And what might have been lost?

I shook myself. Liam would be arriving soon. He wouldn’t let me to wallow in these morbid, philosophical fancies.

Slipping on a pair of archival gloves, I peeled back the skirt to examine the stitches. Some of them were crooked – not those of a trained seamstress. Interesting. I ran my finger along the seam, as I had yesterday. Like most historians, I loved broken objects. There was always more to be learned from the way something worked than how it appeared from the outside. As a dress historian, I found decorative beauty as useful as a book with blank pages is to a reader.

The seam running along the back of the skirt was rigid, the sleek boning resisting the gentle pressure of my thumb. I’d almost reached the waist when, underneath the bone, I felt two hard lumps. I paused, my fingers resting on the unexpected texture. Whatever it was had been disguised well under the padding, which explained why I hadn’t noticed it yesterday. I extracted a slim scalpel from my bag. Liam would kill me for doing this without him, but I rationalised the act by promising him silently that I would undertake all the documentation for whatever ended up being tucked inside. Delicately, I slipped the blade under one stitch and pressed it into the wadding, forcing whatever was in there out of the gap. There was a gentle snick as two small accoutrements dropped into my hand. The glass baubles each had a twisted hook set in one end, the kind that could be slipped into a woman’s pierced earlobes. Inside, pale liquid swirled, like sea-mist or the Milky Way, celestial bands of dust and light.