The Juliet (9 page)

Sailor nodded at Morecambe’s joke. “Many a man has found his dreams with the assistance of
la fée verte,
but in this case we mean to assure you all that if The Juliet is indeed on these grounds as indicated by the message…” and here Sailor paused to allow the smiles to slip from all those piggy faces.

Toby took advantage. “A moment.” The room hushed. He leaned in to his brother and said, “She is here.”

Sailor nodded. “I understand.” One of his sweet little daughters dangled a chubby leg between the rails of the high stairs, and the other tugged on the hem of his beaver coat. He noticed neither, distracted by Morecambe’s sparkling tumbler of absinthe. It was too much liquor and in the wrong sort of glass.

“His glass,” Sailor whispered. Morecambe was a fool to draw so much attention to himself.

Toby didn’t care. “She is here.”

The plan: the old jeweler would claim to have found The Juliet in a hollow of a statue in the rear courtyard of tiled paths and fountains, once a ragged garden that served as an unmarked graveyard for what must have been the institution’s most inconvenient patients. Upon announcing his discovery of The Juliet, Morecambe would make a great speech pledging to return ownership of the gem to the brothers, but only after he transformed it into a piece of jewelry so beautiful that it would eclipse its tragic history. The new brooch would then be displayed and protected in Morecambe’s New York store. It was a promotion unlike any other, and everyone stood to win, except those who paid good money to hunt The Juliet.

Sailor addressed his audience again. “We urge you to focus your energies on those areas that have been subject to the least amount of disturbance by our rejuvenation efforts. Look in the carriage house, the garden, the attics, and even the cellar, where you will find the finest collection of bottles this side of the Atlantic, even if you don’t find The Juliet.”

Emboldened by the success of his earlier joke, Morecambe boomed, “Well, now you are talking,” and gestured with his unlikely drink. He was behaving like a well-loved man, even though he was not.

“Gentlemen,” said Sailor. “We are about to begin. When I ring this bell again, that will signal the start of The Hunt. Good luck to you all.”

Morecambe leered at them now, and Sailor understood. The old jeweler carried The Juliet in his glass. He even sipped from it, knowing the crystal obscured the contents. It hadn’t occurred to the Stiegs that Morecambe disliked them as much they disliked him.

Sailor did not believe in spirits. He did not believe in messages from the afterworld. But if Firebird really was with them, she would strike now by propelling that great chunk of emerald down Morecambe’s whiskered throat. That didn’t happen, and Sailor was reassured that this plane of existence was indeed the only one.

Toby gripped the rail. “She is…”

“She isn’t.” Sailor rang the bell.

The crowd pulsed towards the exit like an unhealthy bowel movement. Eventually they dispersed, and the attendees who never intended to hunt in the first place ambled toward divans from which to observe the ludicrous spectacle of their peers acting like children and rats.

Sailor gathered his girls under each arm. “You’re ill,” he said to Toby, who was perspiring, losing focus.

Dellaire joined them, but before he could offer congratulations, Toby nearly fell forward into the lawyer’s arms.

“Firebird is here,” Toby said. “Great tragedy is coming to us.”

“It always is,” said Dellaire.

Sailor was unavoidably disappointed. The defining event of his young life was finally under way, and it wasn’t perfect, was it? Only days before, Dellaire showed Sailor documents proving that Caroline Firebird had never been detained at the Bottler’s House. This meant that Toby was merely mad, not mad and possessed, which would have been a bit more interesting.

“He needs to rest,” said Dellaire. Sailor agreed.

Toby stared out over the balcony as if he couldn’t hear them. Sailor called for two of the staff to escort his brother to his rooms.

As they took Toby away, Dellaire reached for one of the girls, and in his arms he made her giggle. She’d lost her wings, but no matter. They were always giggling, these little Stieg girls, and it never failed to surprise him given the bizarre disposition of their father and uncle. He put one girl down and picked the other up. He’d never learned which was which; were their names Lenoria, Clara, Cloris, Laurelia…? Something along those lines. He’d never heard their father refer to them by name, and they were too young to announce themselves sensibly.

Sailor watched the lawyer play with his children. “This will be a very long hour,” he said.

“Go on,” Dellaire said. “Take care of Toby. I’ll look after the girls.”

“And what sort of father would I be if I left my darlings with a lawyer?”

“Do not worry. I’ll care for them as if they were my own little clients.”

* * *

Toby lay naked and sweating on the pile of fur rugs that cushioned his bed, and he appeared to be dying. He’d taken the best accommodations for himself. Not a smart choice business-wise, but Sailor felt as if he should always try to work with, rather than against, his brother’s desires. Toby’s apartment was made up of the top floor of the Bottler’s House, four rooms where the Bottler’s family had lived when the babies were young, and where he incarcerated his own daughter when she reached her teenaged years; she had taken to stabbing children and tearing her clothes off in the street. Whether she was born mad or was made mad by living in a madhouse was not known. And no one knew what happened to her in the end, either. She was forgotten or erased.

In the renovation Toby had insisted that they leave the windows barred.

Toby now lay in a fever state. Sailor was by his side, not feeling that well himself, but he suspected his ailments were more imagined than organic. He hated waiting for The Juliet to be found. They could hear vague shouts and laughter echoing through the house; even after The Hunt was concluded, it was going to be a long, drunken evening.

Sailor said, “We could send you back to hospital. It would be quieter there.”

Toby said, “She.”

“Oh please do not persist. Unless.”

“Unless what?”

They were so alone. Always alone. “Unless you are willing to say that she loved me, too.”

Toby was unthinking, sick, and cruel. “No. She did not.”

Sailor never wanted to hurt his own brother, his truest love, but he would like to be there if someone else should give it a try. Caroline Firebird was seventeen when she killed Louis. And for how long had he been forcing himself upon her? Men of power did such things.

Sailor’s earliest memory was of a perfumed piece of soft cloth, and a dark hand feeding him something sweet by the spoonful. He’d always assumed that was Caroline. He almost never thought about his mother.

Dellaire came earlier than expected, and he brought Morecambe with him. He dragged the old man into the room and ordered the attending staff to wait outside. Morecambe was near tears. Sailor’s daughters were not with them.

Sailor knew before anyone could speak. “You fool.”

“It slipped from my fingers,” Morecambe sputtered.

Dellaire shook his head. He was dark with anger. “He says he dropped it and it slipped into an old drain. There’s no way of knowing where it is. We can try to dig it up, but…”

Sailor sighed. “Oh my fuck.”

Morecambe was always on the verge of caricature, but in his high emotion he was nearly unbearable. He looked like a bad actor after spilling his last cup of gin.

Toby slipped in and out of consciousness.

“We need the other half,” Dellaire said.

Sailor felt sick to his stomach, but he gave over his piece of the emerald. The scheme proceeded. With speeches.

And that was how The Juliet was found.

* * *

December 1898: New York City

Sailor would follow his brother to the hospital with the same feverish complaint, just three days after The Hunt transpired. Toby died within a week, but Sailor lingered, dying a month later. His wife, said to be “not quite French,” fled the country, and their daughters became the most famous orphans in America.

In New York, the rumor was that the Stieg brothers had poisoned each other, but in Philadelphia they knew better: Caroline Firebird had cursed them from her unknown grave.

It took Morecambe three years to finish recasting The Juliet, and the girls, accompanied by their foster father Dellaire and a cadre of hand-picked journalists, arrived at Morecambe’s New York store to celebrate the old jeweler’s accomplishment. It was a snowy day, and the twins were dressed in blonde furs, and no one could take their eyes off them. Outside the storefront, Morecambe greeted them and delivered a hammy speech before inviting them in to behold their birthright.

Lorelei and Clothilde were solemn as they followed the old jeweler through the store towards the back where something green seemed to glow atop a pile of black velvet.

They ran to it.

“Don’t touch!” shouted Dellaire. Morecambe laughed at him.

The girls thought The Juliet was wonderful. They would, they were children.

Before them was a jeweled sculpture of sorts, a blocky dragon with ruby eyes, diamond legs, and two gold wedges forming the torso and tail, each nesting an enormous green stone. The two halves of The Juliet were reunited.

No one would remember they had ever been apart. Dellaire and Morecambe had been counting on that. The Juliet was a singular legend, impossible to break. That was the beauty of it all.

Lorelei said, “I want to wear it!”

Dellaire said they would someday. Perhaps at their coming out, they’d take turns. “It’s too heavy now.”

“May we play with it?” asked Clothilde.

“Certainly not,” said Dellaire.

And Morecambe said, “Of course.”

He waddled over to the velvet and picked up his terrible creation. With creaking knees, he squatted in front of the girls and said, “It’s like a doll, isn’t it?”

Lorelei, Clothilde, and Morecambe sat on the floor, and he proceeded to show them The Juliet’s new features: the diamond crusted legs that bent on golden hinges, the eyes that rocked up and down as you tilted the brooch, the forked tongue that poked in and out, and best of all, the wispy shadows in the green parts when he held The Juliet up to the light. “What do you see there in the emerald clouds?”

“It’s Daddy, isn’t it?”

Dellaire was shocked, but Morecambe wasn’t. “Of course it is. And in this one?”

“Uncle Toby.”

Morecambe grinned at Dellaire. The lawyer looked uneasy. For years he had rebuilt the Stieg fortune on a foundation of legends and curses, and now The Juliet was ready to fulfill her promise. A thing had come to fruition, an abstraction had become concrete. Now the future was fixed and fixable. This was something jewelers knew but lawyers did not.

“Martin, this is it.” Morecambe gestured towards The Juliet, the monstrous Juliet.

The next day, the pictures in the papers showed the Stieg heiresses on the floor with old Morecambe, playing horsey or choo choo with The Juliet, depending on one’s perspective. In the background was Martin Dellaire, barely visible.

* * *

The Juliet was installed in a heavy glass case inside Morecambe’s shop. It had its own guard, hired by Dellaire, and for a decade the brooch drew swarms of visitors who would stare at it while Morecambe recounted its history, starting all the way back with the deformed Egyptian Prince. He had lied about his desire to obliterate the memory of the Stieg family tragedies, just as he’d lied about his desire to create an object of great beauty from The Juliet.

“It’s a terrible stone,” he said to Dellaire. He and the lawyer met in the cloakroom of the Bottler’s House just after The Hunt commenced. “I mean look at it.” He held the cloudy stone up to the light.

“What do you care?” Dellaire took Toby’s portion of the emerald from the jeweler’s chubby fingertips and pocketed the stone. He still didn’t understand how those clumsy mitts could craft the delicate and extraordinary pieces that were the hallmarks of Morecambe’s career. The man was an artist with royal clients.

Morecambe shrugged. “I have a certain reputation for quality.”

“And I have a reputation for moral integrity, so stop complaining. Now, let’s collect Sailor’s half.”

That was the occasion during which Morecambe released the last of his dignity, and he never looked back. Freedom and ever-increasing wealth gave him more pleasure than pride ever had. So he retold every truth and rumor, no matter how salacious, to anyone who cared to see The Juliet and hear tales from her dark past. In addition to being famous for her legend, Morecambe’s Juliet was also famous as one of the most unattractive pieces of jewelry ever created. The critics were so scandalized that they began to believe that Morecambe’s Juliet was in fact a satire of couture and perhaps even a remark on the closing of the age.

Dellaire sent the girls to New York for annual visits to The Juliet, and these were usually timed to coincide with the beginning of the holiday season. Their arrival attracted throngs to Morecambe’s shop, both to recollect the legend and to watch the girls grow up. The Stieg twins belonged to the nation, and every year they struck the same pose for the newspaper photographers: Lorelei to the left of the case that held The Juliet, Clothilde to the right, and Morecambe stood behind, with his giant hands on their shoulders. The portrait would appear in the papers, but also as part of a set in Morecambe’s front window. From picture to picture, customers could watch the girls grow up, becoming taller and leaner, as Morecambe grew down, collapsing into his once hearty frame.

* * *

Poor Little Rich Girls, Stiegs Come of Age Amidst Tragedy

Lorelei and Clothilde Stieg have pledged to visit The Juliet one final time before they begin studies at Smith College. However, they have made no statement about the future of the infamous brooch or whether it will continue to be available for public display. After the death of its long time proprietor, it was announced that Morecambe’s Jewelry will cease operations after the New Year.