The Juliet (8 page)

Sailor looked at the gesture and acknowledged that it was informative.

“And there were three pins to hold it up, but still. What a monstrous stone. He should have left it in the tomb.”

Sailor said, “I’m not sure that part is true. I suspect Father spent half the family fortune on a fairy story.” But parts of his brother’s tale moved him. Fashion was important, very important, and The Juliet was a famous embarrassment. Not only was the gem grotesquely flawed, in its original setting it was meant to resemble a country lake. Anyone of any taste agreed it was ghastly. Perhaps a farmer might wear it to plow a field. It was his father’s design, of course.

“No, Caroline says it’s true. The stone was picked up during a raid on the tomb of an Egyptian prince, but there’s a sordid side.”

“More sordid than tomb robbing?”

“The prince was only seven years old when he died, and his head was shaped like a giant peanut. And he married his own brother somehow.”

“Handy.”

Toby smiled. “Caroline was struggling to attach the pin when Father came upon her. They were going to one of those awful Calico Balls.”

This was new information to Sailor. “I doubt that. Father wasn’t the charity type.”

“She has no reason to lie about the details. He tried to fasten the brooch himself, and he hurt her. Drew blood. That’s when she got the idea to drive one of the pins right through his eye.”

“Toby.” Sailor almost admonished his brother for being so lurid, but he stopped short. Criticism was for professionals. At least his brother did not say eye-
ball
.

“He didn’t die immediately, of course. There was a struggle.”

Sailor knew this part well. He nodded before repeating an oft-told line: “Yes, and as they fought, Caroline managed do what generations of inbred Pharaohs had not; she broke the massive emerald in two.”

These suppers would be so much easier with wine. Unfortunately, spirits of all kinds agitated Toby’s sensitivities.

Toby rose from the table and for a moment only the rosy circle of his hips and manhood were illuminated. Sailor stared at his mad brother’s balls without shame. They were his, after all, the very same, and not often illuminated so beautifully. Toby turned and walked away to collect more meat from a charger atop a cloth-covered crate that served as a sideboard. Sailor inspected his brother’s buttocks from a distance. Toby’s arse was narrower than Sailor’s. A faint, oval bruise decorated one cheek, as if left by an artist or a politician.

Sailor asked, “Is she with us now, brother? Where is Caroline?” He was only half teasing. He wished it were possible to speak to the dead. Their mother died giving birth to them. Caroline Firebird was the only kind female they had known in their childhood, and she was gone too soon. They were still in frocks when she murdered Louis.

Toby turned. He was eating meat directly from the huge carving fork. “No, she’s not here, love.” There was a tilt to his eyes, a pity that was recognizable even in the dim light. He shook his head.
“She never really liked you.”

Sailor tried to ignore the insult. He was the stable brother after all, even though he sometimes slept with his piece of The Juliet poking out of the side of his mouth. It clicked across his teeth and drew pools of saliva into his cheek.
Juliet. Juliet-ta.

Sometimes, all times, he dreamed of being almost married to Toby, of living always in the perfect calm of their union. So how was he different from Toby? Well, he wasn’t mad. He didn’t sleep in an empty madhouse. And he could still find a wife.

Sailor waited a few moments before he asked again. His brother was nothing if not a fruit machine of moods. “Is she here now?”

“No.”

“What does she think of the plan, of the hunt for The Juliet?”

“She says she will destroy the discoverer. She says his life and the life of his descendants will be an unending misery.”

Sailor sighed. “A curse in this day and age?”

“I was disappointed too.”

“Can she pull it off?”

“She can’t even get out of this house. It’s why I stay with her.”

“Still. Perhaps we should go with Morecambe instead of Connaught. I quite like the Connaughts.” Dellaire had convinced the Stieg brothers to leave nothing to chance, not even the hunt. The winner would be pre-selected from among a handful of world-class jewelers who would then have the basic stone from which to create the most famous piece of jewelry in the world. Whatever that was going to be.

“Morecambe’s design was a froggy wasn’t it?”

“Gila monster. He is from the west coast. He promised articulated legs.”

Toby shuddered. He despised nature. “Another brooch, then.”

Sailor disapproved of his brother’s mood. “And a curse on the entire Morecambe line, don’t forget that.”

“You’re right of course. And even so, we still have the other half, no matter what happens.”

Sailor thought his brother mad but wise, and he could imagine someone like their father saying those exact words, perhaps even to their mother before she perished. It was generally agreed that Gladys Daughter Stieg, heiress to the Daughter Pickling & Spice empire, would have lived had she only given birth to one of them, and so the implication was that the second of her sons was in fact her killer. For this reason the family physician refused to reveal which brother, Toby or Sailor, was born first, not even to them, not even to Louis. And the precise manner of death was unspoken as well. Sailor remained convinced that this mystery was at the root of his brother’s sparkling madness just as it was the fulcrum for his own dark sense of peace. It was possible that he had already committed the most terrible act of his life. It was over. It was done.

“Is she here?”

“No.”

Sailor thought surely Toby would have asked the Firebird spirit which one of them tore mama in two. Sailor didn’t believe in ghosts, but if Toby had an answer, right or wrong, that would change many things.

* * *

May 1895: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

A year and a half after renovations had commenced on the Bottler’s House, they were completed. Sailor came to visit Toby at a modern sanitarium, a bright and sprawling institution surrounded by gardens where patients were encouraged to indulge in long sessions of peaceful rest in the sunshine. Sailor was a family man now, much changed. He dressed like a businessman, his hair returned to its natural brown, and he had grown a ridiculous moustache just like his father’s. He brought along his own twins: two cherubic little girls dressed in so much lace and flounce that they’d never learned to crawl. Rather, the girls rolled across the sweet green grass towards their uncle, now sprawled on a chaise near a blossom-filled tree. Toby wore a large dressing gown and soft pants. His feet were bare and vulnerable looking, but there was a pair of carpet slippers on the grass beside the lounger.

Sailor said, “Your doctors are reluctant to allow you to attend The Hunt.”

Toby gathered up one of his nieces and smelled her hair. “They do know I shall not be participating in anything more than the reception? Am I so frail?”

“That is the prevailing opinion.”

Toby had attempted to hang himself from the banister of the grand staircase in the main foyer of the Bottler’s House just a week before. In another week it was to re-open for The Juliet Hunt, this time as a luxurious hotel instead of a house of terror. Somehow, in the eighteen months it took to renovate the old building, the brothers had become gentlemen.

“What does Dellaire say?”

“He says your current confinement is voluntary. He also says you are ‘part of the show.’ He really is vulgar.”

Toby traded one niece for the other. “Dellaire is not interested in my health. Neither are you.” He let his niece chew on the fat tip of his thumb. “And neither am I, frankly.”

“Excellent.” By which Sailor meant the tickets were sold out, and the press was clamoring, even more so after Toby’s breakdown. One of Sailor’s daughters managed to make her way back to him and was now tugging at her father’s trousers. Sailor looked down at her, clearly amazed.

Toby asked, “Is that one your favorite?”

“Oh, I’m sure I don’t know.”

“You don’t have a favorite or you don’t know which one she is?”

At that moment, a howling patient disrupted the garden peace. The sound set the girls off, and both started crying as if they’d suffered simultaneous, insulting injuries. As happens, other patients picked up the call, jarred loose from their drug-induced reveries, and slowly a chorus of weeping began to build. There was movement on the grounds, nurses and orderlies mobilizing to quell the rebellion, but anyone could tell that it was going to get worse before it got better.

Toby rose from his lounger and picked up one of his sobbing nieces. Sailor retrieved the other girl. Together the brothers and the sisters moved slowly across the sweet- smelling grass towards the men’s dormitory where they would collect Toby’s things.

Each patient they passed was immediately infected with grief and burst forth in a rush of moans and tears. A shriveled old man had stripped to his waist and was hopping barefoot to intercept Toby. There were marks on his chest like burns, and tears were moving down the planes of his sun-pink face. He touched Toby’s sleeve and asked, “Where is it? Where is The Juliet?”

This was why, while everyone else was sobbing, the Stieg brothers shared a hearty, healthy laugh together. So unexpected was the sound that the baby twins went silent.

Sailor patted the old man’s lean shoulder and said, “Indeed brother, indeed. That’s what, then?”

“The Great Question,” answered Toby.

* * *

The Hunt for The Juliet

Tonight marks the most riveting event of the social season as Philadelphia’s elite set gathers to search for the elusive Juliet Emerald, a prize thought to be forever lost in the aftermath of the grisly murder of the venerable Louis Montgomery Stieg. It is rumored that some tickets have sold for up to $10,000, and the prize for finding The Juliet is the stone itself. Why give away one’s birthright, we ask? “We don’t want The Juliet,” explains Sailor Stieg. “It has brought too much sorrow.” Toby Stieg is reported to be in confinement for distress and may not be available for the hotel’s debut. We wish the best of luck to those who seek The Juliet, and even more luck to the soul who finds her. For we have to wonder: Does The Juliet carry a Cherokee Curse?

—From
The Inquisitor
, May 1895
      

The street in front of the Bottler’s House had been scrubbed of ash and rubbish to make way for a dignified processional of wealthy guests as they arrived for the most intriguing social event of the season. However, on the day of The Hunt, the public filled the street by the thousands, packed in shoulder to shoulder, hat brim to hat brim, leaving only a tiny passage lined with sturdy Philadelphia policemen. Denied their stately promenade, great men and their mistresses found themselves hustled through the heavy doors of what was once a home to raving lunatics.

Sailor and Toby agreed that things were going better than expected. The throng outside had stripped their guests of confidence, and within the lurid main hall with its gold and red and green appointments, the invited captains of commerce were already acquiescent, subject to their hosts’ protection and mercy. The twinned grand staircases led up to a mezzanine floor with a gilt-railed balcony under which two carved cherubs seemed to hover, holding it in place. This was the balcony from which Toby had attempted to hang himself only weeks before, but now Sailor and Toby stood there together, smiling down at their guests as they were admitted. The Stieg twins attempted to recreate their legendary effect: Sailor in a black beaver coat with his hair re-dyed and slicked into place, and Toby in a long, golden dressing gown (he was ill, after all). His hair was longer than it had ever been and almost white. Underneath the gown he was nude. He and Sailor had argued about that.

The subtle detail: Toby had been eating red candy that made it look as if his gums were bleeding slightly. Sailor thought that was a good touch, so he ate some too.

Unaccustomed to ceremony, Sailor’s daughters played on the stairs, both dressed in white gowns with lacy wings attached to their backs. The girls’ mother would not be attending. Sailor’s wife was of indeterminate European heritage, a strong woman who survived giving birth to the girls but resented the experience all the same. She was unable to shake off her dark ideation, and thereafter she was thought of and treated like a good cow.

The lawyer Dellaire monitored the proceedings from a corridor busy with servants carrying trays of champagne. Several times he was offered a glass, and each time he refused. He didn’t drink on the job.

When the main floor was fully packed with overdressed fat men, each with a glass in hand, Sailor rang a small bell he had tucked away in a pocket of the beaver coat. The sound quieted all, and they looked up. Pigglety heads sat back on stumpy necks like pies cooling in a safe. Toby whispered, “Should we toss them scraps?”

“My darling, we are about to,” Sailor said. And then he addressed the guests:

“My friends, we thank you for making our debut as hoteliers so special tonight, and it is our desire you will find not only comfort but joy within these walls. Mind you, we trust you not to be too literal in your pursuit of our family treasure; we’ve spent quite a lot of money on making these walls very pretty indeed.”

His slight joke was met with raucous laughter. The guests were giddy, nervous. Sailor continued: “To clarify, we have, of course, mounted an exhaustive search for The Juliet while renovating this fine old building, and we have concluded that she is not to be found on any of the public floors. Not in the guestrooms, not in the penthouse, not in the dining room—”

“What about the bar?” It was the old jeweler, Morecambe. He raised an etched tumbler of Pernod Fils to salute his hosts. Its contents dazzled under the light of several blazing chandeliers. The room erupted in more heavy-bellied laughter, and no one save Dellaire knew he was taunting the boys. It had been easier to strike a deal with Morecambe than it was to settle with the Stiegs as to which half of The Juliet would be presented as the whole. Ultimately, it was Toby who gave up his portion, which was then given to Morecambe.