The Pearl Thief

by Fiona McIntosh

  A small gasp had escaped at first sight. ‘This is perfection,’ she had breathed. ‘Nothing short of circular glory.’

  ‘Everyone craves working from here – most of us find a reason to walk in at some point in each day, Mademoiselle Kassel. But you will be here for most of your working hours, so you will be the envy of many museum staff,’ Mr Partridge had said. ‘It is within these walls that notable writers found …’ She remembered now how he had considered the right phrase before smiling benignly, ‘… a peaceful mind, including Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain, Conan Doyle, of course, Orwell, Shaw …’

  She’d read none of the writers he mentioned, although she knew their names, but Severine didn’t need to know their work intimately to understand that the Reading Room was like a place of worship for any researcher.

  ‘Three miles of bookcases in all, and I believe we have calculated twenty-five miles of shelves.’

  ‘A lot of books, Mr Partridge,’ she’d remarked, not merely impressed. She had felt a fresh awakening of excitement to be within this chamber of vast knowledge; the pulse reached back to childhood, connecting her to her father’s teachings and later – even as young as she had been – to the museum they had worked in together. As the world had tumbled into madness and despair, their determination to preserve for posterity what their invaders wanted to destroy had felt vital. It had kept a measure of lucidity in a life of increasing insanity. She had blinked away the memory.

  Each morning when she entered her quiet working chamber her spirits soared, all the way to the oculus at the apex of the Reading Room. Daily, she allowed her gaze to sweep across the vast circular bookshelves with their thousands of books full of secrets. Severine preferred the day overcast so the light streaming in was muted. It gave a dreamy quality to a chamber painted duck-egg blue and the colour of freshly churned cream that already felt ethereal – to her, anyway. Forty or more French-style double windows stood like a row of sentinels at the base of the glass dome, which could be opened to let in air, while the gilding that shone from the dome’s laced iron structure added a sense that one had entered a heavenly space. She believed it. Outside its round walls the museum shifted with a restless river of people. People, footsteps, sounds of delight and curiosity in hushed tones. But in her workspace there was a stillness where a single cough or the rustle of a turning page could puncture a weighty silence that was enclosed by the papier-mâché ceiling interior.

  ‘It reminds me of the Pantheon,’ she’d once remarked, but Catherine had smirked.

  ‘Blimey! Listen to you. When did you visit Rome, then?’

  ‘As a child. Er, my father travelled in his work and took our family to visit the great city.’ Fortunately, Severine had not been required to elaborate.

  This morning passed like most other mornings: her settling down with a comfy sigh at her chosen station before moving to the cabinets containing the index cards. Here she scanned for the subject that was inked onto a small card tucked into the handle. ‘Every librarian should nod daily to Melvil Dewey,’ she murmured barely above her breath, always grateful to the American who devised a method for classifying library books. Despite its constant revision, the Dewey system held true to the librarian who designed it in the final quarter of the nineteenth century.

  Her father had taught her the system, by which time they were using the fifth abridged edition. Severine remembered how the fourteenth full edition had been released not long after her family had died. ‘Were murdered,’ she corrected in a whisper as she tugged on the brass handle of the drawer she chose, liking the smooth feel achieved by years of similar researchers making the identical motion to reveal the knowledge within. The gesture allowed her to lose the thought but not the sense of it. She never wanted to let go of the truth.

  ‘The Dewey organises the contents of a library into disciplines,’ her father had explained, and at her frown, elaborated. ‘Fields of study. So, choose something,’ he’d challenged her.

  She’d considered, remembering her mother arranging flowers that morning and let that guide her. ‘Roses,’ she’d answered.

  Her father had given her a smile. ‘Good. Let’s imagine that you were especially interested in historical information about roses, so you’d first move to the number 635, which is for Horticulture …’

  And her fascination with research had begun that day, aged eight, in the Klementinum, a library in Prague that could potentially rival this Reading Room, she thought.

  The morning passed quickly as she lost herself in her work. She had recently opened a box containing gemstone earrings. She guessed amethyst and seed pearls, but design appreciation was merely a passing thought in her work. Severine first noted the jeweller named on the satin lining of the box lid. This already led her mind to Western Europe because she recognised it. She lifted the velvet pad from which the earrings gleamed to see markings that told her this jewellery had already passed through the hands of Sotheby’s auctioneers twice in their lifetime. ‘Good,’ she murmured, mimicking her father. Now it was time to discover their provenance and she was about to stand to head back to the index card cabinets when she noticed a familiar figure stepping quietly across the floor. Severine glanced at her watch; it was already nearing ten.

  ‘Miss Kassel?’ he whispered.

  ‘Bonjour, John. Comment ça va?’ she mouthed, not needing to say it aloud.

  He blushed as he answered, barely above a whisper this time, and not attempting to reply in French. ‘Very well, thank you.’

  She pointed to the exit and he nodded. It only took her a few moments to tidy up the desk. She placed the earrings back into a box and locked it, before standing in a fluid movement. A break to stretch her limbs was necessary. She signed the locked box back into the care of the young assistant, who countersigned. She was careful not to let her heels click loudly across the floor as she made for the doors. Outside she found John.

  ‘I’m needed?’ She hoped so – it would be a welcome interlude.

  ‘Sorry for the interruption, but Mr Partridge asked if you would help with an item.’

  ‘Of course. His office?’

  ‘Er, no. They’re in the Enlightenment Room.’

  Even better. She enjoyed every opportunity to stroll through the large space of disconnected curiosities from around the world. ‘All right.’ She straightened her spine and heard it crack neatly into place. Still holding her notebook and pencil, Severine glanced at the clock to be sure the museum was still yet to open to the public. She headed for the small passageway – they all referred to it as the secret tunnel – that would take her into the Enlightenment Room. They emerged from where the door was cunningly concealed amongst the sweep of bookcases; most museum-goers never learned of its existence, unless by chance or accident.

  She was greeted by four colleagues, one other woman amongst them, and Mr Partridge, the most senior, beaming at her.

  ‘Ah, here she is. Mademoiselle Kassel,’ he said. ‘Thank you for coming.’ He waved the pipe he habitually carried but never lit in the public spaces. ‘We have something special to show you and would appreciate your opinion.’ He peered kindly at her through horn-rimmed glasses.

  ‘I’d be delighted,’ she said, moving closer. ‘What have you got for me?’

  ‘It’s the most exquisite piece of antique jewellery. It’s not a necklace; I’m trying to work out what it is,’ her female colleague murmured in a breathy tone of admiration. ‘Frankly, I’m not sure I recall a piece of jewellery I’ve encountered that is more breathtaking.’

  ‘Now I’m intrigued,’ Severine admitted, not for a moment anticipating what would be lifted from the velvet bag.

  She stepped closer to the glass cabinet they stood around, which contained a noose and a whip used on African slaves in the Caribbean. When she’d looked at those objects on the second day of her secondment, she had read the small card that explained they had been collected in Jamaica during the seventeenth century. It had occurred to her, as she read the matter-of-f
act wording, that the objects had been acquired not out of moral concern for the evils of slavery but out of pure curiosity. It was the way of the world. Had anything changed over the centuries? Hadn’t the Nazis collected Jewish religious objects to put in their private museums out of curiosity and the hope they could visit those museums of an extinct people they had decided to obliterate?

  ‘Middle Ages, we believe?’ one of her colleagues murmured, recalling her thoughts to the present, ‘but we don’t quite know what it is, to be honest.’

  Severine watched as a supple, oddly shaped length of lustrous pearls was lifted to uncoil from the bag in which it lay. From that first glimmer it felt as though someone had suddenly reached into her chest to squeeze her heart. Instantly it was difficult to breathe and with her body moving into shock she was aware, only vaguely now, of blinking fast as if to deny the presence of what she watched emerging, serpent-like, through a rapidly misting lens, of pearl jewellery, heavy and sinuous in its gleaming glory.

  Despite her shock, she’d had a couple of heartbeats to register that their lustre had not dimmed. They had been first worn in the eleventh century, so the story went, and certainly the radiant iridescence of their nacre had not dulled over the years since she’d last seen them … despite the touch of the treacherous hands that had stolen them.

  Her vision tunnelled and she could listen in on the normally silent but now angry rush of her blood, feel her lungs straining for oxygen when she was usually unaware of a single breath unless it steamed out of her mouth on a frosty day. Her senses were shutting down fast. She was blindly reaching behind herself to prevent a fall.

  The beast was out …

  Drenched in blood … some of it hers from a head wound, though most of it belonged to others. What last remnant she had of sensibility – perhaps whittled down to base animal survival instinct – had kept her still, silent and looking like another corpse that bitterly cold night. She’d wished she were dead when she later stood at the loose edge of a mass grave that had been hastily dug and quickly filled. The deceased were all those she loved, alive just hours earlier. Strangers had ruthlessly killed them, but only one monster had taken aim at her with his pistol, and worse …

  Her head snapped back as the pungent vapour of lavender laced with ammonia dragged her from 1941 to 1963. The memory wobbled and dissipated, her vision cleared; she could see the small bottle of Crown smelling salts still waving nauseatingly strong in front of her and she pushed it away. Severine noted a row of worried expressions peering at her from behind the secretary who stood before her and who had presumably brought the salts in a hurry. She watched her screw the purple crown-shaped lid back on the bottle.

  ‘Are you feeling better?’ she asked.

  Severine nodded. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Should I leave the salts?’

  ‘No, no. I’m fine now, thank you, again,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  The secretary was bundled aside as the others crowded in.

  ‘Mademoiselle, you gave us a scare. Are you ill?’

  ‘No, Mr Partridge, apologies. I felt dizzy for a moment, that’s all. I’m perfectly fine now,’ she lied, standing and smoothing her skirt self-consciously, feeling exposed. Her colleagues stepped back. ‘Please don’t worry yourselves.’

  Awkward silence lengthened; clearly she wasn’t fine and no one seemed to know what to say or how to proceed after the drama. Severine filled the difficult pause with the truth, once again grateful for her command of their language.

  ‘I can tell you about this piece.’ She didn’t need to so much as touch it to explain more. ‘It is believed that these pearls date back to the thirteenth century and they are said to have been commissioned by the sultan of the Ottoman Empire for his newest and from thereon most favoured wife. The story goes that at just fifteen she was chosen from his harem, plucked from the obscurity of the odalisques to become his sultana, and this was his wedding gift.’ She cleared her throat, noting the silence had changed character, thickening around her, filled with anticipation as much as captivation. They were waiting for her to take the Pearls. She preferred not to but the polite and expected words slipped out anyway. ‘May I?’

  ‘Of course,’ Miss Baker said, gesturing to the Pearls, which were still mesmerising to Severine in their creamy lustre that nonetheless shone metallic, almost mirror-like. She stepped closer, showing no inclination to take hold of the jewellery yet. Severine could view her reflection in each unblemished orb as she leaned in and noted her lips were now a line, her gaze as thorny as the rose their colour imitated.

  She still wasn’t ready to touch the Pearls so she continued speaking. ‘We have no proof of what I’ve just told you, but they were once known as the Ottoman Pearls, a title coined by a Russian royal – the Grand Prince Alexander of Tver – during the Middle Ages. Don’t ask me how a Russian prince came to have them in his possession, but he gifted them to his wife, Anastasia, who famously jested that the chief eunuch of the imperial harem stole and sold them on as far east as he could. I’m not sure I can believe that but the Pearls next surfaced, we understand it, in the Slovakian aristocracy.’

  ‘Good grief,’ she heard Partridge say into what had become a now spellbound silence.

  She swallowed, knowing she must now finish what she’d begun. Severine finally reached for the Pearls and lifted their heavy, serpentine beauty. Her colleagues all sighed with pleasure at their shimmering iridescence, even in the low museum light. The most dramatic part of their design was yet to clear the box.

  ‘This grand piece of jewellery is meant to be worn like a garment,’ she explained. ‘Originally it was designed for a slim, tall woman.’ She gestured to a loop in the strand of the Pearls. ‘See, here is where the new bride would put each arm.’

  ‘Ah,’ breathed Miss Baker in a sound of delighted dawning. ‘And she’d wear this over what?’

  Severine twitched a smile, although there was no warmth in it. ‘Over her skin, Miss Baker. She would come to her sultan naked, wearing only this strand of enormous natural pearls like a tiny bolero.’ She lifted the piece free of the box to view the jewel it suspended. ‘And this exquisite sapphire is said to be of the finest cerulean hue and likely from Kashmir of the middle centuries.’

  Everyone sighed at the sparkling teardrop gem. She remembered the weight of the Pearls, their chilled but silken feel, recalling how her mother had curiously rubbed one against her teeth and exclaimed, That’s how you know they’re real, when you can feel the grit from the oyster and its waters. Severine breathed away the memory of her mother, especially the final one that had stuck in her mind of a birdlike woman, huddled, terrified, unaware that she was preparing to die. Severine held the Pearls against herself. ‘As you can see, when I hold up the entire piece to approximate the way it would be worn, the sapphire would sit at the woman’s navel as a final tantalising encouragement.’

  Partridge cleared his throat, looking embarrassed.

  Too erotic, she wondered? Perhaps she wouldn’t mention, then, that the whole piece was entirely designed to encircle the nubile young wearer’s breasts and point the gaze of her husband between her legs, newly shorn by slaves using hot, pliable sugar. The young bride would stand nakedly submissive and welcoming, awaiting his pleasure and hopefully his seed because only a child – a son – could ensure her position, never to be toppled. She held back on that detail but continued with less confronting information. ‘If, or rather when, the sultan chose his wife over newer, younger, perhaps more beautiful odalisques, the sultana would wear this piece to show any pretenders who was truly the most powerful woman in his harem.’

  ‘I thought the sultan had many wives?’ Miss Baker chanced.

  ‘Yes – as many as he chose. However, there was only one first wife, and these belonged to her alone. The pearls and sapphire were also believed to bring luck to their union, the blue of the sapphire suggesting a son might be made whenever she wore it.’

  Poor old Mr Partridge was now blushing fu
riously at her words. She should stop. She did, returning the extraordinary piece to the box, watching it lie against the midnight-coloured velvet bag she recalled as if she’d seen it just moments ago.

  Severine only just caught the sob in time and forced it back down; to those watching it looked like little more than a hiccup. She turned it into a soft cough. ‘Excuse me,’ she said and took a low, long breath as she faced them. ‘I’m so sorry about my swoon earlier. I missed breakfast.’

  They seemed to accept her explanation easily enough.

  ‘You … you said the piece emerged in the aristocracy of Slovakia. Do you know any more about its provenance?’ It was one of the younger men who spoke. ‘I’m David Johnson, by the way,’ he introduced himself. ‘The piece found its way to my office.’

  ‘Hello, David. Er, yes, I do know more,’ she admitted. Time for truth, then. ‘Bringing it up to date, it was finally acquired by the Goldstein family of Bohemia in the 1800s. This stunning piece that so few people know about remained in that Czechoslovakian family for five generations and was passed down through the maternal line from eldest daughter to eldest daughter.’

  ‘Mademoiselle Kassel, am I to understand that this incredible item of jewellery most recently belonged to a Jewish family?’ Mr Partridge now looked astonished.

  ‘Correct, Mr Partridge. It did and still does belong to the same Jewish family, although through marriage it came into the family called Kassowicz,’ she said carefully. ‘It was stolen from them during the Nazi occupation, in 1941. October, in fact, from their country house about an hour out of Prague.’

  ‘My word,’ her boss replied, beaming at David Johnson. ‘I told you she’s frightfully good.’ He cut her a sharp look. ‘And you’re absolutely sure of that?’

  Years of torment erupted into rage but of the cool, wintry kind that could burn slow and steady. People said she possessed a simmering beauty but only Severine knew from where the controlled heat originated.

  Her tone was even; she had had years of practice masking the pain. ‘I am sure. And I can be this accurate because my real name is Katerina Kassowicz and I am the eldest daughter,’ she explained, keeping it matter-of-fact, ‘and this piece of jewellery is mine, given by my mother to her firstborn daughter.’