by Laura Rahme
Maurice lifted an eyebrow. “You wish to become an actress?”
“That surprises you? I’ve got a good memory, I’ll have you know. I can remember entire passages from Shakespeare. I’ve a boyfriend in Reading who just got a job making theater sets. He promised he would take me. Better than wasting hours in a mad house. I just can’t imagine Aaron Nightingale was any good in bed. The man gives me the creeps. Dead or not.”
“Why do you say that?”
“What? About Mr. Nightingale?”
“Why do you say it is a mad house?”
“Oh.” She brought her voice down to a tone that was close to sinister. “Wait and see.”
Before he could protest, she darted near him and brushed her dress against his knee. “What are you reading, there? Let me have a look.” She reached for the cover and tilted the volume so that she could appraise its title. “Did you just help yourself to any books you pleased? Quite the arrogant French, aren’t you? My, The Animal Kingdom. You think you’re quite clever.” She gave him a saucy smile.
“Whatever will help me to understand the mysterious owner of this mad house,” protested Maurice, crossing his legs to avoid bodily contact with Madeleine.
“I tried that trick once. On my second day here, I thought it might be nice to borrow a book. Mrs. Cleary got cross with me first thing once she knew of it. She has eyes called Shannon in the back of her head. I’ve been mostly well-behaved since.”
She glanced again at the book’s cover. “Seventh book from the right, row three,” she quipped.
“What?”
“Seventh book from the right, row three of the bookcase. That’s where you found it, didn’t you? In Mr. Nightingale’s study? That man must have been awfully boring. It didn’t take me any time to remember his entire bookcase. I mean how many science books can one wish to read?”
“You remembered every book’s position in that room?”
She stared back at him. “Try me.”
“I’m astounded. You do have a good memory.”
“Oh, you of little faith.” She leaned over him, two hands on the armrests as Maurice clung to the book across his chest. Her breath was hot on his face. “I know where everything is in this house. If you want it, I can get it for you.”
Maurice met her gaze. “Alright then. What’s in the cellar?”
She tilted her head in a sigh. “Oh. You got me. I’m only human, after all. I’ve seen everything, except the cellar.”
She spun about and returned to her duster, deep in thought. “Still,” she said, “if there’s a key, there’s a way.”
“I am certain there is a key,” replied Maurice, more determined than ever. “But key or not, I will find a way inside.”
Mrs. Cleary’s night
NIGHTFALL brought disquiet to Maurice. The walls seemed to close in around him. He feared being once again locked inside his room.
Ever since Shannon had brought the fountain’s noise to his attention, he thought of little else. He had mentally drawn a plan of the house and made out that the fountain lay downstairs, adjacent the wall to his right. Its sound had gone unnoticed the nights before. Why did he fixate on it now? Try as he had, he could no longer ignore the water’s torrent.
Maurice pondered whether Mrs. Cleary might have deliberately given him this room so that upon suffering numerous poor nights, he might take his leave sooner. He recalled Mrs. Cleary’s smug tone when she had declared that he would have long since returned to France by the time anyone was legally permitted in the cellar. She wanted him gone. But why?
The more unsettled he felt, the louder the sound of the water. Everything flows, the words whirled in his mind like a never-ending rush. How could one sleep through this?
But beyond the fountain, what disturbed him was the fear of being locked in.
He decided to lay awake and speak to Mrs. Cleary once she neared his room to lock it. Despite his attempts at breathing deeply, his heart raced as he listened for the housekeeper.
It must have been about ten o’clock, when he heard her walking up the stairs. Maurice was startled by how agitated she seemed. The housekeeper stomped angrily, the timber groaning underfoot. Was she mad? To Maurice, it felt like the force of every step sent the house shaking.
He knew he had to confront her immediately. He would let her know what he thought of her imprisoning him inside his own room. Maurice leapt from his bed and reached for the door.
When he opened it, he saw Mrs. Cleary’s shadow.
She stood in the far end of the stair landing, hunched, her back turned away from him. She carried a dim gas lamp that had waned. Her long-sleeved nightgown of white linen reached down to her bare feet. She wore a thin lace shawl round her shoulders. The tight bun was gone. Instead her hair fell to her shapeless hips so that strands of silver hung low, all the way down to her bony buttocks.
“Mrs. Cleary…” began Maurice. He thought he had spoken loud enough but the sounds of water deafened him.
The light in Mrs. Cleary’s hand dimmed to nothing. The corridor blackened, streaked in parts by the moonlight seeping through the side window.
She was a grey shape at the top of the stairs. She threw the lamp down with force.
Maurice stepped back, still staring at her from the doorway. The lamp rolled down the stairs, tumbling down each step, until he heard the glass shatter below.
Without warning, Mrs. Cleary turned, filling Maurice with unexplained dread. She muttered in a throaty voice and he sensed her rage from afar. Maurice took another step back, stunned by the housekeeper’s terrifying manner.
“Mrs. Cleary, are you alright?” he asked, his voice wavering.
The housekeeper seemed grotesque now.
“Mistake!” she spat. “A grave mistake!”
And the old woman paced towards him at a frightening speed, impelled by all the fury within her, more intent with every step that drew her near. A withered form, moving angrily in the darkness, he could make out the menacing snarl on her moonlit face as she came at him in the dark. “Made a grave, grave mistake! Grave mistake!” she hissed.
Maurice froze, unable to understand what he was seeing, unable to utter a sound.
“I told you to stay where you were! Do you not listen? ” she roared. She was getting closer and the glowing moon ray distorted her features. Maurice blinked. He wondered why Mrs. Cleary’s eyes appeared so bloodshot, so streaked with red.
Then just as suddenly, she came to a stop at his bedroom door, a foot from where he stood. A flash of recognition passed across her face and the threatening expression vanished. She brought a trembling hand to her temple then closed her eyes while she inhaled. When she opened them, they were still brutally red but her tone regained its polish.
“Mr. Leroux, oh my…I did not see you.” She recovered her breath, pressing her hand to her chest. A glint of madness still shone in her eyes.
Maurice stared at her in disbelief.
“You must be very careful,” she said, straining to speak each word as though still out of breath. “At night, I mean. You must be ever careful. For this reason,” she pushed him savagely, and with unexpected strength back into the room. “I must lock you in!”
“No! No, Mrs. Cleary, that’s out of the question. I told you that I can take care of myself.”
“You foolish man!” she spat. “It is everywhere. It flows everywhere like…” Her vision seemed to glaze.
Maurice held her up as she swooned.
“Madame, I think you should rest. I assure you that I can take care of myself. From now on, I will need you to leave this bedroom door unlocked every night.”
She reached out and clung to his arm.
“But you don’t understand. It’s her,” she warned.
Maurice stared wide-eyed. He held Mrs. Cleary and firmly guided her towards her room, even as she resisted.
“It’s her…” she repeated. “Her and that snakelike hair…”
“Medusa?”
The ho
usekeeper’s eyes widened and Maurice shuddered at how dilated her pupils were. She nodded frantically. “Quite right, you are. Quite right. She’s an evil creature.”
“That’s nonsense… Watch your step, now.”
“…one look upon her face and one is turned to stone.”
“You can’t possibly believe that, Mrs. Cleary.”
“But you don’t understand. She was abducted! Abducted by Poseidon. Not many people know…”
“Now, Mrs. Cleary, please. You’ll only frighten yourself.”
“You don’t understand. It’s Calista! She has brought Medusa’s vengeance to this house.”
“No, no, that’s not true. It is only a Greek myth from ancient times. It is not real. None of it is real.”
They had reached Mrs. Cleary’s room and Maurice stood by the door as the housekeeper entered, still in a daze. He waited for a while before quietly retracing his steps.
As Maurice returned to his bedroom, he pondered over the nature of the housekeeper’s outburst. The reddened eyes and dilated pupils did not lie. Neither did her haggard face and private mutterings.
What had Madeleine confided earlier? Was Mrs. Cleary taking medication that altered her behaviour? If that were true, it was no wonder she fabricated these visions of Medusa. Maurice thought no more of it. He drifted to sleep, this time with the door partly ajar.
The hours passed, and Maurice slept. But by a mechanism mastered only by astute detectives, his curiosity succeeded in stirring his senses at the right time, and at midnight, he opened his eyes.
Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he was about to return to sleep when he felt a movement outside his room. He stared at the gap near the door. Stillness followed. Again, he watched and waited. Nothing.
Feeling reassured, Maurice closed his eyes.
A curious odor of sea and salt filled the room but Maurice ignored it, drawing the covers higher upon his nose.
Outside, the sounds of rushing liquid filled the nightscape and the fountain waters poured unrelenting. In the pond where the blue moonlight shone, the mosaic tiles glistened magically like tiny fish scales.
Chapter 6
The Nymph of Kassiopi
Greece, 1835
LEGENDS told of the water nymph who had bewitched Poseidon, Greek lord of the sea. Naiads of her kind lived in running waters, in the rivers, near the cascades and the creeks. Theirs was the power to give birth to the fountains and to oversee them. Korkyra was such a naiad. She was a maiden crowned with ocean flowers and gifted with breathtaking beauty. One look at her was enough to lose one’s mind. Once Poseidon fell in love, he abducted her, then swept her away to an island where she might be his alone. In time, the island bore her name, and in the people’s dialect, was known to all as Kerkyra.
It was a lush paradise in the Ionian Sea, a place of beauty graced with six mountain peaks, and whose rocky maquis overlooked crystal clear blue waters. Its green rolling hills burst with life, for nature and all its creatures thrived here.
Kerkyra had found itself under British protectorate since Napoleon’s defeat twenty years ago. To Aaron, it seemed like the proper destination for an Englishmen to inhale the Greek landscape in its natural form, well away from mystified Athens. Lately, he had grown suspicious of the new mythology surrounding the ancient capital. To hear English and French writers, the Greeks of today were the same as they had always been.
Aaron did not fancy being told how to see the Greeks. He wished to see them, with his own eyes. The raw, the dark, the savage appealed to him more than any illusion painted by those who wished to revive Hellenic culture, a culture which, to him, was long gone. He knew better than be swayed by romantic writers’ nostalgia for classical dreams.
It was fortunate that Aaron spoke Greek well, for here, on the island along with her Ionian sisters, the official languages, despite British rule, remained Greek and Italian.
There was a reason Aaron had travelled to this island, which the English now called, Corfu. It was the long and captivating conversation he had had in Athens about a week ago with a fellow medical graduate.
The young man had recently returned from his appointment in Corfu’s prison. Like Aaron, he enjoyed sitting on a terrace, speaking of his travels over a glass of Ouzo. A good drink could only revive his shaken morale from what he had seen in Corfu.
In the island’s prison, he explained, members of the insane languished in appalling conditions alongside criminals, and many suffered terrible maladies. The young doctor then expounded on a project which the Lord High Commissioner of Corfu, Sir Howard Douglas was supervising himself – to build a new hospital so Corfu might benefit from advanced, enlightened measures readily embraced elsewhere in Europe.
“The British will use this new hospital to shelter the insane and give them better treatment than in the prisons.”
“It is the least we can do,” agreed Aaron.
But as riveting as the British project seemed, the young doctor soon drifted to the beauty of Corfu and its quiet village life which he claimed seemed to have been untouched, even after years of Venetian rule.
“Untouched, you say? How so?” asked Aaron, ever sceptical but hoping to find relief from an Athens overrun by visitors.
“There is, you see, a sleepy village in the north-eastern coast of Corfu. It goes by the name of Kassiopi. It is only a small community. It overlooks the prettiest beach. Clear, turquoise waters like you’ve never dreamt. I’ve seen many of these in Greece but still, there’s something about that particular place. Perhaps because it seems so far away. Well in that village you see…” The young doctor’s eyes had shone bright as he told Aaron a most curious story.
The details of a unique village incident poured from his lips. It sounded like a far-fetched tale. To any person other than Aaron Nightingale, the story would have seemed inconsequential, absurd even, but the young doctor noted that his table companion’s eyes had lit up and that he was even compelled to write down notes in his journal.
Upon hearing the young doctor’s extraordinary account, Aaron Nightingale promised himself he would not remain a moment longer in Athens. Farewell then, Acropolis, farewell Hadrian’s Gate, farewell Socrates’ prison, goodbye classical ruins, goodbye the newly repopulated Plaka, the ancient Turkish quarter of Athens with its snaking streets crowded with European travellers, where poverty and post-war misery thrived among eager hawkers. To the islands, then… to Kerkyra!
It wasn’t long before Aaron, revived by this story, this village tale of which he believed only he could divine the full meaning, set sail, along with several British soldiers, to Corfu’s port.
He was pleasantly surprised by the sight of Corfu Town. This glorious marina had apparently once been a naval power. Only Athens and Corinth had been mightier. Dominating the town were two four-hundred year strong Venetian fortresses. A charming French esplanade had been built in the short time span when Napoleon had seized the island from Venice. With its arcades, it reminded Aaron of the rue de Rivoli in Paris. Unlike Athens, here, Aaron saw no traces of an Ottoman influence, for the fortresses had long succeeded in keeping Turks at bay.
Aaron followed a local guide who promised him some means of transport and lodging in Kassiopi. As bemused as he was to discover this mode of transport consisted of several donkeys, he did not protest.
Each man was soon saddled upon a donkey. A third donkey carried Aaron’s travel bags together with a day’s provisions bought in the port. Eager to inform himself, Aaron purchased a copy of the official government newspaper, the Gazzetta Uffiziale Degli Stati Uniti Delle Isole Jonie.
Along his journey to the outskirts of Corfu Town, Aaron marvelled at the Venetian charm of the island, its serene cobblestone streets, its blooming citrus trees. He stared in wonder at the abundance of olive groves which flourished up on the hills. Many years ago, shared the guide, long before the Venetians had encouraged the growth of olive trees, the island had been covered by vineyards and thick oak forests. Nowadays, the Corf
iot wineries were of modest size. As for the ancient trees, they had long been felled for Venetian shipbuilding.
The guide continued his lively historical account, explaining how the vineyards had made way for extensive planting of olive trees, and how the Ionians were made to pay taxes to the Venetians in the form of olive oil, but Aaron was not listening. He’d grown enchanted by the idea that somewhere in the formidable Venetian Arsenal which Napoleon had looted in the last century, there might have been ancient planks of wood that were stolen pieces of Kerkyra.
“And now, here we are in colonial England,” whispered Aaron, his studious eye missing nothing of the foreign landscape around him.
The path began to narrow, flanked on either side by wild growth, and under the crushing summer heat, insects flew and buzzed round them. Aaron lost sight of the sea as they drew inland. The rawness of his surroundings, far from causing concern, only excited him further. Along the meandering journey from Corfu Town to Kassiopi, he reflected on his daring adventure to the Ionian island. The established English presence would make his stay comfortable at least. That part was easy. The hardest task was finding the girl which the doctor back in Athens had mentioned at length.
The girl from Kassiopi.
Aaron had not foreseen the power this girl would have on him. Already, his reason appeared to have left him. He felt inexorably pulled towards her village.
The journey seemed to never end, and Aaron forgave the unbearable stench of his donkey whose stoic endurance he almost admired. He employed this time to ponder over that astonishing tale told to him by the young doctor. The tale which he had not, at first, believed but which had driven him to drop everything and find the coastal village.