Minutes later, his duty done, Henri withdrew from her, dressed in haste and left the room. The door closed behind him with a muted click. Perhaps less than twenty words had passed between them from the beginning of this act to the end. Catherine lay on her back with her eyes closed, wondering why, even now, she allowed herself to be subjected to this. She remembered the Doctor, Jean Fernel, with his prodding, poking fingers, exploring her, prising her apart. He had examined both her and Henri in an attempt to diagnose the cause of the apparent barrenness. Mercifully, he had declared that she was not infertile, simply that conception was proving difficult. Catherine’s pride burned with the remembrance of what came next – that which caused her, even now in the emptiness of her bedchamber, to feel the blood sting her cheeks with shame once more. Henri’s mistress had taken her aside and under the guise of solicitude, masquerading as sisterly concern, she had suggested a different approach that perhaps the Dauphin and Dauphine could benefit from. Try it à la levrette, she had urged. An alternative position might prove to be what was needed. Catherine could not be sure but thought she had detected the faintest trace of a smile at the edge of the woman’s mouth as she pressed her point. Now, as Catherine lay in her darkened chamber, having performed ‘like a greyhound’ as requested, she wondered if this was yet another game of the Duchess’s to alienate her further from her husband’s affections. For now, when they made love, he did not have to meet her eye, did not even have to face her.
As Catherine rose from the bed, her hands rested lightly for a moment on her stomach. Then she put on her gown and made her way through the small chapel beside her chamber and into her study on the other side. As she walked idly around the room she rested a hand against the wooden panelling that lined the walls. Something in its touch soothed her. Perhaps it was the smooth solidity of the grain beneath her fingers. Perhaps it was the knowledge that she held of what was contained beneath the panels, in the secret compartments hidden in their depths. In some the ingredients for ancient pagan remedies were concealed. Mule’s urine – a certain cure for sterility – she had drunk religiously upon the counsel of one of her alchemists, while she had taken a mixture of mare’s milk, rabbit’s blood and sheep’s urine upon the advice of a second. She had tried all manner of dressings and poultices, purges, potions and lettings of the blood. For with each month that passed without a pregnancy her position had grown more and more precarious. There had been talk not too long ago of the repudiation of her marriage and her replacement by another. But she had found an unlikely ally in her husband’s mistress, who had pleaded her case with Henri – her good nature, her gentleness, her youth and the fact that she would most likely bear children in the future when the time was right. And for the moment at least the matter seemed to have been dropped.
Catherine stopped beside the window and looked down into the courtyard below. All was quiet, serene. She placed her hand on the panel to the right of where she stood and prised open the secret compartment beneath it. A small vial, she knew, rested inside although she did not turn to look at it. It contained a white powder, innocuous enough, with the look of talc or flour. And yet its contents were deadly.
She thought of the Duchess again. Motivated always by self-interest it had served that woman’s purpose to defend her, to champion the barren Dauphine’s cause. After all, a new, perhaps more beautiful successor might not view the presence of an older mistress with such apparent calm and resignation. The Duchess’s own position was in jeopardy. And so, with terrible irony, it seemed that the three of them – Catherine, Henri and his mistress – were bound together until a child was conceived. But after that, who could possibly know what would happen?
Catherine smiled in the darkness as she thought about the baby finally growing inside her. It was early in the pregnancy and she had managed thus far, through deception and guile, to keep it a secret. For with that discovery her husband’s visits to her bedchamber would come to an end, she was certain. Tears pricked her eyes as she realised she would prefer the little she got from Henri to having nothing of him at all. And, as she contemplated the loss to come, tears fell down her cheeks. But she wiped them away. With a child, after all, came other possibilities. A growth in her influence and power. A decline, perhaps, in that of the Duchess. Who knew what could happen?
Her right hand, still resting over the secret compartment, now reached forward and her fingers caressed the vial of arsenic within. Yes, she thought, her smile returning, who knew what infinite possibilities lay ahead? Then she closed her eyes and thanked God silently for the child.
6
WHEN I WALKED into the dispatch room the following morning I saw Tara’s handbag lying on her desk and her umbrella sprawling sodden next to one of its legs. Her coat hung limply behind the open door of the store cupboard close by. So she was here already. It was early for her. I put my coffee down next to the papers on my desk and slung my jacket, wet from the rain, over my chair. It was then that I noticed the note:
Come and find me as soon as you get in. I have a surprise for you!
Tara
I took a long, slow gulp of my coffee and wondered exactly what it was that she wanted. I drank a little more and then stood up. Normally I would have taken my time before seeking her out. I might have looked over my papers or made a few calls and only then gone to find her. In short, I would have bolstered myself, prepared my Tara defences. My armour and deflector shield. But today something was different. I was different. And no doubt all because of Ophelia. I took her card out of my wallet and looked at it again. She had given it to me late the previous night just before she went home. Apart from her name, in white type in the centre, and her number beneath it, it was a square of black emptiness. I rolled the words around my tongue. OPHELIA GRAY. OPHELIA GRAY. Then I put the card away once more and went to find Tara.
Her note hadn’t said where she would be but I didn’t figure it would be difficult to track her down. I crossed into the finishing department where racks of completed shoes lined my path. The soft, sweet smell of the leather rose and wrapped itself around me like an old, familiar coat. As I walked, I seemed to catch the smell of Ophelia’s skin on the air and an image of the kiss we had shared the night before flooded my mind. I thought of her lips, full and moist, and I closed my eyes as the vividness of the memory hit me. I blinked hard, tried to concentrate and walked briskly to the stairs. I ran up them two at a time and crossed the three sections on the first floor in turn. No sign of Tara. I stopped at the window and looked out at the park. In the dampness of the day, it looked greener than ever. The plane trees still stood like sentries on the periphery. There was no one there.
I turned back to the staircase and reached the second floor slightly out of breath. I looked around for a moment, then walked to the end of the factory floor and stopped. I was in the clicking department once again. But I still couldn’t see any sign of Tara. Maybe she had popped out for a minute. But why leave a note and then take off? Plus her bag and coat were still here. I shouted her name and waited. My voice hit the walls flatly. I breathed in and waited some more. The clicking machines looked as if they, too, were frozen, waiting for an answer. Nothing came back but silence. So I took the stairs out of that department down to the first floor. As I walked its length, I called Tara again. The same flat voice. The same lack of answer. I coughed and then shouted her name, loudly this time. Nothing. Confused, I made my way to the staircase and back down to where I’d started. My coffee cup still stood on the table. My coat drooped idly on the back of the chair. I walked over to the door, turned round and looked across the room. Everything was as I’d left it five minutes ago. I called Tara one last time. Finally a muted noise responded to my call.
I froze momentarily. Then I moved to the centre of the room and called her again. The same small voice came back, but I was struggling to identify where it was coming from. I walked to the rear wall, turned and called again. Another muffled response. I looked to my right. Now I was pretty sure. Tara’s voi
ce was coming from the store cupboard.
I walked towards it, feeling mildly ridiculous. Was this some kind of weird game of hide-and-seek? She couldn’t be hiding in the cupboard, could she? When I got to the open door I looked into the small rectangular space beyond. It was about twelve feet deep and four feet wide with a ceiling as high as the dispatch room. Narrow shelves ran all the way up and along the left-hand wall, packed with books, files, loose paperwork, swatches of leather, bits of apparatus and machinery. The floor was similarly crowded and towards the rear wall was littered with dusty cardboard boxes. I surveyed the chaos. There was no sign of my assistant.
‘Tara, where are you?’ I shouted loudly.
‘Hey.’ A subdued voice filtered out from the confines of the cupboard. ‘You’ve found me out.’
I took a step forward and looked again into the depths, along the cupboard’s walls and ceiling. No, I really wasn’t sure I had.
‘I’m not surprised it’s taking you a while. It did me too.’ Suddenly, a gap appeared in the right-hand wall. A long, thin strip of blackness. It continued to expand outwards, pushing against the floor. It was a door opening slowly from the inside. But the inside of what? I stood gaping. First I recognised Tara’s hand, then her arm against the door and after a moment she emerged in full. She smiled naughtily. ‘Well, hello. Welcome to my parlour.’ With a flourish, she gestured to where she had just come from.
‘What the hell?’ My voice came out rather high-pitched. I was having trouble controlling it. And a little trouble with Tara popping out of the wall. ‘What the hell?’ I repeated, stuck for words. ‘I don’t remember seeing this in any of the plans.’
‘That’s because it’s not marked on any of the plans. Come on down and see what you think.’ And with that she turned and disappeared.
Incredulous, I watched the space where she had been for a second or two and then moved forwards towards the open doorway. It was something else, practically undetectable from the outside. I peered through the gap in the wall. I could make out the top of a staircase descending into blackness beyond. I was still standing, staring, when a voice jumped out at me from the darkness.
‘Come on. The stairs are pretty dark but I’ve got candles down here.’
‘Jesus, Tara. Are you crazy?’
I heard her laughter erupt from the darkness and then another ‘Come on.’
A burst of anger rose within me. ‘Look, you had no idea what was going to be down there. You could have hurt yourself.’ I had a mental image of Richard reprimanding me for a complete lack of respect for health-and-safety regulations. Not to mention for endangering his lover.
‘Yeah, yeah. Are you going to come down here or are you going to argue with me for the rest of the morning? Don’t you want to see what I’ve found?’
I looked at the stairs. They were steep and wooden, with a painted handrail running alongside, presumably all the way to the bottom, although I couldn’t see that far. I started to clamber down, counting the stairs as I descended into the darkness and holding on to the handrail as I went. It was ever so slightly sticky. One, two, three, four, five. My irritation with Tara was still fizzing inside me. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten. I kept stepping down the stairs, taking shallow breaths as I went. The air was stale as if this place had been shut up for a long time. It felt thick and cloying as I breathed. Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. And slightly damp against the skin. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. And with that my foot touched the floor at the bottom.
I turned around and looked back up the staircase at the pale rectangle of light that marked the doorway into the cupboard. It looked much smaller from here. The thought made me feel mildly uncomfortable. Then I felt a hand touch mine.
‘Come on, slowcoach,’ said Tara. ‘Follow me.’
She led me down a narrow corridor to the left of the stairs and as I walked I stumbled now and again on the uneven floor. I couldn’t see what it was made of, but I suspected that it was bare ground. There was an earthy smell that lingered. We walked for about ten paces and then my hand felt the frame of a doorway directly in front of me. It had the same mild stickiness as the handrail. We walked through it and then stopped.
‘So, are you ready to see what’s down here?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, I guess so.’
I heard a match being struck and then light pierced the darkness.
7
I BLINKED A couple of times, trying to see beyond the candlelight. But at first it was impossible, darkness crowding in around the edges of the solitary flame. Then Tara handed me the candle and lit a couple more. Suddenly light bounced off the walls.
We were in a small room, about twenty feet square, with a low ceiling that stood just over a foot above my head. The floor was earth. So I’d been right. The hairs in my nostrils twitched. The fusty smell was even stronger in here than it had been in the corridor outside and the room felt abandoned, forlorn. Its walls were bare and blotchy, paint having flaked in patches and dropped to the floor. In some places, the plasterwork had given way completely, revealing the old wooden laths beneath. There were no windows. Against the wall, furthest from where we stood, was a single bed complete with mattress. What looked like rust, eating its way slowly through the metal stand, was bright in the glowing light. Other than the bed, and a mouldering old yellow armchair in the corner to the right of it, the room seemed empty. I walked over to the bed and, suddenly nauseous, kneeled down, resting my hand against the mattress for support. For a moment my mind swam and I thought I might retch.
‘Are you okay?’ Tara’s voice sounded lifeless, as if it was being sucked into the walls.
‘Yeah. It’s just the air in here.’
I stood up and turned around to face her. As I did so, I caught sight of something suspended on the wall furthest from the bed. It was a huge rectangular mirror, about six feet long and two feet wide, its thick silver frame tarnished in places, twinkling in the light. What had once no doubt been bright clear glass was now dark and deeply mottled. My outline was nothing more than a shadow, dully reflected in blackened silver.
‘Seriously, are you okay? You don’t look too good.’ Tara hovered in the doorway. ‘Maybe we should go back upstairs?’
‘No, really, I’m all right.’ The air was still sticking in my throat but that wasn’t what was bothering me now. I walked towards the mirror. ‘Strange . . .’ I muttered to myself, looking over its surface.
‘I know – it’s creepy, isn’t it? And what do you make of these?’ She pointed to the top left-hand corner of the mirror. A pair of dark green leather shoes, with thick high heels, hung from a green velvet ribbon suspended over the mirror’s frame. They were small and intricately embroidered around the toes with pale green silk thread. ‘Strange place to leave your shoes, don’t you think?’
‘Very,’ I mumbled as I reached out to touch them. They felt soft and smooth and even here, in this foul-smelling room, I could pick out the faint fragrance of the leather. They were still in good condition. Without thinking I slid my fingers inside the left shoe until it enclosed them snugly. Then I reached forward with my index finger and felt the soft leather of the insole. Within it was the subtle imprint of five small toes. An image of Ophelia on a beach danced fleetingly across my mind and then was gone. I blinked hard and tried to focus. I felt the imprint again.
‘What are you doing?’
I turned my head and looked at Tara who was eyeing me curiously. ‘I’m checking something.’ I looked away as I slid my hand into the right shoe. The same imprint was there. ‘To see if they’ve been worn. They have.’
‘Yes, but not a lot. The soles are only a little scuffed.’
I turned the shoes over and sure enough they were lightly criss-crossed with grazes and scars. I ran my fingers over the lines and grooves and the logo branded in the middle of the sole. They had been made here at the factory. Yet they looked smarter than an average pair of shoes. The leather was sumptuously soft and the stitching
on the uppers was elaborate.
I stared at them for I don’t know how long until Tara cut in on my thoughts. ‘So, there’s more. Would you like to see another strange discovery?’ She held out her right hand. Between her fingers was a piece of paper, an old scrap with ragged edges. I reached for it but at the same time I felt a quiver of unease. I had the growing feeling that we were handling things that perhaps we shouldn’t. Things that were personal and private. And that we had stumbled into somewhere that perhaps we shouldn’t have. I took a deep breath and tried to shake the feeling. On the side of the paper facing me there was nothing but a faint dark spot lying below the rough upper edge. I ran my finger over the mark and felt a slight stickiness. It must have been from where the note had been attached to something. I flipped the paper over. Here there was writing. Three lines stood out in the centre of the paper, in elongated green script.
I have heard, (but not believed)
The spirits of the dead
May walk again
Around the edges of the paper, fragments of letters in the same green ink survived. It seemed that the scrap had once been part of a larger text. I looked at the words again. But I had no idea what to make of them.
‘Where did you find this, Tara?’
‘It was stuck to the mirror, to the bottom left-hand corner. Roughly there.’ She pointed.
I moved forwards to look. While the surface was still dark, it was paler than the rest, with fewer thick inky marks. In the middle of this section there appeared to be two letters, etched into the surface of the mirror or just below it. It was difficult to say, due to both the darkness of the room and the discoloration of the mirror. I stepped nearer and bent in to take another look. Yes, they were definitely letters. Perhaps an ornate T and M, the long strokes of the letters intertwined. TM. It meant nothing to me. I touched the surface of the mirror gently, then stuck the paper back where it had been. It floated on the surface like shiny flotsam on a dirty pond.
The Medici Mirror Page 5