‘It’s okay,’ I said, without facing her. ‘Forget about it.’ But even as the words fell out of my mouth I felt the anger rise within me once more. She was right, she shouldn’t have come here. I tried to let it go, concentrating on the image of myself in the mirror. The black eyes, the dark lips. I smiled but something hard was reflected back at me. I looked at my lips, fascinated. ‘It’s okay,’ I said again, more to myself this time than to her.
‘Johnny?’
Her voice sounded very far away.
‘Johnny?’
‘Hmm.’ This time I turned to face her.
‘Come on, let’s get out of here. You were right. There’s something . . . I don’t know . . .’ She looked around the room and then back at me. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Are you sure?’
I looked at her face then, paler than usual in the candlelight and I felt a heady, overwhelming rush of desire.
‘I’m fine,’ I said, pulling her to me. ‘More than fine.’
I kissed her deeply, my hands behind her neck, holding her to me, then moving under her coat, over the thin white cotton of her nightdress to her breasts. They were full and warm beneath my fingertips. Squeezing tightly, I felt her nipples harden. I heard her moan, felt her hot breath against my ear. My hands slid down her body, over the taut skin of her stomach, downwards and between her naked thighs. Feeling her wetness, I grew harder, shifted my hands to her hips and lifted her. She wrapped her legs around me and I pushed her backwards against the wall, against the mirror. Her hair fell dark against the darkness of the glass, her skin white, almost luminous against it. I looked at the arch of her long neck, ran my fingers over the skin, felt the fast throb of her pulse beneath the surface. My body flooded with desire. I inhaled deeply, watching my reflection in the mirror as I felt her hands grappling with the belt at my waist. She smelled of roses and jasmine, and her smell and that of the room sank inside me into the darkness. I closed my eyes. And then I was inside her. I heard her gasp, murmur something to me, but what the words were I couldn’t tell. As I pushed deep into her, I felt something, besides desire, stir inside me. What was it? It rose in my stomach, blooming like ink on water, like the marks on the mirror’s surface. I opened my eyes and their reflection stared back at me, black, hostile from within the dark glass. Then I knew that what I felt was anger. Anger at her. My hands were once more around her neck, her pulse beating, strong against them. I became more aroused. As I pushed her harder, quicker against the wall, I heard her voice again, but still the words were not clear. I closed my eyes, closed my ears, surrendered to the turmoil inside, and in an explosion of anger and lust came hard, deep inside her.
Then, for a moment, there was nothing but darkness.
17
Chateau de Chaumont
November 1552
CATHERINE SHIVERED IN the chill of the room, conscious of the dark silence hanging thickly, sticking to her, a heavy shroud around her shoulders. She tried to remember how long she had been standing like this. But she could not. She had heard the last small gasp of the wick as the candle extinguished itself. Then she had smelled smoke on the air as the fumes rose. It had caught in the back of her throat, hard and sooty, before eventually dispersing. But she had no idea whether that had been seconds or minutes ago. She tried to peer through the darkness, to see her reflection in the mirror that she knew was in front of her. But she could not. Neither could she see her hand when she raised it towards her face, nor where it finished and the darkness began. And standing in this cold black room, where time had ceased to have any meaning, she began to feel a strange sensation, almost of suffocation. As if the darkness was taking hold of her. Just as panic began to rise, as she was about to call out, she caught a flicker of light once more.
Immediately her breathing stilled and the rapid beat of her heart slowed. Through the half-light she could see the reflection of Tommaso in the mirror, his silhouette behind her, bending over a new candle. Cosimo, close to him, was marking out a pentacle on the stone slabs. The liquid he daubed onto the floor looked thick and black, no doubt the blood of some animal. But in the flickering candlelight Catherine could not see clearly. Perhaps that was for the best. She watched Cosimo, his movements confident and swift. When the pentacle was finished he placed a glass jar at each of its five points. One, she knew, contained earth, another air, a third water. Then he placed the candle in the fourth, the symbol of fire. The fifth remained empty – awaiting the spirit that would fill it.
Catherine swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry, and shifted her focus from the brothers back to the mirror. She looked over its thick silver frame. It was a beautiful piece, that was for sure. And that thought made her fury rise once more. She thought about Henri’s mistress, with her skin, so white, so pale. She thought of the elixirs prepared to keep her young, the liquid gold she drank to preserve her youth. She thought about her vanity and her greed. She thought about her licentiousness. And Catherine smiled to herself. She had waited so long – so long on the sidelines, in the shadows – for the moment that would soon arrive, when Cosimo would perfect his craft. But that moment was almost upon her. The moment for her revenge to bite.
She was stirred by Cosimo’s voice, calm, low, commanding, speaking in tongues that she did not understand. She continued to look into the mirror, avoiding her own reflection as instructed, waiting. Suddenly there was a change, a shift in the room. Cosimo ceased talking and an unquiet silence loitered in the spaces where his words had been. The darkness seemed to become fluid, moving around the room, moving tighter around Catherine, suppressing the candlelight. The hairs on her forearms rose. Fear bloomed within her as the darkness tightened its grip. Then she could smell it on the air, the stench of her own sweat. And she knew with absolute certainty that there was something to be afraid of within this new-found darkness. The dead were among them.
Her eyes flickered momentarily towards the reflection of the fifth jar on the floor behind her. But terror forced her to look away before she could focus. Instead, she made herself raise her gaze and stare directly ahead into the mirror. For the first time that night she allowed herself to see her reflection, to look into her own eyes. Through her rising fear she tried to remember what Cosimo had told her. ‘Keep your eyes upon yourself alone once the ceremony has begun. Concentrate on your own gaze and when I tell you place your hands upon the mirror’s surface.’
Catherine felt the knot in her stomach tighten as the mirror appeared to quiver and shift. She stared at herself, at her own eyes, yet the more she looked at them the less they appeared to be her own. She stared at her face but again she failed to recognise it. She willed herself to smile, to dispel the fear and tension, and although she was sure that she had not, could not, she was equally sure that the reflection which she saw smiled darkly back at her.
She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could do so she heard Cosimo’s voice behind her, compelling her to touch the mirror. She hesitated, almost frozen with fright. His voice came again, authoritative in the darkness. And this time she did as she was told. For a moment she felt nothing. Then a tingling began in her fingertips. It spread slowly throughout her fingers and into her hands. And as she watched herself in the mirror, as she heard Cosimo’s voice chanting once again behind her, she felt all her anger and rage, all her fear and hatred, all her frustrated desire and longing flood out of her. A moment later, exhausted, her hands fell from the mirror’s surface and she stumbled backwards. Tommaso rushed to her aid, supporting her, as she closed her eyes and waited, just as Cosimo had instructed, for the incantation to be over.
As Catherine stood in the darkness she thought of her husband once more. She had done all for him: sacrificed everything, almost forgiven and almost forgotten. But she had not forgiven those closest to him, those who were corrupt and who defiled him in turn. She thought of his whore again. This had been done for her. It was time for retribution.
It was time for a gift tinctured with v
engeance.
18
THE DAYS WERE passing swiftly. Yet we seemed more stuck than ever in the frozen heart of winter. The nights were long and dark, the days, barely lighter, were bitter and overcast. Every day I trudged to the factory longing for the clarity of blue skies and the onset of spring. And every day I was disappointed.
In this time my ideas for the renovation, also seemingly frozen, had hardly developed at all. Day after day I stared at my drawings, frustrated by their lack of progress, by my own inertia, yet seemingly impotent to change either. I tinkered, amended and redrew but nothing substantive or complete, nothing wholly satisfactory ever seemed to evolve. I ended every day more confused about what I wanted, more unsure of what to present to the client. I began to think that it was a subconscious unwillingness on my part for the project to end, a deep-seated reluctance to leave the factory when the time came and return to the office. But perhaps I was just overthinking. At the end of the day, perhaps I was simply preoccupied with other things.
The sound of Tara’s footsteps beside me disturbed my meandering thoughts. We were walking back to the factory after another project meeting with Richard. Surprisingly, notwithstanding the stasis of my ideas this one had gone better than the last. Richard had shown some concern at the lack of development but as I had promised him results within the next few days it hadn’t become a bigger issue. The fact that I didn’t feel my promises were worth much was a source of considerable anxiety to me. But I was keen to avoid a restatement of the lack of faith that he probably still felt. So there was a sense that neither of us was being fully truthful but that we had both settled upon an uneasy truce.
I exhaled deeply into the biting air and focused on the dull thud of Tara’s boots against the tarmac. At least the spat I had had with her had blown over. I had apologised for my behaviour and she had done the same – saying that she had overreacted and was sorry and embarrassed that it had spilled over into our meeting. With that, the air was clear and now it was almost as if it had never happened. Almost. But I had been careful since then to avoid mentioning Ophelia to her – and, more specifically, to avoid revealing that Ophelia had now visited the underground room. As my mind turned once again to thoughts of the mirror, I became aware of Tara’s voice, echoing faintly beside me.
I turned towards her. ‘Sorry. Did you say something?’
She nodded and then smiled. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She paused for a second and then carried on. ‘You seem miles away. Is everything okay?’
I shrugged. ‘Sure, it’s fine. I was just thinking about the mirror in the underground room at the factory. That’s all,’ I added as if it were nothing.
She turned towards me. ‘What about it?’
As I had with Ophelia, I had told her about my visit to Mr Alexander and the discussion I’d had with him about the letter markings on the mirror’s surface. But we hadn’t spoken about it since then.
‘I went to the British Library a few days ago. I wanted to check on the intertwining H and C letters. It started to bother me that we didn’t know for sure that that’s what they were.’
‘And?’
‘And it seems that they were probably not intended to be Cs at all. They’re most likely Ds.’
A barrage of horns interrupted me as two white vans advanced towards one another from opposite ends of the street. Each was hurtling along kamikaze-style, taking more than its fair share of the oncoming-traffic lane. Their tyres screeched as they braked violently and swerved inwards, hurling dust and grit into the air. Tara looked up, observed the chaos of the street indifferently, then looked down again. She said nothing.
‘So Henri II,’ I continued, when the volume of street noise had returned to normal, ‘like most kings of the time, had a number of mistresses. But there was one he adored more than all the others: Diane de Poitiers or the Duchess of Valentinois. She was almost twenty years older than him but she was his mistress throughout his adulthood. Between them they created a monogram, combining the letters H and D.’
Tara nodded but again was silent.
‘It was apparently a symbol of their love. It’s been found on objects associated with them – the panelling of their bedchamber at Diane’s chateau at Anet, for example. Ironically, the layout of the letters also makes it possible to decipher a letter C within them. Or maybe this was purposeful – who knows? A sop to Catherine.’
Tara, staring down at her feet, now spoke. ‘It’s possible. But did you know that Cs were also associated with Diane? They’re crescent moons, the symbol of Diana, the hunting goddess. And they too were incorporated into lots of architectural features – floor stones, wall engravings, buildings and such – during Henri’s reign.’ Tara looked up at me and smiled. ‘You’re not the only one who was intrigued enough to do some more research.’
I nodded. ‘Clearly.’
We walked along in silence for a few moments, taking a right turn into the factory square. The park came into view and the noise of the main road began to recede.
Tara was the first to speak. ‘So do you think the mirror even belonged to Catherine, then? Or was it actually Diane’s?’
I shrugged again. ‘Who knows?’
‘I think it’s more than likely that it was Diane’s. She was always receiving gifts from Henri, gifts that should rightfully have been given to his Queen. When Henri’s father died, both his long-term mistress and his widow had to return all the jewels they had been given by the crown. Henri gave Diane the key to the treasury and told her to take whatever she wanted.’
I shook my head.
‘He also gave her the Chateau of Chenonceau – a palace that Catherine had always wanted for herself and claimed had been promised to her.’
‘Yeah. I read about that,’ I said, coming to a standstill in front of the factory. ‘She had a pretty rough time of it, all things considered.’
I pulled the keys from my jacket pocket and unlocked and pushed open the heavy outer doors. Tara went before me, turning on all the lights, switching on her computer and then busying herself with the coffee machine. I sat down at my desk and stared hopelessly at the array of designs spread chaotically across it. To avoid dealing with them, I took my camera from my desk drawer and flicked once more through the images of the mirror that I’d taken to show Mr Alexander, the ones that showed the TM of the mirror maker and the interwoven lettering on the bottom right corner. H and C. Or, more likely now, H and D. After a few moments I closed my eyes and rubbed the lids. ‘I don’t even know why I’m so interested in this,’ I said, more to myself than to Tara. But, hearing me, she crossed over to my desk.
‘I didn’t know you’d taken these,’ she said, grabbing the camera from me and scrolling through the images. Then she removed the SIM card from the camera and took it back to her computer. After a moment she called out, ‘You might want to come and take a look at this. You don’t really get a true sense of it when you see it on the camera.’
Glad of the distraction, I got up and headed over to her. When I saw the picture of the mirror on her computer screen, with the colour and contrast sharpened, the difference was staggering.
The mirror’s metallic surface was dark, but the subtle gradations of its mottling were clearer: dark silver here, lighter silver there, unfathomable darkness blooming in patches elsewhere. The silver frame was easily distinguishable from the glass and faint tarnished patches were discernible on it. What I had not been able to see when I looked at the image on the camera, but could clearly see on Tara’s computer screen, was my own dark reflection evident in the mirror.
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘That’s amazing.’
‘Yes, that’s you.’
I focused on the shadowy blur, dark and elongated, that had been caught by the camera. I blinked and looked again. Was that really me? As I stared at it, I felt a subtle ache of disquiet in my stomach. The same feeling that I had had intermittently since the first discovery of the mirror and the underground room.
Tara broke in on my thoughts.
‘When did you take these?’
I took a breath and tried to think. ‘A few weeks ago.’
She pursed her lips, still staring at the screen. There was something hypnotic about the image. ‘And have you been back down to the room since then?’
I paused, wondering if I should tell her the truth. That not only had I found Ophelia there one night alone, but that we had subsequently been back there together, perhaps three, maybe four times. But I wasn’t sure that she would understand, wasn’t sure that I would be able to explain adequately. That alongside the disquiet that I felt when I thought about the room, there was a small kernel of excitement, growing in the darkness inside, pulling me back towards that place: a stronger, more powerful urge than the one to stay away. So while I wanted to tell her, I didn’t. And the lie slipped out of my mouth. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I haven’t been back.’
Tara nodded and said nothing.
‘What about you? Have you been down there since you found the room?’
I thought I sensed a moment’s hesitation before she shook her head. ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘I haven’t.’ Then she turned to face me and looked me directly in the eye. ‘And I haven’t told Richard about it, either.’
I hesitated, unsure what to say. I knew that I didn’t have any right to ask her not to talk to him about it but something in me still baulked at the idea of him knowing about the room. I felt a wave of anxiety flow through me as I imagined him walking around the cellar, examining the mirror and then wanting the room discussed and drawn and analysed in project meetings.
‘I haven’t told him,’ she said again.
As I continued to meet Tara’s unflinching gaze, my fear passed and another feeling rose in me. Something resembling relief. I was sure that she was telling the truth. I nodded and then gave her a slight smile.
The Medici Mirror Page 12