The Medici Mirror

by Melissa Bailey

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  ‘I have heard, but not believed, the spirits of the dead may walk again . . .’

  A hidden room

  When architect Johnny Carter is asked to redesign a long-abandoned Victorian shoe factory, he discovers a hidden room deep in the basement. A dark, sinister room, which contains a sixteenth-century Venetian mirror.

  A love in danger

  Johnny has a new love, Ophelia, in his life. But as the pair’s relationship develops and they begin to explore the mystery surrounding the mirror, its malign influence threatens to envelop and destroy them.

  A secret history

  The mirror’s heritage dates back to the sixteenth century, and the figure of Catherine de Medici – betrayed wife, practitioner of the occult, and known as the Black Queen.

  The Medici Mirror is a haunting story of jealousy, obsession and murder; of the ability of the past to influence the present; and of love’s power to defeat even the most powerful of curses.

  About the Author

  Melissa Bailey read English at Oxford, before studying law in London and then pursuing a career in media law. The Medici Mirror is her first novel. She lives in London with her partner, who is a human rights lawyer.

  The Medici Mirror

  Melissa Bailey

  For Mum and Dad, with love

  Prologue

  Chateau de Fontainebleau

  November 1542

  THE SPLINTERS AT the edge of the hole in the wooden floor scratched the corner of Catherine’s eye. She squinted and tried to focus but, as she had suspected, she could see nothing but darkness. She turned her head, placing her ear against the opening. All was quiet below. So they had not yet retired to their chamber. Kneeling upright, she pulled the silk rug back into position, masking the presence of the hole. Then she checked the two additional holes that she had requested should be made in the floor a few days earlier, affording differing vantage points into the bedchamber below. As with the first, they revealed nothing but a silent darkness.

  For what felt like an age, Catherine paced the floor of her own room, waiting. On more than one occasion, from somewhere close by in the palace, she heard a door open and close, allowing the brief escape of music and laughter. But nothing followed this except the diminishing sound of footsteps and then the advent of yet more silence. Finally she lay down upon her bed and contemplated her plan. Her ladies had begged her not to go through with it, not to go to such agonising lengths. But she knew that she was lacking, that she could not please her husband, that she was not alluring to him. And that the consequence of this was that she remained childless. She could not contemplate such a barren future stretching before her. Could not face the uncertainty and peril that that brought in its wake. She had to learn, whatever the cost. And so she had decided and had steeled herself for what was to come. She would harden her heart to the pain that it would no doubt inflict upon her, but she would watch them. She would watch her husband and his mistress as they fornicated beneath her.

  Catherine sat upright, suddenly breathless, and felt a sullen fury rise within her. It was not an uncommon feeling. The beautiful, older mistress, who dominated life at Court, eclipsing her in most things, also overshadowed her in the bedchamber. And she was reduced to stealing glances. She closed her eyes, feeling tears imminent, and lay back down on the bed. She tried to push the sour-tasting feeling down, reminding herself that she was the Dauphine, that she loved the Dauphin above all others and would do more than all others for him. And that she would remain his and become Queen if she simply remained pragmatic. She would bide her time and wait. And she would triumph in the end.

  The sound of a door below banging loudly stirred Catherine from her reverie. Then she heard the unmistakable voice of her husband as it rose faintly through the floorboards. She almost leaped from the bed and her limbs trembled as she ran around the room, extinguishing the candles. Fumbling in the darkness, she pulled back the carpet and saw the hole she had looked through earlier, now illuminated with light from below. Her heart pounded in her chest. The moment was upon her. Henri and his mistress were almost in sight.

  And so she looked. She caught a glance of Henri first. He was in a state of semi-undress. His legs were bare and he wore only a loose-fitting undershirt. She watched as he walked around the room, admiring the contours of his body. He was a fine-looking man, with a lithe, muscular physique from hunting and the joust. And in the darkness of her chamber, looking down upon her husband, she felt a bloom of desire. The next moment she blushed with embarrassment and instinctively looked away until the burning in her cheeks had passed. By the time she returned her gaze to Henri, he was standing beside the bed upon which his mistress reclined. She wore her signature black and white gown. For a few minutes they talked and laughed together, so quietly that Catherine could not make out what they were saying. But their complicity, their delight in each other’s company was so apparent that she began to feel the rise of that sick raging feeling once again. It also caught her off guard. The ease with which they touched each other: faces, eyes, lips, hair. Their intimacy was well disguised at Court. Hiding behind a mantle of feigned respectability, they were cool, aloof and distant. Now Catherine began to see the real truth of things.

  As the Dauphin leaned towards her, his mistress rose up to meet him, kneeling on the bed. He removed her jewellery, her gown, his fingers lingering teasingly on her skin, moving across her neck, her shoulders, her belly, slowly caressing her breasts. Henri’s lover submitted openly, her body giving beneath his fingers, clearly aroused by his touch. And Catherine saw for the first time the porcelain nakedness of this woman who had so bewitched her husband.

  The anger drained from her and tears invaded her eyes. She blinked them away and continued to look. She saw the older woman, bold and shameless, straddle her husband, and witnessed his delight, his excitement at her daring, at her abandon. Her hair fell over them in cascades as he pinned her to him. Catherine watched their bodies moving, wild and increasingly passionate, until she could no longer blink away the tears. Then she surrendered and let them overflow, running silently down her cheeks. She had seen enough. And yet she could still hear them, their loud carnal noise. Those sounds, she thought, wo
uld haunt her for ever. Along with their counterpoint: the silence that dominated when she was with her husband in such a way.

  Catherine turned and lay on her back in the darkness, trying not to imagine their sated, breathless bodies lying on the sheets of the bed below. Instead she tried to feel only the darkness within her. She breathed it in and tried to clear her mind. She would have the holes filled in tomorrow. She would have no more use for them now. She wondered if she should have listened to her ladies, who had begged her not to indulge in such a venture. Perhaps she should. Perhaps she should have continued in ignorance. But then she would never have known the truth.

  She sat upright in the darkness and saw the moonlight creeping in through the window. It was bright, a full moon perhaps, a hunting moon. It made her think once again of the woman with her husband in the room below her feet. Catherine’s heart hardened. She would bide her time. After what she had witnessed tonight, she knew that she could bear almost anything. But in the end she would have revenge. She might have to wait a long time.

  But she would have it in the end.

  1

  London, 2013

  I HEARD THE ambulance before I saw it. The raucous blare of the siren before the rush of air as it sped past. A flash of yellow and green stripes and blue neon light. Scattering dust and grit in its wake, it careered down Upper Street only to be arrested by a dense queue of cars and lorries at the traffic lights. It stood still, screeching into the cold winter morning, until the traffic shuffled and shunted and it was finally on its way again.

  I looked at the gridlock ahead – diesel fumes spewing forth, stereos blaring. It was the same scenario day after day. I cut off the main road and after a few moments the noise and pollution all but vanished. The route was so familiar that I could have walked it in my sleep. And over the last six months it felt as if I’d been doing just that: going through the motions, barely conscious. The thing was, I’d simply needed some time. That was my standard reply whenever my business partner, Richard, pulled me up. I simply needed some time. Given my lack of attention lately it was a wonder I still had a job to turn up to. But Richard was a good guy. And I’d produced some great projects with him over the years. So I’d become a sleeping partner recently. Big deal. When it really came down to it he didn’t seem to mind too much.

  As I skirted classical Georgian terraces, my hand reached out for the smooth solid blackness of the railings. Behind them there were neat window boxes perched on pristine sills and perfect miniature trees on balconies. X5s and Audis cluttered the edges of the pavement. It was a catwalk of opulence, this part of my route. Further down the hill and across the main road it was a different story. This was the point at which the crossover began. The flash cars slowly disappeared, the terraces became stunted and there wasn’t so much as a whiff of a window box. The smell of elegance and money vanished. If you breathed in deeply you could catch a hint of the weariness hovering in their place.

  As I walked, I thought again about Richard’s message from the day before. ‘I have the perfect job for you, an architect’s dream. Can you come and take a look?’ He’d left an address and asked me to meet him there today. Then he’d hung up.

  I had to admit I’d been more than a little intrigued. So instead of going straight – my ordinary journey to the Shoreditch office – I bore right at the next lights and headed towards Clerkenwell. To my left, tower blocks mushroomed, great grey smudges of pebble-dash against the sky. Row upon row of small, square windows punctured their surfaces, dully reflecting the day. Their underbellies, emblazoned with graffiti, swathes of pink, red, orange and blue, jack-knifed the greyness. At the end of the road I took a left turn and then a right moments later. Immediately I was in a different environment, surrounded by a circle of Georgian terraced houses. In their centre was a small park, a surreal blur of green after the nearby maze of concrete. As Richard had instructed me I moved towards the break in the circular symmetry of the houses. Then it was before me, the imposing Victorian Gothic shoe factory.

  It was a large three-storey red-brick building, discoloured by years of smog, dirt and rain, with a multitude of windows across its façade, those of the first floor set in semicircular arches of ochre-coloured stone. I had just walked round the ground floor, a vast open space, when I heard the clangour of footsteps pounding down the stairs in the corner of the room. When Richard appeared he had a broad smile on his face and strode purposefully towards me.

  ‘Johnny Carter.’ He grabbed my hand and clapped me on the back. I caught the faint odour of his expensive aftershave. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m good, thanks. Just admiring the place.’

  ‘Yeah, she’s a beauty all right. And wait till you see upstairs.’ Richard let out a low whistle. ‘I had a quick look while I was waiting for you.’

  I smiled. Richard was always dashing around. He was the lifeblood of our practice, the boss, the business mind, the guy without whom everything would grind to a halt. Yet no matter how busy he was he still managed to look unruffled and composed. I took in the designer clothes, the subtly tousled grey hair, and wondered, not for the first time, how he did it.

  He made his way towards a desk at the foot of the stairwell and began leafing through some papers. ‘Did you find it okay?’

  ‘No problem.’ I picked up a pair of black leather shoes from a stack in the middle of the room. They were well made, the leather, despite its age, still fine. The business had obviously been one of quality. Whether the renovation would echo that remained to be seen. ‘So, give it to me. What’s the brief?’

  ‘A residential conversion, opulent and modern, but with a nod to the past. Your speciality.’

  I smiled, still looking at the shoes. He knew that I was waiting for the most important part.

  ‘And the client’s a wealthy individual, not a developer. He wants the whole place as his home. So it’ll be spacious.’

  ‘No kidding.’

  ‘We’ve got a great budget and pretty much free rein to do what we like.’ Richard plucked a stapled wad of material from the desk and put it to one side. ‘Our instructions, such as they are, are here. Have a good look later.’

  ‘I will. It all sounds very promising.’ I had to admit, this was my favourite kind of job. A renovation project, dripping with history, crammed full of memorabilia and with no scrimping or corner cutting. I turned to look down the length of the factory floor once more. Large wooden machines and workbenches crammed with tools loomed out of the dirty light fighting its way through cobwebbed windows. I listened to the noises of the factory. Creaking floorboards, groaning metal, murmuring old pipes, subdued but present nonetheless. ‘So what do you know about the place?’ I said, turning back to face Richard.

  ‘Not much. It was a family business set up in the late nineteenth century. The father ran it first, then one of the sons, James. His son Thomas followed after, when he came of age. Business started out well but trade slumped in the late 1940s. Falling demand, escalating costs, things like that, drove it into the ground. Eventually, it was just closed down.’

  ‘And they never did anything with the building?’

  ‘No, I guess not.’ For a few moments Richard flicked through some papers in front of him. ‘It says here that it’s only sold now because of the recent death of the last surviving Brimley – the grandson of James. He wasn’t married and didn’t appear to have any relatives. His Bloomsbury house – which had been passed down from his grandfather – is being cleared out but is still for sale.’ He paused. ‘I think that over time perhaps the factory just got forgotten.’

  ‘Forgotten?’ It was hard to imagine how someone could let this place just slide into decline, untouched. I turned and looked once again, more closely this time, along the length of the floor, into the shadowy corners at its far end, into the darkened spaces beneath the workbenches and behind the cupboards. I closed my eyes and listened to the subtle whispers of these spaces, their melancholic, dusty breath. ‘How does someone just forget abou
t this?’ I said it more to myself than to Richard.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s lack of interest. Or maybe it’s something altogether more personal. Maybe they wanted to forget.’ Richard shrugged. ‘Anyway, whatever the reason, it’s been unoccupied for over five decades.’

  That was an age in terms of London property development. I looked at the dust-covered clutter surrounding us. ‘And there’s still so much stuff here. Can I use what I want?’

  Richard nodded. ‘The client was quite specific on that. Take what you need and discard the rest. He doesn’t want to keep anything beyond what’s incorporated into the renovation.’

  ‘Okay, understood.’

  ‘The survey’s already been done and the surveyor’s CAD drawings are here.’ He tapped a thick pile of printouts on the table. ‘There are loads of copies, all 1:100 at A1 – but shout if you want anything different.’

  ‘Great, thanks.’ My gaze moved past Richard to the staircase in the corner of the room. I was desperate to see what lay beyond it. ‘So, is it time for the tour yet?’

  He smiled, reaching for some papers on the desk. ‘Sure. Let’s start at the top and work down – I think that’s the right way to do it.’

  As we climbed the stairs he fed me snippets of information. The factory had three floors, with a staircase at each end, each floor containing three departments. Richard told me dimensions, referred to his notes and turned to me now and then to check that I was listening to him. I nodded, half hearing, focusing my attention more on the beauty of the old parquet flooring, the huge windows that dominated both sides of the building, the rich exposed beams in the ceilings, the vast and numerous pieces of machinery. Wheels and pulleys hung from the roof, leather, wood and metal sat alongside one another on benches and on the floor. They were all now my materials and tools.

  I became aware of Richard coming to a standstill in front of me. We were at the far end of the second floor, sandwiched between lines of benches supporting metal beams.