The Medici Mirror

by Melissa Bailey

  ‘There’s a marking on the other side, too.’ Tara’s voice was quiet.

  I looked to my right and moved in closer to take a look. Sure enough, in the same style, was what looked like a letter H, with decoration between its vertical strokes. Again, I ran my fingers over the mirror’s surface. Then I took a step back and frowned.

  ‘So what do you make of it?’ Tara said softly.

  I turned to look at her and met her gaze. Her pupils were wide, as if adrenalin pumping through her body was dilating them. She didn’t seem her usual confident self. ‘I have absolutely no idea. About the room or the things here.’ I paused. ‘I mean, what is this place? It could perhaps have been an old coal cellar, although I’m not sure. Maybe it was just a storage space. Whatever it was, it seems to have been converted at some point into a strange hidden room to hang out in.’

  ‘I’m with you there. I mean, what’s with the bed?’ Tara walked towards it, the familiar click of her heels noiseless against the earth floor. She tapped the leg of the bed frame with the toe of her boot. ‘It’s got to be sex, right?’

  I had to agree. After all, why anyone would want to sleep down here was beyond me. I tried to think of other possibilities. But the sound Tara was making was distracting. I looked at her, at this beautiful girl tapping her foot against the edge of the bed. I studied the curve of her boots around her calves, traced the shape of her legs upwards until they disappeared under her skirt and I felt myself becoming aroused. A sudden rush of shock made me turn away. What was wrong with me? I blinked hard a few times and tried to concentrate, to focus. I took a couple of deep breaths. The fetid dampness of the air, sticking in my throat, seemed to bring me back to myself. Exhaling slowly, I looked at the mirror and tried to think. Clearly someone had brought it down here. But why? To hide it away? Or maybe to use it? But what purpose could there be in having a mirror that reflected practically nothing in a secret basement? I closed my eyes, suddenly tired and confused. The late night was catching up with me.

  Tara’s voice pierced the silence. ‘What about the note and the shoes? They’re bothering me.’

  I looked around once again. At the room and everything it contained. It was all bothering me. Why were these things here? No escaping that their presence was deliberate. There was no other stuff in the room. But what the meaning was, presuming there was one, I didn’t know.

  ‘What do you think of when you see shoes like that?’ Tara was back on her own line of questioning.

  I shrugged.

  ‘Well, they’re pretty special shoes, right? Perhaps they belonged to someone special.’ She walked back to the mirror and touched the edge of the note ever so lightly. ‘“I have heard, but not believed, the spirits of the dead may walk again.” Hmm. What do you make of that? Is someone being haunted? Or wanting to be haunted but not believing it to be possible?’ She paused for a second. ‘Or is that just ridiculous?’

  I looked into the mirror as she spoke, focusing on my shadowy reflection. Were we really talking ghosts? ‘I don’t know,’ I said. My head had begun to ache. I moved it from side to side and suddenly some of the tension dislodged and evaporated. I smiled at myself. A dark distorted smile seemed to come back to me.

  ‘What is it?’ said Tara.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said again. We both laughed then, the sound slight and nervous. Our laughter, like everything else, was sucked into the walls and vanished. ‘I can’t make sense of any of it. And why isn’t this place in the plans?’

  She shrugged. ‘Who knows? Maybe someone found it by accident and wanted to keep it private.’

  I raised an eyebrow at myself in the mirror. ‘So how did you find it if it’s not marked anywhere?’

  ‘I just stumbled on it.’ Tara stopped. She too was looking at herself in the mirror. ‘Courtesy of the great British weather. I got soaked on my way in. So I was hanging up my coat to dry behind the cupboard door and a couple of things in there caught my eye. Some bright-coloured shoes, matching leather samples. That kind of thing. I’d seen them before but never actually bothered to take a proper look. But today I did. I started to delve. I didn’t think it would hurt.’ The words hung for a moment on the air. ‘And that’s when I saw it. The door handle, hidden away at the back of the cupboard. But after I’d cleared away some stuff from the floor in front of it, it pulled open fairly easily.’

  No kidding.

  ‘Then I saw the stairs and thought I’d take a look at where they went. I found some candles and matches in the storage cupboard so I was away. And anyway, like I said, I don’t mind the dark.’

  I blinked hard. I didn’t want to think about her descending into darkness not knowing where it might lead.

  ‘I just thought it would be some normal kind of cellar.’ Tara said it in a tone that implied she no longer thought that.

  ‘Well, let’s keep this place between ourselves for now until we find out more about it. Yeah?’

  She nodded.

  ‘So, what were you doing down here while I was looking for you?’

  Tara paused. ‘I don’t really know. When I got down here I thought I wanted to get out as soon as possible. But then I came across the mirror and spent most of the time I was down here looking at it.’ She reached out and touched its surface lightly with her fingertips. ‘There’s something about it.’

  I nodded. For once, we were in accord.

  She waited for a while. Then came the question I’d been wondering if she would ask. ‘You feel it too, don’t you?’

  I looked at her. She seemed suddenly uncertain. But she met my gaze and held it. ‘Yes, I feel it,’ I said eventually.

  We stood in silence for a few moments.

  I looked again at my reflection, such as it was. My eyes stared back at me. They had lost all of their blueness and had deep, dark circles around them. Darker, I’m sure, than they actually were. Nonetheless, I felt exhausted. I didn’t want to be underground any longer.

  ‘Come on, let’s go. I’ve had enough of being down here. I need some fresh air.’ I walked through the doorway towards the stairs. ‘And no more coming down here by yourself in the dark. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  Standing at the bottom of the staircase I looked up towards the rectangle of light coming from the factory floor. I blew out the candle I was still holding, looked at Tara and then back at the stairs. ‘Are you ready?’ My voice bounced upwards, round and full. It was regaining its usual cadence.

  ‘I’m ready,’ she answered. Then she blew out her candles and plunged us momentarily into darkness once again.

  8

  WE WERE QUIET for a long time. Whenever I looked over at Tara she appeared to be hard at work, bent low over her laptop. But it was a front, I was sure. I suspected that she was as distracted as I was. I was sitting, papers spread out on my desk. But I wasn’t focused on any of it. My mind was still in the underground room, flicking over its contents, trying to make sense of them. The presence of the mirror, in particular, was bothering me.

  I went over the original blueprints of the factory once again and then the surveyor’s drawings. I knew all the answers before I began but I did it anyway. Three floors. The shallow attic space. The thickness of the outer walls. Windows and doors clearly marked. No indication of a cellar. None whatsoever. Everything you’d expect, nothing that you wouldn’t. I sighed and leaned back in my chair.

  ‘All okay, boss?’ Tara was staring at me. Her olive skin seemed paler than usual.

  ‘Sure. I’m just distracted.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  She watched me as I got up from my desk and walked around the dispatch room. I looked out of the window but my eyes couldn’t focus on anything. I blinked hard and tried to clear my head. Then I took a breath and before I’d thought through exactly what I was going to say, I turned back towards her and launched in. ‘I’ve been thinking . . .’

  ‘. . . about the room?’

  I nodded. Clearly it was still on her mind. ‘It might
be an idea to try and dig up some more information on the factory’s original owner and his family. Check out their history and the history of this place. It might lead to something on that cellar. If that’s what it was. Who used it and what for? Something like that.’ I paused, wondering how best to present it. ‘I know, strictly speaking, this kind of research isn’t really necessary. It’s more that I’m interested to know, having been down there.’

  Tara looked at me and nodded.

  ‘Plus, if there is an interesting angle, then perhaps we can make that resonate in the conversion. It might even swing whether the space gets used or just sealed off and forgotten about.’

  Tara didn’t say anything for a while and I started to prepare myself for some resistance. When her answer finally came, it wasn’t what I was expecting. ‘Sure, I can do that. Richard has a lot of information on the factory. I’ll start with that and take it from there.’

  I smiled. ‘Okay, great.’ But with the mention of Richard, something occurred to me. ‘Look, like I said before, do you mind not mentioning the room to anyone for the moment, until we find out a bit more?’ I couldn’t have said for certain why I was asking her to keep things secret from Richard, even though I hadn’t referred to him explicitly. But for the time being I didn’t want him to know about the room and, in particular, the mirror.

  We stared at each other in tense silence for a few moments. Then Tara nodded. ‘I’ve been thinking about the shoes,’ she said, seemingly changing the subject. ‘The shoes downstairs, I mean.’

  I nodded as well. I too had been thinking about them. In my mind’s eye I saw them through the darkness, dangling from a velvet ribbon over the edge of the mirror.

  ‘So we know they were made here, right? The logo on the sole told us that.’ Tara was looking at me intently. ‘But they weren’t run-of-the-mill shoes. They were beautiful, intricately stitched.’ She looked down at her hands on the desk and then back at me. ‘So, want to know what I think?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. Shoes, after all, were Tara’s thing.

  ‘They’re bespoke. I remember Richard telling me that they made one-off pairs for important customers. So I think I was right when I said they were for someone special.’ She paused. ‘And if I’m right on that then there would almost certainly have been a log of who the important customers were. Don’t you think?’

  I nodded again. ‘It makes sense.’

  ‘So, then it’s a question of whether that log survived. There’s enough paperwork still lying around so I’ll see if I can track it down. And in turn the owner. That might tell us something, too. Give a different angle on the story.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ I managed to say, slightly shocked by the orderliness of her reasoning when my mind was still somersaulting. ‘If you really don’t mind the research?’

  ‘No, I don’t mind. Besides,’ she gestured towards the shoeboxes underneath the window, ‘I owe you one for the free gifts.’

  ‘Okay, great,’ I said and smiled.

  Tara nodded. She definitely wasn’t her usual self.

  ‘Are you okay? You seem a little off colour.’

  ‘I’m fine. Just preoccupied.’ She sat still for a moment and I wondered if she would mention it again. The feeling in the room. But it appeared that neither one of us wanted to revisit it.

  Suddenly she jumped up. ‘I think I need some fresh air and a coffee. Clear my head. Can I pick you one up while I’m gone?’

  ‘No, I’m fine. But take your time. No need to hurry back.’

  She looked at me and smiled. ‘Thanks.’ The click of her heels echoed as she moved around the room. So the sound, at least, was back to normal. Then she put up her umbrella, opened the door, and left in a flash of rain-spattered sunlight.

  A few times during the course of the afternoon I thought of the mirror in the darkness of the room downstairs. Then a quiver of unease would travel down my back and settle coldly at the base of my spine. What was it about it that had unsettled me? But at the same time I felt a pull deep inside me to see it again. Part of me wanted to ask Tara if she felt the same way. But I couldn’t as she had gone back to the office. The other part of me, the part that wanted to dismiss it all as ridiculous and irrational, was relieved that she wasn’t around to ask.

  I got up from my desk and pulled open the outer factory doors. The afternoon was oppressive. Clouds hung low and threatening in the sky and the air was close, prickling with electricity. A thunderstorm was on the near horizon. I sighed, went back to my desk and began to shuffle papers around once again. It was then that I saw the pencil sketchings on my notepad. On a number of pieces of paper, I had drawn the markings I had noticed on the bottom corners of the mirror’s glass. T and M intertwined. An H with embellishment. I wondered again what they could mean. Unable to concentrate on anything else, I switched on my computer and spent the rest of the afternoon carrying out internet searches on combinations of the letters alongside mirrors, engravings, darkened glass, antiquities. I searched anything and everything, but by the end of the afternoon I hadn’t come up with anything concrete. I studied my drawings of the letters one last time. But there was nothing familiar about either them or their design. Rocking back on the legs of my chair, I closed my eyes and let the silence of the factory envelop me.

  9

  THE RAIN WAS bouncing off the pavements as I left the factory and walked towards Ophelia’s place. Still preoccupied by the discovery of the underground room and the mirror, I was only vaguely aware of the downpour splashing against my cheeks and neck. I crossed the park swiftly but as I reached the old bandstand something brought me to a standstill and I turned around.

  The sun had now entirely disappeared from view and the evening was on its steady slide towards total winter darkness. The factory, closed up and empty, was little more than a silhouette against the deepening sky, illuminated faintly in the glow of the street lights, the fuzz of orange halos battling with the gloom. My eyes moved across the bricks and windows of the ground floor to the first and then the second. Then they came back to where I’d started. It was pointless. I couldn’t see anything. And besides, what was I trying to see? My gaze flicked unsteadily over the factory windows once more. Up and down, to the left and right. But it was too dark. I turned and walked quickly towards the exit. As I stepped out of the park and closed the gate, my breathing was quick and my heart was beating fast. There was something there, I knew it. Beyond the darkness. I just didn’t know what it was.

  By the time I reached Ophelia’s flat I was drenched. I stood outside the door, my finger resting lightly on the buzzer. But I didn’t press it. Instead, I closed my eyes and leaned backwards, catching drops of rain as they fell. I tried to empty my mind, to think of nothing. As the seconds ticked by, my breathing slowed and returned to normal. I rang the bell and waited. The rain kept falling, running over my face and down my neck. I opened my eyes and looked upwards into the darkness. Black rain just kept on falling.

  Then a voice rang out.

  ‘Hello?’ It was Ophelia. My heart did a different kind of leap in my chest. ‘Hello?’ the voice came again.

  ‘Sorry, it’s me. Soaked to the skin.’

  ‘Come on up,’ she replied and with a buzz the door swung open. ‘Second floor.’

  I took the stairs slowly, one at a time, leaving a dark wet imprint on the carpet with each step. A fleeting thought of footprints, of sand and sea, danced across my mind. As I climbed I took off my coat and shook my head, the motion flicking raindrops to the floor. I saw Ophelia standing in the doorway at the top of the stairs. Her dark hair hung around her face and she was wearing a black sleeveless dress, stark against the pale skin of her arms. It was high-necked and the material clung at her breasts and then fell in soft folds to her knees. She wore a pair of red shoes, a shock of brightness against her feet.

  ‘You look terrible,’ she said as I came to a stop in front of her. She smelled of roses and jasmine. ‘Bad day?’

  ‘You could say that.’ I breat
hed her in. In spite of myself, of how I felt, I found I was smiling. I tried to pull her to me but she pushed my soaking body away, laughing. A strand of her hair fell across her face and I reached for it, my fingers pushing the stray lock behind her ear. I held it there, unable to let go. ‘God, it’s good to see you,’ I said at last.

  ‘You too.’ And finally she leaned forward to kiss me. Then she pulled me through the door and closed it.

  Ophelia took away my sodden clothes and while I waited for her I stood in my T-shirt and shorts before the fire, luxuriating in its warmth. The room before me was large and square, with two white leather sofas, perpendicular to one another, at the centre. At either end of them, two small chrome lamps resting on glass tables spilled soft light across the leather. Brown suede cushions were strewn on the pale carpet close to where I stood. Behind the sofas a dark wooden table was set for dinner. White roses stood in a vase at the centre and six candles in bright silver holders flickered light across the surface. Along almost the entire length of the room windows stretched from ceiling to floor and French doors opened onto what I presumed was a balcony. All I could see beyond them was a cold and dreary darkness filled with rain.

  To my right, in the far corner of the room, was a set of double doors. They were wide open and led into a separate space that I presumed was Ophelia’s studio. As in the sitting room, floor-to-ceiling windows dominated but blackout blinds were drawn on all of them. On a table in the centre were four computers which rested back to back, and on a wooden bench that ran along the side of the room were a series of printers of different sizes. A mass of ink cartridges and boxes of paper were scattered along a shelf above them and what looked like a large safe stood in the far corner of the room next to another door.