The Medici Mirror

by Melissa Bailey

  ‘Really?’

  I nodded. ‘Catherine was supposed to have a talisman made of human blood, the blood of a goat and the metals of her birth chart. It wasn’t unusual in the sixteenth century to have talismans, but that combination was a little odd.’ I rubbed my eyes and watched the tongs in Ophelia’s hands still shifting the paper in the developing tray. ‘And after she gave up her chateau at Chaumont a number of items were found there that indicated occult practices having been carried out. Pentacles drawn on the floors, altars decorated with skulls, jars of powders and liquids, the remains of animal sacrifices. Lots of sinister stuff.’

  ‘No wonder she became known as the Black Queen.’

  ‘And then there are all the stories about her premonitions. Apparently, the night before Henri was fatally injured in a jousting match she dreamed of him lying stricken on the ground, his face covered in blood.’

  ‘Creepy.’

  ‘Hmm. She was said to have second sight. A number of those close to her recounted that she sometimes awoke from sleep screaming and predicting the death of a loved one.’

  We both stood in silence for a while, the only sound the faint lapping of the liquid in the developing tray. In spite of myself, I couldn’t help thinking of the nightmare I’d had recently: the mirror, the man, the sensation of suffocation and falling. I closed my eyes, trying to blink the thought away. ‘So, in light of all that, I guess it’s not such a stretch to imagine her using mirrors for seeing and divination.’ I paused for a moment. ‘I read something else, and I don’t know whether this is history or myth, that during her final visit to Chaumont, Catherine asked Cosimo to use a mirror in a darkened room to foretell the future. It was said that each of Catherine’s sons appeared in turn and circled the mirror. Each circle was supposed to signify a year that they would reign.’

  Ophelia nodded. ‘Mirrors were often used to see the future. Witches through the ages, white and black, used them as a medium to see things, past, present and yet to come.’

  I knew that, and even though I didn’t really believe it I shifted vaguely on my feet, suddenly uncomfortable.

  ‘Not much longer now,’ said Ophelia, mistaking my movement for impatience. ‘In fact . . .’

  Sure enough, out of nowhere, an image was developing on the photo paper: a man’s face, black and white, emerging from the darkness.

  ‘Did you know that the ancient Greeks thought that looking at one’s reflection in a mirror could invite death?’ Ophelia’s voice sounded suddenly strange in the darkness.

  ‘No, I didn’t know that,’ I said.

  ‘Something to do with the reflection capturing the soul. Lots of ancient cultures feel the same way about photographs. And when you think about it, in many ways, a mirror image is quite like a photograph. It captures an image of the self that isn’t quite the self.’

  Instinctively I thought of when I had looked into the mirror’s surface with Tara. I thought about the darkened image hiding below the surface. A ripple of fear ran through me. I looked again at the photograph that was emerging in the tray: a man’s unsmiling, monotone face, hard around the eyes. I felt something catch at the back of my throat and I swallowed hard. But my mouth was dry.

  ‘My own special brand of dark magic,’ said Ophelia, pulling the image from the developing tray with her tongs and placing it briefly in the next one along.

  I swallowed again and tried to concentrate on the process.

  ‘Do you remember me telling you that I like to take close-up photographs of people, portraits, that sort of thing? So this was taken in the park near the factory.’

  Ophelia placed the image in the last tray, tilting it back and forth, moving the solution over the paper. I looked at the emerging face, feeling strangely disconcerted, and tried instead to focus on the movement, back and forth, back and forth. But my mind kept coming back to my reflection in the mirror, to my dream, to the sensation of falling.

  ‘All done,’ said Ophelia abruptly, lifting the photograph out of the solution. She walked to the sink in the far corner of the room and placed the image in a tray there, turning on the tap so that a soft trickle of water flowed into it. After a few moments she removed the photograph and hung it up to dry on the line that spanned the walls. The man’s dark, unflinching stare, eerie in the red glow of the room, seemed directed at me. I stared back for a moment and then looked away, focusing on Ophelia as she moved the three developing trays off the central workbench. Then she headed back and stood silently in front of me.

  I was just about to speak, to break the tension that I felt building, when she spoke.

  ‘When are you going to let me see it, Johnny?’

  I sighed. ‘Not that again,’ I said softly.

  ‘But I don’t understand. Why don’t you want me to see it?’

  I looked at her, this pale, delicate girl. ‘It’s not that,’ I said, but as soon as the words were out of my mouth I knew they were a lie. Something about the prospect of her seeing the mirror made me uncomfortable. I wondered whether it was today’s hocus-pocus talk. But I had felt the same way when we had last spoken about it. I didn’t understand it and I didn’t know how to explain it. I shook my head, confused. ‘It’s just a feeling. I don’t know. It’s probably ridiculous. Just wait a while, okay?’

  She stared at me for a second and then looked away.

  ‘Ophelia,’ I said quietly, coaxingly, ‘you’re not angry with me, are you?’

  She turned back to me and shook her head. But I sensed defiance in the movement.

  ‘Hey, come on. Like I said before, you can see it. Just give me a little time. Please?’

  Eventually, she nodded her head. ‘Okay.’

  I picked her up and sat her on the workbench in front of me. Then I pushed off her shoes, one by one, and took her feet in my hands, almost cupping them. I ran my left index finger under her right heel, over the high rise of the arch and across the ball of her foot to her toes. As my fingers traced them, one by one, I remembered the story she’d told me about her mother, walking along the beach in front of her while Ophelia crouched in the imprint made by her foot. This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed at home. I laughed softly, closing my eyes as I remembered.

  ‘What is it? What are you thinking about?’

  And even though my eyes were closed, I could tell she was smiling at me as she spoke.

  ‘You,’ I answered. ‘I was thinking about you.’

  16

  AFTER DINNER WE went to bed and made love. I fell asleep with my body curled around Ophelia and dreamed of a deep emptiness as if a black hole had sucked all the life out of my thoughts. I don’t know how long I slept like this but I awoke suddenly, jumping upright as if in response to someone having just called out my name. I listened but I couldn’t hear anything. I opened my eyes. It was still dark. I looked at the alarm clock. 03:17. The darkness was absolute and I wondered for a moment if I was still asleep. The room was freezing and the hairs on the back of my neck were standing to attention. I looked at the clock again. The same numbers flashed, marking time in the darkness. 03:17. But something wasn’t right. I reached out to touch Ophelia beside me. Instead of her warm body, a cold emptiness greeted me.

  I flicked on the bedside light and looked again. There was nothing but a space beside me. Everything else in the bedroom was exactly as it should be. The overflowing wardrobes to the left of the bed, the racks of shoes directly in front, the glowing lamp on the bedside table. I got out of bed, pulled on my jeans and walked towards the sitting room. As I passed the bathroom, I flicked on the light and looked inside. Nothing and no one. Next I tried the kitchen. But it was dark and empty. No Ophelia. At the threshold of the sitting room I listened intently, then called out her name. Nothing came back to me but silence. I stood there for a few more seconds and then moved forwards. The room should have been in darkness, but the curtains were open and moonlight spilled over everything. It cast a fluorescent blue glow over the walls and floor, shimmering over th
e dining table to my left and across the sofas ahead of me. I listened. But there was nothing. No sound. A deathly stillness hovered over everything.

  Reaching the corner of the room, I looked through the French doors onto the darkness of the balcony. But it was deserted. There was no sign of Ophelia. I took a deep breath, letting my forehead rest briefly against the coolness of the glass. I didn’t understand. Turning around, I looked into Ophelia’s studio. It was in semi-darkness, the blinds lowered. For some reason, I called out her name once more, gently, but still desperate for an answer. Nothing came back and silence once more fell around me. But as I continued to look into the studio, one thing emerged. A pair of pale legs, blunt, truncated, rose out of the darkness from the image on the wall. They reclined on a sofa, a dark substance dropping from the paleness of the toes to the base of the picture. I looked, mesmerised for a second, before panic took hold.

  I went back to the bedroom, trying to think. But my mind couldn’t make any sense of it. Where could Ophelia have gone? I rubbed my eyes and made my way to the window, looking down into the garden at the back of the house. Bare grass and a black poplar were illuminated in the moonlight. It was a typical London garden, unkempt and unplanted. I scanned the neighbouring plots. Nothing. I looked around the flat once again. I called her name. But it was pointless. She wasn’t here.

  I dressed quickly and on my way out of the flat went to pick up my keys from their usual place by the door. Only they weren’t there. I hunted around in the hallway for a few seconds, then made a snap decision. It didn’t matter. If I couldn’t find her, it wouldn’t be that long before I could get in touch with someone. I slipped my mobile phone into my pocket and by the time I left the flat I was running. I couldn’t shake off an intense sense of foreboding. An image of feet and calves and viscous liquid flashed across my mind. I tried to sweep it away. Such thoughts were ridiculous, I told myself. I careered down the street, my trainers smacking hard against the tarmac. I breathed the air, cold and sharp, into my lungs. Maybe she couldn’t sleep and went out for a walk. Maybe she was sitting in the park at this very moment. I took a left turn. The road was deserted and the light from the street lamps made little inroad into the darkness. A strong wind blew against me. The cold was intense. Why would she want to go out in weather like this? I took another left turn and tried not to think. But I started to become angry and irritated. Why the hell would she have left in the middle of the night? Who was this crazy woman? Then I felt a bloom of fear. After all, I hardly knew her. I didn’t know what she was capable of doing.

  I tried to put the thoughts from my mind. It wasn’t helping. I just had to keep running. I was nearly there. A right turn and the park came into view. The way was second nature to me now. It was a short walk from the flat. Or a thirty-second sprint with a fist of ice in my chest. The railings loomed black and hostile. The signs rattled in the wind. Litter bounced down the street, dodged the iron rails and snagged in the bushes. I opened the gate and walked inside, breathing heavily, more cautious all of a sudden. I waited, looking into the wind. Then I called out her name. No reply. So I began to walk, to circle the park, moving under the trees and around the bushes. I took my time. I was vigilant. I covered every inch of ground. Strange, I thought. I had watched a scene very like this just a few days ago. But then a woman was looking for something she had lost. Now a man was looking for that woman.

  I climbed the steps of the bandstand and looked around one last time. At the top of my voice I shouted her name into the wind. No answer came back. I waited. I called out once more. I waited again. There was no reply. Standing still, I listened to the hard sound of my breathing, in and out, in and out, in and out. I made a deliberate attempt to slow it down. I had to think. She wasn’t at the flat, she wasn’t here. So where was she?

  As I looked around me the night tightened its grip on the park, the moon disappearing behind dense cloud. Here especially, surrounded by trees, the darkness acquired a peculiar intensity. There were shades of deep violet and purple within it, lending it a richness like velvet. It was a darkness that you wanted to touch and yet which you knew would swallow your touch entirely. Standing here I thought about Ophelia. Where would she have gone on a night like this? And then it came to me.

  I looked beyond the park’s flower beds, hubs of churned earth covered over with a blanket of darkness, past the railings marking the perimeter and the road that lay beyond, a circle of concrete and tarmac, white and yellow lines. I looked past the street lights sparkling at the border of the park, as faint and fragile as fairy lights. On the far side of the road, shadowy houses, terraces towering four storeys tall, formed almost a full circle around me. I turned, looking upwards, looking as I had just a few days earlier for the interruption in their Georgian symmetry. There it was. The factory. I suddenly knew with complete certainty that that was where she had gone.

  I moved swiftly in the darkness from my vantage point on the bandstand towards the gate nearest the factory doors. They opened with a loud squeaking noise that set my nerves further on edge. I made my way quickly to the outer doors of the dispatch room and, sure enough, the large padlock and chain we used when the factory was empty were gone. I pulled at the doors and they swung open easily. The ordinary lock had also been opened. Only Tara and I had keys for these doors. And my keys had disappeared.

  I entered the dispatch room and closed the door softly behind me. Moonlight poured through the windows, irradiating everything with a soft light. I could see the shoeboxes piled against the factory wall, the tables where Tara and I worked during the day. Only, bathed in that unearthly light, they didn’t look the same. They seemed suspended in a different time and place. As I moved slowly across the room I felt like a deep-sea diver hundreds of miles below the surface, crossing the sea floor in a silence almost as deep as the ocean, my movements slow and pronounced. I almost didn’t feel like myself.

  Peering inside the storage cupboard, I saw that the inner door was wide open. Without hesitating, I moved towards it and looked down the staircase. An orange glow, as if from candlelight, climbed the stairs. Relief flooded through me. She was here, she was safe. But by the time my feet touched the bottom of the stairs I felt another emotion rise within me. Turning towards the underground room, I caught sight of Ophelia standing in front of the mirror, a candle on the floor at each end of it. She was wearing a long coat over what appeared to be a white nightdress. Her feet were bare, her shoes discarded on the floor beside her, and her right arm hung inert at her side. Her left was holding a silver locket that she often wore, sliding it up and down the chain from which it was suspended. For a few moments I watched her staring into the darkness of the mirror, a look of longing on her face, oblivious to everything around her, including my presence.

  ‘Ophelia?’ I said at last. My voice when it emerged was a hard whisper.

  She jumped and turned abruptly towards me. Her face looked waxen, ghostly in the candlelight.

  Neither of us said anything for a moment. I just stared at her.

  ‘You scared me,’ she said at last. Her voice didn’t sound as if it belonged to her.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  She looked around her and nodded distractedly. ‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t sleep. So . . . I . . . I came here.’ She sounded unsure. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.

  ‘Stop saying that,’ I snapped, suddenly letting it out. I felt enormously, irrepressibly angry with her. ‘What are you doing? It’s the middle of the night.’

  ‘I’m . . . I just wanted to take a look.’ She bit her lip and looked as if she was about to cry.

  I wanted to move towards her but somehow my feet didn’t budge. ‘It’s three o’clock in the morning, Ophelia. And you took my keys and came here. After everything I said.’

  She nodded, then walked over to me silently. ‘I’m sorry if you’re angry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  I looked at her face, her pale skin and the dark circles under her eyes. I traced their lines with my
fingers and felt the fury slide out of me. She looked exhausted. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘It isn’t nothing. What are you doing?’

  She stared at me but didn’t say anything. Instead she pulled me to her and held me there for a long moment.

  ‘Ophelia, what is it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t know how to explain it. Perhaps it can’t even be explained. Not rationally. But I was dreaming . . . and then I awoke. Or I thought I awoke. And then . . . I was here.’ She paused. ‘I don’t even remember getting here. Not properly.’ She looked down at her bare feet and then, taking my hand, walked back to stand in front of the mirror.

  The silver was spattered with blotches of black and dark grey, radiating across the surface like the bloom of ink drops when they hit water. I tried to focus on my face. There was only the vaguest of reflections, blurred, leeched of colour. The blue of my eyes had vanished, the pink of my skin had disappeared. I was a black and grey silhouette. A shadow. My gaze shifted and came to rest on the spot in the bottom left-hand corner where the initials were: TM. Then it moved to the other corner and sought out the others: H and C. Raising my eyes slowly upwards over the surface of the glass, I could see Ophelia’s dark reflection staring out towards me.

  ‘My father didn’t like mirrors,’ she announced abruptly.

  Yeah. I was with him there.

  ‘He hated to see his reflection. He didn’t like the idea of it. This other him, one identical to him and yet not him, staring back from across an unbridgeable divide. He used to joke about it, quote Newton’s laws of physics. A reflection is only refracted light. But I don’t think he believed it really. There was something else, I’m sure of it.’ She paused. ‘Anyway, there were never any mirrors on the walls of the places where we lived. Not after my mother died.’ She stared at the mirror’s surface. ‘Strange, then, that looking into this mirror made me think of my father.’ She breathed heavily in and out and then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw her turn towards me. ‘I’m sorry, Johnny. You were right. I should never have come here. I don’t know what I was thinking.’