The Medici Mirror

by Melissa Bailey

  I could imagine. Dealers must come across hundreds of letters that don’t have any monetary value. Worthless personal histories thrown out with the rubbish. There was something tragic about it.

  ‘Anyway, I thought I’d let you know, Johnny, simply because it was such a strange story. And given that the piece itself is so strange.’ Mr Alexander’s marvel at the strangeness of it all seemed to hang suspended on the line for a moment or two. ‘But it’s just another tall tale, I suspect.’

  ‘No doubt about it.’ Trying to make light of it, I managed a small laugh. But it lacked any heart.

  38

  AFTER MR ALEXANDER’S phone call, I was haunted by visions of bodies lying unmoving across wooden floorboards. When I thought of the Frenchman, images flashed across my brain accompanied by the sounds of wind and rain and cicadas, a Deep South melody. When I imagined James, the only herald of his death was silence, punctuated intermittently by the creaking of the factory floors and the whistling of its ancient pipes. In the darkness around the edges of both visions, I saw the mirror.

  To escape these thoughts, to distract myself, I got dressed and left the flat. I had no idea where I was going but I needed to get out, to walk, to try to clear my head. I set off, heading south in the vague direction of where I had agreed to meet Ophelia later that afternoon. Criss-crossing backstreets and avoiding main roads, I tried to keep my mind blank, to avoid thinking any more. The wind was cool and light, the air and the calmness of the day soothing. I passed blocks of flats, shops and parks, the signs of urban life all around me. Yet everywhere seemed still and deserted. Out of necessity I crossed Old Street and then continued moving south, keeping away from the crowds and the thrum of the traffic. I listened, but beyond the occasional car passing by, the odd screech of tyres or children, everything seemed subdued. The only signs of vibrancy were the tattered plastic bags which rose on the air and then, caught by the push of the wind, rolled down the street, peculiarly colourful man-made tumbleweed.

  After ten minutes I emerged onto City Road. It was busy, people jostling one another, passing back and forth, going about their business. As I was poised to cross the main road, something brought me to a halt. It was the sign for Bunhill Fields, emerging now on my right. I had come across its name recently. Only I couldn’t remember where. I stopped and stared at it as I thought about it. I racked my brain. Then it came to me in a flash. James Brimley had been buried in its graveyard. I had come across the information in an article about his death. For a moment, I stared at the sign and the green space beyond. Then I made my way through the gates.

  I had visited Bunhill Fields before and knew that it contained the graves of several famous individuals: William Blake, Daniel Defoe, John Bunyan. It was a beautiful, romantic space, a walled burial ground which also contained a large public garden. It was filled with mature trees – oak, lime and ash – and interspersed with small pathways that meandered amongst the graves, many of which were packed closely together and others which were enclosed behind railings. I ambled past the gravestones until I found what I was looking for: a small, insignificant plot in a corner. The headstone was slant-faced, traditionally Victorian, and made from granite. It had sunk somewhat into the ground and was now obscured by moss and lichen, making the inscription a little difficult to read. Beyond his name, James Arthur Brimley, and the dates below it, 2 September 1859 – 25 September 1898, there was nothing to be instantly gleaned. I knelt down and rubbed the stone until the inscription became clearer:

  To a devoted son and father. May he rest in peace.

  Short and sweet. There was no reference to his wife and I wondered if this was deliberate.

  I rubbed away at the lichen on the top of the headstone until an indented line of crosses appeared, which ran along the top edge of the rectangle. I continued to rub my fingers over its outer edges until a full border of crosses was revealed. I ran my fingers over them to be sure, but they were definitely crosses. And there were lots of them.

  I looked over at the gravestone to the left of James’s, the only one nearby. It too was tired and overgrown, almost entirely covered in moss, ivy snaking densely across its surface. But through the foliage I could just make out the name on the headstone: Michael Cleaver. So James’s wife was buried somewhere else.

  ‘What, pray, are you doing? Not desecrating graves, I trust.’

  I looked up to see Ophelia approaching, looking at me quizzically.

  I jumped to my feet, laughing, and walked to meet her. ‘Not unless you count cleaning up a grave as desecration. Hey, stranger.’ I pulled her to me.

  She studied me for a moment. ‘Johnny, you look tired.’ And her fingers moved gently over the lines at the corners of my eyes. ‘Have you been sleeping?’

  I shrugged as nonchalantly as I could. ‘I’ve been missing you,’ was all I said. And only now, as I held her, did I realise how much. Holding her tightly to me, I kissed her, the smell of rose and jasmine enveloping me. I had missed the touch of her lips, the smell of her skin, the comforting sensation of her body against mine. ‘Welcome back. How was your trip?’

  ‘It was fine. The usual.’ She shrugged. ‘What are you doing here?’

  I laughed. ‘I might ask you the same thing.’

  ‘I was walking up City Road to meet you when I saw you come in here. I called out to you but you didn’t hear me. So I followed you in.’ Pause. ‘And now I see why. Our old friend James.’

  I nodded. ‘One of the articles I read about him said that he was buried here. I remembered as I was standing on the road. So I thought I’d take a look.’

  We both stared at the headstone for a few moments.

  ‘The chain of crucifixes around the edge is a bit over the top, don’t you think? Overkill even for the Victorians.’

  ‘Perhaps someone was worried for his soul.’ The words were barely out of my mouth before a barrage of images of dead bodies on bare floors once more flooded my brain. I blinked hard and then closed my eyes, but in the darkness there I thought of James again, in the underground room, rambling on about death and what evils lurked, waiting for him. When I opened my eyes I found Ophelia looking at me. She squeezed my hand softly and smiled. ‘Are you okay?’

  I nodded quickly and tried to forget it all. I looked back at the headstone.

  ‘I feel sorry for him,’ said Ophelia. ‘He dies . . . oddly, to say the least, jabbering and deranged, and then ends up here, in this corner of a cemetery. I can’t help feeling that he was being hidden away.’

  I looked at where we were standing, on the very fringes of the churchyard, hard against the boundary wall. He certainly wasn’t in pride of place at the centre. And his headstone was hardly one that distinguished itself. There was certainly some disparity between this and the bold claims about his popularity, at home and in the world at large, in the literature at the time of his death.

  Ophelia looked around her, at the other crumbling, dilapidated headstones, worn down by sun, rain and the movement of the earth, overgrown with ivy, brambles and creepers. ‘I love graveyards,’ she said finally.

  I looked at her and frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘There’s something sacred about them. And I don’t mean that in a religious way. They are places dedicated to love, to remembrance, where you can feel close to someone long after they are gone. That’s why they’re so affecting.’

  Now I began to understand. ‘Where’s your mother buried?’

  ‘She’s not. She was cremated and my father and I scattered her ashes into the sea. I think my father thought it was the right thing to do, given the life we’d led at that point.’ Ophelia turned to look at me. ‘And as you know he died at sea. So they’re both buried in a pretty expansive grave. I suppose that’s why I like the idea of a small plot. Somewhere contained to go.’ She tilted her head as she continued to look at the gravestones. ‘I remember once seeing an exhibition of photographs. They were taken in Jewish cemeteries in Eastern Europe in the early twentieth century. They showed familie
s, individuals, children and adults pictured alongside the graves of their loved ones. I remember two men in bowler hats standing beside the grave of their father. A woman leaning casually against her mother’s headstone. And a young girl reclining, almost seductively, along the length of her lover’s grave. She had laid flowers there and they matched the ones she had in her hair. So you see. It’s not unusual: people love to have a place to go. Graveyards are as much about the living as the dead.’

  I nodded. ‘So do you have anywhere that you go to remember your mother and father?’

  ‘No. Nowhere.’ Ophelia shook her head slowly. ‘But I have photographs that I carry with me. Pretty much all the time. So I remember them that way.’ Reaching to her neck, she unclasped the silver locket she always wore and showed me the images inside. Both were black and white. The left-hand photograph was of a woman shot with a close camera lens. It captured her face and not much more. She had dark wavy hair, full, oval lips and twinkling eyes. She was beautiful, all luminous skin and cheekbones and an enigmatic smile, much like Ophelia’s. In the image on the right, the same woman appeared with a man, their two heads together, touching, caught in laughter. The man had dark hair, a large nose and distant eyes. Eyes that he had passed on to Ophelia. There was an intimacy to the shot that was captivating.

  ‘They’re beautiful,’ I said.

  Ophelia twisted the locket around to face her and smiled. ‘Yes, they are. I often think that it was these pictures of my parents that made me want to become a photographer. To capture lives, moments like this. And it’s probably why I take so many close-up shots now. Perhaps trying to capture these moments again.’ She looked at the photographs for a few more seconds. ‘I’ve been missing them more than usual at the moment. Strange.’ Then she closed the locket with a quiet click and dropped her hand to her side.

  ‘Why haven’t you shown me these photographs before?’ I asked.

  She paused for a second. ‘I don’t know. These in particular are intensely personal to me.’ And her hand reached up instinctively to take hold of the locket once more. ‘Perhaps I wasn’t ready. But I’ve shown you now.’

  I smiled, reaching for her hand and taking her fingers in mine. ‘It’s good to have you back.’

  ‘It’s good to be back,’ she said and leaned forward to kiss me.

  As we turned to head out of the cemetery in the fading light, I caught a final glimpse of James’s grave from out of the corner of my eye, its surface an ostentatious loop of crosses. I wondered if they were intended as symbols of love and redemption. Or whether they were trying to guard him from something much darker and more damning, something which lurked hidden, unseen.

  39

  The Louvre

  July 1559

  CATHERINE SAT IN the corner of the room in silence. Her eyes were red, her face puffy. She had been weeping. But now she was quiet, her mind blank, made up of nothing. She found the emptiness comforting and luxuriated in its darkness. Her eyes flicked to the left and saw the walls shrouded in black brocade. Black cloth was spread upon the floor and across the windows where it blocked out the light. Looking behind her she saw the bed, covered with a black sheet, and in front of her an altar dressed in the same manner. Candles burned at each end of it, the only light to pierce the darkness of the room. For a split second she couldn’t remember where she was or why the room had been decorated like this. Then in the next instant she felt it rising, almost in slow motion. The unthinkable. Her whole body stiffened and with a sudden painful fury the remembrance came. The knowledge that he was dead and the violence of his passing.

  She inhaled ragged breaths as the images flooded through her. A still, hot day in June, sunlight glinting off the armour of two men. Her husband, resplendent in the saddle, charging his opponent time and again, their jousts clashing repeatedly. She saw herself begging him not to continue, just as she had begged him that morning not to partake of the games that day, warning of her vision of him lying stricken on the ground. But he had laughed, said that it was sport and that he did not believe in predictions. The furious noise of the crowd had rung in her ears as the men advanced upon one another one last time. Then there was only the sight of wood splintering against metal, piercing a broken visor and penetrating a skull. And a dying husband, bleeding from his eye and his temple, lying prostrate in the dirt.

  Catherine closed her eyes and her sobbing began again. Now, in this moment, she could not imagine that there were points of forgetful calm, small oases of time in which there was no knowledge that such a thing had happened. Now, in this moment, there was only desolation, entire, complete. There was only emptiness in the place where she should have felt her heart beating.

  Minutes later the force of the emotion left her. She wiped her eyes and sat unmoving for a moment. Then she reached for the hand mirror beside her on the chair. Looking at her face, even in the darkness, she could see enough. The high forehead, bulging eyes, the sharp, pointed nose, the protruding lower lip. Her face was not attractive – it never had been. Her body was short, fat, after years of childbearing. The mare of France, they had called her, and her eyes pricked with tears of a different nature. For years she had hidden her feelings inside this body, disguised her anger, her hatred and her longing beneath an expressionless plain face. She had been overshadowed, surpassed in almost every respect and the love she had longed for, that should have been hers alone, had been given instead to a harlot. Donec totum impleat orbem (Until it fills the whole world), their motto, the words dedicated to their love, that had been lauded over her without shame, had stuck in her throat for over twenty years. But no longer.

  She stood abruptly, the mirror still in her hand and paced the floor of the chamber. In the darkness her cheeks and her pride burned. With her husband gone, his whore had no more standing. She, Catherine, would banish her from court and from memory, as effectively as she had banished her from his funeral bed. She smiled as she remembered her first taste of power. He had called out for his mistress day and night and she, Catherine, had prevented her from entering his chamber. He had died without a last sight of her.

  She stopped in front of the altar and raised the mirror once more in front of her face. A dark smile played upon her lips. It reminded her of a different time and an altogether different mirror. She had tried, always, to give him the strength that his whore had stripped him of. To allow him to break the bonds that tied him to her. What was it that had so ensnared him? She had driven herself half mad in the contemplation of it. Catherine remembered the holes in her bedroom floor that had been made what felt like a lifetime ago, and the sight through them of the pale skin, the long, slender limbs entwining him. His mistress had fashioned herself on Diana, goddess of the hunt, and he had allowed her to spin the myth around them. It was degrading. That he, like Actaeon, had stumbled upon her naked beauty in the forest and that in retribution for being so caught she had had his heart ripped out. Why had he allowed such a belittling story to be not only told but celebrated? And she, Catherine, had had to tolerate it. How was it that a crescent moon could eclipse a Queen?

  She looked once more into the glass and saw her own reflection there. In disgust she hurled the mirror against the wall. It smashed into pieces and then fell, disappearing into the darkness at the room’s edges. She had tried to make him strong. She had given him the power to reverse that woman’s spell and also avenge his mistreated wife. But the gift had never been put to use and the whore, wiser than she appeared, had hidden it away in fear. She had triumphed once again. But no more.

  Catherine turned and walked towards the window. She could, of course, demand its return as she had demanded the return of the crown jewels and would, before long, demand the offering of Chenonceau. But perhaps there was a better way. She smiled again as she placed her hands upon the black cloth which covered the glass in the window. She remembered the tingling in her fingers, still remembered acutely the sensations that ran through her that night in the darkened room with Cosimo. Perhaps it was better
for it to remain at large, passed down into posterity. Her smile broadened as she imagined her vengeance, her revenge exacted upon those whores that fornicated with men tied to others, women who failed to give heed to God’s ordinances. If she had failed with Diane, she would succeed with others. Her curse had been to love: theirs would be the same.

  As she turned from the window and resumed her vigil at the darkened altar, her mind was set. Donec totum impleat orbem. It would become her motto now and it would symbolise not her love but her revenge passed down, far and wide.

  Until it filled the whole world.

  40

  OPHELIA AND I were ensconced in a cocktail bar in Shoreditch.

  It was a great place that I’d been to a few times before – an eclectic space with exposed brick walls decked with a mixture of anatomical drawings and ancient tapestries, filled with antique pieces, giant Chinese vases, a myriad of chandeliers and wooden toy horses suspended from the ceiling, even a hippopotamus head jutting out of the wall. We were in a corner, a life-size wooden swan sitting on the table alongside our drinks, a grandfather clock ticking softly beside us. I had just finished telling Ophelia the story that Mr Alexander had recounted to me that morning.

  ‘Of course, it doesn’t seem as if there’s any written record of these events,’ I went on. ‘The man who told the antique dealer about the letters couldn’t find them. He just remembered the story. And we all know how that works. Memory and imagination don’t always stick to the facts.’

  Ophelia pulled a face. ‘Nonetheless, the similarities between what happened there and what happened to James are weird.’

  I nodded, looking at the giant swan. ‘Right.’ It was true. I hadn’t mentioned James, or what had happened to him, to Mr Alexander. And I couldn’t imagine that he would have known about such things. So she was right: the similarities, seemingly coincidental, were strange.