Kathryn stepped into the vault, and Cyril closed the vault behind her. A pair of casement windows, their glass as occluded as the door, allowed a pale nimbus of light to infiltrate the chamber, which was larger than it appeared from outside. The marble walls at this level were inscribed with various quotes from Scripture, and a bust of Archibald Van Owen, the bearded railroad baron who had founded the family fortune in the late 1800s, glowered over anyone entering.
A few steps down, the chamber opened up, and on the granite slabs to either side rested perhaps a dozen caskets, their brass handles tarnished with age, their once-gleaming wood now dull and covered with a thick film of dust. And on two shelves that ran around the four walls of the crypt, there were a host of urns, in everything from porphyry to porcelain, containing the cremated remains of other family members. The air inside was cold, but not altogether still—the place in the ceiling where the vine had broken through allowed the tiniest hint of fresh air. In the uppermost corner, a spiderweb a yard wide trembled, and the marble beneath it bore a broad yellow-and-green stain from the seepage of rain and melting snow.
A wave of repulsion swept over her, but not from the cold or the dreadful occupants of the place. It was the sight of the black spider herself, scuttling across the fine filaments, reacting no doubt to the unusual air currents in the room and thinking her web might have trapped some unlucky prey; first the spider went one way, then the other, looking in vain. And Kathryn, trapped for centuries in a web from which there was no apparent escape, could not help but feel like prey herself.
Stepping down, she went to the wall and, raising a gloved hand, cleared a space on the shelf, before placing the urn holding Randolph’s remains on it. For a few seconds, she let her hand rest atop it, as if in benediction; but in actuality she was simply waiting for some corresponding emotion, some sense of finality or even sorrow.
But there was nothing. It was a scene she had played already, too often, and it had grown stale. Her heart was as dead as the occupants of the crypt.
Instead, she found herself thinking of other times, now long removed. Times when she had genuinely been young and had had an appetite for the things that life had to offer. When artists had begged her to be their muse and aristocrats had showered her with gifts in the hopes that she would become their mistress. But truth be told, in all that time, there had been only one man who had touched—no, taken—her heart. Only one man whose soul she felt had touched her own. Even now, she could imagine his rough hands on her body, turning her this way and that, posing her limbs for yet another of his masterpieces. She could feel the scratchiness of his beard on her face, hear the sound of his bawdy laughter, and smile at the memory of his insolence to lords and ladies who had crossed him. She remembered the nights they slept on the hard pallet in his studio, ate their meals off borrowed silver, and strolled arm in arm along the Ponte Vecchio.
Nor could she ever forget the fateful night she had pried open the iron casket and changed her own destiny forever. Now her only hope was to find the accursed mirror again and hope that by breaking it, she could shatter the spell and free herself from its power. If the Key was correct—and everything it had said about the powers of La Medusa had proved true so far, so why should she doubt this?—then that might be her one escape from the iron grip of immortality. Once the glass had been shattered, her life would resume again, as if she had only been frozen, and move forward, day by day, like that of any mortal woman. And end, in due course, just as naturally. In the words of the immortal Shakespeare—though when she had known him, no one had treated him as anything more than a prolific scribbler—it was “a consummation devoutly to be wished.”
Without her even having noticed at first, hot tears had begun coursing down her cheeks, and she could taste their saltiness on her lips.
She had fled Florence, then the European continent altogether, with the Duke of Castro’s men hot on her heels. Her ship had foundered and sunk two days out of Cherbourg, but she had been rescued after several days of clinging to the wreckage, and eventually found shelter under another name, among the gentry of England. It was there, years later, that she had heard news of Benvenuto’s death, and his burial beneath the stones of the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata. Had he found a way, she wondered, to cheat the blessing, or the curse, of the looking glass? Or was she the only one on whom the magic had been performed? Could he have made the thing and not employed it himself? It seemed unlike him, but at the same time, perversity was in his very nature. At the news, she had found herself overwhelmed by a wave of loneliness more profound than anything she had ever experienced before.
But she had grown accustomed to it over the years. She was a lone wayfarer, carried along on a cold, inescapable, and unending current.
The cobweb vibrated again, and she saw the fat black spider scuttling across its strands. Hoarse sobs were coming from her throat, and she had to retire to a stone bench beside the caskets. She took a scented handkerchief from the pocket of her coat and dabbed at her tears. A breeze encircled her as Cyril cracked the door open.