The Hermaphrodite's Curse Ch. 21

PART THREE – PARIS

- 6 -

Returning to the Louvre, the surroundings now felt familiar enough to Gabe that he no longer needed to follow Saphy's lead to find his way to the gallery where the Hermaphroditus statue lounged on his soft mattress. This familiarity would have been comforting to Gabe were he not such a complete bundle of nerves as to barely register that his feet were instinctively taking him in the right direction. He could not help replaying Atalanta's threat through his mind and imagining the eyes of all the white marble statues following him through the museum as he headed straight back to the one place to which he had been warned not to return.

Every statue of a towering goddess armed and poised to strike, he imagined was one of the murderous naiads about to deal out to him the same treatment that they had to the poor victim at the National Gallery back in London. He could barely concentrate on what Saphy was saying about the mystery as his attention continually darted around the room in search of anything out of the ordinary.

Both the previous times he had encountered Atalanta and the naiads, they had appeared and disappeared silently, with barely a flutter of white fabric for him to notice. This scared him more than anything, the idea that they could suddenly be there just where he was looking without him ever seeing them arrive. For all he knew, they could be there watching him right now. His back twitched and tingled, half expecting to be impaled with the shaft of a deadly arrow at any moment.

Saphy, however, seemed exhilarated by the whole situation. While Gabe glanced around silently and nervously, Saphy was more talkative than he had ever seen her. The mystery and danger seemed to suit her and find her in her element. Gabe did not know whether this newfound chattiness and enthusiasm was just a different reaction to nervous fear to his, or whether she was genuinely excited. Whatever the reason, as they approached the reclining nude hermaphrodite once more, Saphy was in full flow with her latest idea.

"I've been reading some of the books that I, er, borrowed from the library back in Cambridge," she was explaining as they crossed the red and white squares of the gallery floor, "I think we've been looking in the wrong place. It's not the statue itself that holds the clue."

"What? How do you mean?" Gabe asked, distractedly half listening as he suspiciously eyed up the statue of Diana with her quiver full of arrows, "If it's not the statue why are we here? Why are we putting ourselves in danger?"

"It's not the statue. It's the mattress he's lying on."

"Huh?"

"The statue dates right back to the Roman period, but the mattress doesn't," she explained, "It was made after the statue's rediscovery in the 1600s, the time that all of Europe suddenly became excited about the Hermaphroditus and Salmacis legend. If any part of the statue is going to leave us a clue, it's that."

"Why that part, specifically?"

"Because of the artist that made it. Cardinal Borghese commissioned his protégé, a young sculptor named Gian Lorenzo Bernini to create the mattress. Bernini went on to become the leading sculptor and architect in all of Italy. And, here's the interesting part..."

"What?"

"Bernini was rumoured to be a member of the Illuminati, the secret society, and could not resist containing all manner of coded clues and suggestions in his sculptures. The mattress here is one of his earliest works. If he had any knowledge of the secret of Salmacis, he is bound to have left his mark, left us a clue somewhere."

"OK, but where?" Gabe was beginning to get hooked in by Saphy's excitement, beginning to get interested in the mystery at the expense of his caution, "We can't just turn over all the buttons on the mattress without attracting some suspicion."

"Hmmm, good point," she agreed, "Still, that's a good idea about the buttons. That's probably the best place to hide something. If we could just prize one up without the guard noticing."

"We could distract him somehow, but that would still only give us time to see one."

"Which one?" she bent over to get a closer look along the mattress, "Are there any that look different, that look loose somehow."

"Wait a minute," Gabe said, staring at the statue and replaying the number of times they had seen that pose over the last few days, "Just think, where did we first see this? What led us here in the first place? The painting. The Rokeby Venus."

"I see, that painting was painted at the same time as this mattress was made. You think that the painting gives a suggestion about where we can find our next clue here."

"Exactly. Didn't Professor Cavendish say something about the painting not being finished? Something that seemed like a deliberate case of leaving it, drawing attention to one particular spot."

"Yes," Saphy said, excitedly, "That's right. The area around the left foot."

Both of their eyes shot instantly down the bare left leg of the naked marble statue to where its left foot rested daintily on the soft looking mattress. Sure enough, one of the mattress buttons lay right there. Both began to look pretty excited about what they might discover beneath it. There was just one problem.

"So, how do we distract the guard long enough to look beneath it?" Gabe broke the excited moment to ask.

"I'll take care of that," Saphy replied with a little smirk on her face, "You just be ready to overturn that button and snap a photo with that ever present camera."

Saphy walked across the other side of the room and Gabe followed her with his eyes, wondering just what she was going to do. The gallery was quiet but not completely empty. A handful of other people were browsing around the various statues and the guard was pacing up and down. Saphy positioned herself on the opposite side of the gallery looking back over at Gabe. She smiled and winked at him in a way that was oddly suggestive given their relationship up to this point.

Gabe looked around the room once more. Suddenly all the eyes were turned away from him, the guard turned and hurried across the room to where Saphy was standing. Gabe knew that he may only have a few seconds and therefore resisted the urge to follow where everybody's attention was turned. Instead, he ducked under the barrier and quickly grabbed the button of the mattress.

Despite his expectations, Gabe was still a little surprised that the button was just loosely fitted inside and came up easily in his hand. There was certainly something scratched into the underside of the button, maybe letters or words, but over time they had worn down as to be almost invisible. Still, knowing he only had a moment, Gabe took his camera and snapped a quick picture before replacing the button and ducking back beneath the barrier.

As he breathed a sigh of relief to have managed all this quickly and smoothly without being caught, Gabe allowed himself a moment to glance up and see just what had caused such a distraction that let him do it. He could not help gasping with surprise as he looked across the room to see the guard sternly having words with Saphy, who had her shirt lifted to expose a pair of round, bare breasts. Gabe got a brief glimpse of the disfigured heart tattoo and the shining glimmer of a nipple piercing, before her chest was covered once more. As the guard showed her out of the gallery, Saphy turned to Gabe and gave him a cheeky smile and a thumbs up sign. Gabe, blushing and unsure just what to do, could only mirror her and give the same sign back.

They met up again beneath the glass pyramid where Gabe found Saphy sat waiting for him with a look of triumph on her face. Gabe sat down beside her with his camera out and for a moment was completely speechless.

"Works every time," Saphy said, breaking the silence, "If women's bodies are going to be so objectified then we women should make use of that. It can give us the power sometimes."

"I have to say, that was not what I was expecting when you promised to provide a distraction," Gabe replied, honestly.

"Yeah, well it was the simplest, quickest thing I could think of," she admitted, "So, what did you find?"

He passed her the camera with the image of the scratchings on the underside of the button brought up on the viewing screen.

"Well, it's definitely something," she said, with a tone of disappointment, "But I guess we can't really quite see what."

"Just a minute," he replied, taking the camera back.

He had had an idea. Adjusting the contrast of light and shadow with the controls on his camera would make the scratchings much better defined within the photograph. Sure enough, after a few adjustments, a group of Greek letters began to emerge, still worn and faded but clearly spelling out a word, the letters in the middle pretty obvious while the ones on either end harder to read.

"Artemis!" Saphy exclaimed when she saw it, "That's what it looks like."

"What's Artemis?" Gabe asked.

"Artemis is the Greek word for Diana," she explained, "The virgin goddess worshipped by the naiads. That doesn't really tell us anything. Why would they reveal themselves and their involvement to stop us from discovering this? It doesn't make any sense."

"Maybe that isn't what it means," Gabe suggested.

"But, what else could it be except Artemis?" Saphy asked.

"Beats me, you're the expert here," he replied, "Are you sure there aren't some other Artemises?"

"Artemises? No," she replied, before appearing to have a brainwave, "Although...Where did your Professor Gerard say that the Fountain of Salmacis was supposed to be?"

"Oh, um, I can't remember the name of it," he said, "One of the wonders of the world. It was in Turkey."

"The Mausoleum?"

"Yeah, that sounds like it. Why?"

"Because the woman who had it built was called Artemisia."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that we're going to Turkey!" Saphy announced as they both sprung to their feet together and left the museum.

Back beneath the pyramid, there was a movement in the shadows. Gabe might have become distracted from his fear of being watched, but that did not mean the fear was any less appropriate. The figures lurking in shadows had been following him right from the moment that he was nervously scanning the room for them. Now that Gabe and Saphy had left, the figures in the shadows moved and also hurried towards the exit.

There were two of them, both dressed archaically in flowing robes, one a woman in white, the other a man in black. The woman had long waves of dark hair, wore a tunic and carried a quiver of arrows, one of which had been drawn on her bow and directed straight at her opposite number. Opposite, in a long black robe marked with a white cross, with a gun drawn against the naiads bow, Gabe might have been surprised to see Detective Inspector Gilbert of the Cambridge CID. Gilbert left the Louvre and, rather than following Gabe and Saphy, hailed a cab and headed off in the opposite direction.