Without warning, Mrs. Cleary turned, filling Maurice with unexplained dread. She muttered in a throaty voice and he sensed her rage from afar. Maurice took another step back, stunned by the housekeeper’s terrifying manner.
“Mrs. Cleary, are you alright?” he asked, his voice wavering.
The housekeeper seemed grotesque now.
“Mistake!” she spat. “A grave mistake!”
And the old woman paced towards him at a frightening speed, impelled by all the fury within her, more intent with every step that drew her near. A withered form, moving angrily in the darkness, he could make out the menacing snarl on her moonlit face as she came at him in the dark. “Made a grave, grave mistake! Grave mistake!” she hissed.
Maurice froze, unable to understand what he was seeing, unable to utter a sound.
“I told you to stay where you were! Do you not listen? ” she roared. She was getting closer and the glowing moon ray distorted her features. Maurice blinked. He wondered why Mrs. Cleary’s eyes appeared so bloodshot, so streaked with red.
Then just as suddenly, she came to a stop at his bedroom door, a foot from where he stood. A flash of recognition passed across her face and the threatening expression vanished. She brought a trembling hand to her temple then closed her eyes while she inhaled. When she opened them, they were still brutally red but her tone regained its polish.
“Mr. Leroux, oh my…I did not see you.” She recovered her breath, pressing her hand to her chest. A glint of madness still shone in her eyes.
Maurice stared at her in disbelief.
“You must be very careful,” she said, straining to speak each word as though still out of breath. “At night, I mean. You must be ever careful. For this reason,” she pushed him savagely, and with unexpected strength back into the room. “I must lock you in!”
“No! No, Mrs. Cleary, that’s out of the question. I told you that I can take care of myself.”
“You foolish man!” she spat. “It is everywhere. It flows everywhere like…” Her vision seemed to glaze.
Maurice held her up as she swooned.
“Madame, I think you should rest. I assure you that I can take care of myself. From now on, I will need you to leave this bedroom door unlocked every night.”
She reached out and clung to his arm.
“But you don’t understand. It’s her,” she warned.
Maurice stared wide-eyed. He held Mrs. Cleary and firmly guided her towards her room, even as she resisted.
“It’s her…” she repeated. “Her and that snakelike hair…”
“Medusa?”
The housekeeper’s eyes widened and Maurice shuddered at how dilated her pupils were. She nodded frantically. “Quite right, you are. Quite right. She’s an evil creature.”
“That’s nonsense… Watch your step, now.”
“…one look upon her face and one is turned to stone.”
“You can’t possibly believe that, Mrs. Cleary.”
“But you don’t understand. She was abducted! Abducted by Poseidon. Not many people know…”
“Now, Mrs. Cleary, please. You’ll only frighten yourself.”
“You don’t understand. It’s Calista! She has brought Medusa’s vengeance to this house.”
“No, no, that’s not true. It is only a Greek myth from ancient times. It is not real. None of it is real.”
They had reached Mrs. Cleary’s room and Maurice stood by the door as the housekeeper entered, still in a daze. He waited for a while before quietly retracing his steps.
As Maurice returned to his bedroom, he pondered over the nature of the housekeeper’s outburst. The reddened eyes and dilated pupils did not lie. Neither did her haggard face and private mutterings.
What had Madeleine confided earlier? Was Mrs. Cleary taking medication that altered her behaviour? If that were true, it was no wonder she fabricated these visions of Medusa. Maurice thought no more of it. He drifted to sleep, this time with the door partly ajar.
The hours passed, and Maurice slept. But by a mechanism mastered only by astute detectives, his curiosity succeeded in stirring his senses at the right time, and at midnight, he opened his eyes.
Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he was about to return to sleep when he felt a movement outside his room. He stared at the gap near the door. Stillness followed. Again, he watched and waited. Nothing.
Feeling reassured, Maurice closed his eyes.
A curious odor of sea and salt filled the room but Maurice ignored it, drawing the covers higher upon his nose.
Outside, the sounds of rushing liquid filled the nightscape and the fountain waters poured unrelenting. In the pond where the blue moonlight shone, the mosaic tiles glistened magically like tiny fish scales.
Chapter 6
The Nymph of Kassiopi
Greece, 1835
LEGENDS told of the water nymph who had bewitched Poseidon, Greek lord of the sea. Naiads of her kind lived in running waters, in the rivers, near the cascades and the creeks. Theirs was the power to give birth to the fountains and to oversee them. Korkyra was such a naiad. She was a maiden crowned with ocean flowers and gifted with breathtaking beauty. One look at her was enough to lose one’s mind. Once Poseidon fell in love, he abducted her, then swept her away to an island where she might be his alone. In time, the island bore her name, and in the people’s dialect, was known to all as Kerkyra.
It was a lush paradise in the Ionian Sea, a place of beauty graced with six mountain peaks, and whose rocky maquis overlooked crystal clear blue waters. Its green rolling hills burst with life, for nature and all its creatures thrived here.
Kerkyra had found itself under British protectorate since Napoleon’s defeat twenty years ago. To Aaron, it seemed like the proper destination for an Englishmen to inhale the Greek landscape in its natural form, well away from mystified Athens. Lately, he had grown suspicious of
