Mistress of Night and Dawn (17 page)

When they reached the base of the long flight of stairs that Lauralynn indicated led up to the exhibition, Aurelia gripped the winding iron stair rail eagerly. It wasn’t until she reached the top and discovered what lay ahead that she began to wonder what she had got herself into.

They had arrived at a long passageway that was peppered with closed wooden doors and further passageways that branched off the main corridor. There was no sign of any other people or any indication of where they should go next though Aurelia could hear the murmuring of voices and the occasional clatter of high heels. As she strained to catch the source of the sounds, she observed a strange whistling noise, rhythmic thudding and the occasional loud ‘crack’, a symphony of aural vibrations bouncing like balls from the stones so that it was impossible to pinpoint where the noises originated.

They picked a bricked archway at random and wandered through it. Shadows crept up the walls around them. Torches had been set into the walls and the flames hissed and stuttered. The air was warm and smelled faintly like paraffin, leaving a bitter, acrid taste in Aurelia’s mouth.

‘It doesn’t feel like America, does it?’ Siv remarked.

‘No,’ Aurelia agreed, ‘it feels more like England.’ The place was a maze, and she felt just as she had when she’d been stuck with Siv in the ghost train, but now she could not separate her increasing foreboding from her sense that the stranger might appear again here, just as he had at the funfair.

They passed by several adjoining rooms, each of them either open and empty or closed and firmly locked, and were about to give up on the idea of finding Walter or any kind of art display when they reached another stone staircase.

‘You’d think they’d at least have elevators,’ Siv complained.

‘They probably do,’ Aurelia agreed. ‘We must be in the wrong place.’

She took one step up and narrowed her eyes, looking for some sign of what lay around the corner, but she couldn’t see anything. Then there was movement in the shadows ahead of her and a strange scraping sound and she turned her head and squinted again through the poor lighting. She thought she had seen someone with an animal on a lead. Perhaps it was Walter, with a guide dog. There was definitely something, or someone, crawling along the stone steps above them, but unless her mind was playing tricks on her again she was sure that she had caught a glimpse of a bare arse and a long, slim pair of legs disappearing behind the bend in the staircase. Surely not a person on a lead?

‘There’s nothing up here,’ Aurelia called back to Siv, who was still poking around in the corridor behind them. She was lying, of course, but she couldn’t think of any way to explain her natural distrust of the sculptor. She knew that if Siv got any inkling at all that she didn’t like the idea of tracking him down, then every rebellious bone in Siv’s body would respond by redoubling her detective efforts.

‘It’s okay,’ Siv called back, ‘come down here, I’ve found something.’

Aurelia followed the sound of Siv’s voice down the winding passageway and past all the other locked doors.

The room that Siv had discovered was small but appeared larger because every flat surface had recently been painted white. A small window, barred like a prison cell, provided the only light, but the white paint reflected each ray so effectively that the walls seemed to glow.

Aurelia opened her mouth to speak when she caught sight of the display inside, but Siv had drawn her finger to her lips to indicate that they should be silent.

A woman was hanging from an elaborate series of pale-pink ropes that were fixed in place in various points on the ceiling. She was positioned like a ballerina in mid-
grand jeté
, with her arms raised above her head and bound at the wrist, her back arched and her legs spread wide apart, her back leg raised higher than her front as if she had reached the highest point of a leap and was now on her way down again. Rope had been wrapped, tied and cinched around her ankles and just above her knees, and then clipped onto the lengths that hung from the roof. She wore a rope harness that wrapped around her hips, inner thighs and buttocks and supported the majority of her weight.

Her expression was peaceful, as if she found serenity in having been caught in flight. If anything, it seemed that the effect of the rope was to prolong her airborne freedom rather than to restrain her. She remained perfectly still and at ease in her bonds and did not move or make a sound to acknowledge the presence of the two young women.

In the corner of the room a man sat on a stool alongside a small workbench. He was not looking at the suspended woman, but Aurelia had the impression that he was analysing her somehow. His head was slightly cocked to one side as if he were seeing her by listening rather than looking. With his hands he was deftly shaping a clay figurine.

She recognised the man that Siv was so taken with.

This must be Walter.

Aurelia peered at him. He was wearing a strange combination of clothes. A pair of cream-coloured hemp trousers and a long-sleeved, collarless purple shirt made from the same fabric, which was thick and looked rough to the touch. Perhaps, in the absence of vision, he enjoyed the texture of things, which would explain both his outfit and his chosen art form.

Up close, his hair was snow white and cropped close to his head. Aurelia noted his features but found them unremarkable. A square jaw and high cheekbones gave him a somewhat animal appearance, an effect that was magnified by the way that he moved and responded to touch and sound rather than to sight. His loose-fitting clothing did not reveal much in the way of muscles or lack of them, but it was obvious that he was of slim build and his straight-backed spine suggested the kind of good posture that comes with fitness.

To Aurelia, he simply looked like an old man. Not an unattractive one, certainly, but far beyond the age that she considered eligible. He must be in his sixties, she thought, at least forty years Siv’s senior. Did her friend really feel that way about him as she had with the now long-jettisoned Ginger? She turned and gazed at Siv.

Siv was standing with her feet spread solidly apart and her thumbs tucked through the belt loops of her severely abbreviated shorts with her fingers in her pockets. She was staring at Walter, transfixed. Aurelia followed the line of her gaze. Siv was not looking at the side profile of his face that was visible to them, but rather she was totally entranced by the movement of his hands as he shaped the clay. Aurelia took a step closer to her friend and pinched her arm to get her attention but Siv had drifted into a sort of daze and was totally oblivious to everything around her – Aurelia, the room, the woman hanging from the ceiling. For a moment, Siv looked as if she was blind as he was.

‘Siv!’ Aurelia whispered under her breath. Siv ignored her. Aurelia waved a hand in front of her face. Finally she broke her gaze from the movement of the sculptor’s hands.

‘What?’ Siv hissed back.

The sculptor did not turn at the sound of their voices. Most likely, Aurelia thought, he had known that they were there all along.

‘Let’s go,’ she said. Siv’s reaction to the sculptor made her hair stand on end. She had never seen her usually straightforward and rational friend behave this way and it made her uneasy.

Siv shifted her weight from one foot to the other but did not make any move to leave.

‘We’ll distract him if we stay here,’ Aurelia added. This had the desired effect. Siv took one more wistful look at the sculptor and then reluctantly began to head towards the door.

Aurelia watched Siv walk. Her steps were slow and heavy, as if her friend were somehow attached by invisible threads to Walter and was having trouble leaving him behind. Again Aurelia felt a strange itching sensation on her skin, the same feeling that she had when she occasionally watched thriller films and wanted to scream a warning at the TV set when the heroine opened a squeaky door or headed down the rickety stairs to the basement.

Why was she so troubled by Siv’s interest in the sculptor? Aurelia hadn’t seen any of his finished pieces but, regardless of the quality, the fact that he could create visual art at all without the ability to see was remarkable, but besides that he seemed fairly ordinary and unfrightening. It was Siv’s reaction to him that was so strange. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but something about her friend was different. She seemed consumed by her thoughts of this man.

No different to me then, Aurelia thought with a wry smile. Likely it was a passing crush or a phase caused by his unusual talent and Siv would snap out of it.

‘Whoa,’ said Siv, coming to a halt in the corridor ahead of her. Aurelia hurried to catch up with her and see inside whatever new display it was that had now caught Siv’s attention. Some of the doors that had previously been locked were now open and within the first was one of the most alarming sights that Aurelia had ever set her eyes on, but yet she could not pull her gaze away. It all seemed to be happening in slow motion like a film stuck in freeze frame.

A young woman – probably around the same age they were, Aurelia guessed – was leaning against a wall with her arms and legs spread in starfish style. This woman too was bound, but only with very thin white ribbons that were wrapped around her ankles and wrists. The fragility of the restraints that bound her only served to highlight the fragility of her wrists and ankles and the delicacy of her frame. Her long hair was jet black and hung loosely around her shoulders and face so that even her profile was obscured. She was standing in perfect
en pointe
in a pair of peach-coloured ballet slippers. Her lacy knickers were the same shade and had been pulled halfway down her thighs, exposing a pert, naked arse. Clearly visible on each cheek was a bright-red handprint.

A man stood behind her with his arm raised. He paused at the top of his swing like a baseball pitcher gathering speed and power for a throw and then brought his hand down onto her buttock with what seemed to be all of his strength. The girl cried out, releasing a guttural sound that suggested pain but was not accompanied by any attempt to escape her situation. She involuntarily jolted forward, tugging on the ribbons that bound her, but she managed to remain on her tiptoes. Aurelia, though, knew from her own limited experience of ballet that retaining that posture under such circumstances must have taken extraordinary balance and strength of will.

The first moment of impact passed and the girl relaxed again. The man had switched from his heavy blow to a soft caress, cupping her arse cheek in his hand with absolute gentleness as if he was stroking the delicate petals of a flower. A look of total satisfaction crossed his face as she leaned back against his palm. Then his eyes flashed and his smile turned cruel as he raised his hand again and brought it down with a thud onto her other cheek. She hissed between her teeth in pain, jolted forward again and then relaxed once more into his hand. This time his finger slid briefly between her legs and he traced a line from her sex lips up to the cleft of her arse. In response she strained against the ribbons that bound her ankles so that she could shift her legs further apart, inviting him in.

Totally unbidden, Aurelia felt her own body responding. A familiar warm sensation began to buzz between her legs and she felt a strong desire to pleasure herself. She closed her eyes momentarily to try to ward off the feeling and keep her mind in the present, but the moment that she did so the images that had been in front of her now appeared behind her eyelids, but in her imagination she had transformed into the dancer with her wrists and ankles restrained and it was the stranger from Bristol who stood behind her with his arm raised, preparing to strike her. The thought made her wet and her mental vision seemed even more real because with her eyes closed she could not prevent the rhythmic sound of smacking and the girl’s cries from filtering through her ears. Every rational thought in her head told her that this was wrong. And yet, and yet . . . she was so aroused.

Aurelia’s eyes snapped open. She tugged Siv’s arm.

‘Mmm?’ Siv mumbled.

‘Let’s keep looking,’ Aurelia said. Truthfully, she wasn’t sure if she could handle seeing anything more like this. An internal battle between curiosity, arousal and disgust was raging within her with no clear victor in sight and the conflict that resulted was making her feel horribly confused and uncomfortable.

Was this even legal? she wondered. Fancy being too young to drink beer at a bar, but being old enough to attend events like this. But she knew that it hadn’t been advertised. Even if an interested person had got hold of a ticket, they would still need someone to provide them with the time and address. So perhaps it was entirely underground. That thought gave her a little more courage. She liked the idea of being part of a secret.

Her eyes darted around the room and she noticed that a steady stream of people were heading in the same direction like eddies in a river flowing into one another and heading upstream.

‘The show is starting,’ a slim man in a stiff, starched shirt said to another man who was so much his double they might have been twins. They were both wearing dark-blue ties patterned with love hearts and dancing satyrs.

Aurelia and Siv fell in behind the two men and followed them all the way down another corridor.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Siv when they were finally released from the bowels of the endless passageways that were spread like veins running from a giant heart and into the main hall.

The room was enormous and covered with a huge domed ceiling. Orange and red rays from the setting sun fell through the long rectangular windows that were inset into the brickwork at one end of the building and cast a hazy glow over all of the room’s inhabitants, as if they were standing near the dying flames of a bonfire. The domed roof was supported by numerous curved steel arches, each of which was further reinforced by a network of shorter pipes so that the ceiling resembled a huge metal spider’s web.

Seven trapezes dangled from equally placed points across the ceiling and at the end of the trapezes, with their feet just a few tantalising inches from the floor, hung seven pale-skinned, red-haired women who were entirely naked besides their vivid purple ballet slippers with satin laces that formed a hatched pattern all the way up their legs to their hips where the satin strips wrapped around their waists and then threaded between their buttocks. They were each gripping the trapeze bars tightly with their fingers, but also appeared to be locked to them with delicate silver chains that were attached to slim bracelets fastened around their wrists and onto the bar above so that they resembled prisoners hanging with their wrists in irons. Their heads were covered with gossamer thin violet-coloured gauze hoods that were fastened around their throats beneath a silver band. Their necks were relaxed with their chins resting on their chests. If it had not been apparent that their muscles were tensed and their toes pointed sharply downwards in a perfect
en pointe
that sharply emphasised the firmness of their buttocks and the chiselled musculature of their legs, then they might have been sleeping.