Read by Claire Lacey
I placed his letter on my dressing table, so that while I sat before the mirror I could keep my eyes on his words. I’d heard the myths before of course, of the wayward daughter who bewitched men with a look. According to the tales, she enchanted an Emperor in some fabled land at the edge of the world, who made her his bride and showered her with gold. They said she was a powerful sorceress but, like any common witch, water was her downfall. She left his land in a ship laden with treasure, but lost it all to the sea.
I believe she was real, he wrote. I believe her treasure awaits rediscovery. I wish to prove that she lived, your famous ancestor. Do not let superstitions deter you. I know you are an educated woman and believe in science, not curses.
Think of it, he wrote. Help me reclaim her treasure and rescue her from obscurity. Respectfully yours, Thomas Johnson.
I had heard of him before, this Thomas Johnson. I had read of him in the newspapers. A clever man by all accounts. If he thought there was something to find…
“All done, Madam,” the maid said, putting down my brush.
She had interrupted my thoughts, but I was too distracted to scold her. I waved her away and took the letter to my writing-desk.
Dear Mr Johnson, I wrote. I invite you to visit me this afternoon, and discuss the details of your work. Please take this opportunity to convince me of its merits, and my patronage will be yours.
That afternoon, Thomas Johnson stood before me with his bag in his hands. A tall man, lean, with a pleasant face.
I offered him tea, and a comfortable chair. He declined the tea, and sat with his bag perched in his lap, his fingers tight around the handle.
He glanced at the paintings on my wall, scenes from my travels.
“You have lived quite a life,” he said. Was it a comment on my age?
I tried to laugh it off: “It’s not over yet, I hope.” I told him of my adventures, how I’d entered ancient tombs, climbed snow-capped mountains, conversed with wise sages.
“And now,” I told him, “I intend to walk on the bottom of the ocean, with you.”
That shocked him. “Madam, I do not think …”
“Ah, but you are a visionary,” I said, stopping him there. “Most men cannot see the way you do, but I can, I understand. You will risk everything for your new invention, this great discovery. Now, let me see the plans that you guard so closely.”
He thumbed open his bag and drew out sheets of paper covered in spidery notes and detailed sketches. A suit with a grilled mask caught my eye; it could have been some instrument of torture.
He flinched as I reached a finger to touch the image, but I pretended not to notice.
“These tubes provide the air?” I guessed, and he nodded. I asked how much time he needed, to make a pair.
“Given sufficient means,” he said, “I could have everything ready in a matter of weeks.”
“Then I will give you the means,” I promised, “but you will take me with you, that is a most important condition.”
He agreed, of course, and left to get to work. I waited patiently for those long weeks, until the time came to settle on a date; I wanted to avoid Mercury in retrograde; he was more concerned about the weather. It was like planning a wedding, but I put that thought carefully aside. Thomas was a fine young man, with a focus that bordered on obsession. There was no time for women in his life.
We would both wear suits of leather and metal rivets, adorned with spikes to deter sea-monsters from eating us. Though I had paid for it, the suit he made for me seemed the most personal gift I had ever received. He had even allowed space for my skirts inside the leather legs. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was quite accustomed to wearing breeches. My helmet was a beautiful thing, not nearly as frightful as in the sketch. Fashioned of polished bronze, with a barred window from which I would peer at the world he showed me.
We took a boat out across the water, manned by eight fine muscled fellows of my own staff. I felt like an Empress already, sat at one end of the boat, Thomas checking the equipment at the other. I listened to the waves lapping, and watched him work. Two gulls passed overhead, flying together and calling to one another, and I took it as a good sign.
He put up a hand; this was the place. Our suits lay ready under sackcloth, that stopped the sun heating the metal masks.
“This is thrilling,” I said. “Are you excited?”
“Of course,” he said, “but I’m afraid this is the first of many dives, Madam. The only records we have are in myth, we can’t be sure of the wreck’s location.”
“You must not doubt yourself,” I told him. “You think it’s here, and I believe you. Others may not.” I glanced back towards land. He had invited a number of learned gentlemen to witness our dive, and none had come. “But soon we will prove your invention and return to shore with ancient treasures beyond price. No one will ever doubt you then.”
He nodded, and said nothing.
We tugged the suits on over our clothes. It would be cold, he’d said, in the deep. The heat of the sun couldn’t reach there. We would be in another world entirely, just the two of us.
Thomas went first, and I followed. Our boots were weighted with lead, and it was a strange sensation, being dragged down through the water into the unknown.
The hiss of air pumping through my mask seemed to grow louder as the light dimmed, but it was reassuring. As long as my men continued to pump, I could breathe naturally. Or so Thomas had said, and I had no reason to mistrust him.
It grew difficult to see, the light from above murky and distant. Occasionally something shot across my vision, too fast to identify. I kept my arms to my sides as instructed, to aid the descent, and Thomas spun slowly beside me, his arms stiff by his sides. Cables trailed above him, giving him the look of a fish on a hook.
I did not see the ground, but felt it, and stumbled slowly forward before Thomas’s arm gently righted me. Our every movement was slow, deliberate, as in a dream. I gazed at the seabed. Nothing but rocks and sand, grey in the gloom.
Then he pointed through the murk, and I saw a jutting stone with carvings on its surface, swirls and whorls like a fingerprint. He had been right, of course he had.
Like drunken men lost at night we plunged after the artefacts. The gleam of gold in the sand seemed an illusion, but each footstep revealed a new treasure, jewels that glinted for a moment before sand settled over them again.
Thomas detached the bag from his belt and began to fill it, using a claw-like tool he’d designed himself. Bending was impossible in the suit, but with that tool he soon filled the bag with wonders plucked from fertile ground, ancient treasures and works of art.
Then, a face in the sand, golden and shining. He gripped it with the claw and pulled, but found it embedded in some remnant of the ship. I watched him tug and strain, and then it came free with such force that it slipped from his grip and spun loose in the water, among fragments of rotten wood. I reached out and caught the treasure in my gloved hands, and found myself gazing into the face of the Empress herself, her beauty immortalised in a golden mask. Her features were familiar, the family resemblance clear.
A deep shadow passed over us, something large swimming above, but the Empress’s face still shone and I held her towards Thomas to put in his bag; she had to be the most priceless thing we had found.
Thomas did not take her, but recoiled, jerking away too quickly; his suit leaked bubbles, he was losing air! His arms flailed uselessly so I reached for the wire above him and tugged a signal to the waiting men.
His feet left the ground and he rose through the water, leaving me alone with the mask. I might have been hysterical with worry for Thomas, but the serene expression of the Empress was some comfort. I held her golden face up to my own, and her empty eyes seemed to gaze back.
When my turn came and I emerged, the men lifted the helmet from me and I saw Thomas lying unconscious on the deck. He was breathing, they assured me. One of the tubes had detached from his suit in the water, and he was lucky to be alive. He still clutched my sack of treasure in his hands.
I took Thomas home, gave him the finest guestroom and sat by his bedside while he slept. The doctors assured me he would be well, but needed time to mend. I would give him all the time in the world. I filled the room with the treasures he had collected, so that he would see evidence of his success when he woke. I dribbled water over his lips, and when his eyes opened I was there to greet him.
He shrank from me as though I were a monster, hid under his blankets like a child.
“You need food,” I said. “You need your strength back, that’s all.”
I carried it to him myself, seafood soup in a golden bowl.
“Food fit for an Emperor,” I told him, but he would not have it, wrinkled his nose as though it smelt foul.
Such rudeness! I put the spoon to his lips, but he lifted a hand and sent it clattering across the floor.
Some madness took him, and he grabbed the mask of the Empress I had placed on his bedside table. He swung it round, and I fell back off my chair as the golden face came towards me, thrust with such force he could have cracked my skull with it. I caught it, and clutched her visage to my chest. How could anyone fail to be enchanted by her?
Servants came running, and I ordered them to tie him down.
Such a wondrous thing we had done together, diving to the depths to reclaim the treasure of my ancestor, her gold, her jewels, her very likeness. It was mine now, and I felt as though she lived on within me, free of the sea at last. When I put the mask to my face, the gold fitted like a second skin, and I tried to show Thomas, to make him understand.
He averted his gaze, unable to look at me. Eyes wide and quickened breaths, like a rabbit in a snare.
After that, it didn’t matter whether I wore the mask or not, he quailed at my approach. I had to believe that he would recover, and share the spoils. Yet he begged for release, as though I were his jailor, not his nurse.
A lesser woman would have tired of him long ago and given up, but I never will. I am stronger than other women. I am an Empress.
(c) Lisa Farrell, 2020
Claire Lacey is a former member of the BBC English Repertory Company. Stage includes Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest, Helen in dark comedy Come Die With Me (The Vaults) and Gratiana in The Revenger’s Tragedy. Screenwork includes feature The Hippopotamus, Brief Encounters (ITV), and sci-fi feature Game Day opposite Stephen McGann; she’s also an experienced voice-over artist.
Lisa Farrell is a book-addict, freelance-writer, and mother-of-two. Read her very occasional tweets @lisamrc8
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