The Hermaphrodites Curse Ch 12

PART TWO - CAMBRIDGE

- 5 -

Gabe knocked on the door marked "Professor Robert White, Dr. Raymond Gerard -- Classics", and listened for an answer. He heard nothing from inside the office. It was already late in the afternoon of what had seemed a long day. That morning he had been in London retracing his steps on the day of the murder, going back to the National Gallery. That certainly seemed a lot more than a few hours ago. Since then he'd been caught up in even more violence and mystery and found himself investigating arcane mythology long thought lost in the dreams of childhood.

He knocked again and still heard nothing but silence. He tried the door and it opened without resistance. The office was empty for the moment. Gabe knew that it was impolite and invasive, but he still found himself going in for a look around. Robert White had written the one book that had affected him more than any other, he was curious about what this man was really like.

In the office, there were two desks, and stacks of bookshelves and filing cabinets, just like Professor Cavendish's office. However, here the space was clearly shared by two quite different characters. One desk had a mess of files and paper work spread out all over it. The other was neat and clean. Gabe headed for the messy desk. Sure enough, this was the one with a name plaque reading Robert White.

Knowing full well that this level of snooping wasn't really acceptable behaviour, but filled with a desire to know more about the professor's disappearance, Gabe went over to the desk and began to look through the messy pile of books and papers. He was desperate to discover anything he could that might tell him something about Robert White and the story of Hermaphroditus that White had written and that had so much held sway over Gabe's childhood imagination.

Looking through all the papers revealed very little that Gabe could very well understand. The writing was scrawled in lines so close together that it was virtually illegible in places, while in others individual words were so spread out that it was hard to see which words went with which. There were pictures that looked like vague doodles and lists of strange names from mythology and place names, lines drawn all over maps of the Mediterranean.

Suddenly, he stumbled across something that made his heart skip a beat, a familiar beautiful naked reclining figure, reproduced in blurry black and white but clearly the Borghese Hermaphroditus. There was a list scrawled in the same messy handwriting beneath the picture. It read -- "Louvre, Paris; Villa Borghese, Rome; Palazzo Massimo Alle Terme, Rome; Vatican, Rome; Uffizi, Florence; Prado, Madrid; Met, New York". The bottom part of the list had been torn away. Gabe folded it up and slipped it into his pocket just as he heard footsteps and the office door opening.

"Excuse me, you appear to be in my office, uninvited," came a voice with a commanding and slightly annoyed tone, "What are you looking for?"

Gabe turned to see a man of about fifty, his hair thinning, combed over to cover his baldness in an act of unsuccessful vanity. Apart from that point, he seemed well kept and in good physical condition for a middle-aged academic. His suit was well tailored and immaculately neat. He stared at Gabe in a way that seemed a little condescending, but he was obviously taking meticulous note of every detail of what he saw. Gabe could tell that he was in the presence of a man with an obviously keen intellect and bright observational faculties.

"Dr. Gerard?" Gabe guessed, "I've come looking for Robert White."

"You wouldn't be the first," was all that Dr. Gerard responded, "He hasn't been seen in months."

"I was wondering if you could help me," Gabe went on, "Tell me about some of Professor White's research. I've been talking to Professor Cavendish, she told me you might be able to show me some of Professor White's ideas."

"Robert had plenty of pretty eccentric ideas," Dr. Gerard said, his eyes scanning where Gabe had been going through the papers on White's desk, "I guess you can see that his mind was never the most organised. Recently, things had been getting much worse. He always saw himself as something of an adventurer, chasing after the truth in mythological ideas that so often wasn't there at all."

"I read his book, Love's Children," Gabe went on.

"His great folly," Dr. Gerard replied, "As a young man, Robert thought that book would bring him fame and fortune, but the legends of the ancient world are of far more interest to fusty old academics like us than they ever will be for most of the public. Robert took its failure very hard. He was determined to seek out the truth in the legends, to show people why they should have been interested in the first place. When I first met him, almost thirty years ago, I found this drive inspiring. As the years we worked together went by, I found it more and more frustrating. There simply was too little historical evidence for a great many of Robert's fascinations and investigations. Before his disappearance, the college were considering cutting off us funding. He was starting to become something of an embarrassment."

"I was always interested in the story of Hermaphroditus in the book," Gabe said, "Was that becoming one of Professor White's pre-occupations? Did he think there was truth in the legend?"

"It was never his first area of interest," Dr. Gerard replied, "But lately, in the months leading up to his disappearance, the idea of finding Salmacis was certainly one that he raised. It's preposterous of course."

"Salmacis? The nymph who became one body with Hermaphroditus?" Gabe said, curiously, "How could he think to find her?"

"Salmacis was the name of the fountain," Dr. Gerard explained, "The fountain whose waters were supposed to make men effeminate. Robert didn't ever believe that the stories he wrote about were completely true, the myths of gods and their children. However, he felt that they must have sprung from some original grain of real life, something the myth would grow up around. He thought that the Fountain of Salmacis, the waters that transform men's bodies, could exist in truth."

"Could it?" Gabe asked, excited by this thought far more than by anything he had learnt from Professor Cavendish, trying hard not to let this excitement burst out of him as he tried to process the idea that water that could turn men to women could really exist, "Could somebody still find the Fountain of Salmacis?"

"You'd better sit down," Dr. Gerard motioned to a seat beside his desk, "And I'll explain Robert's theories, and how wrong they could be."

Gabe crossed over from where he stood beside Professor White's desk, hoping that White's colleague hadn't noticed the slip of paper he had pocketed. Dr. Gerard's cold, clear eyes observed him minutely, seeming to think through just what to say to this naïve, uneducated young man here to question him about his colleague's private business. As Gabe sat down on the other side of the desk, Dr. Gerard simply stared at him for a few seconds, before getting up and taking down some books from his shelves. It was almost the same action as Professor Cavendish had taken earlier, only Dr. Gerard's obviously meticulous classification system enabled him to find the books quicker. Gabe wondered to himself whether these academics could ever make any point without resorting to books for back-up.

"Robert used Ovid's Metamorphoses for much of the substance of his book," Dr. Gerard explained, after deciding what he felt worth divulging to Gabe, who he still looked upon somewhat patronisingly, "The Metamorphoses is pretty much the most influential Latin work on classical mythology, certainly in terms of the theme of love's influences and transformations. It's also the earliest extant version of the Hermaphroditus legend. It comes here in Book 4," here he opened the book onto the original story, "Ovid describes the story as a novelty, something that his audience would not have seen before. He probably invented it himself to explain the Hermaphroditus figure that was popular in the free standing sculpture of the time.

"However, it seems that the idea of the fountain that turned men into women was already in existence, even if the wider legend was not. This is how Ovid introduces his story:

"'How Salmacis, with weak enfeebling streams,'" he quoted, "'Softens the body, and unnerves the limbs, And what the secret cause, shall here be shown; The cause is secret, but the effect is known.'"

"So, the nymph rapist is a myth, but there is really a Fountain of Salmacis?" Gabe asked, unable to suppress all of the thrill that he felt at this idea.

"It certainly appears as a story in some of the more respected writers of the day, but most even then were happy to dismiss it as idle fancy," Dr. Gerard confirmed, "Strabo's Geographica, pretty much the best guide to the places and cultures of the classical world," he said decisively, opening another book and searching for the right section, "Here we are, Book 14, he describes the fountain as having 'the slanderous repute, for what reason I do not know, of making effeminate all who drink from it. It seems that the effeminacy of man is laid to the charge of the air or of the water; yet it is not these, but rather riches and wanton living, that are the cause of effeminacy.'

"Vitruvius' De architectura, the great Roman treatise on architecture," he went on, opening a second book, "In Book 2, Vitruvius says: 'There is a mistaken idea that this spring infects those who drink of it. It cannot be that the water makes men effeminate.' You see, most of these writers feel the legend is just that, a legend, which does not stand up to much close scrutiny."

"But Professor White believed it was real," Gabe cut in, "He believed he could find it."

"Robert was like that," Dr. Gerard sighed, "He always believed in the truth behind the legend. He would feel that stories would never have grown up around that fountain had it not had some transformative properties. He spent his life following up these stories and never found anything worth mentioning."

"But, maybe he's right," Gabe said, "How would the legend have started without there being some grain of truth in it?"

"It's just as Strabo said, effeminate behaviour could stem from wanton living," Dr. Gerard replied, disapprovingly, "Then it would be easy for people to blame this debauchery on the waters rather than allowing people to take responsibility for it themselves."

"So, do any of these old scholars say where the fountain was supposed to be?" Gabe asked, slightly impatiently.

"Strabo puts it next to the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus," came the response, "One of the Seven Wonders of the World," he added patronisingly, after a pause in which he did not register any recognition in Gabe for this ancient site, "It was in Asia Minor, Turkey today."

"So, why didn't Professor White just go there?"

"The Mausoleum is no longer there," Dr. Gerard explained with a little frustration, "It was destroyed in an earthquake hundreds of years ago. During the crusades most of the stone was used elsewhere. Even if we did know exactly where the Fountain of Salmacis was supposed to be, it would all be ruins by now."

He paused momentarily to let this information sink in, then seemed to decide that this information brought an end to his conversation with Gabe, seemed to feel that he had more important things to be getting on with.

"I'm sure I would be interested to discuss Robert's research further, but I'm a busy man," he said, "I'm afraid that I've got a lot of work to be getting on with. Please, come back and see me some other time if you have any further questions."

With that, he seemed to completely block out Gabe's presence, opening a file full of papers on his desk and beginning to read through them as Gabe got up and headed for the door. However, just as Gabe was about to leave, Dr. Gerard gave him one final parting shot.

"The last time I saw Robert, he told me had discovered some of the waters of the Fountain of Salmacis," he said, stopping a shocked Gabe in his tracks, "He also told me that they had no transformative affect. It was nothing but regular water. It's a myth, Mr. Herrison, a myth with no basis in fact."

In spite of these last remarks, Gabe left the office in excitable spirits. He couldn't help imagining the fountain that turned men feminine could be real just like in Professor White's book. Perhaps the Fountain of Salmacis was something that really could be found again. Perhaps legends and myths could be proved true. If only the clues could be followed.

Instinctively Gabe knew that a secret like the discovery of the Fountain of Salmacis was just the kind of thing somebody would be willing to protect by any means, even if that meant hurting people. Even if that meant killing them. He had always had a tendency of jumping to conclusions, drawing links in an imaginary chain from the most tenuous connections, and now his mind went into overdrive doing just that. He let his childhood fascination with Hermaphroditus run away with him as he tried to fit the mystery together. Logically, there was nothing particularly to connect the murder in front of the Rokeby Venus, it's secret identity as Hermaphroditus, the disappearance of Robert White and his search for the Fountain of Salmacis, but logic had little part to play in Gabe's excitement.

To Gabe's mind, the coincidental return of his mind to Love's Children and Hermaphroditus at the time of the murder seemed like fate leading him on. He felt that the symbol on the wall had been drawn just so the painting's secret would be revealed and lead him on to discover an even greater secret. A part of him felt that seeing the goddess herself in his dreams that night was a sign that lead him on down this path. That these were just the same instincts that had Saphy pegged as the murderer in his mind just from looking at her picture didn't seem to bother Gabe right then.

Indeed, he was completely lost in these thoughts as he walked back through the pleasantly manicured lawns of this historic college grounds. A light, misty drizzle had begun to form as Gabe exited the frowning gatehouse and headed back onto the street, but he barely noticed the weather. Nor did he pay any attention to the way that the shadow of the gatehouse that loomed over him seemed to shift away from the light, so deep was he inside his own mind.

The touch of a cold hand digging claw-like into his shoulder shook Gabe uncomfortably from his reveries, bringing him crashing back down to the dangerous reality in which he now found himself. Two long, tall figures loomed over him, grabbed tight onto his arms giving him no chance to struggle. A high pitched hissing voice came almost straight into his mind, seeming to emanate from both shapes in unison.

"This time, there will be no escape," it hissed, "You will suffer so much more after what happened before. Now, we will make you truly know fear and dread."

Gabe felt a wave of terror and nausea run right through him. He felt light headed and numb with panic, unable to speak, barely able to move. He knew that with his slight, unmuscular frame, there was nothing he could do to escape the iron grip that held him from both sides. The inevitability of his imminent death weighed down on him until he could barely think straight.

To say his life flashed before his eyes would be an exaggeration, but he certainly got a sudden and unpleasant sense of how little he had done with his short life. He felt the sharp point of a knife blade pressed against his back and hoped that his end would come quickly and without pain.

The knife dug in deeper and he felt warm blood running down his body. This wasn't going to be quick at all. They were going to make him suffer, make him feel the pain. A third shape loomed out of the shadows and the knife blade stopped digging into him.

Gabe looked up in relief and felt a crashing blow come down against his temple. His mind slid into blackness, his last thought as his body hit the floor was the seeming certain knowledge that he would never wake up again in this world.