Chapter 37
The bathing suit Eve had been given was very modest by the standards she was used to—more of a swim dress than a swimsuit—but it still felt odd to be wearing such a thing and she was grateful for the white robe.
Despite how early it was, there were already several other guests enjoying the frigidarium, all wearing robes or bathing suits.
It was the most spectacular space, with grand Islamic arches and painted ceilings.
Natural light flooded in through the skylights set into the arabesque painted ceiling, shining upon the neat rows of reclining beds that were lined up along the Italian terrazzo floor.
A sign stated that this was the coolest room in the steam baths, but it was still warm compared to the hotel, heated with a continuous flow of hot, dry air.
A large octopus was painted on the wall and Eve took the scavenger card from the pocket of her robe and wrote it in.
She now had ten octopuses and four clocks left. Getting closer…
“This is the Wellness Area,” Max told her.
“The doorway at the end of the room leads to three more chambers that get gradually hotter. On the other side there’s a cold plunge pool and a warm mineral pool.
” He gestured at another sign on the wall, which explained the ritual of heating, cooling, and cleansing the body as you progressed through the chambers. “Shall we get this over with?”
“You don’t like the steam baths?” Eve asked as they made their way past the rows of beds.
He shrugged. “It’s peaceful and restful and beautiful. What’s not to like? But it reminds me of being an invalid, and of a time of my life I’d prefer to forget.”
They passed through the archway into the first of the three heated rooms—the tepidarium, or warm room.
It had the same curved ceiling and skylights, but the walls were glazed bricks in cream and sea green.
Long stone benches lined the walls for guests to sit or lie on, and everyone had removed their robes due to the heat.
Max and Eve soon had to do the same, and she tried hard not to look at the black shorts and dark blue tank top that made up Max’s bathing suit and showed off the lean muscle of his shoulders.
Tried hard not to think once again about what this moment might have been like if they were normal people doing normal things in the normal way.
It was warm and pleasant in the tepidarium, but there were no clocks or octopuses there, so they went on to the caldarium, or hot room, where there were more glazed bricks and mosaic tiles fashioned into the shape of shells.
A couple of guests soaked up the heat in large, solid wooden deck chairs draped with towels.
Max didn’t linger here either but went straight on into the laconicum—the hottest room.
Like the others, this was a beautifully ornate chamber, laid out with benches and deck chairs, but it was scorching, and Eve could feel sweat running down her body moments after they walked in.
“Over here.” Max went into the corner of the room and pointed out a small mosaic octopus upon the floor. Eve noticed as he did so that there were several small scars on his forearm.
“Shell fragments,” he said, seeing her looking.
“Sorry,” she said, annoyed with herself. “I didn’t mean to stare.”
He shrugged. “There aren’t any other octopuses or clocks in the chambers, as far as I know. Just one of each at the entrance to the pools.”
“All right, thanks,” Eve replied. “I’m going to look back through them again, just in case.”
“It’s too hot for me,” Max replied. “I’ll be in the pool when you’re done.”
They parted and Eve retraced her steps through the heated chambers, but there were no other clocks or octopuses to be seen, and before long she was making her way to the pool area.
A wooden archway formed the entrance to this part of the steam baths, and as Max had said, there was a clock perched on top, held within the tentacles of a large wooden octopus.
She marked both items off on the list. At last, she was down to single figures for the octopuses—just eight to go, along with three more clocks.
She passed beneath the arch to the area beyond.
Another archway on her right led to the cold plunge pool and the one on the left went to the warm mineral pool.
Eve was dripping with sweat, so she picked the cold one and entered a room with glazed cream bricks on the wall and a blue-and-green tiled floor.
The pool itself was blue and inviting and the room was unoccupied.
The water wasn’t just cold but icy—a welcome relief after the sweltering chambers.
Eve ducked her entire head beneath the surface and when she came back up, she could suddenly hear the distinctive clip-clop of a horse’s hooves.
For a moment, she thought perhaps it was the water ringing in her ears, but no, the horse was there; the horse was real.
She wiped the water from her eyes in time to see it trot through the archway.
A grey horse, streaked with dirt and mud, just like the one she’d glimpsed that night outside the windows of the Fountain Room, peering inside with deep, dark eyes.
The eyes and the music.
The music and the eyes.
And the hand holding hers in the dark…
The horse carried a couple of saddlebags, along with some loose items tied on with straps.
Eve saw wire cutters, a gas mask, a bayonet sheath, and a trench periscope.
Then the horse tossed its head and trotted briskly down the length of the pool, quickly disappearing through the archway at the opposite end.
She swam to the edge of the pool and climbed out.
The horse had been filthy, yet there were no muddy hoofprints to mark its passage.
She snatched up her robe and went out into the corridor, but there was no sign of the horse.
When she walked through the doorway into the room with the warm mineral pool, she found it was much larger than the cold one, with its own marble fountain at the far end.
It looked very much like the fountain in the lobby, except that this octopus’s tentacles trailed all the way into the pool itself.
There were several guests here, swimming or relaxing on the loungers placed around the perimeter.
Max was swimming when she arrived but came out of the pool when he saw her. He grabbed up a towel and wrapped it around his shoulders before walking over. “Finished?” he asked.
“I just saw a horse by the plunge pool,” she said.
“Ah. The horse.”
“Did you see it too?”
He shook his head. “I’ve never seen it. The others used to speak of it, though. Back in 1918. There were twelve of us and everyone said they saw the horse in the steam baths at one point or another. Except me.”
“It looked like a war horse,” Eve said. “It had wire cutters, and a gas mask, and other things tied to its saddle.”
“Yes,” Max replied. “That’s the one. Eleven men don’t all imagine the same thing at different times, so I suppose it’s a ghost.”
“Why would a war horse haunt the steam baths?”
He shrugged. “Why would an eavesdropper haunt the Palm Bar, or an octopus haunt the sixth floor? The White Octopus is not like other hotels.”
They began to retrace their steps through the heated chambers until they were back in the vast frigidarium.
As before, there were several guests enjoying the Wellness Area, reclining on the benches, or reading newspapers.
A sense of calm tranquillity filled the space.
Until the sound of hooves echoed upon the tiles.