Tales From the Black Chamber (19 page)

… suggested to me that
Apollyon
(Greek Απολλυω, meaning “destroyer” as well), might be the correct reading of the last word, the remaining missing letters then being
p
,
l
, and
y
, yielding:

‘-č-i-b-d-a-g-g-i-b-d-u-d a-b-a-d-d-o-n a-p-o-l-y-o-n

Or, simply,
Chidag Dü Abaddon-Apollyon
. To be sure, a fearsome juxtaposition, or perhaps identity.

Plugging these letters into the longer cipher text, I thus had:

1-a 3-o-5-p-a-p-o y-a-n b-o-y-o-10-a-y-5-u-12 9-l-a-5-a-l-i y-18-19-u y-i-n-20 1-a d-18-b-l-a d-i b-u-d-a-22 č-i-g-24-o-n-g-d-a-1 g-y-a-y-a-d-a-1 g-u-b-č-u g-o č-i-g-p-a a-n-n-o d-o-5-i-n-i-l-a b-25-17-a-y d-a-1
5-o-1-g-o-l-17-a-y-d-a-1 l-a-24-i-n-a-17-a-y d-a-1 g-22-18-17-a-'-i-17-a-y-17-y-i-12 d-i-n 3-25 1-a-'-i y-i-g-18-'-i-12 b-22-i-12-g-i-y-25 d-on-d-u 26-o-1-27-4 d-o-n-l-a 17-i-o-g n-u-12-p-a-g-i-5-a-22-a-y-20

At this point, a combination of extensive knowledge of Tibetan, a fondness for acrostic and crossword puzzles, and—oddly enough—the classics, allowed me to fill in the rest of the letters thusly:

ñ-a z-o-m-p-a-p-o y-a-n b-o-y-o-h-a-y-m-u-s b-l-a-m-a-'-i y-e-š-u y-i-n-. ñ-a d-e-b-l-a d-i b-u-d-a-r č-i-g-t-o-n-g-d-a-ñ g-y-a-y-a-d-a-ñ g-u-b-č-u g-o č-i-g-p-a a-n-n-o d-o-m-i-n-i-la b-ö-k-a-y d-a-ñ
m-o-ñ-g-o-l-k-a-y-d-a-ñ l-a-t-i-n-a-k-a-y d-a-ñ g-r-e-k-a-'-i-k-a-y-k-yi-s d-i-n z-ö ñ-a-'-i y-i-g-e-'-i-s b-r-i-s-g-i-y-ö d-o-n-d-u q-o-ñ-x-o d-o-n-l-a k-l-o-g n-u-sp-a-g-i-m-a-r-a-y-.

Or, more recognizably:

nga tsom·pa·po yan bo·yo·hay·mus bla·ma'i ye·shu yin
. nga deb·la di bu·da·r chig·tong·dang gya·ya·shi·dang gub·chu go chig·pa an·no do·mi·ni·la bö·kay·dang mong·gol·kay·dang la·ti·na·kay·dang gre·ka'i·kay·kyis din·tsö nga'i yi·ge·'is bris·gi·yö don·du khong·tsho don·la klog nus·pa·gi·ma·ray.

This is clearly Tibetan—not particularly literate Tibetan and a transliteration of the spoken language rather than the formal written language—but Tibetan nonetheless. In case, for whatever reason, you require the equivalent text in written Tibetan, it would read:

Now, begging your pardon for the pedantic manner in which I have reached it, I am very gratified to present you with my translation. I suspect it will surprise you greatly, and I hope it is some assistance to you.

I the writer am Jan Boiohæmus, priest of Jesus. I am writing this book in Buda in one thousand and four hundred and ninety-one
anno Domini
with Tibetan, Mongol, Latin, and Greek sounds, with these my letters, so that they will not have the power to read the meaning.

So, you appear to have a document written by Father John the Bohemian in a mixture of languages and a cryptic cipher, in Buda in 1491. This is fascinating, as there's no known contact between the West and Tibet between the journeys of Odoric of Pordenone circa 1325 and António de Andrade, S.J., in 1624, yet our friend Jan clearly speaks Tibetan and, apparently, Mongolian. Why do we not know anything about him? Why did he disappear? Did “they” get him?

The document you have is fascinating. If it comes to the light of day before I shuffle off this mortal coil, I'd love to have a look at it. Thank you very much for allowing an old man to attack a genuinely new and interesting puzzle. I hope my solution satisfies.

In accordance with your instructions, I have discussed this with no one. I trust I will not have offended you by destroying all my notes and sending you the sole copy of this letter, which I have not saved to any computer medium. I remain eternally in your debt and thus ready to assist you in any regard in the future.

With fondest regards,

Lewis

Lewis Geoffrey

Professor Emeritus

Balliol College, Oxford University

School of Oriental & African Studies

After a long silence, John spoke up. “Okay, what does this tell us?”

“I'm not sure, but I just crapped my pants,” said Mike.

“Seriously,” said Joe, “this is scary.”

“I think we can all agree on that,” said Rafe, rubbing his temples hard, “but what can we take away that's helpful?” He took a long draw on a water bottle.

Anne spoke up. “Well, the fact that Jan writes ‘1491' fits with what's known about the Voynich Manuscript as well as the breviary. No one's exactly sure, but as far as anyone can tell, the Voynich Manuscript was written between about 1450 and 1520.”

“And Buda in that period makes some sense if he were a scholar,” said John. “There was a university there then, and it's right around the reign of Matthias Corvinus, the great patron of art and scholarship. Maybe more importantly, it would have been a way point from Western Europe to the East, either via Russia or, more likely, the Ottoman Empire.” He turned to Anne. “Is there any known connection of the Voynich Manuscript to Budapest?”

“No. The first record we have of it is in Prague in the early 1600s, in the possession of an alchemist named Georg Baresch who studied at the Jesuit Clementium in 1603. Baresch evidently had no idea what it was, as he wrote repeatedly to Athanasius Kircher—another Jesuit, incidentally—who had published a Coptic dictionary and a decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics.”

“A famously ridiculous decipherment,” interrupted John, “but that's hindsight for you. Sorry, Anne. Go on.”

“No problem,” nodded Anne. “We have Baresch's 1639 letter to Kircher mentioning it as a ‘Sphynx' (with a y, yet!) that has been quote—'taking up space uselessly in my library for many years'—unquote. Interestingly, he asked Kircher to solve the cipher, but not the content—which is of course impossible—but apparently Baresch knew or suspected something about the content. Also, he may have acquired the book illegally.”

“Nice,” joked Rafe. “I like my alchemists shady.”

“Now, there once was a faded signature, or inscription, on the first page of the name Jacobus de Tepenec, who's known to be a Czech doctor who received the title ‘de Tepenec' in 1608. So conceivably he owned the book sometime after 1608 and before Baresch, but there's no direct proof of that. One leading theory is that since he got his title from Rudolf II for curing the Emperor of a disease, perhaps Rudolf gave him the book. Or, since it doesn't seem to match de Tepenec's handwriting, maybe someone else wrote his name there at some undetermined later date.”

“My head hurts,” joked John.

“Sorry it's so vague, but that's history,” said Anne. “So Baresch dies, sometime before 1662, leaving the book to one Johannes Marcus Marci, another doctor. The last written document we have from Marci is a letter to Athanasius Kircher dated 1666, which seems to be a cover letter sending Kircher the manuscript along with Baresch's copious notes on the thing. And at this point, the book disappears. Wilfrid Voynich said he found the Marci letter with the manuscript in the library of Villa Mondragone in Italy in 1912.”

Lily tapped her nails on the conference table and said, “So its provenance is almost entirely mysterious. No wonder it has so frequently been held to be a hoax.”

“There is a plausible theory on how it got there, though,” explained Anne, “that goes something like this. Kircher was a professor of mathematics at the Jesuit Roman College. He built up a huge library and collection of objects, artifacts, devices, and oddities of nature, which became known as
il Museo Kircheriano
, the Kircher Museum. Several catalogs of its contents are published between 1680 and 1773. The Voynich Manuscript doesn't appear in any of them. When the Jesuits are suppressed for the second time in 1870, they've been using the Villa Mondragone for about five years. In order to keep Vittorio Emanuele's troops from seizing a lot of the order's books, they mark them ‘private library of P. Beckx,' Peter Beckx being the Superior-General of the order. And, in fact, years later, when Voynich gives the book to the Beinecke, they find exactly this label on it—which Voynich had never mentioned. Kircher's correspondence was also kept at the Villa Mondragone, so it's theorized that the manuscript came into his possession at some point and then travelled with various Jesuit libraries until arriving in the Villa Mondragone, where Voynich found it. It was a boarding school by then, and the Jesuits were secretly selling off some books to restore the building.”

“Okay, so what does this all mean for us?” asked Joe.

“Well, it occurs to me that the connection between the breviary and the manuscript seems to definitively be located with the Jesuit community in Prague. We know the breviary came from a Jesuit captured and executed in Britain. Some of the Jesuits of the English Mission—most famously Edmund Campion—spent time at the Jesuit university in Prague. So I think it's not too much of a leap to imagine that our Jesuit comes to Prague and somehow runs across this snippet of Voynich code and its Tibetan equivalent, which have made it with the manuscript from Budapest to Prague by some means. He jots it down, possibly not even knowing what it was. He goes to England, dies, and meanwhile the original key to the manuscript he used is lost somewhere in Prague.” She paused a moment and shuddered a little with the thrill of antiquarian discovery. “Or maybe it's still there.”

“Neat as that may be, where are we going with this, Anne?” asked John.

“Well, it implies to me that someone somewhere other than the author knew about the book and possibly its contents. So it's entirely possible that our bad guy, perhaps this Monsignor Clairvaux, came by his knowledge of the key through some sort of historical game of telephone, with necromancer passing it down to necromancer. And for the first time in, what, four or five hundred years, someone knows where both the book and the key are.”

“What bothers me,” said Rafe, “is what he wants it
for
.”

“I just hope to crap it doesn't have to do with Hüsker Dü, or whatever his name is,” said Mike grimly.

John looked down at his notes, “You mean Chidag Dü Abaddon-Apollyon, Demon of the Lord of Death, the Angel of the Bottomless Pit? Sounds like a lovely fellow. I mean, just because he's a member of the Apocalyptic-American community, that's no reason to pre-judge him.”