The Cthulhu Encryption (16 page)

“Who told you that Jack Taylor was a bad man?”

“Oberon.”

Again, Chapelain looked at Dupin; again, Dupin shook his head.

“What became of your father, John Taylor?” Chapelain asked.

“He sailed for the South Seas. He never came back.”

“Why did he sail for the South Seas?”

“To seek protection.”

“Protection from what?”

“Angria—and the ghost.”

Dupin raised his eyebrows at the mention of the name Angria, but did not attempt to deflect Chapelain from his course

“What ghost?” Chapelain asked.

“The ghost from the ghost-ship.”

There!
I thought.
I knew that it was relevant. I knew that there had to be a ghost-ship in this somewhere
.

“Whose ghost was it?” Chapelain hazarded.

No answer.

Another glance; another shake of the head.

“When did your father sail for the South Seas?”

“In 1731.”

“When you were eight years old?” Because Saint Sylvester’s Day is New Year’s Eve, she could only have reached her ninth birthday on the very last day of that year, so Chapelain’s arithmetic was accurate.

“Yes.”

“Were you left alone with your mother.”

“My mother was dead. I only had my ayah, and the Mahatma.”

The Mahatma in question was presumably the original after whom she had named Leuret.

“Did you have any brothers or sisters?”

“No.”

“Who took responsibility for you?”

Silence. Either she did not understand the question, or could not answer it. Dupin made a hand-signal to Chapelain

“When did you first go to Karla?”

That was the first question that seemed to disturb her. It surprised me too, even though I had heard her mention the name before. Dupin and Chapelain were obviously trying to draw upon everything she had let slip.

“I don’t remember,” was he answer she eventually gave. Presumably, she had been too young have any awareness of the date, or even her age.

“When was the last time you went to Karla?” Chapelain persisted.

“Before Oberon came.”

“How old were you then?”

“Twelve.”

“When did you leave India?”

“When Oberon took me away.”

“And how old were you then?”

“Twelve.”

“Where did you go?”

“To Oberon’s home.”

“What port did the ship sail to?”

“Le Havre.”

“And by what means of transport did you leave Le Havre?”

“A diligence.”

“Bound for where?”

“Caen.”

“Did you stay in Caen?”

“No.”

“Did you take another diligence?”

“Yes.”

“Bound for where?”

“Rennes.”

“Did you take another diligence from Rennes?”

“No.”

“Did you stay in Rennes?”

“No.”

“Where did you go, after Rennes?”

“To Oberon’s home.”

This time, Dupin had to reach out with his free hand to touch Chapelain’s arm and attract the mesmerist’s attention to his head-shake.

“Did Oberon have another name?” Chapelain continued.

“Yes.”

“What was it?”

“He sometimes called himself the Ancient Mariner.”

“Did he have any other names?”

“Yes.”

“What were they?”

“He once called himself Captain Nemesis.” This was becoming frustrating.

“Do you know the name with which he was baptized?” Chapelain demanded, trying to focus on the datum he wanted.

“He was never baptized.”

“Do you know the first name he had, before he became Oberon, or adopted any other nicknames?”

Silence. Again, she did not understand, or could not answer.

“How old were you when Oberon made you Queen of his Underworld?”

This time, her face seemed to light up slightly.

“Thirteen,”

Thirteen!
I thought.
That was when she had her fatal romance with Tristan de Léonais. In 1736, if her chronology can be trusted!
I did not suppose for a moment that her chronology
could
be trusted, objectively, although I was quite prepared to believe that she was not lying, and that she honestly imagined that she was well over a hundred years old.

“And how long were you queen?”

“A year and a day.”

“Where did you go when you left the Underworld?”

“Paris.”

“And when did you arrive in Paris?”

“During the Revolution.”

“The Revolution of 1789?” said Chapelain, obviously surprised by the chronological inconsistency.

Mesmerized subjects do not usually respond to rhetorical questions, but Ysolde was an exception to the rule.

“No,” she said. “The July Revolution.”

The July Revolution had taken place in 1830, but this time Chapelain made the effort to swallow his incredulity.

Briefly slipping into the role of Thomas Linn the Rhymer, I was not surprised. According to folklore, a year and a day spent in fairyland can easily be the equivalent of a century in the mundane world. I carried out a rapid operation of mental arithmetic. If Ysolde had been thirteen when she went into Oberon’s Underworld, she must have been fourteen when she came out, which meant that she was now, in terms of lifetime elapsed, thirty years old. Not nearly as old as she looked, in fact—but syphilis is a cruel disease, and if she had been walking the streets of Paris since 1830, she was fully entitled to look a great deal older than she really was…if
really
actually meant anything, in this context.

Chapelain changed tack. “Ysolde,” he said, “Have you ever heard the name Cthulhu?” He tried to pronounce the word as Dupin had, but did not quite succeed in emphasizing every one of the name’s seven elements as if it were a distinct syllable. The attempt was good enough, though; she knew what he meant.

The light in her eyes became strangely feverish.

“Yes.”

“Where did you first hear the name?”

“In Karla.”

“How old were you then?”

No answer—too young to remember, probably.

“Are you aware that there is an inscription on your back?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know how it was put there?”

No answer—perhaps because the question was badly-phrased rather than because she did not know the answer. Chapelain did not attempt to repeat it, though.

“How old were you when was it put there?” he asked, instead.

Again, no answer. Very young, presumably.

This time Chapelain risked the direct approach. “
How
was it put there?”

“By magic.”

“Has it always been visible?”

“No.”

“When did it become visible?”

No answer.

Chapelain tried again: “When did you become aware that it was visible?”

“While I was in Bedlam.” She obviously meant Bicêtre, but I was surprised by her substitution of the English slang term, which she must have known and used habitually before she committed herself to Leuret’s care.

“Do you know what the inscription means?” Chapelain, persisted, doggedly. I knew, before he had even completed the sentence, that it was a mistake…that these were questions he ought not to be asking, no matter how much Dupin wanted to know the answers. He was stirring up something that would be better left undisturbed—but if he realized that, it was too late.

Suddenly, the sick woman was in desperate distress—but not because she was waking up. I think she actually tried with all her might not to answer the question, but she was in a mesmeric trance and was not the mistress of her own ill-treated flesh. She tried to remain silent, but she failed. It was, however, another voice—I am morally certain of it—that used her poor sore lips to say, or rather screech:
“Ph’nglui mglw’nat Cthulhu R’laiyeh wgah’ngl fhtaign.
”

When she had pronounced the formula before, in Bicêtre, it had not seemed to have any manifest effect on our physical surroundings, although it had clearly disturbed the other patients on the ward. That had been a very bleak and rather gloomy room, though, and the awful fecal stench had drowned out more subtle sensory indications.

Now, we were in a pleasant, if slightly Spartan room, and the daylight, though no less grey, was coming into the room from a better direction at a more kindly angle. It would have been even brighter had I not been blocking it partially with my upper body. When Ysolde pronounced the formula, though, it seemed to me that the daylight
blurred
, that the room became distinctly chillier, and that there was a distinct whiff of rotting seaweed in the air. It might have been purely subjective, of course—an echo of the horror and terror of the night before.

If Chapelain noticed any change in the ambience, he did not react. Nor did he stop following his script. Instead, he said: “Those are only the first six lines of the cryptogram. Do you know the seventh?

“Nobody knows the seventh,” she replied. “It is only to be pronounced in cases of the direst need. Angria judged that I would never need it, and should not be trusted with it.” She was speaking in her own voice again, but she had become suddenly loquacious, in a way that obedient somniloquists were not supposed to do.

I knew that something was wrong—that among the things we did not know about her history there was something that made it dangerous to inquire about it. This time, Chapelain was puzzled, and looked at Dupin for guidance. Dupin pointed to her hands, still clasped around the medallion, holding it pressed to the top of her sternum.

“Do you know the purpose of the cryptogram on the medallion you are holding?” Chapelain asked.

“Yes,” she said.

Don’t ask her to pronounce it!
My inner voice screamed, although not a whimper escaped my sealed lips.

When Chapelain checked with Dupin, however, the great man’s reply was another insistent nod of the head.

“What is its purpose?” Chapelain.

“To protect me.”

“From what?”

No answer—but she was disturbed again, and a visible frisson ran through her supine body.

I wanted to say “Please stop!” but my tongue seemed to be glued to the roof of my mouth. Dupin was frowning now, though, evidently disappointed and frustrated by the difficulty Chapelain was experiencing in making progress, but also anxious. He refrained from making any signals—but for once, Chapelain was not looking to Dupin for his lead. He had a question of his own that he had doubtless waned to ask for some time.

“Ysolde,” he said, “Do you know where the remnants of the treasure of the
Nossa Senhora del Cabo
are hidden?”

“Yes,” she said.

Dupin looked furious, although I could not imagine why. I had heard him ask her where “the manuscripts” were on his own account. He shook his head furiously, but Chapelain could not be restrained.

“Where are they?” he asked, a trifle breathlessly.

“Some are in the Underworld,” she replied, perhaps predictably—although it seemed to me to be useful information. If the mysterious Oberon who had brought her to France from India had taken her to somewhere near Rennes, then the Underworld, or its entrance, must be in Brittany.

I almost had to pinch myself to remind myself that the woman was dying, and mad, and that everything she thought she knew, about herself and everything else, was the product of pox-induced, or pox-encouraged, hallucination. Even the stigmata, striking as they were, were a product of her fantasy: what Leuret and Chapelain both called a “psychosomatic symptom.” They were bizarre, but not impossible. The incantation was, it seemed, real—but probably only “real” in the sense that it had been written down in esoteric texts, available to be memorized by bibliophiles like Auguste Dupin…and bibliotaphs like Oberon Breisz.

That Breisz knew Ysolde Leonys, I did not doubt. That he had known her while she was a child, I did not doubt. But what he had done to her while she was a child, I could not imagine, and was not sure that I wanted to try. He had saved me from the shoggoth, apparently—but Dupin was certain that Madame Lacuzon’s instincts were sure. If Jack Taylor had been a
bad man
, what was Oberon Breisz?

Again, I tried to remind myself that this was madness, and that anyone who tried to make sense of it was responding to a dangerous lure. I almost wished that Leuret was present, to remind us all that he would have taken a very different approach to the treatment of the dying woman. He would have tried to bring her back to reality. He would also have bought a priest into the ward to administer extreme unction, and hear her last confession, if she were capable of making one.