Euridyce's Lament

by Brian Stableford

  “Right,” I said. “I’ll make a couple of copies later. Now, we have to get to work.”

  “What work?” Tommaso asked.

  “We have to find what the Italian wants to steal. Once we have it, we can make a decision about what to do next.”

  “How are we going to do that?” the youth asked.

  “We’re going to go down to the library, and we’re going to search very carefully through the three crates of books that Monsieur de Toustain left me in his testament. There’s no way to be sure, but weighing up the timing and various other coincidences, the likelihood is that there’s something among them that escaped my attention when I looked through them hastily on the day of their delivery.”

  “I’m not sure that I’d recognize a valuable book if I saw one,” said Tommaso, uneasily.

  “It might not be the book itself,” I said, “but something hidden inside one.”

  “You man a secret message—a cryptogram?”

  I suspected that the only books Tommaso and Lorenzo had ever read, at least outside the classroom, were vulgar thrillers. They had probably been as good a training as any for the vulgar thriller that he and I now seemed to be living.

  “Something like that,” I agreed.

  We went down to the library and I showed him the three crates. “Let’s take the books out one by one and leaf through them,” I said. “If you see anything that seems unusual, let me know.”

  I assumed that I would have to check them all myself eventually, but he needed something to do while I worked. The kindest thing might have been to put him to bed, but it wasn’t that late yet, even though he must have had a hard day.

  “I don’t suppose,” I said to him, by way of making conversation, “that you’ve ever heard mention of the Cult of Dionysus?”

  “As it happens, I have,” he said. “Father says they’re the scum of the earth, and ought to be exterminated.”

  For the second time that day, my jaw had to resist an almost-irresistible temptation to drop. “Lord Dellacrusca told you that the Dionysians are the scum of the earth?” I queried.

  “Well, no,” Tommaso admitted. “He didn’t exactly tell me. In fact, he didn’t know we were listening. It was one of his secret meetings. He’s always having them. We used to make every effort to listen in, secretly, but it wasn’t worth the trouble. They were always boring—incomprehensible, for the most part. The only interesting thing, really, was that his club is at daggers drawn with the other one you just asked about. And I don’t mean daggers drawn metaphorically—I mean that it’s a real feud, murders and all.”

  I presumed that he was exaggerating, but even so… Dellacrusca, an Orphean! Not, I presumed, in any religious sense—if ever there was an utterly godless man it was Dellacrusca—but in the more modern sense that the “cult” functioned as a kind of conspiratorial elite, dedicated to securing and holding on to as much political power as possible by the occult mans available to them; which, in their case, presumably meant stilettos and skullduggery rather than prayers and incantations. I recalled that Jean-Jacques had been certain about the continued existence of the Cult of Orpheus, even though he had been dubious about the survival of its legendary rival. If he was aware of some presence on the island…could that possibly explain why Dellacrusca, Alectryon and their cronies in the Peerage had taken to vacationing here? Were they holding meetings of what Tommaso called their club?

  “That Dionysus fellow was supposed to have murdered one of theirs,” Tommaso explained, helpfully, “but it was way back when, before Julius and the Empire. I don’t think it’s a real vendetta—just jockeying for lucrative posts in various administrations. There are more than two sides in that competition, on course, but the only ones that Father’s friends really hate like poison are the Dionysians.”

  That didn’t seem to me to be good news, given that the rumor seemed to be oozing around that the pseudonymous Toustain had been a secret Dionysian, and that I was one too. But if that was why someone wanted to rob me, it was hardly likely to be an Orphean who’s tried to hire the Dellacrusca twins covertly to help him do it—not if Dellacrusca was himself an Orphean. On the other hand, if Dellacrusca was active in the political wing of whatever secret society considered itself to be keeping the Orphean torch alive, it didn’t seem quite so ludicrously unlikely as it had when I had scoffed at Niklaus Hylne’s suggestion, that the Marquis de Mesmay might be an Orphean too, and that his interest in possessing a symbolic triptych wasn’t purely that of an art lover.

  “Merdre,” I said, suddenly overcome by the suspicion that I might have accidentally got myself into the middle of a contest whose crossfire might be dangerous. I cursed Toustain for his seeming generosity. What on earth had he been thinking? Had he realized that his real identity was bound to leak out after his death? Had he wanted to prevent whatever it was he was hiding from going up for auction with the rest of his worldly gods? If so, then why not simply bury the damn thing? Why drop it into my lap, without warning?

  But I was getting ahead of myself. It was all wild conjecture. There might not be a single word of truth in it—apart from the overheard remark that Lord Dellacrusca had made about the Dionysians, which might only mean, now I came to think about it, that he was a high-ranking member of the Emperor’s secret police, dedicated to wiping out all conspirators, of whatever notional stripe. That seemed more plausible, on reflection. It was far easier to believe in Dellacrusca as a secret policeman than an Orphean… except that appearances, as Niklaus Hylne had scrupulously pointed out, can be deceptive, especially when people are trying hard to deceive...

  There was, after all, no contradiction in terms in thinking that Dellacrusca might be the leader of the secret Cult or Orpheus as well as the province’s political police, and one could even argue that it might be a convenient functional combination.

  In the meantime, I was going through the books as carefully as I could. There were no pieces of paper slipped between the pages. The books were all relatively recent, none more than a century old and very few more than half a century. There were dozens of books on religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Druidism, Mithraism, and the syncretized rites of Zeus-Jupiter-Amon and Minerva-Athene-Isis as well as the Greek Mystery Cults, but as I’d told Niklaus, they were all scholarly histories and commentaries, or popularizations of such studies for general readers. There were a handful of supposedly sacred texts, but nothing esoteric. Some of them were handsome volumes, with fancy binding and high-quality engravings, but they were just trade editions, easily purchasable even on the island, where almost all of them seemed to have been acquired. There were other history books, including some on the history of art and architecture, and a few works of philosophy, science and geography. No fiction or poetry at all. Some of the texts were in Italian, but most were in the vernacular.

  “There’s nothing here,” said Tommaso, after each of us had inspected every single volume. There weren’t that many—only a hundred in all.

  “Seemingly not,” I agreed. I examined the crates in which they had been packed. They were just crates.

  “There isn’t anywhere to hide anything,” said Tommaso. “Except...” He picked up one of the few demi-folio volumes, and weighed it in his hand speculatively.

  “Except what?” I said.

  “Well, the covers are quite thick. If we’re looking for a piece of paper, it might be inside.

  I looked at the binding of the volume carefully. It was, indeed, sturdy, and it was not impossible that there might be an extra sheet between the thin leather surface and the board on which it was mounted—but I checked the spine first, as that seemed to be the likeliest hiding place.

  I checked a lot of spines; there was nothing hidden inside them. If there was anything hidden in the bindings, it had to be laid flat on the board, underneath the surface sheet.

  I checked all the demi-folio volumes, very carefully, and selected out the likeliest candidate.

  “If we’re wrong,” I said, “
we’re about to ruin a work of art.”

  Tommaso didn’t care. “Go ahead,” he said.

  I slit the binding. There was nothing hidden within it. So much for my judgment of likelihood. I slit two more, and only ended up ruining two more works of art. Works of mass-produced art, admittedly, but still, there was an element of uncomfortable sacrilege involved.

  I was on the brink to giving up when I hit gold—or, to be strictly accurate, parchment. It was very artfully concealed, by someone who had gone to a great deal of trouble to do so, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that the likely size of a hidden document had made the demi-folio and quarto volumes far more probable hiding-places than the octavos, a searcher who had no idea what title to look for could easily have gone through three-quarters of the volumes without finding the right one.

  I took the utmost care extracting the piece of parchment from its niche without inflicting any further damage upon it than the slight nick I’d made in making the initial slit. Then I studied my prize.

  “You were right,” said Tommaso, meaning that he thought that he was right. “It’s a cryptogram.”

  The parchment was full of strange symbols—more than a hundred and thirty in total, arranged in sixteen lines—not one of which was recognizable in the context of any written language I had ever seen. They might not have been letters or ideograms at all, in fact.

  “How do we decode it?” Tommaso asked.

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” I admitted.

  “What are we going to do, then?”

  “First of all,” I said, “I’m going to make copies of it—two, at least.”

  “That’s not going to be easy,” Tommaso said. “Those squiggles are very intricate.

  The “squiggles” were, indeed, very intricate—but I’m an artist, and I have a very reliable hand and eye. It would be difficult at first, but as my mind adapted to the script, if it really was a script, my hand would become more fluent. Assuming that I could make do with two or three hours of sleep, as I often do when working with real intensity—successfully, provided that I don’t attempt it too often in the course of a week—I hoped that I could, indeed, make at least two, and perhaps three adequate copies before daybreak.

  “It’s going to take some time,” I admitted to Tommaso, “But I can do it. Then I’d like you to do me a big favor, if you’re willing.”

  “Will it put one over on the Italian?”

  “I hope so. That’s the purpose of the exercise.”

  “Count me in, then.”

  “There might be some risk.”

  “Good.” He meant it. He was giving every indication of spoiling for a fight. Coming here to warn me had apparently been step one in paying the debt of vengeance that he thought he owed his brother, but it wasn’t enough to set his mind at rest. He was wound up, ready for action. It was probably a good idea to give him something to do rather than accepting his offer to help me “hold the fort.”

  “I’m not sure that there’s anyone on the island at present who might be able to help unravel this,” I explained to him, “although there are a couple of people that it might be worth trying, and I shall. In the Capital, on the other hand, there are real scholars of ancient scripts. I’ll give you the name and address of one; if he can’t decipher it himself, he’ll surely know someone else who stands a better chance—and if there’s anyone at all who can read it, he’ll winkle him out eventually. You’ll need to be careful, though. Someone’s apparently willing to go to a lot of trouble to get their hands on this. They might not like the idea of copies being distributed hither and yon. I’ll be as discreet as I can be, but if someone with an interest finds out that you have a copy in your possession, and are attempting to decipher it, you might be in danger of something worse than a broken leg. Until we know what this is and who wants it, there’s no way of knowing what lengths they might go to in order to get it.”

  “Tell me where it has to go, and I’ll get it there,” Tommaso promised, firmly.

  “Good,” I said. “You’d better get some sleep now, while I make the copies. The sooner you can make a start in the morning the better. Can you get back to the mainland without delay?”

  “Without anyone but you being any the wiser,” he assured me.

  I was probably the only person on the island who would have trusted a Dellacrusca twin with any kind of delicate mission, especially after what he’d just told me concerning the results of his eavesdropping on his father, but it seemed to be a worthwhile gamble, and it would get him out of the way—which anyone sane person would have wanted to do, given that he was the very model of a loose cannon.

  “I’ll get to work now,” I said. “Tomorrow will be a busy day, given that we can’t assume that your man will be long delayed in getting here. We need to make sure that even if he arrives tomorrow evening, he’ll find that it’s too late to get what he wants, no matter how many bravos and revolvers he has.”

  “You’ll be running more risk than I will,” Tommaso pointed out, scrupulously.

  “Good,” I said. It seemed the least I could say. There are times when one has at least to pretend to play the hero.

  VI. Spreading the Word

  My first visit, the following morning, was to Constable Clovis, who was always up with the dawn, and liked October more than June for more reasons than one. I gave him the sketch, and asked him to show it to his men.

  “You can’t arrest him,” I told him. “He hasn’t committed any crime on the island, and nothing provable in the Capital, but if he turns up here, it’s because he’s bent on mischief.”

  “If anyone spots him, I’ll have him watched,” Clovis assured me, probably glad of the chance to ask something definite of his men, in a season when there was usually something of a lull in the crime rate.

  “He speaks with a slightly odd Italian accent,” I told him. “Possible Venetian.”

  Clovis nodded. He didn’t ask me how I knew about the mysterious stranger; like many of the indigenes, he was half-convinced that I was something of a sorcerer, and I had given him more help in the past than merely making sketches from descriptions given by his witnesses.

  Niklaus Hylne was by no means as early a riser as Clovis, but his manservant was conscientious, and he went so far as to provide me with chocolate and bread fresh from the local bakery while he went to rouse his master and get him dressed.

  Niklaus finally appeared.

  “What is it, damn it?” he demanded.

  I gave him the copy of the mysterious cryptogram.

  “What’s this?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” I told him. “That’s why I’m here. You’ve been swollen up with pride in being the island’s foremost antiquarian since Ragan went to jail, and you contrived to skim off the cream of his collection when it was sold off. Now it’s time to take responsibility. You need to search your books for some clue as to what this is. I’m not asking you to read it—just to figure out what language the symbols belong to, some clue as to how they might contain meaning.”

  “Need?” Niklaus queried, not nearly as willing to pitch himself into the game as Tommaso Dellacrusca or Clovis. “I don’t need to do anything of the sort.”

  “I need to know what this is, and as soon as possible,” I told him. “My need isn’t your need, admittedly—unless you value my respect and friendship. Do you?”

  Niklaus was fully awake by now, and he stared at me hard.

  “Ragan Barling would have jumped at the chance to show me what he could do,” I told him, refraining from adding that Ragan had valued my respect and friendship so much that he had tried to poison me.

  “I suppose expertise carries a certain responsibility,” he conceded, and was quick to add: “Does this have something to do with the Cult of Orpheus… or the other one?”

  “Yes,” I said forthrightly. “It’s the secret that the man who called himself Toustain was hiding. Since that idiot Guillot has let his real name slip, there seems to be something
of a competition to acquire it. You’re the first person to lay eyes on it, except for me, in at least twenty years, perhaps two hundred or two thousand. I’m a painter, not a scholar, so there’s nothing I can do with it. I’m sending a copy to the Capital, but you have a head start. If you can get to the answer before the finest scholars in the world...”

  That was more than sufficient bait to capture his attention fully. He raised the paper on which I’d copies the symbols as scrupulously as humanly possible to his eyes, and peered at them intently.

  “I’ve never seen anything like them before,” he said, although it was hardly news and didn’t help.

  “But you have Ragan’s books now, as well as the ones you spend half a lifetime accumulating,” I reminded him. “If you don’t think you’re up to it, or aren’t interested, there’s one other person on the island I can try.”

  I reached out my hand, utterly convinced that it would remain empty. It did. Niklaus even moved the piece of paper away, in case I tried to snatch it.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “I came to you first,” I reminded him. “You’re my best hope—but if...”

  “All right,” he said, feigning a world-weary compliance. “Since you’re so insistent, I’ll try.”

  “It’s urgent,” I told him.

  “I can see that,” he snapped. “I’ll do my best. I can’t promise anything.”

  I knew that. I left him to it. I had no great hope that he might find something, but he did have the best library on the island now… or the second best, if Hecate Rain’s judgment could be trusted. I was prepared to trust it, at least in the absence of anything more solid.