Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu Page 8

  He was a long time talking to Laertes, and soon enough our attacker had lowered his sword and just listened, his face growing longer and longer. They returned to the tomb, then, and Hamlet showed the ranks of empty receptacles and the grotesque bones. That pagan warrior king had been Laertes’s ancestor too.

  And what else he told the man, I cannot know. All that I knew and more. There were things he must have read in his more esoteric researches in Wittenberg and there were the secrets vouchsafed him by his mother.

  And perhaps there was other cryptic lore that came to him when he was out on the water. Perhaps that great spongy mass I thought I glimpsed had come to complete poor Hamlet’s education, that the state of his family sepulchre only confirmed.

  When he was done, Laertes’s desire to kill him had faded, though, from his face, it had been replaced by even darker thoughts. Polonius’s son set off at once for Elsinore and we followed at a distance.

  “He will give out a challenge to me,” Hamlet explained in tones almost carefree. “It will be announced as sport, but they will take it that he means to kill me. I do not think my uncle will shed tears, if he can still shed any.”

  “And then what will you do?” I asked. “You’ll fight him?”

  “He and I will fight,” Hamlet said. “Horatio, you have nibbled at the edges of this business like a mouse. All you need to know is that it will be finished tonight. I am the last of my line, Laertes the last of his, two noble Danish families whose roots go further back than genealogy can possibly record. What if I told you that, where Elsinore now stands, the people of these lands have come to the waters since time immemorial, and made terrible bargains with the sea? But we live in a modern, Christian age, now. Such things cannot be permitted to continue.” And a shudder gripped him. “Though nothing any of us can do may touch what goes on beneath the waves and in the abyss of the deeps. We cannot stop them; perhaps we cannot even slow them. All we can do is show them that we are no longer their collaborators.”

  “I do not know what you mean,” I protested, though it was not true. I had seen enough to guess at it.

  “Do you know they marry the city of Venice to the sea?” Hamlet said wildly. “Aye, it’s commonplace knowledge. Not so the sea-marriage we have perpetrated here in Denmark! But I shall furnish a divorce that even the Pope shall not condemn.”

  What’s more to say? Well, certainly there is the tale I spun Fortinbras, of duels and chalices and poison. And by the time he arrived with his men, I’d already set a torch to the bodies, just as Hamlet had instructed me. And well I did, given the irregular form of some of the corpses. But what actually transpired within Elsinore’s halls that night, I cannot honestly vouch. I know that Claudius was slain, and Gertrude too, who knew more about the matter than any mortal should. Some others of the court I found dead, mostly by the blade. All were of the older Danish families – nobles and their ancestral retainers alike. The remainder, guards and servants come to the castle within the last generation, had fled its walls.

  In the central hall, where Claudius stared glassily at the ceiling from bulging dead eyes, I found Laertes, run through. I do not know if it was by his own hand or by another, but there were footprints in the blood that could only have belonged to my friend.

  I followed them, expecting at any moment to find his corpse laid out, for surely some of that blood was his. His halting steps led, however, to the battlements.

  There, I was confronted only by the waves crashing against the rocks below, and the great roiling swell of the ocean beyond, and so in truth I cannot say what happened to Hamlet, my friend from Wittenberg. It is a strange thing, that the very best I can hope for is that he dashed himself to death against the rocks. Any other outcome would represent a victory for the forces and powers that he was fighting against. And yet they were within him. Who knows what they might have whispered to him, in those last moments? Who knows if, in the face of death, his resolve might not have crumbled?

  But Fortinbras never knew, and did not count the bodies. He accepted what I told him, because it served his purposes and because he was a simple man.

  And that was many years ago.

  And now I am an old man, and I tell you this before I travel to Elsinore one last time. The peasants there are restless. There are rumours, just as there were before, of something seen out to sea. The least credible of them swear it bears the face of the old royal line, that was so tragically cut short back in my youth. I think they are just superstitious peasants and fishermen who would take a seal or a dead fish for Our Lord Jesus Christ if they had drunk enough, but there are other possibilities that I strongly wish to be able to rule out.

  And so I will be on my way, if you would pass me down that crossbow from the wall. Because, if something is still rotten in the state of Denmark, then I may be going to meet my oldest, dearest friend from university, and it is fitting that I bring an appropriate gift.

  Once More Unto the Breach

  C L Werner

  Darkness clung close to the French countryside, the night as heavy and black as any the young King had ever witnessed. The dull glow of campfires seemed but the feeblest defiance of that darkness, the impertinence of mortal blood against powers and principalities old beyond reckoning. The voices that rose from the tents of the English were less than whispers, humbled and subdued by the weight that bore down upon them. By contrast, the sounds arising from the French encampment fell upon his ears like the rumble of an angry sea. Song and laughter, the clamour of armourers pounding rivets into plate, the equine cries of destriers with the smell of battle in their noses, sometimes the haunting tones of a murmured Latin prayer.

  Henry could see the fires of the French camp, blazing away beyond the shrouding darkness. They were vast and monstrous, betokening a force almost beyond measure. Well did his adversary, Charles d’Albret, Constable of France, appreciate the disparity between their armies. There was no need to conceal the enormity of his host, for by displaying the overwhelming superiority of arms the French enjoyed, Charles d’Albret hoped to take the heart from the English even before battle was joined.

  Certainly the display had shaken the English King’s confidence. Only a short time ago Henry had led his troops through the broken walls of Harfleur, rallying them to stir themselves for a final effort to capture the town. Through the breach they’d won a grand victory against the French, but now Henry appreciated just how much that victory had cost him in the end. The siege of Harfleur had taken too long, worn away too much of the fighting season. To spare his army a winter spent in enemy territory, he’d intended to withdraw to Calais. Instead, he found himself caught in the jaws of a French trap. Charles d’Albret had guessed his route of march and intercepted the withdrawing English near the village of Agincourt.

  Henry hugged the long cloak Sir Thomas Erpingham had thrown over his vestment as a guard against the October chill. His hand touched the glove he’d thrust beneath his belt. A rueful smile pulled at his mouth as he thought about how he’d come to possess that glove. Unrecognised in his cloak, he’d joined conversation with three of his soldiers. The loyalty they’d expressed, their faith in their King, had moved him greatly, but at the last he’d provoked the ire of one Michael Williams when stating that their liege wouldn’t allow himself to be ransomed should he be captured. The disagreement had ended in a challenge of honour should the two of them survive the morrow’s battle. Henry had exchanged gloves with Williams as token of their arrangement, putting the soldier’s glove under his belt while the commoner stuffed the King’s beneath his cap of boiled leather. So fierce had been Williams’ manner when it was suggested that his King should die in battle that Henry wondered what the soldier would say if he knew it was the King himself he’d challenged.

  Such brave, bold and honest men! Henry felt pride that he could inspire loyalty from such as these. Yet with that pride came a terrible sense of guilt, for he’d led them into a conflict that was hopeless. The Constable of France had assembled an army m
any times that of Henry’s five thousand archers and seven hundred knights. The French horde was larger by orders of magnitude. Scouts from the English camp had reported their foe was five, ten, even twenty times their strength. Nor was it peasants and mercenaries who marched under the banner of Charles d’Albret, but thousands of French nobles arrayed in the finest armour and riding the most magnificent warhorses. There was no question in Henry’s mind the tactics his enemy would employ. Despite several defeats at the hands of the English over the years, the French stubbornly insisted upon massed charges of lance-armed knights to carry the day for them. In better circumstances, such awareness of his foe’s intentions would have emboldened the shrewd Henry. Now, all they did was provoke a sense of impending doom.

  The French were too numerous to rout, too well armoured to stave off from a distance. The English forces were weary from their long march across northern France, and many were sick with contemptible afflictions. Though their hearts and spirits were staunch and defiant, they lacked the strength to seriously oppose the Constable of France. Only a miracle, an act of almighty God, could carry the day for the English. Henry had begun his campaign against the French certain of his divine right to these lands that had been wrested from the English crown. Now he was plagued by uncertainty. Was his claim just? Who was he after all, but the son of an usurper? Was this sorry end God’s judgement against those who’d stolen the crown from Richard II?

  The rustle of something moving through the brush snapped Henry from his thoughts. His hand sped from the glove tucked into his belt to the dagger hanging from it. His eyes struggled to pierce the darkness. Faintly he could make out a figure moving among the trees. “Who is there?” he called out in French.

  The reply was rendered in accent so barbarous that Henry had a hard time making sense of the words. “One that would offer service to a king,” the figure answered. Beyond its brutish inflection, the voice had a repulsive quality about it, like the scraping of a snake’s belly across a gravel path. Without realising it, the King found he’d drawn the dagger, clenching it tight in his fist.

  “Are you Frenchman or Englishman?” Henry demanded. He knew the question was foolish, for such a loathsome voice never issued from either French or English tongue. “Come forward and show yourself.”

  The figure stepped out from the darkness. Henry was surprised to find himself looking upon a man wearing a leather hauberk and a helm of cuir boulli, his leggings tattered and stained, his boots worn and scratched. The features were rough and weathered, the face of a professional soldier. In aspect, the man was alike to the soldiers Henry had so recently spoken with. It was something less tangible that set the King uneasy, something that offended him at a level far more base and primal than reason and sense.

  The soldier bowed before Henry. “I’m only a humble man, sire, but I offer service to you.” Again, the words had that primitive intonation that made the King’s ears feel unclean to hear them.

  “Your bow will be called upon on the morrow,” Henry told the man. “Or if you have no bow, then there will be work enough for your sword.” He moved to turn away from this strangely repugnant soldier when the man caught at the hem of Erpingham’s cloak.

  “The service I offer is worth a thousand bows, a thousand swords.” The man waved his hand towards the distant fires of the French camp. “No arms can win against that.” A crooked smile worked across his face as he looked up into Henry’s eyes. “You need a miracle, sire.”

  Henry would have laughed at that, but his humour faded when he considered that only a moment before his own thoughts had taken a similar turn. “Are you selling miracles?” he wondered.

  The strange soldier straightened. “If you will forsake scruple and honour, there is a way to ensure your victory. How much do you want to triumph over the foe?”

  Henry stared at the man, an almost superstitious dread gnawing at him. Somehow he felt this soldier could do exactly what he promised. The prospect frightened him, conjuring images of the Devil and the awful price paid by those who entered into compacts with the Infernal. Yet, at the same time there rose into his mind the responsibility he bore. The fortunes of not only his army but also his kingdom depended upon the morrow.

  “Follow me,” the man said, seeming to sense the King’s uncertainty. “It is not far. You will see, and then you can judge for yourself if you have the courage to lead your army through to victory.”

  Reason roared its warning through Henry’s mind, urging him to be quit of this man, to shout for his soldiers to seize him. But a strange fascination held the King in its grip. He was transfixed, held like a bird staring into the serpent’s eyes. When the man withdrew into the shadows of Tramcourt woods, Henry followed after him, slipping past his own sentries as he pressed on through the brush.

  The threat that he might be walking into a trap shouted at him to return to the English camp as he moved deeper and deeper into the forest. Spies had informed Henry that the Count d’Alencon had sworn to kill the English king or forfeit his life in the attempt. The count was known as a man whose bravery was only eclipsed by his cunning. Was this some subterfuge of his design? Even if it were, Henry found he was unable to resist the uncanny lure that drew him onwards.

  The strange soldier finally came to a stop, standing in a little clearing deep within the wood. Henry half expected to see d’Alencon and his knights erupt from the underbrush but even when he stepped out into the open, such an ambush failed to manifest. Instead the man he’d been following dropped to his knees and began pushing leaves and branches away from a spot just a few yards from the middle of the clearing. As the man moved away the dead foliage, Henry noted for the first time the weathered grey stones that lay half-buried in the grass and dirt. There was something about them that seemed too orderly to belong to any natural formation, yet at the same time he found himself unable to decide what part such curiously angled stones could have played in any construction.

  That they belonged to a ruin was soon undeniable. The soldier’s labour had exposed a rough stone slab in which an oaken trap-door had been set. Curling his grubby fingers around the metal ring fastened to it, the man drew back the door and revealed a series of steps. Henry could make out only blackness below.

  “Only a little farther now,” the man said. “Don’t let your regal spirit falter now, my liege.”

  Henry directed an angry glower at the impudence of the man, his anger all the worse for the accuracy of the taunt. He had felt a tremor of fear pass through him, primal and terrible. A nameless sense of repulsion had seized him, something that reached down into his innermost being with loathsome violation. He wanted nothing more than to be quit of this feeling, to flee from whatever had provoked it. Kingly pride restrained him. Henry was of royal blood. Where lesser men quailed, he would stand defiant and resolute.

  The strange man smiled and gestured to the steps. Preceding the King, he descended into the earth. Henry tarried only a moment, then followed after the soldier. The dagger was in his hand. If there was an ambush waiting for him, his betrayer at least wouldn’t live to boast about it.

  Darkness and the electric reek of a thunderstorm closed in around Henry as he descended the steps. His guide had become just a shadow ahead of him, more a suggestion of motion than anything of shape or form. The King felt an impression of hideous loneliness press down upon him. Almost he would have welcomed d’Alencon and his assassins; anything to dispel the terrible isolation that gripped him.

  Suddenly there was light. A green flame flared into gibbous luminance. By its eerie light, the vault into which he’d walked was revealed to Henry. The chamber was hoary with age, the stone walls and floor betraying the same atmosphere of grisly antiquity that had clung to the rubble above. The room was neither square nor circular, but a disorienting jumble of sharp angles and convex curves, some trick of light or construction making their uneven contours seem endowed with multiple properties at once.

  The King hurried to turn his gaze away from the wal
ls to the accoutrements strewn about the crypt-like hall. A splintered table groaning under the weight of alembics and pestles, glass bottles and copper tubes. A grubby shelf trembling beneath vellum-bound tomes and mouldy scrolls. Tangles of dried herbs and shrivelled weeds hung from the ceiling while desiccated animal carcasses lay stacked in one corner, odd bits and pieces trimmed from their mummified remains. Across the floor, cabbalistic symbols had been drawn in chalk and blood, circles and pentagrams bound with strange letters and hieroglyphs.

  Henry felt a chill run down his spine. Sorcery! The revelation didn’t surprise him, but to have his suspicions confirmed was still an unnerving thing. When he looked back at his companion, his unease was only magnified. The green light was emanating from the man’s outstretched hand, spilling from it in ghostly ropes of mist.

  The wizard grinned at Henry’s alarm. With a flick of his hand he sent the ghostly light spinning towards the ceiling, leaving it to cling there like some glowing growth. He turned from the King and moved deeper into the room. As he did so, the glamour that had concealed him evaporated. No more was he the strange soldier arrayed in the style of the English yeomanry. His frame became taller, more twisted, his skin lightening into such a pallor that Henry was reminded of a frog’s belly. The hair became a mane of snowy cobwebs, falling about the wizard’s shoulders in matted clumps. The face was lean, the nose long and hooked like a vulture’s beak. The eyes were vicious red pits, recalling nothing so much as those of a starving rat.

  Henry had never seen a man who evoked such disgust as this sorcerer. Despite his tall, gaunt frame, his proportions were squashed and malformed, like some monstrous dwarf swollen into the semblance of a giant. There was something diseased about that pallid flesh, something far more unclean than the taint of any leper. Every motion, every breath that stirred the wizard was wrong, a violation against nature itself. Strange undulations, hideous suggestions of motion that stirred beneath the mantle of uncured animal skins the wizard wore made Henry dread what further abominations lay hidden from his eyes.