| Obscure Parodyverse Moments #13: The Heresy of Romance This story continues from Obscure Parodyverse Moments #7: Amnesia, Obscure Parodyverse Moments #8: Monsters on the Loose, Obscure Parodyverse Moments #9: The Black Chapel, Obscure Parodyverse Moments #10: The Cabinet of Dr Morningstar, Obscure Parodyverse Moments #11: Flesh and Blood Obscure Parodyverse Moments #12: I Am John’s Psychosis  The Marquis looked up from his writing and frowned. “I didn’t send for a whore,” he said. Amnesia trembled on the threshold of the lamplit bedroom. She didn’t recognise this place but she knew the face of the Marquis. “I’m not a whore,” she told him. “I wasn’t sent for.” The Marquis look at her again in her filthy ragged tabard. It exposed too much flesh. “Then how did you get here?” he demanded. “You must have passed the guards.” “I… it’s difficult to explain,” Amnesia admitted. “I know this must seem strange, but you have to believe me…” “I don’t have to do anything, nor to believe anything. That’s why I’m locked up here. I won’t do as I’m told.” For the first time Amnesia spotted the bars set into the stone frames of the window. The lobby behind her was sealed with an iron-bound door. The viewing port was fastened shut from the other side. “This is a prison,” she realised. For all the books and luxuries, the fine furniture, the four-poster bed, the roaring fire, it was a prison. The roaring fire reminded her how chilled to the bone she was. She shuddered. “You’re cold,” the Marquis recognised, suddenly seeming more human. He rose from his work and gestured to her. “Come to the hearth. Warm yourself.” Amnesia limped to the flames. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d rested. Time seemed not to matter much anymore in her tormented wanderings. Having shown some humanity the Marquis seemed prompted to other courtesies. “A drink,” he announced, pressing a glass of spirits into her hand. “And put on this robe. Throw your rags on the fire. They smell.” The brandy burned Amnesia’s throat but it revived her. She shrugged the proffered dressing gown around her shoulders, turned from the man, and peeled away her bloodstained shift. It burned on the logs in an instant, as ephemeral as the ghosts of Herringcarp. The Marquis was watching her. He’d returned to his desk and was sat with one hand resting on an astrolabe and the other on an ancient ledger he’d been studying. “You have a story, I think?” Amnesia wrapped the gown around her. It was made for a man, for the Marquis. It smelled of cigars. The quilted silk rubbed against her flesh in a way that was almost lewd. “I don’t know where to begin. I don’t remember the beginning.” “Pick the thing that stands out most in your mind,” advised her host. “I’ve seen you before,” she answered. “Except not as you are now.” The Marquis shrugged. “I’ve met many woman. A few of them have visited me in my confinement. All of them agreed beforehand to try and convince me to recant and behave. Some of them tried very enthusiastically to motivate me to do so.” “I don’t even know who you are,” Amnesia told him. “I don’t know how I got here. But I’ve seen you – or maybe someone who looks like you – in… other places. In torment.” The Marquis shrugged. “The torment will come, I suspect. When they finally lose patience with me and decide to try other means.” Amnesia pushed her hair back from her face. “Who are you, then? What is this place?” “Games?” the handsome young aristocrat challenged. “Be careful. I’m an expert player.” “Please, just tell me.” He assayed a half-smile and refilled Amnesia’s glass. “Very well then. I’m the notorious Marquis of Herringcarp, and I’m a prisoner in my own home for defying the church and blaspheming against God. I’m mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” “Herringcarp! So this is still Herringcarp Asylum?” “Of old this was a monastic foundation that acted as a refuge for the insane,” the Marquis admitted. “Long ago.” “What year is this?” Amnesia asked. The Marquis smiled. “What year would you like it to be? It seems that I should have a turn asking questions; such as your name?” “I don’t remember. I have amnesia. That’s what they’re calling me now. Amnesia.” “A name you make pretty by association,” the Marquis confessed. “And how came you to such dire straights, Amnesia?” The girl baulked for a moment at telling of her confinement as a madwoman. Might not such a thing happen again? “I’ve had some adventures,” she eventually conceded. “Horrors, really.” She began to tremble again. The Marquis sniffed at his brandy glass. “You’ll have to pardon me,” he told her. “I’m not used to company these days. Not real company. Guards and priests and the occasional slut, that’s all. I’m out of practise at the niceties.” Amnesia nodded. “It’s a remarkable situation all round. I have no point of reference for it.” The Marquis reflected for a moment. “What you need,” he decided, “is a bath. No, honestly, believe me. A bath will clean your body, soothe your injuries, and allow your mind time to sort through your experiences. While you bathe I can collect my thoughts, complete the line of research I was undertaking when you suddenly came to me, and determine a future course of action.” “I don’t know…” He gestured to his bed. “If you would be so kind as to hide there, with the curtains shut around you, I shall summon guards with hot water. You may bathe behind the screen there.” It seemed that once the Marquis had a plan he was resolved, because Amnesia soon found herself hiding behind the hangings of the four-poster, then easing herself into the hip-bath behind the Chinese concertina screen that sectioned off the Marquis’ ablution area. “When you saw me before,” the Marquis called to her from his desk, “I trust I was suitably courteous?” “You were, well… you did me no harm,” Amnesia answered, choosing her words carefully. “In fact I wonder if you didn’t help me.” “I’d like to think so,” the Marquis agreed. “It is the duty of every gentleman to attend to a damsel in distress.” Amnesia sponged the filth from her body. Soap and water felt so good. It was like being reborn. “What did you do?” she called curiously. “To get yourself locked under house arrest? What terrible crime did you commit?” “My crime was thought,” the Marquis answered. “Free thought. I questioned the dogmas. I wrote too candidly, spoke too honestly. I dabbled unwisely in politics and made some mortal enemies. Thoughts are what matter. Thoughts are what kill you in the end.” “I… may have heard something similar before,” Amnesia admitted. She forced herself to leave the water and towelled herself dry. The Marquis had provided a comb and a nightshirt and she used both. “But what if I can’t remember my own thoughts? If I don’t know my past I don’t know who I am. What kind of person am I? Good? Bad? Kind? Cruel? Virtuous? Slatternly? How can I relate to the changing world I find myself in if I don’t have anything to hold on to?” The Marquis was waiting for her again as she emerged from behind the screen. “A great improvement,” he judged, admiring her in her white linen. Amnesia blushed. “What now?” she wondered. “I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know how to leave. You said guards…?” “There are soldiers,” agreed the Marquis. “But we have many more mysteries to untangle yet, my lost beauty. There are things that must be uncovered, fathomed, conquered.” “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who to trust.” The Marquis nodded. “May I suggest that you have to start with a leap of faith? Trust me.” “Isn’t that dogma?” Amnesia quipped. “Everybody has to have a moment of weakness sometime. Will you trust me?” Amnesia moved her head in a way that might have been a nod or a shake. “Tell me your story,” the Marquis urged. “What you remember, anyway. Leave nothing out. Come, sit with me by the fire and begin.” Amnesia padded over the rugged floor to sit on a cushion by the roaring hearth. She felt warm and clean for the first time she could recall. The Marquis placed a blanket around her shoulders and that felt safe. He kept his arm around her too. “I’m not mad,” Amnesia told him. “But there was this monster…” The Marquis was a good listener. He heard about the beast, about the asylum, about the madman, about Father Abbot, about the ghosts. He asked few questions, but all were apposite. “I know this sounds insane,” Amnesia concluded, “but it’s not. Please, you have to have faith too. Believe me.” “I believe you,” the Marquis replied. “Your story is insane, but you are not. In your words and your actions as you describe them you are lucid and coherent within the boundaries of a woman facing the incredible. I’m impressed, and I do not impress easily.” “But what does it mean?” Amnesia begged. “Why is this happening to me? What is going on in Herringcarp? How did I come to you, to be here?” Her host considered this. “I think the key was in the words of the cannibal lunatic who slaughtered the priests,” he suggested. “He told you that reality is only what we perceive. That makes sense to me. Change the slightest detail of our past and we change the world.” Amnesia wasn’t following. “And so?” “And so Herringcarp has been a place of madmen and dreamers for hundreds of years. All those ideas, all those perceptions. What if this very place had become fragmented, disjointed in time, compounded of many realities each locked around the thoughts of a lunatic? This Black Chapel might be the very metaphor for the darkest part of the human mind.” “I’m trapped in a metaphor?” “You’re trapped between realities, Amnesia. Perhaps your loss of memory makes you especially vulnerable, or else some circumstance that took your past from you has also led you to this present torment. Each aspect you have seen is another part of the puzzle.” “And you?” Amnesia asked. “Why did I come to you?” The Marquis smiled. “Because every puzzle has a key. Your own self is asserting upon the chaos around you. You created a monster to protects you, brought you to a madman to inspire you; and now it brings you to me.” “To explain it all,” Amnesia suggested. “To comfort you,” the Marquis replied. “To love you.” He leaned over and kissed Amnesia on the lips. His hands smoothed over her shoulders and pressed her hair, bringing her head to him. The contact became passionate. “Don’t…” Amnesia said as he slipped the night-gown from her shoulders. “Shhh,” the Marquis whispered. “Trust me.” Amnesia woke happy from a long deep dreamless sleep. She reached across the bed for the Marquis but he wasn’t there. He was standing to one side so the soldiers could get to the girl and drag her away. “Do to really think I would be so foolish as to fall for your ploys?” he asked Amnesia as she screamed in alarm at the rude awakening and rough handling. “I warned you that I was good at games.” “What are you doing?” the girl cried out, reaching for her lover. “Why have you betrayed me?” “I’ve had what I want from you,” the Marquis replied, turning away to go to his desk. “The information will be most valuable. The rest was… adequate.” “You bastard!” Amnesia shouted as the soldiers tugged her away. “You swine!” “This ploy is concluded,” the Marquis declared. “This round to you, then,” suggested Father Abbot while the guards dragged the struggling Amnesia away to the inquisition rooms. “I’ll see the girl does not trouble you again. Or anybody.” Next: Whispers and Screams (some answers) Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2007 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2007 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
