Frankenstein’s Legions

Printed under Royal license and gracious permission by Thomas Pothecary, bookseller and stationer by appointment. Mincing Lane, London, the Year of our Lord 1835.

PROLOGUES (plural)

‘More wine!’ ordered Ada—but got death instead.

True, Foxglove, her butler, whom she expected to bring the wine, occasionally looked like death warmed up, especially after a night on the tiles or a boxing bout, but he was most definitely numbered amongst the living. Those who answered Ada’s call down the voice-tube couldn’t say as much.

In fact they couldn’t say much at all. Low grade Lazarans were the product of low grade serum which started the heart but would never fire up witty conversation.

They did bring wine though. A bottle of it with which they broke poor Ada’s head.

The bottle contained a fine vintage and when shattered against her skull released the ghost of a long lost Spanish summer. Likewise, the skull it shattered released a ghost of equally fine lineage: the descendent of soldiers and poets mixed with a heady dash of genius or madness.

Her many admirers said that Ada was a blue blood as well as ‘blue-stocking.’ Not so. The deep-dark wine proved a perfect colour match to Ada’s lifeblood as it ebbed away. Both pooled on the writing desk on which they killed her, too free-flowing to be soaked up by the piles of paperwork.

Ada’s calculations for Mr Babbage were quite spoiled.

Wine was Mr Babbage’s downfall too. A single glass (never more nor less) was his invariable habit before retiring for the night, but it had never made him sleep so sound before…

‘Oh dear,’ said the police constable who eventually shook him awake. ‘Oh dear. What a busy bed!’

Through a thick head and eyes prickled by broad daylight Mr Babbage perceived that his bed did indeed seem heavily laden, even more so than when dear Mrs Babbage was still alive. That was another mystery to add to this shockingly late rising and there being a policeman in his bedroom.

The constable enlightened him on the latter conundrum.

‘Your man-servant alerted us, sir. Shortly after delivering your morning tea and Times. And he begs me to inform you that he has quit your service to never return. Likewise all your staff when they saw.

‘Saw? Saw what?’

With curling lip the constable drew back the covers and thus resolved another puzzle. The mattress sagged because Mr Babbage had company.

Two oiled youths, one to either side, smiled invitingly—or as best those revived from death can. They signalled every sign of intimate acquaintance.

‘We—go—again?’ enquired one, in typically Lazaran flat tones. And reached out.

‘Errrgh!’ exclaimed Babbage, and tried to hurl himself from the bed.

‘Too late, sir, I’m afraid,’ said the constable, detaining him. ‘Likewise, I much regret I’m the unbribable variety of officer, so don’t try that malarkey, there’s a good gentleman.’

Babbage was half tangled in the sheets, half still embroiled in the Lazarans’ loathsome embraces. Prisoners of their programming, they called to him.

‘Come —back —to —bed —master…’

Babbage tried to bat them off with his night-cap.

‘I can explain everything, officer!’

But the policeman merely sighed and shook his world-weary head. And Babbage, being an honest man, saw his point.

‘No, you’re right,’ he conceded heavily. ‘I can’t…’

The arresting officer had the decency to look downcast as he took out notebook and pencil.

‘Sodomy’s a hanging offence as well you know, Mr Babbage. Sexual relations with Lazarans likewise. So we’ve really gone to town viz a viz capital crime, haven’t we, sir? But be of good cheer; maybe your—previous—good name—will get sentence commuted to the treadmill…’

There was nothing more to be said. Babbage’s mind was like the calculating devices he sought to construct. Even as he pondered the injustice of it all. Innocent as an angel of any wrongdoing and the victim of a wicked plot, his brain dispassionately processed the new data.

Farewell, house of thirty years and marital memories. Farewell, workshop wherein he’d laboured at machines to make miracles. Most certainly farewell, reputation and government grants towards his project.

Obviously blueprints and prototypes were now out of the question for the foreseeable future, even assuming he didn’t swing. However, perhaps mental computations might still be possible whilst turning a treadmill?

It was no idle question. History hung in the balance that morning in number 1 Dorset Street, Manchester Square, Westminster. The world’s future depended on the answer.

Alone of those present, only Babbage could perceive that. He saw, with a clarity that banished personal considerations like shame and sorrow, precisely what lay at stake. On the one hand stood further same old same old. History at its customary snail’s-pace. On the other a huge shovel load of coal stoked into the fireplace of human progress.

In short, was the Analytical Engine merely delayed or forever aborted?

When that question was resolved, then and only then, Babbage would turn his great intellect towards exactly who’d framed him. And why.

It wouldn’t work out that way. Reality shoulders innocence aside. It has powers of veto over even clever plans laid by clever people.

Mr Babbage was a clever man (perhaps the very cleverest of his Age) but the police constable (who’d barely skimmed schooling) could have corrected him. The difference was that the constable had been around the seamier seams of life. So, in some specific cases, he knew better.

Like about penal conditions for instance. Like how hard-labour and the treadmill left no energy for thinking, let alone detective work. Neither during the long days or at day’s end.

And when each of those of days had done with you there was no margin left for luxuries. No reserves. By the end of the first week Mr Babbage would be doing well to remember his name. One month in and his world would have shrunk down to his resultant double hernia. The treadmill had that focussing effect.

Sad to say therefore, this side of the grave, whoever had done Mr Babbage this ill-turn stood a good chance of escaping scott-free.

But this world is not an entirely cold place. When he was able (which was infrequent), the constable was a kind man. And so he kept his counsel and left Babbage a little while longer in blissful ignorance.

Unlike Mr Babbage, Lady Ada Lovelace didn’t go quietly. She’d no idea that was the done and dignified thing when faced with the inevitable. Her parents were to blame.

Papa, a poet, had scandalised his age (and wife) and so Mama, fearful of feeding the bad blood, fiercely shielded young Ada from all philosophy and liberal arts. Her education being strictly scientific Ada grew to womanhood having never heard of stoicism or noble resignation.

Thus when the Lazaran assassins came into her study Ada fought back in a most unladylike way. A lighted candle thrust in the face saw one off, and bringing the curtains down, pelmet and all, draped two more in a velvet shroud. Meanwhile, Ada shrieked like a banshee and generally made a drama out of a crisis.

Wasted wails and vain tears. From Lord Lovelace to the humblest servant in Horsley Towers, all were fast asleep, as all good people should be in the early hours before a busy day. Even the peacocks in the grounds who might have added their screams to hers dreamt peacock dreams. In short, she was the only living soul about. Unnatural Ada had troubled the silent night with her scribblings once too often.

Finally, the whey-faced Lazarans caught her. One pinned Ada to her desk and another brained her repeatedly with a bottle.

While her spirit and the other assassins fled, the best looking Lazaran stripped off his clothing and awaited developments.

Chapter 1: THEY MARCH BY NIGHT

‘Twenty pound and not a farthing more. Don’t waste breath trying to budge me.’

‘You’re a thief!’ said the solicitor. It demeaned him, haggling in the street like this, a source of amusement to urchins and passers-by, but he knew Babbage’s yard and workshop held material worth ten times that, even at scrap value.

The scrap merchant looked down on the solicitor from a great height of commercial and moral advantage.

‘That’s rich coming from a land-pirate!’ he said. ‘Anyhow, I’m the only ‘thief’ interested in the deal. Take it or leave it.’

He spoke truth: word had got around and a sulphurous taint hung over 1 Dorset Street and all its appurtenances. Offers for the house and contents had been thin on the ground. What respectable family wished to buy an abode where it was a blessing the walls could not speak? ‘Crimes against Nature,’ and ‘Unspeakable necrophilic depravity,’ as the judge had termed them, hardly enhanced property prices

Early hopes for some perfumed confirmed-bachelor house-buyer to appear and save the day went unfulfilled (there was never one about when you needed one). Accordingly, winding up Mr Babbage’s affairs had been a tale of woe and robbery and waste.

The hagglers had to leap for their lives as a hackney cab ploughed through without so much as a ‘mind y’backs!’ or flick of the whip. Arrogant prole-aristocrats!

Then, adding insult to injury, in passing it splashed them with mud and probably worse. Yet the indignity seemed strangely appropriate in the circumstances.

‘Done,’ snapped the solicitor. ‘And I damned well have been!’

Beggars (or buggers) could not be choosers—which was an apt epithet. By the time the solicitor’s fees and reasonable expenses were deducted from the proceeds of sale Mr Babbage might find begging his sole career option once his prison term was done.

The scrap merchant spat into his palm and offered to shake on it. The solicitor shrinkingly brushed two fingers past that general direction.

In went the scrap merchants’ street-arabs. Out in due course and in carts came metal components galore, off to be reused or recycled. A short while before they’d been Mr Babbage’s ‘Analytical Engine’: his hope of immortality and the blessing of mankind with mechanical computers.

So that was the end of that for a century or so.

When the sun set, the columns set out. There was no law against daylight movement, but it was for the best.

The Heathrow Hecatomb: a brutal slab of jerry-built concrete, devoid of the slightest humanising touch. Not even a Royal coat of arms graced the gate, for no one on earth, from high to low, wished their name associated with it.

Happily, Nature’s revenge for the blot on the landscape had a head start due to that careless construction. Rain selectively streaked those parts with excess sand in the mix and drove its fingers in. The Hecatomb’s hard edges were already crumbling. Particles of it dissolved down to whiten the dying grass below.

Accordingly, Heathrow Hecatomb wasn’t going to outlive the great Cathedrals it matched in size—but that hardly worried its begetters. It kept people out and other people (sort of) in, and that sufficed. Aesthetic considerations could go hang—and appropriately enough there were gibbets enough atop the place, gibbets so busy there was a queue for their services.

A moat had been started but never completed: the finished structure’s appearance and contents were found to be deterrent enough. Now the demi-ditch was a dog’s graveyard and rubbish-record of every successive inhabitant. Other than in the depth of winter it stunk to high Heaven and glowed yellow-green in the dark.

So, all in all, the Hecatomb was no adornment to Hounslow Heath! Coaches passing through on the Great West Road put on a burst of speed—or even extra speed.

Because even before the Hecatomb arrived, ‘Heathrow’ had an evil reputation: the haunt of highwaymen and sad wanderers. As the name suggested it was a waste with a road running through it. Few lingered there by night and fewer still with honourable intentions.

Come the Hecatomb in the Year of Our Lord 1823, things soon reverted to business as normal—only more so. The scattered natives (innkeepers and/or misanthropes) barred all doors as dusk fell and then stayed indoors till morning. Highwaymen they could deal with, but now there were stories about escapes…

Unofficial escapes, that is. The regulated kind occurred regularly, as they did this particular night. The Hecatomb’s main doors cracked to spill yellow light onto the heath. There emerged scouts—bona fide human hussars in scarlet and gold—to check the coast was clear. They scattered all over the scene in the interests of thwarting spies and scandal.

Then redcoat infantry—living soldiery with torches blazing—trooped forth to line the first part of the route. It was a sad necessity. Newly Revived recruits sometimes chose their first breath of fresh air as the signal to mutiny, go mad or otherwise malfunction. Recycling body pits awaited them behind the Hecatomb.

Finally, to the tolling of a sombre bell, columns of new Lazarans emerged from the nest; those most complete and with best matched limbs to the fore. Conversely, the more shoddily made ‘Shamblers’ were placed at the back and shot if they could not keep up.

Fife and drum and flag parties proceeded each regiment, manfully trying to add vitality to what painfully lacked it—and to drown out the perpetual groaning.

The Lazarans’ grey uniforms were the least of their differences to the living men shepherding them along. The latter’s pale faces were just the result of lack of sunshine, the former’s the lack of something much more profound.

Down the Great West Road the Legions of the Dead marched to war. From a high window in the Hecatomb their creator watched them go.

At Longford, not a mile off, they were intercepted by emissaries so senior they could stop the column in its tracks. The colonel of the regiment didn’t like that: once you got new Lazarans going it was as well to keep them moving till they grew accustomed to military life.

Yet there was nothing he could do. The seals on the emissaries’ orders left no room for wrangling. The bugle call for halt rang out and most of the Lazarans remembered its meaning.

It was a dangerous moment. The living escorts were ordered to ‘stand ready.’

Meanwhile, the undead looked around and took in what little there was to see. God alone knew what their blank-palette minds thought, for their faces weren’t designed for expression. That quality of serum was reserved for higher grade revivals.

There’d been one occasion—and mercifully only one—when a whole corps had gone berserk and brushed aside their convoy. Acting on herd instinct they’d headed for inhabited areas and it eventually took massed cannon to stop them reaching Hampstead. Army gossip said their commander had been demoted so low he was currently saluting civilians in Shetland.

Praise be, there was no repetition now. Those who’d forgotten the stop signal were clubbed back into line and the ranks redressed with whips. Meanwhile, the emissaries reviewed this guard of no honour.

They picked a few of the best from the front: sturdy near good-as-new revivals, plus some immature specimens from the rear. Ideal candidates to become Ada’s Lovelace’s murderers and Mr Babbage’s bed-fellows. Then the silken strangers left with their selection and that was all the regiment ever knew of it.

The colonel wasn’t favoured with names or explanations: not even a receipt. Old fashioned courtesy was just another casualty of the ‘Forty Year War.’ Government by dictat was something people gradually got used to: a subset of the purely temporary suspension of democracy.

It didn’t really matter. What did matter now, save winning the War and getting through life still vaguely human? Besides, the colonel’s command would have bigger gaps than this torn from it soon enough.

‘March on!’

The colonel rode along the column, brandishing his sabre as encouragement —or something. He studied the Lazarans and they studied him.

‘I don’t know what effect they’ll have on the enemy’ he mused, ‘but by God they frighten me…’

It required a brace of ‘examples’ to be made before the regiment complied but eventually the march resumed.

Half a dozen ‘men’ down even before they’d passed Longford. It didn’t bode well.

Unfulfilled omens. Day two’s tally revealed only a couple had slipped away, off to terrorise the English countryside before the Yeomanry or peasantry hunted them down. Not bad considering.

The only fly in the ointment was a tight schedule. The necessary wide berth of London had taken longer than expected, made sticky by blocked roads. Clouds of cattle and sheep, on their way to feed the War just as the regiment was, were easily dispersed, for animals naturally sensed Lazarans and scattered. The curses of military shepherds were nothing to worry about.

Protesting Christians were more of a trial however. At Runnymede they met demonstrators. When they wouldn’t listen to authority or reason, the colonel had to resort to condign measures.

Shooting Quakers he had no problem with. Canting po-faced types for the most part, though the ladies in their prim bonnets excited not only his charity. It was the Catholics the colonel disliked dispersing the rough way. His Aunt had been a Papist and they suffered enough under the Penal laws as it was.

Still, if people put up barricades—even token flimsy barricades—on the King’s highway, they couldn’t complain when His Majesty’s new recruits were sent in. Which was ironic, considering these were the very same creatures the protest was on behalf of. Shocking scenes ensued.

Why, the colonel wondered, did Lazarans want to rape people when, strictly speaking, there was no point? They were incapable of either pleasure or conceiving children. He sadly concluded it must be something innate in human (or ex-human) nature.

Living troops mopped up any resistance with bayonets and collected the bodies for recycling.

By Kingston the colonel concluded that only forced marches would get them to their ship on time. That meant moving by both day and night and snatched sleep in the saddle for those who needed it. He posted cavalry ahead to warn the natives.

Fortunately, Surrey was mostly heath and sparsely settled once you got past the London sprawl. Very ‘light land’ as surveyors termed it. Local magistrates did a good job and sent word so that minor roads paralleling the main one were cleared. After that, they made good time without further incident.

Though the colonel never knew it, besides the North Downs, where the old ‘Pilgrims’ Way’ brushed the Portsmouth Road, a man ruling an Empire which spanned one third of the globe (though only he recognised his rule) watched them go by.

From a drawing room in Loseley House, a mansion requisitioned from its ancient but ‘unpatriotic’ family, the man trained a spy-glass on the regiment as it shambled through the—now his—hamlet of Littleton. And since no one could see him, he shuddered.

It was imperfect picture in every sense. The elegant mother-of-pearl opera-glasses were not designed for such long-seeing. They gave only a fuzzy image: which given the view was perhaps just as well.

Another thing neither parties knew was that it was from this very regiment the observer had drawn Ada’s assassins and Babbage’s boys. Again, ignorance of the connection was probably for the best and thus bliss.

The peasantry had been recalled from the fields and children from their play. Presently, they huddled behind barred cottage doors and gripped rustic weaponry. The local militia stood to arms hidden from sight behind a barn. No less frightened, the livestock had scented something and crowded against field boundaries as far away as possible. Yet the sun still shone bright, and wayside wild-flowers abounded. Together, their splendid normality almost overcame the affliction traversing Littleton’s narrow lane. Almost.

As the regiment passed his drive the man had his best view of the drab column, glimpsing details right down to paper-white flesh and dead eyes. Accordingly, the opera glasses were set aside.

‘How did things come to this?’ he reflected. ‘It really is appalling!

But that was mere emotion (high emotion by his standards) and therefore unworthy of him or any man. Plus nothing to do with anything. As he’d famously once said (and shocked his audience): ‘Thought is everything—but also leads nowhere.’

No, civilised minds should transcend first thoughts and come to cooler conclusions, thereby building their house on rock (as Scripture so wisely advised). What did he really think about the unnatural horror show parading before his very window? Or, broader still, about the world-as-it-was come to see him in all its glory?

Answer came easy, in the form of another of his infamous epithets, said long before but in a similar death-connected context: ‘It is worse than a crime; it is a mistake!’ Which said it all as far he was concerned.

That settled, the man then chided himself that any old world-class intellect could describe the world. That was the easy bit. The point (and problem) was how to change it.

More difficult still, how could just one individual—even an exceedingly clever individual (such as he)—amend things for the better?

And, of course, have monstrous fun at the same time?

It was a quite a trip for name checks. Another important personage happened to see the new-forged regiment too. They crossed paths with Admiral Nelson, (Lord Merton, Duke of Bronte, Knight-commander of Naples, etc. etc.) as boats ferried him in his capsule to HMS Victory and them to their troopship.

Nelson curled his lip at their wafting stench of serum mixed with decaying meat—though, strictly speaking, in no position to cast stones himself.

In Germania the regiment proved its worth.

A stubborn salient of churned mud and rubble still described on maps as ‘The Prince-Archbishopric of Dresden’ was holding up the French armies. Any breakthrough by them there might lead to the recapture of Berlin for the umpteenth time. Occasion, it was decided, for a rare Allied counter-attack.

Disposed against that were legions of Lazarans (though the Conventionary army more tactfully termed them ‘New-Citizens’), backed by massed French cannon in unassailable positions.

Unassailable, that is, to soldiers with a life to lose. A life which they valued. And families. And souls.

The colonel’s ‘413th regiment of Revived Foot’ had few such qualms. Or if they did, bayonets and barbed-whips overcame them. They rushed the French emplacements and blocked grapeshot with their second-hand bodies whilst live troops manoeuvred and won the battle elsewhere.

So it was worth all the grave-robbing and serum and upsetting Littleton and Nelson after all.

Afterwards, men from the ‘Charon brigades’ went and collected any identifiable bits in order that the glorious 413th might become the glorious 414th.

Accordingly, Berlin didn’t fall for a further fortnight.

Chapter 2: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JULIUS FRANKENSTEIN

The previously mentioned pale face at the Heathrow Hecatomb window kept a diary. The day before she came the diary entry read: ‘Same. Breakfast. Visitor, with menaces. Pretend researches. Drink. Bed.’

Which was essentially it. But to expand:

‘You are at risk of being a disappointment to us, Frankenstein. I tell you in all candour: it does not do to be a disappointment to us.’

The visitor, presumably another Secret Service man, leant back to let his words sink in.

Other senior staff enjoyed a cheroot and coffee after breakfast. It was some compensation for sitting behind steel mesh watching the new revivals relearn to eat. Increasingly however, Julius Frankenstein got hauled over the coals instead.

Yet there was flattery in this. Julius was fairly shooting up the scale of threatening interviews. Slanging matches with local management and ‘final written warnings’ were left far behind. Now there was this nameless man from nowhere, with all the assurance in the world and silky skills to match it.

‘A pity,’ Frankenstein replied. ‘I have significant aptitude in that specialist field. I was a disappointment to my father as he was to his, as I am now to you. It is a family trait polished from generation to generation. However, if my presence is not required…’

The visitor steepled his fingers.

‘I am not a child to be humoured, Herr Frankenstein…’

Indeed not. The visitor was in his seventies if he was a day, though the legacies of a lusty youth still hung around. Particularly in the eyes. As for Julius, he was less afflicted with years but equally steeped in experience.

‘You must know that this is not a post one resigns from,’ the visitor continued. ‘Your current status is a curious one: both a bucket of blessings and the sword of Damocles hang over your head. It is in my power to decide which one falls.’

‘But not in mine to influence the decision.’

The visitor pursed his lips. Julius decided he must have been a fop in earlier days, a dandy about town but with a steely core. Only now the silk and lace contained a withered frame and the man of the world had expanded round the equator.

‘Au contraire, dear sir, au contraire. As the Heathrow Hecatomb’s Head of Research you are very much master of your own destiny. Which you would find out if only we saw some research from you. As it is, at best we get only grade three and four Lazarans from your laboratory: Revivals I wouldn’t trust to make tea. Or look after my library…’

Frankenstein guessed that tea took priority over books in this man’s life by a factor of five at least. The chill between them grew accordingly.

The visitor sensed it, even if he did not understand. He frowned.

‘You must understand, sir, that such mediocrity can be matched by myriad English technicians. Trustworthy technicians. Whereas you possess neither of those admirable qualities…’

Julius Frankenstein looked round the little interview room. It was bare of consolation. Yet he knew full well that if he directed his gaze within it would only meet a similarly bleak vista.

It was open to him to say he’d not asked for the post but had it thrust upon him. But then the visitor would counter he had asked for asylum in England—and got it, which not many did nowadays—and a job besides. A good job, vital to the War effort and his new adopted nation. It was cold and harsh out in the big wide world at the best of times (which this was most certainly not) and he should be grateful for his generous reception. Other nations, even his motherland, would not be so kind: especially those ones who actively sought him. Given his family name, the guillotine was high on the list of likely outcomes should he fall into their hands—once his brain was sucked dry that is.

All true and reasonable, from a certain cock-eyed perspective. So Julius jumped ahead several exchanges to the nub of the matter.

‘I have doubts,’ he said.

He’d said exactly the same thing when much writing and pleading secured him an interview with the Prime Minister. A four hour wait in an overheated antechamber rubbing shoulders with Field Marshals and Admirals secured him two minutes of the great man’s time.

‘I have doubts,’ concluded Julius, at the end of a long chain of argument, briskly stated.

The Duke of Wellington had not interrupted. Indeed, he’d nodded sympathetically and made notes as Frankenstein explained the whys and wherefore of his ‘doubts.’ Then The ‘Iron Duke’ looked up with his cold-as-iron eyes and said he would:

‘Waste no time looking into it.’

A mere Swiss, innocent of the subtleties of the English language, Julius didn’t straightaway understand.

Yet though Frankenstein was foreign he wasn’t deaf. Before the door had even closed behind him he overheard the Duke tell his secretary:

‘I never want to see that man again!’

Julius’ present visitor and the Duke were obviously of one mind. The caller sighed but stoically forged on.

‘We all have doubts from time to time, Frankenstein. Let me assure you that we do. Yet I am no priest or confessor. I have no more power to dispel your misgivings than I have my own. ‘Doubt’ is the lot of mankind until we are admitted beyond the veil. When doubtless we shall see clearly, if you’ll excuse the pun. Meanwhile, we must live with it as best we can. Blame the War, Herr Frankenstein, blame the damn Frenchies if it helps. Meanwhile, make use of the days your eyes are graciously permitted to see. Utilise that gifted brain.’

It was an honest speech, as far as it went, with the menaces well in the background. The best Julius had had so far.

‘I will think on what you say.’

The visitor studied him, undeluded, a stranger to illusions.

‘Hmmm. Well, see that you do but don’t dilly-dally about it. Meanwhile, think of me as a chimney-sweep. There is a blockage and a variety to methods to deal with it. First one tries the simple, gentler, less messy, means; then, if success does not attend, the more robust. Ultimately it is always open to a sweep to just thrust a brush up the chimney to… pop the offending item out of there. And as to where that damned blockage falls: who knows? Or cares? It is of no worth to anyone.’

An unfortunate metaphor. The Hecatomb had a chimney which never rested. Up it went the surplus to requirement body parts, producing succulent smoke and spreading horrified sniffs all over Middlesex.

‘I shall dwell on the simile this very day, Mr…’

The visitor arose and handed Julius his card.

The richly embossed rectangle simply read:

and nothing else. Which said a great deal.

Despite the jostling of his coach heading home, Sir Percy Blakeney jotted a note in Frankenstein’s case file: ‘Matthew. Ch.3 v.10.’ (Which is to say: “Therefore every tree which bring not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.”)

Then, after a brief ponder, he added: ‘One more week. Then, if he’s no use to us, make him no use to anyone else.’

Which was a coincidence. As his last act the day that Blakeney called, Julius Frankenstein added the following to his diary: ‘One more week. If this purgatory hasn’t improved by then, I give myself permission to blow my brains out.’

The seal on that resolution was set by the remainder of his daily routine. After Blakeney left, Julius retired to his office and doodled till his hand hurt. Then, after luncheon (local Heathrow guinea fowl and game-chips), he practised with his sabre for an hour before seeking diversion along the production line.

The architects’ plans had envisaged steam-driven conveyer belts but it proved simpler to have bargain-basement Lazarans crank the wheels. They didn’t require coal or maintenance and when they broke down were readily replaceable: hence no requirement for engineers hanging around. In fact, the whole development of steam-power had languished on that principle. Things stood much as they had since Mr Watt’s brainwave eighty years before. Abundant undead muscle-power removed the need for faltering development and brain-straining invention. Much money had thus been saved—at the expense of innovation.

The Lazarans’ colleagues-to-be came in from the surgeons’ shop stitched up and ready. Julius Frankenstein paused as a fresh batch were loaded on to the line and then cranked into position under the serum spears.

A click as the retainer was freed and a crash as the array fell.

Even now he still winced to see the spears pierce those still hearts. Wasted compassion: without sense there was no feeling. They remained mere retrieved meat from the battlefield and gallows.

Mostly the former today. When Frankenstein forced his eye to notice he saw the remnants of uniforms: a medley of costume from many different dead men.

Already the spear array was being hauled back up by rope, ready for the next set. Frankenstein moved along the line with the primed batch.

In the galvanising tank they had some privacy, if only on practical grounds. If Frankenstein accompanied them in there he would die when they received life.

Even an observation plate was deemed too risky. The frightful electric charge had to be constrained within seamless insulation. Anyway, the shrieks announced when the job was done.

On a whim, Frankenstein threw the switch himself, swatting the trusty-Lazaran aside. Instantly, the air crackled and an ozone aroma annoyed the nose. Behind the tank’s walls screaming began.

Theorists of Revivalist science speculated that rebirth was akin to being ripped from the womb, made worse by greater than new-born sentience. After the calm of the Great Beyond (for all anyone knew) the rush of sensation jumbled with memory was an agony beyond description. Or so those Lazarans capable of speech seemed to convey.

For Hecatomb staff with feelings left, it creased the heart to hear those revivals whose first word was ‘No!’

Frankenstein lingered to see the seals cracked and armed men crowd the door whilst technicians ventured into the cacophony to grade the successes and cull rejects. Their practised eye easily distinguished between those fit only for soldiering or service, and the few that might aspire higher. Some among those could be sold at auction to the public as clerks and body servants, to boost the State’s tottering finances. Any obvious towering intellects would be retained as civil servants, to relieve their living colleagues of routine duties.

Then labels were pinned on as appropriate, settling their new destiny. The useless balance meanwhile got the knife until they lay still again (which sometimes took time and effort), ready for recycling. Finally, all those thought worthy were unstrapped from the line and led away to life anew.

It was believed essential to start as you meant to go to on, and promptly, before any autonomous thoughts developed. The new recruits, confused and complaining, were chivvied into line and then marched off. No-nonsense sergeant-majors awaited them on the Hecatomb’s parade ground.

Whereas back in his private laboratory, itself a miniature version of the Hecatomb’s production line, a bottle of brandy awaited Julius Frankenstein, then supper, then his diary and then bed.

Barring a miracle, one-seventh of his remaining days was gone.

Chapter 3: A DAY IN THE DEATH OF LADY ADA LOVELACE

The day that she came, Frankenstein’s diary would have read:

save that just before bedtime he had another visitor.

Security at the Hecatomb was tight, but skewed towards preventing escape, not invasion. On the whole, the reputation of the place was its best defence against intruders: a bit like the Tower of London or Bedlam.

Even so, there were guards to counter the off-chance of French or Christian saboteurs. Great skill or wealth must have been required to shroud their eyes. Julius put his money on the latter.

‘Good evening, sir,’ said the stranger, in a soft-spoken voice.

His uninvited guest seemed courtly but looked otherwise. A prize-fighter turned flunky was Frankenstein’s wager. Scrubbed-up and instructed in the non-spitting, non-swearing lifestyle when his pugilist prime was over. Most certainly not a Hecatomb staff member.

Frankenstein raised his glass.

‘Good evening to you, dear fellow.’

‘Dr. Frankenstein, I presume?’

Julius felt no great alarm: indeed, he felt no great anything at all lately. His sabre was within reach if need be.

‘You presume correctly, sir. How may I oblige?’

‘Permit me to first introduce myself, sir, and to apologise profusely for the interruption. I would not dream of intruding were not my purpose pressing. My name is Foxglove.’

‘Do you have a calling card?’

‘Not as such, sir, but I do have this.’

‘Foxglove’ drew a pistol from his coat and cocked it.

Frankenstein dismissively waved the aim aside.

‘Fire away and do the world—and I—a favour. My present life holds little savour. Alas, sir, you choose to toot upon a muted trumpet…’

Foxglove accepted it on trust and returned the threat to store.

‘Forgive me, Doctor, but I had strict instructions to start thus. Were it my place to do so, I would have pointed out such considerations hold little weight with true gentlemen. Unfortunately, whilst my employer is a worthy person they are also inclined to be impetuous, even wild, you might say—and especially so at present. ‘Tis in their blood you see, though do not mistake me to imply criticism by it. But I assure you, sir, they have good cause. In those circumstances, might I be permitted to begin again with sweet reason?’

Frankenstein smiled.

‘You may as well,’ he said, ‘since you are here. As a mere foreigner, kept nigh prisoner in this ghastly place since reaching these shores, almost any diversion is welcome.’

Foxglove raised one eyebrow (near the full extent of his permitted emotional range, Julius suspected) in sympathy.

‘I commiserate sir. Nevertheless, that same internationally acknowledged expertise in your field which binds you here is also the reason for our interview.’

Though not the scientist his late uncle hoped (and late father feared) he would become, Julius could extrapolate the present data into an elegant theory.

‘If it’s Lazarans you require, I cannot—indeed, will not—oblige. The black market attracts capital punishment and though, as I state, my current existence holds few charms, neither am I minded to quit life via what you English call the ‘Tyburn clog dance.’ Nor does my moral code permit cooperation. If—and I stress if, sir—I were minded to be helpful I should merely inform you there are alternative sources of supply. Certain depraved surgeons would comply, I’m sad to say. Find one made reckless by drink or debts and there’s your man. Or you could even attempt what I believe is termed a ‘home-bake’…’

Foxglove looked pained by such second-hand crudity.

‘There remains the need for serum, sir,’ he reminded, still courtly.

Frankenstein scoffed.

‘Serum? Bah! The very dogs in the street know that to be just an activated admix of formaldehyde, egg-yolk, alcohol and… ahem, vital seed…’

Still the visitor stuck to his guns.

‘Possibly so, sir. But those same well-informed canines cannot help with the matter of relative proportions. Nor with that ‘admixing’ you referred to. All highly rarefied tasks, I’m told; requiring specialist skills. Not to mention the ‘activation’…’

‘Well, yes,’ conceded Frankenstein, ‘there is that. You cannot afford to get any component wrong…’

So-called ‘half-bakes’ were justifiably the stuff of legend and nightmare. The fortunate among them soon exploded, but others had been known to ‘live’ for years, to the horror of all, including themselves.

Frankenstein recalled himself from reverie.

‘But you need not have penetrated this grim edifice to learn such commonplaces,’ he said. ‘And on that subject, how did you penetrate here?’

‘Sacks of sovereigns,’ said Foxglove succinctly, also conveying decent distaste.

‘Mankind…,’ mused Frankenstein, mostly to himself, ‘how can one fail to love it…?’

‘Indeed so, sir. But not all men are mercenary. I know I am not, for all my failings. Nor, I trust and pray, are you. Reflect, if you will, on what brings me here, at risk of life and limb, not to mention terror. For I am bound by ties of loyalty and gratitude. Were it not so I would be far away and in safety and comfort. As it is, I have lost all: home, position, good name, everything but honour, to be here to speak to you. Concede then, that some men act unselfishly for the good…’

Frankenstein waggled his hand.

‘My Father believed thus,’ he said. ‘And his brother, the most famous or infamous of my family once believed thus. As for myself, I waver. However, pray continue…’

‘My instructions,’ said Foxglove, ‘prescribe pleas and promises of enrichment should threats fail. Monstrous enrichment…’

Again, Julius just waved the prospect away. Mention of monsters was not a happy choice of phrase, and nor was gold a starting motor in him. The visitor perceived both mistakes and quickly moved on, guided by the light of instinct.

‘However,’ he said, ‘I will dare to disobey and skip such sordidness to ask one thing, and one thing alone, of you: will you meet my patron? She waits on the Heath.’

Bedtime and a restart of the grey cycle was the only alternative. Frankenstein shrugged to signify ‘why not?’

Normally, Frankenstein needed written permission to visit the Heath, but the same sovereigns that got Foxglove in now let Julius out. They also hired him a cloak of invisibility and mini holiday from the Hecatomb. Outside, a carriage awaited with a passenger inside.

As greying twenty-something women went, Foxglove’s mistress was worth seeing: some might even say she was attractive. Necrophiliacs especially. That face, though pointy-nosed, might once have been thought piquant and pretty. However, Julius Frankenstein had met enough dead people for one day (and lifetime).

He withdrew from the coach-window. The ice packed round its sole inhabitant made the interior appropriately tomb-like. In passing, he noted the rich livery and scrolled ‘L’ painted on the door. Some faint association stirred but couldn’t get to its feet to introduce itself.

‘Well,’ Julius told Foxglove, acidly, ‘it was perfectly… average to make her acquaintance. We really ought to do this a lot less often…’

The servant remained charmed.

‘She has — had — her father’s likeness,’ he reflected, drawing on happier memories. ‘He was a loveable rogue —though I grant the balance between the two qualities varied vastly. Of course, presently you cannot note the family wild eyes…’

‘No indeed. ‘Tis the practice to close them when laying out a corpse.’

He instantly repented of his sarcasm when he saw Foxglove shudder. His loss was too recent for levity.

‘You are taking a risk here,’ Frankenstein added out of charity. Heathrow is not safe at night even for armed coaches, whereas you are but one man and a cadaver. Doubtless, you also bribed the sentries to shield your vehicle and… cargo, but it will soon come to notice. Be on your way and give her decent burial. The old adage is trite but true: grief yields to time…’

For a second, Julius thought he’d gone too far and Foxglove was reaching for his gun again. Happily, before Frankenstein had his response underway a letter was produced instead.

‘Read, I beg you…’

Julius looked back to the looming Hecatomb. If any director should see, or an unbribed guard betray him, there would be need for explanation and written reports. He bit his lip in indecision.

Foxglove was more subtle than he looked (not that that was saying much).

‘The night is long, Doctor, but my lady’s message short…’

That played upon the right strings. And he saw that it was personally addressed to him.

Julius broke the seal and unfolded the missive.

At top were two impressive coats of arms, embossed and in colour. Then a bold hand took only a few lines to cover the whole page with confident script, richly expressive of the author. It flowed wastefully free over on to pages two and three.

Julius Frankenstein didn’t even have to think. Now they were talking! Why didn’t they say so in the first place?

Geo. Washington: ‘This “serum”, sir, by which you work your blasphemous horrors, what is it comprised of?’

Victor Frankenstein: ‘Essential oils, Mr President; a complex melange of mixed vivifying chemicals, to which is added a tincture of the electrical fluid. And, with all due respect, sir, that much detail must suffice.’

Washington: ‘How so, sir? Do you impute to us sordid commercial ambitions? Do you think we mean to rob you of your patent?’ [Uproar in the house].

Frankenstein [shouting to be heard]: ‘No indeed, sir. On the contrary, my reticence stems from far higher motives. I decline to describe the precise formula only because amateurs attempting the Revivalist process have resulted in the production of impermissible monsters! Therefore, when it comes to serum, Mr President, I assure you that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’

Washington [pausing, with great solemnity]: ‘Indeed, sir, I do not doubt it. And therefore how much more dangerous is your entire knowledge.’

Transcript extract from ‘Submissions to the Congressional Committee on the Legalisation of REVIVALISM, popularly known as Corpse-raising.’ 13th July 1793.

‘When did she die?’

‘Two days ago,’ answered Foxglove. ‘Foully murdered.’

Julius’ question arose from professional interest and required asking even though his hands were full. The onset of decay was harmful to the Revival process. Therefore he should have stopped there and got on with his preparations. However, the extra detail supplied sparked mere curiosity.

‘How? Who?’

‘A severe blow to the head. As you will see, Mr Frankenstein, sir, the family surgeon who attended the scene closed the gaping fracture for cosmetic reasons, because a public laying-in period was intended—before I purloined the mistress’s remains that is. If your ministrations are successful the damage should heal.’

Julius probed the relevant area with skilful fingers. Scarlet sealing wax! It would do, but some more lasting form of cap would be necessary in the long term—if there was one. Meanwhile, caution and laudanum should see Ada through the recovery period—if he chose to go through with this.

Disturbed by these attentions Ada’s locks released a waft of spice, despite death and chilling. Long deprived of such sensations, Julius discovered himself more than usually hopeful his charge would tread the long path back.

He let the cold head return to the pillow and surveyed the whole. A pale vision in a scarlet gown with green buttons. It was strange that so evident a beauty hadn’t attended to the premature greying of her crowning glory. It hinted at a character worth the risk of snatching from Heaven.

‘Fasten the leg straps whilst I attend to her hands.’

Julius had better qualified assistants on call but there wasn’t time to bribe or persuade them. The guards who admitted the coach and swallowed Julius’ ‘special ladyfriend’ explanation had delayed them enough already. Besides, Foxglove had disgorged yet more money to buy them and Frankenstein wanted there to be some left for after. ‘Escape’ and ‘adventure’ rarely came cheap.

In deference to the skull trauma, he rigged up a neck restraint also. Quite often renewed life wasn’t welcome, or last painful memories were still lodged in the brain: therefore, frenzied thrashing about was by no means uncommon. Vocal distress likewise, so a gag was applied too. They’d already pushed their luck with excess activity disturbing the normally silent Heathrow night. Screams (or unscheduled screams) inside the Hecatomb would almost certainly wake unwelcome attention.

Frankenstein’s private laboratory was a dolls’ house version of the main production line. Therein, he’d been expected to work the wonders Governments believed inherent in his family name. Devoid of inspiration or inclination he had proved a sad let-down so far and daily expected expulsion to menial work: if he were lucky. The arrival of high-ups like Blakeney suggested exalted impatience and that the dread day would not be long delayed.

Therefore, Ada’s arrival might be that luck. Julius hadn’t considered that before. All his own planning seemed to end in dead-ends like beggary or bullets in the back whilst trying to escape. Or, worst of all, boredom. This wild-card could be his last chance at playing a decent hand in the game of life…

Which made his mind up.

‘I suggest,’ he said, ‘that you avert your eyes.’

Foxglove, worried but entirely in another’s hands now, reluctantly turned his back on the zinc table where his mistress lay.

Julius parted the scarlet gown with two hands, baring Ada’s breasts. Then he reached up to position the primed serum spear.

‘You never did say who…’

Mainly he desired to distract Foxglove during the most distressing part of the process, but he also wanted to know.

‘‘Who,’ sir?’

‘Who killed her…’

Foxglove clenched his huge scar-coated fists.

‘Her Lazaran lover, who went berserk as such beasts do. If you could believe such a slander of such a woman. Alas, Lord Lovelace did. He went through the motions of requesting revival but did not demur at its speedy refusal.’

Frankenstein threw a lever and impelled by lead weights the serum spear descended. It penetrated spot on, deeply piercing the dead heart.

No blood flowed, demonstrating life was long gone. The body jumped once at the impact but returned to repose.

Gruesome sound effects almost made Foxglove turn but he restrained himself.

‘It… will not hurt her?’

‘A fractured rib perhaps, probably a lingering ache. Certainly a lasting scar. All but the last will pass. A small price to pay for life anew.’

‘Ah yes… and it shall be the best serum, as we agreed?’

‘I am provided with a select store: the much distilled sort used for reviving generals and the like: royalty even. The same stuff that runs in Neo-Nelson’s veins. It was intended for my experimental program which proved sadly stillborn. So, having no use for the stuff, I shall not stint it now.’

Ada probably had pale skin even before Death made her pallor permanent. Now she was stuck with it. Not even the vintage serum being forced under pressure through her body cells would alter that, for all its high quality. It was one of the defining features of the Revived and no method yet discovered could alter that. When life returned a Lazaran might spend its entire un-life pearl-diving under tropic suns and still remain ‘pale and interesting.’

Frankenstein took hold of his patient’s right hand and foot. He sought and found the faint plumping that said the steam-spear had done its work, pushing serum to the far extremities.

Whilst the Galvanism tank warmed up, Julius brought Foxglove back in to fill the pregnant pause and save some sweat.

‘You can turn around now. Help me roll her in.’

If he’d expected miracles in the interval, the faithful retainer was disabused. Lady Lovelace remained as she was: mere breathless meat with a tenderised head.

‘Crank the wheel when I say. Ready? One, two, three, go!’

Julius Frankenstein was young and hale but it was still arduous work setting in motion a mechanism meant for two. Foxglove’s brawn provided ideal assistance. The conveyor belt fairly shot Ada into the open maw of the tank in one fluid motion.

Frankenstein hid her from view and fastened the heavy seals.

‘I should stand back. Leaping arcs are not unknown.’

A rubberised mat was provided for the purpose. Julius beckoned Foxglove over to join him on it.

‘You don’t believe that explanation then?’ he asked.

With but one topic occupying his mind the visitor knew what was meant.

‘The murder story? Indeed not, sir. Those who knew her Ladyship recognise the wicked imposture for what it is. Or they should. Sadly, Lord Lovelace was not of that number. Perhaps his mind was misled by grief and shame, but he remains at fault. Sorry as I was for him, my obligations to his house severed that day.’

‘So she wasn’t a Lazarophile? It does happen you know: bored aristo ladies appreciative of super-human staying power. Plus there’s attractions in a lover who doesn’t get in your hair afterwards…’

Foxglove’s face was eloquent answer enough.

‘Not a flighty piece at all…?’ Julius persisted. The hum from the tank had not yet reached its optimum.

‘No.’ The reply was firm, not encouraging any challenge. ‘Madam’s passions lay elsewhere. In realms of the utmost propriety.’

Julius was minded to say ‘pity’ but thought better of it.

‘Then who? And why?’

Foxglove drew a deep breath.

‘Those questions are projects for another day. We shall see what Her Ladyship says.’

His confidence was flattering but misguided. The public didn’t realise Revivalism was not an exact science. Persuading a critical mass of atoms to resume work when they thought their job was done and eternal rest in order, required both skill and luck. Many cadavers were stubborn (or safely ensconced in Heaven, according to theologians) and the failure rate significant. Yet even a failure was better than a botched job: the halfway returns were terrible to see—and hear. It was a kindness to send them straight back to oblivion.

For Julius such thoughts sponsored inner pictures of scenes he’d witnessed as an army field surgeon. Unfortunately some things seen can’t be unseen.

Frankenstein gladly left his mind’s-eye version of the Battle of the Vatican for even this present. The whine from within the tank was almost transcending human range. He checked the gauge and its fail-safe twin and then threw the remote-lever.

Dynamo columns atop the tank lit up like lightning-struck trees. They exchanged arcs of power and fed them back into the container. Dust on its surface hovered in sprightly blue-lit dance.

In the absence of screams or any other sign Frankenstein gave it an extra second but dared no more than that. The only thing worse than half-returns were what the Hecatomb wits called ‘fry-ups.’

How he hated the English way with words! Other nations would have been more… indirect, more delicate.

The lever was lifted and the dynamos died. Residual sparks gradually subsided.

One way or the other, they hadn’t long now. The power usage would register on every other Hecatomb system. The duty officer might assume it was just the useless foreigner burning some midnight oil for a change—or he might not.

Donning protective gauntlets Frankenstein opened the door a fraction sooner than was prescribed. Burnt ozone wafted out.

‘Give me a hand again.’

They reversed the belt drive and Ada emerged head first.

She was still pearl white, not charcoal black: which was a good sign. She lay absolutely still, which was not.

Nevertheless, Frankenstein removed the restraints and observed the exposed chest for signs of heaving. There were none.

Foxglove frowned.

‘Slap her,’ Julius ordered.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘It works with babies and likewise Lazarans. You wouldn’t like seeing me do it…’

Foxglove hesitated. It went against Nature —or his nature—every bit as much as raising the dead.

‘Hurry!’ said Frankenstein. ‘Do you want this thing or not? The opportunity is fleeting. Oh—I see your problem…’

The English were brutal but bashful: a Frenchman or Italian would have jumped at the chance.

Frankenstein spelt it out.

‘No, man: not exactly as with babies: I meant slap her face.’

Foxglove almost panicked but recovered. He marked his target and then shut his eyes.

Smack!

Ada’s head rolled in response to the blow: her sole response.

‘Again!’ said Julius.

Smack!

Back the other way went Ada’s face.

Foxglove looked at Frankenstein in extremities of distress.

‘Can you not repeat the process?’

Julius shook his head.

‘One attempt is all that is meaningful. You may have to reconcile yourself that perhaps she is —’

Smack! Smack!

Foxglove delivered without restraint.

Julius suddenly realised that the corpse’s face was reddened where the blows fell. Which implied…

Ada’s eyes flicked open. Foxglove’s next strike was too far advanced to cancel.

‘Owwww!’ she said. ‘How… how dare you?’

The servant flinched back, both mortified and awash with joy. Each flickered briefly across his normally impassive face.

Ada Lovelace sat up like a jack-in-the-box. There was obviously more energy in that slight frame than met the eye.

Speaking of which, as a doctor (albeit a mere military one) Julius recalled from his studies that all eyeballs were of identical mass, and that only eyelid variations gave the illusion otherwise. Yet Ada Lovelace’s face seemed dominated by windows to the soul of extraordinary size and sauciness.

She felt her face and rubbed it. Previous paleness returned. She next noted her display of more cleavage than decorum allowed and sought to repair Julius’ careless undressing.

Only then did she deign to view the wider world. First Foxglove.

‘Hmmm…’ she said, with neither gratitude nor reproach.

Then Frankenstein.

‘Hmmm…’

Julius had been brought up with Swiss manners before he learnt less starchy Italianate, and then anything-goes English, ways. He bowed politely.

‘Lady Lovelace. Welcome back to this wicked world.’

She did not acknowledge him but swung her long legs to the floor via a flash of silk stocking.

‘That ‘wicked world’ awaits us,’ she said to both all and none—but proving she must have heard. ‘Foxglove, fetch my coach.’

Foxglove not only fetched it, he proposed to drive it, for there was no one else. From having a horde at her beck and call Ada Lovelace was reduced to just one lacky.

Not two. When Frankenstein joined them in the waiting vehicle, Ada looked at him like a side dish no one had ordered.

‘Foxglove!’ she called through the carriage roof. ‘Is this man coming with us? What did you offer him?’

‘Only as per your letter, milady.’

‘Hmmm…’

She had a rich variety of those, all meaning something subtly different. Meanwhile, she studied Julius up and down.

Frankenstein felt it was time he had an input.

‘Escape and adventure were the core contractual features, madam. You promised both.’

Ada had a hat now. She threw back her bonnet and laughed heartily.

‘Did I? Did I really?’

‘Those were your very words. And now my bridges are burnt I must hold you to them.’

Lady Lovelace was selectively deaf. It was as if he’d never replied.

‘I see he has packed a bag, Foxglove; plainly meaning to accompany us. What do you think?’

‘He’s sound,’ said the voice from the driving seat. ‘But I’ll be guided by you, milady.’

Ada fixed Julius with her gorgeous eyes.

‘Do you have pen and paper, herr doctor?’

Packing hastily (for the guard’s bribed blindness wouldn’t last forever) those were indeed amongst the few items he’d scraped into a case to take with him. Latterly, all Frankensteins travelled light. Julius demonstrated to her that he owned both.

Ada smiled and snatched them.

‘He’s in, Foxglove. Drive on!’

As with her revival, Ada’s next step presumably followed a pre-laid plan. Not being a party to it, Frankenstein sat back and relaxed as Foxglove clattered along the Great West Road, heading only God and he knew where.

Hounslow went by in the dark, then progressively larger villages and miles of thriving market gardens till they were skirting the outskirts of the Capital. Finally, they came to a halt before the Turnham Green Bastion and awaited—so Frankenstein presumed—the opening of the gates at dawn. Unseen hands trained wall-guns upon them.

Fortunately, there were other untimely or impatient travellers, and a small collection of conveyances and horsemen gathered close together for mutual protection from the perils of the night. For it was a known fact that the lightless hours were the preserve of feral humans and rogue-Lazarans, to which legend added were-creatures and vampires as well.

Though rarely known to attack so close to civilisation, precautions against such threats were always advisable. Therefore the coaches were manoeuvred into a circle and a watch set. Armed with a blunderbuss, Foxglove took on all the sentry duties assigned to three.

Meanwhile, inside her vehicle, Ada ignored her new companion just as she did the wonder of returned life. Instead, she sat hunched over Julius’ loaned notebook, scribbling furiously into it. And increasingly furious: for from time to time she wrenched out pages in a rage or viciously scored through what she’d written. Sometimes, the pen was jabbed so hard it pierced straight through the page, or ink flew from the companion pot. Likewise little gasps of frustration escaped her Ladyship’s pursed lips, plus occasional most unladylike hisses of hate.

Frankenstein stayed by her side but left her to it. There was wisdom in his inaction for he had nowhere else to go and it was as well not to show his face to the world so soon. The Hecatomb’s working day would be starting shortly, and shortly after he’d be missed. Also, Lady Lovelace didn’t seem the sort for small talk.

Julius only wished Ada’s schemes hadn’t included a liveried coach. It proclaimed her presence as good as a flag, and Bastion guards would recall it. However, there was nothing to link him and the ex-deceased just yet. The association needn’t be fatal to him moving discreetly for a while.

Then, just as the huge windlasses creaked to open London’s gates to another day, Ada deigned to notice her companion once more.

She threw the book at him. It bounced off Frankenstein’s forehead, leaving an angry mark.

Her eyes glared at him, equally angry.

‘Charlatan!’ she spat. ‘Fraud! Where is my spark?’

Chapter 4: NO FIRE WITHOUT A SPARK

‘I want it! I want it! I want it!’

Ada contained herself only for as long as the innkeeper could overhear. The second the door was shut she was at Julius again.

Where he came from, a second—and most certainly a third—feminine slap to the face merited a right hook in return, and chivalry be damned. However, Frankenstein restrained himself because Foxglove was standing watchfully by. A room-wrecking full-blown brawl would not be helpful now they had finally found sanctuary.

Ada’s eyes blazed: when she gave herself to something she gave all. Yet she had less to give than before: her palm was as cold as her fury was hot.

Julius caught her wrists as they sought to drum a tattoo on his chest. They too were icy. He surreptitiously sought a pulse, knowing full well of all people that he sought in vain. Lazaran hearts beat once an hour, if that.

‘Well, you can’t have it,’ he replied calmly. ‘Even if I knew what you were talking about…’

Ada wrenched herself free.

‘I’ve lost my spark!’ she accused Frankenstein. ‘It’s gone! Beforehand, I was a genius, now there’s no inspiration. I’m just… living, like all the rest of you!’

An unkind man would have pointed out some glaring errors in her statement, but there was an certain etiquette in dealing with the Revived. Not to mention common compassion.

‘What can I say, madam?’ said Julius, drawing back from claw range. ‘You enjoyed the very finest serum known. More than that I cannot bestow.’

Ada thought on, studying him all the while, rubbing her wrists to which not even Julius’ grip had restored colour.

‘Hmmm…’

‘I swear to it, madam.’

‘Do you now? But shall we believe him? What do you think, Foxglove?’

The servant had a very cool appraising gaze when he chose to lift the mask.

‘I believe him, milady.’

‘Damn!’ she said.

Frankenstein gasped. He’d not heard a female swear since his army days: and even then only from ‘camp-wives’ and pipe-smoking whores.

Ada Lovelace waved him away—out of sight and out of mind.

‘I take it,’ she observed to Foxglove, ‘from all this folle-de-rol that my husband, his Lordship, is going to be of no use to us.’

‘Alas no, milady. He sought permission for your revival and the refusal contained no ambiguity. A gentlemen from the Home Office even called in person at Horsley Towers to stress the point. And Lord Lovelace, though he protested, is a very law-abiding sort of gentleman…’

‘Not to mention Lord-Lieutenant of the County of Surrey,’ Ada added in contempt. ‘With a position in society to consider. Which is why,’ she turned to Frankenstein to point out an important lesson to a poor foreigner, ‘there’ll never be a revolution in this rotten country. Someone might have to walk on the grass!’

Having been in countries where civic unrest crammed the mortuaries Julius felt inclined to see that as a blessing, but didn’t say so.

‘Also,’ added Foxglove, ‘there were the… circumstances of your demise, milady.’

‘Circumstances? Explain!’

Foxglove looked embarrassed and advanced to whisper in her ear. Her eyes widened still further, although blushes were now out of the question.

‘As a mere bachelor,’ commented Julius (who knew all already), ‘it may not be for me to say, but I think you are a little harsh on Lord Lovelace. Evidence of a Lazaran lover is hardly calculated to fire his love for you…’

Ada withered him with a glance.

‘On the contrary,’ she countered enigmatically, ‘I’d say the scene was “calculated” with exquisite precision.’

But she left it at that and thought on, rapt and in a world all her own.

‘Very well,’ came her eventual decision. ‘I divorce him, I divorce him, I divorce him. And that’s that and his Lordship out of the way, Mohammedan style. Next thing is getting my spark back: I can’t live other than as a genius. We’ll go see the only other one I know and see what he suggests.’

Mr Babbage wasn’t at home. Or if he was he’d have to stay there, because a Metropolitan Police ribbon sealed the front door.

Ada Lovelace hammered away even so. Julius could hear the knocker echo through an obviously empty house.

They’d driven the coach to Westminster in the face of Frankenstein’s vehement protests. Lady Lovelace still hadn’t got it into her head that she was Lady Lovelace no longer, not in the eyes of the Law, nor probably those of her husband who, moreover, she’d just self-service divorced. That meant the liveried coach was bogus as well as unwise. Yet Ada’s confidence had trampled all over Frankenstein’s bleatings. They arrived at Dorset Street in style.

To no welcome. Lady Lovelace was puzzled. She associated empty houses with the owners decamping to their country estates, or maybe departure on a grand tour. Yet she knew Babbage was too obsessed for either. The police barrier was worrisome too.

Though surely coincidence, the militia galloon choosing just then to slowly traverse the sky above their heads, did nothing for their peace of mind. It probably was looking for riots and revolutionaries, not them—not yet. Still, the low lament of its frantically pedalling Lazaran crew slung below the canopy was hardly confidence building. Julius cast about for help or shelter.

It is a cross-cultural truth that guttersnipes are better informed than governments. One arrived unbidden at precisely the right moment bearing newspapers and intelligence.

‘‘Oi, toffs!’ the boy called from beyond the railings. ‘Are you friends of the bloke wot lived there?’

Julius acted as spokesman: his companions didn’t care to acknowledge such converse.

‘We might be. What of it?’

The boy blew Frankenstein a great big kiss and ran off laughing.

‘Mmmm,’ mused Ada.

Foxglove sought out fuller particulars in nearby shops and hostelries whilst Ada and Julius waited in the coach. They sat in silence, not even of the companionable sort.

Eventually, her manservant returned and told all with a most becoming blush. Among other upshots, apparently the members of Babbage’s Gentlemen’s club had left a loaded pistol in his pigeon-hole, for use in the unlikely event he ever darkened their doors again. Plus a note spelling out their flattering confidence that he would ‘do the decent thing.’

‘Spark or no spark,’ said Lady Lovelace, ‘I begin to perceive patterns…’

‘Pretty patterns?’ enquired Julius.

‘Hardly: but consistent ones, suggesting intelligent design. Death and disgrace are the predominant themes. You must take my word for it, herr doctor, but my friend and collaborator, Mr Babbage, was a man of science; not a Uranian or deviant of any kind. Just as I am no jezebel lazarophile consorting with undead lovers. Someone is weaving a story to our detriment and I must calculate who and why. It is therefore all the more imperative I retrieve my spark of inspiration.’

Julius Frankenstein nodded surrender to her imperatives. Short of drawing pictures, he had explained the limitations of his reviving powers as clearly as could be.

‘If you say so, madam. And how do you propose to do it, may I ask?’

Lady Lovelace looked at him like he was an idiot.

‘Yes, you may.’

Seconds of silence ensued —unless Julius’ teeth grinding was audible to the others. His will broke first.

‘How-do-you-propose-to-do-it,’ he said, through powdered enamel.

Ada’s answer was bright and breezy, considering.

‘Why,’ she said, ‘the way I always got everything, of course. By buying it. Foxglove! To the Bank!’

In a curious parallel to Ada’s revived life-force, everything was as before for her at Baring’s Bank—save for the heart of the matter. Recognition was there, and courtesy; even obsequious service likewise—but not her money.

Whilst Julius was about his own business elsewhere, Lady Lovelace went through a succession of clerks as her voice ascended the octaves, but still no funds were forthcoming. At last she saw someone so senior he could speak the plain truth.

The melancholy fact was, the manager explained, that Lady Lovelace was dead—or legally so. Her whey face and the Times both confirmed it. He did not know how it came about that she was here demanding access to the family account, nor would he dream of daring to enquire. However, one thing was certain: people came into the world with nothing and left it likewise. Both scripture and Baring’s Bank said so. Accordingly, and with the profoundest, the politest, of regrets, he could not oblige her.

Ada swore for the second time that day.

In a stolen mansion beside the North Downs, a human spider considered the twitchings of his web.

A coach sighting here, a visit to a sealed house there, an altercation in England’s oldest banking house—and all in one day. What a busy revenant she was! How well he’d chosen.

Everything was going splendidly and it almost reconciled him to the earlier shedding of blood. That had been difficult and not his style at all. So sad. Only a great cause and the sense of history hovering anxiously at his shoulder had persuaded the human spider to inject venom with his bite.

Now things were going smoothly he could be gentle again.

‘Just a nudge,’ he informed an underling, who would inform his underling who would inform his underlings—and so on. ‘No unpleasantness, but the merest propelling prod…’

The human spider had a horror of haste, and of enthusiasm even more so. Both led to all sorts of errors. For that reason he strictly instructed his staff that they should pleasure their wives or, at a pinch, themselves, before reporting to work each day. It was imperative there be no unresolved impulses fizzing around in office hours to cloud judgements or make them heavy handed.

Fortunately, most were French and so could be relied upon to comply without him checking. However, the English ones proved harder work and wife substitutes had to be procured for some. Eventually though, such sensitive matters were resolved and the human spider could relax and be confident: confident that whatever hints he cared to drop would be converted into action in the world beyond his web. But always seemly and conservative action; kindly too, if at all possible.

Which left the human spider free for wine, women and song—though being in his ninth decade his doctor had advised he ease up on the singing.

Chapter 5: WITHDRAWALS

Lady Lovelace put down her sandwich.

‘Do I actually need this? she asked. ‘I feel no hunger. Not the slightest pang since I rose like Lazarus.’

The inn beside London Westgate had laid on an excellent luncheon in Ada’s room. Frankenstein had insisted, overruling her lack of interest.

‘It is essential,’ he answered firmly, raising the bread and beef to her mouth again. ‘Though the serum sustains you, your raised body must also be placated. You will not wish me to supply the gross details, madam, but suffice to say that if your digestive system is not kept occupied it will rot. Shortly afterwards you will rot with it. Vivid-green gangrene, proof against the lustiest surgeon’s knife. Therefore, though food has no savour to you and never will again, you must—if you will forgive the phrase—go through the motions…’

She plainly did not forgive the phrase but Julius slid another slice of pie onto her plate, and then jiggled it back and forth in a way intended to be tempting.

‘Eat, madam,’ he said, ‘I implore you. If you eat well—or leastways regularly—you will last as long as your body does!’

Ada eyed pie and Julius with twin distaste.

‘Which is how long exactly?’

Though her tone was peevish this was not idle curiosity on her part, but a vital missing element in ongoing calculations.

Frankenstein shrugged.

‘It depends on you. And Fate, of course. Revivalist Science is yet young and few figures exist on which to theorise. The vast majority of the Revived spend—and I use the term advisedly—their lives either on the battlefield or farmers’ fields. Neither are conducive to longevity. However, it may cheer you to learn that I knew of one Lazaran who outlived his owner: a man who departed this Life in the fullness of years…’

Alas, honesty then compelled him to add: ‘Although his heirs had it—I beg your pardon, him—put down soon after. That the servant should just… continue struck them as indecent, you see…’

‘I see,’ said Lady Lovelace, when she obviously did not.

‘But in theory, there is no firm upper limit. Consider, madam: perhaps you now possess Life—of a kind—everlasting!’

‘Hmmm…,’ she said. Supplemented by ‘Hmmph!’ Then: ‘away with your honeyed words, mein herr: Life without my spark is no life!’

Even that was not enough: chagrin made her want to twist the knife.

‘Are you really a doctor?’

She’d sulked throughout the meal so far, barely speaking to him. Therefore Julius realised that the question was born of more than spite.

‘Of a sort, madam,’ he answered. ‘Of the military sort.’

Ada gave him a cool look—and saw. No medical man he, but thwarted scientist through and through. A compromise career choice therefore, possibly a dictated one, comprising a life-defining mistake. Hence the hidden turbulence beneath the still surface of those deep waters.

‘Meaning a mere amputator,’ she said. ‘Plus a Revivalist, of course.’

For all its present utility, in social esteem the job title ranked alongside ‘abortionist.’ As Ada well knew.

‘Of course,’ Frankenstein agreed, in arctic tones. ‘The family curse.’

So she’d guessed right. Probably the father was to blame: pressing his son into the military where he could only do moderate harm.

Ada favoured him with her full attention—and a beaming smile!

‘A curse to you perhaps but not to all, mein herr. It may interest you to know that my headaches are quite gone. Presumably, I can attribute that to your ministrations.’

‘Headaches, madam?’

‘I was a martyr to them: sickening pain lodged behind the eyes for days on end, enlivened by lightning storms in the brain. Sometimes I could barely speak, is that not so, Foxglove? I suffered and, what is far more important, my great work suffered. Company was intolerable to me and life scarcely less so. Your treatment seems to have banished them.’

Amongst other Revivalists he might have ventured an explanation along the ‘no sense no feeling’ line, but for such a prickly patient Julius sugared the pill.

‘The post mortem brain has ways all its own, my lady, and none of them well understood. I cannot claim credit for this happy accident. Indeed, one would have predicted only increased sufferings due to your cranial injuries.’

Lady Lovelace involuntarily reached to the back of her head where a circle of tinplate now protected her fracture. A local blacksmith, chosen for drink-dulled lack of curiosity, had provided that. Then a lady stylist procured by the inn had skilfully hidden it under hair so that no one could see.

How Ada had fumed and glared as the smithy had tapped its tacks in. Now, back on mission, she required reminding of its existence.

‘Hmmm…,’ she said. ‘Well, be that as it may, I greet the liberation with joy. My spark might be—temporarily—mislaid, but I now find my mundane thought processes wonderfully… uninterrupted.’

If so, they were in marked contrast to their meal. The door slammed open and interruptions galore flowed in.

In the form of officers of the law. A bustle of four or five of them crowding into the room. The foremost held up some legal document.

‘Lady Ada Augusta Lovelace,’ he read, without bothering about introductions, ‘inasmuch as you have been plucked from the grave without sanction of God and man, in impudent contravention of the statutes of both the English Realm and the Almighty, it is the order of His Majesty’s High Court that your arrest…’

Julius had heard enough and fired.

Simultaneously—to slow human eyes—a blackened circle appeared both in the paper and the reader’s chest. The man looked amazed from one to the other and then sank slowly to his knees.

Frankenstein was expecting congratulations for his foresight in having a pistol to hand, but instead all eyes in the room conveyed horror. The constables were frozen in shock, and Lady Lovelace and Foxglove likewise. They studied their luncheon companion of a minute ago entirely anew.

You just can’t please some people. Julius thought he’d done well, making such prompt use of his earlier purchase. Therefore, he’d hoped for gratitude, but the English were a funny lot, and Ada Lovelace more so than most. It was all rather a puzzle, but not one Frankenstein had leisure to solve. Instead, he took control of the situation with his second pistol.

‘Foxglove,’ he suggested, ‘why don’t you disarm them?’

One constable had recovered enough to look at Frankenstein with loathing.

‘Maybe because we’re not armed?’ the man ventured, with bitter sarcasm.

Julius shrugged. ‘More fool you then. Right, Foxglove, just check he speaks true and then grab our bags. I’ll keep these invaders occupied in the interval.’

He waggled the levelled weapon threateningly. ‘Come, come, gentlemen: I must insist! Hands up or I’ll fire!’

They had good evidence he might mean it. Arms shot aloft.

A flurry of patting proved the enforcers of the Law had indeed ventured out unarmed: innocent of even a truncheon! Julius boggled: how on earth had these people acquired an Empire?

Frankenstein felt the need for haste: any minute now there might be footsteps on the stairs—the first brave explorers investigating the sound of gunfire.

‘Ready?’ he asked.

Foxglove didn’t have words but he had their luggage. His ham-like arms lifted the bags as evidence.

Julius urged Ada out of statue-mode.

‘Come along, my lady.’

To her credit, Ada didn’t hesitate. She didn’t say anything but she didn’t protest either. Her lustrous eyes were finding it hard to leave Julius’ gesticulating gun.

As he passed, Frankenstein pillaged the dead man of any items of use, and likewise scooped up the holed legal document.

‘Some reading for the journey,’ he explained to its former owners. They shrank against the wall, making way according to the stage directions of his weapon.

‘Help yourself to the food,’ Julius suggested as he locked the door after him, imprisoning them—for a while.

‘Murderer!’ came the accusation straightaway, loud and clear through the oak panel. ‘Foul murderer!’

Frankenstein shrugged. It was an alternative term for soldier: not one he preferred, but it did sometimes fit.

Still under the elf-spell of sudden death, Foxglove and Lady Lovelace were waiting for him in the lobby. By the time he rejoined them his pistols was nowhere to be seen and he could bestow greetings upon the innkeeper like any normal guest.

‘But…,’ said Ada at last. ‘But…’

‘It was necessary,’ Julius replied. ‘They would have minced you…’

He let her chew on that technical term, prey to new doubts, whilst he secured transport.

Most conveniently, the black constabulary cab was waiting outside, left in sole charge of an ostler. His tip turned out to be verbal (‘go! Away!’) rather than coinage, backed up a sword-tip. It proved compelling and soon Foxglove was in the driver’s seat. Which was just as well, for the first ‘major outrage’ cries were coming from the inn, some of them out of an open window facing the street. Julius ushered Lady Lovelace into the cab.

‘Let’s try things my way for a while, shall we?’ he suggested, lending his words weight with a stolen catchphrase. ‘Do you think that might be worth a go? Hmmm?’

‘That was a tactical withdrawal,’ Frankenstein informed Lady Lovelace before they entered. ‘Now for a strategic one…’

She was chastened—or maybe in deep calculation—and said nothing. All the same, she went along with him.

After the previous kerfuffle at Baring’s Bank, Ada got the senior clerk straightaway, who had his speech rehearsed. Only this time Julius did the talking—always so more effective than shrieking.

He showed ‘his’ badge of office taken from the shot constable. Once that was accepted he handed over the pistol-punctured document.

‘A candle accident,’ he explained, when the brown rimmed hole was noted. The clerk’s eyebrow slowly descended.

‘As you’ll read, Milady has been taken into custody,’ Julius flowed on in fluid confidence. ‘Illegal revival, as I believe you wisely suspected before. Good man: you shall be commended. His Lordship would not have been pleased if funds had been released. Whereas now it is his strict instruction that a deposit be made.’

The senior clerk had not reached those giddy career heights without owning more than his fair share of caution. Banking depended on it. Therefore, he’d already sent one of his Lazaran accounting staff to check that a police vehicle was indeed parked outside. Which duly confirmed, further talk of deposits, rather than the always suspicion-arising contrary, lowered his shield still more.

The man spread his pale hands as if to receive the funds, or at least further explanation.

Julius delivered.

‘The jewellery, of course,’ he semi-whispered, as if Ada sitting beside him could not hear. ‘Family heirlooms. She’s dripping with them.’

‘Ah…,’ said Senior Clerk. It did fit. He’d heard tales of the fate of illegal Lazarans. Pig food apparently. Certainly, respect for personal property didn’t feature highly in any likely scenario.

Playing the game, Ada reached her even whiter hand to touch her string of pearls and jet necklet.

‘The Lovelace safe deposit box requires a combination,’ said Senior Clerk. ‘The Bank knows part, the client the rest. Will she co-operate?’

It was the fate of the Revived, even if present and listening in, to be spoken of as though not there.

‘Oh, I think so,’ replied Frankenstein. ‘I’ve had a word with her.’ He mimicked use of a whip.

Such lurid assurance clinched matters, in more ways than one. Plainly the man knew nothing outside of his service to Mammon. Those who’d ‘been around’ realised you could whip Lazarans until your arm ignited, without making much impression.

The way to the relevant vault lay through a weariness of gates, corridors and sentinels. Senior Clerk wafted through them all like a magician. Finally, in a little-frequented room of church-like stillness, he lit a lantern.

Locked boxes awaiting owners who might never come lined floor to ceiling. Both Ada and Senior Clerk knew which one to go to.

Concealing his actions behind a hunched shoulder, Senior Clerk twirled the dial three times and ways. Then Lady Lovelace completed the process, acting out the role of good little Lazaran. The door swung open—and Julius swung at Senior Clerk.

As a medical man Frankenstein knew there was a fine line between stunning and brain damage: but a pistol-butt is no precision instrument. He knelt and found the senseless Clerk’s neck pulse to check all was as well as could be expected in the circumstances. A gesture to himself mostly: it was too late to apologise if matters proved otherwise.

Meanwhile, Ada, never slow on the uptake, was taking inventory of the deposit box.

‘Bearer-bonds, high denomination banknotes, cut diamonds, share certificates: all good liquid stuff.’

Then Julius’ accomplice revealed herself to be in the very forefront of fashion. Lady Lovelace hitched up her skirts to show she wore those new-fangled ladies’ drawers. Into the spacious scarlet garment she stuffed stolen riches.

Frankenstein politely turned his back. Having forgot to bring a sack he thoroughly approved of her initiative, yet such shamelessness also unsettled him in ways he preferred not to explore.

‘You’ll have to take the gold coin,’ Ada ordered. ‘Too bulky for me to store in my nether garments…’

As soon as she was decent again, Julius went over and packed his pockets.

Ada awaited at the door. If she weren’t dead she might have had a bloom to her cheek. Even so, she still looked radiant; her eyes shone with excitement.

‘You know,’ she said, crooking her arm for him to link with it, ‘I might have been mistaken about you. You may escort me home, sir.’

Ever chivalrous, even to deceased ladies, Julius Frankenstein obliged.

Foxglove drove as though sedated, for on no account must they attract attention. Under the current ‘Total Security Government’ prowling police coaches were ten-a-penny but people who stole one needed to mimic their stately confidence. Doubtless, the word was out that a Black Maria was missing, but scrutiny would concentrate on those in a hurry. Therefore, Foxglove courteously gave way at junctions, whilst staring down those civilians who dared look.

Meanwhile, within, Frankenstein and Ada had discovered a new rapport. They were as bad as one another.

‘I must confess,’ she said, ‘the violence did rather shock one…’

Julius spread his hands.

‘Madam, if bridges are to be burnt, I see little point in being moderate with the matches.’

‘Perhaps so. I also lazily presumed you to be a stolid Switzer. Not to mention a mere scientist.’

‘‘Mere scientist’? queried Julius.

Ada turned on him in fury.

‘Idiot! I said not to mention mere scientists!’

Frankenstein had flinched away fearing a claw-attack before he realised she was joking. Lady Lovelace’s laugh had no pity.

So, that was how things stood between them! After restoring her to life, after shedding blood to save her from the mincer, even after conducting a bank raid to oblige her he remained just a hired help and figure of fun. Julius seethed.

‘Most amusing, madam. Highly droll. Yet I am surprised to hear you talk so. One thought you a devotee of science.’

‘I see it as a means to an end, herr doctor. However, its practitioners do tend to the tedious.’

‘Likewise the Swiss, I heard you imply.’

‘If so, you seem the exception to the rule.’

Julius smiled to himself.

‘Lady Lovelace, permit me to enlighten you: my countrymen may be likened to a well built bedlam. From the outside, all seems solid and safely gathered in; yet inside wild forces rage. It has been calculated that a million mercenary Swiss have served in the wars of Europe, and, I assure you, complaints are few. I myself have seen service with the army of the Holy Father, and the King of the Two Sicilies beside. War, revolution and rapine are normality to me. I have seen things that would make even your long locks stand aloft.’

It was Ada’s turn to smile enigmatically. ‘That’s all you know…’ was implied.

‘Do you doubt me?’ Julius asked, affronted.

Ada flicked her fan over a face which no longer felt heat or cold.

‘No, one does not. Doubtless you have stood up to your hocks in blood, on the battlefield and operating table alike. Though what you find to be proud of in that I do not for the… life of me know…’

There was just the hint of a stumble there, over her unfortunate choice of words. Lazarans generally learnt to purge ‘life’-related words from their vocabulary for fear of mockery. Lady Lovelace plunged on regardless with barely a pause.

‘My thoughts were instead of your presumption, herr doctor. Do you think me a mere stay-at-home lady of leisure? A woman who has seen and done nothing? Do you not know of my lineage and illustrious father? Let me assure you, Dr Frankenstein, I contain surprises for you yet!’

Julius stretched back in his seat, feeling fairly secure and shock-proof.

‘Surprise me then, madam…’

Ada looked at him, gimlet-eyed, her grey lips compressed to a slit.

‘I will. Take for example, those gems and jewellery you stole today: don’t try to pawn them.’

Contrary to his every wish and intention, Julius was startled. He sat upright. Those were a major part of their haul.

‘Why not?’ he asked.

‘Fake!’ replied Lady Lovelace triumphantly, like it was good news. ‘All fake!’

‘What?’

‘Glass and paste, I promise you.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me at the time?’

‘Surely, you should be asking, why did I? Have copies made, I mean.’

Frankenstein gritted his teeth, not nearly as rich as he thought himself a minute ago. They wouldn’t get so far now, or have so much first-class fun en route.

‘Go on then, madam; enlighten me: why did you?’

Ada was enjoying herself now. Just like her scandalous father she rather enjoyed shocking confessions.

‘Because the real ones are long gone—gone to pay my monstrous gambling debts!’

For the rest of the ride, Frankenstein brooded in silence and there things stood, at an impasse, a chasm yawning between the two travellers.

Not another word was said until Foxglove delivered them to Scotland Yard.

Chapter 6: DUCK ISLAND DISCUSSIONS

That too had been another of Frankenstein’s bright ideas. Where better to leave a purloined police vehicle than among a throng of others? Word was out on the street but it might escape notice for ages buried amongst its brethren.

Foxglove parked at the end of a line of Marias outside constabulary headquarters. When nothing untoward happened he tapped the roof to say the coast was clear.

Still chagrined, not so much about the money but for being bested, Frankenstein didn’t even offer to hand Ada down. His first failure in etiquette to the fairer sex since youth.

So Lady Lovelace sorted for herself. Whilst Foxglove tethered the horses as though they were his and always had been, she exited from the blind side, away from the station entrance. A shapely questing foot found the coach step and then the ground. Meanwhile, she smoothed down her dress—and rubbed Frankenstein up the wrong way.

In other words, still crowing.

‘Am I such a disappointment to you, herr doctor? Dear me, I believe there is a word for young gentlemen who care only for a lady’s financial attributes! I would not have suspected you of being such. You have the dashing looks, I’ll grant, but persons of that… profession are usually far less starchy…’

This was neither the time or place. He and she could both be convicted of capital charges, and Foxglove, as their accomplice, was hardly in any happier position. Instead, Frankenstein cut her dead (that word again) and looked around for safe avenues of escape.

‘This way, and give me your arm.’

He didn’t really want the chill limb but Ada cheerfully complied. With bonnet lowered in maidenly modesty she might pass for a living, breathing, belle out for a promenade with her beaux.

As Big Ben sounded ‘one’ they walked briskly towards St James’s Park, with Foxglove patrolling their perimeter, sniffing out pursuit.

Their ruse called for a modicum of small-talk, granted, but Ada was relentless: a wildcat in defeat and insufferable in victory.

‘Silly man: why else do you think I was so interested in Mr Babbage’s calculating machine?’

‘My indifference knows no bounds,’ answered Frankenstein, speaking through a false smile.

Ada expounded nevertheless.

‘People say Fortune or Fortuna is the goddess of gambling, but if so I am an atheist. No, I say that mathematics is the key that unlocks the treasury of gaming table or track! King Probability rules all. Now that sir, I believe with all my heart!’

‘Selling the family jewellery works too,’ Frankenstein added sourly. ‘I am told it greatly speeds one’s trajectory to debtors’ prison.’

Ada took it on the chin.

‘That also, good doctor. My once dear husband, Lord Lovelace, would have shot or divorced me had he known, but my researches were simply ravenous in their consumption of cash. Taking on the roulette wheel or the vagaries of the turf are not for the financially faint-hearted, I can assure you. However, the great project had to continue at all costs and so I liquidated the capital contained in my finery. A Hebrew in Hatton Gardens had replicas made.’

‘In that case, madam, I wonder that you’ve bothered to burden your britches with them.’

Julius blunted his barb by blushing again. Such tavern-talk was not his natural weaponry.

‘Do not let pique make you vulgar,’ Ada instructed. ‘You’ve been almost gentlemanly so far—for a foreigner and mercenary. Why spoil it? Also, have a care, for Foxglove does not take kindly to impudence in my presence.’

Hearing his name mentioned, if nothing more, the servant looked over from his orbital patrol. To Julius’ horror, Lady Lovelace waved back in precisely the way fugitives shouldn’t. Then she resumed.

‘If I had spurned such valuables, alone amongst all the pillaged items, it would have aroused suspicions and my ruse might have been exposed. But not only that, I keep them for a better day. Had not death and Mr Babbage’s… misfortune not intervened it was my firm intention to make good the deception one day. No one need ever have known.’

‘Save yourself,’ said Julius, ‘when wearing them; deceiving all who those admired their beauty.’

Lady Lovelace laughed, raising her white face dangerously high.

‘Oh, I know all manner of wicked secrets, Mr Swiss! You can hardly conceive… One more hardly makes any difference, does it. And are you still so very cross with me, mein herr? Can you not be just a little… mollified?’

Happily, the play on words sailed over Frankenstein’s head. He was not to know that ‘mollie’ was the low-English term for bachelors who had not met the right girl yet (and never would).

Even so, he quickened their pace and frowned.

‘Madam, I refer you to my earlier statement on indifference.’

Ada squeezed his arm, a disconcertingly marital gesture.

‘I don’t believe you, gold-digger doctor. But comfort yourself: the jewellery and all manner of other things shall be restored to how they should be. In due course, just as soon as I have conquered the deities of chance…’

They were passing by the lake and Duck Island, secure avian HQ in the centre of the metropolis. From it birds quested out to demand dinner from passers-by.

Fortunately for Julius and Ada there were a lot of the latter. Both place and hour provided perfect concealment in tidal flows of Westminster government workers taking lunch or otherwise about their business. The generation-long War had greatly inflated both their numbers and busy-ness.

Though excellent cover, Ada placed too much faith in it. She dilly-dallied and chit-chatted. The world was her oyster again and she was peckish.

‘Did you know,’ she enquired, indicating the tiny islet, ‘that on a whim and in his cups, King Charles II appointed a exiled French poet ‘military governor’ of Duck Island? Complete with handsome salary and title? I should have liked that post; and to confound the giver I would have taken it seriously, with tours of inspection and schemes of defence. That would have been most amusing, don’t you think?’

Julius knew she hadn’t been drinking, for he’d been with her all the time. Therefore this must be the madness of the British aristocracy he’d heard about—doubtless a function of inbreeding and lack of mental exercise. It would make a fascinating medical study for a student who gave a damn.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t,’—and dragged her on.

Once past the island of Ada’s obsession, Frankenstein headed for another concentration of cover. At the fringes of the park, where they wouldn’t be in the way of their betters, a crowd of Revived clerks and menials were gathered round a street-preacher on a soapbox. Since the established church barred Lazarans from its places of worship they had to meet their spiritual needs as and when they could. In practice, this meant during those rare occasions when anyone deigned to address them and their masters didn’t know where they were. Therefore the throng was avid, their yearning palpable.

And the preacher was fit to meet it: his eyes were as wild as his hair; his voice powered with passion.

‘… Souls?’ he was shouting, all the time looking round for the Park Police who’d inevitably move him on. Or arrest him. Or truncheon him. ‘Of course you have souls! Let no man tell you otherwise: least of all the venal prelates of the lickspittle state church! ‘Archbishop of Canterbury’? ‘False shepherd of Babylon’ more like! What does he know? Can mere Man burgle the Afterlife? Can the created steal from its Creator? Rubbish! Purchased dogma! Bought-and-paid-for Blasphemy! No: I tell you most solemnly: you all—all—have souls. Somewhere… in some inexpressible form known only to God…’

‘Testify!’ the recalled dead cried out, inspired by their own version of joy and urging him on. ‘Testify!’

A smattering of living supporters present, eccentrics and/or idealists, approved more measuredly. Some bore banners. Julius saw one that read:

A sort-of truth which only prompted him to think ‘God forbid!,’ and stunned all sympathy.

‘Therefore,’ the preacher continued, waving his arms, ‘I assure you, dear brothers, dear sisters, that you are far more than cannon-fodder! Better than mere meat machines! You are alive again—and thus basking in Divine love—for better reasons than accountancy!’

That got a cheer. Some masters had no mercy and drafted their Lazarans into the drearier professions. Likewise the sad fields where their already cold hearts came in handy. Lawyers now employed more undead than living.

‘Wherefore, you deserve the dignity that comes with those Divine origins. Are ye latter-day Gibeonites: those whom Scripture says the Israelites enslaved to be forever ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’? No, You are men: children of God and made in his image!’

Here was a weak point in his thesis, for many of those images gathered round him didn’t look very god-like. Rhetoric demanded he either get louder or more daring.

He did both. The Preacher looked about, even more haunted than before, and bellowed:

‘Nor are you beasts! Mere vermin to be hunted for perverse pleasure!’

This was pushing his luck. Lazaran blood-sports were forbidden (a waste of war material for a start) but everyone knew it went on. It was a melancholy fact that hardcore hunters found former-humans so much more challenging, more mettlesome and miles-for-your-money than a fox or deer. However, those who (allegedly) indulged tended to be both addicted and aristocratic: that is to say committed, well-connected, people averse to the limelight. The ‘Earl of This’ or ‘Lord That’ didn’t care for loose talk which might spoil the fun. There was even rumours of a Parliamentary Pack. It most certainly ‘didn’t do’ to go public about it.

And sure enough, soon afterwards someone must have ‘told’ on all the subversive talk. A constabulary whistle signalled suppression was on its way.

Which meant Frankenstein and friends must be likewise. They left the preacher and his assistants hurriedly packing up their portable pulpit.

‘Do not despair, brothers!’ the preacher roared as he worked. ‘We shall overcome! God will chastise Pharaoh and permit ye into the Promised Land! God shall feed His flock!’

‘With crumbs of comfort…’ thought Frankenstein dismissively, once they’d fled far enough. ‘Stale crumbs.’ Then he realised with a far from delicious shock that his family stood responsible for the terrible hunger they’d just witnessed. Hunger so gnawing that sufferers were willing to feed off crumbs from the Christian banquet they were barred from.

Julius was furious with himself for his lack of sensitivity (or something). What had he become? What still worse creature might he become given time? It was the Frankenstein family curse: first making monsters, then making monsters of themselves. That ancestral legacy followed him everywhere like a cloud; a big black cloud cancelling every holiday from care.

Anger (like all energy) cannot be destroyed, merely diverted. This particular fiery bolt ricocheted off towards Lady Lovelace. Julius permitted himself a scoff at Ada’s expense, resuming their last serious exchange as though the Duck Island nonsense had never been.

‘So, you plan—no, intend—to conquer the deities of chance, do you? ‘Just as soon as’ is it, madam? Really? And when might that be? And how?’

Anger aside, up till then they had remained arm-in-arm for cover’s sake. Now Ada dared to disengage and turned to face him. Frankenstein ‘ahemed’ and gestured she should remember who—and what—she was.

To no avail. There Lady Lovelace stood, hands on scarlet silken hips, regarding him as though he were the king—nay, emperor—of idiots.

‘‘When’?’ she shot back. ‘When? Well, when you’ve got me my spark back, of course.’

Chapter 7: DEAD MAN WALKING

‘Is there anything else you can tell me? The slightest scrap?’

France’s Minister of Police had aquatic eyes, cold and watery as a fish. They blinked behind their rimless glasses when no reply came.

A interrogator brandishing pliers stepped up but the Minster waved him away. That was not the best way with this prisoner: different dogs itched in different places.

The Minister cleared his throat: polite, almost apologetic, about his persistence in probing.

‘It is a matter of some import. Consider this: you are in no fit state to judge what is relevant or not. Moreover, this is a issue for consideration by someone imbued with civic virtue, someone with humanity’s best interests at heart: in short a citizen of the glorious French Republic—which you, of course, no longer are…’

Touché! The doomed man awoke from reverie and lifted his head. He looked up at the Minister through a curtain of matted hair.

‘There you are wrong, monsieur,’ he said, in gasps. ‘Wrong! No matter what your tribunal says, I shall be a citizen until my dying breath!’

He had been harshly treated, both before and after condemnation. His half-healed wound had re-opened, patterning his prison shirt with blood. Only the trial itself (a rushed five minute fiasco) had not presented opportunities for mental and physical violence against him. Now, contesting the verdict of the sacred State took what little reserves the prisoner had left. His chains barely shifted.

‘Alas,’ said the Minister, consulting his pocket watch, ‘that ‘breath’ you refer to is mere hours away. Meanwhile, I implore you to ponder, to review recent events: is there not some residual snippet? Some last service to render to the Republic?’

Actually, any such service would not be his absolute last. Not from some perspectives. The flow of bodies from Madame Guillotine was too bounteous to commit to the grave. In short order this man must rise again as a ‘New-Citizen’—or Lazaran as enemy nations disparaged them. With permanent semblance of a red ribbon round his neck, he would take his place amongst myriad others, whether it be as a foot-soldier or undead ploughboy.

Let the Church and other reactionaries protest as they will, The Minister could not see anything wrong in it. Nature recycled all that it created, and the Convention sensibly emulated Nature. It was both virtuous and instructive that former enemies of the State might make good for their life’s misdeeds in the only after-life the State believed in.

More thorough-going than his masters, Minister of Police Joseph Fouché believed in nothing: not a single thing. Through a varied past as priest, then politician, then revolutionary, terrorist, Bonapartist, Royalist and now servant of the Convention, no cobweb of belief had ever bound him. He loved his wife and children and thought that quite enough idealism for one lifetime.

Being blessed with such remarkable freedom of action proved the launch-pad of a glittering career. Fouché saw but didn’t share the strings controlling those afflicted with ‘values.’ That enabled him to make them dance to his tune.

Like here, for instance. If this condemned wretch were not a believer, indeed, a fanatic, he would be beyond recall. The blade that would part him from life was being oiled for action even as they spoke. He had nothing left to lose and more torture would only spoil him as a spectacle for the Place de la Guillotine mob. So, in one—highly technical—sense he should be safe from harm.

Yet that same fanatic spirit which had made him suitable to be sent to England en mission meant he was still reachable. Though facing the just penalty for having failed, binding ties to an earthly cause meant use could be made of him yet.

The man was thinking. Not of matters more fitting to his predicament, but of ephemeral things, sole concerns of the world he was about to leave behind. Light returned to his eyes. Fouché leant low.

‘There may be one thing…,’ said the prisoner, dredging deep for one last reprise of his life-role as elite soldier of the State.

‘Good, good…,’ anticipated Fouché, taking out a dainty gold-clad notepad. He twisted its matching pencil till lead appeared and stood poised to record.

‘It was when we were reconnoitring. A man-servant told me an alehouse tale. He was bitter; angry: loyal to an aristo family displaced from their château. Yes! I recall: it seemed just black bile at the time, but not I’m not so sure. It was he who also gave me the drugged wine and dead-boys plot—and that all came true, didn’t it…’

‘Permit me to be the judge of that…,’ Fouché whispered into his ear, scribbling away at the same time. He was more aroused than the marital bed ever made him.

The prisoner obediently trotted back from interpretation to reportage.

‘This English lackey said the Arch-Traitor was distracted for days. ‘Smooth as a plate, normally, but not no more’: those were his actual words, I swear. He was a serf, a lickspittle of counter-revolution, and so I did not attach weight to his views. Was I at fault? ‘Facts yes, opinion no’: that is what we were taught at the ecole privé…’

The Republic-wide chain of state schools for France’s teeming war orphans raised dependable but inflexible products: a combination that could be both strength and weakness. The Convention’s best minds had wrestled with that conundrum in vain.

‘Nevertheless,’ Fouché hushed him, ‘on this occasion, I should like to hear the vile wretch’s opinion.’

The prisoner revisited recent days: from miraculous survival and escape, to return to inevitable death. He recounted from memory:

‘The man overheard the Arch-Traitor talking to himself, when he believed himself alone.’

‘And… and…?’ Fouché’s anticipation was almost erotic.

‘I do not have the precise words, but apparently the Arch-Traitor said something to the effect that ‘this was the plan that would make or break him.’ Then the servant heard him pray—actually pray—for success—and then laugh!’

Fouché wrote it all down and then stood up straight. He exhaled deeply.

‘You did not report this.’

‘I was wounded and in a fever, Minister. Also, the debrief on my return was not… gentle. It seemed nothing; not even a tassel on the great tapestry of my other news.’

Fouché nodded understandingly.

‘Just so. Is there more?’

‘None, minister. You have everything.’

How true, how true. Joseph Fouché, Minister of Police, Duke of Otranto, Prince of Elyria, father of four, and now possessor of this priceless gem of intelligence, reflected that, yes, he did indeed have everything. The Convention, his nominal masters, hearing some of this, would be pleased with him. His real master (other than himself) would praise and possibly promote him. It was a lovely feeling. Too good for words.

Therefore, he wordlessly beckoned the Revolutionary Guards forward, and in silence signalled they should kill the prisoner now.

Two weeks before, back when the prisoner was still an agent and had a whole fortnight left to live, he was far away from that grim Parisian condemned cell. Likewise, though a frequent business visitor to the Nouvelle Bastille in the past, he was then merely aware of, but unacquainted with, its tears and stoicism soaked ‘special rooms’ where he’d be worked over and murdered.

Specifically, two weeks ago the Sun still shone on him and his blissful ignorance, whilst he hid in an hedge shielding the privacy of a mansion in England. Formal gardens were all around and a gravel drive beside him. In the middle distance the North Downs loomed, adding perspective to the pretensions of the house. Those chalk hills were here before it and would remain so after.

That thought pleased the waiting man. Injustice was not eternal. Also, he was gratified to have his fellow agents beside him, similarly concealed to the best of their elite abilities. He felt as reassured as a revolutionary cadre on active service reasonably could be in this very epicentre of black reaction.

If his brothers and sisters in arms didn’t know their orders by now they never would. Therefore the prisoner-to-be had nothing to say to them save exhortation.

‘Citizens,’ he whispered softly, but with fervour, ‘The spirit of History is watching: do not disappoint it. What is there to fear? Death is but an eternal sleep! Vive la Republic!’

Those with him, live and Revived alike, mouthed the salutation back.

‘Vive la Republic!’

It was the golden cliff-hanger spell between summer evening and summer dusk. Slap in the middle of that time when humble folk had meals to attend to in their own homes, but before the gentry answered invitations to dine. Only a few carriages hung around the main entrance, their drivers deep in chat or day-dreams. The mission enfilade had managed to worm their way close without detection.

Its captain, the prisoner-in-prospect, looked at the blue sky overarching him and all men. He knew for a fact there was no eternal eye watching: merely the moon, eight planets, a few thousand stars, and then space for infinity; all signifying nothing. Only the Republic had weight and reality. It was both the vanguard and epitome of mankind. What was one man’s life compared to that? It was a privilege to have been raised to make sacrifice to it.

Here, at the likely end of things, he had found certainty. It felt like armour.

So, if not now, then when?

‘En avant!’ he hissed.

The doomed man emerged from the foliage and shot the guard before Loseley House’s front entrance.

Chapter 8: A CRAVAT INTERRUPTED

Shooting? At this hour? What a bore!

The Prince de Beavente, Lord Vectis, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, was disturbed during the second most important part of his day. Only the morning fitting of his silken cravat outranked having his hair dressed for dinner. How tiresome it was for this crucial moment—or hour—to be disrupted by gunfire! And in the sacred sanctum of his dressing room as well!

One member of the massed servantry legged it straightaway, off without a word and at speed through the far door connecting to the bedroom. Talleyrand pursed his lips in disapproval—no one need ever mention him again!

The balance stayed but were dismayed. Minor musketry they could live with (the local gentry were always murdering animals for sport), but this was developing into an early Guy Fawkes night. From beyond the now ajar door and not so far away, cries and angry men’s voices were adding to the mix of single shots and massed volleys. There was nothing within either designed to provide comfort.

So, Talleyrand provided it. Aside from allowing them to turn him to face the fracas, he shifted not an inch, bolt upright in the ornate chair before the dressing table, still apparently awaiting the application of curling tongs and wig-powder.

‘Some callers,’ he said, quite unafraid, ‘have no manners! I’ve half a mind to quite refuse to see them!’

A few laughed nervously. Others—the serious waverers—said nothing. Talleyrand laboured under no illusion (of any sort): the local labour bore no great love for him, for all his open-handedness and gentle yoke. They still bore a torch for their previous masters, the More family, turfed out after half a millennia of residency to make way for this foreign turncoat. Meanwhile, his French staff were just wig-combers and coat-brushers, the merest candyfloss of the human family. Not one would stand between him and an assassin’s bullet.

Why should they? Talleyrand entirely understood and bore no grudge. They were material creatures, of limited duration, inhabiting a material world. Excess expectations of humanity only brought melancholy in its train. He would be the same in their position.

Nearer now, much nearer, came the sound of swordplay, of sparks being struck off sabres and metal applied to fragile fresh. Several more servants melted away.

‘Come with me, sir,’ said the Prince’s senior cravat folder. ‘We may yet escape through the kitchens…’

He meant well but Talleyrand frowned at him. He had never, even in extreme youth, so lowered himself as to run, and didn’t intend to sample such dubious delights now. Quite apart from anything else, his club foot debarred him from having both haste and poise. Better death than even a moment without dignity.

‘A thousand pardons, highness…,’ said the flunky, remembering whom he addressed. Talleyrand graciously waved all remembrance of the faux pas away and remained sitting calmly to await Fate’s decree.

Loseley House had a garrison of guards—elements of the famed ‘Scots Guards,’ to be precise. Dark, dour, men with an distressing propensity for wearing colourful skirts. Loseley locals termed them the ‘poison dwarfs.’ Talleyrand, though a tolerant man, and never for a second doubting their professional skills, always requested they kept out of sight when his friends called.

Yet, despite the suddenness of this attack it was clear they were in plain view now. Interspersed with the sounds of combat could be heard their peculiar variant of the English language, expressing orders, protests at pain and some rather wince-worthy profanity.

Talleyrand tutted.

‘I can understand men wishing to kill one another,’ he observed to the company, ‘but surely there’s no need to be rude about it…’

The Prince also had two Home Office bodyguards allocated to him, though they chanced to be elsewhere when this present unpleasantness began. Talleyrand had every confidence they were now making best efforts to be with him, but he wouldn’t weep over their non-arrival. He suspected the grim duo had orders he should not fall into enemy hands alive. In the present context they were a decidedly two-edged weapon.

Likewise, the Loseley Estate and adjacent Littleton boasted a force of militia, as did every last hamlet in modern militarised Britain, but it was highly debatable they would influence events. For one thing, most would be scattered across fields and farms, far from the action. Secondly, it was necessary that they be willing to arrive. Foreign invasion was one thing, but saving a ‘furriner’ another.

Yet, in the distance the Prince heard St Francis’ church bell begin to ring. So, now that the alarm had been raised some response might—indeed, could—be expected. The State required a return on those muskets provided gratis to every (trusted) homestead, and if no one in the locale stirred then questions would be raised. Conscription-for-life-if-you-answer-wrong sort of questions. Therefore, loyal Littleton would soon be on their way.

Too late. Beneath his unconcerned facade, Talleyrand’s keen ear detected a silence in the lower house. The enemy had passed through there and prevailed. Now the maelstrom was up the main stairs and onto the landing. It appeared that the invaders had precise knowledge of where they wanted to go. The West Wing and Chapel, the expanse and charm of the Great Hall with its family portraits and stags’ heads, tempted them not at all. They were an arrow travelling direct at a pre-selected target.

Footsteps thundered along the corridor leading to Talleyrand’s boudoir. A Scottish voice rose above the clatter to roar ‘fire!’

Following the storm heavy objects thumped the floor hard. A French voice in pain called for his mamam.

After the briefest of interludes a counter volley sounded. A bullet penetrated the bedroom door and ricocheted round to explore the room. Beyond, there were Caledonian howls.

Senior cravat-folder never learnt. He leant closer again.

‘I have a gun, sir…,’ and proof was shown in the form of an enamelled gambler’s pistol of exquisite design.

‘‘So I see,’ said Talleyrand, though not actually deigning to look. ‘Good boy…’

For a second there had been the implied offer that the Prince might actually take up the weapon! Talleyrand kindly let the awkward moment die in silence as if it had never been.

Comparative silence. The fighting was almost in the room beyond now, proxy revealed in every particular by a libretto of nasty noises. Hostile boots blundered in haste towards the sanctity of Talleyrand’s bedroom. En route, firearms boomed in confined spaces and sharp steel screeched horribly together, ten times worse than chalk on a blackboard.

Actions have consequences—serious for some, judging by the sound effects. One life ended groaning at the bedroom’s threshold before the door was slammed shut in the face of French imprecations. Then they heard Talleyrand’s four-poster bed (of so many, so much sweeter, memories) heaved across the floor to serve as barricade.

An impasse. Both sides re-evaluated their options in the light of recent developments.

Talleyrand sat up straighter still and smiled, hands at ease atop the silver top of his walking cane. However, like all the others with him, the unseen scene in the room beyond was vivid in his mind. Every sound was interpreted into instant pictures probably even worse than the reality.

Evidently, the attack on Loseley House was no impulse action. The invisible enemy had come well informed and equipped. Axes began hacking at the bedroom door.

Musket balls have little respect, even for hallowed oak; even less than axe-heads. ‘Fire!’ said the Guards officer in charge, and a volley ripped through the wooden panels.

The sound of an axe-head hitting the floor delighted most ears, but soon after the blade was taken up again, and reinforced by another. Simultaneously, French firearms replied through the splintered barrier. Talleyrand heard a Guardsman expire and greatly feared the body had fallen atop his beloved black silk sheets. Meanwhile, the wrenching of wood and hinges announced the death of the bedroom door. A babbling gaggle entered into the room beyond, shooting profusely. Grunting hand-to-hand conflict ensued. Or else they were mating.

Talleyrand was nearly alone now. In ones and twos his attendants deserted the scene via the back door. To the best of the Prince’s knowledge that led to a servants’ staircase and various obscure underling sorts of places. It had never crossed his mind to investigate before and he didn’t intend to start now.

Only the core cravat team—his sartorial elite force—had lingered. He addressed them in farewell.

‘Gentlemen,’ (for such they’d proved themselves to be), ‘I think you should go now. My guests are almost here.’

They gulped, they were pale, but they shook their heads.

Talleyrand sniffed in suppressed amazement. Who would have expected the most from the least? Life-lessons still kept on coming, even at its end.

‘Well, then, bravo!’ he said. ‘But, if that is your considered decision, oblige me one last time. Am I presentable?’

They craned round, giving the rouged old man their full professional scrutiny. A minor adjustment to a lock there, a straightening of a cuff there, but nothing serious.

‘Perfectment!’ their captain cried and dashed two fingertips off his lips in tribute.

Prince Talleyrand was reconciled and awaited the inevitable.

Sight unseen, there were a few more shots and stabs, plus a few, quite excusable in the circumstances, extreme reactions to them. Then there was hush.

The Prince adopted a polite but non-committal smile.

The door handle turned. The door opened. A Frenchman strode in. He pointed a pistol straight at Talleyrand ‘s head. He pulled its trigger.

However, being preoccupied with dying because of the bayonet in his back, his departing mind quite forgot the weapon was already discharged. Its hammer sparked upon an empty pan and sparked only residual powder. A ‘flash in the pan’ as the English say.

Realising it was his last observation on earth, the would-be assassin moved on to whatever lies beyond, meanwhile folding gracefully to the floor.

Next in was a Guards officer, double-armed with red sword and cocked pistol. No friend of the effeminate (even those with the good excuse of being female), he observed the cameo before him with ill disguised distaste.

‘Right…,’ he said. ‘So…, how’s things wi’ ye?’

Talleyrand let his composed countenance answer for him. But one lace-fringed hand went so far as to wave gracious thanks.

‘Aye, well…,’ said the officer, and withdrew.

Prince Talleyrand sighed. A twisted corpse was paying homage at his feet. Gales of gunpowder perfumery offended his upturned nose. Worse still, he could imagine the ruin of his precious boudoir, site of his second most important remaining life ambitions.

‘England!’ he said sadly to the remaining faithful, ‘What can one say about it? My dears: the noise! The people!’

Chapter 9: THE COUNCIL OF BOX HILL

In after-times they came to call it ‘The Council of Box Hill’: the first time Ada’s awful ambitions were revealed in their full glory. In fact, it took place on nearby Betchworth Station but Ada preferred Box Hill—and what Ada preferred she tended to get.

Also, it was more of a monologue than a debate.

‘It must be so!’

Ada’s assertion cut the conversation’s throat. All contradiction was curtailed—because she said so. It was good enough for Foxglove: he wandered off along the platform.

Not so Doctor Frankenstein: his curiosity was pricked. Such certainty shouldn’t flow from all the cold water he’d been pouring. He turned to his travelling companion.

‘Why?’

Lady Lovelace looked to the hills—and beyond—for salvation. She obviously thought Julius was being slow.

‘Because I want it to be!’ she replied. And then realising that sounded too ‘spoilt brat’ out here in the big wide world (though the inmost conviction of her heart), hurriedly added. ‘And logic dictates it also.’

Frankenstein sighed and returned to repose on the station bench. He suddenly found the birds overhead fascinating. Unlike him, animals and mad-people had freedom, sweet freedom—and the great gift of understanding nothing.

They’d got off their most recent train when awareness of travelling without aim struck home. Just getting out of London had been objective enough in the first hours, but soon the little branch lines became samey and wearisome. They were comparatively safe now for a while: a little while. If there was pursuit it had been shaken off and their trail muddied by complexity. Time to take stock.

It was a nice day and place to do so: the sun shone bright on Betchworth, but all debate had been throttled at birth. Ada’s plans proved to be concrete.

Julius sighed again.

‘So you’ve recruited logic to your side too, have you? And to think I considered him my supporter. Pray tell how it was done…’

Ada knew when she was being humoured. She’d had a lot of that from Lord Lovelace.

‘It simply stands to reason. They would not have revived Bonaparte without a reason. The French Convention worships reason! But if there were no serum to fully revive him—not the feeble stuff you gave me, but spark and all—then there would be no cause to. No? But revived he was, therefore ipso-facto, such a serum exists…’

Julius would have tipped his hat to such a bedlam-fresh parade of ‘logic’ had he not been so tired. They’d barely rested all day. Even this uncomfortable iron seat on a station platform was siren-calling him to sleep.

‘Amazing…,’ he ‘replied.’

And it was really. Ada’s thought processes were amazing. The fact of their escape from London after one close shave too many was amazing. Their ‘success’ in reaching this sleepy Surrey station was… well, amazing—in a spectacularly unhelpful way.

The big question was, where to next? And then, just as important, why? Julius Frankenstein had the disquieting suspicion that, right beside him that very moment, Ada Lovelace’s insanity was assembling an answer to both.

Meanwhile, the scenery was enchanting: green hills spread before them shone, basking in the sun, and the few trippers who’d disembarked at Betchworth as they had, could now be seen as dots ascending the white ‘Zigzag’ path to Box Hill. Allegedly, a spectacular view over multiple counties awaited them. Further away, toiling along another approach to the same slope, cantered a hunt; matchstick figures resplendent in their ‘pinks,’ in pursuit of Mr Fox. Probably. Hopefully.

All very charming; all very English, but nothing to do with them. Back on the platform, there was no one about to bother about. After announcing that the next train anywhere wasn’t for an hour or more, the Stationmaster had taken himself and his suspicions about this trio off to some private citadel. Betchworth village was too tiny and remote to merit waiting cabs and so the ensuing space constituted solitude and interlude. Julius decided he might as well spend it exploring the delusions of a dead mad-woman.

‘You’ll surely concede,’ said Lady Lovelace, returning to the fray, ‘that he has been attended by success…’

Well, yes, Julius surely would. ‘He’ could only be ‘the Wolf of Europe,’ the revived Napoleon, dragged from the grave to win battles anew. Frankenstein considered ‘The Great Breakthrough,’ and ‘The Month of Marches,’ followed by ‘The Masterstroke of Mons’: epic victories to ten times over wipe away the shame of Waterloo. A time when every newspaper every day reported shattered armies streaming back whence they came, and thrones toppling. And since then other, equal, triumphs had been added. Recent rumours said that Prussia (what little was left of it) had been swept out of the anti-Conventionary alliance. Russia waited, trembling, next in line. The Grande Armée, living and otherwise, stood masters of the continent. But for neo-Nelson’s navy they’d be in England too! So no, Ada’s contention, as far as it went, could hardly be denied.

Of course, she had to drag it further, beyond all reasonable bounds.

‘Accordingly,’ said Ada, like she was administering a coup de grace to a fallen foe, ‘not only does this royal serum exist, but it clearly works!’

‘‘Royal serum’?’

‘My term: the invention of a second ago. It fits, n’est pas?’

Frankenstein quibbled for the sake of it.

‘He’s not Emperor this time round; not royal.’

Lady Lovelace brushed his pedantry aside with a sweep of her fan.

‘Give it time, mein herr, give it time…’

Likely so, but time was one resource the trio were short of. And sleep. And clean clothes. In fact, they must each have looked as wretched as Julius presently felt. One of the trippers from the train had been moved to pity and offered them a spare ham-sandwich and swig of ginger-ale. Frankenstein, for one, now secretly repented of spurning that charity. Out in darkest Surrey there was no question of a station buffet.

Meanwhile, though no mathematician such as Lady Lovelace, Julius was adding her two plus two to arrive at an alarming five—or more…

‘You want to go and borrow some, don’t you?’ he asked, resignedly. ‘To tap on Versailles Palace door and ask if Field Marshall Napoleon Bonaparte has any ‘royal serum’ he can spare…’

Ada admitted all with a smile. Though robbed of their living sparkle, her eyes were still lustrous; even beguiling. She turned them on Frankenstein and he could not turn away.

‘Borrow… steal… whichever,’ she said coquettishly.

With an effort, Frankenstein disengaged gazes.

‘Could you not consider somewhere nearer home?’ he said, mock grave. ‘Neo-Nelson is at Portsmouth I believe…’

Ada pondered the option for all of a second.

‘No. I think not. Does he have the spark? Doubtful. What has he achieved since revival? More mere victories such as he gained in life. Trafalgar, Yarmouth Harbour, the Battle of Botany Bay. Decisive victories, I grant you, but the same old stuff, much as before. Not a country-crusher amongst them. No, mein herr, I tip Old Boney as the sure-fire certainty if you ask me…’

Julius wasn’t sure he had, or if he had now wished he hadn’t. He sighed yet again and adjusted his collar. It felt over familiar, even grimy.

Yet he had no grounds for complaint, not really. What had she promised him? ‘Escape and adventure.’ Well, this proposal contained both those, beyond all arguing.

After all, what else was death but the ultimate escape and adventure?

Julius beamed at her—or something.

‘Very well, my dear Ada, France it is!’

She frowned at such familiarity but he’d already tipped his hat over his face and settled down to doze. Soon his breathing became shallow. Like many soldiers he had somewhere acquired the knack of seizing sleep in small packages, as and when required.

No longer needful of sleep, Lady Lovelace sat stiff-backed awaiting the next train, watching the colourful galloons, both civil and military, floating over Box Hill.

In her previous life, she and Lord Lovelace had their own private airship. The scarlet and gold dirigible was garaged in a private aerodrome at Horsley Towers, with stables for its Lazaran crew alongside. Husband and wife had been free to fly anywhere their hearts desired—instead of which Ada stuck to her calculations in confined spaces, and Lord Lovelace to politics in Parliament. Now it could have wafted her to France as easy as pie, if things were back as they once were…

But they weren’t. Ada put the possibility out of her mind, along with all related baggage. Awaiting mere public transport and the fourth class carriage that Lazarans were confined to, she felt no nostalgia for those pampered days. Mansions, family, fine meals and clothes, all such refinements of life sought to grip on a place Ada didn’t have, either pre or post-mortem. All she missed was her spark, and that lack would shortly be attended to.

Lady Lovelace’s dulled eyes ranged confidently across the living world, in anticipation of better days.

Toiling up the Zigzag path, Alfred Sturgeon clapped one hand to the back of his neck.

‘Strewth!’ he exclaimed to wife and ankle-biters. ‘Someone’s dancing on me grave!’

‘Have a rest, Alfie love,’ said Mrs Sturgeon, concerned. Foundry work took its toll and he wasn’t the man he once was. This slog up a sheer hill on a hot day might well do their breadwinner a mischief. She proffered a bottle of lemon-cordial from her picnic bag.

‘Here, ‘ave a swig. It’ll cool yer down.’

Mr Surgeon shook his head but accepted anyway.

‘It’s warming up I need. Blimey, Elsie: someone slid a ton of ice down me spine just then.’

He looked back in the perceived direction of the assault, but was none the wiser. All he could see was the tiny dot of someone on Betchworth Station staring up at him.

The only other people in the fifth (or ‘Revived-person’) class compartment were an obvious miser and some Welsh slate roofers, en route to some job somewhere far from home. Plus, of course, various Lazarans—but they didn’t count.

Julius and Foxglove sat either side of Ada on the slat seats to show she was escorted, and the ticket collector had to mask his disdain. After ordering some refreshments brought through from the buffet car they were soon as comfortable as they were ever going to be in a cattle wagon. Along they went, sometimes in excess of thirty miles an hour, chugging away to the south coast.

Paradoxically, down amongst the lowest of the low was where you had greatest freedom of speech. Even if you crossed the bounds, who would believe anything that riffraff claimed to have overheard?

Frankenstein’s natural curiosity had risen from the grave precisely parallel with Ada. Now, as they rolled through the Surrey countryside wreathed in steam, it was a convenient time to indulge it.

‘Can you remember anything from being dead?’

The query was without preface or address but Lady Lovelace accepted delivery. After all, it was unlikely her companion was addressing the Lazaran chain-gang opposite: their low moaning, and indeed existence, had swiftly merged into the general background.

Foxglove frowned at such forwardness.

‘‘No.’ Ada’s reply was considered but succinct.

It was a disappointment, though not unexpected. Frankenstein studied the smoke-dominated view from the window.

‘No, none of you do. Or at least that is what your sort say. If true, it is a great pity: how one longs for a fore-glimpse of Paradise…’ He paused and then reluctantly added, out of honesty: ‘or premonition of Hell. Alas, we must conclude that the chasm between life and death is absolute, too wide to bridge or even glimpse the other side.’

Lady Lovelace dislodged a glowing smut from her bodice with a deft flick of the fan.

‘There is an alternative explanation, mein herr’

‘There is?’

Julius looked for it in vain. So Ada assisted.

‘We may remember nothing because there is nothing. Have you not considered that, dear doctor?’

No, he hadn’t. A sheltered Swiss upbringing, fortified by formative years in the Vatican, plus Frankenstein family guilt, evidently ruled such a hypothesis out of court. Julius was as shocked, shocked, as a maiden menaced by a drunken sailor.

‘Apparently not…,’ Her ladyship observed, and smiled, relishing her naughtiness’ effect on him. Whatever else the grave did to Revived folk she was still her Father’s daughter. ‘Well, such is my conclusion. Personally, I draw great comfort from it…’

Fear of report-backs from the afterlife had fuelled the Church’s earliest and most vociferous objections to Revivalist science. That none ever arrived barely stilled the disquiet. The whole business had… implications—as now.

Ada Lovelace’s irreligion left Julius aghast. Like beholding a blasted heath where you thought to find a garden. When the motion of the train caused their bodies to collide he perceived the chill from her dead flesh anew. Even Foxglove had to assume a stony face.

‘Do not take offence,’ the servant said to Frankenstein, (advice or command?) ‘Her ladyship thought that way before.’

As if that made things better!

Julius calmed himself with deep breaths. He could not entirely quit the field without seeming unmanly, but the subject must be steered to safer shores.

‘I respectfully decline to share in your delusion, madam,’ he said. ‘Although it does at least afford proof of one thing. Consistency with the former life only returns with the most refined serum. Likewise, memories of the former state. Most Lazarans awake to only a blank slate and vague sense of loss…’

Once she dug her dainty heels in, Lady Lovelace wouldn’t budge a inch.

‘How do you—or I, for that matter—know I have all my memories? There may be great swathes missing! How would I miss what I don’t recall having?’

Foxglove stiffened at the horrible suggestion. He straightaway began silent work on a catechism of Lovelace minutiae, names of children and hounds, colours of curtains etc., to quiz his Mistress on later. Whatever she lacked, be it money or memory, it was his sacred duty to supply.

Frankenstein wasn’t so easily reeled in.

‘Concede, I implore you madam, that the serum supplied to you drew back full recollection as well as raw life. Accordingly, you were revived by the best serum available-’

‘Almost the best,’ snapped Ada, implacable in her new belief. ‘We go to remedy your botched work!’

No one would ever have guessed from his face but in that instant Frankenstein was visited by revelation. It all suddenly struck home. This was real! He actually was heading for France and unbelievable danger on the say-so of a Lazaran!

Naturally, the next step was considering alternatives. Like getting off the train at the next stop and living out a long life somewhere. A safer life. A sleepier life.

It only took two seconds.

Julius Frankenstein smiled at Lady Lovelace.

‘Whatever you say…,’ he said.

Chapter 10: DEAD MAN STILL WALKING

Outside Loseley in the gathering night, yet-murkier-still in the shadows of the orangery, the condemned prisoner-to-be looked back and surveyed the ruin of his plans. Lights were going on all over the great house, illuminating the scene and ruling out further dark deeds. This rural idyll was now a riot of shouting and shots.

Because others had escaped like he had, and a vicious game of hide and seek was underway in the formal gardens. Occasional streaks of flame tore through the gloom as an attacker was found and fired upon, or the hunted despaired of flight and turned upon the chase.

Prisoner-to-be had seen the way things were going and so went the other way. Most survivors had taken the shortest and obvious route, towards sheltering trees. There they would be halfway to the ‘Hogs Back’ road atop the Downs where there might be traffic to hijack or blend in with. It was the obvious course to take.

Except that the enemy could see that just as clearly and seek with all his might to prevent it. Men on horses were racing ahead even now to cut them off. Later, expendable Lazaran beaters would sweep the woods whilst guns waited for whatever they flushed out.

Prisoner-to-be was cleverer. He hid himself in plain view.

The main drive to Loseley was broad and straight, and travellers upon it obvious. Lanterns being lit to either side made a passable imitation of daylight.

The French assassin embraced the light, walking in its fullest glare, scrunching the gravel as though he owned it. Locals rushing to the scene in arms and trepidation made way for him at first. After all, far more important than the pistol he carried, he had that air.

But there’s always one. When close to escape someone had the balls and/or stupidity to stop him.

In other circumstances, Prisoner-to-be welcomed the company of truculent rustics. Such men had revolutionary potential and might prove suitable recruits to one of the cells he’d set up. But now was neither time nor place.

‘Ere!’ said the burly yeoman in question. ‘Hold fast! Who might you be?’

His twelve-bore was halfway to raised and the suspicions of the gaggle with him were emboldened. This stranger might look and walk like authority personified, but it was no ordinary night. It might just be in order to probe.

Prisoner-to-be was not only fluent in English but had taken advanced idiom courses. He could be anyone from Duke to dustman; all of them impeccably English.

Tonight it was Duke.

‘Who I am is not your damned business. Nor relevant. Are you blind, sirrah? Can you not see there is an emergency?’

The Yeoman looked up at the disturbed ants nest that was Loseley and signified he could. Prisoner-to-be pressed home his point.

‘Well then, man, there is no time to waste with your idle curiosity. I serve the new Lord of Loseley. An attempt has been made, this very night, on his life: right under your inattentive noses!’

‘Now, see ‘ere!’ said the Yeoman, red-faced and flustered. ‘We ain’t full-time militia: we’ve got lives to lead and farms to attend to. I’ve come all the way from Binscombe, you know!’

‘Testify, Jacko!’ said some supporters. ‘You tell him!’

‘S’right!’ said another. ‘Even good ole Binscombe’s up in arms!’

From painstaking reconnaissance Prisoner-to-be knew Binscombe to be all of half a mile away—and a hamlet of infinite insignificance besides. He almost despaired, he really did. How could you ever have a revolution in a country where the natives were proud of self-forged chains? Their horizons barely got off the ground. Come the Convention’s inevitable invasion it might prove necessary to ‘slaughter and restock,’ and start again from scratch. Sad but necessary—and ‘necessary’ was always trumps.

Pending that glorious day, Prisoner-to-be needed to pretend willing slavery didn’t sicken him. He magnanimously conceded their point (whatever it was…)

‘Perhaps so: but you can be of vital assistance now. I am securing a perimeter but fighting is still underway on the Downs. The attackers have arrayed themselves in British military uniform; moreover they can even assume Scottish accents. Be on your guard or they will gun you down. My advice to you—no, command!—is to shoot on sight!’

It worked. Most knuckled their brows to him and rushed on to death by deception. Prisoner-to-be flowed through the mob like Moses parting the Red Sea. At the end of the drive the dark swallowed him up.

Behind him fresh firing began, initiating a whole new phase of festivities. It allowed Prisoner-to-be to ungrit his teeth and acknowledge his injury.

Prisoner-to-be hijacked a pony and trap, transferring ownership via a knife, and put miles between himself and his aborted mission. Then, after a spell of self-surgery and muffled screams, the offending bullet was extracted and he slept in a ditch.

On the plus side, rest permitted him to fight fever and infection. He made it through the night and awoke to a new day. On the other hand, he could no longer masquerade as an English aristocrat. Even the most eccentric of those did not come in a covered in mud and blood version.

Melchizedek Copper was a true shepherd of the Sussex Downs, like his father before him and his father before that—and so on back to just after the Flood for all he knew. His world encompassed the few miles round Lewes and that more than sufficed.

He had heard there was a war on with something or somewhere called France but he wasn’t entirely clear what that signified. At any rate, it failed on impinge on lambing season and so couldn’t be all that important.

What Melchizedek did know was that charity was the essence of Christian faith. His onerous duties didn’t permit him to attend Divine service all that often but he well recalled one Easter-tide when the parson in his sermon had said ‘faith without works is dead,’ and even a shepherd could well see what was meant.

Therefore, Melchizedek modelled himself on ‘the good shepherd’ featured in ‘The Good Book’ that he himself couldn’t read but still revered. And, though poor as poor can be, Melchizedek gave of what little he had and was kind to those about him: to his family, to his two Lazaran under-shepherds, and even to the flocks in his care. It seemed to work: life in his tiny portion of Sussex was that bit less harsh because he was around.

So, it was only natural, when one day Melchizedek the shepherd saw a weary figure slogging its way up Windover Hill, all done with travel, that he should offer him shelter.

Unfortunately, it was a dead man walking on the Downs.

On his second night of flight Prisoner-to-be took over an isolated cottage, murdering its inhabitants down to the last sheepdog for the sake of a bath and change of clothes. It was a pity to kill mere shepherds and their families, who were workers after all; but History was a cruel mistress to those who served her, taking no account of individuals. Everyone knew that.

Once he’d cleared up, Prisoner-to-be consoled himself with the thought that there were plenty more where the deceased shepherd came from. The dictates of History would impel them to step up and fill the gap. Meanwhile, the humble lives sacrificed would, in their modest way, inch forward the glorious day, meaning they had not lived—or died—in vain. And, in any case, the cause of an agent in the field outweighed a shepherd’s need for a natural span of years.

Tough measures for tough times. Even now, when far away from the scene of his original ‘crime,’ Prisoner-to-be would not have it easy. Far from it. True, there were pre-planned escape routes and agents in place, but by now the hue and cry would be truly up. The English Channel was well patrolled at the best of times, with Lord Nelson’s flotillas criss-crossing like sharks, but even before them there were manifest dangers. England’s face had been slapped whilst sitting in its own back-garden: all eyes would be extra-peeled, looking out for vengeance.

The now silent shepherd’s cottage provided opportunity for reflection. After Prisoner-to-be had dressed his wound and driven the bothersome sheep over a cliff, there was silence in which to reflect on what had passed.

Theirs had been a brave try, founded on strictly rational thought. Mere assassination of the Arch-Traitor by wayside ambush or sniper’s shot, would not have sufficed. Outright attack in force passed the clearest message to all traitors in Reaction’s employ—or it might have had it succeeded.

There is no safety from the Republic’s displeasure, it would have demonstrated, no appeal against History’s condemnation! No distance, no guards, no snuggling deep into a tyrant’s bosom was protection enough. The Republic struck when and where and how it wanted, and not via some furtive assassin’s blow but with style! Massed infantry attack deep in the black heart of the enemy! Loseley was to have burned and Talleyrand with it.

But it and he hadn’t. So that was that. No good crying over spilt milk or unspilt blood. Prisoner-to-be still had one more duty to fulfil.

He had faith, of the strictly secular kind. He knew he would make it home, somehow. He would report to the Republic. He would demand his due punishment for failure.

If a wounded French agent could extricate himself from England the same should have been child’s play for Julius and Ada, who had their health (if not life, in one case), plus funds, plus every right to be in the country.

Not so. At the exact moment said Frenchman was murdering Melchizedek the shepherd’s family on the Downs above them, down in Lewes town beside the River Ouse the couple were being rudely rebuffed.

‘N-K-D,’ said the quaymaster, and made to turn away. Julius’ hand on his shoulder restrained him—and earned a black look.

‘Explain yourself, sir!’ Julius cried. ‘I demand a degree of courtesy!’

The quaymaster reached up and politely but firmly disengaged the delaying hand. There were scowling dockhands and mariners around who looked willing to give him support.

‘I’ll explain, but I’ll not alter, mister furriner—and I’ll thank you to keep your paws to yourself. N-K-D I said and say again: ‘tis local dialect for ‘no-can-do’: our little rustic joke, only it ain’t no joke. No one here will take you, not for love nor money.’

‘But why not, man?’ said Frankenstein. ‘We can afford to be lavish, nor shall we haggle.’

Quaymaster’s expression indicated he never doubted it.

‘Nor shall I, mister. Neither shall I be druv—as we say here in Sussex’

Julius looked to Ada for interpretation. She supplied, purse lipped.

‘The motto of the county, mein herr.’ She adopted a rustic accent: ‘‘We wunt be druv.’ In plain English, they sometimes oblige but cannot be forced.’

‘Just so, ladyship,’ confirmed Quaymaster. ‘And there’s an end to it.’

‘But in the name of God why not?’ cried Frankenstein, throwing up his arms. ‘You have craft galore: why cannot we be conveyed to the coast?’

Quaymaster was amused. Lady Lovelace sniffed, even though she now had no need for breath. The man knew.

‘But it don’t stop there, does it, mister?’ he said. ‘I misdoubt your path ends at Newhaven and England’s shore…’

He had them there, though naturally Julius couldn’t admit it. Quaymaster pressed his advantage in the intervening silence.

‘I dare say you might get one of the gentlemen to take you…’

‘He means smugglers,’ interjected Ada helpfully.

‘…but we’re law-abiders here. And besides, Lewes is a pious Protestant place. I don’t speak for all, but many don’t hold with all this … reviving business.’

He looked at Lady Lovelace with frank distaste. Foxglove bristled.

‘We load occasional Lazaran regiments for the war,’ said the master of this little world, ‘out of duty and love of country. But shipping deaders abroad without a licence? Oh no, matey, that’s a hanging offence!’

It was the same story in Rye when they got there, via many tedious short journeys and changes of train. At the Mermaid Inn, whilst Ada waited in the rain outside, Julius enquired after local vessels plying for hire. Subtle questions (or so he deluded himself) ascertained which of their masters were the liveliest lads.

Passing by the port’s gallows en route to the harbour should have prepared them for disappointment. There, strung up and rotting, were all those free traders who’d run foul of the coastal blockade squadron. Their former colleagues passed by them twice a day—a salutary lesson.

Rye mariners weren’t so restrained as those of Lewes. After their first ‘no’ to Frankenstein wasn’t heeded, they threw fishheads.

Lady Lovelace had to bear-hug Julius in an icy embrace to keep his pistol in his pocket.

They struck lucky on their way back along the coast. Though first impressions suggested quite the contrary. Life served them up a lemon, only for it to spontaneously turn into lemonade.

A militia-constable boarded the train at Cooden Beach and started checking tickets, so they were obliged to disembark at the next stop, far earlier than intended. However, that ‘choice’ of station might have been their downfall just as effectively as surrendering themselves. ‘Norman’s Bay Halt’ was the epitome of insignificance set in a sea of desolation. Anyone alighting there merited a curious glance.

Julius and Ada got them aplenty but, as luck would have it, not from the constable. An incautious flash of ankle meant he was all agog at a jaunty young lady passenger at the time. Then the loco chugged away and he never knew about the certain promotion just missed.

Which meant he retired, decades later, still a constable, rather than the Inspector that might have been. Taking the long view from then, he would have said the glimpse of stocking was good, as far as it went (½ inch up the calve), but all in all wasn’t fair exchange. But he didn’t know and so didn’t say so, and remained content as he was. Thus things worked out well for everyone.

Back at Norman’s Bay, the pancake flat Pevensey Levels spread from the distant Downs right to the pebbly beach, and the wind swept over all. It spoke of rain soon. Only a few cottages, doubtless the abode of sluice-keepers and the like, relieved the uniformly grey scene.

‘Please tell me,’ said Ada, ‘I beseech you, that this is the low point in our adventure…’

Frankenstein looked all around again, as if he couldn’t trust first impressions. Finding nothing for his comfort, he tried to light a cheroot but the lucifer wouldn’t flare. He flung both away, losing both smoke and dignity.

‘I can only observe,’ he said, ‘that here is indeed low, madam. In fact, positively sea-level. Therefore, it is difficult to conceive of deeper depths, but one cannot rule it out. As I found out in the Heathrow Hecatomb, Fate sometimes drives our fortunes positively subterranean…’

Lady Lovelace slumped down onto the suitcase Foxglove carried for her.

‘In which case,’ she sighed, ‘I propose to throw myself under the next train to arrive.’

Foxglove prematurely stepped between Ada and the platform’s edge, although the track was visibly empty for miles either way.

Her proposal would do the trick. If anything, Lazarans were even more delicate than living humans, and disturbance of the serum sustaining their frames invariably did for them. The mangling attentions of a train’s iron wheels would certainly put Lady Lovelace beyond reviving as an entity, leaving just loose limbs fit only for spare parts. A dreadful waste of Frankenstein’s hard work…

He decided to risk a second cheroot and this one took.

‘Even if sincere,’ he commented, puffing away, ‘your proposal may be long delayed, madam. This hardly seems the busiest of lines: your despair must stew awhile…’

Inadvertent mention of food reminded them they were hungry. Simultaneously, the rain arrived.

‘Perhaps,’ said Foxglove, keen to get his mistress away from the rails, ‘we should seek shelter nearby. And eat something. And then think about things.’

‘‘Things’?’ said Lady Lovelace bitterly. ‘Don’t talk to me about things!’

But she arose and went with them into the days to come.

To their pleasant surprise, two of the low cottages transpired to be joined-into-one—and an inn besides! ‘The Star of Bethlehem,’ no less. Though a mystery how it found custom out here in the back of beyond, the gift-horse’s mouth was not inspected. It meant there was no need to share a fisher-family’s limited hospitality.

Even so, there might still have been problems. Regardless of former status, Lazarans were—at best—only tolerated in public houses, and then only in the public bar, or that portion of it designated for day-labourers, gypsies and sundry hoi polloi. There the undead formed a reassuring bottom-of-Life’s-barrel for even them to feel superior to. Ada and Foxglove wouldn’t have enjoyed that.

Fortunately, the Star was so far flung it only had the one bar—a sort of rough Sussex equality. There they found funny looks galore but also, compared to the cold and rain outside, a welcome, and warmth, and food for sale. And, as it turned out, not only food.

Whilst the landlord went off to assemble their ‘luncheon’ (which got laughs), one of his customers peeled away from the bar huddle and came over, drink in hand. He looked capable of anything: a gnarled tree-trunk of a mariner with wind-reddened face and wind-slitted eyes. Yet they probably appeared as exotic to him as he to them.

‘Come for the whale, ave ye?’ he asked, without preamble. The lower classes were meant to preface unsolicited conversation with ‘excuse me saying’s and ‘might I make so bold’s…

‘No. We’ve ordered lamb cutlets,’ replied Foxglove, who was prickly on points of etiquette.

The mariner smiled but remained. Frankenstein’s curiosity got the better of him.

‘What whale?’

‘Only you’ve missed he,’ the mariner went on. ‘The big ole stranded whale what trippers came to see, that the Railway company put the halt in for, he clean rotted away two year back. And good riddance: all pong and no eating.’

‘Don’t you have a go at old whaley!’ said the landlord, returning with a tray of brandies. ‘He were good business while he lasted. And put us on the map too, with a new name.’

‘The Railway company didn’t much fancy ‘Pevensey Sluice,’’ the mariner explained. ‘Normans Bay sounded much sweeter to they…’

‘Really?’ Frankenstein delivered the variant of that wonderfully multi-purpose English word which implied he didn’t give a damn. ‘No, not here for the whale,’ he then confirmed, and left it at that.

The visitors downed their drinks and when the spirits reached their spirits they felt revived enough to converse—amongst themselves.

‘Are you still here?’ Foxglove asked the mariner. Somehow, by tone alone, it was conveyed he’d happily make it otherwise.

The mariner ignored words and intonation alike. He focused on the gentry.

‘So,’ he said, softly, ‘if ain’t the whale of blessed memory, then you must be for France…’

That got their attention.

‘What on earth do you mean?’ asked Ada, taking command in full aristo mode.

The mariner cut her dead, or as good as. His gaze remained on Julius.

‘Not ‘earth’: I’m talking sea. Earth’s where this here deader belongs. Sea is how you’s trying to escape: is why you’s here in Normans Bay. Now Mr Whale’s gone there ain’t no other reason.’

Frankenstein installed a finger erect before Lady Lovelace’s opening jaw. Slowly she closed it again, in order to bite her tongue.

Julius spoke quietly, though he now suspected it little mattered in this place. The mystery of the Star’s location was solved: it lived and thrived on illicit trade, born of being in prime position for it.

‘That,’ he said, ‘is loose talk. Your country is at war with France: all contacts with it are capital crimes…’

The mariner smiled. The exercise screwed his eyes up still more till they were mere beads of light.

‘If we weren’t in mixed company,’ he answered, ‘I’d have this shirt off and show you my back. Red and ridged as bacon! Twelve years in his Majesty’s navy flogged all the patriotism out of I! Now are you France bound or not? Are we in business?’

They were. They certainly were.

Since it was cold and dull upon the beach at midnight, they made conversation. It is unlikely Lady Lovelace would have exerted herself otherwise.

The only alternative sound around, save the sea, was moaning from Lazaran gangs working sluice gates out on the Levels. Not that cold, wet and dark signified anything to them: it was merely their response to being ripped from eternal rest. Owners had to accept that perpetual lamentation was a feature of the low-grade Lazaran. Even muzzles and beatings only reduced it to a hum.

Accordingly, almost anything was an improvement on that distant but depressing dirge.

‘Have you ever played rounders, mein herr?’

She persisted in calling him that, for reasons all her own. Julius speculated that she wished to emphasise his foreignness, the better to stress her own belonging here. Nationality might be all Lady Ada Lovelace (deceased) had left. In the modern world to be born (or even re-born) English was to have done well in the lottery of life.

Frankenstein skimmed a flat pebble at the waves. It sank like… a stone.

‘Rounders?’ he said. ‘It is a card game, no?’

‘No,’ Ada replied. ‘It involves a bat and ball and running between four stations. One played it as a girl, but that is not material. One only mentions it because the sport employs an apposite phrase: ‘Three strikes and you’re out.’ I strongly believe that applies to us.’

Frankenstein yawned. It was a bore to feign interest but their rendezvous was late.

‘How so?’

‘In that by time of our third request for conveyance, first Lewes then Rye, the news will have spread to every fisherman’s ‘spit n’ lean’ hut and foreshore in the south—for theirs is an incestuous world, bound into brotherhood by adversity and risk. Our concerns would be the subject of promiscuous discussion and, soon after, public knowledge.’

‘Really?’ That word again, this time expressing surprise.

Lady Lovelace nodded.

‘Really. As I say, on the third occasion of asking is my calculation,’ she confirmed.

‘I defer to you in the matter of calculations…,’ said Julius, unbelieving.

A distant splash and howl signalled that a Lazaran must have fallen into one of the deep drainage ‘guts.’ It was not as great an emergency as it might be, for one of the few benefits of revived life was lack of need for air. Shipwrecked Lazarans had been known to survive in the water for months, only finally coming to grief via rocks or sharks. In the past, escaping Lazaran slaves had dashed into the sea and, for all anyone knew of it, lived and failed to breathe under the waves still.

It was an enviable quality to possess—possibly their only enviable quality—when about to embark on a hazardous voyage. It merited mentioning to Lady Lovelace, if only to cheer her up.

‘Has it not occurred to you, madam, that you might safely walk to France?’

Obviously not. Ada grimaced and indicated her scarlet gown and just-so coiffure. Despite the premature streaks of grey she was proud and protective of her crowning glory.

Julius persisted.

‘I meant if you were not such a lady, if your appearance upon arrival was no consideration? In reality you have no need of a vessel as we do.’ He turned jocular. ‘Consider further, my lady: we mere living creatures are holding you back!’

Ada nodded and turned to look at him, deadly serious.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Now that I had considered. Often.’

Frankenstein suddenly felt a chill even deeper than the night’s. He’d just glimpsed a future master species different from his own.

‘All aboard!’ came a shout from seawards.

Chapter 11: A VISION OF VECTIS

Maybe it was his title that made Talleyrand think of the Isle of Wight. ‘Lord Vectis’: after the classical name for the place. The Prime Minister’s erudite little joke to match making him Island Governor too.

Well, let the great man and his cabinet laugh. If they crowned him King of Duck Island in St James’s Park, as per Ada’s fantasy, he’d take that seriously too. As ever, Talleyrand ate what was set before him and made the most of it. Made a relished meal of it, in fact. It was only who had the last laugh that mattered.

Talleyrand had never visited Wight and probably never would. However, full of good intentions now that he was solely responsible for a concrete somewhere, he’d carefully appointed a civilised man as manager. Someone thoughtful and a stranger to passion. Also someone who, as compensation for all the prodding and probing involved in getting the job, would be hugely rewarded for his troubles. Or, alas, punished likewise. Linked to that lavish salary was a clause spelling out that the penalty for corruption—even a shilling’s worth of corruption—was death. Labour laws in contemporary England had got to the stage where such contracts were commonplace—and quite legal. Many factories had their own gallows (to save time and bothering the State).

Talleyrand’s first assigned task for him (bar the prescribed sexual purgative each morning) was to rid the Isle of soldiers and other tax-eaters. They could remain in the fortresses central Government felt necessary, but nowhere else. In a well-run polity shepherdesses should be able to roam unmolested, and hard-working people work hard without robbery.

Then the Prince scoured all democracy from the Island whilst simultaneously inflating an illusion of it. Any number of ‘consultative councils’ and councillors were created: but with no real power but to feast and talk and keep themselves out of mischief. For Talleyrand did not just fear ‘crude and licentious’ soldiery and busy-body bureaucrats: he knew from personal experience that humans had to be protected from the political class no less than they were from pirates.

Of course, some social-cannibals are not susceptible to reason and, like foxes, do what they do driven on by urges. No blame therefore attaches: but neither is there point in appealing to their better natures. Lawyers were warned once about their behaviour and second time shot. There were limits even to Talleyrand’s tolerance.

Whilst still intact their bodies then hung in cages on the walls of Yarmouth and Cowes Castles. Thus, all arrivals to Wight were met with visible demonstration of its enlightened penal system. Swift, cheap, Justice, with a moral, and a 100% record of reform.

After that it was merely a matter of setting up first-rate free schools (bilingual, naturally) and then ‘Lord Vectis’ work was done. He and his manager could sit back and let things roll, relying on human nature. Just a century or so should see peace and prosperity become their default setting.

Because, in a perverse way, the Prince had a benign view of humanity (setting aside, of course, its obvious innate depravity). He had long observed that, left in peace and protected from bullies, the invincible trajectory of man was to prosper. Restrained from war and preying on one another, they couldn’t help themselves but build things: useful things like houses and businesses and families. And then they tended them like a garden, finally handing on the baton to loved ones or relatives before laying down to eternal rest, fairly satisfied. Or else drank themselves to death early.

It wasn’t glorious or noble, there was little drama and no poetry; and Talleyrand had no wish to join in himself, let alone, God forbid, socialise with such people. But he was convinced that this was what they really wanted—and, who knows: perhaps what the Almighty wanted too?

If there was one thing the Prince de Beavente, Lord Vectis, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord was above all, it was polite. And it was surely polite to give people (and deities) what they wanted. Where possible. If he felt like it.

Word was that tax yield was now way up. People were moving there from elsewhere and native smugglers going straight, finding better, more relaxing, ways to make a living. All good signs. Soon there’d be agitation for a mainland link and Solent bridge—though he’d veto that: let Shangri-la remain its sweet self and require a little effort to get to…

Meanwhile, goodness knew what his manager did all day, sitting there in Carisbrooke Castle; twiddling his thumbs or playing with himself probably: but Talleyrand wished him well. He recalled from one interview (the fourth, or was it fifth?) the man saying he liked to read History. Well, thanks to Talleyrandian rule there were now free libraries on the Island that he could read his way through and grow even wiser (if not happier).

So, everything should have been fine and civilised and yet here Talleyrand was apparently visiting the place one morning, contrary to all intentions, and finding things—everything—gone so very wrong. Just as there was no sign of his manager anywhere there was excess signs of soldiers everywhere.

They straggled all over the place, discipline as eroded as their uniforms. And even civilians were in arms, brandishing weapons and acting like drunkards. And at this time of day too! Some of them looked like death-warmed-up. In fact, on closer inspection, they were.

Talleyrand couldn’t recall arriving (which was strange), or even what type of craft he’d sailed in. Presumably his secretary had arranged things. But then surely they would also have arranged for his reception. And not by a yelling rabble either. Yet all he could see through the strands of morning mist were men running hither and thither, all rudely ignoring him. It was worse than a Greek fire-drill!

There were the sounds of gunshots also, something Talleyrand deplored. When he’d ran Napoleon’s empire for him there’d been perpetual musketry the length and breadth of Europe, despite all his best efforts and advice. And look how that had ended up!

He was in Yarmouth, Talleyrand felt fairly sure. Though not blessed with personal acquaintance, he’d heard that its castle was of the squat modern sort rather than picturesque and ruined kind. And here beside him reared a boring wall of the type you’d imagine. It had the royal coat of arms (Henry VIII’s, if Lord Vectis read correctly) above its gate but was otherwise unadorned: a pared-down weapon of unwelcome. He’d read that the fabric incorporated stone from Quarr Abbey, suppressed during that King’s ‘Reformation.’ Surveying the result as an aesthete, if nothing more, Talleyrand considered it a very poor exchange.

And what was this? Canon fire from the Castle’s portals? That wasn’t meant to happen! And certainly not in his model state. What a state of affairs! How extraordinary.

Talleyrand went to investigate. A dozen paces on he discovered Lazarans hurling themselves at the fortification, only to be blown back (and apart) by grapeshot. The consequent gore and gunpowder residue threatened his cravat. Naturally he retreated.

A siege? By unruly undead? Everything had gone to pot he concluded.

And had it confirmed for him by meeting one in Yarmouth High Street. A great cauldron, perhaps pillaged from an inn, bubbled away atop a fire made of furniture. Into it the undead fed bits of people. The suspiciously long limbs protruding from it were instantly identified. In an adjoining alley Talleyrand now saw a pen of human prisoners, either resigned or wailing, being one by one converted into portions by Lazaran butchers armed with cleavers.

He’d always heard that rogue Lazarans consumed their victims whole and live: no gourmands they! Yet these seemed a higher sort (the Jane Austens of their species perhaps) who demanded daintier rations. Or perhaps it was a refinement of revenge.

Naturally, Lord Vectis recoiled—straight into the arms of one of his surviving subjects (apparently an endangered species…).

‘Save yourself! Save yourself!’ said the man, gripped by strong emotions and delayed in the act of fleeing. ‘All is lost!’

‘No, sir!’ replied Talleyrand, and went so very far as to reprimand him with his walking cane. One, two; light mock-knighting blows to each shoulder. ‘No, I say. You save yourself—from shameful abandon!’

He drew the man to him by a handy chain draped about his neck. Then they were temporarily alone and out of the action, secluded in a shop doorway. All the shop windows were shattered, its display of lady’s-wear dishonoured.

The man rallied slightly. He looked at Talleyrand but did not really see.

‘They came out of the waves at Freshwater,’ he said—or babbled. ‘While we were clinging on at Totland! All is lost!’

Well, plainly he was, but, although a fabulously wealthy man, Talleyrand could not afford to join him. Panic was the most expensive of luxuries. Cathartic, possibly: but ruinously expensive. There would be time enough for panic in the grave (where it had the habit of putting you).

‘How can all be lost?’ he asked the man whilst he still had him. ‘This is just the Isle of Wight…’

‘Man’s last stand!’ said the man. ‘The end of England!’ And he wept. And fled. Leaving behind in Talleyrand’s hands his mayoral chain of office.

And then Lord Vectis was suddenly elsewhere (which was strange), oddly unclear about travelling between the two places. He now stood below verdant green downs. The village sign said ‘Brighstone.’

Its cottages were afire and there was that confounded pop pop pop of small-arms fire again. Oh, how he detested it!

Fortunately, the vile sound proved to be short-lived. Less happily, it derived from last gasps and mopping-up operations. Lazarans were in charge now. They strode the streets like masters and directed how things should be for the superseded species.

He observed prisoners being corralled in the main street and edged utensils being sharpened. He watched a Lazaran leader drag a respectable matron by a halter round her neck, screaming towards the village church. Perhaps she was his prize and treat. Talleyrand did not envy anybody here their fate.

The matron saw him. ‘Help!’ she called out as a change from shrieking, arms outstretched, clutching at fence posts and straws as the darkness of the church interior drew near. ‘Help me, sir, I beg you!’

Talleyrand bowed to her.

‘Never fear, madam,’ he said, at maximum dip. ‘I shall.’

And the fact that he stood by as she was ravished and eaten didn’t alter that resolve one bit.

Then Talleyrand woke up. Then he sat up. That portion of his silk sheets nearest his hands had been shredded. All of them were sweat-soaked (no mean feat for a diminutive man)

Well!

It was not nice: he’d go so far as to say (the strongest condemnation in his armoury) it really was appalling. Men of his vintage and calibre did not deserve to be appalled. It would not do and up with it he would not put.

Till then he’d had an mild preference for one side and policy. He’d dabbled here and directed there as mood took and opportunism offered. His core was not engaged (naturally). But now he sensed a need for commitment: urgency even!

Which was not like him at all. So perhaps he was being directed in his turn. But it was no angel that had shown what he’d seen. Nor would Jehovah send one of his famous ‘dreams’ to such as he. Would He? Surely not!

Though not so fast! Technically Talleyrand was still a Bishop. He’d left the business, true, and been excommunicated to boot, but in one sense the brand remained on him and always would. ‘A priest for life’ they’d intoned at his ordination ceremony all those years ago (though he’d been distracted by a piquant chorister at the time). So just maybe…?

Talleyrand had always taken it as a point of honour to examine all evidence in the problems Life presented him: no matter how disquieting some evidence might be. Braving disquiet and damage to the soul was the courage he’d shown in preference to scampering round a battlefield at someone’s else’s behest. Valour in the service of self and commonsense had always struck him as the far better part of… well, valour. Ditto not intercepting speeding lumps of metal.

Whatever the source, he now felt called to a decision. One of the big ones in his life, not like ‘Napoleon or the restored Bourbons?,’ or ‘loyalty to France or dealings with the enemy? No, this ranked alongside choosing a cover story for his club-foot (a childhood injury and neglectful nurse = sympathy), or appointing his chef (the all-rounder Carême or potato sorceress—but mad harpy—Madame Mérigot?)

Talleyrand could not find it in himself to love his species—even he was not capable of that level of deceit—but by and large he wished it well. For what was the alternative: the rule of trees and lichen? Or insects? Or Lazarans? It would be peaceful, granted, but not interesting.

Talleyrand preferred interesting and so plumped for that future. Regardless of any inconvenience to himself (within reason), he would make it so.

But not today, because today he was playing whist with some witty fillies. Therefore tomorrow. Or shortly. But certainly soon. Probably.

Chapter 12: LIP SERVICE

Talleyrand’s habitual rising at midday threatened to drive Sir Percy Blakeney mad. There were things to do and plans to make but his second-in-command (so he deluded himself) never appeared till the day was nigh done! As if managing all England’s Intelligence Services could be a part-time post!

But because the man (or devil) had his uses, Sir Percy tried delaying his arrival as long as he could bear: meeting the Prince half way, so to speak. However, that compromise involved agony. As a lifetime early riser, and increasingly aware his best moments were now confined to morning, the lost hours scraped Sir Percy’s soul as they slipped by. Therefore there was many the time that he stomped Loseley’s formal gardens in murderous impatience, not seeing God’s glorious creation but an ever darkening red mist instead.

God’s Teeth and toes! What in the Almighty’s name did the Frenchman have to do in that damned bedroom anyway? Sir Percy was aware of Talleyrand’s ludicrous ritual of the cravat, and that he played cards till all hours, but the old fool was so advanced in years he stood in less need of sleep, surely. Blakeney got by on five hours a night or less, and it was a filthy lie to say his volcanic temper had anything to do with that! He’d sacked any number of clerks and servants who so much as hinted at it. Other people were entirely to blame. Like now.

And as for the thought that the Frog might still do the mattress dance, or even display interest in trying… At his age? Disgusting!

Today, after the fifth furious message, Talleyrand finally emerged as the clocks struck one. He looked poised and faultless. You could have sliced bread on the creases of his cravat.

Sir Percy had a mad moment of wanting to vomit over this vision of vanity, to spoil it with last night’s pheasant-and-dumplings, but fortunately the urge passed. The Prince’s limp evoked sympathy for one thing, his artfully concealed special shoe evident to the trained appraising eye. Blakeney had been brought up (with many a reinforcing clipped ear) that it was ‘wicked to mock the afflicted.’

Then Talleyrand punctured the burgeoning Christian compassion. He theatrically passed the back of one hand across his powdered brow.

‘Ohh,’ he sighed, ‘je suis très fatigué après mon travail aujourd’hui…’

Blakeney almost said something unforgivable, but swivelled on his heels and strode off towards the appointed reception room.’God’s teeth: speak English, man!’ he called back. ‘And get a move on, damn y’eyes!’

Sir Percy’s retreating shoulders clenched as he heard (and had to pretend not to) the Prince comment, sotto voce, on the surprising shapeliness of Blakeney’s behind.

In fact, a full three hours before Sir Percy fumed, Charles-Maurice Talleyrand was up and dressed and already in action.

A week had elapsed since the armed incursion and several days now separated him from his dream visit to Isle of Wight Armageddon. Normal Loseley life was restored.

Accordingly, a staff member, seconded from Loseley’s dairy, aroused his interest in the new day by paying the sweetest lip-service. Talleyrand awoke and knew it was she by feeling her locks all over his loins. Her brother had far shorter hair.

Then, after a Spartan breakfast of brandy-flambéed egg-white omelette, he was ready to face life’s rich tapestry. It would be, however, his own enhanced version of it, not Blakeney’s grey government-issue variety.

The world made its way to Talleyrand via visitors and communications. Journals, letters and informants supplied grist to a mill which ground exceedingly fine. Propped up in bed, the Prince welcomed them all with a gracious smile.

So, the Convention was planning to invade Mantua was it? The regime there (wanted: a term for rule by the indefensible: ‘Disgustocracy’?) would pay handsomely to be forewarned. And Lady Worsley of Appuldurcombe had embarked on her eighth affair of the season, had she? That much-loved lady was slowing down. What was failing: her lust for life or merely lust? Either way, both adulterer (a general) and cuckold (a peer) involved would now be extra… persuadable.

And a Swiss and a lady Lazaran were seeking illegal passage to France were they? And having trouble finding people—even poor sailors—as corrupt as they? In Lewes and Rye? Who would have thought it? To be rebuffed once was misfortune, but twice was sufficient to tug the strands of Talleyrand’s cobweb. A third refusal might even tweak Sir Percy’s more sluggish version…

Talleyrand sipped his morning chocolate and pondered. Yet outwardly he remained unreadable, a behemoth of bland, a mill pond on the stillest day ever. No observer would have suspected the subtleties now slithering about, like iguanas in a pit, beneath that skull. Unless, that is, they knew his reputation (which all Europe did).

Was his intended ‘nudge’ to History turning into a battering ram? Has he been wise to blend two such volatile chemicals? To mix the metaphors, were two dull chrysalides blossoming into alarmingly colourful butterflies? If so, should he swat them or supply more breeze to fill their wings?

It was yet another first division quandary, ranking right up there with the looming debate over whether to wear a white or a pearl waistcoat.

Talleyrand was in benevolent mood that morning. Looking through the very same window that Good Queen Bess had during her visits to Loseley, the green Downs struck him as… perfect. There were carriages travelling along the Hogs Back, off on all sorts of doubtless interesting errands. And he had kept an erection throughout the maid’s ministrations this morning: no mean feat for a man of his years.

So, the pendulum of Talleyrand’s thoughts swung towards ‘yes.’

Yes, he would be as kind as the world (falsely) seemed today. He would give the couple a helping hand. Just as the maid had he.

Talleyrand called his clerk of the day.

‘Xavier!’

‘Highness?’

‘Are you familiar with current case 323?’

‘Intimately, highness.’

‘They are about to commit themselves to the cruel sea. Make it less cruel.’

‘Immediately, highness’

‘And Lord Lovelace has written,’ said Blakeney.

‘Gracious me!’

It was Talleyrand’s standard one-size-fits-all response, and could be taken to mean anything—or nothing. Over the course of a working ‘day’ it became like Chinese water torture, with the additional potential to squirm under your skin.

After his long wait Sir Percy’s face was already dangerously dark, a collage of ominous reds and purples. Talleyrand really shouldn’t have…

‘Damn me, do you have to keep saying that?’ Blakeney exploded, hammering the table and making the coffee cups jump.

And not only the coffee cups. A Scottish soldier, pistol drawn, looked in to see that all was well.

The Prince drew back in exaggerated shock, throwing up his hands as protection.

‘Gracious me!’

Sir Percy wanted to bury his head (in hands) or bury his sword (in flesh) or, better still, go home to bed; but duty drove him on. He took deep breaths whilst waving the guard away.

‘I apologise for the outburst,’ said the spymaster, insincerely. ‘You must forgive my temper: I haven’t been feeling myself lately.’

Talleyrand almost embarked on a very unwise response, touching upon the guidance to his staff on that subject. Instead, he bit his lip.

It had been a long afternoon, what with the ‘gracious me’s and pile of pettifogging correspondence to work through. Lord Lovelace’s missive lay near the dregs of the in-tray, amidst material getting short shrift out of sheer weariness. After hours devoted to setting up English spy rings and wrapping up French ones, the marital difficulties of minor Lordlings seemed mere milk-and-water stuff, unworthy of important men’s attention.

Yet the heavy paper and embossed coat of arms commanded some respect. As did his and Blakeney’s mutual membership of White’s Club. Sir Percy’s ear had been bent on the subject several times when he sought sanctuary there from the silly world and refuge in a stiff brandy. ‘Put it in writing, dear boy’ he’d said, hoping to hear no more. However, evidently the noble Lord Lovelace was so unworldly as to mistake fend-offs for promises.

Blakeney rescued the letter and waved it before Talleyrand.

‘No need to read it,’ he said, helpfully. ‘I can tell you the gist. He married a flighty piece, Lord Byron’s daughter in fact: not that you’ll have heard of him…’

The lip Talleyrand had bitten was now pursed. To be presumed uncultured by some Saxon oaf…!

‘Anyhow,’ Blakeney sailed on, ‘what’s bred in the bone comes out in the meat, and she’s acted true to form. Dabbled with science, pestered busy men, slept with Lazarans; that sort of thing. Got herself killed by one in fact. The Home Office denied permission for revival but someone did it anyway. Now, she’s on the rampage, dead as a doornail and mad as a hatter: robbing banks, shooting police and generally disgracing the Family name. Plus she’s acquired an accomplice: we have an artist’s impression available from one of the outrages. There’s been so many I can’t recall which…’

In trying to recall, Sir Percy was troubled. He’d spared all of three seconds to quiz the file that morning and the drawing had shared that brief scan. Now a bat shriek of recognition stirred. Was it mere imagination or had that face been vaguely familiar? Trouble was, Sir Percy had so many cases on the go that all but crucial facts were purged from memory lest his head explode.

Now, hours later, he could spare only the briefest mental chase: Talleyrand was waiting expectantly and there remained ample work to do. No: no good: the will o’ the wisp recollection was let go—if it ever existed.

‘Well, the long and the short of it is milord wants us to put men on the case, above and beyond the Police: get it sorted quick. And there’s a jest for you: I get the impression she had men aplenty on her in life. Now, in death, if you please, her husband wants us to put more on!’

Talleyrand pretended to restrain his ribs.

‘Ha ha! Oh, you are too droll, Sir Percy.’

‘Am I? Well, be that as it may, I want to oblige the chap: it’s embarrassing for him. He never explicitly said so but I reckon it’s best if she just… disappears. Back to Heaven—or Hell more likely—which she never should have left. Romney Marsh has loads of room left in it, if y’ take me meaning…’

Talleyrand did. He gathered that many of the English State’s enemies (or mistakes) resided there on a permanent basis, slowly turning into leathery peat-men to amaze future generations.

Sir Percy realised he’d sounded a bit ruthless, maybe even French!

‘There’s laws been broken,’ he expanded. ‘A life lost; serenity of the Realm disturbed and all that, so the legal aspect’s covered. Plus illegal revival’s a capital offence. But I don’t have staff to spare. Have you got any slack? Could you cover it?

The Prince smiled and inclined his head. It was so… luxurious to be able, on occasion, speak the truth.

‘My dear Blakeney,’ he said, ‘consider it done.’

Which, in fact, it was.

Mere shutting of the stable door after the horse was fled. A face and job-saving gesture. By the time the posters were printed the ‘Switzer’ was well beyond England’s grasp.

And that was because, alas, the disparate bits only clicked when it was too late. Somewhen in the early hours when Sir Percy was in fitful sleep, some of his synapses got together and conspired behind his back (or back-brain). Whether it be to help or hinder isn’t clear but whatever the motive they agreed to pool electric charges to zap open a disused cupboard in his memory.

Its door swung wide and within stood an image of Julius Frankenstein. That bally foreigner from the Hecatomb, the one nearing the end of his usefulness. Allegedly Europe’s foremost Revivalist but actually a bit of a dud, Lazaran research wise. Yet still someone to be kept at all costs from the service of the Enemy.

Whatever comprised Sir Percy’s consciousness when he was unconscious matched all this to various Talleyrand-meeting memories. Those brain cells were much more frequented and their door hinges far less creaky. One contained the police artist’s impression.

Eureka! The two recollections met, matched and mated. Sleeping Sir Percy identified dead, mad, embarrassing Lady Lovelace’s accomplice in crime. An outlaw, murderer, bank-robber and general rapscallion Johnny-foreigner!. On the loose and out of control!

Worries about a weak heart and his desperate need for sleep were sternly overruled. Adrenaline production sufficient to wake all systems was authorised.

Britain’s senior spy jack-knifed up in bed as septuagenarians really shouldn’t, hurling off the covers and howling. It was just as well Lady Blakeney was stone deaf and a sound sleeper. He instinctively reached for the pistol under his pillow before returning reason informed him that wouldn’t help much. A comfort maybe, but no help…

The same faculty also blessed or cursed him with total recollection.

‘Bugger!’ said Sir Percy. ‘Bugger!’

It was just as well Lady Blakeney was comatose. There were some practices her sheltered life had spared her awareness of. Sir Percy would rather not have to explain at this late stage of life and marriage, or at this ungodly hour. It was the only mercy in the whole damn business.

He could take the necessary steps of course, but it was embarrassing. He blamed old age and a crippling workload, but that still didn’t fully excuse. And as for his masters and many enemies, they wouldn’t excuse at all.

Heads must roll of course, but preferably deputy-heads. Certainly, they mustn’t include Sir Percy’s. His country needed him. Therefore, best to keep it quiet, as far as you could in the context of a nation-wide man-hunt.

The only problem was whether to tell Talleyrand or not. The man was his deputy after all, with a proven track record of pulling off minor miracles. Perhaps if Sir Percy made a clean breast of it, the Prince would be nothing but silky sympathy, composing elaborate explanations that hadn’t even occurred to the offender.

Which would only make Sir Percy’s writhe with secret anger all the more…

So, no, Talleyrand wouldn’t be told. Not out of any professional pride or anything like that, oh no. But because if he did then Talleyrand would be as wise as Sir Percy was—and that would never do!

The Spymaster rang for his secretary to help him compose wanted posters.

Chapter 13: OH, I DO LIKE TO BE BESIDE THE SEASIDE

‘What’s that?’

Frankenstein and Foxglove followed Ada’s pointing finger back to England.

‘A Martello Tower, milady,’ said her servant, once Julius had shrugged. ‘One of a long line of defences against the French.’

‘And that?’

They looked along the shore.

‘Another one, milady.’

‘And that?’

Frankenstein intervened to stop the madness. There was something about the minds of mathematicians that was not as other men.

‘A yet further ‘Martello tower,’ madam,’ he snapped. ‘If you would but address the wider picture you will observe the coast studded with them at regular intervals.’

Lady Lovelace lifted her head and looked left and right.

‘So there is,’ she conceded. ‘I never realised.’

It was probably true. In life Ada’s days had been spent in stately homes and salons, or in circumscribed localities, perhaps including far-flung Brighton and Bath during the ‘season.’ And then of course there were her ‘studies,’ confining existence to cramped little citadels of computation. Between her wealth and obsessions she had been completely insulated from the longest, grimmest war in the history of humanity.

Ever faithful, Foxglove was there to supply any lack.

‘I understand that the prototype is in Corsica, milady. Cape Mertelo by name. In 1794 it was observed to survive hours of pummelling from English ships and so the model was imported home. Over a hundred were thrown up along the south coast when invasion was thought imminent. Mercifully however, Lord Nelson’s crowning victory at Trafalgar saved them from being put to the test.’

Teetering on the verge of helpless giggles, Lady Lovelace tapped Foxglove on the chest.

‘Nelson’s ‘Victory’—oh very witty, Foxglove. Such drollery: I don’t pay you enough.’

‘Oh no, madam,’ Foxglove blurted hurriedly. ‘I’m quite content…’

For once, Frankenstein agreed with her. Unused to erudition amongst the lower orders, let alone laughter from Lazarans, he studied the pair anew. Ada picked up on that bewilderment.

‘He can read as well as box,’ she informed him. All amusement had suddenly fled like it was switched off. ‘One insisted. I simply won’t suffer ignorance around me…’

Julius speculated what it must be like to be a servant of Ada Lovelace—and the terrifying idea occurred she might now consider him in that category.

If so, she wasn’t the only one. The Mariner interrupted their conversation with typical Sussex lack of respect for superiors.

‘Oi, you,’ he barked at Julius. ‘Can you sail?.’

Suddenly it struck home they were on a frail craft upon a hostile medium, dependant on another’s skills. Frankenstein looked at the complex of cable and canvas above and the dark sea below—and quailed.

‘No,’ he replied. And then felt amplification was required. ‘I am from a land-locked nation. The need never arose.’

Mariner scoffed, as if disbelieving the existence of such men or places. ‘How about you?’ he asked Foxglove.

The servant shook his head.

As did the Mariner. ‘Save us…,’ he said, disgusted.

‘I can… a little,’ said Ada. ‘Mama kept a skiff upon our lake…’

It was as though the rolling ocean had swallowed her words whole. Mariner chose not to hear. If she only could, Ada would have gone pale with fury.

‘Well, girls,’ said Mariner, ‘if we sight the Law you’ll still have to pitch in all the same. Even landlubbers can help pile on sail or dump surplus weight. Listen for my word and then look bloody lively.’

He turned back to the rudder and spat into the sea. As far as Mariner was concerned his companions had ceased to be.

Such disrespect! Both Julius and Foxglove separately swore a settling of accounts—once they were back on dry land. Sadly though, whilst on his element, Mariner must remain usurper-king.

The degradation demanded refined conversation to wipe way the stain. Anything would do.

‘Concerning your Father, dear lady,’ prompted Julius, ‘I have heard intriguing hints from others but little from you…’

Ada continued looking back to land.

‘I have little to tell, herr doctor. To me he was but a portrait hidden under a green velvet curtain in the hall. Naturally, I peeked. A rakish devil—in Albanian national dress for some reason. Perhaps to show off his devilishly fine legs. Who knows? His was not a name to be mentioned to Mama. Yet she loved him still: on each wedding anniversary I know she drew the velvet covers aside and wept.’

Quite why Mama wept was a subject best not pursued. Ada changed tack.

‘The rest is public property, doctor: there is his poetry, and of course the legend: ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’! That’s it! That’s all.’ Then she stared at him, hard. ‘And what of your father, you have not said much of him…’

In fact he’d said nothing at all, but small talk is not obligated by accuracy. Julius reluctantly dredged in the pool of memory: he disliked disturbing its deceptively still waters.

‘A fine father and plain military man,’ he said eventually. ‘Honourable to a fault, a credit to his nation and profession. He served with decorated distinction in many European armies, and in the Lebanon alongside the Maronites and Druze. Then he died in battle when the French stormed the Vatican. An eye-witness told me he… he threw his life away.’

‘Hmmm…,’ commented Ada, tentatively.

‘Yet it was not a French bullet that broke him but shame. Family shame…’

‘Oh…,’ said Lady Lovelace. Foxglove looked away.

Julius had forgotten that in present company displayed emotion was like public nudity. In fact, lost in recollection he’d forgotten everything external. Moisture clouded his eyes.

‘And your still more famous uncle?’ interjected Ada hurriedly. ‘What of him?’

Frankenstein returned from a private purgatory.

‘What of him indeed? A man bearing my name who bought a curse on his family and all the world. Whilst I was still a child his creation cut a swathe through my kin…’

Ada displayed her deep research, if not her sensitivity.

‘Yes, so one understands,’ she said. ‘The mere matter of Victor Frankenstein’s wife, brother and best friend. Plus, indirectly, the death of his own father and cousin—and ultimately…’

‘Ultimately,’ interrupted Julius: such that even the dead should have got the hint, ‘ultimately dear Uncle Victor did the decent thing and died. No, I never knew the man—and wish my family never did.’

Ada wouldn’t let go.

‘He reposes in the north I believe…’

Julius shrugged, implying he’d heard so but was indifferent.

‘An Englishman,’ he said, ‘Walton by name, kindly conveyed his carcass back from the Arctic and gave him undeserved decent burial. I know not where—nor care.’

‘Whereas his creation…’ The probe was as gentle as Ada got.

‘Walton says it intended a fiery death at the North Pole—and would mount its funeral pyre with joy.’

Lady Lovelace turned her head aside lest at this vital moment her eyes betray her.

‘The Pole you say? How so, I wonder?’

‘How what?’ asked Julius.

‘How construct a pyre? ‘Tis said the polar region is a tree-less place…’

At first Julius put it down to her scientific bent: a sad affliction always dragging its slaves to facts and pedantry.

‘It had a sled: if broken up that presumably served as fuel…’

Then a less innocent explanation occurred.

‘You know!’ he exclaimed. ‘About the papers!’

Ada turned back and looked coquettishly at Frankenstein over her fan, eyelashes fluttering at full power.

‘One may have heard whispers…’

‘Pipe down there!’ hissed Mariner from the stern. ‘The Revenue sail silent and listen out, you know!’

A Frankenstein-deceived didn’t take orders from menials. The admonition sank unheeded into the sea.

‘You knew the creature stole my Uncle’s research papers and carried them about its person!’ he said. ‘You thought-’

Lady Lovelace was shameless.

‘I thought perhaps they might be retrievable. A second string to our bow should the present plan fail. One’s been awaiting an opportunity to broach the subject. When you mentioned my father…’

So Julius had brought all this unwelcome history on himself. He cursed the minefield of small-talk.

Ada was implacable.

‘Now, herr doctor, as I recall, this very first Lazaran had the notion of commissioning a bride for itself, is that not so?’

Julius now handled her questions like a viper.

‘Allegedly…’

‘Leastways, having perused its creator’s notes the creature believed it feasible: a life-mate to share its years. Therefore the papers were profound. It follows that the secret of the serum may be therein…’

‘Madam,’ said Julius, exasperated, ‘there is no secret: only a formula, widely known.’

‘So you say—and possibly speak the truth. Ah, but if one only had the inventor’s directions! Then who knows what additional wonders might be possible?’

‘Your ‘spark’?’ ventured Frankenstein.

‘Exactly!’ answered Ada, as if a slow pupil had at last caught up.

‘For the last time,’ interrupted Mariner, ‘shut your traps or I’ll…’

Foxglove dealt with the impertinence. He raised a fist and Mariner observed it was almost the size of his face and covered in scar tissue.

‘Just keep it down then,’ he compromised.

Down went both Foxglove’s fist and the volume. But it was in genteel deference to their pilot’s agitation rather than caution. Passions remained high.

‘You bang a broken drum, madam,’ hissed Julius. The monster’s ashes are scattered by the Arctic winds and any papers likewise.’

‘Perhaps. Though the French thought otherwise…’

So: she was as wise as she was wicked. Lady Lovelace had heard of the enemy’s secret Polar expedition to find the creature’s last resting place—and anything that might still survive in its pockets. The British Government were quietly alarmed about it, and Julius had been quizzed about the nothing he knew the minute he arrived in England. He recalled a surreal conversation with a spy-chief about the propensity of polar wind and snow to put fires out before they’d completed their destructive task. As if a mere military doctor might know!

Accordingly, a British force had gone in pursuit, just in case. Neither nation’s party returned, or so rumour said. Right then Julius wished Lady Lovelace with them.

‘Ahem…,’ said Foxglove.

‘Yes?’ answered Ada, giving permission to speak.

The servant cleared his throat.

‘My lady, As a mere ‘landlubber’ I am not sure of the correct terminology in this situation, but I believe it is something along the lines of ‘ship ahoy!’’

And he pointed to their left (or port).

Mariner swivelled like he was greased and then said something not fit for mixed company. Followed by:

‘You wouldn’t listen, would ye?’ He was full of a crazed admix of fear and fury which freed his tongue. ‘More noise than a wagon load of women! Bloody gentry! Ruination of the country and everyone! The Convention’s got it right: to the guillotine with the friggin’ lot of yer!’

‘Steady on, chappie…,’ Foxglove warned him, quite mildly in the circumstances.

Julius turned in the direction of all the fuss and couldn’t see what all that fuss was about. The sizeable ship was way off, even if heading in their direction.

Mariner wasn’t so deceived. He wanted—he powerfully desired—everyone aboard should share his concern.

‘Twenty minutes,’ he advised them, careless about shouting now. ‘One hour tops!’ He pointed accusingly at Lady Lovelace. ‘Then we’ll all be as dead as she!’

High above, the galloon kept them in sight as it had since they launched, describing wide circles round and round the suspect vessel. Where possible it scraped the undersides of low clouds, avoiding the moonlight even as it took advantage of it. There was no point in being sighted by the target even at this late stage.

Lantern semaphore kept the craft in contact with the customs cutter below. One towering intellect amongst the Lazaran crew was entrusted with its operation.

‘Signal four aboard,’ ordered galloon-commander (and sole living soul aboard) Lieutenant Neave. ‘No obvious cargo. South-east by east. I will continue close pursuit.’

Play upon the lantern’s shutters sent flashes to convey those words. A code had been constructed so simple that even the Revived conscript couldn’t muck it up. Whatever ‘Lazaranisms’ the signaller inserted, His Majesty’s Navy would get the gist of it.

When he joined that honourable service straight from school, Lieutenant Neave envisaged something more romantic than hanging beneath a bag of gas pedalled into motion by the undead. However, his promotion board had strongly hinted the ‘Fleet Air Arm’ was the place to be for accelerated progress, and he’d swallowed the poisoned bait. That they’d failed to mention career advancement usually came as a result of some poor devil spiralling to the ground in flames still rankled with him. He’d been wet behind the ears then, not making any connection between the power of modern artillery and the fragility and flammability of the gasbags called galloons. He ought to have guessed though, if only from the practice of putting just one live man per craft. The balance of motive and bombing and reconnaissance power was entrusted to expendable Lazarans—and not even the choicest of those.

‘Oh, shut up!’

Neave wondered if he wasn’t really addressing himself and his gloomy thoughts, not the crew with their infernal, eternal moaning. He’d had ample opportunity to get used to that, even blank it out, by now. Ditto the stench of serum and that… cold-pork smell the really bargain basement Lazarans gave off. If so, talking to yourself was maybe just another symptom of spending so many hours in the air, alone (or effectively so). It gave a man too much time to think.

Like thinking of how he’d once dreamed of a posting to the Mediterranean Fleet, or the Far East, where great things were being achieved in India, so it was said. There an enterprising officer with access to Lazaran troops could acquire a private empire amongst the native Hindoos and Mohammedhans who foolishly scrupled to raise such soldiery. Not to mention a harem of exotic houris. Far better company than clouds…

Mind you, his frustration had moderated somewhat when the great Lord Nelson was revived and given the Home Blockade Fleet command. Neave had to grant there was honour and stories for your grandchildren in serving under him, in whatever capacity.

At first some officers, especially the more pious, had grumbled about obeying a dead commander. About how there was no knowing where those orders really came from, and hinting it might be second-hand from the Devil himself. Then the all-clear came from Canterbury and put a stop to all that. Reassurance from the King and the Primate of the Anglican Church surely settled the matter. Leastways, that was how Lieutenant Neave silenced his misgivings on the subject.

Neave hadn’t met ‘Neo-Nelson’ yet; not even glimpsed him from afar, but he lived in hope of it. That prospect and having his own command at the tender age of twenty was surely enough for any man.

Well, that and a share of whatever prize-money was going. Which reminded him…

‘Drop,’ he ordered, and the sergeant Lazarans lashed their comrades till the even dullest got the message they should ease off their efforts. You couldn’t really hurt them but a whip still tickled…

Failing which, as last resort each pedalling bench was rigged up to deliver electrical impulses, powerful enough to kill a man or pain a Lazaran. Fortunately, they weren’t needed today. The Lieutenant was always sickened by the cooking fragrance their use produced.

The galloon dipped dramatically as gas was bled out, but all aboard were used to that. They weren’t the most robust or manoeuvrable of craft, nor their resurrected motive-power the finest tuned. It was a matter of judging your fall so that it didn’t turn into a plummet. Neave had seen that happen often enough in training to be wary of it ever after.

The outcome of the chase below was inevitable now and the cutter almost in firing range. Out of boredom and devilment Neave decided to curtail matters even more, and ‘chain of command’ be damned. The sooner it were done the sooner he could be done with present company.

There was also the tempting prospect of some righteous target practise. Though he bought brandy and tobacco from them like everyone else, Lieutenant Neave disliked smugglers as a breed. Unpatriotic types, evasive of naval service and taxes alike. Just like whores and lawyers they had their occasional uses, but that didn’t make them any less vermin…

Neave took up his carbine and cocked the special spark-minimising mechanism. Would the world much miss a smuggler or two, so long as at least one was taken to confess his crimes? The Lieutenant consulted his conscience and decided ‘probably not.’

A consummate professional to the end, Mariner’s estimate proved spot on.

‘Ten minutes,’ he updated them, and even Julius had to concede it. The pursuing ship loomed large now and had hoisted visible signals which conceivably spelt out ‘stop,’ should you be in the know. Ominous activity at its bow could well be a fore-gun being readied for action.

Though Mariner had hoisted extra sail and heaved anything not nailed down overboard—even most of his passengers’ luggage—his main motivation now was in postponing the inevitable.

‘Can’t even hope for a straight hanging!’ he complained, though busy with hoisting what looked like pocket handkerchiefs as additional sprit-sails. ‘Coastal Blockade operates under Cinque Port laws!’

Julius wanted to sympathise, but lacked sufficient facts.

‘Which signifies what?’ he enquired, to pass the time.

‘The old way: cold and cruel,’ came Mariner’s reply. ‘No quick noose but staked out on the beach waiting for the tide…’

Even Ada, who should stand in least fear of that fate, shuddered. Though revival had put her beyond drowning her imagination functioned just as well as before.

It was not the nicest of pictures to conjure with as they sat there, just so much useless dead-weight, whilst Mariner cursed both Fate and them.

Therefore, the voice from above came almost as relief—after the initial shock.

Four heads traversed as one as they located the amplified sound. It came from a direction from which only seabirds should speak.

But seabirds don’t speak English (as far as is known). Nor make death threats.

‘Heave to or I fire!’ ordered Lieutenant Neave through his megaphone. A gun barrel levelled through the cupola side window proved and reinforced his point. ‘Lower sail and surrender!’

Till then their minds had merged the sound of the galloon with that of the waves, but now in beholding it they could separate the two. It had a gaseous hiss and Lazaran groan all of its own. Parchment faces peered incuriously at them from the few portholes.

Ordinarily, the Lion and Unicorn emblem on the craft’s side would have reassured, but no longer. Each in their own way, those aboard the fugitive skiff had put themselves beyond those beasts’ implied protection. In their persons they personified the very definition of ‘outlaw.’ Right now it felt cold and lonely in that zone. And wet too: the sea was getting up to match their stormy fortunes.

Perhaps by coincidence, or maybe miffed at being pipped at the post, the cutter now fired a warning shot. Perhaps. Its vibration ‘thwwwwm’ed by and split the air parallel to the skiff a mere two lengths off to port. Either the cutter’s gun crew were very sure of their skills or the ‘warning’ was of the killing kind.

Between not one but two devils and the deep blue sea, Mariner moved to obey. Cursing but compliant his hands headed for the sail ropes.

Julius neither judged nor condemned. Presumably, Mariner’s thinking ran along conventional ‘whilst there’s life there’s hope’ lines. The illogical optimism that rules most men said there might still be a few seconds of pleasure between now and when they shackled him to a foreshore for death by slow drowning. That slim hope alone made surrender the sensible option.

Frankenstein was not as most men. Nor, though Swiss, had he ever much cared for ‘sensible.’

‘Now might be the time, madam,’ he hinted to Ada.

‘It certainly looks like it,’ she agreed, calmly. ‘Time to die. Again.’

‘No, you misunderstand, foolish woman! I meant for you to swim!’

He indicated the broad ocean expanse: and every direction her oyster.

Lady Lovelace sat up straight, offended.

‘I do not swim,’ she said, with finality.

‘You cannot?’ Julius was incredulous. He’d assumed that, the English being a notoriously sea-faring race, they were all semi-aquatic from their earliest years.

‘I did not say that,’ Ada answered. ‘I said I do not. It is undignified.’

Foxglove nodded confirmation.

One of Julius’ father’s favourite maxims was ‘never argue with policemen or lunatics.’ His son had imbibed that from earliest years, along with ‘Do what you want—but don’t whine about the bill.’

So instead he stood and took aim at the galloon.

Lieutenant Neave hadn’t been expecting that. No one had. Accordingly, his own shot went wild.

What with the waves and it being extreme range for a mere pistol, Julius’ reply was impressive. Its bullet shattered the pilot’s windscreen but not his head as intended. Lieutenant Neave was duly impressed, amongst other sentiments.

‘What the…!’ said Mariner. Death in many varied forms encompassed him on every side. A notion which had occurred to him oft times before now returned with the force of Divine revelation: Life isn’t fair…

‘Stop that,’ ordered Frankenstein, meaning the slackening of speed. The authority of education and class was backed by a second, still loaded, pistol.

‘One shot: that’s all it’ll take,’ Mariner advised, meaning the closing cutter, not Frankenstein’s far lesser weapon. ‘We’ll be nothing but blood and splinters…’

Even so, he withdrew his hand from the ropes sustaining their progress. Unlike the cutter’s cannon Julius’ gun was both near at hand and near his head.

‘Since we’re all good as dead anyway,’ observed Frankenstein, ‘I can’t see that it matters…’

Mariner deferred to the ‘logic’ therein.

Having got his way in that respect, Julius returned to the galloon question. Lieutenant Neave was frantically reloading as best his confined cabin allowed. Frankenstein took the opportunity to take extra careful aim.

Neave’s nerve snapped before Julius’ investment of effort could pay dividends.

‘Up!’ His command to the crew could be heard loud and clear through the pierced screen. ‘Up! Damn y’eyes!’

Prow first, the galloon made an emergency ascension, gas valves being flung open as they came to hand, regardless of grace and stability. The Lieutenant, on whom Julius was drawing bead, was flung back into the unseen interior.

Frankenstein could have fired anyway, but now there was a new fish to fry. The cutter roared again and this time unmistakably in earnest. The heat of the ball as it passed not far above caressed all their faces. When they then looked up, as a natural reaction to still having heads, it was to note that most of the mast was no longer with them. Such was the force of the blow, it had not snapped or splintered but was simply swept away in silence.

Though most likely a fluke shot it did the trick perfectly. The sails descended like a eager bride’s nightie. Straightaway, the skiff’s speed bled away, courtesy of less than half a mast left for the wind to play upon. Simultaneously, akin to the canvas, all resistance went out of the craft’s contents.

Except for Julius that is. Regaining balance via the sudden loss of progress, and shrugging off a shroud-like corner of sail, he shifted aim to the customs cutter as it hoved to.

To outside observers it might appear the merest romantic gesture, but there was method in his madness. Frankenstein had taken on board Mariner’s intelligence about savage ‘Cinque Port penalties,’ and he really didn’t fancy being slowly nibbled to death by the tide. As he saw it, once the range closed he had a fair chance of dropping one of the gunners, or possibly even the captain should he show his face. With luck, that pointlessly taken life aboard the cutter might anger their conquerors enough to deal out swift ends. Like sinking them there and then. Or summary trial. Skilfully done, hanging could be quite quick, so he’d heard.

That was how Julius’ rational faculties justified the ‘gesture’—but they were just a decorative facade, designed to deceive. The simpler truth was he wanted to go in style, and here was the opportunity. ‘Never give your life away: sell it!’ was another adage of his father that he lived (but apparently didn’t die) by.

Or, deeper still, maybe despair ran in the family.

Julius’ smile as he sighted along the gun barrel should have been a massive clue to one and all, but trapped forever within his own skull Foxglove couldn’t see all these rich layers of meaning. He had to act on external signs.

Fortunately, Frankenstein’s mouth was clamped tight in concentration. There’d be no danger of bitten-off tongues.

Foxglove’s raised eyebrow queried. Ada’s nod approved. The servant’s fist met Julius’ jaw.

Chapter 14: A FESTIVAL OF FALSEHOODS

‘Well, I say he did!’

Julius didn’t recognise the voice. Curiosity made him open his eyes.

As well as the cutter, which had grappled alongside, there was a ship’s officer looming over him. More to the point, the man had the tip of a naval cutlass poised above Julius’ navel. He gave every indication of wanting to pin Frankenstein to the skiff’s deck like a collected beetle.

‘I give you my word of honour as a Lady,’ said Ada, off to one side.

‘A dead lady,’ said another of the boarding party. Ada huffed.

‘Well, really!’

It didn’t work. The homicidally inclined officer’s expression and posture remained unchanged. So Ada changed tack.

‘Very well then, if the oath of a person of quality is insufficient, perhaps you’ll accept the evidence of your senses. Where exactly is this pistol he is supposed to have pointed at you?’

Overboard, thought Julius: the second phase of Foxglove’s pre-emptive strike. Wisely though, he kept his theory to himself.

‘Our galloon scout swears he was shot at…’ However, Ada had hit home. A slice of reasonable doubt now entered the officer’s tone.

‘All those solitary hours, up in the sky,’ Ada insinuated, ‘with only the Almighty and Lazarans to commune with… I dare say the imagination can run riot. And besides, his is a very junior branch of your heroic service…’

The officer considered. Flattery from a pretty, albeit Revived, woman? It sufficed to sway his decision to the one he knew he ought to make. The sword withdrew.

‘Very well, I am a merciful man; your companion shall live. For the moment…’

‘Not only merciful,’ Ada gushed, ‘but also a most gallant officer…’

Julius was learning a lot, even though laid out on deck. Firstly, Lady Lovelace had pledged her honour to a downright lie, and now she was tugging men along by the tassel. He was duly warned.

‘Hello,’ said Frankenstein, raising himself on one elbow. Speech powerfully reminded him of the pain rampaging round his jaw. It felt loose in places and stiff in others. His voice sounded off-key.

Since ascending from the horizontal didn’t provoke retaliation, Julius went the whole hog. He rose to his feet.

‘Good evening to you,’ he slurred, slowly getting the measure of his teeth and tongue troubles.

‘And to you too, sirrah,’ replied the officer and tipped his bicorne hat. The gesture was pretty perfunctory but still reassuring. Plainly they were amongst civilised men.

One scan of the balance of boarders soon revised that notion. The rank and file sailors looked feral and hungry. One was a jigsaw puzzle ‘patchwork Lazaran’—the lowest, worst kind. If their commander should choose to depart…

‘You are no ordinary smuggler, sir,’ said that officer to Frankenstein. It was a cross between a compliment and accusation.

‘Indeed no,’ Julius agreed.

‘They must be the ones, Stephen,’ said another officer, from back aboard the cutter.

Arms resting nonchalantly on the ship’s rail, this second man surveyed their prize and shook his head sadly. ‘Has to be. Blast and confound them…’

‘There’s no contraband aboard,’ agreed the first officer, also with a twinge of regret. ‘If you discount these three…’

His friend did. ‘I said I saw it on daily orders. A Swiss, a she-Lazaran and a bruiser. Now tell me my dear fellow, how many of that combination d’ye reckon are in the Channel tonight?’

The boarding party commander looked at the prisoners and ticked them off the list one by one. He didn’t want it to be true but facts refused to dissolve.

‘Can you sail?’ he asked Frankenstein.

‘Yes, I can,’ Julius lied instantly. Lady Lovelace and Foxglove did well to keep a straight face.

The officer didn’t necessarily believe it but he accepted it.

‘Then you can sail her away.’ It wasn’t permission but an order, with overtones of ‘be quick about it before I change my mind.’

‘Hey!’ shouted Mariner, intuitively leaping ahead of the conversation. ‘This ‘ere’s my vess-’

It was stylishly done. In one fluid motion ‘Stephen’ drew a cocked pistol from his belt and to Mariner’s head without even bothering to look at the man. It rested on the suddenly sweating brow.

‘Shut up,’ said the officer quietly—so Mariner did.

‘This one’s known to us,’ their captor continued. ‘Contraband or no, he ran from due authority. So he’s ours. But you can keep the boat. I’ll arrange for a jury mast to be rigged, which will get you where you’re going, assuming it’s not too far. However, I must have your solemn vow: on arrival, burn or wreck this wretched craft. It’s smuggled enough for one lifetime…’

It was obvious Mariner burned to say something but a pistol overruled the urge.

So they weren’t going to die (again in Ada’s case), or not yet anyway. A tidal bore of relief thundered down three nervous systems and arrived as bubbly, irrational, joy.

‘I swear by my father’s life,’ said Frankenstein.

And strangely that sufficed! And would have even if they’d known said parent was pre-deceased.

Many commentators blamed the French Revolutions for the horrors of the modern age, and innovations such as mass conscription, ‘total war’ and the liberation of the evil genie of Revivalism from its bottle. Most of the rest blamed the evil legacy of the ‘ancien regime’ and pre-Enlightenment ‘superstition.’ However, one feature of former Christendom not quite extinct on either side was ‘the word of honour.’ Even in present decadent times it remained bankable and might well remain so for some while, until the bank balance of Christian culture went definitively into the red. Thereafter, cheques drawn on it would bounce—and ever more spectacularly.

But that was not yet, and the quaint notion was still subscribed to (in principle, ‘all other things being equal’) by the civilised classes—if only because they might one day need it themselves to get out of a tight corner.

And, right then, at that precise moment, out on the anarchy of the open sea, there was the added attraction that it was the only meaningful contract around.

So the officer nodded and smiled and allowed himself to be fooled.

The gun was taken from Mariner’s head and used instead to point at the wounded mast. Orders were issued to the air with all the blithe confidence that comes from long command

‘Repair this.’

‘Aye aye, sir,’ said various voices.

The gun then airily returned to indicate Mariner.

‘And hang that.’

By then Lieutenant Neave was halfway home, both his galloon and pride punctured. Which was bad enough, requiring the tedium of repairs and an ‘I regret…’ report, plus probably some teasing in the officers’ mess. What he didn’t know, and still had some precious hours of blissful ignorance about, was just how much trouble he really was in.

If he had known, he might have fairly blamed his upbringing. The boy Neave was never much encouraged to read, and Eton only encouraged his abstention from learning. Accordingly, he never saw the point of reading ‘Daily Orders.’ Which was fair enough and true much of the time—but not the day that Talleyrand had a hand in them.

It was rotten luck. As a result, all that ‘good education’ and all those ‘contacts’ went to waste and Neave never did prosper in the Service. When it was reported what he’d so nearly done with his carbine and gung-ho ways, his copy book was well and truly blotted. Not that the Navy understood the need for fuss and lightning bolts from on high, but bolts there were and they had to hit someone.

Consequently, Neave shuffled up to meet retirement many years later as the never promoted (and thus unmarried) custodian of an old-army-blanket store in Ballymena. Soon after that, a disappointed man and still a mere lieutenant, he wasn’t that put out to meet the Grim Reaper.

His memorial in Rochester Cathedral glossed over his career and instead lied about his piety.

Chapter 15: HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY. DISCUSS

So, poor Mariner needn’t have worried about a slow death on the beach. His captors’ thwarted law enforcement instincts didn’t let him get that far. Lantern lit, he was writhing from the cutter’s yardarm before his former passengers were out of sight.

You might have thought the man would be grateful for that small mercy, but sight and sound suggested not.

Julius looked on as they departed and, now it was too late, protested.

‘But the man broke no law,’ he said. ‘Not today anyway. ‘Can they just do that?’

There was no reply. They just had. Modernity stared them in the face. Efficient super-streamlined justice.

Ever meticulous, Foxglove gazed at the ghastly scene and asked Lady Lovelace if she might ‘say something appropriate?’

‘Certainly,’ Ada answered crisply. ‘How about: goodbyeee!’ And she waved to the dying man.

Then she rounded on Julius.

‘Why in God’s name did you say you can sail?’

Julius was used to her blustering by now. Compared to the swelling sea and darkening sky it was nothing.

‘I thought, madam,’ he said to tease, ‘that you doubted the existence of our Eternal Father. How interesting that you choose to invoke him now, in this time of peril…’

Peril indeed. In a distinctly double-edged development, the cutter was heading off; its grisly example still visibly doing the yardarm dance. Granted, the prospect of arrest receded with it but directly the grapples were detached and the far larger ship’s stability removed, it was brought home to the skiff how much the sea had risen. They were now rocked back and forth as though in a cruel step-mother’s cradle. It became hard going to keep your feet. Overhead, the night clouds promised nothing promising.

Lady Lovelace ignored his theological gloating. Instead, she clung both to her point and the patched mast; indicating with a furious face the unpromising scenario all around.

‘Look what your lies have condemned us to! You can’t sail! None of us can! That cutter was our salvation but you let it go! Idiot!’

An impudent wave conquered the skiff’s side and drenched Frankenstein from waist to foot. It looked like to be the first of many, with ample supplies for all.

However, unlike his breeches, Julius’ spirits were not noticeably dampened.

‘I wilfully misinformed them, yes. Do tell what stopped you from correcting me.’ The enquiry came with a smile. ‘Was it perhaps…’

A circular motion of his hand mimicked the operation of a mincing machine.

He thought it a fair bet that Ada had researched his earlier hint about the fate of illicit Lazarans. And she had. Lady Lovelace would have blanched were she able.

Frankenstein pressed his advantage.

‘Calm your fears, madam. Consider the train of events. First disaster: i.e. the cutter intercepting us. Then miracle: its mysterious setting us free. Next, disaster again as we are cast adrift with less knowledge of seamanship than the man in the moon. As a mathematician, surely the next part of the sequence should be plain to you? No? Then permit me to spell it out: disaster, miracle, disaster and then…’

Regardless of fresh wave-wettings, he indicated he was willing to wait for the slow of understanding to catch up.

Lady Lovelace turned away in disgust. If she were any less of a lady she might have augmented the threatening sea by spitting into it.

As if on cue in a gothic melodrama, thunder broke and lightning illuminated far more of the scene than anyone wanted.

‘If I may,’ said Foxglove, ‘I’ve heard that the appropriate action is to strip all sails and sit it out…’

Which they duly did (Lady Lovelace having nodded approval), not having the faintest idea of what else to do.

Dawn should have received a welcome from them, but instead it found the party half-dead (save for Ada, who was ahead of that curve…). They weren’t just soaked but saturated, and gladness of any kind wasn’t on the menu.

Their gross ingratitude had the excuse that it wasn’t much of a dawn. Diffuse light from somewhere behind the storm was allowed through on sufferance, but not much and not often. Big black clouds remained firmly in control of minor intruders like the sun.

It had been quite a night: dramatic but repetitious. First climb the mountain of a wave, rising to almost vertical, nearly tipping them out of the boat; then enjoy a sickening pause at the crest before plunging down the far side, losing the pit of your stomach (its contents being long gone) en route.

And that was just one wave: tonight the sea had many more where that came from, and another would be along in just a few seconds. Then rinse and repeat, again and again without pause for prayer or sigh of relief, throughout the hours of darkness. Each repetition every bit as thrilling as the first…

Lady Lovelace and Julius just clung on for dear life, but Foxglove lashed himself to the mast with his belt and spent the night baling like a man possessed, spoiling his top hat in the process. If he possessed inhuman powers and if he kept up the same pace for the duration of the storm, then maybe, just maybe, their most likely cause of death might be running ashore rather than foundering.

But, of course, he didn’t and couldn’t, and so taking a break from his labours didn’t make much odds. The big man straightened his complaining back and surveyed the sky.

‘Fimbulwinter…,’ he concluded.

Like most Swiss, Frankenstein was fluent in all the main European languages, but this word was new to him.

‘Pardon?’ he shouted above the roar.

Ada’s chin reposed in her hands. It was possible she was closely monitoring the inexorable rise of water in the bottom of the skiff. Or possibly she was just miles away.

But not too far to explain.

‘Old English for the end of the world,’ she said, without lifting her eyes. ‘My forebears believed it would be preceded by a mighty storm.’

Once again, erudition in the lower orders quite threw Frankenstein. Not only was it beyond his experience but also disturbing on myriad levels. Like returning home to find your hound playing the harp.

‘A storm taking wolf’s head form,’ Foxglove expounded. And gestured.

Indeed, when Julius looked the cloud front did somewhat resemble a monstrous maw advancing to swallow all. It was a tribute to Nature’s sadism—or possibly the power of suggestion.

‘No.’ Frankenstein discounted the evidence of his eyes, thinking to supply comfort and raise morale. ‘Not the end of the world. Merely of us—maybe.’

Ada clapped her hands in mock glee, just as a refreshingly icy wave found home in her lap.

‘Oh goodie!’ she said. ‘That’s all right then.’

Later. Lady Lovelace was cultivating her huff in the minimal cover afforded by a sun parasol. Unsuited to rough salt waves the flimsy thing soon looked not long for this world.

Likewise, Foxglove’s headgear. The top of his top hat had come out and he was having to use his boots for baling instead.

Their accessories closely matched the skiff itself. Spun and buffeted by wind and wave alike, like a human long maltreated by Fate, too much had been asked of it. If Mariner had still been aboard he would have known what to do, even if it was only succumb to despair. As it was their tiny glimmer of hope, probably misguided, was a torment to them.

But for the opposition of the waves they would have been making excellent progress… somewhere. The wind drove them at a fair pace, sails or no sails, but they’d long since lost any sense of direction. Land, if and when it loomed up, might be anywhere; friend or foe—but thereagain, anywhere would do. Always assuming of course, that they didn’t founder first under the weight of the water they were shipping, or smash to splinters on rocks. Little things like that.

Yet there was another remote possibility they’d hardly bothered to think about. Surely no other sensible ship would be about in such filthy weather, not if had a port to shelter in. Clearly therefore, the ship Ada spotted was not sensible, or else it was homeless and/or incompetent just like them.

These were not relevant considerations right now. Lady Lovelace went into action. She rose like a rocket, she screamed like a banshee, she waved like an admiralty semaphore tower.

It was a big vessel, they could tell that much despite the distance and poor conditions. An armed-merchantman, or a frigate maybe. Like the skiff its three tall masts were stripped, but professionally so, not lubberly-style. And though she rode the towering waves heavily, just as they did, she looked by far the better bet for survival.

Ada certainly thought so. At great risk of going overboard she was doing everything a lady might to attract attention across a watery gulf. More so in fact. If her drawers had been red or any other bright hue she would have happily whipped them off and waved them. For what use was a good name without years of life to enjoy it in?

‘Doctor!’ she ordered Frankenstein, in-between her ‘haloos’ and the regular rude interruption of waves. ‘Fire a shot in the air, fire several! Get their attention.’

Julius never ceased to marvel at the European aristocracy. Some times they were as innocent as angels, others as worldly as devils. The former in this case. Not having to lift a hand for themselves from cradle to grave made the class amazingly impractical.

‘I would if I could,’ he replied. ‘But I can’t, so I won’t.’

‘‘Won’t’?’ screamed Ada. ‘ “Won’t”? You? Mr Promiscuous-Pistol! Old shoot-on-sight? Normally, we can’t stop you! Oh, just do it, you damn foreign dago or I’ll…’

Empty threats are awfully demeaning, so Foxglove stepped in.

‘It’s the water, madam,’ he explained with saintly patience. ‘The waves: washing over all night long. I very much doubt Mr Frankenstein has any dry powder left…’

He’d have much preferred to avoid the subject altogether, having surreptitiously ditched Julius’ gun overboard long before. At the time it had seemed prudent, the better to feign innocence when intercepted by the cutter. Now, having survived that passing crisis, his action felt awfully like common theft. And Doctor Frankenstein did so dearly love his firearms. When he found out there’d be ructions…

Meanwhile, Lady Lovelace wasn’t having any truck with tomfool logical explanations. ‘That’s no excuse!’ she said, followed by something else fortunately swallowed up by the storm. Then she spurned her companions and devoted all attention to the new arrival.

It was nearer now, no doubt about it. The tempest, though 99% malevolent, was doing them this little favour, driving the dying skiff in the right direction. Unless, that is, it was really pure 100% evil and just stoking up false hopes in order to dash them shortly.

But ‘shortly’ was when they’d be within hailing distance. ‘Shortly’ there’d be method as well as madness in Ada’s efforts. Soon even Frankenstein saw purpose in adding his lung-power to the cause.

Now they could see activity on deck, and lots of it. Up and down the poop and middle portions there moved lovely swarms of people. Surely, any second now, one of them must turn and see the vessel bearing down on them.

Apparently not. Presumably preoccupied by the storm, the boiling mob aboard carried on without a friendly wave or word in their direction. At first it was frustrating, a cause for irritation to nerves and straining throat.

Then it grew odd. Then worrying.

Foxglove proved to have a perspective-glass tucked inside his waistcoat. He drew bead with it.

‘Ah.’

Another one of those rich English words, capable of conveying a thousand different meanings.

This version mixed warning with disappointment, albeit decently restrained. The ‘ah’ stayed calm and level—not that that signified not a great deal. Foxglove’s stiff upper lip could have sustained suspension bridges.

‘Well?’ said Ada. ‘Well? Ah!’ That ‘ah’ signified disgust and irritation, courtesy of a refreshing wave right in the face.

Foxglove had been debating whether to say, but his Mistress’s query left no room for manoeuvre.

‘Alas, milady, I fear this newcomer labours in as much difficulty as we. Possibly more so.’

‘Give me that!’

She snatched the glass and, parting her sodden locks with one hand, used the other to see for herself. That left her vulnerable to the sea’s rough ways but the view proved fascinating enough to risk it. Lady Lovelace stood firm, most unladylike, legs akimbo, and surveyed her to her heart’s discontent.

‘Perhaps I might talk to them,’ she ventured, though sounding un-Ada-ishly hesitant. ‘Kin to kin…’

‘No,’ ordered Foxglove, in a rare reversal of roles. ‘Begging your pardon, milady, but I cannot allow that. They are in no mood.’

Ada screamed in fury and flung the petite telescope away.

Because he’d been poised for such a tantrum, but still making a most impressive lunge, Frankenstein caught the thing before the sea could have it. Then he took his turn.

All became clear. A running fight was taking place aboard the vessel—or, more accurately, was drawing to its close. Lazarans had charge of most of the ship now, save for the crew’s last stand on the poopdeck. A few men in naval uniform, white-faced as their Revived foes, traded blows with insuperable numbers and were forced back, step by step, to the stern. Elsewhere, in the taken part of the ship, Lazarans were taking vengeance on their former masters. Captured sailors were being forced through the rigging—turned into minced meat—or else just eaten alive. They were women and children, presumably passengers or officers’ family, amongst them. It was not the nicest view Julius Frankenstein had ever beheld.

So, the 100% malevolence hypothesis proved correct. Now, just when they’d rather it weren’t so, the waves saw fit to bring the two ships together. And they’d been spotted at last. Ranks of rank Lazaran faces stared at them from the ship’s rail, or peeked out from open gunports (open in this weather—that should have been a clue long before!). They wailed and beckoned, but not, Frankenstein thought, with his best interests at heart. Some mounted the rail, ready to jump and board.

He’d seen enough and Foxglove got his glass back.

There was the option of clutching at straws, like proposing paddling away with their hands. Or else they could just await developments, retaining residual dignity. Julius plumped for the latter and sat down.

Lady Lovelace would have reproached—maybe even attacked—him, claws to the fore, had not further company arrived. A ship’s boat, even smaller and more wave-distressed than they, rounded the mother vessel’s stern. Sailors pulled professionally on its oars, accumulating distance between them and Lazaran nemesis, despite all opposition. For, quite aside from the sea’s best efforts to capsize the craft, ex-men rained down missiles on them as they passed. Frankenstein saw one oarsman slump down, brained by a brandy barrel from above. A comrade directly took his place at the oar—and tipped the useless body out.

Ada saw that too and was intrigued enough to comment.

‘How could they be sure he was dead?’

The answer was they couldn’t, but it remained unsaid. Scruples had gone overboard before the sailor had.

Such clear-sightedness did the trick. The row-boat negotiated the danger-rich passage round the ship’s stern, though threatened by each successive wave with being smashed to splinters against its towering side. Then gradually they drew beyond the range of hand-propelled Lazaran enmity and only musketry and cannons remained to worry about.

Evidently, the mutiny aboard was too young yet for that sort of advanced, co-ordinated, action. Or, just as likely, they might be really raw Lazarans: transported for training elsewhere. Either way, using firepower might still occur to them shortly. Julius hoped to be somewhere else—even if only via death—by then.

Meanwhile, the contents of the skiff had a decision to make. The row-boat had seen them and was heading in their direction. Compared to that mere cork in a barrel, the skiff must have looked like a hundred-gun ‘ship of the line’ and highly attractive in present circumstances.

The question was, should they share those attractions? Was there space enough aboard the skiff without bringing forward the hour of sinking to now? On the other hand—and the trouble with life was that there always was another: a second or even third hand to trouble your thoughts—some genuine maritime expertise wouldn’t go amiss. Presently they were mere playthings of the storm, not going anywhere, or leastways nowhere of their own choosing.

And yet who were these men? Was it wise to welcome them aboard in out-numbering numbers, all unknown? They might well be slavers or, worse still, legitimate authority. They might prove to be as ruthless as Ada and hurl the original occupants overboard to save themselves…

It was a conundrum, of the sort that should be susceptible to the awesome powers of human reason. It certainly ought to have been vulnerable to Lady Lovelace, with her trained scientific mind.

In the event, she looked at Julius and he looked at her and neither could decide. The row-boat drew ever nearer.

So Frankenstein tossed a coin.

Chapter 16: ADA WALKS ON WATER

‘Jolly decent of you. We wish you well.’

The third-lieutenant was being ironic, which made a change from the shocked silence of previous hours—and a change, Julius supposed, was as good as a rest.

Frankenstein also supposed both responses were the lieutenant’s armour against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Not yet sixteen by the looks of him, and yet here he was directing his very own vessel—the skiff. Or so Third-lieutenant deluded himself.

The boy was wasting his breath addressing his former ship and its new Lazaran owners. They couldn’t hear his mock blessing across such a distance and through such a storm. Not that they would have listened anyway: they were too busy decorating their prize ship with dead men and bits of (therefore dead) men.

The bright side of having to witness it was that, with no hand attending wheel or sail, the frigate was being driven before the wind straight towards the rocky coast; kindly going before the skiff to see if the way was safe. Hence Third-lieutenant’s mock gratitude.

It wasn’t safe. There are few sounds so gut-wrenching as the bottom being ripped out of a ship, even if it’s not actually the wood beneath your feet. Add to that the lamentations of the doomed Lazarans on board and there was quite a symphony to chill the blood. It made even the tempest sound benign.

‘Bound to be,’ said one of the able-seamen, as he adjusted what little sail it was safe to raise. ‘When they’re well lodged on we’ll tack round the larboard of them. They’ll block the worst of wind and wave.’ Then he remembered the niceties. ‘If you’re agreeable, sir?’

Third-Lieutenant scanned the boiling white water along the shore and knew no better.

‘Make it so.’

‘Aye, aye, sir.’

Myriad tugs upon ropes and minor adjustments turned their path away from immediate ruin. The sea fought them tooth and nail but the sailors had their way.

Ada, Foxglove and Julius were relegated to the skiff’s stern. Not exactly spurned, but not consulted either. It had been that way since the survivors of the mutiny were allowed over the side. Their technical proficiency gave them mastery of the vessel after the briefest of introductions. Now, following a shaky period just getting the skiff under control and ensuring survival, the former hierarchy of His Majesty’s frigate ‘The Lady Bridget’ reasserted itself.

For his part, Frankenstein marvelled at how grizzled men of far greater size and experience deferred to a beardless boy, just because of epaulets on his skinny shoulders. It reminded him of a bull he’d once seen, a ton or more of sheer muscle power, being meekly led along by an Alpine herdsman. The beast might have flung its master off the mountain with the merest flick but it chose not to, subdued by a tiny nose ring and long habit. There was a metaphor and lesson there, for those who studied humanity.

However, these were dangerous thoughts, subversive of all societal and family ties. Frankenstein consciously turned away from them lest he too catch the disease that had turned France mad.

‘Do you despair of your former ship, young sir?’ he asked.

Burdened by responsibility, Third-lieutenant appeared to have forgotten he had passengers. The youth jumped at being suddenly spoken to in non-sailor.

‘What? Oh, it’s you…’

‘You’ included Ada. Earlier she’d tried to ingratiate herself, joining Third-lieutenant on his bench. His quick scan and resultant ‘ugh!’ made her retreat to ponder how much things had changed since a flashed eyelash would open any door. She’d sulked in silence since.

But there were other strangers aboard beside her; plainly living ones. Third-lieutenant felt obliged to reply.

‘‘Despair’? Well, that’s a strong word… But, um, yes. Sadly so.’

Things weren’t yet quite as before. One of the senior seaman felt free enough to speak without bidding.

‘She’s impaled,’ he affirmed. ‘You mark my words mate: next big wave will move her along and take ‘er bottom. Poor old Bridget!’

Third-lieutenant frowned but wasn’t so sure of his authority as to protest. Maybe when they were on dry land…

‘Yes, thank you, Cowley. Steady as you were…’

‘Cowley’ recalled himself and knuckled his brow—the Service’s sign of subservience—before knuckling under.

Just on the edge of it not mattering any more, the storm showed signs of dying down. The thunder and lightning display had played itself out ages back; now ‘only’ a wicked wind and frenzied sea remaining to finish the job.

Which it would. It drove them on stronger than sail or oar could counter. Returning to open sea to sit things out wasn’t an option: proper professional seamen agreed on that and so even Ada had to believe.

The coast was very close now and the larger sand dunes discernible. But first the offshore rocks awaited like jagged teeth; a giant’s jaw line showing just above the water.

There hadn’t been opportunity before and Frankenstein’s curiosity was piqued. He didn’t want to die not knowing.

‘What happened to you?’ he asked swiftly, to keep Third-lieutenant’s attention.

There was nothing the over-promoted youth could do to materially effect things—Cowley and co. were in charge of that—and so he seemed almost glad of diversion.

‘A mutiny,’ he said. ‘It happens occasionally.’

Ada and Julius exchanged glances. Third-lieutenant’s words said one thing but his face another. Frankenstein had heard enough of England’s famous navy to know that loss of a ship attracted mandatory court martial. Third-lieutenant was probably the senior surviving officer and, should he continue to survive, must eventually give account of himself on behalf of all.

That same thought must have occurred to the youth. In giving further detail he was probably rehearsing his testimony.

‘We’re a ship of war, not a troop transporter: especially not that sort. And they didn’t supply enough chains. Plus the Lazarans weren’t broken: too fresh. Things aren’t going well in the Basque enclave, so we were rushing reinforcements…’

It satisfied Frankenstein, but not, alas, Third-lieutenant himself, who must have had the less generous audience of the Admiralty board in mind. Just like the Allies’ enclave in Spain his defence required reinforcement.

‘It was during feeding,’ he added. ‘One of them refused to eat from the offal barrel. I think it must have been an officer or gentry beforehand and had residual memories. So we made it take its turn… forced it to eat. And things went from there. The spirit of rebellion spread like smallpox…’

‘Too quick, too many,’ contributed Cowley, again without being asked. ‘No time for the swivel guns.’

Reliving the vivid scene before his eyes, Third-lieutenant may not have heard, or maybe graciously overlooked the breach of etiquette.

‘Captain Barker tried to get on deck…’ There was a catch in the young man’s voice. He was no longer before an imaginary tribunal but explaining to a wider audience, including the Almighty and himself. ‘But they got him at stairwell. They… tore him apart.’

Suddenly, he stared straight at Julius in frank appeal.

‘I fought. I did fight. But when we were trapped on the poopdeck getting off seemed the right thing to do. Yes, we left people but they just couldn’t be rescued. We only got one boat away as it was: there wasn’t room for all…’

It mustn’t have been a bad ship to serve in. The half dozen seamen, tattooed veterans all, looked on the young officer with compassion, as to a son in distress.

‘You did the right thing, sir,’ said Cowley for all. ‘Chin up, there’s a good gentleman! Stiffen y’lip. Oh—and stiff grip on the sides too, all of ye. We’re going in!’

It still looked like standard sea to Frankenstein but he submitted to a trained eye. He and Ada and Foxglove braced themselves against the stern rail.

The stranded Bridget was breaking up. Waves penetrated to have their way with her and departed taking whole timbers as souvenirs, making it easier still for the next in. Each watery inundation likewise swept up a bevy of Lazarans and sucked them into the deep. They wailed and waved until a bashing against the half-seen rocks pacified them.

Frankenstein heard the mainmast crack and saw the Union flag atop it dip in surrender. The next fluid hammer blow, or maybe the one after that, would swallow it up.

He was not alone in observing. Maybe half their new friends in the skiff had brimful eyes. Julius was torn between thinking it shameful sentiment or touching.

‘Now!’ said the man watching at the prow—and secured himself a death grip to either side.

Something implacable started to eat the bottom of the boat, chewing and spitting away splinters. It roared as it dined.

Frankenstein felt a powerful impulse to swing his feet up on the bench to escape the unseen monster below, but at the same time feared to appear womanish. Self-respect won over self-preservation—but only just.

Ada, who had a perfect excuse for effeminate acts, was reacting better than he—by not reacting at all. She sat quite still, the remnants of her parasol unfurled again, and awaited what would be. Foxglove was as close to her as decorum allowed, poised to put himself between her and harm. Lady Lovelace showed no sign of acknowledging that devotion, or indeed any external fact.

Looking to the future (and assuming they had any) Julius could now see individual rockpools and flotsam accumulations on the beach. It looked as inviting as Eden after their eternity afloat. Even the early Lazaran arrivals, or bits thereof, could not detract from the lovely sight.

‘Now or never, boys!’ called Cowley, just audible above wave, wind and ripping wood. ‘Jump!’

‘I can’t see what all the fuss was about!’ commented Lady Lovelace as she stepped ashore, barely getting her boots wet (or wetter).

If his hands hadn’t been busy keeping his balance Julius would have pinched himself. In his experience, when things seemed too good to be true then they generally were. Yet, apart from a scraped palm courtesy of some barnacles, he made it to dry land unscathed. Ditto Foxglove and almost all of them. They even retained the essential baggage they’d refused to let Mariner heave overboard, plus all their portable wealth: the latter safely secured to their bodies in waterproofed money-belts.

The skiff retained vestigial structure long enough to surf the worst rocks, sacrificially absorbing the punishment they doled out, and in dying delivered its charges into merely waist-high water beyond. As related, Ada was extra-special lucky. The stubborn pair of spars on which she stood kept their form to the last gasp, allowing her to merely step off onto sand, as though even the cruel sea deferred to her sense of dignity.

Not only that, but their undertaking to ‘Stephen,’ the cutter officer, regarding the skiff was fulfilled without further effort or conscience searching. It had been a good old boat to them and they were belatedly grateful to it, but now, as per vow, it was no more.

All that spoilt things was a final wave, which reached into the still(ish) waters and snatched back two seamen. Like a spiteful child it lifted them up and smashed them against stone. Suddenly very relaxed, they surrendered to the sea and let themselves be drawn into its embrace. Seconds later they mixed with the skiff components and receded from view into ocean. No one gave them a second glance.

They were the past; the beach was the future. The survivors embraced it.

Alas, some who had preceded Lady Lovelace and co. wanted to embrace them. A host of Lazarans, many of them displaying grievous rock damage, were stumbling ashore, dripping water and attitude. Rough treatment might have softened their bodies but not their anger. They understood dimly but well enough. Warm humans had brought them to this: warm humans were the enemy…

The random scatter of Lazarans on the beach were still enough to comprise a ‘surrounding.’ It was time for clear thinking and clear direction of forces. The polite fiction about the chain of command which prevailed on the skiff was brutally jettisoned. Frankenstein cut through Third-lieutenant’s first hesitant ‘er…’ and took charge.

‘Form a circle! Anyone with any weapons?’

They could oblige with the first but not the second. Then Third-lieutenant recalled he retained a midshipman’s dirk tucked into his stocking. Julius snatched it.

The nearest Lazaran was the best of a pretty basic bunch: no patchwork at all and fairly similar to what he’d once been. Possibly even some memories of previous life and status lingered. Therefore he was ringleader of all the enmity. He reached out for the warm ones and beckoned others.

Julius knew the score: in such situations it is vital to something—anything—rather than nothing. Frankenstein surged and slashed. Third-lieutenant had kept his midshipman rank memento in good order. The blade cut clean through Lazaran trachea and jugular, not producing the normal claret spectacular but causing the head to loll at a crazy angle.

It served. The Lazaran leader couldn’t see straight any more—his world had gone all cock-eyed. Using the interval of adjustment, the ring of warm-bloods slipped past him.

Into the arms of more like him. Cowley succumbed to a malicious embrace and could not escape it. Other Lazarans caught up and joined the group hug till the confused bundle overbalanced and hit the sand.

Frankenstein could not restrain himself from a sidelong glance. The sand under where he presumed Cowley to be was staining red.

Foxglove felled one, two and then three foes who menaced his mistress. Julius saw the terrible blows leave knuckle imprints on targets’ faces or entirely flatten noses. It was very effective as far as it went but meant neglecting a boy Lazaran who had mounted Foxglove’s back to bite.

Third-lieutenant wrestled with the stripling undead to complete absence of effect. Only when teeth met bone and a scream produced was Foxglove’s sense of duty overruled. He reached back and stabbed a stiff finger into his tormentor’s eye. Julius couldn’t help but cringe when he saw it go in right up to the knuckle.

The boy fell off and Third-lieutenant kicked him. The reward for that was to have his leg grasped and held hard. Failing to drag himself away, he called out in panic.

His companions pretended not to hear. They would have abandoned him, no doubt about it, for self-preservation dissolves all hierarchies and decencies. ‘Every man for himself’ was only seconds away—always assuming anyone could be bothered to say the actual words.

That wouldn’t have looked good at the time or sounded well in retrospect. How kind, then, of the Deity or Fate or random events to send salvation.

Chapter 17: DON’T MESS WITH THE BELGIANS

Happily, at that moment friends came over the hill.

Less happily, with friends like these most enemies were redundant. The long drawn out agony of the stricken ship must have been seen and a robust response mobilised.

The line of lancers paused at the dune line to take the situation in—and seconds later plunged in.

It was a universally agreed precept that ‘turned’ Lazarans were no more use to anyone. Even the most miserly of slavers didn’t dare keep rogue Revived about them. Once they’d developed a taste for flesh and discovered that the warm-bloods weren’t invincible that was it. Sooner or later, one dark night when vigilance was low, new lessons learnt would be put into practice. There was the Marseilles Mutiny as terrible example, and the time it proved necessary to burn Liverpool…

That principle was an expensive one. In the West Indies whole islands had to be cleared and re-stocked when local rebellions broke out. Accordingly, liberal-minded plantation owners were frowned upon, and even run out of the place if particularly kind to their Lazarans. It only took one good apple to spoil the whole barrel, and then you were looking at months of massacres, not to mention ruinous expense. And that was just on smallish Caribbean islands. If the cancer set in on a continental land mass it didn’t bear thinking about.

Which is why the lancers didn’t ask questions. They simply piled in and skewered the scattering Lazarans with zest—and twelve foot plumed lances also.

Contrary to what you might expect, some Lazarans had highly developed survival instincts. Having already lost life once before was the most likely explanation. And with this bunch, escaping captivity and surviving shipwreck reinforced such sentiments. Added to that, the more rational undead present were disinclined to take on cavalry unarmed. Accordingly, the sensible elements fled in every direction.

The rest, the barely sentient ‘patchwork’ jobs and botched revivals, or those eaten up with universal rage, disputed ownership of the beach. They rushed howling at the new arrivals—and as a by-product left Julius and friends unmolested.

The horsemen met them at the gallop and transfixed a fair few. Then, having burst through and out the other side, they wheeled and returned to deal with the remainder. It was pretty simple work for trained men, as these appeared to be. Several saddles were emptied as they passed and comrades ripped to bits, but it didn’t seem to faze them.

Two traverses did the trick and after that it was a merry chase along the shoreline, making a game of how many fugitives could be spitted on one stick. Frankenstein was queasily reminded of a kebab dinner he’d once had in Constantinople.

But stronger still, he was reminded of what a fragile bag of flesh the human frame is—and the alive variety yet more so than the Revived kind. There was little to distinguish them in their present drowned-rat state from the Lazaran horde, except perhaps pinker skin— and in Ada’s case not even that. They couldn’t just assume they would be immune from the rough justice being meted out to the mutineers.

Already, individual lancers were starting to notice the knot of people trying to pretend they were invisible. You didn’t need to be Nostradamus to foretell that things were about to take an unfortunate turn.

‘Screen her!’ Frankenstein instructed Foxglove. ‘Don’t let them see her face.’

How refreshing it was to deal with the swift of understanding! Without so much as a ‘wot?’ the servant complied. He no longer had his top hat but even without it was tall enough to serve as a human shield.

‘And you…,’ Julius addressed the trembling Third-lieutenant, ‘step forward—your uniform might count for something.’

There was no time to wait for comprehension. Frankenstein grasped the youth’s collar and dragged him along.

‘Wait!’ Julius tried it in French, since that seemed the best bet. Certainly, the lancers were resplendent enough in green and gold to number in that nation’s army. ‘Wait! We are not like them! Or with them!’

But several soldiers had already couched their lances to pedestrian level. Their mounts pawed the sand, awaiting the word

Julius repeated in German and, for good measure, Italian. You never knew—they might be men from one of the French conquests. It could do no harm. Only one thing was certain: this side of the Channel speaking English wasn’t going to do them any favours.

One of the lancers advanced—but at a walk. Frankenstein and his captive put on a burst of speed to meet him more than halfway, to maximise mutual visibility.

‘See?’ (French again) ‘See?’ Julius pinched his cheek to produce a blush. ‘We are living. They were our enemy. You have saved us!’

The man exchanged words with one of his comrades, but Julius couldn’t catch it. Either the distance was too great or it was a language not in his repertoire. The man spoken to shrugged.

Such battle as remained had moved to the outskirts of vision. A sort of peace had returned to the beach save for a few lancers ambling about, pig-sticking those undead who wouldn’t lie still. Those not engaged walked their horses over and gradually formed a loose circle round Frankenstein and friends.

Foxglove, Ada (still shrouded) and the remaining sailors caught them up. There was minor comfort in huddling close.

Julius bore up under the scrutiny. It was not in his nature to beg, nor, he thought, good policy at present. In the context of being soaked and shivering and he-knew-not-where, it was a brave show.

Which was rewarded. One of the lancers, an obvious officer from the extra epaulettes and gold braid, rode close.

‘Hello.’

He spoke French, but accented in a way Julius failed to recognise.

‘Good day, sir,’ said Frankenstein in kind, bright as he could.

The hand which held the lance wavered side to side, equivocating.

‘It may be, it may not. For you, that is. I have not decided. What are you?’

Third-lieutenant was going to say something but Julius nipped it in the bud by treading on toes.

He chose words carefully; most salient facts first.

‘We are living. Victims of the sea. And of mutinous Lazarans.’

The officer raised one eyebrow, in a not-unfriendly ‘you don’t say…’ manner.

So far so good. Julius moved on to specifics.

‘I am Swiss. A neutral. With me are my manservant and Lazaran sister.’

The last was a risk in itself, but was swift followed by a bigger one.

‘These are English sailors. They had taken us prisoner on their Lazaran carrying ship.’

Both eyebrows were raised in response to that. Which was better in its way than a lowered lance. Better still, lack of protest from Third-lieutenant vindicated the gamble that neither he or his men spoke French.

Julius relaxed. He had maximised his options, and taken all care. If things turned horrible now it was just Fate’s fault and none of his doing.

As his horse fretted and worried at its bridle, the officer chewed on his moustache for far too long. It was, to put it mildly, a tense moment.

However, such less than nimble decision making gave Julius some clues. It might be useful information if they survived.

Finally the man spoke, still in accented French.

‘Then they are our prisoners now, monsieur. Prisoners of war. But I think you are what you say you are. Probably. A neutral. Likewise your menagerie. Therefore, congratulations on your escape. And welcome to the Belgian Republic…’

Frankenstein had to restrain himself from visible glee at guessing right.

Chapter 18: A SWISS HERO EXHUMED

The organ loft and pipes were a nest of Lazarans. The high altar likewise. They crawled over them and each other like crabs in a barrel, devoid of decorum.

The few soaring intellectuals there who retained curiosity peeked out occasionally at the comings and goings in the nave; but mostly their own writhings and mountings and devourings were enough. Even more occasionally, a wild one would claw at the floor to ceiling wire fence separating the chancel from the rest of the church, but soldiers would prod them back with bayonets.

The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Sea in Zeebrugge had definitely seen better days.

As had Julius Frankenstein. In fact, he went so far as to say he’d never seen anything so hellish in his entire life—and that was saying something.

The plump Belgian official happily conceded it.

‘In the Republic we have not raised Revivalism to the art it is in France. Or even England. In the early days the Church forbade it—until the Republic forbade the Church, ho ho.’

He indicated the savagely deconsecrated edifice they stood in.

‘They’ll keep their opinions to themselves in future, n’est pas, monsieur, don’t you think?’

Not only was the official speaking French, in his own Belgic fashion, but evidently he was thinking French too. Julius had heard that the Belgians, though nominally neutral, were heavily infiltrated by French opinion—and French agents and ‘advisors’ too. It wasn’t quite a client state yet: Neo-Napoleon’s armies had swept by, not through. But once he’d settled the Austrians and Russians’ hash, and the Italians and the Greeks and Turks and the Eskimos too probably, then he’d be back. The Belgian Republic was simply embracing the future before it embraced them.

Certainly, their companions of the storm, Third-lieutenant and his men, had received precious little sympathy and plenty of kicks. The last Frankenstein had seen of them was in a farm cart being driven off to captivity or execution, they knew not which. Only his Swiss status and some rapid talking had saved him and Ada and Foxglove from the same fate. However, once that fact was established they weren’t even robbed.

Happily, inbred stoicism kept the Englishmen’s protests pretty minimal, but it was still distressing to see them taken away.

Julius should have intervened, he realised. These men’s seamanship had saved his life. However, the Royal Navy was not popular hereabouts (the coastal blockade and bombardments, press-ganging, being organised Reaction personified etc. etc.) and so he shamefully heeded Ada’s whispered ‘forget them!’

‘That’ll teach the swines!’ he agreed with the official, meaning the Cathedral’s former owners, not Third-lieutenant and company. He said it with false relish, re-routeing the self-disgust he felt in order to ingratiate himself.

‘No it won’t,’ chuckled the Belgian. ‘You can’t teach dead men!’ He mimicked a noose around his neck and gently swayed side to side.

Then, it struck home that his remark had double value in the context of this Lazaran academy. The man laughed all the heartier and all his bellies with him.

‘Well, maybe you can with this lot,’ he conceded when he’d done, indicating the heaving mass in the fenced-off Chancel. ‘But let me tell you, monsieur, it’s not easy.’

‘Do please tell,’ Frankenstein prompted. ‘I’m interested…’

‘Really?’

‘Certainly.’

The official started on his luncheon of bread and sausage and spring onions, unwrapped from what was surely a wife or mother-packed hamper. From time to time he wiped his hands on his orange sash of office.

For some reason it didn’t occur to him to offer any to his company. Julius and Ada and Foxglove remained standing, supplicants before his desk, whilst their host in this new country lolled back in his seat and noisily enjoyed.

‘Why is that?’ he finally asked through a mouthful. ‘Are you in the trade?’

‘I was. Monsieur, allow me…’

Frankenstein uncorked the hamper’s wine flask and poured. The official saluted him with it and sipped with surprising delicacy.

‘Well, you Swiss invented the whole business, didn’t you?’

Seeing the way things were going, Julius wouldn’t accept all the credit.

‘We did But it took the Convention to take up the baton and run, eh? As with so many things, the Revolution is the vanguard of human progress, n’est pas?’

The official almost purred. He even set down his baguette.

‘Absolutely, monsieur. I discern that you are a man after my own heart…’

It was not for want of trying. Julius was progressively adjusting his Swiss French into an imitation of purest Gallic tones, the better to stroke his new friend’s cultural cringe. It definitely appeared to be unlocking doors, and might even save them from shooting or life imprisonment, or whatever it was the Belgic Republic did with unwanted foreigners.

Though only half fed the official felt expansive, willing to make minor concessions to show he had a generous soul.

‘Well, our training procedures lag behind the more refined methods of other nations,’ he admitted, ‘but we’re catching up, you mark my words. My chef-régional thought of this…,’ he waved one languid hand to encompass the ex-cathedral, ‘and I think you’ll agree it’s a good idea. Bring ‘em back to life and straightaway cage them up in this big space which had become available. Then—and here is the genius, monsieur—let their own struggles weed out the weaker specimens, whilst at the same time allowing them to see humans come and go, to acclimatise them. That is why we use the rest of the building as an government office. Which is why you’re here. Which reminds me…’

The form he’d been filling in, now stained by spilt spring onions, had been quite forgotten in the course of conversation. Frankenstein was quite happy for it to remain so.

‘It’s brilliant,’ Julius exclaimed as diversion. ‘A cheap culling and training process rolled into one. What novelty! What economy of effort! You are to be congratulated, monsieur!’

The official modestly accepted only some of the praise.

‘It wasn’t my notion, not entirely: I only run the place…’

‘Any one can have ideas, sir,’ Julius greased on, ‘the trick is make them real. I think we shall hear more of you and this place! The English may have their Heathrow Hecatomb, the French their Mausoleum de Compeigne, yet I warrant this institution boasts the same success rate at one tenth the trouble!’

That almost overdid it. Both supposedly secret places Frankenstein had named were common knowledge but, even so, excess specifics awoke suspicion.

Or would have but for the second glass of wine Julius obligingly poured. The potential poison in their conversation was then purged by an inspired answer to a pointed question.

‘You seem to know a great deal about Revivalism, monsieur…,’ said the official. He was guarded again.

Frankenstein looked soulful.

‘Alas, not through choice…’ He indicated Ada. ‘My sister… a sad case…’

The official had seen too many to regard any Lazaran, no matter how pretty, as anything but meat; yet he did Julius the honour of giving Ada a quick scan up and down.

‘No good for the army,’ was his judgement. ‘But I suppose you had your reasons…’

‘A mother’s dying wish, sir. They are as divine commands to dutiful sons. Otherwise, as you so correctly discern, I would never have bothered…’

If looks could kill Julius would have been eligible for the circus in the Chancel. Fortunately, by then the official’s glance had moved on and so missed seeing Ada’s death stare.

‘Well, you’ve got her well trained, I’ll give you that much, monsieur. Nicely silent. Maybe you could teach us a thing or two!’

He didn’t mean it. It was a joke between two men on the same wavelength.

‘Now, where were we?’ He was fussing with the paper storm on his desk again.

‘I believe,’ Julius prompted, ‘it was just a few more details and then we were off…’

Actually, that wasn’t quite so, but the official didn’t care to spoil this pleasant chat over (his) lunch by contradicting.

‘More or less, Mr…’ He consulted some paper. ‘Mr Tell. A few extra formalities…’

Julius’ mad mood had persisted beyond the beach debacle, drawing sighs from Lady Lovelace and reproachful looks from Foxglove. In the absence of any identification—all lost at sea, of course—he’d seen fit to test the official’s education by assuming the name of Switzerland’s best (perhaps only) known hero.

Happily, the man’s schooling and reading proved deficient. ‘William Tell’ duly went down on the carte de sejour being drawn up, reckless of all the problems it might bring later on.

‘And where do you intend heading?’

‘Home, I suppose,’ said Julius, sounding resigned. ‘The estate calls, and my dear sister, Miss Tell, is due back at her asylum.’

When the official looked on her again Ada constructed a rictus smile. She even bobbed a curtsey.

‘Most commendable,’ said the Belgian. ‘Most progressive. No other country I know of has institutions catering for family Lazarans. Everywhere else it is either field work or concealment in attics…’

The gaze had lingered and so Ada tried to look grateful.

‘Yes,’ Julius said to her, loud and slow as though to an idiot. ‘I said, yes: back to your sweet little room and cot, my dear. And the embroidery that keeps you busy. I said embroidery, yes…’

Frankenstein was getting a touch too embroiled in this farrago he’d created. The bare bones of his tale about a disastrous sailing holiday might pass muster before this uninspired bureaucrat, but surplus detail could break the spell. Foxglove applied the tip of his boot to Julius’ ankle.

Frankenstein transcended the pain without expression and also got the message. The official was none the wiser.

‘So,’ said Julius, when he trusted his voice again, ‘if you could make the carte valid for all points to the Swiss border, then we need take up no more of your valuable time.’

The official liked his time being deemed valuable. He poised his validating stamp above the document with extra added dignity.

‘I wish you bon voyage, monsieur, and better luck this time!’

The stamp crashed down and suddenly they were legal again.

They ought to have been grateful to Fortune for simply being alive, and to Frankenstein for their freedom. Not only that, but for the first time since Lady Lovelace rose again and Julius fled the Hecatomb, they were respectable once more—after a fashion. Albeit coated in the wrong names, they were entitled to be… well, to be. No one could legitimately hunt them for sport like they were vermin. It was a heady feeling not to have to skulk.

And yet Ada—and even Foxglove—were still minded to criticise Julius. For instance, for taking things too far and making a game of it all.

But before they could frame words it was brought home to both just how much his crawling had cost Frankenstein. Directly they were outside the Cathedral and out of sight, Julius sought a quiet corner and sicked his stomach up.

Lady Lovelace curled her lip at all the tiger noises and averted her eyes, but afterwards she said nothing. Naturally, Foxglove followed her lead.

Belatedly, Ada was reassured. There was dignity in travelling with a man of honour. But also comfort in finding his honour so flexible.

Chapter 19: NO MAN’S LANDS

‘ “Beginning near the Belgian town of Nieuwport on the North Sea, the system extends in a zigzag through France to the bastions constructed along the Swiss border just south of Pfetterhouse in the Alps”…’

‘How far is that?’ snapped Lady Lovelace, plainly far from pleased. Foxglove consulted the guide till he found the required passage.

‘…“totalling almost four hundred miles in length and consisting of never less than three lines of trenches on each side, the front occupies a band usually three miles wide, including ‘no man’s land’. Estimates vary but it is believed that the war zone contains no less than twenty-five thousand miles of trenchworks in total, more than enough to circle the Earth’s Equator”.’

Too far to walk then.

The plan had been to hit some isolated bit of French shore and work their way inland via unpopulated places. Meanwhile, they’d wait for inspiration to strike about contacting Neo-Napoleon. Now it was clear that the greatest war in the history of their species stood between them and their objective.

Standing on a high hill at a safe distance, the little group surveyed and were dismayed. A titanic plough had been through here but never returned to sew seed or turn the furrow. There remained a wound, a suppurating gash, the like of which Mother Earth had never suffered before. Nothing grew there and it reeked of death. And brimstone. And residual poison gas.

Though both Ada and Julius were temperamentally inclined to dark thoughts it had never occurred to either there could be such a wound upon the world. They’d read of course, they’d heard stories, even seen etchings in the news-sheets, but nothing could prepare for the reality. Even Foxglove was visibly shocked.

For his part, the Belgian coachman who’d brought them here no longer even looked. Once during his first trip conveying tourists had been enough. The wisdom in that was confirmed by the fact that no group ever requested a second visit. Nowadays, he just deposited people with averted eyes and headed back to comfort the horses. They could smell abomination even better than human noses.

‘Is this where they broke through?’ asked Lady Lovelace.

The coachman didn’t even raise his gaze.

‘No. That’s further down. Maybe fifty kilometres. But don’t bother: it’s all the same.’

Ada overlooked his blunt impertinence in favour of looking again. The prospect didn’t charm any better second time round—or third—or thousandth probably.

Meanwhile, their driver was off, without, be it noticed, being dismissed.

‘Just shout when you’ve finished,’ he said as he went. ‘I’ll be by the coach. And don’t go any closer. ‘Tisn’t safe.’

They got the strong impression it wasn’t so much that he cared about them, but that they hadn’t paid yet.

Julius understood why. It was ghoulish to ride out in smart brand-new clothes just to gawp at where so many, so very many, had died. He did not even have the excuse of lost loved ones to justify such a pilgrimage, for Julius’ country had wisely stood aloof—save for mere mercenaries who knew the risks. Likewise, his English companions looked like non-combatants.

‘It might not be for me to say, madam,’ said Foxglove, ‘but I do not think we should attempt to get through here…’

The French had managed it of course, but they were a People’s army, levee en mass, preceded by unprecedented numbers of ‘New Citizens,’ and led by a military genius. Whereas they were merely three civilians. Their modicum of (hot) money might have helped them this far, but neither it or they could afford the quarter million casualties it cost Neo-Napoleon.

Actually, the true extent of the losses wasn’t known and might well be more. Most of the fallen had no grave—or not one they were allowed to stay in.

Frankenstein had assumed the plain hopelessness of this route would free Lady Lovelace from her mad plans. He should have known better.

‘Foxglove, you are right,’ she replied, and wickedly paused just long enough to wrongfoot her devoted servant. ‘It is not for you to say!’

Foxglove blushed and bowed his head.

Yet he had a point, and one that could hardly escape her. Even a blind man could have smelt it. Hell’s Mouth stretched for mile upon appalling mile between Lady Lovelace and her objective. She had to inwardly regroup before she could push herself on.

‘What precisely would you say are the dangers?’ Ada asked.

Thinking himself addressed, Foxglove flicked through his guidebook in search of a definitive answer. Lady Lovelace hissed and snatched it from him, flinging the thing away.

‘Do you mean me?’ enquired Julius. He’d been preoccupied, trying to outrun the horrible notion that a lot of the white gravel underfoot was actually bone fragments. And if so, should he spread the news?

Ada was as acid as she ever got: victim of an aristocratic upbringing. When thwarted she turned the whip on whoever was nearest to hand.

‘Who else, sirrah? There must be some reason for you to be here!’

He was not employed by her, he had no bonds of affection; even their history together was short. There was no reason not to play her at her own game.

‘Tush, madam,’ said Julius. ‘It’s perfectly safe. After the Great Breakthrough the lines were left unoccupied. Mostly. Some feral undead remain, so they say: a negligible few hundred thousand of them, getting their daily bread the Lord knows how. And certain timid commentators talk of millions of mines, and unexploded shells, and lakes of more than man-height mud, and shoot-on-sight galloon patrols, and…’

‘Shut up,’ said Ada.

Frankenstein pressed on regardless.

‘If you ask me, I think we should reserve it for an after tea stroll on Sunday. Our innkeeper tells me he expects good weather on Sunday…’

‘Foxglove, make him shut up.’

‘No, milady,’ said he. ‘It’s for your own good…’

Which was a turn up for the book. It impressed her more than anything Reason or Frankenstein had to say. Nimble as a ballerina, Ada re-evaluated her options.

‘We could get a ship,’ she suggested, burying Foxglove’s slave rebellion in silence. ‘Risk the Channel again…’

‘No,’ said Julius—and he had never sounded firmer.

‘No,’ said even Foxglove.

Ada thought on and remembered.

‘No,’ she agreed. But then: ‘Yet we have got to get through somehow.’

For a space, Frankenstein deluded himself he had an ally in Foxglove, but when he looked across at the man his gaze was avoided.

So, here he was alone again: the most unlikely ever ambassador for sanity.

‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why must we?

‘I refer you to the Council of Box Hill,’ snapped Ada. ‘It was all dealt with there. I got the distinct impression you were present…’

Indeed he had been. He’d not had voting rights, but he’d been an observer. And therefore complicit in the lunatic resolutions passed.

Julius Frankenstein looked behind him. There lay Belgium and, beyond it, using the eye of faith, Holland. Two statelets too crazed with commerce to realise the state they were in. Come the day the Convention could abide their offensive bourgeois presence no longer, they would be swept away in an afternoon: toy armies and all. It wouldn’t even take Bonaparte himself, but just one of his galaxy of star-generals, to deal with them in short order.

They would be juicy plums to pick. What little Julius had seen confirmed the legend that the Low Countries had exploited Lazaran economics about as far as they would go—even to the far side of the world in fact.

Belgic and Netherlands Lazarans dug dykes and forced the sea back, field by field, careless of casualties. Their treadmill power turned the windmills which dotted that reclaimed land. Then the money that earned bought merchant ships for which Lazarans were shipwrights, dockers and crew; making and ‘manning’ a fleet that carried forth manufactured goods and brought back riches. Naturally, or perhaps unnaturally, it was Lazarans who laboured twenty-four hours a day, chained to benches in the factories that made those manufactured things. Word was there were even undead explorer ships, completely expendable of course save for a living captain to report back, sent to seek out new lands—and markets.

In short, this was the virtuous economic circle that had let the Republics scale the moral high-ground and abolish slavery. They were bursting with the prosperity that came from bursting open the grave.

In the few short hours he’d graced Belgium with his presence, Frankenstein had seen as many Lazarans as living humans; perhaps more. Reports said Holland was worse. They were asking for trouble of course: sooner or later some Revived Spartacus would do the arithmetic and rise up, but in the meanwhile there was a lot of money being made. The French Convention, for all it was supposedly above things like worldly wealth, would thank the Lowland Republics for that in due course. When ransacked they would sponsor the invasion of some other countries, maybe other continents.

Telescoping down to personal considerations, the big question was: did Julius want to turn back and be a part of that, to await, albeit in comfort, the arrival of the inevitable in the form of the French?

Answer: no. Or NO! If the French were fore-destined it was better to go meet them now, on his own terms, at a time of his choosing. Which, however weirdly, meant his thoughts coincided with Ada’s.

Which in turn meant his thoughts must be wrong, though he couldn’t quite see how at this moment.

Therefore he cast about for other options. How about home?

That thought provoked a bitter laugh. Leaving aside the country-wide outlawry notice on him, the Helvetic Republic contained too many memories of murdered family. The first Lazaran of all had not only deprived him of kin but indirectly of Fatherland too. Even a Swiss firing squad was preferable to a moment’s actual residing and reflection there.

Which just left going forward. Which implied crossing the forsaken front-line before them. Which was impossible save for an army—and a army careless of its men’s lives at that.

Ada was still waiting for his response. She must have sensed he was at a cross-roads, for she never normally waited for anyone.

If it was going to be done, it was best done quick and get it over with. Frankenstein drew deep breath.

‘Upon reflection,’ he said with finality, ‘I see that you are right. France it must be.’

When she wanted, Lady Lovelace could fake sincerity like no other. She also thought she knew which strings made Frankenstein dance.

‘Well, that is where the ‘escape and adventure’ I promised you lies…,’ she said, in warm, welcome-home-prodigal-son, tones.

Julius only heard half of it: the ‘promised you lies’ bit: which happened to be the true portion, so he didn’t protest.

Thus are decisions made. Yet Frankenstein was still distracted, pondering whether he should tell all. About his terrifying vision.

It only took a further second. Being here, in this horrible place, emboldened him. Here, where so many lives had been thrown away like they were nothing, or less than nothing, put his own petty story into perspective. Why was he making such heavy weather of living a mere three-score years and ten, if you were lucky? One way or the other, not a great deal mattered much anyhow…

‘Live your life, Julius’ he told himself.

And so he said:

‘I have this idea….’

Chapter 20: FROM ON HIGH

Several scenes from a bird’s-eye view: an all-seeing, all hearing, but nosey bird, with no regard for people’s privacy.

‘Well, I think it’s a very bad idea,’ said Foxglove, before passion subsided and he remembered himself. ‘Milady…,’ he added.

‘But very stylish,’ said Frankenstein, knowing it to be a done deal anyway. ‘Bags of style!’

‘Indeed,’ concurred Lady Lovelace, not actually caring a damn about style or any other inessentials, but willing to conscript it to her side. She deemed no more need be said.

Nor need there. Foxglove’s outbursts were few and short (if not sweet), but came from the heart and with the best of intentions. The house-broken bruiser sat back and became like a statue again.

The undisputed good thing was their heading away from the terrible trenches. Less unanimous was their trajectory to the Free City of Luxembourg: as ‘agreed’—but only after argument and Julius putting his foot down. Deplored by all was the fact of their new inseparable companion.

The sinister sealed coach followed them at a discreet distance.

It had shown up not long after they arrived at the former frontline viewing point. Frankenstein noticed it directly and long before the others would. Products of their relatively happy national history, the English tended to be less skittish on such scores than continentals.

He’d let his companions in on the news directly after the great ‘what-next?’ debate. Ada had queried why they had to go all the way to Luxembourg to catch a France-bound galloon? ‘The Belgians have them too you know’ she’d said.

‘Because of that,’ Julius answered succinctly. With a flick of the thumb he indicated their new companion. ‘No, don’t turn round: they’re watching us. Just be aware we have company and act innocent.’

Foxglove complied by not looking at all, but Ada could not be deterred from a slow motion turn. Eventually, the second coach came into Lady Lovelace’s peripheral vision.

‘Mere sight-seers, like us,’ she decreed. ‘A young couple; honeymooners I shouldn’t wonder…’

Save in dire need, it wasn’t Foxglove’s style to gainsay his mistress, but there remained a range of euphemisms he could deploy.

‘Possibly, milady, possibly…,’ he said. ‘But a battlefield’s an unlikely port of call for a nuptial pair, don’t you think? Hardly what you’d call romantic…’

‘The couple are just cover,’ Frankenstein confirmed. ‘Others remain inside. I saw sunlight flash upon a perspective glass…’

Acting like he’d had enough for one outing, Frankenstein casually sauntered back to their own coach driver. He was going to ask if the newcomer was known to him, but the man’s nervy demeanour resolved the matter without words.

By the time Julius returned Lady Lovelace had considered and concurred.

‘Who would have thought,’ she said in wonderment, ‘that the Belgians even had a secret police?’

Frankenstein was amused.

‘The Ancien Regime is over,’ he informed her. ‘The State now stands in for God. What other choice do the poor Belgians have but to conform? Welcome to modernity, madam.’

Lady Lovelace took that compressed lesson away to digest in silence. For once she didn’t mind being lectured. The broad sweep of history be damned: the main thing was that she’d got her way. There’d be no more caveats from Ada—not till the next gap between want and have opened up anyway.

So, Luxembourg it was. And urgently, before the Belgians’ fully justified curiosity evolved into something worse.

‘Mr Tell’ and company set off and, a token while after, the second coach set off after them.

When he heard of it some days later, Talleyrand was delighted that his corps de ballet of spies, some deliberately conspicuous like the ‘Belgian’ coach, others invisible as air, had restored contact. Up till then he’d feared that circumstances beyond control, such as that inconsiderate stormy sea, might have taken Lady Lovelace and entourage from him. To hear otherwise made him clap two lace-fringed hands together and bestow such a charming smile upon the messenger. Later that same evening and for the same reason, a roadside beggar had his life changed forever by a bag of golden guineas cast from Talleyrand’s carriage.

That the (comparatively) innocent Belgian Republic got blamed for his scheming would have been sweet sugar icing on Talleyrand’s cake of deep joy—but sadly he never knew that.

Nevertheless, the Prince was well content with his present level of informedness. To aspire beyond that was to trespass into territory reserved for the Almighty alone: wherefore he humbly withdrew. The excommunicated former Bishop and serial turncoat had many mortal sins on his charge sheet (including those the Church said ‘Cried Out to Heaven for Vengeance’), but blasphemy was not amongst them. The man Emperor Napoleon had described as ‘shit in a silk stocking’ was far too fly to offend the Omnipotent.

‘Tell our people to play them out a little more rope,’ he instructed his agent. ‘There’s not quite enough to hang themselves yet.’

Chapter 21: WE CAN SEE YOU

Surveying another cathedral (save this one was still open for business) Frankenstein and Lady Lovelace and Foxglove behaved like they were family plus flunky passing through on a ‘Grand Tour.’ Devotees of high culture ticking off inspirational architecture on their list.

In Luxembourg the disguise was quite plausible—albeit these particular ‘tourists’ somewhat less so. A unscrubable whiff of ‘post-apocalypse’ hung about Julius and co., whereas residual pre-Promethean War normality lingered in the City. The French hadn’t incorporated the place when they boiled through during the ‘Great Breakthrough,’ but instead respected (after a fashion) the rule of its Prince-Bishop. Of course, it had been pillaged down to its underwear, even (or especially) the Churches, but in theory there remained a self-governing city; one of the patchwork of petty states and historical accidents that collectively comprised Germania. Once the war went east and then global, Luxembourg was left behind and got on with its own business unmolested. For the time being.

In the contemporary lottery of life that was no mean achievement anywhere. On their way in, Frankenstein and friends had received yet another unsolicited crash course in present-day harsh realities. The statelets traversed were silently instructive—but not in the sense they once graced the itinerary of every Grand Tour: as aesthetic academies and/or fun stays. Now, those not physically ravaged by war were indirectly so. Denuded of male citizens (all either dead or in arms or both), Lazarans kept the show going—or limping—along. Resurrected people drove—or, more often, hauled—the ploughs. Death and the scent of ‘serum’ hung over all.

Hence it had been a depressing trip. Shepherded by their shy ‘Belgian’ shadow, they saw only vistas of civilisation visibly in retreat.

Which was why Luxembourg was such a tonic. If only by contrast as a haven of prosperity and home to myriad still-warm humanity. Not only that, but crucial to Ada’s aims, it still boasted a civilian aerodrome.

That had been a sleepy little facility before ‘History’ intruded; catering mainly to the Prince-Bishop’s Episcopal progresses. Changing geo-political imperatives altered all that. Now it was quite a hub. The party were biding their time before heading for its hubbub.

One of the ‘day-one’ acts of French Conventionary Government in all its conquests was to nationalise every aircraft. They couldn’t for the life of them see why mere civilians should gallivant in the sky whilst the class struggle hung in the balance below. And besides, there was the danger of aristocrats and other enemies of the People escaping that way. Instead, collaring the collective national fleet, they used them to rain bombs and air-mobile columns of revolutionaries on their enemies. Zeal and sheer elan carried them halfway across Europe—till the trenches rendered both qualities irrelevant—and suicidal.

Later, when revolutionary ardour cooled and the wars turned gutty, there was even less justification for jaunts and fun. With the rainbow-hued vessels of Europe’s leisured classes long since confiscated and painted grim, and the factories unable to keep up with war losses, those merchants without contacts in the Convention or money for bribes lost their galloon fleets too. Which plunged Europe’s economy further into free-fall recession—though with the happy by-product of creating unemployment just when the army desperately needed fresh flesh. The leaders of the Revolution congratulated themselves on killing two birds with one stone.

All of which is to explain why tricoloured galloons criss-crossing Luxembourg’s airspace, locating their position via the Cathedral’s spire, had become such a familiar sight as to be invisible to the natives. No one pointed any more. Not that it was anyone’s business noting their conqueror’s ways in any case: open curiosity often came at a cost…

Because, in a paradoxically un-revolutionary way, the Convention set great store by its material possessions: aerodromes included. For instance, it was common knowledge what happened to Budapest when its French air facilities were sabotaged by guerrillas. Now there was neither a Buda or a Pest beside the Danube, and the puppet ‘Revolutionary Protectorate of the Magyars’ was casting around for a new capital.

But Frankenstein had no such concerns: here wasn’t his homeland. Indeed, it could be said he no longer had such a thing. Here in Luxembourg—or anywhere else—he was free to look up at the crowded skies, drink in the scene, and be careless of consequences.

The Luxembourgeois saw things differently. They saw that wisdom lay in averting your eyes and cultivating your own garden whilst you still had one. Plus adopting the positive attitude of gladness it was only war-supplies the vessels above deposited on their soil, not bombs.

That culture of denial suited Frankenstein and playmates down to the ground—which, coincidentally, was also the direction most Luxembourgeois cast their gaze when they met foreign eyes.

All in all perfect conditions for a conspiratorial meeting: circumstances conspiring in their favour for once. Away from their hotel’s walls-with-ears, surrounded by the devout coming in or out, plus the hucksters that preyed upon them, Luxembourg Cathedral was an answer to plotters’ prayers.

The ‘Belgian Secret Police’ had been successfully left at the border. Frankenstein felt they were now free to worry about other things.

‘Ready?’ he asked, meanwhile pointing out some blameless gargoyle as if that was the topic of discussion.

‘As we’ll ever be,’ replied Foxglove. And I still say it’s a very bad idea…’

Ada playfully smacked her servant’s arm.

‘Oh, hush you!’ she admonished, but gently by her standards. Lady Lovelace was thoroughly enjoying this lark. She kept checking her appearance in her powder compact mirror, making needless minor adjustments to hat or hair. This was her biggest transformation since rising from the grave and she was growing to like it.

‘I wish you’d stop doing that,’ said Julius. ‘Try to act in role.’

Ada carried on regardless.

‘Who’s to say it isn’t?’ she countered sweetly.

A good point. Frankenstein moved on.

‘You have all the baggage?’ he asked Foxglove.

‘All that you’ve permitted us, sir.’

‘And the rest?’

‘In the hotel privy pit, weighted down to sink.’

‘Are you sure? No coat or trinket donated to charity?’

‘At your insistence, sir, I resisted the urge.’

‘Good. We must leave no trace here. And the hotel bill?’

‘Paid in full, plus an generous gratuity.’

‘Excellent.’

Lady Lovelace tutted.

‘No it isn’t. It’s very un-excellent. That was waste. It’s not as if we’re ever coming back here…’

Frankenstein brooked no dissent. Here was his time and plan.

‘We leave no spoor and likewise no pursuit,’ he said magisterially. ‘We shall shortly have enough problems without risking an outraged innkeeper. His shrieks as he chased us down the street for a few francs would ruin all.’

Ada snorted scepticism.

‘And pray tell how he would recognise us? Eh? Eh?’

Another good point. She was full of them today just when they weren’t welcome. Best to cut things short before she made any more. Frankenstein tore up the rest of his intended mental check list.

Or almost all of it.

‘The pistols?’ he asked Foxglove.

‘Primed and loaded, sir. May I ask why, sir?’

Frankenstein drew himself up on his crutch, shifting weight onto his remaining free leg.

‘No, you may not. Enough said. Right then: come fly with me!’

Then off went the freshly-minted cripple and his companions, tip-tapping across the cobbles towards the aerodrome.

The beggar by the Cathedral door—who could really have done with a ‘coat or trinket’ from Foxglove, had the man’s generous inclinations been allowed play—was relieved soon after.

A second and even more afflicted indigent took his place and, in the space of all the levering up and grunting, an exchange of intelligence took place.

‘He mentioned flying,’ said the first to the second.

‘Alert Team two,’ said the second to the first before he left.

Then the new beggar settled down to some long hours of displaying (fake) sores, and importuning worshippers as they emerged from the Cathedral all pious minded. Professionalism aside, it was in his interest to be convincing. The surveillance master said he could keep any alms received.

‘Beggar One’ went and rattled his tin before a young couple and their child seated outside one of the cafes in Cathedral close.

‘Be off with you!’ said the husband sternly, to be plausible. Simultaneously, his ‘wife’ discreetly pinched her borrowed baby to make it cry. The other patrons had sympathy for the poor mite, plainly frightened by the dreadful old tramp. Under the barrage of general grumbling the couple had cover to hear his true purpose.

‘Twelve,’ said the beggar—pre-agreed code for the aerodrome—and shambled off before the police arrived.

Whilst madam calmed ‘her’ infant with kisses that induced ‘ahh…’s from the cafe clientele, father took off his bowler hat and fanned his face with it. Although it wasn’t that warm a day.

‘Twelve,’ said the team at the hotel window, who’d counted the bowler’s back and forths.

A care-worn man sitting at a desk well back into the room was not content.

‘Check,’ he ordered.

They observed again. As per instructions, the cafe signal was repeated after the agreed ‘message break’ (casual adjustment of a breast-pocket kerchief).

‘It’s the aerodrome,’ confirmed the window team.

Care-worn man was straightaway even more worn.

‘Amateur!’ he hissed—his heaviest rebuke. ‘Keep in code! You might have been seen. Lips can be read!’

Everyone present cringed and became even more eager to please. Jobs like this weren’t easy to come by, but were exceptionally easy to lose.

‘I’ll tell five to activate seven,’ said the most senior junior.

Care-worn man nodded, like that should be so obvious, and looked even sorrier to need to add:

‘And don’t forget eleven on stand-by.’

The rest left and Care-worn man, today’s surveillance supervisor, could relax, insofar as he ever did.

He hated having to wield the whip: his agents were like his children to him. Yet did not Scripture say ‘he who spares the rod hates his son’? And very often in his profession the penalty for carelessness was death. So, Care-worn man had to be stern out of the love he bore them

The back-up squad (that the departed team knew nothing of) now entered the room. They were older in the service: deceptively sleepy-eyed professionals.

‘He masquerades as a maimed man: a French hussar,’ Care-worn man briefed them. ‘One feigned empty sleeve, ditto a lost lower leg, plus a crutch and eye patch…’ He almost smiled, his closest approach to that expression for many months. ‘The work of civilians. Grossly overdone. The Swiss looks like the love-child of a patchwork Lazaran and Neo-Nelson!’

That nearly got a laugh, but it did no harm to be light hearted during simple missions, building up a bank balance of solace for the more frequent gruelling jobs.

‘The actual she-Lazaran is dolled up as a cantiniére. Not familiar with the term? Well, you are excused: only in the French army could it happen. The wives and whores of the regiment have their own uniform: a delightful red, white and blue creation: skirt and pantaloons. Plus a sweet black bonnet with a red feather stuck in it. I doubt you could miss her, even if you tried…’

He realised he’d digressed too far, sounding almost human.

‘And her flunky is dressed as… a French flunky. Or so they delude themselves. Remember they have their oh so humorous carte de sejour, courtesy of the Belgians. William Tell indeed! Plus false French papers purchased in the town. I instructed the forger who made them to provide top quality examples: they will pass muster. And they have weapons. The Swiss is free and easy about using them. Watch that.’

Care-worn man waited for a nod from each to signify they understood. All were armed, but experienced enough to realise that real skill lay in never firing a shot.

‘Insofar as we can guess their intent our Master thinks they’ll be thwarted. But either way pleases us. Now go.’

Care-worn man wished he had a glass of wine to toast his charges with as they went; off—yet again—at his bidding to face mad people in a world gone mad. However, alcohol, or indeed any indulgence, during a mission would have been that awful thing: unprofessional. It skewed judgement and urged impulses even on those who’d won life’s most difficult struggle: namely to control their own thoughts.

More to the point, Prince Talleyrand would not have smiled upon it—and in the intelligence field no more need be said.

Soon the clear-up team would take over the building to remove the slightest trace he’d ever been there, but meanwhile Care-worn man had a moment for reflection.

Surely he would get to crack a bottle of red one day? Was that really too much to ask? Perhaps there’d be opportunity during retirement (if he made it), or on his twenty-first birthday: whichever came sooner.

Sooner the better.

Chapter 22: COME FLY WITH ME

Julius spruced himself up—and found that wasn’t so easy with only one free hand. So, acting the part, he instructed Foxglove to adjust his busby and straighten his pelisse.

The little interlude, so natural seeming of a maimed but still dapper hussar, proud of his uniform and wounds gained in his country’s service, gave him opportunity to size up the aerodrome concourse. Again. This was his third survey on three successive days—though the first two had been in another persona.

Nothing had changed. Access to this public part was promiscuous, but beyond was an entirely different (and yet the same old) tale. National Guardsmen controlled the narrow entrance to ‘airside,’ as exclusive and hard to attain as the gates of Paradise. Papers were being demanded even of high ranking soldiers. Beyond them, just visible beyond the lattice barricade, civilian heavies kept a beady eye before yet another line of passport control. After that there was distant sight of the galloon pylons and windmill dynamos.

And Julius had heard entry control at ‘arrivals’ in France was even stricter! Hence the second and madder-still phase of his plans.

Meanwhile, there were more than enough concerns to occupy the present moment. French law (or more accurately, power) ran the show here, and, though technically on Luxembourg sovereign soil, foreign rules pertained. Tight rules, straight out of the desiccated mind of Police Minister Fouché.

Everyone, Frankenstein included, had heard of the legendary control the Convention exerted over its citizens in order to remain in power, but it was still impressive—and daunting—to see it in action. Julius wondered if it was strictly necessary, now that the Convention’s internal enemies were all either Lazarans or definitively dead. There was even word that the vast ‘Civic Virtue’ re-education camps were closing for lack of business. If so, perhaps the Revolutionary government was now just making a point to keep things that way.

Whatever the reason, only serving soldiers got on to French galloons, and even then only those who strictly needed to. Except that Julius had heard one sentimental exception was made. A blind eye was turned towards those whose sacrifices to the People’s cause rendered travel difficult.

He lurched forward to the booking cabin, making a show of the stick that bore him and of pain bravely borne.

Deep joy! He had deceived. The military clerk stood and saluted.

‘Monsieur?’

‘Three tickets to Paris, if you please. The first available flight.’

‘Your papers, please monsieur.’

The clerk read them.

‘Tell? William Tell?’

‘Yes,’ said Julius Frankenstein.

‘No!’ protested Ada, less loud than she first intended, but still audible.

Julius had promised her he’d use their French papers, and right up to that moment he’d truly intended to. But the name on those had never really appealed to him, and, besides, were too easily forgotten. The instant Frankenstein arrived at the desk mischievous voices in his head (perfect mimics of his own voice) had spoken to him. Worse still, he’d listened.

The clerk looked up. ‘‘No?’ he enquired, after Ada.

Julius dismissed the protest as of no account.

‘My New-citizen sister fears flying,’ he said, adopting impatient tones. ‘Once we are in the waiting area I will beat her until she calms down.’

The clerk approved. He’d often wanted to do that to passengers.

Ada shut up and looked Lazaran-fashion hang-dog, apparently resigned to less-than-nothing status and taking to the skies.

Frankenstein’s new name was checked against a big book of undesirables and, of course, found absent—since William Tell’s insubordinate acts ended centuries ago.

That established, money changed hands and tickets were married to documents. ‘Mr Tell’ lurched off with his human baggage in tow.

‘William’/Julius was looking forward to a cup of coffee. It would invigorate him for (belatedly) explaining to Lady Lovelace and Foxglove his true plans. That he didn’t look forward to.

It all hinged on whether he could convince them of the legendary tightness of French entry control. And that therefore they’d be hijacking a galloon rather than just catching one like normal people.

If they swallowed that he’d go on to explain it was a childhood dream of his to command a galloon, and he could only thank Lady Lovelace for driving him on to realise it. Then, he’d outline his revised intentions for France, on the off-chance they’d succeed and survive. He had in mind wine and peace and a period of cloud-counting in a French village—whose name would not be vouchsafed to Ada. And when, probably after five minutes or so, he grew sick of that, he foresaw a further change of identity and enlistment in one of Neo-Napoleon’s ‘Foreign Legions.’ But Madam Lovelace would never know the upshot of that because they’d have long since parted company by then…

Finally, when all was said and done and confessed, coffee-cup still in hand in the departure lounge, he would wish his companions ‘a nice life.’ Goodbye rather than au revoir.

But before that exciting prospect there awaited the steely-eyed soldiers round the gate. The spiked barrier blocking it was never lifted till they’d given each passenger their seal of approval.

Not everyone was spoken to but Frankenstein merited a word. And a salute, which boded well.

‘Been in the wars, eh? said the one with the best pressed uniform and most luxuriant ‘Old Guard’ style moustache. All these sentinels was imitating, and maybe aspiring to join, that elite regiment. ‘Best-pressed’ was the first amongst equals.

Julius had prepared an entire alternative life story, spending a very pleasant afternoon constructing it in his room with history book and bottle of wine.

‘Moscow, Tunis and Naples,’ he said, successively touching truncated trouser leg, sleeve and eye-patch.

They were impressed: each had been big and bloody battles,—and better still, all victories.

‘Well then,’ mused Best-pressed, ‘you must have served under Marshall Treffault…’

‘No.’

‘What: a veteran like you?’ Best-pressed frowned. ‘At Naples? Why not?’

‘Because,’ said ‘Mr Tell,’ ‘there was no Marshall Treffault at Naples. Or Tunis. Or Moscow. In fact, I’ve never heard of any Marshall Treffault.’

Best-pressed smiled.

‘Right answer. Because he never existed. Papers please…’

He perused the proffered carte de sejour, but not in any sceptical fashion. Frankenstein’s hopes rose.

‘A Swiss National, eh?’

That signified nothing. The Revolutionary cause, and then its conquests, had inspired or pressed men from all over Europe into the Convention’s armed forces.

‘That’s right.’

‘William Tell.’

More muffled jubilation. The name obviously rang no bells. Again, for Frankenstein ignorance was bliss. He gave thanks for defective educations. Gratitude lent his voice a certain flourish.

‘At your—and the Revolution’s—service, sir.’

A few more steps and he’d be free: free to indulge a long held fancy of directing a stately galloon through skies he had no business to be in. Or possibly ending the tedious succession of day after day in a blaze of glory.

Well-pressed was about to give his ill-informed blessing and wave them on. Until:

‘No!’

It was Ada again, in a reprise of her little scene before the booking desk. Except that here it wouldn’t be so little.

Julius leapt boldly into the deja vu.

‘My—Lazaran—sister fears flying,’ he started. ‘Once we are in the…’

‘No!’ Ada repeated, and Julius’ heart froze. He saw she was out of role, still a Lazaran because that was unalterable, but not ‘Mademoiselle Tell’ or any other subordinate guise any more. She was Lady Lovelace again, mistress of her own fate and all she surveyed. And, worse still, smiling.

Foxglove was impassive—but he was in on this. His eyes had just the slightest glitter when they locked with Frankenstein’s.

So, it transpired that just like Julius they had their own surprise planned. A trump card played before Frankenstein could explode his own bombshell about hijacking. The fox had been outfoxed.

‘He is not William Tell,’ said Ada. ‘Nor a hussar. Nor wounded. But Swiss, yes, we can grant him that much.’

No. The soldiers would grant him nothing except suddenly cold faces and broad hands upon his shoulder.

There was a ‘pepperbox’ revolver in Julius’ waistcoat pocket: eight bulky barrels of persuasion ready for use when aloft. Yet it had no relevance here on solid ground and surrounded. He’d be dead before fingers gripped the handle.

‘This is preposterous!’ he protested, and tried to stand up straight as best crutch and restraining hands allowed. ‘She’s mad-…’

Which was probably true and might have worked if he’d persisted, and bluffed better than any human had ever bluffed before. But far more likely was the loss of all dignity and the same result in the end anyway. Julius plumped for poise and silence.

He wasn’t even allowed that. A questing French hand detected his strapped up arm and ripped his pelisse open to reveal it. Thus encouraged, others located his doubled-up ‘missing’ leg. For the sake of completeness, even the eye-patch was ripped away. By then his gun had gone too.

Ada and Foxglove had taken a step back, putting distance between them and someone suddenly no longer of their company. The soldiers had permitted that, but wouldn’t smile on any further retreat. They had questions.

Like:

‘Who is he then?’

Ada looked at Julius and he at she. He could detect no bottom to the depth of her eyes or triumph.

‘I was about to say,’ she said. ‘He is Julius Frankenstein. Great-nephew of Victor Frankenstein, inventor of the Revivalist science. And therefore wanted throughout Europe. I suggest you arrest him. Your Government will reward you.’

Every uniform in earshot seemed to think that was an excellent suggestion and rushed to adopt it.

Care-worn man saw and heard all—from a safe distance.

As soon as Frankenstein was bundled away in chains he ordered each surveillance unit to stand down. For the moment they would drift back to the innocuous lives they lived when not needed.

Meanwhile, in his mind Care-worn man was already considering his report on the mission. For once he looked forward to the task—how sweet the words would flow!

He could tell Talleyrand all had gone well.

THE WAY OF THE WORLD: MISCELLANEOUS DOCUMENTS

Being a selection of divers documents and source material presented for the interested reader to peruse at leisure, while those impatient to resume the story may do so here.

From Decisive Battles of the Western World by Sir Charles Oman (London, 1930)

Volume II: ‘The Second Battle of Agincourt, 1819’

‘…defining moment of the Second French Revolution, fortuitously fought on ground hitherto famous for a crushing Gallic defeat. On this occasion, the ramshackle post-Revolutionary French army, reinforced by elements of the old Imperial Grande Armée and Revolutionary militia of dubious military worth, necessarily took up a defensive stance slightly to the north-west of the historical battlefield. They faced an overwhelmingly stronger Austro-Russian invading force augmented by French Royalist echelons returning from exile.

The defenders of French soil and the newly re-stated ideals of “Liberty, Egality and Fraternity” can have little dreamed that at the height of battle and on the cusp of what seemed like certain defeat.’

From the (pre-publication and unedited) Memoirs of Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington. (Five volumes. London 1830.)

‘…certain defeat and serve them right, when I heard that the d*mned rebel Frenchies had finally turned to fight at the old field of Agincourt. Naturally, I rejoiced like any decent Englishman would, and made all haste to get my army over there to do their worst. The omens all looked d*mned good.

Omens? Stuff o’ nonsense! Never underestimate the stupidity of Johnny foreigner—especially ones called ‘count’ this or ‘duke’ that. As much use as a chocolate teapot the lot d*mned lot of them!

Well, with nigh 50,000 English troops—scum of the earth of course, but seasoned fighters—on the way to lend a hand you might have thought the blasted Austrian and Rusky dunderheads would have held back till we could combine our forces. It wasn’t as if we were across the ocean in China—our advance guard was less than half a day’s march off! We could have been there well before bad light postponed play!

But no, by G*d’s teeth and turban, they wouldn’t wait, d*mn their eyes! If you ask me my opinion, they didn’t want to share the glory. Bldy fools! Bldy foreigners!’

From Memoirs of the Arch-duke Franz-Joseph IV (Vienna. 1863)

Volume 1; ‘My Early Years and Tribulations’

‘…foreigners but welcome allies. A column of Russians was to our left: royal-blue clad grenadiers from Muscovy burning to punish the ungodly French who had dared to kill not one king but two! A cloud of Cossack riders with lance and bow (soldiers, it seemed to me, from another century), preceded and surrounded them. Horse artillery of the most modern kind trundled beside, making the scene gay with their jingling horse accoutrements.

Soon the French front line was driven back on their main body—or I should say one French line, for to our right were the gallant French royalists, smallest of our three converging army columns but by no means the least in zeal. Holy banners and relics went before them and they sang in joyful anticipation of battle.’

From: Because History Demanded It! Random Recollections of a Revolutionary by Jean-Marie Martine (Parthenopian Republican Press, Naples, Year 1 [1870 old-style])

number: Reaction personified; the armies of the Hapsburgs and Romanovs and pretend-French lickspittles of the Bourbon pretender. And the nearer they came the more confident and invincible they seemed and the more our spirit drained away. How could we, mere ragged volunteers armed only with Revolutionary fervour, prevail against these gloriously arrayed professionals, these same veteran troops who had previously defeated the tyrant Bonaparte, the greatest general of his age?

Our sole comfort was that our few were not pitted against even worst odds. Three mighty columns converged on us, it was true, but it could so easily have been four. In their sure expectation of victory and ancien-regime arrogance, the allies failed to wait for the English army, mere miles away and currently dashing in our direction with all the misplaced energy of that benighted nation.

However, little did they know—and nor did we—that a fifth column would decide the day.’

From: A Christian Philosopher in Arms—being the sacred and profane memoirs of Count Charles Bonhomme, Gendarme (privately printed, Avignon, 1890)

‘…the day not be ours? It was inconceivable. As we neared the Atheists’ line our brave warriors spontaneously quickened their pace, such was their hunger and thirst to reclaim the good name of Mother France, France the eternal, France the legitimate, seat of Kings and saints, loyal daughter of the Church!

Our officers could not contain this zeal. We zouaves were at the charge even before coming within rifle range. As for me, it was my plan to draw close to the cowardly barricade these king-killers skulked behind and then hurl over it the sacred regimental banner I bore. Thus I hoped to provoke and inspire my companions in arms to scale the fortification and rescue our flag, lest it be captured and our honour lost with it.

And if, God forbid, none should chose to follow me, well: I resolved to attack alone and earn earthly glory and a Heavenly crown via a martyr’s death!

But then…’

From the transcript of the court martial of Captain-general Franz-Joseph IV, 1820 (unpublished; secure collection; Imperial Hapsburg Archive, Vienna)

‘…but then I heard a babble of excited French voices —nothing unusual there, you may say—but these came not from the enemy to our front, but from our Gallic allies to one side. The babble swiftly turned into alarm, and then to cries of ‘Treason! Treason!’ and ‘We are betrayed!’

Then they routed through us, bringing our good order into utter disorder. Very rapidly all was lost and the horrors of Hell unleashed onto the Earth.

Years have passed since but they have not been put back yet…’

From: a poster of the early Second Revolutionary period.

Pan-Europe Ephemera collection. Helsinki. 13th edition electronic catalogue 2008.

Undated but signed by “Auguste BLANQUI, First Citizen, President of the Society of Rights, First Amongst Equals, Provisional Chief commissioner of the Committee of Public Safety”.

From the (pre-publication and unedited) Memoirs of Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington. Five volumes. London 1830.

‘…death to continue. What little I could gather from the sheep-like survivors of the confounded debacle suggests a horde of d*mned Revolutionary Frenchies, living and otherwise, poured into the exposed Allied army flank, catching the over-confident blighters by surprise. Led by that Blanqui fellow we should have hung when we had the chance during the Occupation. Which only goes to show you the great folly of milk-and-water moderation. Dead men do no mischief, that’s what I say! If you see what I mean. It always was the case before that d*mn Frankenstein fellow’s meddling. Save in Christ’s case—but I digress.

Be that as it may, couple everything with our ‘gallant’ allies not having seen so many undead before and you can almost forgive the foreigners running. Almost. They said the Lazaran undead were all frenzied up and ripping men to shreds…

Well, your brittle continental type soldier can’t stomach such stuff and they turned and run so fast a whippet couldn’t catch ‘em! By the time we turned up it was an absolute bl**dy shambles. Had to fight our way off the battlefield and all the way to the coast, harassed all the time by Lazarans you needs must hack to bits to get them off you. One bit the throat out of my horse as I sat on it: dashed impudence! I was quite fond of the beast. And my personal aide de camp got eaten—which was a devil of a job explaining to his mother. I thought she’d never stop blubbing.

Eventually, we got to some God-forsaken hole called Dunkerque and the d*mned Navy, better late than never, blasted the beach until there was space to take us off. But permit me to inform you, it was a confounded close run thing…’

From Decisive Battles of the Western World by Sir Charles Oman (London, 1930)

Volume II: ‘The Second Battle of Agincourt, 1819’

‘…close run thing but elements of the Allied army fought their way out to fight another day. Nevertheless, the victory of ‘Second Agincourt’ was so resounding that not only did it guarantee French independence and the survival of the proto-Conventionary regime, but also gave birth to a remarkable elan which carried the Revolutionary (and predominately undead) armies to Vienna, Rome, Athens, Cairo and beyond, in an unstoppable tide. Burdened by Papist prejudices against similar mass use of ‘Lazaran’ legions, the opposing continental powers struggled to maintain their own borders, let alone counter the Revolutionary threat.

Indeed, for some while after even the shores of Great Britain were not immune from Lazaran “new-citizen” incursions and the likelihood of full-scale invasion. Only reluctant recourse to Revivalism, albeit less promiscuous than across the Channel, served to flesh out (if the reader will excuse the term) Albion’s defences sufficient to preserve its freedom

Meanwhile, on the continent, the French conquests acquired such an extent as to merit the name of Empire, but blushing to term it so, the Revolutionary Convention was pleased to call its realm the “New Civilisation”.

Such is the vanity and self-deceit of rulers. However, to those, living and dead, who laboured under the yoke of that “civilisation”, it seemed like a fresh Dark Age had descended.’

JOINT HOME OFFICE & FOREIGN OFFICE

FAST STREAM EXAMINATION—PAPER 1

To be held at the Banqueting Hall, Westminster Palace, at 10.00 a.m. sharp on the 13th day of February in the Year of Our Lord Eighteen hundred and thirty-five, also the 5th Year of the reign of His Gracious Majesty, William IV, King of Great Britain and the Dominions, Protector of the French Realm, Guardian of the Gate to Life, Defender of the Faith & etc.

TIME ALLOWED: 3 HOURS.

No candidate will be permitted entrance more than five minutes after commencement. No hounds or servants or family members may accompany any candidate. No Lazarans likewise. All books, paperwork and such and weaponry must be lodged with the invigilators upon pain, if detected, of exclusion and failure—without exception. All candidates shall first provide the doorman with proof of vitality by a pricking of the (visible) skin and production of blood, or else a surgeon’s note authenticated by a public notary that day.

CANDIDATES FOR THE FOREIGN OFFICE MUST ANSWER AT LEAST TWO QUESTIONS FROM SECTION A, AND AT LEAST ONE QUESTION EACH FROM BOTH SECTIONS B & C. CONVERSELY, HOME OFFICE (INCLUDING SECRET SERVICE) CANDIDATES MUST ANSWER AT LEAST TWO QUESTIONS FROM SECTION B AND AT LEAST ONE QUESTION EACH FROM BOTH SECTION A & C.

Examination scripts contrary or superfluous to the above instructions will be entirely disregarded. THE EXAMINERS’ WORD IS FINAL.

SECTION A—MODERN HISTORY

1. Outline the main events of the Second French Revolution from either:

‘The Massacre of Mons’ to ‘Second Agincourt.’ OR: Establishment of the Conventionary Government to ‘The People’s Declaration of Eternal War.’

2. ’The Allies’ occupation of France 1816-18 prompted legitimate grievances leading to the Second French Revolution. Foremost amongst them were reparations and the veto on Frankensteinian Science.’ Demolish this outrageous farrago.

3. Identify the main phases of the PROMETHEAN WAR, either:

1820—1828 OR:

1830—date.

Further, identify three signs of France’s inevitable defeat.

4. The precise date of Buonaparte’s revival by the Godless French regime may be precisely identified through examination of their conduct of the war. Discuss in relation to the so-called ‘Great Breakthrough’ and the ‘Month of Marching’ which followed it.

SECTION B—HOME AFFAIRS & POLITICAL DISCOURSE

1. Temporary suspension of Habeas corpus and other sundry antique and impertinent laws has been the salvation of the British Nation. What arguments would you muster against those unpatriotic elements who opine otherwise?

2. The thrust of English Foreign policy is to deny continental European hegemony to any one power. Can you conceive of any circumstances by which the French regime might be our ally in this cause?

NB.All answers will be considered purely hypothetical. The terms of the 1818 ‘Treachery Within The Realm Act’ shall not apply.

3. You are a Grade 7 Local Government Major General in England. An anti-Revivalist agitational group is established in your area. What administrative and/or coercive actions would you take to liquidate it, assuming said group comprised:

Item: Gentry and members of the quality, OR:

Item: Papists, OR:

Item: Quakers or other nonconformist Protestants, OR:

Item: French exiles.

4. Outline the Anglican Church’s evolving accommodation with Frankensteinian Revivalist Science 1800—1823, up to and including the Council of Tintern. Illustrate your answer by reference to specific synods and encyclicals.

NB1. No reference need be made to Papist intransigence.

NB2. No reference need be made to the untimely but unquestionably accidental demise of Archbishop Butt.

SECTION C—APPLIED PHILOSOPHY

1. The French Conventionary Government’s promiscuous use of the Revived for its military and agricultural and industrial workforce is motivated by:

Item: The exhaustion of French manpower by forty years of war, OR:

Item: The wicked and atheistic nature of the regime.

To which of these explanations do you primarily subscribe and why?

2. ‘Revolutions or the fear of revolutions had more to do with the dissolution of the Holy Alliance against France than the Battle of Second Agincourt.’ Discuss Gibbon’s cynical and fatuous contention.

3. Prince Talleyrand said that the restored Bourbon monarchy had both ‘forgotten and learnt nothing. Against stupidity even the Almighty struggles in vain.’ Discuss this d*mnable slander on legitimist principles.

4. Outline the 10 (ten) main ethical objections to Lazaran legal rights and acquisition of legal personality by the Revived. Would a Revived monarch undermine rights of succession? Is the Revived Incan monarchy ‘utterly illegitimate and unholy’ as Pope Leo XX brazenly declared?

Regulations for Scholars of Trinity College, Oxford, as revised, reissued and delivered of the Master and Proctors, this Year of Grace 1834.

‘Stricture number the 314th: no undergraduate shall retain in College any animal, excepting with permission ONE hound, ONE hawk, ONE horse, donkey or mule or other beast of conveyance. Nor shall any scholar feed and sustain any other such creature, whether wild or tame, two or four-legged, as their particular pet. Ratters shall be maintained by the College and no other party. The definition of ‘animal,’ ‘pet,’ and ‘ratter’ shall be at the entire discretion of the Master. Loss of one or more limb shall not preclude any beast from inclusion in the category of two or four-legged. BEARS are zealously excluded from all aspects of College life, regardless of Lord Byron’s precedent.

‘Stricture number the 315th: no undergraduate shall be attended by more than TWO Lazarans as his body servants or protectors, their given names to be supplied in writing to the proctors before the commencement of term in which residence begins. Excepting peers of the Realm who may be attended by up to FOUR undead. To avoid scandal and vice all Lazaran retainers shall be demonstrably MALE—this fact to be self-evident without need of disrobing.

Such permitted attendants are to be entirely fed, clothed and ordered by their master. They shall wear adequate apparel at all times, said apparel to prominently display both their given name and that of their master. The College shall have the entire prerogative to dispose of any Lazaran that offends against decency, public sensitivities, the statutes of Trinity or the law of England. Undergraduates are not permitted to exercise capital punishment upon any Lazaran in their charge in accordance with the stipulations above, save with the express permission of the College authorities. All such condign penalties shall be exacted upon the College gallows ONLY.

‘Stricture number the 316th: No whore-mongering shall be permitted. Neither shall any undergraduate avail himself of more than ONE bottle of fortified wine before morning divine service or TWO before evensong, unless…’