Frankenstein's Legions (11 page)

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.