Frankenstein's Legions (17 page)

‘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.