Frankenstein's Legions (26 page)

Meanwhile, back in the Mausoleum and present, in his desperate casting about for positive developments Julius looked on the bright side. At least the absence of machines made for comparative tranquillity—so long as you were careful where you looked. Get that wrong and even silence wasn’t ‘tranquil.’

Frankenstein exercised great care, but 100% avoidance was never going to happen. Not there. For instance, there’d been a batch brought in the day before that were either victims of a lynch mob (nothing unusual in stressed and starving Revolutionary France) or else grapeshot from massed artillery (ditto). The carts held what looked more like off-casts from an autopsy than coherent corpses.

So, no—only by raising one’s eyes to Heaven (and pinching one’s nostrils) could you construct the delusion of living in a place where humans lived—that is to say real humans living real life. The tops of the Chateau’s tall towers (out of bounds to him) and clouds passing by in their eternal journey (likewise) conspired to bolter the notion. If he determinedly thought of nothing else they would metaphorically bear him aloft and above all this for… minutes on end.

Today Fate begrudged him even those minutes. Footsteps on the stairs to his door called him back to earth. He heard and hated them.

With good reason. Hobnails. It could only be one of the Mausoleum moustaches, here to upbraid him—or worse. Or perhaps that long anticipated moment had arrived and nemesis was approaching his door. A sudden strong premonition told him it might be the latter.

Frankenstein considered this and took a possibly last sip of wine. Fittingly, it was acid.

How much did he care?  About that or anything?

Not much came the answer—so long as leaving this world  was quick. And neat. And dignified. Which he knew to be asking a great deal. Too much probably, especially in present circumstances.

So then: goodbye cruel world—and damn your eyes!

Frankenstein dismissively clicked his fingers at existence—but the visitor took that as summons and entered.

It transpired Julius had libelled life without cause. It was not ‘that moment.’  Nor nemesis. Quite the opposite in fact.

A Mausoleum messenger stood before him, bearing letters that would save his life, not end it.

Chapter 2: R.S.V.P.

‘My dearest Julius,’ said the first letter, in a familiar wild hand.

‘How are you? How go your researches? Any news?

From your most fervent and true friend,

Lady Ada Augusta Lovelace, nee Byron.

xxx’

Frankenstein’s first reaction?  He didn’t know how she had the nerve. Then a second’s reflection reminded him he knew all too well. Their history together should have led him to expect nothing else.

A sudden acid storm sloshed around his stomach, taking him to the verge of nausea. The sheer gall of the woman!

‘Any reply,
monsieur
?’

The messenger had waited, temporarily invisible to Julius.

‘What?’

‘Do you wish to reply,
monsieur
?  There is opportunity. The man who delivered it awaits.’

Julius sucked his lips.

‘Well, that depends,’ he answered eventually. ‘Do you have a loaded gun to hand?’

Messenger took that as a no and departed.

Frankenstein crossed to the french windows of his cell cum quarters cum workplace. Sure enough, far down the drive of the Compeigne Mausoleum, just visible through the bars, beyond the gates and guards, waited a black coach. Before it stood a man who was almost certainly Foxglove, starring up at Frankenstein’s new home.

You had to hand it to them. Or her. If you didn’t hand it to her she’d snatch it anyway. Lady Lovelace had got in!  She’d slipped away from the aerodrome kerfuffle and entered by some other means. Probably it was long arranged in advance and the whole galloon business—maybe all their post-Channel plans—a mere humouring of him. She must have been waiting for the first encounter with French authority in strength: a scenario with no prospect of shooting your way out. If they’d chanced to have been shipwrecked on a French rather than Belgian beach it would have happened then. Whichever way the dice fell, the outcome was pre-determined. Julius would be led up the garden path like a dumb beast with no understanding, to be delivered to the butcher.

Bile was mountaineering up his throat. He had to gag and try to think of other things. It proved impossible.

All manner of loose ends now meshed and locked into place. Disparate parts became an understandable whole. A sickening picture. Or perhaps a puppet show, starring Dr. Julius Frankenstein, singing and dancing without dignity to someone else’s tune.

For a second, if he’d had that hypothetical gun, he would have used it on the distant coach. Or maybe hurtled down the drive with it to get right up close and make sure of the job.

Of course, teeming soldiery would have stopped him long before he was within sniffing distance of escape or vengeance, but it would still be cathartic. The visible working out of his inmost thoughts.

Yet if that wasn’t on, it was always possible to take remote revenge. He could have the pleasure of denouncing Ada as she had him. One word, one raising of the alarm, was all it would take to have Mausoleum security all over that coach like rampant pox.

They’d find an Englishwoman—and an aristocrat to boot. An illegal. Someone who’d barged into a society where all things not compulsory were forbidden. Probably an expendable Lazaran spy they’d conclude, one of the rare sentient sort. The secret police would have a field day!  Fouché’s men had their own ‘interrogation facilities’ in the Mausoleum, as they did in every state building. Julius sometimes heard the screams from them at night.

The chilling remembrance of which turned Frankenstein to another option. A wholly irresponsible and therefore highly tempting alternative.

It remained open to him to answer the impudent message. To re-engage with mad Ada. To replay their relationship a second time—and this time to play it better...

Her coach still awaited. The Mausoleum messenger could be summoned back to deliver a reply

Which would say… what?

How am I?  Answer: a prisoner, as before. In a Gallic mirror image of the Heathrow Hecatomb.

How goes my researches?  They do not. They cannot. Which my captors must soon perceive.

And any news?  No, no, no, no!

Or possibly... yes.

Julius suddenly recalled that the messenger had delivered two letters. The second lay in still virgin state whilst shock and outrage and multiple beckoning ways distracted him.

And betrayed him almost. The road of life forked. If Frankenstein had acted in haste and gone to her he might never have known there was a counter offer. A offer that blew Ada’s clean out of the water.

*  *  *

It was short but, when interpreted, sweet.

‘Mon Chère Frankenstein’

it read, in careless, V.I.P.’s hand. Then:

‘?’

Then:

‘N’

You could legitimately have commissioned a conference of scholars to decipher it, timidly exploring the multiple pathways of possible meaning till they were all set out, ready for rational conclusions to be made. Alternatively, you could, as Frankenstein did, shoulder aside all those imaginary academics and make an intuitive leap of faith over their gleaming heads. The end result was probably the same but with the added attraction of being stylish—and a lot quicker.

Since Frankenstein was a man in a hurry he happily took the short route. He also took up paper and pen and he wrote:

‘Mon Chère General

!

JF’

Chapter 3: MOUSTACIOED ELOPEMENT

In doing so Frankenstein sensed he’d passed a test. If he’d identified his correspondent correctly they were looking for someone who, when travelling from A to Z, wasn’t scared to skip B—Y. His cryptic response should be spot on. Granted, it was a lie, but that was only an issue for someone not already far from God’s favour.

His way out was made easy for him. On the envelope there was, in another, more clerkish, hand, a return address: one of the myriad numbered postal ‘caches’ serving every Government purpose from the sublime to the sinister. To interfere with anything so sanctioned was a capital offence (like almost everything else in Conventionary France). Dumped in the Messengers’ office ‘out’ sack for tomorrow, alongside many others, a missive thus addressed would not invite notice or scrutiny.

Julius rejoiced and reached for another glass of wine—even the sour stuff they served at the Mausoleum. He’d found a conduit to the outside world through which news of his continued existence might crawl!  Would he take it?  He most certainly would!

By contrast, any reply to Ada’s plea needed subtle gymnastics (surely a contradiction in terms...) to reach her. He’d missed the chance to put a message in Foxglove’s hands and there was no way of knowing when or if another would arrive. All outbound letters to conventional addresses such as Lady Lovelace’s lodgings (wherever they might be) would be opened, poured over and censored to the point of death, if not beyond. And never more so than in the case of their intrinsically untrustworthy foreign ‘volunteer.’  That sure knowledge (plus absence of anyone to write to) was what had ‘inspired’ Julius to writer’s block so far.

Today he let it deter him again. Answering Ada would only bring a hornets’ nest of trouble down around her pale pretty head, and whilst that had a certain appeal, Julius didn’t doubt a matching nest would be found for him too. Far better then to inflict on her the lesser torment of silence and unknowing. For a while, perhaps a long while, let her seethe in rented accommodation waiting for a word from him. It would do her spiritual good and also serve her right!

Having absorbed what both letters had to say, Frankenstein tore them into digestible strips and proceeded to eat his words. They weren’t noticeably worse than the rest of breakfast…

*  *  *

The inwardly digested letters hadn’t even passed through Frankenstein’s system before his reply was replied to.

It took the unconventional form of a tap upon his window soon after midnight. Which was surprising in itself, since he resided on the first floor.

Even so, Frankenstein ignored it. He was turned on his side away from the window, just getting comfortable, half-asleep, and half-tipsy. And besides, odd night noises were the norm in the Mausoleum and none of them rewarded investigation.

Except that this one was insistent and unwilling to be snubbed. The rap upon his windowpane was repeated, but with more force. Then again, harder. Extrapolate the series but a few steps forward and the glass would shatter.

Not that Frankenstein cared greatly about that. One of the few pluses about his present abode was no requirement to pay for breakages. On the other hand, getting it repaired would take ages and much begging of surly artisans. Meanwhile, a draught would whistle through. On balance, Julius decided to turn over in bed.

His first bleary thought was that there was a new Man in the Moon. Then returning consciousness clarified that. Handily silhouetted against the full moon was a man’s face, masked and urgent. He raised his fist, clearly threatening to put it through the window.

Of course, Frankenstein had been searched and disarmed long before he ever got to the Mausoleum. Now he was left without so much as a letter-opener with which to defend himself. However, in present circumstances, gravity offered itself as his salvation. The man must be perched atop a long ladder. If he proved to be an unwelcome guest it would be easy to end their conversation by sending him back down the quick way. But for that Julius needed to arise.

Arranging his night-gown into decency, Frankenstein crossed over and inserted his arms through the bars to raise the sash window.

In these present strange days, the first thing you determined in any encounter was ‘are they living or not?’  That fundamental fact determined all subsequent intercourse, outranking even race or class. Society had Victor Frankenstein to thank for that

His great-nephew checked. All the vital signs were there. The visitor lived and breathed. Burst capillaries on his cheeks flushed red with life-giving blood.

Satisfied on that score, but still poised to launch the man into space, Julius addressed him.

‘Good evening,
monsieur
. How are you this fine evening?  Ah…’

 A splendidly stylish start but spoilt by the ensuing feeble exclamation.

For Frankenstein’s scrutiny had moved on to take in finer details. Beneath the black mask spouted a moustache of extra special luxuriousness. And in turn beneath that was an extra confident smile—of a kind unbefitting an ladder-trapped intruder into a terrible place. Supporting both features was a frame of splendid martial bearing.

For the second day running Frankenstein made a sprightly leap from sparse facts to fascinating conclusions. Hence the ‘Ah…’

The visitor smiled, approving of something. Several crucial teeth were missing, creating a gravestone image highly appropriate to the location.

Finally the man spoke, in soldierly French. Their conversation was conveniently covered by shrieks and laments from the Lazaran pens, so constant as to be part of the aural scenery.

‘I’m well. And you,
monsieur
?’

In the interval, Julius had recovered his poise—never far from at hand.

‘Likewise. To what do I owe this pleasure?  Are you an assassin?’

The visitor considered. Clearly it was a possibility.

‘Not tonight,
monsieur
. You were right first time with the ‘pleasure’ thing. My master requests the pleasure of your company.’

‘And who can blame him?  Is it R.S.V.P.?

The visitor shook his head regretfully.

‘Not as such. More like ‘come now.’..’

Frankenstein deliberated for nearly a second.