Frankenstein's Legions (46 page)

He’d lost her early: a life-time—and afterlife-time—ago now. Thought of the loss made the Admiral raise his remaining arm to wipe away a manly tear. Except that Lazarans were unable to weep.

‘Would have said no in usual circumstances...’

His expression had changed and hardened. They got to see the face of ‘Dark Nelson.’

‘No, in normal circumstances he—and you —could bloody well go hang...’

Frankenstein overlooked that. Nelson wasn’t himself—and never would be again.

‘‘Normal circumstances’?’ he enquired.

‘S’right. Proves what rot all this ‘Dark Nelson’ nonsense is. I still have a soft heart, more fool me...’

Then he realised he’d lost them and kindly backtracked.

‘You don’t know?  About Talleyrand?  I assumed you would. The Hell-bound old scoundrel is dying.’

Chapter 11: WHEN FELLATIO FAILS

‘02/02/1837: Eighty-three years gone by! I do not know that I am satisfied when I consider how so many years have passed, how I have filled them. What useless agitations, what fruitless endeavours! Tiresome complications, exaggerated emotions, spent efforts, wasted gifts, hatreds aroused, sense of proportion lost, illusions destroyed, tastes exhausted! What result in the end? Mortal and physical weariness, complete discouragement and profound disgust with the past. There are a crowd of people who have the gift or the drawback of never properly understanding themselves. I possess only too much the opposite disadvantage or superiority; it increases with the gravity of old age.’

Insomnia and early hours ennui are not conducive to cheerful journal writing. Talleyrand set down his pen, fatigued by so much intense integrity but still not sleepy. He re-read what he had written and sighed.

Unbeknownst to each other, two trusted retainers had been separately tasked with the destruction of his journal immediately after his death. Meanwhile, within its pages at least, he could be honest with himself.

Yet an act maintained for so long becomes reality. Since gaining the age of reason Talleyrand had cultivated a butterfly spirit, flitting lightly over humanity, laughing at himself and it. That stance now reasserted itself, soaring above so much dull-dog earnestness. He was glad the journal would one day be committed to the flames and thus rid the world of all its cant.

Meanwhile, he knew of some sovereign remedies for spiritual slumps.

Talleyrand reached for the bellrope and rang for champagne!  And a strumpet!

*  *  *

When even champagne and fellatio failed Talleyrand he knew he was dying. Or should die: which amounted to the same thing.

He set his barely sipped glass aside. Treacherous taste-buds made it taste acid.

‘Thank you, my dear,’ he said to the shape under the covers. ‘But that will be all.’

When she emerged blinking, the lovely Loseley milkmaid was worried she was in trouble. The Prince went to great pains to reassure her.

‘The fault is all mine,’ he said, feigning the sweetest of smiles. ‘You are entirely exquisite but I am old and failing. My time is done and therefore so is yours. Thank you for all the delectable awakenings. Thank your brother too. Now you should be on your way: morning milking awaits to judge by all the mooing from outside. Be sure to tell my chamberlain I said you should have an extra shilling today.’

Which contented her, if not him, and she left, closing the bedroom door and a whole colourful chapter of his life.

It was indeed early, an uncivilised hour, when he’d summoned her, preceding even her main (respectable) duties of the day. Talleyrand was sleeping worse and worse of late, and some nights were interminable.

In fact, the more he thought of it and faced the cold facts, all manner of things were closing in on him now, all manner of minor aches and pains adding up to something significant.

And now this culminating failure. Talleyrand had been many—indeed, most—things in his long life, but never impotent, not in any sense. That was the final straw. Or a straw in the wind, to continue the metaphor. Or the—limp—straw that broke the camel’s back.

It had been a broad back in its time, a strong one as well that had borne up many things, many burdens, for all his outward appearance of a foppish cripple. Now its work was done. Time to rest. Time to go.

Talleyrand released a long breath and switched off. Off!  The mighty survival mechanism, the gleaming machine that had powered him so long, faltered for the first time in nine decades.

Momentum carried it on a few seconds more but then the great betrayal sunk in. It failed, it coughed and finally slid to a halt.

Rising for want of anything better to do in bed, Talleyrand crossed to where his schemes were made manifest. On a tabletop inlaid with a mosaic map of Europe, exquisite porcelain figurines represented anything from armies to individuals playing out their hour upon the stage. For a goodly proportion, knowingly or not, Talleyrand was both their stage manager and acting coach.

When not in use this dolls’-house for statesmen was kept decently shrouded in black velvet. The Prince lifted this cover and studied the work of his hands—and mind and money and cunning and appalling cynicism. Curiously enough, certain patterns therein exactly matched Lady Lovelace’s paper construct in her Roman hotel room. Not that either party would ever know of this conclusive proof that great minds think alike.

Talleyrand picked up a tiny Napoleon from the dot labelled ‘Versailles’ and brought him to eye level.

He smiled.

‘‘Shit in a silk stocking’ was I?’  he proxy-enquired of a thing unable to answer back. ‘Well, who knows?  Maybe you were right. Politics is determined as much in the sewer as in the salon...’

In a petty but satisfying act of settlement, Talleyrand rolled the figurine between two fingers, hoping by sympathetic magic to make the Emperor dizzy.

‘And how about a fitting alliterative description for you,
mon petit Empereur?
Eh? “Butcher in boots”, maybe. Or perhaps “tyrant in tights”.  How do they fit? Eh? Eh?’

Nearby on the map, occupying the marker for Paris, sat a group figurine representing the ever changing cast of the Convention. Regular rapid ascents and Icarus-like falls to the overworked guillotine meant it wasn’t practical to personalise the models.

Talleyrand picked this up too and engaged it in fierce combat with the Napoleon figure, also supplying a soundtrack for their struggle for supreme power.

‘Grrr!
Merde!
Grrr grrr! Arrgh!’

In Talleyrand’s not particularly humble opinion they’d be fighting for real before long, and he knew who his money was on to prevail. Bonaparte versus a gaggle of sleazy lawyers? (an oxymoron, he knew). No contest!

He knew it but also knew he would not be around to see it. Not after turning off his engine of ambition. Already he felt his attachment to the world weakening. Even the appeal of seeing his country’s true enemies knock lumps off each other was not what it would have been yesterday.

Therefore leave them to it: clambering over each other, sans dignity, sans perspective, like slugs in a beer glass. And all for prizes hardly worth having!  He wished them joy of it, safe in the knowledge they would have none. Only antediluvian relics like himself retained any memory of the real art of living.

He’d said it oft-times before, causing young people’s eyes to glaze over. Nobody could appreciate life who had not lived before 1789. The Revolution had swept in the modern age and even Talleyrand’s far-sight could not see any end to it. All the more reason then to be gone and make way for a desensitised replacement.

Talleyrand dropped both figurines into the rubbish basket, planning to sweep the rest in to join them. A cleaner could be first to find tangible sign of one of the great players of the age quitting the scene, leaving the board bare and lifeless. And would be blessed by understanding nothing.

Then second thoughts struck.

It occurred to him that the children of the Loseley estate might love to have these brightly painted objects to play with. Just ditching them was a waste: of both the skill employed in their making, and waste of opportunity. Distributed to appreciative boys and girls they might increase the sum of human happiness. Heaven knew it could do with adding to. Back when he was a priest one of the few things Talleyrand had truly believed was that on the Day of Judgement God would be stern about any aborting of chances for joy.

Furthermore, in contemplating the figures’ final seconds his eye caught those representing his deep plan. Here at the end of things he belatedly wondered what had become of them and it.

He had fathered this particular pet project and taken better care of it than any of his other offspring. He’d raised it and seen it out into the world with every blessing he could deploy. Now in adult form it was independent of him but it was only natural that a parent should worry. What would become of it?  Could he still help?

The miniature Frankenstein, Lady Lovelace and Foxglove had been placed in an indeterminate location. Last heard of bolting from Versailles, leaving uproar and outrage behind, even Talleyrand’s antennae had picked up only hints since. Reports subsequently trickled in but they could not be all true, not unless his protégés had developed powers of bi-location. That was the penalty of having overlapping agencies engaged in a hunt. Their paid informants boosted income by providing the intelligence people wanted to hear.

However, for good or ill it was out of his hands now. Either the plan had acquired life of its own or it was a Lazaran, devoid of any animating soul. Come what may, it must do without him.

Talleyrand found a jewel box and one by one retrieved the toy kings and emperors and armies and traitors and catalysts, placing them on their backs on the velvet plush inside. Like him, their careers over, they looked much more relaxed now.

Frankenstein and friends he left until last, before rescuing them from unspecified middle-Europe.

‘And where are you tonight, my dear grave-robber?’ Talleyrand enquired. ‘And your cold-blood companion too?  I wonder...’

Despite everything, he had to smile. He’d chosen right with these little bundles of energy. Like ball-lightning. Very dangerous energy...

A Hellburner in Versailles, eh?  The Emperor wouldn’t have been amused by that. No matter how high he’d risen the tubby little Corsican was conscious of his humble origins. Being housed in a palace, indeed, the palace of palaces, must be a daily scratching of all sorts of itches. Yet now his new home must look rather scorched and bargain basement.

‘Naughty, naughty!’ Talleyrand reproved the Frankenstein figure, waggling a finger at it.

A scratch at the boudoir door. A trusted secretarial face edged round it when the Prince sighed ‘enter.’

‘It’s Sir Percy Blakeney to see you, excellency. He’s very insistent...’

The Prince sighed again, louder and for effect.

‘Well, that does make a change,’ he said. ‘One cannot think of any man anywhere in more need of pleasuring himself each morning before venturing out into the world...’

‘I heard that!’ protested a familiar English voice from the room beyond.

As Talleyrand knew he would. One of the perks of ceasing to care.

*  *  *

‘I have news!’ said Sir Percy.

Of course he did. An inability to filter out the inessential meant he always did.

‘Gracious me!’ said Talleyrand

The third in a recent trinity of serious sighs came from Sir Percy.

‘I do wish you wouldn’t always say the same bloody th-...’

‘What is your news?’ interrupted Talleyrand.

That brought Sir Percy up short. It was too direct, not coated in greasy Gallic evasion. Then the spy-chief suddenly realised there were other things ‘wrong with this picture.’

For a start—and enough for a finish—the Prince was cravatless!  Sir Percy should have been kept waiting for at least another hour whilst a swarm of effeminate flunkies dolled their master up like a wedding cake. Not only that but the infuriating superior smile was gone, and there were—Sir Percy took the trouble to count—one, two, three, strands of hair out of place!

Blakeney was not a bad man, when life permitted otherwise. He could be kind to children and lunatics. He felt a pang of compassion.

‘Are you well, Prince?’

Talleyrand was going to say ‘never better’ but out of nowhere a genuine fruity cough appeared. Dealing with it took some time.

‘We can do this some other time...,’ offered Sir Percy.

Talleyrand took out a peach coloured silk handkerchief and dabbed his mouth.

‘Actually, we cannot. I have something to impart to you. But I forget my manners: you spoke first. What is your news?’

Sir Percy recalled issues more important that some frog traitor’s health.

‘We’ve found that chap who deserted from the Heathrow Hecatomb knowing too much. Frankenstein. The one who went on the rampage with the Lazaran Lovelace woman...’

Talleyrand could still cut it, should he care to. His face was a mask. One hand gestured underwhelment.

‘One vaguely recalls...’

‘Well,’ said Sir Percy, ‘her husband—a friend of mine you’ll recall—has been running me ragged about her. Our ambassador in Rome has now picked up the trail. Apparently, Frankenstein has turned papist—perhaps he always was. A lot of foreigners are, apparently.’

Talleyrand would have winced if only he had the energy.

‘Really? Gracious me.’

Sir Percy winced for him but pressed on.

‘And now he’s spilling his guts to priests. Telling all. We can’t have that. The Pope’s already making a fuss of them—and you know how het up the Church gets about raising stiffs. Not only that but it looks like this Frankenstein chappie and her Ladyship are now an item. Very embarrassing for the Lovelace family. They’ve even adopted a Lazaran baby between them!’

Talleyrand sat up straight and one by one tucked in the stray strands of hair—which he’d been fully aware of.

‘Gracious me!’

It wasn’t the normal way he said it. There was meaning. He might even have added more had not the coughing returned. There was a spell of hacking before the Prince forced words out.