“I don’t suppose, your majesty,” he said, “that your other secrets include the art of making rain?”
Marie Laveau looked up at the cloudless sky. “Even magic requires raw materials,” she told him. “Given a cloud, I might be able to whip up a hurricane—but that might do us more harm than good, and in the absence of clouds, I can only confess my helplessness. What was your purpose in traveling to Port-au-Prince. Monsieur Knob? Are you carrying some message to Boyer from the English King?”
“Radical as I am by conviction,” Ned replied, attempting to match his interlocutor’s mock-sorrowful tone, “I can’t take the King’s shilling and then betray his confidence. I’m sorry, Mademoiselle, but I can’t tell you why I was dispatched to Port-au-Prince.”
“Well,” she said, “given that you’re English, I can be reasonably sure that you’re not working for the French, and that your employment of a French ship was determined by the simple fact that very few ships out of Liverpool or Southampton ever have ports of call in Haiti. You can’t have any moral objection, though, to telling me why Monsieur Trelawny was—and still is—aboard the Belleville.”
Ned considered that matter very carefully, but eventually decided that there might be more opportunity than hazard involved. In any case, the temptation was too strong to resist. “I believe that he’s searching for a man named Germain Patou, in whom Lord Byron has a particular interest,” he said.
“Ah!” she said, in what was presumably supposed to be a neutral tone.
“You might well have heard Patou’s name before, Mademoiselle,” Ned concluded. With calculated irony, he added: “You may ask me the question, if you wish—I shan’t be offended.”
She looked at him sharply then. “He too is reputed to make zombies,” she said. “Better zombies than the zambo, or even the ancient Tairo: zombies capable of articulate speech, and action on their own initiative. I would very much like to meet such a man, if his reputation were justified. Do you think he’s in Haiti, and that Trelawny will be able to find him?”
Having taken the gamble, Ned felt that he might as well increase the stakes. “Yes, Mademoiselle Laveau,” he said. “I believe that Patou might have taken refuge somewhere on the island. I think Trelawny might be able to find him, since he’s evidently clever enough and unscrupulous enough to deal diplomatically even with pirates. If they deliver him safely to Tortuga—La Tortue, as you call it—he’ll likely be able to make his own arrangements for getting to the mainland and continuing his mission.”
“And why should Desart help him?” the witch-queen asked.
“That, I don’t know,” Ned admitted. “Since you appear to be familiar with the pirate’s reputation, your guess is probably better than mine. Monsieur Trelawny did, however, seem quite confident that Boyer’s followers might help him, by virtue of Lord Byron’s reputation as a friend to foreign revolutionaries. Byron is a vocal supporter of the Greeks in their rebellion against the Ottoman Turks. His friend Shelley once claimed that poets are the true legislators of the world. That’s not true, alas—the true legislators of the world are, alas, the legislators—but it’s a fine Romantic idea, and Byron is the perfect incarnation of adversarial Romanticism: a king and a redeemer in mythical terms, if not actual ones. His interest in Victor Frankenstein’s technology of resurrection only adds to his reputation in that respect, setting him against the Roman Church as well as secular political authorities—to the extent that the Church has been prompted to revive the Inquisition in response to the perceived threat. It has commissioned a former Knight of Malta, Malo de Treguern, to hunt Frankenstein down.”
“So this Trelawny is an ambassador, intent on establishing friendly relations with both Boyer and Patou—and, indeed, negotiating a pact between the two—in order that Byron and Frankenstein might make Haiti the base of their future operations?”
“That might well be his plan, or his hope,” Ned confirmed.
“To which you, as an agent of the English King, are bound to be opposed?” she probed.
Ned found himself caught on the horns of a dilemma. There was a sense in which the pretty lady was correct, although he was also an agent of Patou’s former collaborator Henri de Belcamp, in which capacity he had a very different set of priorities. Diplomatically, he said: “The English government has not yet made up its mind about the Haitian Republic or the potential of Frankenstein’s technology. The Tories are diehard opponents of what they call ‘Jacobin science’—which includes the advances in chemistry made by Joseph Priestley and Humphry Davy, and the advances in biology made by Erasmus Darwin as well as Frankenstein’s discovery—but the Whigs, almost by virtue of an automatic reaction, take a very different view. We humble civil servants must be ready to serve any government voted into power, so we are not permitted to adopt firm positions of our own. As I said before, I’m not at liberty to discuss the specific terms of my commission—but I’m prepared to tell you that it’s a matter of fact-finding rather than purposive action. I’d be extremely interested to discover Patou’s whereabouts, but I have no hostile intention toward him, nor any hope of reconciling Boyer to his presence in Haiti. For what it might be worth, I think Trelawny’s chances of achieving that goal are slim.”
“Why?” she demanded, point-blank.
Ned hedged slightly. “I’ve met General Mortdieu, the most articulate of his Grey Men, and the true master of their company. He’s only a little taller than I am, but he’s a man of great prestige and determination. He’s a warrior by inclination, by no means a natural diplomat—and the Republicans of Haiti are unlikely to consider him a welcome ally, or even a tolerable presence in their vicinity.”
“I certainly can’t imagine the blacks, mulattos or mestizos welcoming a zombie ally,” Marie Laveau said, thoughtfully. “The zambo, on the other hand…Tell me, Monsieur Knob, is the name of Francis Drake well-known in England?”
Ned was taken aback by that question, which seemed to him exceedingly strange. “He’s one of England’s greatest heroes, your majesty,” He said. “He’s reputed to have saved England from invasion by the Spanish Armada, in the days of Elizabeth the Virgin Queen.”
“Really?” she said. “He has a different reputation among the maroons of the Caribbean. He was the only white man ever to make effective common cause with maroons, in the days when they were universally hated. He gathered an army of maroons to fight the Spaniards on the mainland. I dare say that he did it for his own purposes, to further England’s cause—but that army remained when he had sailed away, and its spirit spread throughout the islands. In zambo vaudou, Drake is a great hero, almost a loa.”
“What’s a loa?” Ned asked.
“The loa are intermediate between humans and gods. In varieties of vaudou that have absorbed elements of Christian faith—including those that flourish in New Orleans—they’re somewhat akin to Catholic saints, helping to smooth the way to a quasi-Christian Heaven, but zambo vaudou isn’t tainted in that fashion; although its African components include some of the same figures, its Tairo components assume a different relationship between life and afterlife, with a different notion of paradise.”
“So you think that your own messianic cause might be greatly assisted if you could find a new Francis Drake?” Ned guessed. “And you think that Mortdieu, as an articulate zombie, might be better fitted to that role than an English buccaneer? You’re certainly not lacking in ambition, your majesty.”
“I’d rather you did not call me that, Monsieur Knob—especially in that sarcastic manner,” the pretty woman said, in a tone whose neutrality veiled a hint of menace. “I owe you a debt of gratitude, but my tolerance isn’t infinite.” As if to soften her rebuke, however, she handed him the water-bottle, from which he sipped very gratefully before politely handing it back. He knew that once she had taken a few sips of her own, the bottle would be empty.
“I’m sorry, Mademoiselle,” Ned said, rejoicing in the moistness in his mouth while it lasted. “I’m inclined to become bumptious wh
en I feel that I’m in dire danger—and I must admit that our present situation seems exceedingly ominous. I’m no connoisseur of sea-shanties, but I’ve heard sailors in Sharper’s singing La Courte Paille with gusto ever since I first learned to talk, and I know what horrors attend the fate of castaways.”
Marie Laveau smiled wryly; she too was familiar with the words of La Courte Paille, which described in lurid detail the fate of castaways continually forced to draw straws to determine which of them would be next to be eaten by their comrades. There were versions of it in every European language, and it was presumably familiar in New Orleans. “I’m no cannibal, Monsieur Knob,” she said, “although I’m grateful to know that your innate sense of decency would oblige you to sacrifice yourself before attempting to slit my throat and feast on my tender flesh…not, of course, that you could literally slit my throat, given that Desart was not sufficiently generous to leave us a knife.”
Ned studied the woman’s finely-chiseled features. “You really are confident, aren’t you, that we shall be saved?” he said.
“Yes,” she replied. “Help is on its way. It has a fair way to come and might not arrive before nightfall, but it will arrive in the end. All we have to do is wait.”
Ned scanned the horizon yet again, but could not make out any dot. Then he looked at the circling sharks, which seemed equally confident that it was worth their while to wait. He was as skeptical in regard to the efficacy of magic as any devotee of Jacobin science, but he had no alternative in trusting Marie Laveau’s witchery over the sharks’ instinct. It was the only hope he had. In any case, her conviction that the Belleville’s arrival had been anticipated by virtue of news that had flown south from the Bahamas a day or two in advance of her arrival off the coast of Hispaniola presumably extended to confidence that it had even reached the zambo, who would have been even more delighted to hear it. “How can you be sure, Mademoiselle?” he asked, politely, interested to know how she would represent the matter.
“I’m sure that the loas will not desert me, if I plead for their intercession,” she told him, wryly. “I also know that news travels with lightning-speed in La Tortue. The news that Desart set us adrift will reach zambo ears within minutes of the Cayman dropping anchor in the island’s harbor—which it will do without delay, even if Desart elects to keep the greater part of his crew aboard the Belleville—and those ears will already have been forewarned. Every zambo community on the north coast will send out searchers. The greatest danger we face is neither thirst nor the sharks, but the mestizos who will set out to sea in their turn.”
“If you’ll forgive me saying so, Mademoiselle,” Ned observed, “the westerly wind won’t have helped the pirate ship to reach Tortuga in a hurry. It might work more to the advantage of the rescuers you hope to see, but it isn’t lively enough for my liking.”
“The zambo are not sailors,” she told him. “We prefer conditions of this sort.”
“You’re expecting your people to paddle to our rescue in canoes?” Ned exclaimed, in frank astonishment.
“I warned you that it would take time,” she replied, serenely. “We’ll be thirsty, I dare say, unless some cloud blows up, but we’ll live—provided that wound on your head doesn’t turn ugly and poison your blood…in which case, I would live but you wouldn’t.”
“Thank you for the reassurance, Mademoiselle Laveau,” he said. “That, I suppose, would free you from your supposed obligation—but until then, we still have time to while away. Would you consent to tell me more about zombies?”
“I might,” she said, “although, like you, I have secrets that I am obliged to keep as a matter of duty. Would you be willing to tell me more about the ones you’ve encountered?”
“In a spirit of fair exchange,” he said, after a moment’s hesitation “I’m not, alas, prey to Germain Patou’s secret formulas. I saw him revive a dead man once, having immersed him in a chemical bath left over from one of James Graham’s Temples of Health and Hygiene, designed to administer an electrical stimulus to living flesh. There were, I believe, other drugs involved, delivered into the corpse by means of a clyster and dissolved in the immersing fluid. The eventual effect is a metamorphosis of the body’s substance, permitting it to renew the use of its own innate electrical pathways—the motor nerves, at least. Restoring the functions of thought to the brain is more difficult, but experiment had proved that it was not impossible, and Patou was trying hard to find efficient means of re-education. He had achieved some success in that direction too, especially with respect of an old friend of mine, Sawney Ross. Whether he’s made any further progress in recent months, I don’t know—but I suspect not, given the necessity of fleeing across the Atlantic and hunting for a safe haven.”
He stopped, and waited patiently for her to honor her part in the bargain. After a brief hesitation, she said: “We use a combination of drugs, which we call bokor. They, too, have to be introduced into the bodies of the dead person by difficult means. We also employ immersion. What you say about the electrical stimulus is particularly interesting, however.”
“Obviously, you have no means to deliver that,” Ned said. He wondered, though, whether the “agricultural machinery” in the Belleville’s hold might have contained Voltaic piles. There must, at any rate, be raw materials enough in a city like Port-au-Prince to make such piles. There was no reason why a ‘Temple of Health and Hygiene’ could not be erected and equipped in the tropics.
“To the zambo, however,” Marie Laveau continued, “zombies are, essentially, creatures of the snake-god Damballah Wedo, and are subject to his will rather than their own. They can be controlled by magicians of both sexes, who are associated with the relevant loas, but priestesses of Damballah Wedo—especially those who consort with the god’s favorite snakes—are most privileged in that regard. Most such priestesses, for obvious reasons, prefer to carry out their rituals in association with constrictors, which have no poison, but the greatest respect is always attached to those who deal with more dangerous creatures, especially those whose bite is reputedly deadly.”
“I was assured that there are no poisonous snakes in Haiti,” Ned said, warily.
“There are, indeed, no poisonous snakes native to Hispaniola,” the young woman confirmed. “When Columbus arrived, it was entirely free of that sort of venom. Once slave-ships from Africa began to call on a regular basis, however, importation became possible, and perhaps inevitable. In the harbor at Port-au-Prince, such incomers are considered unwelcome and killed, but vaudou practitioners have a different view, and lavish the utmost care on their black mambas.”
“And keeping close company with such deadly reptiles an essential part of the cost of being accepted as a descendant of Queen Anacaona and a potential savior of the zambo?” Ned concluded.
“Yes, it is,” Marie Laveau confirmed, as a frown suddenly appeared on her face.
At first, Ned assumed that the frown had been occasioned by the thought of the poisonous snakes to which she might be introduced by the zambo of Haiti in order to fulfill her supposed destiny, and a quip about Anacaona being the serpent in Christopher Columbus’ Eden was on the tip of his tongue before he realized that the young woman was looking at something.
He strangled the witty remark and turned his head. The horizon was no longer uniform; there was now a wisp of vapor visible upon it—slender, to be sure, but promising nevertheless.
“It’s not much,” he commented, “but as great oak trees grow from little acorns, perhaps it might provide the germ of a shower, if not a hurricane.”
“It’s no cloud,” she said, a trifle anxiously.
“What is it then?” Ned asked—but then guessed the answer to his own question. He sat up bolt upright, placing his head in direct sunlight for the first time, and shielded his eyes with his hand. “Is it headed this way?” he asked.
“Yes it is,” she replied, “but whether that’s good news or bad, I have no idea. I had not thought that there were any steamships in these waters,
although they’re an increasingly familiar sight in New Orleans, and I saw several at close range while visiting France.”
That reminded Ned that he had not thought to ask Marie Laveau how she had come to be aboard the Belleville, traveling to Port-au-Prince from Le Havre—but it was too late now, for there were more urgent matters to consider.
“I know of one,” he said, “if rumor can be trusted.”
She looked at him sharply. “Patou’s ship?” she said, immediately.
“Not exactly Patou’s,” he replied. “It’s Mortdieu’s now. If that really is the Outremort…”
Marie Laveau’s expression had changed completely, from one of fearful doubt to extravagant delight. “I was right to trust my magic!” she exclaimed, as if she had hardly dared believe it. “My loas have answered my prayers! They have guided me faithfully—even the pirates, unwittingly, have served their purpose! I truly am appointed by fate!”
She stood up in the dinghy, and lifted her green parasol so high into the air as she could—which was a good deal further than Ned’s short arms would have been able to lift it.
Chapter Three
A Naval Engagement
When the ship came close enough to be identified, Ned saw that it was, indeed, the Outremort. He still could not believe that it was coincidence that had brought them into the same region of the western Atlantic at the same time, and Marie Laveau’s similar conviction was increased by a further order of magnitude when she saw the crew of the launch put out by the ship, which consisted entirely of living men: men she unhesitatingly identified as zambo.
“My loas are, indeed, intent on protecting me,” she told Ned, while they waited for the launch to cross the margin of sea still separating them from the steamship. “You’re merely one of their instruments. Who would ever have thought that the zambo could take possession of a steamship in order to search for me? This is an excellent omen. The loas must have a powerful interest in the present course of Earthly events, else they would not interfere to this remarkable extent.”
Frankenstein in London Page 3
