“Who is she, really?” Temple demanded. “And who are you?”
“Your questions are based on false grounds,” the vampire told him, “But I shall give you honest answers. You think you want to know who we were when we were alive, assuming that we are, in some sense, still the same individuals now—but even though I retain some of the memories of the man who inhabited this body when it was alive, I am not him. The Countess retains none of the memories of her living predecessor, so she might, I suppose, be reckoned a purer individual than I. In one way of reckoning, she really is Madame Marcian Gregoryi, for Marcian Gregoryi was the name of my living predecessor—a name that I discarded when I decided to become Count Szandor Tzingaryi. In another sense, my companion is Addhema, a female equivalent of Adam, into whom new sentience was breathed by my mesmeric authority when her predecessor’s body reverted to common clay.”
“So the Bishop is right: you are not humans reborn or resurrected, but demons who have put on borrowed human flesh?”
“Demon is such a harsh term, Mr. Temple—and if it is supposed to imply that we are minions of Satan, accursed followers of a self-appointed anti-God, we are certainly nothing of the kind. If the consciousness that emerges to inhabit a new-born babe as it grows to childhood is to be reckoned a creation of God rather than a vile possessor, I cannot see why Addhema and I should not be accorded the same privilege—but I confess that I do not know quite what I am, any more than you can be sure that you know what manner of being you are. I am, however, as enthusiastic to find out as any former victim of superstition and dread who has glimpsed a glimmer of enlightenment and is avid to follow that star.”
“Mortdieu claims that he is no longer Napoléon Bonaparte,” Temple said, reflectively, “for all that he has the same vaulting ambition—but if Ned’s judgment is reliable, Sawney Ross is definitely still Sawney Ross, however sour his complexion may be.”
“I would be surprised if Ross makes that claim himself,” Szandor retorted, “but he would be entitled to the delusion, if he so desired.”
“You have met other representatives of nature’s Grey Men,” Temple said, his tone making it a statement rather than a question. “Have they told you that they are not the same men now as they were when they were alive?”
“Some have,” the other reported, “but the oldest of them have forgotten everything save for their own self-deceptive legends. The Jew insists that he was cursed by Christ on the road to Golgotha, Saint-Germain that he was the greatest of all the alchemical followers of Hermes Trismegistus—but the Jew is no older than 600 years, and Saint-Germain no older than 200. You have no idea how I have yearned to meet Cain, Pythagoras or Apollonius of Tyana—or any of the old Greek demigods—but the sad truth is that Grey Men are mortal too, whether they develop from the living or from the dead, by what might or might not be variations of the same basic metamorphic process.”
“You think that Saint-Germain and others like him are merely Grey Men whose predecessors did not die?” Temple asked, curiously
“I cannot be certain about the two examples in question, but I know that there are—or have been—Grey Men who claim that they never died. How they can be certain of that, I don’t know, although I suppose they can be certain that their bodies were never buried. But what, exactly, is death, Mr. Temple? Is it the cessation of the heartbeat, the exhaustion of the breath, or merely the extinction of consciousness within the body? If it is the last, then a man might die without his heart ever ceasing to beat, or without ever ceasing to draw breath—but if it is a matter of the suspension of consciousness, do we not die every time we go to sleep, only to rise again, perhaps less identical to our former selves than we admit? Perhaps our dream-selves reformulate us every night—and perhaps, when duplication becomes impossible, they succeed in creating a substitute, different in character and in potential from its predecessor.”
“Possessed, for instance, of greater mesmeric authority?” said Temple, echoing the phrase the other had chosen.
“I am not at all sure how exceptional I might be in that regard,” Szandor told him. “Lazarus seems to have no such power, and trustworthy reportage credits none to Mortdieu—but their second incarnations are very young, as yet. Then again, Mesmer’s discoveries barely scratched the surface of the phenomenon that he mislabeled animal magnetism, and present-day practitioners of hypnotism are similarly groping in near-darkness. The secret report that Franklin and his associates prepared as a result of their investigation of Mesmer is only a little more honest than the one that was published, but at least it admits that the power of suggestion is greater than anyone had imagined, whether or not there is any tangible fluid on which it might be exercised. I am uncomfortably aware of the possibility that, if there were greater mesmerists abroad, they as could easily hide from me, or persuade me of their non-existence, as I can hide from common men, or persuade them of my non-existence—but I will not allow that awareness to inhibit my ambition to try my powers in a spirit of disciplined experimentation, with collaborators of the highest intelligence.”
“Your apparent shapeshifting is due to the power of suggestion, then?” Temple deduced. “You have not actually remolded your flesh in Singer’s image?”
“You are attempting to draw a distinction that is far too explicit,” the vampire told him. “Sight is a less trustworthy sense than humans, in the grip of their dependency, are ready to assume. Seeing is believing, you say, without knowing how truly you speak. Once a belief is securely planted, sight proceeds in association with that belief. Children must learn to see in order to bring a coherent image of the world out of the confusion that surrounds them, and what they learn to see, or not to see, depends on what they are taught to believe, and what they are taught not to believe. Your eyes are not passive instruments, Mr. Temple, but active seekers of form and meaning; nor is your mind a blank canvas awaiting sensory paint, but a net set to trawl an understanding that is largely pre-existent. When I appear to dissolve into a cloud of dust or a wisp of mist, or fade into a near-fleshless skeleton, I do not really evaporate or shrink—that is merely your mind’s way of coping with the seeming paradox of the rude destruction of its own confabulations. I am no mere illusion, Mr. Temple—I really am George Singer, insofar as Singer any longer exists, and am becoming more comfortable in that guise every time Andrew Crosse looks at me with the gladness that comes from having a friend that he once believed dead returned to him alive. In the same way, the lovely Addhema, whom I made in the image of my ideal of beauty, really is Countess Marcian Gregoryi, in all the glory of her precious flesh, and she becomes even more herself every time a man looks at her and finds her beauty wondrous.”
Temple was not at all sure that he understood the implications of these claims, but he was glad of the information, which he took to be honest. There were more pragmatic issues at stake, which he needed to address. “What do you intend to do tomorrow, Mr. Singer?” he said. “You are not here simply to observe, I think.”
“I am here to assist,” the vampire replied, equably. “I am here to do what I can in order to ensure that Frankenstein’s demonstration is the spectacular success that he, Faraday and Crosse desire so dearly.”
“Mesmerically?”
“Of course—but not by means of trickery. It is no part of my plan to persuade the audience that they have seen something that has not actually happened. That would defeat my object.”
“So you intend to exert your mesmeric authority upon the resurrected man?”
“I do—except that the first subject Frankenstein has chosen is a female, little more than a girl. He selected her on the basis of her youth and the condition of the corpse, rather than her sex, but I am pleased with his choice. I believe that I shall find it easier to render a young female articulate than an old man.”
“And what will you have her say?” Temple wanted to know.
“Ideally, whatever she pleases—but if it should transpire that her mind is virtually blank, devoid of accessible m
emory or tangible ambition, then I shall do my best to put words in her mouth. You need not fear that any words that I implant will lack politeness and piety; I need the demonstration to succeed in every possible sense.”
Again, Temple was ready to believe him—but there were other matters still to be addressed, while the opportunity was there. “Why did your rivals kidnap Jean-Pierre Sévérin?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” the vampire replied, “But if my guess is worth more than yours, I’d wager that they want to engineer his metamorphosis into a Grey Man, and chose him because they believe that nature has already primed him for such a transformation. If they fail…well, you already know that they tried to trap you too, and I’d also wager that you warned Treguern to beware when you visited him in the hospital, having concluded that the bully-boys missed an opportunity in wounding him and leaving him behind.”
Temple did no bother to confirm that Szandor would have won his bet. “My superiors would never agree to any alliance with vampires,” he said.
“Of course not,” Szandor replied. “That is way I have come to you. Your superiors will, I suppose, be less ready to dispense with your services if you can tell them that the most beautiful woman in London is in your personal employ, and if you can make deft use of the information she supplies. No one need know that she has returned from the dead, and she is more than capable of making any such accusation seem absurd if it is leveled in her presence. I am offering you a lifeline with which to shore up your precarious position, Mr. Temple—you might do well to take it, else you might be forced to retire from the game…or enter into Tom Brown’s employ.”
Never, Temple thought—knowing, of course, that that was exactly what he had been intended to think, in spite of the old proverb counseling a man to prefer the Devil he knows to the Devil he does not. He knew, too, that what his visitor had said about the fake Countess was also true about the fake Singer; any public accusation that he or any other person might make regarding Singer’s true identity could easily be made to seem absurd in the presence of the man in question, who would have Crosse’s testimony to back his imposture. And yet, had not Jean-Pierre Sévérin demonstrated that a sufficiently rapid hand could defeat even a mesmerically-authoritative eye?
As if he were party to Temple, private thoughts, the vampire resumed his discourse: “You are doubtless thinking that you thwarted my plans once, and might do so again—and so you might, if you were sufficiently dexterous. I invite you to wonder, however, whether Sévérin and Treguern might have done more harm than good by bursting in when they did at Miremont. Treguern would have been unhappy to see an alliance forged between myself and Lord Byron, and the vehmgerichte would certainly not have been glad to see one forged between myself and the Grafina von Boehm, but you have little sympathy for either. On the other hand, you and your masters might yet have reason to be direly displeased that Colonel Bozzo-Corona has been alerted to shades of light and darkness whose existence he had not previously suspected. Like Saint-German, he had become convinced by his own legend, and had committed himself to it in a fashion that was not entirely sane. How Sévérin’s captors would have loved to trap the Colonel in a secure net! Now that he is alert, though, he is more likely to trap them. He has made alliance with Tom Brown before, in the guise of the Gentlemen of the Night; were he to do so again…”
“Colonel Bozzo-Corona is a much respected man,” Temple said, furrowing his brow as much in anxiety as puzzlement.
“So he is,” the ersatz Singer agreed, “but he is three-quarters grey already, and a more avid vampire than I ever was, at least in monetary terms. There’s no miser like a grey miser, Mr. Temple, and none more dangerous—especially if he has the army of the Habits Noirs at his beck and call.”
Temple knew better than to protest that the Habits Noirs were an item of urban folklore, although he had never heard any suggestion that Colonel Bozzo-Corona was involved with them. “Still,” he said, slowly, “I would be a fool to believe that you could possibly have the interests of the living, rather than the interests of the dead-alive, at heart.”
“You’d be a fool if you were to believe that the two do not coincide, at least in this instance,” the vampire retorted. “There are men of ill-will among the ranks of the dead-alive as well as the living, and I mount no defense of the likes of Mortdieu, who dreams of conquest—but there are men of good will too, perhaps in as high a proportion as among the living. I am not asking you to trust me, Mr. Temple, but only to bear with me for a little while, in order to determine whether we might both profit from a better understanding.”
Get thee behind me, Satan! Temple thought—but he could not muster the conviction to say it aloud, or to mean it. Perhaps that was the effect of the vampire’s steady stare, but whatever the source of the belief might have been, the detective was certain in his own mind that Count Szandor was not Satan, nor any minion of the Lord of Hell. Szandor was a creature who had come into the world like any other, unaware of his own origins, nature and potential. The flesh he inhabited had died once, but it was alive again now, and fully entitled to the consideration due to living, thinking individuals. He was not a demon, nor a monster—perhaps less so, in fact, than John Devil the Quaker, with whom Temple had once reluctantly called a truce. Gregory Temple was a secret policeman now, and everyone knew that secret policemen had to make occasional pacts with their adversaries, for the sake of the greater good.
“I make no promises for the longer term,” Temple said, finally, “but for the time being, I won’t attempt to denounce you before tomorrow’s demonstration, or make any other move against you.”
“And if the vehmgerichte or Civitas Solis should make a move?” the vampire prompted.
“They’re foreign agents operating on English soil,” Temple said, firmly. “It would be my sworn duty to prevent them, just as it would be my duty to arrest any agent of Tom Brown’s.”
“There’s no need to worry about Tom Brown,” the false Singer assured him. “He’s set against Civitas Solis and the vehm alike. He might stir up a little mischief, that being his nature, but he’s not about to lend any material support to our adversaries. And that, I think, concludes our business for now, Mr. Temple. If all goes well, we shall certainly talk again—and you’ll also have the opportunity to question Addhema at your leisure. For now, I’ll bid you goodnight—we shall both need sleep if we’re to be fully awake tomorrow.”
About that, at least, the vampire was right, for Temple could feel the extent of his exhaustion. He was not displeased when the candle-light went out, snuffed by a subtle breath. Nor was he surprised that he did not hear the door of his little room open or close, that absence leaving behind the suggestion, if not the suspicion, that he had been visited by a ghost.
Chapter Five
The Demonstration
The next time Temple was woken up it was by one of his own men, anxious that he was late in making a scheduled round. Having ascertained that his pistol was safe beneath his pillow, Temple made haste to get dressed, and ate a swift breakfast in the servants’ parlor. Then he checked his men, making certain that each of them knew exactly what his duties were to be between nine in the morning and midnight before sending those who had not yet slept to bed.
Once again, he made his own tour of the house’s surrounds, shivering in the cold morning air, but there was nothing to be seen outside the house, and he still had no idea which of the people within it might be agents of foreign powers. All he could do was wait, and hope that he could react quickly enough if anything untoward did occur.
The demonstration being scheduled to take place at noon, Frankenstein and his associates were busy in their laboratory, making preparations. The members of the Commission of Inquiry were at a loose end, and occupied themselves as they pleased. The Bishop insisted on taking a walk in the fresh air, but it was a little too fresh for most of his companions, so the scientists busied themselves in learned discussion while the parliamentarians—including those who
had brought companions from London—investigated the possibility of obtaining sexual favors from Fyne Court’s serving girls. So far as Temple could tell, they had little success; Somerset folk did not, in the main, accord much status to Members of Parliament, and Messrs. Hastings, Southborne and Medstead were not conspicuously equipped with any personal charisma.
One way or another, however, the time dragged by until the moment came for the interested parties to assemble in what was known as “the small drawing-room,” where chairs had been neatly set out in four rows. The first row was reserved for the members of the commission, the second for a number of other invited guests from the surrounding area, including representatives of the Taunton Literary and Philosophical Society. The third row was occupied by selected members of the guests’ households, including two young wives and a female “housekeeper,” who added a little feminine glamour to the proceedings. Temple and his men had been allotted chairs in the fourth row, along with Crosse’s wife and children, but Temple preferred to stand at one side of the improvised stage, while posting one of his men opposite and another at the room’s main door, situated opposite the stage.
Crosse brought Frankenstein and his other co-conspirators into the room through a door behind the stage. He was carrying the corpse to be reanimated cradled in his arms, and did not seem to find the burden excessive. It was not until the girl had been laid on the table that her shroud was removed, revealing her to have been some 13 or 14 years of age. She was not naked, but had been clad in a loose-fitting chemise in order to offer token protection to her modesty.
She had been plain rather than pretty, with the muscles of a farm-girl rather than the slender arms and delicate hands of a lady of leisure, but death had not marred her unduly. Temple had been told, privately, that she had drowned, but had not been long immersed in the water following her demise, and might even have been revived had those who pulled her out known how to proceed in that regard. Temple felt sorry for her parents and siblings, none of whom were present, but also felt a slight tug of hope at the thought that life might yet be returned to the corpse.
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