Frankenstein in London
Page 20
He was aware of being picked up and carried awkwardly into the room from which the rope had be thrown, then dumped on a settee. He was abandoned there, not knowing whether to be grateful or to feel insulted that his adversaries did not even think it necessary to knock him unconscious.
“We’ll come back for him later,” said one of the Englishmen.
Temple was aching too badly in too many places to be able to pull himself together immediately, and contented himself with gripping his injured head in his bloodstained fingers for at least five minutes. He kept his eyes open, not without difficulty—there was blood trickling down his forehead too, and the pain was literally blinding—but all he could see was a confusion of blurred shapes. To begin with, there was a great deal of noise, but it abated by degrees, and the shapes gradually coalesced into items of furniture.
Finally, certain that he was alone and unguarded, Temple blinked away a few bloody tears and made a Herculean effort to raise himself into a sitting position. He succeeded, but at some cost, and had to maintain immobility for a few minutes more, gathering himself all over again. When he could finally see clearly, his first glance told him that the room was still empty—but his second picked out a human form recently arrived in the doorway.
The newcomer’s eyes met his, and the other—who might otherwise have passed on—immediately hurried into the room.
“Mr. Temple!” said a Grey Man that Temple first mistook for Victor Frankenstein. “Are you badly hurt?”
Temple blinked again, and his gaze traveled over his interlocutor’s dust-stained riding-costume and grey features with mute incomprehension. “Lazarus?” he said, finally. “Is that you?”
“Yes it is,” replied Frankenstein’s Adam. “We’ve arrived too late, it seems—but I’ve brought help, if there’s any assistance that can usefully be given. Do you know where my maker is?”
“He was in the laboratory, I think, only a few minutes ago—ten or fifteen, perhaps. I had the impression that he was barricaded in, with Faraday, Crosse and the vampire.”
“Vampire?”
“Count Szandor, now masquerading as George Singer, Crosse’s old friend and former colleague. Are they not there? Has the door been forced? Have the mad monks taken them?”
“No,” Lazarus replied, “they’re no longer in the laboratory—but the door has not been broken down, and what has become of them I cannot tell. I gather that the demonstration was not a success.”
“Oh yes,” Temple said, forcing a sardonic laugh. “It was a tremendous success. Had it been more modest, events would presumably have transpired in far better order. Civitas Solis would never have risked an open assault had the prize not seemed too tempting to resist. You know, I suppose, than your maker is now a Grey Man himself, more immediately articulate than any of his kind, with the possible exception of General Mortdieu?”
“I knew that he had died and was due to be resurrected,” Lazarus confirmed, bending over to examine Temple’s head-wound more carefully with his eyes and fingers. “I came as rapidly as I could, with what assistance I could gather.” As he spoke the final words he turned to look at someone else who had come along the corridor, and was now framed in the doorway. It was Jean-Pierre Sévérin. Like Lazarus before him, the great swordsman hurried forward as soon as he recognized Temple.
“I’m sorry, my friend,” the Frenchman said. “Had we got here a mere ten minutes earlier…but the Comtesse’s men are scouring the house and grounds. If they cannot catch up with Balsamo’s brigands there, they will soon be on their trail.”
“The Comtesse’s men?” Temple echoed, in frank bewilderment.
Sévérin blushed slightly behind his white beard and moustache. “It’s the strangest alliance imaginable,” he said, “but it was the Comtesse’s men who freed me from the Germans who sent hirelings to capture me on the Dover Road, and Lazarus persuaded me to accept a truce while there are greater matters at stake.”
“Don’t worry, old friend,” said Temple, with a hollow laugh. “The Comtesse is in my direct employ now, it seems, and I have somehow become fast friends with her master, the vampire. Had I succeeded in reaching the laboratory where I believed he and Frankenstein to be under siege, I would have fought with him shoulder to shoulder, in spite of what happened at Miremont. Do you know whether the Commissioners reached safety? They were on the Taunton road.”
“We came from another direction,” Lazarus told him, “but have no fear—the Commission is irrelevant now. Open warfare has been declared, and it only remains for the various armies to mobilize and take up their positions. Wellington will take a stand himself, no doubt, with 10,000 redcoats behind him.”
“It might come to that, now,” Temple admitted. “If we could capture a few of Balsamo’s men and bring them to trial…”
“I doubt that Mr. Canning is ready for that, as yet,” Lazarus told him, moving back after satisfying himself that Temple’s head-wound, though bloody, was superficial. “We’ll do far better if we can recover Frankenstein, Crosse and Faraday, and establish the Necromancers of London at the heart of the Royal Institution, with or without the mysterious Mr. Singer.”
Temple made as if to get to his feet, but his limbs were not yet ready to support him without excessive complaint. “That fool Southborne,” he muttered. “If he hadn’t panicked at the sight of the grey girl…have you any news of her, by the way?”
“None,” Lazarus admitted. “The events of the first demonstration were reported to us, but we have no idea what happened to the subject after her escape from the house.”
“I saw her briefly,” Temple told him. “We arranged to meet, so that I could get her to a place of safety, but she didn’t make it to the rendezvous. I seem to have failed in every possible respect but one—although my superiors will doubtless be pleased to hear that I did my duty according to my orders.”
A third man came in then, but this one barely glanced at Temple before addressing himself to Lazarus. “The Grafina is negotiating a treaty with Tom Brown’s men,” he announced.
Temple recognized the man as Guido, the vampires’ principal mortal hireling, and was slightly surprised to see him rather cheerful. “What are you so pleased about?” hee growled.
“Why should I not be glad?” Guido retorted. “The opposition has been tempted to a reckless move, and thus helped enormously to establish a common cause between the rest of us. We had presumed that Balsamo and Belcamp would make their peace, and might even make a treaty with the Illuminati, at least while their Prussian dupes were forced to operate on alien soil. Now, Civitas Solis stands alone, with everyone against them—at least for the time being. It’s only a few short months since my master stood alone, without a friend in the world, but he will be the lynch-pin of a mighty alliance now, if…”
“If only you can find him,” Temple growled. “Is Malo de Treguern with you, perchance?”
“Alas, no,” said Lazarus. “The Church has its own politics, and it does not matter how much the Knights of St. John hate the heretics of Civitas Solis—they will never join forces with an army as seemingly diabolical as ours.”
“I’m not at all sure that I shall join it myself,” Temple said, “if John Devil is a member of its High Command.”
“With all due respect, Mr. Temple,” said Lazarus, politely, “we do not really need you. You would not be half as useful to us as Sévérin.”
Temple immediately looked up at the Frenchman, who did not let him down. “I stand with Mr. Temple,” he declared, stoutly. “I will follow his counsel.”
Guido shook his head, as if to signify that it was quite irrelevant, but Lazarus looked at him disapprovingly and said: “If we cannot find Frankenstein, there is no center around which we might form. I am not the only articulate Grey Man in Europe, by any means, but none of us has Frankenstein’s status and importance. While he and Faraday are missing, along with Crosse and Szandor, the greater part of the genius of this affair is lost. We do need Sévérin—and Mr. Temple m
ight be useful too, if he is willing to help us even for a little while.”
If Civitas Solis have the men of science,” Guido said, confidently, returning to the door as he spoke, “we’ll get them back in no time at all, with or without the two old men. The alchemists might outnumber our own small company, but once Tom Brown’s resources are added to ours, we can locate and storm any hidey-hole where they might have taken refuge.”
“I wish I could believe him,” Lazarus said to Temple, as he moved toward the door in his turn, “but we have no idea what resources Civitas Solis might have in the vicinity, and their expertise in hiding dates back centuries.”
Once the Grey Man had gone, Jean-Pierre Sévérin sat down on the settee beside Temple. “This is direly confusing,” he said. “I came to London to warn you that the vampires were in England, fully expecting that you and I might join forces to hunt them down together and dispose of them forever. Now, it seems, they are doing all they can to help us, in a war against enemies I never knew I had.”
“They didn’t know they were your enemies either,” Temple told him, “until their curiosity was aroused. We’ve lived too long for our own good, it seems; people have begun to look askance at us, sensing something unnatural. It will do us no good to protest that old age has merely been kind to us, because that is the precise object of their research. As an Englishman and a policeman, I have His Majesty’s secret agents behind and beside me, but as a Parisian, you, alas, have no one to turn to but the likes of Vidocq.”
“I have René de Kervoz behind and beside me,” the Frenchman muttered, “and I have received an offer of assistance from Colonel Bozzo-Corona. While I am on English soil I have you, too, Mr. Temple, do I not? If we cannot hunt vampires together, we can still act as one in some other worthy cause.”
“You do have me,” Temple conceded, “but, as you can see, I’m likely to be as useless to you as I am to Lazarus and his allies. I don’t have your uncanny skill in a fight, so I have little to bring to any partnership.”
“But I don’t have your renowned intelligence,” Sévérin countered. “It’s my opinion that if anyone can figure out a path through this maze of confusion, and bring order out of its chaos, it’s you—not Michael Faraday, or the boastful Count Szandor, or even my old friend Germain Patou, but you. We might make a powerful team, my friend, even in a contest full to overflowing with younger men, secret societies and the ranks of the dead-alive”
Temple finally contrived to stagger to his feet. “You’re very kind,” he said, “but my bruises are telling me, in no uncertain terms, how far past my best I am, in spite of my seeming resilience. Since younger men than us—and deader ones—seem to have this matter in hand, for now, I suggest that we go down to the servants’ pantry to discover whether Cook and Caddick have survived the battle. Either way, we’ll be fed and watered, ready to fight another day, if the chance or necessity arises.”
“Agreed,” said the one-time fencing-master, helping Temple to hobble to the door. “Just show me the way.”
Chapter Eight
The Necromancers in London
When Gregory Tremple finally completed the discomfiting business of making his official report, he hastened to St. Thomas’s hospital, where Jean-Pierre Sévérin was waiting for him at Malo de Treguern’s bedside. The great swordsman had already told his compatriot the full story, and Treguern, his curiosity sated, was now protesting loudly against the injustice of his doctors.
“They say that I am an old man,” the knight protested. “They think me half-mad, because I wear the Hospitallers’ cross so proudly, and owe such fidelity to the Order’s ideals. They will not let me go, although the wound no longer troubles me, for fear that it will open again. I have shown them all my other scars, but they will not believe that I have the same healing power now that I had then.”
“They might be right, my friend,” Temple told him, touching the fingers of his right hand to his own wounded head. “At any rate, you cannot blame them for their anxiety. They are not convinced, as yet, that wounds they have formerly taken to be mortal no longer mark a necessary end to human life.”
Treguern took exception to that. “If you are implying that I might be turned into an abomination if I should happen to die,” he said, “I must object in no uncertain terms. I would like you to give me your word, Mr. Temple, that you will oppose as sternly as you can any attempt to resurrect me after my death. I will not suffer this body to become the abode of a demon.”
“I’ll give you my word, for what it’s worth,” Temple replied, “but now that I’ve seen and heard two further example of the dead-alive, I’m more convinced than ever that there is no principle of evil at work here. I do not claim that the dead-alive are intrinsically virtuous, nor do I deny that some might be more dangerous in their new state of being than they were when alive, but they are thinking beings, capable of moral judgment and entitled to moral consideration. If I were to die…”
“You should not say such things, even in jest,” Treguern insisted, cutting off the sentence. He would doubtless have said more, but was interrupted himself by the arrival of another visitor: an old man wearing a quilted coat and a woolen scarf, who seemed a trifle unsteady on his feet as he walked, but whose eyes were bright, penetrating in their gaze.
Temple and Sévérin both recognized the man, but it was Malo de Treguern who actually addressed him by name, saying: “Colonel Bozzo-Corona! What on Earth are you doing here?”
“I am in London on business, traveling with my beloved grand-daughter. little Fanchette. When I heard that one of my oldest friends, a warrior knight, was lying in a hospital bed far from his native Britanny, in danger of dying alone, how could I not come to see him? But I see that you do have friends, and the finest imaginable: a great swordsman and a brilliant detective. I’m delighted to see you again, Monsieur Sévérin, Monsieur Temple.”
Temple bowed, following Sévérin’s example.
“You have had quite an adventure, I hear,” the Colonel said to Temple. “I had adventures myself once, but I am too old now—every affair I undertake seems likely to be my last. We cannot simply lie down and let fate take its course, though; it is the nature of a man to strive, and, if necessary, to fight.”
Temple did not know what to say, but Treguern was more forthright. “Have you, too, come here searching for the elixir of life—or, at least, the secret of progressing to an unholy artificial afterlife?” he asked.
“Me?” said the Colonel. “No, I’m fully reconciled to my own fate—but I still have business matters requiring my attention. Business is the curse of the modern era, don’t you think? An evil, but a very necessary evil. A man must have ambition, and ambition, nowadays, requires business. No matter how much we might regret the fact that mere money has become the measure of everything, and that the sheer beauty of a treasure no longer counts for anything by comparison with its market price, we can but accept it…and without money, one cannot do good works, can one, Frère Treguern?”
“One does not need money to do good works,” Treguern replied—as the Colonel must have known that he would. “It simply makes them easier to perform.”
The Colonel smiled. “You must let me help you, my friend,” he said. “Come and stay with me when the doctors release you—I have rented a very comfortable house in Hampstead village. You would be welcome there too, Monsieur Sévérin—and you must come to dinner soon, Mr. Temple. We old men must stick together, must we not? The mere passage of time has given us common cause and united our interests.”
Temple thanked the Colonel kindly, although he did not see how he would be able to find time for mere socializing until Balsamo’s brigands and their presumed prisoners had been located—a task that had so far proved beyond the scope of Tom Brown, let alone the secret police and the vampire’s agents. He was distracted, however, when a young orderly came up to him and handed him a folded sheet of paper, before returning in haste without waiting to be questioned as to its origin.
“What is it?” Sévérin asked.
“Official business,” Temple muttered.
“A state secret!” said the Colonel, marveling. “Why, how exciting. Are you on the trail of Faraday’s abductors? That news caused great consternation in the scientific circles of Paris, I can assure you. If the agents of the Terror had not cut off Lavoisier’s head during the Revolution, he would be under 24 hour guard today.”
Ignoring this strangely ambiguous item of whimsy, Temple said: “I must go.” He raised a hand to interrupt Jean-Pierre Sévérin before the other could make a formal declaration of his intention to accompany the man whose bosom companion the now considered himself to be. “I need to go alone,” he added. “There is no danger—but there might be, if I were to take anyone with me.”
He did not give Sévérin time to argue, nor either of the others time to comment further, but hurried off.
He walked across Tower Bridge at a brisk pace, and then hired a cab to take him home. He knew that it would take time to make himself up, and then to get to what was nowadays Jenny Paddock’s Cabaret Theatre.
He did not make himself up as Solomon Green, the character he had invented specifically for use in the den of iniquity in question. Too many people now knew that Green had been Gregory Temple in disguise. Instead, he made himself up as a sunburned sailor, with every appearance of 20 years’ experience in the slave trade. That was the guise he presented to Jenny Paddock when he approached her counter and demanded a tot of rum.