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.
‘What do you propose?’
‘Well,’ Sir Percy was mildly embarrassed, ‘that’s where you come in. It’s in the nature of a favour I’m looking for here. There’s the good name of the Lovelaces to consider: an ancient and honourable English family. Plus we don’t want His Holiness roused up about the Hecatomb all over again, just when things had died down—if you’ll excuse the phrase...’
‘I don’t excuse it,’ said Talleyrand. ‘Make amends by speaking plain.’
Which was a bit rich, coming from him of all people, but Sir Percy was on the cadge and couldn’t cavil for the moment.
‘As you wish, Prince. Well, we thought perhaps we could kill two birds with one stone—if you’ll excuse the phr.... What I mean is, you must still have contacts out there, you being an ex-bishop and so forth.’
Talleyrand urged him on with his eyes and Sir Percy decided to go for broke.
‘Assassins,’ he said. ‘That’s the proposal. Not really our thing. But very much yours, we reckoned. Contacts from the old days maybe. Do you have people in Rome who could...’
‘Kill two birds with one stone?’ said Talleyrand for him.
‘Yes, just the two. There’s a servant with them but he can’t know much. He can live...’
Talleyrand cut in.
‘I do have such people, alas. But I have something else. Better. For you.’
Sir Percy leant back. He’d anticipated some sordid bargaining but this morning was going all awry and down unexpected avenues. He wished he’d had more coffee before setting out.
‘Which is what?’ he ventured hesitantly. If one should be cautious of Greeks bearing gifts then how much more so of this arachnid in human form...
‘My job,’ said Talleyrand, succinctly. ‘It’s yours.’
How well things always seemed to fall out for him, Talleyrand reflected, just like he was not a sinner at all! He’d fully intended to offer his resignation free of charge at this, their final meeting. Now he could sell it.
Sir Percy frowned.
‘What would I want with that? I’m already your superior.’
Talleyrand arranged his face into a ‘be-serious-this-is-important’ look that was an expressive universe away from his usual blandness. The ground shifted alarmingly beneath Sir Percy’s riding boots.
‘My job,’ the Prince went on in all earnest, ‘could be yours. Fully. I’ll resign and meddle no more. You’ll be in sole charge.’
To give him credit, Sir Percy could be brutally honest with himself. He opened his mouth to protest—but then shut it, the words unsaid.
‘Along with my agent networks: the whole lot,’ said Talleyrand, spicing the deal. ‘People—resources, that is to say— you’ve never dreamt of! With letters of recommendation for you to each one.’
If even half of what Sir Percy had heard was true that would be like becoming the greatest peeping-Tom ever. It had appeal.
‘And all my files.’ Talleyrand piled on the temptation to intolerable levels. ‘Every scrap. War-winning information...’
Sir Percy knew of them: he had tried to subvert Loseley servants to steal samples but to no avail. If sincere, it was a mouth-watering prospect. But what a huge ‘if’’.
‘Including the file about you and the lady choristers in Sussex,’ added Talleyrand. ‘The hamlet of Folkington wasn’t it? A South Downs church. Such exquisitely curvaceous slopes and valleys—the Downs that is.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Blakeney, deadpan, ‘exquisite.’
‘Well, that’s on offer too. Plus my draft letters on the subject—or was it ‘outrage’—to the Times. Plus the illustrative woodcuts of events that I commissioned. You could have them framed for your walls—or perhaps burn them.’
That settled it. Lady Blakeney had said that the next time she’d take red-hot coal-tongs to his privates. Then she’d mimicked a vicious twisting movement...
‘Probably burn,’ said Sir Percy.
‘I’m sure you know best,’ said Talleyrand sympathetically.
‘And in return?’ asked Sir Percy. He was nervous, expecting a great deal to be asked for so much.
Talleyrand was as straightforward as anyone had seen him since the veil descended between he and humanity long ago. There was no nuance, no shadings, not even the slightest inflection of voice requiring interpretation.
‘Don’t kill them,’ he said: demanded. ‘Frankenstein or Lady Lovelace or the servant. Don’t harm or silence them. Let them speak. Bring them home. Strain every sinew. Send the fleet. Send Nelson.’
Sir Percy realised he was experiencing a once-in-a-very-blue-moon-indeed moment. Compared to this Halley’s Comet was a next-door neighbour you were sick of the sight of. He seized that moment.
‘Done,’ he said, and extended his hand.
For form’s sake Talleyrand shook it, though the ritual added no extra solemnity to him. Indeed, Sir Percy’s rough hand rather rasped...
It seemed a day for major sighs: or so Sir Percy misinterpreted it. In fact the sound was Talleyrand releasing the pent-up tension of a lifetime.
‘Nunc dimittis,’ said the Prince, with relief. ‘Now let thy servant depart in peace.’
As though in answer, he was racked with coughing again. When he took the kerchief from his mouth he saw there was blood upon it.
Talleyrand raised his eyes to the ceiling—and by implication further still.
‘Gracious me!’ he said. ‘Such prompt service!’
* * *
Coincidentally, later on that day a letter arrived for Talleyrand from the Pope, discreetly sealed, elegantly worded. Stranger still, it proposed much the same things as the Prince had urged on Sir Percy.
Which just shows you how odd history can be. Up to that point who would have bet a fake farthing that two such contrasted careers might coincide?
Chapter 12: EARNING EMMA
‘…in irons,’
Nelson added to his order.
‘In irons?’ Julius and Ada spoke in chorus—but could have sung it opera-style for all the good protesting did them. Even Frankenstein’s reasonable offer of medical assistance during the battle had been turned down.
‘In irons,’ the Admiral confirmed from his position of god-like authority on the poopdeck. ‘Because I am entrusted with your safety. And I do not trust you. Or like you. Oh, and Hardy,’—this to the captain of the Victory, just setting off to do his bidding.
‘Yes sir?’
‘If they give you trouble, flog them.’
‘Very good, sir.’
So it was that during the famous ‘Second Battle of Trafalgar’ Frankenstein and Lady Lovelace and Foxglove were securely confined below the waterline, safe from enemy shot or from seeing history unfold. The only things they could truthfully recount of being there were sails the size of postage stamps on the horizon and then hour upon hour of ear-splitting noise. Likewise, the only fighting they took part in was against waves of panicking rats sent scurrying across their laps by each thundering broadside.
None of which comprised a memoir worth publishing or even anecdotes worth repeating. The very best they could hope for was to boast being present at ‘Trafalgar II’—and then hope no one asked for further details.
All because, soon after the French fleet’s sailing was reported along the chain of English frigates stretching right to Cadiz, down into the Victory’s stinking depths they went, to be chained up alongside an American awaiting hanging for sodomy. Neither he nor they were cheerful company.
Ada might well be profoundly changed inside but externally she was still Lord Byron’s girl. Some of the phrases she used as they were bundled away brought blushes to the rough tough sailors carrying them. But for the futility of flogging an unfeeling Lazaran back, a likewise shocked Captain Hardy would have implemented Neo-Nelson’s threat of the cat o’ nine tails.
There’d been no prior warning of such degradation. On the contrary, the Admiral had been absolutely jubilant that having them aboard had finally drawn the enemy fleet out.
‘Five years of blockade and not a peep!’ he’d exulted to them, shortly before the sudden exiling below. ‘We couldn’t tempt ‘em out to battle whatever we did. I thought their ships would rot in port before I had a chance to sink the swine!’
In his excitement he’d even reverted to the broad Norfolk accent of his youth, such that there was some difficulty in understanding. His officers, the ‘band of brothers’ stood around amazed.
‘Borr!’ he told Frankenstein and Lady Lovelace, ‘If I’d known old Boney wants what’s in your noddles so bad I’d ‘ave ‘ad ye press-ganged years ago, painted purple and tied to the topmast! God bless ‘ee!’
You could have construed that as flattery of some sort, but shortly after the Admiral turned and issued his harsh instructions.
‘Dark-Nelson’ indeed said Lady Lovelace—or words to that effect.
In a previous professional incarnation Frankenstein had treated the aftermath of a naval flogging. He didn’t want his back similarly turned into steak tatare and so, unlike Ada, held his tongue. However, his mind was given full permission to think harsh things.
The most printable of which was that if Admiral Nelson’s tactics were as unpredictable as his moods then the battle was as good as won.
Which it was. Gloriously and famously, after a tedious—to Julius and Ada and Foxglove and the American—long afternoon of continuous cannon fire, cries and the reek of powder smoke and blood from the surgeon’s space above. As the day wore on—and how it wore on—huzzahs and jubilation were added to the heady mix of sound. British gunfire had always predominated, since Albion’s Jack Tars could load and fire two shots to ‘Jacque Crapaud’s one, but eventually it was playing a solo. Even those imprisoned down in the murky gunnels could draw their own conclusions as firm as those on deck.
Late in the day they had a visitor. By Julius’s pocketwatch it must have been evening outside (much difference it made to them) but Nelson’s beaming visage lit up even their darkness, rendering his lantern redundant. His smile was such they could see every tooth, even the black back-molars.
Nor was that all they could see but would rather not. There was a gaping wound in his chest, obliterating the Order of the Bath, and another exactly where they’d got him last time, down through a shoulder epaulette and into his spine. The difference was that this time round Nelson was still standing—albeit crookedly. There was ragged flesh but no blood. At Trafalgar II the French snipers had been flogging a dead horse. Neo-Nelson was pumped so full of superior serum and unresolved ambitions it would have taken a broadside from a hundred-gunner to lay him low.
‘We won!’ he informed them. ‘Ten sunk and twenty prizes!’
Lady Lovelace was still sour.
‘And our losses?’ she asked, out of malice. Julius could have punched her. Even Foxglove was tempted.
Nelson’s face darkened.
‘None! Of course not, woman. English ships don’t strike their flags!’
‘Did any Frenchies escape?’ asked Julius, hurriedly.
‘Not one!’ replied the Admiral, Ada’s faux paux forgotten. ‘Not one! An annihilation victory!’
In the course of their brief acquaintance Nelson had impressed them as one of those rare specimens: the natural human predator. Accordingly, annihilation was his favourite word. Along with one other...
Somehow he was reminded of it. Suddenly the Admiral was no longer in the bowels of the Victory with them, nor riding a wave of a victory. Neo-Nelson was far away and in other company.
‘They’ll have to give me Emma now...,’ he mused, turning abruptly plaintive. ‘Won’t they?’
Then even the condemned American’s heart was touched as they saw the hero of the hour and age break down and weep—or as best as a Lazaran can.
Chapter 13: A SWEET TREAT
Admiral—soon to be High-Admiral and Earl—Neo-Nelson wasn’t with them. Which was a relief frankly. Ever since setting foot on English soil he and thus they had been mobbed night and day by worshipping crowds. Characteristically quick to seize an opportunity, he had drawn the hordes to besiege the Admiralty whilst he lobbied within for Emma Hamilton’s revival. He reckoned the just-this-side-of-hysteria baying of ‘Nel-son! Nel-son!’ rattling the windows would do his cause a power of good.
Rightly so. A letter would go from Whitehall to the French Government that very night and set off a very grisly series of events. One of the secrets not even Napoleon knew was that Lady Hamilton had already been raised but then lost. She currently walked elsewhere and in a very curious frame of mind—but that’s another story.
Meanwhile, Frankenstein and Ada and Foxglove’s story went like this. The pungent Port of London where they finally landed gave way to the cacophony of the City and debriefings in the wasps’-nest of the War Ministry. Then the summons from Talleyrand arrived, superseding all other claims on their time.
Though quicker, the trains were not trusted. Too high-profile and disruptable. Napoleon’s agents had but to bend a rail and then what? Instead, whisked away in a Government stagecoach with outriders, they cleaved through London’s smoke and congestion out into open country. The air and sunshine, even that little they smelt and saw of either, was welcome, compensating for the haste and hurried comfort-stops at coaching inns.
Just a few action-packed months before, Frankenstein had moped at a window of the Heathrow Hecatomb and watched the ‘413th regiment of Revived Foot’ march off to war in Germania. Now, somewhat older and wiser he unknowingly followed their route to within sight of Loseley House. There, happily, the re-enactment ended.
The more distance put between them and ‘BABYLONdon’—what the exiled Cobbett and other members of the opposition ‘Golden-age Reactionary Party’ termed ‘the Great Wen’—the greener it got. For, despite centuries of ceaseless demands from the shipyards and cannon-foundries much of the ancient Wealden forest survived. Not only t
hat, but they took a discreet route, off the obvious roads. Dark little villages populated by dark little villagers could be glimpsed to either side as the coach rushed through to Surrey’s more modern-world market towns. Then, several changes of horses later the horizon suddenly broadened. There before them were the North Downs and Loseley House.
The coach turned off the road onto a driveway. There were soldiers, strange soldiers in skirts with few social skills. Once past them Julius dared poke his head out and beheld a gracious dwelling built of old stone recycled from another place. Before its grand frontage labourers were stacking timber into a pyramidal pile.
There was no time to enquire about that or anything else. Even their earlier simple ‘where?’ questions had been only grudgingly and partially answered. Now the coach door was wrenched open the second they halted and its inmates allowed minimal time to stretch their legs (or leg in Foxglove’s case) and stare at the new scene.
The high ridge of the Downs bounded one horizon and a road ran along it, complete with toy horsemen and vehicles. That was the route normal and sensible coaches took. Below in the valley were silent woodland and landscaped gardens. A place of peace.
Normally. Right now it seemed to be nothing but frenzied comings and goings. To the eternal hills who’d seen it all before and would see it all again, such transient fevers were presumably nothing, but short-spanned humans were more easily impressed.
They arrived just as a delegation of high-flying Churchmen fled. Considering that they dealt with matters infinite the men of God should have looked more composed than they did. Red-faced exasperated expressions topped some of the clerical collars.
But at least that supplied a spot of colour, for otherwise the flood of black issuing from Loseley would have been in total contrast to Ada’s scarlet (gown) and white (skin), Frankenstein’s dandy waistcoat and the gay motley of their Highland soldiers escort. With the addition palette of Church of England rage or blushes, a charitable eye might mistake the two groups as the same species.
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