Frankenstein in London

by Brian Stableford

  Then there was a new explosion; Captain Desart was not the only pirate to have hoarded his powder supplies aboard his vessel. The shock-wave was not nearly as great this time, but Ned had to grit his teeth to steel himself against its various effects. The explosion was more fizz than bang, though, and he was not deafened again. Indeed, he heard Mortdieu say, with grim relish: “My guess is that every captain in Tortuga has stockpiled powder in fear of a famine, just as Desart did. It only requires one more substantial arsenal to ignite, to set off a chain reaction. We’d best be going, though—if the canoes are sighted they’re sure to be bombarded, and we need them to stay as close as possible to the harbor mouth.”

  Jeannot took this speech as permission to set off, and did so, his long and powerful arms carrying him through the water without any seeming effort. Mortdieu, being much shorter, found the task less easy—but he was a metamorphosite, and his undead body seemed to be free of at least some of the constraints affecting Ned’s all-too-human flesh. Both his companions soon outdistanced him, and he scolded himself yet again for his careless half-truth.

  I’ll never make it, he thought. I’ve doomed myself with a silly boast.

  He had no alternative, though, to take his swimming one stroke at a time, and make what headway he could in spite of his weariness and inefficiency.

  Behind him, there was another loud detonation, as another cargo of powder was ignited by the rampant blaze. As Mortdieu had judged, that was enough to set off a chain reaction. Ned could not resist the temptation to take one last glance behind him, and it seemed to him then that the entire crescent-shaped quay had been turned into an arc of fire, as the hungry flames devoured the wreckage of 25 or 30 pirate ships. Mortdieu had done more than singe the buccaneers’ beards; he had almost single-handedly put an end to the Tortugan Renaissance—and he was escaping with his life, plowing though the water like a squat shark.

  There was no cannon-fire from the forts; the garrisons there had obviously found more urgent occupations. Ned knew that the zambo in the canoes would be edging closer, searching the turbulent water for their comrades and their admiral. Even so, he was convinced that he could not stay above water for another minute. He seemed to have been swimming for an eternity.

  He did not go down without a fight, but he did feel himself going down, and was certain that he was done for—before strong arms grabbed him and lifted him up again, and held his head out of the water until more arms reached down to haul him into a canoe and pull him aboard. Jeannot, who had held him up, followed a moment later. Afterwards, he lay supine in the bottom of the vessel, utterly helpless, for what seemed to be a very long time.

  In the distance, he heard a sporadic sequence of further explosions: Boom! Boom! Boom!

  Such is the fate of empires, great and petty, he thought. Even those restored after an interval of exile are bound, in the end, to meet their Waterloo.

  Eventually, Ned was able to sit up, and to seek out Mortdieu, who was already sitting proudly in the prow of the canoe, with Jeannot sprawled behind him. The Grey General made room for Ned to sit beside him.

  “You might have warned me,” Ned observed. “I almost drowned.”

  “You had the option of being placed in a canoe,” Mortdieu reminded him. “But had you taken it, you’d have robbed yourself of a fine tale to tell—or at least, the opportunity of representing yourself as one of its heroes. I did tell you that you were a fool—but you’re a mortal man, with a poor understanding of the threat of death.”

  “You risked as much as I did,” Ned pointed out. “The experience of death does not seem to have armored you against taking mortal risks.”

  “I have my obligations to my cause,” Mortdieu retorted.

  “Our cause,” Ned corrected him. “It is ours, whether you like it or not. And don’t tell me that I have no idea what the world is like, from the viewpoint of a Grey Man—I intend to form an idea, as best I can.”

  “Perhaps it is our cause,” Mortdieu admitted, not entirely ungraciously.

  “Do you really expect to get the Outremort back in exchange for what you’ve just done?” Ned queried. “Do you really think that Boyer’s captains will keep their word? Do you think Boyer will let them?”

  “Yes, I think so,” Mortdieu said. “The President has more than enough enemies already. He can’t be too selective in the matter of new friends. He’ll honor the bargain, I imagine—even to the extent of sending military support to relieve the mestizo siege of our small colony.”

  “You intend to stay in Haiti, then, and refuse Lord Byron’s offer of a safer haven?”

  “Better the haven you’ve earned than the haven you haven’t,” Mortdieu said, grimly. “If Byron wants a stake in our affairs he can come to us—and Boyer will still have the opportunity to bargain with him, on terms no worse than before. This is a new dawn for the undead, my friend. You are my friend, are you not, Monsieur Knob?”

  “Oh yes,” said Ned, pretending not to hear the dull note of threat in the other’s voice. “You can rely on me. So long as we’re working in the same great cause, you and I—and Patou too, now that we have the means to talk him round—are true brothers-in-arms. It’s a new dawn for the undead, as you say. For you and for Sawney, for John the poet… and for all the zombies that will emerge from Marie Laveau’s fresh graves, if her loas really are on her side.”

  “The gods help those who help themselves, in my experience—recent as well as former,” General Mortdieu informed him.

  “Empires are not built in a day,” Ned countered, matching him cliché for cliché, although he was swift to add: “but they can by built, by men such as you.”

  Chapter Nine

  Epilogue

  Marie Laveau’s acute sense of theater ensured that what she called the ceremony of awakening would take place in the wake of yet another blood-red sunset, as the brief subtropical twilight gave way to a velvety darkness lit by torches, lanterns and bonfires. The zambo had come by the thousand from the entire northland, paying no heed to the national border separating the Republic of Haiti from the eastern half of the island.

  The sense of expectation was palpable.

  Ned knew that there was still abundant risk in the prospective display—that the Witch-Queen’s trial by ordeal was not yet over—but he also knew that she and Germain Patou had checked the two dozen covered pits very carefully several times over during the last few ways, and had improvised as best they could with the use of the electric eels still captive in the pits, most of which had contrived to survive thus far.

  Ned was seated beside Germain Patou, on a stool that was noticeably less status-worthy than Patou’s wicker chair, although the latter was by no means as grand as the twin thrones that had been carved for the use of the now-undisputed rulers of the Land of the Reborn Dead: Mortdieu, the new incarnation of Sir Francis Drake, and Marie Laveau, the new incarnation of Anacaona, Queen of the Tairo. Edward Trelawny had been kindly allowed to squat on the ground, between Sawney Ross and the “patchwork man”—who had arrived the day before, along with the remainder of Germain Patou’s company of Grey Men, from the Trou du Nord.

  “How many zombies will rise from the depths, do you think, when she summons them from their rest?” Ned asked the physician.

  Patou did not reply to Ned’s question immediately, probably because he could do no more than guess, but eventually, he said: “She will need eight, at least, if she is to cement her reputation. “Twelve would be better, but four would be a disappointment. It will not matter much that they are idiots, if that is to be their fate, as long as they can stand up. That will be a sound beginning. Any more will be a gift from the gods.”

  “From the loas,” Ned corrected him. “We are followers of vaudou now, my friend—you more than I, for you must play the priest as well as the physician from now on, if we’re really to build an empire.”

  “For a good Radical, you seem to have the word empire on your lips a great deal of late,” Patou observed, dryly. “
You’ve been too often in Mortdieu’s close company, and he has infected you with his disease.”

  “Perhaps so,” said Ned, accepting the rebuke. “Empires do not generally end well, I know—but they’re a powerful instrument of historical change, and I’m now convinced that nothing less than a profound historical change will serve our purposes. You have Boyer’s protection now, and Lord Byron will have to bring Frankenstein to you if he wants to maximize his own chances of playing a hand in the game of destiny. Henri de Belcamp will not be far behind, if I’m not mistaken, and I’m certain that he will not come without strong support.”

  “We’re still a minuscule enclave on a tiny island,” Patou reminded him, soberly. “France still holds Jean-Pierre Boyer’s destiny in her hands, and France is a fickle jade, no matter how assiduously her parliamentarians seek the juste milieu. She will not like the name of Francis Drake being bandied about so freely here, any more than that of Queen Anacaona. Once Frankenstein is here, our work will doubtless make more rapid progress—but whether it will be rapid enough to defy the enmity of half the world, with only a divided island and a fragile Republic to insulate us from its fury, remains to be seen.”

  He fell silent then, as Marie Laveau began her circuit of the zombie-pits, with a constrictor snake draped over her shoulders and four handmaidens in close attendance, moving rhythmically to the cadence of the zambo drums.

  Ned held his breath as the handmaidens stripped away the palm fronds covering the first pit, and the Witch-Queen knelt down, extending her hand to the seeming corpse that lay within, half-immersed in viscous mud. She gripped the hand of the supine figure, and drew it upwards, tugging very gently. She could not possibly have lifted the dead weight of the body in that manner, but she did not have to do that. The zombie responded to her touch and to her summons, and came slowly to its feet.

  The first hurdle was overcome. The relief within the crowd was palpable in the rumor of excitement that ran through it, extending back from one rank to the next and vanishing into the trees surrounding the resurrection site.

  While the first zombie stood quietly erect, and men came forward with pails full of water and sponges, to clean the mud from his grey flesh, Marie Laveau moved forward to the next, and repeated the ritual.

  The second zombie also rose from his grave, and so did the third. The fourth did not, but the pattern was set. By the time she had visited the entire two dozen, 15 zombies had been brought back from the dead, at least to a form of half-life. There was no way to tell, by their present appearance now, which had been dark-skinned zambo in life, and which had been light-skinned mestizos.

  “If even five are educable,” Patou murmured, “then this is more than a symbolic dawn. If even three reach a consciousness as full as John’s or Ross’s, then the new era is begun.”

  “All you’ll need,” Ned remarked, sarcastically, “is an endless supply of corpses, preferably slain in the prime of life and the full flush of health, ready-equipped with the kind of determination with which men like Bonaparte are born. You might count yourself fortunate to live in a very obliging world, on the former score, but the latter element might be in much shorter supply.”

  “You have been party to the deaths of a great many men yourself, Monsieur Knob,” Patou retorted. “You have no moral high ground to stand on, in that respect.”

  Ned accepted that rebuke too. “Perhaps not,” he agreed, “but I, like you, am working for the resurrection of all—and when I’m given the choice, I almost always run away rather than attempting massacre.”

  The ceremony, Ned judged, was already a success: the zombies were able to stand—and as they were washed clean of the clay that had helped to give them birth, a few of them began to sway to the rhythm of the drums, which they could evidently hear, or feel. Their eyes were open, and one or two looked up at the starry sky, almost as if they recognized its promise, before they were led away by their appointed companions. They walked steadily, as meekly as any of the anticipated multitude to whom the inheritance of the Earth had been promised.

  That was more than mere success. That was a triumph.

  As Marie Laveau returned to her throne she paused by Ned’s chair, and said: “I believe that the trial by ordeal is over now, and that we have come through it successfully.”

  “We’re no longer adrift, it’s true,” Ned replied. “We have a means to steer and a star to steer by…but the trial will never be over. The ultimate triumph will require more lives than ours, and a greater thirst than two mere mortals could ever muster…but Monsieur Patou is right—the new era is begun.”

  PART TWO:

  THE NECROMANCERS OF LONDON

  Chapter One

  Waiting for the Night Mail

  November 1823 had turned out to be unseasonably cold, and the members of the thin crowd awaiting the arrival of the evening mail coach from Dover were all huddled in the coffee-shop next door to the Post Office, sitting as close as possible to one or other of its two black-leaded stoves. One man, however, had stationed himself slightly apart from the two clusters, alone at a table. He was muffled by a greatcoat, a scarf and a capacious felt hat, with a coffee-pot and a white china cup before him. The dregs had long since gone cold.

  The coach was late—unsurprisingly, given that the chill of the night must have frosted all the ruts and potholes in the road into jarring solidity, and that a freezing fog had settled that must be even worse in open country than the streets of London, though not quite as smoke-laden.

  When a slender but not unmuscular individual came over to the table where the lone man was sitting, carrying a fresh coffee-pot and a clean cup, the latter looked up gratefully, although he did not allow the concealing scarf to fall from the lower part of his face. The gratitude vanished from his eyes, though, and he scowled behind the scarf. The benevolent newcomer was not a waiter.

  “Good evening, Mr. Temple,” the newcomer said, politely. “Or should I say ‘good morning,’ given that it’s past midnight? Do you remember me?”

  Gregory Temple cursed the mention of his name, although it had been spoken in tone so soft and silky that he doubted that any other members of the patient crowd had heard it. “I remember all the hirelings who bore false witness against Richard Thompson, with the intention of sending him to the gallows for a crime committed by John Devil,” he said. “Given the chance, I’d bring them all to their due reckoning—and be sure to keep them from the kind of evasion accomplished by Sawney Ross. You have a damnable nerve approaching me, Mr. Hopkey.”

  “You can call me Sam,” the actor said, as he sat down and poured out two cups of coffee for himself and the secret policeman. “And I’ll freely admit that I was never comfortable with that affair. I’ve been to the Old Bailey half a dozen times in all, but always to secure an acquittal, save for that once. John Devil took care to snatch Thompson away from the noose, though—for which you might be a little grateful. You’ve forgiven Ned Knob, after all, and taken him into your service.”

  “I’ve forgiven no one,” Temple growled, although he picked up the full cup readily enough, and put the hot brim to his lips gratefully, “and I know full well that Knob didn’t send you, for he’s still in the Caribbean with your old master, trying to play the diplomat in the founding of a zombie empire.”

  “Might I ask how that work is going?” Sam Hopkey said, with the ghost of a smile on his lips.

  “None too well, as you doubtless have your own means of knowing,” Temple retorted. “Limehouse is swarming with sailors returned from the Americas, and they all turn up at Sharper’s eventually, although many must be disappointed to find it metamorphosed into Jenny Paddock’s Cabaret Theater. I hear that your slut has pretensions now to be a tragedienne, although I doubt that she was playing Phaedra tonight.”

  “You have no right to call Jeanie a slut, sir,” Sam Hopkey replied, with a certain dignity. “We might not have solemnized our union in church, but we’re as faithful a couple as you’d find at one of the Duchess of Dev
onshire’s affairs, and far more so than any you’d find in jolly George’s rotten court.”

  There was no scope for denying that, so Temple merely said: “What do you want, Mr. Hopkey? Best hurry—the coach will be here at any minute.”

  “Not a chance, Mr. Temple,” the wiry man replied. “It’ll be another half-hour at least, on a night like this. As you must have guessed, I’m here on Tom’s behalf.”

  Temple had guessed, but he was still intrigued. He had lately had some slight contact with a representative of Civitas Solis—the man who styled himself Giuseppe Balsamo—and the fact that Tom Brown, alias Henri de Belcamp, thought it necessary to make separate contact suggested that the latter’s plan to become an influential figure in that shadowy organization was faring no better than Germain Patou’s plan to secure a haven in Haiti where he could resume his necromantic vocation with all possible fervor and efficiency.

  “John Devil and I might have forged a brief alliance in the recent past,” Temple said, “but we are not friends. Any information you give me, I am likely to use against him. I’m even more eager to send him to the gallows than you and your doxy.”

  “Tom told me that you would be gruff and surly,” Sam replied, calmly, “but he told me not to take any notice, because you know as well as he does, in your heart of hearts, that you’re both on the same side now, facing the same adversaries with the same heroic spirit. He says that no matter what you might say aloud, you’re no more committed to the King and Parliament than Ned Knob is.”

  “He has a damned cheek, then,” Temple opined, wrathfully. “I’m loyal to my country—and Parliament has not yet made up its mind. Canning used to be the most ardent of the enemies of Jacobin science, but now he’s in charge of the nation’s destiny, he knows better than to play the bigot.”