Frankenstein's Legions

by John Whitbourn

  ‘Do not take offence,’ the servant said to Frankenstein, (advice or command?) ‘Her ladyship thought that way before.’

  As if that made things better!

  Julius calmed himself with deep breaths. He could not entirely quit the field without seeming unmanly, but the subject must be steered to safer shores.

  ‘I respectfully decline to share in your delusion, madam,’ he said. ‘Although it does at least afford proof of one thing. Consistency with the former life only returns with the most refined serum. Likewise, memories of the former state. Most Lazarans awake to only a blank slate and vague sense of loss...’

  Once she dug her dainty heels in, Lady Lovelace wouldn’t budge a inch.

  ‘How do you—or I, for that matter—know I have all my memories? There may be great swathes missing! How would I miss what I don’t recall having?’

  Foxglove stiffened at the horrible suggestion. He straightaway began silent work on a catechism of Lovelace minutiae, names of children and hounds, colours of curtains etc., to quiz his Mistress on later. Whatever she lacked, be it money or memory, it was his sacred duty to supply.

  Frankenstein wasn’t so easily reeled in.

  ‘Concede, I implore you madam, that the serum supplied to you drew back full recollection as well as raw life. Accordingly, you were revived by the best serum available-’

  ‘Almost the best,’ snapped Ada, implacable in her new belief. ‘We go to remedy your botched work!’

  No one would ever have guessed from his face but in that instant Frankenstein was visited by revelation. It all suddenly struck home. This was real! He actually was heading for France and unbelievable danger on the say-so of a Lazaran!

  Naturally, the next step was considering alternatives. Like getting off the train at the next stop and living out a long life somewhere. A safer life. A sleepier life.

  It only took two seconds.

  Julius Frankenstein smiled at Lady Lovelace.

  ‘Whatever you say…,’ he said.

  Chapter 10: DEAD MAN STILL WALKING

  Outside Loseley in the gathering night, yet-murkier-still in the shadows of the orangery, the condemned prisoner-to-be looked back and surveyed the ruin of his plans. Lights were going on all over the great house, illuminating the scene and ruling out further dark deeds. This rural idyll was now a riot of shouting and shots.

  Because others had escaped like he had, and a vicious game of hide and seek was underway in the formal gardens. Occasional streaks of flame tore through the gloom as an attacker was found and fired upon, or the hunted despaired of flight and turned upon the chase.

  Prisoner-to-be had seen the way things were going and so went the other way. Most survivors had taken the shortest and obvious route, towards sheltering trees. There they would be halfway to the ‘Hogs Back’ road atop the Downs where there might be traffic to hijack or blend in with. It was the obvious course to take.

  Except that the enemy could see that just as clearly and seek with all his might to prevent it. Men on horses were racing ahead even now to cut them off. Later, expendable Lazaran beaters would sweep the woods whilst guns waited for whatever they flushed out.

  Prisoner-to-be was cleverer. He hid himself in plain view.

  The main drive to Loseley was broad and straight, and travellers upon it obvious. Lanterns being lit to either side made a passable imitation of daylight.

  The French assassin embraced the light, walking in its fullest glare, scrunching the gravel as though he owned it. Locals rushing to the scene in arms and trepidation made way for him at first. After all, far more important than the pistol he carried, he had that air.

  But there’s always one. When close to escape someone had the balls and/or stupidity to stop him.

  In other circumstances, Prisoner-to-be welcomed the company of truculent rustics. Such men had revolutionary potential and might prove suitable recruits to one of the cells he’d set up. But now was neither time nor place.

  ‘Ere!’ said the burly yeoman in question. ‘Hold fast! Who might you be?’

  His twelve-bore was halfway to raised and the suspicions of the gaggle with him were emboldened. This stranger might look and walk like authority personified, but it was no ordinary night. It might just be in order to probe.

  Prisoner-to-be was not only fluent in English but had taken advanced idiom courses. He could be anyone from Duke to dustman; all of them impeccably English.

  Tonight it was Duke.

  ‘Who I am is not your damned business. Nor relevant. Are you blind, sirrah? Can you not see there is an emergency?’

  The Yeoman looked up at the disturbed ants nest that was Loseley and signified he could. Prisoner-to-be pressed home his point.

  ‘Well then, man, there is no time to waste with your idle curiosity. I serve the new Lord of Loseley. An attempt has been made, this very night, on his life: right under your inattentive noses!’

  ‘Now, see ‘ere!’ said the Yeoman, red-faced and flustered. ‘We ain’t full-time militia: we’ve got lives to lead and farms to attend to. I’ve come all the way from Binscombe, you know!’

  ‘Testify, Jacko!’ said some supporters. ‘You tell him!’

  ‘S’right!’ said another. ‘Even good ole Binscombe’s up in arms!’

  From painstaking reconnaissance Prisoner-to-be knew Binscombe to be all of half a mile away—and a hamlet of infinite insignificance besides. He almost despaired, he really did. How could you ever have a revolution in a country where the natives were proud of self-forged chains? Their horizons barely got off the ground. Come the Convention’s inevitable invasion it might prove necessary to ‘slaughter and restock,’ and start again from scratch. Sad but necessary—and ‘necessary’ was always trumps.

  Pending that glorious day, Prisoner-to-be needed to pretend willing slavery didn’t sicken him. He magnanimously conceded their point (whatever it was...)

  ‘Perhaps so: but you can be of vital assistance now. I am securing a perimeter but fighting is still underway on the Downs. The attackers have arrayed themselves in British military uniform; moreover they can even assume Scottish accents. Be on your guard or they will gun you down. My advice to you—no, command!—is to shoot on sight!’

  It worked. Most knuckled their brows to him and rushed on to death by deception. Prisoner-to-be flowed through the mob like Moses parting the Red Sea. At the end of the drive the dark swallowed him up.

  Behind him fresh firing began, initiating a whole new phase of festivities. It allowed Prisoner-to-be to ungrit his teeth and acknowledge his injury.

  * * *

  Prisoner-to-be hijacked a pony and trap, transferring ownership via a knife, and put miles between himself and his aborted mission. Then, after a spell of self-surgery and muffled screams, the offending bullet was extracted and he slept in a ditch.

  On the plus side, rest permitted him to fight fever and infection. He made it through the night and awoke to a new day. On the other hand, he could no longer masquerade as an English aristocrat. Even the most eccentric of those did not come in a covered in mud and blood version.

  * * *

  Melchizedek Copper was a true shepherd of the Sussex Downs, like his father before him and his father before that—and so on back to just after the Flood for all he knew. His world encompassed the few miles round Lewes and that more than sufficed.

  He had heard there was a war on with something or somewhere called France but he wasn’t entirely clear what that signified. At any rate, it failed on impinge on lambing season and so couldn’t be all that important.

  What Melchizedek did know was that charity was the essence of Christian faith. His onerous duties didn’t permit him to attend Divine service all that often but he well recalled one Easter-tide when the parson in his sermon had said ‘faith without works is dead,’ and even a shepherd could well see what was meant.

  Therefore, Melchizedek modelled himself on ‘the good shepherd’ featured in ‘The Good Book’ that he himself couldn’t read bu
t still revered. And, though poor as poor can be, Melchizedek gave of what little he had and was kind to those about him: to his family, to his two Lazaran under-shepherds, and even to the flocks in his care. It seemed to work: life in his tiny portion of Sussex was that bit less harsh because he was around.

  So, it was only natural, when one day Melchizedek the shepherd saw a weary figure slogging its way up Windover Hill, all done with travel, that he should offer him shelter.

  Unfortunately, it was a dead man walking on the Downs.

  * * *

  On his second night of flight Prisoner-to-be took over an isolated cottage, murdering its inhabitants down to the last sheepdog for the sake of a bath and change of clothes. It was a pity to kill mere shepherds and their families, who were workers after all; but History was a cruel mistress to those who served her, taking no account of individuals. Everyone knew that.

  Once he’d cleared up, Prisoner-to-be consoled himself with the thought that there were plenty more where the deceased shepherd came from. The dictates of History would impel them to step up and fill the gap. Meanwhile, the humble lives sacrificed would, in their modest way, inch forward the glorious day, meaning they had not lived—or died—in vain. And, in any case, the cause of an agent in the field outweighed a shepherd’s need for a natural span of years.

  Tough measures for tough times. Even now, when far away from the scene of his original ‘crime,’ Prisoner-to-be would not have it easy. Far from it. True, there were pre-planned escape routes and agents in place, but by now the hue and cry would be truly up. The English Channel was well patrolled at the best of times, with Lord Nelson’s flotillas criss-crossing like sharks, but even before them there were manifest dangers. England’s face had been slapped whilst sitting in its own back-garden: all eyes would be extra-peeled, looking out for vengeance.

  The now silent shepherd’s cottage provided opportunity for reflection. After Prisoner-to-be had dressed his wound and driven the bothersome sheep over a cliff, there was silence in which to reflect on what had passed.

  Theirs had been a brave try, founded on strictly rational thought. Mere assassination of the Arch-Traitor by wayside ambush or sniper’s shot, would not have sufficed. Outright attack in force passed the clearest message to all traitors in Reaction’s employ—or it might have had it succeeded.

  There is no safety from the Republic’s displeasure, it would have demonstrated, no appeal against History’s condemnation! No distance, no guards, no snuggling deep into a tyrant’s bosom was protection enough. The Republic struck when and where and how it wanted, and not via some furtive assassin’s blow but with style! Massed infantry attack deep in the black heart of the enemy! Loseley was to have burned and Talleyrand with it.

  But it and he hadn’t. So that was that. No good crying over spilt milk or unspilt blood. Prisoner-to-be still had one more duty to fulfil.

  He had faith, of the strictly secular kind. He knew he would make it home, somehow. He would report to the Republic. He would demand his due punishment for failure.

  * * *

  If a wounded French agent could extricate himself from England the same should have been child’s play for Julius and Ada, who had their health (if not life, in one case), plus funds, plus every right to be in the country.

  Not so. At the exact moment said Frenchman was murdering Melchizedek the shepherd’s family on the Downs above them, down in Lewes town beside the River Ouse the couple were being rudely rebuffed.

  ‘N-K-D,’ said the quaymaster, and made to turn away. Julius’ hand on his shoulder restrained him—and earned a black look.

  ‘Explain yourself, sir!’ Julius cried. ‘I demand a degree of courtesy!’

  The quaymaster reached up and politely but firmly disengaged the delaying hand. There were scowling dockhands and mariners around who looked willing to give him support.

  ‘I’ll explain, but I’ll not alter, mister furriner—and I’ll thank you to keep your paws to yourself. N-K-D I said and say again: ‘tis local dialect for ‘no-can-do’: our little rustic joke, only it ain’t no joke. No one here will take you, not for love nor money.’

  ‘But why not, man?’ said Frankenstein. ‘We can afford to be lavish, nor shall we haggle.’

  Quaymaster’s expression indicated he never doubted it.

  ‘Nor shall I, mister. Neither shall I be druv—as we say here in Sussex’

  Julius looked to Ada for interpretation. She supplied, purse lipped.

  ‘The motto of the county, mein herr.’ She adopted a rustic accent: ‘‘We wunt be druv.’ In plain English, they sometimes oblige but cannot be forced.’

  ‘Just so, ladyship,’ confirmed Quaymaster. ‘And there’s an end to it.’

  ‘But in the name of God why not?’ cried Frankenstein, throwing up his arms. ‘You have craft galore: why cannot we be conveyed to the coast?’

  Quaymaster was amused. Lady Lovelace sniffed, even though she now had no need for breath. The man knew.

  ‘But it don’t stop there, does it, mister?’ he said. ‘I misdoubt your path ends at Newhaven and England’s shore…’

  He had them there, though naturally Julius couldn’t admit it. Quaymaster pressed his advantage in the intervening silence.

  ‘I dare say you might get one of the gentlemen to take you…’

  ‘He means smugglers,’ interjected Ada helpfully.

  ‘…but we’re law-abiders here. And besides, Lewes is a pious Protestant place. I don’t speak for all, but many don’t hold with all this … reviving business.’

  He looked at Lady Lovelace with frank distaste. Foxglove bristled.

  ‘We load occasional Lazaran regiments for the war,’ said the master of this little world, ‘out of duty and love of country. But shipping deaders abroad without a licence? Oh no, matey, that’s a hanging offence!’

  * * *

  It was the same story in Rye when they got there, via many tedious short journeys and changes of train. At the Mermaid Inn, whilst Ada waited in the rain outside, Julius enquired after local vessels plying for hire. Subtle questions (or so he deluded himself) ascertained which of their masters were the liveliest lads.

  Passing by the port’s gallows en route to the harbour should have prepared them for disappointment. There, strung up and rotting, were all those free traders who’d run foul of the coastal blockade squadron. Their former colleagues passed by them twice a day—a salutary lesson.

  Rye mariners weren’t so restrained as those of Lewes. After their first ‘no’ to Frankenstein wasn’t heeded, they threw fishheads.

  Lady Lovelace had to bear-hug Julius in an icy embrace to keep his pistol in his pocket.

  * * *

  They struck lucky on their way back along the coast. Though first impressions suggested quite the contrary. Life served them up a lemon, only for it to spontaneously turn into lemonade.

  A militia-constable boarded the train at Cooden Beach and started checking tickets, so they were obliged to disembark at the next stop, far earlier than intended. However, that ‘choice’ of station might have been their downfall just as effectively as surrendering themselves. ‘Norman’s Bay Halt’ was the epitome of insignificance set in a sea of desolation. Anyone alighting there merited a curious glance.

  Julius and Ada got them aplenty but, as luck would have it, not from the constable. An incautious flash of ankle meant he was all agog at a jaunty young lady passenger at the time. Then the loco chugged away and he never knew about the certain promotion just missed.

  Which meant he retired, decades later, still a constable, rather than the Inspector that might have been. Taking the long view from then, he would have said the glimpse of stocking was good, as far as it went (½ inch up the calve), but all in all wasn’t fair exchange. But he didn’t know and so didn’t say so, and remained content as he was. Thus things worked out well for everyone.

  Back at Norman’s Bay, the pancake flat Pevensey Levels spread from the distant Downs right to the pebbly beach, and the wind
swept over all. It spoke of rain soon. Only a few cottages, doubtless the abode of sluice-keepers and the like, relieved the uniformly grey scene.

  ‘Please tell me,’ said Ada, ‘I beseech you, that this is the low point in our adventure...’

  Frankenstein looked all around again, as if he couldn’t trust first impressions. Finding nothing for his comfort, he tried to light a cheroot but the lucifer wouldn’t flare. He flung both away, losing both smoke and dignity.

  ‘I can only observe,’ he said, ‘that here is indeed low, madam. In fact, positively sea-level. Therefore, it is difficult to conceive of deeper depths, but one cannot rule it out. As I found out in the Heathrow Hecatomb, Fate sometimes drives our fortunes positively subterranean...’

  Lady Lovelace slumped down onto the suitcase Foxglove carried for her.

  ‘In which case,’ she sighed, ‘I propose to throw myself under the next train to arrive.’

  Foxglove prematurely stepped between Ada and the platform’s edge, although the track was visibly empty for miles either way.

  Her proposal would do the trick. If anything, Lazarans were even more delicate than living humans, and disturbance of the serum sustaining their frames invariably did for them. The mangling attentions of a train’s iron wheels would certainly put Lady Lovelace beyond reviving as an entity, leaving just loose limbs fit only for spare parts. A dreadful waste of Frankenstein’s hard work...

  He decided to risk a second cheroot and this one took.

  ‘Even if sincere,’ he commented, puffing away, ‘your proposal may be long delayed, madam. This hardly seems the busiest of lines: your despair must stew awhile...’

  Inadvertent mention of food reminded them they were hungry. Simultaneously, the rain arrived.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Foxglove, keen to get his mistress away from the rails, ‘we should seek shelter nearby. And eat something. And then think about things.’