‘‘Things’?’ said Lady Lovelace bitterly. ‘Don’t talk to me about things!’
But she arose and went with them into the days to come.
* * *
To their pleasant surprise, two of the low cottages transpired to be joined-into-one—and an inn besides! ‘The Star of Bethlehem,’ no less. Though a mystery how it found custom out here in the back of beyond, the gift-horse’s mouth was not inspected. It meant there was no need to share a fisher-family’s limited hospitality.
Even so, there might still have been problems. Regardless of former status, Lazarans were—at best—only tolerated in public houses, and then only in the public bar, or that portion of it designated for day-labourers, gypsies and sundry hoi polloi. There the undead formed a reassuring bottom-of-Life’s-barrel for even them to feel superior to. Ada and Foxglove wouldn’t have enjoyed that.
Fortunately, the Star was so far flung it only had the one bar—a sort of rough Sussex equality. There they found funny looks galore but also, compared to the cold and rain outside, a welcome, and warmth, and food for sale. And, as it turned out, not only food.
Whilst the landlord went off to assemble their ‘luncheon’ (which got laughs), one of his customers peeled away from the bar huddle and came over, drink in hand. He looked capable of anything: a gnarled tree-trunk of a mariner with wind-reddened face and wind-slitted eyes. Yet they probably appeared as exotic to him as he to them.
‘Come for the whale, ave ye?’ he asked, without preamble. The lower classes were meant to preface unsolicited conversation with ‘excuse me saying’s and ‘might I make so bold’s...
‘No. We’ve ordered lamb cutlets,’ replied Foxglove, who was prickly on points of etiquette.
The mariner smiled but remained. Frankenstein’s curiosity got the better of him.
‘What whale?’
‘Only you’ve missed he,’ the mariner went on. ‘The big ole stranded whale what trippers came to see, that the Railway company put the halt in for, he clean rotted away two year back. And good riddance: all pong and no eating.’
‘Don’t you have a go at old whaley!’ said the landlord, returning with a tray of brandies. ‘He were good business while he lasted. And put us on the map too, with a new name.’
‘The Railway company didn’t much fancy ‘Pevensey Sluice,’’ the mariner explained. ‘Normans Bay sounded much sweeter to they...’
‘Really?’ Frankenstein delivered the variant of that wonderfully multi-purpose English word which implied he didn’t give a damn. ‘No, not here for the whale,’ he then confirmed, and left it at that.
The visitors downed their drinks and when the spirits reached their spirits they felt revived enough to converse—amongst themselves.
‘Are you still here?’ Foxglove asked the mariner. Somehow, by tone alone, it was conveyed he’d happily make it otherwise.
The mariner ignored words and intonation alike. He focused on the gentry.
‘So,’ he said, softly, ‘if ain’t the whale of blessed memory, then you must be for France...’
That got their attention.
‘What on earth do you mean?’ asked Ada, taking command in full aristo mode.
The mariner cut her dead, or as good as. His gaze remained on Julius.
‘Not ‘earth’: I’m talking sea. Earth’s where this here deader belongs. Sea is how you’s trying to escape: is why you’s here in Normans Bay. Now Mr Whale’s gone there ain’t no other reason.’
Frankenstein installed a finger erect before Lady Lovelace’s opening jaw. Slowly she closed it again, in order to bite her tongue.
Julius spoke quietly, though he now suspected it little mattered in this place. The mystery of the Star’s location was solved: it lived and thrived on illicit trade, born of being in prime position for it.
‘That,’ he said, ‘is loose talk. Your country is at war with France: all contacts with it are capital crimes...’
The mariner smiled. The exercise screwed his eyes up still more till they were mere beads of light.
‘If we weren’t in mixed company,’ he answered, ‘I’d have this shirt off and show you my back. Red and ridged as bacon! Twelve years in his Majesty’s navy flogged all the patriotism out of I! Now are you France bound or not? Are we in business?’
They were. They certainly were.
* * *
Since it was cold and dull upon the beach at midnight, they made conversation. It is unlikely Lady Lovelace would have exerted herself otherwise.
The only alternative sound around, save the sea, was moaning from Lazaran gangs working sluice gates out on the Levels. Not that cold, wet and dark signified anything to them: it was merely their response to being ripped from eternal rest. Owners had to accept that perpetual lamentation was a feature of the low-grade Lazaran. Even muzzles and beatings only reduced it to a hum.
Accordingly, almost anything was an improvement on that distant but depressing dirge.
‘Have you ever played rounders, mein herr?’
She persisted in calling him that, for reasons all her own. Julius speculated that she wished to emphasise his foreignness, the better to stress her own belonging here. Nationality might be all Lady Ada Lovelace (deceased) had left. In the modern world to be born (or even re-born) English was to have done well in the lottery of life.
Frankenstein skimmed a flat pebble at the waves. It sank like... a stone.
‘Rounders?’ he said. ‘It is a card game, no?’
‘No,’ Ada replied. ‘It involves a bat and ball and running between four stations. One played it as a girl, but that is not material. One only mentions it because the sport employs an apposite phrase: ‘Three strikes and you’re out.’ I strongly believe that applies to us.’
Frankenstein yawned. It was a bore to feign interest but their rendezvous was late.
‘How so?’
‘In that by time of our third request for conveyance, first Lewes then Rye, the news will have spread to every fisherman’s ‘spit n’ lean’ hut and foreshore in the south—for theirs is an incestuous world, bound into brotherhood by adversity and risk. Our concerns would be the subject of promiscuous discussion and, soon after, public knowledge.’
‘Really?’ That word again, this time expressing surprise.
Lady Lovelace nodded.
‘Really. As I say, on the third occasion of asking is my calculation,’ she confirmed.
‘I defer to you in the matter of calculations...,’ said Julius, unbelieving.
A distant splash and howl signalled that a Lazaran must have fallen into one of the deep drainage ‘guts.’ It was not as great an emergency as it might be, for one of the few benefits of revived life was lack of need for air. Shipwrecked Lazarans had been known to survive in the water for months, only finally coming to grief via rocks or sharks. In the past, escaping Lazaran slaves had dashed into the sea and, for all anyone knew of it, lived and failed to breathe under the waves still.
It was an enviable quality to possess—possibly their only enviable quality—when about to embark on a hazardous voyage. It merited mentioning to Lady Lovelace, if only to cheer her up.
‘Has it not occurred to you, madam, that you might safely walk to France?’
Obviously not. Ada grimaced and indicated her scarlet gown and just-so coiffure. Despite the premature streaks of grey she was proud and protective of her crowning glory.
Julius persisted.
‘I meant if you were not such a lady, if your appearance upon arrival was no consideration? In reality you have no need of a vessel as we do.’ He turned jocular. ‘Consider further, my lady: we mere living creatures are holding you back!’
Ada nodded and turned to look at him, deadly serious.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Now that I had considered. Often.’
Frankenstein suddenly felt a chill even deeper than the night’s. He’d just glimpsed a future master species different from his own.
‘All aboard!’ came a shout from seawards.
Maybe it was his title that made Talleyrand think of the Isle of Wight. ‘Lord Vectis’: after the classical name for the place. The Prime Minister’s erudite little joke to match making him Island Governor too.
Well, let the great man and his cabinet laugh. If they crowned him King of Duck Island in St James’s Park, as per Ada’s fantasy, he’d take that seriously too. As ever, Talleyrand ate what was set before him and made the most of it. Made a relished meal of it, in fact. It was only who had the last laugh that mattered.
Talleyrand had never visited Wight and probably never would. However, full of good intentions now that he was solely responsible for a concrete somewhere, he’d carefully appointed a civilised man as manager. Someone thoughtful and a stranger to passion. Also someone who, as compensation for all the prodding and probing involved in getting the job, would be hugely rewarded for his troubles. Or, alas, punished likewise. Linked to that lavish salary was a clause spelling out that the penalty for corruption—even a shilling’s worth of corruption—was death. Labour laws in contemporary England had got to the stage where such contracts were commonplace—and quite legal. Many factories had their own gallows (to save time and bothering the State).
Talleyrand’s first assigned task for him (bar the prescribed sexual purgative each morning) was to rid the Isle of soldiers and other tax-eaters. They could remain in the fortresses central Government felt necessary, but nowhere else. In a well-run polity shepherdesses should be able to roam unmolested, and hard-working people work hard without robbery.
Then the Prince scoured all democracy from the Island whilst simultaneously inflating an illusion of it. Any number of ‘consultative councils’ and councillors were created: but with no real power but to feast and talk and keep themselves out of mischief. For Talleyrand did not just fear ‘crude and licentious’ soldiery and busy-body bureaucrats: he knew from personal experience that humans had to be protected from the political class no less than they were from pirates.
Of course, some social-cannibals are not susceptible to reason and, like foxes, do what they do driven on by urges. No blame therefore attaches: but neither is there point in appealing to their better natures. Lawyers were warned once about their behaviour and second time shot. There were limits even to Talleyrand’s tolerance.
Whilst still intact their bodies then hung in cages on the walls of Yarmouth and Cowes Castles. Thus, all arrivals to Wight were met with visible demonstration of its enlightened penal system. Swift, cheap, Justice, with a moral, and a 100% record of reform.
After that it was merely a matter of setting up first-rate free schools (bilingual, naturally) and then ‘Lord Vectis’ work was done. He and his manager could sit back and let things roll, relying on human nature. Just a century or so should see peace and prosperity become their default setting.
Because, in a perverse way, the Prince had a benign view of humanity (setting aside, of course, its obvious innate depravity). He had long observed that, left in peace and protected from bullies, the invincible trajectory of man was to prosper. Restrained from war and preying on one another, they couldn’t help themselves but build things: useful things like houses and businesses and families. And then they tended them like a garden, finally handing on the baton to loved ones or relatives before laying down to eternal rest, fairly satisfied. Or else drank themselves to death early.
It wasn’t glorious or noble, there was little drama and no poetry; and Talleyrand had no wish to join in himself, let alone, God forbid, socialise with such people. But he was convinced that this was what they really wanted—and, who knows: perhaps what the Almighty wanted too?
If there was one thing the Prince de Beavente, Lord Vectis, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord was above all, it was polite. And it was surely polite to give people (and deities) what they wanted. Where possible. If he felt like it.
Word was that tax yield was now way up. People were moving there from elsewhere and native smugglers going straight, finding better, more relaxing, ways to make a living. All good signs. Soon there’d be agitation for a mainland link and Solent bridge—though he’d veto that: let Shangri-la remain its sweet self and require a little effort to get to…
Meanwhile, goodness knew what his manager did all day, sitting there in Carisbrooke Castle; twiddling his thumbs or playing with himself probably: but Talleyrand wished him well. He recalled from one interview (the fourth, or was it fifth?) the man saying he liked to read History. Well, thanks to Talleyrandian rule there were now free libraries on the Island that he could read his way through and grow even wiser (if not happier).
So, everything should have been fine and civilised and yet here Talleyrand was apparently visiting the place one morning, contrary to all intentions, and finding things—everything—gone so very wrong. Just as there was no sign of his manager anywhere there was excess signs of soldiers everywhere.
They straggled all over the place, discipline as eroded as their uniforms. And even civilians were in arms, brandishing weapons and acting like drunkards. And at this time of day too! Some of them looked like death-warmed-up. In fact, on closer inspection, they were.
Talleyrand couldn’t recall arriving (which was strange), or even what type of craft he’d sailed in. Presumably his secretary had arranged things. But then surely they would also have arranged for his reception. And not by a yelling rabble either. Yet all he could see through the strands of morning mist were men running hither and thither, all rudely ignoring him. It was worse than a Greek fire-drill!
There were the sounds of gunshots also, something Talleyrand deplored. When he’d ran Napoleon’s empire for him there’d been perpetual musketry the length and breadth of Europe, despite all his best efforts and advice. And look how that had ended up!
He was in Yarmouth, Talleyrand felt fairly sure. Though not blessed with personal acquaintance, he’d heard that its castle was of the squat modern sort rather than picturesque and ruined kind. And here beside him reared a boring wall of the type you’d imagine. It had the royal coat of arms (Henry VIII’s, if Lord Vectis read correctly) above its gate but was otherwise unadorned: a pared-down weapon of unwelcome. He’d read that the fabric incorporated stone from Quarr Abbey, suppressed during that King’s ‘Reformation.’ Surveying the result as an aesthete, if nothing more, Talleyrand considered it a very poor exchange.
And what was this? Canon fire from the Castle’s portals? That wasn’t meant to happen! And certainly not in his model state. What a state of affairs! How extraordinary.
Talleyrand went to investigate. A dozen paces on he discovered Lazarans hurling themselves at the fortification, only to be blown back (and apart) by grapeshot. The consequent gore and gunpowder residue threatened his cravat. Naturally he retreated.
A siege? By unruly undead? Everything had gone to pot he concluded.
And had it confirmed for him by meeting one in Yarmouth High Street. A great cauldron, perhaps pillaged from an inn, bubbled away atop a fire made of furniture. Into it the undead fed bits of people. The suspiciously long limbs protruding from it were instantly identified. In an adjoining alley Talleyrand now saw a pen of human prisoners, either resigned or wailing, being one by one converted into portions by Lazaran butchers armed with cleavers.
He’d always heard that rogue Lazarans consumed their victims whole and live: no gourmands they! Yet these seemed a higher sort (the Jane Austens of their species perhaps) who demanded daintier rations. Or perhaps it was a refinement of revenge.
Naturally, Lord Vectis recoiled—straight into the arms of one of his surviving subjects (apparently an endangered species…).
‘Save yourself! Save yourself!’ said the man, gripped by strong emotions and delayed in the act of fleeing. ‘All is lost!’
‘No, sir!’ replied Talleyrand, and went so very far as to reprimand him with his walking cane. One, two; light mock-knighting blows to each shoulder. ‘No, I say. You save yourself—from shameful abandon!’
He drew the man to him by a handy chain draped about his neck. Then they were temporarily alone and out of the action, secluded in a shop doorway. All the shop windows were shattered, its display of lady’s-wear dishonoured.
The man rallied slightly. He looked at Talleyrand but did not really see.
‘They came out of the waves at Freshwater,’ he said—or babbled. ‘While we were clinging on at Totland! All is lost!’
Well, plainly he was, but, although a fabulously wealthy man, Talleyrand could not afford to join him. Panic was the most expensive of luxuries. Cathartic, possibly: but ruinously expensive. There would be time enough for panic in the grave (where it had the habit of putting you).
‘How can all be lost?’ he asked the man whilst he still had him. ‘This is just the Isle of Wight…’
‘Man’s last stand!’ said the man. ‘The end of England!’ And he wept. And fled. Leaving behind in Talleyrand’s hands his mayoral chain of office.
And then Lord Vectis was suddenly elsewhere (which was strange), oddly unclear about travelling between the two places. He now stood below verdant green downs. The village sign said ‘Brighstone.’
Its cottages were afire and there was that confounded pop pop pop of small-arms fire again. Oh, how he detested it!
Fortunately, the vile sound proved to be short-lived. Less happily, it derived from last gasps and mopping-up operations. Lazarans were in charge now. They strode the streets like masters and directed how things should be for the superseded species.
He observed prisoners being corralled in the main street and edged utensils being sharpened. He watched a Lazaran leader drag a respectable matron by a halter round her neck, screaming towards the village church. Perhaps she was his prize and treat. Talleyrand did not envy anybody here their fate.
The matron saw him. ‘Help!’ she called out as a change from shrieking, arms outstretched, clutching at fence posts and straws as the darkness of the church interior drew near. ‘Help me, sir, I beg you!’
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