Frankenstein smiled to himself. ‘If’? When was more like it on present form...
He entered ‘The Courtyard of the Penitents’: a huge expanse open to the sky; the architect’s conscious act to let sunlight counter the dark sins confessed there. Julius basked in the bright rays and—almost—relaxed.
It had been an eventful trip. The culmination, and quite probably the conclusion, of an eventful life all told.
All told? Phrasing it like that, and seeing the lines of confessionals along the walls, all in heavy use, Julius suddenly felt the impulse to tell it. To tell his tale! Why not?
Likewise, with the book stowed in the pack against his back. The book. What a liberation it would be to lighten himself of that!
The sudden temptation to disclosure was almost unbearable. His feet were taking him in that direction as if of their own volition. He surrendered to their supposed will. Complete nonsense, of course, but Julius wanted to be able to blame his boots.
He had been raised a Catholic and had always thought fondly of the Faith, if only for the childhood it sponsored, the ideals it sustained. Yet now, in sad adulthood, he looked in on it from without, like a man viewing stained glass from outside. There was pattern and form, to be sure, but the glorious colour others perceived was lost on him.
Belief had trickled away into the sand of life, drop by drop with every Lazaran raised and each sordid but necessary compromise. Julius told himself that was simply the way the world was. The Almighty had created that world and could hardly condemn the antics it forced His creatures into.
Yet the temptation remained: to plunge in and confess and come out cleansed! Frankenstein realised he had so many things to say and no one he could say them to. Not normally.
Fate saw fit to empty one confession box just as Julius crunched across the gravel beside it. A shriven sinner emerged. They looked… lighter.
Frankenstein hesitated—and then ducked into the vacated space as though it had always been his intention to.
Those waiting in line tut-tutted at his queue-jumping. Then they recalled that impatience was a sin not only on his part but theirs. So they compensated themselves with the thought that he wouldn’t be long.
They were wrong.
Chapter 2: TRUE CONFESSIONS
‘You took the child? You actually took it?’’
It was not that the grille between them impeded speech. Nor that the priest was hard of hearing. It was simply that he could not believe his ears.
‘She took it,’ Julius corrected him.
‘But you permitted it?’
Back in the shadows Frankenstein shook his head. Words were inadequate and failing him.
‘You have not met her, father. There is no question of ‘permitting.’ You do not permit a bolt of lightning. It either strikes or it does not, according to its own program.’
Dimly seen beyond the grille, the priest was mopping his brow with a polka-dotted handkerchief. The day which began so calm and ordinary had turned dramatic on him; the yellow light of just another morning now shot through with the red and purples of truly grave sins.
Granted, it made a change from the usual furtive fornications, the shoplifting and so on, that the faithful bothered him and God with; but this change was far from ‘as good as a rest.’ Here was the confession of a lifetime for him: both the lifetime of his vocation and the spilling forth of one man’s life lived on the stage of history. The priest knew he must strengthen every spiritual sinew to be equal to it.
‘Nevertheless,’ he persisted in reply, ‘that does not absolve you, my son. You have God-given free will with which to oppose this wicked women of whom you speak. Or at least to reprimand her so that the sin is hers alone...’
Frankenstein sighed.
‘I can only repeat, father, that you do not know her. You were not there...’
The phrase was fatal: before he could restrain his vaunted ‘free will’ Julius’ mind was revisiting the scene...
* * *
Children—or near-children... On a sunlit roof-garden.
They were Lazarans, but also more—as well as less. Naked, but also psuedo-clothed with flasks. Strings of flasks...
‘Can you speak?’ Ada asked the best of the infants, one she’d selected as nearest to human.
The boy regarded her with the coldest gaze Frankenstein had ever seen; something dredged up from oceanic depths with no soul to back or warm it at all.
The Old Guard had gladly departed to stamp out the ‘Lazaran rebellion’ elsewhere; and it suited them to believe Julius was the proper person to remain and restore order in this very improper place. So, Frankenstein and Foxglove were now the only living creatures there —and yet there was a crowd.
The white boy opened his eyes again and nodded: a concession to Lady Lovelace—but only conceded by whim.
‘I can speak,’ he said. His voice was more lifeless than his flesh. It had nothing child-like about it at all, but rather the expression an old, old, man—and not a nice one.
‘So why don’t you answer me?’ Lady Lovelace persisted.
Possibly because she was kindred to his condition, the boy humoured her.
‘Why should I? What gain can I expect?’
Ada looked around the roof-garden. Those amongst the milk-white children who could move of their own accord were shuffling nearer. There was little threat in that, but ample horror.
Perhaps she used the pause to count to ten to quell her temper, or perhaps she deemed this exchange so important she was considering her words extra-carefully. Either way, Ada re-engaged conversation without rancour.
‘It is considered polite for children to answer their elders when spoken to,’ she said maternally, as if addressing her own offspring (who she’d not so much as mentioned since leaving them). ‘It is what good children do...’
The boy was languid in his wheelchair. Lady Lovelace meant nothing to him and her guidance even less.
‘We are not good children,’ he said.
Nor healthy ones. He was the most vigorous they could see, but even that short exchange drained him. Not that brevity mattered. Those few words settled the matter as far as he was concerned.
It was the icy arrogance Julius noted. Despite their many afflictions, each of the children remained coolly regal. Nor even a crazed Lazaran incursion had dented their supreme self-assurance.
The boy resumed the doze they’d found him in. They’d received their dismissal.
Some of his companions (or those with the requisite organs to do so) tittered. It was not pleasant amusement. The rattle of bottle-bandoleers festooned across every single body made it worse.
Frankenstein drew one such flask from its holster. Its owner raised no protest. Julius broached and sniffed it.
‘Serum,’ he announced; and sniffed again to be sure. ‘My enhanced serum...’
Meanwhile, Ada looked like she was going to slap the princely youth back into discourse. Lost in disgust, Foxglove would have been too distracted to stop her.
But she did not. Instead she clenched her fists and surveyed the wider scene.
It was limited but rich in diversion. Screens blocked off all view of the countryside beyond—or more likely hid the rooftop’s contents from the world outside. And with good reason.
Not one in ten of Napoleon’s children had bred true. Some of the furthest from the norm were very wide of human. Most slept or writhed listlessly in confinement. All were that particular pallid white that comes from absence of vitality—and yet they still breathed. The likeness of their father was stamped on each of them.
‘These are the best.’ Frankenstein supplied expert commentary as the resident Revivalist. ‘The ones that were kept...’
Foxglove spoke. Till then he’d been silent; revulsion carrying him somewhere far away.
‘Then God preserve us from the rejects...,’ he said, returning to harsh facts.
To which they could only say ‘amen’—but neither did. It would not have been appro
priate even if they believed. Here, high up in the sky and thus that bit closer to God’s Heaven, was nevertheless a Godless place.
In any case, whatever ‘preservation’ they’d been favoured with was only a small mercy. With the whole rooftop garden their own to wander and wonder in, they soon found that exploration revealed nothing any easier on the eye or soul. Quite the contrary. Things got worse the closer they looked.
‘How long have we got?’ asked Ada.
Frankenstein calculated.
‘Not long: there can be few Lazarans left for them to suppress down below. Five to ten minutes maybe. But by then a soldier will have mentioned they left someone aloft. ‘Left who?’ will come the question. ‘The Swiss corpse healer’ they’ll say. ‘You know: the doctor chappie...’ Two minutes more will pin a name on that description. Which will be reported and someone senior will realise I am not authorised to know the secret of the roof garden. And then...’
‘By then we’ll be gone,’ said Ada. ‘Meanwhile, let us learn all!’
Only Ada’s heart was in it. Therefore she led the way, sweeping a path, jungle-explorer style, through the undergrowth of monstrous children. Frankenstein followed, even though he didn’t much care to know more. Foxglove formed their rearguard as the infant throng closed up again behind them. Some of the chalk-white children pawed at the party as they went by.
There was a building at the furthest end: a long low barracks-type structure, out of sympathy with the elegance of the rest of the Palace. The brickwork looked hurried and slapdash. Frankenstein received a strong sense of foreboding from the place.
If she shared it Ada didn’t show it. Being charitable, Julius thought some laudable urge—perhaps the desire to see the worst and get it other with—kept her headed in that direction.
Against all better judgement Julius joined her, just in time to hear Lady Lovelace pronounce judgement. Her voice reverberated back from the threshold.
‘Oh my God!’
* * *
‘As you may guess,’ said Frankenstein, continuing his confession, ‘God had nothing to do with it. The diametric opposite in fact. Satan reigned there supreme.’
By his silence the priest signalled he agreed. Or maybe it was shock. Doubtless he’d heard a great deal in his time as a confessor, and perhaps it was those things that had helped put snow on his head. Equally doubtless though, Frankenstein’s revelations must have been a first. The highs (or was it lows?) of sin were being taken to hitherto inconceivable limits.
When reply came it was not in the priest’s customary confessional whisper. Instead he husked.
‘A scaffold?’ The tone was that of sheer disbelief. ‘A hangman?’
‘A team of them. France’s foremost professionals.’
‘Beside a nuptial bed?’
‘Well...,’ Julius cavilled, ‘‘nuptial’ is overstating it, unless you subscribe to serial monogamy. Which,’ he added speedily, ‘you obviously don’t, of course. ‘An abode of Venus’ might be more accurate. A jousting ring for bouts of passion: passion, I hasten to say, purely in pursuit of procreation. Though not, now that I think of it, ‘pure,’ nor indeed procreation as commonly understood...’
This wasn’t the normal him. Julius was deliberately waxing lyrical to forestall remembering the scene in explicit detail. If he worked hard at constructing flowery descriptions of what they’d seen—and smelt and heard—on that rooftop, then perhaps it might dissuade his brain from visualisation.
The priest skipped over all that to make sure he’d heard right: in hope that he had not.
‘Women in harnesses?’ he went on, a litany that only increased his distress. ‘Damaged women..?’
‘A harem of them,’ Julius confirmed. ‘A breeding herd.’
It had been obvious from first glimpse: the lolling heads, the slack mouths: somehow sentience had been extracted from the pregnant mothers. At the time, the scene itself had been enough. Subsequent reading of ‘The Book’ and thereby learning the reasons for those sights improved the memory not one whit.
‘But why?’
Julius could tell the priest didn’t want to ask, but felt compelled—just as Julius was compelled to tell.
‘Because what is asked of them,’ he replied, ‘or of their bodies, is so gross a demand on the human frame that the thinking mind rebels against it. Living flesh rises up against the carrying of Lazaran seed. Or so the scientists hypothesised. They observed that where the mother’s higher mental functions were unimpaired there was a far higher spontaneous miscarriage rate. Whereas idiots and the insane tended to breed true—or truer. Consequently, they experimented with the insertion of red hot wire into the forebrain and...’
‘No! No more!’ ordered the priest, leaning back from the grill. ‘I forbid you. These are not your sins, they are the wickedness—the gross wickedness crying out to Heaven for vengeance—of others!’
Julius feared it might come to this: the time of trial. Here was the big question: was he an honest man or not?
Spiritual tests of strength do not conform to conventional time. This one, though a savage struggle, was won between one breath and another.
Frankenstein used the air that that breath drew in to commence his real confession.
‘Well actually, father, that’s not strictly true. Alas. You don’t know my family name. Permit me to introduce myself...’
* * *
It was to the credit of the Church he served that the priest did not give up there and then—or just give up Frankenstein to the authorities. Instead, he steeled himself and heard the whole sorry tale.
Morning wore on. Outside in the Courtyard of the Penitents, the queue for this particular box had long since given up and joined other lines.
Chapter 3: MEET THE FAMILY
Back on the roof-garden, a few others heard Lady Lovelace’s appeal to the Deity—but not as many as might do normally. Fortunately, His Imperial Highness had been distressed and fatigued by his last bout in the breeding house, and a day’s respite was decreed. Therefore, there were comparatively few staff around when Frankenstein and friends entered in. Luckier still, several of the hangmen, midwives and other technicians lurking around knew Frankenstein by sight and so didn’t renew the alarm.
All in all, the Lazaran incursion had been drama enough for one day, and compared to that Frankenstein’s friendly face was normality itself. Especially given the horrible eventfulness of their day-to-day duties. They even overlooked his hangers-on and Ada’s exclamation.
Julius waved a cheery greeting.
‘Everything is well?’ he enquired, as though it was his responsibility to find out.
Various affirmatives from around the building suggested it was, more or less.
‘Just thought I’d check.’
Blithe confidence and high acting carried Julius through again. Several of the more cultured staff went so far as to thank him for his concern.
Others had other concerns. Foxglove’s gaze took in the gallows, the dynamos and the suspended breeding racks—and found that actually, no, he couldn’t take them in. And, apart from the sights, there was the smell. The place was scrubbed and sterile but it still stank. The place stank of sex and electricity.
‘I have to go,’ said Foxglove, gorge rising.
‘We all have to go,’ agreed Frankenstein, speaking low. ‘As I said, our being here will be reported and not forgiven. But be so good as to give us a few more moments.’
‘I’ll try,’ said Foxglove, and endeavoured to see no more.
‘Stiff upper lip!’ Lady Lovelace exhorted her servant: which was extreme compassion by her standards. ‘Pull yourself together man!’ had been her first framed response.
Sadly for Foxglove’s resolve, at that moment one of the naked pregnant ladies saw fit to shift in her harness and loll her head in his direction. Inadvertently, he found himself face to face with her.
It was hardly a meeting of minds, not least because one of the minds had gone—and Foxglove even felt
his slipping away. He was eye to eye with eyes that beheld nothing and lips the opposite of stiff.
On the contrary, she moaned and drooled. She must have been a pretty girl once, perhaps a maid drawn from the Palace staff, with notions of her own about how motherhood would be. Now she had no thoughts at all, not even about being naked and cocooned mid-air in row after row of many like her.
‘No! Enough!’ said Foxglove, and being a decent soul might have done something drastic at that point to rectify the great wrong before him.
Happily however, by then it was ‘enough’ in another sense. Enough time for the slow fuse Julius had lit as his last act before leaving his rooms, to reach its destination. Time for Julius’ ‘collection’ to be unveiled to the world.
They could hardly ignore it. Home-made ‘Hellburner’ bombs were the weapon of choice for guerrilla movements worldwide when they wished for ‘a spectacular.’ Julius had familiarity with their effects in more than one continent, back when he was a mercenary (and thus should have known better…).
A few people had remarked on the in-preparation project, but it was by no means unknown for single men to have a beer barrel in their rooms (though rarely, it must be said, one so huge). Curious cleaners and Julius’ few visitors were told it contained blood for his experiments, or that—being Swiss—he was a heavy beer drinker. Either way, they didn’t enquire further.
Such squeamishness or national stereotyping meant he could go on with his painstaking accumulation, spending many an empty Versailles evening stealing the necessary powder flasks, bushels of nails and pots of tar. As it grew he gained faith that one way or another his hobby would serve as his default way out of Versailles.
Before escape-plans acquired a point and purpose, he’d envisaged being beside it when it went off, smiling sweetly in the faces of the soldiers come to arrest him. From him to the hissing fuse they’d look, and then back again, saucer-eyed and chasm-mouthed; too late to do anything but whisper ‘oh no…’
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