‘Then look closer, sir,’ he snapped. ‘And if that fails, allow me to spell it plain. Xavier...?’
A sleek looking servitor emerged from obscurity, discreet efficiency personified.
‘Highness?’
‘The letters, if you please.’
From a locked portion of the bedside cupboard came an armful of letters, all sealed, all portentous. When handed them Talleyrand examined each address.
‘Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire,’ he read aloud from one, and then flung it to Frankenstein’s feet. ‘That better be you, I think: they’ll not listen to a woman. Also have Vienna, the Hapsburg Empire: you’re vaguely middle-Europe: they’ll appreciate that...’ Another missive joined Julius’ portion.
To Lady Lovelace went:
‘America: the President and Senate,’ read Talleyrand. ‘Yes: ideal. Wear that scarlet gown or one similar. And flash those eyes as I’ve seen you do. No rouge though: don’t try to conceal your status. Americans are simple but shrewd folk. Speak slowly as you would to a rustic and without embellishment. I was there in exile for a while, you know. It is a primitive country at present but destined for greatness—or what passes for it in this world. And sooner than people think. It is down to you to determine what sort of greatness. Wean them off Lazarans to good honest slavery. Then allow some future other to wean them off slaves.’
Talleyrand paused for breath and coughed red into his kerchief again. Meanwhile, in an act of mutual solidarity, neither Julius or Ada stooped to pick up their assigned letters.
‘What exactly,’ said she for them both, ‘are these?’
‘Letters of recommendation,’ answered the Prince crisply. ‘And most fulsome ones. My word still counts for something among the worldly, and still will do even when I speak from beyond the grave. Those pieces of paper will gain you admission to the highest echelons of government. Not only that, but I am informed that comparable passports will be provided by his Holiness the Pope for those regions of the globe where his word counts.’
Lady Lovelace still did not stoop to collect or accept her mission.
‘To what end?’ she asked, beating Frankenstein to it by a sliver.
Talleyrand looked at them full on.
‘To what end?’ he said to Ada. ‘The end of your kind!’ Then to Julius. ‘And the end of your trade. We must wipe out this satanic science world-wide!’
And then and thus they understood in full. But Talleyrand gave them no chance to relish the revelation.
‘ “Lo, and Jacob called his sons to bless them”,’ he quoted, drawing on his own distant memories of priesthood, ‘ “and he said, ‘Gather together and I will tell you what will happen to you in the end of days’...”’
The Prince actually did beckon them closer. Reluctantly gathering up the letters they came.
‘It will be difficult without Lazarans,’ he said, ‘but worse with them. When the nations learn what Bonaparte proposes, what he has done, they will ally against him. Humanity will unite against its superseding—which is the one and only cause that will ever unite it. There will be a crusade: a world-war. And there will be civil war wherever Lazarans are the mainstay of the economy, as in America. Those places must again substitute negro slaves: until such time as conscience forbids that too. Also, the Churches will split between the honest and the bought. There will be actual and spiritual strife throughout the world; and it will be vile and long and hard but eventually France will lose. And since I love France and have only ever sought its well-being—the one consistent thread in all I have done—then I am sadly glad of that. But beforehand the Convention and Napoleon will contest together: oh, if only both could lose! There will be scope for true patriots to save France. Because it must not be just foreign armies that sweep both the Convention fanatics and the Napoleon monster and his would-be eternal empire away. Ditto a foreign occupation. Both have been tried before and would only unite all Frenchmen against them. This time it must be my way: the slow but sure way. Only then can France be what it truly is and be loved again...’
An unlikely prophet, Talleyrand relinquished his exhausting grip upon futurity in order to regroup for one final push.
‘This will be your unenviable lot,’ he said. ‘To be in the middle of much unpleasantness. To be both its cause but also its cure.’
He turned to Ada.
‘You know what you are,’ he said. ‘And being a unique sentient version of it surely you realise this all must stop. Stop with you.’
Ada bowed her head and thought.
‘And you,’ Talleyrand addressed Frankenstein, ‘you know full well what wrongness your ancestor unleashed. That is what drove you half mad. That too must stop.’
Julius did not deny it. The Prince pressed his point home.
‘I offer you hope. There is the chance to make amends. You are or you have the evidence of the wrong you represent: Lady Lovelace’s mind, the unnatural child, the book of instruction and so on. Now,’ he indicated the letters of introduction, ‘you also have transport to take that evidence to the rulers of this afflicted world. All that is wanting is eloquence on your part. That I cannot give: it must come from your own inner conviction. Do you have it?’
Ada and Julius looked one to the other. The speed of the mind is such that they reviewed their life story in time to reply without unmannerly delay.
Lady Lovelace nodded. Frankenstein likewise.
Talleyrand seemed to shrink and merge back into the pillows. The child beside him whimpered.
But he was not gone. Not yet. He rallied.
‘That is good,’ he said, now in a whisper. ‘Napoleon must be denied his dynasty, lest being cleverer and colder than humans they supplant mankind. Also, generals must not have their armies of undead lest we end civilisation with ceaseless war. All this... evil must end. The world is for the living and no others: the dead have had their day. Heaven claims them and is not cheated with impunity. Humanity must be natural again!’
A simple enough statement, but a strategic vision that cut across all the complexities of politics and policy. Normal striving for petty advantage sways few men of goodwill, but a vision: that is different. A vision can alter history.
Talleyrand studied them—and was content.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘and take the servant with you.’ He indicated Foxglove. ‘You owe him that for his love. Besides, even with one leg he is the strongest of you all. Maybe, madame, you should marry him: that might constitute some small reward.’
Foxglove blushed to the roots of his hair. Lady Lovelace raised one eyebrow—but did not dismiss the idea.
‘Or wed the doctor,’ the Prince nodded at Julius. ‘He would do too. It hardly matters...’
Nor did it compared to the weightier matters afoot. Talleyrand realised that in addressing such minutiae he had lingered overlong. He had done what he could with the broad brush strokes: mere detail had to be delegated—forever.
‘Time for that delectable sweet, I think,’ he told his niece. ‘Would you be so kind as to pass the plate, child?’
She would. The Prince partook and soon died of the poison within.
Chapter 14: LOSELEY LIBERATION DAY
It was like setting in motion a well-oiled machine. No sooner had Talleyrand’s soul quit the frame that had carried it across nine lively decades than swarms of servants took over the room to carry out his final wishes.
Two separate flunkies found they had the job of destroying his journals but in the spirit of the moment they did not bicker but instead assisted each other. Every worldly-wise page was shredded and each scrap fed to a furnace. History and humanity both lost and gained thereby.
Meanwhile, faithful Xavier led the squad which ensured their author met a similar fate. Wrapped in a simple shroud, the sometime Prince de Beavente, latterly Lord Vectis, but always Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand Perigord, was borne down through Loseley house out to the huge pyre awaiting.
Then, with little ceremony, and no words but much urgency, his
body was committed to the flames. A torch ignited the primed timber. There was not much flesh left on him at the end. The puppeteer who’d had his hand up all Europe was gone within minutes.
In many eyes it was the final scandal in a long life full of them. Some said it was another slap in the face to the Church and implicit denial of the Credal ‘Resurrection of the Body’. Given the notoriety he had acquired over the years that became the default view.
However, the perceptive realised that the Prince would never insult someone whose services he might soon need, whether it be the Almighty or a milkmaid. To that tiny minority it was but a short leap of commonsense to arrive at the truth. The Prince wished to put himself beyond those who might revive him before Judgement Day.
Meanwhile, on the day of his departure, the great and good were not present as they would have wished to be, even if only to check he really was gone. The massed clerics had only just received his amended retraction and were still fuming in their lodgings nearby. As in life so in death: the Prince’s speed of thinking left them standing.
Instead, Frankenstein and Ada and Foxglove and the crack cravat team served as Talleyrand’s sole mourners. Which was probably as he would have preferred it.
They stood and watched as the smoke from his burning rose far into the Surrey sky—and possibly as high as Heaven.
Chapter 15: WORLD LIBERATION DAY
From: Words that Changed the World—Great Speeches of Modern History
(University Press of the Sorbonne, Paris 1895)
‘…and I, being sentient although what is called a “Lazaran”, being possessed of that spark which makes a man a man and child of God, ask this. How can it be that we dare wrench from the grave that which the Almighty has taken to Himself? Do we know better than He?
‘Further, how can we presume to make that poor wretch our slave? Is it not an insult both to He who made us and he who was made? We outrage a being who was as we are; who is as we shall be.
‘And yes, is it not the gravest of insults to our dignity as a race that we should persist with this perversion of human ingenuity, that noble calling, which we call science?
‘Gentlemen of the Senate and Congress, Mr President, I put it to you that here, today, you have it in your power to sweep away this gross shame brought on our species, to start a new day when Life is reserved to those for whom Providence intended it!
‘And if I, the first—and perhaps through your intervention the last—of my kind can find it in my ransomed soul to make this plea, how much stronger comes the cry from my brothers and sisters revived to half-life, to indignity and ceaseless labour, to an existence—yes mere existence—devoid of dignity and any wider hope?
‘There will be those—I suspect in this noble-hearted Republic they will be few in number—but there will be those whose narrow souls say, “why should I liquidate my Lazaran plantations, my undead-worked prairies on some mere point of principle? Why should others, less scrupulous, derive a commercial advantage? For Heaven’s sake,” they might say, “we let our Negroes go, but still you’re not satisfied!”
‘But I have a answer for them, gentlemen, if I may make so bold as a mere Englishwomen to suggest one on your behalf. And it is this:
‘Your words are happily chosen: we do what we do for Heaven’s sake—and in hope of gaining it and God’s favour for our nation. But we also do it because our good name cannot be bought for dollars! We are patriots! We are Americans!’
—Lady Ada Lovelace’s joint address to the USA legislature and executive. May 1st 1840: immediately prior to the abolitionist debate of Emancipation Day.
* * *
‘But I have a answer for them, excellencies, if I may make so bold as a mere Swiss infidel to suggest one on your behalf. And it is this...
‘Yes, we do what we do for Paradise’s sake—and in hope of gaining it and Allah’s favour on the Ummah, the community of the faithful. But we also do it because our good name cannot be bought for the fripperies of this fleeting world! We fear the Day of Judgement! We are Muslims!’
—Dr Julius Frankenstein’s address to the Sublime Porte and Grand Mufti of Constantinople. May 1st 1840—immediately prior to the abolitionist fatwah of Emancipation Day.
* * *
Fortunately, publication was not so swift or widespread in those days. Ada and Julius’ suspiciously similar words were not immediately matched. They got away with it.
Surely Talleyrand would have looked down (or perhaps up) and smiled.
After which it came to pass pretty much as the Prince predicted, although it took decades. Napoleon would have cursed him all the more had he known—except what insult is there upwards of ‘shit in a silk stocking’?
Epilogue: TOMMOROW (& YESTERDAY) BELONGS…
The American Civil War whimpered to a close and anti-Revivalist laws were enforced both there and in the ‘Old Countries’ too. Peripheral aberrations aside, Revivalism became taboo in most civilised parts of the world.
Towards the end, even the lowest Lazarans grasped what was being done on their behalf and came over to the Abolitionist side. After that final victory was assured.
Granted, there were still grim patches and unfinished business. For instance, dark rumours spread of what was going on in Haiti and Martinique. The oppression there had very great and retribution likewise. What comes around goes around. Apparently, Lazaran former slaves had taken charge there and feasted on their former owners like farm animals: but in slow-motion, limb by limb. Restorative expeditions went in but failed to come out.
Also Japan emerged from its seclusion, learnt of Revivalism and decided they’d like to borrow that too, along with rifles and finance capitalism. No amount of persuasion could persuade them otherwise. So, no sooner had the ‘Great Powers’ steam fleets dragged Nippon out of purdah than they plunged it back again, via blockade and quarantine. Even so, there seemed a frightening amount of activity in those arsenals and cemeteries that could be glimpsed from offshore. Christendom couldn’t bombard a whole nation into submission. Or could it? Some Admirals saw that as a challenge...
And as for what went on in the obscurity of the Brazilian jungle, the refuge of runaway Revivalists, the least said the better. No one went there any more, except bounty hunters and/or madmen. Sullen silence fell over much of the southern continent.
But France succumbed, eventually, which was the main thing. Napoleon and the Convention fell out, as such people always eventually do, just as Talleyrand predicted. In the ensuing interval of civil war the armies of the rest of Europe took their opportunity. As did Minister Fouché, whose ‘patriotic coup d-etat’ was a lasting success, not least for him. For a while.
But Napoleon’s final throw puzzled all...
* * *
At the end of all this madness and human inhumanity, Napoleon sat not on a throne but a folding camp-stool. That resting place for his bum in turn sat upon the Russian steppe on an autumnal evening. The sole advantage his famed tactical eye could discern from there was that snow was antiseptic.
For His Imperial Highness would have far preferred to be in the comfortable and germ-free environment of the Palace of Versailles, but Destiny decreed otherwise. The Emperor went along with that: because one thing you could say for the (ex) man was that he always ate what was put before him.
Mind you, if so, he was dining on a dog’s dinner. His normal insistence on strict protocol was suspended the same way as concerns about infection. Right now for instance, Napoleon Bonaparte was having to take unabashed criticism—indeed abuse!—from his Marshals and senior generals, the same ungrateful wretches he’d personally raised from obscurity to greatness and gold braid.
His children, his dynasty, should have been some support but weren’t. It transpired that loyalty wasn’t uppermost in their natures—unlike ambition. The Emperor-in-exile had been obliged to execute some for plotting and worse. Which was, when he considered it, an awful waste of all his effort, not to mention those traumatic ‘galvanic enemas’…
The first few were dealt with discreetly by poisoning their serum, but their depressingly frequent successors got to meet Madame Guillotine. There was entertainment for the rabble in that, so Napoleon reasoned, in thus seeing the high and mighty brought low. Not to mention a fable for all the family, with a strong moral and, most importantly, a hundred per cent record of reform.
So much for ‘reason.’ The policy did prove educational, but not in the way intended. The plots simply got more subtle and in the end, to avoid a King Herod style massacre of offspring, the Emperor was obliged to be forgiving. It ran contrary to his nature, but, looking on the bright side, served to keep him on his toes when advancing years meant natural brilliance might be dimming. However, family meals became a trifle fraught (and crowded) when bodyguards and food tasters easily outnumbered the guests.
But now that Napoleon and his army were on the march (or on the run, to be specific) there was no time for decorum. Family traitors were dealt with en route, and handy trees roped in to hang them from. It made a very public point but proved a bad idea in terms of time-saving. Lazarans, even this new breed of demi-Lazarans, took a frustratingly long time to die by strangulation. In the end, troops were called in to tug on the feet till the head came off.
Yet Bonaparte’s devilish luck still held. Even such sordid spectacles proved grist to the Imperial mill. As it passed by the army reflected that if the Emperor behaved thus to his own kin, then what mercy could others hope for? Their resolve about marching into Muscovite mists temporarily stiffened.
However, like all moods, that passed, to be replaced by something more truculent as the first snows started to fall. Casualties due to cold began and mass desertions occurred for the hovering clouds of Cossacks to hunt down. Like some put-upon mule, the army slowed and then finally stopped dead without being told to.
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