“I have not asked for an alliance,” the Grey Man pointed out. “It was you who invited me to your room and made me welcome. Do you really want to be my friend, given that I am being hunted by men with pistols and muskets, who seem to be prepared to shoot on sight even in a law-abiding town like Spezia?”
“Of course,” Ned said. “In my youth, in St. Giles’s, all my friends and almost all my acquaintances were hunted men, endangered by the rope if not by bullets. I’ve lost more than I can count, including those I loved most dearly of all. I made a new friend today, who seems very likely to go the way of all the rest. Death and I are far from strangers–and whatever Ned Knob can do to assist in the war of science against death, you can be very certain that he will not hesitate. You have not asked for an alliance, it’s true–but you were following me, were you not, in the hope that I might be useful to you?”
The new Lazarus did not deny it. “I hope and trust that a reconciliation with my maker might be possible,” he said, “but it might be better if the initial approach were made through an intermediary. I dare not approach Walton, because I’m far from sure what his attitude to me might be. I would have risked an interview with Shelley, despite his wife’s opinion, if that had been the best course–but when I saw you come from the house, not long after my maker had gone in, I thought there might be another opportunity worth investigating. I was still wary, as you saw, but I’m glad now that I followed my impulse. You might want to be wary too, though–as you’ve seen, I’m not without enemies.”
“Your maker told me that he and his conspirators have enemies of whom I knew nothing,” Ned observed. “In retrospect, though, it’s possible that he might have been thinking of you.”
“It’s possible,” the Grey Man conceded, sadly. “I’m not his enemy, though. I’m determined to make my peace with him if I can–but it might not be easy, if he has not entirely recovered from the legacy of his delirium. Are you willing to help me, Mr. Knob?”
“As it happens,” Ned said, “it would suit me very well to become your ambassador. It wouldn’t be fair to let you think that I am agreeing to your request for purely altruistic reasons.”
“I had taken it for granted that you have your own reasons for being here,” the new Lazarus replied, graciously. “That is your business–always provided that you mean no harm to my maker or his friends.”
“I mean no harm to anyone, at present,” Ned assured him. “Although I might want to make some exception to the rule in future. If the mysterious Guido really is a vampire’s minion... but perhaps I’m jumping to conclusions. Perhaps vampires are no more deserving of the reputation that Gothic fiction has given them than the reanimate dead.”
“I must reserve my own judgment on that score,” the Grey Man said. “The term vampire appears to be local, though. In the Caribbean, I’m told, the reanimated dead are called zombis. The rumors are unclear as to whether they’re natural or artificial, although they’re said to be very stupid, without exception. You’ll go to my maker on my behalf, then?”
“Yes I will, this very afternoon,” Ned said. “You had best stay here, for the time being, but if one of the hotel servants comes in, or Guido decides to pay me another surreptitious visit, you might find it diplomatic to leave in a hurry. If so, try to make your way to San Terenzo again, and hide within view of the Don Juan–the boat I hid behind when you shouted your warning. I’ll look for you there.”
“Thank you, Mr. Knob,” said Lazarus, extending his hand to be shaken. “You’re a true gentleman.”
Ned shook the hand willingly. “I had such pretensions once,” he said, with a sigh, “but I’m a hardened radical now, who deem all men to be strictly equal, in terms of their innate quality.”
Chapter Seven
Wheels Within Wheels
When Ned set out for the house he had been watching for the last few days, the Sun was still some way above the western horizon, reddening in hue but shining very fiercely. The atmosphere was thick and heavy, more somnolent than it had been during the siesta hour, and the world seemed very still and perfectly content.
Ned walked with a confident and satisfied step, thinking furiously about what he ought to say to the new Adam’s maker and Robert Walton, and any other conspirators who might be with them. Shelley, he knew, would not be there unless he had taken a turn for the worse, so he would probably meet a wall of hostility–but he had an ace up his sleeve now.
As he approached the house, he looked up at the vantage point where Guido had placed himself on previous days, but found it empty. That put him slightly on his guard, but wariness was not enough to prevent misfortune. He was within ten yards of the gate into the grounds when a man stepped out of the shadows to his right, moving swiftly to block his way.
Ned did not recognize the man, but his costume and the way he moved–like a man accustomed to moving stealthily and to combat–strongly suggested that he must be one of the banditti who had been hunting the Grey Man earlier in the day. He had no weapon in his hand, but he had a dagger in his belt and he placed his hand on its hilt suggestively.
“You will come with me, please,” he said, in Italian.
The relative mildness of the request suggested that the banditti were now showing a certain circumspection, at least while operating in this respectable neighborhood, but Ned had no reason think that help would arrive swiftly if he called for it.
“I think not,” Ned said, continuing to move forward, with his hands ready to grapple the bandit’s wrist if the knife were drawn. Instead, the other man fell back two paces–but that was a tactical move, for Ned heard footsteps running up behind him. He turned round, and then leapt forward to meet his second assailant, who was wielding a cudgel. He managed to deflect the first thrust of the cudgel, and kicked backwards in anticipation of the other man’s closing movement. Had his leg been a handspan longer the maneuver might just have worked, but for once his short stature was his undoing. He put himself off balance without striking a wounding blow at either of his attackers.
He screamed for help then, with all his might, but–as he had anticipated–no help came, at least not swiftly enough to lend him any useful assistance. He hit out with both fists, and tried another kick in the Parisian style, but his opponents were accomplished brawlers. Had they been intent on killing him, they would have slit his throat within five seconds, but they were not. The fact that they only intended to knock him out gave him a full quarter-minute to make his displeasure felt, but he knew before the last blow landed that he had not hurt either one of them significantly.
When he woke up with a roaring headache, he could not estimate how much time had elapsed. It was quite dark, but that told him nothing, since he seemed to be in an enclosed space, with his body lying on a thick carpet and his head on bare boards. His hands were tied behind him, and his ankles were bound too.
As he began struggling against his bonds, Ned tripped a cord attached to a little bell. As soon as it rang,he suspended his struggle, realizing that someone would undoubtedly come in response to the summons. He wanted to compose himself for the confrontation.
A door opened somewhere to his left and two men came in, one of them carrying a tray on which a lighted candle was mounted. It was a tallow candle of no great dimension, and it was held at arm’s length, but Ned would have been able to recognize either face by its light, had he ever seen it before. He had not–but neither man was dressed in the manner of the banditti who had chased the new Lazarus and kidnapped Ned. Their clothing was simple and severe, but not cheap or well-worn.
While they stared down at him, Ned took the opportunity to look around the room. There was no furniture, although indentations in the carpet suggested that there had once been a sofa, a sideboard and several chairs. The walls had been cleared of pictures, whose outlines still showed there in the stains on the surface. The empty bed-alcove was now home to a large crucifix, though, and there was a slab of slate set beneath it as a kneeling-platform.
The ma
n holding the candle had obviously followed the flicker of his gaze. “Have you a religion, Monsieur Knob?” he asked, quietly, in French.
Ned ignored the question. “It seems that I am the only person involved in this business who readily owns up to his true name,” he observed, instead. “In consequence, everyone seems to know it, while I languish in ignorance as to theirs.”
“An embarrassing situation, for a spy,” the man said. He seemed to be very old and exceedingly thin, but also quite fit and strong–a near-paradoxical combination that Ned had observed before in men of a certain kind. “I am not at all reluctant to tell you my true name. I am Malo de Treguern, of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.”
“The Hospitaller knights?” Ned retorted, skeptically, trying unsuccessfully to squirm into a sitting position. “That Order was disbanded, I believe, when Napoleon captured Malta more than 20 years ago.”
“Many of Bonaparte’s commands have been reversed in recent years,” the warrior monk replied. “Some less ostentatiously than others. If you had come peacefully, as you were asked to do, you would not have been hurt. You were fortunate that we had given our assistants such strict instructions–they are the kind of men who would not normally hesitate to kill someone who attacked them.”
“It was they who attacked me, when they blocked my way,” Ned said. “If you intend to engage a man in polite conversation, you should not have your invitation delivered by bandits–even bandits who represent themselves as resistance fighters against non-existent oppression.”
Malo de Treguern set the candle down beside Ned and stepped back, as if to appraise his condition. “You may have a point,” he conceded, “but we are only two, and far from home. It was necessary for us to find local allies, and we selected the men we bought because they already had a grievance against the individual we were seeking, and have been fortunate enough to find. Now, alas, the opportunity for politeness seems to have passed. If you will oblige me by answering my questions honestly, we might yet be friends. If not... Well, let us not get sidetracked.”
Treguern knelt down then, to help Ned assume a sitting position, with his back to the wall. This allowed the old man to look Ned more fully in the face, while his younger companion remained standing. “Have you a religion?” Treguern repeated. The question seemed genuinely important to him.
“I’m no Calvinist,” Ned answered, warily, “if that’s what concerns you.” Frankenstein, he knew, was Genevese, and hence reckonable as a Calvinist no matter what his actual beliefs might be. Shelley was reputed to be an atheist. Neither persuasion was likely to be congenial to an ex-Knight of Malta.
“But have you a religion?” Malo de Treguern repeated.
“No,” Ned finally consented to answer. “I have not.”
His interrogator nodded, as if he had merely wanted to make certain of his suspicion. “Is that why the demon came to you?” he asked.
“He’s not a demon but a man,” Ned said, bluntly. “He has been dead, and is alive again, but he is a man regardless. He followed me because he hoped to find a friend. He did. Why were your hirelings attempting to kill him?”
“How can a man who is already dead be killed?” the self-supposed Hospitaller countered. “No more banter, please. Was it on the demon’s behalf that you were going to the necromancer’s house?”
“Ostensibly,” Ned said, deciding that it was hardly worth the bother of protesting that Victor Frankenstein was a man of science, not a necromancer. “But it was on my own behalf as much as his. I wanted news of my countryman, Percy Shelley. He fell ill this morning on his boat, the Don Juan, and I carried him back to his house. Walton’s colleague came to attend him there, because there was no doctor close at hand. I was interested to know the result of his examination.”
Malo de Treguern’s weathered face gave not the slightest hint of any reaction to this statement, although he undoubtedly suspected that Ned had more reasons to make contact with Walton than the one he had specified. “Who was the man with you when the demon ran towards you this morning?” the Churchman asked.
Ned took leave to regret that the dutiful Lazarus had shouted out his well-meant warning. If only the Adam of the Grey Race had kept quiet, the banditti might not have leapt to the conclusion that there was a link between Ned and his rival spy. “He calls himself Guido,” he replied, shaking his head in a vain attempt to clear it, “but I doubt that it is his real name.”
“Are you working together?”
“No.”
“Who are you working for?”
“The King of England,” Ned replied, with a certain emphasis.
His interlocutor laughed dryly, although he did not accompany the laugh with a smile. “That will win you no credit in these parts,” he said. “There’s no lingering love for Bonaparte’s lackeys in this region, but that does not make the appalling George more popular than any other foreign king. Is Guido in the employ of His Majesty too?”
“No,” Ned said. He almost stopped at that, but could not resist the temptation to make one more attempt to stir a reaction from those wrinkled features, which seemed as hard and polished as teak. “I took him for a Turkish spy at first,” he added, “but it seems that he’s a magyar, minion of some vampire king.”
Ned half-expected another dry laugh, perhaps slightly more vitriolic than the first, but none came.
“That’s an awkward complication,” muttered the standing man.
“Please be quiet, Simeon!” said Malo de Treguern. To Ned, he said: “Will the necromancer attempt to bring Shelley back to life if he dies?”
“I’d dearly like to know the answer to that myself,” Ned said. “Unfortunately, your bully-boys stopped me as I was on my way to find out.”
“You talked to Shelley, though,” the questioner pointed out. “Is he determined to be brought back, if he should die?”
“He didn’t mention the possibility,” Ned said, “but I can’t imagine that he would prefer to remain dead, if there’s a chance that he might not. Did Masi try to kill him in order to provide the man of science with a suitable subject with which to resume his work?”
“You’d have to ask Masi’s masters that,” the Hospitaller consented to reply, in a neutral tone, after a slight hesitation. “You might ask the boat-builder Roberts the same question–nor would I very confident in trusting the Irishman, Taaffe, if I were your friend Shelley. Someone there is, it seems, who imagines that poets and atheists are ideal subjects for this kind of devilry.”
“You might be stretching the imagined conspiracy too far,” Ned said, “although I can understand how you might, given the circumstances. Is the reborn Order of St. John commissioned as a new Inquisition, then, hot on the trail of a new breed of heretics? Have you news of Civitas Solis?”
That was a chance shot, and a reckless one, but it struck home. For a moment, his interrogator’s previously-expressionless face showed such blatant alarm that Ned could easily have believed that the man really was an inquisitor terrified by the imagined threat of legendary heresy. “What do you know of Civitas Solis?” the kneeling man asked, sharply.
“What does anyone know of Civitas Solis?” Ned countered, blandly. “It’s a phantom, the stuff of superstition–like vampires, zombis and poor fugitive Lazarus.”
“If we were like the inquisitors of old,” Malo de Treguern told him, “we would doubtless feel entitled to use less tender methods to discipline your sarcastic tongue. Perhaps we are, but we still feel obliged to give you the opportunity to make a free confession before we begin heating the irons and crushing your fingers. At any rate, as you have obviously deduced from my questions, we do not approve of atheism or of necromancy. Given that you seem to be involved with known advocates of both, you might want to be a little more wary of offending us.”
“I have nothing against true Christians,” Ned told him, sincerely, “but I would not count any torturer, however pious he might pretend to be, as a true Christian. You didn’t bring me here to hurt me, or you
r tame banditti wouldn’t have been so careful, and you certainly didn’t bring me here to instruct me to beware of atheism or necromancy. Why not proceed directly to the matter of bribery? I’m a spy, after all, ever ready to work for hire.”
“Will you sell us the demon, then? Do you know where he is?”
“How much is he worth?” Ned countered. “I’ll need more than the traditional 30 pieces of silver, mind. Gold is more in my line.”
“Fifty sovereigns,” said the kneeling man, promptly. Inquisitors, Ned remembered, were reputed to be specially licensed to lie to their victims.
“Done,” said Ned. “He’s in my room at the hotel, waiting for my return.” This too was a chance shot, but he felt quite certain that if these supposed Hospitallers had sent two banditti to intercept him, they must also have sent others to his room. What he wanted was confirmation that his ally had escaped them.
“Where did you arrange to meet him?” the kneeling man countered, harshly, tacitly providing the desired confirmation.
“Has he already escaped, then?” Ned asked, insouciantly. “Your banditti are by no means the cream of the crop, are they? Fra Diavolo must be weeping tears of shame in his Corsican grave, if rumors of his death have not been exaggerated.”
“Leave him here, Malo,” the standing man advised. “He won’t tell us anything useful, even if he knows anything, which I doubt. In two days, it will all be over and we can let him go. He’s harmless enough. We ought to provide him with a little company, though, if this Guido really is working for the vampire.”
Ned took due note of the fact that the man his interrogator had called Simeon had said “the vampire,” not “a vampire.” These gentle inquisitors seemed to be demon-hunters rather than heresy-hunters, and might well have been badly misled as to the manner of creature they were chasing. Perhaps, he thought, they too had read Frankenstein. The banditti evidently knew Lazarus of old, though, well enough to harbor a long-held grudge against him. They must know that he was no wild beast or imp of Hell.
Tales of the Shadowmen 4: Lords of Terror Page 37