Tales of the Shadowmen 4: Lords of Terror

by Jean-Marc Lofficier

  “We’d better make room for more company than that, if that’s the way we intend to go,” Malo de Treguern replied, with a hint of annoyance. As he turned to speak to the standing ma, he looked up, thus tilting his head back and allowing Ned to glimpse his tonsure.

  He really is a monk of sorts, then, Ned thought, scrupulously. Perhaps he really was a member of the Order of St. John, and perhaps some relic of the Order really does survive, just as relics of Civitas Solis survive. It may well be, though, that the ex-Knights of Malta are, and perhaps always were, affiliates of Civitas Solis. Even if Henri has succeeded in infiltrating that Order, he might have provoked grave mistrust as well as keen interest among its factions.

  “You should have answered our request and our questions politely,” Malo de Treguern said to Ned, again–although Ned took some slight offense at that, having thought his responses reasonably polite as well as reasonably honest. “That way, we might have been prepared to let you go.”

  In a pig’s eye, Ned thought. Aloud, he said: “I’m no man’s enemy, and I don’t bear grudges after the fashion of your local hirelings. I can do you no harm, in any case, although I’ll have to be careful now that I don’t lead you to my friend–unless, of course, you can come up with the 50 sovereigns.”

  Malo de Treguern stood up, picking up the candle-tray as he did so. Looking down at his captive, he said: “I’m glad to hear that you’ll bear no grudge. I’ll let you go in two days, as Simeon suggests, provided that we’ve succeeded in our mission by then. I’ll send you water and food when I have time to spare. I’m sorry to have inconvenienced you–you’re a mere fly, after all, whose buzz is no more than a tiny nuisance–but matters are already moving too quickly for my liking, and the last thing I need is another loose cannon rolling around the deck. In case you’re minded to try to escape, I must warn you that I shall instruct my hirelings that they need not handle you so tenderly if you get in our way again.”

  “If one of the great minds of his era were to die an untimely death,” Ned said, making no attempt to hide his annoyance in the face of this sententious threat, “and your intention were to prevent his being resurrected, and his intelligence preserved to the extent that can be contrived, I might bear a grudge for that.”

  “Our intentions go a great deal further than that,” the aged warrior monk told him, with more than a hint of renewed threat in his voice, as he and his companion moved towards the door, “and we are not to be intimidated by the grudges of dwarfs. Be grateful that we have removed you from the game–it’s now a field of play where not-so-innocent bystanders are very likely to get hurt.”

  The door closed, plunging Ned into total darkness again.

  He immediately began to worry the cords binding his wrists, hopeful that he could get free, given time. He rather liked the idea of being a loose cannon rolling around the deck, albeit one that wanted to prevent injury rather than inflicting it. At any rate, he liked the analogy far better than the one that had likened him to a fly whose buzz was only a tiny nuisance.

  Chapter Eight

  The Necromancer’s Den

  Ned struggled for an hour in pitch darkness, attempting to extricate his wrists from the tightly-knotted cords, but whoever had tied them knew his business, and Ned was coming close to despair when the door swung open again and faint candlelight poured through it.

  The man who entered, bearing a candlestick, was Guido, the “vampire’s minion.” He looked down at Ned with a wry smile on his face.

  “You trapped me very neatly by the shore,” he said, in a low voice, “but it seems that you’ve run into trouble yourself.”

  Ned did not bother to correct the other’s slight misapprehension. “Have you come to taunt me or to set me free?” he asked, keeping his own voice low.

  “To set you free,” said Guido, with the slightest of sighs, setting the candlestick down and starting work on the knots binding Ned’s ankles, “although you don’t entirely deserve such generous treatment. We still have enemies in common, Monsieur Knob, and ought to make what alliances we can.”

  “How did you know where to find me?” Ned asked.

  “I have not been idle since I woke up with a sore head. I thought that I had every chance of making friends with the banditti, if I were to dispense a little coin; I hardly thought to find them in the employ of Mother Church, avid to do violence to her enemies. We live in strange times, my friend. Anyhow, I found out easily enough where the bandits’ masters were lodged, and I saw you carried in unconscious. We’re only a few hundred meters from Walton’s house, in another covert on the same irregular terrace. I would have come to you sooner, but I had to make perfectly certain that the coast was clear. There are only two Churchmen, it seems, but they have more than a dozen bandits at their beck and call. One party is watching Walton’s house, while a larger one has gone to San Terenzo, perhaps hoping to find the demon there–not that he is actually a demon, of course, as you must know as well as I do.”

  “Any more than your own master is a actually a vampire, I suppose,” Ned retorted, rolling over so that Guido could get a better purchase on the cords securing his wrists.

  “Did the Churchmen tell you that?” Guido asked.

  “Everyone seems to have known it but me,” Ned admitted. “I’d assumed that you were in the pay of the Turks, but it seems that I was naive.”

  “My master would be amused to hear that,” Guido said. “The Sultan hates vampires even more virulently than the Pope–mercifully, neither has much say in Hungary nowadays. The last relic of the Holy Roman Empire is neither very holy nor very Roman. There!”

  Ned sat up and rubbed his wrists to restore the circulation to his numb hands.

  “Do you know who the Churchmen are?” Guido asked.

  Ned hesitated, but decided that he owed the other that much. “They claim to be members of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem,” he said, “reformed in secret since the fall of Malta. One calls himself Malo de Treguern; he addressed the other as Simeon. Do you know them?”

  Guido shrugged. “The name means nothing,” he said, “but there are rumors a-plenty of a new crusade against so-called necromancy. Thus far, its operations are clandestine–but if they were able to capture a man returned from the dead, of whatever sort, they might elect to put him on show in order to rouse mobs to continue their work. They would not dare put Frankenstein on trial, given that he is a Swiss citizen with a magistrate for a father, but few people know that he is here, or even that he is alive and nearly sane; if he were to vanish, I doubt that anyone in authority would exert themselves overmuch to find him. We need to prevent that, if we can.”

  Ned was duly grateful for the fact that his supposed ally really did seem disposed now to share what information he had. There would be no more nonsense about bomb-factories. “Shelley and Byron know that he is here,” he pointed out, “and they are famous men.”

  “For which reason the Hospitallers will not lay a finger on them,” Guido said. “But that will not mean that anyone will take them seriously if they were bold enough to tell their story. Their discretion thus far suggests that they are keenly aware of that–genius has the reputation of being perilously close to madness and I doubt that they would be able to win support from the likes of Davy and Darwin without incontrovertible proof of the contention that the dead may return. Frankenstein and Patou have been very wise, I think, to try their hardest to perfect the process before granting it any publicity, given that they want to inspire hope rather than horror. We need to leave now, and must be careful. There was no one downstairs when I came in, but they might send someone back at any moment to make sure that you are safe.”

  Ned nodded, and followed Guido through the door and along a corridor to a flight of wooden steps. There was no light in the house save for Guido’s candle, and they made their way outside without any difficulty. Once they were outside, Guido extinguished the candle, although the Moon was far from full and the stars were partly obscured by drifting clo
uds.

  Ned did not recognize the street, but they were high enough on the hill for him to estimate their location within the town; Guido had been reasonably accurate in his estimate of its distance from Walton’s house. Guido started walking in that direction.

  “What do you intend to do?” Ned asked him.

  “If Walton has any sense, he must have sent a messenger to Pisa to summon as many of the conspirators as possible. If you did not scare them sufficiently by barging into Casa Magni this morning, the sight of that pursuit down the hill and along the strand will certainly have brought them to a fine pitch of alarm. If Walton recognized the demon, as he might well have done, they will know that all hope of proceeding in secret is now gone. They’ll probably take flight, but they’ll gather at the house first. If there’s to be a siege or a pitched battle, it will be as well for us to weigh in before the larger party returns from San Terenzo. If we can help Frankenstein to get away while there’s still time...”

  “They can’t take flight,” Ned objected. “Shelley and his wife aren’t well enough to travel.”

  “Then they’ll be left behind,” Guido said, simply. “Williams and his wife might stay to care for them, but the rest will have to go, and go quickly. I can help, especially in the matter of finding a new place of safety.”

  “I don’t think...” Ned began. He had several objections to raise, and strong reservations to express regarding the wisdom of accepting guarantees of safe conduct from the minion of a vampire, but Guido cut him off and silenced him with an abrupt gesture. They were coming close to Walton’s house now, and had to complete their approach silently. Ned wondered briefly whether he ought to have passed on Malo de Treguern’s warning about giving the bandits permission to use any and all violent means, but decided that it was unnecessary. Guido did not seem the type to be squeamish in such matters himself.

  Ned had no weapon, and Guido only had his stiletto–that being why he had had to untie Ned rather than simply slicing through the cords that bound him–but Ned had no hesitation about going forward regardless. He was not afraid. If the banditti were widely scattered, as they probably were, given the size of the tract of land they had to surround, it might well be possible to take them one by one and appropriate their arms. Ned still had questions that he wanted to ask his currently-obliging informant, especially concerning his mysterious vampire master, but that would have to wait.

  They found the first bandit easily enough, on the very spot where Guido had stationed himself to watch the house–an understandable coincidence, given that it was a natural coign of vantage. The bandit was not standing up, though–he was laid out flat on his back, unconscious, and he had already been deprived of his weapons.

  Guido let out his breath with a slight sigh of delight. Ned, too, was more delighted than surprised. If this was not the work of one of Frankenstein’s more muscular friends–Trelawny, perhaps–than it could only be the work of the new Lazarus. Either way, it suggested that the battle had already been joined, and that the right side had seized an early advantage.

  The second bandit they contrived to locate was, however, awake and alert. Guido crept up behind him and used one of the cords that he had taken from Ned’s wrists as a garrote, preventing him from calling out. Whether he released the strangling-cord before the man had choked to death, Ned could not tell, and he could not afford to care overmuch. Guido took the man’s pistol for himself, and handed his poniard to Ned.

  Then the silence was broken by an alarm call–not occasioned by Guido or Ned–and there was a sudden flurry of movement all around the house. Ned and Guido separated, hurrying to assist in the burgeoning conflict. Ned had evidently chosen a bad direction, for he found his path suddenly blocked by one man, while another immediately tried to circle behind him. This time, they were obviously not acting under orders to be discreet.

  One of the attackers fired a pistol, whose ball whirred above Ned’s head, while the other tried to stab him in the throat. Ned avoided the knife-thrust, rather to narrowly for comfort, and hurled himself forward to butt his nearer assailant in the midriff. They went down in an untidy heap, but Ned was able to get a grip on the hand that held the knife and force it away from his body.

  He heard a dull thud as the other bandit fell, struck from behind. No more than a second elapsed before strong hands reached down to push him out of the way, before a heavy boot came down on the knife-wielder’s throat, crushing the bandit’s Adam’s apple.

  “Into the house, quickly!” said a voice he recognized readily enough as that of Lazarus.

  Ned allowed himself to be bundled toward the main entrance of Walton’s house and through the open doorway. The corridor within was dark, but he was hurried along it, then pushed up against a wall and told to be still. Others were now hastening through the door, which was abruptly slammed. Then a light was struck and a candle lit.

  There were seven men gathered in the corridor, counting Ned and Lazarus. Walton was there, and John Taaffe; Ned also recognized Edward Trelawny, who had visited the house on several occasions, and a man with a terrible wound on his face, whom he took to be Captain Hay. The seventh man was a prisoner, who had evidently been seized by Taaffe and Hay; it was Malo de Treguern.

  “Guido’s still out there!” Ned was quick to say. “He’s no Turkish spy, but a friend–he took care of at least one of the banditti for you.”

  “He’ll come to no harm,” Lazarus was quick to say. “If he wants to come in, he may–but one of the bandits, at least, ran away down the hill. He’ll be in San Terenzo within the hour, and the whole gang may well be back within two. We’ve no time to waste.”

  Malo de Treguern looked at Ned, with a steely glint in his eye, which suggested that he might be regretting his clemency. He had seemed perfectly reasonable on his own ground, when all was going according to his plan, but there was a wildness about him now. “The fact that you have a hostage will not deter them from attacking,” the Hospitaller said. “They will rely on God to protect me–and rightly so.”

  The Churchman was not the center of the group’s attention, however. The others–Walton and Trelawny in particular–were staring at Lazarus mistrustfully, although they had to know that he had helped them in the skirmish.

  “It was you who brought down this swarm of hornets upon us,” Walton said, angrily. “If you knew how hard we have struggled to avoid any possibility of being thought to be in league with demons, you would surely have stayed away.”

  “I am not a demon,” Lazaruis repeated, yet again. “If the work is to begin again, I have more right to interest myself in its progress than any one of you.”

  “We have no time for this,” said Trelawny, putting his hand on Walton’s arm. “Bring them both into the laboratory. Hay, guard the door–and watch out for the man who is not, after all, a Turkish spy, since he seems to be on our side. Let him in if he asks to come in–we may yet need every man and every weapon we can muster.”

  In the absence of any specific instruction, Ned followed as Trelawny and Taaffe hustled Malo de Treguern into a room at the rear of the house, where the equipment that Victor Frankenstein had been gathering was accumulated, much of it not yet removed from its packaging, Ned’s heart sank as he realized how very unready Frankenstein was to resume his experiments, even in the simplest terms. No wonder Shelley had become alarmed by the danger threatening his wife–and so much the worse for him, if the wound in his head could not be healed.

  Victor Frankenstein was there, perched on a stool. Malo de Treguern shook off Trelawny’s arm and immediately stepped forward to confront him, although Ned could see that the confrontation would be futile. Frankenstein’s eyes were glued to his “creature,” and his face showed a bewildering confusion of emotions. The man of science clearly did not have the slightest idea what he ought to think or feel about his “creation,” let alone what to say to him.

  “Vile necromancer!” said the warrior monk, in English, for all the world as if his curse might have rea
l injurious power. “Blasphemous maker of demons! You shall rue this day!” He seemed mad with frustrated rage, having lost every vestige of the calmness and method that he had brought to his earlier examination.

  Frankenstein continued staring at his “daemon,” who stepped forward and offered his hand. “Bonjour, Victor,” he said, pausing slightly before withdrawing the unaccepted hand and continuing, in French: “It’s good to see you again, and to find you better than before. I came to help you with your work, but I seem to have arrived at the same time as your enemies. It’s too late to hide, I fear–in mainland Europe, at least. Will you let me help you find a safer refuge, and assist you in your work?”

  Malo de Treguern was amazed, and seemed to have taken great offense at being ignored. He took hold of the small wooden crucifix he wore suspended about his neck and brandished it, as if he were about to attempt an exorcism.

  It was, Ned thought, purely because Victor Frankenstein could no longer bear to meet his creature’s calm eyes that the man of science turned his gaze aside momentarily to look his angry accuser up and down, with frank disdain–as John Calvin himself might have studied a Romanist friar. Then the alleged necromancer turned to look at Lazarus again, with tears welling in his eyes. “You should have let me alone,” he said, in a voice hardly above a whisper. “How many times have I begged you to stay away?”

  “I tended you when you first fell ill, Victor,” the Adam of the new race replied, quietly. “I was kind, and faithful, although I had recovered but half my wits. Would you rather I had been the monster your delirium proclaimed me to be? Was it so very hard to bear that you found yourself helpless in my arms, like a child? Was it such a terrible blow to your godlike pride? Do you really believe that your future subjects will be more thankful and more docile than me?”

  “We have no time for this,” Trelawny said, in an anguished tone. “We must act, and quickly. We must leave Spezia–the only question is, where shall we go? Even if Byron brings the Bolivar tonight, it may be too risky to go down to the shore, given that the remaining banditti are scouring San Terenzo for this fellow. We have a chance to strike inland and make our way to Pisa–I say that we should take it.”