“I’ll do that,” Ned promised.
As with Walton and Trelawny, no move was made to stop Ned when he went back to the hotel again to get something more to eat. He was not so lucky, though, when he tried to leave the dining-room to go back to his bed, for the young men from Sussex were there, making merry before yet another whoring expedition. They knew that something very strange was afoot in the town, and had found out that he was caught up in it.
He told them the truth, in synoptic form, but they laughed uproariously and called him a fine romancer. They, at least, were still trapped within the narrow span of their own limited dimension, which hardly touched the world through which they moved as idle tourists.
“Have you seen Master Shelley at Casa Magni?” one of them asked him. “He could probably make a fine epic poem out of a story like that.”
“Where do you suppose the little man got it from?” scoffed another of the good companions. “It’s all borrowed from that garish horror tale he published anonymously back in ’18.”
“No, that was Byron,” said yet another, “and it was in ’19, in Blackwood’s.”
“The tale of the vampire is another story,” Ned said, apologetically, “which I have yet to learn in full. In time, though, lads, in time...” And with that, he contrived to extricate himself from their company, and went back to bed.
Chapter Eleven
The Tuscan Light Horse
Ned did not intend to sleep late, but exhaustion got the better of him again, and the morning sunlight was streaming through his window when he finally staggered out of bed. He bathed and ate a hearty breakfast before making his way yet again to the house behind the olive grove under the harsh light of a blazing Sun that was no more than two hours from its zenith.
He found Frankenstein poring over one of the three corpses, vibrant with excitement, while Walton and Lazarus looked on. “It’s definitely working!” the man of science said. “The fluid is beginning to flow in his veins, albeit sluggishly and his flesh is maintaining its consistency remarkably well. Decay had hardly set in, so there’s less work to be done...”
“Can you wake him?” Walton asked, impatiently.
“Not yet,” said the Grey Man, answering for his maker. “For his sake, it will be better not to hurry.”
“I don’t care about the bandit,” Walton said, brutally. “The point is to satisfy that mob, and get out of here while we can. It might be better if he doesn’t recover his wits, in my opinion. How soon will he be in a fit state to put on parade?”
Frankenstein pursed his lips, but made no comment on Walton’s attitude. He pushed his right hand into the slimy liquid again to test the flesh of the dead man’s arm.
“The signs of life he’s showing won’t be sustainable outside the fluid for six hours, at least,” the man of science opined. “Even then, he might not be able to walk or talk if we hauled him out. We have to leave him immersed until dusk, at least.”
Walton consulted his watch. Dusk, Ned knew, was a full nine hours away. “Time for a division of the infantry to arrive in force,” Walton muttered, “let alone a detachment of cavalry–but we wouldn’t be wise to make a move before nightfall, unless it’s absolutely necessary. I can’t stand all this waiting, though.”
“Go to Casa Magni, then,” said Frankenstein. “The crowd won’t bar your way. Change the dressing on Shelley’s wound. Comfort Mary–and tell Williams to be ready to put to sea at a moment’s notice.”
Walton shook his head. He was determined to stay. If trouble did materialize, that would be the time for him to assume command.
Once the night became dark, Ned knew, Gregory Temple’s courier would return to the hotel, expecting to collect another report. At the same time–or a little beforehand, if his ship had caught a favorable wind–Henri de Belcamp’s courier would station himself on the approach to the quay at much the same time. The thought of encoding everything he had to write, twice over, was distinctly tiresome, although he knew that he ought to send some word, in case he did not get the chance again. Assuming that he still had time in hand, though, he went out of the main door into the sunlight. Malo de Treguern was still sitting on the step, as if he were hoping that God might somehow contrive to send down a lightning-bolt from the cloudless sky, to obliterate the Antichrist’s lair.
“Have you had anything to eat, Brother Malo?” Ned asked him, sitting down beside him.
“I have fasted for 40 days and 40 nights in my time,” the ex-Knight of Malta informed him, stiffly.
“They will let you leave, I think,” Ned said. “It’s only Frankenstein and the Grey Man they’re holding prisoner, and Walton won’t try to hold you any longer against your will. You’ll probably find your friend waiting for you in San Terenzo–although I’m surprised that he hasn’t come here to make sure that you’re unhurt.”
“You will not obtain any advantage by pretended amity,” Treguern told him, bluntly.
Ned ignored the rebuke. “You think he’s gone for help, then,” he said, as if thinking aloud. “But where to? Not to Rome, that’s for sure. Civitas Solis had convents within a day’s ride of Paris, but I doubt that the same is true of any Italian city.”
Mention of Civitas Solis made Treguern turn his head slightly to look more sharply at his interlocutor, but the warrior monk was as good as his word, and gave nothing away.
“It would not be unprecedented for two orders of the Church to be at loggerheads,” Ned went on, “especially when one, at least, could easily be deemed heretical. On the other hand, you seem to me to be every inch the scholar, probably as conscientiously esoteric in his chosen fields of study as Victor Frankenstein. If I were to guess, I’d guess that the relic of the Order of St. John is now under the protection and supervision of the revitalized Civitas Solis–unlike my old friend John Devil, whose application for membership was probably rejected, although a certain Jesuitical caution might have prevented your masters from telling him outright. On the other hand, Civitas Solis may be a mere myth, like vampires and the elixir of life, unworthy of serious consideration by intelligent men.”
Treguern deigned to comment at last. “A buzzing fly,” he said. “The slightest irritation imaginable.”
“You are entitled to your opinion of me,” Ned said, equably, “but I’m not an unreasonable man, Brother Malo. Even though I have no religion, I’m also a passably virtuous one. If and when you find out where the Outremort has made landfall, I have information to trade that might make it worth your while to let me in on the secret. I’m usually in London or Paris, and will not be too hard to find in either city for a man with your resources.”
“I have spent more time than I deserved in the company of revenants, working patiently for the fulfillment of prophecies,” Treguern said, enigmatically but with perfect equanimity. “I’m an old man, and my time of rest cannot be long delayed–but if God still has work for me to do, then he will succor me. You’d do well to be wary, if you’re as easy to find as you say.”
“I’m sure that the Lord will lend you the assistance you need,” Ned told him. “Remember, though, that He works in mysterious ways. Given the company you’ve been keeping of late, death might be no more than a punctuation mark in the ongoing story of your life, and you might be required to do the Lord’s work for a long time thereafter. The road to Heavenly indolence might not be as easy to negotiate as you presently suppose.”
That finally got an emotional reaction from the Churchman. “Vile korrigan!” he exclaimed–but then the expression in his fiery eyes changed from wrath to exultation as he saw something beyond the hedge. Ned immediately stood up to see what it was.
It was as if a flock of birds with impossibly ornate tails were fluttering in the unkempt branches at the crown of the hedge. It required two seconds and an anxious murmur from the waiting crowd for Ned to realize that they were actually the plumes of military helmets.
The Tuscan Light Horse had arrived.
Ned promptly turned back to Malo de
Treguern, and contrived to pronounce the single syllable “Don’t...” before he realized how futile any such plea would be.
Having lost the loyalty of his hirelings and failed to sway the Spezian mob, the soldier in God’s Army still had high hopes of claiming the loyal support of a secular military unit. He had already come to his feet and was drawing in a deep breath.
Ned did not linger, but darted inside the house, calling for Walton and Trelawny. This time, he knew, the Grey Man would not be the right spokesman to represent the conspiracy.
By the time Walton had run outside, though, followed by Trelawny, Malo de Treguern had already embarked upon his new clarion call–and he was more in control of himself now than he had been when he had ranted at the sullen crowd in the gloom.
The officer in charge of the cavalry detachment had been followed through the gate by three other riders, but once he had come to a halt, there was no room on the path for any more, so the others were grouping in the narrow lane beyond the hedge. The members of the loosely-knit crowd, somewhat circumspect in the presence of bright uniforms and sturdy sabers, had hesitated between pressing forward and retreating into the shadows; they had already sacrificed the opportunity to seem intimidatingly resolute.
Malo de Treguern pointed a bony finger at Walton, rattling out a string of accusations that had nothing to do with necromancy. Ned knew that the cavalrymen were already ill-disposed towards the Englishmen, even though it had been their own man who had picked the quarrel some weeks before. In all probability, none of these riders knew that Masi had been acting under orders, and they very probably had their own ideas as to what had happened and why. Malo de Treguern knew all of that too, and know how to make his pitch to the mind of officialdom.
Walton ran forward and began to shout as loudly as Treguern, denying the accusations leveled against him and demanding to be left in peace. Ned had enormous difficulty following the overlapping tirades, but he understood well enough when Treguern set off on a new tack, complaining about the desecration of the bodies of good Italians and good Catholics, and demanding that the corpses be recovered for proper burial. Walton immediately launched into a stream of protest, but Ned could see that the pre-emptive strike had taken effect on both the officer and his men.
The crowd realized that too, and its ringleaders made a belated decision to exercise its power–but the artisans had delayed too long to make any effective attempt to demonstrate conclusively that they were the superior force and the ultimate arbiters of the situation, and thus deter the soldiers from any belligerence. When the Spezians attempted to gather in a tentatively threatening manner, the Pisan calvarymen were quick to draw their sabers and muster a formation.
There was a brief moment when the crowd’s ringleaders might have drawn back, to form their own men up in quasi-military ranks and put on a countervailing display of potential strength, which might have made the officer pause to reflect–but the moment was lost. The mounted soldiers urged their horses forward, as they had probably done a dozen times before when breaking up crowds in Pisa, fully expecting the men on foot to scatter and run. The Spezians were, however, made of sterner stuff.
Ned wanted to join in the shouting, in order to beg the men of Spezia to mass by the door of the house and block the entrance, but his Italian was not up to the task, and he could not have made himself heard even if they had been willing and able to listen to him. The Tuscan Light Horse had evidently been given grounds for a grudge or two in their time, and as soon as the impression was created that they were actually attacking the common people, with no good reason and without sufficient numbers to be sure of victory, the incipient conflict turned into a disorderly riot.
The officer’s reaction–natural enough, on tactical grounds–was to look for a defense. The door of the house stood wide open, with no one to defend it but a handful of unarmed men. The officer yelled an order at his men, and charged straight for it.
It was, unfortunately, a capacious doorway; there was plenty of room for a horse and rider to pass through it, without the rider having to duck too low. Walton was bowled over by the officer’s horse. Ned had no alternative but to imitate Trelawny and dive sideways to avoid his thrusting saber and the iron-shod hooves of his mount.
Ned got to his feet as quickly as he could, but there was nothing he could do as five more horses swept past him, one by one. They galloped straight along the corridor towards Victor Frankenstein’s laboratory.
Ned had to imagine what would happen when they arrived there, but it was not hard. In his mind’s eye, he saw the sturdy but delicately-balanced equipment tumbling, its brittler elements smashing on the tiled floor, and also saw the multitudinous wires dragged hither and yon, ripped from their connections. The baths would not be upset; nor, in all probability, would the calvarymen pause to drag the men who were suspended between death and new life from their fluid in which they were immersed–but all hope of their eventual resurrection was lost now.
The remainder of the cavalry troop was caught up in the seething crowd, whose members were now agitated to fear and fury. There were few screams, and Ned could see that both sides in the battle were exercising a measure of restraint; the horsemen still considered themselves to be engaged in crowd control rather than a massacre, and the men fighting from the crowd were trying to unhorse the soldiers rather than hack them to pieces. Far more bruises were being inflicted than cuts–but even so, the situation was completely out of control. The riot could not be stopped.
Walton barked an order, in English, instructing his own people to execute the emergency scheme he had hatched. There was no alternative. There seemed to be little chance, though, that Frankenstein’s friends could form a coherent group in order to protect one another as they retreated in an orderly manner.
Ned ran into the house. The corridor leading to the laboratory was clear now, and there was nothing to obstruct his passage. As he had anticipated, though, the laboratory itself was in a very different state. The horses had passed right through and made their exit by the wide-open French windows, their riders apparently hoping that they might go around the house and tackle the crowd from the rear, but they had done enormous damage as they passed. In the event, three of their riders–including the officer–had been thrown or forced to dismount, and all three were waving their swords in near-panic, although no one was trying to engage them in combat.
Frankenstein, to his credit, had not only stood his ground bravely but was still doing everything he could to defend the baths where the dead men lay. He was screaming at the soldiers, with his empty hands held high to demonstrate that he was unarmed, but his Italian was not good enough for him to make his message clear; the cavalrymen were extremely unsympathetic to his attempts to block their way, even though they had no idea where they ought to be going, or why. The officer would have run the scientist through had Lazarus not snatched his maker away in the nick of time and dragged him towards the French windows.
Ned would have run to help them if he could have done so, but there was too much debris in the way, and his short legs could not bound over it with sufficient alacrity.
Lazarus caught sight of Ned as he was making good his escape, dragging Frankenstein with him. “Run, Ned!” he shouted. “Get clear as best you can!”
It was good advice, and Ned knew it. He turned on his heel and went back the way he had come. Once he was out of the front door, he put his head down and sprinted for the gate. Once he was out of the gate, he headed for the steepest part of the hill and he went down it with all possible speed.
He did not stop running until he reached the shore, by which time he was completely out of breath. He looked around, hoping that he might see Lazarus and Frankenstein, or any one of the others, running behind him–but he found himself alone. He took two or three leaden steps in the direction of San Terenzo, but paused as he realized that help might be available nearer at hand. He hesitated for a full minute–but then he did catch sight of other running men coming towards h
im, from the direction of Casa Magni. There were at least three, He cursed as he recognized more of Malo de Treguern’s banditti. He did not suppose that the orders Treguern had given them two nights before had been countermanded.
Mercifully, he had time to give the bandits the slip.
Fortunately, it also turned out that the boat that had brought Henri de Belcamp’s courier to collect his latest report had arrived early.
Unfortunately, that was the last stroke of luck he had for quite some time.
Epilogue
At Sea
Ned intended, once the courier’s vessel had cleared the harbor, to sail directly to Casa Magni. That did not happen quickly, though, because the harbormaster insisted on delaying the vessel’s departure until it had been cleared by customs officers.
The customs officers were not acting on anyone else’s orders, and had not the slightest inkling of what had been happening on the hill above Spezia, far beyond their sphere of interest and influence, but simply by carrying out their ordinary functions in their customary manner, they contrived to hold Ned back for several hours. During that interval, the weather changed drastically.
A violent squall blew up–so violent that the boat’s master evoked his privilege and refused to put to sea once he was cleared to do so. Ned had authority enough and anger enough to overrule him, but his insistence turned out to be worse than futile–once out of the harbor, the vessel could make no headway at all towards Casa Magni, even though it was a mere mile away, and was blown out to sea instead. By the time the storm had died, as rapidly as it had been born, it was too late. Ned returned to Casa Magni to find the Don Juan gone and the house deserted. He lingered for a while, hoping that Guido might be lurking in the vicinity, but in the end, he consented to be borne away westwards.
At Genoa, Ned wrote his report and translated it into code–once only–for the benefit of Gregory Temple. He took it to a dispatch office in the city which handled large volumes of material sent to England by tourists, and entrusted it to the mail-coach. By that time, 48 hours had passed since the vessel had left Spezia, having been forced to put into Riomaggiore to pick up supplies that the captain had not had time to load upon departure. That particular delay proved something of a small blessing, though. The Italian courier, who was no stranger to waterfront inns, was able to collect rumors regarding the sensational events in Spezia in Riomaggiore that would not have troubled the more urbane gossips of Genoa. Once the more flagrant fantasies had been discarded, those rumors had allowed him to amend and augment his report to a judicious degree.
Tales of the Shadowmen 4: Lords of Terror Page 41