Frankenstein's Legions (27 page)

‘Then I should be delighted.’

Another smile in response.

‘Very glad to hear it,
monsieur
. You’re a bit bulky to drag along unwilling. Thank you for making my job so much simpler.’

He waved to unseen friends in the darkness below. Further out in the courtyard Julius detected the stirring of bigger-than-human movement. Air displaced in a straight line from there to his window forced Frankenstein to notice cables attached to the bars.

‘I’d step away if I were you,’ said the visitor, starting to descend. ‘Take the opportunity to get dressed if you like. But don’t go too far...’

There was a team of cavalry mounts, Julius saw now, being roused into action against the metal grid imprisoning him. As his eyes acclimatised, aided by the moonlight, he detected more masked men, urging the horses on. There were yet more around the ladder’s base.

Frankenstein was about to pay tribute to all they’d so far achieved in silence, undetected in this heart of darkness, but then realised any words were redundant. Super-human was expected as standard in this regiment, and praise only cut in beyond that.

He retreated into the room and threw on some clothes. All his other possessions had been stolen, leaving him free as a monk to move on at a moment’s notice.

The cables braced, the bars buckled, the comparatively new (by the Chateau’s standards) mortar gave way.

This, thought Julius, was the moment when all would go wrong. The Mausoleum would awake in all its ghastly glory, including swarms of guards. But no: his callers had every point covered. Naturally, the bars made protest at being wrenched from home but they hit the ground with barely a sound, muffled by some pre-laid padding. No voice was raised to query events, no musket spat.

Yet there still ought to have been both. Discreet as the operation was, no horse can understand the need for total hush, nor will masonry and metal ever fully oblige. There was noise that the sentries should hear.

As he pulled on his boots Frankenstein waited for their intervention and the rip of bullets in the night. He waited in vain.

Having vacated the ladder’s summit to make way for the bars, the masked face appeared again, gesturing impatiently.

‘Courage,
monsieur
. I shall save you from falling…’

The implication of that worked better than threats. All Swiss are (or have to pretend to be) mountaineers. Frankenstein quit the room at speed, taking nothing, not even a rearward glance, and located the topmost rung with one questing foot. Aiming to impress he descended swiftly; so swift as to catch up with the masked man and plant a foot upon his head.

‘
Monsieur
!’ the man protested. ‘Have a care!  We do not have enough time to hurry…’

Reeling in that gnomic utterance occupied Frankenstein’s thoughts all the way to the gatehouse. En route, he was joined, one by one, by other masked conspirators, all moustachioed and confident as his initial visitor.

That pretty much clinched it. Julius knew who they were and thus where he was going. All that remained was to get there. And if anyone could perform such a miracle these people could.

In one sense they already had. By silvery moonlight Frankenstein discovered how they’d got thus far. The bodies of various sentinels were propped up by the gatehouse like trophies from a good day’s hunting. Their slumped posture was reminiscent of the Mausoleum’s less successful products, but unlike them these weren’t stirring at all. Bayonets pinned each one to the wall in a presumably post-mortem flourish: a message to those who might follow. And all this had been achieved in perfect peace!

Julius felt like saying ‘bravo!’ but equally didn’t feel like attracting these terrible men’s attention. So he merely saw and grew wise instead.

Bowing him through with the greatest respect, the ladder man ushered Julius into the gatehouse. There fresh horrors awaited. Some of its former inhabitants had been New-citizens of sturdy construction. Frankenstein even recognised several burly specimens as his own bacon-saving special productions. Or leastways he thought he recognised them: his handiwork must have taken a lot of second-time-round killing and multiple blows with sabres. The gatehouse was like a charnel house.

Except that the living were also present. A batch of captives were kept under beady eye in one corner and Julius was intrigued. For reasons many and varied they didn’t have the look of French gaolers. If pressed to guess Frankenstein would have placed them on a parade ground in England.

So it proved. Though they were blindfolded and gagged, one had apparently loosened his bonds. He sensed fresh arrivals and spoke out in faultless if frightened English.

‘Who’s there?  What are you going to do with us?’

Rather than answer, Julius’ escort simply demonstrated. He took up a discarded musket and plunged its fixed bayonet into the speaker. Years of practise shone through, just like the blood pooling into his victim’s tunic. The man died instantly, with barely a groan.

It proved a cue. One by one the prisoners were taken to various parts of the room and dispatched. Then the fresh corpses were arranged in combative poses alongside pre-existing French dead.

Again, wealth of experience paid off. If Julius hadn’t known better, he would have sworn from the emerging tableaux that a fierce little Anglo-French battle had swarmed through here. One in which the Mausoleum guards had acquitted themselves well.

The Ladder man looked upon the scene like an artist. He wandered round, arranging a limb there, inserting weaponry into dead hands there.

Eventually, he stood up and surveyed the finished work. The mark of a great artist is knowing when to leave a canvas alone.

‘It is good,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

Someone had oiled the Mausoleum’s main gate. Normally they moaned like a choir of Lazarans with each and every opening, a deliberate feature of the security arrangements. Now they cracked ajar with hardly a protest.

Flowing smoothly like the lubrication on the hinges, Frankenstein’s new friends poured through the gap with him in their midst.

*  *  *

The next morning, when all was revealed and certain tell-tale English artefacts found on the dead, the Mausoleum drew its own conclusions.

Perfidious Albion had struck again; its cursed fleet delivering a raiding party onto France’s sacred shores to snatch a coveted Revivalist. English ships notoriously got everywhere they could find even a duck-pond to float on. You might go on to speculate it was just the sort of thing Neo-Nelson would and could do, damn his one remaining eye. There was no absolute proof, true, but the mission carried all the hallmarks of his audacity.

In drafting the required report its authors upgraded that possibility into nigh certainty, and after that the insult didn’t seem so bad. Also, the records showed that Julius Frankenstein wasn’t so hot anyway and thus maybe the rostbifs had incurred heavy casualties for little gain. Aside from the slight of waltzing into the Mausoleum and then out again, the English were welcome to him.

That interpretation was eventually accepted by the Convention. Heads would have to roll of course, but only token Terror was visited upon Mausoleum staff.

A mere maiden’s kiss, a child’s slap on the wrist: just one in ten.

Chapter 4: SPICK N’ SPAN

‘Welcome,
monsieur
, most welcome!’

The chamberlain’s array of gold braid was dazzling and his bow exquisitely elegant, but Julius had seen it all before. Moments before in fact. It already seemed like an age since his cheerfully homicidal masked rescuers delivered him here.

‘The chamberlain before you said that,’ Julius replied. ‘And the one before him.’

He indicated his route previous to the high double doors that now sealed them in this ante-room.

This chamberlain went from soft to hard with a speed that put the male generative organ to shame. He showed the steel just below the velvet glove. His eyes glittered.

‘And they meant it,’ he said. ‘As do I. Rest assured,
monsieur
, you would not have got as far as me had you been found in any way wanting...’

Which was both praise and a slap combined. Frankenstein didn’t know whether to feel honoured or offended. Not that it mattered in any case. His opinions in this palace mattered as little as those of the peacocks that patrolled its county-sized grounds. Even less probably. At least they were decorative and no harm to anyone...

Elbow cupped in one hand, the chamberlain rested his chin for the duration of a close scrutiny of Julius. Contrary to Conventionary fashion, he still wore a short-wig and kept it powdered. Actually, he resembled a throwback to pre-Revolutionary days: a look likely to attract lynch mobs on the Parisian streets today.

If so, the man showed no signs of unease. He was not a man of the streets; here was his place and he was at home in it.

‘Hmm,’ he pondered aloud, sounding like a slightly more effeminate Lady Lovelace. ‘Hmm...’

Now Julius knew how the produce in an Ottoman slave market felt. He fought the urge to pose or disport himself to command a better price.

‘‘Hmm...’?’  he said in turn, as both mimicry and query.

The chamberlain returned instantly from reverie-land to fix Julius’ gaze.

‘The eyes of a man,’ he said, ‘are a window into his soul.’

‘Indeed,’ Julius agreed. He’d lived too long to dispute it.

‘And yours,’ continued the chamberlain, ‘reveal a very dark vista...’

Again, Frankenstein could not but agree. In his shaving mirror he daily saw what the chamberlain referred to.

That gentleman’s elbow was now lowered, a decision arrived at.

‘Darkness may conceal all manner of dirt,’ he said. ‘Proceed into the next room and have it washed away.’

*  *  *

The instruction proved to be literal. To Julius’ amazement the room beyond the next set of double doors proved to be a bathing suite. Rather than yet more gilded courtiers, a team of white-clad flunkies, male and female, waited beside a steaming bath.

‘Disrobe,
monsieur
,’ ordered their captain, who incongruously wore a chef’s hat as badge of office. ‘Abandon yourself to our ministrations.’

Willing or not, it was going to happen. It seemed routine and they seemed implacable. Also, amongst their number were bulky sorts for the lifting work, plus soldiers lining the walls (also uniformed entirely in white). Frankenstein realised that if he did not comply compulsion was on hand, and then he would lose his dignity as well as his clothes

So, despite the presence of appraising ladies, Julius stepped forward and stripped.

The water was warm and scented and, in other circumstances, might have been welcome. Less enjoyable, however, was being dunked and scrubbed by professionals of exceptional thoroughness. They were insistent on total immersion and cleansing of the most obscure corners. Meanwhile, extremities were periodically gripped and held so that nails and nasal hair could be radically clipped. Someone even brushed his teeth for him—whilst submerged!

Then, as he surfaced short of breath, Julius caught sight through streaming hair of his garments being born away. For some reason the scene had a strong sense of finality to it.

‘What are you doing with my cloth—’ he started to say, before a strong hand on the top of his head plunged him under again. Simultaneously, practised fingers scurried over his head like an aquatic tarantula, questing for nits.

Allowed back into light and air, Frankenstein took exception.

‘How dare you?  I am a gentleman!  I do not harbour livestock!’

The inspector turned out to be a woman with arms like hams and face to match.

‘Makes no difference if you’re Pope or peasant, my dear,’ she informed him cheerfully. ‘Everyone gets the same treatment.’  Then she turned to address her colleagues. ‘He’s free.’

Those was the only comforting words he was going to get. Other strong limbs lifted Julius out and onto fluffy towels on the floor. It was like being a baby again and long lost memories of infancy arose dusty from burial places in his brain, surprised as any Lazaran at being revived.

If so, they were the only dusty thing about Frankenstein by then. Though a fastidious man by nature he was now cleaner than ever before. He stood there dripping water and indignation.

The captain of the bath approached—and approached—and approached yet again, until far too close for European comfort. If this were Switzerland and the bath-captain a wench, they would have been deemed engaged.

The man then inflicted further rudeness via a series of sniffs over Julius at point blank range. Which in turn permitted—in fact forced—Frankenstein to notice that, scent-wise, Bath-captain didn’t exist. Even the air round him had more character and he was just a void in its normality.

Julius had passed his life to date amidst privileged circles where cleanliness, if not Godliness, was becoming de rigueur, yet such high standards as this struck him as extreme; even unnatural...

Which, he then realised, was a silly thought. In his dictated, not chosen, profession of defying death, the unnatural was natural. How much longer must he go on tormenting himself by noticing it?  Those who no longer cared were so much happier men...

But it was no good. He had to scratch the itch. A power stronger than willpower made him ask.

‘What was the point of all—?’ he said, or started to say, but desisted when it became clear no one was interested in Julius any more. He doubted they even heard him. Odourless Bath-captain was indicating the next set of doors.

‘Go in there and dry off,’ he ordered, and then turned away. He and his team had a new mission. A marshal of the
Grande Armée
had just entered the room as Julius had earlier. All attention was focused on this new visitor from the unclean.

‘Disrobe,
monsieur
,’ the marshal was told. ‘Abandon yourself to our ministrations.’

*  *  *

Frankenstein let himself out and entered into an sunlit chamber. Floor to ceiling windows flooded it with light to the furthest corners and, as if that did not suffice, the three other walls held polished metal sheets to reflect the rays.