Frankenstein's Legions (49 page)

‘Like when it’s time for me to go to bed?’

Talleyrand agreed as vigorously as he could.

‘Precisely. And I’ve heard tales that you make problems about that. Therefore, take your example from your great-great uncle who is a good boy and always does what he is told.’

She wasn’t going to have that. The Prince was able to deceive diplomats but not innocence.

‘I don’t think you’re going to bed. You’re already in bed! I think you’re going to die.’

Talleyrand considered that like it was news.

‘Do you know,’ he said after a while, ‘I do believe you’re right! What a clever girl you are!’

She looked round the po-faced gathering of grown-ups but found nothing of interest there. Even Ada’s Lazaran features detained her only a second.

‘Mama doesn’t want you to die,’ she went on. ‘Not yet. She’s been crying. She says you won’t say sorry to God. She says you’re going to a bad place.’

Talleyrand looked grave.

‘Even mamas can be wrong,’ he said. ‘But listen to this and then be sure to tell her...’

The Prince elevated his face and dignity.

‘Sorry!’ he said, loud and clear, to the upper air. ‘I’m very, very, sorry.’

The child clapped her hands with glee.

‘When I tell mama she might let me stay up late tonight!’

Talleyrand shrank to her level and confided.

‘Tell her I order it!’ he said. ‘Now, hush a moment while we big-people conclude some boring business. And while you are waiting you may have some sweets.’

He gestured that the bowl of bon-bons beside the bed be brought over. It was a rainbow of tempting shapes and colours guaranteed to titillate a jaded palate or silence a child.

‘Except that one,’ said Talleyrand, quite stern for him and pointing out one particular sweet set aside. ‘That is Uncle’s favourite.’

With that warning the child dived in and had soon spoiled her dinner.

‘Now,’ he asked the priest, ‘has the Archbishop gone?’

‘He has, highness. Back to his lodgings to rest. He was exhausted.’

‘No,’ corrected the Prince. ‘He was exhausting. But since that is so, give me the retraction. So long as he’s not here to gloat, I’ll sign.’

The priest rushed at it. He saw a soul to save and fame for himself. Great things in this life and the next might come to he who’d converted a commanding-officer of the forces of darkness.

Talleyrand took a pen from him too. He scanned the proffered scroll with care, striking out a line or two here, adding an alternative word there, each time earning a priestly frown. However, the prize was such he was left to it and in due course a signature was appended. The Prince even managed a flourish of the pen—and then in words too.

‘There, now you have it,’ he said, handing back the historic document. ‘But let me add this in verbal and thus ephemeral form, for veracity’s sake. I believed life was a vale of tears and hard on humanity: because for reasons best known to Himself the good Lord constructed it so. Nevertheless, I hoped that what the Church taught was correct. However, I feared that nothing was true and everything was permissible. Now I go from here to find out the truth of the matter.’

It wasn’t exactly a retraction of his retraction but... Still, the second was mere words and the first on parchment. One would outdistance the other.

Perhaps. Such unique honesty, from this man of all people, silenced all present. Some even committed it to memory to record later, thus rendering the apologia less fleeting than envisaged. Exactly as the Prince intended...

‘And now you must go too,’ he told the priest. ‘Though not like me. Go spread the good news to your hierarchy. I still have a modicum of worldly business left to conduct.’

Exit the cleric. Talleyrand returned to his invited guests.

‘Where were we?  Oh yes: about what successful agents you were. Unwitting agents but wildly successful. Maybe that is the best way: when humans introduce their own petty agendas things go askew. They should defer to genius and be guided.’

With a pout Lady Lovelace conceded the principle, if not their relative roles.

Talleyrand didn’t notice and continued.

‘Of course, there were other, conscious, recruits I sent out into the world but they fell by the wayside. Or at least I heard no more of them. One fears they fell into the hands of Fouché.’

‘As did we,’ said Lady Lovelace. ‘Do you wish to see Foxglove’s scars?’

The servant modestly drew his coat together as if to discourage the offer. Talleyrand grimaced.

‘No thank you. Simply consider them the medals you deserve but shall not receive. Badges of honour...’

That did it. That touched upon Frankenstein’s sore point, or rather the one his Father had drummed into him. As did his father before him. And his father before him... probably right back to Adam.

‘‘Honour’?’ he queried. ‘I do not see the honour in any of this!’

The Prince could be kind to children and courteous to womenfolk, depending on what he was after, but grown men, he felt, really should keep up to speed. And besides, time was too short for limping thinking.

‘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.