Frankenstein's Legions (33 page)

Meanwhile, Frankenstein had taken to keeping the mummies company when he wanted to think clearly. The jumbled contents of the room helped him to acquire perspective about his own petty troubles. Long ago, these presumably important people had strutted and fretted their hour upon the stage, and afterwards careful provision had been made, and great expense incurred, to get them safe to Heaven. Then circumstances changed and someone else’s agenda had led them here, first to being sliced up like salami, and then when that bright notion was ditched, to abandonment in careless disorder. In the stock market of life (or afterlife) they’d plunged from precious commodities to the junk-shares nobody trusted. And it showed.

The jars and sarcophagi had been stacked higgledy-piggledy by, Julius surmised, servants with no respect for them and even less liking for the task. Lids were askew and partially unwrapped limbs protruded. It was like being in a field hospital’s failures zone after a battle, save for the smell. Rather than the reek of fresh death, here was the scent of ancient dust and long centuries patiently waiting in the dark for... what?

Appropriately enough, it was ‘waiting’ that Julius had come here to ponder on. How long would he have to wait before he was found out again?  The Heathrow Hecatomb had been comparatively slow; the Compeigne Mausoleum less so. All the indications were that the Emperor’s establishment was an super-streamlined place. When the breakthroughs failed to arrive on a daily basis he would be asked why—and soon. And in no uncertain manner.

That being so, how long did he have?  And what should he do in the interval?  There was his ‘collection’ (of which more anon) to preoccupy him, but that was nearly complete. What else could he profitably do?  Grow a stylish beard perhaps?  Would there be time?  And when his head rolled into the guillotine’s basket did he want it to be wearing a beard in any case?

Answer came there none to either big or banal questions. Which was perhaps why, since he was feeling so low in spirits, Fate stepped in to suggest a solution: just so he would keep going and still provide it with amusement.

Someone slid a letter under the door.

Julius heard the rustle of paper and looked up in time to see the missive finish its horizontal journey. Unhurried footsteps receded down the corridor beyond the door.

Unless he’d been followed—and wary Julius didn’t think he had—no one knew he was here. No one else came to this place at all: the lower echelons thought it haunted and the ambitious shunned the remnants of an out of favour project. Either his habits had been the subject of close study (Why?  By who?) or someone was writing letters to mummies.

Frankenstein had an opinion on which was more likely. He launched himself from his repose against the sarcophagus of a Ptolemaic high priest.

His repose-to-launch speed wasn’t fast enough. By the time he’d flung the door open the messenger had rounded the corner and was gone. The only other person visible was the girl who collected the chamber-pots—and she was a simpleton.

‘You girl!’

She’d had her back to him. The lumpy child jumped and spilled liquid from her burdened tray onto the carpet.

‘Who was just here?’ said Julius. ‘Did you see them?’

The girl had just enough courage to face the frightening man but insufficient to answer him. She chewed on her lip. The tray wobbled ominously.

As a doctor Frankenstein had previous experience of these ‘innocents.’  Her oriental eyes were wide and when he looked within there were all the indicators. So, definitely not her...

Also, he hated to distress her—and there was the carpet to think about too.

‘It doesn’t matter, my dear. Carry on.’

He retired back into the lumber room and shut the door.

If she weren’t so self-controlled, the chamber-pot girl-would have smirked.

*  *  *

Frankenstein had high hopes. Whoever it was had gone to great effort. It should be good.

He cracked the thin sliver of a seal, unfolded the luxurious paper, and read. It didn’t take long.

Julius flipped the letter to check he was reading the right side, but the choice was still between the two words of his name and, overleaf, two more words comprising a message. Sort of.

‘Probe deeper.’

it said. And then, doubling the word count.

‘PS: (and higher)’

As a suggestion for what to do with the balance of his life it lacked detail. It was also light of a signature, compounding what Frankenstein saw as borderline bad manners.

 Repaying it in kind, Julius rolled his correspondence into a cylinder and stuffed it into a crack in the coffin of Seti Nefihotep, a twentieth dynasty middle-ranking scribe. Not that the identification was known to Frankenstein, but it just seemed a suitable repository. Nothing so dramatic had happened in that container for over three thousand years.

Inadvertently, the useless, enigmatic, letter helped Julius come to a decision. This dead Egyptian, who must have had his own troubles in his day, would be his role model in accepting whatever transpired with quiet dignity. Every man came to the same place in due course anyway.

Frankenstein left the inhabitants of the lumber room to their peaceful slumber and strode out into the sunlight and days to come.

Chapter 10: LUST-CRAZED NURSES

For all his boldness in certain fields, Julius’s ‘days to come’ might still have been wasted in wool-gathering till the much-mentioned sword poised above his head dropped. Although a man who might rob a bank (for a third-party!) on impulse, or shoot a officer of the law likewise, he was relaxed to a fault when it came to his own interests. There are penalties as well as comforts in a profound belief in Fate.

‘Know Thyself’ said the Ancients; a precept they considered the summit of wisdom. Well, Julius knew himself all right. With his little collecting project (of which more later) almost ‘done and dusted’ there was insufficient to sedate the sleeping beast of his brain. If should it awake, famished, and find no meat nearby, it might start to feed on itself again, as at Heathrow. Frankenstein couldn’t face that. Not great chunks of his personality self-digesting. There was need of alternative focus.

Like the letter he’d received, for instance. That might do. He deliberately let it prey on his mind. The almost insulting brevity, as much as its anonymity, helped. Like Chinese water torture, the drip drip drip repetition of its minimalist message came to demand even more attention than a fulsome screed might. Finally, its repetitious whispered suggestion started to sound like good advice. Then a day of pretend-resisting that gave it the weight of a command. The nest step up from there was crusade…

Which was precisely the intention of its wickedly clever creator.

Seti Nefihotep’s stoic example was forgotten. Though still the hapless victim of ever changing moods, though still a devout disciple of Destiny, it became obvious to Frankenstein that his only alternative was standing still, awaiting the inevitable—and precious little good that had done him so far. Fate operated to its own timetable, which wasn’t always ideal for those who tried to travel by it. You couldn’t rely on a Lady Lovelace or Old Guard kidnapping detail to arrive when you wanted one...

Therefore...

‘Probe higher,’ the letter said—and so Julius did.

*  *  *

As a man who often perused the Holy Koran (looking for loopholes), the Egyptian (dec’d) might have enlightened Frankenstein from day one.

‘There are signs for those who look...’

is a frequent refrain: with the emphasis on the volitionary ‘
would
.’

It transpired that the advice of both letter and Holy book was sound. When Julius at long last looked he saw. And once he saw he investigated.

Whereupon one thing led to another, like links in a chain: a stout chain either leading him on—or dragging him in. What he found then chimed with all the other little things he’d noticed but not noted until now: images stored away in the ‘something wrong with this picture’ section of Julius’ brain. Like, for instance, the successive servings at luncheon, the excess chefs and crockery for the visible number of staff, the extraneous servant bells: all things he’s put down, insofar as he thought of them at all, to the French failing of obsessing about food. Belatedly, they now elbowed their way to the front of the picture and shouted ‘Hey you!  Look here!  Significant!’

It started in this way. Being a man with escape on his mind, Julius was prone to register doors, and in a palace the size of Versailles there was no shortage of them, of every kind, to collect. Julius specifically spotted those in frequent use and soon got to see what lay behind them, if only in glimpses.

Others, the more intriguing, seemed under-unemployed and remained mysteries to him, to greater or lesser degree. ‘Lesser’ applied to those plainly leading to the little kingdoms of Versailles’ servile staff: the refuges where they stored their mops and buckets and hid from onerous duties. ‘Greater’ referred to those barriers as grand as the rest but which stayed strangely shut. Julius put a mental mark against those and, one by one, when no one was looking, tried them out.

That meant discreetly kissing a large number of frogs in hope of finding a prince. Most had good reason for disuse: such as mothballed ballrooms and banqueting halls awaiting a monarch who danced or ate in company. Either that or the doors led the long way to somewhere and so were shunned by Palace staff with a world to conquer and always moving at maximum speed.

But there was one in particular that had Julius intrigued. He never observed it in use but detected the carpet before it was worn. Therefore, that one he saved up till last, reserving it for when his confidence in the mystery letter’s instruction was as threadbare as that square of carpet.

Thus it was only later on in his new nosiness, when momentarily alone in the corridor, that he grasped the nettle. He also grasped the door handle and swung it open.

‘Bingo!’—the English would say.

A sentinel stood right behind. Behind that member of the Old Guard stairs ascended into the heights. Up those stairs there was a fleeting glimpse of structure and the movement of many limbs.

The Guardsman had been meditating, or whatever it was career elite-soldiers do when in standby mode. He stood startled. Things likewise stood in the balance.

Frankenstein had prepared for every eventuality. Before the man had time to prise his shoulder off the wall Julius had said ‘sorry,’ complemented by an innocent and apologetic look. Before any opportunity for the challenge ‘who goes there? Julius had shut the door and was gone.

Less than a second had elapsed. A short enough span for a sentry who’d fallen down on the job to convince himself the lapse might not matter—or maybe hadn’t happened at all...

Shoulder-blades only slightly clenched, Julius continued down the corridor as fast as a casual pace could take him.

As he walked he listened out for the sound of the door opening, but peace reigned for two, then three, then four whole seconds—after which it would never come. The feared bullet or bayonet failed to arrive and prove that clenching is a useless reflex against express-delivery metal. Both Julius and his new knowledge survived.

Two turns of corner later he’d gained the cover of other people. Soon after that he’d slotted himself back into his timetable and was exactly where a trustworthy Palace employee with full buy-in to the Imperial project should be right then. Thereafter he was invulnerable unless the Guardsman wanted to make an issue of his own lapse and implicate himself. Which was unlikely, if Julius’ upbringing amongst soldiers was anything to go by.

Which in turn meant Frankenstein was free to consider the implications of his discovery. An apparently disused door with a sentinel behind it?  The very height of discretion and serpentine thoughts!  The thinker of those thoughts did not wish that door known about.

Being an obliging fellow, Frankenstein forgot all about it for a while.

*  *  *

That ‘while’ equalled about a day. During that time it was still just about possible the Guardsman might have a change of heart. Whilst light lasted Julius made sure he stayed near a high-up means of exit—from Versailles and life. Likewise, for the whole of the night that followed he dozed fully dressed in an armchair, booted and ready for the hammering on his door which meant he had been informed upon. That way he could hurl himself to a mercifully swift doom and at least die with dignity. Otherwise, he didn’t doubt that the Emperor’s curiosity about his curiosity would be persistent and painful.

Yet the next morning came, as it tends to, and Frankenstein found himself still alive, albeit unrefreshed. Time to resume work.

Blowing up that slightly ragged feeling into full-blown illness, Frankenstein swung lead. He asked for and secured the day off. No one seemed suspicious: on the contrary, the man who Julius in his slowness still called ‘the Bureaucrat’ feigned humanity and sent a servant with tonics and a message asking if there was anything else he could do.

There was. Julius requested some bottles of the finest vintage in the Palace cellars. Hardly a standard cold cure but he was Swiss and therefore strange, and he was amongst Frenchmen with a predisposition to smile on any request concerning wine. Therefore no one turned a hair, the bottles arrived and Frankenstein set to work.

It was a proven technique for emergencies: not swift, granted, but as sure as anything could be in this uncertain world. Julius made himself comfortable and methodically constructed a trap for his perverse mind.

To start with, that comprised assuming a relaxed position, lolling on a chaise-longue and preparing for a long wait if need be. Plus sip sip sipping at the fine wine to lull the brain’s tricky tendencies. An unlikely, languid looking, sort of trap therefore, but none the less effective for that.

To bait it required one indispensable component: a delectable thought. If Julius was sufficiently inventive and the thought delectable enough, he could have sat on a spike and imbibed neat caffeine and yet still the trap would have worked. Assistance of the upholstery and alcohol kind simply streamlined matters.