Frankenstein's Legions (6 page)

Ada’s eyes blazed: when she gave herself to something she gave all. Yet she had less to give than before: her palm was as cold as her fury was hot.

Julius caught her wrists as they sought to drum a tattoo on his chest. They too were icy. He surreptitiously sought a pulse, knowing full well of all people that he sought in vain. Lazaran hearts beat once an hour, if that.

‘Well, you can’t have it,’ he replied calmly. ‘Even if I knew what you were talking about...’

Ada wrenched herself free.

‘I’ve lost my spark!’ she accused Frankenstein. ‘It’s gone!  Beforehand, I was a genius, now there’s no inspiration. I’m just... living, like all the rest of you!’

An unkind man would have pointed out some glaring errors in her statement, but there was an certain etiquette in dealing with the Revived. Not to mention common compassion.

‘What can I say, madam?’ said Julius, drawing back from claw range. ‘You enjoyed the very finest serum known. More than that I cannot bestow.’

Ada thought on, studying him all the while, rubbing her wrists to which not even Julius’ grip had restored colour.

‘Hmmm...’

‘I swear to it, madam.’

‘Do you now?  But shall we believe him?  What do you think, Foxglove?’

The servant had a very cool appraising gaze when he chose to lift the mask.

‘I believe him, milady.’

‘Damn!’ she said.

Frankenstein gasped. He’d not heard a female swear since his army days: and even then only from ‘camp-wives’ and pipe-smoking whores.

Ada Lovelace waved him away—out of sight and out of mind.

‘I take it,’ she observed to Foxglove, ‘from all this
folle-de-rol
that my husband, his Lordship, is going to be of no use to us.’

‘Alas no, milady. He sought permission for your revival and the refusal contained no ambiguity. A gentlemen from the Home Office even called in person at Horsley Towers to stress the point. And Lord Lovelace, though he protested, is a very law-abiding sort of gentleman...’

‘Not to mention Lord-Lieutenant of the County of Surrey,’ Ada added in contempt. ‘With a position in society to consider. Which is why,’ she turned to Frankenstein to point out an important lesson to a poor foreigner, ‘there’ll never be a revolution in this rotten country. Someone might have to walk on the grass!’

 Having been in countries where civic unrest crammed the mortuaries Julius felt inclined to see that as a blessing, but didn’t say so.

‘Also,’ added Foxglove, ‘there were the... circumstances of your demise, milady.’

‘Circumstances?  Explain!’

Foxglove looked embarrassed and advanced to whisper in her ear. Her eyes widened still further, although blushes were now out of the question.

‘As a mere bachelor,’ commented Julius (who knew all already), ‘it may not be for me to say, but I think you are a little harsh on Lord Lovelace. Evidence of a Lazaran lover is hardly calculated to fire his love for you...’

Ada withered him with a glance.

‘On the contrary,’ she countered enigmatically, ‘I’d say the scene was “calculated” with exquisite precision.’

But she left it at that and thought on, rapt and in a world all her own.

‘Very well,’ came her eventual decision. ‘I divorce him, I divorce him, I divorce him. And that’s that and his Lordship out of the way, Mohammedan style. Next thing is getting my spark back: I can’t live other than as a genius. We’ll go see the only other one I know and see what he suggests.’

*  *  *

Mr Babbage wasn’t at home. Or if he was he’d have to stay there, because a Metropolitan Police ribbon sealed the front door.

Ada Lovelace hammered away even so. Julius could hear the knocker echo through an obviously empty house.

They’d driven the coach to Westminster in the face of Frankenstein’s vehement protests. Lady Lovelace still hadn’t got it into her head that she was Lady Lovelace no longer, not in the eyes of the Law, nor probably those of her husband who, moreover, she’d just self-service divorced. That meant the liveried coach was bogus as well as unwise. Yet Ada’s confidence had trampled all over Frankenstein’s bleatings. They arrived at Dorset Street in style.

To no welcome. Lady Lovelace was puzzled. She associated empty houses with the owners decamping to their country estates, or maybe departure on a grand tour. Yet she knew Babbage was too obsessed for either. The police barrier was worrisome too.

Though surely coincidence, the militia galloon choosing just then to slowly traverse the sky above their heads, did nothing for their peace of mind. It probably was looking for riots and revolutionaries, not them—not yet. Still, the low lament of its frantically pedalling Lazaran crew slung below the canopy was hardly confidence building. Julius cast about for help or shelter.

It is a cross-cultural truth that guttersnipes are better informed than governments. One arrived unbidden at precisely the right moment bearing newspapers and intelligence.

‘‘Oi, toffs!’ the boy called from beyond the railings. ‘Are you friends of the bloke wot lived there?’

Julius acted as spokesman: his companions didn’t care to acknowledge such converse.

‘We might be. What of it?’

The boy blew Frankenstein a great big kiss and ran off laughing.

‘Mmmm,’ mused Ada.

*  *  *

 Foxglove sought out fuller particulars in nearby shops and hostelries whilst Ada and Julius waited in the coach. They sat in silence, not even of the companionable sort.

Eventually, her manservant returned and told all with a most becoming blush. Among other upshots, apparently the members of Babbage’s Gentlemen’s club had left a loaded pistol in his pigeon-hole, for use in the unlikely event he ever darkened their doors again. Plus a note spelling out their flattering confidence that he would ‘do the decent thing.’

‘Spark or no spark,’ said Lady Lovelace, ‘I begin to perceive patterns...’

‘Pretty patterns?’ enquired Julius.

‘Hardly: but consistent ones, suggesting intelligent design. Death and disgrace are the predominant themes. You must take my word for it, herr doctor, but my friend and collaborator, Mr Babbage, was a man of science; not a Uranian or deviant of any kind. Just as I am no jezebel lazarophile consorting with undead lovers. Someone is weaving a story to our detriment and I must calculate who and why. It is therefore all the more imperative I retrieve my spark of inspiration.’

Julius Frankenstein nodded surrender to her imperatives. Short of drawing pictures, he had explained the limitations of his reviving powers as clearly as could be.

‘If you say so, madam. And how do you propose to do it, may I ask?’

Lady Lovelace looked at him like he was an idiot.

‘Yes, you may.’

Seconds of silence ensued —unless Julius’ teeth grinding was audible to the others. His will broke first.

‘How-do-you-propose-to-do-it,’ he said, through powdered enamel.

Ada’s answer was bright and breezy, considering.

‘Why,’ she said, ‘the way I always got everything, of course. By buying it. Foxglove!  To the Bank!’

*  *  *

In a curious parallel to Ada’s revived life-force, everything was as before for her at Baring’s Bank—save for the heart of the matter. Recognition was there, and courtesy; even obsequious service likewise—but not her money.

Whilst Julius was about his own business elsewhere, Lady Lovelace went through a succession of clerks as her voice ascended the octaves, but still no funds were forthcoming. At last she saw someone so senior he could speak the plain truth.

The melancholy fact was, the manager explained, that Lady Lovelace was dead—or legally so. Her whey face and the Times both confirmed it. He did not know how it came about that she was here demanding access to the family account, nor would he dream of daring to enquire. However, one thing was certain: people came into the world with nothing and left it likewise. Both scripture and Baring’s Bank said so. Accordingly, and with the profoundest, the politest, of regrets, he could not oblige her.

Ada swore for the second time that day.

*  *  *

In a stolen mansion beside the North Downs, a human spider considered the twitchings of his web.

A coach sighting here, a visit to a sealed house there, an altercation in England’s oldest banking house—and all in one day. What a busy revenant she was! How well he’d chosen.

Everything was going splendidly and it almost reconciled him to the earlier shedding of blood. That had been difficult and not his style at all. So sad. Only a great cause and the sense of history hovering anxiously at his shoulder had persuaded the human spider to inject venom with his bite.

Now things were going smoothly he could be gentle again.

‘Just a nudge,’ he informed an underling, who would inform his underling who would inform his underlings—and so on. ‘No unpleasantness, but the merest propelling prod...’

The human spider had a horror of haste, and of enthusiasm even more so. Both led to all sorts of errors. For that reason he strictly instructed his staff that they should pleasure their wives or, at a pinch, themselves, before reporting to work each day. It was imperative there be no unresolved impulses fizzing around in office hours to cloud judgements or make them heavy handed.

Fortunately, most were French and so could be relied upon to comply without him checking. However, the English ones proved harder work and wife substitutes had to be procured for some. Eventually though, such sensitive matters were resolved and the human spider could relax and be confident: confident that whatever hints he cared to drop would be converted into action in the world beyond his web. But always seemly and conservative action; kindly too, if at all possible.

Which left the human spider free for wine, women and song—though being in his ninth decade his doctor had advised he ease up on the singing.

Chapter 5: WITHDRAWALS

Lady Lovelace put down her sandwich.

‘Do I actually need this? she asked. ‘I feel no hunger. Not the slightest pang since I rose like Lazarus.’

The inn beside London Westgate had laid on an excellent luncheon in Ada’s room. Frankenstein had insisted, overruling her lack of interest.

‘It is essential,’ he answered firmly, raising the bread and beef to her mouth again. ‘Though the serum sustains you, your raised body must also be placated. You will not wish me to supply the gross details, madam, but suffice to say that if your digestive system is not kept occupied it will rot. Shortly afterwards you will rot with it. Vivid-green gangrene, proof against the lustiest surgeon’s knife. Therefore, though food has no savour to you and never will again, you must—if you will forgive the phrase—go through the motions…’ 

She plainly did not forgive the phrase but Julius slid another slice of pie onto her plate, and then jiggled it back and forth in a way intended to be tempting.

‘Eat, madam,’ he said, ‘I implore you. If you eat well—or leastways regularly—you will last as long as your body does!’

Ada eyed pie and Julius with twin distaste.

‘Which is how long exactly?’

Though her tone was peevish this was not idle curiosity on her part, but a vital missing element in ongoing calculations.

Frankenstein shrugged.

‘It depends on you. And Fate, of course. Revivalist Science is yet young and few figures exist on which to theorise. The vast majority of the Revived spend—and I use the term advisedly—their lives either on the battlefield or farmers’ fields. Neither are conducive to longevity. However, it may cheer you to learn that I knew of one Lazaran who outlived his owner: a man who departed this Life in the fullness of years…’

Alas, honesty then compelled him to add: ‘Although his heirs had it—I beg your pardon, him—put down soon after. That the servant should just… continue struck them as indecent, you see…’

‘I see,’ said Lady Lovelace, when she obviously did not.

‘But in theory, there is no firm upper limit. Consider, madam: perhaps you now possess Life—of a kind—everlasting!’

‘Hmmm…,’ she said. Supplemented by ‘Hmmph!’  Then: ‘away with your honeyed words, mein herr: Life without my spark is no life!’

Even that was not enough: chagrin made her want to twist the knife.

‘Are you really a doctor?’

She’d sulked throughout the meal so far, barely speaking to him. Therefore Julius realised that the question was born of more than spite.

‘Of a sort, madam,’ he answered. ‘Of the military sort.’

Ada gave him a cool look—and saw. No medical man he, but thwarted scientist through and through. A compromise career choice therefore, possibly a dictated one, comprising a life-defining mistake. Hence the hidden turbulence beneath the still surface of those deep waters.

‘Meaning a mere amputator,’ she said. ‘Plus a Revivalist, of course.’

For all its present utility, in social esteem the job title ranked alongside ‘abortionist.’  As Ada well knew.

‘Of course,’ Frankenstein agreed, in arctic tones. ‘The family curse.’

So she’d guessed right. Probably the father was to blame: pressing his son into the military where he could only do moderate harm.

Ada favoured him with her full attention—and a beaming smile!

‘A curse to you perhaps but not to all, mein herr. It may interest you to know that my headaches are quite gone. Presumably, I can attribute that to your ministrations.’

‘Headaches, madam?’

‘I was a martyr to them: sickening pain lodged behind the eyes for days on end, enlivened by lightning storms in the brain. Sometimes I could barely speak, is that not so, Foxglove?  I suffered and, what is far more important, my great work suffered. Company was intolerable to me and life scarcely less so. Your treatment seems to have banished them.’

Amongst other Revivalists he might have ventured an explanation along the ‘no sense no feeling’ line, but for such a prickly patient Julius sugared the pill.

‘The post mortem brain has ways all its own, my lady, and none of them well understood. I cannot claim credit for this happy accident. Indeed, one would have predicted only increased sufferings due to your cranial injuries.’