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.’
Lady Lovelace involuntarily reached to the back of her head where a circle of tinplate now protected her fracture. A local blacksmith, chosen for drink-dulled lack of curiosity, had provided that. Then a lady stylist procured by the inn had skilfully hidden it under hair so that no one could see.
How Ada had fumed and glared as the smithy had tapped its tacks in. Now, back on mission, she required reminding of its existence.
‘Hmmm…,’ she said. ‘Well, be that as it may, I greet the liberation with joy. My spark might be—temporarily—mislaid, but I now find my mundane thought processes wonderfully… uninterrupted.’
If so, they were in marked contrast to their meal. The door slammed open and interruptions galore flowed in.
In the form of officers of the law. A bustle of four or five of them crowding into the room. The foremost held up some legal document.
‘Lady Ada Augusta Lovelace,’ he read, without bothering about introductions, ‘inasmuch as you have been plucked from the grave without sanction of God and man, in impudent contravention of the statutes of both the English Realm and the Almighty, it is the order of His Majesty’s High Court that your arrest…’
Julius had heard enough and fired.
Simultaneously—to slow human eyes—a blackened circle appeared both in the paper and the reader’s chest. The man looked amazed from one to the other and then sank slowly to his knees.
Frankenstein was expecting congratulations for his foresight in having a pistol to hand, but instead all eyes in the room conveyed horror. The constables were frozen in shock, and Lady Lovelace and Foxglove likewise. They studied their luncheon companion of a minute ago entirely anew.