‘Drape her head with a mantilla,’ said the Guardsman to Julius, making clear this was a big concession. ‘No, two mantillas. And another as a veil.’
Draped in the black lace head-dresses, Ada could pass for just another pale pious pilgrim lady.
‘In you go,’ said the Guardsman, ‘but don’t say you’ve seen me.’
Julius tapped his nose.
‘Rest assured,’ he replied. We’ve never met…’
It wasn’t far from the truth. Two steps beyond the portal Frankenstein had already forgotten him.
That was partly just Julius’ way with the ever changing tapestry of people that life showed him, but mostly it was because there were weightier things occupying his mind. Getting Lady Lovelace into the relative safety of the Vatican (!) was welcome light relief from the larger thoughts he was juggling.
Then she had been transfixed by the sights of the Sistine Chapel, and her trance or coma or whatever it was took her off Frankenstein’s hands for a while. Foxglove was around if need be, although only a shadow of his former self. His devotion to Lady Lovelace was undiminished by loss of a limb for her sake. He could still lean against a wall and raise the alarm if need be.
Frankenstein smiled to himself. ‘If’? When was more like it on present form…
He entered ‘The Courtyard of the Penitents’: a huge expanse open to the sky; the architect’s conscious act to let sunlight counter the dark sins confessed there. Julius basked in the bright rays and—almost—relaxed.
It had been an eventful trip. The culmination, and quite probably the conclusion, of an eventful life all told.
All told? Phrasing it like that, and seeing the lines of confessionals along the walls, all in heavy use, Julius suddenly felt the impulse to tell it. To tell his tale! Why not?
Likewise, with the book stowed in the pack against his back. The book. What a liberation it would be to lighten himself of that!
The sudden temptation to disclosure was almost unbearable. His feet were taking him in that direction as if of their own volition. He surrendered to their supposed will. Complete nonsense, of course, but Julius wanted to be able to blame his boots.
He had been raised a Catholic and had always thought fondly of the Faith, if only for the childhood it sponsored, the ideals it sustained. Yet now, in sad adulthood, he looked in on it from without, like a man viewing stained glass from outside. There was pattern and form, to be sure, but the glorious colour others perceived was lost on him.
Belief had trickled away into the sand of life, drop by drop with every Lazaran raised and each sordid but necessary compromise. Julius told himself that was simply the way the world was. The Almighty had created that world and could hardly condemn the antics it forced His creatures into.
Yet the temptation remained: to plunge in and confess and come out cleansed! Frankenstein realised he had so many things to say and no one he could say them to. Not normally.
Fate saw fit to empty one confession box just as Julius crunched across the gravel beside it. A shriven sinner emerged. They looked… lighter.
Frankenstein hesitated—and then ducked into the vacated space as though it had always been his intention to.
Those waiting in line tut-tutted at his queue-jumping. Then they recalled that impatience was a sin not only on his part but theirs. So they compensated themselves with the thought that he wouldn’t be long.
They were wrong.
Chapter 2: TRUE CONFESSIONS
‘You took the child? You actually took it?’’
It was not that the grille between them impeded speech. Nor that the priest was hard of hearing. It was simply that he could not believe his ears.
‘She took it,’ Julius corrected him.
‘But you permitted it?’
Back in the shadows Frankenstein shook his head. Words were inadequate and failing him.
‘You have not met her, father. There is no question of ‘permitting.’ You do not permit a bolt of lightning. It either strikes or it does not, according to its own program.’
Dimly seen beyond the grille, the priest was mopping his brow with a polka-dotted handkerchief. The day which began so calm and ordinary had turned dramatic on him; the yellow light of just another morning now shot through with the red and purples of truly grave sins.
Granted, it made a change from the usual furtive fornications, the shoplifting and so on, that the faithful bothered him and God with; but this change was far from ‘as good as a rest.’ Here was the confession of a lifetime for him: both the lifetime of his vocation and the spilling forth of one man’s life lived on the stage of history. The priest knew he must strengthen every spiritual sinew to be equal to it.
‘Nevertheless,’ he persisted in reply, ‘that does not absolve you, my son. You have God-given free will with which to oppose this wicked women of whom you speak. Or at least to reprimand her so that the sin is hers alone…’
Frankenstein sighed.
‘I can only repeat, father, that you do not know her. You were not there…’
The phrase was fataclass="underline" before he could restrain his vaunted ‘free will’ Julius’ mind was revisiting the scene…
Children—or near-children… On a sunlit roof-garden.
They were Lazarans, but also more—as well as less. Naked, but also psuedo-clothed with flasks. Strings of flasks…
‘Can you speak?’ Ada asked the best of the infants, one she’d selected as nearest to human.
The boy regarded her with the coldest gaze Frankenstein had ever seen; something dredged up from oceanic depths with no soul to back or warm it at all.
The Old Guard had gladly departed to stamp out the ‘Lazaran rebellion’ elsewhere; and it suited them to believe Julius was the proper person to remain and restore order in this very improper place. So, Frankenstein and Foxglove were now the only living creatures there —and yet there was a crowd.
The white boy opened his eyes again and nodded: a concession to Lady Lovelace—but only conceded by whim.
‘I can speak,’ he said. His voice was more lifeless than his flesh. It had nothing child-like about it at all, but rather the expression an old, old, man—and not a nice one.
‘So why don’t you answer me?’ Lady Lovelace persisted.
Possibly because she was kindred to his condition, the boy humoured her.
‘Why should I? What gain can I expect?’
Ada looked around the roof-garden. Those amongst the milk-white children who could move of their own accord were shuffling nearer. There was little threat in that, but ample horror.
Perhaps she used the pause to count to ten to quell her temper, or perhaps she deemed this exchange so important she was considering her words extra-carefully. Either way, Ada re-engaged conversation without rancour.
‘It is considered polite for children to answer their elders when spoken to,’ she said maternally, as if addressing her own offspring (who she’d not so much as mentioned since leaving them). ‘It is what good children do…’
The boy was languid in his wheelchair. Lady Lovelace meant nothing to him and her guidance even less.
‘We are not good children,’ he said.
Nor healthy ones. He was the most vigorous they could see, but even that short exchange drained him. Not that brevity mattered. Those few words settled the matter as far as he was concerned.