The priest and some servants frowned, for they couldn’t recall him making a fuss of her before. Maybe, like so much else, he’d done so privately in the labyrinth of his mind.
‘Uncle,’ asked the child, getting round to the purpose of her visit in her own good time, ‘it is true you are going?’
Talleyrand smiled and nodded.
‘It is, child; yes.’
‘Where to?’
‘I’m not sure, my dear.’
The priest signalled he might have a shrewd idea, but had the grace not to interrupt.
‘Will you come back, uncle?’
Talleyrand shook his head.
‘I’m afraid not, my sweet. Or rather, I am not afraid, because it is time for me to go.’
She looked up at him.
‘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.’