Shadow Conspiracy (7 page)

“Yes. And if you can do it for me, why not for Percy, for Claire, for Mary, for yourself?” He leaned even farther forward. “We could be immortal, John. A race of immortal Poet Kings.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Immortality? For all of us? Suddenly, I was looking down a corridor in time, back to Johann Dippel, digging up his graves, then ahead to us, waiting like vultures for someone somewhere to die. Or far, far worse. I recalled what Immanuel had said one afternoon: “Men are fools—and worse—who wish to be immortal.”

I didn’t realize I was on my feet until Percy touched my elbow.

“Mary, whatever is wrong? Isn’t this the most exciting thing? The most glorious thing?”

I opened my mouth to spill out my fear and loathing at the idea, but a glance at my husband’s face checked me. “Glorious,” I said and hurriedly left the room.

Death & Rebirth

The young man drowned late on a Saturday. I was the first one Dr. Polidori told of it. The body had been brought to a clinic in which he had colleagues, and when the young man—who had been flung from his horse into the channel—was pronounced dead, Polidori’s colleagues drained the lungs and packed the body in ice from a neighbourhood
glacière
. It was on its way.

I was in an extreme state of agitation as he gathered the rest of our group in the drawing room and made his momentous announcement: “We have a body. A drowning victim. I am informed that it is quite perfect. A young man of twenty-four, the son of a merchant of Geneva, strong and healthy.”

“But for want of the ability to swim,” George added in an unseemly jest.

“Oh, what does he look like?” asked Claire.

“I’m told he’s quite handsome. Blond and grey-eyed.”

Claire smiled and glanced mischievously at her beau. “Indeed.”

The corner of George’s mouth twitched, whether in humour or irritation I couldn’t say.

“The body will arrive late this evening. I’ll perform the procedure at first light with Mary assisting.”

All eyes turned to me and I realized that I had become associated with Polidori’s enterprise. The thought chilled me to the marrow.

“I’ll send Paolo to tell...to tell the—the patient,” I said, though “victim” was the word that had come to my mind.
Nonsense, Mary,
I told myself.
The doctor is saving Immanuel, not harming him. He will be reborn. Renewed.

“There’s no need for that, Mary,” said John quietly.

“Oh, have you already dispatched your man, then?”

“M. Dessins will not be my first subject after all.”

“What?” I had turned to leave the room and now stopped and swung back.

John’s voice was gentleness itself. “Understand, Mary, that bodies of young men of this age and in this condition—bodies of a quality to be a fit receptacle for Lord Byron—are exceptionally rare and difficult to acquire.”

The look he sent George Gordon was one that made my flesh creep, and I knew that they had likely cooked this up between them days ago and were only now telling me. I looked at Percy, but he was nodding as well.

I wanted to scream at them that it wasn’t fair, that Immanuel had been given hope and now they were to dash it. I wanted to put myself away from them quickly and emphatically. Instead, I nodded, too. “Of course,” I said. “It sounds a perfect match for Lord Byron.”

I turned and continued from the room, making my way upstairs to the nursery. I could feel John Polidori’s eyes on me until I was out of sight of the drawing room.

Elise was with William. She stood when I entered the room, her gaze bright and wary. “What is it, Mam? What’s happened?”

“The doctor has his body,” I told her, for she knew virtually all of what had transpired between me and Polidori over the past weeks.

“Well, then...?”

“He doesn’t mean to use it for Immanuel.” Yes, I had told her that too. “He means to make Lord Byron immortal. Lord Byron and the rest of us, if we’re so lucky.” I laid harsh emphasis on the last word.

“That ain’t natural, Mam.”

“No, it isn’t. Nor is it fair. He promised Immanuel...
I
promised Immanuel.”

“Well, then,” said Elise, giving me a strange look from beneath her lashes, “what will we do?”

I sent Elise to Immanuel with a note. I gave her further instructions as to what she was to do when she returned to the villa, then I fed my baby and rocked him to sleep in my arms.

The body arrived at half-past eleven under cover of darkness. There was a moon, but it frequently hid its face behind wisps of cloud. There was much activity around the coach house then. I pretended to be asleep in my room, but watched instead from the darkened window as Polidori and his Poet King returned to the house. They seemed in rather high spirits, but as they traversed the hall to their rooms the tenor of their voices changed.

I moved closer to the door to listen.

“What will it be like, John? How shall I feel when I awake?”

“Free, my friend. Free of the limp. Free of the blackness. Free of all disease.”

“But what of
him
? Will he leave nothing of himself in the shell?”

“He is gone. A ghost. Less than a ghost—a vapor. Look, when I began these experiments I carefully charted the habits of the animals I used. Their preferred foods, their responses to certain stimuli. I chose as subjects those with the most clearly defined personality traits, for want of a better word. In all cases, the personality of the transferred spirit was preserved. You will be you—George Gordon, Lord Byron—and no one else.”

“I am afraid...” George began, then stopped.

“Afraid of what?”

“My poetry. How much of it is influenced by my sickness and informed by my trials? What if...what if I am so whole I no longer
hunger.
I no longer have reason to write?”

There was a long silence, then John murmured, “That shan’t happen. You are brilliant. And your brilliance transcends all physical factors. In this new body, your powers will be amplified, my friend, not diminished. Besides,” he added, his voice taking on a teasing tone, “if being young, healthy and beautiful does not suit the Poet King, we will find you an old cadaver that looks like Punch. Cease worrying, George. You can be anything you desire.”

“Yes. I can, can’t I?”

Dear God, they spoke of it as if they might shop for bodies as they shopped for a new chapeau. You don’t like this one or it goes out of fashion, simply select another. I returned to my watch and waited, as the windows of their respective rooms lit, then darkened.

Immanuel met me behind the coach house at a quarter past one in the morning. I had a key to the lab now, for I had asked to be entrusted with the care of the animals. I wore it around my neck on a satin ribbon.

Once in the lab, it took both of us to get the frozen body of the young drowning victim onto the host’s table. I had gotten towels, a fur throw and blankets. Immanuel had brought a change of clothing—clothing that had once fit him and which should fit him again, for the dead young man was very like him in stature.

I bid Immanuel lie on the other table. I strapped him down carefully. I had witnessed several animal transfers now and knew that the reaction from the donor could be violent. To the heads of both Immanuel and the other young man, I affixed the strange little caps the doctor had fashioned. They were of silver mesh which he insisted would best allow the electrical current generated by the machine to flow, pushing the spirit along on its fiery tide.

Forgive my want of scientific precision. I am a writer, not a scientist, and have lived for some time with a poet—this is the best description I have.

The hardest part, I knew, would be to generate that flood of electricity. I had seen John Polidori do it several times but I had not his physical strength. Yet, for Immanuel’s sake, I must find strength. I went to one end of the Machine.

“Are you ready?” I asked and Immanuel grunted in the affirmative.

I took a deep breath, wrapped both hands around the crank that would turn the gears against the metal brushes, and threw my entire being into the task. The Machine hummed, the “bees” buzzed, then a blue arc of electrical current raced up the dancing rods and flashed between them, completing the “touch.” The blue flame danced down wires attached to those rods and out to the silver cap on Immanuel’s head. He was suddenly cocooned in pale azure radiance. He roared aloud and I knew a horrible fear that we would be heard. I turned the crank faster...but not as fast as I had seen Polidori turn it.

It was taking too long. Much too long. The spirit of the capuchin monkey had been transferred by now—the donor body dead and cooling, the host body twitching to life. My arms were aching, but I had no more to give, I was slowing when I needed more speed.

I heard a sound behind me and turned to see Paolo Foggi standing in the doorway to the tack room. I almost cried out in defeat. We had been discovered, but the sight of Polidori’s man galvanized me. I cranked harder, fear pumping through my every vein. I would do this thing. I
would
.

Paolo paused only long enough to take in the situation, then rushed toward me, his hands outstretched.

No! No! I would not be deterred. I
must
not.

He reached my side and put his hands over mine on the crank shaft. I tightened my grip. But instead of trying to rip my hands from the handle, he began to turn the crank with me—faster and faster still. Immanuel roared again. The light exploded from his cap, raced back up the silver wire, leapt the gap between the rods and flashed through the second wire. There was a bright burst of radiance from the cap on the drowning victim’s head. Then the aura subsided as if the body had absorbed it.

“Stop!” I cried to my unexpected helper. “
Arresto
!”

We stopped turning the crank and I hastened to the table, grabbing a blanket as I went. I threw the blanket over the naked man and put my cheek near his nose. Did the flesh beneath my fingers feel warm or was that imagination? Was the pallor of the skin lessening?

I felt a thin breath of air on my cheek. He gasped suddenly, convulsing, quite as a drowning victim might if he regained his breath. His eyes opened—fine grey eyes. They met mine.

“Mary,” he said and I all but collapsed.

But there was no time for weakness. Paolo was chattering at me in Italian, telling me that we must flee. There was a carriage awaiting us at the top of the lane with Elise and little Willmouse in it. It was Elise who had sent him, of course, and he had come because he loved her and would do for her anything she asked.

He helped Immanuel—Immanuel reborn—into his clothing, while I agonized over whether I should leave a note for Percy. Something begging his forgiveness even as it condemned what he and his friends meant to do. But a note seemed too poor a vehicle for all that I felt: horror and fear at what I had done and what they had meant to do, grief for Percy whom I shall always love, and hope that Immanuel might take from science a future nature had denied him.

I turned to Paolo. “
Prendalo al carrello
. Take him to the carriage.” I gestured toward the back door and added that I would meet them up at the road; I merely wanted to make sure we left nothing behind. (Nothing but Immanuel’s empty shell.)