SCENE FOURTEEN Baltimore, MD,
"Damn the man! Damn that fool, Gordon to Perdition!" Gideon Boudin muttered, pacing his private suite in his mansion on the outskirts of Baltimore. "How is it possible he is no longer acting on patterning long since implemented? How is it possible he no longer responds to mesmeric cues we know were implanted as firmly as the foundation stones in a pyramid? We remember distinctly insisting to our old friend, Stephan that such despicable Hebes as Gordon and Danielson should TAKE NO PART in our Great Work, lest they sully it beyond all hope of redemption!"
Then you are remembering our discussions of that very question with your typical imbedded inaccuracies, Gideon, my old friend. Aynsley's spectre seemed to say within Boudin's imagination. It was you, not I, who demanded that young Danielson be used to bait a trap for Gordon, who then in his turn would bait a trap for the only Courier Candidate you wanted for the Work. You went on at some length on several occasions during that period of renewed testing, on the absolute need to bring Major West into the Work, by the brutal expedient of murdering outright
first one and then the other of those very particular young Jews, first Shimon Danielson and then Artemus Gordon. But you remained convinced that only by first attacking Gordon's informant, young Danielson, and then Gordon himself, could we bring Major West into the Work once more.
And I finally acquiesed, with the caveat that each of those unfortunate persons should be tested like the rest, to determine what potential they held for taking the Great Work forward to its proper ends at last. I demanded that both Danielson and Gordon be brought in turn to my laboratory that winter, Gideon. I demanded that I be allowed to determine if either man, the sixty-first and sixty-second of my subjects held any potential at all for the patterning. And you agreed. You agreed, old friend. And so it was done. But Danielson expired during the Candidate Testing as all prior subjects had died. And Gordon would have surely died in my laboratory as well, if not for the glimmer of potential he carried for administering the Courier's coup de gras at the appointed place and time.
"Yes, yes, you may in fact have that correct in part, old friend." Boudin shrugged as if he merely admitted losing a bet. "We recall the many conversations we held on that very question as if they took place yesterday. Certainly we never objected to reducing the maddening presence of damnable Hebes in the general population. We have not now and never had any objections to reducing the maddening presence of these damnable Hebes in the general population, Stephan, old friend. What we protested then as now was the time spent on all those others… all those others, Stephan who had nothing like the True Courier's potential or preparation at that point. How many times, after all did we point out with what ease we could bring our dearest Torry back to his place of heroic Destiny, his Glorious Task, for the Great Work and the One? How many times did you continue with all those other subjects of yours, when we knew Torry was so near at hand?"
When WE knew … when we both knew Torry was so near at hand? Gideon, I had no such knowledge until you finally informed me that our best Courier Candidate had survived the Conflict, after all! I recall very precisely Gideon that you only shared that knowledge with me, when we'd spent most of a year and some fifty-three young lives searching for a new Courier, elsewhere! But how like you, how very like you Gideon to put things in just that way! Stephan's spirit seemed to answer, shaking his head in a familiar melancholy fashion.
How like you to use the 'Royal We', especially in reference to your own imagined heritage, your own profound trials and tribulations. I am of Imperial Hapsburg blood, as I declined on many occasions to remind you, old friend. My family is eons old, going back to the Holy Roman Empire, and the ancient Roman world that preceded that august dominion by a good millennium at the very least! Liesl Marguerite could have become a Physician and Advisor to the Emperor, or any other Royal family in Europe, by virtue of her training and her brilliant mind, if she so chose! But you never heard her, or myself boasting of our ancient lineage, did you, Gideon, excepting for those times when you felt the need to boast of your own
"My lineage is among the oldest, proudest and most revered on two continents, old friend!" Boudin furiously insisted to the bothersome spirit of his former ally. "We trace our bloodlines directly back to the Golden Age of Greece, to be entirely precise! Rome, you say, and its descendants? What was that but the overblown, rampaging of poor, destroyed Troy's remnants? Aeneas, Homer tells us, crept out of Troy by some furtive means or other, taking with him a few menials and his shattered bloodline! Rome, Virgil tells us was founded by dispirited, defeated escapees from the Achaeans greatest, most renowned Triumph!"
"An eon of blood-lust, degradation and tyranny, that is the heritage of your precious Rome, Stephan, old friend! And all those who ever thought to recreate her so called Glory have found themselves with nothing but a handful of ashes! The same will hold true for all of your Hapsburg, Holenzohleren, and Hanoverian so called monarchies, as long as they refuse to bond with the true-blooded sovereigns of La Belle France and her world wide possessions! From the time of the first Merovingian to the newest born Bourbon, the royal houses of France have held sole possession of L' Sangre Royale! And that bloodline, which in an earlier, happier age they shared with their Norman cousins, the ones who conquered and held Britain against all comers, is that which has been produced the heritage I spring from, from that day to this!"
Yes, yes, so you've said, time and again, old friend, times past counting. Aynsley's ghost nodded. Yet, I cannot help but recollect at this juncture that your closest blood ties to La Belle France and her Sacred, Royal bloodline comes from your maternal great grandfather's marriage to a disgraced, disinherited, exiled French courtier's daughter, on the island that nowadays we know as L' Republique d' Haiti! And it was there, in a lovely old harbor town called Port au Prince where you were born Gideon, old friend, during the heyday of the very revolutions that tore Haiti from your beloved France forever. Mademoiselle Helene Terese Beatrice d' Dupree, your lady mother, gave birth to you on the fifteenth instant of May, in the year eighteen hundred and eleven of the Christian era. It was, let me see if I recollect this … yes, it was a matter of merely six weeks before she was recovered enough from that travail to be given in marriage to your late father, Joshua Phillipe Zadkiel Boudin.
"You, sir, are a liar and a dastard!" Boudin shrilled, the fantasy of this conversation becoming unhappily authentic. "Even now, even from Perdition you boast, you lie and you denigrate your genuine betters! For one thing, and it is the most minor of your ugly errors, I was named for my father, Gideon Alexander Remiel Boudin, the Second! Secondly, old friend, you have your dates quite turned about! My mother's nuptials were held in her family chapel, twenty two months to the day before my birth! Begone with you, I'll hear no more of your boasting, much leSs your futile fabrications against me!"
Gideon, old friend, I am and I have been gone to my own well earned corner of Hell these three years, as you very well know. If I were not, if I remained among the living, you must also know I would be using my every thought and each breath left in my body to bring you and your ruinous madness to its rightful, violent ends. You proved yourself the worst enemy I could ever imagine, one I allowed into my home and my work and my bereft Liesly's heart, to work your poisonous wiles there like the craven, groveling reptile you are by your nature! Aynsley's shade seemed to be saying.
And once there you proceeded with tremendous dispatch, indeed with true celerity, old friend, to ravage and ruin, to devastate and destroy everything and everyone you touched! So, believe this, old friend, if there is in reality any such thing as Ultimate Justice, I swear to you I shall avenge my home, my name and my niece on your pathetic person! And I shall have a great many allies' assistance in doing just that! I am not, and I was not the only soul ever to learn your deadly nature, old friend, no!
Watch and wait for us, Gideon. Keep close watch at all times and in all places, under all circumstances, old friend. We are coming for you, we are united by our willpower as never before! We are bound by our deep, shared resolve to visit your own malevolence upon you! We are joined by our profound awareness of your iniquity, and our long held knowledge of your transgressions against so many they can no longer be counted! You know our retribution is the Fate that truly awaits you, old friend. You know the Shining Hour of Reprisal and Resurgence you dream of will only appear as your worst nightmare, now! You know you have damaged, have terrorized and destroyed too many souls to ever escape the same doom as you laid out for all of us!
And you know mine is not the only soul who ever knew the depths of your dementia, old friend! But your defeat will come from those you make no provision against, believing them crushed, believing them powerless against you. Your downfall, Gideon, old friend will come from not knowing how many now stand ranged against you. Your destiny will come as surely as another dawn, from not seeing how entirely encircled you are by the ranks of your supposed victims and your former allies! Stephan's ghost answered, leaving Boudin little, if any, doubt he was hearing his old ally's bitterest vows.
"Stephan, my old friend," Boudin retorted, frowning. "I never dreamt you would be lost in the midst of our proud endeavors. I never thought for an instant you might fall by the wayside, or relinquish the Campaign we commanded, together for so very long. I never once intended the poor, mad woman child you cherished so greatly should be genuinely harmed."
"How, how could I know she would not be the one to emerge from the roiling chaos of that moment when we should have finally triumphed, old friend? How should I have known only a madman with the mind of a blinded, beleaguered child would appear in her place? Surely, he'd been utterly patterned to follow the maze to those stairs. But just as surely as we expected the Butcher's guards to shoot him down, to gun down the assassin, if in fact he did not exit as originally planned, to meet his Martyr's Fate at the hands of his own supposed ally? I arranged that alternative escape route only because I felt somehow, that thick headed Hebe, that Gordon would foil all our planning. I never thought he could be trusted to take the patterning entirely to heart, you see? And in that mistrust, old friend, I have indeed been proven wholly, entirely correct! Once again, the chance came for him to refuse our enemies any further assistance."
"Once again, Gordon was acting on the patterning you implemented in him, to deny, to refuse, to reject all their bewildering, bizarre theories and stratagems where Torry's concerned! He should have stalked out of that asylum last week, never to return! He should have wholly abandoned Torry to the misguided maundering of those so called physicians. Gordon should have forsaken the whole matter as hopeless, as futile, as wrong! Gordon should be somewhere preparing the coup d' grace we meant him to provide our poor Torry, months ago!"
"Our enemies are about to converge on that miserable place even now! Our Great Enemies, both of them are walking back into our hands! All our plans, all our endeavors are coming to fruition at long last, Stephan! And once Torry delivers his dispatches as he should have done …all those months ago, Gordon should be more than prepared to deliver his friend from any method or means of so called damn Yankee Justice, at last! We are going to have our Shining Hour of Destiny and Retribution, just as we planned, just as we dreamt! We are going to win back our World as it should have been these many years! Stephan, old friend, do you not see how it is all coming round just the way we would wish for? Do you not see how all wrongdoing, all transgressions, and all the dishonor ever done to us will now be avenged?"
Indeed, yes, I see the Hour of your Destiny quite vividly, Gideon, my old friend. It shines like the sun at its zenith, like the diamond myriads of stars lighting the night. It warms my dead heart! The ghostly voice answered. I simply, sincerely doubt we see the same vision now, Gideon. But I am well pleased with mine, so I'll leave you to yours, however deluded.
"Then be gone, you old, obstinate fool!" Boudin all but screamed. "I'll have no visions but my own and no Destiny I need share with craven quitters and timorous souls, be they quick or be they dead! I'll have my Shining Hour, and my enemies at my feet, once and forever! I know my Destiny! And it's about to fall into my hands! The Butcher will fall at poor Torry's hands, but not an instant before I see my dear, old Jimmy realize how he made it all happen! And then he can watch, dumbfounded and grieving, as Torry falls in his turn, taking on his True, Classical, Ancient Hero's Fate as long since determined! What happens then? Oh, that's surely the best part of all!
Then the poor witless Hebe, distracted by grief and guilt will take his own life, just as we patterned him to do, so many months ago now! And that will be the wondrous moment of moments, don't you see? For then the Butcher, and Torry and his Hebe friend will all be deader than doornails! Then my dear, old Jimmy will see the New World, the Resurgent South his faults, his failure and his foibles have all wrought! I shall then ascend, albeit with terrible, honorable, dutiful reluctance and misgivings and evident self-doubt to the place of pride, taking the reins of power in these two hands!"
"Then we, as Emperor Gideon Alexander Remiel, shall mend all the ills of this broken, chaotic post-bellum World! We shall bind all wounds and remake this Nation as an Empire stretching as far as our hearts and our minds and our desires can possibly take us! We shall stretch out these hands and see our beloved South Reborn and Thriving! We shall humbly, proudly as is our birthright, take the seat of Washington, in his fair City and make it a throne for the ages! We shall preside over a Second Confederacy whose borders are as illimitable as the stars!
We shall undo all wrongs, all thieveries, all so called Yankee "Peace and Reunion' as it should always have been! We shall decree and create a new Empire on all Continents, beginning with this dear, beleaguered, Yankee and darky-lover infested homeland! A Pax Imperial will then at once be born that will sweep the World with its majesty and power. We shall order the Languages of our Royal Ancestors to take their place as the Imperium's only acceptable tongues. Classical, Homeric Greek and Boyian French shall be the only recognized languages of commerce, education, politics, diplomacy, philosophy, Art and Science!"
"We shall banish all filthy immigrants, and exile all thick headed farm boys and tanners, along with their sons to the farthest points of the globe! We shall root out all black, bloody handed Republicans and their scallywag allies from every corner of this land! We shall see every low, mean, heathen Black sheepe of every darky, Hebe, Mick, Moor, and Roman infested nation on earth thrown back where they came from, if they are not held as chattel, if they do not submit to filling their rightful place! We shall then humbly accept, no doubt by thunderous acclamation, the Imperial throne of a new-born Imperial Age! We shall install in fond memory the Sacred, Royal History of Our Blood! We shall command all children, everywhere to be instructed in the Great, Glorious Story of our Kin. And we shall be, henceforth, forever, Our Excellency, His Exalted, Imperial Majesty, The Eternal One, Gideon Alexander Remiel the First!"
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