Introduction

 

 

In Paul Féval’s John Devil,1 that legendary pseudonym is adopted by Comte Henri de Belcamp in support of his mother’s career as a notorious member of London’s underworld, where she is known by her maiden name, Helen Brown. After attempting unsuccessfully to rescue her from an Australian prison camp, Henri takes news of her death to his long-estranged father, the Marquis de Belcamp, in the small town of Miremont, and is reconciled with him. Meanwhile, he is secretly engaged in financing the construction of an unprecedentedly powerful steamship with which he intends to rescue Napoleon from St. Helena and conquer India; in pursuit of this plan, he takes over a secret Bonapartist organization, the Knights of the Deliverance. Henri is assisted in this project by his long-term companion, Sarah O’Brien, the daughter of a murdered Irish general.

When a potential traitor to the Deliverance, the opera singer Constance Bartolozzi, is murdered in London, the case is investigated by Gregory Temple, the senior detective at Scotland Yard, assisted by his junior, James Davy. John Devil is identified as the murderer. Temple strongly suspects that the person behind that name is Helen Brown’s son, known to him as Tom Brown, but the accumulated evidence seems to point to Temple’s former assistant, Richard Thompson (who is secretly married to Temple’s daughter, Suzanne). Actually, James Davy–who is another of Henri de Belcamp’s many aliases–has framed his predecessor, exploiting the account of his methods Temple has published in a book on the art of detection. Henri/Davy persuades Thompson to flee to France, where Suzanne is a guest at the Château Belcamp, but he is captured and convicted of the Bartolozzi murder.

When Henri is reconciled with his father, Sarah rents the so-called “new château” on the Belcamp estate under the name of Lady Frances Elphinstone. Henri commissions the murders of his dead mother’s wealthy brothers but there is one further obstacle to the fortune he intends to collect by this means, in the name of Tom Brown: Constance Bertolozzi’s daughter, Jeanne Herbet, who also lives in Miremont. Jeanne is the designated heir of both brothers, neither of whom knows which of them is her father. Henri falls in love with Jeanne after impulsively saving her life, and decides to marry her fortune rather than murdering her.

Henri eventually marries Jeanne under the alias of an English entrepreneur, Percy Balcomb, in which guise he slips out of the jail where he is supposedly confined. Henri is in prison because the obsessive Temple, having failed to prove that he murdered General O’Brien or Constance Bartolozzi, found out where the bodies of his hired killers were buried. Temple obtained thus information from the drunken mistress of the vertically-challenged petty criminal Ned Knob, who was a witness to the murders and disposed of the bodies. Ned also schooled the false witnesses at Richard Thompson’s trial, using members of a troupe of vagabond actors.

On the eve of Thompson’s execution, Henri inveigles his way into Newgate Prison, helping him to escape by taking his place. When Temple tries the same trick, Henri confronts his nemesis in the condemned cell, almost driving him insane by telling him that Tom Brown is not, after all, one of his pseudonyms but an actual half-brother, sired by Temple. After escaping in Temple’s place, however, Henri finds that everything is going awry. The Deliverance is betrayed, his new steamship is destroyed, and his mother has returned from Australia, accusing him of having abandoned her. He finds it politic to commit suicide–or, at least, to appear to do so.

Part One of The Empire of the Necromancers picks up the story four years later, in November 1821. Ned Knob, now directing the acting troupe, is unexpectedly confronted with his predecessor in that role, “Sawney” Ross, who has been hanged but now appears to be alive again, though somewhat slow-witted. When the reanimated Ross is collected by a diminutive French physician, Germain Patou,2 Ned follows them to a boat where they are met by a man in a Quaker hat like the one Henri wore in his guise as John Devil.

After being knocked unconscious, Ned wakes up in Newgate and is interrogated by Gregory Temple, now working for the secret police. Temple is supposed to be investigating a series of body-snatching incidents, but his attention has been caught by a report of the Quaker hat. Following his release, Ned tracks Patou to a house in Purfleet. There he renews his acquaintance with Henri and witnesses the resurrection of a man from the dead using an elaborate electrical technique recently discovered by a Swiss scientist.

The demonstration is interrupted when Henri’s ship is attacked by a rival group under the command of the only one of the reanimated “Grey Men” to have recovered all his faculties: a person who styles himself “General Mortdieu.” Mortdieu’s hirelings seize the electrical apparatus from the house, taking it to their own ship, the Outremort. Ned is arrested again, but makes a deal with Temple.

As the Outremort is about to depart from her berth in Greenhithe, a three-cornered battle develops between Mortdieu’s hirelings, Henri’s followers and Temple’s men. The fight eventually arrives at an impasse, but a hastily-contrived treaty permits Mortdieu to sail away, taking Patou with him.

Later, Gregory Temple is woken one night by Henri, who tells him that they must join forces, at least temporarily. Temple’s grandson has been kidnapped from the Château Belcamp, where Thompson and Suzanne are now resident, along with two younger children of much richer parents; one is the son of Henri and Jeanne, the other the son of the former Sarah O’Brien, now the widow of a German Count.

Temple and Henri set out to make their separate ways to Miremont, where Temple has to break the news to Jeanne that she is not a widow. Henri is delayed and Temple has to respond to the first ransom note with no one to help him but Ned Knob. He is taken prisoner in his turn. Temple’s captors are members of a long-dormant society of heretic monks known as Civitas Solis, seemingly led by Giuseppe Balsamo, who are more interested in securing the secret of resurrection than in the ransom money that will help finance their exploitation of it.

Henri’s delay has been caused by his traveling under the name George Palmer, in which guise he was involved with a vehm (a secret society of vigilantes) at the time of General O’Brien’s murder, and in whose eyes he is still a wanted man. Having made his peace with the vehmgerichte, however, Henri is able to attack Civitas Solis and liberate Temple and the captive children before disappearing again, intent on joining forces with Civitas Solis in the expectation of using them as he had formerly used the Deliverance.

Now read on...

 

Bran Stableford