Lemprière's Dictionary

by Lawrence Norfolk

  The pack quickened. Through Champs Clairs, cutting the Chapel road to Handois, circling and moving down to Quetivel and the valley, their trail led across scrub and pasture, over hedges and ditches, walls and fences, meadows and fallow fields, through undergrowth turning to woodland until the roots reared up to trip the dogs as they made their way down a steep incline. The man on horseback picked a more deliberate path, guiding the horse down to the bushes he knew lay below. The dogs panted and their tongues out. They no longer barked.

  The steep sides of the valley were composed of dark earth which the canopies of trees had not prevented from drying out. It crumbled away beneath Charles’s feet as he half-ran, half-slid down the slope. He was in little danger of falling. The trees threw up elbows of thick, gnarled roots which served as hand-holds for his descent. As the slope began to level out the trees thinned and thick brambles took their place. Charles knew their supple, barbed stems from berry-picking outings when a boy. No-one had picked berries here though. They had shrivelled to tight, brown buds on the branch. He picked his way carefully around the dense bushes until he found, a little to his surprise, a viable path. It must have been cut recently, he thought. By whom? He made his way through, unsnagging the thorns from his clothing as he went. The sound of running, or falling water reached his ears, but a patch of tall ferms blocked any view of it. He pushed them aside and strode through. It had been falling water, but the sight that met his eyes then dropped him to his knees as surely as if his ham-strings had been snapped. His heart pumped a thick pulse through his body.

  ‘Good Christ,’ he exclaimed at the scene before him.

  About now, yes, thought the man on horseback. His mind was very clear. And the boy too. Soon. He gathered the dogs as they reached the bank of the stream. They knew the object of their pursuit was close. He held them, waiting, tracing in his mind the path the boy would have taken, gauging distance and terrain against time. The sun blazed down on him. Soon, he calculated, the boy would come to the place marked out for him and find his own part in the scene. Then the need to finish it rose irresistibly. He rallied the hunting-pack and aimed his horse upstream. Now.

  John Lemprière had dawdled along the cliff-tops of Bouley Bay as far as Vicard Point before heading inland to Cambrai, then west to the Mont Mado quarries. From there he had trod southwards, past the Wesleyan Chapel and into St Lawrence valley. Warm sunlight sparkled through the leaves above and dappled the ground around him. With his eye-glasses he had little fear of the slope, and in any case the west side of the valley was less steep than that which faced it. He walked along, taking his bearings from the sound of the stream which flowed, out of sight, below and to his left.

  He loved this valley. Undisturbed by human habitation, it might be anywhere in time; a place where ancient figures might run unchecked, might be seen fleetingly, the glint from a headpiece, a quick movement on the very edge of his vision. His face ached from having spent the night pressed against the book that Casterleigh had sent him. Twice in the night he had jerked his head out of sleep in a dreamed panic that the characters had shifted beneath his eye-lids. Twice he had fallen back into sleep, reassured. But the memory of the huge face, with its tears of molten bronze still pursued him. And in Ichnabod’s shop too, he thought to himself. He moved on, toward his most favoured place in the valley, the waterfall, where the quick stream took a drop and widened to a shallow pool before narrowing again and running on down the valley to Blanche Pierre. Somewhere he had visited at other times to do nothing but sit and listen to the water.

  He heard its light roar long before he saw it, and attuned his ears to the sound as though it were a beacon. But as he made his way down at an angle to the slope he heard a short cry followed by a loud splash. Someone had found his pool. Someone was in his pool! He strode forward angrily, rounded a copice of trees and stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of Juliette Casterleigh, naked beneath the waterfall.

  He might have run forward then. He might have run forward and knelt and kissed where the waterfall kissed her now. On her stomach and breasts, on her lips. But it was all he could do to breathe. Desire dried his tongue and he felt every muscle in his stomach tighten. Shining, silvery water glistened on her skin. She threw her long, black hair back and glittering drops of water rained out in an arc. Her cupped hands sluiced water up her legs, over her stomach and onto her breasts whose nipples, stiff with cold, dripped shiny droplets back into the darker water which swirled at her feet. The waterfall cascaded down on her and she reached up with her arms to embrace it, opened her mouth to taste it, arched her back to feel it tingle down her spine, between her buttocks and on the backs of her legs. She stood as if fixed by the gazes from either side of the pool, the father and the son. As she took the cold kiss of the waterfall on her body John Lemprière’s eye was caught by a faint birthmark on her upper arm, but before he could make out what it was, she had turned.

  Skin of alabaster, eyes of jet, the girl’s body swung from son to father. On the other side of the pool Charles Lemprière had seen all his son had seen. All but one detail. White flesh in the black water and the dark glitter of water-drops as they skated from her skin. And when she turned, he saw those drops scatter about her like a silver noose rising out of the pool. He saw the black triangle between her legs, and her breasts and her eyes which were blacker yet and the breath caught in his throat. And as her body turned for him, he saw the mark, the imperfection his son had glimpsed a moment before and not recognised. But the father recognised it and he knew it as a sign he dreaded above all others, burning into him as once it would have been burnt into her. A broken circle, the signature of all he had fought against. And he knew then that his patient, faceless adversaries had bested him, that all his efforts, and his father’s, and his father’s before him had again come to nothing. The account against him would be settled now and his life was forfeit to it. They had found him. For a moment he knelt as if entranced by the recognition of defeat, and then he rose, the protest welling in his throat, to scream mindlessly.

  ‘No, no! Not now! Not here!’

  Then he heard the pack. He stopped dead, the words dying in his throat as he realised, he had been their prey from the beginning, from the very first. But the time for any kind of thought was past.

  The dogs broke cover forty yards downstream, moving fast and low over the ground. He turned to the naked girl who now watched him from the pool. Her black eyes glittering, sinking into him. He told himself not to run, to face whatever might come. But run he did, flailing wildly at the ferns and bushes in his way, while on the other side of the pool, under cover of the overhanging trees, a pair of legs tried to run, and could not. A pair of hands tried to claw their way out of the emerging nightmare, and could not. A voice tried to scream, and heard only the screams of his father.

  The sun burnt down from above, blinding the fleeing man. The first dog hurled itself at him, Melampus, its teeth met in his calf, the first cry of pain, the first blood, Ichnobates, clawing at his ribs, the tunic shreds, white flesh, Pamphagus sinking yellow teeth in his wrist, raised in futile … Dorceus takes the other arm, dragging him down for Oribasos to gouge red meat from the back leg of the prey, the leg in spasm, he falls and Nebrophonos finds the throat, rips at it so no screams now, only the sound of blood in the windpipe, a death-rattle that inflames Theron to bite into the soft flesh on the cheek. Laelaps to snap and maul at the tongue. Pterelas and Agre share the genitals between them, snarling at Hylaeus who fastens teeth in the back of the knee, the bloody flesh still moving until Nape and Poemenis twist the neck in opposite directions, Harpyia leaps back, startled at the cracking sound, licks hungrily for the warm marrow, joined by Ladon and forced off by Dromos as Canache, Sticte, Tigris and the rest of the pack gorge themselves on the corpse. Alce makes his way out to the silvery pool. Leucon raises his bloodstained muzzle to the slopes. The trees rustle, thick green foliage dances in the breeze. Asbolus barks in fury at their soft movement.

  The young man r
olls, rubbing his face in the soft earth. Lacon yelps. His lips bleed. Aëllo paws at the ground. The mutilated body shudders with a last twitch of its muscles. Thoos throws himself in play on the ground. The young man claws at the earth. His nails split. Lycisce raises his head as an horse’s hooves plash their way upstream. Cyprius leads the way as the dogs rush to the horseman. Harpalos lingers by the pool. The girl looks up to the man on horseback who is waiting for her. Melaneus looks back to the carcass. He says nothing, simply holds his arm out. Lachne sniffs the air. The young man writhes. Labros runs in circles. She runs to the man, her feet splash water in all directions. Argiodus scampers from her path. She wears anklets of soft, brown leather set with turquoise. Hylactor licks the blood on his back. Melanchaetes leaps from the bank. The girl runs and jumps for the saddle, gains it, rests her cheek on his back. Her cheek is wet. Theridamas raises his head and bays at the sky as the horse moves slowly out of sight.

  The long, dark cloud-bank moved silently overhead, shading the hills fields and valleys as it went. It shaded the gashed and twisted body by the pool. It shaded his son, wrapping its grey shroud about him. A grey shade touched his skin with cold fingers, like mist. He felt dry, racking sobs force their way up his throat. There were no words at first. Deep inside him, at his centre, a black gland was already leeching its transfiguring thought through his body and its channels, observing its own slow seepage into the basin of his brain, offering its mouth to him in his grief and, as it coupled with him, it was accepted. In his mind’s eye, the book was still open on the table in his room. Actaeon was still alive, still waiting for the dogs to reach him. Here, half-lying in the pool, was his father’s torn cadaver. Between both these bodies was his own, which connected them, turning one into the other.

  The oil-lamp held ten wicks. An unusual design, it flickered and gave off a fitful light. One was a lighting wick; of the other nine, three were lit.

  ‘We hear Dundas’s bill may be debated next month. We hear there is support for it.’

  ‘An enquiry has been made. There should be no difficulties, although….’

  ‘A little leverage might ease a conscience or two. Have it done. If there are still difficulties, we shall think on it again.’ He paused. ‘The other business?’

  There was a short silence.

  ‘Carried off as we planned.’

  ‘Jaques can be sent to France now. We must not delay further. The girl can go with him.’

  Assent was indicated.

  ‘The boy?’

  ‘Matters are in hand. I cannot foresee any difficulties, not at the present.’

  ‘Your place is precisely to foresee. Do so. Remember what is at stake.’

  A third voice sounded. Deeper, slower than the others.

  ‘Everything. Everything is at stake.’

  The overladen pacquet pitched and yawed despite the calmness of the sea. Every time its prow broke the gentle swell the crates of chickens stacked towards the bows squawked in terror and the men and women on deck reached for the rail to steady themselves. He was going to be sick again. He straddled his trunk and looked back at Jersey, still plainly visible off the stern. The sky was leaden and the sea, taking its colour from above, looked opaque and uninteresting. It looks cold, he thought, although he knew the sea was warmest at the beginning of autumn. His father had told him that. He wished he could be sick again.

  It was two weeks now. He had barely said a word. For the first three days he had not opened his mouth. He had not cried. Jake Stokes had found him. In search of the father, he had found the son, wandering absently in the fields above Blanche Pierre. It had been pouring with rain. He was drenched, so they said. He didn’t remember. His finger still hurt, the nail was growing back slowly. When they took the body back to St Helier he had identified it.

  ‘That is my father,’ he had said, even though the face was unrecognisable.

  He knew from the clothes, the pieces of clothes, he corrected himself. Jake Stokes told him that the coroner had said he would have died quite quickly. From the throat-wound. Casterleigh himself had led the men back to where the body lay, then he had shot the dogs.

  He was going to be sick, barely made it to the side. The thick, yellow stain floated away from the boat. Mother had broken down in D’Aubisson’s office.

  ‘The full will is held in London,’ D’Aubisson had said. ‘These are only documents pertaining to it.’ The solicitor liked those kinds of words, pertaining to it, secondary executor, codicil…. He had talked for a long time, but all it meant was that John had to go to London. He didn’t care, but that was when Marianne had cried.

  He saw Guernsey ahead, half an hour away perhaps. It was me, it was meant to be me, I read of it, I witnessed it…. But his thoughts only led him back to the thought he could not face, the credo that stalked him like a stealthy and invisible enemy. He gazed out, over the side of the boat. There, beneath the familiar surface, what lurks there?

  Small waves slapped the side of the boat. Above, gulls wheeled. To them, the sea was transparent. The boat, a tiny point in a vast uniformity, a flaw in the pattern. They caught the thermals as they rose and rode up with them until they saw both islands, Jersey and Guernsey and beyond them the coast of France. And they flew higher still until the coast of England was just visible, a grey smudge on the horizon.

  Far below, the pacquet sailed slowly into the harbour of St Peter Port. The young man swung his trunk up and carried it high on his shoulder, down the gang-plank to the jetty. He stopped at the end and looked back, just once, before turning and walking on. Gulls flew up into the clouds, up until they were lost to view in the grey expanse of the sky.

  Farewell Caesarea.

  II London

  GULLS SCREECH and wheel overhead. They can be heard inside the coach as it bumps and slides through the muck and mud, its bevelled wheels cutting deep thin ruts in the road which leads on towards London. From Southampton by way of Guildford and the Holmesdale vale, it has struggled through mud, rain, ice, a broken shaft and the foulness of the North Downs in November. For the moment, the sky is fine. The horses pull hard against the shafts and snort as the driver cracks them on. Their breath comes hard in the cold air. Through shrunken hamlets and empty fields, past abandoned farmhouses, shining green streams, steaming hayricks and churches decked with elder-trees they have come in their drive for the metropolis. The road has cut through valleys, low hills, moors and marshland. Now it moves through George’s Fields.

  Meadows and dry stone walls are being replaced by more businesslike fences enclosing terraced cottages with red pantiled roofs, chimneys coughing smoke. The driver pulls his hat down and gets to work on the tired horses again. They pick up and pull on through Southwark to the Borough as the houses gain a storey, then another, growing taller and narrower all the way up to London Bridge where the crowded piles break, suddenly, for the river.

  ‘… life-blood of my trade, import-export. Any way to turn a penny,’ Cleaver is explaining to his audience as they pass over the sluggish water. Nobody cares. A woman and her young child nod politely, the young man is asleep, lolling on his shoulder. Cleaver shrugs him off.

  ‘Nobody’ll say Ned Cleaver don’t love the river,’ he declares. The young man knocks himself awake just in time to hear this. The woman nods again.

  ‘The river? Where’s the river?’ he asks as he comes to. His voice is thick with sleep.

  But they are across it now, rattling over the cobbles of Lombard Street.

  ‘Back there.’ Cleaver jerks his thumb over his shoulder. The carriage slows for the crowds which thicken and grow noisy as they continue down Cheapside and around St Pauls at a snail’s pace. Cleaver sneezes without troubling to cover his nose.

  ‘Just look at her!’ he exhorts them. ‘No city like her, you know.’ Above, the driver pulls in his reins. The horses stop immediately.

  ‘Journey’s end!’ he shouts down. Cleaver clambers out, pulls his case from up top and is off without so much as ‘good day’. Th
e woman and child follow, then the young man, less steadily, still rousing himself. The woman clasps her valise in one hand and offers him the other.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Jemmer.’

  ‘Good day to you, Mister….’ She struggles with the name which has been offered her only once, three days previously. ‘My condolences, sir,’ she says instead and takes her leave.

  ‘This yours?’ asks the driver, handing down his chest. He takes it and feels in his pockets. His hand closes in error about the miniature of herself his mother had pressed into his hand as he boarded the pacquet from Jersey. People are pushing and shoving past him. He fishes again and pulls out the paper upon which she had laboriously drafted a map laying out directions from any point on the Thames. He has only to find the river from the midst of this crush. He cannot fail.

  ‘Whoa there!’ He jumps back as a handcart rattles past. The chest is hoisted onto his shoulder.

  ‘Oi!’ He is propelled forward as a burly individual demands passage behind. The thoroughfare is crammed with vendors and their customers who have spilled out of Fleet Market to fill the neighbouring streets. Stallholders cry their wares at the throng which mills and presses all around. Car-men force their way through with kicks and curses, load-carriers the same. The din fills his ears as mistresses haggle pennies and farthings and the sellers protest at their stinginess. Small boys dodge between the legs of the punters. Dogs get in the way.