Lemprière's Dictionary

by Lawrence Norfolk

  The next few days recorded a number of further meetings, though now they were marked only, “F.L. Met and talked for some hours” or “F.L. Talked further until very late.”

  ‘They were negotiating the agreement,’ said Alice de Vere.

  ‘Of course,’ Lemprière murmured, somehow caught up in the urgency of their business, conspiratorial meetings in the dead of night, hushed voices, fatigue.

  “Taken with us unto Norwich, Eighteenth day of April, year of Our Lord 1603, Cloves, 3 oz. at 6d. per oz. 1s. 6d. Long Synamon, 2 lb. 2 oz. at 3s. 3d. per lb. 6s. 11d. White starch, 12 lb. at 4d. a lb. 4s. Trenchers, 2 doz, 11d.” The list extended down the page, silk, thread, ribboning, tape, pins, rose-water and sweet-water, long mace and middle mace, Beaser stone, amber-greece, saffron and Horsespice. Pepper. It had been quite an expedition. Then Lemprière remembered the last words of the agreement, Signed this day in Norwich.

  ‘Thomas went there to meet François and sign the agreement,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lady de Vere. ‘It was signed on the 25th of April.’

  ‘Why Norwich?’

  ‘It might have been anywhere. But not London, and not here. They had to keep it close, things were not as they are now. France was our enemy in more than name, it was….’

  ‘Treason,’ said Lemprière remembering the evening spent with Peppard, listening as the little man had unstitched the agreement, phrase by knotted phrase.

  ‘Treason, yes’ replied Lady de Vere. Her eyes were on him.

  ‘Skewer mentioned some such thing,’ he said.

  ‘He did.’ It could have been a question. Their eyes met. She knew he was lying.

  ‘But I cannot see why,’ Lemprière said. ‘Not the secrecy, but the whole partnership. François could have sent his own ships. Why should he enter into such an agreement at all? Thomas would act as his agent and gain a tenth of all the profits for his trouble, that I understand, but not the need for an agent in the first place. Why did these men not sail from Rochelle in the first place?’

  ‘They had their own difficulties. Remember, they were dissenters, Huguenots.’ That word again, Septimus’ question in the crush of worshippers in Covent Garden. ‘Protestants,’ she was saying, ‘and the French court was, is, Catholic to its bones. You see the English joint-stock Company had nothing but impounded ships and their charter: but that was what the Rochelais lacked. Their own king would never have granted them that and they knew it. The charter protected the monopoly of the route. If they were not Company ships sailing around the Cape, they were none. That was what the Rochelais bought from Thomas, Philpot, Smith and the others.’

  ‘But the Dutch sailed the route, or did they use another?’

  ‘No! There is no other route. If there were, every ship afloat would be plying it, believe me. The Dutch were a nuisance, but they had no army or navy to speak of then as now. They could not guarantee the route if challenged.’

  ‘And they were challenged?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ and the woman gestured again to the account-book. ‘Read.’

  The pages which followed the signing of the agreement told quite a different story from before. Creditors were paid off, land bought back, craftsmen engaged for this or that project, money invested in other, smaller ventures, new servants taken on.

  ‘The greater part of this house was built around them.’ Lady de Vere spoke again. ‘The arrangement ran smoothly for close to a quarter of a century. Of course, tongues wagged when the second voyage set sail, people wondered how it was financed, but none of their gossip was as strange as the truth. And the truth made our family very wealthy; the other investors too. Voyages were mounted one after another, trading stations set up. Nothing to the size of the Company now, but still the rewards were huge. Your own family must have been rich as Croesus. It even became a problem, gold in those quantities becomes a cargo in itself, visible.’

  ‘What did they do with the money? If it was all supposed to be secret, the arrangement that is?’

  ‘I do not know,’ said Lady de Vere. ‘The Rochelais handled it, that much I do know, but how…. The fourth earl never wrote of it, and I have looked, believe me. Thomas was paid his tenth by your ancestor, but I do not even know how that was accomplished. Thomas never recorded the amounts, though they can be estimated from his expenditure, thousands upon thousands.’

  ‘Hard to conceal,’ said Lemprière.

  ‘Not impossible,’ said Alice de Vere.

  Outside the room in which they spoke, the snow-cloaked country was still. Damp air lay heavily about the house and gardens. Beyond, in the rougher terrain, all sounds were deadened and soaked up by the snow fall. The machines lay about like sleepers. All traces of activity were buried in the night. Boffe had caught his foot in roots, or something. It would not come loose. He took a step backwards, then tried again. It was still caught. He brought his other foot over, then stamped down. Something cracked and his foot came away with a jerk. He had lost all feeling below the knee, he thought. He should not be here. He hurried over to the other man, standing still, waiting for him.

  ‘All ready,’ he announced a little breathlessly as he came closer. The larger man turned and began walking back. ‘I said it is all ready,’ Boffe repeated, hurrying to catch the other, who swung around suddenly.

  ‘I heard you!’ Casterleigh barked.

  ‘So the Rochelle merchants gained control of the Honourable Company. The agreement was honoured with Thomas de Vere and the others. All was well,’ ventured Lemprière.

  ‘Yes, François and the others returned to Rochelle 1 presume. All was well for close to a quarter century. The Company grew and grew. Then it all blew up.’

  The fire had burnt low and the cold was creeping into the room. Lemprière shivered. The carpet on the floor between the two of them had a diamond design in red on grey. If Juliette were to arrive at all, she would have arrived by now. The snow, perhaps. ‘Blew up?’

  ‘The siege.’ But he knew nothing of that. A blue sprite flickered in the grate, dancing back and forth on the black iron work, back and forth. It drew his eye along, past the old woman who was talking to him, ‘… encircled all about, by land and sea, Mister Lemprière!’

  ‘Yes, I heard, I….’ Rochelle, the siege of La Rochelle. That was what blew up, and they had all been caught, so intent on their commerce they had not seen it coming, waiting for them in their neglect.

  ‘It went on for months, a year and beyond. All the payments were halted, caught up somehow. Presumably the money was routed through Rochelle. At any rate, it stopped. The Company could run itself by and large, but the profits were another matter entirely. Perhaps they were lost. Perhaps not.’

  ‘So François and his associates died in the siege?’ Lemprière interrupted her.

  ‘It all becomes very complicated,’ said Lady de Vere. ‘The siege itself was terrible. The French king wanted no quarter given. He wanted them crushed, every Huguenot life taken, the city razed to the ground. There were stories of massacres in the countryside round about the city, terrible stories…. The English mounted an expedition, common cause supposedly, all Protestants together, but it failed or was designed to fail. The siege dragged on into the next year, 1628. The Catholics under Richelieu built some sort of sea wall and that was the end really.’

  ‘The city was taken?’

  ‘What was left of it. Most of the Rochelais were dead of starvation and those that were not soon followed them.’

  ‘Slaughtered?’ Lemprière asked.

  ‘They killed themselves,’ Lady de Vere’s voice was cold, ‘rather than be captured.’

  ‘But you said François and the others escaped….’

  ‘Perhaps the only ones to do so. I do not know how. They were resourceful men. But something had happened, something amongst themselves I believe. It was a few months after the siege, the spring of 1629. No payments had been made for close to two years. The investors in London believed their partners had perished. Thomas, the fourth earl wa
s convinced of it. It was then he was contacted again by your ancestor. Remember, they had not seen one another for twenty-five years. François was in London and they met there. It was a strange meeting, but see for yourself.’ Lady de Vere took the battered bundle of papers from Lemprière’s hands and turned its sheets five or six at a time. ‘He recorded the meeting in his accounts,’ she was saying, a few more sheets were glanced at, then the whole mass was thrust back at him. ‘There,’ she pointed to where Thomas de Vere’s account began. ‘The spring of 1629.’ Lemprière took the papers and began to read.

  “On this day I became the wealthiest man alive or the meanest beggar and I know not which. I have met the man who once before found me ruined and burthened me with riches, and now promises the same. I mean François Lemprière, merchant. Five and twenty years have passed since last we met and we both are much changed. François carries a stick for his leg is damaged and will not mend. He is grey but still his countenance is full of expression and his speech is full of extravagance, and truth too I pray, else I am ruined and my own family shall seek dinner with Duke Humphrey.

  “Our meeting was a thing of chance, and yet recovering from our surprise we fell to talking at once and dined on beeves and ham. A thousand mysteries beset me but I stilled my tongue from useless wagging and patience was never a better valued virtue than then for François was pumped up like a bladder with talk, much of it terrible. He spake of the siege and its horrors whereof I was aghast, his words were so vivid and countenance so wild, but I will not write of them here. We supped further and drank of a bottle of Negus and François spake of his adventure in escaping from that fated place, Rochelle. His leg was all smashed within and he bears a scar. He had been sent, a kind of envoy to the good Duke of Buckingham and the Court in England, but it availed the poor men and women within the walls nothing for I knew the Duke had not broken the siege and when the Duke came back François had sailed with him, feign as he was to leave his friends. But when I asked if he mourned his fellow-merchants still for it is now some months since the final slaughter he told me nay, for they lived yet and were they burned to death with the rest his answer would even then be nay for he detested them as he would birds who eat their young and worse. All this was said in a grete rage like a madness but he calmed again and talked like a sane person. He has lodged in the island of Jersey, the months past the siege. He has broken with his fellow-merchants and challenged them. He will not say why but says only that the spirits of Rochelle know why and that is enow. I did not press him more, but rather told him of mine own privations though they were nothing to his own, his wife and six children were all dead. François was full of spirit when I spoke, and told me soon I will be richer than any man bar himself for he made an Agreement with me and will keep it. I believe he means mischief to his old fellows the other eight merchants but talked only of marking their papers or having marked papers, saying mark you and making a grete play with that word mark in his accent. For myself I kept my peace and we talked of other matters, like the vile attacks by hacks on the Company. When I said this my outrage was a kind of Comedy to him for he laughed very loud and his madness came back though in another joking way. I asked him how it could come about that we would be so rich as he said but he would say no more then but to trust or know, the choosing was for me. I am home now, at my small-table and my head has an ache from the hour and the wine. The Lord guides me in this matter though I would wish his direction plainer and François is a strange man, but no stranger to me. I will trust him. That is my decision.”

  ‘And he was wrong,’ said Alice de Vere. ‘For he never saw François again and never received another penny.’ Lemprière let his eye wander up and down the hastily formed characters, “like the madness … and his madness came back.… I will trust him.”

  ‘But what happened? If François had a plan against the others, some sort of revenge….’

  ‘If, if,’ said the woman. ‘I have never discovered what it might have been. It came to nothing at any rate. I have combed the fourth earl’s papers for a clue, and I believe he knew no more than I do now. Less….’ But Lemprière was thinking of François’ madness, imagining his eyes rolling and the uncontrolled laughter, the rage. Something had thrown him into that, something at Rochelle.

  ‘What were the attacks?’ he asked. ‘And the business with marked papers, or marks? When François laughed like….’ Lemprière hesitated. ‘When he laughed?’

  ‘The attacks were pamphlets,’ said Lady de Vere, burrowing amongst the papers once more and handing over a shabby production with irregular type printed off the centre of the page. “A Primer for John Company, wherein he might find his letters writ large and learn of them his true nature.”

  ‘They were a series,’ she said. ‘This is the second.’

  “Hell-hound. These are the vermin who perjure, rob and blind the common weal with talk of trade, by which name they know their own profit and gain and we know them as the Company….” ‘I’ was for “infection” and ‘J’ for the “Just War I wage against them, like germs they are in need of a purgative, a scourging,” and so, on through K and L and M, the whole thing a catalogue of abuse and invective against the Company written in the most shocking language. There was much talk of unmasking, but no unmasking was done, nor were any specific charges made. It was only when Lemprière saw the pseudonymous signature on the final leaf that something rang very faintly inside him, Asiaticus. He brought his head up, as if the elusive memory might be revealed in the cracked plaster of the ceiling. The chest. That was it. His father’s chest contained such a pamphlet, Asiaticus, he had glanced at it on the night of the Pork Club and now told the woman so.

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Lady de Vere. ‘The mysterious Asiaticus,’ and she seemed about to say more, but checked herself. ‘The point is,’ she took up on a different note, ‘that François had disappeared without a trace. His family had been killed in the siege and, after the meeting you read of, we heard no more. Perhaps he was killed, or simply died of his malady, or ran away. Likewise, the months between the end of the siege and their meeting were a mystery to Thomas. François had appeared from nowhere so far as he was concerned. François must have spent the best portion of those months on Jersey. The fourth earl never thought to travel there, though if he had, he would have found François’ second family and everything might have been different.’

  ‘Second family? How can you know François began a second family? He was only there for,’ Lemprière peered once more at the account, ‘a few months.’

  ‘You have only been here a matter of hours Mister Lemprière. Nevertheless, I am quite certain you exist. However long he was there, François Lemprière took time to begin a family. When Skewer brought us his scrap of news, it was not the agreement which interested us, Mister Lemprière. It was you.’

  ‘Me? But….’

  ‘The family begun by François in those months was your own. You are a true Lemprière, the other half of the partnership do you not see? The agreement is in perpetuity. Mister Lemprière, a full ninth of the Company is rightfully yours and a full tenth of that is ours. Read it for yourself.’ Her hands had a life of their own, jerking down with each point on the low table. Her ring rapped on the frontispiece of the pamphlet which lay there before them on the table top.

  ‘Forever, do you not see?’ Lemprière saw the earlier meeting between Thomas de Vere and his own ancestor in a new light, the edge in Thomas’ need to know what was happening, the urgency of it and the dammed-up restraint, waiting to be told his lot with François reeling like a drunkard, a mad man. It was there in Alice de Vere’s eyes, the same thing, her arm was on his arm and he knew it was absurd. All those men were long dead and their mad hopes with them. ‘Millions upon millions,’ she was saying and her hand was like a claw holding them together over the agreement. He could hear himself saying, ‘No, no, impossible,’ saying the things Peppard had said, that she would have heard before and known in any case even before that. It could not be do
ne, it was too late. Her house might crumble about her ears as she claimed and still no one would listen. They were all dead. Lemprière was shaking his head and repeating himself. ‘Whoever owns the Company will not simply give it up. Not for this,’ and he held up the agreement which Lady de Vere suddenly snatched from him.

  ‘Then to hell with it!’ She stood upright quickly and almost ran to the fireplace. ‘To hell with you!’ she cried, as she threw the document into the flames where it was consumed and burnt to ash in an instant.

  The old woman stood over the fire. Lemprière stared at her, then looked down. A piece of ash whirled out on a tiny thermal and lodged in the prickly brocade of her dress. ‘I must apologise Mister Lemprière,’ she said after a long silence. Lemprière mumbled something at his feet, sorry. Lady de Vere looked down too, then turned to him once again. Her carriage was as erect as before. When she spoke again her voice was even, almost as if nothing had taken place.

  ‘I would like to tell you about the drainage of the west pasture,’ she said in a different, clearer tone. Lemprière looked across at her, still startled as she held up her hand for forbearance. ‘Before you rejoin the guests Mister Lemprière, if you would.’

  ‘Of course,’ Lemprière said, although mention of the other guests sharpened his impatience. He wanted to be gone.

  ‘This house stands on a slight rise,’ Lady de Vere addressed him. ‘You would have noticed the incline in your approach.’ He had not, but was nodding. Pug’s pipe had occupied his attention, that and other thoughts. ‘The gardens surround it and beyond them, to the east and west, are two pastures, each of several acres. They are identical in most respects, both were cleared in the time of the fourth earl, the soil is similar, they suffer the same weather and both are low lying. When they were cleared, the east pasture formed good springy turf and was used for grazing within a year. But the west pasture turned out to be a bog swarming with all sorts of flies in summer, freezing over in the winter. Quite useless. The fourth earl accordingly decided to drain it, and, with some labour, managed to do so. The west pasture was now good grazing ground, the whole operation a success. But after some weeks, Thomas’s man noticed that the east pasture was becoming wetter and in fact, before the year was out, it was as marshy as the west pasture had been before.’