Rough corridors ran forward and to either side between hundreds of thick blocks. Each was ten feet or more across and reached from floor to roof. Lemprière took them for squat supporting columns. The musty smell was much stronger inside, the air cold with damp. Then he saw that the columns were paper; vast piles of sheaves of papers stacked in blocks. The cellar was an archive of monstrous proportions. Theobald walked ahead of him, turning this way and that between the mouldering piles until they could no longer see the door through which they had entered, the side walls, nor yet the far end of the cellar. Lemprière heard the faint drip of water somewhere in the darkness. The smell of damp paper was all around him.
‘This,’ said Theobald, as he came to a halt beside a malodorous pile of papers spotted with green mould and gestured into the blackness about them, ‘is the Correspondence. All of it. Everything. From the first venturers right up until today.’ Then he paused and looked about. ‘There are secrets here, if you can find them,’ he said in an undertone. ‘Matters the Company wouldn’t wish public a thousand years from now. Some of them, terrible things….’ Lemprière thought he heard a note of regret in Theobald’s voice as though it were his brother and the unlucky players in the Neagle Affair to whom he alluded. But then his tone changed and he was the bureaucrat again.
‘Only I have the right to enter the Archive,’ he asserted. ‘Even the directors must apply for permission. Now look,’ and he pulled a sheaf from mid-way up the pile and handed it to Lemprière. ‘The accounts from the Falmouth, Neagle’s ship,’ he said. Lemprière saw columns of figures next to lists of provisions, shipwrights’ bills and other expenses.
‘The end,’ Theobald said and Lemprière turned until the columns ended suddenly in 1766 on a page yellowed with age and dotted with mould, but otherwise quite empty.
‘What?’ he asked. He saw nothing significant. ‘This was when she sank?’
Theobald nodded. ‘No total,’ he said. ‘And no payment. The insurance was never claimed. Not on the cargo, not on the lease of the ship.’
It began to dawn on Lemprière that this was the extent of the “proof” Theobald had bruited on the other side of the city and he was on the point of becoming annoyed when he saw Theobald’s shoulders shaking and crocodile tears run down his cheeks.
‘George was right all along,’ he sobbed as Lemprière joined the pantomime by patting him on the back. But his hand froze and Theobald’s tears stopped in an instant as both heard the door behind them being pushed open for a second time.
They turned and saw two slight figures enter the archive, lit from behind by a lamp held by the third, a larger man who squeezed his shoulders through the door only with difficulty. Theobald doused his lamp and led Lemprière away from them, further into the gloom of the archive. Lemprière looked quickly at Theobald, expecting panic, but he was cool and collected. Behind them, the three figures fanned out.
Two were lost almost instantly to view, the third only a dim shape in the lamplight sixty feet away. Powerfully built, thought Lemprière. The low tones of a conversation whose words they could not make out pursued them as Lemprière and Theobald moved noiselessly about the mouldering piles. They caught glimpses of the lamp and its holder but the other two were invisible.
‘What are they doing? Who are they?’ Lemprière whispered. Theobald only shook his head and pulled him further back again. But whichever direction they took, it seemed that the lamp eventually followed, slowly quartering the archive and narrowing their avenue of escape. Now and again they heard sounds which might have been the footsteps of the other two and they would back away slowly until the sound faded. They manoeuvred about the archive in this way for what seemed like hours; only minutes in reality. Then Lemprière rounded a corner and there, only feet away, was a shape which turned at his sharp intake of breath, the head coming around and Lemprière grabbed with both hands to seal off the cry, pulling it down and pressing as hard as he could, the lamp moving closer, only twenty feet away now and its yellow light creeping around the corner until it lit the body beneath his own and a voice came which he recognised, as he recognised the silhouette from the doorway and now the girl beneath him. The voice was Casterleigh’s. The girl was Juliette. The Viscount was calling her and moving towards them both. Her eyes were wide with fright. Casterleigh called again.
‘Answer him!’ he hissed into her ear. She looked mutely up at him as he released his hand from her mouth. A long moment passed. Insanely, he wanted it to go on longer. The lamp was only feet away and he could hear the Viscount’s footsteps moving nearer.
‘Wait!’ Juliette called, then rose and as she did so whispered, ‘Tomorrow,’ only that, and he saw the fear still in her face as she slipped away.
‘Come!’ the Viscount ordered her and Lemprière heard her half stumble as she was pulled forward. Then he realised that her fright was not at him at all.
He would have risen but Theobald pulled him back. Together they watched as Casterleigh’s lamp moved away, its yellow light catching the corners of each squat pile whose shadows closed like teeth on one another as the three of them moved towards the wall farthest from the door. When it was a faint glow almost seventy yards away, Lemprière rose and crept slowly after it. He moved sideways, looking down the length of each passage in turn. He heard a sound like a door, the light wavered then suddenly went out. A key scraped. He ran forward in the sudden pitch black.
Theobald re-lit his lamp and followed at a more leisurely pace. Its rays shone out throwing a giant shadow onto the far wall which rushed to meet Lemprière as he penetrated to the end of the archive. It ended in a wall in which alcoves were set, hundreds of them running to left and right. A door was set in each, lower even than the one through which they had entered.
‘Where is it?’ Lemprière stalked up and down peering at the doors as Theobald drew near. ‘The one they left by, where is it?’ He pulled the nearest door open. It was heavy oak, inches thick and banded with iron. A hinge snapped as it came free. Paper. However deep the chamber he had opened extended it was stacked floor to ceiling with paper. He opened another. The same.
‘It isn’t,’ said Theobald. ‘They are just little cellars, extra storerooms for the archive. None of them go anywhere.’
‘You have looked?’ Lemprière pulled open another, and another. He fancied the lamp light had disappeared somewhere to his right.
‘There is no other way.’ He was working his way down the line, Theobald, despite his avowed scepticism, holding the lamp over his labours. Then he pulled and the door was fast. Again, but it would not move an inch.
‘Here,’ he directed Theobald and they both saw the fresh scratch marks around the key hole. ‘The key,’ he demanded, but Theobald shook his head.
‘I did not know they were locked. I did not know there was a key.’ Lemprière’s head dropped, then he rose and tried the next door in line. Like the others it was opened with some effort and like them it was stacked high with papers. But badly.
Lemprière was half-buried as an avalanche of paper descended on him which he kicked away in irritation. He pulled at the locked door again and clawed at the jamb but it was futile. Then he kicked the barrier in frustration as hard as he could and heard a deep boom echo up from somewhere behind it. The two men looked at one another.
‘I didn’t know,’said Theobald. ‘I thought…. I never looked.’ Theobald bent to pick up the papers which had spilled from the adjacent door. They were bound for the most part, making the task easier. Lemprière bent to help him. As his hands closed about the first armful, a familiar frontispiece stared him in the face. He stopped.
‘What?’ asked Theobald, but Lemprière only continued to look at the pamphlet. ‘What is it?’ the other asked again.
‘Asiaticus,’ said Lemprière. He picked up others of the booklets. They were all the same, thousands of them. ‘The fourth pamphlet,’ he said. Then to himself, ‘Here of all places….’
Below them both, hundreds of feet below, at the foot
of the ladder pinned to the side of the shaft, the three of them stopped and looked up as the thin beam of light shone through the keyhole. Le Mara turned away first. The Viscount pulled Juliette about. As the three of them walked down the slight incline of the cavern, a pounding thud echoed down the shaft from the door, the sound rolling through the broader tunnel in which they walked. Casterleigh smiled to himself, imagining the impetuous blow. The girl seemed to hesitate at the sound.
‘Move!’ he barked. The command joined the dying echoes of the first report, the two mingling and ricocheting together down the throat of the Beast. He pushed her forward again. She was wavering, weakening, he knew it and he wondered how far she might be trusted. A little further he urged her silently. After that it would not matter. After tomorrow, none of it would matter.
“U is for the fat white Underbelly which hangs and sways beneath this Great Kingdom of England where John Company clings like a Savage Horseman, a Secret Rider, and on his back an Ulcer grows that is affixed there and draws out his strength and through him the strength of the Kingdom. And I, Asiaticus, know this Ulcer for a foreign growth, an unlicensed importation into this Realm, a Cabbala.…”
He had given up his struggle with the door and helped Theobald pile the pamphlets back into the store, retaining a single copy. They had shut it, wedged it, then made their way back through the length of the archive to Theobald’s office. Theobald had opened all the drawers in his desk to show that he did not hold the key. Lemprière had thanked the little man for his efforts. Theobald had seemed smug and not at all nervous at their discovery. The echo had died very slowly.
“V is for this Cabbala’;s Venial Sins, in the papists’ term, for so they believe them, but they are mortal, thirty thousands of times Mortal then, and now Vampirick as the peoples of the Banat say it, for they suck Blood where before they spilled it, but I have some of that blood too and have stained my battle flag red with it for V too is for the Vexillum I fly to token my revenge. I shall march on them as Vlad and make their cellars mine.…”
He walked home in a kind of cloud. A hot wind shifted slowly through the streets in sluggish segments, fat blocks of heated air. It was evening. The moon was almost full. The gangs were more numerous, the citizens fewer. On one corner a group of people had gathered and clapped in unison. He saw people exchange signals as they passed one another, strange little salutes, nods of the head. He saw a woman with a babe in arms, but the infant was still and smelt of decay. On the road in the snow, amongst the piles of rotting paper, he had let her slip by again.
“W is the Wolf I hold now by the ears and the Worm that twists upon my tongue. I go to War with them, the Words being near an end. To the Web they have wove from the guts of the dead, their own will be added for the White Ladies are with them now, these new Worthies of London, foretelling death. Soon shall I arrive to tell them more.…”
He had reached his home and pulled the pamphlet from the ripped pocket of his coat. Asiaticus’ anger seemed more direct than before and Lemprière’s earlier guesses grew firmer. Not only the Company, but the investors too were his target, ‘a foreign growth … a Cabbala,’ he called them. It seemed that Asiaticus had decided on some aggression beyond the rhetoric of his pamphlets. “Worthies”; there were nine worthies, like the investors, though that would include François. He could hardly concentrate as he read on. Her promise.
“X is the character of Xerxes who stood safe behind his Armies weeping false tears before their fight with the Greeks saying ‘Of all this multitude, who shall say how many will return?’ He is their mentor for only they returned while their Army perished. The Jews have a name, it is called Yom Kippur, it is my Y, it means their Day of Atonement and it is upon them all and most of all upon one, upon you Zamorin for you are my end, or I yours, and you are my last letter, my Z.”
The pamphlet ended there. Lemprière tried to imagine the Cabbala of investors standing behind their fellow Rochelais, as though they were a shield, but Asiaticus implied a more deadly betrayal than that. After all, it was Richelieu who had cut off the town by land and sea, who had bombarded its inhabitants until they gave up the ghost and died rather than be captured. Asiaticus’ rage suggested a far worse deed than the investors’ flight from their dying city. But whatever that deed might be, the fourth and last pamphlet completed the dictionary of rage, hate and threats without disclosing it.
Lemprière turned the pages back and forth, wondering at Asiaticus’ own stake in the saga. Presumably he had gone forth to battle as promised, but the very presence of the pamphlets in East India House spelt defeat. He was long-dead. They had found him and his pamphlets, and dealt with both. Or this Zamorin had; one of them, he supposed. Their leader.
As he pored over the pages, Lemprière noticed that the paper on which they were printed was hardly marked at all. The archive had fairly stank of mould but the pages before him were unblemished. Printed in 1629 or 1630; they must have lain there for close on one hundred and sixty years. They had yellowed, but that was all. He rose and lifted piles of books from the lid of his travelling-chest, then rummaged within it until he found the three preceding pamphlets. A quick comparison solved the mystery. Better paper. The first three were printed on coarse stuff, the fourth on lighter, finely-grained material, more like writing paper. Also, the small cellars might provide a drier home for the papers stored within them than the vaster and damper archive-proper.
Lemprière pushed the four pamphlets about his desk. Some other fact was lodged at the back of his thoughts but it would not come. Something to do with them spilling out and burying him, but his mind was drawn back to Juliette. He was already waiting for her. He saw her face pulled away from him, staring from the back of the coach, from between his own hands in the archive. Closer each time, yet each time receding into different kinds of darkness. He heard the single word Tomorrow and urged it on, faster to bring her back.
Strong sunlight woke him. He had fallen asleep at his desk. The morning sun streamed through the window onto his face. He rose, adjusted his eye-glasses, removed them to wash, replaced them and resumed his seat. It was hot in the room and he was sweating. Then began a day of waiting.
The gazettes would later record the eleventh day of July as the hottest that year. By midday, the room was stifling. He opened windows but the air hung in saturated blocks. The street was a furnace and as the sun moved east to west, the windows opposite glared in his face. He tried to occupy himself stacking the books for which, with the dictionary completed, he had no further use. He began to read Oppian on fish but the thought of oceans of cool water only tormented him further and he gave it up to lie on his bed, trying to think of entries he had omitted from his dictionary. So far as he could recall there were none. Septimus had come for the last sheets over a week before. Doubts niggled him. Several times, as he lay there, he fancied he heard light footsteps on the stair and leapt up then to open the door, but no-one was there. It was the waiting, nothing more.
Perhaps she had meant something different. Come for me tomorrow. Find me tomorrow. Perhaps it was a warning and by tonight he would lie on this bed as George had on his. But the thought that she might come and find him gone kept him lying there, waiting. The shadow cast by his house rose slowly up the one opposing it and Southampton Street was still as though the heat stifled even sound. From time to time he took great gulps but heat, not air, filled his lungs. The orange tree watched him from its corner, taking grim pleasure in his discomfort.
Towards the end of the afternoon the heat began to change. It grew heavier, stickier, more omnipresent. When the sun set, he rose and hung out the window but the air was sluggish and hardly moved. He splashed water on his face and was replacing his spectacles when he heard a single knock at his door, an unfamiliar signature. Lemprière took a breath, gathered himself then walked across to admit his visitor.
‘Ah, John….’ Lemprière stepped back, his shoulders dropping in a mixture of disappointment and relief. It was Septimus, who seemed u
nsure whether to enter or not. Usually he banged loudly on the door; very loudly, if carrying his walking cane. Usually he walked in without asking. But Lemprière saw his expression was vague, as it had been on his last visit, and the one before that.
‘Come in,’ he said and Septimus wandered over the threshold, then stopped in the middle of the room. There was a short silence.
‘What?’ asked Lemprière. Septimus turned.
‘Ah, John,’ he said, as if catching sight of him.
‘Yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘What?’ He had had conversations like this with Septimus before. Usually he grew irritated but this time his friend seemed genuinely bewildered.
‘I wondered about the entries. If you had completed the last of them, as I imagined. It would be best to collect them now.’
‘Yes,’ Lemprière said. ‘But I gave you the last a fortnight ago.’ He peered curiously at Septimus. ‘Where have you been? Where is Lydia?’
‘Oh….’ Septimus waved imprecisely. Lemprière looked again at his friend. He was torn between wanting to know the cause of this vague humour and needing to usher out its owner before Juliette might arrive. Septimus was looking about him as though in search of something unlikely to be there.
‘Ah, John,’ he said again. His eye lighted on his pink coat which hung over the back of the chair. It seemed to anchor him for his familiar bustling manner returned and be began to chide Lemprière over its condition, which was lamentable. The chair displayed its ripped pocket to peculiar advantage.
‘I went to the fellow upstairs….’ Lemprière began, rather caught off-guard, and was about to tell him of the tailor’s strangely narrow line of work when Septimus seemed suddenly to regain all his former spirit.
‘Don’t trouble yourself with that scoundrel!’ he burst out. ‘Had a shirt sewn by him once. Appalling job, a one-handed drunk could have done better….’ He went on to slander the man outrageously until Lemprière laughed out loud. ‘What he does, sticks the needle up his ass, swallows the trousers….’
Lemprière's Dictionary Page 58