Lemprière's Dictionary

by Lawrence Norfolk

  He took up a station above the coach with a clear view down the street and settled down to wait. The streets were still quiet. After an hour or more he saw the door of the coach open and the girl get out. The moon was up, shining brightly on her white dress. She walked down Southampton Street and entered the same door as Mister Praeceps. The coach set off once again, moving west. Again Nazim was caught between staying and pursuit. He stayed. The night wore on and he had begun to think his decision an error when the door to the house opened and the girl crept out, picking up her heels as she walked noiselessly over the cobbles. When she reached the top of the street, she looked back. Both of them saw the door thrown open. The girl abandoned all attempts at stealth and took flight. A dishevelled figure in a pink coat stumbled after her and in the moonlight Nazim thought at first it was Septimus. He waited until the young man had passed before he too gave chase. Somehow, he was not surprised when he saw that it was not his earlier quarry at all. The pseudo-Lemprière attracted confusion as a dog did fleas.

  A strange chase ensued, three sets of footsteps clattering through the streets. Nazim shadowed Lemprière, knowing that he shadowed the girl in turn. Their paths zigzagged west as far as the Haymarket where both of them disappeared. Nazim walked up the thoroughfare looking to left and right. He found the black coach waiting for him again in an alley that ran off the road down the north side of a theatre. An identical alley ran down the far side but it was empty. The Haymarket itself was less deserted than the smaller streets through which he had passed. Men and women walked up and down it in twos and threes. The moon had risen higher and in its cold light their faces looked as though they were carved from chalk. He patrolled the alley at the back of the theatre. He remembered the girl’s role at the Manufactory as a kind of lure, drawing in the pseudo-Lemprière much as she had drawn him to this theatre tonight. And this Septimus, he had appeared later as a guardian angel of sorts, protecting the goods from damage. But tonight the girl had tried to wave him back, to warn him off; and Praeceps had gained entry to the house with ease. He was trusted by the pseudo-Lemprière, though clearly in the pay of the Nine. Two of them at least…. Only eight now, he corrected himself, remembering the real Lemprière’s body in Blue Anchor Lane.

  More than an hour had passed. A noise to his right, towards the coach, footsteps and the girl’s voice as he edged around the corner and saw the coach door close, muffling the voice. He drew nearer and heard some kind of struggle taking place inside, the girl’s voice sharper than before.

  ‘Let me, let me go! You said he would come to no harm. You swore, damn you,’ and the struggle resumed.

  ‘Cease.’ Le Mara’s monotone barked after a minute or two. Then ‘Cease’ again, and whatever threat had been offered in the darkness of the coach was proved effective for the sounds suddenly stopped. Nazim crouched down by the side of the coach expecting it to move off at any moment, but the horses waited impassively in their harnesses. He heard a rushing gust of wind somewhere above. The hot wind was getting up and more people were appearing in the thoroughfare, moving back and forth in small groups. His attention strayed, recognising something in the gatherings. The heavier footfalls moving up the alley were almost upon him before he turned and saw the broad frame of Le Mara’s partner moving towards the coach and himself.

  He thought surely he would be seen, caught between the advancing figure and the street beyond, bathed in moonlight, but the man shambled like a sleepwalker and Nazim saw that his head was tilted back, looking up at the sky. The face was grey and the mouth gaped as though its owner had begun to say something and suddenly found himself struck dumb. The bloodless face passed him unawares as the man stumbled towards the coach. The door was opened and Nazim saw the vehicle shift slightly as its suspension bent beneath his slumped weight. He crept closer and heard Le Mara’s voice grate out a question.

  ‘Is it done, Viscount?’ But the Viscount said nothing and Le Mara was forced to repeat the question.

  ‘No.’ The answer came then. ‘He lives still.’ The girl gave a short cry of surprise and relief.

  ‘I will finish it.’

  ‘No!’ the Viscount shot back.

  ‘I will find him….’ But the Viscount held him back. His voice shook.

  ‘Our past has come back, now. Up there, I saw it. It found me. You know the thing I speak of….’

  ‘Praeceps will deliver the boy as instructed unless we find him.’

  ‘Leave it, I said. Understand me now, leave it. We have bigger fish to fry and if the boy appears he can share their fate. Let us go.’

  Nazim found the boy with ease. As the coach moved off, he followed into the Haymarket and watched it turn north. Praeceps and the pseudo-Lemprière were lying in the alley on the other side of the theatre. The Haymarket was filling with people who milled about in confusion and Nazim mingled with them. Presently the two of them emerged, first Praeceps and then, supported by him, the pseudo-Lemprière blinking behind his eye-glasses, conspicuous as ever in his pink coat. They moved off together through the gangs of men and women. Nazim followed. As they approached Southampton Street their roles seemed to reverse and it was the pseudo-Lemprière who guided the other through the more aggressive groups. The citizens of the city were appearing from nowhere, banding and disbanding as a gradual drift east began to establish itself amongst the bodies. Some had painted their faces. One gang carried short clubs which they swung and slapped in their palms. The name “Farina” was everywhere.

  As the two of them reached the house in Southampton Street, Nazim felt the tense purpose which rushed through the streets. So it begins, he thought to himself.

  He paid only cursory attention when the two emerged once more, their roles reversed again. It was inevitable. Praeceps was supporting his companion as though the other were drunk. The gangs were gathering in the street. He saw Praeceps hail a carriage from the Strand and bundle the unconscious pseudo-Lemprière into the cab.

  ‘Leadenhall, East India House!’ The carriage moved off into the mob and Nazim let it go. If the pseudo-Lemprière had followed some parallel path to his own against the Company he had reached its end now. His own had a little further to run and it was clear at last. The city had reached its brink and beyond tomorrow there would be no more time.

  He made his way to the docks and broke open a store on Hythe Wharf. The tool he needed found, he returned to the cellar. All through the next day’s uneasy interregnum he lay with his eyes open, staring into the darkness and thinking on what he was at last about to do. When night fell, he rose and walked through the gathering mob to Le Mara’s house. Its windows were dark. He entered by the back door and descended to the cellar. The hatch set into the floor was locked, as he had expected. Nazim pulled the crowbar from his belt and drove it down. He leaned his weight against the bar, levering open the hatch. It groaned and cracked and at last splintered under the assault. Nazim gathered himself, then threw the trap door open and looked down. The shaft dropped down into darkness. Down there, he told himself, they were waiting for him.

  Lemprière felt the thick cable of muscle ripple up his back and curl in a whiplash that cracked in the base of his brain. A tiny orange glow turned yellow then incandescent white, growing until the soundless explosion of white light filled everything then faded and fell back and he was flying through the earth, his body denser and harder than the surrounding stone and rocks which he pulverised as he drove with irresistible force deeper beneath the surface. He could neither see, nor taste nor hear nor smell, only feel as tilting beds of limestone split and shattered in his wake. He felt broad curves and undulating swathes above and below as he shrugged off deflections from the synclines and anticlines of the sloping stone and punched through the throws and hades of its fault-planes. His head was diamond, his limbs were tempered steel. He felt the earth rippling behind him and he knew it was Septimus. He neither stopped nor turned. He sliced through veins of lead sheathed in calcite and smashed fossil beds, leaving crinoid sea-lilies and petri
fied coral as dust. Slick cold clay red with oxides slid down his sides as one after the other he pierced the strata. Water dripped and trickled about him in the fissures and spongeworks of the water table. He felt its resurgent jets spray up and hiss off his body as steam. He was white-hot. Striated marbles, dolomites and periclase crumbled like chalk as he penetrated further past shale beds, boulder chokes and thick plates of mudstone, pockets of firedamp and wells of dead air, beyond the dripping phreatic zone into a granitic darkness that seemed to go on and on until he hardly knew if he moved at all. His descent was slowing, the rock becoming harder and more and more resistant. Dust ground into his sides. The rippling presence behind him was gone. He realised he was caught fast in the rock. He felt its mass all around him, thousands upon thousands of tons which began to stir and then to press against his skin, his face and eyes. He was alone. It was dark. He was trapped.

  Lemprière opened his eyes and at first he thought it was true. He was lying in dust, very dry and fine as flour. It was dark. He was alone. He bent his neck and a dull pain spread across his shoulders then up into his skull. His mouth tasted foul. He put his hands to his face and found his spectacles still in place. His body was laid out with his feet and head slightly raised by the curvature of a tunnel. He was underground. As he grew more conscious, he realised that the darkness was not absolute. If he put his hand up to his face, he could count the fingers. A diffused light drifted in the gloom, its source obscure, showing him that he lay in a tunnel which curved and twisted away in both directions. Lemprière pulled himself upright and sat quietly, thinking on what he should do now.

  Septimus had betrayed him from the first day in Skewer’s office. Casterleigh was his father’s murderer, and his grandfather’s perhaps, and his father’s before him. Casterleigh was one of the Cabbala, the refugees from Rochelle. Together with Septimus (one of them too? A hired hand?) they had pulled him this way and that like a puppet. And he had believed it all: his father’s death, the woman in the pit at the De Veres’, at the Manufactory, believed everything as he forced his mad constructions on the killings. Actaeon, Danae, Iphigenia and then himself as Paris, who in his own words “fought with little courage,” whose infatuation brought the siege to Troy and the massacre to its people. Perhaps his courage had been slight. Perhaps he might have seen the truth for all its trappings a little sooner. But he was not Paris. It was more than infatuation.

  The air in the tunnel was warm and still. Even with his spectacles he could make out only the most general contours and the strange light was very dim. He fancied he saw a darker form some yards to his left. The ache in his head was a dull throb. He began to crawl through the dust towards the figure but, as soon as he moved, the whole vista disappeared in a dense black cloud. The dust was so fine, the least disturbance sent up great billowing plumes and he coughed as it bit the back of his throat, which sent up more clouds. The powder swirled around him, blinding and choking him. He stopped and sat very still with his eyes closed for some minutes. When he opened them the dust had settled and the faint light had returned. He brushed gingerly at the fine coating on his face. The light was yellower than before, and brighter too. He saw that the dark form rested in the tunnel and made a shape similar to his own. The light grew stronger and he might have made a clearer identification then, but as he looked into the gloom he saw small billowing waves of powder roll around the curve of the tunnel. Someone was approaching, carrying a lamp which was all but engulfed by the particles sent up by his or her footfalls. And presently he could hear these too, soft regular thuds in the dust. The lantern moved closer and closer. The screen of dust advanced and Lemprière was engulfed once more. His eyes watered and his nostrils were clogged. The dust was a dry black fog and the lantern swayed nearer until it hung directly over him. Miasma. The soft footfalls stopped. He tried to speak but coughed instead. The lantern hung there in silence. Gradually, the dust settled once more and Lemprière was able to look up. He had expected, perhaps, Septimus. Or Casterleigh, or even Juliette. The face he recognised was none of these. If he had thought of all the people who might conceivably find him in this place, the man he greeted now would not have appeared amongst them. Yet it was the man who had found him wandering in the fields above Blanche Pierre an age ago and a world away, the day of the killing by the pool on Jersey. And it was the man whom his father had set out to visit that day, whom he had never reached, whom had known Charles would call that day, the last day of summer.

  ‘Jake!’ he said as the face emerged from the dust, yellow in the lamp light, quietly looking down at him and unsurprised.

  ‘Jaques,’ said Jaques, as he bent to help Lemprière to his feet.

  There were questions, certainly there were large questions to be asked now and yet Lemprière did not ask them. As they walked through the twisting pasages and vaulted caverns of the Beast his queries would die on his lips, as though Jake’s mere presence here was a self-indictment which overtook and answered everything. How else could he be here, unless….

  But now, with the dust settling around them both, it was the dark form he had glimpsed before which held his tongue. In the light from the lantern it emerged as a human figure lying across the tunnel ten yards away from him. He moved towards it slowly. Black powder swirled up to his waist in billowing layers, covering the corpse as he drew near. Lemprière stood over the still figure and waited for the cloud to settle. As the layers grew thinner and fell back, a face rose up like a drowned man’s rising too late to the surface; he saw white teeth and lips drawn back tight and thin as ribbons. The eyes were shrivelled to peas and the skin pulled tight over the skull as though the arid tunnel had leached the water from the corpse and left only skin dry as paper stretched over porcelain bones.

  The cadaver had been laid out with its limbs splayed, still in its clothes. Lemprière could make out tufts of white hair, a kind of ruff about the neck and the buttons of a coat, but the clothes were dry as their wearer and the two were barely distinguishable now. Lemprière thought of the rage of Asiaticus which he had taken for empty rhetoric, and the wild talk of his ancestor, reported by Thomas de Vere. He looked into the face of the corpse and knew that those emotions had found the same end here in the dark, alone. They had found François, or he had found them. They had killed him and left him here. Lemprière looked down at his ancestor and wondered if the same fate awaited himself.

  ‘John,’ Jaques called to him. ‘There are matters to be settled.’ Lemprière glanced once more at his ancestor, then turned to the man who stood waiting for him.

  ‘You are one of them, Jake, are you not? You are one of the Nine.’

  ‘I am,’ Jaques replied. ‘Just as you are, John.’

  Nazim knelt amidst the wreckage of the trap door and looked down. A long vertical shaft descended into the darkness. He saw that the sides of the shaft were bricked for the first twenty feet or so and thereafter they had been cut from solid rock. An iron ladder was set into the bricks. Nazim replaced the crowbar in his cloak and drew a short knife from its sheath, gripping it between his teeth. He checked his pockets for candles and matches then took a piece of splintered wood and dropped it down the shaft. He was able to count to six before a muffled thud echoed up the shaft. Warm dry air rose up from the opening and mingled with the more humid vapour in the room. Nazim pulled his hat on tight, then swung himself over the lip of the shaft to begin the descent.

  The shaft was narrow and seemed to reach down forever. The iron rungs went on and on. Above him, the entrance shrank to the size of a penny and still the shaft went down. He paused to draw breath and felt his heart thud in his chest. When he looked down, he saw only darkness. Somewhere, down there, they were waiting for him. He went on, hand over hand, further into the depths. His feet found a rhythm and moved steadily down the rungs. His teeth clenched about the knife. Several minutes passed. Then suddenly he seemed to slip and the rungs were gone. He was hanging in space. His legs were swinging, then kicking against the side of the shaft before he
could pull himself up and find the last rung once again. He looked up and saw the top of the shaft as a pin prick of light. Below him, nothing. Nazim crooked his arm around the rung and ferreted in his pocket for the matches. As he pulled them out, his weight shifted, his foot slipped out and he had to grab for the rung again. He pulled himself back onto the ladder and cursed. He had dropped the matches. Nazim rested there a few moments and considered what to do next. After a few seconds’ thought, he tensed his legs, let go of the ladder and jumped into darkness.

  As he had guessed he would, he fell three or four feet and landed safely. The ladder had stopped a few feet short of the bottom of the shaft. He was standing on a slope and realised that the shaft dropped into the side of a much larger tunnel. His matches had come to rest where they fell and he was about to light the candle when he noticed that he could see two faint shapes. His hands. The absolute darkness lightened further as his eyes searched the gloom. A very faint glow seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, from the rock itself. The tunnel was several times his height in diameter. Its sides curved up and around him, ringed with thick ribs of petrified muscle which formed slight troughs between one another. He found that his stride matched their intervals and began to walk comfortably over the humped ridges, thinking that Le Mara’s stride would match them by the same token.