‘François told his family nothing,’ the leader said. ‘Nothing of ourselves. Yet, generation after generation came in search of us and as we stopped one, another would spring up in his place to come at us from another direction. At first it was Rochelle. The first Lemprières knew more of the siege and our part in its aftermath than they could possibly discover alone. Why should they ask in the first place? After them your ancestors moved closer still, to the Company itself and after that wherever a chink opened in the veil we put up, it seemed a Lemprière was waiting there, peering through the crack, trying to tear apart the fabric. With your father it was the Neagle Affair. How could he know its significance? What led him to the western ports of France? Had he lived to search them as he planned, he might have found our depot at Rochelle and all that it contained. How did he know?’ A few seconds passed before Lemprière realised he was expected to answer.
‘I was never privy to my father’s reasons,’ he said stiffly.
‘No,’ the leader said in resigned tones. ‘Perhaps it no longer matters. Inevitably some ends are left loose.’
‘Is that why I am here? Was my father a loose end too?’ Lemprière’s voice was bitter.
‘The central cord, John. To bring you and your dictionary to this point has not been easy.’ The book again. The leader’s fingers were twitching about its corners, lifting the cover a fraction and letting it fall. Abruptly it was flicked open and the unseen figure read aloud, ‘Aarassus. Aba. Abacenae. Abadir. Abae. Abaeus….’ As the recitation went on it came to seem a mockery of his labours. The dictionary. Was that why he was here? ‘… Abagarus. Abala. Abali. Abalus….’ Lemprière tried to think of its beginnings, the day of his decision to embark on the project when Kalkbrenner had produced the notion like a skeleton for himself to clothe with flesh. Septimus had been there and Septimus was in their pay. Was Kalkbrenner?’… Abana. Abandus. Abannae….’ The leader’s voice was being overtaken by his cohorts, Monopole and Antithe parroting their master. Kalkbrenner, Septimus, or before them both. He thought back to the island, to an ambiguous dusk and himself staring from his window out across the fields of Rozel which shifted in the gloom and deformed themselves about an old faith, an old body pulling itself out of the roots and wiry turf, stalking across the distances to his neglected chambers; Vertumnus. The first figment of his madness; but how could they have known? ‘… Abanta. Abantes. Abantias….’ Actaeon, the second. Danae in the pit. Iphigenia at Coade’s. ‘… Abantidas. Abantis. Abaorte. Abaratha. Abaraza….’ Paris. He looked again at Juliette and thought of her as she had stepped from the coach outside Saint Martin’s. How far back must he go? When had they caught that glimpse inside his head? He tried to think back to that night, to the vision seen from his window and the troubled sleep which had followed. He had shouted something into the night. Had someone heard and understood? He could not believe it. When he awoke he had visited the priest and been dismissed as a fool. He had climbed a tree, fallen, Juliette had found him on her way to, to the church? Yes, the church.
‘Calveston,’ he said and behind the leader the recitation stopped. His neck was beginning to throb once more. He wanted to sit down. ‘Father Calveston told you I saw demons, phantoms in the dark. He told you I was mad.’
Juliette walked down the path to the church leaving him to his confusion. He walked home. The invitation to the library had arrived and, a few days after that, the edition of Ovid in thanks for his services. There in the book was the singular illustration: Diana in spectacular undress, Actaeon in the first of his agonies. That was the tale he had read, which they would have anticipated and counted upon. Glaring reds. Steel greys. The horse had turned and walked upstream.
‘Very good, very good.’ His father’s body was still. The leader was speaking very far away. Calveston had told the girl, the girl the Viscount, the Viscount the man who addressed him now.
‘You thought yourself deranged, a helpless conduit for your monsters. You gave up your books and shut your eyes, but by then we already had you John. When you came to this city we gave you Septimus, your fidus Achates for the voyage ahead and where Septimus led, you followed. To Kalkbrenner, where our dictionary was first put to you. To the De Veres, where its pages came to life. To Coade’s where we hung Iphigenia. The dictionary was ours John, Danae’s death our doing and Iphigenia, she was my gift to you.’ He was turning the pages.
‘Here are your monsters. Here is where you shackled them. And underneath each is a date and your signature. Each time you put your name to the catalogue, we drew a little closer. Exact descriptions, exact dates, your exact name. Why do you imagine Septimus had you sign and date each entry?’ Lemprière’s whole head was throbbing. The earlier blow, Septimus’s blow, seemed attached to him like a thick collar of flesh. He said, ‘Septimus?’
‘A young cadre in the Company. He showed initiative in a difficult situation; suggested himself….’ He could hardly follow what the leader was saying. Sign and date each one, absolutely of the first importance. Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em cry. ‘… the victims were real, John. With or without your help, they are dead.’ Make ‘em pay. ‘Murdered, in Sir John’s view….’
Sir John’s name brought him round. Septimus and Cadell faded into the past, into nothing. Sir John, who caught killers and thieves and hanged them. His name sounded out of place, resonant with a rule of law which was suspended in this place, in this company. Sir John, whom he had lied to in Peppard’s room, who was behind the searchers he had fled over the snow covered estate of the De Veres, who now sought the young man seen running from Coade’s that night, namely himself.
‘You are the murderer, John. Your dictionary is the key, the proof.’ The collar was thicker, a cord of muscle tightening about his neck.
‘It is your signed confession.’
His hands touched the ends of the table to either side of him. They would never believe it, never give him credence as a murderer, not ever…. But the evidence piled up: his presence at, or near the murders, his subsequent silences, his lies to Sir John. (Smith? Lemprière!) His dictionary. He imagined his appearance before the court: myopic, withdrawn, odd. Guilty. Unbalanced, perhaps Ladies and Gentlemen by his father’s sudden and suspicious death, to which he was also a ‘witness’, alone in the city he took a terrible revenge on the women who shunned his advances.… He would hang. They would hang him and then the feud would be finished. Welcome to you, François. Welcome John.
For a second time he felt the parapet slide out from under him. Casterleigh’s face was staring up, tilted as though Lemprière himself, here and now, were whatever apparition had appeared behind him on the roof of the theatre. Then, for the second time, he felt the hand behind his back push him forward.
‘But you will not hang, John.’
Casterleigh wanted him dead. He had tried on the roof and would try again. The man shrouded in the chair’s darkness threatened the same but as the blow approached it seemed to swing about him and slow to a steady pressure - if they had wanted him dead, surely he would already be so - he was alive for a purpose and lurching towards it now, away from the precipice at his back and towards the talk which got up now like a fair wind; it was Jaques and the leader speaking. Casterleigh said nothing throughout the recitation which drew him back to their disaster at Rochelle, neither beginning nor ending there but spreading forward and back to the Pastoreaux, the Caputati, to Roquetaillade, the Adepts of the Free Spirit and the search for a second Charlemagne. Then forward to Duplessis-Mornay and the Vindicae contra Tyrannos and the other fomenting cells all drawn in and pulled together by its coalescing beacon called Rochelle, so that all these lines of confused revolutionary purpose could meet there for the few brief months it took the royal mortars and the Cabbala’s expedient need to blow them out under their new and multiple guises: les Chevaliers de l’Ordre de I’Union de la Joye, Plantin’s Family of Love, the Knights of Jubilation … Lemprière trod water in a sea of secrets as the sects were named and numbered and their operation
s described: Jean Rousset de Missy and Prosper Marchand smuggling the Traité des trois imposteurs through the posting office at Lille, Voltaire’s Eurania read aloud in the secret library of Baron Hohendorf, d’Holbach’s sponsoring of Wilkes, later Farina, the cults of Minerva, Picart’s coded engravings and all the squabbling factions within the entourage of Prince Eugene de Savoy. Rising waves of encyclopedists and republicans fell into sinks of dissenters, refugees and Orangists, commingled together and touching on one another but most of all and most frequently mentioned were Les Cacouacs, the Conseil aux Conseils, whose network of agents and intermediaries bound the whole loosely together like surface tension, and floating even on that, tossed up and down on the secret sea, was the repeal of his sentence. He might not hang. This tumbling dross of currents and cross currents had something to do with that, was some part of whatever purpose was keeping him alive in the here and now. Les Cacouacs had prepared the ground and were ‘to act for us before the vulgar,’ they were ‘our returning officers’ and the borough was rotten. The borough was France. They had planned it all, gathered the dispersed, the malcontents, the rogue and neglected variants and set them into their design. This time the coalition would take the opposite role. It was France, not Rochelle, which would find herself besieged, though not by arms.
‘Her heart is eaten out. Her pockets are empty,’ said the leader. There was talk of deficits and surpluses and collapses of confidence and Lempriére understood only that the Cabbala were to stuff the corpse of France with their gold as they had the Company and in this way the corpse would breathe again though in a different rhythm from before. It was a matter of waiting, as it had been at Rochelle. But there the time had run out and here it had not. He might not hang.
‘Many years ago I made a vow.’ The leader spoke and though he could not be seen his words were for Lemprière and no-one else. ‘I would return the conqueror. Tonight, this night, I mean to keep that promise. I intend for you to keep it with me. You have done well to come this far Lemprière. Come further. The Vendragon waits for the Nine of us to take us back to Rochelle. The country we fled a century and a half ago now waits in ignorance to welcome us rulers. Join me, John. That is your choice. Become as I am.’ And with that the leader leaned forward, out of the concealing darkness into the candle light and Lemprière saw the shadows peel away from his face and seep out of its folds and lines like blood running off meat. ‘Or hang.’
There was something wrong. Not on the skin’s surface, nor within the head, but between the two. The skin and flesh on the leader’s face hung and moved as though the sinewy threads which twitched and shifted the lips, cheeks, chin and nose were snarled up and so delayed those movements. The mouth was shapeless and Lemprière saw that when he spoke his neck puffed out and the sound seemed to come from his stomach. The muscles had collapsed. The face hung slackly as though his head were a bag of skin irregularly filled with flesh.
‘The candles, John.’ A slight movement of the head indicated the lamp in which they burned. ‘Eight for the eight of us here and one unlit.’ Lemprière saw Casterleigh glance away from him and make a tiny signal across the table to Jaques or Le Mara. ‘The ninth is for you, John. Light it.’
He caught Vaucanson in the corner of his eye looking across the table to Casterleigh, but nothing was said or signalled. Vaucanson and Casterleigh. Jaques or Le Mara. Two possible triangles. All of them in their different ways were watching the leader without seeming to as though, like himself, they had never seen his face before and Lemprière thought of the man’s solitude through the years since the siege, waiting for the last Lemprière to arrive and take up the ninth place. But why? Still that question wrote itself over his face and the leader’s face began to lift in approximation of a smile, acknowledgement of his unspoken question.
‘Why you Lemprière? Because you were part of François’ settlement. We did not know your name then, except it would be Lemprière. You were still unborn by a century or more, but I knew you would come finally. Your place has been kept. Your share held in trust. The girl is yours if you want her and in time my own seat at this table. All of it yours, if you will join with me.’ The leader’s eyes were on him waiting for an answer. Casterleigh’s face was turned to him too. His frame was tensed, waiting for him to speak. But Lemprière was stalled in ignorance, still baffled behind his question. Why me?
‘Can you not guess, John? Can you really not guess the nature of the settlement that day?’ The ruined face leaned forward, looming into his own.
Hadal currents pulled at the old wreckage, a single plank came loose and turned end over end as it floated up to the surface. It broke cover there, signalling the greater vessel still hidden in the blind waters below. Lemprière glimpsed it for a closing moment, a brief second of focus before his own intrusion sent clouds of watery sand over the hulk and its spars. He looked across at the man who sought to print his features on his own. His eyes found a thin nose and high cheek bones all but lost under the accretions of older flesh. The leader spoke. ‘The corpse you saw below was not François’.’
The face surfaced at last. ‘I am François. And you are mine, John Lemprière, my own flesh and blood. The settlement I offered was my silence for Zamorin’s life. It was his body you saw when you awoke. The fourth pamphlet was already printed. Had these, my partners, killed me as they planned the world would have known them for what they were that very day. How could they deny me what I asked? They murdered my wife, my six children, perhaps a seventh, and I took from them their Company, and from their leader his life.’ The other members of the Cabbala watched him then looked away, as though offering up one of their own, even so long ago, still demeaned them all. Casterleigh looked up, then across at Le Mara. Lemprière let the fact settle in the bed of his thoughts. He thought of the real settlement made that day, François’s settlement.
‘You did not come here for revenge.’ Lemprière spoke carefully. ‘You did not come for your wife, nor your children, nor the Rochelais. You came for the Company.’
‘No!’
‘You sold your first family like stock and murdered your second to protect it. I am not your flesh and blood. You are not even human.’
Le Mara looked from Casterleigh to François and back. Casterleigh’s face was frozen. François stared at him and Lemprière met his stare. When François replied his voice was changed, the warm tones stripped away from the cold fact of his action. The pretence was abandoned.
‘Yes, I wanted the Company and I got it. I wanted you and I got you too. You do not have the luxury of judgment, Lemprière. You have a choice. Tonight we return to Rochelle and France to expel those who drove us out. Join with me, or hang.’
With that, François’ hands closed about the book and flung it across the table.
‘Take back your dictionary, Lemprière. Come with us.’ He gestured to the lamp. ‘Light the last candle.’
Lemprière took the book and slipped his ancestor’s testament between its pages. It felt heavier than he imagined. Le Mara’s posture was unchanged, still coiled in his chair. But his face was different. Lemprière moved towards the lamp with the book in his hand. He saw that the expression on the assassin’s face was puzzled, as if something had happened or had failed to happen and this was inexplicable to him. Eight candles flared out of the lamp. He looked away for a moment and blinked. The same expression was on Vaucanson’s face. He took the taper in his hand and was about to turn. They were both looking across the table, both watching Casterleigh. They were waiting for him. The taper burned higher and brighter as its flame ate into the wax. He looked up and saw Juliette’s face turn towards him at last. Her face was tight. There was a movement below him and to his right where Le Mara sat, where the frames of his spectacles ended and the world became a blur. The lamp was a blaze of light this close to him and as he moved to ignite the ninth and last candle he heard Casterleigh say ‘Yes,’ as though in answer to a question and Jaques said ‘No,’ as if it were a question. Le Mara had already mo
ved, half-risen and thrust his arm forward. Lemprière looked down and saw it. Le Mara’s knife was buried to the hilt. Jaques was rocking back and forth trying to lean forward with a puzzled expression on his face. The hilt knocked against the back of the chair, tap, tap, tap. The knife was lodged in Jaques’ back. It seemed to take hours for François to protest.
‘You dare!’ Vaucanson had risen too and had hold of Boffe. Le Mara cradled the head in his arms and pulled back suddenly so that the thick neck cracked loudly in the stone chamber. Boffe’s hands twitched on the table.
‘How dare you!’ François’ voice had filled with rage. The two figures behind him had not moved. Nor had François, though his arms strained to push him up. He could not stand, Lemprière realised. Jaques was trying to speak but the words were a gurgle in his throat. Lemprière froze.
‘Light the candle, John.’ The Viscount regarded him casually from his seat, his accent a mockery of François’. Juliette was behind him, staring directly at Lemprière, her eyes wide, her expression urgent. She was telling him something with her eyes. He raised the taper like a pathetic sword.
‘You are mine, John,’ said the mockery again. But serious too this time as the Viscount rose from his seat and Lemprière remembered the size of the man, his physical bulk and his own terror on the roof. Jaques choked and spat a gout of blood from his throat.
‘Juliette,’ he began to say, but the rest was lost as his mouth filled again. She was staring at the candles, signalling to Lemprière. Casterleigh tossed a chair aside and began to move around the table. He stared back at Juliette, his gaze flicking to the Viscount who advanced towards him. The candles guttered. Casterleigh grinned and flexed his hands as he approached. Juliette began to move and then suddenly, Lemprière understood. At the same moment, Casterleigh saw her and understood too. Lemprière gulped air, filling his lungs to bursting and the Viscount threw himself forward, the huge hands reaching for him too late.
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