Lemprière's Dictionary

by Lawrence Norfolk

‘Now he’s saying something about the carts. I think they want to unload the ship. Yes, that’s it. The cargo….’

  Almost before he could finish speaking, the first of the men had moved forward, up the gangplank and down the hatch to the hold.

  ‘What is the cargo?’ asked Wilberforce.

  ‘Statues,’ said Eben.

  Neagle and his crew had disappeared belowdecks. The four of them looked on as the first of the crates was manhandled up from the hold, lowered over the side and carried up the jetty towards the carts lined up along the shore. Here the men set to work with their bars and hammers, and soon the area was littered with splintered wood. The statues were lifted from the wreckage of their containers and stood upright along the shore. The stevedores worked without pause and soon a host of figures were clustered about the carts: Minerva, Juno, Venus, Diana surrounded by her nymphs, Hercules strangling the vipers, Jove with his thunderbolt, Neptune with an Urn, satyrs, dryads and hamadryads, all looking blindly to one another as other gods, goddesses and heroes emerged from the broached crates to join their ranks.

  ‘Why don’t they load them?’ asked Peter Rathkael-Herbert. Wilberforce shrugged in ignorance, but as he did so this small mystery began to be resolved.

  Those men carrying hammers gathered around the still figures and at a signal from the man who had earlier addressed them advanced on the huddled statues. They swung the hammers like axes. Limbs and heads were broken off. Torsos which fell to the ground were cracked open and soon a cloud of off-white dust hung over the carnage. At one point, a pitcher of water was passed around. Each man took a draught and then the work went on. Faces and fingers splintered under the hammer-blows until every figure lay smashed. The dust began to settle. Eben saw the first man bend and lift something heavy from the rubble. Another joined him and helped lift the object onto the nearest cart. Presently the whole workforce was picking similarly through the demolished statues. The carts were loaded in sequence and driven off up the low hill behind.

  ‘Gold,’ said Captain Roy. One man had emptied the pitcher over the irregular lode before him and as the dust was washed off a familiar glint could be seen in the moonlight. The last of the carts was clearing the brow of the hill. The men sat about the smashed evidence of their labours, catching their breaths. The two men approached once again, the first of the pair addressing Eben as before.

  ‘Our arrangements are complete now. Send Lemprière, Jaques and the others our thanks and greetings. We expect them at their pleasure a year from now.’ Both men raised an arm in salute. ‘The fourteenth!’

  ‘The fourteenth!’ the four of them answered, saluting likewise. They turned and found Neagle standing in silence behind them.

  ‘What now?’ asked Wilberforce.

  Inland, the landmass stretched away into darkness. The green light was extinguished. The Vendragon sat high in the water, knocking lightly against the jetty as she was rocked in the swell. The eastern sky was growing light, dawn only an hour away now. Captain Guardian looked out over the starboard rail to where Rochelle stood like a silent sentinel marking the boundary between land and water. Peter Rathkael-Herbert thought of dawn in Constantinople, of the day’s first sunlight glinting off gilded domes high above the city. Wilberforce and Roy shivered beside him. A thin, chill wind was getting up from the north.

  ‘South,’ said Eben, and the others nodded agreement. South.

  A bright sun rose over London on the morning of the fourteenth of July. High winds blew from the north-west and descended upon the city in cold gusts. In Leadenhall Street, the engineers were already at work with their barrows and shovels, filling and cementing the crack which split the road. Odd wisps of smoke curled up from the smouldering debris in Haymarket. At the Examiner’s Office in Bow Street, Sir John Fielding berated his beadles and listened to the reports as they came in from around the city. The Militia had been chased from the Opera House through Saint James Park to the river and there thrown in. Unsympathetic wherrymen had charged half a guinea a head for their rescue. There had been looting and there had been arrests, but the mob had become dispirited, divided, leaderless at the last. It had dispersed sometime before dawn and the streets had grown quiet. The city was the same city as the night before.

  As he walked from Bow Street through Covent Garden market to the Tilt Yard, Sir John listened to the noise and chatter of the fish-wives and haggling traders. Gyp’s whetstone was a low whirr in the east corner as he passed. A woman was selling turbot from a basket. He smelt fish, vegetables, the unwashed bodies of men and women. Nothing had changed. Now, in the cold light of morning, his fears seemed extravagant, almost fanciful. What could he have been thinking?

  At the gate to the gaol he was met by the turnkey and escorted through the yard to the cells below. He heard keys jangle, doors being locked and unlocked. Gates clanged shut behind him.

  ‘Mixed bag, Sir John,’ offered the turnkey as they came to the first of the cells where Stoltz and his men sat in sullen silence. ‘Found ‘em on Butler’s Wharf.’

  ‘Very good. And in what practice were they engaged when come upon?’ queried the magistrate.

  ‘Sir John?’

  ‘What were they doing?’

  ‘Oh, I see sir. Well, they was sleeping Sir John. Couldn’t wake ‘em neither. Had to load ‘em in the wagon like coal-sacks.’

  Sir John nodded sagely. ‘Carry on,’ he said.

  The second cell was as crowded as the first.

  ‘This lot was with Stoltz, and them,’ announced the turnkey. ‘Claim to be pirates, sir.’

  ‘Pirates? There are no pirates in London….’

  ‘There’s us sir,’ came a voice from within the cell.

  ‘And who might you be?’ questioned Sir John.

  ‘Hörst Craevisch,’ replied the voice, ‘and the crew of the Heart of Light, known onetime as Alecto….’ Alecto. Pirates…. No, it was impossible. Thirty years if it was a day.

  ‘Tell me, Mister Craevisch, how did you come to be a pirate?’

  ‘Ah now, sir. Now that is a story worth the telling. You may recall the Great Comb Protest of’52. Well, there was a magistrate around then….’

  ‘Thank you, Mister Craevisch,’ Sir John interrupted the recitation. ‘I have heard enough. Turnkey, release these men.’

  ‘Sir John? Piracy. I mean, ‘tis a serious charge….’ But Sir John was not listening. Here at last was a conundrum not of his making. Pirates indeed. Here at least the blame was not rightly his. He thought of his half-brother and his clever solutions. He turned his blind eyes to the cell as the pirates began to gather their belongings. No, this was not his fault at all. This was something Henry had done.

  Sir John waited as the pirates filed past then followed the turnkey to the last of the cells.

  ‘Bit of an odd one this,’ the man announced.

  ‘Is there a charge?’

  ‘Affray, arson and murder, Sir John. He’s already confessed. Matter of fact, he asked specially to see you.’

  ‘And the basis of these charges?’

  ‘Well sir, he’s punched a number of your constables who was restraining him at the time of his arrest, claims he burned down the Opera House in Haymarket and says he killed these women, kept on and on he did. Horrible it was, Sir John. Filling ‘em up with metal and wrapping them in dead animals….’ Sir John sighed inwardly.

  ‘Does he wear spectacles?’

  ‘Why yes.’

  ‘And a pink coat?’

  ‘Yes, Sir John he does. Very nasty it is….’

  ‘And what exactly was he doing when arrested?’

  ‘Well, trying to walk into the Opera House, Sir John. It was blazing away and the lads thought they’d best pull him out before….’

  ‘Mister Lemprière!’

  Sir John addressed the cell’s occupant. There was a pause, then a voice he recognised addressed him in desolate tones from the corner.

  ‘I killed them, Sir John. It’s all in the book, dates, methods, all signed up
. I’ll tell you how too….’ Sir John heard him leaf through some pages.

  As he drew breath to begin reading, Sir John raised his hand for silence.

  ‘Mister Lemprière, I have spoken with your companion on both those nights. By his account, you were already several miles from the De Veres’ when the murder took place. As for the Manufactory, you were seen and remembered from the tavern at King’s Arms Stairs by your friend and up to a dozen watermen. He came to warn me of your obsession not two nights ago. Now, I know….’

  The young man erupted suddenly.

  ‘You blind fool! Why should I confess it if it were not true? I killed them. Me. I did it. Don’t you understand?’

  ‘Mister Lemprière, to the best of my knowledge you came to this city to settle a will and stayed to write a dictionary. You have killed no-one, and whether or not I suspected you in the past does not alter the fact. Your friend Mister Praeceps did you a great service when he came to me. Now, take your dictionary Mister Lemprière, and go home.’ And with that, Sir John motioned for the turnkey to release his prisoner.

  The young man sat on the jetty with his travelling chest and a book held open in front of him. He had been there since mid-morning. Every so often he would look up as though expecting someone, then, finding the waterfront deserted, would go on with his reading.

  Captain Radley of the pacquet Vineeta watched from the stern as the young man removed his spectacles and wiped them for the umpteenth time. His appearance was extraordinary: hair uncombed, face streaked with soot, a coat which might once have been pink all stained and torn. As he watched, the young man wrapped it more tightly about him. The wind was cold as it blew across the open water. A nor’westerly, odd for July. The sun shone down onto the boat. Stacked beside him in their crates, chickens fought noisy, private battles.

  ‘Watch out there!’ he called to the woman tottering down the gangplank. She stepped gingerly onto the deck and Captain Radley looked back to the young man. He had dropped his book, which now lay abandoned between his feet. His spectacles hung idly from one hand and his lips moved slightly as he mumbled to himself.

  Upstream from the pacquet, the Nottingham hove into view. The huge Indiaman dwarfed every other craft on the river and the wherries paddled furiously to clear her path. Captain Radley turned back and watched his crewman stack the last of the crates towards the stern. He heard the water begin to rush against the sides of the boat. The tide had turned already. The Nottingham crept past with her pilot and began to round the bend. The far bank shimmered. The woman was settling herself behind the wheel-house.

  ‘Is he taking the passage?’ he asked his passenger, pointing to the figure who sat alone on the jetty. The woman shrugged in ignorance.

  ‘All aboard!’ he called up. But the young man made no sign that he had heard. He called again and the figure moved as if startled. Captain Radley watched as he heaved the chest up shoulder-high and carried it along the jetty to the gang-plank.

  ‘Saint Peter Port?’ The young man nodded. ‘No cabin, mind you.’ The young man nodded again and offered him the fare in silence.

  ‘Cast off!’ shouted Captain Radley. The boat began to swing out.

  ‘Wait!’ The young man was pointing towards the jetty. ‘My book. I’ve left it.’

  ‘Hold the rope!’ shouted Radley. ‘Be quick,’ he cautioned his passenger and watched as the young man jumped ashore. He turned to the woman.

  ‘Forgot his book.’ The woman shrugged again. Captain Radley watched the gulls which sped over the water, gliding, almost touching the surface. Three of them were pursuing a fourth which fled downstream, all of them shrieking together, then up, higher and higher, until they were tiny dots in the enveloping blue of the sky. He looked down once more, to the jetty, but his passenger was almost fifty yards away, miles past his damned book which still lay where he had dropped it.

  ‘Oi!’ he shouted and waved. The young man turned and waved back. Someone was with him. They were talking and gesturing to one another. Both of them started running back along the waterfront.

  ‘The bloody book!’ he roared as both of them ran past it. The girl stopped and retrieved it. The young man jumped for the deck and fell clumsily into the chickens. The girl was more sure-footed. When he had picked himself up, Radley saw his demeanour was changed. He was smiling. So was the girl.

  ‘What?’ he demanded. ‘What’s so funny? Are you coming too now?’ The girl nodded. If anything she was in a more disreputable state than the other.

  ‘No cabin, mind you,’ he said again. They were paying no attention. The boy was asking, ‘How did you know?’ and the girl was saying, ‘Septimus….’

  ‘Cast off!’ shouted Radley for the second time, and ducked as the rope was thrown. The chickens squawked, the gulls shrieked and the Vineeta swung slowly out into the broad flood of the river to begin the voyage home.

  1788: Settlement

  AIR BEING the place of souls, the second element, Juno’s domain and female as the ancients had it, her embrace would swaddle and soothe him in the long years to follow, throw him aloft in her cool streams and ladders and airy wells, baffle him with polar mysteries, draw him to her nowhere-breast and hold him safe there between heaven and the jagged earth below, between the high blaze of light and the task whose weight pulled him earthwards and seawards when he needed air and light and the sun’s oxygen, whose command gave him a dark purpose and shoes of iron when he needed the gull’s wing and a lifting prayer, sunless vaults for bright aether and proxies for his own descending hand as Rochelle was left blazing behind him, behind its betrayers too, and the thin screams of the dying seemed never to die for the air was the place of souls and he must share it with them all until they might ascend together and that portage was his weight, his restraining hawser called in its earthbound term their settlement, and now it was done. Now he might rise, or wait, or simply hang above the scored surface below and watch its fury and bustle unwind to release him upwards and away towards the furious yellow eye which galvanised the vast neutral sky … Wait, he told himself then, wait for these last moments. He hung above the scarred surface of the city and traced the curling river’s meanders east as they flowed towards the wider sea, a glistening, fattening snake whose jaws opened about the estuary in which the ships and boats were tiny splinters blown forward on the freshening wind, the jetty he sought was a single matchstick, the young man a tiny leaping figure and the girl a dot of white as he ran for her along the waterfront and he himself was a gull blown higher than sight on the day’s thermals for which the two below may yet give thanks, a mote of black in the high blue, a dwindling detail shot forward out of the carnage at Rochelle that night and known to the young man and the girl below as Septimus.

  Below now, luggage stowed and slumped down together before the wheelhouse, he saw them embrace, heard his own name, thought yes, myself. Who else after all? The chill air cycled and spiralled around him, dropping wide loops to gather snatches of their conversation and carry them up. Chariots of silence.… He came late, and found her wandering by the burning theatre. The blazing fire pulled dark air into its mouth and spat flames which rouged their faces, though beneath the firelight his own was cold and deathly pale. At his approach through the crowds she seemed to awaken from a trance. Fires burst through the theatre’s windows and reached towards him. He could hardly stand it there, told her the name, turned, walked back into the darkness where the roar of the fire followed him and seemed to grow louder with every step as though the flames were licking at his back and he might fly as fast as the wind, they would follow after, recalling him to the old city and the earlier fire, to the November night when his flight had begun. Now, and then an age away, he saw her turn and look for him, but the crowds which milled about the pyre were stalled in indecision and she could see nothing but faces with the dying fire playing harmlessly upon them. But for her departing angel, this scene, in which she must play Aeneas to Lemprière’s lost Anchises, is still a century and a half in the f
uture. The streets through which he walks, then runs, then leaves never to return are the streets of that other city, a skeletal mimic of this one whose flesh falls away as his own dissolves in the air’s cradle and he rises above to view the burning eye and dark surrounding masonry as an old terror, his own, from which he has fled in a flight come full circle now, both the Greek fire of his launch and the beacon of his return for in the circling air over London, Rochelle is briefly possible once more and amongst the scurrying columns of its citizens, his own tiny body is the one detail to escape the tightening coil of the city’s self-murder, eyes screwed shut in sleep and tiny face buried in the breast of the woman who carried him through the hosts of the betrayed and the already-damned towards their unquiet grave a century and a half before.

  Citadel, prison of souls. Bodies crowding and buffeting her as she swung about to gather her children. A babe in arms wakes and howls thinly in the night air. Sharp elbows, shoulders, ribs, jutting chins and cheeks hollowed by hunger jostle about her as her brood is marshalled once more and driven forward with the slow surge of the Rochelais. It is past midnight. The youngest wails again and she clasps him tight to herself to soothe him. She is prosperous, unused to shepherding her children in this way, but the siege has done away with such distinctions and the only true master of her situation has already fled. His partners are preparing to do the same. They are waiting beneath the citadel. Tomorrow is the day the city falls. The citadel is a rumour which became a hope in the minds of the Rochelais, a place of safety in which their faith can be guarded from the encircling enemy. The citadel is where they will gather to affirm their belief; a place of souls. Again the baby’s shrill voice sounds above the murmur of the crowd. Torchlight reflects in the darkened windows and the citadel lies ahead. Tonight it is served by flooded conduits, hundreds, thousands of souls advancing in columns towards its entrance. The heavy doors are flung open and the dark mass of bodies feeds into a huge hall with balconies rising in tiers and high arched windows. The roof is an infinity away and the Rochelais are insects crawling below it, a scramble of bodies as wave after wave seeks entry through the portals at their backs. They are forced further and further into the cavernous interior, packed tighter and tighter. The siege has inured them to waiting. Behind them, the doors are closed and barred. They are inside the citadel, all waiting together. He turns his face up to hers. He sees her looking over the heads of the crowd. She frowns, sees something on the far side of the citadel, a concentration of the crowd’s murmur, a quickening of its engine. Then, quite without warning, the first shout of alarm cuts through the conversations of the Rochelais. By a later reckoning, he is five months old. His mother gazes down on him. Her eyes are grey-blue.