Lempriere's Dictionary (79 page)

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 unsure 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….’

‘Trousers?’

‘Shirt, pardon me, though you wouldn’t have known it for one. Stay clear of the knave, that’s my prescription.’

‘Right you are,’ said Lemprière, still laughing.

‘Ah, John,’ Septimus clapped him on the back. ‘I’ve been out of sorts. Forgive me.’ He moved towards the door which Lemprière held open. ‘I know I came here for a reason,’ said Septimus as he left, ‘but damn me if I haven’t forgotten what it is.’

Lemprière saluted and watched him take the stairs two at a time. He closed the door. Then he stopped laughing. How long would it take? Two, three minutes.

Lemprière took the coat from the chair, turned it inside out and rolled it in a tight bundle. Then he climbed to the next floor and knocked softly on the door. He heard a chair scrape and footsteps move quickly across the floor.

‘About time….’ as the door opened. ‘I’ve waited…. Oh.’ The tailor looked up and saw that it was Lemprière. His expression switched from annoyance to surprise, then back to annoyance. ‘I told you before,’ he said quickly, ‘trousers only. Now if you don’t mind….’ And he made as if to close the door.

‘Trousers,’ said Lemprière, holding up the bundle and placing his foot against the door.

‘Too busy!’ the tailor shouted.

‘Trousers!’ Lemprière brandished his coat. Then he leaned against the door and nudged. The tailor fell back and Lemprière walked into the room.

‘Where are your children?’ he asked innocently. ‘And your wife?’ The tailor was silent. ‘The work you are so busy with? Needles? Thread?’ But the tailor only stood in sullen silence.

Lemprière looked about the room. A narrow bed, desk, chair, books stacked against the far wall. It was identical to his own.

‘Who were you expecting?’ he asked, though he had known the answer as soon as the tailor had mistaken him for his overdue visitor. He was the same height, his clothes similarly dark. ‘What are you doing?’

The answer lay on the desk. The last entries of his dictionary were stacked next to an identical pile. A neat and exact copy. Lemprière stared at them in silence.

‘You have copied my dictionary,’ he said. The “tailor” nodded. ‘All of it?’ The nod was given again. Lemprière thought for a moment. ‘The signatures,’ he said. ‘How did you….’

‘Left ‘em out. Dates too. Don’t know why they were there in the first place.’

‘Copyright, Mister Copyist,’ Lemprière replied sharply.

‘Makes no odds, no difference at all,’ the copyist said. Lemprière digested this information, then changed tack.

‘Pays well does he, Mister Praeceps?’ The purpose of Septimus’ visit to the house was now abundantly clear, even if it had not been so to Septimus himself.

‘Well enough. Look here Mister Lemprière.’ The man’s tone was earnest. ‘It’s not so strange to make a copy. For safe-keeping, I mean. Cadell’s place isn’t fire-proof….’

‘Without my knowledge? In secret? Behind my back?’ The thought that as he had written his dictionary, a clerk stationed directly above him was tracing every line of his pen, duplicating every word that he wrote, angered him in a way he could not readily explain. The action seemed somehow to mock him. Lemprière gathered up both piles from the desk.

‘I don’t know why he wanted them.’ The copyist tried to placate him, but Lemprière pushed past the man clutching the last of his dictionary. He slammed the door and stamped down the stairs, baffled and angry and curious all at once. But then he forgot the papers and his rolled-up coat, his bafflement ceased and his anger evaporated. His curiosity was a memory of curiosity, postponed and half-forgotten already for Juliette was standing alone at his door.

She wore a dress of cream linen. He recognised it as the one she had worn when she first descended from the coach outside the church in the parish of Saint Martin’s. Then, she had appeared as a fabulous, quite untouchable creature. An apparition. She turned to him as he approached. The hills and parched grasslands of Jersey seemed very far away, that summer a different age. She was quite beautiful. That had not changed.

‘You came,’ he said.

She sat on the bed. He watched her from the chair. At first he had been tongue-tied. The events which had befallen him were dammed up inside him. If he extracted just one, the whole torrent would descend and drown them both. She reminded him of the afternoon in the library and they both laughed quickly, then stopped as the memory became a prelude. She had heard of his work, his dictionary. He realised that he still clutched its last sheets in his hand and released them, along with his coat.

‘It is finished then?’ she said, and he nodded. They both sat very straight in their places.

‘You could go home….’

‘Yes, I suppose I could,’ he answered without really thinking. When he looked across at her he saw a kind of appeal in her expression. ‘Come with me, come back with me,’ he said quickly. He knew what he wanted now. ‘We could leave this….’

‘No!’ she broke in. ‘I cannot, I cannot tell you why; that is why I came. Go now John, simply go.’

‘Your father….’

‘What do you know?’ Suddenly all her composure left her. ‘Tell me!’ she implored him.

Lemprière was startled. He began to tell what Walter had said, that she was held a virtual prisoner, what his own perceptions told him, her terror in the archive only the day before. But as he spoke of Viscount Casterleigh he saw her expression change from pleading to resignation. Her head dropped.

‘The Viscount is not my father,’ she said. ‘I am only his ward. Nothing more.’

‘Then leave, leave now,’ he urged her.

‘He knows who my father is,’ she replied. ‘He will tell me soon….’ Her voice was hopeless. ‘I must stay till then, I know he will tell me. In the end he
must
tell me….’ She talked on in this way but more and more to herself as though she had rehearsed it too many times. At length, she fell silent. Lemprière began again to argue that she should come with him back to Jersey. Juliette sat shaking her head.

‘I do not know how you are able even to look at me!’ she burst out. Lemprière stopped in mid-sentence. Slowly, his cheeks reddened.

‘I knew nothing of it until much later,’ she said. ‘Believe me, I beg you.’ He looked away, two images rising irresistibly before his mind’s eye: his father’s body, torn and bloody, rolling over in its death throes, and the body of the girl who sat before him now, naked as she was in the pool.

‘I thought,’ he began and cleared his throat. ‘I thought it was my fault, you see. It is why I wrote this.’ He indicated the last sheets of paper. ‘There were other things; at the De Veres’, at Coade’s….’ The memories silenced him for a moment. ‘But it was not my fault.’ He gathered himself.

‘No,’ said Juliette.