Lemprière's Dictionary

by Lawrence Norfolk

  ‘Let us begin at the beginning,’ he announced, ‘with Homer.’

  ‘The question, I think, is of the edition rather than his inclusion, hmm?’ countered Quint.

  ‘The best edition being of course….’

  ‘… that of Heyne,’ Quint capped his sentence.

  ‘No, that of Eustathius of Thessalonica is without doubt the best. But, being almost completely unavailable, Heyne will do in its stead.’

  Honours were shared on a roughly equal basis and they proceeded to Hesiod where Lemprière argued successfully for Parma’s edition, published the previous year, and won his cause chiefly by the fact that Quint had not heard of it. Juliette, without the least understanding of the varying merits of the Ascraean Bard’s editors, understood well enough the varying merits of their advocates. She fanned the flames of their rivalry with exclamations of support or caution as they jousted over abstruse points of grammar, corrupted fragments, and the finer distinctions of classical palaeography. Their pages were littered with the corpuses of dead authors and the air grew thick with disputed emendations.

  Lemprière fought hard for Oppian on fish. Quint conceded the Halieuticon, but was adamant on the Cynegeticon. Quint insisted on quoting twenty lines of Bacchylidês.

  ‘Bravo!’ exclaimed Juliette as he finished. Lemprière responded with six possible construals of a line from Anáxilas and drew a similar commendation. Each maintained a rigid politeness with regard to the other but both knew that this was what they did best, this in a sense was what they were. Their catalyst tossed her head and slapped the table with her hands as the battle raged from Athens to Rome. In vain did Quint try to quell her enthusiasm, she drove them on, perched there at the end of the table. Lemprière contended that Caesar had no place in the literary pantheon.

  ‘Either they were notes or he understood not the first principles of grammar,’ he argued impatiently. Quint was familiar with that line of thought but would not be drawn.

  ‘He justifies his place as a strategist,’ he declared flatly.

  ‘And the Aeneid as a travel guide,’ rejoined the younger man, exposing the argument.

  ‘Ah, but not, not the same thing at all, you see….’

  But Lemprière was gaining the upper hand. Cato’s De Re Rustica provoked a tussle, Quint favouring Ausonius Pompona’s edition, Lemprière the more modern one by Gesner. Lemprière eventually gave way, but stood firm on half a dozen more. His thoughts had never been so clear, his arguments so incisive. He quoted long passages with ease, halting only to explain a textual crux here, a corrupt reading there. All was clear, and as he moved towards proving this point or discrediting that, he kept the old man in his sight, the real object, the target of his endeavours. Juliette now was openly favouring his advances. It spurred him on.

  The light was fading outside when they arrived at Sextus Propertius. Quint was sweating while his adversary wore a half-concealed smile, as if savouring a private joke.

  ‘The edition of Santenus, I have heard, is excellent. Concise, learned….’

  ‘I think not,’ Lemprière cut him off.

  ‘That of Barthius then….’

  ‘No, Propertius is unworthy of inclusion.’

  And Quint found himself in the strange position of defending a poet he detested against the charges of one whom he knew to be his passionate advocate. But Lemprière would not be swayed, the poems were lascivious, colloquial, ungrammatical and filled with clumsy archaisms.

  ‘… and if we love him for his learning we may as well be satisfied with Ovid,’ he finished dismissively. Quint was tempted to agree with all these charges, but committed to the opposing view, he argued fiercely against each. Still Lemprière would not be persuaded. Juliette was growing clamorous.

  ‘Unless,’ the young man conceded, ‘he be represented by his fifth book alone, for the first four seem quite inadmissable.’

  Quint jumped at the compromise.

  ‘Quite, quite, the fifth book, yes I quite …’ tumbling the words out in flustered agreement. Lemprière held back for a moment, then leaned forward at his former teacher.

  ‘There is no fifth book.’

  He dropped the fact like a stone into a calm pool which swallows it and sucks it down out of sight, leaving only ripples that lap gently towards the bank and fall back in silence before reaching it. The room was instantly very still.

  ‘It is late, I must go,’ muttered the old man. Without looking at either of them he turned to make his way out. It was only as he was closing the door that Lemprière saw the humiliation on his face. And in that instant he was sorry. Sorry, with a deep regret for what he had done and confirmed in the certainty that he was wrong. The door closed and, for a moment, only the soft ticking of the clock could be heard in the library. But Juliette did not think he was wrong. No, Juliette did not think he was wrong at all. She ran to him as he hung his head. She placed her cool palm against his cheek and, for the barest fraction of a second, touched her lips to it.

  ‘Bravo my warrior.’

  Her hot whisper in his ear.

  “My thanks to you Mister Lemprière, and this token of my satisfaction at your labours. Between us we will keep the booksellers of England in pocket for a decade.”

  The note was signed only with a ‘C’. For Casterleigh. He turned the book over in his hands. It was beautiful. ‘Ovidius Publius Naso Metamorphoses’ stencilled in silver on the black calf-skin. He opened it at random,

  Rumor in ambiguo est; aliis violentior aequo

  Visa dea est….

  Four days had passed since he had emerged the victor from the Library. Four days in which he had thought of little but the brush of lips against his cheek. He had come over absent-minded again, but happier, his mother thought. The rustle of papers from his father’s study had been unceasing, the level of activity rising and falling all hours of the day and night. Normally his son would have taken this activity as an object for intense study, another clue to the enigma his father presented, but for now he was absorbed in his own thoughts. Thoughts of the girl in the house across the valley, thoughts that were more like devotions, devotions that were more like love. Like love, yet somehow he was held back from that. When he had looked into her eyes, that first time, outside the church, he had seen the image of all that was desirable, all that he might love. But he saw no further. Beyond those deep black eyes, he did not know. It baffled and inflamed him. An appropriate gift, he thought.

  Lydian women, maidens from Thebes and Haemonia changing into trees, birds and streams in their efforts to evade the gnarled hands that grasped at their ankles. He turned the pages without method, the familiar stories of Ceix and Alcyone, Jupiter and Europa and the revenge of Althaea trod lightly through his thoughts. But the book itself was strange. The text, so far as he could see was free from errors, yet no editor was credited. There was no date, nor any printer’s mark to indicate its provenance. The only clue was an oddity in itself. In the middle of the frontispiece a circle was printed, obviously a symbol of some sort, but the imprint was poor, the circle was cracked on one side. In most editions this would not have detained his eye for a second. Fouled type was common enough. But here the type was uniformly excellent, every cusp and point perfectly formed. Such an obvious error, surely it would have been spotted by the printer … it puzzled him. But he did not let this mar the pleasure he took in leafing through its pages. Almost every tale was illustrated. Small lithographs interspersed through the text; they complemented the fine Roman type well enough but did not hold his attention. Until he came to the legend of Actaeon and Diana.

  This one was different. It occupied a whole page, contained far more detail than the others and looked as though the artist had made only a half-hearted attempt to ape the style of the others. He noted that the page numbers did not account for it. The artist had obviously thought long and hard on the folly of Actaeon. Poor Actaeon, condemned by his own ill-luck to witness the fierce chastity of Diana in her nakedness. She has just been surprised
in the pool, her bow is unstrung. But this does not save Actaeon, his head is already a stag’s head and his own dogs are clawing at his legs and rib-cage. One arm extended for support from the tree behind him, the other raised in futile supplication to the heavens, his stag’s head bellows in pain to no avail. Diana seems calm, her soft arms, adorned only by leather bracelets set with turquoise, hold the bow out as if to show it to some hidden, but permitted, onlooker. One breast is exposed. An avenue of trees extends a perspective into the background of the picture and in the shady tones and half-tones a figure that could be a man on horseback surveys the scene. The picture gripped the young man. He did not know why. Actaeon’s fate had held little interest for him before. But now he pored over the tale, half-consciously looking for clues as to why it should fascinate him. But all he found was what he had always found. Ovid’s rather leaden sense of irony, a strange cohabitation of beauty and violence in the descriptions and an abstracted kind of compassion for Cadmus’ grandson laid low by crimen fortunae. Whether Actaeon deserved his gruesome fate or not was a hackneyed debate in the classical world. He remembered he had argued it through with Quint once, and at the end they had changed sides and argued it in reverse. That was a happy memory and he felt suddenly regretful again at his triumph over the old man. Yet Juliette had sweetened him and more. She kissed me, he thought to himself, then turned back to the outrage of Diana at Actaeon’s prying eyes.

  There was no key. Not here at any rate. And not yet…. Charles Lemprière paused in his labours. Time was not on his side. The path had come to an end with the destination still out of sight. He was close, he knew that much, close enough perhaps. Perhaps he would stir the waters even if he did not flush them out, or maybe they would emerge of their own accord? He did not smile at this thought. He would be bait for creatures of which he knew nothing but that they waited for him in the dark spaces where he could not see. But it was time to entice them into the light… or a time to die? He feigned annoyance with himself at the melodrama of this thought. But somewhere within him lurked the knowledge that it might only be the truth. It waited for him to uncover it and he dodged it. When would he be ready for that knowledge? When is anyone, he thought. The breeze through the open window lifted the corners of the papers piled in disarray on the desk before him. From time to time one would float gently down to the floor. There were quite a number there now. How long have I been here? They would know from Chadwick, the solicitor by now. He must assume so…. The rest was an easy guess. He wished his own were so. It was late, the stars gleamed down on him from the summer night-sky. Somewhere among those points of light was an order, somewhere, said the theologians was the shape which explained them all. And perhaps I will find it, he thought.

  Anyone endowed with exceptional eyesight and the ability to climb to the top of Rozel Windmill would, had he or she looked westwards to the Lemprière household, have seen a pleasant symmetry in the two unconscious heads laid on desks behind the windows at the left and right extremities of that house. Had he or she been stone-deaf and consequently not heard Marianne Lemprière’s rousing call to arms, it might have been thought nothing short of miraculous that both heads should suddenly jerk up, be rubbed by hands still numb from sleep, yawn, stretch and disappear almost simultaneously, as though they were puppets sharing a single set of strings. However, he or she would be disappointed in this line of thought if it were revealed that hereafter their respective morning rituals diverged to elicit the fact that each head contained quite different notions of the actions more or less appropriate to the passage from somnolence to a state of wakefulness.

  While Charles Lemprière doused his head in water from a white enamel basin, his son gaped to look at his teeth in the mirror. John Lemprière took off his eye-glasses to rub sleep out of his eyes and timidly applied a little cold water to his face. His father towelled the back of his head and put on a crisp, clean shirt. When both had performed their respective ablutions they descended the stairs and converged again for breakfast. Uncongenial news awaited them.

  ‘This may be the last fine day of summer,’ Marianne Lemprière greeted them.

  ‘It may Marianne, it may indeed,’ replied her husband through a mouthful of egg. Her son nodded. The two men had the same thought at the same time.

  ‘No, Marianne. It’s simply not necessary.’

  ‘The house has never looked, never looked….’

  ‘… more palatable,’ Charles improvised an ending to his son’s sentence.

  Marianne Lemprière waited for silence.

  ‘The last day of summer is the day the house is cleaned for winter,’ she announced, smiling as their faces dropped.

  ‘And I do not want the two of you under my feet. You’ve finished your breakfast, John? Good. Charles?’ He handed her the plate. ‘I don’t want to see either of you until five at the earliest. And then I want to see you both.’ She laughed as she pushed them through the door.

  ‘Five-o-clock!’ she shouted after them as the door slammed.

  Outside, they looked awkwardly at one another. Within their joking protests at their expulsion from the house lay a rare vein of intimacy which, stripped of its humorous camouflage, now embarrassed them both. No matter. They had shared a joke as any father and son might do. The son grinned.

  ‘I think I might take a walk to St Lawrence’s,’ he said.

  ‘And I to see Jake Stokes,’ rejoined his father. They both smiled, these were their habitual refuges in times of Marianne’s cleaning crises. The sound of pots and pans being marshalled for the day’s activities arose from within. The house sounded like a smithy and Marianne would, they knew, soon emerge for water.

  ‘Until tonight then, John.’

  ‘Farewell, father.’ And with this they parted company.

  Across the intervening fields of St Martin’s, a matter of two, perhaps three miles away, Viscount Casterleigh led his horse around to the kennels by the bridle. The animal snorted and tossed its head, unnerved by the sudden baying and barking. His face was set, determination mixed with the first trace of excitement. The plan had taken shape when the solicitor had come to them. At some time, all of them, even Jaques, had known it would come again to this. It always had. Always would.

  Where was the girl? Already the dogs were clawing to be loosed, sensing the off. He lifted the latch and they spilled out into the yard, scrambling over each other in an ill-tempered mêlée of tails and legs, snapping at each others’ ears, brief, vicious skirmishes taking place as each fought for its place in the hierarchy of the pack. He mounted and the dogs became more frantic, milling about in expectation of the chase. Where was the damned girl? He called her, his anger rising, as she came at a run around the corner. She would have to take her place first. There must be no delays.

  ‘Get up!’ he ordered her as she waited, apprehensive and costumed for the piece.

  The dogs had grown no quieter. Heavily-built animals. He felt the horse steady itself under the girl’s slight weight. Her hands closed about his waist. She would play her part as instructed, even unknowing. He smiled to himself at the irony. The manufacture of the scene might not be his, he might even resent his being cast within it, but the part itself, that was something to savour. Suddenly his thoughts closed in on this, gripping hard on what he was about to do. The horse, its riders and the eager pack, all wheeled about, readied themselves for a second, then surged out the gate for the fence and the fields beyond. The dogs fanned out ahead, wanting the kill.

  The son and the father had parted, Charles taking the lane for St Martin’s church, his son cutting across the field to the cliff-tops which rose around Bouley Bay. Once the church was reached, Charles too took to the fields, following the hedgerows eastwards towards La Vallée and the house of Jake Stokes at Blanche Pierre which was his goal. Jake would be expecting him. He knew as well as Charles that Marianne’s housewifely campaigns were conducted according to a rigid regime. And it was becoming more and more obvious, as he strode along through the fields
, that this was indeed the last fine day of summer.

  The sun had risen high and the still air held the morning heat. To the south-east he saw a louring, black bank of cloud that seemed to thicken and darken as he watched. Jake would see it too and guess at Marianne’s reaction. The thought of his wife suddenly stabbed at him. She had looked so pretty, holding back her smiles in pretend sternness. So desirable, and it occurred to him that they had not lain together for weeks. How many weeks? He had forgotten, and the impulse gripped him to turn back then and there. To turn back and throw open the door of their house and kiss her hand and say that he was a brute to neglect her so. And she would laugh and say, as once she had, that she had a hankering for brutes and lead him upstairs by the hand.

  But Marianne was busy and would not welcome intrusion. He knew that, and walked on. Birds sang in the hedgerows. He thought he saw a magpie and heard the baying of dogs in the distance. He loved his wife. He hoped there would be time to make up for his indifference, for she must see it as that, he thought. The turf felt unyielding beneath his feet, dried out by the summer sun. Cracks had appeared in the fields on higher ground, worrying some of the farmers. ‘The soil’s giving up its ghost,’ they said, without believing it. He caught the sounds of the dogs again. Casterleigh’s curs, he thought to himself. The Lord knew why he ran them on Jersey. There was little enough to hunt.

  He took a random path through the fields, following a general direction rather than any particular route, and so perhaps it was an unlucky lie of the hedgerows which substituted for the normal southward bias of his direction a northward one. Or perhaps he simply lost his way. But what is certain is that whenever he veered south he heard the sound of Casterleigh’s hounds. At least, he assumed they were Casterleigh’s. He never actually saw them. He did not like dogs, but his half-conscious efforts to skirt around the pack only resulted in his emerging some distance to the north of Quetivel Mill, when he would normally expect to be half a mile from Les Chasses. He was three or four miles from there. Damned animals. But it was his own timidity which vexed him most. He resolved to cut straight down into the St Lawrence valley and follow the stream down to Blanche Pierre which lay to the south.