Lemprière's Dictionary

by Lawrence Norfolk

  Nothing prepared him for their meeting as adults. Lemprière stood brandishing a piece of smoking wood, spindly legs planted in defiance, spluttering and eyes streaming behind a pair of owlish eye-glasses as Septimus introduced himself the next day. At Skewer’s, he asked irrelevant questions and day-dreamed. At the Pork Club he fell for the first of the Cabbala’s deceptions and afterwards, in the pouring rain, he sobbed out a story about visions coming true, dogs tearing his father’s flesh, Actaeon’s hubris and Diana’s retribution. Hardly the master of demons he had hoped for. Lemprière was weak, awkward, lacked common sense and confidence, betrayed himself as gullible at Kalkbrenner’s and almost killed himself running into the freezing night at the De Veres’. It was Septimus, his trusted friend, who gave him the dictionary, just as the Nine had instructed, and it was Septimus who led him out to the west pasture to witness the death of the woman in blue. He nudged his charge this way and that through the streets of the city, guiding him through the tangle of trails left behind by the Nine: the voyage of the Vendragon, the pamphlets of Asiaticus, the Agreement which bound the Lemprières to the De Veres, the rumours which rolled like sea-mist about Rochelle and thickened to a fog which only the fire could dispel. All the while, the plot concocted against the young man coiled and tightened, flicking and brushing against him then receding as he moved to grasp the implications of details he would notice and still fail to comprehend. Septimus surrounded him with hints and clues but still he blundered on. The dictionary grew and Sir John’s investigation gathered pace. Its arrows were converging on a single point and Lemprière seemed intent on meeting him there. Septimus watched the progress of his proxy and in secret he despaired.

  Over the stone cap of the city and its outlying districts, the river and sea beyond, across plains and ranges shaded to grey and black by the sun’s flight, wheeling south along the ragged peninsular coasts and west over the enclosed Middle Sea flew Septimus. The air was clear and cool. Lemprière stumbled and blundered below, seemed almost to welcome the noose which tightened about his neck. The air was consolation. Europe’s dark verdure stretched away beneath him, cut with great rivers and highways. He noted the fumbling engagements of Musselmen and their pale enemies; the entrenchments about Belgrade. The sweet smell of decay drifted in the warmth of spring, invading the cool jet-streams above. A Turkic column was marched west under guard and as he passed high overhead a few faces were turned towards him until the returning call drew him back to his familiar routes. Find him, tell him…. He wanted to stay above it all but the Lemprière’s shortcomings drew him down into his own version of this fumbling conflict. It was growing confused. The signals were broken and inexact. He needed spaces to set out his thoughts and hoped to find them in the empty vault of the sky, his own Zero State. Here was Lemprière. Here were the betrayers of Rochelle. Between them stood the figure that was himself. Sir John already suspected this Lemprière, was already part of their design, and the Indian was ambiguity itself. Emissary, assassin, avenger in his own right…. His own instructions arrived through the Secret Committee and sent him to play his part for the Lemprière, just as Rochelle sent him to play its part for the Nine, and his mother a further role. He was Septimus, the hearty counterweight to this Lemprière’s moody introspections, willing agent seconded to the Secret Committee, son of his mother, seeker after a fugitive father and all manner of other versions and roles which dispersed him until only the murmur of souls was a constant. He was a carrier already overburdened with aspects and had no need of more. He never wanted this Lemprière to offer his friendship.

  Pylades had offered his life on the altar at Taurica to save that of his cousin. Orestes had given it back. Septimus looked down on the Vineeta as she rounded the headland and wondered if the two of them, so unlike and divided in purpose, moving now along their diverging axes, might have formed a parallel compact. Was this ever a possible point on the line linking Septimus’s rising perpendicular to Lemprière’s horizontal bearing below? There had been moments when the veil slipped, when he might have been revealed to his comrade. He had been caught unawares by the three professors and their talk of flying men, of Sprites winging out from Rochelle. He had felt the souls stir up inside him and for a moment he had been dumbfounded by this apocryphal version of himself. All his bravado and crass good humour had dissolved at the Stone Eater. Distracted by Lemprière’s antics, he had not noticed his onetime drinking companion standing beside them in the audience. Guardian’s recognition had been sure, its expression direct. He could only stand there and deny it. Jersey? A drinking bout? Never, not me. Another perhaps, a doppelgänger…. And so another version of himself came to feed upon him, another draining outline for him to drag about with the procession of his possible selves. When he moved, he would leave a succession of them behind him, a trail of coincident outlines, sloughed skins, pieces of himself. Perhaps they extended forward too, marking the places laid out for him, the selves yet to be inhabited. They were both of them trapped. The Lemprière moved forward, hesitant and ridiculous with his proffered stone. A commotion sounded somewhere behind. A lamp coming free of its mounting, falling and breaking on the planked floor, the tongue of flame which crept forward towards him and from which he fled into some dark recess where no-one and nothing could find him. He cowered before his own familiar terror. Surely Lemprière would come to question this timorous Orestes, to doubt him and guess the truth?

  Questions floated over his friend’s face like clouds which the familiar face of the sun would burn out of the air. The skies were most often clear. But when their blue depths darkened to grey it was in response to some other, broader signal. The sky was a congruent mirror for the land below whose upheavals were reflected there, though changed and difficult to decipher. Septimus would face Lemprière across rooms, over tables, through thin air. They would talk, as they had in the coffee-shop or, later, in Lemprière’s room, and Septimus would feel a vagueness come over him, a strange distraction. The other had noticed it and tried to question him. He could not answer. The moods came without warning, and more frequently as the summer advanced. Aware and unaware in their different ways, they were coming to the crux. He would face his proxy and feel the souls grow active within him. The noise was a din which only he could hear, drowning out all the senses which connected him with the other. He could see Lemprière’s face. The eye-glasses made his eyes huge. They were pulling him in and there, hidden in the darkness of his pupils, was the host of tiny figures he had first spied in the inn on Jersey. Lemprière still carried his demons. They shouted and cried out and fought to escape, crammed together in their citadel. The souls of the Rochelais would grow frenzied in reaction. He could hardly register the young man in front of him. Their heads were rival cities peopled with dissonant warmongers. They shouted to one another and threatened violence until Septimus could do nothing but rise and mumble excuses, turn and leave his companion. Lemprière would look up, startled by the abruptness of his departure. His demons would quieten, and the souls of the Rochelais would answer them with a like quiet. Lemprière was a cousin of sorts, a brother under the skin. Septimus wondered, if the positions were reversed, would Lemprière have done the same as himself?

  Remembrance gave him the burning man, the blind man who had stumbled out of the flames in the citadel towards himself and his mother. He had not fallen. Another had run towards him, knocked him to the floor and laid his body across the other to smother the fire, limb matched limb, face to burning face. As his mother had caught him up and carried him away, he had seen the two of them locked in each others’ arms rolling over and over until the flames claimed them both. Would Lemprière have laid his head on the altar at Taurica, or run to clasp the burning body to his own? They were locked together in any case, creatures of air and earth pursuing congruent paths, virtual images of one another. All summer the nets were drawn tighter about his proxy. The absurd, gory productions of the Nine hedged him about with suspicions and circumstance. Sir John’s investigation circled
its eventual suspect, narrowing and focusing. The city boiled in the summer heat. Lemprière’s dictionary neared its end and the long loading of the Vendragon was completed. A sad parody of Olympus lay crated and stacked in her hold, awaiting the arrival of the Nine. As June became July, Lemprière’s own fumbling investigation seemed to slow even further. Septimus flew by night now. He rose in the early hours to feel the cool rush of air unfold the night’s envelope and hang him from broader wings over the drifting surface below. He saw white sails inching over the ocean’s plate and the lights from the western ports were stations drawing him south to the ragged mouth of the harbour. Rochelle was a low silhouette, a quiet instruction to return. He rose over the old city and felt its pull swing him about then release him along the trajectory which would take him back. London was a beacon to the north, a glowing network of ports and circuits, all humming and pulsing, and below it were waiting the Nine.

  Something happened. A satellite had drifted out of orbit and been lost. The Eight remaining had realigned to account for its absence but the sum of their forces was out of balance and their vectors conflicted now. In the Viscount’s unguarded conversation, Septimus heard talk of an old settlement, a necessary sacrifice made after their flight from Rochelle. One had broken free and thrown the others into confusion. One had been lost and they were Eight now. But the old balance could not be regained. The old partners were divided and only the thinnest veneer held them in coalition. It was Lemprière again, the random and incalculable element in their plans. He was unaccountable, still at large as an issue they could not resolve. Septimus intuited deeper purposes behind their entrapment. The scope was wider than he had thought, wider than they themselves had imagined. Only Casterleigh was clear in his aims. Perhaps his deputation to oversee the last phase of their plan was a test, a way for the other faction to bring his ambitions to the surface. Perhaps Lemprière was the decoy all along. They gave him the girl that night to lead him west. She was already wavering. Her alliance was already with Lemprière. Septimus knew that they were almost at the end. He went to Sir John with a hatful of alibis. He waited outside the door to Lemprière’s room. He followed them to the theatre. The souls sensed it too. The critical moment hung in space and wavered like the girl, or himself, all of them, as the drama was played out on the roof high above. Casterleigh’s hand was naked now, his solution to the old problem abundantly clear as Lemprière leaned back into space. The souls screamed in his head. Lemprière was a toppling citadel overhanging the dark drop from the parapet, still for a moment then falling backwards into nothing.… He had no choice, and the Lemprières were owed so many such debts; so many times he had stood back and watched as the final blow was delivered. Not now.

  The wind had risen. Sitting behind the wheel-house of the Vineeta, Lemprière leaned his head on the girl’s shoulder and watched the gulls fly out from the headland. Sheerness slid by to starboard. Captain Radley took nips from a hip-flask against the cold and passed it back to the two of them. When Lemprière handed it up, he caught the young man’s eye and winked broadly. Juliette laughed. The chickens squawked in their crates. She had taken the dictionary from his pocket and was now idly turning the pages. He watched as her finger traced lazy waves down the pages then turned and looked out over the water once more. Every time she leaned forward to turn a page their bodies would part and Lemprière would imagine for an instant that she had disappeared once again. A brisk breeze blew over the canvas of the for’ard mast with a rushing sound. The water nearest the boat seemed greyer than the surrounding blue as different angles of refraction opened the sea’s spectrum. On the roof of the theatre, the Viscount had stopped dead in his tracks, eyes pointing to some other figure, something hovering above and behind him. The parapet slid out from underneath his feet and he was falling back. Then came the smell of burning, a sound such as the wind when it is harnessed by a sail, the taste of salt. The Viscount staggered back with his mouth slack and face ashen. A hard hand drove itself into his back.… Or was it the other way around? The taste of salt, the sound of rushing air, then the hand and the smell, something burning behind him, charring in the dark space which opened beneath his feet, falling forward with such force. It would not come right. He could not find the sense in it. Why should Septimus tell Juliette the name of her father? And why should he given her back to Lemprière? Grey waves and a difficult wind took the Vineeta on. Radley shouted to the crewmen to bring the boom across. Juliette nudged him and pointed to the blank page where his dictionary ended, her face a question and the lacuna which puzzled her a space for the last entry.

  Under the city and its umbra, under the flood of bodies, the torchlight and the false horizons of night, the seismic ground had shuddered and twitched. Rochelle was rising again from the buried conflict. He hurried through the streets with Lemprière clinging to him and supporting him in turn. The familiar room. Familiar suspicions. The souls of the Rochelais were wary and confused, churning inside him while Lemprière blasted him with his questions. Then, a respite as the other pieced together the last elements of the puzzle posed for him by the Nine. The moon was huge and white, flooding through the windows as his companion put the ring to the watermark, the watermark to the harbour, the name to the harbour.… He had tried to offer his own token. He stumbled through dismal formulas, reaching for a kinship at this last moment but he was clumsy and the Nine were too close, his own settlement possible at last. He mumbled his sentiments too late - cousins, brothers under the skin - all too late. Lemprière was already at the mouth of the Beast, standing there all unaware with his back to Septimus and the old city’s name on his lips. He was a poor actor. He had forgotten this was their last scene together. The puppet-masters were waiting and he must be clear. ‘All of it began….’ Yes, he thought as he dealt his friend the blow. All of it began at Rochelle. The young man’s face looked peaceable in the moonlight. Now the endgame could begin. He must descend, they both must. He is an engineer crawling through secret passages beneath the besieged city and in his arms is clasped the powder-mine that was always the point of these excavations and hollowings-out. The Beast represents to him the terrors of depth and purpose, but his own plan has been deep enough and his purpose clear. The ellipse has come around, and as he places Lemprière by the corpse he will take for his ancestor, he sees his own departing back as it disappears into the darkness. He is just beginning, just setting out on the journey which will lead him here. The souls begin to hum in looped circuits and flicker inside him. Lemprière is left in the tunnel with the corpse he will take for his ancestor beside him as Septimus makes his way to the great antechamber above.

  Vengeance. The souls spin together inside him, gathering and forming themselves about his purpose. He waits in the antechamber for the players to assemble. He sees Lemprière pass by, led by Jaques towards the far chamber. He feels the presence of the one he has sought as a vacuum sucking him into the chamber. All his shed selves are arriving, catching up with their template at last and massing within it. He is an army ranged about the besieged. Black-winged souls gather along his circuits and axes to form an image he recognises now, a face which is his mother’s, but in reverse, light mapped onto dark and vice versa. The halo of flames about her head is pitch-black. Her eyes are twin fires. When her mouth opens he sees the floor of the citadel yawn open to reveal the furnace below. Footsteps sound over the gravel from the door, moving away from him. And again. The door to the chamber blinks like a yellow eye. Her face forms and dissolves, changes and yet remains the same. The sound of water reaches his ears, only now it is not the distant surge of the sea far below the citadel but a descending flood which crashes over the gravel to the lip of the void before him. The wailing of furies tears through the air. Screeching and screaming down the shaft come the old avenging angels. Tisiphone, Megaera and Alecto drag their bodies forward on the luminous flood. Noxious vapours hang in the air as their bellies split and spill their contents to mingle in the vault of the antechamber. His mother’s face conto
rts and the words are spelt out slowly. Find him. The souls scream louder, framing their own message about the first until the two are mixed like the vaporous clouds above. Tell him. He moves through the carnage, driven by the cacophony to the door. All his guises are gone and only his own face, only that of the disfigured infant is left. The souls wail again and he believes himself resolved. Kill him.