Lempriere's Dictionary

by Norfolk, Lawrence

  ‘“Danae, the daughter of Acrisius, king of Argos, by Eurydice. She was confined in a brazen tower by her father, who had been informed by an oracle that his daughter’s son would put him to death….”’ Septimus’s voice, there, standing over his desk. Lemprière knew he was awake and struggled up.

  ‘“His endeavours to prevent Danae from becoming a mother proved, however, fruitless; and Jupiter, who was enamoured of her introduced himself to her bed by changing himself into a shower of gold.” Hmm, good. Didn’t you kill Acrisius at the club that night?’ Septimus imitated quoit-throwing. But his friend was still barely awake. Sometime in the night his own shivering had awoken him. He had risen and written the entry. His sleep was full of strange interruptions.

  ‘How does it end?’ Septimus was asking. The inquisition would begin soon. He might have died from the cold.

  ‘Badly,’ Lemprière managed after a long pause. Septimus was still standing over the desk.

  ‘We looked for you, you know? Search party, torches….’ He remembered a coach, the road, a thudding noise.

  ‘You found me,’ Lemprière said.

  ‘No, we found a woman….’ Lemprière had let his head fall back into the pillow. Septimus would not be able to see his face. ‘A dead woman….’ Lemprière thought, tell him.

  ‘A dead woman?’ and before he could catch himself, ‘how did she.… I mean….’

  ‘Out in the west pasture, more like a bog. Quite horrible. You were miles away.’ How could he read the entry and not guess? ‘Miles away,’ an instruction?

  ‘I became lost, thought I was going back to the house. It was dark.’

  ‘You were outside the house to begin with?’

  ‘Yes, of course….’ Of course, led by fresh footprints in the snow on the lawn, by a glimpse of Septimus. ‘I thought I saw you, a corridor at the back of the house, a room,’ Lemprière said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Septimus.

  ‘On the lawn.’

  ‘Yes. I took a turn round the lawn, then went back inside. I was looking for you. You missed the fireworks.’ Turn around the lawn. Fireworks.

  ‘I tried to go around the house,’ Lemprière said. The footprints had not come back.

  ‘Shall I take this? You have already signed it.’ He was holding the entry. Take it, yes, yes, take it away. The lolling eye, the mouth, take them all away.

  ‘If you like,’ Lemprière said. The footprints had just stopped. Septimus was folding the entry carefully.

  ‘You could have died you know? From the cold.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ Lemprière looked over at Septimus who was walking towards the door. ‘Thank you,’ he said. Septimus was leaving.

  ‘Alice de Vere’s a queer bird isn’t she?’ he said.

  ‘An extraordinary woman,’ replied Lemprière carefully.

  ‘And you missed the Casterleigh girl.’ This was shouted as he clumped down the stairs. And then, ‘more fool you!’ The front door slammed shut. Exit Septimus, thought Lemprière, cum mea culpa, for which my thanks.

  In the days which followed Lemprière wrestled with the letter D. He sat at his desk disentangling the thirteen Domitii from one another. There were over twenty people called Dionysius. He had distinguished twenty-four so far and had a nagging feeling there was another. The librarian of Atticus was one, Cicero mentioned him, but there was some business about book stealing, also to do with Cicero - the same one? As the references piled up, walking back and forth between his desk and the pile of books on the far side of the room became a tiresome ritual. Accordingly, he opened all the books and arranged them on the floor in a sort of bookcarpet. Gaps were left for his feet when he wished to walk from one part of the room to another. It was a far superior arrangement and eliminated draughts. He remembered the twenty-fifth Dionysius. Lemprière hopped over the Stoics and part of Euripides to confirm the source. “A slave of Cicero who plundered his master’s library of several books, Cic. Fam.5. ep. 10 1.13 ep. 77” he scribbled, that was it. He was rather sick of “Dionysius”, all twenty-five of them. He worked on haphazardly. He had forgotten Daedalus had built mechanical men, automata. And assisted Pasiphae in her unnatural passion. Everyone knew about the flying; his edition had a small picture of Daedalus and Icarus flapping up towards the sun. Perhaps the flying and the automata had become confused in some way and they were flying machines, not flying men. It was possible, though he would rather believe in the flying men. Flying: an extraordinary idea really, whoosh). Lemprière made a clumsy soaring motion with his arms. Heavy carts rumbled down the cobbled street outside. He had an idea that there was another Dionysius, a twenty-sixth, but it would not come. He returned to the Doberes, Dobunni and Dochi, peoples of northern Macedonia, of Gloucestershire and Ethiopia all jammed together in his dictionary; a new geography. Docimus had had too many hot baths.

  Through the days and nights which followed, his sleep remained troubled: three hours here, twelve hours there and all at strange times. The dictionary seemed still to impose its own unfathomable schedule. If he forced himself out of bed, on the dot of seven or eight as he should, he would later find himself staring into space, daydreaming, drifting on other currents. It was at one of these times that he found himself thinking of Alice de Vere, Lady de Vere rather, whom Septimus thought was “queer” and he did too really. “An extraordinary woman”. That was good. Had the ring of authority. Pontificating from the mantel-piece, phrases such as “or so one is led to believe” and “If one thing convinces of the truth of the matter, it is this”, they would say, “That Lemprière knows more than he says.” Alice de Vere had promised him wealth beyond all his dreams. What had she asked after all? Give me this small thing and you will have all the wealth and power your ancestor enjoyed. More, whatever you wish. Lemprière remembered Peppard’s pause, “in perpetuity….” The little man would have said more but had stayed his words. “In theory the agreement would go on and on….” Alice de Vere had offered him that theory’s practice. He was a Lemprière, he was entitled to a ninth of all the Company. The agreement told him so. Had that been the message his father sought in his long hours in his study? His father had had some business with Mister Chadwick, and that business had involved the agreement. He knew this because Alice de Vere had told him. And she knew because Skewer had told him. The solicitous Skewer. The shyster.

  So the widow had been right, and Lemprière had thought her mad. Peppard should have told him of the agreement’s implications, even if they were fanciful. And Skewer. Skewer had lied to him, had deceived his father. Had run to Alice de Vere and sold his knowledge for a pittance.

  Lemprière watched the crowds in the street below as he struggled into his coat. He had brushed the worst of the mud off when it had dried. Now it had large mottled areas. His boots followed and he checked his pockets, key, coins, the miniature of his mother, whose presence reminded him of Rosalie, and Lydia asking him about her and, ghostly memory, the thuds which had reached him even through his exhaustion in the coach. Days ago. Her head banging on the roof. But when he reached the street, his thoughts turned back to Skewer, and Peppard too, but most of all to Skewer. Mister Skewer had extended to him an open invitation, “any problem, however small.” Those were his words. As Lemprière entered Southampton Street he reflected on that invitation. He had a small problem. It concerned betrayals of confidence and he would take Ewen Skewer up on his offer.

  His second journey to the solicitor’s office followed the path of the first. Here Septimus had pulled him off a collision course with some dung, the Strand had seen crates of chickens and Warburton-Burleigh’s slurs, goodbye and the continuance of their hurried progress along Fleet Street, up Chancery Lane, a promenade of side-steps until the courtyard which he now entered, crossed and mounted the stairs on the far side. As before, he took them two at a time, but then the parallel shifted and the first schedule ghosted the second, a matter of the minutes which he had earlier spent kicking his heels in the outer office for, as Lemprière approached the door at
the top of the staircase, a familiar sound started up. Angry voices. The door opened and he was confronted with the Widow Neagle. She should still be in Skewer’s office. The shoe poised above his head, but she was not, the shoe had been replaced though her fury was evident.

  ‘Why are you here? Did I not tell you?’ She directed herself at Lemprière. On the other side of the door, Peppard would be settling back into his chair, flustered from the encounter. Skewer would be nursing his head. Lemprière grinned.

  ‘There is nothing amusing, young man,’ the Widow continued. ‘I am well aware of the impression given by an elderly woman in a temper. You, on the other hand, are blissfully unaware of the reasons for it Mister Lemprière. Until you are, keep your own counsel. You have problems enough of your own.’ Lemprière no longer grinned. The Widow pushed past him and stamped down the stairs. Lemprière was about to knock on the door. He stopped, turned and hurried back down the stairs. The Widow was crossing the courtyard.

  ‘What problems?’ he demanded as her angry words caught up with him. ‘I was not laughing at your misfortunes. It was Skewer, you see, before….’

  ‘Do not make the mistake of patronising me, Mister Lemprière.’ She turned again and would have continued but Lemprière caught her arm.

  ‘I am not patronising you. I am not laughing at you. I am trying to explain.’ He had the same sensation as in the coach when they had disbelieved his acquaintance with Juliette. The Widow was looking at him, not in the least intimidated by this outburst. Her eyes were searching his. His hand dropped from her arm.

  ‘You ignored my advice. I told you not to trust Skewer, now if you wish to explain yourself, explain yourself to him.’ What problems? Lemprière thought.

  ‘You were right,’ he said quickly.

  ‘Of your affairs, I know only this,’ the Widow said. ‘Skewer serves only one master, and you are not he. Nothing he does will benefit you. Now, if you will excuse me….’

  ‘One master?’ Lemprière wanted to hear more.

  ‘It is a long story Mister Lemprière, if you wish to hear it.’

  ‘Might I call on you?’ Lemprière asked. ‘This afternoon perhaps.’

  ‘After your meeting with Mister Skewer? I fear you would not be welcome then.’

  ‘Another day, Tomorrow.’

  ‘Make a choice Mister Lemprière, either come now, or do not trouble me again,’ said the Widow and turned to leave. The tone of her voice left no room for doubt. Skewer’s perfidy. One master. She was disappearing through the opening on the far side of the courtyard. Lemprière hung there, strung between curiosity and mild revenge. The Widow was out of sight, only footsteps.

  ‘Wait!’ he shouted and ran after her.

  ‘When they write their history books, my name will burn a hole in the page. Farina!’

  Lemprière recognised the ranter as they skirted the crowd in the street outside the inn. He and the Widow sat at a table by the window.

  ‘They have lit the fuse my friends, not I, not you all. They think of their fat daughters, their fat fortunes while the blackbirds of Saint Giles gobble the bread from our mouths and the mothers of Spitalfields uncover their infants on the parish step….’ The crowd rumbled about him. Lemprière had seen him outside the Craven Arms the night of the Pork Club, brandishing a length of silk, shouting to a smaller mob. This time the crowd was larger. More ill-tempered. The Widow looked away from the window.

  ‘If you hate Skewer so, why do you visit his offices?’ Lemprière asked.

  ‘Not hate,’ answered the Widow, ‘despise. Skewer is a little man, a nothing, hardly worthy of hate. In any case, Skewer’s office holds more than just Skewer.’

  ‘He keeps something of yours, a document?’ hazarded Lemprière. The Widow smiled and looked down at the table.

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ she said. Lemprière waited for her to continue but she added nothing.

  ‘Skewer said that you had lost your husband,’ he prompted.

  ‘Also that I am mad with grief,’ the Widow came back at him. She said something else but the crowd had grown noisier, a low roar drowned out her words.’… popular story in the taverns. I still hear it from time to time: Neagle’s Whale. There was even a ballad. But that was more than twenty years ago.’ She smiled to herself. ‘Neagle’s Whale. My husband would have appreciated it.’

  ‘So he is dead?’

  ‘Oh yes, Skewer told the truth about that. The questions for me are how and why. Skewer might know the answers, though I doubt it. But he knows more than he tells; as do the insurers, and the insurers’ lawyers, and my late husband’s colleagues, and, most of all, the Company. Perhaps you know more than you tell, Mister Lemprière?’

  ‘I only know what you have told me….’ he began to explain, but the Widow was smiling, teasing him.

  ‘I married at eighteen and was a widow at twenty-four,’ she told him. ‘Alan, my husband, was almost ten years older than I. It hardly mattered. He was one of the youngest captains of an Indiaman ever to take a command. We made a fine couple. He beat off all his competitors, wooed me, won me.’ The Widow flicked a loose lock of her hair back in a coquettish gesture, then replaced her hand quickly.

  ‘Anyway, we were married, Alan and I, and took a house in Thames Street. I still have it. The next part of the story is Alan’s, Commander Neagle’s, rather. I have it by his report. His ship sailed in 1763 for Madras, it had been re-fitted and it was late in the year, but he believed he could catch the tail of the Trades and convinced the Company too. By anyone’s account he was an expert sailor but the voyage ran into all sorts of troubles. He had to put in at Lisbon for repairs - the Blackwall shipwrights had been hurried you understand - and a squall hit them a few days afterwards. All they could do was run before the storm. They were blown east towards the Gates of Hercules, through the Straits of Gibralter and into the mouth of the Mediterranean. They had their share of fortune too though. When the storm passed they found that they had passed safely through the Gates and were sitting in the Sea of Alboran. The lookouts had not seen either coast. It was something of a miracle. Alan gathered the men on deck and told them all of their good fortune, there was a prayer and then soundings were taken. It should have been a ritual, they were in open seas after all, but when the readings came back, the whole ship fell silent. They were all but aground. Alan had no charts, but he could not believe it. A second sounding was taken. This time, the starboard side was clear, but the port gave a depth less than the draft of the ship. In other words, they were aground. But they were not. The ship was floating freely. The crew became nervous, peering over the side but seeing nothing. Alan could not understand what was happening. More soundings were taken, but no two were alike. Some of the men began to panic and Alan had stationed his officers around the whole of the ship when the mystery suddenly resolved itself. There was a low rushing sound to port, and great whorls began to appear in the water. Then the same on the starboard side. A huge spout of water gushed up, soaking everyone aft of the mainmast and, almost as one, a school of whales surfaced all about the ship. Ten or fifteen of them at the least and they were huge, more than half the length of the vessel. The soundings had been taken off their backs. For a moment, the ship was silent, then everyone cheered although the danger was hardly over. But the whales circled the ship for a minute or two, then swam off close to the surface, heading east. The ship was safe.’ The Widow peered across the table at Lemprière.

  ‘Alan returned with his ship and cargo intact the following year. When he told me the story of the whales I was only filled with relief. But it is a strange story and for a number of reasons. Why did the whales not damage the ship, or even sink it?’ Lemprière shook his head.

  ‘I had no idea there were whales in the Mediterranean,’ he said.

  ‘Exactly!’ the Widow exclaimed. ‘There are very few, or so it was thought. But the most extraordinary thing was the direction the whales took when they left the ship. Whales do not swim without purpose, and these whales swa
m east. Away from the opening of the Mediterranean, towards Arabia.’

  ‘Arabia, and then where?’ But the Widow waved the question away.

  ‘My husband had made sketches showing the fins and flukes, even some notes on how they swam. He showed these to friends of his in the whaling fleets, but he was no draughtsman and they all identified them differently until he mentioned the size, close to one hundred feet. Then they were unanimous: the beasts were blue whales, the greatest of all the whales. But when he was asked where he had seen these leviathans, they scoffed. There were no blue whales in the western Mediterranean, and no whales at all to the east. You see, there was nothing for them to eat. The nearest feeding grounds were in the Northern Indian Ocean and there was no route from there, unless they could somehow cross the deserts of Egypt. My husband became the butt of a number of jokes, a new kind of whale was dubbed Neagle’s Whale. It was supposed to have legs. But Alan knew what he had seen and, more to the point, what it meant. His request to the Court of Directors to investigate further was turned down flat and when he persisted he was warned off. We discovered an old account of a voyage which convinced us we were correct, the same place, the same whales. A Company ship had made the sighting almost a century and a half ago.’

  ‘But what did it mean?’ Lemprière asked. ‘Where were the whales going?’ The Widow said something in reply, but a roar from the crowd outside drowned her out again.

  ‘… the Company’s charter gives them the monopoly of the route, you see. Anyone can trade with the Indies provided they do not travel by the tip of Africa. So long as there is only the single route, the Company’s trade is safe.’ The Widow paused, and realised that Lemprière had not heard. ‘The Indies,’ she said. ‘The whales were heading east to the Indian Ocean, to their feeding ground. They had discovered a second route to the Indies, probably through the Red Sea. That is why the Company had to silence my husband.’