Lempriere's Dictionary

by Norfolk, Lawrence

  Lemprière sat back, trying to imagine schools of whales passing unseen through uncharted channels between the Mediterranean and the Red Seas.

  ‘It is an unlikely enough story I will own,’ said the Widow. ‘But not so impossible as it appears, and it does not end there.’

  Abruptly, the table was thrown into shadow. The crowd had swelled to fill the street until the backs of the men on its periphery were pressed right up against the window.

  ‘Does not end there?’ Lemprière prompted, but the Widow was looking out of the window. The crowd was growing rowdier. Farina’s voice was only just audible to them inside the tavern.

  ‘… this is for the Spitalfields’ weavers….’ Even above the crowd a loud tearing sound could be heard and a deafening cheer went up, ‘… and this for the woolpackers who have buried their skills with their children….’ Another tearing-sound, and this time the cheer was louder, angrier.

  ‘We shall continue our talk elsewhere,’ the Widow spoke quickly to Lemprière. ‘Come.’ He hesitated, bewildered by the turn of events. She spoke sharply. ‘Hurry!’ He rose and the Widow pulled him to the door where the full extent of their situation was revealed.

  The crowd which earlier had consisted of two dozen spectators now numbered two hundred or more, rough customers too it seemed to Lemprière as he was pulled along the front of the tavern by the Widow, squeezing past the men’s backs. Farina was visible raised up at their centre, standing on something. At his side, Lemprière noticed, a small balding man who was referred to from time to time - ‘Give me the figures, Stoltz!’ or ‘True or not, Stoltz?’ - at which the man would reply or nod. Stoltz. His demeanour rendered him almost invisible beside Farina, who now held a length of red silk. Stoltz was doing something to it, kneeling?

  ‘This way!’ The Widow yanked his arm, and he edged past more of the men who now raised a shout, then another and another. He was deafened and the mob was punching the air. Farina was standing with his head thrown back, the silk tight in his hands, the mob jostling one another, growing more frantic and flames were licking up the cloth when Farina ripped it in two and he was standing there with his head bent back, arms outstretched, in each hand suddenly the silk went up, two burning banners framing him like an unholy avenging angel. The mob’s noise seemed to go on and on. ‘Indian spies!’ Then another voice. ‘Spies! Indian spies!’ The silk was ash. The Widow shoved burly journeymen out of their way. The call went around the mob and Farina looked down. A punch was thrown, then another.

  ‘Farina!’ A voice like gravel stamped its authority over all the noise of the mob. A man was standing on the far side of the crowd, his stick raised and pointed unwaveringly at the ranter. His eyes were bandaged. A man had gone down and was being kicked.

  ‘Push!’ the Widow shouted back at Lemprière.

  ‘No!’ Farina yelled at the mob but the fight spread through them like the flames up the silk.

  ‘Indian spies!’ The call to violence went up as the blind man pointed and shouted once again. It was too late, the brawl was all about Lemprière who ducked, tripped, fell then felt a hand like steel close around his wrist and pull him along the ground. Not the Widow; a broad brimmed hat, cloak. He was on the edge of the crowd. The Widow was turning. She had seen him, was hauling him up and when he looked around for his rescuer, the man had gone. All he had seen was the hat and cloak. And the hand, which was tanned and brown. A sailor, thought Lemprière.

  ‘Come,’ said the Widow, then pulled him by the arm and he stumbled after her. Behind them both, the mob’s ferocity was waning. There were men lying on the ground. The blind man shouted ‘Farina!’ once more and his stick still pointed to the centre of the mob. But Farina had disappeared.

  ‘Hurry now.’ The Widow was talking breathlessly over her shoulder. ‘Sir John will call the militia and we have no wish to encounter those ruffians.’ Lemprière thought he had hurt his knee and matched the Widow’s brisk stride with a lopsided canter down the street, offering silent thanks to his mysterious rescuer. There was something familiar about the hat. His coat had sustained a tear about the pocket which he picked at as they entered Shoe Lane, then turned into Stonecutter Lane. He was still shaken, half-expecting broad shouldered rioters to appear from nowhere and set about him. At the end of the lane he glanced back anxiously but saw only harmless pedestrians, a crowd of children, behind them two basket-women, further back a slighter figure, a hat which he recognised, its broad brim.

  ‘Damn!’ the Widow pulled him about. ‘Look there.’ She pointed and through the bustle of Fleet Market, Lemprière could see a squad of redcoats pushing through the crush. He looked back once more, saw the children still, the two women, but the cloaked and hatted figure had disappeared. The street was too long for him to have run back along its length, but before he could reflect further on this second disappearance, the two of them were skirting the marketplace, working their way south and east by way of Ludgate. Another squad, fifteen or twenty of them, with pikes and muskets confronted them in Thames Street. They were fifty yards away and moving towards the two of them. Lemprière moved as though to turn back but the Widow moved forward more purposefully, only twenty yards’ distance from the red-coated thugs who swaggered towards them and Lemprière shrank against the wall, offering silent prayers to the gods of conciliation and calm.

  ‘Here,’ said the Widow as she removed a key from her pocket, then turned into the nearest doorway. The key turned, the door opened and they were safe inside as it slammed shut behind them.

  ‘This is my home,’ she said. ‘Welcome. Perhaps you should rest here awhile.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lemprière.

  ‘And then you must meet the professors.’

  Some minutes later they sat in a drawing room on the first floor of the house. The furnishings were lavish, the rooms large and airy.

  ‘My husband set sail the following year in 1766,’ the Widow was saying. ‘We had planned our course of action with care.’ Lemprière sipped tea from a china cup. ‘My husband would take the usual route as far as the Straits of Gibraltar but then, instead of sailing down the west coast of Africa, he would return to the Mediterranean….’

  ‘And find the passage,’ Lemprière finished the sentence.

  ‘Exactly. And if a school of whales could pass through it, then so could a fully-laden Indiaman. He would emerge in the Indian Ocean months in advance of all expectation. The Company’s monopoly would be at an end.’

  ‘And he found the passage?’

  ‘Wait. I was left in London, I too had a part in all this. If the route were established, it would have to be safeguarded. If one man could find it out, so could another. Accordingly, I was entrusted with my husband’s sketches, charts, all manner of speculations. They were bundled up and sealed, only our lawyer was to see them, and he only when a firm undertaking of secrecy was given. Only then would he begin to draw up the patents, charters and other documents; in short, put the force of law behind my husband’s claim. But we had great difficulty in persuading any lawyer to take our case.

  ‘It was a complex business, legally speaking, as you might imagine. I must have sat in a hundred offices, every practitioner in London had an idea of what we were about. Some scoffed, some showed polite disinterest, most simply refused the commission there and then. Those few who agreed to accept the work invariably returned to me within days with excuses, prevarications and refusals. As soon as they learned that their adversary in the courts would be the Company, they ran for shelter with their tails between their legs. I was at my wits’ end. For all I knew, my husband was ploughing up and down the Mediterranean, charting the last of the great trade routes and I could not even find a lawyer. That was when I visited Chadwick and Soames, your own family’s solicitors.’

  ‘And they took the case?’

  ‘No, they did not. But they referred me to one of their juniors. He had left the firm to practise on his own some months before.’

  ‘Mister Skewer!’ Lemprière burs
t out. The Widow looked at him in surprise.

  ‘What an absurd notion,’ she said. ‘Skewer was still a clerk for Mister Chadwick, and was to remain so for another twenty years. No, no. Hardly Skewer. The young man Chadwick recommended was a rising star, very quick, very bright. And he was someone I knew from another time, before my marriage to Alan.’

  ‘Why did you not go to this man before?’ Lemprière asked.

  ‘Another long story,’ said the Widow quietly. ‘Perhaps I knew already that the business would turn against us. Anyway, I went to him and, when I had told him the story, he agreed to take the case. I left the sealed papers with him and went home. It had been three months since Alan’s ship had sailed, three months of disappointment and failure, but now at last, I felt we might achieve something. In truth, it was still a dream. Alan was always an ambitious man, there was no secret to that. For me, the lawyer was a triumph. By the same time the next day, all those dreams, all the things we wanted and everything I held most dear would be lost, ruined, drowned, dead….’ Her words just stopped. Lemprière watched as she poured more tea into both their cups. Her own rattled against the saucer as she picked it up.

  ‘It began the following morning. The lawyer who, only the day before, had agreed to act for us, arrived at my door. He had spent the night reading my husband’s papers and his message was brief. He told me he would not take up our cause. But I knew him from before, we were more than acquaintances.’ The Widow twisted the ring on her finger, reminding Lemprière of Lady de Vere, the same gesture.

  ‘There are bargains struck which should not be struck, but they must be done, do you understand me? And I knew this man from before my marriage. He had courted me. He still wanted me, you see. He would not take what I offered, but I would have given it had he required that. He knew that, and I knew he knew. It was our contract. And it was for my husband….’ The Widow gave a short bitter laugh.

  ‘It is not so terrible,’ Lemprière said.

  ‘No,’ said the Widow, ‘not so terrible, save that I knew he wanted me, that he was too much the gentleman to take what he wanted. Not so terrible, except that on that day, on the other side of the world - how could I know? - my husband was already dead, and all his men with him. Really not so terrible, except that the lawyer took up our cause when it was already lost and they ruined him, branded my husband a common blackmailer, his wife a mad woman or the shyster’s whore. Alan was dead, floating in the seas off Ankara and I was as you find me, provided for by the Company, not even worthy of their enmity it seems, though I would destroy them in a second had I the chance. It is,’ she chose her words with care, ‘an appropriate humiliation.’

  ‘And the lawyer,’ Lemprière said. ‘What became of him?’

  ‘Surely you know,’ the Widow said softly. Lemprière shook his head. ‘The lawyer was George Peppard,’ she said.

  A maid was hovering, waiting to light the lamps. Lemprière saw Peppard’s face in the dingy room on Blue Anchor Lane and remembered how his voice had tightened at a mention of the Company. He looked at the Widow, his mind placing Peppard at her side, her courtier, perhaps her husband’s usurper, but the husband was drowned, betrayed and left for the fishes. That was what she was thinking. Dead men. Drowned men drifting in the slow currents of the ocean, their limbs waving slowly back and forth as they fell, and lay there riddled with arrow-worm and their mourners’ dreams. They tumbled down slowly. Far above, the abandoned flotsam gathered to form a chaotic raft. The three-master was splintered planks and shredded canvas all snarled together in the rag-ends of the rigging as it lurched over the wave tops far above the dead sailors, a seaborne Ceraton calling the deep sea sleepers to a second prayer. The basins shifted and the waters moved. Slight twitches in the still water disturbed the dead men’s creeping progress as the abyssal waters began their slow convection. The bodies rose.

  The lamps burned a little higher, bringing the ghosts back in other forms. The maid left the room, and Lemprière watched her until the door was closed.

  ‘They never found the wreckage,’ the Widow was telling him. ‘Not the slightest trace. And remember, Alan had resolved to sail into the Mediterranean. Arakan is on the Indian coast. Either the ship was lost elsewhere, or….’

  ‘Or he found the Mediterranean passage,’ said Lemprière.

  ‘Yes, and that would have been the knowledge we needed, which the Company feared most of all. I knew they had lied to me, they had destroyed him somehow. They knew much more than they said, but like a fool I rushed them head on. I was mad with the lies and the half-truths, and Alan’s death too. George begged me to stop, but I would not. Without Alan it was hopeless. Only he knew the facts of the matter and he was drowned. They ridiculed us in the court room and broke George Peppard with their slanders. I made him do it…. He stood up in court and spoke of whales and charters, secret waterways. Without Alan it was nonsense.’

  Lemprière remembered Septimus’ words outside Skewer’s office. Maritime insurance, a fraud of some sort. He asked the Widow if it were true.

  ‘That was after the case. George had evidence of some sort to support it. He used it to negotiate a settlement, out of court you understand. I know very little of what went on, but that too blew up in his face. The Company accused him and my husband of blackmail. I think it is that slur above everything else which has driven me all these years. My husband is gone, but I will revisit his death on the Company and its agents. It might seem that something so vast is beyond redress. Perhaps so, and yet for the last twenty years I have tried to prove nothing else. Come, I will show you.’

  The Widow stood up then and ushered Lemprière to the door. A corridor led to a room at the rear of the house where the noise from the street was replaced by the fainter shouts of the watermen on the Thames a hundred yards away. Already, it was dark.

  ‘Look,’ the Widow indicated along bulging shelves which lined the room and which groaned under the weight of ledgers, account books, trial transcripts, atlases, old broadsheets, histories both official and unofficial.

  ‘The evidence,’ she said. Almost every complaint or attack ever made against the Company has its place somewhere here. Every corruption, vice, every crime is chronicled and noted, including that against my husband.’ She fingered a thick bundle of yellowing papers. ‘The Neagle case,’ she said. Lemprière looked at the evidence, in awe at the Widow’s industry. The room was one vast indictment.

  ‘Do you know of a writer called Asiaticus?’ he asked her. The Widow looked at him in surprise.

  ‘But of course. Though your own knowledge puzzles me. How do you know of him?’ Lemprière told of his discovery of the first pamphlet amongst his father’s papers, and the gift of the second made to him by Lady de Vere. He mentioned the agreement only in passing.

  ‘You do not, by any chance, have the fourth pamphlet?’ the Widow enquired eagerly. Lemprière shook his head. ‘A pity. I have the first three. They are full of fine sentiments, but the evidence is lacking. The fourth pamphlet was supposed to reveal everything, but I have never discovered a copy. I rather doubt it was printed at all.’

  ‘Perhaps it was all just bluster,’ Lemprière hazarded. ‘He might have had nothing to tell.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ the Widow agreed, ‘but I incline to the opposite view. He gives the impression of knowing more than he tells. There is a threatening tone, damaging revelations are promised. I rather like the man.’

  ‘Who was he?’ Lemprière asked.

  ‘It is still a mystery,’ the Widow said. ‘For obvious reasons he kept his identity hidden at the time. The first pamphlet appeared some time after Buckingham’s return from La Rochelle, late in 1628 or early in the following year. The other two followed a few months later, then nothing. Asiaticus, whoever he was, went to ground and never came out again.’

  ‘Not under that name, anyway,’ Lemprière ventured and the Widow nodded.

  ‘Anything might have befallen him,’ she said, ‘as it might anyone who impinges on the Company’
s interest.’ She was looking at him. Lemprière stood there surrounded by shelves groaning under catalogues of abuse and recrimination, all that remained of thousands of victims. Anyone at all. The Widow’s gaze was still fixed upon him, then she spoke again.

  ‘I know a little of your own enquiries,’ she said. Lemprière looked back at her. ‘Your affairs are your own,’ she added quickly, ‘but whatever you unearth, it will not be enough, not enough to get what you desire. I wish to know no more, but when you reach that point, come back to me Mister Lemprière.’ She gestured at the shelves. ‘I will tell you what you need. Everything you need to know is here somewhere. Remember the offer.’ For the second time that day, the Widow recalled Alice de Vere to Lemprière’s thoughts. ‘All the wealth you can imagine….’ was the promise held out a week before in the crumbling mansion. Now, ‘Everything you need to know….’ He let the silence gather as the two women and their offers competed in his thoughts and he wavered like Paris with the golden apple; unimaginable wealth, unguessable knowledge and beside them both was a shimmering third, not yet, a little longer and further away, disappearing into the night.

  The Widow was looking out of the window. He could see her face reflected in the glass. She turned and tapped him lightly on the arm, breaking his reverie.

  ‘Keep your counsel, John Lemprière,’ she said. ‘Come, meet the professors before you leave.’ She had taken his arm. ‘They rarely have the chance to speak with a man of learning.’ Lemprière demurred at the description, then suffered himself to be led out of the study and up a tight staircase which creaked under their weight. As they reached a door at the top a loud, staggered thud was heard from within and a babble of voices started up in dispute.

  ‘Ah,’ said the Widow. Lemprière looked askance. ‘They are playing Jump or Die,’ she said, then opened the door to reveal three grey-bearded men hunched over a large table which seemed to be covered with a large stylised chart.