Lempriere's Dictionary (65 page)

Sunlight cleared the gables behind him to shine down onto the terrace and himself, to glitter off the lake, warm the yawning palace corridors and ripen tiny shrivelled oranges on the anxious trees before him.

The same sun beat down on his trusted under-secretaries who stood now on the heights above Cherbourg.

‘Folly,’ said Protagoras. His companion surveyed the scene with weary eyes shaking his head in agreement. Their journey from Paris had taken a full week. It might have been done in three days, but a number of minor detours had taken longer than expected. None of these would have excited much comment in the turbulent capital, but nor would they have been readily explicable. Even with the full breadth of their extraordinary powers the relevance of minor officials from the Parlements of Toulouse, Rouen and Montpellier to their assignment was questionable. And why should they meet at night in a village outside Argentan? Given even their almost limitless remit, informal contacts with disaffected tax-farmers from the Vendée seemed somewhat outside their official roles. Travelling in short stages, unobtrusively by public coach, their journey had been punctuated by such diversions until the previous evening, at an inn a few miles outside Cherbourg, they had met the contact the Cardinal had been at special pains to procure.

No introductions were made. The three sat in an upstairs room around a table which was piled with papers. The talk was in English. Duluc and Protagoras watched as the third man drew long columns of figures, underlining and marking totals in a complex system of cross references.

‘You might liken them to pools within a reservoir,’ he said as they watched him across the table. ‘The levels in individual pools may go up and down, but the volume of water within the reservoir remains constant. Only the distribution differs. Europe, and the whole world for that matter, does its business in this way. Each pool is a country with more or less wealth. Here is France for example with none at all, a minus value. France
can still do business because, were it to be sold, lock, stock and barrel, the amount would erase the deficit many times over. Now, by balancing imported goods against exported ones, weighing foreign debts against investments and adding the per capita wealth of each of its subjects, a state can be “valued”, given a number corresponding to its worth. This much is familiar. When these values are combined they give a further number corresponding to the volume of the whole reservoir, or the wealth of all nations. My concern, however, is with the pools.’

‘Pools?’ Protagoras interrupted.

‘Individual nations. These can be calculated by subtracting repayments and expenses from borrowings and earnings, plus the cost of imports from exports of course. The final figure is the nation’s wealth. In theory it is simple. In practice,’ he gestured to his trunk which overflowed with papers, ‘a different story. Still, your Cardinal paid handsomely enough for….’

‘Cardinal?’ Duluc broke in sharply. ‘We know of no Cardinal.’ The third man looked bewildered for a moment, then recovered himself.

‘Of course,’ he said quickly. ‘Now, your
friend
commissioned an overview of England’s last three fiscal years. As I said, the calculations are never exact. Mathematically speaking the task is tedium itself. Errors creep in. There are also factors which cannot be accounted for, smuggled goods, informal loans, goods in transit and the like. But generally these are negligible and allowances can be made when they are not. I claim an accuracy to within two or three per cent. That is why these figures puzzle me. I have rechecked them twice now. In each of the three years, there is a discrepancy of almost four per cent. That represents several millions of pounds. It is as if someone somewhere is running a national bank, but quite outside the banking system. Stranger yet, the money never re-enters the system, no other country shows a corresponding rise. The money is not being used. In one form or another it simply sits somewhere. Where I do not know and how I do not know. But it exists gentlemen, that is certain.’ He looked up then, expecting surprise, curiosity at least. Protagoras and Duluc merely nodded confirmation.

‘There is one more thing,’ he said. ‘I performed the same calculation for the same years a century ago. The results were the same and I’ll wager the intervening years show the same deficit. Whoever, or whatever, controls this process controls a sum greater than the capital of any state in the world.’

When the man had packed up his papers and departed in a hurry for the morning pacquet-boat, Duluc sat down at the same table and wrote two brief notes. The first was to the Cardinal. It read, “All Jaques claimed for himself and his associates is true. We have our confirmation. We proceed
to the final arrangements at Rochelle. Our cause is safe.” The second was to Jaques himself. It merely identified their recent companion and outlined the findings of his calculation. That would be enough. Jaques, or his partners, would take the matter from there. He signed off, “Until the thirteenth,” by way of his mark, and carefully sealed the letter. It would probably travel by the same paquet as its victim.

The following morning, he watched with Protagoras as the pacquet tacked gingerly past the “improvements” and out of the harbour. For larger ships the entry into the port had become a pilot’s nightmare. The reason for this was plain. A wooden monster wallowed in the harbour at Cherbourg. It was two hundred metres long, of varying width with sprouting piles and bizarre projections running off at angles all along its length which undulated where heaps of unused building materials had been dumped to rot or warp. The first section was roughly straight, the second roughly curved and the third roughly both. The monster lay at a diagonal across the harbour pool, ending in a squat tower which, he squinted, seemed to be constructed from wheel-barrows. This whole structure, in the officialese of a correspondence now so incumbent that it had overflowed into the offices of the Marine Board Directors and grown there until their resignations were added to its bulk, was the New Jetty. It was the sacred crocodile of the Marine Board and it had eaten its priests.

‘Sheer folly,’ Protagoras said once more. The fortifications were more modest, spindly scaffolding and planking for the most part. It was the jetty had done the damage. The citizens of Cherbourg claimed that ships putting in there for ten or twenty years were now using ports to the north and south. The inns were empty and the wharves idle. The town was dying. A petition was being got up to be sent to the King himself. The wood-shortage was contrived. Less wood, not more was needed and none at all in the harbour. In the fortnight which followed, Duluc and Protagoras would pay lip service to their roles by listening carefully to these complaints. They would turn blind eyes to minor acts of sabotage and deaf ears to reports of every barn for miles around being stacked high with intercepted wood-consignments. Their recommendation would be to abandon the project at the first opportunity. Far below, a league or more out, a frigate which would later feature in the petition was sailing north-east. Duluc and Protagoras turned from their vantage point and walked to the waiting coach. Already their thoughts were flying southwards down the coast towards La Rochelle where a very different project awaited them.

Chased by a stiff breeze, the converted frigate
Tisiphone
sailed on up the channel for Deal. Loaded with powdered charcoal, her commander still had hopes of catching the next day’s tide. The tail wind lasted until late afternoon then died. Reaching Deal at four in the following afternoon the tide had already turned. The sloop
Cockatrice
and cutter
Nimble
already lay at anchor. The
Tisiphone
joined them overnight, setting off the next morning for the Upper Pool. The fading wakes of ships further advanced and cross-currents shot from the river bed’s basins rebounded from bank to bank, gently rocking the three-master as it advanced with the slow surges of the tide towards the city. Belowdecks, within its close-packed barrels, charcoal shifted to form invisible patterns, prolific whorls and unfolding carousels of black on black, slow rotations and undulations as the strata shuffled top to bottom in a secret echo of the waters’ conflicting forces. Docking at Queen’s Wharf on the legal quays around six that evening, the three-master drew Captain Guardian’s vigilant eye fifty yards upstream from the
Vendragon
to view this new arrival.

‘
Tisiphone
,’ he announced to Captain Roy who was peering up approvingly at his mantelpiece. ‘From Lisbon via Cherbourg, carrying charcoal.’ He had read the ship news which had reported her departure a month before. ‘She’s early,’ he said.

‘Probably avoided Cherbourg,’ speculated Captain Roy.

‘Ah.’

The works at Cherbourg were familiar by report. Eben glanced back down the quay to the
Vendragon
. As promised, he had kept a watchful eye on the Indiaman though there was little to report. Loading had come to a halt some weeks back and, a solitary watchman apart, the wharf in front of the ship had been deserted. Several times he imagined he had seen lights moving below deck, brief flashes escaping through the planking, but no one had boarded the vessel for weeks and no provisions had been taken on. It seemed an unlikely berth for stowaways. His concerns during this vigil had been of a less obvious nature, nothing he could specifically describe, nothing very particular, but still a vague anxiety gripped him in these weeks. How would he put it? The quays running up and down the river’s edge were changing, their character was different from before. It was indistinct this change, ill-defined still, but it was for the worse.

The docks had always been a rough sort of place, always had its own codes and customs, its own running feuds and vendettas. But recently it seemed to Eben that the codes and customs had fallen into abeyance and the feuds and vendettas become more virulent. A new viciousness was afoot. He had seen a man kicked to the ground and left for dead on Butler’s Wharf. There were reports that a customs man had been set alight on the south bank and made to run a gauntlet. Habitual disputes escalated into
fisticuffs, fisticuffs into brutal beatings. For the first time in his life he found the port a threatening kind of a place and an important consequence of this change was Captain Roy.

The amputee was a variously respected figure along the wharves and quays of the port. Protected by rumours of a vast buried treasure, by respect for an unparalleled knowledge of the world’s ports garnered in his younger years at sea and by sympathy for the loss of his legs, Captain Roy had patrolled the docks from before even Eben’s residence there. In the mornings he hawked matches around the city markets. The afternoons and evenings inevitably drew him back to the river. No-one laid a finger on Captain Roy. That was the code. Then, two weeks ago, on the first day of the month, he had come upon a party of mudlarks. They were loading a wherry with cases. Captain Roy had pointedly ignored their thievery and continued along the quay. That too was the code. A few yards past and he had heard quick footsteps. Suddenly he was being lifted up and thrown into the water. The high sides of the ship offered no hand holds. His stumps pumped ineffectually. He was drowning and the mudlarks were leaving him to his fate.

Apparently a lighter had hauled him aboard, choking and spluttering, shivering with the cold, cursing his assailants. He was dazed with shock. There was no room for doubt, they had tried, quite casually, to kill him. That was not the code.

Hearing of the incident, Guardian had asked of the Captain’s whereabouts and found him, still shivering, under the short pier beyond Tower Stairs. One glance at Captain Roy had convinced Eben that twenty years of solitary living must come to an end. The Captain was installed at the Crow’s Nest that afternoon. The docks had changed and, indirectly, his own life had changed with them. So far, his guest had proved an agreeable companion. They shared similar enthusiasms and conversed in familiar terms. Roy had resumed his match-selling, Eben his watch on the
Vendragon
. This evening was to be their first outing together. It was an experiment and also, Eben understood, a token recompense for his hospitality. At Captain Roy’s expense and insistent invitation they were going to see the Stone Eater.

Two hours, four miles and five shillings later, the two Captains stood in a crowded room in Cockspur Street waiting for Francis Battalia, the Stone Eater, to make his entrance. Captain Roy had caused a minor fracas outside when four heavy-set men led by a smaller, colourless fellow had walked directly to the front of the queue and entered without paying. Why should he pay when they had not? It was explained that they had not gained admittance and indeed, looking about the room, Eben could see no sign of them. A flight of stairs ran up to the floor above. The crowd were young
men and women, mostly of the poorer sort. A head of pretty red ringlets caught his eye, two youths with her, he looked again, then once more. It seemed an unlikely place to find him, to find himself for that matter. The red head said something and they both turned to her. The spectacles, the daft coat, he was right. He waved across the audience and called. ‘Young Lemprière!’ The young man was looking around. He gestured again. ‘Join us,’ he called across. Eben watched as the three of them edged through the crowd toward him.