Lempriere's Dictionary (83 page)

The night at Coade’s had revealed their hands more naked than before, and still the incident was opaque. Two girls, seemingly twins and dressed alike, the black coach, Le Mara and his larger partner, the young man in black at the inn: the actions he had witnessed seemed to refer to nothing outside themselves, like a complex and bloody board game or a machine that assembled and disassembled itself. At the centre of these pointless acts stood the pseudo-Lemprière. Player? Prime mover? Pawn? He did not know, and the real Lemprière was dead, slaughtered in the room on Blue Anchor Lane.

Nazim fished in his pockets for the memento of that night. Did the woman whose grey eyes stared up at him from the miniature know her son was dead and replaced by an ambiguous imposter? They must know he knew these things, yet they ignored him and their inattention diminished him as though he were an irrelevance thrust out on the periphery of their actions. Similarly, the Nawab’s sphere of influence had shrunk, his commands to Nazim were only faint suggestions now, tendencies of behaviour. He remembered his original purpose clearly enough. Find them, kill them, recover what is mine…. The urgency was gone and he was left as a spectator in a dream, between two faltering gyres where he drifted not quite caught up and not quite held by either.

So he floated in the heat of summer and the sluggish months wore on. When he noticed the dispute which spread through the bustling quays bringing them gradually to a standstill he saw it as the outward expression of his own creeping paralysis. His world contracted to the dark haven of the cellar where he would lie and listen to the feeble movements of the woman above. Nazim retreated further, into sleep where dreams of blinding sunlight and red cliffs gave him a different vista and a different vision of mortality. Bahadur’s unsurprised face was always waiting for him there. He would wake with the human smell of decay in his nostrils, invading the clean silence of the dream. Decay, death, different forms of death. Something told him the two were opposites. Something in the woman’s too-human frailty was missing in Bahadur’s long plunge down the face of the cliff, something in the coldness of his uncle’s face as he pointed to his chest. ‘We change inside….’ Was that what had happened to him? To them both?

Towards the end of June, with the heat rising a degree of two by the day, he began to note changes in the city. All the pent-up energy of its streets
seemed to flow around and around without effect. The citizens, for all their variety, seemed to wear the same face with only the expression varying to distinguish them from each other. He saw the same transactions and heard the same exchanges in the markets. The restlessness of the city seemed always to turn in on itself as though all its energies were required just to keep the engine moving as it did.

But as June edged closer to July he saw new features pressing through the stucco and brickwork. Slogans began to appear on the bland walls. A more restless creature was emerging, though it looked like simple neglect as rubbish piled up in the streets and the lamps were left unlit. The night patrols passed over the cellar with less and less regularity, eventually ceasing altogether. He ventured out more frequently then and wandered the streets by night, drifting unnoticed through the inns and taverns, listening to the casual metropolitan gossip. He saw new coalitions spring up around brilliant talkers, cells form about a well-turned phrase. July filled the courts and alleys with foreign accents and groups of men who glanced at him suspiciously as he passed in his cape and broad concealing hat. Their muttering followed him until he disappeared from sight. The second week of the month brought a slow hot wind and the gangs grew larger. They began to hang about the main thoroughfares and move down the streets as single units. A new sense of purpose, still suppressed, still unclear was palpable in the heat. He felt it rise with each succeeding day as though any number of different desires were converging to find their satisfactions in the city. All becoming the same.… It was a familiar concentration. Familiar from where, he did not know. He felt himself focus, even draw from it. He resumed his vigil at Le Mara’s house and at the deserted docks which, he realised, were not idle but only waiting, just as he was waiting. The streets hummed with undisclosed purpose, like his own, and the feeling of familiarity grew as the city tensed and stretched around him. His anticipation gathered in a knot inside him, tightening until on the night of the twelfth the first strand broke.

He was outside Le Mara’s house. The mews was deserted. A livid sunset was daubing pinks and darker blues over the western sky. Heat rolled like a millstone through the streets and Nazim sweated beneath his hat for the slow hot wind offered no relief. He had been watching the house for over an hour when the black coach drew up. Nazim shrank back and watched as it came to a halt. No-one got out. It waited there for several minutes, its driver muffled despite the heat and motionless on his seat. Then the door of the house opened without warning, no lights, no sound, and four figures emerged. Nazim recognised them all from the night at Coade’s. First came the girl, dressed in white and seemingly reluctant as the broad figure behind her pushed her forward: Le Mara’s partner. One of the Nine. Next
came Le Mara himself, expressionless as ever. Last of all the one he had seen only twice, before and after the incident at the Manufactory, first here, outside this house, and afterwards at the King’s Arms tavern where he had faced down the thugs who threatened the pseudo-Lemprière with their clumsy violence. The others addressed him as Septimus.

The first three disappeared inside the coach, which moved off slowly. Nazim made as if to follow but Septimus still stood outside the house, turning this way and that. Nazim could only watch in frustration as the vehicle turned the corner west into Thames Street. The young man dawdled a few minutes more, then began to walk slowly up the street. Nazim followed. Like the coach, the young man headed west. He walked as far as Bow Street where he seemed to hesitate before the door of an imposing building then, some inner decision resolved upon, he advanced up the steps and entered.

When the door closed Nazim drew nearer and read the plate set to one side. “Chief Examining Magistrate” and underneath, “Sir John Fielding.” He looked about. The streets were quiet, almost deserted. Strange for this hour. Again he felt the odd sense of familiarity. The changed city was brooding, waiting for something. Underneath Sir John’s name someone had scrawled “Farina”. Only a few minutes had passed before the door opened once more and Nazim saw Sir John himself, bandaged eyes somehow directed at his informant, thanking the young man, shaking his hand and saying, ‘Yes, very helpful Mister Praeceps, very helpful indeed. A thing eliminated is another found …’and the words that followed were on the edge of his hearing, but he heard the name that followed, certain he was right, though the sentence was a low mumble ‘… Lemprière …’ not even sure which of them had said it, and then the door closed and he was following this Septimus across the Piazza and down into Southampton Street where he realised he need not have worried about losing the coach. It was waiting for him at the top of the street. Nazim watched as Mister Praeceps nodded to its occupants then walked down the street and disappeared into one of the houses.

He took up a station above the coach with a clear view down the street and settled down to wait. The streets were still quiet. After an hour or more he saw the door of the coach open and the girl get out. The moon was up, shining brightly on her white dress. She walked down Southampton Street and entered the same door as Mister Praeceps. The coach set off once again, moving west. Again Nazim was caught between staying and pursuit. He stayed. The night wore on and he had begun to think his decision an error when the door to the house opened and the girl crept out, picking up her heels as she walked noiselessly over the cobbles. When she reached the top of the street, she looked back. Both of them saw the door
thrown open. The girl abandoned all attempts at stealth and took flight. A dishevelled figure in a pink coat stumbled after her and in the moonlight Nazim thought at first it was Septimus. He waited until the young man had passed before he too gave chase. Somehow, he was not surprised when he saw that it was not his earlier quarry at all. The pseudo-Lemprière attracted confusion as a dog did fleas.

A strange chase ensued, three sets of footsteps clattering through the streets. Nazim shadowed Lemprière, knowing that he shadowed the girl in turn. Their paths zigzagged west as far as the Haymarket where both of them disappeared. Nazim walked up the thoroughfare looking to left and right. He found the black coach waiting for him again in an alley that ran off the road down the north side of a theatre. An identical alley ran down the far side but it was empty. The Haymarket itself was less deserted than the smaller streets through which he had passed. Men and women walked up and down it in twos and threes. The moon had risen higher and in its cold light their faces looked as though they were carved from chalk. He patrolled the alley at the back of the theatre. He remembered the girl’s role at the Manufactory as a kind of lure, drawing in the pseudo-Lemprière much as she had drawn him to this theatre tonight. And this Septimus, he had appeared later as a guardian angel of sorts, protecting the goods from damage. But tonight the girl had tried to wave him back, to warn him off; and Praeceps had gained entry to the house with ease. He was trusted by the pseudo-Lemprière, though clearly in the pay of the Nine. Two of them at least…. Only eight now, he corrected himself, remembering the real Lemprière’s body in Blue Anchor Lane.

More than an hour had passed. A noise to his right, towards the coach, footsteps and the girl’s voice as he edged around the corner and saw the coach door close, muffling the voice. He drew nearer and heard some kind of struggle taking place inside, the girl’s voice sharper than before.

‘Let me, let me go! You said he would come to no harm. You swore, damn you,’ and the struggle resumed.

‘Cease.’ Le Mara’s monotone barked after a minute or two. Then ‘Cease’ again, and whatever threat had been offered in the darkness of the coach was proved effective for the sounds suddenly stopped. Nazim crouched down by the side of the coach expecting it to move off at any moment, but the horses waited impassively in their harnesses. He heard a rushing gust of wind somewhere above. The hot wind was getting up and more people were appearing in the thoroughfare, moving back and forth in small groups. His attention strayed, recognising something in the gatherings. The heavier footfalls moving up the alley were almost upon him before he turned and saw the broad frame of Le Mara’s partner moving towards the coach and himself.

He thought surely he would be seen, caught between the advancing figure and the street beyond, bathed in moonlight, but the man shambled like a sleepwalker and Nazim saw that his head was tilted back, looking up at the sky. The face was grey and the mouth gaped as though its owner had begun to say something and suddenly found himself struck dumb. The bloodless face passed him unawares as the man stumbled towards the coach. The door was opened and Nazim saw the vehicle shift slightly as its suspension bent beneath his slumped weight. He crept closer and heard Le Mara’s voice grate out a question.

‘Is it done, Viscount?’ But the Viscount said nothing and Le Mara was forced to repeat the question.

‘No.’ The answer came then. ‘He lives still.’ The girl gave a short cry of surprise and relief.

‘I will finish it.’

‘No!’ the Viscount shot back.

‘I will find him….’ But the Viscount held him back. His voice shook.

‘Our past has come back, now. Up there, I saw it. It found me. You know the thing I speak of….’

‘Praeceps will deliver the boy as instructed unless we find him.’

‘Leave it, I said. Understand me now, leave it. We have bigger fish to fry and if the boy appears he can share their fate. Let us go.’

Nazim found the boy with ease. As the coach moved off, he followed into the Haymarket and watched it turn north. Praeceps and the pseudo-Lemprière were lying in the alley on the other side of the theatre. The Haymarket was filling with people who milled about in confusion and Nazim mingled with them. Presently the two of them emerged, first Praeceps and then, supported by him, the pseudo-Lemprière blinking behind his eye-glasses, conspicuous as ever in his pink coat. They moved off together through the gangs of men and women. Nazim followed. As they approached Southampton Street their roles seemed to reverse and it was the pseudo-Lemprière who guided the other through the more aggressive groups. The citizens of the city were appearing from nowhere, banding and disbanding as a gradual drift east began to establish itself amongst the bodies. Some had painted their faces. One gang carried short clubs which they swung and slapped in their palms. The name “Farina” was everywhere.

As the two of them reached the house in Southampton Street, Nazim felt the tense purpose which rushed through the streets. So it begins, he thought to himself.

He paid only cursory attention when the two emerged once more, their roles reversed again. It was inevitable. Praeceps was supporting his companion as though the other were drunk. The gangs were gathering in
the street. He saw Praeceps hail a carriage from the Strand and bundle the unconscious pseudo-Lemprière into the cab.

‘Leadenhall, East India House!’ The carriage moved off into the mob and Nazim let it go. If the pseudo-Lemprière had followed some parallel path to his own against the Company he had reached its end now. His own had a little further to run and it was clear at last. The city had reached its brink and beyond tomorrow there would be no more time.

He made his way to the docks and broke open a store on Hythe Wharf. The tool he needed found, he returned to the cellar. All through the next day’s uneasy interregnum he lay with his eyes open, staring into the darkness and thinking on what he was at last about to do. When night fell, he rose and walked through the gathering mob to Le Mara’s house. Its windows were dark. He entered by the back door and descended to the cellar. The hatch set into the floor was locked, as he had expected. Nazim pulled the crowbar from his belt and drove it down. He leaned his weight against the bar, levering open the hatch. It groaned and cracked and at last splintered under the assault. Nazim gathered himself, then threw the trap door open and looked down. The shaft dropped down into darkness. Down there, he told himself, they were waiting for him.