Lempriere's Dictionary (90 page)

‘Light the candle, John.’ The Viscount regarded him casually from his seat, his accent a mockery of François’. Juliette was behind him, staring directly at Lemprière, her eyes wide, her expression urgent. She was telling him something with her eyes. He raised the taper like a pathetic sword.

‘You are mine, John,’ said the mockery again. But serious too this time as the Viscount rose from his seat and Lemprière remembered the size of the man, his physical bulk and his own terror on the roof. Jaques choked and spat a gout of blood from his throat.

‘Juliette,’ he began to say, but the rest was lost as his mouth filled again. She was staring at the candles, signalling to Lemprière. Casterleigh tossed a chair aside and began to move around the table. He stared back at Juliette,
his gaze flicking to the Viscount who advanced towards him. The candles guttered. Casterleigh grinned and flexed his hands as he approached. Juliette began to move and then suddenly, Lemprière understood. At the same moment, Casterleigh saw her and understood too. Lemprière gulped air, filling his lungs to bursting and the Viscount threw himself forward, the huge hands reaching for him too late.

Stretching first one knee, then the other, arching and straightening his back, rolling his neck, flexing every joint down to his fingers and toes, Nazim waited outside the chamber in the darkness. When the pseudo-Lemprière and his companion had disappeared into the chamber, Nazim settled at the edge of the gravel. His limbs moved rhythmically as the minutes, then hours passed by. His mind raced and once again the pseudo-Lemprière was its quarry. He rehearsed the young man’s encounters to himself: the winner of the women in blue’s protégée at the Pork Club, buffeted by Farina’s men outside the inn, confiding with the real Lemprière the night of his murder in Blue Anchor Lane, mistaking himself for someone called ‘Theobald’ at the
Ship in Distress
a week later, running like a madman out of Coade’s, running after the girl to the theatre the previous night, hustled unconscious into the coach a matter of hours later by Mister Praeceps, the same man who had spoken to Sir John that night, and their discussion had centered on ‘Lemprière’, although the man was dead months ago, killed by Le Mara and they all seemed in league against his bespectacled successor who was at once the drunken butt of a practical joke at the Pork Club, the near victim of Farina’s mob, betrayer or loyal lieutenant to the true Lemprière, a myopic fool in the
Ship in Distress
, a lunatic at Coade’s, inamorato at the Opera House, colleague of Praeceps then corpse in Southampton Street, and now it seemed he was allied with, perhaps even one of Nine whom he, Nazim, was here to despatch.

Nazim wrestled determinedly with these pseudo-Lemprières trying to trace them back as affects to some single ur-Lemprière but the adversary he constructed was still too awkward with his thin arms and legs and his strange angular body which defied all attempts to pin him down as definitely this or certainly that or possibly something else entirely. It was neither dark nor light and Nazim wanted to be clear. Real or not, the Lemprière would not fit. Now of all times, he wanted to be single-minded, but the Beast was as ambiguous as the Lemprière, gulled or guileful, guilty or innocent as he was and its sourceless light drew strange shapes from the
wavering hollows and high vaulted spaces which drew his eye in turn. Had the blackness been absolute he might have dismissed them as phantoms, as patterns seen when the eyes are screwed too tightly shut, freaks of the brain’s idling engine. Undefined objects and figures seemed to hover and flit in the half light above him.

Once or twice he fancied he heard disturbances in the air, wind rushing over some alien body far above and away across the gravel, over the abyss from which the Lemprière and his companion had emerged an hour or more before. Freaks and phantoms: the Beast sent them to beg his unanswered questions and feed on his doubts. He thought back to the wide ribbed tunnel he had followed to the chamber blocked off with planks and buttresses, to the stalactitic teeth and petrified tongue which seemed to lap at the water pressing behind the wall of clay. He remembered the water seeping through the wall whose supports he had kicked away without a second thought, the tiny glistening beads, then a silver trickle as though the Beast were a vast water clock measuring the time to its own destruction. A trickle, a rivulet…. And then?

And then his anxieties flew back into the dark spaces above him. He heard the air there rush suddenly as though a gust of wind had found its way through the tunnels, a particular kind of gust - he had heard the sound before - and he wondered, a bat? But the shape that swooped in and out of his vision in a blink was larger than that, much larger as it disappeared away to his left and he heard an audible
crunch
as something landed on the gravel fifty or sixty yards away. The theatre, minutes before Le Mara’s companion had staggered into the coach, he had heard it then. He rose and squinted into the gloom. He saw nothing. It was nothing. Only the scree shifting of its own accord, the air’s susurration, a convection current set off by the heat of his own body, a deferred version of himself, nothing, nothing at all. But he could not rid himself of the suspicion that on the far side of the gravel, away from the entrance to the chamber, someone or something was watching and waiting in the dark, like himself.

The minutes trickled by and nothing more was heard. Gradually, Nazim’s attention swung back to the chamber. He began flexing his muscles and joints once again, back, neck, shoulders.… A bubble of sound burst into the darkness, a gabble of voices disgorged from the door to the chamber and suddenly bitten off short as the door was closed. Nazim heard a man’s voice barking orders, a choking sound, a deeper voice raging, then silence, and out of the silence the sounds of unguarded footsteps approaching from the chamber. No lights had shone. Two sets of footsteps, he realised as they drew nearer. The door opened again. It seemed the lamp within was alight now. Silhouetted in the light from the doorway behind them, two figures were moving towards Nazim, whilst in
the doorway itself, cast like shadows by the stumbling pair ahead of them, two further figures were framed for a moment before they too began to move in pursuit. The door closed, the darkness resumed and there were only the sounds of overlapping footsteps crashing towards him. Nazim clutched the miniature in one hand and his knife in the other then moved towards them. The first pair were very near now, the noise so loud it seemed impossible he could not see them. Suddenly two faces came out of the gloom, scared unguarded faces, first the girl and then, a little behind her wincing with the effort, the pseudo-Lemprière. The sight of himself brought them both to an amazed halt. The pseudo-Lemprière’s eyes narrowed in recognition.

‘You!’ he gasped. Behind the pair of them, the steadier footfalls of their pursuers stopped too.

There was a brief complete silence as the three of them, Lemprière, Juliette and Nazim, looked at one another and the pursuers behind paused, baffled suddenly by the absolute quiet. Then into that noiseless moment dropped a sound, a toneless
pop
which was followed by something like air but more substantial this time, more forceful and Nazim knew that far behind him through the spongeworks and the broad tunnel, beyond the rotten planking he had disturbed, the clay had failed, the clock had run out and now water was pouring down the throat of the Beast towards them. The girl’s arm was about the pseudo-Lemprière. They looked quickly at one another as he raised his knifehand and stepped forward.

It was simple. As Casterleigh threw himself forward, Lemprière blew out the candles and the chamber was plunged into darkness. He heard the Viscount’s bulk crash against a chair, a grunt as he fell then a strong hand closed about his wrist and pulled him suddenly towards the door.

‘This way,’ Juliette’s voice urged him. She was guiding him out of the chamber and then he felt gravel grinding under his feet; they were out and running, their footsteps echoing like gun shots around the vaults of the cavern. Her dress appeared as his eyes adjusted to the faint light, a wavering area of white ahead of him. At his back he heard at once a match strike and the door open again. The lamp was being re-lit. Two figures appeared in the doorway, one broad and tall, the other shorter and of slighter build. Then the door closed again and there was darkness. He could hear the practised footsteps of their pursuers as they began to come after Juliette and himself.

They had gained perhaps forty yards, crashing forward together over the gravel, her hand still about his wrist, his breath already short. The ground seemed to slide out from under him dragging him back with every step he took. He heard Juliette’s breath coming more quickly and underneath the sound of their own footfalls, those of Casterleigh and Le Mara drawing closer. Suddenly Juliette’s body slammed into his own. She had stopped dead in her tracks and as he collided with her, her arm sought his own for support. The footsteps behind them stopped. Lemprière looked up and saw a man dressed all in black with a black cloak and hat whose broad brim was raised to disclose a face he knew from the
Ship in Distress
, the Indian who had been Theobald until the real Theobald arrived.

‘You!’he exclaimed. And the hat…. The hat he had seen in the midst of the brawl outside the inn, a strong hand pulling him away from Farina’s thugs, and somewhere else. His rescuer there. The three of them were silent. Lemprière heard a sound somewhere in the distance ahead of him, like a cork being pulled and the wine rushing out of the bottle. Running water. Juliette looked up at him and her arm tightened about his own. The Indian had raised his arm and begun to move forward. His eyes seemed to look through them both. His hand held a knife. The footsteps behind them began again. Lemprière moved sideways, pulling Juliette with him. The footsteps were faster and louder. The Indian advanced, as though they had not moved, towards the spot they had occupied, and over it towards their pursuers who could be heard plainly now. They watched for a moment as Nazim advanced to meet his quarry. They were passed over, spared, and again it was Juliette who pulled him forward, towards the haven of the spongeworks. As the two of them moved off and the cloaked figure went forward to engage their pursuers, a sixth player, unseen and unheard by the other five, rose from his position on the far edge of the gravel apron and turned his eyes towards the chamber where his own quarry lay.

The gravel behind them, Lemprière and Juliette ran quickly over hard rock. Their pace slowed again as odd humps of stone began to rise up and obstruct their flight. Behind them Lemprière could hear the footsteps of the three converging, coming to a halt. There was a flurry of sound as the battle was joined. Ahead, the rushing sound was louder and more distinct, more obviously water moving towards them. A pair of footsteps detached itself from the mêlée to his rear, growing louder then abruptly silent as their owner reached the harder ground they now travelled themselves with greater difficulty.

The humps had grown taller, more like spires, each the height of a man dividing the area into open chambers as though bubbles had been blown in the molten rock and solidified to leave a honeycomb. The sound of water was louder. Lemprière wondered whether it were Casterleigh or Le Mara
who had taken up the chase. Casterleigh, he thought. It would be the Viscount. Juliette was ahead of him, weaving a way through the sponge-works. The dull roar was directly ahead of them both, drowning out any sound from behind now.

Gradually the waisted columns began to shrink to hummocks once more, to swellings and then to vague irregularities in the stone floor. The spongeworks was behind them and they were faced with a wall of rock rising up out of sight. At its centre a gaping mouth broke the sheer cliff - the entrance to a broad tunnel twenty yards across and as many high – from which the roaring of the water was clearly audible. Lemprière began to cast about for an alternative passage but Juliette pulled him forward hissing, ‘This way!’

‘The water,’ he protested but she seemed to pay no attention.

‘The river has broken through,’ she threw over her shoulder. ‘This place will flood. We must reach the shaft before the water rises or we are drowned.’