Lempriere's Dictionary (15 page)

Those who remained, the older men, huddled together in groups, talking amongst themselves. He sensed their despondency but, as had been the case many times before, he did not share in the mood. Certainly, the barracks was a foul place; cold, ill-lit, it had lain uncleaned for months. What did it matter? He kept his own counsel and did not join the muted discussion. Some were already talking of finding a berth back to Madras or Goa. The Company would not permit that, he knew. And in any case, few ships would be sailing for the Indies in November; the risk made a nonsense of it. Nazim looked at the lascars. His fingers drummed deliberately on the planked floor, one, two, three, four, the thumb. Flexing of each finger-muscle, one, two, three, four, the thumb. Strings and levers. There were worse places than this. And better.

Across from where he sat the men grumbled on. His fingers ceased their slow movement. It was only the other side of the coin. Their griping would be replaced by joy, equally inexplicable to him, if the Company’s promises had turned out to be true. A worthless coin. Had it gained him anything, he would have puzzled over their behaviour, but he had lived apart from such concerns for long enough. He had seen the other side. Men struck dumb by what they thought was their desire. Their vanity. Years ago now, when his uncle had still lived, he had made his first visit to the palace of the Nawab. He had seen much that day, much he had not understood, but the point of the visit, one of the points as he had later come to understand them, was a lesson in vanity.

His thoughts drifted back. He and his uncle stood together outside the huge building. He remembered the burning heat, the glare of red sandstone. And then the cool marble inside. Their feet had slapped on the floors, the sound echoing off the walls and high, gilt ceilings. As they walked through the entrance bazaar, his uncle had pointed at the music
pavilion beyond it. He had stared dutifully. They had traversed the audience hall, past the private rooms and the
zenãna
, the hot baths and gardens where water channels and waterfalls sprinkled the swimming pools. Domes and roof-pavilions looked down on them as they disappeared into the inner chambers where embossed doors of brass and silver closed silently and faint whispers were heard behind the perforated screens. The two of them had continued down long, shadowed corridors which had led them, finally, to a reception room decorated with arabesques and inscriptions, designs inlaid with agate and carneol, others painted in gold, turquoise and purple, all the most precious colours. Here, a small, shrunken man sat, attended for this occasion by a single servant.

His uncle had addressed him respectfully. They had talked for some time and he, a gangling twelve year old, had been presented to the little man. He had not guessed it then, and had not been meant to, but at that meeting a bargain had been struck, a succession assured, and from that moment, even unknown to himself, he had become the servant of the Nawab. Eventually, after hours in which his uncle and the Nawab had spoken in a low tone, they had paid their respects and turned to take their leave.

Before they left the palace, his uncle had taken him to see the Mirror Room. He had heard tell of it from others, it was said to be wondrous. Myriads of tiny glasses mounted in stucco ledges and slabs formed a strange, shifting mosaic. He had seen himself in thousands of tiny pieces, all dislocated from each other. It was a marvel, was it not? He had nodded politely, unmoved by the spectacle. It would have made neither more nor less an impression upon him if the walls had been plain. What was it for? His uncle had watched him carefully and later, much later, he had realised it was a test of sorts. No flicker of interest had passed across his features.

His uncle had smiled then and led him back through the audience hall where the palace servants cleared a path before them and averted their eyes from theirs. Nazim had not thought his uncle was a man of such import. He had peered at their faces and seen in all of them the same expression. There was respect, certainly, and something else. His uncle had reprimanded him for curiosity, but still he stared, taking quick glances as they passed and seeing then a trace of distaste in the servants’ eyes, and more, unmistakeably, a strong and ill-concealed fear. He tried to think why they should fear a man such as his uncle, a man who, so far as he knew before this day, wielded little influence with anyone. Later, he would smile to recall this misapprehension, but then, as they made their way back through the bazaar and the ornate palace gates, his curiosity had grown. The courtiers, the favoured servants, the professional dissemblers of the palace, all had watched with unobtrusive care as they walked slowly out of the grounds. The two of them: the divinely appointed assassin to the Nawab of the
Carnatic and, appointed only that day, his twelve year old apprentice. Hand in hand together, Bahadur-ud-Dowlah had led his young nephew home….

The barracks door flew open suddenly, startling Nazim from his reverie. The first of his countrymen had returned. He spread his blanket over the boards and lay down, angling his head towards the door as was his habit. The door banged open at irregular intervals. Each time, his eyes blinked open, then, seeing no threat, closed once more. His ship-mates wandered back in twos and threes; none returned alone. The first lesson, he thought to himself. A few put a brave face on things, but most returned downcast, some were bloodied. He sighed and tried to settle on the hard floor. His sleep was fitful, broken by the sound of the night’s stragglers as they stumbled to their places. Tomorrow, the task with which he had been entrusted would begin.

“
My son
,” began the letter, “
by the time you read this, my first and last letter to you, I shall be dead. If the mode of my passing follows the precedent set by our ancestors then you will be left curious, besieged by doubts and unanswered questions. John, pursue them no further. Your curiosity will not be appeased, your vengeance never enacted. If the history of the Lemprières has resembled that of the house of Atreus it is because this advice has been too rarely offered, never taken. It is my thought that you will be reading this letter in London, or on your way to that city. Complete any business you must and leave. Of my papers
,” at this, John looked across the room at the travelling chest which overflowed with these, “
burn them. Do not trouble to read them. I fear to say more, merely do as I say and I will be at peace
.”

It was unsigned, but the hand was his father’s without doubt. What had he meant by vengeance? And how had he known that his death would be a violent one? The more he thought of his father’s words, the more these and other questions assailed him.

He lay back on the narrow bed, gazing up at the whitewashed ceiling, now yellowed by firesmoke. He thought with mixed feelings of the woods and fields of Jersey, briefly of his mother. Above him, the tailor’s family could be heard preparing for bed, while outside, the din of the street was undiminished, although changing in character. The noise of the journeymen, market-workers, which had provided a steady hum of commerce, insults, and greeting faded, as now the broken rhythms of evening asserted their different dominion in sudden shouts, footsteps which approached and receded.

He eased his position on the bed, trying not to think on the questions the letter held up for him, allowing the slow drift towards sleep. Despite having always resented it as lost time, he was impatient now for its thoughtlessness. He rarely remembered his dreams. The brain’s fugitives, he chased them sometimes through the morning half-light between sleep and waking. They eluded him as if surrounded by an invisible bubble which his grasp pushed further away at each frustrated attempt until he stumbled into wakefulness. Morning was when the losses of the night were counted, as if his dreams might be records of himself whose transience pointed obscurely to a gradual whittling away of his self’s core. Waxing by day, waning by night. He envisaged these orts fondly as constituting the version of himself most closely approximating the truth and imagined his dreaming self shut up within the gaol of his waking mind, which thwarted any and all efforts to free it.

Above, the tailor and his wife were marking another day’s end with grudging beneficences to God and then each other, thump, thump, thump through the ceiling. They kept a practised rhythm. Charles the Second, Oliver Cromwell, William and Mary…. Cromwell? Thump, thump,
suck
. He thought of his father. Why had he screamed? Had he simply lain there it would not have happened. Had Casterleigh chosen any other day to go hunting it would not have happened. Had Juliette not been bathing, had Juliette not been playing in the water, had Juliette not … had I not committed Actaeon’s sin…. No, he refused that thought. Not now.

But yes
, another voice persisted in him,
had you not let another take your place
…. It would not have happened, he concluded wearily. So many ways for it not to happen.

The noise above grew briefly louder, the tempo quickened and he heard a low discontented grunt. The room fell silent again and no more was heard for some time. Had I not read the tale, invoked it, had I not been given the book, had I not tried to prove myself in the library. So many things I might not have done. Watching her in the pool.

His thoughts kept returning to the girl. Outwardly he seemed calm while, within, his waking senses drained slowly down like the white sand in an hourglass. The night moved on. At length, his eyes closed and he slept.

Outside, it is the hour of suspicion. The closed hour when men walk the streets with the air of interlopers in a drama played out in silence between the city and the night. A cloaked figure crosses the street at a diagonal, his shadow lengthening as he moves away from the lamp. Someone loiters on a corner with studied casualness, looking first one way then the other, offering no clue to explain his watchfulness. The city is almost still, but the slow arc of the moon brings it to something like life. Shadows, strange silhouettes on walls which lighten and darken with the moon’s passage.
Parts of the city which appear solid and normal in daylight disclose capriccios of the grotesque, their hidden aspects. A vase of carved stone, its rim cracked, throws a broken face on the wall it adorns by day. Broken timbers stacked carelessly in the corner of a yard might be the limbs of two figures locked in combat and a flagpole’s shadow falls across cobbles, allows a right-angle as it strikes the opposite wall, another as the wall rounds a corner. A gibbet.

As the moon crosses the sky these lengthen or shorten, disappear and are replaced by others. The city seems eager to display the arcane details of its construction, but some parts will never be known. Cellars, covered stairways, passages which run beneath the surface of things, secret channels and chambers, the walkways and corridors of the unseen and unheard; these places remain unlit save by the light of those privy to their existence.

And now, a kind of life begins to stir in these subterranean ducts and courses. Something pulses. Something moves in these petrified veins. At first it is no more than a slight eddying of the chill air, the suggestion of warmth. Stone chambers and passages unused to light are now, briefly, lit and the sound of hoarse breathing susurrates through the long corridors and caverns. As these sounds and these lights careen off the surrounding walls and floors, they reveal a surprising smoothness, rounded contours and gentle curves, creases rather than corners. Larger chambers open out periodically from narrow passages. They seem organic with their high, natural vaults and arches. Mineral filaments like attenuated stalactites fall from roof to floor. But they are not stalactites. This tangled skein of fossilised arteries, sinews and organs betrays an ancient presence.

Long, long ago, something huge pounded the rocky sub-strata. Unmindful and arrogant in its vast mortality, here its shadow fell across whole plains and scarps. Here its footprints were craters and here it sank down into the soft loam which slowly closed about it. Here it died. And here the soft, accepting earth drew it down to the beds of stone. A slow accommodation began. Gradually, so slowly, it succumbed to the patient stone which seeped into its limbs and organs, preserving it perfect in every detail. Its form hardened and became more than a corpse; almost imperceptibly, it became the monument to its own passing, a riddled lode which now plays silent host to five intruders.

Deep beneath the sleeping city, there is the slightest quickening in this structure. At five points in its fossilised remains, there is movement. Five men creep through arteries of granite, adamantine galleries and brittle plates of crystal. They advance by separate routes. Their paths twist and curve but never cross. All have made this journey many times before. No-one knows the path of the others. Their destination is all they hold in common as each picks his way through the network of tunnels. At times,
they might be only inches from one another, separated by the merest, paper-thin membrane of flaking limestone, but they would never know. Each takes his own path to the chamber at the very centre of the vast corpse, a chamber which might once have been its heart. The door to it may once have been an aorta, pounding with hot blood through arteries and veins that now harbour only the faint echo of shuffling footsteps as the five men draw nearer. The lamps they carry close to their chests light the way before them while their bodies throw shadows which lengthen away into the darkness at their backs. On entering the chamber, each extinguishes the lamp he holds and lights a wick in a lamp mounted upon the wall. There are nine of these wicks, not counting the lighter. When five of the nine are lit, they throw a stuttering light on the chamber’s roof and walls. It is the only illumination this place has known. The chamber is cold and the air very still. The Cabbala is in session.