Free Lempriere's Dictionary by Lawrence Norfolk

your very life. How firm are the most trusted foundations, and what are the things which must be done to protect them? These were slow, visceral questions, asked in the flexing of the arms, the straining of the shoulders. The time had come to answer those questions, to provide the answers. Not as palliatives to some mood of enquiry, but as tablets of marble: answers that would eradicate the very possibility of such questions being asked again. Never asked again. Behind the house, the pack was barking and wailing. Why had they not been fed? Casterleigh turned from the window in some annoyance, just as Juliette burst into the room.
    ‘Papa! Papa!’ she was laughing and out of breath. ‘Sit down Papa, let me tell you-of my day.’ His annoyance rose to anger at her intrusion.
    He turned as she ran to him holding her skirts.
    ‘Silence!’ he barked.
    Instantly, she was quiet, her face blank. He looked at her, saw the dependable fear in her eyes. He was soothed. He rested against the desk, then spoke again.
    ‘Tell me of the boy,’ he said.

    Summer was announcing its end in the sky, sending small, dark clouds over Jersey. Compacted and black with rain, they looked unnatural against the deep, continuing blue behind. A brisk south-westerly was whipping the tops of the taller grasses. The clouds passed quickly and silently overhead, their shadows racing across fields, lanes and houses. Despite the sun’s intermittent appearances and the strong breeze, morning dew still clung to the stems of the grass through which he tramped. The path was not walked often and had become overgrown. His shoes were wet through, yet he hardly noticed this. He came to the stile, climbed it and made his way up the lane towards the Casterleighs’ home.
    The house stood in open lawns but two screens of trees, staggered at angles to each other, concealed it from casual view. Lemprière rounded the second line of trees and came upon his first sight of Casterleigh’s country house. Only half a century old, its plum-red bricks had withstood the corrosive effects of the sea air well. The colour stood out violently from the gentler greens of the surrounding lawns and made the house seem larger than it was. Even so, it must be thirty or forty yards across, he estimated. The four angles were rounded and set with bay windows, giving the edifice the look of an oval. All the many large windows were set with scarlet-gauged bricks, and pilasters ran the height of the building between them, ending in elaborately carved stone capitals which, in their turn, supported an entablature extending, so far as he could tell, all about the building. Two of the pilasters rose higher than the others to define an attic-storey on the centre of the roof, and, on their tops, stood two intricately carved stone figures. But even with his eye-glasses he was unable to distinguish their exact features. Two stone staircases ran up in parallel to meet on a balcony in front of the main entrance, the doors of which now flew open as if pulled violently from within.
    ‘Enter, John Lemprière, your doom awaits!’
    Intoned in mock-solemnity, the words betrayed Juliette’s presence in the cool shade of the entrance hall within. He made his way up the staircase to his left. Juliette advanced to greet him, smiling, as his eyes adjusted slowly to the dimmer light in the entrance hall. On the ceiling, chubby cupids aimed playful arrows at each other.
    ‘Come, Papa wishes to see you.’ The look of alarm on his face prompted her. ‘Don’t fret. He only wants to thank you.’
    In his pocket was a list of ancient authors he had compiled two days previously. He clutched it like a charm. Juliette chattered over her shoulder as she led him through the house. Her voice lilted and Lemprière fancied he heard a cadence beneath her words not truly belonging on Jersey. French perhaps. They passed through an antechamber to the drawing room beyond it.
    ‘Papa, Doctor John Lemprière has arrived to set