> Getting better ... Emacs compiles and installs just fine now, but doesn't run (if lpackages are loaded during startup).
>
> "emacs -Q" starts OK. Doing [M-x load-library RET package RET] fails with "Opening stdio stream: No such file or directory, package".
I've bootstrapped Emacs and I don't see that problem.
emacs -Q
M-x load-library <RET> package <RET>
works as expected.