The Emperor of All Things (30 page)

I approached, the chill forgotten. I think I knew already – and not just from the evidence of my eyes, but on an instinctive level, by the pricking of my thumbs, as it were – that I was in the presence of a horological masterpiece, and, moreover, an eccentric one. This
impression
was bolstered by the tower’s appearance, which, though it revealed nothing of the mechanism within, nevertheless confirmed my sense of an idiosyncratic personality at work, for it more than made up for any lack of ostentation in the other structures I had seen so far. I did not doubt for an instant that I had found another example of the wizard’s work – the purest example yet, for this was no mere addition to something made by a lesser craftsman, as was the case with the other timepieces I had encountered in my travels: this masterpiece could only have come from the hands of the wizard himself, or so I imagined.

The ragged pulse of lamplight and shadow through the curtain of falling snow imparted a semblance of activity to the figures that covered the tower’s exterior. I couldn’t tell at first if they were castings or carvings, nor if they were painted; they seemed to sprout from every inch of the façade and came in a variety of sizes: the smallest no larger than my finger, the largest as big as life, or bigger. Men, women and children were represented, but also gargoyles that mixed human and bestial aspects, winged devils and cloven-footed demons, as well as angels, and skeletal figures, too, wielding scythes or hourglasses that seemed no less dangerous. Twining through and about them all was the coiling body of an immense serpent … or perhaps a dragon, though it lacked wings as far as I could see. Never had I beheld the sufferings of the damned depicted so persuasively, for such, it appeared, was the artist’s subject. The crowd of tormentors and tormented blurred before my eyes into a single undifferentiated mass, as if those inflicting pain and those seeking to escape it suffered alike the agony of exile from God’s presence even as they remained subject to His will, fixed in place for ever by a judgement that permitted neither escape nor appeal.

As I gazed at the tableau, a feeling of horror stirred in my breast, and I shivered beneath my cloak. Despite my admiration for the artistry, or what I could discern of it, I found myself hesitant to undertake a closer examination. Indeed, I felt an impulse to step back, as if I were in the presence of something dangerous or vile, and though I stood my ground, I did not draw any nearer.

The decorated portion of the tower rose to a height of fifteen feet or so, where an opening gaped, wide and dark as the mouth of a cave: daylight would no doubt reveal a recessed stage there, across which, at the
stroke
of some predetermined hour, figures emerging from within would progress along inlaid tracks in jerky pantomimes of living movement. I had seen such parades of dolls and automatons hundreds of times in my training and my travels, and knew them inside and out, but I felt certain that whatever display emerged from this particular tower would be like nothing I had witnessed before.

Above the proscenium, the pale clock face floated in mid-air like some smaller sister of the moon seduced down from the heavens. I tried to make out the time, but I couldn’t see the hands clearly, much less the numbers to which they pointed. Rising out of the mix of snow and shadow, in which feathery black flakes seemed to be falling alongside the white, was the apex of the tower: a campanile open on all four sides. Clustered within, dimly visible, were the pear-shaped silhouettes of five bells. The two largest hung motionless, but the three smaller ones were swinging slowly back and forth, each following a rhythm of its own. Though there was no sound of striking clapper, faint pings and clicks reached my ears through the keening of the wind – a forlorn music.

‘
Tempus Imperator Rerum
,’ rasped a voice from behind me in German-accented Latin.

I jumped, startled; lost in reverie, I had not heard the man’s approach. Turning, I saw the lamplighter looking up at me with a sly expression, as if pleased to have surprised me. This close, there was no mistaking him for Magnus: he was younger, for one thing, with a full and vigorous reddish-brown beard (in which snowflakes winked and melted), a bulbous red nose and glittering blue eyes beneath a battered brown tricorn. Unlike Magnus, he was a true dwarf, his head disproportionately large for the rest of his body, as were his hands. Yet he might almost have been a dwarf of legend.

‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.

In one gloved hand, the man held the knotted end of a hempen rope by which the ladder was slung over his shoulder; in the other, like a club, he carried the flambeau, now extinguished. ‘
Tempus Imperator Rerum
,’ he repeated. And then, in an English that bore the same accent as his Latin: ‘Time, Emperor of All Things. Is that not the motto of your guild?’

‘What guild would that be?’ I asked in turn.

He laughed aloud, flashing teeth as white and large as those of a horse, or so it seemed to me. The combination of physical exhaustion and mental stimulation made everything dreamlike and unreal. ‘Come now, lad,’ he chided, although he did not appear any older than I. ‘Do you think I don’t know a member of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers when I see one? Why try to hide it?’

‘I’m not hiding anything,’ I replied. ‘I’m merely curious as to how you came to that conclusion, as I carry no badge or mark of identity.’

‘Do you not?’ he asked, still grinning. ‘Who else but a clockman would be standing here in the middle of a snowstorm, oblivious as a pilgrim in a cathedral? And you are English, as I deduced from your manner of dress, and as your speech confirmed. Finally, you recognized the Latin motto. Thus, you are an English clockman. Thus, you are a member of the Worshipful Company.
Quod erat demonstrandum
.’

‘You are here,’ I pointed out. ‘You speak English and are acquainted with the motto. Does that make you a member of the guild?’

The man gestured with the charred flambeau. ‘I have to be here, don’t I? No matter the weather, the lamps must be lit. But now my work is done, and I’m for the hearth and home. You’d best come along, before you freeze to death.’

I confess I was taken aback at the invitation. ‘That’s very generous of you,’ I said, ‘but if you could just direct me to a good inn …’

Again he laughed, expelling gouts of steam from the thicket of his beard. ‘Why, where did you think we were going? To
my
hearth and home? The missus would have my head on a platter!’ Chuckling, he started off across the square, moving with the lurching gait I had noticed earlier, as if the ladder slung over his shoulder was a lot heavier than it looked.

‘What’s your name, clockman?’ the man inquired once I had caught him up.

I gave him my alias. ‘I am Michael Gray.’

‘Adolpheus.’

I wondered whether this was a first or a last name. No clarification was forthcoming.

‘Come to fix our clock, have you, Master Gray?’

‘I’m no master,’ I told him. ‘Just a journeyman. But yes, I’d like to try.’ That seemed the safest way to answer the question.

‘Climbed all this way, did you? Afoot, with no horse to bear you?’

‘That’s right.’

‘You’re fortunate. Each spring we find the frozen bodies of those who stray off the track in some snowstorm or other.’

‘I didn’t realize it was so dangerous.’

Adolpheus grunted but said no more. He led me through a maze of steep and narrow lanes, all of them deserted, past closed-up shops and dwellings whose curtained windows glowed warmly through the falling snow, which had increased in intensity, along with the wind. If it didn’t qualify as a snowstorm yet, it would soon do so.

At last, following my guide around a corner, I found myself facing a two-storey dwelling whose windows were ablaze with light. The inn – or so I judged it to be from the clapboard sign that hung above the door, which depicted a dog lying curled before a fire and was flapping vigorously back and forth as though determined to break loose and fly away, a creature tethered against its will – seemed to promise more than mere hospitality, as if every species of earthly delight were to be found within.

‘The Hearth and Home,’ Adolpheus said, bustling forward. He unslung his ladder and leaned it against one wall, where snow was already piling up, then laid the dead torch across the top rung. Motioning for me to precede him, he flung the door open.

A wave of warmth and conversation rolled out. Smells of wood smoke, tobacco, cooking meat, mulling wine and cider, and spilled ale mingled with the steamy odours of wet garments drying in the heat of a roaring fire. I paused on the threshold, dizzy, dark spots and bright sparks dancing before my eyes. A hush descended, not hostile, but not welcoming, either. A dog barked once, sharply.

In my travels, I had of necessity become a connoisseur of silences. Being able to judge them correctly can mean the difference between life and death to a stranger entering a place whose customs and language may be other than his own. This silence was made up of curiosity and suspicion in equal measure. I guessed that more than one of the hushed conversations had concerned my identity and purpose – news of a
visitor
spreads fast in small towns, along with the wildest of rumours. In such cases, it is imperative to make the proper first impression. People are ever eager to believe the worst.

I removed my hat, but before I could say a word, Adolpheus pushed me forward and entered behind me, slamming the door against the wind. ‘Bless all here,’ he said in German, vigorously brushing the snow from his beard.

Voices chorused a welcome: ‘Doooolph!’

‘I’ve been known to look in from time to time,’ he confided to me in English with a wink and a grin as he tugged off his gloves.

My eyes had cleared, the dizziness lifted, and now I saw that there were a dozen or so men seated at tables in the inn’s common room, and an immensely fat, middle-aged woman who stood behind a long and unoccupied bar. All their eyes were fixed on me through a drifting bluish haze, but I sensed no animosity in their regard; thanks to Adolpheus, I had been accepted, accorded the provisional status of guest rather than intruder. I nodded a generalized hello, and the buzz of conversation resumed.

A medium-sized but rotund brown and white terrier, which I assumed was the same dog that had barked at my entrance, came waddling up like a sausage with legs, and Adolpheus chuckled and scratched behind the animal’s foxlike ears. ‘Hello, Hesta, old girl.’

The dog had but a single eye; the other, to judge by the scars surrounding the empty socket, had been lost in a fight. She wagged her stubby tail, basking in the attention, then gave my outstretched palm a sniff and allowed herself to be patted on the head before retreating, satisfied, to what was plainly her accustomed spot before the fire.

‘It’s she who truly owns the place,’ said Adolpheus, tucking his gloves into the pockets of his cloak. ‘The great Frederick himself couldn’t stop here if Hesta didn’t approve.’ He unfastened the cloak and shrugged it off, then handed it to me, indicating with his eyes a row of wooden pegs along one wall, above his reach, where other cloaks were hanging, dripping onto the wooden floor. ‘Would you mind?’

‘Not at all,’ I told him in my rough German. At his raised eyebrows, I added, ‘You see, I am as adept in your language as you are in mine.’

‘Then perhaps we can misunderstand each other equally,’ Adolpheus replied – in German – with a laugh. He had taken off his hat and tucked it beneath his arm, revealing a full head of hair the same reddish-brown as his beard.

I hung the cloak on an empty peg, then hung my own beside it. I shrugged out of my rucksack and stamped clinging snow and ice from my boots, toes tingling as they began to thaw. Meanwhile, the woman from behind the bar came forward to greet us. I tried not to stare, but I had seldom seen a woman – or man, for that matter – of such prodigious girth. Her bare arms were the size of hams; her neck and chin were lost in rolls of rosy pink flesh; the movement of her bosom beneath the tent of her blue and white smock, with its colourfully embroidered designs of mountain wildflowers, was positively oceanic. Seeing her across the room, I had assumed she was in her mid-to-late forties, perhaps somewhat older, but up close she appeared younger than that – or, no, not younger, but as if the range of her possible ages was wider than I had at first supposed, just as she herself appeared to widen as she approached, glowing with health and vigour. Her cheeks were like firm red apples, her eyes were blue as gentians, and thick brown braids, like wreaths of fresh-baked bread, curled about ears that were translucent, pink, and incongruously small, like souvenirs of a dainty girlhood otherwise unimaginable.

‘Well, and who’s your handsome friend, Dolph?’ she asked in German, appraising me with a frank and, or so it seemed, flirtatious stare. She was nearly my own height, but she must have outweighed me by two hundred pounds or more. She smelled like beer and bread. What would it be like, I found myself wondering, and not entirely without interest, to bed such an enormous woman?

Adolpheus introduced me as Michael Gray, a journeyman of the Worshipful Company. The woman’s name, I learned, was Inge Hubner.

‘A pleasure to meet you and enjoy such warm hospitality,’ I told her with a gallant bow. I spoke in German, and the rest of our conversation took place in that tongue; indeed, unless I mention otherwise, you should assume that all the conversations I report to you were conducted thus.

Inge laughed, her chins jiggling. ‘You’re a long way from home, Herr
Gray
. But I’ll bet I can guess what brings you to Märchen. You’ve come to try your luck with Wachter’s Folly, haven’t you?’

‘She means the clock,’ Adolpheus put in. ‘That’s what we call it hereabouts, after its maker, Jozef Wachter.’

‘I should very much like to meet him,’ I said.

‘Why, you should very much
not
!’ Inge said. ‘The man is dead and gone almost half a century now, with that old clock, his monument, growing crazier by the year … by the day, I sometimes think. Can you set it to rights?’