The Emperor of All Things (7 page)

‘To spy on me, you mean.’

This the master did not trouble to deny. ‘Do we have an understanding, Mr Quare?’

‘It appears I have no choice.’

‘Quite.’

‘Then, yes, I agree, of course. Who will you assign to me?’

‘I must think on it.’ And with that, the storm clouds lifted from the master’s expression, and he looked younger, almost boyish – as if the flames dancing in his spectacles had burned away half a lifetime in an instant. The change did not make his appearance any more regular or pleasing to behold, yet it made Quare smile even so, for he had never yet witnessed this transformation in Master Magnus without being rewarded by some astonishing glimpse into the man’s fertile mind: a hint of some heretofore veiled mystery of time, or a wondrous invention like the stair-master, which put horological principles to unexpected use.

‘Now, my boy,’ said Master Magnus, a mischievous lilt to his voice, his stature seeming to grow straighter as he spoke, ‘would you care to have a look at the timepiece you have risked – and sacrificed – so much to procure?’

3

Three Questions

USING HIS WALKING
sticks, master magnus pulled himself across the floor of the study. He stabbed one forward, then the other, dragging his legs along behind with sharp wrenchings of his hips, like a man toiling through drifts of snow. Once again Quare was struck by the strength of his arms and upper body. Mewling cats slipped in and out of his path, rubbing against the sticks and his twisted legs. He ignored them.

‘Word of what I am about to show you can go no further,’ he said. ‘Is that understood?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Quare, wondering what was about to be revealed to him. He would have risen to assist Master Magnus but knew from experience that any such attempt would meet with an angry rejection.

The master paused before Quare, his face shining with sweat. Now it was his own reflection Quare beheld in the dark spectacles; though he was seated, his eyes were nearly level with the master’s, so pronounced was the curvature of his spine. ‘Swear it,’ growled Master Magnus. ‘Swear it on your
honour
.’

There was more mischief than malice to the barb; still, Quare couldn’t help flinching as it struck home. ‘I swear it.’

‘One day I will perfect a set of mechanical limbs,’ the master said as he resumed his halting progress. ‘Think of it, sir. Legs for the legless. Arms for the armless. Hands as clever and supple as your own. Better, even. Stronger. Then cripples such as I will be envied instead of scorned.’

His destination was the bookshelves. A cluttered space Quare could have crossed in five seconds was for Master Magnus a labour of as many minutes, though he did not once complain of it. But at last he stood before the solid mass of books and papers, his misshapen back to Quare. The phlegmatic rasp of his breathing was the loudest sound in the room, but it did not drown out the purring of the cats; it seemed almost to rise out of those lesser rumblings, riding above them like the foaming crest of a wave. Quare felt an answering vibration in himself, transmitted through the air, or through the calico cat still curled on his lap, as if all his nerves, pulled taut, had been plucked like the strings of a guitar. He got to his feet (displacing the cat, which leapt to the floor) and stepped – or, rather, felt himself drawn – towards the shelves. Was the timepiece hidden there?

‘Bring a light,’ said Master Magnus, who must have heard Quare move, for he had not turned to look at him, his attention fixed on the shelves before him. He reached up with one of his walking sticks to stab at the fat, leather-bound spine of a nameless volume. There came a clicking sound, and a section of shelving slid away from the rest, scattering cats as it pivoted through one hundred and eighty degrees to bring into view a worktable outfitted with all the familiar accoutrements of the clockmaker’s trade … and some not so familiar.

Quare’s heart was beating fast as he joined the master, who motioned for him to set down the candlestick he had fetched along. This Quare managed with difficulty, as the surface of the worktable was strewn with disassembled or partially assembled clocks and watches – a spilled cornucopia of gears and gauges, wheels and wires and other glittery objects he would have given much to examine at his leisure. Though he had spent a fair amount of time in Master Magnus’s study of late, and had on occasion even assisted him in his researches, he had never before seen this hidden worktable, or so much as suspected its existence. How many other secrets were concealed here?

‘Now, where did I put the cursed thing?’ muttered the master. Having set one of his sticks against the worktable, he leaned upon the other as he rummaged one-handed, and with a roughness that made Quare wince, through the mechanical treasure trove atop the table. ‘I could have sworn … ah!’ His hand rose, still empty, and plunged into the
pocket
of his waistcoat, whence it emerged clutching an object about the size and shape of a quail’s egg. This he held up between thumb and forefinger as if presenting a precious jewel for Quare’s inspection.

It was, he saw at once, a pocket watch of the type known as a hunter, the case of which included a metal lid covering the dial. The watch was ovoid, as he had already noted, the case of polished but otherwise unembellished silver, including the cover.

‘Well, sir?’ demanded Master Magnus.

‘But that is not the clock I brought you!’

‘No, it is not … and yet it is. Here, take it.’

Quare accepted the watch. It was unusually thin, less than half the width of his index finger, and lighter than he had expected. He prised the cover apart with his thumbnail and swung it open, revealing a mi-concave crystal and an enamel dial with twelve black symbols – neither numbers nor astrological signs; at least, not any that he recognized – painted upon it. His horological studies had exposed him to the alphabetic and numerical systems of foreign lands: he could recognize Cyrillic, Chinese, and Arabic, among others, but these symbols were new to him, rendered in a style so fluid as to almost swim before his eyes, as if the marks were changing in subtle ways beyond his ability to register. He found it difficult to focus on them; they seemed to squirm not only against the backdrop of the dial but, as it were, against the backdrop of his mind. The sensation was uncomfortable enough that he let his gaze slide away, to the inside of the silver cover, which he noticed was engraved. He held it closer to the candle, angling it until he could make out the initials
JW
in fancy script, and a date:
1652
.

Quare frowned; given the thinness and lightness of the watch, he would have guessed it to be of more recent manufacture. The hour and minute hands were gilded and fancifully shaped to resemble the head and tail, respectively, of a dragon, and, as he determined after a quick check against his own pocket watch, were not positioned to anything near the correct time. He raised the watch to his ear, but heard no ticking; the mainspring had run down and was in need of winding. But the stem proved decorative only, and there was no opening for a key. Nor any indication that there ever had been. He shot Master Magnus a questioning look, but the master returned his gaze expressionlessly.

‘Well?’ he repeated.

‘An intriguing watch,’ Quare acknowledged. ‘Am I to infer that you found it secreted inside the clock I brought you?’

‘Like a pearl within an oyster.’

‘Was there a master with the initials JW on the rolls of the Worshipful Company in 1652?’

‘More than one,’ said Master Magnus, manoeuvring himself towards a nearby armchair covered with loose papers and cat hair, into which he collapsed with a grunt of voluptuous satisfaction. ‘Journeymen, too. But after studying the archives thoroughly, I have ruled out each of them as the maker.’

‘Perhaps JW was a foreigner,’ Quare mused. ‘Or an amateur, like Lord Wichcote—’ He paused, struck by a sudden notion: ‘What is that gentleman’s first name, by the way?’

‘It is Josiah,’ the master said, stroking a fat black and white cat that had wasted no time in leaping into his lap and settling itself there with an air of entitlement a pasha would have envied. ‘But that is mere coincidence. Why, the man was not yet born in 1652! And his father, the late Lord Wichcote, was named Cecil … and had no better acquaintance with the insides of a timepiece than does this cat. No, it is the watch you should be interrogating, sir, not me. The answers you seek lie there, provided you can unlock them.’

Quare accepted the challenge with a nod, remembering how, at his first meeting with Master Magnus, years before, the master had similarly challenged him with a pocket watch. Now, turning back to the worktable, he fished a loupe from his waistcoat pocket and held it to his eye while examining the watch more closely in the candlelight – though, as before, his eyes slid past the figures painted onto the dial, as if their flowing shapes offered no purchase for his sight.

‘These markings are most curious.’

‘Indeed,’ Master Magnus agreed. ‘What do you make of them?’

‘I assume they are numbers, though none that I recognize. Still, there are twelve of them, arranged in the traditional manner upon the face – what else could they be?’

Master Magnus shrugged in a most maddening manner.

Quare told himself that he would subject the numbers – if numbers
they
were – to a more rigorous inspection at some later time. They were, after all, the very least of the wonders and mysteries of what was unquestionably a masterpiece. The detail of the draconic hands was particularly well done, the filigree as fine as gilded frost, evidence of a keen eye and an exceptionally steady hand. Yet the secret of its winding eluded him, unless …

Could the watch be self-winding? Such a timepiece was theoretically possible, and many gifted clockmakers, Master Magnus included, had sought to solve the considerable practical difficulties involved in making one. Yet as far as Quare knew, no one had succeeded, or come close to succeeding. Certainly his own efforts in that line had met with abject failure. How likely was it that some solitary genius had done it more than a century ago? He needed to open the case.

Quare could feel Master Magnus’s probing gaze. The master was studying him as intently as he was studying the watch … and with an identical purpose: to divine his secrets. He had said he trusted no one, suspected everyone, and just because Quare was no traitor did not mean he had no secrets he wished to hide.

Of course, Master Magnus had been correct in his suspicion that Quare had not been entirely forthcoming about his rooftop encounter with the woman – a woman whom, despite the master’s scorn, he still believed to have been the real Grimalkin and not an imposter.

After all, she had told him so.

She had regained consciousness while he was still marvelling at her unmasking. Master Magnus had asked if he had found her attractive, but the truth was that neither at the time nor later had he thought in such conventional terms. The woman was not beautiful but uncanny, her pale blonde hair seemingly spun out of moonlight, her skin like ivory, an exotic cast to her angled features – features streaked now with soot and grime and blood from where he had struck her – that provoked his fascination rather than his admiration. He saw a blend of races there but could not identify the mixture. She might have fallen from the moon, a handmaiden of Selene.

She didn’t make a sound. All at once the dark pools of her eyes opened, and she regarded him with frank but calm curiosity. Such self-possession threw Quare further off his mark. It was as if their positions
had
been reversed, and he was the one who had been surprised and rendered helpless, his secret exposed, his prize stolen, his honour – indeed, his very life – hanging by the thread of a stranger’s mercy. He felt interrogated by her stare and drew back, as if, bound though she was, she still constituted a danger. ‘I warn you,’ he said. ‘Do not cry out.’

She laughed softly … and, he thought, sadly; the sound sent a shiver down his spine. ‘I congratulate you, sir.’

‘What?’ Her voice made him think of fresh country breezes and springtime rain showers, as if he were back in his native Dorchester and not squatting upon a foul London rooftop. Her accent, like her features, was hard to place.

‘You have caught the great Grimalkin.’ She seemed to mock herself, and him. ‘Now, what will you do with her?’

Quare felt drunk, or under a spell. He swallowed and attempted to marshal his wits. ‘You are my prisoner, madam. I will ask the questions.’

She laughed again, but this time there was no sadness in it; eagerness, rather. ‘Ask, then. I am bound to answer.’

‘Are you really Grimalkin? A woman?’

‘Have I not said it? You are a spendthrift with your questions, man. That is one of your three gone already.’

‘Three? What folly is this?’

She grinned. ‘And there is question two, fled as quickly as a man’s life. But I shall answer, as I must. You have captured me, sir, knocked me out and restrained me as I lay senseless. Yet it is not these ropes that bind me. By ancient compact must I answer truthfully three questions put to me by any man who holds me in his power.’

‘You’re mad,’ he said.

‘Ask your third question, and you shall see my madness,’ she promised. And there was that in her voice and her dark eyes which made him shudder and draw back farther still.

‘I know not what tricks you have up your sleeve, nor do I care.’ Quare sheathed his dagger and drew his pistol, which he cocked and held at the ready. ‘Do not think your sex will save you. Believe me, I will not hesitate to fire.’

This seemed to recall the woman to the reality of her circumstances.
Or
perhaps it was the reassuring feel of the pistol grip in his hand that made him see her in a more realistic light. In any case, she no longer seemed so eerie. The wild provocation of her manner, which had puffed her up like the bristling fur of a cat seeking to warn off a larger enemy, fell away, revealing a bedraggled creature more to be pitied than feared, a young woman – certainly no older than he, and perhaps younger – who lay entirely at his mercy. ‘Don’t,’ she said, and shrank back against the filthy tiles of the roof. ‘I beg you …’