Paul Witcover - The Emperor of all Things

‘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 …’

‘I won’t, unless you force me to it,’ he reassured her. ‘Now, you will tell me who you are working for, and why you have stolen this timepiece from Lord Wichcote.’

She answered with another question. ‘What is your name?’

‘Give me yours, and perhaps I will tell you.’

‘You know my name.’

‘Grimalkin? That is but an alias. I mean your true name.’

She glared at him defiantly.

He shrugged. ‘No matter. I am more interested in hearing the name of your masters.’

‘I know your masters,’ she replied. ‘You are of the Worshipful Company. There is the stink of the regulator about you.’

‘The existence of the Worshipful Company is no secret,’ he said, ‘but few indeed are those who know of the regulators, and common thieves are not of that number.’

‘There is nothing common about me,’ she declared, eyes flashing with a trace of their former fire.

In that, he was forced to agree, though he was not about to admit it to her. ‘Come now,’ he said instead. ‘I watched you enter Lord Wichcote’s attic through the skylight and leave the same way, bearing your prize. Those are the actions of a thief.’

‘A thief steals the property of others. I take what belongs to me, wherever I chance to find it.’

‘Chance?’ He laughed. ‘I suppose you will tell me next that you were simply out for a moonlight stroll across the rooftops of London and happened to fall through Lord Wichcote’s open skylight!’

She glowered but said nothing in reply.

Keeping the pistol trained upon her, he lifted the clock from the rooftop with his free hand. ‘So, you maintain that this clock is your property. That Lord Wichcote stole it from you, and you were but retrieving it.’

‘Careful,’ she cautioned, and it seemed to him that there was more than just concern for a rare and valuable timepiece in the tone of her voice.

‘It seems an ordinary clock to me.’

‘It is no more ordinary than I am.’

‘Indeed? I am glad to hear it. I should hate to think I have engaged in this merry chase for nothing.’

‘You are a fool.’

He felt the blood rush to his face. ‘At least I am no traitor, madam. You would betray your country, and your king.’

‘There is more to the world than England. If my allegiance lies elsewhere, that does not make me a traitor.’

‘No matter. Whatever you are, my masters will ferret out your secrets. Just as they will the secrets of this timepiece.’

‘I do not think so.’ Suddenly the woman was free, her hands no longer bound behind her; they were pointing at him, and they were not empty, either, but held a brace of small pistols. He had seen only a grey blur. He cursed, realizing too late that she hadn’t been cowering at all but somehow cutting herself free of the ropes he had lashed about her wrists. Or, no … not cutting herself free, but instead being freed by the sharp teeth of a small grey mouse that he now saw scamper up her sleeve and disappear into the folds of her cloak.

Though he could scarcely believe his eyes, he forced himself to show no surprise. ‘Your little pet is resourceful,’ he said.

‘Henrietta is no pet but a friend and companion. And now’ – she gave him a mocking smile – ‘hand over the clock, and I will spare your life.’

He shook his head. ‘Lay down your pistols, and I shall spare yours.’

‘Why do you not fire?’ she demanded. ‘Are you a coward?’

Truthfully, he did not think he could beat her to the trigger. She was that fast. He would have to find another way. ‘You have not fired, either,’ he observed. ‘It would appear we are at an impasse.’

For a moment, they faced off in silence. Then the woman groaned with frustration. ‘Damn you, sir, for a dunce! Why will you not ask your third question?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Your third question, man! Until you ask it, I am bound to do you no harm, unless you should first attempt to harm me. If you would but try to shoot, or if you would but ask – yet you do neither, as if you somehow know our ways!’

He blinked, taken aback by the return of the madwoman of moments before. Mad, yes, but could he not use that to his advantage? ‘Perhaps I am not such a dunce after all, madam. And perhaps I know more of your ways than you think.’

She regarded him with something like horror. ‘No. That is not possible.’

‘And yet, as you say, I have not posed my third question.’ Until she’d spoken of it, he’d had no idea that he hadn’t asked her a third question; indeed, even now he could not have sworn to it with certainty. Yet she obviously believed it, and, with the capricious logic of the mad, attached a dire significance to the omission. Thus Quare resolved to continue as he had started – though he soon discovered that it was more difficult to avoid asking a question than he would have imagined, even knowing that his mission, and likely his life, hung in the balance. What ignorance had allowed him to accomplish with thoughtless ease took all his concentration to continue now that his mind was fixed upon it. ‘Nor shall I pose it,’ he added. ‘No, nor attack you, either, though I will not hesitate to defend myself. I have the clock, after all, and I reckon that my masters and I may pose it as many questions as we like without fear of retribution.’

‘You could not be more wrong.’

He couldn’t help chuckling at such arrant lunacy. ‘Why, you speak as if I held a weapon rather than a timepiece!’

‘That is precisely what you hold. A weapon so dangerous, so deadly, that it cannot be allowed to fall into careless hands. That is why I was sent to retrieve it from that supercilious bumbler, Lord Wichcote. And why you must return it to me now. Believe me, it is for your own sake. For the sake of all mankind.’