Paul Witcover - The Emperor of all Things

No, he would say nothing of that, either. He would hand over the clock and leave the rest to Master Magnus. Yet he would have to mention Grimalkin; Lord Wichcote was the sort of man who would take a perverse pride in having been robbed by the notorious Grimalkin, and he would no more be able to resist boasting of his attic encounter than he had of possessing the clock that had occasioned it. The news would no doubt spread quickly, reaching the ears of Master Magnus in short order. So he must confess that much, at least. And, too, there was his wounded leg to explain. It occurred to him that the latter might serve as an excuse for his failure to kill or capture Grimalkin.

Thus it was that by the time he returned to the guild hall, Quare had concocted the story, a blend of truth, lies, and omissions, that he had related to Master Magnus while suffering the none-too-gentle ministrations of the man’s surgeon. And thus it was that he had found himself caught in the strands of his own web – or, rather, swept up in the larger web of Master Magnus, who, after seeing his wound treated, had ensnared him in a further fabrication, this one directed at no less a target than Grandmaster Wolfe himself. As Quare took a carriage home in the early morning hours, a luxury provided by Master Magnus, he’d cursed the luck that had caused this night’s mission to fall into his lap; the result of his success had not been the praise and advancement he deserved but an injured leg and recruitment into a power struggle between two giants who could crush him as thoughtlessly as he might crush a fly.

He had sought to make his own way in the Worshipful Company, beholden to no faction but to his talents only; no doubt he had been naïve. But that was finished now. Or would be, once he was called before the Old Wolf to give his report, a summons that Master Magnus had advised him to expect by the afternoon at the latest. Then he would relate the fabrication he had been rehearsed in and suffer the consequences of it – disgrace, suspension, perhaps outright expulsion – all in the service of a scheme whose purpose was as obscure to him as were the plans of the Almighty. Yet as he lay back on the cushions of the carriage seat, it was not the base machinations of guild politics that whirled feverishly through his brain but instead the features of the woman he had discovered behind Grimalkin’s mask.

Those exotic features were still present in his mind, or at the back of his mind, seeming, as it were, to gaze down over his shoulder as he examined the hunter that Master Magnus had placed into his hands. The woman’s dire warnings echoed in his memory. They seemed crazier than ever now that their object had been revealed to be a pocket watch barely thicker than his dagger’s blade; yet though he could not credit her warnings, neither could he dismiss them, any more than he could dismiss the memory of the woman herself: her vernal voice, the quickness of her wit and of her movements, the sense that there had been, and perhaps still was, a connection between them, one that went deeper than words unsaid, questions unasked, and ancient compacts born of a moonstruck fancy: a bond brought into being by the shedding and , as she had put it, the mingling of blood, as though what had passed between them on that rooftop had been some kind of ceremony and not a shabby paroxysm of violence that had left her unconscious from a blow to the head and himself run through the leg and lucky to be alive. He wondered if he would ever see her again, and though he felt no certainty that he would survive a second encounter, he found that he desired it almost as much as he desired to possess the secret of the timepiece he had taken from her.

Now, after clearing a work space on the cluttered table, he set loupe and hunter down and pulled from an interior pocket of his waistcoat a well-worn leather-bound wallet tied shut with a length of dark ribbon. This he untied, placed on the table to one side, and flicked open with practised ease. Laid out within was a tidy assortment of files, calipers, pliers, tweezers, wires, springs, small glass vials containing various chemicals, a watchmaker’s hammer, an equally diminutive screwdriver, and other items needful for the interrogation and repair of timepieces. He glanced at Master Magnus for permission.

The master inclined his head while continuing to stroke the cat in his lap. ‘Have you enough light?’

Quare nodded; the single candle, while not ideal, would suffice for now. Turning back to the table, he screwed the loupe to his left eye and bent to his work. In one hand he held the watch; in the other, a long, scalpel-like tool he had adapted for horological use from a surgeon’s kit. Many of his most useful tools were based on or even made from surgical implements; the clockmaker and the surgeon, he had found, had much in common. But before he could begin in earnest, a movement to one side startled him, and he stepped back as a small black cat leapt onto the table.

Behind him, Master Magnus laughed. ‘Why, it would appear that Calpurnia wishes to observe your technique!’

The small cat sat regarding him through unblinking green-gold eyes, its tail curled primly about its front paws. It might almost have been a marble statuette, save for the vigorous purring that seemed to emanate from its entire body. ‘That is a very large purr for such a small cat,’ Quare remarked. ‘But if she has any advice, I would welcome it.’

‘Cats do not advise,’ said Master Magnus. ‘They command.’

At present, Calpurnia seemed inclined to do neither. Once, Quare would have found the animal’s presence a distraction, but among the many things he had learned from Master Magnus was a tolerance, even a kind of grudging affection, for cats. The master had an absolute mania for the creatures; he could identify each of his vast menagerie by name, and seemed to prefer their company to that of human beings.

‘They accept me for who I am,’ he had once told Quare. ‘They do not judge by appearances but see past the surface of things. Dogs have no choice but to love us; it is how they are made. Despite their many fine qualities, one cannot help but pity them. A cat, however, bestows its affections where it will. Thus the companionship of a cat is to be more highly valued, for cats are like mirrors in which we may see ourselves as we truly are, not as we appear to others, and still less as we would prefer ourselves to be.’

The cases of most pocket watches were easily removed, opening from the back, but in this, too, the watch at hand proved an exception to the rule: the case was all of a piece. The crystal came away without trouble, but once he had laid it upon the inside flap of his tool kit, Quare was baffled. There seemed no way inside. The edge of the dial met the side of the case precisely, and not even the fine, sharp edge of his scalpel could find purchase there. He did not probe too forcibly, however, for fear of scratching the dial.

He straightened with a sigh, replacing the loupe on the table, and rubbed his watering eye as Calpurnia gave a querulous miaow.

‘Giving up so soon?’ Master Magnus echoed rather smugly.

Quare couldn’t help but glare. ‘I suppose you opened it right away, without any trouble.’

‘On the contrary, it took me the better part of an hour.’

‘And you expect me to do it faster? You must have a higher opinion of my abilities than you’ve admitted so far, Master Magnus.’

‘No higher than your own,’ the master replied.

Quare opened his mouth to answer, then thought better of it; he couldn’t decide if he’d just been complimented or insulted. He returned his attention to the watch. It was infuriating but at least would not talk back. Cupping it in one hand, he used the scalpel to push the fancifully shaped hands around the dial, once again experiencing that strange disinclination to focus upon the glyphs painted there; his gaze glided over each one as smoothly as did the hands themselves … which, as he now ascertained, moved with equal facility in a counterclockwise direction. But these idle exercises brought him no nearer to his goal. What was he missing? He ground his teeth in frustration. Again he thought of Grimalkin. He did not doubt for an instant that she would have already prised the watch open somehow. He felt clumsy and stupid, like a thief standing before a locked steel vault deep in the bowels of the Bank of England.