Paul Witcover - The Emperor of all Things

‘Well?’ asked Master Magnus.

The others looked on with mystified expressions.

He was being tested; that much was clear. But as to the purpose of the test, let alone its consequences, he had no idea. ‘It is very plain,’ he said, weighing his words with care. ‘But it seems well made for all that. I would need to open it up before I could venture anything more.’

‘Then do so,’ the master said, inclining his head.

Quare always carried a small tool kit with him; in a moment, he had prised the back of the pocket watch open. The inner workings of the timepiece did not match the drabness of its outer appearance. There were a number of small but significant innovations to the mechanisms that powered and regulated the watch. This in itself was unexpected; he knew very well – what apprentice did not? – that the Worshipful Company took a dim view of innovation, confiscating or destroying outright any timepieces that departed from what had been officially sanctioned. So it came as a surprise to have such a watch handed to him by no less an authority of the guild than Master Magnus. Surprise turned into something approaching shock a moment later when he recognized the innovations as his own. For some time now, Quare had been keeping a notebook that he filled with sketches of improvements to the mechanisms he worked upon each and every day in Master Halsted’s shop. But he had not yet found the courage to actually translate one of his sketches into reality. Nor had he shown the notebook to anyone. Yet here was a watch that incorporated not one but a good half-dozen of his ideas. It seemed impossible.

‘I ask again,’ said Master Magnus. ‘Do you recognize anything about this watch?’

Quare glanced up, surveying the faces that were regarding him in turn. With his eyes hidden behind his dark spectacles, Master Magnus’s expression was inscrutable. Grimsby’s mouth had fallen open again. Mrs Halsted’s blue eyes shone with a tender concern he blushed to see: the look of a fond mistress. Halsted looked away, his cheeks flaming, and Quare wondered if the man suspected what his wife and his apprentice got up to when he was away.

‘Well?’ Master Magnus prompted.

Quare swallowed, mouth gone dry. He felt as if he’d been manoeuvred into a trap. Just a moment ago, Master Magnus had spoken of reports he’d received from Master Halsted; he realized now that those reports must have contained copies of his sketches. He felt a sharp sense of betrayal – ridiculous, as he had betrayed his master’s trust in a more tangible fashion: but feelings are not reasonable things, and he felt what he felt regardless. Apprehension, too, crept along his veins, for he did not doubt that his sketches alone could result in a stiff sanction from the guild, if not outright expulsion. And then where would he go, with no family and no trade? Yet despite this, one other feeling surged through him, stronger than the others.

Pride.

Though he had not cut and filed the parts of this watch with his own hands, nevertheless they were realizations of his designs. Something that had existed only on the page and in his mind had been made real and tangible. And, at least as far as he could tell from such a cursory examination, the mechanisms worked as he had anticipated. How could he deny this thing he had created? To do so would be to deny himself.

‘I didn’t make this watch,’ he said, ‘but I suppose you could say that I designed it.’

‘Daniel, I—’ Halsted began, but Master Magnus, lifting a hand, overrode him.

‘So, you admit that the watch is based on your designs?’

‘Yes.’

‘By keeping those designs to yourself and not showing them to your master, so that he, in turn, could forward them to me for review, you have failed in your obligations as an apprentice of this guild. Do you dispute that?’

‘No. I don’t dispute it.’

‘Very well.’ Master Magnus nodded in satisfaction … or so it seemed to Quare. ‘I will tell you, sir, that the small improvements you have made were known to us already. This watch was not crafted to your specifications. I made it myself when I was a mere apprentice, more years ago than I care to admit. Nor is it the only such example in our archives. So you see, you are not as clever as you may think, Mr Quare – not by a long shot. You are not the first to have had these insights. Others have been here before you. Still, I won’t deny that you have talent.’

As soon as he had registered what the master was telling him, Quare had turned all his attention back to the watch. And indeed, now that he looked more closely, he could see that the various parts of the watch that reflected his sketches did not do so with the fidelity he had at first thought to find there. In some cases, it seemed to him that his design was the more elegant; in others he saw that, on the contrary, he had not found the best solution. But the truth was plain: the sketches he had struggled over in solitude, the innovations he had dreamed would revolutionize horology and win him acclaim and riches, were no more than instances of reinventing the wheel. Yet though he was disappointed, he was not as crushed as he might have imagined; instead, it was as if an unexpected vista had opened out before him. Who could say what wonders were to be found there? He seemed to see them in the distance, glittering like the gold-leafed spires and towers of a fabulous city: a city built entirely of clocks. At the same time, he feared that he would be denied entrance to that city, permitted only to glimpse its wonders from afar. He looked up at Master Magnus. ‘I assume I am to be punished?’

‘Oh, indeed,’ said the master. ‘Most dreadfully punished. To begin with, you may consider your apprenticeship with Master Halsted over.’

Again Master Halsted began to speak. Again Master Magnus silenced him with a gesture. No one else said a word.

So that was it, then. It was to be expulsion. Now, indeed, Quare felt crushed, the very breath squeezed out of him.

‘You will be coming back to London with me,’ Master Magnus continued. ‘You will continue your apprenticeship there, at the guild hall, under my supervision.’

‘I … what?’

‘Go and get your things ready, Mr Quare. We leave within the hour.’ He turned towards the others as a dazed Quare rose to his feet. ‘Mr Grimsby, your presence is no longer required. Perhaps you can assist Mr Quare in packing.’ Grimsby nodded, looking as dazed as Quare, and stood.

As Quare left the room, Grimsby trailing behind him, he heard Master Magnus’s voice: ‘If I might trouble you for another cup of tea, Mrs Halsted, your husband and I will work out the transfer of Mr Quare’s indenture.’

In the workroom, he hurriedly packed his things as Grimsby pestered him with questions he scarcely heard and in any case could not answer. His life had been turned upside down in an instant, and his thoughts, divided between what he was leaving behind and what awaited him in London, had no purchase on the present. In what seemed the blink of an eye, he was shaking Mr Halsted’s hand as his master – former master! – stammered out an awkward goodbye, then embracing a tearful Mrs Halsted, who pressed him to her ample bosom with more-than-maternal zeal, or so it seemed to Quare, though no one else appeared to find the embrace remarkable. Nor were his own eyes empty of tears; he was, after all, leaving the closest approximation to a family that he had ever known.

Then he was seated across from Master Magnus in a jolting carriage that bore the arms of the Worshipful Company – a great golden clock showing the hour of twelve, surmounted by a crown and cross, itself surmounted by a plumed silver helmet, which was in turn topped by a banded sphere of gold; the whole supported on one side by the figure of Father Time with his scythe and hourglass, and on the other by a monarch with a golden sceptre, and beneath it all, as if inscribed on a flowing scroll, the words of the guild’s motto: Tempus Rerum Imperator . Time, Emperor of All Things.