Paul Witcover - The Emperor of all Things

Quare, picking up a candle along the way, trod a careful path across the room to the shelves, still favouring his wounded leg, and let his eyes rove over the books assembled there. They were not organized by title, author, date of publication, or any other discernible bibliographical system; they weren’t even all upright, with spines facing outward for ease of inspection, but jammed higgledy-piggledy wherever there was space, like fieldstones in a wall. It bothered Quare to see books treated like stones; there were treasures in the library of the Worshipful Company that could be found nowhere else in the world, ancient horological texts long forgotten or believed irretrievably lost, as well as more recent publications and private correspondence by some of the greatest minds of Europe, the Orient, and the New World. Master Magnus respected knowledge, indeed had an insatiable appetite for it, but he was less than scrupulous about books, like a connoisseur of wine who cared nothing for the bottles it came in. Why, there, wedged into a space that would not have easily admitted a volume half its size, was the Horologium Oscillatorium of Huyghens! Quare reached for it.

‘I have always maintained, if one wishes to discover the true character of a man, it is but necessary to set him loose in a library and let him think himself unobserved.’

Quare turned towards the voice, a smile on his lips. ‘Your pardon, Master Magnus. I did not see you.’

‘Few do,’ came the reply, ‘unless I wish to be seen.’

Across the room, beside the desk, a vigorous-looking elderly man as slender and hooked as a sickle stood hunched over a pair of stout black walking sticks. The pronounced curvature of his spine forced him to look up at Quare, although if he could have stood unbowed he would have been Quare’s equal in height. His dark breeches were finely tailored but could not disguise how twisted were the legs within, and from the cut of his blocky shoes it seemed more likely that they contained pig’s trotters than human feet. He had a pronounced humpback, a nose that echoed his posture in miniature, and a wild if thinning mane of white hair that framed his craggy face as if the area around his head were subject to violent crosswinds. A pair of round, dark-tinged spectacles reflected the flames of the candles scattered about the room, giving Quare the disconcerting impression of being stared at by a creature with eyes of fire. Little wonder that fearful, malicious apprentices had bestowed the nickname Master Mephistopheles upon him. Twining in and out of the space between his legs and the two sticks were a number of cats that, like the man, seemed to have materialized out of thin air. The notion that this person could make himself inconspicuous or unseen would have been laughable were it not for the fact that Quare had ample evidence of its truth.

‘The moving closet, master,’ he burst out, navigating his way past piled books and manuscripts on which certain of the cats – there seemed to be more of the animals by the second – had taken up residence; some ignored him, others regarded him through slitted eyes with something like contempt, a few hissed at his passage. ‘Is it your invention? How does it work?’

Master Theophilus Magnus bared white teeth in the feral grimace that served him for a smile. Those teeth were the only uncrooked thing about him. ‘You like that, eh? Just a little something I threw together. Employs the same principle as the gravity escapement. Saves me the trouble of climbing stairs. I call it the “stair-master”.’

‘Ingenious,’ said Quare.

Master Magnus tossed his head dismissively. ‘A curiosity, nothing more. Of use only to cripples like me.’

‘What is the name of the man who operated it?’

‘Ha ha! Did the rascal give you a scare? Ruffled your dignity, did he? I’ll speak to the fellow, never fear. Now, my boy, take a seat and tell me how things went with Sir Thaddeus. Don’t worry – here of all places, in the very bowels of the guild hall, you may speak freely. This is my domain.’

Quare could not find a chair that wasn’t covered with books or cats, or both, so remained standing. ‘As well – that is to say as badly – as one could have hoped. I am suspended from the Most Secret and Exalted Order of Regulators.’

‘Capital,’ said Master Magnus, flashing his bright grimace again. ‘The Old Wolf took the bait, eh?’

‘I begged him to reconsider, but he refused.’

‘Of course he did. Predictable as a pendulum. And the clock? Any suspicions there?’

‘Not that I could see. He identified the improvement to the escapement and dismissed it out of hand, just as you said he would. But I confess, I don’t understand the need for this obfuscation.’

‘It is obedience that I require from you, Mr Quare, not understanding,’ Master Magnus replied.

‘But surely you don’t suspect the Old Wolf of treason!’

‘I suspect everyone, yourself included. That is the task appointed to me by Mr Pitt and His Majesty. Your task is to follow my orders without tedious questions and objections. And I must say, my boy, you did well with Sir Thaddeus. Very well indeed. Should your horological talents ever desert you, I advise you to take up the stage.’ Raising one stick in a swordsman’s flourish, he repeated: ‘Now, sit, sir – take the weight off that leg of yours.’

As Quare sank dejectedly into the nearest chair, a calico cat leapt clear with a yowl. ‘If I were on the stage, at least my efforts would be applauded.’

‘Have I not applauded them? You must be satisfied with an audience of one, my boy. Such is a regulator’s lot.’

‘But thanks to you, I am no longer a regulator.’

‘Pishposh. Regardless of what Sir Thaddeus and the rest of the Order may believe, you are a regulator until I say otherwise.’

‘That is small consolation, sir, for the public humiliation. News travels fast within these walls – and beyond them. Soon all of London will think me disgraced.’

‘Hardly all. All of London does not know of our Most Secret Order’s existence. Even the masters of the Worshipful Company know little enough of our business, and the majority of journeymen still less. We are a subject of rumour and speculation, not knowledge. But perhaps you deserve a little disgrace, sir. You let a rare opportunity slip. That grey-clad popinjay has robbed us of too many prizes.’

‘But—’

‘You had Grimalkin at your mercy,’ Master Magnus interrupted sternly. ‘With only the moon as witness. Sir Thaddeus may be wrong about any number of things when it comes to the management of this guild, but he is right to be angry when a regulator fails in the clear requirements of his duty.’

‘Master, as I told you when I placed the clock into your hands last night, I was concerned about my wound and feared the rogue’s blade was poisoned. There was no time to question or dispatch him.’

‘I know you, Mr Quare. I trained you. You are no milksop to flinch from what needs doing. So do not think to pull the wool over these eyes. There is more to your rooftop encounter with Grimalkin than you have divulged to me. I knew it at once, as soon as you began to spin your preposterous tale, but I decided to wait until this morning, after your interview with Sir Thaddeus, to prise the truth out of you. I knew it would be easier for you to play your part with the Old Wolf if you believed your story had taken me in. So I pretended to believe that poppycock about a poisoned blade, and I pretended to be relieved when my surgeon determined the wound was not poisoned after all. That you should attempt to deceive me was surprising, I confess – but I had other priorities than ferreting out the truth just then. Namely, the clock you had placed into my hands, the secrets of which could not be trusted to anyone else but me, not even Sir Thaddeus. That is why I rehearsed you in a tale more preposterous still, a tale of gross ineptitude conducted under the flag of honour, a tale apt to be so infuriating to a man of Sir Thaddeus’s saturnine temperament that he would overlook any inconsistencies in the timepiece before him and focus instead on the inadequacies of the man who had recovered it.’