The Emperor of all Things

by Paul Witcover

  Quare had seen Master Magnus lose his temper, but never his self-control. Yet here he was, the legendary Master Mephistopheles, he of the iron will and clockwork heart, confessing a petty litany of secret hurts and thwarted ambitions such as might be found smouldering in the breast of any disgruntled apprentice set to scrubbing floors. It was a breach of decorum every bit as shocking as the baring of his hump would have been.

  ‘But here is one thing he will not steal,’ the master continued. He drew the still-disassembled watch from his pocket and brandished it triumphantly; the silvery movement winked between his fingers, looking more like metal than any kind of bone with which Quare was familiar. ‘With this, I will pull the teeth from the Old Wolf and— God in heaven!’

  A spitting and hissing ball of blue-grey fury had replaced the cat purring placidly in his lap. Master Magnus stared goggle-eyed at the animal, the watch raised level with his ear.

  ‘Do you see, Quare?’ demanded the master. All peevishness had vanished from his voice, replaced by boyish enthusiasm. ‘As with Calpurnia a moment ago, her instincts tell her plainly what our vaunted intellects strain uselessly to comprehend! If only you could speak, Marissa!’ He brought the watch closer to the cat, intent on her reaction. ‘If only you c—’

  He broke off with a curse as claws raked the back of his hand. Blood flew, and so did both cat and watch, the latter sailing high in the air behind the master, the former leaping after it as though it were a bird. Still cursing, Master Magnus groped for his walking sticks but succeeded only in pushing them out of reach, and, for good measure, knocking the bottle of port off the table. Quare, meanwhile, remained rooted in place, watching the timepiece as it tumbled through the air, the movement no longer silver but red: a baleful crimson eye.

  ‘Get it, you fool!’ cried the master.

  The room was in an uproar. Earlier, Calpurnia’s distress had infected the other cats. Now the rage of Marissa transmitted itself, and when the watch fell to the floor in the centre of the room, bouncing twice on the thick carpet, what seemed a single furry mass of teeth and claws fell upon it with a ferocity that curdled Quare’s blood.

  ‘Mr Quare!’ the master half shrieked, having turned himself within the prison of his chair to gaze in horror at the frenzied swarm.

  The anguished voice pierced the caterwauling, jolting Quare out of his daze. He did not relish the idea of wading into that angry mob, but neither, he discovered, could he allow such a marvellous timepiece to come to harm. He sprang from his chair.

  A flicker of darkness. It was as though all the candles in the room had gone out at once, then rekindled. Or a great black wing had passed before his eyes. Had he fainted again? But no: he was still on his feet, the cats still …

  He stopped short. His heart throbbed in his chest, as if he had run for miles across the rooftops of London and not merely taken a few quick steps across the floor of the study.

  The cats …

  In the stillness and silence of the room, the drawn-out howl that issued from the mouth of Master Magnus seemed all the more terrible. It was like the sound of a hinge creaking as a door was forced open that had been rusted shut for centuries.

  Quare stepped wonderingly into the midst of them. They lay motionless in concentric circles radiating out from a point of pale silver that seemed to shine with a light of its own. The outermost rings were sparsely populated, giving Quare room to walk, if he placed his feet with care, but the inner rings were so packed with bodies that he knew he would have to clear a path if he wished to reach the centre. There must have been close to fifty, perhaps even more.

  ‘Quare, are they … are they all …’

  ‘It would seem so.’ He felt giddy, as if he might break into laughter, although in fact he had never been so frightened in his life. Yet he couldn’t turn away. Something held him, a sense of being implicated in what had taken place, not simply as a witness to it – or rather to its aftermath, for whatever had been unleashed here had done its work in darkness , in the blink of an eye – but as a participant, however unwilling or unaware. Perhaps it was that he had been spared. He and the master both. As if, because the watch had drunk their blood, they were connected to it now. Part of it somehow. And therefore complicitous in its actions – for despite how little he understood of what had happened, he had no doubt that the watch had lashed out in self-defence, like a living thing.

  The words of Grimalkin came back to him: ‘This clock will not yield up its secrets to such as you – no, nor to your masters, not even the greatest of them. Believe me, rather than answer your questions, it will punish you for asking them – and it will be a punishment that strikes the guilty and the innocent alike.’

  He shuddered, wondering if the effect was limited to this room or extended beyond it, into the rest of the guild hall, the city, the world. If Master Magnus should blow on his whistle now, who would answer the summons? Was there anyone left to answer?

  From behind him came the sounds of ragged sobbing, and it seemed to Quare that the master was grieving a loss greater than his precious cats. But he didn’t want to learn the truth of it. Didn’t want to witness the master’s mourning or even acknowledge it. Instead, he picked his way among the outliers, stooping here and there as he went, looking for some sign of what had killed them, as if that were the only question that mattered. But he could find no evidence of injury: bodies unmarked, unbloodied, limbs whole and positioned with the regal insouciance common to sleeping cats, so that he found it difficult to remember at times that they were not sleeping.

  When Master Magnus next spoke, his voice was raw. ‘And the watch?’

  ‘I-it appears to be undamaged, Master. But I need to clear a path—’

  ‘You shall not touch them!’

  This was no voice he knew. Quare turned at the shrill and fearful cry, nearly crying out himself at the sight that greeted him. The master seemed to have aged ten years or more.

  The horror that came over him then was so much greater than what he’d felt before as to deserve another name. He told himself that the watch was responsible, that it had killed the cats by aging them, and that Master Magnus – and, no doubt, himself as well – had been similarly aged. But then he realized that it was an illusion, a trick of candlelight and the naked play of emotions across the master’s tearful face. He had not grown older; rather, a customary mask had fallen away, a mask of iron self-control that disguised his true age, made him seem not younger, exactly, but ageless. Now that mask was gone, and Quare beheld a face that Master Magnus himself might not have recognized had he chanced to see it in a mirror: the ravaged face of a man whose greatest solace has been ripped from him. But the understanding of what he was seeing came as no relief to Quare. Nor did the swift return of the mask.

  ‘Forgive me, Mr Quare.’ The master’s voice was as it always had been … only more so. It made Quare shudder to hear it.

  ‘Of course, Master,’ he somehow managed to bring himself to say.

  ‘You are quite correct. It is the watch that matters. Clear your path and bring it to me.’

  Quare hesitated. He had no desire to touch the cats, and even less, if possible, to touch the watch. ‘Perhaps the servants …?’

  ‘No,’ the master said in a tone that brooked no argument. ‘There will be talk enough among the servants as it is. But the existence of the watch must remain our secret. At least for now, until we can understand better what has happened, and how. Move the cats aside. But do it gently, sir, I beg you. As gently as ever you can.’

  ‘Care for some company?’

  Startled out of his reverie, Quare looked up to see a woman standing beside the table and smiling down at him, her eyes hooded by a ruffled blue bonnet but the rest of her face garishly painted, so that it was impossible to tell what her true features, or even her age, might be. ‘Sorry, love,’ he answered. ‘Not in the mood tonight.’

  Like many such establishments, the Pig and Rooster had its share of prostitutes who either worked out
right for the business or kicked back a share of their earnings in exchange for the right to troll the premises.

  Rather than accepting the rebuff, the woman seated herself.

  ‘See here—’ Quare began.

  She interrupted: ‘I believe you have mistaken me, sir.’

  Quare knew that voice. Those dark eyes newly revealed in the light of the candle. ‘Grimalkin,’ he whispered.

  With infuriating insouciance, she lifted his mug of ale, saluted him, and sipped from it. ‘I promised we would meet again.’

  ‘You are a fool to come here.’ He made to rise, then stopped as the point of a sword pricked his belly. He felt the blood drain from his face. The minx had drawn on him under the table.

  ‘Do not prove yourself a bigger fool. Sit down, Mr Quare.’

  He settled back in the chair. ‘How do you know my name?’

  The sword point did not retreat an inch, even as she took another sip of ale. ‘I have many resources at my disposal,’ she said with a smile made grotesque by the red paint smeared over her lips. When she lowered the mug to the table, a grey mouse darted from her sleeve, ran across the table top to his plate, and nibbled at his steak and kidney pie.

  ‘Look here!’ he exclaimed, and would have shot to his feet had not the tip of the sword impressed upon him the wisdom of remaining seated. ‘Can you not control that infernal rodent?’

  ‘Come, Henrietta,’ she called, and the mouse, after standing upon its hind legs to observe him, pink nose twitching, scampered back up her sleeve like a witch’s familiar.

  ‘Why do you carry that vermin upon your person?’

  ‘You have seen yourself how useful she can be,’ Grimalkin replied. ‘Now, sir: to business.’

  ‘I do not see what business you can possibly have with me, or I with you.’

  ‘Can you not? Have you forgotten that we are linked, you and I? Blood calls to blood, Mr Quare.’

  ‘Blood …’ He could not suppress a shudder. ‘Has this aught to do with that cursed timepiece?’

  ‘Cursed, is it? You were singing a different tune last night.’

  ‘I have since had the opportunity to examine its workings more … intimately.’ His finger throbbed at the memory.

  ‘Then you understand the danger.’

  ‘I understand nothing whatsoever! How it works, or how such a thing could even exist. ’Tis unnatural, an affront to God and science alike.’

  ‘That’s as may be. Yet it does exist.’

  ‘What do you know of it?’ he asked. ‘Who made it, and why?’

  ‘None of that matters now,’ she said. ‘I have come to ask your help – to beg it, rather.’

  ‘Beg, is it? At swordpoint? I believe the proper word is threaten.’

  She winced at that, and, beneath the table, he felt the blade withdraw. ‘Your pardon. We must trust each other, you and I.’

  ‘You have given me no reason to trust you.’

  ‘I have not killed you. Is that not reason enough?’

  ‘You said yourself there were other reasons for that – reasons that have remained as cloaked in mystery as everything else about you. You wish my trust? Then speak plainly.’

  ‘Very well. Bring me the watch, Mr Quare. I would steal it back myself, but I dare not enter your guild hall. It is not safe for such as I.’

  ‘What, for a thief, you mean?’

  ‘If you like. Will you help me?’

  ‘I did not give you the watch last night, madam, when I knew nothing of its true nature. Now, having experienced the horror of it for myself, I am even less inclined to do so. I know nothing of who you are, really, or of why you want the watch. I only know that it is too dangerous to fall into the wrong hands.’

  ‘Where that watch is concerned, there are no right hands,’ she said.

  ‘Right or wrong, I should prefer it remain in English hands.’

  She frowned; for an instant he thought to feel himself pierced by her blade. But then she sighed, and her shoulders slumped. ‘I was a fool after all. To come here and expect your help. Why should you help me when you understand nothing of what is at stake?’

  ‘Enlighten me, then. After all, we are bound, are we not? Blood to blood?’

  Her eyes flashed. ‘You would not joke if you understood what that meant. It is the watch that binds us, for it has drunk of our blood.’

  ‘You speak as if it were alive.’

  ‘It contains life and death, yet is beyond both.’

  ‘More obfuscation. I begin to wonder—’

  A shout interrupted him. ‘Quare! Ho, Quare, old son!’

  Quare turned his head and squinted through the drifting smoke towards the front of the Pig and Rooster, where four men had just entered. He recognized three of them as friends and fellow journeymen. The quartet made for him at once, calling loudly for ale.

  Grimacing at the interruption, Quare turned back to Grimalkin. She was gone. He shot to his feet, searching for the blue bonnet, but there was no sign of it, or of her, amidst the patrons of the Pig and Rooster. Once again, it was as if she had vanished into thin air.

  He was still standing, mouth agape, when the new arrivals reached him: Francis Farthingale, a handsome, dark-haired giant who claimed to be the illegitimate son of a European monarch – which monarch, he was never prepared to say, but his insistence upon this circumstance, plus the fact that he received a regular sum of money from a mysterious source, had earned him the nickname Prince Farthing; fat Henry Mansfield, whose round, smallpox-ravaged face always wore a baffled smile, as if the world were a perpetual wonderment to him; and Gerald Pickens, the youngest son of a master clockmaker in far-away Boston in the Colonies, who had a comfortable allowance from his father but no hope of inheriting the prosperous family shop, which would go to his elder brother. The fourth man, a slender, red-haired youth, Quare did not know.

  ‘You look as though you have seen a ghost,’ said Mansfield, clapping Quare on the back. He pulled out a chair and sat down, as did the others.

  Quare sank back into his own chair. Not a ghost, he thought, yet was there not something ghostlike about Grimalkin? She was as uncanny in her way as the timepiece she sought. And as dangerous.

  Mansfield reached for the steak and kidney pie. ‘I say, Quaresy, are you going to finish this?’

  Before Quare could reply, Farthingale interjected with a laugh: ‘Speaking of ghosts, did you hear about Master Mephistopheles? It seems the old boy poisoned his pussycats!’

  Quare bristled. ‘You shouldn’t be spreading lies, Farthingale.’

  ‘It’s true,’ the dark-haired youth protested indignantly, looking to his fellows for support. ‘I had it from one of the servants, who saw it with his own eyes. A whole roomful of dead cats! And the master right there in the midst of them, cool as you please, picking out corpses for dissection as if choosing melons at the market!’

  Mansfield spoke around a mouthful of steak and kidney pie, his lips glistening with grease. ‘His children, he liked to call ’em, remember? Some father, eh?’ He licked his fingers as fastidiously as any cat cleaning itself.

  ‘It’s as close to paternity as he’s ever likely to come,’ laughed Farthingale. ‘Even if he could pay a woman enough to lie with him, what’s between his legs is probably just as shrivelled and useless as they are!’

  ‘For God’s sake, Farthingale,’ said Mansfield. ‘Some of us are trying to eat!’

  ‘Even if it were true,’ Quare said tight-lipped, ignoring the sniggers provoked by Mansfield’s remark, ‘it must have been an accident.’ He wanted to say more, but the master had sworn him to silence. And even if he had not been so sworn, he knew that he could not unburden himself of what he had seen and experienced, not to this audience or any other. Men of reason would dismiss him as a lunatic, while the religious would see proof of witchery. Nor was he by any means certain that witchery had not been involved. Or lunacy, for that matter.

  He doubted that he would ever forget those fraught, disjointed momen
ts, the dark flash of the event itself, and, in some ways worse, the dreadful aftermath: how he’d cleared a path through the cats, gingerly lifting the limp, still-warm bodies and moving them aside, and then, more gingerly still, as if reaching for an infernal device primed to explode, picked up the watch … or tried to, for the timepiece, which was glowing with an unnatural white light, like a scale of moonstuff fallen to earth, had burned his fingers, though with cold rather than fire, forcing him to fetch a pair of iron tongs from the fireplace in order to ferry it back to the worktable.

  There a shaken Master Magnus had confessed himself unable to go on. He’d instructed Quare to come back in the morning, when, the master promised, he would answer his questions as best he could and give him a new assignment: a confidential brief that would make up for the sting of his suspension from the Most Secret and Exalted Order.

  Now, surrounded by his high-spirited fellows, Quare was sensible of a gulf between them – a gulf of knowledge and experience. Of terror. He looked at their lively, animated faces with a pang of loss, and of envy.

  ‘Accident or not,’ Mansfield said meanwhile, ‘what’s he doing with poison anyhow? Is the man a clockmaker or an apothecary, eh?’ He helped himself to Quare’s mug of ale.

  Gerald Pickens spoke up for the first time. ‘Why, he’s both, Henry. And a bit of an alchemist into the bargain. After all, he is in charge of the Most Secret and Exalted Order. Oh, don’t fret, Daniel,’ he added, noting Quare’s sharp, admonitory glance towards the fourth member of the quartet, the slight, red-headed stranger, who had been following the conversation with glittering blue eyes and a ready if rather brittle laugh, ‘I’m not spilling any secrets. Aylesford here is a fellow journeyman, newly arrived from … from … what was the name of your village, Tom?’

  Aylesford, who appeared to be still in his teens, his cheeks smooth as a maid’s, blushed scarlet in what Quare took for shyness … until he spoke. ‘Rannaknok,’ he declared rather too loudly, in an assertive tone and a rough Scots accent, as if daring anyone to dispute him. ‘’Tis a town on the Meggerny River, in Perth.’