‘The sooner the better,’ he answered, rising from the chair. We shook hands, but he prolonged the clasp, fixing me with his steely gaze. ‘If I find you have betrayed my trust, Herr Gray, and used this opportunity to seduce my daughter, I will kill you. Is that understood?’
‘I am interested in another prize entirely,’ I assured him.
And what’s more, I believed it.
11
A World Newly Born
MY EXPOSURE TO the elements had left me weaker than I realized, and it was some days before I was able to rise from my sickbed and take even a few tottering steps across the room. In that time, Inge and Corinna took turns caring for me like ministering angels indeed. True to my agreement with Herr Doppler, I began to teach Corinna the rudiments of the horologist’s art. At first, as promised, it was with the intent of discouraging her. But it soon became apparent to me that she would not be discouraged. Every task I set her she accomplished with ease. She was a natural. Her mind was quick, her fingers clever and dexterous. The tools she had made for herself – which I had asked Herr Doppler to return to her – were as effective as they were ingenious. In truth, she had already passed beyond the rudiments. More than once, as we bent together over one of the timepieces she had brought to me – the ones that pre-dated Wachter’s arrival – and my own pocket watch, I thought of my own apprenticeship and found myself wondering what Magnus would have made of this prodigy. I think he would have been as scandalized by her sex as he was impressed by her skill.
When I summoned up the courage to tell her of the bargain I had struck with her father, she laughed and replied that she’d guessed as much from the first, and had been waiting to see if I would play her false and try to dampen the fires of her enthusiasm. But, she said, knowing me for an honourable man, she had never doubted my intentions. I felt ashamed at hearing her say so.
I suppose I had already fallen in love with her. Any man would have, for she was beautiful, kind and brave – as well as having more natural ability than any horologist I had ever seen, with the exception of Magnus. Under other circumstances, she might have rivalled Wachter himself. Her grasp of horology, entirely self-taught, was extraordinary, as was her mechanical genius, evidenced not only in the timepieces she had at first dissected, then repaired, and finally improved, but in small automatons she had crafted, cunning little creatures that were nearly as lifelike as Wachter’s creations. I remember in particular a metal mouse that, when wound with a key, would scamper up and down the sides of an old clock like the rodent in the nursery rhyme, or run along her arm like a tame pet.
But did she return my feelings? How could I dare even to hope it? I was her teacher, her friend. But that was as much as I aspired to. The snows had continued to fall, and by now it was clear that I would be stuck in Märchen until the spring thaw. It would have been foolish – not to mention, with Herr Doppler’s threat hanging over me, suicidal – to attempt a seduction.
Nevertheless, Doppler realized soon enough that things were not going according to his plan. I explained to him that Corinna had proved to be more gifted than I had expected, and that it was taking longer than anticipated to discourage her. Rather than disappointing him, the news puffed him up with fatherly pride, and he told me to take as much time as necessary. After all, he said with a laugh, I didn’t have any other pressing engagements.
Corinna broached the subject of ‘borrowing’, as she put it, one of Wachter’s timepieces for me to study, but I told her at once that such a course would be too risky. Instead, I suggested that the two of us collude in making it appear that she had reached the natural limits of her abilities and was at last growing discouraged. By the terms of my agreement with her father, he would then yield up his pocket watch for my examination, and Inge would follow with her cuckoo. I would, of course, share the fruits of my investigations of these timepieces with Corinna. She was willing, but preferred to wait until she had learned more of what I had to teach. I agreed. Herr Doppler was right, after all. I had no pressing engagements, and to be trapped for months in Märchen without the solace of Corinna’s company would have been unbearable. The hour we spent together each day, talking of horology and other things, was like gold to me, an interval of time no clock, not even one of Wachter’s, was fit to measure.
Meanwhile, life went on. As the days and weeks passed, snow continued to fall, until it reached and then overtopped the second-storey window behind my bed. No one had thought to wind my pocket watch as I lay in the grip of fever, and by the time the fever had broken, the watch had long since stopped. Herr Doppler had assured me his own watch was accurate, and Inge insisted the same of her cuckoo, and though it was true that the two timepieces agreed with each other, I found it impossible to fully trust any timepiece built by Wachter. I reset my watch, yet for the rest of my stay in Märchen I felt untethered, cut off from the outside world, as if I had entered a kind of bubble where time was not the dependable constant of my experience but instead something as variable as the wind. It sometimes seemed to me that the only clock I could rely on was the rising and setting of the sun. At other times, even that seemed suspect, for I saw so little of the sun, hidden as it generally was behind a thick scrim of grey cloud or snow. Yet I kept my watch wound, and carried it with me everywhere, not only because I needed some yardstick against which to measure the day, however arbitrary or inaccurate in an absolute sense, but because it made me feel safe, protected. I suppose it had stopped being a timepiece exactly and become a sort of talisman. Perhaps that is all our ingenious watches and clocks really are, when you come right down to it.
I had no more strange dreams, no more terrifying visions. In fact, I stopped dreaming altogether – it was as if I were living a dream, and thus had no need for fantasies. Once I felt strong enough, and had replenished my depleted wardrobe, I resumed the visits that had been cut short by my illness. As before, the townsfolk, though friendly, refused to grant me access to their timepieces. Soon my perambulations had made me familiar with the labyrinthine network of passages that was now the only means by which Märchen could be navigated without snowshoes or the danger of becoming lost and freezing to death. Of course, the passages had their own dangers. Occasionally the weight of the snow would cause a section to collapse, but the townsfolk seemed to have a second sense about such things, for I never heard of any deaths or injuries, and either I came to share their sensitivity or was just lucky, as I, too, escaped harm. In the aftermath, the able-bodied men of the town, led by Adolpheus, would gather to clear and repair the damage, and I joined with them whenever I could, hoping to win their trust more completely, to the point that they would give me what I sought. But though they seemed appreciative of my efforts, standing me drinks at the Hearth and Home, even inviting me into their homes on occasion to share a meal, they remained adamant in their refusals – though they did not seem angry or annoyed at my persistence. In truth, after a week or so I had resigned myself to the idea that only with Corinna’s help would I ever gain access to the secrets that lay within Wachter’s timepieces.
The only place I did not visit once I had recovered sufficiently to leave the Hearth and Home was Wachter’s Folly. The mere thought of it left me trembling with fear, an irrational terror that had seeped into my very bones. You may protest that there was nothing irrational about it. After all, I had nearly died there. I had been struck a blow to the head, stripped of my clothing, and left to freeze to death in the snow. And the man – or woman – responsible was still at large, perhaps awaiting the opportunity to finish what they had started. Yet it was not that which turned my will to quivering jelly but the memory, which haunted my waking hours, of the parade of automatons I had seen: those titanic figures, like forgotten gods from ancient days, that I had witnessed emerging from a space too small to contain them. The whole world seemed too small for them. I could not forget how one of them had reached for me, its hand closing over me as if snuffing out a candle. All it took was the chiming of the bells for those memories to ri
se up and overwhelm me, and for a weight of darkness to descend over my eyes, as if the shadow of that hand was once again engulfing me. And the bells chimed with perverse frequency now, far more often, or so it seemed, than they had previously, as if the clock, no less than I, had been changed by our encounter – as if it sensed my fear and sought to exacerbate it, toying with me like a cat with its prey. Or like a dragon. For I could not forget, any more than I could the giants, the dragon I had seen. I felt its malevolent intent focused upon me like a second sun: a dark sun.
Corinna noticed everything, of course. Though I tried to hide my distress, ashamed to be so unmanned by a mere memory, I was with her too much, and she was far too attentive a pupil, for her to be deceived. Earlier, in my weakness, I had told her what I had seen, though I had not confided in anyone else.
‘Let me accompany you to the Folly,’ she offered at last. ‘Two may face together what one cannot.’
‘I have no desire to visit that clock again,’ I assured her. ‘Nor to see what might emerge from it.’
‘Why, what better way to lay your fears to rest than to see for yourself that what comes out of the clock, however fanciful, is nothing to be afraid of? What you saw – or, rather, thought you saw – was due to the blow you received. How could it be otherwise? Even Wachter, for all his genius, could not create such automatons! No mortal could, but only God Himself. In any case, I don’t believe you when you say you have no desire to go back. You are like me, Michael. We cannot so easily extinguish the curiosity that burns in our hearts, stronger than any fear. You know that I am right.’ She reached across the table to take my hand.
We were in my room, where, with Inge’s blessing, I had set up a small workshop for my daily sessions with Corinna. In the course of those lessons, our fingers had brushed a hundred times, our hands had touched, our eyes had met and exchanged silent understandings – or so I had fancied. Yet we had said nothing of our feelings, and the kiss she had given me, whose warm imprint I could still feel upon my cheek, had not been repeated. But now, as she laid her hand atop mine and looked into my eyes, I felt something shift in me, in us both. In the world itself. That shifting drew us together, until it was not just our hands but our lips that were joined. And our hearts. For I knew at once that this was no dalliance of the sort I had admitted to Herr Doppler. This was much, much more. At that moment, I understood for the first time that there is something greater than time in the world. The motto of our guild refers to time as the emperor of all things. But that is wrong. It is love that is the true emperor, for time is helpless against it, and though love exists within time, so, too, does it transcend it. In my mind, that first embrace we shared, that first kiss, has not ended; it will never end. But that is all I will say of it. To speak of such things is to dishonour them.
Afterwards, we sat side by side, our hands clasped, her head resting on my shoulder, our hearts too full for speech, basking, as it were, in a world newly born. Then, as if it had long been decided, we began to talk of the future, of how, when spring came, and the snows melted, and the paths were clear once again, we two would leave Märchen, embarking on a life together here in London. It all seemed so simple, so obvious. I wished to do the honourable thing and ask Herr Doppler for his daughter’s hand, but Corinna forestalled me.
‘That you must not do!’ she said, gripping my hand, her gaze locked with mine. ‘Far from giving his consent, he would banish you at once … or worse. You must promise me that you will not ask him!’
‘I am not afraid of him,’ I told her.
‘You should be,’ she replied. ‘I have learned to be. In this, you must let me be your tutor, dearest Michael.’
How it wrung my heart to hear that false name so lovingly on her lips! Yet I did not tell her who I really was. In truth, I was afraid to. Afraid that I would lose her if she realized I was not the man she thought I was – not the man she had fallen in love with but an imposter, a liar. I told myself that there would be plenty of time to confess everything in the weeks ahead, that it would serve no purpose to reveal myself now. Instead, I promised that I would be instructed by her in this and in all things.
That earned me another kiss – a sweet reward for a base betrayal. But I did not spurn her lips on that account. On the contrary. Their velvet caress absolved me of all my sins … for a while. As I breathed in the fragrance of her breath, which seemed to contain the springtime we had just been speaking of, I swore to myself that if I did not yet deserve the love of this goddess, I would merit it one day by my words and actions.
But rather than drawing nearer, that day seemed to recede into a hazy future. As our closeness grew, the lie at the heart of it became all the more difficult to expose. To do so would have put everything at risk: Corinna’s love, Wachter’s secrets – they were too tangled in my mind to allow any easy unravelling. To lose one was to lose the other. It was the pursuit of those secrets, after all, that had brought us together, that sustained us in a common purpose and gave us hope of a shared future.
From that point on, our daily lessons had little to do with horology. We put aside clocks and watches and all the finely calibrated instruments of our craft and instead devoted ourselves to the study of each other. Not our bodies alone but our minds, our very souls – always excepting that kernel of untruth which, hard as I tried, I could not forget about for long, however deeply I buried it. Corinna approached these investigations in the same bold and insatiable spirit of inquiry that had characterized her pursuit of horological knowledge. I will say no more of what we shared – it is enough that she became my wife in every way that mattered to us, if not to the rest of the world. I have taken no other wife in all the years since. I never shall.
We took care that we should not be discovered, though we had some close calls, with Inge especially, for she was always looking in on us. But her size made stealth impossible; one could always hear her coming. Doppler might have done better, but he made no effort to surprise us. On the contrary, he seemed pleased with the reports I gave him, content with the pace and progress of Corinna’s lessons – though of course there was little truth in what I told him.
Corinna, meanwhile, continued to press me to visit Wachter’s Folly, and at last I gave in, unable to refuse her anything and wanting as well to be rid of the unreasoning fear that had all but paralysed me in this matter. Besides, I did not want her to think me a coward – the more as I knew myself to be one.
‘But how shall we determine when to go?’ I asked. ‘The automatons only emerge when the clock strikes, or so your father informed me, and it strikes randomly, at no set or predictable interval. I have no wish to stand out in the bitter cold for what could be hours. Yet if we wait until we hear the bells begin to ring, the whole display could well be over by the time we reach the Folly.’
‘You need not worry about that,’ she replied. ‘Over the years, we townsfolk have developed a second sense about when the timepiece is going to strike. There is a tension in the air, like the onset of a thunderstorm. And not only in the air. We feel it in our bones, in our hearts, a vibration that cuts right through us.’
‘It sounds painful,’ I told her.
She shrugged. ‘We are used to it.’
‘But how extraordinary!’ I continued. ‘How long does it take to develop this sensitivity?’
‘No time at all,’ she said. ‘We are born with it, you see.’
I did not see. Nothing in my knowledge of horology or natural science could explain how the workings of a clock might impress themselves into the bones and sinews of a single human body, much less an entire town. Not that I doubted her. Thinking back, I realized that I had witnessed the truth of her assertion many times over in fleeting expressions that passed across the faces of the townsfolk in the moments before the bells of the clock began to peal, looks of anxious anticipation, as if at some signal I could not discern, followed by smiles and sighs indicative of release. These quirks of behaviour had puzzled me, but I had not inquired into them, thin
king them related somehow to my presence. I felt no such connection myself. In truth, I envied it. It did not seem right that these people, who knew nothing of our art, should manifest a deeper affinity to the flow of time than even the masters of our Worshipful Company could lay claim to.
Thus it was that Corinna and I made our way early one afternoon to Wachter’s Folly. When we emerged from the lamplit passage into the open, the glare of sunlight reflecting from the mounds of snow and ice that had more than half buried the town left me blinded. Even after my vision cleared, I stood frozen in place, dazzled by the stark beauty of the scene. I do not think I had ever seen a sky so blue; it made my eyes ache, and still does, in memory. The jagged peaks of the surrounding mountains, and the upthrust dagger of the glacier that seemed to stand guard over the town, glittered as if encrusted with diamonds. The air sparkled with ice crystals swept up in a biting wind that blew without pause, piercing my clothes, my skin, all the way to the bone. I shivered, still weaker from my ordeal than I had realized until that moment. It was the first time in weeks that I had stood under an open sky.
Corinna put a steadying arm around my waist and asked if I wanted to return to the Hearth and Home. I shook my head and told her no. ‘Then we must hurry,’ she said. ‘The bells are about to strike.’
I swear that I could feel, through her touch, the same thrumming vibration I had felt weeks ago when I had laid my hands upon the figures decorating the tower’s façade. Those figures were less visible now, buried more deeply beneath fallen snow; even the great dragon that coiled about the tower was lost to view, only bits and pieces of its serpentine length exposed, like the gnarled roots of an immense tree.
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