The Emperor of all Things Read online

  But it did not spill over.

  Instead, it seeped into the watch. The parts of the movement, the wheels and pinions and plates, the escapement, the fusee, all the pieces so cunningly carved out of … something … sucked in the blood. Drank it in like water absorbed by a sponge. And as they did, they changed colour, took on the redness of Quare’s blood. Or perhaps it was that they turned translucent as glass, only seeming to take on the hue of what filled them.

  But Quare was not interested in such distinctions. He stood transfixed with awe and creeping horror, mesmerized by the sight of the watch so engorged with blood that it seemed to glow like a hot coal in the palm of his hand. He would not have been surprised had it burned him. But the watch, already warmed to his body temperature, grew not a whit warmer.

  Then he felt it faintly shudder. Felt a convulsion spark and bloom within the watch and pass through it into his flesh, his blood, like a call seeking answer.

  He would have dropped it then, cast it from him like a loathsome, cursed thing, but Master Magnus took hold of his wrist in an unbreakable grip, preventing him.

  Quare moaned, words as far beyond him as thought, as reason. For now, as if his heart had answered the call, the watch throbbed to life, pulsing in time to the rhythm in his chest, the wheels and pinions turning, the teeth meshing: the movement running, keeping time.

  ‘ There is your source of power,’ Master Magnus said, his voice fierce, triumphant.

  4

  Pig and Rooster

  QUARE DREW ON his pipe and tilted his chair back against the wall, gazing through a fog of tobacco smoke at the other tavern patrons eating and drinking at tables and along the bar. Wheels of candles hanging on chains from the beams of the ceiling provided a wan illumination. According to the clock on the wall above the fireplace, it was approaching nine o’clock. Quare had no reason to doubt the time, though he had not checked it against his pocket watch as he was normally wont to do. Nor could he locate in himself the remotest desire to do so.

  The Pig and Rooster was packed, the atmosphere boisterous. A man wearing an eye patch had taken out a fiddle and begun scratching a tune in the far corner, and an appreciative audience had gathered round, clapping and shouting encouragement as a little capuchin monkey done up as a Turk, a bright red turban strapped to its head, capered and turned somersaults on a table beside the fiddler. Elsewhere, men were playing at cards, chess and draughts, and at a nearby table a rowdy group of apprentices from assorted guilds, including his own, was engaged in a – so far – good-natured drinking game mediated by a pair of dice … or perhaps it was a dice game mediated by draughts of ale. Three barmaids – a brunette, Martha, and two blondes, Arabella and Clara, who looked enough alike to be sisters – hustled back and forth across the sawdust-covered floor with loaded trays, bantering with the men they served while expertly dodging groping and grasping hands … and just as expertly, it seemed, failing to dodge others . A fire crackled in the hearth, adding to the smoke and heat.

  Quare sat at the back of the tavern, his only companions a mug of ale and a steak and kidney pie, both barely touched. Beside them on the stained and gouged table top a candle burned in a battered tin holder, the flame bending and swaying. He had come to the Pig and Rooster, a favourite haunt, to lose himself in the easy good-fellowship of the public house, yet instead he felt cut off from everything and everyone around him, as if the smoke from his pipe had wrapped him in a hazy cocoon.

  The horror of all that had happened in Master Magnus’s study lingered like a nightmare that refused to fade. It clung to him like a leech – a leech of the mind. Of the very soul. He could still feel the throbbing pulse of the hunter in his hand, strong and regular as the beat of a living heart. Against his palm, like the ticklish scrabbling of an insect, he had felt the hands of the watch moving. He would have dropped it, thrown it away, but Master Magnus had clamped his wrist in a grip of iron.

  ‘Control yourself, sir! Master your fear, damn you, or you’re of no use to me!’

  He’d turned his head away with a groan.

  ‘Look at it!’ Master Magnus had hissed. ‘And you call yourself a clockmaker? Look you, sir. Look you!’

  Quare looked.

  The fiery crimson glow of the pocket watch had faded to something like the cherry blush of colour on a young girl’s cheek. The rotation of the wheels and pinions was slowing, and the vigour of the pulsations communicating themselves through the case to his hand was weakening, the interval between them growing wider. The watch was running down. Its ruddy colour waned, passing from apple red to strawberry to rose to a wan pink, like wine diluted in water, as the fuel of Quare’s blood thinned, consumed by the uncanny engine in his hand. Another moment and the movement had returned to its original appearance of pale, unblemished silver, and the wheels once again were still.

  The watch had stopped.

  Only then did Master Magnus release him. Quare gasped, vaguely conscious that he’d been holding his breath. His thoughts were sluggish; he felt as if he’d taken a blow to the head. His fingers opened reflexively, and the watch slid to the table top; it landed face up, and Quare saw that the hands had moved from their former positions, pointing now at sigils whose significance he did not know any more than he had a moment ago but which nevertheless seemed invested with sinister import. He drew back as though afraid the watch might fling itself upon him.

  ‘What in God’s name is that thing?’ he demanded. And then: ‘How does it work ?’

  At which the master gave a satisfied chuckle. ‘You’ll do, Quare. You’ll do.’ He reached past Quare to retrieve watch, case, and crystal, tucking all three into his waistcoat pocket without pausing to reassemble them. When he turned, his eyes narrowed and he said, ‘You might want to tend to that finger.’

  ‘What? Oh.’ Blood oozed from the cut. He had thought the master had but pricked his finger; now it was clear the blade had sunk deeper. Digging a handkerchief from his pocket, he fashioned a makeshift bandage. The finger throbbed as though from a bee sting, reminding him of how the watch had pulsed in his palm. He shot Master Magnus a trenchant look and opened his mouth to demand an accounting, but before he could get a word out, a shadow passed before his eyes like the wing of a great black bird.

  The next thing he knew, he was gazing up at the frowning face of Master Magnus, which seemed to be suspended some considerable distance above him, hanging down as if attached by invisible wires to the still-more-distant ceiling.

  ‘Well,’ demanded that face, ‘are you going to lie there all day like a lazy dog? Get up, sir! Get up! We have much to discuss.’ And one of the walking sticks struck against his shoulder.

  Or, no, not a walking stick. A cat, butting its head against him. In fact, numerous cats were prowling about his person, rubbing against him, patting him with their paws, purring as if very pleased indeed to find him stretched out upon the floor. No doubt they were just being friendly, but even so there were rather a lot of them. He sat up with alacrity, and they scattered.

  ‘I never figured you for a fainter,’ Master Magnus said with a sniff. ‘Does this happen often?’

  Head swimming, Quare climbed to his feet. ‘I’ve never fainted in my life,’ he protested, steadying himself with one hand upon a stack of books that was almost more in need of steadying than he was. ‘I don’t know what—’ He stopped short at the sight of the handkerchief swaddling his finger.

  ‘God help me,’ sighed the master, rolling his eyes. ‘You’re not going to faint again, are you?’

  Quare glared at him. ‘I appreciate your concern, Master. I’m quite well.’

  ‘I should hope so. What possible use will you be if you go around fainting every five minutes like some overdelicate young miss suffering from the vapours?’

  ‘I don’t know what use I can be at all,’ he answered. ‘You’ve told me nothing, explained nothing, just shown me something possible by no natural science with which I am acquainted – a watch that runs on human blood. My blood, a
s it happens, drawn without a by-your-leave! And you wonder, after such shocks to the body and the mind, that a man might find himself a trifle unsteady on his feet?’

  Master Magnus shrugged. ‘ I did not faint when it happened to me. Oh, yes, my boy – how do you think I knew to prick your finger? I cut myself accidentally while examining the watch, and my blood was drawn into the movement just as yours was, and with the same intriguing if admittedly disquieting result. But why do you look at me so sceptically, sir? You have experienced for yourself the truth of what I am telling you.’

  ‘I am merely surprised to find that blood and not oil circulates in your veins.’

  ‘Hmph. Come, let us sit and talk.’ As he spoke, the master swung himself about on his sticks and led Quare to a small round table flanked by a pair of chairs, all three pieces of furniture covered with various combinations of books and cats and their respective sheddings of loose pages and hair.

  ‘Clear them away,’ he directed, and Quare evicted all the cats save one, a fat old orange tom that lay draped in a peculiarly boneless fashion over two books whose much-clawed bindings had the look of despoiled antiquity. This surly beast hissed and swatted a hefty paw at him when he made to remove it, and he balked at a further attempt, deciding that he had already been wounded enough for one day. Master Magnus, not so easily deterred, delivered a thump with his stick that sent the feline yowling in retreat.

  ‘The books as well,’ he said in a tone of impatience, gesturing with the stick as though threatening Quare with the same treatment.

  ‘Where shall I put them?’

  ‘Anywhere. It doesn’t matter.’

  Quare transferred the books and papers to the floor. There was no organizing principle to maintain; Greek and Arabian treatises on horology lay alongside volumes by Newton, Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza, which in turn sat upon anonymous pamphlets setting forth systems of astrology, alchemy and numerology. Interspersed throughout were pages covered with diagrams and calculations and Latin scribblings in the master’s own crabbed hand.

  ‘You should have all this put in the proper order,’ Quare admonished, not for the first time. He couldn’t help thinking that the books and papers – the property of the Worshipful Company, after all – deserved a kinder master, or at any rate a more meticulous one.

  ‘I like to keep them near to hand,’ Master Magnus said, manoeuvring himself in front of a chair and then toppling back into it with a grunt. His misshapen legs flew up, resembling the flippers of a seal. ‘This way, I know exactly where everything is.’ He laid his walking sticks against the side of the chair.

  ‘But what of the other masters?’ Quare persisted. ‘What if they should require a particular book? How will they ever find it?’

  ‘They will ask me, and I will procure it for them. The system is practical and convenient. Now, sit you down, sir.’

  Quare began to brush cat hair from the upholstery of the remaining chair. But he soon gave it up as a lost cause and seated himself with a sigh. Master Magnus, he noted with some foreboding, was once again gazing at him with that unsettling grimace-cum-smile. Without a word, the master reached into his pocket. Quare flinched, fearing that he was about to draw forth the watch; despite his curiosity, he was not eager to renew his acquaintance with the timepiece just yet. But instead, Master Magnus produced a small tin whistle. Putting it to his lips, he blew three shrill blasts in quick succession.

  A door opened, and a servant entered the room carrying a tray on which sat two glasses and a bottle of port. The man approached smoothly, something of a feat considering that he did not glance even once at the array of animate and inanimate obstacles bestrewing his path, but avoided them as if by instinct or some sense other than sight, his gaze fixed on a distant point. Quare studied him, trying to ascertain if this was the same servant who had fetched him in the stair-master, but there was no way of telling; perhaps if the servant had spoken he might have recognized the man’s voice, but he lowered the tray to the table without a word and then, with a stiff bow, his powdered face so devoid of expression that it seemed to indicate a lack of consciousness itself, turned and left the room, shutting the door behind him.

  The master filled the glasses. He lifted one and indicated that Quare should do likewise. Half wondering if he were still unconscious and dreaming, for he had that sense, peculiar to dreams, that the most fantastic events could take place at any moment, and indeed most probably would take place, and, moreover, if he but knew it, were very likely taking place already, Quare followed suit. Master Magnus made the toast: ‘To His Majesty.’

  ‘His Majesty,’ echoed Quare, rising to his feet and drinking.

  ‘No need to be so formal, Quare. It’s just the two of us, after all.’ The master refilled his own glass, then reached up with the bottle to refill Quare’s. ‘ Tempus Imperator Rerum .’

  The motto of the Worshipful Company. Time, Emperor of All Things. A reminder that even His Majesty had a master greater still. As did all men.

  Quare drank. The sweet wine went straight to his head, accentuating his sense of inhabiting a dream. He cleared his throat, set the glass down on the table as though to reassure himself of its solidity, and his own, and took his seat again. ‘How did the servant know to bring the wine, Master?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve got them trained,’ said Master Magnus, holding up the whistle. ‘They’re under strict orders not to enter unless summoned with this. I’ve devised a kind of code, you see, to communicate simple commands by means of the number and duration of blasts on a whistle. It’s quicker and more effective than calling them in here and explaining what I want. The Vikings used a similar method in bygone days. The longboats of a raiding party would speak to each other over great distances or through inclement weather by blowing upon their horns. My system adapts their barbarous custom for civilized use. I call it “Norse Code”.’

  ‘Impressive,’ said Quare. ‘But still, the servant must have been expecting the command. He appeared immediately with his tray.’

  ‘Despite all that has transpired, you remain observant. Excellent.’ The master gave a satisfied nod. ‘Yes, Mr Quare, he was expecting the command. I thought it only right that we celebrate your success with a glass or two.’

  ‘Then you knew I would succeed in opening the watch.’

  ‘Your horological talents have never been questioned. At least, not by me.’

  Quare sighed, reminded of his interview with Grandmaster Wolfe.

  ‘Your suspension irks you,’ Master Magnus said. ‘You feel the insult keenly.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Indeed, I would not! The Most Secret and Exalted Order of Regulators. Bah! How secret can they be when they are named thus?’

  ‘But, Master, it was you who created the Order. You who named it. You recruit the regulators from among the journeymen of the Worshipful Company, oversee their training, dispatch them on their missions—’

  ‘Then perhaps you will grant that I know what I am talking about,’ Master Magnus interrupted. He reached for the port, then seemed to think better of it, making a dismissive motion as if shooing the bottle away. ‘Oh, the Order serves its purpose. The regulators do good and necessary work in thwarting the efforts of our enemies and their agents. But they are men of reason. Men of science. And there are other forces at work in the world, as you have now experienced for yourself. Thus I require other agents. Agents who belong to no named order, however secretly styled.’

  ‘I am surprised to hear you, of all people, disparage reason and science.’

  ‘I do not disparage them. On the contrary, I embrace them as fervently as I can. I have struggled my whole life to see them triumph. Look at me, Mr Quare. What do you see in this twisted body of mine?’

  Quare hesitated, uncertain how to answer.

  ‘Come now, sir. Am I a spawn of evil? Does my misshapen outer aspect proclaim a soul bent equally out of true?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Yet many would say other
wise, even today, in this supposedly enlightened age. Do you know how many years it has been since I dared to leave the safety of the guild hall? It is my sanctuary and my prison all in one, for I cannot walk the streets of London without being followed by whispers of the devil. Adults mock me, children hurl insults and worse.’

  ‘Ignorance and superstition. No thinking man believes such foolishness.’

  ‘Perhaps not. Unfortunately, there are few men who can truly be said to think, even among the so-called educated classes. Why, even here in the Worshipful Company, I am looked upon as a monster. Apprentices fear me. Journeymen mock me, call me Master Mephistopheles. And my fellow masters, while content to reap the rewards of my genius, keep me hidden away, buried alive in the very bowels of the guild hall.’

  The master paused, but before Quare could interject a word, he raised a forestalling hand; taking this for an invitation, a blue-grey cat jumped into his lap. He stroked it as he continued. ‘Do not misunderstand me, Quare. I am grateful to the guild. It gave me shelter, a home. I do not believe I would be alive today if the guild hadn’t taken me in, a friendless orphan, and trained me. But am I permitted to express my gratitude openly, like other men? Can I acknowledge my debt before the world and be seen by the world to pay it back tenfold, a hundredfold, a thousand, so that people might say, “Behold Theophilus Magnus, a credit to his guild and to his city!”? No. I must keep to the shadows like a skulking kobold. Allow lesser men to take credit for my work and receive the rewards and honours that rightfully belong to me. While it is true that I have the ear of Pitt, I do not believe that His Majesty even knows I exist!’

  ‘But surely Grandmaster Wolfe—’

  ‘Do not speak to me of that mendacious mediocrity! He has stolen everything from me. Everything! Do you think he would stand at the head of our guild if my back and legs were straight? Eh? Sir Thaddeus, indeed! Where is my title, I should like to know?’ He gave a bitter laugh.