The Emperor of All Things - By Paul Witcover Page 0,124

or whether it was still snowing. The girl, meanwhile, had left off calling for Inge, though she had not returned to the room, and now I heard – and felt as well – the landlady’s heavy tread as she mounted the stairs. It was no more than a faint trembling compared with the earthshaking footsteps of the giants, yet the terror I’d felt as I lay helpless in the snow took hold of me again. Shivering like some palsied ancient, I groped for the covers and pulled them to my chin.

Inge squeezed into the room, her round face flushed red. ‘So, you are awake at last, Herr Gray! But what are you doing? You’re in no condition to get out of that bed!’

‘Indeed, I am not,’ I agreed. ‘Where are my clothes?’

‘I was going to ask you the same question,’ she replied as she bustled over. I flinched, thinking that she was going to push me down – weak as I was, a child could have done it. But instead she touched the back of her hand to my forehead, then reached past me to fluff the pillows into a backrest. Her yeasty scent enveloped me, and had its customary effect, which I endeavoured to hide by shifting beneath the covers.

‘There,’ she said at last, stepping back to survey her work with satisfaction, her thick arms crossed over the shelf of her bosom, ‘all nice and comfy.’ I had the impression that she was rather enjoying my helplessness. ‘You gave us quite a scare, Herr Gray! Ach, what possessed you to pay a visit to the clock tower in such weather? And what happened to your clothes?’

‘Do you mean to say I was naked when you found me?’

‘It was not I but Adolpheus who found you,’ Inge said. ‘Lying in the snow at the base of the clock tower as naked as the day you were born!’

‘I lost my way in the storm,’ I told her, ‘and found myself at the clock tower. The bells began to chime, and I saw the most incredible display …’ I trailed off, afraid that she would think me mad if I said any more. ‘That is all I remember.’

‘Lucky for you I happened by,’ Adolpheus remarked, entering the room with his lopsided gait. Hesta trotted in behind him, tail wagging. The dog went straight to the stove, where she circled once before curling up on the bare floorboards.

‘I found you at the foot of the tower,’ Adolpheus continued. ‘It seems you were struck on the head by a piece of falling ice.’

I raised my hand to the bandage again, but stopped short of touching it, remembering the pain that had ensued the last time I did so.

‘Big as a cannonball it was,’ my rescuer stated, demonstrating the size of the ice chunk with his hands. ‘Blood everywhere! I thought you were dead at first – if not from the blow to the head, then from the cold, for you weren’t wearing so much as a stitch of clothing. I covered you with my cloak, lifted you in my arms, and carried you here. I may be small, but I am strong as a bull.’

‘But my weapon … my watch!’

‘As for your dirk, I saw no sign of it. Perhaps it is buried under the snow. Your watch, however, was clutched in your hand; indeed, I had some difficulty prising your fingers apart to remove it! It’s there, beside the bed.’

And so it was, on the nightstand. The sight of it was immensely reassuring for some reason; even more so, once I had picked it up and judged that it was still running, was the familiar heft of it in my hand. But I didn’t know what to think. Had it all been a dream? Everything had seemed so real! Yet I remembered how, when the bells began to toll, chunks of ice had fallen from the tower. Perhaps one had indeed struck me – knocked me, dazed and bleeding, to the ground. And from there, before I blacked out, I had gazed up and seen the automatons emerging from the tower; from that perspective, they might have loomed large as giants. Yet that did not explain what had happened to my clothes and my dirk.

Inge, meanwhile, had poured a glass of water from the pitcher on the table beside the stove, and this she brought to me now. ‘Here, Herr Gray. You must be parched.’

I accepted the glass and took a deep swallow