The Emperor of All Things - By Paul Witcover Page 0,30
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