The Emperor of All Things - By Paul Witcover Page 0,36
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.