The Emperor of All Things - By Paul Witcover Page 0,98
and came in a variety of sizes: the smallest no larger than my finger, the largest as big as life, or bigger. Men, women and children were represented, but also gargoyles that mixed human and bestial aspects, winged devils and cloven-footed demons, as well as angels, and skeletal figures, too, wielding scythes or hourglasses that seemed no less dangerous. Twining through and about them all was the coiling body of an immense serpent … or perhaps a dragon, though it lacked wings as far as I could see. Never had I beheld the sufferings of the damned depicted so persuasively, for such, it appeared, was the artist’s subject. The crowd of tormentors and tormented blurred before my eyes into a single undifferentiated mass, as if those inflicting pain and those seeking to escape it suffered alike the agony of exile from God’s presence even as they remained subject to His will, fixed in place for ever by a judgement that permitted neither escape nor appeal.
As I gazed at the tableau, a feeling of horror stirred in my breast, and I shivered beneath my cloak. Despite my admiration for the artistry, or what I could discern of it, I found myself hesitant to undertake a closer examination. Indeed, I felt an impulse to step back, as if I were in the presence of something dangerous or vile, and though I stood my ground, I did not draw any nearer.
The decorated portion of the tower rose to a height of fifteen feet or so, where an opening gaped, wide and dark as the mouth of a cave: daylight would no doubt reveal a recessed stage there, across which, at the stroke of some predetermined hour, figures emerging from within would progress along inlaid tracks in jerky pantomimes of living movement. I had seen such parades of dolls and automatons hundreds of times in my training and my travels, and knew them inside and out, but I felt certain that whatever display emerged from this particular tower would be like nothing I had witnessed before.
Above the proscenium, the pale clock face floated in mid-air like some smaller sister of the moon seduced down from the heavens. I tried to make out the time, but I couldn’t see the hands clearly, much less the numbers to which they pointed. Rising out of the mix of snow and shadow, in which feathery black flakes seemed to be falling alongside the white, was the apex of the tower: a campanile open on all four sides. Clustered within, dimly visible, were the pear-shaped silhouettes of five bells. The two largest hung motionless, but the three smaller ones were swinging slowly back and forth, each following a rhythm of its own. Though there was no sound of striking clapper, faint pings and clicks reached my ears through the keening of the wind – a forlorn music.
‘Tempus Imperator Rerum,’ rasped a voice from behind me in German-accented Latin.
I jumped, startled; lost in reverie, I had not heard the man’s approach. Turning, I saw the lamplighter looking up at me with a sly expression, as if pleased to have surprised me. This close, there was no mistaking him for Magnus: he was younger, for one thing, with a full and vigorous reddish-brown beard (in which snowflakes winked and melted), a bulbous red nose and glittering blue eyes beneath a battered brown tricorn. Unlike Magnus, he was a true dwarf, his head disproportionately large for the rest of his body, as were his hands. Yet he might almost have been a dwarf of legend.
‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.
In one gloved hand, the man held the knotted end of a hempen rope by which the ladder was slung over his shoulder; in the other, like a club, he carried the flambeau, now extinguished. ‘Tempus Imperator Rerum,’ he repeated. And then, in an English that bore the same accent as his Latin: ‘Time, Emperor of All Things. Is that not the motto of your guild?’
‘What guild would that be?’ I asked in turn.
He laughed aloud, flashing teeth as white and large as those of a horse, or so it seemed to me. The combination of physical exhaustion and mental stimulation made everything dreamlike and unreal. ‘Come now, lad,’ he chided, although he did not appear any older than I. ‘Do you think I don’t know a member of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers when I see one? Why try to hide it?’
‘I’m not hiding anything,’ I replied. ‘I’m merely curious as to