The power of compulsion. That explained a great deal about the British Empire.
The boy went on. “Smallwood, too. The gas division. They walk in poison, you know.”
“This
Bassett
was a magnificent ship?”
For the first time, Clarence Davies smiled. “The greatest. Soaring through the clouds on a summer day, looking down on them whales and sharks and fuzzy wuzzies ⦔ His head dropped again. “I want to go back to England, though. But 'tis too far to walk.”
“You flew through the air to come here, and now you cannot find your way home.” Something in Paolina's heart melted, that she had not known was frozen. “They'll grumble for a month, the
fidalgos,
and never come to a decision. So I decide now. I invite you in my mother's name. We will find a boy's family for you to stay with, and I will make sure there is a bit more food.”
“I ⦠I ⦠have nothing to give.”
“Nothing is required. Help where you can, lend your muscles, speak to me in English.” She smiled, trying to coax another flash of bright teeth out of this Clarence. “There are few enough safe places on
a Muralha.
Stay here a while.”
“Thank you.” He came to some visible decision, a flash of relief and recognition in his face, then dug deep into an
inner pocket of his leather wrap. Clarence shoved a little bag at her. “Here. I don't need this. Ain't wound it in months. Smart, clever girl like you maybe could use it.”
The thing was heavy, a hunk of metal or glass. She pulled it out and corrected herself. A hunk of metal
and
glass. Round face, with hours on it like a sundial and a heavy metal rim containing more weight. The face was topped by three metal arrows. There were tinier faces within, with their own calibrations, and a little cutaway showing something behind the face.
She peered close and saw Heaven.
Gears.
It was God's gearing, the mechanisms of the earth and sky captured in the palm of her hand. Light flooded her head for a moment, the dawn of a new awareness. Paolina's stomach knotted in something between fear and fascination. She'd had no idea that a person could fashion a model of the world to carry with him.
“It counts the hours,” she whispered, her voice and hands trembling in awe.
“Yes.” He touched a little cap extending from one end. “See? It's a stemwinder. A Dent marine chronometer that needs no key.”
Her fingers lay on the knurls of the cap. At his nod, Paolina very gently twisted it.
The tiny model of the world within clicked, just as the heavens did at midnight.
This was Creation in the palm of her hand. The English were truly magicians.
Much to her surprise, Paolina began to cry.
PRAIA NOVA
had seven books. They were kept in the great hall, in an inner closet with the precious bottles used to contain
bagaceira
when Fra Bellico found the necessaries to distill more, or the wildflower wine the women made when Fra Bellico lacked materials, time, or ambition.
There was half an English Bible, the Old Testament through the middle of Ezekiel. It was water damaged. The New Testament, with its stories of the Romans and their horofixion of Christ, existed in Praia Nova only as a scrawled leather scroll reconstructed from the memories of the various shipwrecked sailors who'd brought their indifferent faiths to the village over the generations. It did not matter what she thought of the prophets or the inept copy work of recent times-the Bible needed no more explanation than a look to the sky.
The other books were a different matter entirely. Her favorite was
Fieis
e
Verdadeiros Segredos,
a Portuguese translation of a book that claimed to have originally been published in French, written by a Comte de Saint-Germain. It was a magnificent volume, bound in a slick, smooth leather that she was fairly certain was human skin. The title was stamped into the binding with traces of gold leaf and faded red pigment. There were lurid woodcuts within, lavishly illustrating scenes of debauchery from the ancient days. She'd spent time studying those, but had not yet divined the meaning of most. In any case, Paolina found it difficult to credit what Saint-Germain said of himself and the world. The man, whoever he had truly been, was an extraordinary storyteller at the least. She hoped to meet a Jew one day so that she could pursue some of the questions raised in
Segredos
.
There was also
Archidoxes Magica,
by Paracelsus. It was bound in boards, and quite damaged by damp and age. Furthermore, no one could aid her with the Latin. She had no second text to compare it with in order to puzzle out the language. As a result Paolina had struggled mightily with the book. In
Segredos
, Saint-Germain claimed to have known Paracelsus as an alchemist and physic, but that only told her one thingâfraud or genius, he had seen into the heart of the world.
That inspired her.
Three of the other books were popular texts, two in English,
one in Spanish:
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
by Charles Dickens,
Mathias Sandorf
by Jules Verne, and
Cartas Marruecas
by José Cadalso. There was also one volume in an alphabet that looked maddeningly familiar while making no sense at all. Paolina was surprised the last hadn't been burned for fire starter. She'd read through the English works many times, and puzzled through Cadalso twice.
She'd learned how strange the world was, beyond
a Muralha
and the goat-dung paths of Praia Nova. That, and how badly she wished she lived in a part of the Northern Earth where there were printing presses and libraries and bookshops.
Even Dr. Minor's visit to Praia Nova, while immensely improving her English and her knowledge of the world, had only deepened her dissatisfaction.
Now, though, now she had a treasure beyond price. She had a pocket watch. A stemwinding marine chronometer, to be specific.
Neither the Bible nor Saint-Germain had anything to say directly about watches, though both certainly discussed clockwork-albeit somewhat metaphorically in the Bible. Paracelsus was no help at all, and neither was Cadalso. Verne and Dickens, however, seemed fully in command of a world where pocket watches were ordinary.
In the days that followed, she reread both works carefully. The purpose of the watch would have been clear enough even if Davies had not explained it. Paolina was far more interested in the design and construction. She'd never so much as seen a clock. There were obvious inferences to be made about the mechanism from looking at God's design for the universe. He had written His plan in the sky, after all.
What Paolina wanted was a clear set of instructions.
THE STEMWINDER
was heavy in the pocket of her homespun smock. She knew it was there the way she knew her
heartbeat was there. Wound, it ticked. Ticking, it reflected the world.
Time beats at the heart of everything,
she thought.
It was one of those ideas that pricked a spark in her mind, a little flare that staked a claim of importance.
God had made the universe of clockwork. The world ticked and turned. Two years ago, it had stuttered. The great waves and quakes came from deep within, she knew. Midnight had slipped by a few seconds. No one else understood, and there was no point in explaining, but she'd known.
Then the world had been fixed. Whatever time beat at the heart of the earth had been restored. Paolina wished she knew how. A question that ran through all the books (except the Bible, of course) was whether God acted directly in the world, or simply let His handiwork sort itself out.
Something
had been sorted out.
And still time beat at the heart of everything. The stemwinder was a model of the universe, no larger than the palm of her hand, no thicker than two of her fingers, and it ticked away the moments and hours just as all of Creation did.
Paolina put it close to her ear, listening with the words of Dickens and Verne and the Old Testament prophets close in her mind. Ezekiel 24:6 suggested itself to her in the gentle ticking deep within.
Woe to the bloody city, to the brasswork in which there is verdigris, and whose verdigris has not gone out of it! Take out of it piece after piece, without making a choice.
That was clear enough. God was telling her to take the watch apart.
PAOLINA'S MOST
difficult problem was finding a clean, clear workspace. Whatever gears and trains lay within the stemwinder were tiny reflections of the brass in the heavens. She'd need a room sealed from the winds, relatively
free of dust and dirt, where the complex work could remain undisturbed in her absence.
The inner room of the great hall, among the books and bottles, would have been ideal. But even Paolina couldn't quite imagine how to get
the fidalgos
to come around to that. They would beat her for a stupid chit and set her to scraping moss off the water stairs if she had the temerity to even ask.
She wandered the village, looking at the houses and storerooms that comprised most of Praia Nova. The ones that were not inhabited were tumbledown. Paolina didn't want to contemplate the patience required to clean up an abandoned hut.
On the Oporto shelf, the second ledge above town, where more of the thin wheat fields ran, she realized she was looking at her answerâthe mushroom sheds. They were sealed with lacquered canvas, and they were quiet. It would be a month or more before another set of trays was picked. All she needed was a bit of light.
Best of all, the women of the town ran the sheds. Senhora Armandires was the dame of the mushrooms. Paolina had built a much improved chimney in the woman's house last year, once Senhor Armandires had finally moved out for good and the senhora could make her own choices. The lady would make no objection.
Light was still an issue, but it would take little enough to see the watch. Candle stubs were her friends.
Paolina went off to find Clarence. He could help her drag a table out of one of the abandoned houses and up to the Oporto shelf. And a cloth to cover it.
She would find a way. This was the solving of problems. She was good at that.
DURING THE
course of the following days, Paolina opened the back of the stemwinder to observe the delicate movements of the mechanisms within. What she saw nearly turned her away from her project. She lacked the tools to
grasp such miniscule things. She might be able to make those, in time, with scraps from the Alcides' smithy. She would need a lens, as well, scarcely possible here in Praia Nova. In any case, this was a task for the slow and patient. She stuck with picks and pries made out of hardwood splinters.
Clarence was something of a help, ghosting about and answering her occasional question. He spent time foraging, too, farther from Praia Nova than most of the locals would go. Of course, he'd walked the Wall for two yearsâthe boy had survived far stranger things than the glittering, scaled cats that occasionally prowled the ledges here, or the bright, frigid rocks that sometimes bounded down from higher up.
He came running in the evening of her fourth day in the mushroom shed. Panting, sweating, as the whites of his eyes gleamed in the light of her little candle stub. “The
fidalgos
are looking for you!” he shouted in Portuguese.
“Someone is always looking for me.” A tiny stab of fear stole into her heart.
Davies switched to English. “You have been summoned. Senhora Armandires argues with Fra Bellico down in the village.”
Paolina sighed and put down the teakwood picks. She carefully covered the stemwinder with a square of pale silk, part of the bounty harvested from the body of a Chinaman brought up in the nets the year before the big waves. “What does the good father want of me?” She dusted off her hands.
Clarence looked down at his feet a moment. “The
fidalgos
are angry.”
The answer was obvious now, but her rising irritation made her unkind. “About what are they angry, Englishman?”
Walking behind her through the canvas flap that was the door, he mumbled some answer she couldn't hear.
“Pardon?” Nasty now.
“That you were given the watch.”
“That I was given the watch.” Her singsong tones mocked him. What had she ever thought worthy of this idiot boy? “The heavens opened up and spat a watch into my hands, which by the grace of God should have been given to the men of Praia Nova, is that it?”
“I'm sorry,” he muttered, but she already raced down the paths toward the shouting.
THE
FIDALGOS
were drunk and angry. The first thing Paolina realized was that they were into the wildflower wine. The
bagaceira
was gone, and Fra Bellico had not found any more of the wild grapes and plums from which to press his pomace and make more. No wonder they were upset, forced to drink a woman's swill.