The Cabinet of Curiosities (15 page)

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Chapter Twenty-Seven

Hrusosky Hlava had taken many risks in his pursuit of wealth and comfort. It had occurred to him as he approached the Castle that day that this might be the most dangerous one yet. But he knew his worth, and he was determined to sell his services for the highest fee he could muster.

Now they were waiting to hear what he had to say.

‘His Imperial Highness has a fascination with extraordinary mechanical devices,’ began Hlava. ‘The more uncommon, and the more beautifully embellished, the greater his desire to own them. Furthermore, the more gaudy the claim made for such a device, the more he will be desirous to see it. In his search for power over life and death he is ready to believe anything, no matter how fantastical or ridiculous. His Highness has learned little from previous experience. Many times he has been disappointed, but this does not quench his thirst for novelty and sensation.’

‘Your accomplice wearies us with his discourse, Monsignor Mach,’ said Dorantes to the Inquisitor. He deliberately chose not to address Hlava directly, to show his anger at the arrival of this outsider.

Hlava was not a man to let an insult get in the way of business. He bowed low and replied directly, making it plain he was neither hurt nor intimidated by the reproach. ‘Your Excellency, I apologise. I will tell you immediately of my suggestion.’

He looked at Dorantes for permission to continue. Dorantes nodded curtly.

‘My plan is to present the Emperor with a gift that he will not be able to resist.’

Dorantes coughed in an irritated manner.

‘I will create a beautiful machine. Once it is set in motion, His Highness will fall into a deep sleep, from which he will not awake.’

‘You dare to waste our time with fairytales!’ snapped Dorantes. He could barely contain his anger.

Mach intervened. ‘Your Excellency,’ he spoke directly to Dorantes, ‘Mister Hlava has told me of his plan in detail. I suggest it will be greatly to your benefit to hear what he has to say.’

Hlava licked his lips and began to outline his scheme. Gradually the anger and scepticism ebbed from every face. He finished on a flourish: ‘And in the morning His Highness will be dead and his courtiers will suspect nothing, although some might surmise that the Devil came to claim his soul during a night of necromancy.’

‘And do you have such a machine?’ said Dorantes expectantly.

‘I do not. But if you provide me with sufficient resources, then I shall make one.’

‘And what will your fee be?’

‘Three thousand ducats should be sufficient.’

‘Two,’ said Dorantes.

Hlava shook his head. ‘Your Excellency, it is a grave thing you ask me to do.’

Dorantes mulled it over. It was a huge sum, but if Hlava was able to do what he claimed, it would be worth it.

‘Two thousand ducats is a ransom worthy of a prince,’ said Dorantes. ‘It will utterly deplete my resources.’

‘Two it is,’ said Hlava. He couldn’t believe they were prepared to pay him that much.

‘And how long will it take?’ said Dorantes.

‘I will have it ready by the end of the month.’

‘And who is to present this machine to the Emperor? Surely whoever does this will cast suspicion on himself?’

Hlava nodded. ‘You are most wise, Your Excellency.’

‘I do not need you to tell me I am wise,’ said Dorantes. He was not going to let this sinister little man patronise him.

Hlava nodded and smiled his ingratiating smile.

‘I have a friend who will play the part of a traveller who purchased the machine in Asia Minor. I will prepare instructions for the use of it – with a clear command that it will work only in the presence of a single soul. I am sure the Emperor will not be able to resist such a prospect. My friend will need to be rewarded, of course.’

‘I’m sure you can see to that yourself, with the generous fee we are prepared to pay you,’ said Dorantes. He was affronted that Hlava was fishing for even more money. ‘And can we be sure we can trust your friend?’

‘I will use only the most reliable gentleman. Of that you have my assurance. He will know nothing of our intentions.’

‘You must keep me informed of your progress,’ said Dorantes. ‘You may have one thousand ducats to cover your immediate purchases, and the remainder when the Emperor is no longer with us.’

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Chapter Twenty-Eight

Hlava was surprisingly calm about the enormity of his task. He felt he knew the Emperor’s character well. Although he had never met him, he knew people who had. In the past he had mixed with some of the stargazers of the court and had even been with them to the top of the Astronomical Clock to observe the heavens. Now many of his acquaintances were former alchemists or natural philosophers who had fallen foul of Rudolph. One of them had written to the Emperor to say he had invented a perpetual-motion machine. He was summoned to the Castle and seen immediately – which caused no end of ill feeling among the ambassadors, diplomats and emissaries who had been waiting months for an audience.

But the meeting was a short one. The machine, a complex contraption featuring a ball rolling down a series of tilting planes, failed to perform as expected. Rudolph was so angry at having his expectations raised and time wasted that he had the man sent to Daliborka Tower. They let him go after a month, without torturing him, although he witnessed other wretches undergo great suffering and his every waking hour was spent in dread, wondering when it would be his turn on the rack. Hlava told himself that all would be well with his scheme if he had no contact at all with Rudolph’s court.

He returned to his home, just north of the Old Town Square, close by the Jewish Quarter, and went straight to his workshop, which was crammed with the paraphernalia of the alchemist and inventor. Hlava’s trade was making automata – little dolls that moved their eyes, dancing monkeys that bashed tambourines and did somersaults. Here and there were the hides of cats and dogs – fur for the animals he created. Levers, cogs and sundry other mechanisms lay on his workbench. Once he had fashioned great complex mechanical creatures, who could play the violin or write the future with pen and parchment. But such creations were too time-consuming and the commissions too infrequent. These days Hlava’s main customers were local toyshops. But there were always much easier ways of making money.

He knew exactly what to do for Dorantes. And he would not even have to make the expensive purchases the foolish Spaniards had funded him so generously for. In the basement below his workshop, concealed beneath dust sheets, were two magnificent machines stolen the previous year from a maker of scientific instruments in Plzen. They had caught his eye when he walked past a shop-window display close to the University there.

In the small hours of one hot August night, Hlava had returned to Plzen with Oldrich and Karel, and a cart with well-oiled wheels. They disturbed the nightwatchman and had to kill him. Oldrich had the bright idea of taking the body with them. They had strangled him, so there was no blood. ‘If he’s gone, they might think he’s made off with the very things we’re taking,’ he said with a chuckle.

The watchman was weighted with a millstone and dumped in the river. It took several months for his bloated, unrecognisable body to break free of the rope that held it and float to the surface. By then everyone had forgotten about him.

The instruments had been worth the trouble. One was a brass torquetum. This astronomical measuring instrument was the size of a small low table, with three variable circular measuring planes. At its base was a compass and a plumb line and on each plane elaborate floral patterns were woven between the intricate calibrations.

The other was an astronomical clock. It was an even more magnificent work of art and science than the torquetum. Four overlapping dials displayed the hours and minutes of the day, together with the phases of the Moon, the signs of the Zodiac, the times of sunrise and sunset and a calendar that could calculate days and dates up to the year 3,000. The entire instrument was housed in an ebony and glass case that allowed the inner workings of hundreds of gleaming overlapping brass cogs, flywheels and levers to be seen.

Hlava began a dramatic reconstruction. The ebony wood that made up the casing of the clock was skilfully removed and replaced with polished golden oak, inlaid with green Indian marble shaped to form alchemical symbols. Arabic inscriptions were carved into the wood and inlaid with carnelian. That gave it a nice mystical feel.

The torquetum was more difficult to alter, but he managed to lay a tiny mother-of-pearl band around the sides of each of its three variable planes.

The torquetum was set atop the clock, which in turn was to be mounted upon a solid iron strongbox surrounded by polished oak. Into this, Hlava carefully placed a hefty clockwork mechanism positioned to operate a set of bellows, and a chiming glass bowl which gave out a strange singing note when rubbed with a leather cloth. This too was operated by mechanical means and would give the machine an additional air of magic as well as covering the sound of the bellows.

Inside the strongbox there was also space for a large leather bag – the sort that could be used to carry water. This would contain a deadly vapour he would need to prepare. It was a curious by-product of alchemical research, known to a few of his acquaintances. If the
lana philosophica
– the philosopher’s wool, which some call
ninx album
, or zincum – was mixed with pearls, or even limestone, and then heated, a vapour of sorts was produced, odourless and colourless and undetectable to human senses. Inhalation led directly to death. Being without form or smell it was quite perfect for the discreet disposal of unwanted emperors.

‘There,’ he said to himself. ‘You wind the mechanism to start the machine; that turns the flywheel, which pumps the bellows. The glass bowl starts to sing and vapour seeps from the underside of the machine, and that . . . will be that.’

He finished the work within a week, then settled down by the window with the oldest, most withered parchment he could find and began to write a detailed set of instructions. Each page was then left in the early autumn sunshine, which allowed it to fade most convincingly.

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Chapter Twenty-Nine

Strom and Etienne had spent the morning offloading trinkets in the market. When Hlava found them they were whiling away a pleasant afternoon in the Three Violins.

‘I have a job for you, my friends,’ he whispered to them, after looking around to check no one else was in earshot. ‘I want you to take something to the Emperor. It is a machine of great ingenuity. One that can stop time.’ He gave a wink.

‘Hlava, you stinking dog’s arse,’ said Strom, who had drunk more than his usual for that time of day. ‘You can do a job like that yourself. Then I can come and admire
your
head on a spike on the Stone Bridge, because that’s what’s going to happen to me if I do it.’ He snorted, as if it was a bad joke. ‘The Emperor!’

Hlava tutted. ‘Such intemperate language, my friend. Would you not like to hear more of my plan?’

Strom gave him a grudging nod, but Etienne was all ears. Hlava would not normally tolerate such rudeness so cheerfully so this must be important.

‘You are to tell the Emperor’s curators you are merchants travelling from Asia Minor with treasures for the courts of Europe. Your journey is almost at an end, but you still have the most wondrous device of all, one reputed to stop time. I will provide such a machine and you will deliver it. You may sell it for a considerable sum and have it sent to the court. Not only will you keep the sum you sell it for, but I will also give you two hundred ducats for your troubles.’

‘Ducats?’ said Strom, spluttering out a mouthful of beer in his astonishment. Now he was tempted. That was enough to buy a house. ‘Hlava, if this goes wrong, and I do end up on the Stone Bridge, then I’ll get Radek and Dusan to hang your entrails round my severed neck.’

‘It will not go wrong, my friend. I will see to it. I have a name at the Castle: Anselmus Declercq. He is the Emperor’s chief curator. Write to him and tell him what you have. Be sure he meets you at a place you will not need to return to ever again. And when it is done, you and I will all be richer.’

Etienne looked on in amusement, but declared himself out. He had to be somewhere else anyway. He had to go.

‘So be it,’ said Hlava, ‘but no one else must hear of this.’ He knew this was a job Strom could do alone, but he always liked Etienne to be involved in his schemes. He was reliable and intelligent – which was more than you could say for most of the others.

As he left them talking, Etienne tried to remember where he had heard that name Declercq. It seemed familiar, but he could not place it. His instinct told him to have nothing to do with Hlava’s scheme, although he could see why Strom was tempted. He remembered with a wry smile how he had intended to work as a translator here in Prague – instead of all this mischief. For now he was enjoying himself living on the wrong side of the law, but maybe it was time to consider that more carefully.

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As curator of the Cabinet, Anselmus Declercq was often approached by merchants and craftsmen who had something strange and wonderful for the Emperor. It was one of his jobs to investigate which of these items were worth acquiring. Now a merchant travelling to Asia Minor had written to him with details of an extraordinary device that was certain to attract Rudolph’s interest. The merchant let it be known that he was intending to sell his machine to the murderous Mehmed the Third, in Constantinople, but he wanted to know if his great enemy would like to buy it instead. Strom thought this was a more effective pitch than the one Hlava had thought up.

Anselmus took the bait. He arranged to meet this fellow the next morning, just after breakfast at an inn in the Old Town. When he arrived, Anselmus was immediately impressed by the beauty of the machine. ‘And what does it do?’ he asked.

Strom was evasive. ‘I don’t know. I came across it in the basement of an abandoned monastery, Your Eminence. There are instructions – at least I suppose they are instructions . . .’ He pulled out a drawer at the side of the device and gave the faded parchments to Anselmus. They were written in Latin.

Anselmus read quickly. He understood enough to know that the apparatus was some sort of temporal device. It claimed to be able to ‘stop time’ – something Anselmus immediately rejected as impossible. But he was still interested. It was a beautiful machine made in glittering gold and silver with gemstones, and inlaid with ivory embellished with alchemical symbols. He was sure the Emperor would be delighted to have it in his collection.

To look at, he could see it was a mixture of a torquetum and an astronomical clock. In fact it was the mechanical equivalent of those bizarre mythical creatures that he sometimes saw at fairs and in the cabinets of the more gullible collectors – the gryphons, dragons, mermaids and unicorns that were clumsily stuck together by barber surgeons from the remains of other animals.

‘And how much do you want for this device?’ he asked.

‘Four hundred ducats,’ said Strom.

Anselmus was wary of Strom. There was a shifty nervousness about him and he was undoubtedly not a merchant, especially with the facial tattoos he could see peeping out from either side of the hood he had wrapped tightly around his head. Neither had he found such a device in a monastery.

‘Sir,’ said Anselmus, ‘this machine is clearly not able to do what it claims . . . but it is still very beautiful. I should like to buy it for that reason alone, although I can offer you only two hundred ducats.’

He was expecting the fellow to haggle and had already decided he would pay up to three hundred ducats. He was surprised when Strom said, ‘Done,’ and thrust out his hand to shake on the deal. The man seemed anxious to be rid of it and on his way.

‘I shall send some soldiers from the Castle to carry it back. They will pay you the money when they collect it.’

‘Do so immediately,’ said Strom. ‘I must be away by midday.’

As Anselmus walked back to the Castle he kept chuckling to himself. Travelling to the court of Mehmet the Third, indeed. That man would have been slain at the border, or taken as a galley slave. But Anselmus knew something strange and wonderful when he saw it. This was the best bargain he had ever purchased and he was sure the Emperor would be fascinated by such a bizarre contraption.

Anselmus mentioned the machine to Rudolph when he and Lukas visited him for his weekly examination that morning. The Emperor was especially despondent that day, and the news cheered him immensely. ‘Have it delivered as soon as it arrives, my dear Declercq,’ he said. ‘I shall read the instructions with great interest. What I would give to be able to stop time . . .’

Anselmus expected the Emperor to see this contraption as he himself had – as an amusing fraud. He was surprised to hear him express such open enthusiasm. Perhaps the Emperor believed it might work because he so desperately wanted it to.