‘I would appreciate it if you sent my things on to the guild hall, Mrs Puddinge,’ he replied. ‘Once this matter is cleared up, I believe I will seek other lodgings.’
‘There’s no cause to get huffy,’ she said, flushing more deeply still. ‘Your things will be safe with me. I run an honest house, I do. But, not to put too fine a point on it, if it’s a French spy you are, Mr Quare, why, then by law your things are rightfully mine, as it were me that nicked you. So if you don’t mind, I’ll be holding on to them for now.’
‘I do mind,’ he said.
‘That’s as may be. If, God willing, you’re found innocent, then you can come and fetch everything – after payment of a small storage fee, of course. Good day, sirs.’ With a stiff nod to Quare, and another curtsy to Grandmaster Wolfe, she left the study, escorted out by one of the servants.
‘A formidable woman,’ said the Old Wolf once she had gone. ‘I sometimes think that if we could but ship a hundred like her across the Channel, the war would be won in no time.’
‘Sir Thaddeus—’
‘Have no fear for your possessions, Mr Quare. I have already dispatched agents to bring everything here.’
‘Thank you for that, at least.’
‘I have not done it for your sake, but so that we may examine your things with a fine-toothed comb. Once we are done, if you are judged to be a spy, then what is left – after the Crown has taken its share – will indeed go to Mrs Puddinge. That is the law. Now, sir. Let us return to the matter at hand.’
‘I will not lie about Master Magnus,’ Quare said. ‘He suffered enough calumny while alive. I’ll not add to it now, when he can no longer defend himself.’
‘Noble sentiments, no doubt.’ The Old Wolf leaned back in his chair – it creaked ominously – and regarded him for a moment, placid blue eyes unblinking. Then, seeming to come to a decision, he leaned forward again, to the accompaniment of further creaking, and placed his elbows on the desk, careful to avoid coming anywhere near the
watch
. ‘You must consider the living, Mr Quare, and leave the dead to bury the dead. That is my advice to you. Now that Master Magnus is gone, I will be taking his place at the head of the Most Secret and Exalted Order. In these perilous times, it no longer makes sense – if it ever did – to divide the reins of guild authority between two men. I have already appointed Master Malrubius to assist me.’
Quare flinched at the name. Master Malrubius modelled himself upon the Old Wolf in his style of dress, his mannerisms, even his very girth; but the man was physically and mentally smaller than his model, and the contrast made him an object of ridicule and contempt among the apprentices and journeymen. But he was also an object of fear, for his dull wits did not preclude the frequent use of his fists, which were not at all dull. They struck with the force of small hammers.
Meanwhile, the Old Wolf had continued to address him. ‘I do not yet know if Master Magnus was a traitor to his guild and his king – and do not imagine, by the way, that your testimony alone will acquit or convict him; you are not as important as all that, Mr Quare. It is the master’s own writings that will testify most strongly to his guilt or innocence, and we have only just begun to sort through them; as you know, he was not what could be called an orderly man, at least not where his papers were concerned. But regardless of whether or not he was a French spy, it is already clear that Master Magnus used the regulators as a kind of private army, keeping secrets from me and from Mr Pitt alike, while pursuing an agenda of his own. You, sir, were a part of that agenda. And for whatever reason, when it came to this particular timepiece, the master chose to involve you, rather than a more experienced regulator. Now, however lax he may have been in the disposition of his books and papers, when it came to matters of horology and spycraft, the master was meticulous, as I think you will agree. Thus I conclude that it was not by chance or circumstance that he dispatched you to procure this timepiece. Nor, though the Massacre of the Cats may have been an accident, as you say, was your presence there accidental.’
This had not occurred to Quare. But he was quick to dismiss it. ‘Master Magnus told me that all the more experienced regulators were
on
assignment. There was no one else close enough at hand to dispatch to Lord Wichcote’s.’
‘He told me the same, and I trusted him – I had no reason not to. Our rivalry was no secret, of course, yet I had always believed that, beyond these walls, we set our differences aside for the good of king and country. I know
I
did. But since his death – or, rather, since you came to me with that appalling and quite frankly fantastic tale of sparing Grimalkin’s life out of a finicky sense of honour, a tale I did not believe for one instant – since that bit of uncharacteristic sloppiness on Master Magnus’s part, as if events had taken an unexpected turn and forced him to a clumsy improvisation – I began to suspect that he had not been entirely truthful with me. I made inquiries. And so it proved. There
were
other regulators available that night, Mr Quare. Indeed, the master could have picked among half a dozen men with more field experience than you. And yet he chose you, a regulator still wet behind the ears, for a mission of, as it appears, extraordinary importance. Why would that be?’
‘I-I don’t know,’ confessed Quare, taken aback by this information. He did not think the Old Wolf was lying to him. With Master Magnus, there had always been gears within gears. Not that his opinion of the man’s loyalty had changed, but in this matter, he realized, he might have been too credulous. Loyalty, after all, did not preclude self-interest; aye, or the settling of old scores. ‘The master intended for you to suspend me from the regulators,’ he admitted. ‘That was why he fabricated that story.’
‘Now we are getting somewhere. You will tell me what truly happened between you and Grimalkin, Mr Quare. But first I will hear the reason that Master Magnus wished you suspended.’
‘I don’t know,’ Quare repeated. ‘He said he had some kind of special assignment in mind for me, one in which I would have more freedom if my connection to the Most Secret and Exalted Order was believed to have been severed, but he never had a chance to tell me what it was.’
‘Perhaps we will find a clue in his papers,’ mused Grandmaster Wolfe. ‘But I think you yourself possess many if not most of the answers I seek, though you may not realize it. Answers having to do with the nature and purpose of this watch, for one, and with Master
Magnus’s
relationship to Aylesford and Grimalkin, for another. Either you are withholding these answers to protect a perfidious scheme in which you are involved right up to your eyeballs, or, more charitably, out of misguided loyalty to a man undeserving of it, or you have simply failed to grasp the significance of certain details known only to you.’
‘Sir Thaddeus, I swear—’
‘Do not protest your innocence to me, sir. Or your ignorance. Mere words will not convince me of either. It is details I want. And details I shall have. Whether you provide those details willingly or require the persuasion of Master Malrubius is immaterial. Is that clear?’
Quare nodded. He did not see any alternative now to confessing everything: the fact that Grimalkin was a woman, along with her dire if imprecise warnings about the dangers of the timepiece – warnings that circumstances had borne out in such disturbing and incredible ways, from the discovery that the watch ran on blood, to the Massacre of the Cats, to his own unaccountable surviving of a wound that, to all appearances, should have been fatal. The watch was the key to all of these mysteries, and more, yet was itself, he felt certain, a greater mystery still. Its nature, its origin, its purpose – he knew none of these things, could not even begin to guess at them. He did not think he could convince the Old Wolf of what little he knew … or of how much he didn’t know. He could, of course, offer to demonstrate the watch to Sir Thaddeus – could prick his finger and let his blood drip into its bone-white workings. But even if the hunter reacted as it had before, seeming to come to life with stolen vitality, Quare thought it entirely possible that such an action would merely light the fuse of some new and still more terrible manifestation of the object’s parlous energies. ‘Sir Thaddeus,’ he began.
But the Old Wolf interrupted him again. ‘I do not wish to hear anything more from you at present, Mr Quare. No, I think it best that you have some time to ponder your situation. To review all that you have told me … and all that you have not. Solitude, I find, can be a helpful goad to reflection, a powerful stimulus to memory.’ He gave a nod, and Quare turned to see the remaining servant advancing upon him from his position beside the door. He backed away.
‘This isn’t necessary, Sir Thaddeus,’ he protested.
‘Oh, but I believe it is,’ the grandmaster said. He had risen while Quare’s back was turned, and now, moving with a swiftness at odds with his bulk, he laid hands on Quare from behind. The man’s aged, sweaty reek enveloped him. His grip was like iron, and Quare did not attempt to break free. The Old Wolf spoke low in his ear, his breath stinking of tobacco. ‘Think on anything that Master Magnus may have revealed to you, whether in words or actions or otherwise, about the nature of this timepiece and his plans for it. Review your encounters with Grimalkin and Aylesford. Meanwhile, Master Malrubius and I will make a more thorough examination of the master’s papers, and of your possessions as well. I think perhaps I will have him pay you a visit. I find he can be most persuasive. Be assured, if you attempt to mislead him, or hold anything back, I shall hear of it and take it as proof of your guilt, at which point I will not hesitate to turn you over to the watch – or to Mr Pitt himself, whose methods of interrogation, I am given to understand, are more exacting still. Do we understand each other, Mr Quare?’
‘We do,’ he said tersely, trying not to breathe in the man’s rank odours, as if they would leave a stain upon his insides.
‘Good.’ The Old Wolf released him, pushing him towards the servant, who did not take hold of him but gave every appearance of being prepared to do so should it prove necessary. But all the fight had gone out of Quare. He turned back to the grandmaster.
‘Where …’
A satisfied smile lit the fat, florid face. ‘You will be lodged with us, Mr Quare. We have rooms prepared for such occasions as this. Granted, it has not proved necessary to use them for some time, but they exist, and you will find them adequate, if, no doubt, lacking the amenities of Mrs Puddinge’s establishment.’ He nodded, and the servant spoke in the sepulchral tones cultivated by all his fellows.
‘If you would come with me, sir.’
Quare glanced at the man. His powdered features might have been carved of stone, and his slate grey eyes gave no hint of the thoughts and emotions – if any – that were present behind them. Was he judging Quare now? Did he believe him to be a traitor to his guild, his country? Quare felt a deep-seated impulse to justify himself, to break
through
that impenetrable façade and evoke some kind of bare human acknowledgement, as if it were this nameless servant, not Grandmaster Wolfe, who would decide his guilt or innocence. But he said nothing, merely nodded his acquiescence.
Nor did the servant speak again. He turned about and strode to the door, opening it and then stepping aside for Quare to precede him. This he did, without another word to the Old Wolf, or even a backward glance. When the door closed, he felt as if he had left a portion of himself behind, along with his sword: and even if the sword were returned to him in the fullness of time, along with his other possessions, as he hoped would be the case, it didn’t seem to him that the life those objects had ornamented would be as easily regained; indeed, that life seemed irretrievably lost to him, regardless of what happened next. Even if he were not expelled from the guild, he would never be elevated to the rank of master now. Instead, it seemed the best he could hope for was a beating from Master Malrubius, followed by an ignominious expulsion from the company.
He felt it likely things would go considerably worse.
It was in this morose frame of mind that Quare followed the servant down a series of candlelit halls and stairways clutching his tricorn as though it were a shield. They encountered no one. The only sound, other than the scrape of their footfalls, came from a bristling ring of keys that the servant held in one hand: a faint, discordant chiming that punctuated their progress. Every so often, he would pause before a particular door and without hurry or hesitation select a particular key from among dozens, unlock and open the door onto another hallway or staircase, wait for Quare to enter, then, after following him through, fastidiously lock the door again behind him before resuming the lead. All without a word. His grey eyes uninterested as mud.
At first Quare was equally uninterested, mired in his own muddy thoughts, but soon he began to take note of how, in their steady downward progress, the paintings and tapestries covering the panelled walls gave way to bare wooden panelling, which in turn gave way to stone, while, on the floor, tiles were succeeded by wood, then stone. The air grew cooler and damper, yet also cleaner, more pure. The candles in their wall sconces were set farther and farther apart, like stars in the
night
sky, so that the servant was finally obliged to lift one down and carry it before him to light the way. After this, whenever he had to unlock a door, the servant would pass the candle to Quare, then, on the other side, the door closed and locked again, take the candle back.
Quare felt as if he were descending through time as much as through space, traversing past iterations of the guild hall preserved intact like the chambers of a nautilus shell. How deep were the roots of this place sunk into London’s rich soil? Who had walked here before him in years gone by? He shivered not only from the chill but from the sense that he might, at any moment, encounter the ghost of a Roman legionary or one of Boadicea’s warriors; even the sight of a gnome did not seem out of the question.
But at last, without incident, they came to a section of passage lined with stout wooden doors, each, so far as he could tell in the meagre light, equipped with an iron grille set at eye level. Quare stopped in surprise and consternation. The servant had conducted him to a dungeon. He had not known, would not have guessed in a thousand years, that the guild hall even
had
a dungeon. Doubtless it was an atavistic survival of less civilized times, pre-dating the establishment of the Worshipful Company and perhaps the raising of the hall itself. Buried deep … but not forgotten. The Old Wolf had said that these rooms were kept ready, though they had not been used for some time. Quare wondered how long. Years? Decades? Who had been the last prisoner here, and what had been his fate? Such speculations were not helpful, yet he could not keep them at bay.