‘But surely you don’t suspect the Old Wolf of treason!’
‘I suspect everyone, yourself included. That is the task appointed to me by Mr Pitt and His Majesty. Your task is to follow my orders without tedious questions and objections. And I must say, my boy, you did well with Sir Thaddeus. Very well indeed. Should your horological talents ever desert you, I advise you to take up the stage.’ Raising one stick in a swordsman’s flourish, he repeated: ‘Now, sit, sir – take the weight off that leg of yours.’
As Quare sank dejectedly into the nearest chair, a calico cat leapt clear with a yowl. ‘If I were on the stage, at least my efforts would be applauded.’
‘Have I not applauded them? You must be satisfied with an audience of one, my boy. Such is a regulator’s lot.’
‘But thanks to you, I am no longer a regulator.’
‘Pishposh. Regardless of what Sir Thaddeus and the rest of the Order may believe, you are a regulator until I say otherwise.’
‘That is small consolation, sir, for the public humiliation. News travels fast within these walls – and beyond them. Soon all of London will think me disgraced.’
‘Hardly all. All of London does not know of our Most Secret Order’s existence. Even the masters of the Worshipful Company know little enough of our business, and the majority of journeymen still less. We are a subject of rumour and speculation, not knowledge. But perhaps you deserve a little disgrace, sir. You let a rare opportunity slip. That grey-clad popinjay has robbed us of too many prizes.’
‘But—’
‘You had Grimalkin at your mercy,’ Master Magnus interrupted sternly. ‘With only the moon as witness. Sir Thaddeus may be wrong about any number of things when it comes to the management of this guild, but he is right to be angry when a regulator fails in the clear requirements of his duty.’
‘Master, as I told you when I placed the clock into your hands last night, I was concerned about my wound and feared the rogue’s blade was poisoned. There was no time to question or dispatch him.’
‘I know you, Mr Quare. I trained you. You are no milksop to flinch from what needs doing. So do not think to pull the wool over these eyes. There is more to your rooftop encounter with Grimalkin than you have divulged to me. I knew it at once, as soon as you began to spin your preposterous tale, but I decided to wait until this morning, after your interview with Sir Thaddeus, to prise the truth out of you. I knew it would be easier for you to play your part with the Old Wolf if you believed your story had taken me in. So I pretended to believe that poppycock about a poisoned blade, and I pretended to be relieved when my surgeon determined the wound was not poisoned after all. That you should attempt to deceive me was surprising, I confess – but I had other priorities than ferreting out the truth just then. Namely, the clock you had placed into my hands, the secrets of which could not be trusted to anyone else but me, not even Sir Thaddeus. That is why I rehearsed you in a tale more preposterous still, a tale of gross ineptitude conducted under the flag of honour, a tale apt to be so infuriating to a man of Sir Thaddeus’s saturnine temperament that he would overlook any inconsistencies in the timepiece before him and focus instead on the inadequacies of the man who had recovered it.’
‘I did as you asked, and look what it has cost me. Do I not deserve to know why?’
‘Why? Because it suits my purposes to have the Old Wolf and his partisans believe you dismissed from the Order and out of my favour. But do not attempt to divert me, Mr Quare. You would do well to remember that I am not so credulous as Sir Thaddeus. No, not by a long shot. So do not try my patience with any more flimsy fictions, sir – or you will find me as temperate as the Lisbon earthquake. Now, if you
please
, the truth. What really happened between you and Grimalkin on that rooftop?’
Quare swallowed, his mouth gone dry. ‘I fear you will not believe me.’
‘I will believe the truth, when I hear it.’
‘Will you hold it in confidence?’
‘Why, damn your impudence!’ Master Magnus slammed one of his sticks hard against the floor, putting a passel of cats to flight. ‘I will not parley with you! If you would remain a regulator, then speak. But understand this – one way or another, I will learn the truth. I have other devices at my disposal, devices every bit as ingenious as the stair-master … though much less pleasant to ride upon, I assure you.’
At this, Quare realized that the servant had been following Master Magnus’s orders in conveying him here so roughly. The master had foreseen this moment from the first and had planned accordingly; truly, he had a better chance of trouncing the great Philidor across a chessboard than of winning a battle of wits with Master Theophilus Magnus, who had built the Most Secret and Exalted Order of Regulators into a secret service said to rival that of Pitt himself. Yet the knowledge that he was almost certainly overmatched served only to stiffen his spine. ‘I do not take kindly to threats,’ he said, glowering.
‘Think of it rather as a reminder,’ Master Magnus answered.
‘A reminder of what?’
‘Of the oath you swore upon becoming a journeyman of this company. Why, one would think you were trying to protect Grimalkin!’
‘It’s not that. It’s … Well, it’s …’
‘Out with it, sir!’
Quare sighed. There was no help for it. ‘He … Grimalkin, that is … is a woman.’
For a moment, the only sound was the purring of the cats. Quare had always found a cat’s purr soothing, but there was a peculiar quality about a roomful of purring cats that was, he decided, not very soothing at all. Master Magnus, meanwhile, studied him from behind those dark lenses filled with flickering flames. That wasn’t too soothing, either. Despite his twisted legs, or rather because of them, the master possessed unusual upper-body strength – Quare had seen him lift, with
minimal
effort, gear assemblies for tower clocks that two men would have struggled to raise – and to watch him now, propped upon his sticks, ominously silent, was to see not a crippled man but a coiled spring. ‘A woman,’ he said at last. ‘Grimalkin a woman, you say?’
‘There can be no doubt of it.’
‘Grimalkin, who has outfought the deadliest swordsmen in Europe and outthought their masters, not once but again and again, that Grimalkin, the spy supreme, the paragon of thieves, is a female.’
‘It’s hard to believe, I know. But it’s true. I saw her with my own eyes. That’s why I couldn’t— You said the moon was the only witness, master. But God was watching, too. How could I slay a woman in cold blood?’
Master Magnus grunted as if he might be prepared to offer some practical suggestions. But instead he said, ‘Tell me everything that happened from the moment you first saw Grimalkin. Leave nothing out, Mr Quare, no matter how insignificant it may seem.’
Quare related how he had seen Grimalkin emerge, wreathed in smoke, from the attic skylight of Lord Wichcote’s house, then shadowed the grey-clad figure from rooftop to rooftop under the gibbous moon, crept close enough to deliver a knockout blow, more by luck than skill, and at the cost of a painful gash to his leg, and then lifted the grey mask only to find himself gazing at a face unmistakably female. Apart from the lifting of the mask, and what he had found beneath it, it was all as he had related to Master Magnus the previous night, while his leg was being tended to.
‘Describe this woman,’ Master Magnus instructed with sceptical interest.
‘It was not a face I had seen before,’ Quare replied. ‘Youngish, I would say.’
‘Attractive?’
‘I was too taken aback to notice.’
‘Were you? In my experience, regardless of the circumstances, the attractiveness of a young female is among the few things a young male may be depended upon to notice.’
Quare felt himself blushing. ‘The light was poor, and one side of her face was bruised and bleeding,’ he explained.
‘Did you move her? Staunch the bleeding?’
‘No, master.’
‘You did not … touch her at all?’
Quare bristled. ‘What do you mean?’
Master Magnus raised a bushy white eyebrow above the gold frames of his spectacles. ‘You would not be the first to take advantage of such an opportunity. Alone with a helpless young woman – a woman, moreover, who by her wanton actions might be said to have forfeited the protections a civilized society accords the weaker sex.’
‘Do you think I would spare a woman’s life only to violate that which is more precious than life?’
‘Fine sentiments, sir. They do you credit, I’m sure. Yet I cannot help but notice that you did not attempt to aid her. A strange sort of chivalry, that.’
‘I …’
‘No matter. Surely you questioned the woman once she had regained consciousness.’
Quare started as a cat – the same calico he had evicted earlier – leapt into his lap. He stroked the animal, grateful for the distraction. ‘Er, no. In truth, I
was
worried that her blade had been poisoned. You will grant, master, that poison is a woman’s weapon.’
At this, Master Magnus gave a stiff nod, as though compelled against his will to acknowledge the point.
Encouraged, Quare went on. ‘I thought it best to return the timepiece to you as quickly as possible – before the poison took effect or any accomplices came to Grimalkin’s aid. I was loath to lose the prize so soon after having won it.’
Master Magnus chuckled. ‘I do not mean to denigrate your bravery and resourcefulness, my boy. But even you must realize how unlikely – inconceivable, rather – it is that a regulator of your limited experience could take a seasoned agent like Grimalkin by surprise. No, sir, no. That alone proves – were the idea itself not absurd on its face – that the woman you overcame on the rooftop was not Grimalkin, but an imposter.’
‘An imposter! But she stole the clock from Lord Wichcote – and, by the sound of it, crossed blades with more than one adversary to do so!’
‘Pishposh. By your own testimony, you did not see what went on in that attic. For all you know, the woman was aided by an accomplished swordsman, who sacrificed his life – or at least his liberty – in order to facilitate her escape. That seems more likely, does it not, than a lone woman besting multiple swordsmen? No doubt the woman and her accomplice believed their chances of robbing Lord Wichcote would be improved if one of them dressed as the notorious Grimalkin. Such a stratagem would also enable the woman to conceal her gender beneath a mask – thus giving Lord Wichcote the mistaken impression that he was facing two men.’
‘But I saw no evidence of an accomplice!’
‘Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.’
‘If only you had seen the speed and skill with which she moved, master. She very nearly skewered me! How do you explain that?’
‘You believed you were facing Grimalkin – and believing made it so. Preconceptions colour perceptions, my boy.’
‘What of
your
preconceptions, then? Because you cannot entertain the possibility of a female Grimalkin, you spin hypotheses out of whole cloth!’
‘No, sir, no,’ the master repeated, giving the floor another thump with his stick. ‘Why, it were as likely for me to dance a jig atop this desk as for Grimalkin to be a woman! Put the notion from your mind. That was not Grimalkin you fought. And a good thing, too, else you would not have survived, much less come back in triumph, bearing the prize.’
Quare was not in a mood to be mollified. ‘If not Grimalkin, then who?’
‘That is precisely the question, Mr Quare. And you may rest assured that it is a question I mean to get to the bottom of. Not just the woman’s identity – and that of her accomplice, should he be proved to exist – but the identity of the person or persons who engaged them to steal that timepiece from Lord Wichcote. I do not believe they were common criminals. Far from it. They were in the service of England’s enemies, of that I have no doubt.’
‘Then perhaps they are allied with Grimalkin in some way.’
‘That is indeed a troubling possibility.’ Master Magnus adopted a severe expression. ‘You were wrong to try and keep this from me, Mr
Quare
, as you were wrong not to question the woman posing as Grimalkin. But I will forgive these wrongs, just this once, because you did bring the clock to me, after all, and played your part to perfection with the Old Wolf. Yet I must say, I find your account, even in its amended form, an odd one – so odd, in fact, that I cannot help but wonder if you are holding something back even now.’
‘I’ve told you everything, master – I swear it!’
‘We shall see,’ he answered, and his expression turned more ominous still. ‘You were not my first choice for this assignment, Mr Quare. Had a more seasoned regulator been available, I would have sent him. But with the French, Russians, and Austrians moving against us on the Continent, as well as in Scotland and in Ireland, to say nothing of the Colonies, I’ve had to dispatch my best men far and wide, and you – to be blunt – were simply the best of what remained. I was, I confess, somewhat apprehensive as to your chances. Nor has your success in securing the timepiece against all odds laid those apprehensions to rest – on the contrary, in some respects what you have just told me has exacerbated them. If you are to continue as my special agent, I must have your solemn oath that you are prepared to harden your heart, put conscience aside, and act in the best interests of your country and your guild as circumstances require. Can you do that, Mr Quare? Because I assure you, if you cannot, I can find another man who will.’
‘I am your man,’ Quare said, anxious to assuage the master’s doubts. It had not only been from a desire to draw closer to the mysteries of time that he had accepted Master Magnus’s invitation to become a regulator; the master had promised to utilize his intelligence network on Quare’s behalf, to uncover the identity of his father. He did not wish to jeopardize that promise now. ‘You have my word.’
‘Hmm … Perhaps there is someone I can assign to help you,’ Master Magnus said. ‘Someone with more experience …’
‘I thought all the experienced agents were on assignment,’ Quare said. ‘Anyway, I prefer to work alone.’
‘Your preferences do not concern me,’ the master answered. ‘There are regulators no longer on active duty but still competent enough to support you in the field.’