The Emperor of All Things

10

Corinna



IT WAS SNOWING harder than ever when I awoke the next morning. Outside the window of my room, in the pale morning light, I could catch only fleeting glimpses of the street and hints of buildings across the way. It was as if the town were flickering in and out of existence, suspended in time.

As best I could tell, I’d had no further nocturnal visitors, either in dreams or reality. I performed my morning ablutions and went down to breakfast. The common room was deserted, no doubt because of the snowstorm. There was no sign of Inge or anyone else at the bar; nevertheless, the fire had been built up again, and the room was warm and welcoming. I took a seat at the bar opposite the cuckoo clock, which indicated a time of approximately seven forty-five. As I pulled out my pocket watch and wound the stem, I thought of Doppler’s watch, its ordinary appearance hiding a secret I would have given much to know. A watch that needed no winding, that had not stopped or slowed in more than fifty years, if the man was to be believed. When I’d held it up to my ear, I’d heard nothing at all, as though it were hollow inside. Or solid all the way through. But of course there had to be a mechanism within, some source of motive power. But what?

I looked up at the sound of the kitchen door swinging open. Inge emerged in a cloud of fragrant smoke.

‘Why, good morning, Herr Gray,’ she said, wiping her beefy hands, white with flour, on her apron. She seemed to have grown stouter overnight. Her plump cheeks, flushed from the heat of the kitchen, glowed like ripe tomatoes.

‘Good morning, Inge.’

‘I heard what happened last night,’ she said, lowering her voice to a whisper as she drew abreast of me on the other side of the bar although we were alone in the room. ‘I’m altogether mortified. The girl will be punished. You’ll get your tools back, never fear.’

‘So Herr Doppler assured me,’ I said.

‘Och, that girl gives herself airs. She thinks that I work for her and not the other way around.’

‘I’d like to speak to her. Is she here?’

‘So early? Not that one! It’s a rare day she’s out of bed before noon. Thinks she’s a princess. And her father, bless his tender heart, doesn’t do anything to correct the impression. What that family needs is a woman’s hand. A mother for the girl, a wife for the father.’

It sounded as if Inge had aspirations to both positions. ‘He’s a widower, I understand.’

‘Lost his wife the same time I lost my husband.’ She leaned across the bar, her yeasty smell once again working its disconcerting magic. Her breasts swelled beneath her apron, seeming about to spill over the top of her blouse. I shifted on my stool as she continued, her voice again dropping to a whisper. ‘They ran off together, Herr Gray, the two of them. I’m telling you because you would have heard it sooner or later, the way the folk of this town gossip. So you see why I wasn’t exactly distraught when I learned of my husband’s fate.’

‘Your dream, you mean.’

She nodded. ‘I saw her there with him, lying broken at the bottom of the crevasse.’ Her smile of fond reminiscence sent a chill down my spine.

‘Of course, it’s not Corinna’s fault that her mother was no better than a common whore,’ Inge continued, sounding as though she believed the opposite was in fact true, ‘but blood tells, you know. The girl needs to be treated firmly, not with the indulgence her father lavishes on her, encouraging all her worst tendencies. I do my best, but I’m afraid my efforts aren’t always appreciated as they should be.’

This I could well imagine. I found myself feeling unexpected sympathy for the motherless girl who had stolen my property.

‘Ach, no matter,’ said Inge, straightening. ‘You’re here for breakfast, not to listen to my troubles. But wouldn’t you prefer to sit at a table, Herr Gray?’

‘I’m right where I want to be,’ I told her. ‘Close to your remarkable clock.’

Inge turned to the side, crossed arms nestling her ample bosom, and beamed at the timepiece on the wall behind the bar. ‘Yes, it’s something, isn’t it?’

‘I saw it strike the hour last night with Herr Doppler. He said I might ask your permission to examine its workings.’

‘I’m afraid that’s out of the question,’ she replied without hesitation.

‘But—’

‘No, Herr Gray. What if you should break it? Who could fix it again? Could you?’

‘I believe I could,’ I answered. ‘Clocks are mechanical devices, no more and no less. Even such a marvel as this one. Herr Wachter’s secrets, once studied, can be understood, and once understood, replicated. I’ve encountered many wondrous clocks in my travels, and I’ve never found one beyond my abilities to repair.’

‘You’re not lacking in self-confidence, I’ll say that for you. Yet sometimes your duty is to destroy, not repair, isn’t that so? At least, that is the case with the journeymen of our own Clockmakers’ Guild.’

‘It is the same with us,’ I admitted. ‘A sad duty.’

‘Sad or happy makes no difference,’ Inge said with a shrug. ‘The result is the same either way. Perhaps you are correct, and you possess the skill to examine my clock without disturbing its workings, or, failing that, to repair it successfully, but what if, instead, you should find something that compelled you to destroy it?’

‘My guild has no authority outside England,’ I answered, choosing my words with care. ‘Indeed, one of the reasons I left England was to escape its authority, so that I would no longer have to put the parochial interests of the guild above science. Destroying clocks is not something I enjoy. It’s abhorrent to me. Besides, I’m a guest here, and it’s a rude guest who damages or destroys the property of his host! Really, if you think about it, I could be a godsend to this town, an English horologist at once beyond the reach of his own guild and unbound by the strictures that would govern the actions of any Austrian clockman. I discussed all this with Herr Doppler last night. He told me I might advertise my services freely and repair or examine any timepiece I cared to – with the owner’s consent, of course.’

‘You make a strong case, Herr Gray. But you must understand, my clock is special. It is Herr Wachter’s finest creation … after the town clock, of course. In some ways, it’s even finer.’

‘It is marvellous,’ I agreed.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ she said. ‘I will not be your first customer, but if you can find someone else willing to let you examine their timepiece, I’ll consider giving you a peek at mine. Don’t look so discouraged, Herr Gray – I haven’t set you an impossible task. Herr Wachter made many timepieces during his years here. You won’t find a household in Märchen without at least one.’

‘I’m not at all discouraged,’ I told her. ‘I’ll make inquiries around town today.’

‘Just one other person,’ she reiterated with a broad wink, ‘and my cuckoo is all yours.’

As with Herr Doppler the night before, I had the sense that Inge’s meaning was twofold. But before I could manage a reply, she turned and made her way into the kitchen, the back of her dress swaying voluminously from side to side with the quiet tolling of her hips. The sight put me in mind of my visit to the clock tower the day before, when I’d watched the bells of the campanile swinging soundlessly in the falling snow. I felt an incongruous stirring of passion, as if the mechanism of desire had become unbalanced in me. As I said, I like women with meat on their bones, but this was beyond anything I had ever experienced. What would it be like to sink into those rolls of flesh, I wondered, to scale the soft mountain of that massive body?

A familiar whirring sound shook me from my reverie. What followed was as extraordinary as I remembered – perhaps even more so, for I was fully awake now and, not taken by surprise as I had been the night before, able to register details that had escaped me when the room had been illuminated by a single candle instead of bright lamps and a roaring fire.

The little coppery dragon that emerged from the clock was the most natural-seeming automaton I had ever seen. Yet it was also the most unnatural, for no matter how realistic it appeared, how lifelike the glimmer in its eyes, the sinuous curling of its barbed tail, the ripple of tiny muscles under sleek scales, there are no such things as dragons. They are, are they not, no more than superstitions, myths, the stuff of dreams. As the little fellow vented its finger-length of flame, I recalled my own dream of the immense one-eyed dragon and how it had swivelled its grizzled head towards me and opened wide its jaws. I remembered the dark flickerings in its throat, as of a vast colony of bats stirring in the depths of a cave. A wave of dizziness swept over me, and I clung to the bar like a drowning man to a piece of wreckage.

Then the minute hand jerked forward, and the dragon retreated into its sanctuary, the tiny door snapping shut behind it. There was a last, fading whir, then a silence broken only by the regular knocking of the pendulum. The longing that pierced me at that instant was so pure that it was physically painful. I knew then that my assurances to Herr Doppler and Inge were meaningless.

I would do whatever it took to get inside that clock.

I spent the next hours calling on townsfolk in their homes and places of business. The blizzard was still in full force. Narrow pathways had been shovelled along the streets, with side passages leading to individual buildings to allow for ingress and egress. To prevent these paths from filling up again, they had been lined with wooden frames that joined together to form covered corridors, lit by lamps at regular intervals. The mazelike passages thus formed were narrow, cold and draughty but preferable to being exposed to the elements. While I slept, the town must have been hard at work erecting these frames. I had never heard of such a thing, but the people of Märchen assured me that otherwise they would be snowbound for months on end, trapped in their homes. This way the life of the town could go on even in the depths of winter, while storms raged that made this one appear a mere dusting. It struck me as a peculiar but ingenious solution to the problem set by nature, and I was not surprised to learn that, like the timepieces that so interested me, it, too, was an innovation of Wachter’s.

I found that I did not have to introduce myself: everyone knew who I was and why I had come. The townsfolk were friendly, if somewhat formal. They invited me into their homes, offered me food and drink, a place by the fire, and asked for the latest news of the wider world. I obliged, concealing my impatience with their questions and the comments they exchanged among themselves, which scarcely varied from house to house. Maddeningly, these mundane conversations almost always took place with one of Wachter’s creations in plain view, hanging on the wall or sitting on a nearby table. But at last the moment would come when my hosts would turn to the reason for my visit.

In this, Inge had not exaggerated: every shop and household possessed at least one timepiece of Wachter’s manufacture. These their owners presented for my admiration, hovering at my side as if afraid I might attempt to steal them right out from under their noses. Yet I kept a pleasant demeanour, praising with perfect sincerity the timepieces and the care with which they had been maintained over the years. Each was a masterpiece. In some places I was given no more than a quick glance; in others, I was allowed to hold these beautiful and eccentric creations, which moved me with feelings of wonder, excitement and sadness, as if their secrets lay not merely out of my sight but beyond my understanding, and would remain so even if I should look upon them more closely. I would have had my notebook with me in order to make preliminary notes and sketches, but since my tool kit was still missing, despite Herr Doppler’s assurances that it would be returned, I had judged it best to approach the townsfolk empty-handed, hoping to put them at ease. Nevertheless, my requests for permission to perform a more thorough examination later were everywhere rebuffed.

It struck me after the first hour or so that I hadn’t seen a single timepiece that didn’t show evidence of Wachter’s touch. Inquiring about this, I was told that while Wachter had repaired every clock and pocket watch that was brought to him, he refused to accept new commissions unless his prospective clients first destroyed every other timepiece in their possession. I couldn’t help thinking of the policies of the Worshipful Company and the Clockmakers’ Guild, which would have seen all of Wachter’s timepieces destroyed; here the opposite had occurred, and that had been the fate of the ordinary, run-of-the-mill timepieces. Thus, over the years of his residence, such timepieces had vanished from Märchen altogether, replaced by Wachter’s original creations, or by timepieces he had not just repaired but altered to such a degree that they were, to all intents and purposes, original creations as well. And in the years since his disappearance, no new timepieces had appeared; indeed, the townsfolk, by common consent, kept them out. My own watch, for example, was looked upon with outright suspicion, as if it might carry some sort of plague, and I soon learned to consult it in private only.

By mid-afternoon, discouraged but not defeated, I returned to the Hearth and Home for supper. Easier said than done, as I soon lost my way in the warren of dimly lit passages, none of which was marked; doubtless the townsfolk had no need of signs to direct them, as sure of their routes as rabbits or rats, but I was not so fortunate. Nor was I able to ask directions, for I seemed to be the only one out and about. It was disconcerting, to say the least, as if the men and women I had just been visiting and speaking to had vanished off the face of the earth, leaving me alone, trapped in this strange place. The farther I roamed, the more I felt cut off from the outside world. The passages down which I made my way, scarcely wide enough for two people to squeeze past each other – Inge would have been stuck like a cork in a bottle – might have been miles beneath the surface of the ground, cut deep into the bowels of the Alps. I began to be aware of a great weight pressing down from above, more than could be accounted for by the snow, and I felt the first stirrings of panic, as if the ceiling were about to collapse on top of me, or as if I had strayed somehow beyond the borders of the town.

It was then that a gust of icy wind blasted past me from behind. The lamps guttered and went out, plunging me into a darkness more absolute than I had ever known. I carried a tinderbox, of course, but it was not easily accessible, and was difficult to use in such draughty conditions. But I did not lose my head. Laying my hand along one wall, I pressed on in the direction I had been going, reasoning that sooner or later I would emerge into another lighted area or come upon a side passage leading to a house where I might request assistance.

Neither proved to be the case. In the dark, it was all too easy to imagine that I had slipped between the cracks of the world, as if I might fall at any moment, like Inge’s husband, into a crevasse where I would lie helplessly until death claimed me. I lost track of time – for a clockman, a most disturbing sensation. Finally I swallowed my pride and called out for help, but there was no answer.

Or, rather, the answer that came was less welcome than the silence that had preceded it. For what issued from out of the darkness at my back was a sound that had nothing human about it. A harsh chuffing, as of some bestial exhalation. I froze, hackles rising. It came again, closer now, and I felt a shudder pass through the ground, as if whatever was back there was heavy as a bull. I felt as if I had re-entered my dream of the night before – or, rather, that the dream had entered the waking world, pursuing me. I ran. I had no light, no weapon save my dirk. But I did not imagine it would afford any protection against this unseen foe.

Was this some plot of the townsfolk? Had Herr Doppler arranged to have the lamps extinguished, then introduced some large and angry animal into the labyrinth? I didn’t know what to think; I barely retained the capacity for thought. More than once I struck a wall or other barrier that sent me reeling or even to my knees, head spinning, but I pressed on every time, certain that my pursuer, whatever it was, would strike at any moment. I sensed its presence at my back, felt the hot wind of its breath; I could have reached out and touched it, had I dared – which I did not.

Then a last collision … and I was outside. I fell to my knees in the midst of howling wind and snow. After my immersion in darkness, even the wan light of the day was blinding, an explosion of white and grey that seemed as much inside my head as outside it. I was exhausted, spent; I knelt there in snow up to my waist, shivering, clutching my dirk with one hand, my hat with the other, ready to fight but with no idea of what I was fighting or from which direction an attack might come.

But no attack did come. After a while, my eyes adjusted to the light – though the blizzard still made it difficult to see – and I was able to rise to my feet. Looming out of the gloom before me I saw the outlines of a building, and I made for it as though my very life depended upon it.

As I drew closer, I recognized the distinctive shape of the clock tower and heard, tangled in the keening of the wind, a raw and random music: the muffled chiming of storm-buffeted bells. I could barely make out the campanile; as for the bells within and the clock face below, I could not see them at all, and the proscenium seemed less a potential shelter from the snow and wind (assuming I could somehow climb so high) than the source of both, like a cave from whose frigid depths winter was exhaled upon the world.

A shovelled passage led to the base of the tower, which struck me as odd: according to Doppler, the entrance had been sealed, and it seemed a waste of effort to shovel a passage that led nowhere. Unless, of course, the burgomeister had lied to me in order to discourage me from seeking the entrance on my own. But at that point, all I cared about was getting out of the storm and away from whatever had been pursuing me – and might still be, for all I knew.

Upon reaching the foot of the tower, I saw that the passage branched left and right, as if circling the structure. Rather than following it in either direction, I stepped up to the wall, where snow was nestled in the niches and hollows created by the ornamental figures I’d noticed upon my arrival the day before. Most of them were buried now, but here and there arms and hands and heads emerged from the snow as in some macabre representation of an avalanche, or, rather, the aftermath of one. Even the great snake or dragon depicted there was all but submerged … yet the way its coils broke free of the snow only to plunge out of sight again made it seem to be sporting amidst the corpses like a sea serpent frolicking amidst the carnage of a wreck.

I swept the snow away with my hat and then groped among the contorted shapes, which I saw now were metal castings, looking for evidence of a door, perhaps a hidden mechanism that, once triggered, would cause the façade to swing open and admit me. But there was nothing – at least, nothing that my fingers, clumsy within gloves that provided scant protection against the cold, could detect. I wondered if I could climb the façade, use the castings as hand- and footholds to reach the shelter of the proscenium, and gain entrance to the interior from there. But I did not like my chances in such a climb. The façade was slick with snow and ice, and the gusting winds would make any attempt even more hazardous.

I considered turning back, looking for an alternative route to the Hearth and Home, or seeking shelter from one of the townsfolk, but I wasn’t ready to give up on the tower yet; this close, my curiosity was rekindled: it was no longer just the need for shelter that drove me. When, I asked myself, would I find a better opportunity to examine the tower unobserved? Hunching my shoulders against the wind and snow, and jamming my hat back onto my head, I set off down the leftward-branching passage.

I hadn’t gone far when the bells of the tower began to peal in earnest, striking some arbitrary hour. I ducked my head and pressed myself against the base of the tower as clumps of snow and ice, dislodged from above, fell around me. The metal figures of the façade poked into my back, and through them I felt a deep, slow, rhythmic thrumming: the inner workings of the great clock. I hadn’t felt the slightest vibration earlier when I’d groped among the castings; now, with the tolling of the bells, an internal mechanism had been set in motion, and I knew at once what it must be.

I ran back to the front of the tower and peered up through the falling snow. The icy flakes stung like chips of stone, and indeed the sky, or what I could see of it, was as grey as clouded marble, like the roof of a vast domed chamber, so that, for a moment, as I gazed into the hollow arch of the proscenium, it seemed to me that I was not looking into an enclosed space but rather out of one, and though I could not see even a glimpse of what lay beyond the snowy curtain, I sensed a presence wider than the world I knew. The vivid force of this perception staggered me, and I felt again, as I had the day before, an impulse to step away from the tower, to retreat out of range of its uncanny influence. But my curiosity outweighed my fear, and I held my ground.

Though the bells were still tolling, they had lost all semblance of musicality. Now they came crashing down like thunder. I flinched with every peal, each louder than the one before, until the very ground seemed to tremble beneath my feet. Once again I recalled my dream, how the girl had fled from footsteps that shook the ground in just this way.

I would have turned then and fled myself, curiosity be damned, if the first automaton hadn’t appeared from out of the snow-blurred depths of the proscenium. At first, I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing. Something angular, tall and dark, like the prow of a ship, came gliding into view. The prow of a second ship seemed to pass it on the outside, as if some ghost armada were sailing out of the clock tower. But then my mind made an insane adjustment of scale, of perspective, and I realized that I was seeing a pair of legs scissoring through the snow. The legs alone were far larger than could be contained within the tower; they seemed to rise up for ever. But of course they did not: no more than mountains rise for ever. Yet it might have been a mountain that I was seeing – a mountain in the shape of a man.

My legs folded, depositing me on my knees. Then, as the earth resounded like the skin of a drum to each impossible footfall, I toppled onto my side, gazing up at the colossal figure. Another strode behind it. And another behind that. They moved slowly, effortlessly, it seemed, through the blizzard. The tower was still present, its dimensions unchanged. Though the figures overtopped it by hundreds of feet, they continued to emerge from its depths, nor did their weight crush the stage across which they filed, nor, for all the vastness of their strides, had the first of them yet reached the opposite side. It was as though the laws of nature were in abeyance, and categories of perception that could or should not coexist in a sane mind were suddenly thrust together. I felt the gears of my reason grinding against each other. I suppose I must have screamed.

At that, the figures halted. The bells fell silent. There was only the howling of the wind. I tried to get to my feet and run, but it was useless. I was like a dazed rabbit scratching for shelter in the snow. Then came a sight that stilled even those feeble movements. A hand was reaching for me, dropping through the blizzard like a dark cloud, like the fall of night. There was no escaping it – not even if I’d been able to run. I had no doubt but that I was about to die. In that moment, a dreamlike clarity possessed me. I felt intensely present yet at the same time detached from what was happening; I watched the fingers of that immense hand open to grasp me, and in those seconds, which seemed to stretch into hours, it struck me with the force of revelation that these were not automatons I was seeing – no mechanical constructs could possibly be so large – but rather living creatures, giants such as the Bible speaks of, and the pagan myths, too. It occurred to me then that Wachter’s Folly was not a clock tower but instead a kind of portal, a gateway, so to speak, between our world and another, and that these giants had crossed some unimaginable distance to come here. Had Wachter summoned them with his wizardry, compelled them to parade in single file across the stage of his extraordinary clock? And if so, for what purpose? I did not think I would learn the answer to these questions, or any others, as the gigantic fingers closed around me, blotting out the snow, the light, the world.

When next I opened my eyes, I was in bed in my room at the Hearth and Home. The light of a candle illuminated the startled face of a girl seated in a chair between the bed and the hissing stove. She gave a cry and sprang to her feet, rushing from the room before I could say a word. I heard her calling for Frau Hubner from the hallway. I winced and raised a hand to my throbbing head … only to encounter a bandage. Pain flared, and I jerked my hand away with a groan.

I sat up, and the covers slipped to my waist. I was shirtless; in fact, I was naked. I had no memory of what had happened to my clothes … or, for that matter, to me. The room was toasty warm; the curtains were drawn over the window, so I had no idea what time it was or whether it was still snowing. The girl, meanwhile, had left off calling for Inge, though she had not returned to the room, and now I heard – and felt as well – the landlady’s heavy tread as she mounted the stairs. It was no more than a faint trembling compared with the earthshaking footsteps of the giants, yet the terror I’d felt as I lay helpless in the snow took hold of me again. Shivering like some palsied ancient, I groped for the covers and pulled them to my chin.

Inge squeezed into the room, her round face flushed red. ‘So, you are awake at last, Herr Gray! But what are you doing? You’re in no condition to get out of that bed!’

‘Indeed, I am not,’ I agreed. ‘Where are my clothes?’

‘I was going to ask you the same question,’ she replied as she bustled over. I flinched, thinking that she was going to push me down – weak as I was, a child could have done it. But instead she touched the back of her hand to my forehead, then reached past me to fluff the pillows into a backrest. Her yeasty scent enveloped me, and had its customary effect, which I endeavoured to hide by shifting beneath the covers.

‘There,’ she said at last, stepping back to survey her work with satisfaction, her thick arms crossed over the shelf of her bosom, ‘all nice and comfy.’ I had the impression that she was rather enjoying my helplessness. ‘You gave us quite a scare, Herr Gray! Ach, what possessed you to pay a visit to the clock tower in such weather? And what happened to your clothes?’

‘Do you mean to say I was naked when you found me?’

‘It was not I but Adolpheus who found you,’ Inge said. ‘Lying in the snow at the base of the clock tower as naked as the day you were born!’

‘I lost my way in the storm,’ I told her, ‘and found myself at the clock tower. The bells began to chime, and I saw the most incredible display …’ I trailed off, afraid that she would think me mad if I said any more. ‘That is all I remember.’

‘Lucky for you I happened by,’ Adolpheus remarked, entering the room with his lopsided gait. Hesta trotted in behind him, tail wagging. The dog went straight to the stove, where she circled once before curling up on the bare floorboards.

‘I found you at the foot of the tower,’ Adolpheus continued. ‘It seems you were struck on the head by a piece of falling ice.’

I raised my hand to the bandage again, but stopped short of touching it, remembering the pain that had ensued the last time I did so.

‘Big as a cannonball it was,’ my rescuer stated, demonstrating the size of the ice chunk with his hands. ‘Blood everywhere! I thought you were dead at first – if not from the blow to the head, then from the cold, for you weren’t wearing so much as a stitch of clothing. I covered you with my cloak, lifted you in my arms, and carried you here. I may be small, but I am strong as a bull.’

‘But my weapon … my watch!’

‘As for your dirk, I saw no sign of it. Perhaps it is buried under the snow. Your watch, however, was clutched in your hand; indeed, I had some difficulty prising your fingers apart to remove it! It’s there, beside the bed.’

And so it was, on the nightstand. The sight of it was immensely reassuring for some reason; even more so, once I had picked it up and judged that it was still running, was the familiar heft of it in my hand. But I didn’t know what to think. Had it all been a dream? Everything had seemed so real! Yet I remembered how, when the bells began to toll, chunks of ice had fallen from the tower. Perhaps one had indeed struck me – knocked me, dazed and bleeding, to the ground. And from there, before I blacked out, I had gazed up and seen the automatons emerging from the tower; from that perspective, they might have loomed large as giants. Yet that did not explain what had happened to my clothes and my dirk.

Inge, meanwhile, had poured a glass of water from the pitcher on the table beside the stove, and this she brought to me now. ‘Here, Herr Gray. You must be parched.’

I accepted the glass and took a deep swallow … then began to cough – racking coughs that made my ribcage ring like iron and left me aching in every muscle and bone. Only when the fit was over, and I lay back weakly against the pillows, gasping like a fish out of water, a cold sweat clinging to my skin, did I notice that Inge had taken the glass from me before I could spill it over the bedclothes.

‘You must take things slowly at first, Herr Gray,’ she admonished, shaking her head sternly, chins jiggling like vanilla puddings.

With a sense of things clicking belatedly, dreadfully, into place, I asked her how long I had been in bed.

‘Adolpheus found you six days ago,’ came the reply.

Six days! I didn’t remember a moment of even a single one of them. Yet I had no trouble recalling my last moments at the clock tower. They might have taken place just hours ago, they were so fresh in my mind. ‘And was I unconscious all that time?’ I demanded.

‘As good as,’ said Inge. ‘You were feverish. Burning up. You raved, ranted. We took turns sitting with you. Tending you like a newborn baby. Adolpheus, the girl and I. Even Herr Doppler.’

‘I’m grateful,’ I told her. ‘And sorry for any trouble I caused.’

‘Ach, what trouble?’ Inge replied. ‘The important thing is that the fever has broken at last. You’re on the mend now.’

‘You’ll be up and about in no time,’ Adolpheus seconded, grinning through his beard.

‘But you need to build up your strength,’ said Inge. ‘Do you think you could eat something?’

‘I feel as if I could eat a horse,’ I told her.

‘I’m afraid that’s not on the menu at the Hearth and Home,’ she replied with a smile.

‘You could have fooled me,’ interjected Adolpheus.

She ignored the gibe. ‘I doubt solid food would agree with you just now. Better to start with some nutritious broth. I’ll send up a bowl.’

‘Thank you, Inge. You, too, Adolpheus. I’d be dead if you hadn’t come looking for me.’

‘As to that, I may have found you, Herr Gray, but it wasn’t from looking. No, I was about my duties, keeping the pathways clear and the lamps lit, when I spotted you. Didn’t know whether to dig you out or finish burying you!’ He chortled. ‘But what happened to your clothes, Herr Gray?’ He tapped the side of his nose with one finger. ‘An afternoon tryst, perhaps, interrupted by a husband unexpectedly returned home?’

Before I could deny it, Inge broke in.

‘Leave off your teasing, Adolpheus. Can’t you see how tired he is? It’s time we took our leave. You, too, Hesta.’

And in fact, my eyes had drifted shut while Adolpheus spoke. I wasn’t sure if it was a lack of strength or inclination that kept me from opening them again as my visitors left the room. I was tired – I could not remember ever having felt so drained … yet my mind would not stop racing, presenting me with nightmarish images of what I had seen, or hallucinated, and wondering, too, at the mystery of my missing clothes. It seemed that someone must have found me before Adolpheus, and removed them … perhaps wanting me to freeze to death. But who would feel threatened enough by my presence to commit murder? Could it have been Doppler after all?

My musings were interrupted by the sound of my name. I opened my eyes to see once more the girl who had been watching over me when I first awoke. Perhaps I had dozed off, for I hadn’t heard her come in. She was sitting in a chair drawn up close to the bedside and leaning towards me with an anxious expression, as though eager to wake me yet fearful of it, too. A fine gold chain encircled her neck, and dangling from the end of it was a glittering gold ring, like a wedding band. The girl was young – no more than sixteen or seventeen, I thought; surely the ring could not be her own, or she would be wearing it … unless it had belonged to a husband now deceased. Beneath a pale blue kerchief, two wings of blonde hair fanned to either side of a snowy white forehead whose worry lines added an appealing touch of vulnerability to features that were otherwise flawless. Those lines deepened as she blinked hazel eyes and drew back slightly.

‘I-I brought you this,’ she stammered, and raised a steaming wooden bowl from her lap in a flustered motion that sent a portion of the contents spilling over her skirt … at which, to my astonishment, she burst into tears, twisting away from me in the chair.

‘Here now,’ I said, sitting up with alacrity, ‘what’s wrong? Are you burned?’

She shook her head.

‘Then why are you crying?’

She faced me, her cheeks rosy in the candlelight. She was like a figure in a painting, present yet remote, beautiful and sad, and I ached to know the cause of her distress, and to assuage it if I could. She wiped her face with the back of one sleeve, first one cheek and then the other, reminding me of a cat grooming itself, and gave me an embarrassed smile. ‘Because you will hate me,’ she said.

‘Hate you?’ I was flabbergasted. ‘I don’t even know you.’

Her gaze faltered at that, dropping to her lap, then rose again, resolute now. ‘I took your things,’ she said.

‘You mean my clothes …?’ But then, as her blush deepened, comprehension dawned. ‘My tool kit! You’re Herr Doppler’s daughter.’

She nodded, fresh tears welling in her eyes. ‘You do hate me!’

I assured her I did not. ‘I’m just glad to have my tools back,’ I said. ‘You did bring them back, didn’t you?’

She nodded again, sniffling. ‘They’re in your rucksack, where I found them.’

I heaved a sigh of relief, sinking back against the mound of pillows. ‘Thank God. And thank you, Fraülein.’

‘Then … you’re not angry?’

‘Your father told me that you took my tool kit to keep me from destroying the tower clock or any of Herr Wachter’s other timepieces. Now that I’ve seen them for myself, or a number of them, anyway, I can appreciate your concern – not that I approve of what you did. Nor was there ever any danger of my doing what you feared.’

‘My father doesn’t understand anything,’ she confided with more than a hint of bitterness, her eyes shifting towards the closed door as if she expected him to come barging in at any moment.

‘Then I’m afraid I don’t, either,’ I said.

‘Clockmen never stay in Märchen for long,’ she said. ‘They arrive one day and leave the next. I thought that if I stole your tools, you’d be forced to stay.’

‘I would have been forced to stay in any case, thanks to the blizzard.’

‘But I didn’t know that. When I came to your room, the snow had only just begun to fall. I saw you lying there in bed, sound asleep, and I thought you looked so young, not much older than me, and kind, so that you wouldn’t mind if I sneaked a peek at your tools. Once I had the kit in my hands, I couldn’t stop myself from taking it. I know it was wrong, Herr Gray, but I was afraid you’d leave the next morning if I didn’t do something.’

‘But why should it matter to you whether I go or stay?’

‘Because’ – and her gaze went to the door again, or perhaps to my rucksack, which was no longer on the floor but hanging from a wooden peg on the back of the door – ‘because I want to be like you. A clockman.’

So unexpected was this answer that I burst out laughing. ‘A clockman? You?’

The look she gave me was not tearful but angry; my laughter shrivelled in the fierceness of her gaze. ‘Why not?’ she demanded. ‘Do you think me too dull to understand your arts?’

‘No,’ I answered, drawing out the word as I considered how best to proceed. I recalled how Herr Doppler had spoken of his daughter’s mercurial nature, and the way she was clutching the bowl in her lap made me suspect that my next words would determine whether or not I received a faceful of hot broth. ‘It’s just that neither my guild nor any other of which I am aware accepts apprentices of your sex.’

‘Yes, that’s just what Papa says. But I don’t need to join a guild. You could teach me, Herr Gray!’

I would have liked to dismiss it all as a joke, but there was no mistaking the girl’s seriousness and determination. ‘Look, Fraülein,’ I began.

She interrupted. ‘Please, Herr Gray. Call me Corinna.’

‘And you must call me Michael,’ I said, ‘for I hope that we can be friends.’

Her face lit up in a smile, and I felt a stirring in my heart.

‘Then you’ll do it?’ she demanded. ‘You’ll instruct me?’

‘Why are you so interested in clocks?’ I asked in turn.

She laughed. ‘Living in Märchen, how could I not be?’ She seemed to take belated notice of the bowl in her lap and, blushing again, offered it to me. ‘Frau Hubner says you are to finish this broth – every last drop.’

I took the bowl from her, feeling a tingle where our fingers brushed. The beefy smell of the broth made my mouth water. There was a wooden spoon in the bowl, and I raised it to my lips and sipped. I had never tasted anything so delicious; warmth and vitality coursed through my body in dizzying waves.

‘Slowly, Michael,’ the girl admonished as I slurped down the broth. After a moment, she returned to the subject of clocks. As she spoke, she toyed with the ring on her necklace, turning it in the fingers of one hand, and I found myself wondering once again about the story that no doubt lay behind it: felt, too, a twinge of jealousy at the thought that some other man, living or dead, might have a claim on her affections.

‘When I was young, our timepieces seemed like magic to me. But as I grew older, I began to wonder at how they functioned. I longed to take them apart and see for myself what it was that drove the hands in their orbits and regulated their progress around the dial. But as you have discovered, it is impossible to get permission to open any of Herr Wachter’s creations. Of course, that didn’t stop me. I can’t tell you how often I tried in secret to gain access to my father’s pocket watch or one of the other timepieces of the town. And how often I was caught and punished. But despite my efforts, I never managed to open a single one. As for the tower clock, I’ve searched and searched for a way in, even climbing to the campanile itself, but without success. Yet I haven’t been completely defeated. Over the years, I managed to find a few old timepieces tucked away in attics – clocks and pocket watches from before Wachter’s day – and these I studied thoroughly, dissected and put back together as best I could, with tools I fashioned myself out of cutlery and anything else that came to hand. But I have reached the limits of what I can learn on my own. I require instruction, a teacher. A man like you, Herr Gray … that is’ – and she blushed again – ‘Michael.’

Finished with the broth, I returned the empty bowl to her and lay back against the pillows. A vast and sleepy well-being pervaded me. I felt light-headed, almost drunk. I had no desire to argue with this pretty and spirited young girl. ‘I should like to see some of those tools of yours, Corinna,’ I said.

Her blush deepened. ‘I would be ashamed to show you.’

‘Ashamed?’

‘I didn’t simply take your tools, Michael. I studied them. What beautiful things they are! So cleverly designed, so lovingly crafted. By comparison, mine are crude, laughable, ugly.’

‘I received most of my tool kit when I became a journeyman. Over the years, like many clockmen, I’ve added some implements of my own design. But to do what you have done, without benefit of a master’s guiding hand – that is truly impressive.’

‘Papa doesn’t think so. He finds my interest in timepieces unladylike. I’m afraid I couldn’t show you my tools even if I wanted to, for he confiscated them from me after learning that I had taken yours. But he’s done so before, and it hasn’t stopped me yet.’ She flashed a conspiratorial smile. ‘I just make new ones.’

‘I’ve never met a girl quite like you, Corinna,’ I told her. ‘And yet I almost feel as if we have met before …’

‘Why, that’s not surprising,’ she said. ‘After all, I helped care for you during your sickness, even if you don’t remember it.’

‘For which I’m grateful.’

‘Grateful enough to teach me something of your art?’

It occurred to me that I had been manipulated into acknowledging an obligation, but somehow I didn’t care. ‘I doubt your father would approve.’

‘He doesn’t have to know,’ she said. ‘It can be our secret. At least for the next few days, while you’re getting your strength back, you could teach me. What harm could it do?’

‘I’ll think about it,’ I told her. After all, what would be the harm in showing her a few things? Nor was it lost on me that Corinna could prove a valuable ally in my efforts to convince her father, the burgomeister, to grant me the permission I sought. And if all else failed, perhaps I could enlist her as an accomplice, get her to bring me one of Wachter’s timepieces; she had already proved herself an adept thief. Besides, the notion of spending more time with Corinna was appealing for its own sake.

‘Thank you, Michael,’ she said, breaking into a wide and dazzling smile.

‘I haven’t agreed to anything yet,’ I cautioned.

‘But you will,’ she said. ‘I know it.’ At which, to my surprise, she leaned forward impulsively and planted a kiss on my cheek. A jolt shot through me at the touch of her lips, and the scent of pine enfolded me, rich and resinous, as if I were walking through a mountain forest in springtime.

Just then, a voice thundered from the doorway: ‘What is going on here?’

Corinna drew back with a gasp. ‘Papa!’

Herr Doppler marched into the room, his bushy white moustache bristling like lightning, his face an ominous shade of red. He wore a colonel’s uniform and a powdered club wig the colour of pewter.

Corinna rose and went to him before I could say a word, laying a hand on his arm. ‘Calm yourself, Papa, dear. I was merely making Herr Gray more comfortable.’

He glared at her. ‘Were you indeed, madam? It appeared to me that the rascal was stealing a kiss.’

‘Papa!’ she chided him. ‘Our poor patient is too weak to steal anything.’

Doppler gave me an appraising glance. ‘He looks feeble, I’ll grant you, but looks can be deceiving … as can daughters.’

Doppler was now the recipient of the same fierce look that had been directed at me a moment ago. He withstood it no better. ‘That is,’ he said, ‘these footloose rascals can lead innocent girls astray with their wild talk.’

At which Corinna stamped her foot. ‘Honestly, Papa! Do you take me for a simpleton? I swear to you on my honour that Herr Gray did not steal a kiss.’

‘Is this true?’ the burgomeister demanded of me.

I nodded, impressed with Corinna’s sangfroid.

‘There, you see?’ The girl stood on tiptoes to plant a kiss on her father’s ruddy cheek.

The man fairly glowed. ‘Forgive me, my dear,’ he said, then addressed me once more. ‘I beg your pardon as well, Herr Gray. With such a treasure, a father cannot be too careful.’

‘Your daughter has been my ministering angel,’ I told him, struggling to keep my expression serious and my voice level as, behind Doppler’s back, Corinna blew me another kiss. ‘I would not repay her in such a base fashion.’

‘Such sentiments do you credit,’ said Doppler. He turned back to his daughter. ‘Frau Hubner has need of you. I will tend to the patient for a while.’

‘Yes, Papa,’ she said demurely. ‘I will see you later, Herr Gray.’

‘Thank you again, Fraülein,’ I replied.

Smiling, she curtsied and left the room.

As soon as she had gone, Doppler’s manner underwent a stark change. Crossing to the bed, he seated himself in the chair that Corinna had vacated and took hold of my upper arm, squeezing so that I gasped in pain.

‘Let us speak as men,’ he said in a low voice that was all the more threatening for its icy calm. ‘Should I discover that you have trifled with my daughter, Herr Gray, you will wish that Adolpheus had left you buried in the snow. Nay, do not speak. I know how it is with you wandering rascals. Clockmen? Cockmen, more like! Do not trouble to deny it, sir! I have been a soldier. I know what it is like to be young and footloose, far from home, with pretty wenches set before you like dishes at a banquet. You try a taste of this one, of that one. Where’s the harm? Come, sir! Do I have the wrong of it?’

I stammered out some excuse or other.

His vice-like grip tightened. ‘We are both men of the world. Pray do not insult me.’

I wrenched my arm free. ‘What do you wish me to say, sir? Yes, I have had dalliances in the course of my travels. You imply that you did the same as a younger man. It is, as you say, the way of the world. But that does not mean I have no honour, Herr Doppler. No gratitude. And you speak of insult? It is you who have insulted me!’

Herr Doppler’s blue eyes widened during this outburst. At the end of it, he sat a moment as if stunned, then broke into hearty laughter, slapping his knee. ‘I like you, Herr Gray; indeed, I do,’ he said at last, wiping his eyes. ‘In truth, I meant no offence. I merely wished to impress upon you that my daughter is precious to me above all things.’

‘You might have done so in a less literal manner,’ I muttered, examining my arm, where the imprint of Doppler’s fingers was purpling to a bruise.

‘It will not have escaped your notice that there is a greater span of years between us than might normally separate a father and daughter,’ he went on, arranging himself more comfortably in the chair. ‘I was already in my fifties when I met and married Corinna’s mother, the youngest daughter of a fellow officer. Maria was scarcely older than Corinna is now when we became man and wife. She was loveliness itself, but fragile as a springtime flower. And our life together was as fleeting as that season. The rigours of childbirth proved too arduous for her delicate constitution, and the effort of bringing Corinna into the world ushered her out of it.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, while reflecting that this story was quite different from what Inge had told me of the fate of Corinna’s mother. One or both of them was lying. Which, and from what motive, I did not know. But perhaps I could find out, and make use of that knowledge. It is always wise to learn the truth behind the lies that people tell each other, and themselves. Such knowledge is like a dagger up the sleeve; sooner or later, you will be glad to have it close to hand. ‘Then, the ring she wears about her neck …’

‘Her mother’s wedding ring,’ Doppler affirmed. ‘I sometimes think there must be an ineffable law, as absolute as that which governs the movement of celestial bodies, preventing two creatures of such sublime beauty from existing simultaneously on Earth, and it was in obedience to that law that Maria was taken from me. For Corinna has grown into the very image of her mother, and there are moments, Herr Gray, moments when I could swear to you that it is Maria herself who stands before me, miraculously restored to life, or never having left it at all, the last seventeen years nothing more than a dream from which I have suddenly awakened. Like Wachter’s Folly, the heart does not recognize the ordinary flow of time, and what the mind knows to be an impossibility the heart embraces without hesitation or reserve. And so my love for Maria remains as fresh today as on the day we married, and my grieving as profound as on the day she died. Add to that a father’s natural affection for his only child and you will understand why I am perhaps a trifle indulgent with Corinna, and at the same time so ardent in safeguarding her welfare.’

I replied that she was fortunate to have such a father, though in fact I pitied the girl, not just for the loss of her mother but for the enduring legacy of that loss, thrust upon her by her surviving parent, to be both daughter and wife to him … or, rather, part-daughter, part-wife, neither one thing nor the other. It seemed a heavy burden to impose on a child, as unhealthy as it was unfair. Growing up without a parent is difficult enough already. The ring she wore about her neck, the mystery of which had so tantalized me, now seemed as much a token of a father’s obsession as it was the symbol of a daughter’s devotion. No wonder the girl was rebellious, headstrong. How else could she insist upon her uniqueness, demonstrate to her father – and, indeed, to herself – that she was more than just the image of the mother she had never known?

Doppler, meanwhile, stroked his moustache and smiled. ‘She does not always recognize that fact, I’m afraid. In beauty, she takes after her mother, but she has also inherited her father’s martial spirit, and the promptings of that spirit sometimes make her forget her filial duty, not to mention the natural modesty that is the most becoming ornament of her sex.’

‘I found nothing immodest about her,’ I protested, feeling compelled to come to her defence even as I savoured the memory of her impulsive kiss.

‘I know my daughter,’ Doppler replied. ‘Doubtless her apology in the matter of your tool kit was so charming that you have by now completely forgotten the theft that occasioned it.’

‘No, but I have forgiven it,’ I said.

‘Have you? I’m glad to hear it.’ Doppler glanced towards the door with a furtiveness that reminded me of Corinna’s movements earlier. ‘I should like to ask a favour of you, Herr Gray.’

‘By all means,’ I told him, curious.

‘This must remain between us.’

‘Of course.’

Doppler seemed at an uncharacteristic loss as to how to proceed. He cleared his throat, shifted his position on the chair, smoothed his moustache. Then he blurted out: ‘My daughter is obsessed with horology. She nurses the ambition of becoming a journeyman like yourself, and one day even a master. When she was younger, her interest in timepieces was amusing, and I indulged it. I thought she would grow out of it, but instead her interest has only grown stronger with the years. I mean no disparagement to your profession, sir, but it is not suitable for a lady, as I am sure you will agree.’

I nodded for him to continue.

‘It was this fascination, this obsession, that led her to steal your tool kit, Herr Gray.’

‘She has confessed as much to me already,’ I told him. ‘Indeed, she told me that she has made tools of her own, and has taught herself the rudiments of horology. Can this be true?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ Doppler confessed shamefacedly.

‘Quite remarkable,’ I said. ‘The influence of Herr Wachter, no doubt.’

‘She requires a more salutary influence now,’ Doppler told me. ‘I have found, as her father, that my efforts to curtail her enthusiasms in this regard only have the opposite effect. Thus I am turning to you, Herr Gray.’

‘To me?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know it is an imposition, but I would consider it a great favour if you would take my daughter under your wing, as it were.’

‘You want me to teach her?’ I could scarcely believe my ears.

‘I want you to discourage her,’ Doppler clarified, ‘under the guise of teaching her. You will be outwardly encouraging but meanwhile set her tasks beyond her abilities, the better to convince her that she lacks the aptitude for horology, that her talents lie in more … feminine directions. Could you do that, Herr Gray?’

‘Let me make certain I understand you, sir. You wish me to deceive your daughter, to invite her trust and then – subtly, to be sure – betray it.’

‘For her own good,’ Doppler said defensively.

‘She will not like it.’

‘If you are skilful enough, Herr Gray, she need never know.’

‘And if I succeed?’

‘Why, you will have earned the gratitude of an anxious father.’

‘I am not in the habit of deceiving young ladies, Herr Doppler. Certainly not at the invitation of their fathers.’

‘And if I were to offer you a more tangible measure of gratitude?’

‘Go on,’ I said.

‘Dissuade my daughter from her unseemly interest in timepieces, and I will permit you to examine my pocket watch – which, you may remember, once belonged to Herr Wachter himself.’

‘I should want to remove the casing,’ I told Doppler.

‘Of course.’

‘And make detailed sketches of the workings.’

‘Naturally.’

‘I might even need to dissassemble the mechanism, or at least portions of it.’

I watched a struggle play out on Herr Doppler’s features. But at last he gave a terse nod. ‘Acceptable,’ he grunted, and I could see that it had cost him much.

‘You surprise me, Herr Doppler,’ I confessed. ‘When last we spoke, you were adamant in refusing to let me examine the watch. Yet now you agree to everything I asked of you that night, and more.’

‘You see how much my daughter means to me,’ Doppler replied. ‘More even than the oath I swore to my father when he passed Wachter’s timepiece on to me. Above all else, I wish for Corinna to be happy, yet as long as she harbours these dangerous fantasies, she will never be content. If she cannot find what she so desperately desires here in Märchen, sooner or later she will look for it farther afield … and find something quite different, as we both can imagine only too well. So I ask you to dispel her illusions, Herr Gray, as gently but firmly as you can, to spare her a more grievous awakening at less gentle hands. Once resigned to her proper sphere, she will find fulfilment as a dutiful daughter, and later as a wife and mother, as God and Nature intended.’

I did not share Herr Doppler’s conviction on this point. The fanatical gleam I had seen in Corinna’s eye would not be so easy to extinguish. Yet I agreed to his proposal, for it promised to deliver not only Herr Doppler’s pocket watch, but Inge’s cuckoo into the bargain. Nor was that my only reason for accepting the offer. Someone had attacked me. Knocked me out, robbed me of my clothes, and left me to die in the snow. I was determined to learn the secrets of Wachter’s timepieces, but I was also determined to learn the identity of my would-be murderer, and my efforts in that regard would be hindered, it seemed to me, if I made an enemy of Herr Doppler. ‘When shall I begin?’ I asked him.

‘The sooner the better,’ he answered, rising from the chair. We shook hands, but he prolonged the clasp, fixing me with his steely gaze. ‘If I find you have betrayed my trust, Herr Gray, and used this opportunity to seduce my daughter, I will kill you. Is that understood?’

‘I am interested in another prize entirely,’ I assured him.

And what’s more, I believed it.