The Emperor of All Things

11

A World Newly Born



MY EXPOSURE TO the elements had left me weaker than I realized, and it was some days before I was able to rise from my sickbed and take even a few tottering steps across the room. In that time, Inge and Corinna took turns caring for me like ministering angels indeed. True to my agreement with Herr Doppler, I began to teach Corinna the rudiments of the horologist’s art. At first, as promised, it was with the intent of discouraging her. But it soon became apparent to me that she would not be discouraged. Every task I set her she accomplished with ease. She was a natural. Her mind was quick, her fingers clever and dexterous. The tools she had made for herself – which I had asked Herr Doppler to return to her – were as effective as they were ingenious. In truth, she had already passed beyond the rudiments. More than once, as we bent together over one of the timepieces she had brought to me – the ones that pre-dated Wachter’s arrival – and my own pocket watch, I thought of my own apprenticeship and found myself wondering what Magnus would have made of this prodigy. I think he would have been as scandalized by her sex as he was impressed by her skill.

When I summoned up the courage to tell her of the bargain I had struck with her father, she laughed and replied that she’d guessed as much from the first, and had been waiting to see if I would play her false and try to dampen the fires of her enthusiasm. But, she said, knowing me for an honourable man, she had never doubted my intentions. I felt ashamed at hearing her say so.

I suppose I had already fallen in love with her. Any man would have, for she was beautiful, kind and brave – as well as having more natural ability than any horologist I had ever seen, with the exception of Magnus. Under other circumstances, she might have rivalled Wachter himself. Her grasp of horology, entirely self-taught, was extraordinary, as was her mechanical genius, evidenced not only in the timepieces she had at first dissected, then repaired, and finally improved, but in small automatons she had crafted, cunning little creatures that were nearly as lifelike as Wachter’s creations. I remember in particular a metal mouse that, when wound with a key, would scamper up and down the sides of an old clock like the rodent in the nursery rhyme, or run along her arm like a tame pet.

But did she return my feelings? How could I dare even to hope it? I was her teacher, her friend. But that was as much as I aspired to. The snows had continued to fall, and by now it was clear that I would be stuck in Märchen until the spring thaw. It would have been foolish – not to mention, with Herr Doppler’s threat hanging over me, suicidal – to attempt a seduction.

Nevertheless, Doppler realized soon enough that things were not going according to his plan. I explained to him that Corinna had proved to be more gifted than I had expected, and that it was taking longer than anticipated to discourage her. Rather than disappointing him, the news puffed him up with fatherly pride, and he told me to take as much time as necessary. After all, he said with a laugh, I didn’t have any other pressing engagements.

Corinna broached the subject of ‘borrowing’, as she put it, one of Wachter’s timepieces for me to study, but I told her at once that such a course would be too risky. Instead, I suggested that the two of us collude in making it appear that she had reached the natural limits of her abilities and was at last growing discouraged. By the terms of my agreement with her father, he would then yield up his pocket watch for my examination, and Inge would follow with her cuckoo. I would, of course, share the fruits of my investigations of these timepieces with Corinna. She was willing, but preferred to wait until she had learned more of what I had to teach. I agreed. Herr Doppler was right, after all. I had no pressing engagements, and to be trapped for months in Märchen without the solace of Corinna’s company would have been unbearable. The hour we spent together each day, talking of horology and other things, was like gold to me, an interval of time no clock, not even one of Wachter’s, was fit to measure.

Meanwhile, life went on. As the days and weeks passed, snow continued to fall, until it reached and then overtopped the second-storey window behind my bed. No one had thought to wind my pocket watch as I lay in the grip of fever, and by the time the fever had broken, the watch had long since stopped. Herr Doppler had assured me his own watch was accurate, and Inge insisted the same of her cuckoo, and though it was true that the two timepieces agreed with each other, I found it impossible to fully trust any timepiece built by Wachter. I reset my watch, yet for the rest of my stay in Märchen I felt untethered, cut off from the outside world, as if I had entered a kind of bubble where time was not the dependable constant of my experience but instead something as variable as the wind. It sometimes seemed to me that the only clock I could rely on was the rising and setting of the sun. At other times, even that seemed suspect, for I saw so little of the sun, hidden as it generally was behind a thick scrim of grey cloud or snow. Yet I kept my watch wound, and carried it with me everywhere, not only because I needed some yardstick against which to measure the day, however arbitrary or inaccurate in an absolute sense, but because it made me feel safe, protected. I suppose it had stopped being a timepiece exactly and become a sort of talisman. Perhaps that is all our ingenious watches and clocks really are, when you come right down to it.

I had no more strange dreams, no more terrifying visions. In fact, I stopped dreaming altogether – it was as if I were living a dream, and thus had no need for fantasies. Once I felt strong enough, and had replenished my depleted wardrobe, I resumed the visits that had been cut short by my illness. As before, the townsfolk, though friendly, refused to grant me access to their timepieces. Soon my perambulations had made me familiar with the labyrinthine network of passages that was now the only means by which Märchen could be navigated without snowshoes or the danger of becoming lost and freezing to death. Of course, the passages had their own dangers. Occasionally the weight of the snow would cause a section to collapse, but the townsfolk seemed to have a second sense about such things, for I never heard of any deaths or injuries, and either I came to share their sensitivity or was just lucky, as I, too, escaped harm. In the aftermath, the able-bodied men of the town, led by Adolpheus, would gather to clear and repair the damage, and I joined with them whenever I could, hoping to win their trust more completely, to the point that they would give me what I sought. But though they seemed appreciative of my efforts, standing me drinks at the Hearth and Home, even inviting me into their homes on occasion to share a meal, they remained adamant in their refusals – though they did not seem angry or annoyed at my persistence. In truth, after a week or so I had resigned myself to the idea that only with Corinna’s help would I ever gain access to the secrets that lay within Wachter’s timepieces.

The only place I did not visit once I had recovered sufficiently to leave the Hearth and Home was Wachter’s Folly. The mere thought of it left me trembling with fear, an irrational terror that had seeped into my very bones. You may protest that there was nothing irrational about it. After all, I had nearly died there. I had been struck a blow to the head, stripped of my clothing, and left to freeze to death in the snow. And the man – or woman – responsible was still at large, perhaps awaiting the opportunity to finish what they had started. Yet it was not that which turned my will to quivering jelly but the memory, which haunted my waking hours, of the parade of automatons I had seen: those titanic figures, like forgotten gods from ancient days, that I had witnessed emerging from a space too small to contain them. The whole world seemed too small for them. I could not forget how one of them had reached for me, its hand closing over me as if snuffing out a candle. All it took was the chiming of the bells for those memories to rise up and overwhelm me, and for a weight of darkness to descend over my eyes, as if the shadow of that hand was once again engulfing me. And the bells chimed with perverse frequency now, far more often, or so it seemed, than they had previously, as if the clock, no less than I, had been changed by our encounter – as if it sensed my fear and sought to exacerbate it, toying with me like a cat with its prey. Or like a dragon. For I could not forget, any more than I could the giants, the dragon I had seen. I felt its malevolent intent focused upon me like a second sun: a dark sun.

Corinna noticed everything, of course. Though I tried to hide my distress, ashamed to be so unmanned by a mere memory, I was with her too much, and she was far too attentive a pupil, for her to be deceived. Earlier, in my weakness, I had told her what I had seen, though I had not confided in anyone else.

‘Let me accompany you to the Folly,’ she offered at last. ‘Two may face together what one cannot.’

‘I have no desire to visit that clock again,’ I assured her. ‘Nor to see what might emerge from it.’

‘Why, what better way to lay your fears to rest than to see for yourself that what comes out of the clock, however fanciful, is nothing to be afraid of? What you saw – or, rather, thought you saw – was due to the blow you received. How could it be otherwise? Even Wachter, for all his genius, could not create such automatons! No mortal could, but only God Himself. In any case, I don’t believe you when you say you have no desire to go back. You are like me, Michael. We cannot so easily extinguish the curiosity that burns in our hearts, stronger than any fear. You know that I am right.’ She reached across the table to take my hand.

We were in my room, where, with Inge’s blessing, I had set up a small workshop for my daily sessions with Corinna. In the course of those lessons, our fingers had brushed a hundred times, our hands had touched, our eyes had met and exchanged silent understandings – or so I had fancied. Yet we had said nothing of our feelings, and the kiss she had given me, whose warm imprint I could still feel upon my cheek, had not been repeated. But now, as she laid her hand atop mine and looked into my eyes, I felt something shift in me, in us both. In the world itself. That shifting drew us together, until it was not just our hands but our lips that were joined. And our hearts. For I knew at once that this was no dalliance of the sort I had admitted to Herr Doppler. This was much, much more. At that moment, I understood for the first time that there is something greater than time in the world. The motto of our guild refers to time as the emperor of all things. But that is wrong. It is love that is the true emperor, for time is helpless against it, and though love exists within time, so, too, does it transcend it. In my mind, that first embrace we shared, that first kiss, has not ended; it will never end. But that is all I will say of it. To speak of such things is to dishonour them.

Afterwards, we sat side by side, our hands clasped, her head resting on my shoulder, our hearts too full for speech, basking, as it were, in a world newly born. Then, as if it had long been decided, we began to talk of the future, of how, when spring came, and the snows melted, and the paths were clear once again, we two would leave Märchen, embarking on a life together here in London. It all seemed so simple, so obvious. I wished to do the honourable thing and ask Herr Doppler for his daughter’s hand, but Corinna forestalled me.

‘That you must not do!’ she said, gripping my hand, her gaze locked with mine. ‘Far from giving his consent, he would banish you at once … or worse. You must promise me that you will not ask him!’

‘I am not afraid of him,’ I told her.

‘You should be,’ she replied. ‘I have learned to be. In this, you must let me be your tutor, dearest Michael.’

How it wrung my heart to hear that false name so lovingly on her lips! Yet I did not tell her who I really was. In truth, I was afraid to. Afraid that I would lose her if she realized I was not the man she thought I was – not the man she had fallen in love with but an imposter, a liar. I told myself that there would be plenty of time to confess everything in the weeks ahead, that it would serve no purpose to reveal myself now. Instead, I promised that I would be instructed by her in this and in all things.

That earned me another kiss – a sweet reward for a base betrayal. But I did not spurn her lips on that account. On the contrary. Their velvet caress absolved me of all my sins … for a while. As I breathed in the fragrance of her breath, which seemed to contain the springtime we had just been speaking of, I swore to myself that if I did not yet deserve the love of this goddess, I would merit it one day by my words and actions.

But rather than drawing nearer, that day seemed to recede into a hazy future. As our closeness grew, the lie at the heart of it became all the more difficult to expose. To do so would have put everything at risk: Corinna’s love, Wachter’s secrets – they were too tangled in my mind to allow any easy unravelling. To lose one was to lose the other. It was the pursuit of those secrets, after all, that had brought us together, that sustained us in a common purpose and gave us hope of a shared future.

From that point on, our daily lessons had little to do with horology. We put aside clocks and watches and all the finely calibrated instruments of our craft and instead devoted ourselves to the study of each other. Not our bodies alone but our minds, our very souls – always excepting that kernel of untruth which, hard as I tried, I could not forget about for long, however deeply I buried it. Corinna approached these investigations in the same bold and insatiable spirit of inquiry that had characterized her pursuit of horological knowledge. I will say no more of what we shared – it is enough that she became my wife in every way that mattered to us, if not to the rest of the world. I have taken no other wife in all the years since. I never shall.

We took care that we should not be discovered, though we had some close calls, with Inge especially, for she was always looking in on us. But her size made stealth impossible; one could always hear her coming. Doppler might have done better, but he made no effort to surprise us. On the contrary, he seemed pleased with the reports I gave him, content with the pace and progress of Corinna’s lessons – though of course there was little truth in what I told him.

Corinna, meanwhile, continued to press me to visit Wachter’s Folly, and at last I gave in, unable to refuse her anything and wanting as well to be rid of the unreasoning fear that had all but paralysed me in this matter. Besides, I did not want her to think me a coward – the more as I knew myself to be one.

‘But how shall we determine when to go?’ I asked. ‘The automatons only emerge when the clock strikes, or so your father informed me, and it strikes randomly, at no set or predictable interval. I have no wish to stand out in the bitter cold for what could be hours. Yet if we wait until we hear the bells begin to ring, the whole display could well be over by the time we reach the Folly.’

‘You need not worry about that,’ she replied. ‘Over the years, we townsfolk have developed a second sense about when the timepiece is going to strike. There is a tension in the air, like the onset of a thunderstorm. And not only in the air. We feel it in our bones, in our hearts, a vibration that cuts right through us.’

‘It sounds painful,’ I told her.

She shrugged. ‘We are used to it.’

‘But how extraordinary!’ I continued. ‘How long does it take to develop this sensitivity?’

‘No time at all,’ she said. ‘We are born with it, you see.’

I did not see. Nothing in my knowledge of horology or natural science could explain how the workings of a clock might impress themselves into the bones and sinews of a single human body, much less an entire town. Not that I doubted her. Thinking back, I realized that I had witnessed the truth of her assertion many times over in fleeting expressions that passed across the faces of the townsfolk in the moments before the bells of the clock began to peal, looks of anxious anticipation, as if at some signal I could not discern, followed by smiles and sighs indicative of release. These quirks of behaviour had puzzled me, but I had not inquired into them, thinking them related somehow to my presence. I felt no such connection myself. In truth, I envied it. It did not seem right that these people, who knew nothing of our art, should manifest a deeper affinity to the flow of time than even the masters of our Worshipful Company could lay claim to.

Thus it was that Corinna and I made our way early one afternoon to Wachter’s Folly. When we emerged from the lamplit passage into the open, the glare of sunlight reflecting from the mounds of snow and ice that had more than half buried the town left me blinded. Even after my vision cleared, I stood frozen in place, dazzled by the stark beauty of the scene. I do not think I had ever seen a sky so blue; it made my eyes ache, and still does, in memory. The jagged peaks of the surrounding mountains, and the upthrust dagger of the glacier that seemed to stand guard over the town, glittered as if encrusted with diamonds. The air sparkled with ice crystals swept up in a biting wind that blew without pause, piercing my clothes, my skin, all the way to the bone. I shivered, still weaker from my ordeal than I had realized until that moment. It was the first time in weeks that I had stood under an open sky.

Corinna put a steadying arm around my waist and asked if I wanted to return to the Hearth and Home. I shook my head and told her no. ‘Then we must hurry,’ she said. ‘The bells are about to strike.’

I swear that I could feel, through her touch, the same thrumming vibration I had felt weeks ago when I had laid my hands upon the figures decorating the tower’s façade. Those figures were less visible now, buried more deeply beneath fallen snow; even the great dragon that coiled about the tower was lost to view, only bits and pieces of its serpentine length exposed, like the gnarled roots of an immense tree.

The pathways shovelled into the snow, by which I had approached and half circled the clock on my last visit, were still in place, well maintained despite the mountains of snow on either side, a testament to the industry of the townsfolk, and especially that of Adolpheus, who, as I had seen, tirelessly laboured to keep the paths shovelled, the covered passages repaired, the lamps lit.

Corinna led me forward. The bronze hands of the clock were in motion, the hour hand creeping slow as molasses in a clockwise direction while the minute hand drifted in retrograde. I could hear, above the whistling of the wind, muffled sounds of activity from within the edifice as the mechanism governing the automatons engaged. As before, I felt a kind of trepidation or wariness, a hesitation to come too close that grew stronger as I drew nearer, until my heart was thumping in my chest and a sheen of sweat broke from my skin, chilling me further. Once again I saw, in my mind’s eye, those gigantic legs scissoring across the proscenium. Though I more than half believed it had all been a vision, or at best a memory stretched out of recognition by the blow that had felled me, as if I had glimpsed the legs of my assailant before I had lost consciousness, on a visceral level I was crawling with dread. It was all I could do not to pull out of Corinna’s grasp and rush back to the safety of the passage. But, again, I did not want her to think me a coward.

She seemed to be in the grip of sensations as intense as my own, though different, for, rather than resisting an urge to flee, as I did, she appeared to be fighting an opposite inclination, as if she were being drawn towards the tower by a force I could not feel. At last, by a mutual if unspoken decision, having reached a point of equilibrium between our conflicting desires, we stopped, each of us holding the other, and, still silent, waited for the bells to ring. We were the only ones present; the townsfolk had grown so accustomed to the marvels in their midst that they no longer recognized them as such; Wachter’s creations had become ordinary. In a way, that seemed the most incredible thing of all.

I felt a shudder pass through Corinna and heard the catch of her breath. Then, with no more warning than that, the bells pealed out. The clock itself might have been wild and without sense in its time-keeping, but the carillon – though I had heard it crash like thunder, or wail like a pack of banshees – now produced a music as clear and bright and cold as the day. It echoed from the buildings around the square, until the sounds seemed to be coming from everywhere at once, produced not by the bells but by sunlight striking the ice and snow. At the first chime, my apprehension shattered like glass, and I felt the shards of it falling inside me, soft as snow but sharp enough to draw blood, like feathers from an angel’s wing, so that I shivered now not from cold or fear but in a kind of exquisite agony.

‘Do you feel it, too?’ Corinna asked in a whisper.

Before I could reply – if I could have used my voice at all – the door on one side of the proscenium swung open with a clap, and the automatons began their parade. Corinna had been right. There were no giants now, no impossibilities of scale. Just a succession of child-sized mechanical figures moving through their ordained paces as the echoes of the bells faded away. Soon the only sounds were the keening of the wind and the whirs and clicks that rose from within the clock and from the figures themselves as they pantomimed the actions of living men and women out for a stroll: knees rising and falling in a parody of locomotion, heads turning, eyes moving, as if to take in the view, arms rising in greeting or farewell, yet all with a stiff and jerky artificiality, like wooden puppets moving without the benefit of strings, that could not have been more different from the smooth counterfeit of life I had witnessed in the operation of Inge’s cuckoo clock and certain other timepieces of Wachter’s that I had seen. Even Corinna’s mechanical mouse was more lifelike. Relieved as I was at the absence of the giants, I was disappointed as well. I had expected more.

Yet it seemed a further revelation of the eccentricity of the clock and its maker that there should be no angels or devils, no figures of Father Time with his scythe and hourglass, no saints or martyrs, none of the garish and fantastical crew such clocks always feature. Instead, what emerged from within the clock was what I had already found outside it: nothing larger than life but rather life itself, in all its mundane variety, as if Wachter, or whoever had crafted the automatons, no doubt at his direction, had used ordinary townsfolk as his models. Burghers, farmers, tradesmen and -women. All roughly, even crudely executed, as if they had been carved in a fit of inspiration, or at the last moment, and painted with equal haste. Yet their slapdash quality, which spoke of enthusiasm more than skill, somehow gave them a vitality more meticulous representations might have lacked; they seemed, as it were, in their rude expressions and painted-on clothes, to aspire to the lives they mimicked. Their small size only added to this impression, as of a parade of children dressed in the clothing of adults.

As I watched, it struck me that certain of the figures looked familiar, as if I had glimpsed them somewhere before, but I ascribed this at first to their caricature-like quality. Until, to my astonishment, I saw Adolpheus emerge from the tower, a stepladder strapped across his back. Indeed, I thought at first that it was the man himself playing a trick on me, though a closer look dispelled my confusion, as he, or rather it, was as crudely rendered as the others. But there could be no doubt that the automaton was modelled on Adolpheus. Why, it even incorporated his limp, and the handicap that caused it! Nor was this the only shock in store for me. Behind him came Inge, with her flour-dusted apron and apple-red cheeks, a loaf of bread in her hands and Hesta jumping up again and again at her feet, as if begging for crumbs. She was followed by Herr Doppler, stiff and stern in his colonel’s uniform, white whiskers bristling as if sheathed in ice, a sword buckled at his side, which he drew and flourished, then sheathed again, over and over, as he marched, looking neither to the left nor to the right. Following him like a dutiful daughter was Corinna, eyes downcast, steps slow and hesitant, as if she were yoked to him by an invisible leash and was being led off to some altogether unpleasant fate.

I turned from my contemplation of the painted wooden figure to the flesh-and-blood original at my side. ‘How is this possible?’ I demanded.

Corinna only shook her head, her gaze fixed on the unfolding tableau. The expression on her face was one of surprise and, or so it seemed, horror, as if the display was as new and unexpected to her as it was to me … though I did not see how that could be.

‘Corinna,’ I insisted, ‘is this your father’s work? Is he playing some kind of twisted game?’

As if in answer, she gasped and raised a hand to her mouth. I looked back at the clock, and there, trailing the figure of Corinna like a lovesick bumpkin, Sylvius vainly importuning cold-hearted Phoebe, I saw what could only have been intended as a mocking representation of myself. But it was the mere fact of the thing’s existence, rather than its satirical intent, that left me reeling; I felt as though my reality had been called into question, as if I should look into a mirror and see reflected there the chiselled features of a marionette leering back at me. For the thing wore my stolen clothes and hat, or so it seemed to me.

By the time I had collected my wits, or at any rate enough of them to feel in command of myself again, my doppelgänger had completed more than half its journey across the proscenium; already the figure of Adolpheus had left the stage, disappearing into the interior of the clock through a door opposite the one from which it had emerged, and my own figure came at the very end of the parade – soon it, too, would vanish, and the door would close.

Impulsively, I pulled my hand free of Corinna’s and ran towards the clock, ignoring her shouts for me to stop. Slipping and sliding over the icy ground, I reached the bristling façade and without hesitation flung myself upon it, finding hand- and footholds amid the ice-and-snow-crusted figures there, hauling myself upwards like a mountain climber. Earlier I had rejected the idea of just such a climb, judging it too perilous to attempt, but now I flew up the slick surface, surprising myself with the sureness and ease of my ascent. Before I knew it, I stood bare-headed on the proscenium, my hat lost in the climb. Only then did it strike me that the space was free of snow and ice, and I wondered, at the back of my mind, if Adolpheus were responsible, for though it was somewhat sheltered from the elements, it was open to the wind. But there was no time for such puzzles.

To my left, the figure of Corinna was re-entering the clock. Below me, the real Corinna was yelling at me to come down. I paid her no heed. With a cry, as if I might thus command the procession to halt, I hurried forward, reaching out for my counterfeit’s painted shoulder as I would for some urchin cutpurse overtaken on a London street. Indeed, I felt that something had been stolen from me, though I could not have said what. I half imagined that the mannequin would turn to face me when I laid hold of it.

But I never did. Instead, a wrenching pain in my ankle brought me to a sudden stop; my boot had become wedged in the track that carried the automatons across the proscenium. I felt the grinding of bone as the train continued to move, carrying me along with it willy-nilly, and my cry now had nothing of command in it, only pain. It was no more effective in stopping the mechanism.

The image is a comical one, I will grant you, like some allegorical study: ‘The Clockman Caught by Time’. But I confess the humour escaped me at the moment. All I could think of was the likelihood that my foot would be mangled in the gears of the train. Yet try as I might, I could not tug my boot free. Overriding the pain, panic filled me as I watched my diminutive double disappearing through the door and into the dark insides of the clock. I would be next. Earlier I had wished more than anything to be privy to the secrets hidden away there, but this was not the way I had imagined myself gaining access to them. What had beckoned with the promise of untold riches, like the treasure hoard of a dragon, now seemed forbidding, hostile. Some tardy instinct warned that to enter the clock in this manner would mean my death, and I did not doubt it for a second. I resumed my efforts to pull my boot free, or, failing that, to extricate my foot from the boot before it was too late. But the motion of the train, disturbed by my interference, was no longer as smooth as it had been; it had grown as jerky as the movements of the automatons, and in attempting to keep my balance and remove my foot, I accomplished neither, falling onto my backside, from which undignified position, more or less of a height with my wooden double, I saw him swallowed by the darkness behind the door that was now swinging shut, even as I continued to be drawn towards it. I say darkness, yet from out of it there shone, like a scattering of stars, glints of silver that I would have taken for reflections of sunlight from metal or ice were it not for the fact that grey clouds had once again spilled over the jagged tops of the mountains and begun to drop their heavy loads of snow, quite obscuring the sun that had just moments before had the sky to itself. So swift was this change that it seemed as much a mechanical effect as the tolling of the bells and the parade of automatons, as if the influence of Wachter’s Folly extended even to the heavens.

But my attention was on lower things. I saw that the door would shut before I was drawn through it, yet not before my trapped boot was carried over the threshold. The door looked substantial, and I had no doubt that the mechanical force behind it would be sufficient to crush my foot. I redoubled my struggles, in vain. I could neither free myself nor, from my prone position, on my back now, my free leg extended to push against the closing door, employ sufficient leverage to stop or even slow its progress. I cried for help, but there was no answer from Corinna. I closed my eyes and braced myself for what was to come.

But instead of the agony I was expecting, I felt myself lurch to a sudden halt. Opening my eyes, I beheld Adolpheus. His appearance was so sudden and unheralded that it was almost as if he had emerged from the clock. The dwarf had used his stepladder to prevent the door from closing, and this, in turn, had stopped the train – though I could feel it straining beneath me, its motive force frustrated for the time being but still exerting itself, like a trapped behemoth flexing against its bonds, building towards an explosive escape. Perhaps only another clockman would credit it, but at that moment my apprehension was not for myself but for the well-being of the timepiece. I feared it would suffer some irreparable harm.

‘This is getting to be a habit, Herr Gray,’ said Adolpheus, a grin flashing through his rusty beard. ‘If Corinna hadn’t found me, you’d be shorter by a foot about now.’

‘My boot is caught,’ I told him. ‘I can’t get it out!’

He gave my leg a tentative tug, at which I gasped as pain shot through my ankle. ‘Ach, you’re wedged in there good and proper,’ he commented as though admiring a fine bit of carpentry. ‘Looks as though I might have to cut the boot away …’

‘There’s no time for that,’ I replied. ‘The clock is going to damage itself – can’t you feel it?’

‘What do you suggest?’

‘Why, pull it out, man! You’ve got the leverage.’

Adolpheus grinned again. ‘It’s going to hurt.’

‘Best hurry then,’ I replied.

He nodded and stepped aside to take hold of my leg with his gloved hands. ‘Ready?’ he asked. ‘On three. One … two …’

There was no three. Adolpheus yanked with what seemed the strength of a giant, and my boot came free – but with such a surfeit of pain that I screamed as if, rather than liberating my appendage, he had torn it off. I rolled away, howling and clutching my leg below the knee; my boot had been shredded in the gears of the train, and I saw a dark stain of blood on the leather, and splashes of crimson glistened on the proscenium. Meanwhile, Adolpheus must have removed his stepladder, because I felt a lurch as the stalled train resumed its course, and the door did likewise, clapping shut with a bang, after which the train stopped again, this time by design.

‘Can you walk?’ Adolpheus asked.

I could not speak, but only shook my head.

He bent down and, before I could protest, lifted me as if I were no more than a child and slung me across his broad shoulders. The movement brought another stab of pain to my ankle, and everything went dark.