The servant, meanwhile, had stopped before one of the doors midway down the passage and was looking back at Quare. The raised candle imparted a ghastly cast to his powdered face, as if he were a shambling corpse. He did not speak but gave his ring of keys an eloquent shake.
Quare’s heart quailed at the prospect of being shut up here for however long Grandmaster Wolfe chose to imprison him, but, really, what could he do? Even if he escaped from this servant, and managed to avoid the others who would surely be sent after him, he had no hope of finding his way out of this underground warren. He could no more retrace the route they had taken than he could flap his arms and fly. The servant shook his keys again, more vehemently this time, and Quare, taking a deep breath, obeyed the summons.
The servant handed the candle to Quare, who accepted it wordlessly, feeling not only helpless but humiliated to be thus rendered complicit in his own captivity. The lock clicked open, and the man gave the door a firm push; it swung inwards on well-oiled hinges, evidence that, indeed, the rooms had been well maintained. Beyond was a darkness that seemed loath to yield even an inch to the small candle Quare held in his trembling hand. But before he could put that to the test, the servant reclaimed the candle and stepped past him into the room. Once inside he ferried the flame to half a dozen fresh candles set in sconces on three of the four stone walls. Quare, continuing to hover at the threshold, watched as the darkness melted away, revealing a comfortably appointed chamber with a narrow pallet for a bed, a desk and chair, a chamber pot, and – taking up much of the fourth wall – a cavernous fireplace in whose deep recesses a fire had been laid. This the servant now brought to roaring life with another touch of the candle, the flames springing up with such alacrity that for an instant they seemed about to leap to the man himself, who, however, drew back unflappably and turned to Quare.
‘I trust all is to your satisfaction, sir.’
‘My satisfaction?’ he echoed, disbelieving. ‘And if it were not?’
‘There are other rooms, though they are less well appointed.’
‘I’m sure they are,’ said Quare, and entered the room at last, looking about with wary interest. It was so far from the crude cell of his imaginings that, despite the bare stone walls and the scant, simple furnishings, he felt as if he had entered the bedchamber of a king. Already the heat of the fire was making itself felt. He tossed his hat onto the desk, then turned to the servant. ‘It’s not quite what I had expected.’
The servant raised an eyebrow. ‘You are a journeyman of the Worshipful Company, Mr Quare, and as such entitled to certain amenities. Should that change, your accommodations will change accordingly.’
‘Of course,’ Quare said. ‘How long must I remain here?’
‘Why, until you are sent for, sir.’
‘And how long might that be?’
‘It might be any time at all, from hours to days. That is for the grandmaster to decide.’
‘What am I to do in the meantime?’
‘That is for you to decide. My suggestion, if you don’t mind, sir, would be to spend your time in reflection, so that, when next questioned, your answers will prove more satisfactory. You will find paper and writing implements in the desk, should you care to avail yourself of them.’
‘I see,’ said Quare. He eyed the servant critically. ‘Was it you who conveyed me to Master Magnus the other day? In the stair-master?’
The servant gave a slight bow. ‘I had that honour.’
‘I thought there was something familiar about you. See here – what’s your name, my good fellow?’
‘You may call me Longinus, sir.’
‘Longinus … An unusual name.’
‘Perhaps I am an unusual person.’
Quare let this pass without comment. ‘What can you tell me of Master Magnus’s death, Longinus?’
‘Nothing at all, sir.’
‘Why, you must have seen or heard something.’
‘Indeed. What I meant was that I have been instructed not to tell you anything more about it than you already know. The grandmaster wishes you to probe your own memories, not mine or anyone else’s.’
‘Don’t you care that he was murdered, Longinus? Aren’t you at all interested in finding the killer and seeing justice served?’
‘Most assuredly, sir. That is why I volunteered to serve as your jailer – for, make no mistake, despite the comforts of this room, you are a prisoner of the Worshipful Company. The sooner you realize that, the better off you will be, if you don’t mind my saying so.’
Quare shook his head. ‘You are unusually solicitous, for a jailer.’
‘As I said, sir, so long as you are a journeyman of this guild, you are entitled to certain amenities.’
‘I see. And if that should change …’
‘Let us hope it does not come to that, Mr Quare. And now I must go. Either I or another servant will bring you food and drink this evening. Until then, I will leave you to your business.’
Quare said nothing until the man was through the door. Then he called out: ‘I’m no traitor, Longinus. And neither was Master Magnus.’
The only response was the shutting of the door and the click of the key turning in the lock.
Alone, Quare felt the weight of all that had happened settle once again on his shoulders. As an orphan, he had known his share of hopeless moments, but nothing quite like this, with the threat of a hangman’s noose staring him in the face. His friends and fellow journeymen were dead, murdered by a maniac who was still at large, perhaps even, despite what he had told Mrs Puddinge, still in the city. His landlady, whom he had heretofore thought of in maternal terms, had revealed herself as a spy – and what’s more, a spy motivated not by patriotism but by avarice. Nor did it seem to him that his own motivations in that regard were any purer, any less selfish, for hadn’t he become a regulator in order to advance his prospects in the guild, to acquire knowledge of horological innovations that would have been unavailable to him otherwise, and to learn the truth about his parentage? To ask the question was to answer it. No, he had no right to cast stones at Mrs Puddinge. He felt as if he had soiled his soul, and though Sir Thaddeus’s suspicions of his loyalty were unfounded, he could not really claim to be innocent. London, he perceived, was a great murderer of innocence. But who could hold the city to account for its crimes?
Without noticing it, he had begun to pace the room like an animal in a cage. This was all Master Magnus’s fault, he told himself bitterly. If only the man had not involved him in his schemes, he would not be here now, a prisoner of his own guild. And if the master had not been so damned curious, so fond of machinations mechanical and otherwise, he would very probably still be alive, for though Quare did not know who had killed Master Magnus, or how, he did not doubt that the man’s death was related to his pursuit and investigation of the pocket watch he had sent Quare to retrieve from Lord Wichcote.
Could Lord Wichcote have engineered the master’s death, having learned through his own sources of the master’s interest in that timepiece, perhaps believing that Grimalkin was in the service of the guild, as was rumoured, and had therefore been sent to his house that night on the guild’s business? It seemed possible. He was a wealthy and powerful man, used to living beyond the law. But Lord Wichcote was not the only suspect. Not by a long shot. There was Grimalkin, for one. And Aylesford, for another – despite his disavowal of the deed. Even the Old Wolf was not above suspicion; certainly he had wasted no time in turning the situation to his advantage by seizing control of the Most Secret and Exalted Order; after all, it was common knowledge that he had envied Master Magnus his leadership of that order and coveted it for himself. The same was true, to a lesser degree, of Master Malrubius, who nurtured not only his own ambitions but those of the Old Wolf as well. It sickened Quare to think that the Worshipful Company was so riddled with corruption and intrigue as to render the murder of one master by another an eventuality impossible to reject out of hand, yet, all things considered, he couldn’t argue against it. Whether that was a result of his own predicament or an accurate reflection of the facts, he was unable to judge.