Grimsby flushed to the roots of his red hair and shut his mouth with an audible snap. Mr and Mrs Halsted wasted no time in seating themselves, followed, seconds later, by Grimsby, which left but two chairs for Quare, one on either side of Master Magnus. He took the nearer.
A tense and expectant silence filled the kitchen, punctuated only by the regular ticking of a small tower clock situated above the hearth – an exact replica of Master Halsted’s masterpiece, in fact, the original of which resided, as did all masterpieces, in the vaults of the Worshipful Company; this modest timepiece was the pride of the house, horologically speaking, though it was, in Quare’s considered opinion, barely adequate as a specimen of the clockmaker’s art.
Master Magnus, as if oblivious to the strained atmosphere, reached with some difficulty for his tea, which he sipped noisily and with apparent relish, holding the china cup in both hands; the steam rising from the liquid testified to a heat that should have communicated itself to the cup, but Master Magnus gave no sign of discomfort, though he did blow, between sips, upon the top of the tea, as if to cool it. Quare noticed both the suppleness of the man’s hands and fingers and the fact that they bore a multitude of small scars, as if from a lifetime of nicks and cuts; later he would learn that the master’s hands, for all their dexterity, had not escaped the general blighting of his body: though able to discriminate by touch among gradations of pressure and texture too fine for Quare’s rough senses to perceive, his fingers were entirely numb to pain.
Master Magnus drank until the cup was empty, at which he smacked his lips and, once again contorting his body, replaced the cup on its saucer with a rattle that brought a look of distress to Mrs Halsted’s blue eyes, though her polite smile never wavered. ‘An exquisite brewing, Mrs Halsted,’ the master said graciously.
‘I try, sir,’ she answered, blushing beneath her white cap. ‘I do try. We do like our tea in this house, sir.’
‘You do more than try, madam. Why, it is plain that this house is blessed with two masters. Indeed, I would go so far as to suggest that you might dispense with clocks entirely and open a tea house instead.’
This barbed and backhanded compliment left his hosts speechless. Smiling, with the air of a guest fulfilling his conversational duties, Master Magnus turned his dark spectacles towards Grimsby, who actually flinched back in his chair.
‘Steady, Mr Grimsby – steady on, sir,’ he said as if to comfort the apprentice, who was Quare’s junior by two years. ‘I have read the reports of your work dispatched to me by your good master here. Amidst so much tedious verbiage, one word leaps out, and I find it so apt that I have already employed it in reference to you myself and am about to do so again. That word, if you cannot guess it, is steady . Your hands are steady, your mind equally so; in short, you are as dependable and dull as a bullock, destined, I have no doubt, for a life of plodding but honourable labour in the fields of time, much like Master Halsted himself. Of such as you is the backbone of our guild – and, indeed, our country – constituted, and I salute you, sir, most sincerely, in your majestic mediocrity.’
Grimsby’s face bore an expression of intense concentration, as if he were attempting, without notable success, to untangle majestic from mediocrity . ‘Er, you are too k-kind, Master Magnus,’ he said, seeming to have caught Master Halsted’s stammer.
‘Not at all,’ the master rejoined and turned now to Quare, who just managed to keep from flinching as Grimsby had done under that blank, reflective gaze, in which he saw himself not merely reflected but belittled. ‘Your master has written to me of you as well, Mr Quare. It is a duty I require of every master in our company, for how else am I to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were, crippled as I am and able to leave London only with the greatest difficulty and inconvenience?’
‘Yet you have come to Dorchester now, master,’ Quare observed.
‘Quite,’ said Master Magnus, and without further ado removed a pocket watch from within his black coat. This he laid upon the table, then pushed over towards Quare. ‘Do you recognize this, Mr Quare?’
Quare shook his head, mystified.
‘Go on,’ said Master Magnus. ‘Have a closer look.’
Quare picked up the watch. He was struck at once by the plainness of it: no lid covered the glass; the hands were simple stark pointers; the black numbers on the white face had been painted without embellishment; the silver backing was bare of any engraved mark or design. He held it to his ear and heard a steady ticking.
‘Well?’ asked Master Magnus.
The others looked on with mystified expressions.
He was being tested; that much was clear. But as to the purpose of the test, let alone its consequences, he had no idea. ‘It is very plain,’ he said, weighing his words with care. ‘But it seems well made for all that. I would need to open it up before I could venture anything more.’
‘Then do so,’ the master said, inclining his head.
Quare always carried a small tool kit with him; in a moment, he had prised the back of the pocket watch open. The inner workings of the timepiece did not match the drabness of its outer appearance. There were a number of small but significant innovations to the mechanisms that powered and regulated the watch. This in itself was unexpected; he knew very well – what apprentice did not? – that the Worshipful Company took a dim view of innovation, confiscating or destroying outright any timepieces that departed from what had been officially sanctioned. So it came as a surprise to have such a watch handed to him by no less an authority of the guild than Master Magnus. Surprise turned into something approaching shock a moment later when he recognized the innovations as his own. For some time now, Quare had been keeping a notebook that he filled with sketches of improvements to the mechanisms he worked upon each and every day in Master Halsted’s shop. But he had not yet found the courage to actually translate one of his sketches into reality. Nor had he shown the notebook to anyone. Yet here was a watch that incorporated not one but a good half-dozen of his ideas. It seemed impossible.
‘I ask again,’ said Master Magnus. ‘Do you recognize anything about this watch?’
Quare glanced up, surveying the faces that were regarding him in turn. With his eyes hidden behind his dark spectacles, Master Magnus’s expression was inscrutable. Grimsby’s mouth had fallen open again. Mrs Halsted’s blue eyes shone with a tender concern he blushed to see: the look of a fond mistress. Halsted looked away, his cheeks flaming, and Quare wondered if the man suspected what his wife and his apprentice got up to when he was away.
‘Well?’ Master Magnus prompted.
Quare swallowed, mouth gone dry. He felt as if he’d been manoeuvred into a trap. Just a moment ago, Master Magnus had spoken of reports he’d received from Master Halsted; he realized now that those reports must have contained copies of his sketches. He felt a sharp sense of betrayal – ridiculous, as he had betrayed his master’s trust in a more tangible fashion: but feelings are not reasonable things, and he felt what he felt regardless. Apprehension, too, crept along his veins, for he did not doubt that his sketches alone could result in a stiff sanction from the guild, if not outright expulsion. And then where would he go, with no family and no trade? Yet despite this, one other feeling surged through him, stronger than the others.
Pride.
Though he had not cut and filed the parts of this watch with his own hands, nevertheless they were realizations of his designs. Something that had existed only on the page and in his mind had been made real and tangible. And, at least as far as he could tell from such a cursory examination, the mechanisms worked as he had anticipated. How could he deny this thing he had created? To do so would be to deny himself.