‘I like a country-style breakfast,’ commented Longinus, nodding to the servants as he led Quare to the dining table and gestured for him to sit down. A footman had already pulled a chair out for him and was waiting, like an automaton designed for the purpose, to slide it back.
‘Will others be joining us?’ Quare asked as he sat. The table could have accommodated thirty, and there was food enough for twice that number.
Longinus walked around the table to take a seat opposite him. ‘I thought an intimate breakfast might be just the thing to get us off on the proper footing,’ he said as he settled into the upholstered chair another footman had pulled out for him. Already plates of food were appearing on the table. ‘What will you have to drink, Mr Quare? I like a strong cup of coffee in the morning,’ he added as a man stepped forward to pour him one.
‘Coffee will serve,’ said Quare, and found this instantly supplied, as were all his other wants. Still, he did not sip from the cup, nor eat any of the food.
Longinus, who had begun eating, looked up at Quare.
‘I’m afraid I don’t entirely trust you, my lo— er, Longinus. I can’t help but wonder if you are feeding me some other drug or even poison.’
‘Yet you must trust me, Mr Quare. We need not be friends, but we must not be enemies. Partners, rather. We need each other. And England needs us.’
‘That is all very well. I hope I am as patriotic as the next fellow. But actions speak louder than words. You expect me to trust you, yet what do you offer in return?’
‘I have already given you your freedom.’
‘Am I free? Could I get up from this table and walk out of that door and leave this house?’
‘I have explained to you why that would be most unwise.’
‘Yes. But would you seek to prevent me from leaving if I should nevertheless choose to go?’
‘I would.’
Quare nodded. ‘So, we understand each other. I remain your prisoner, though my accommodations are certainly improved, and for that, at least, I do thank you.’
‘I promised you answers, and you shall see that I keep my promises. As for the food – you may do as you like. I cannot force you to eat. But speaking as an old soldier, it is wise to eat when one can while in the midst of a campaign.’
Quare’s misgivings were grave as ever, yet he could not ignore the promptings of his belly, nor the tempting smells of the food. He needed to eat, if only to keep up his strength. Once he began, he could not stop; he had not realized he was so famished, and the food was delicious. He ate everything the servants put in front of him. For some time, he was too busy to ask any questions, or, for that matter, to think of them. But at last his mind and stomach regained their equilibrium, and he sat back to regard Longinus, who was watching him in turn. His host had finished with his own breakfast and was on his third cup of coffee. Quare cleared his throat. ‘That was very good, my l— that is, Longinus.’
‘My cook is first-rate,’ he replied.
‘I have so many questions, I scarce know where to begin.’
‘That is understandable.’ Without looking away, Longinus made a gesture of dismissal, and Quare watched as the servants stopped whatever they had been doing and trooped from the room. When the last of them had gone, closing the door behind him, their master leaned back in his chair and said, ‘Ask me whatever you please, and I will answer as plainly and forthrightly as I can.’
‘Anything?’
‘Anything at all.’
‘Why are all your clocks out of step with each other?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Your clocks, sir. Each reflects a different time. It was the same in the workshop of Master Magnus. I used to think that disorder a reflection or product of the master’s unruly genius, but now I suspect there is something else at work.’
‘You are correct,’ Longinus answered. ‘Your question cuts straight to the heart of the matter. Here, sir. Examine these.’ And so saying, Longinus drew from his coat no fewer than five pocket watches of various designs, which he set on the table and pushed towards Quare.
Quare picked them up one by one. Each registered a different time. Which, if any, was correct, he had no way of knowing. He slid the watches back towards Longinus, who restored them to their original places on his person.
‘Why do you carry those?’ asked Quare, baffled. ‘What possible use can they be?’
‘They protect me.’ He gestured to encompass the room. ‘As do all these other timepieces.’
‘Protect you? From what?’
‘What is time, Mr Quare?’ Longinus asked in turn. ‘What do we measure with our clocks and watches? Is it some ethereal substance, akin to the grains of sand that dribble through an hourglass or the drops of water that power a Chinese clock? Is it, rather, an exhalation, a product of some reaction invisible to us, like the smoke that rises from a burning candle? Or is it simply the creation of man, an illusion that has no objective existence at all? I would be most interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.’
‘Master Magnus once told me that time is the mind of God in motion.’
‘Yes, I have heard him say so. But alas, I do not believe in God any longer, and so I have had to formulate my own understanding of the matter. Does that shock you?’
‘It baffles me, rather. The proofs of God’s existence are all around us; it seems to me that one would have to be blind not to see them.’
‘Perhaps I am blind. But I hope you will grant that a man may learn to navigate his way through the world without sight. Why, I have known blind men – and women, too – whose other senses have, as it were, become all the sharper in compensation for the lack of it. One of the keenest horologists I ever met was a blind man able to repair timepieces by touch and hearing alone. So it may be with a man like myself, blind to what others take for granted. Certainly I do not mean to disparage the genius of your late master. His insights into time and horology were profound, and I never met a quicker, more fertile mind, one better able, moreover, to turn its fancies into facts. And what wondrous facts! Nor did our differences of opinion on this and other matters prevent our long partnership from being, on the whole, a happy and successful one. I mourn his passing, sir, and honour his memory: truly, I do. And I will have more to say about that in due course. But I have pursued my own researches into the nature of time, and I think it fair to say that I have come to an understanding no less profound than your late master’s.’
‘I should like to hear it,’ Quare said.
‘I believe that time is another dimension. A fourth dimension, if you will. It is like a river in which we find ourselves, a great river stretching into the unknowable distance of the future and the irretrievable distance of the past. Yet we know only an infinitesimal portion of this river. Of its depths we can say nothing. Nor do I believe that we are afloat upon its surface; that is an illusion of perspective. Rather, it surrounds us on all sides, and the heights to which it extends above us are as infinite as the depths below. What we perceive as the passing of time, the steady beat of seconds and minutes that we measure out with our clever clocks, the signs of aging that we recognize with dismay upon our faces and the faces of our loved ones, which testify to the briefness of our earthly lives, the progression of the seasons, which, like a rolling wheel, both repeats its revolution and moves forward towards some culmination we cannot know, are but visible indications of an invisible force, just as the rustling of leaves in a tree signifies the passing of a breeze we cannot otherwise perceive. In this great river – or ocean, if you prefer – of time, we are but bits of debris carried along by the current. We mistake, in our ignorance and arrogance, the flow of that current for our own movement, and flatter ourselves that we give shape and direction to our lives by our actions and beliefs. But in fact, the vast majority of us are quite helpless, and all our vaunted intelligence is lost on inconsequential ephemera, bubbles and rainbows, rather than on the mysteries of this wondrous medium that surrounds us.’