The Emperor of All Things - By Paul Witcover Page 0,3

blur. The music of swordplay filled the room, providing a lively accompaniment to the stolid ticking of so many clocks.

Preoccupied with the pistol, it was some seconds before Lord Wichcote, in response to a groan that seemed more a product of dismay than pain, glanced up to gauge the progress of the fight. There were now two men facing the masked intruder; the third was sprawled on the floor, a rose blooming on his chest. Frowning, Lord Wichcote returned to his work, a certain agitation visible in his movements. When next he glanced up, the intruder was facing but a single man. Lord Wichcote’s efforts now took on an unmistakable urgency, accompanied by a marked deterioration in manual dexterity. Gunpowder spilled over his shirt, and the ball he was trying to insert into the pistol’s muzzle seemed possessed of a perverse desire to go elsewhere. At last he rammed it home. But no sooner had he done so than he found the red-stained tip of a blade hovering near his throat.

‘Perhaps you should devote more time in your practice sessions to the loading rather than the firing of your pistols,’ Grimalkin suggested, somewhat breathlessly.

‘No doubt you have a point,’ Lord Wichcote conceded through gritted teeth.

‘Indeed I do. And you will become more intimately acquainted with my point unless you drop your pistol.’

The pistol dropped.

Grimalkin kicked the weapon aside.

‘You would not dare to shed even a single drop of my blood,’ Lord Wichcote declared, though he did not sound convinced of it. The powder on his face was streaked with sweat. The skin underneath was neither so white nor so smooth.

‘Would I not?’ The tip of the blade indented his throat, where the skin was as yellowed – and as thin – as ancient parchment. A red bead appeared there.

The man gasped but said nothing more.

‘Give me your parole, as a gentleman and a peer of the realm, that you will not cry out or otherwise attempt to impede me, and I will take my leave without doing you graver injury.’ Grimalkin pulled the blade back a fraction of an inch.

‘You have it,’ Lord Wichcote said.

As Grimalkin retreated a step, still holding the blade ready, the other pressed a white handkerchief to his throat and said in a tone of deepest disapproval, ‘What manner of fencing do you call that, sir? Three of my finest swordsmen dispatched in under two minutes! I have never seen a man wield a blade in such an outlandish fashion!’

‘I have travelled widely, my lord, and learned much along the way – not all of it to do with clocks.’ Grimalkin leaned forward to wipe the blade clean on the edge of his lordship’s sky-blue coat, then returned it to its scabbard.

This affront Lord Wichcote bore with barely controlled fury. ‘Do you know, Grimalkin, I don’t believe you are a gentleman at all.’

‘I have never claimed that distinction. And now, sir, I bid you adieu.’ Grimalkin gave another precise bow and backed away, moving towards the rope that dangled from the open skylight. In passing a table bestrewn with timepieces in various stages of assembly and disassembly – the very table, as it happened, where cat and mouse had earlier disported themselves – Grimalkin paused. A grey-gloved hand shot out.

Lord Wichcote gave a wordless cry.

‘I’ll take this for my trouble.’ A clock very like the one that had been the target of the gentleman’s pistol disappeared into the folds of Grimalkin’s cloak – as, moving more swiftly still, like a liquid shadow, did the mouse that had escaped the cat. ‘Did you really think you could hide it from me?’

The gentleman’s only reply was to begin shouting for help at the top of his lungs.

‘I don’t know what England is coming to when the parole of a lord cannot be trusted by an honest thief,’ Grimalkin muttered, reaching into a belt pouch. A small glass vial glittered in an upraised hand, then was flung to the floor. Thick clouds of smoke boiled up, filling the room.

By the time the air in the attic had cleared, the masked intruder stood on an empty rooftop half a mile away. Tendrils of fog and coal smoke eeled through the streets below, but a strong breeze, carrying the effluvial reek of the Thames, had swept the rooftops clear. Grimalkin fished out the timepiece and turned it this way and that in the silvery light of the moon. The exterior was unremarkable.

The whiskered nose of the mouse peeked out inquisitively from