Toymaker, The (5 page)

There was a small night lamp in the carriage. It was turned down as low as it could go – barely a glimmer. By that single worm of light Mathias could see that Leiter had his eyes shut. His head was jogging, keeping time to the motion of the carriage, as though he were asleep. Mathias didn’t know whether he really was asleep or not. If he was, Mathias didn’t want to wake him. But if he didn’t, what might happen then? Finally he couldn’t bear it any more. He tugged hard at Leiter’s sleeve. Leiter’s eyes opened instantly.

‘There are wolves,’ Mathias said.

Leiter closed his eyes again. ‘It does not matter,’
he said.

‘We have to build a fire.’

‘We do not need a fire.’

Mathias had to make him understand. ‘But they will kill the horses,’ he said.

‘They will not kill the horses,’ said Leiter quietly, his eyes still shut. ‘Valter will see to that.’ He rapped on the roof again.

The carriage began to slow. Then it stopped. There was a bark from the forest to their left, answered by another, nearer, but from the other side. Then another. The wolves were all about them. The carriage rocked on its springs as if someone were climbing down, and all at once there was a confusion of noise, of the wolves seizing hold of something to tear it apart, each fighting for the chance to sink its teeth in. Mathias pressed his hands over his ears, but he still heard what happened next: the yelping of an animal in terrible pain, the noise cut short as though the life had been ripped out of whatever had made it. Then the same noise again, and suddenly all about the carriage, like a wind through the bracken, there was a rushing of wolves yelping and baying like curs chased with a whip. Then silence. Utter, incomprehensible silence.

Mathias turned his head one way then the other, listening. But there was no sound. The travelling box at the back of the carriage was opened and he heard what seemed like a long length of chain being drawn out. There were other sounds too. Of the chain being handled, of something being fastened to the axle of the carriage. Then the carriage rocked on its springs again as the driver climbed back into the seat. There was the smallest of jolts and the carriage began to move. In the far distance came one long mournful howl, then silence.

‘You can sleep,’ said Leiter. He leaned forward and snuffed out the light with his fingers. ‘They will not bother us again.’

Mathias sat wide-eyed in the darkness. He didn’t know what it was that had followed him in the shadows or what had climbed down from the carriage in the dark, but he was certain it was one and the same, and he knew in his bones that it was something to be very frightened of.

It even had a name.

Valter.

He couldn’t remember going to sleep. He opened his eyes and it was bright daylight. The carriage was
empty, the door open. He could hear the sound of hens scratching on the ground. Somewhere nearby a cock crowed and beat its wings. A girl was peering round the open door. It was she who’d woken him. She pushed at his boot and then snatched her hand back as though she were frightened he might bite her.

‘Are you the boy?’ she said. ‘You’ve got to come. He’s waiting.’

Muddled with sleep, Mathias stepped down from the carriage. He had to screw his eyes up against the brightness. They had stopped in a dirt road outside a small inn. Hens were pecking at the ground between the wheels. A small group of people stood staring at him and the carriage. There was frost in the air. In the daylight the horses seemed even bigger than they had looked in the night. Huge and black. The carriage was black too, like ink. But the people were looking at something else as well. Mathias turned and gasped.

Behind the carriage, fastened to it by a chain around their necks, were the bodies of two of the largest wolves Mathias had ever seen. Each was the size of a pony. They were stone dead, throats torn out, their eyes bulging with the terror of their deaths.

The people stepped back and made way for him as he walked towards the door. The girl went in front of him. She kept her distance, looking over her shoulder to make sure that he was following.

Inside, the inn was dark. It smelled of last night’s wood smoke, and beer and spiced sausage. A man was sweeping the floor but he stopped working to watch Mathias follow the girl up the wooden staircase.

She was about Mathias’s age, perhaps a little older. She wore a work apron over a rough skirt and blouse. She had deep auburn red hair tied tight at the back; it stuck out from beneath a padded leather cap. When they got to the top of the stairs, he followed her along a narrow corridor with windows that looked down onto the stable yard. At the end was a wooden door. She stood to one side.

‘You knock,’ she said in a quick, sharp voice, and he realized that she was frightened of knocking on the door. But he was frightened as well.

‘What’s your name?’ he said.

She glanced at the door as though not wanting to be heard, not wanting to be part of this, whatever it was.

‘Please?’ he said.

She looked at him uncertainly, and he could see the wavering doubt in her face.

‘Katta,’ she said, and pointed to the door.

He knocked, so timidly that his hand barely made a sound against the wood. He looked at Katta. She nodded, signing to him to knock again. He did, and this time the door opened.

Katta watched the cold, pale-faced boy go into the room and the door close behind him. It did not seem right. The tall man with the moon face and the silver-topped cane had scared her. The boy was nothing to do with him. She knew that as clearly as if she had been told it. But there he was, and there she was bringing him up the stairs and leading him to the room.

You know that some things are wrong even without breathing. It’s wrong to tell a lie, but everyone does – sometimes. It’s wrong to take a thing that isn’t yours, or to hurt someone for the fun of doing it. But there are other things too, even bigger. Things that are so wrong that just the thought of them makes you shrink up inside and take a deep breath. That’s how Katta felt as she
watched the door close. Instinctively she almost reached out to catch hold of Mathias’s coat to stop him going through, but she didn’t, and then it was too late. The door had shut.

She took a step forward and very carefully put her ear to the wood. She could hear the man’s voice, but she couldn’t make out what it said. Someone began bawling for her from far downstairs. She tried hard to ignore them, to listen to what was happening in the room. But the downstairs voice grew more insistent – angry. She stepped back from the door, not knowing what to do. Then she took her skirt in her hands and ran down the corridor. But even so, she had to stop, just once, and look back. She couldn’t help thinking of the pale boy and the expression on his face. But she was being shouted for, and there was nothing she could do about it anyway.

Inside the room there was a large bed with heavy, dark curtains about it. There was a chest, a wardrobe and a long table. The morning light fell through the small leaded panes of glass in the window and onto the table. All Gustav’s things had been spread out on it. Dr Leiter sat at the table. He had taken off his coat and, with a bowl of water before him and a cutthroat
razor in his hand, he was shaving. There were the remains of his breakfast upon a plate.

Mathias took all this in with one quick glance, then the door shut behind him and he turned to see who had closed it. Just for an instant he thought it was a child like him, or like the girl who had shown him to the room. But that impression lasted for only the most fleeting of moments because it was not a child at all. It was a man. He was not much taller than Mathias, heavy set, squashed like a tight barrel.
He wore a thick double-breasted overcoat that was fastened high under his chin. His hair was like dirty wire. It hung over the edge of the collar. Despite himself, Mathias gasped. The small man’s face was misshapen, as though it had been quarter twisted when he was made. He looked back at Mathias, cocked his head mockingly to one side and smiled. It was a smile full of malice.

‘Come in, boy,’ said Leiter.

Mathias stepped forward. Behind him the small, barrel-chested man leaned his back against the door, then, in the same instant, quick as a cat, he turned and cocked his head as though he had heard something outside. Carefully he put his ear to the door. What he had heard was the very moment when Katta had put her head to the other side. She hadn’t made a sound – I am afraid to say that she was very good at listening at doors. People who work in inns very often are. But for all her silence, that small man had heard her. Slowly he began to reach up for the door latch, but then a voice called from downstairs, then called again, and there was a sound of running footsteps receding down the corridor. They stopped once, but then went on again. Then there was no noise.

Leiter had seen it all. ‘Has our little listener gone?’ he said quietly.

The small man nodded and leaned his back against the door again.

Mathias did not like the idea of him standing there – as much a barrier to someone coming in as to him getting out. It gave him an uncomfortable feeling down the back of his neck. It was the same feeling as the night before, when he had realized that there was something following him in the dark.

‘Are these all your grandfather’s things?’ asked Leiter. ‘Come,’ he said, beckoning to him. ‘Take a good look at them.’

Mathias stepped slowly forward, not sure what it was he was supposed to say.

They were all there. The hollow spheres that Gustav had made glow and float, before sending them out over the heads of the crowd. All his tricks and illusions. His clothes. It all looked lifeless and empty without him. Every single thing on the table had been pulled apart or turned inside out.

‘There is nothing missing?’ asked Leiter.

‘No,’ said Mathias.

‘Are you sure? Look again,’ Leiter said.

Mathias shook his head. ‘It’s all there,’ he said.

Leiter shaved the last of the soap from his face. Mathias could hear the hard bristles against the edge of the razor. Then Leiter patted his skin dry with a towel. Mathias stood waiting with his hands in his pockets, the small roll of paper held tightly in one fist. He had no doubt about it at all: this was what Leiter was looking for. He felt certain too that, if he once let that show upon his face, Leiter would see it. He tried hard to think of nothing at all.

‘Your grandfather,’ said Leiter. ‘Did he ever give you anything to look after for him. Or tell you something very special or secret that you had to remember?’

‘No,’ said Mathias.

‘No little keepsake or letter?’

Mathias shook his head dumbly.

‘Perhaps we should just see,’ said Leiter.

He reached down to the floor beside him and lifted a small, battered, green leather box onto the table. It was not very big, like a shoe box, about a foot high. He took a key from his pocket and opened it. The front folded out in two hinged doors. Inside, snug in the rich blue velvet lining, was a doll. She wore a fine court dress with the smallest flowers and birds woven into it.

‘This is Marguerite,’ said Leiter, carefully lifting the doll onto the table.

Mathias found himself leaning forward. The doll was quite perfect, like a very small, living person but with her eyes shut, as though fast asleep. He had never seen a toy like it before.

‘Marguerite always travels with me,’ said Leiter. ‘I find her so helpful if people try to lie to me. You see, she can do something wholly remarkable.’ He looked steadily at Mathias with his hard dark eyes. ‘She can tell the difference between the truth and a lie. It is extraordinary. But she is never wrong. I will show you.’

Leiter took from the box two small cards, a blue one and a red one. He laid them on the tabletop in front of the doll, then, with his fingernail, tapped on the table in front of her. For a moment she did not move, then, to Mathias’s astonishment, as though she had been deep in other thoughts, she shook her head daintily and looked up at Leiter.

‘Marguerite,’ he said, and the little doll gave a curtsey and looked intently at him with her hands folded across her lap.

‘This boy is called Ludovic.’ He pointed to Mathias and the doll turned her head to look. Then
she bent forward and very lightly laid her hand on the red card. Her face showed no expression as she did so.

‘Ah,’ said Leiter. ‘Marguerite knows that is not true. Tell her your real name, boy.’

‘Mathias.’

Marguerite bent forward and this time touched the blue card.

‘You see,’ said Leiter. ‘Marguerite can hear what is true. The two things must sound very different to her, and she can tell. It matters not how you try to say it. She can always tell.’

He looked at Mathias and suddenly Mathias understood what was about to happen. Leiter was going to ask him the questions again, only this time the doll would hear too.

‘Did Gustav ever tell you a secret?’ he said.

Mathias hesitated. ‘No,’ he said.

He watched wide-eyed as Marguerite bent forward, but unhesitatingly she touched the blue card. As she did so, Mathias realized that she was right. Gustav had never told him the secret. He had only ever said that he knew one and that was something quite different. Mathias hadn’t told a lie.