Toymaker, The (18 page)

Then Anna-Maria came out. She came down the steps and stood beside him in her thick coat with its high fur collar. Looping her arm comfortably through his, she smiled at him, and they stood like that, side by side, and watched the fireworks together.

Anna-Maria had found out everything. She knew about the piece of paper and Katta. She knew about Koenig and Jacob. She knew it all.

The question now was, what was she going to do with what she had found out?

The day of the Feast of the Angel dawned ice cold. There was not a breath of wind, not a cloud in the sky. Bells rang out over the waking city – clamorous and discordant. With each passing minute more were joined until the air was thick with the noise of them. There wasn’t one corner of a room, not one bucket in a yard, that the sound didn’t fill.

Katta hadn’t slept. She’d watched the day come in slow creeping light, heard the very first bells ring. Now, that seemed hours ago. She pushed at the food, steaming hot in the bowl, but she couldn’t eat it.

The night before, Koenig had arrived back at the inn to find only Stefan by the fire. Katta had followed, almost on his heels, ready to enjoy what happened next. But it didn’t happen.

There was no Mathias.

They’d gone straight back into the streets, Koenig carrying a burning tar flare to light their way – but where were they to start? Everywhere they went was crowded with carnival-masked men and feather-faced women. They looked down into the empty dark alleys where the revellers wouldn’t go. But Mathias was nowhere to be found. As they searched the streets, the sky above them filled with bursting fireworks. Then even the fireworks were over, and one by one the people drifted away until the streets were bare, but still they hadn’t found him. Finally they had to accept that there was nothing to do but go back to the inn and start again in the morning. There was always the chance that Mathias had found his way there and would be waiting for them. But he wasn’t.

Then had come the recriminations.

Now they sat silent over their bowls of food.

‘We will start where we were last night,’ said Koenig. ‘I will go one way and you two will go the other.’

Katta couldn’t even begin to say what was in Koenig’s mind. Whether it was that he’d needed to take Mathias to Jacob and they’d lost him, or
whether it was the harm that might have befallen the boy. She wasn’t even going to try to guess. She felt sick. If she hadn’t stayed in The Bear, none of it would have happened.

She glanced up at Stefan. Koenig caught her do it and, as though reading her thoughts, lifted a warning finger in front of her face.

‘This time, you stay with him,’ he said. ‘This time, you will do as you are told.’

She hadn’t ever seen him look more dangerous. It was not a time to argue.

‘So long as he don’t hurt me,’ she said. ‘Tell him he can’t hurt me. Tell him so as he knows. Say he can’t touch me.’

For a moment Koenig said nothing. Then he turned to Stefan. ‘
Ne tzima loy
,’ he said. ‘
Dash jah?
’

Stefan looked up at her; even he wasn’t going to risk a wrong word now. He nodded. ‘
Dash jah
.’

But he said it as though it was a very hard thing to be asked not to do. ‘
Ne tzima loy
.’

Anna-Maria and Lutsmann sat waiting in a fine marble hall. Lutsmann was staring around at the gilded ornaments and furniture with his mouth open and his eyes popping wide. Anna-Maria,
momentarily disconcerted, sat very still beside him. It was not what they had expected at all.

When they’d set out, leaving Mathias tied and gagged in the cart, they’d expected to find Dr Leiter in a small house in the town. Something with a brass bell pull, a few stone steps up to a polished door – but not this. They sat uneasily, looking about them at the colonnaded pillars and the paintings on the ceiling and walls. But it was where Leiter had said that word was to be sent to him. They’d asked the way, so there was no mistaking it.

As they’d come up through the town, the bells had been ringing and the streets were almost empty. The few people already about were church-dressed and sombre-faced. The day of the Feast of the Angel was a much more serious affair than the mayhem that had gone on the night before. They’d made their way through the lower streets and up to the fine buildings at the top of the hill, where the Duke’s palace stood and the great church of the Angel of Felissehaven watched over everything below.

Once admitted, they’d been left in the marble hall to wait for whatever was going to happen next. They could still hear the bells ringing outside. The morning light flooded in through great high
windows, making the gold more golden and the paintings more brilliant.

‘Are we sure this is the right place?’ said Lutsmann uncertainly.

Before Anna-Maria had the chance to tell him that he was a fool, a door at the end of the hall opened and a man came through. But it wasn’t Dr Leiter. It was merely someone to take them to him. They followed the man across the marble floor and up a wide staircase. Portraits of stern-faced men looked down on them. A large chandelier hung at the end of a gilded chain, and suddenly Anna-Maria didn’t feel quite so certain of herself as she had been. Not as certain as she’d been in the cart when she’d finished with Mathias and first thought of what they were going to do next. This was all much more grand than she’d expected. But she told herself that she’d met Leiter before. She’d dealt with him then, and she’d deal with him again. But all the same, she was uneasy. Only powerful people lived in houses like this, and powerful people were dangerous.

The man stopped at a door. He tapped on it and, without waiting for a reply, opened it and ushered Anna-Maria and Lutsmann inside. Then he made a
small bow and, withdrawing, closed the door behind him.

The room was as magnificent as anything they’d already seen. Dr Leiter was sitting at a large table in the middle of it, his fingers steepled to his lips. He had been interrupted in his morning affairs. He had church to attend. Then the procession of the Duke. But this was important.

He watched them come in. He didn’t say anything until the door had shut.

‘What brings you here, circus man?’ he said.

Anna-Maria began to sob. She dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief. ‘It’s the boy,’ she breathed. ‘What has become of the poor boy?’

Leiter’s face might have been carved from stone – its expression gave nothing away. ‘Why do you need to know?’ he said.

What Anna-Maria wanted to know was why the piece of paper was so important, and in that she had a start on Leiter. She had the boy. But she wasn’t going to let him know that.

With great difficulty, she controlled her tears a little. Lutsmann guided her to a chair and she sat down.

‘We heard that he was lost – the lamb,’ she sniffed.
‘We thought that we might be able to help you find him – he is like our own son. We know little things about him that might be of use to you in looking.’

Leiter’s expression did not change. ‘Like what?’ he said coldly.

‘Oh, his little ways.’ She dabbed at her eyes again. ‘Little things he told us about Gustav.’ She watched Leiter through the lace of the hanky as she said the name. ‘Just little things.’

Lutsmann put a comforting arm about her shoulder. He knew what was required of him.

‘Little things,’ said Leiter to himself. ‘I wonder how little?’

There was a worn green leather box on the table beside him. He undid the brass clasp, opened it, and set Marguerite down in front of him. She turned her pretty head and looked up at him as he laid out the two cards, first the blue one, then the red.

Mathias had told Anna-Maria many things – she’d made sure of that. But she hadn’t quite made sure enough. Small details had slipped by her.

Marguerite was one of them.

Anna-Maria looked at the doll and then at Lutsmann. ‘Ah-ha, ah-ha,’ she sobbed, and dabbed the hanky to her eyes again.

‘Why are you here?’ said Leiter.

‘Oh, Doctor Leiter,’ gasped Anna-Maria, ‘we just want to help.’

Marguerite touched the red card.

‘You don’t happen to know where the boy is, do you?’ said Leiter.

‘Oh, that we did!’ said Anna-Maria, looking up at Lutsmann’s face and grasping at his hand for support. He patted her reassuringly. ‘We have not seen him since that sad parting.’

Marguerite touched the red card.

‘How sad for you,’ said Leiter. ‘Did you know that the wretched boy took something that was not his before he ran off?’

Anna-Maria’s painted face became a picture of shamed outrage. ‘Oh – oh! The scoundrel!’

‘I want it back,’ said Leiter coldly. ‘You wouldn’t know where it is, would you?’

‘How could we?’

Marguerite touched the red card.

Leiter leaned forward. There was a small silver bell upon the table. He rang it and sat back. The door opened and the man who had brought them up the stairs came in. He made a small bow.

‘Has my servant returned yet?’ said Leiter.

‘Yes, Doctor Leiter,’ said the man.

‘Have him come to me.’

The man bowed again and closed the door.

‘How may we be of help?’ said Anna-Maria. She wanted to move the matter along more to her liking.

But Leiter didn’t answer. He pushed back his chair and walked to the window. From it he could see the roofs of the town laid out like patchwork below him; the narrow roads, the glittering ice in the harbour, the islands beyond. The bells were ringing in the cold, clean air.

‘Sometimes people make mistakes,’ he said. ‘They pretend that something is true, when it isn’t true at all. Like you have just done.’

Anna-Maria looked up at Lutsmann.

‘I assure you, good sir—’ Lutsmann began, but he didn’t finish whatever it was he was going to say.

In the panelled wall behind Leiter, a door opened and a barrel-squat figure, smaller than a man, larger than a child, stepped into the room.

‘If you tell me the truth now,’ said Leiter. ‘No harm will come to you. You have my word.’

Behind him, on the table, Marguerite smiled her prettiest, sharp-toothed smile and touched the red card.

*

The gag dug tightly into the corners of Mathias’s mouth. Anna-Maria had wanted to be certain that he wouldn’t make a sound. She’d tied his wrists and ankles and pushed him into a corner of the cart behind the cot bed; next, she’d covered him with the rag rug that was spread on the floor, pushing a chair against it all so that he couldn’t be seen. Then she’d painted her face – lips dark as blood – put on her best cloak and, making sure that Lutsmann was ready, set off to find Leiter.

But someone had watched them go.

Estella had had enough of Lutsmann and Anna-Maria. That slap around the face the night Gustav died had been the last straw. She’d decided that she would take her things and go. She’d just needed the right place and the right time.

Felissehaven was both.

She’d gathered together the few things that belonged to her, and then thought to take a few that belonged to Lutsmann – or, better still, to Anna-Maria. It seemed only right.

She’d thought that she would have to choose a moment when their backs were turned. She couldn’t believe her luck when she saw Anna-Maria painted
to the nines and Lutsmann in his shining black ringmaster’s boots lock the door and come down the steps of the cart. Anna-Maria slipped her arm through Lutsmann’s, and off they went together. Estella watched for several moments, but they didn’t come back.

The lock on the door wasn’t enough to stop her. She knew that, slung beneath the cart in a box, were the various tools they used to set up the stage. She opened it and took out a long sharp chisel, which she jammed between the door and the frame, working it from side to side until the lock gave way. Then she slipped through the door, closed it behind her and looked about.

Lutsmann had a pull-down shelf against one side of the cart. It served as his writing slope and desk. It was where they all came to be paid – when they
were
paid, that is. Behind it there were small drawers stuffed with papers and bills. One by one Estella pulled each of them out and tipped it onto the floor, but there was nothing worth taking. She ran her hand along the shelves where the plates and cups were stored. Then she took the lid from the teapot and shook it upside down, but it was empty, so she dropped that too. There had to be something somewhere.
She turned round and looked at the cot bed.

Maybe beneath the mattress?

She pulled the covers and sheets from it – and then stopped still, listening. There’d been a noise. It had come from the corner. It was only then that she noticed the chair and the rug. They looked out of place. Instinctively she looked at the floor where the rug should be, and then back to where the noise had come from.

Curious now, she moved the chair and pulled the rug away.

At first she didn’t understand what it was that she was seeing. Mathias was squeezed into the dark corner with his back to her and his face to the wall. His coat, all covered in ash and treacle, might have been a dirty old blanket. It was all she could see of him. She tugged at it and only then realized that it was a child. Reaching down, she put her finger under its chin and, hooking the face up towards her, saw who it was.