Toymaker, The

by Quidt, Jeremy De

  They walked through the dark cemetery. Koenig went in front, Katta and Mathias followed. Stefan came behind. Katta didn’t like the feeling of him being there, behind her. She tried walking more slowly so that he might go past, but Stefan slowed too. He made sure that he was always behind her.

  The moon cast dark shadows amongst the tombs. There was no sound. Only the dead could make quiet like that. Katta pulled the collar of her coat high up around her chin and closed her eyes as she walked between the graves. Then Koenig stopped. They had come to the stone. She tried not to think of the long-dead woman wrapped in her shroud only feet below them. She tried not to think of what was going to happen next.

  Koenig kicked the frost from the grass, spat on his hands and lifted the heavy pick. He said something to Stefan, then in one long curve he swung the pick into the ice-hard ground. It made barely a mark. He lifted it and swung again; this time it bit in, and he worked the point backwards and forwards until an icy scab of earth lifted away. Then he swung again. The sound of the pick carried on the cold air. He stopped to listen, but if anyone had heard, no one came.

  Koenig and Stefan took the digging turn and turn about. The ground was frozen so hard that they might as well have tried to chip away at stone. But, scab by scab, the ground gave under the pick, and what was first a shallow scrape became deeper, then wider and deeper. They began to lift earth away with the shovel. Katta wondered what it must be like for Gelein Merlevede in the cold dark of her soundless coffin, hearing the scrape of the shovel and the scuff of the pick digging down towards her. She tried not to think, but the picture in her head would not go away. The dead woman was waiting for them down in the dark, cold ground. Koenig climbed out of the hole, and Stefan got in, lifted the pick and started again.

  Mathias began to shake. ‘I’m so cold,’ he said.

  Katta put her arms around him. It gave her something to do and took her eyes away from the digging.

  Stefan was almost up to his waist in the hole when, with a thump, the pick hit something wooden and hollow.

  It was the coffin.

  The lid had long since rotted. As Stefan shovelled the earth clear, the wood suddenly gave way under his weight. His foot went straight through and into the coffin beneath. He must have thought that something had grabbed him. He gave a yell and scrambled, whimpering, out of the grave, trying to brush away the shreds of shroud that clung to his leg. Koenig caught hold of him and shook him hard.

  ‘Shtahl!’ he hissed.

  The cold air was thick with a stale stink from the broken coffin. Crumbs of soil were rolling like peppercorns down into the gaping black hole that Stefan’s foot had made in the lid.

  Koenig let go of him and jumped down into the grave. Standing astride the lid, he began to lever at it with the pick. Katta couldn’t bear it any more. She could feel the last shreds of her nerve going. Mathias had already turned away. He couldn’t look. Koenig was pulling slivers of wood away.

  ‘Don’t!’ she cried.

  He looked up at her.

  ‘It won’t be in the coffin! How could he have put it in the coffin? She’s been dead for years!’

  All she had been trying to do was stop him pulling the shroud away from that awful face, but even as she said the words, she realized that she was right.

  ‘How could he have dug up a whole grave?’ she said.

  Koenig realized it too. He looked down into the hole, then up again at her. ‘It has to be in the ground,’ he said. ‘Not in the coffin.’

  He climbed out of the grave and, taking the shovel from where Stefan had thrown it, began to sift through the pile of earth they had already emptied from the hole, but there was nothing there. He got down into the hole again and, with the edge of the shovel, began to scrape the sides of it clean, running his fingers through each fresh shower of earth that fell away. He had been doing it for only a moment when he dropped the shovel and stood brushing earth away from something that he was holding in his hand. It was a small box, not much bigger than his palm, but it was heavy, made of lead. He climbed out of the grave.

  ‘We need light,’ he said, and began to walk back towards the hut.

  Katta looked at the dark, gaping hole. ‘You can’t leave it like this,’ she said.

  But Koenig didn’t answer. He carried on walking.

  ‘Koenig!’

  Stefan pushed his face close to hers and swore at her – she didn’t need to know the words to understand what they meant. He put his arm though Mathias’s and, pulling him along, followed after Koenig.

  They couldn’t leave it like this. Something would climb out. Katta picked up the shovel; it was heavy and the handle was ice-cold. She started to tip earth back in. It rattled down onto the coffin lid. In the dark, all around, she could feel the silence waiting.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  She kept saying the words quickly, over and over again, as she tipped more earth in.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.’

  Then something moved in the bottom of the grave. It was only the broken lid falling into the coffin under the weight of the earth, but it was enough. The last of Katta’s nerve gave way and she screamed. Dropping the shovel, she fled, running blindly through the dark, not sure which way the others had gone, tripping and falling as she went.

  Stefan had lit the candle stub. She saw the flickering light and ran towards it, falling up the steps into the hut, then standing breathless in the doorway, staring back out into the dark, but there was nothing moving, nothing coming after her. Maybe she had done enough. She could feel her racing heart skipping beats. When she turned round, Koenig was crouching in the candlelight, prising the box open with the tip of his knife. He glanced up at her, and even as he did so, the box opened like two halves of an oyster shell and something dropped through his fingers onto the floor. Mathias picked it up and held it to the light of the candle.

  It was a small square of folded paper.

  Koenig swept the top of the bench clear with the side of his hand, then took the paper from Mathias, unfolded it and flattened it out. It was just like the other piece, torn in just the same way – and just like the other piece it was completely blank.

  For a moment no one spoke. Koenig picked up the two halves of the box and shook them, but there was nothing else inside.

  ‘This can’t be it,’ said Mathias.

  ‘This must be it,’ said Koenig.

  He reached into his coat and, taking out the leather wallet, pulled the other piece of paper from it and laid the two pieces side by side. The torn edges matched exactly, but they were both blank.

  He looked up at Mathias.

  Mathias stared at the pieces of paper and frowned. It had to be a trick. He knew it. But you have to make tricks work – he knew that too. He tried to imagine what Gustav would have done – there on the stage with all their eyes upon him.

  Hesitantly he leaned forward and clapped his hands.

  And then it happened.

  It was like paper dropped flat into a fire – it takes a moment to catch, then burns from the middle out. A small blue-green flame ran along the line where the pieces touched. It crept slowly outwards over them both, but it had no heat. Where it passed it left a pattern of lines behind. They watched, open-mouthed, as the flame moved.

  ‘It’s making writing,’ said Mathias.

  ‘No,’ said Koenig. ‘Look.’

  The flame reached the furthest edges of the paper, and as it touched the wood of the bench, it flickered and went out. Koenig lifted the candle nearer.

  It wasn’t writing that had been left behind.

  Drawn across the two pieces of paper was the outline of a building – like a plan of its floor – but that wasn’t all.

  In one corner, marking an exact place, was a small black cross.

  23

  Across the Ice

  While the flame had burned it filled the hut with a smell of honey and resin. It lingered in the air. It was the same smell that cl
ung to Gustav’s clothes after he had done those unfathomable tricks – the ones that only Mathias ever saw. Mathias had asked Gustav about it only once, and Gustav had gripped Mathias’s face with fingers like a vice, squeezing it so hard that it hurt.

  ‘Mustn’t be too clever, must we?’ he’d said.

  And Mathias knew better than to ask again, so what that smell was he never knew.

  But now it took him back to Lutsmann’s travelling show, to the curtains thrown wide and the crowds in the flickering torchlight. He looked through the doorway at the moonlit graves, half expecting to see Gustav, with his white face, standing beside one of them. But there was only darkness and silence.

  Then he realized that Koenig was asking him a question.

  ‘How did it do that?’

  He could only shake his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘Do you know what this is?’

  Mathias looked at the lines on the paper and shook his head again. Stefan leaned forward, his dark eyes glittering in the candlelight.

  ‘Kruzka?’ he said.

  ‘It might be,’ said Koenig.

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Katta.

  ‘A church,’ said Koenig, looking up at her. ‘Maybe it’s a church.’ He drew his finger along the lines. ‘This could be the nave or the altar.’

  ‘Or a garden,’ said Katta. ‘That might be walls round a garden and a path.’

  Her eyes were wide with excitement. It was as though, filled with the promise of riches, she’d forgotten everything else. She looked at each of them in turn.

  ‘It’s treasure, innit?’ she whispered.

  But that still made no sense to Mathias. He was looking not at her, but at Koenig. He wanted to know what Koenig was thinking.

  Koenig had wet his fingers to snuff out the candle stub and Mathias caught his eye. It was only a glance, but it was enough. Whatever it might be that the paper showed, Koenig didn’t think it was treasure either.

  They spent the night in the hut. Koenig woke them before first light – not that they’d slept much. He wanted them to be away before anyone chanced upon the open grave of Gelein Merlevede.

  What Koenig planned to do was find a high place from which they could look down on the city. There were squares and alleyways with good views over the streets and roofs below – they’d passed places like that the day before. Maybe they could see from there a garden or courtyard that matched what Gustav had drawn on the paper. There was nothing to say that it was even in the city, but the chances had to be that it was.

  ‘What if it’s a room inside a house?’ asked Mathias.

  ‘Then we won’t see it,’ said Koenig.

  ‘Kruzka,’ said Stefan.

  ‘It’s not goin’ to be hidden in a church,’ said Katta.

  She didn’t want Stefan to be the one who was right. But Koenig didn’t dismiss it.

  ‘It depends what it is,’ he said.

  There were churches enough for them to look in as they worked their way up through the town. Each one was cold, and heavy with the thick smell of incense. From the darkness of the roofs gilded angels looked down, and above every altar hung the blue and silver banner of the Duke of Felissehaven, reminder – as if any were needed – of where earthly power really lay.

  In each church they looked in, they tried to match what they could see with what Gustav had drawn, but nothing ever came close. There was always some part that was different, something that wasn’t the same. And it was drawn so carefully, so exactly, that they had no doubt they would know the place the moment they found it.

  They had no better luck when they tried looking from the highest places down onto the roofs and courtyards below. They stood in the cold wind, pointing and comparing, but the day wore on and they found nothing.

  The bell for the last service of the afternoon had been rung as they walked through the doors of a church near the top of the town. The priest had already begun the prayers. A single candle burned in a red glass lantern above the altar, but there was only a handful of people in the church. Koenig dipped his fingers into the bowl of water by the door and crossed himself. When Stefan did the same, Katta copied them and nodded to Mathias that he should do it too. Then they sat together in a pew and waited until the service was done. Katta didn’t know what she was supposed to do. She sat peeping through her fingers at the bent heads of the people as they prayed.

  When it was over, Koenig waited until the church had emptied and the priest was trimming the altar candles.

  ‘Father,’ he called. ‘A question, if I may?’

  Pulling the pieces of paper from the leather wallet, he held them out for the priest to see, but carefully so that his thumb was over the mark that Gustav had made.

  ‘It was my father’s drawing,’ he said. ‘I always thought it had to be the church where he was married, but I’ve never known if it was true and he’s long gone now. Could it be a church in the city?’

  Katta stared at Koenig – it was bad to lie in a church – but he didn’t look at her.

  The priest looked carefully at the pieces of paper that Koenig held. For a moment he said nothing. Then he shook his head.

  ‘It is not a church that I know.’

  ‘You are sure?’

  He smiled at Koenig and shook his head again. ‘I know them all. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Knew it wasn’t,’ said Katta under her breath as they walked towards the door. She took a sideways look at Stefan. ‘Kruzka,’ she said.

  They’d almost reached the door when the priest called after them. ‘Are you sure it was where he was married?’ he said.

  Koenig stopped and turned. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the only thing it could be, I suppose, is the monastery chapel.’

  ‘On the island?’ said Koenig.

  The priest held his hand out, beckoning to Koenig to bring him the paper so that he could see it again.

  ‘It’s not all ruins,’ he said. ‘Some of it has been carried away, but the chapel is still there, and one or two of the other buildings. It’s just the roofs and floors that have fallen in.’

  He looked at the paper again. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can see it now.’ He drew his finger along the lines, showing them each detail as he spoke. ‘These are the alcoves, and that is the window, and that is the door.’

  He looked up at Koenig. ‘That is the Chapel of Saint Becca the Old,’ he said. ‘It would not have been a place for a wedding.’

  ‘On the island?’ said Koenig again.

  ‘Yes,’ said the priest. ‘On the island.’

  Stefan turned to Katta and grinned at her. ‘Kruzka,’ he said.

  He’d been right.

  There was only one way to reach the place, and that was to walk out across the ice. No boat could get there until the thaw came with the spring. But they had to wait until dark. Too many eyes would see. Too many questions would be asked.

  So they waited.

  They didn’t go back to the inn. They sat instead with their backs to the harbour wall, staring out across the ice, watching as the last traces of colour drained from the sky and, one by one, lanterns were lit on the barges in the harbour, and on the ships at anchor out in the sound. Koenig had been back to fetch one of the bags from the stable – Stefan’s; it was all they needed. Now he sat with it between his feet, looking across the frozen bay as the light failed. He could just make out the distant shape of the island against the darker line of the sea. The priest had said that from the shore there were steps cut into the rocks – the chapel stood on its own above the cliff.

  Whatever Gustav’s secret was, that was where they would find it.

  Katta sat close to Mathias. She’d been full of the promise of treasure, but now, sitting in the gathering dark looking out across the ice, she was not so sure.

  What if it had been Leiter who’d hidden it? What if that’s what it had been about all the time – not finding what Mathias had taken, but making sure that no one else ever did? Was that why they�
�d killed Jacob? Was that what Mathias had been trying to tell her?

  A cold thought went like ice down her spine. She pulled at Mathias’s sleeve. ‘What if he knows we’ve found it?’

  But it was Koenig who answered. ‘He doesn’t,’ he said. ‘But he can’t be sure, can he?’

  ‘So what will he do?’ said Katta.

  Koenig stood up and picked up the bag. ‘What would you do?’ he said.

  Mathias had been sitting staring out at the island, turning that same question over in his mind. He already knew the answer. ‘I’d go and look,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Then we’d better make sure we get there first,’ said Koenig.

  It took them two hours. As they walked across the hard-packed ice, the lights of Felissehaven steadily dwindled to a shimmer behind them. When they came to the shore, Koenig lit a small lantern. It had a shutter that half hid the light it threw. At first they couldn’t find the steps. It was only after working their way back and forth amongst the rocks that they saw them, winding up into the blackness. Koenig closed the lantern and, with only the moon to light their way, they began to climb up the rough wet cleft of stone.

  It was a hard climb, almost too much for Mathias. But at the top they stepped out onto level ground, and there was the monastery laid out in silhouette ruins before them, its broken walls open to the sky.

  At the cliff edge, some distance from the others, one solitary building stood facing out across the sea.

  ‘Voy,’ said Stefan, pulling at Mathias’s sleeve. ‘Kruzka.’

  They went in silence through the empty cloisters, picking their way between the fallen blocks of stone that lay on the ground. In the distance they could hear the muffled thump of the sea breaking over the margins of the ice.

  Had they turned round then and looked back towards Felissehaven, they might have seen the light coming steadily out across the ice towards them.

  The door to the chapel was closed. Stefan took the heavy iron ring in both hands and twisted it, but nothing happened. He leaned all his weight against the wood. At first it didn’t move, then Koenig put his shoulder to it as well and, with a crack, the hinges began to grind slowly open.