The Toymakers(22)

When he sees Kaspar, he stops. Carnikava is used to wayfarers. They tramp the roads of the coast, living off forage and the kindness of strangers. But this wayfarer is more brutish than most. His face is a lattice of scars, his nose misshapen, what teeth he has are rotted to pits – and all of that is hidden behind a beard so matted he might be part of the undergrowth itself.

Kaspar turns tail and flees – out of the trees, down the escarpments toward the coast, holding the little pinecone soldier all the way. Intermittently, he looks back. The vagrant is following after, but he has not changed the pace of his tread. He lumbers like a man who has come too far already, who would be happy to find a ditch and lie down until sleep takes him away.

Kaspar reaches home, that succession of wooden shacks, and scrambles inside to find his brother Emil leafing through the pages of a book – though neither Godman brother has ever learned to read.

‘What is it?’

‘There’s a wild man, coming out of the woods.’

The door flies open, and there stands the very same vagrant. Emil leaps to his feet, cowers behind Kaspar (among all of the many things he is, Kaspar is first of all Emil’s big brother and would do anything to defend him).

‘Which one of you is Kaspar?’

This is not a man used to talking; his voice is of whispers and wind.

‘I am,’ Kaspar says, defiant.

‘Where is your mama?’

‘My mama is dead,’ he declares, ‘two winters gone.’

Only this gives the vagrant pause. Behind his mask of filth he is quivering, and the only sign of his tears are the patches of pink skin that emerge out of the dark. ‘Then who looks after you boys?’

‘We look after each other,’ declares Kaspar, ‘and we don’t need nobody else.’

‘Well,’ says the vagrant, and his voice is different now, less bestial somehow, though equally deranged, ‘you have me now. I’m your papa, and I need to sleep.’

Somehow, he knows where the old bedroom is, the one where Kaspar and Emil’s mama had lain down to die. He crosses the shack and closes the door behind him, leaving only that coat of badly butchered hide behind. Seconds later, and for long hours to come, the sounds of his snoring reverberate in the house.

‘What now?’ whispers Emil.

‘I think we sleep in the hen hut tonight, little brother.’

And that was exactly what they did, though there was precious little sleep to come. For that was the night that Kaspar and Emil waged the opening battle of the Long War. After dark, they stole back into the shack where this man who claimed to be their blood was sleeping, and found the interloper’s overcoat pockets stuffed full with pinecone soldiers, ballerinas of bark, warhorses the size of thimbles. Kaspar took a handful, Emil took a handful, and out back, where the yard dog barked and the hens clucked anxiously at the suggestion of every fox, they played out the first skirmish in the campaign Cathy had just watched.

‘It wasn’t long after that that we left,’ said Kaspar, taking care as he balanced one of the pinecone figurines upon Cathy’s palm. ‘Papa spent a few days scrubbing himself clean. He butchered every hen in our hen hut, ate every egg in the nests, quartered the piglets and smoked hard sausages on a pyre. We didn’t know it then, we thought he was just an animal, but he was fattening himself up. Until then, he’d been skin and bone. It had taken him two years to walk home. He’d crossed all the Russias, but he wasn’t stopping now. He wanted to carry on west, and he wanted us to come with him …’

‘And you went, just like that?’

Kaspar nodded. ‘It wasn’t just because he told us to. And it wasn’t just because of those soldiers he made! But, Miss Wray, he could have led all the village children away, if that was what he wanted. No, it was something in his eyes. Somebody needed to look after him. Emil and me, we decided that was us.’

‘What about your dog, the one in the yard?’

‘Left to go feral. It took us an age to forgive Papa for that, but he made it up to us, once we’d reached London. You’ve already seen Sirius, the first of all the Emporium patchwork dogs, tramping up and down on its cotton wad paws. It was a long voyage. I must have held Emil’s hand halfway around the world. Then we were in London, and our papa showing us how to make toys. But that,’ he smiled, ‘is another story. I’ll tell you it some time, but first … isn’t there something you want to tell me?’

Cathy realised she’d been staring at the soldier pirouetting in her palm for too long. Now, Kaspar’s hand had closed over it, and she was forced to look up into his eyes. They were imploring her to tell, and every moment she remained with his hand touching hers, more and more of her wanted to say, ‘Kaspar, it isn’t so easy. Your story, it’s full of adventure. Mine …’

She might have said more (her tongue was threatening to), but before she could the bedroom door opened and Emil reappeared. He was comporting himself with more dignity than the moment he’d left, though his eyes were still swollen and raw. In his hands were more wooden soldiers. These ones were roughly hewn, still bearing the marks of his workshop lathe, but there was something magnificent in their minutely sculpted faces as well: once painted, this would be a unit of men of the same standing as the Imperial Kapitan. ‘I declare an ambush,’ Emil announced. Then, when Kaspar’s eyes narrowed in an attempt to send him away, he spluttered, ‘It’s within the rules. Your troops have taken mine as prisoners. My reinforcements arrive late and ambush them on the way …’