The Toymakers(91)

‘Off them!’ Cathy cried out, and was about to throw herself into the room when somebody pounded up the hall behind her, barrelling Kaspar and Papa Jack out of the way, and thrust her bodily aside.

Emil came into the room in a thunder of footsteps and launched himself at the first bed.

The soldiers turned as one. The mountaineers on the window ledge tumbled in surprise, grappling out for their ropes as they plummeted to the flatlands of the floorboards underneath. A trio emerged from the foot of the bed, lifted their faces at the giant tearing at his son’s ribbon shackles, and scrambled back. Some valiant soldiers lifted rifles and let wooden volleys fly; others turned to escape into the skirting. The siege tower, several of the scaling ladders, were already turned to a ruin under Emil’s boots. He had lifted his first son out of the bed and, cradling him to his shoulder, caught Cathy and Kaspar frozen in the doorway, as he turned to rescue his second.

‘Don’t stand there gawping! Do something! Cathy, you of all people …’

Cathy knelt to loosen the ribbons that bound the second boy. Until now he had been silent, but at the moment of rescue he started shrieking. There was a toy soldier tangled in his hair and, when Cathy lifted him, it dropped to the bedspread.

Emil flailed out with his foot, sending the second siege tower skittering across the room. The soldier on the bedspread marched from one end to the other, finding no way down to the floorboards below. His painted features gave no hint at what he was thinking (if these things, Cathy had to remind herself, really could think), but the way he turned gave the impression of panic.

Emil’s boy was sobbing into her shoulder. She cooed for him to be quiet, told him that he was safe. Now that the worst was over she stepped forward, as if Emil might take him – but his eyes were on the bed, the soldier who marched in circles searching for a way down. It was only now that Cathy noticed its uniform of crimson red, the valiant features with which its face had been etched. The Imperial Kapitan. The soldier who had stood, for so long, on the ledge of Emil’s workshop, looking over everything that he did. Now, he was one of the things building their doll’s house world up and down the Emporium walls.

The venom was gone from Emil. Crestfallen, he stuttered backwards – and, seizing its chance, the Imperial Kapitan cast itself off the edge of the bed. Then, picking itself up (and perhaps amazed that the fall had not corrupted its workings), it joined the last soldiers flooding back into the skirting. On the threshold it turned, threw Emil a defiant salute, and vanished into the dark.

In the hallway outside Nina had arrived. Forcing herself between Kaspar and Papa Jack, she demanded the boy from Cathy’s arms. Before she took him, she drew back a hand and whipped it directly across Kaspar’s cheek. Kaspar turned, only fractionally. Not a word passed his lips.

‘Emil?’ Nina began, as if reminding him of some private discourse.

Emil’s eyes had been on the skirting, but he came to his senses now. ‘It’s gone too far, Kaspar. Too far. You’re to call them off. Summon them up or issue some proclamation, or whatever it is you do, and tell them what’s what.’

Kaspar stammered, ‘Emil, you can’t possibly think I—’

‘I do,’ Emil declared. ‘I saw it. That was my Kapitan. Why else would you take him and fit him out like all the rest, if not for spite? Well, you’ve done it now, Kaspar. They’ve crossed a line. They’re only boys. They’re your nephews, for what that’s worth. Call them off. Call them off or I’ll …’

‘We’ll burn them out,’ Nina said, as poised as Emil was fevered. ‘They come for my sons, well, we’ll come for them. So what’s it to be?’

‘Emil,’ Kaspar began, ‘are you going to let her speak to me like this? This isn’t my doing. I haven’t told them to do a thing. That’s the very point. What they do, that’s up to them. It’s you who tells them. You who …’

Nina opened her other arm, took her second son away from Emil. For a moment, Emil resisted; then he let the boy go to his mama. In the doorway, Nina hesitated, both boys dangling from her neck. ‘Are you coming?’

Emil shouldered his way out into the hall. ‘I’m sorry, Papa,’ he said, ‘but this is just intolerable. They’re only little boys. What did they do to deserve this? To be victimised in their own home? And if he won’t even—’

Kaspar reached out, but Emil only shook him away.

‘Hands off me, Kaspar.’ He had gone three steps before he spoke again. ‘Do you know, we were doing fine. I thought it was going to be impossible without you here. I thought it was going to be hell. I thought there’d be customers turning away, and all because you weren’t here with your fanciful designs. Well, it wasn’t like that. Do you know what the biggest shock was in those years? It wasn’t that the customers didn’t miss you, for I’m certain that they did. It was that … I could do it too. I could make things they’d talk about. Oh, they mightn’t have been the same as yours, but they didn’t have to be, because they were mine. I could bring them in and I could show them how, and, and … and I could have a wife and I could have a family too. The Emporium is ours, Kaspar, and you just couldn’t stand it, so you had to …’

Cathy had been listening from the bedroom, but at last she joined them in the hall. ‘Emil, it’s better if you go. Be there for your boys. Nina will thank you for it. You’ll thank me for it, in the morning.’