7

The First Nail

It was under the wheelwright’s wagon that Philbert slept with Kroonk for his first couple of years with the Fair. Hermann offered to share his tent but his constant scrattelling and sighing kept anyone within ten yards awake, and sadly Philbert had to go elsewhere. It was also an addendum to the hanging incident, Philbert feeling the need to be outside and free, would wake with his hand at his throat making sure it was still there and not being stretched like a length of washed-out sheep-gut on a rack. He developed a fear of big horses, couldn’t bear the touch and scratch of rope upon his skin, had to have a special twine made of leather for Kroonk’s lead.

His miraculous escape from a hard death became well known, and he turned into a lucky charm of sorts for people who might not say a word to him, nor speak his name, but would often place their palm briefly upon his head as they passed him by, trying to take a little of the mouse-boy’s good fortune for their own.

The one person Philbert felt truly safe with was Otto Stellmacher, the wheelwright, huge and red with work, arms bulging like beer kegs, hard as cooper’s bands, and with a ­massive beard pockmarked with cinder-holes hiding him from cheek to chest. He mended wheels, staves, strouters and strakes; shoed horses and donkeys; cooped barrels and mended ploughs. He tried to teach young Philbert about spoke-dogs and ­whipper-trees, twisty-bits and clouts, coach-screws and cotter-pins, dowels and gugs; but there was too much to remember, too many names and whats and wheres and which to weld or tap and turn. Philbert nodded as though his neck really had been broken, trying to concentrate before sidling off under pretext of having something else to do, Stellmacher sadly shaking his head behind him, saying that one day he would regret not learning a proper trade when he’d nothing left to sell in this world and nobody left to teach him.

But he was still there the morning Philbert came crawling back, flush-faced beneath the wheelwright’s mournful gaze, begging for the lessons he had treated previously with lack of interest, explaining his grand plan as best as he was able, telling Otto about Frau Fettleheim: how she could no longer leave her cart for her size, could hardly move, had begun to smell like a leper-gatherer’s cart, worse than the turd-heaps piled high to dry in a dyer’s yard; how Lita struggled in her attempts at weekly bed-baths, how the oranges she’d soaked with attar and stuck with cloves to hang as scent-lockets were all too little and too late. Otto listened, thinking mostly of Little Lita, having already noted how pale and pinched she looked, or rather how much paler and more pinched she looked than usual; he knew, as all the fair-men did, that she’d said the night before that she couldn’t take it anymore and would have to leave the little caravan that had been her home and the woman who was the closest thing she had to a mother. And besides all that, the Little Maus’s idea was rather a good one, having the triple advantage of teaching the boy the rudiments of a trade, airing out the Frau, and letting Lita back into her home. Frau Fettleheim herself was not immune to her own condition and keenly regretted Lita’s absence, giving a short, heartrending speech to anyone who would listen as the tears fell down the uncooked pastry layers of her face.

‘I cannot bear to be this big, but I don’t know how to be any other way. And I cannot bear my own stench, nor that it has finally driven Lita away. Have someone drag my cart down to the river, hack out the boards and throw me in. Walk away and leave me. At least I’ll get to be outside again, if only for the few moments before I sink. And I’ll get to see something other than the same view of those behind and those ahead, and the roads and the mud and the arse-end of one town followed by the back-end of the next . . .’

Otto was moved by the woman’s plight and by Philbert’s attempt at a solution, ashamed he’d not come up with the idea himself. He stroked his beard, pulling the gold-and-grey streaks of it into tracks, revealing a small hint of lips moving somewhere beneath the overlying scrub of hair, because it was indeed an elegant solution.

‘So once we’ve built this cart of yours, Philbert, how do you propose to propel it?’

He’d already formed an answer but wanted to push Philbert into thinking of it for himself.

‘We could pull it ourselves?’ Philbert asked, at which Stellmacher had to laugh, a sound akin to the spilt water he sent over his anvil sometimes to cool it down, then bent down and drew his finger through the sand.

‘Like this,’ he said, making several lines. ‘This is the shaft, and these are called sides; here are the summers, shutlocks and cross keys. We’ll build big wheels rimmed round in iron, and place the fore-carriage just above the axle to give it more strength, for my God, the strength they shall need!’

He chuckled, swore Philbert to agreeing he would learn the names of each bit of wood, the square, the aft and fore, the bevel and pin. Philbert hung his head and accepted his fate, understanding that a man should suffer for his friends, unaware how much they would suffer for him in the future.

He took all Otto’s instructions and worked harder than he had ever done. Otto’s hands were tough and strong as tanner’s boards, unlike his which were soft, and wept blisters in their misery. He planed the ash, hewed the oak, lathed the shafts and cornered the keys. They made the cart narrower at the front so that when tipped it would loosen its load the easier.

‘Very important,’ said Otto, ‘particularly considering the load.’

He taught Philbert to rest his wrist on his knee so he didn’t chop off his fingers with knife or saw, how to drive in a nail without splitting the board. Philbert watched as Otto fitted the felloes of the rim, shouldered the spokes, swung the hammer to drive them harder into the stock, admiring the way he dished the wheel so it leant in at the top, out at the bottom. And then together they painted the finished product the glorious green that only a mixture of white-lead and arsenic can give, and when dried and all was ready, the cart shining and gleaming, it was late in the evening, but no one wanted to wait and away they went to Frau Fettleheim’s, solemnly knocking on the boards, announcing that the carriage awaited its queen.

It was a truly glorious creation, just the right height to shift Frau Fettleheim over from caravan to cart, and the fat lady squawked with delight, kicking up her ankles, sending a ripple through bloomers and chins and her very best dress. Once satisfied everything was in order, Otto took the reins and led the donkey off, slowly at first, Frau Fettleheim sighing with delight just to breathe fresh air, and down the field they went towards the river, people looking up from whatever they were doing as they passed, gasping at the sight, soon starting to laugh, whoop and whistle, flinging caps into the air as they followed the procession, Philbert running alongside the cart making his bows, Kroonk snaffling at the scraps that were flung in celebration, her tail wiggling madly in the excitement, people shouting out:

‘The Maus is moving a mountain! Only look! Here comes the Maus and the mountain he has moved!’

Only Hermann stayed behind in the doorway of his tent, waving solemnly as the procession passed him by for the second time, seeing Philbert in the lead with the donkey, grinning like a cockle, and Frau Fettleheim’s face wet with tears of joy. He stayed inside because Otto had lit an enormous fire of whin and wood scraps in celebration of Frau Fettleheim’s long-awaited release from incarceration, as was only right, and he could not have been happier for her. But he couldn’t step any closer to that fire, his skin would not abide it, would start its constant scritch and scratch, knowing there could be no such easy release for him. He watched the celebrations from afar, seeing the leap and crackle of flames reflected in others’ faces, the shiver of stars becoming visible in the sudden dark drop of the night.

Only one person thought of him later, when the official ­wagon-whetting had been done and the gentle celebration descended into general riot, and that was Philbert, who came and stood by the open flap of his tent.

‘Everything alright, Little Maus?’ Hermann asked from his cot. And the boy came forward, proudly showing him the ­official wagon-whetting nail Otto had put about his neck on a thong.

‘It should be yours,’ the boy said. ‘For it was you came up with the whole plan.’

Hermann smiled as Philbert took the thong from his over-large head and offered it up. He took it a moment, held the nail in his hand, felt its warmth, and the warmth behind its giving, before giving it back.

‘It’s yours,’ Hermann said. ‘It was you and Otto did all the hard work. So tell me, is the Frau pleased with her gift of freedom?’

He saw the boy nod, and saw too that the boy was crying. Hermann said nothing, just placed a single hand upon Philbert’s head which seemed enough, the boy subsiding to the floor, curling up, apparently going to sleep. Hermann rolled back onto his cot, trying not to scratch or sigh. He didn’t know why Philbert was so upset but understood that sometimes a person doesn’t want a crowd but doesn’t want to be alone either, just wants to know someone is there, not too far away in the darkness.

He was right about that, but wrong to believe Philbert was sleeping, for he was not. Something about Otto’s giving him the nail had brought back a memory: the sudden outline of his Papa shadowed somewhere near the fire, wiping the beer from his beard; made him think of those gifts of the little serinette that sang like a lark, the donkey with its saddle of softest silk, Philbert scanning back through every minute of every day trying to find the memory of where they lay, having the strongest feeling that if he went back slow enough and long enough, he would find them hiding in some crook and cranny of his mind. And he was thinking something else too: that the whole world of his past was deep inside him, and that sure as toad follows tadpole, something good was coming, and then would come the bad.