It was like a graveyard, save that instead of cenotaphs and head-stones, it was cluttered with stacks and piles of goods: bales of cloth, barrels of oil, crates of china. She could not see far in any direction; but craning her neck she could see up five stories to the big cargo-doors let into the gables of the House. These were a-gape, swinging untended in the breeze. Within, the attics of the House of Hacklheber were empty. Their contents had all been let down into the courtyard, as if Lothar had decided to liquidate all. But there were no buyers.
Something plopped to the ground behind Eliza, and she heard Caroline give out a little gasp of surprise. Eliza spun on her heel and confronted a tiny savage—a pygmy with a tomahawk. He’d been stalking her through the courtyard, creeping along behind the piles of goods. He had sprung from the lid of a crate taller than his head to menace her in a narrow pass. But now he was having second thoughts, for he had trapped himself between Eliza and Caroline. He turned around to look at the latter. Gazing now at the back of his head Eliza saw a whorl of blond hair that needed washing, a precipitous cowlick that needed trimming, a small body, just stretching out through its sheath of baby fat, that needed a bath. He was dressed in a breechclout and moccasins, and carrying a weapon made from a terra-cotta pot-sherd that some grownup had patiently lashed to a stick.
Caroline had got over being startled and was trying to pick between amusement and annoyance. “Boo!” she shouted. The little blond Indian spun around as if to run away, but remembered too late that his escape was blocked by Eliza. His eye met hers for a moment, and she recognized it as an eye that belonged to her. He dropped the tomahawk, the better to scramble over a netted pallet of sugar-loaves, and before she could call his name, he had vanished into a pretend Massachusetts.
Caroline laughed, until she met Eliza’s eye, and took in her face; then she knew.
The court was surrounded by a covered gallery, where, when Eliza had last been here, men of the House of Hacklheber had sat at their bancas writing in their ledgers, and counting streams of outlandish coinage in and out of their massy strong-boxes. Eliza could see little of it now, save the tops of the arches; but a few moments later she heard a piping voice in German, making something known to “Papa,” and a moment later, a rumble of a laugh, followed by some patient explanation.
Hearing that voice, Eliza by some instinct turned and gazed up at a three-storey balcony that projected out into the space above the court, all decked out with golden Mercurys and other Barock commerce-emblems. She had once seen Lothar up there, talking to the Doctor, and staring down at her and Jack; but the thing was deserted now, a still-life of dusty windowpanes, faded curtains, and moss-slicked stone.
The man had begun to declaim in a loping singsong. Eliza knew little German. She looked to Caroline, who explained, “He reads from a book of tales.”