Chapter 24
“Where is Branan?”
This seemed an odd thing for Enica to be asking her. Tilla waited outside the gate, still unsure of her welcome, and said, “I have come to speak with him.”
“Did you leave him with Conn?”
Tilla was even more puzzled. “I have not seen either of them.”
The color drained from the woman’s face. Then she ran back toward the house shouting, “Husband! He is not with her! She is here and the boy is not with her!”
Tilla let herself in and dropped the frayed rope back over the gatepost. When she turned, Senecio was limping toward her. Despite the early-morning frost on the ground, he had not bothered with a cloak. His first words were “Did you not send for my boy yesterday?”
Tilla felt her stomach tighten. “I did not. I have not seen Branan since I was here when the soldiers came.”
Enica grabbed her by the shoulders. “Do not lie to me! Where is my son? What have you done with him?”
“I have done nothing!” Tilla cried, trying to raise her hands to defend her face. Enica was powerfully built, and Tilla did not want to fight.
The old man was shouting, “Stop! Stop, wife!”
“Where is my son?”
“I do not know!”
“Stop, wife!”
Enica loosened her grip as she was dragged away by her husband.
“Wife, leave her. She may be speaking the truth.”
Safely out of reach, Tilla massaged her shoulders. Enica was breathing heavily, rubbing her own arm and glaring at her husband.
“I have not seen Branan,” Tilla repeated. “People are saying he spread a bad story. I came to warn you that there may be trouble.”
Senecio frowned. “What story?”
She told them.
Enica said, “We know nothing of this. Where is my son?”
“I don’t know.”
“The army are blaming him for something so they can take him!”
Tilla said, “Someone told Virana it was him spreading the story. I do not know who.”
“It is a lie!”
Senecio rested both hands on his stick and bowed his head.
Tilla said, “When did you last see him?”
Slowly, as if the words did not want to be spoken, the man said, “He was out with the neighbor’s boy yesterday. Inam. He did not come back. We thought he must be with the neighbors. When the light was dying, his mother went to fetch him, but Inam had gone home alone. He told her . . .” His voice cracked. He tried again. “He told her you had sent a soldier to fetch Branan.”
“But I would have come to the house!”
“We thought perhaps . . .” He paused.
“We thought you were too embarrassed,” said Enica, clutching at a fistful of her shawl. “I knew we should have gone straight to the fort!”
The other adults were beginning to gather around them now. The skinny man, the man with one eye, and his wife. Cata and her mother and sister were there too. As each one arrived the bad news was passed on: “He is not with her.” “She has not seen him.” “She says she did not send for him.”
“Conn went out last night to fetch him back,” Senecio continued. “The patrol would not let him pass on the road because of the curfew.”
“He should have gone by the field paths!” Enica said. “I told him.”
“Then he would have been arrested when he got there.” Senecio looked at Tilla as if hoping for reassurance. “The patrol said they would look out for a lost boy.”
“That was a lie too,” put in Enica. “I asked a patrol this morning and they had been told nothing of him.”
Senecio was looking frail. “Conn has gone to find you. We thought perhaps Branan had stayed with you because of the curfew.”
Enica said, “I have been awake all night worrying.”
“We must talk to the neighbor’s boy again,” said Tilla.
Enica glanced at her husband. “How do we know she is speaking the truth? Her man is the cause of all this. Ever since they came here—”
“She would not lie to us,” he said. “She is Mara’s child.”
“Hah! And was not Mara the best liar of them all?”
He raised his stick. “You never met her!”
Enica stepped back. “I am just saying—”
“Daughter of Lugh knows the soldiers,” he said. “She can help us.”
Enica gave Tilla a look that said she had better not take advantage of the old man’s desperation.
When they found Inam, it was obvious he could not describe the soldier who had taken Branan. Between his father urging him to make more of an effort and his mother begging the father not to shout, he began to tremble and then burst into tears in the middle of the yard. “I don’t know!” he sniffed. “I thought—I thought he must be your medicus!”