“But they are not saying anything about the rumor!” insisted Tilla, not sure where to start with such nonsense. “They think Branan has been taken by a criminal.”
“You see? It is never their fault!”
“I did not say that!”
“Ah, you wait and see what they do to their own men when they question them,” said someone. “Wait and see if they flog them, or use the hot irons on them like they do with us.”
“Of course they won’t!” said Cata’s sister. “Look what they did to that Regulus: a nice warm bed and a transfer to another unit.”
Somebody said, “If I got my hands on them, they’d be singing like skylarks by now.”
“Somebody else should have gone,” said the woman with the lisp. “The old man, bless him, he’s too trusting. We can’t waste time asking nicely. What good will he do, sitting there and starving? Every moment counts!”
Tilla was tempted to demand, What good will you do, sitting around and complaining? But Enica was right: They meant well toward Branan and his family. So instead of arguing she filled a cup with beer, picked up the platter, and levered the door open with her foot.
Chapter 34
Enica had abandoned the bonfire and was gazing out over the gate. “I thought I heard horses,” she said. “And then I thought, I’ll ask Branan to climb the tree and look.”
Tilla rested the cup and platter and on the gatepost. They watched in silence as a blackbird flew down onto the track and glanced round before stabbing at something in the mud. It flew up again at the sound of Enica saying, “That is a great deal of food.”
For the first time Tilla looked at what she had piled onto the platter. Bread and cheese and ham and bean pottage and two chicken wings. Enough for four people. “I wasn’t thinking.” Back in the house, they would be saying she was greedy. She offered the platter to Enica. The hands that tore at the bread were rough and ingrained with dirt. Senecio was no fool, for all his singing to trees: He had married a hard worker. And perhaps he knew those other women well enough to know that Enica would need Tilla for support. It was good to think that someone, at least, had faith in her.
Enica led her toward the old bench outside the house, the place where, in better weather, women might sit chatting in the sunshine, spinning fleece or preparing supper while they kept an eye on their children playing in the yard. The hens began to strut around them, stabbing at invisible food between the cobbles and watching for tidbits.
Tilla balanced the cup on the bench and placed the food between them to share. “I have been thinking,” she said. “I do not know what the soldiers are doing beyond searching the forts and questioning their own men. But I am wondering if there is another way to search that nobody has tried.”
Enica put down the slice of ham she was about to place in her mouth.
Tilla hoped she was not about to give her a new threat to worry about. “If the story about the body in the wall is true,” she said, wondering how much of this Enica had worked out for herself, “then—”
“Then your husband should look there for his missing soldier.”
It was a good point, but not one Tilla wanted to discuss. “If it is true,” she continued, “then there is somebody who did it, and that person wants his name kept secret. If he heard that Branan had seen him, perhaps he took Branan to make sure he was not betrayed.” She moved swiftly on to the next part, not dwelling on the thought of Branan in the hands of someone who disposed of bodies in secret places. “But when he finds out he has the wrong boy, and that Branan knows nothing, perhaps he will go looking for the person who really did see him.”
“What will he do to Branan?”
“If we can find the witness who really did see what happened at the wall,” said Tilla, not answering the question, “then perhaps that person will lead us to the man we should look for.”
Enica looked up. “Or woman.”
“It could be,” Tilla agreed, “but there is a man involved somewhere. Your neighbor’s boy saw him take Branan.”
“How can we find this person? You may as well dig for the roots of a mountain as try to find the source of a rumor. Everyone will say it is the friend of a friend. Or a traveling tinker, or a stranger in an inn whose name they never knew.”
“But whoever it is knows the name of your son,” put in Tilla, hoping that Branan’s name was not a piece of decoration that some gossip had added further down the chain. “We must think about who might want to place him in such a rumor.”
Enica picked up the ham again. “Somebody who saw a body being laid where it could not rest.”