Ruth Downie - Tabula Rasa

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!”

“No, the Medicus was with me.”

“They do all look alike under those helmets,” said his mother.

Inam’s round eyes and stuck-out ears reminded Tilla of a weasel. His bare feet reminded her that not everyone could afford boots. She said, “Did Branan know the soldier?”

Inam shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

“Of course you know something!” thundered his father, smacking one of the weasel ears as if that would shake a memory loose. As he shouted, “Stop sniveling and think!” Inam’s mother stepped in between them. “Frightening him will not help!”

Tilla reached for the boy’s grimy hand. “Why don’t we go for a walk?” she suggested. “Just you and me.” Dumb, Inam nodded and followed her without resistance.

As she pushed open the gate she heard Enica say, “Will you let her steal your son too?”

Senecio’s reply was short and impossible to make out. When she turned, the men were in earnest conversation. Both mothers were watching her departure, and she had a feeling that wherever she took the boy, they would not be far behind.

Inam shambled along beside her, rubbing his reddened ear. Tilla said, “Can you show me the place where you met the soldier?”

To her surprise he shook his head.

“Why not?”

He said nothing.

“Were you somewhere you were not supposed to be?” she guessed.

He shrugged and carried on gazing at his feet in the mud, which was still crisp with frost.

“I won’t tell them,” she said. “But we need to find Branan, and you are the only one who can help.”

Silently, the boy led her up the track that joined with the one leading to Senecio’s farm. On the way Tilla turned to see if anyone was following them, but the women had the sense to keep their distance. She said, “Did Branan tell you about something he’d seen at the wall lately? Something surprising?”

The boy seemed puzzled.

“Something that might be a secret?”

Inam was saying he didn’t think so when an approaching figure began to run toward them. It was Conn, and instead of a greeting he was shouting, “What are you doing with that boy?” More time was wasted while he took Inam away to confirm that she was not lying. He did not ask her pardon for the insult, and there was only bad news to exchange. Nobody had seen Branan.

Virana had confirmed to Conn that Branan had not been to the bar. The gate guards at the fort and the camp had been told about a missing boy but nobody had seen him. They said they would give a message to the centurion. Conn had arranged to have the horn sounded to call for help, and the family would organize a search.

He looked down at Inam. “You said it was that medicus who took him.”

The boy stammered something.

“He is not sure now,” Tilla explained. “And I know it wasn’t the Medicus, because he was with me.”

Conn eyed Tilla for a moment, then turned aside and spat. “Swear to me you don’t know where my brother is.”

“I swear,” Tilla told him. “I swear by the sky and the earth and the bones of my ancestors that I do not know where Branan is.”

“That man of yours owes it to us-”

“I will tell him,” she promised. “He will do all he can.”

At that moment they all heard the unearthly wail of the horn calling the people together. Inam’s eyes widened and his gaze darted around as if he were expecting warriors to come crashing out from between the trees at any moment.

Tilla could remember the excitement of hearing the horn as a child. Men and boys would be running across the fields toward the sound now, clutching whatever tools could be used as weapons. Women free of small children would be setting aside their work and snatching up coats and shawls and knives and fire irons.

The horn sounded again. Conn pointed at Tilla. “You,” he said. “Finish with this boy, quickly. I’ll be watching.”

“If you want to find your brother,” Tilla warned him, “you will watch from a long way away and not frighten him.”

Conn looked at her as if he were not going to be told what to do, then shrugged and stepped back.

Gathering up her skirts, she crouched down beside the boy. “You are a very important person today, Inam.”

He sniffed, not looking very pleased about being important.

“You are not in trouble. None of this is your fault.”

“Will Branan be all right?”

“We are doing everything we can to make sure of that,” she promised. “Why don’t you take me to where you saw him last, and then I can start to think about where he might be?”

When they reached the main road, Inam turned left and led Tilla along the rough grass verge before stopping a couple of paces back from the roadway. The sun was fully up now, and the frost was retreating into the shadows. She heard the muffled hoofbeats of a couple of local riders cantering toward them, perhaps in response to the horn. Conn hailed them from some distance away, and they stopped to speak to him.

She said to Inam, “You were here?”

He nodded.

“And the soldier came along the road?”

He nodded again.

“Which way did he come from?”

The boy pointed past Conn and the riders, in the direction of the little fort and the scattering of buildings where Tilla was lodging.

“Then what happened?”

Inam resumed his interest in his feet. It was so cold, she doubted he could feel them.

“Did he talk to both of you, or just to Branan?”

After a pause, he mumbled, “Branan.”

“Can you remember what he said?”

A shake of the head.

“Did he seem friendly?” When he did not reply she tried, “Was he cross?”

A pause, then a shrug.

“Did he have a beard? Or a big nose, or bandy legs, or a limp, or-anything?”

“Don’t know.”

Tilla took a slow breath and gazed down the road. She could see a carriage approaching in the distance. “When my brothers were your age,” she said, “they used to walk along the side of the road with their hands full of pebbles. They would wait till someone rode past, and if nobody was watching, they threw pebbles at the horse’s rump to see if they could make it shy.”

Inam looked up. “Did they get caught?”

“Once or twice. When they hit the rider by mistake.”

“I would never do that.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t.”

Finally the boy pointed at the opposite verge. “Branan was over there.”

“And you were here?”

He started to cry again. “It wasn’t my idea!”