‘Hard to get enough food when they’re around, I imagine.’
Another nod, chagrined. ‘There’s not much anyways and they eat first. Mam says the boys need it most because they have to work in the fields.’
It sounds like her family’s among those with too manymouths and insufficient skills for finer work or even much land of their own, so they’re at the mercy of those who employ them for hard physical labour. The sort of family that sometimes doesn’t survive winter months intact. ‘Well, you’re welcome to visit here. There will always be bread and butter to break your fast, something to drink, and a fire to warm yourself by.’
Which seems a lot to offer so quickly when I hardly know this child, but there’s something haunted about her (do I see something of myself in her eyes?), and I cannot leave a child whose mother puts her last to hang in the wind. She thanks me, then finishes her meal at a normal pace. When she’s done, she politely refuses a second helping. But I’ll make a parcel of sweet buns for her to take when she goes, and a few copper bits to hold against a rainy day, a few more to buy bread from Anselm (and perhaps I’ll have a quiet word that he shouldn’t be letting his daughter’s best friend starve, even if they no longer speak).
She asks to use the privy, then returns, wiping damp soap-scented hands on her tunic. When she sits, Mr Tib jumps up onto her lap and she seems delighted.
‘Just don’t let him on the table,’ I say, despite the knowledge of a losing battle with the cat. ‘Now, why have you come to see me, Tieve?’
She doesn’t look away, instead holds my gaze and speaks clearly and firmly. ‘Orin said you’d been asking for me. And about Ari.’
I nod. ‘But your friends let me know you didn’t want to be found.’
‘No.’
‘You’re here, so something’s changed.’
‘Ari’s been my friend since we were very small. If I’d wished for a sister, she’d be it. But… she doesn’t want to play with me anymore, and I don’t want to play with her.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘She’s different. She pinches other children, slaps them, pulls their hair. Only the worst ones will play with her now. The ones that like to hurt birds and cats and foxes.’
I point to the bruising on her face. ‘Did Ari do that to you?’
She shakes her head. ‘But she egged on the one who did. A boy, Jory.’
I rise, go to the workroom and bring out a blue glass vial. She permits me to rub the cream onto the bruising, and I’m careful not to hurt her. ‘This has essence of calendula, arnica and witch hazel suspended in lanolin. It should help improve things very quickly.’ I put the cork back in the neck of the bottle. ‘Take it with you, you should get another five or six applications out of it.’
Her hand darts, out then back, empty. ‘I can’t pay you.’
‘Well, let us barter then. Information in return for treatment. Fair?’
The hand returns, I place the vial into the centre of a slightly calloused palm, and her thin fingers curl around it. ‘Fair.’
‘Can you recall anything strange the day Ari went missing?’
‘Nothing. We were supposed to play in the afternoon after she’d done her chores, were going to meet by the well, and I waited. I waited a long time and then got angry because she didn’t come. I went to the bakery, but her mother didn’t know where Ari was, and she got angry too. I think she’d lost trackof time. Then she yelled at Mr Hadderholm and they both got angry. That’s when I went home. The searchers went out not long after that, and we young ones all had to stay locked in.’
A natural reaction, the assumption that another child might be in danger. Especially living in the forest where children are such sweet meat for so many things lurking in the shadows, and sometimes walking boldly in the light.
‘And you didn’t see her again, not until she returned at the end of spring?’
‘Mam told me Ari was back. How happy her parents were – but, Mistress Mehrab, they’d barely paid any attention to her before.’ As I’d suspected. ‘Now, they’re so nice to her and she’s been so mean to them.’
‘And when did you see her?’
‘As soon as Ma told me, I ran to the bakery – but she just looked at me like she didn’t know me. Or didn’t care.’
I wonder if Ari – the old Ari – had sometimes fed her friend fresh stolen bread, enough to help the girl be not so thin. However, the weeks of Ari’s absence and the subsequent ones of her indifference meant Tieve was half-starved. ‘And she’s been cruel?’
Tieve nods, looks away. I don’t need any greater detail, I can imagine from those bruises. ‘And why did you come to see me?’
‘Another child’s gone missing.’
***
