“Sheseems to be unhurt,” Tessa said.
“She?”
“She’s a little girl.”
The child turned her head and looked up at Marcus.She still hadn’t made a sound.She was trembling a little but not crying.He crouched down beside her.“Are you all right?”he asked gently in French.
She just looked up at him curiously.Maybe she was in shock.Maybe she didn’t know French, and only spoke Flemish or whatever dialect they spoke in this place.He looked around, and still the place seemed deserted.
He tried again, but again she said nothing.
“Do you think she’s in shock?”Marcus said.
“I don’t know.She doesn’t seem very upset, poor little mite.”She gently stroked the child’s dirty face.“Are you,p’tite?”
As if to prove Tessa’s words, the child held up the ragged bunch of wildflowers clutched in her grubby fist and offered them to Tessa with a small hesitant smile.
“Merci, p’tite,” Tessa said in halting French.“Les fleurs sont très jolies.”
The little girl’s smile widened.
“Thank God,” Marcus muttered to himself.She understood.And was all right.
He breathed out several slow deep breaths.He could have killed her, but she was all right.
But who did she belong to?He looked around again.The village was barely worth the name, just a straggle of run-down houses and what looked like a blacksmith’s forge, also looking the worse for wear.
They’d probably had several armies run over them.
But smoke came from one of the chimneys and a dog was tied up outside the smith’s premises.So where were the people?The child’s mother?
They’d made something of a dramatic entrance; the thunder of hooves alone should have been noticed, let alone Tessa’s desperate scream, but nobody had come to investigate.
“She’s terribly neglected, Marcus,” Tessa murmured.He looked.The little girl was skinny and dressed—if you could call it dressed—in a few filthy and inadequate rags; barefoot, bare-legged and bare-bottomed.Her hair was a dusty indeterminate color, matted and with dead leaves and clumps of various unknown substances caught in it.
She looked from him to Tessa and back again, with wide, bright blue eyes shining from the dirty face.
She didn’t seem distressed at all, but still hadn’t spoken.Why?She was very small.Did children of that age even speak?When did children learn to speak?He had no idea.
As if she’d heard his unspoken question, the little girl touched the ragged flowers that Tessa held and said, “Fleurs.”
He gave another sigh of relief.
“Is she hurt?”a voice said behind them.It was a woman of about his own age.Her face thin and careworn, she was clad in a faded blue, threadbare dress.
“Are you the mother?”Marcus asked.
She shook her head.“The mother died weeks ago, God rest her soul.”She crossed herself.
“Then who is responsible for the child?”
The woman hesitated, then pointed to the smithy.“It should be him, but...”She pulled a face and shrugged.“I would have taken her in, but I have my own brood to feed.”She gestured behind her.A gaggle of small faces peered from the door of one of the cottages.
As he watched, a boy of about ten or eleven detached himself from the group and caught the reins of their horses, who were lazily cropping grass.In silent gestures, he asked whether he could take the horses to the stream.
“My son,” the woman said.“He is a good boy.”
Marcus nodded his assent and the boy led the horses toward the stream.Marcus returned his attention to the child.She was barely more than a baby.How could anyone let her get into a state like this?And wander about unsupervised.
