Oh no. Had the former reeve told him what had happened and how she and Ulf had met? Had he revealed that she had tried to kill an innocent man? How had Oslac reacted? This was a catastrophe. Were they to be reunited only to be separated again when he couldn’t accept the woman she had become?
Oslac carried on when he saw that she was not going to answer.
“The reeve told me he knew who you were and advised me to come here and ask for a man called Wolf, who might know where you lived now. I found him this morning and he told me you had just arrived in the village and would be in his grandson’s hut. Which you were. I could not believe how easy it had all been in the end.”
Yes. Incredibly easy. Too easy? It was hard to know what to think. But if the story was true, she owed even more than she had thought to Judith. Had her friend not gone to get Ulf when she had, Oslac would have arrived in the village this morning and Wolf would have told him no one had heard of her in months. They would never have been reunited. Even more shocking was the realization that the reeve had only been able to point Oslac in the right direction because of the incident last winter.
Without Mildred’s awful plan, he would never have heard of her.
Ulf threw her a glance indicating he was thinking the same thing. By an odd twist of fate, had she not tried to kill him, her brother might never have found her. Or at least it would have taken him months, with little guarantee of success.Ifhe was her brother, of course. That still had to be established.
Heart beating hard, she asked the next question. “How old are you?”
“I’m three-and-twenty, four years older than you. We lived in town, in a little street by the south gate. Our parents were Brenna and Wilfred. They died when you were six years old, the winter they fell through the layer of ice in the river outside the town. It was a shock for everyone.”
Ylva nudged Ulf’s foot under the table and nodded. This was exactly what she remembered, even if she’d forgotten her parents’ names. If the man truly was an impostor, he had done his research well. The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced he was not out to trick her.
“Anything else you know about our lives?”
He hesitated. “I don’t know if you’ll remember this but we had another sister, who died as a babe about a year before our parents’ death.”
This was terrible to hear and indeed she did not remember it. So it was of no help in identifying the man. He could have made it up. Ylva swallowed, at a loss. What else could she ask? Was she strong enough to hear more horrors? She wasn’t sure.
Seeing her distress, Ulf took over.
“Tell me what happened after the two of you were separated.” He had done his best not to sound too accusatory, for which Ylva was grateful. “When your sister was sent to a distant relative after your parents’ death.”
He was trying to make him talk about the abduction without hinting that was what had happened. He was even setting a trap, offering a possible alternative to her disappearance. The clever man.
Oslac shook his head. “Sent to relatives? God, I wish that had been the reason we were separated. But alas, no, she was abducted by a slave trader one day at the market.”
Ylva’s heart leaped. He had not fallen into the trap. “How many men were there that day?”
“Four.” Once again, she nodded. “They were well-dressed and approached us as we were eating the piece of bread a kind merchant had just given us and asked where our parents were. We thought it best not to admit we were alone but our fumbled answers made it clear we were lying. They covered your head with a bag and one of them threw you over his shoulder. You screamed at me to flee and save myself. It was horrid.”
The description not only fit, but he had added some details she hadn’t known about but felt right. The two orphans would indeed have tried not to appear as if they were alone in the world, precisely to avoid becoming easy prey.
Though she wasn’t sure she wanted to know, since it was likely depressing, she forced herself to ask. “What happened to you after I was taken by the slave trader?”
The look he threw her reached all the way to the marrow of her bones. She knew that she would hate to hear what she was about to hear.
“I was taken as well.”
Thunder fell in the hut, the silence only broken by the crackling of the fire.
“You were—what?”
Had she misheard? Had her brother just said he’d been captured as well?
“I thought you knew. But I take it that the man never told you?” Oslac looked just as shocked as she felt.
“No,” she managed to whisper. In fact, she had been certain he’d been able to escape.
“I ran, as you told me, to get help, but I was only ten, sick with panic and weak from hunger. One of the men caught me before I could reach the market hall, where I intended to raise the alarm. I was taken to a place on the other side of town where I found half a dozen other children waiting to be sold. I was surprised not to see you and I realized that somehow you had managed to wiggle out of the man’s hold.”
Oh. If only…
Heart in her throat, she told him what had really happened. “I was taken to the trader’s house, where I was ordered to look after his sick daughter. I think that was why he took me that day, to have someone in the house with her, tending to her needs. Her former slaves had just been killed. I ended up staying there for years, with another girl called Judith, until we escaped when the trader and his son were killed last summer.”
