Tabula Rasa

Chapter 41

Tilla’s thoughts were heavy with sorrow and her stomach weighed down with unwanted food. Enica was not hungry, so she had forced down most of what she had mistakenly piled on the platter and then realized she could not refuse some lamb from the sacrifice. Straightaway, instead of a quiet stroll back to her lodgings, she had been forced to hurry to keep pace with the horses. She stumbled as she made her way past the one open door shutter, entering the bar with more of a fall than a step. An elderly couple looked up from a corner table. They pushed their empty bowls away and got up to leave. The woman was frail and struggled to stand, clutching at her husband’s arm, while he stood patiently until she got up on the third attempt. Tilla, unable to tell them she was no more drunk than they were, straightened her skirts, squared her shoulders, and walked past them with as much dignity as she could manage.

Ria came out to clear the bowls. The bar was empty apart from the two of them. “Hardly spent a thing,” Ria observed to the empty corner where the couple had sat. “What with the curfew and that missing boy, trade’s collapsed.” She clapped the empty bowls down on her tray and leaned across to wipe the table. “No news, I suppose?”

Tilla shook her head and slumped down on a bench. She wanted peace and quiet, a cool beer, and then a warm bed. But first she needed to talk to Ria and to Virana.

“At this rate we might as well not have had the new tables made. And if anybody asks me again if I’ve seen that boy . . .” Ria paused. “Well, they might have the decency to buy something while they’re in here.”

Tilla cleared her throat and said, “You may have a lot more people coming in about the boy.”

Ria took the news surprisingly well, which was explained when she continued, “Tell him I’ll want the cash up front. I’ve had promises from the army before.”

“Cash?”

“Well, there’s got to be a fee for him using the premises, girl! I’m running a business here, not a message service. It was bad enough before with all your patients coming in here, wanting to tell me about their aches and pains.”

“Have there been any patients?” Tilla realized with a jolt that she had forgotten to check.

She was torn between relief and disappointment when Ria said, “Not one. Oh, and your girl’s gone off in a huff. I told her, ‘Girl, this is a bar, you get called all sorts, take no notice,’ but in her condition it doesn’t take much.”

“I need to talk to her.”

“I have to say, I had my doubts about her from the start. But she’s a hard worker, and the customers like her, so I let it pass.”

“Is she here?” Tilla asked, hoping she did not have a missing girl to worry about now as well.

“I can’t give credit against the rent for a girl who doesn’t work, you know. Especially not now. I spent half the morning making a new savory cheesecake and I’ve still got most of it left over. I hope you’re hungry.”

“No.”

Ria rolled her eyes. “Another one!”

“Perhaps just a little,” Tilla offered. “Where did Virana go?”

The woman carried the tray of empty bowls to the back of the bar and swung one hip against the door to open it. “You can come out now!” she announced into the gap. “They’ve all gone and your mistress wants her dinner.”

From somewhere behind it a voice called, “I am not coming out!”

Ria let the door swing shut again and joined Tilla on the bench. “I’ll tell you what happened,” she said. “I doubt Madam will.”

Tilla, too tired to argue, sat and waited.

“Some locals came in and got mouthy with a few lads from the camp,” Ria explained. “The soldiers had orders to walk away from bother, so they got up and left without buying a thing. I wasn’t best pleased. Then the locals picked on your girl instead. Nasty bunch. Most of them from somewhere across the wall. When I told them to clear off home they said they were looking for the stolen boy. I said, ‘You won’t find him by sitting in a bar insulting people, will you?’ ”

“Is she hurt?”

“Only her pride.” The woman lowered her voice further. “They were making donkey noises, saying every man in the Legion’s ridden her. There was talk of shaving her hair off. You know the sort of thing. She ran into the back and she’s been there ever since.”

Tilla pulled herself to her feet. She had tried many times to explain to Virana that there was a difference between how to get a baby and how to get a husband. Perhaps at last she understood. “I’ll talk to her.”

The only light in the back room came from a small window paned with thick green glass that opened onto an alley between two buildings. Virana’s bed was in the shadows beyond the ladder. Even so, Tilla could see the girl’s swollen eyes and disheveled hair. In a voice that was blurred by tears Virana said, “I am not going out there again. You can’t make me.”

“You do not have to,” Tilla assured her, moving across to sit beside her. “I am sorry the men were rude to you.”

“Not just men. Girls too.” Virana pulled a strand of hair forward, twisting it around her fingers. “They said horrible things.”

Tilla doubted anyone had called her any worse names than her own brothers had used back at her family’s farm, but the insults of strangers would be far more painful. “They are angry with the army and they think it is clever to hurt anyone who is friends with the soldiers.”

Virana sniffed and blew her nose on a cloth. “Conn was there.”

“Conn was a part of this?” Tilla felt her blood rise. “He has no right to insult you! I will make sure he apologizes.” She would work out how later.

“It was not him who said those . . . things. He came in at the end.”

“But did he tell the others to stop?”

Virana shook her head. “He just looked at me.”

Tilla said, “This is very wrong. I will speak to him.”

“I know it is terrible about his little brother,” Virana said, “but it’s not my fault. Is it?”

“Of course not. He has no reason to hurt you.”

“Anyway, he was nasty before that.”

He had never been anything but gruff to Tilla, either. She had seen a different side of him during the search-hardworking, determined-but he was still stubborn and rude. No wonder Enica’s friends thought her stepson was a miserable offering.

Virana gave another sniff and scrubbed the cloth across her mouth as if she were trying to scrape away the humiliation. “I am not surprised nobody will marry him. Branan was much nicer. I liked Branan. I used to look forward to seeing him.” She looked up. “Is there any-”

“No,” said Tilla. “No news at all. But Enica needs to know who started the story about the body in the wall. Can you remember who brought it to the bar?”