“Yes, Master,” Grosejl answered, and turned to face the pointsman, jamming her hands into the pockets of her smock beneath her apron. She was a tall woman, Leaguer pale, and her eyes were wary.
“So you’re in charge of the girl‑apprentices?” Rathe asked.
Grosejl nodded. “For my sins.” She grimaced. “They’re not so bad, truly, just–”
“Young?” Rathe asked, and the journeyman nodded.
“And now this has happened. Master Rathe, I don’t know what Master Mailet told you, but I don’t think Herisse ran away.”
“Oh?”
“She liked it here, liked the schooling and the work and the people–she didn’t tell Trijntje she was going, and she’d have done that for certain.”
“Was she Trijntje’s leman?” Rathe asked.
Grosejl hesitated, then nodded. “Master Mailet doesn’t really approve, nor the mistress, so there was nothing said or signed, but everyone knew it. You hardly saw one without the other. If she’d been planning to run away, seek her fortune on the road, they would have gone together.”
Rathe sighed. That was probably true enough–runaways often left in pairs or threes, either sworn lemen or best friends–and it probably also told him the answer to his next question. “You understand I have to ask this,” he began, and Grosejl shook her head.
“No, she wasn’t pregnant. That I can swear to. Mistress Fayor makes sure all the girls take the Baroness every day.”
“But if it didn’t work for her?” Rathe asked. The barren‑herb didn’t work for every woman; that was common knowledge, and one of the reasons the guilds generally turned a blind eye to the passionate friendships between the apprentices of the same gender. Better barren sex than a hoard of children filling the guildhalls.
Grosejl hesitated, then jerked her head toward a child of six or seven who was sweeping seeds into the piles of rubbish at the center of the hall. “That’s my daughter. There’d have been a place for her, and the child, if she was pregnant. More than there would have been with her family.”
“A bad lot?”
Grosejl shrugged. “Useless, more like. I met them once. The mother’s dead, the father drinks, the other two–boys, both of them, younger than her–run wild. I don’t know where they came up with the indenture money. But Herisse was glad to be away from them, that’s for sure.”
Rathe paused, considering what she’d told him. They all seemed very certain that Herisse Robion was no runaway, and from everything they said, he was beginning to believe it, too. And that was not a pleasant thought. There was no reason to kidnap a butcher’s apprentice– or rather, he amended silently, the only reasons were of the worst kind, madmen’s reasons, someone looking for a child, a girl, to rape, to hurt, maybe to kill. He could see in Grosejl’s eyes that she’d thought of the same things, and forced a smile. “There may be a good explanation,” he said, and knew it sounded lame. “Can I talk to Trijntje now?”
“Trijntje!” Grosejl beckoned widely, and the girl Rathe had picked out before put down her knife and came to join them, wiping furtively at her eyes with the corner of her sleeve. “This is Trijntje Ollre, pointsman. She and Herisse were best friends.”
“She was my leman,” Trijntje interjected, with a defiant glance at the older woman. “And something’s happened to her, pointsman. You have to find her. I’ve money saved–”
“I’m looking into it,” Rathe said. “We can talk fees if there’s extra work to be done.” And there won’t be, he vowed silently. I don’t take money from poor apprentices. But he had learned years ago that telling people he didn’t want their money only bred more distrust and uncertainty: what kind of a pointsman was he, how good could he be, if he didn’t take the payments that were a pointsman’s lot? Rathe dismissed that old grievance, and took Trijntje gently through her story, but there was nothing new to be learned. Herisse had gone to bed with the others, and had risen early and gone out, missing breakfast, but had not come back when Mailet opened the hall for work. She had taken neither clothes nor books nor her one decent hat pin, and had said nothing that would make Trijntje or anyone else think she wanted to run away.
“We were planning to run a workshop together,” Trijntje said, and gave a hopeless sniff. “Once we’d made masters.”
That would probably have come to nothing, Rathe knew–he remembered all too well the fierce but fleeting passions of his own adolescence–but he also remembered the genuine pain of those passing fancies. “I–we at Point of Hopes–will be treating this as more than a runaway,” he said. “We’ll do everything we can to find her.”
Trijntje looked at him with reddened eyes and said nothing.
Rathe walked back to Point of Hopes in less than good humor. Trouble involving children was always bad–of course, by law and custom, apprentice‑age was the end of childhood, but at the same time, no one expected apprentices to take on fully adult responsibilities. Herisse had been only in her second year of apprenticeship; she would have had–would have, he corrected himself firmly–six more to go before she could be considered for journeyman. It was still possible that she’d simply run away–maybe run from Trijntje Ollre, if she, Herisse, had grown out of that relationship, and been too softhearted, still too fond, to end it cleanly. Twelve‑year‑olds weren’t noted for their common sense, he could see one running away because she couldn’t find the words to end a friendship… He shook his head then, rejecting the thought before it could comfort him. Trijntje had spoken of their plans as firmly in the present tense, though that could be self‑deception; more to the point, the journeyman Grosejl had treated the relationship as ongoing, and she, if anyone, would have known of an incipient break. He would ask, of course, he had to ask, but he was already fairly confident of Grosejl’s answer. And that left only the worst answer: if Herisse hadn’t run, then someone had taken her. And there were no good reasons–no logical reasons, reasons of profit, the understandable motive of the knives and bravos and thieves who lived in the rookeries of Point of Sighs and Point of Graves–to steal a twelve‑year‑old apprentice butcher.
He took the long way back to the points station, along the Customs Road to Horse‑Copers’ Street, smelling more than ever of the stables in this weather, and dodged a dozen people, mostly women, a couple of men, bargaining for manure at the back gate of Farenz Hunna’s stable‑yard. Horse‑Copers’ Street formed the boundary between Point of Hopes and Point of Sighs, though technically both points stations shared an interest in the old caravanserai that formed a cul‑de‑sac just before the intersection of the Fairs Road and Horse‑Copers’. The ’Serry had long ago ceased to function as a market–or at least as a legal market, Rathe added, with an inward grin–and the seasonal stables that had served the caravaners had been transformed into permanent housing for sneak thieves, low‑class fences, laundry thieves, and an entire dynasty of pickpockets. What the ’Serry didn’t do was trade in blood–they left that to the hardier souls in Point of Graves–and he turned into the enclosed space without wishing for back‑up. But there had been trouble of that kind there once before, a child rapist, not officially dealt with, and he had questions for the people there.
The ’Serry was as crowded as ever, a good dozen children chasing each other barefoot through the beaten dust while their mothers gossiped in the dooryard of the single tavern and the gargoyles clustered on the low roofs, shrieking at each other. Below them, the low doors and windows were open to the warm air, letting in what little light they could. Another group was gathered around the old horse‑pool. Women in worn jerkins and mended skirts sat on the broad stone lip, talking quietly, while a chubby boy, maybe three or four summers old, waded solemnly in the shallow basin, holding the wide legs of his trousers up while he kicked the water into fans of spray that caught the doubled sun like diamonds. Rathe recognized at least one of them, Estel Quentier, big, broad‑bodied–and, if he was any judge, at least six months gone with child–and at the same moment heard a shrill whistle from one of the blank doorways. He didn’t bother to turn, knowing from experience that he would see no one, and saw heads turn all across the ’Serry. He was known–the people of the ’Serry knew most of the senior points by sight–and was not surprised to see several of the women who had been sitting by the fountain rise quickly and disappear into the nearest doorways. More faded back into the tavern, but he pretended not to see, kept walking toward the fountain. Estel Quentier put her hands on her hips, belly straining her bodice, but didn’t move, squinted up at him as he approached.