Mine Is the Night_ A Novel - Liz Curtis Higgs [114]
She kept calling his name, pushing her way through the crowd. When she reached the fiery hot forges, Elisabeth was certain she’d guessed wrongly. He must have gone back toward the marketplace. Toward the fleshers with their lethal knives. Toward the shoemakers with their sharp awls. Toward the swords and the dirks that he’d desperately wanted to touch.
“Peter!” She was screaming now, not caring what people thought of her. Caring only about a little boy who’d slipped from her grasp. “Peter!”
Forty-Nine
Never think that God’s delays
are God’s denials.
GEORGES-LOUIS LECLERC, COMTE DE BUFFON
lease, Lord. Please help me find him.
Elisabeth retraced her steps, struggling to catch her breath. “Peter Dalgliesh!” she cried, knowing the lad would never hear her, no matter how loudly she called his name. The marketplace was too noisy, too congested. In the sea of faces, she saw only strangers.
“Peter, where are you?” she moaned, bending down, fixing her gaze a few feet above the ground, desperately looking for a red-headed boy in a muslin shirt and brown waistcoat. All she could think about was how frightened he must be. Oh, Peter. I’m so sorry.
She felt physically ill, her stomach in knots. Had he returned to the sheep market? Run down Shaw’s Close, curious what he might find in the narrow passageway? Or had a stranger beckoned him to follow?
When she heard a child crying, Elisabeth elbowed her way through the milling crowd, more concerned with haste than politeness. “Peter? Peter, is that you?” A moment later she reached the sobbing lad. He was the same age and size, but, alas, he was not Peter.
His mother, holding him firmly by the hand, jutted out her chin. “Have ye lost yer bairn?”
“He’s run off,” Elisabeth confessed. “Perhaps you’ve seen him? Bright red hair and blue eyes.”
“Och! Ye’ll find plenty o’ lads here what fits that.”
“Aye,” Elisabeth said, fighting tears.
“Noo, lass, dinna greet.” Compassion softened the woman’s features. “He’ll not have gane far. And he’ll be leuking for ye as weel. A bairn aye finds its mither.”
But I am not his mother. Jenny would never have let go.
Heartsick, Elisabeth pressed on, searching up and down Water Row. Whenever she saw a familiar face from the neighborhood, she hurried to the person’s side and asked the same frantic question. “Have you seen little Peter Dalgliesh?”
The answer was always the same: “Nae, Mrs. Kerr.”
Distraught, she stood near a display of fleeces and skins and bowed her head, pleading for divine intervention. Help me, Lord. Please. No wonder the Almighty had never entrusted her with a child of her own. How could she have been so careless? How could she have let him slip away?
Then from high above her, a small, excited voice crowed, “I found her!”
Elisabeth’s head lifted as quickly as her spirits. “Peter?”
Here he came, riding on his father’s shoulders, his legs draped round the tailor’s neck, his wee hands clutching Michael’s larger ones.
She hurried up to them, awash with relief. “Wherever have you been, lad?”
“Whaur have ye been is mair like it,” Michael admonished her, giving his son a playful bounce. “Peter spied Annie and me in the crowd, ran o’er to see us, then turned back and couldna find ye. Och, he felt terrible. Made me carry him about ’til we spotted ye. And so we have.”
“Oh, so I was the one who was lost.” Elisabeth reached up and patted the lad’s chubby leg. “I’m sorry I gave you a scare, Peter.”
“Next time I’ll not let ye go,” the boy promised.
Anne tapped the brim of Elisabeth’s straw bonnet. “Tall as you are, Bess, we could add a peacock feather to your hat and never lose sight of you.”
“A fine idea,” she agreed, though the way Anne and Michael had locked gazes, keeping an eye on her was clearly the last thing on their minds. “Suppose Peter and I resume