She is not in their room, where the bed is still unmade, the hearth unswept, the stub of the candle they burned down last night still stuck in its holder with streams of wax. There is nowhere to hide here, either, and so Petrus does not linger; he is thudding down the corridor, down the stairs, calling his daughter’s name. Through the tavern once more, ignoring the maid’s staring, the jump of fear in her eyes as he approaches her at a gallop, leans his hands on the table she had been scrubbing and says, “Have you seen my daughter?”
“N-no, sir,” the maid says, staring at his face as if she were staring into the face of the devil himself; but for once, Petrus does not care.
Outside once again, where the driver says Antoinette was not in the kitchen, and the innkeeper’s wife, a parcel of food clutched to her bosom, says she will look, too, she will check the cellar, the attics, all the secret places a child might like to hide—
Petrus nods to her, thanks her, even as he is moving away. Toward the busyness of the road, all fears disappeared as suddenly as paper in a hot blaze, all save one.