When Eidi joined Rossan and Lesna, she tried her best to seem just as usual. She told them what she’d been doing all day, as she always did. In her tale she altered Tink’s neck scarf to a shawl for the shop.
Then she asked Lesna if she could make herself a bite to eat before going to bed. Lesna looked at her, shaking her head.
“I don’t think I ever met anybody who could eat like you. Where do you put it all? Because it doesn’t show on you. Anyway, it’s not good for you to eat just before bedtime.”
Nevertheless Lesna got up, went to the kitchen, and brought back a platter with cold meat pie, a hard-boiled egg, a slice of thickly buttered bread, and three little pickles.
“Thanks very much. I’ll just take it over to my room,” said Eidi.
Rossan sent her a searching look but said nothing. Lesna sat back down with her knitting. “You do that. And sleep well,” she said without glancing up. But Rossan’s eyes followed Eidi all the way to the door.
As she shot the latch on the outer door of the room, a click sounded in her ear, and the little, shrill howl began. Eidi set the platter on the footstool by her bed and hurried into the stable.
Tink stuck his head out when he heard her coming.
“Hide yourself really well,” whispered Eidi. “Crawl right down under the hay in the far corner.”
Tink nodded and withdrew. She hurried back to her room and closed the inner door, shoving the footstool against it, as if she never went into the stable that way. She took off her clothes and laid them on the stool, shoved the platter under the bed, blew out the candle, and burrowed deep under the covers.
“Who else could it be?” bellowed a voice outside in the dark a moment later.
“He must have climbed out by himself,” she heard Rossan argue.
“Impossible. The cellar door is much too heavy for that spindly brat. Somebody helped him, and it can only be her, because otherwise the watchdog would have barked the house down.”
“Then it must have been one of the servants.”
“Impossible,” snapped Bandon.
Rossan came into the room with Bandon on his heels. He set the lantern on the floor by the door and came over to the bed.
“Eidi,” he called.
She sat up, rubbing her eyes.
“Do you know where Tink is?” he asked her kindly.
“He’s shut in,” Eidi answered without hesitation. She rolled over on her side and pretended to go back to sleep.
“Where does that door lead?”
Bandon was pointing with his stick at the door behind the stool.
“Into the stable. But that’s enough now,” said Rossan. “This is no way to behave, disturbing folks’ rest. And what can you be thinking of, shutting a child up—”
Bandon kicked the stool aside and opened the door to the stable. Then he picked up the lantern and went in. Rossan followed him. Eidi lay quite still with the covers pulled over her ears. She could hear mice rummaging around the platter under the bed, but she couldn’t risk chasing them away.
There was a sound like a branch snapping.
“That confounded boy! When I catch him I’ll wring his neck!”
“That ladder won’t bear your weight,” came Rossan’s calm voice. “You’d better let me look.”
Eidi held her breath and listened in the darkness of her room. Some time passed.
“Not even a cat up here,” Rossan called, short of breath. And a little later, when he had come down by the ladder: “Now it’s high time we had some peace and quiet for the night.”
Bandon searched the stable, poking into the hay with his stick, but at last he let himself be escorted out the door. Shortly afterward Eidi heard Bandon stumbling and cursing in the alley leading out to the street, then Rossan’s voice: “Yes, it’s not easy finding your way in the dark. Let me light you home.”
Eidi stayed where she was until the sound of footsteps had ceased. Then she got up. She called Tink, who hurried down to her. He was trembling all over.
“Hurry up and take off your trousers!” she commanded.
“But—”
“Nobody must recognize you. You’re going to wear my skirt. We’re going to dress you as a girl and me as a boy.”
Tink did as she said. She helped him into the skirt and found a piece of rope in the stable to hold it up around his waist. She pulled his jacket down so the rope couldn’t be seen and wound his new scarf around his head so no one could see his short hair.
She herself put on Kotka’s work trousers, which were hanging on a nail in the stable. She put on his old sweater to cover the rest.
“You still look like a girl,” said Tink.
Eidi grabbed her long, thick braid and stuffed it down the neck of the sweater. She took the blanket off the bed and made a bundle of the rest of their clothes. She remembered to take her scissors and some other useful things as well.
Then she thought of the platter under the bed, but when she pulled it out, only the three little pickles were left. They would have to start off without provisions.
She put out the candle and stood listening with the stable door open a crack until she heard Rossan come back and close the front house door after him. Then she took Tink’s clammy little hand in one of hers, and the halter in the other, and led both him and Rossan’s horse out of the stable, down the alley, and onto the road.
The sound of the horse’s hooves rang out in the quiet of the night, but there was a seaward wind that carried the clatter out over the bay, away from the house and Lesna’s ears. The sky was heavy with rain clouds, and now and then a drop splashed on their faces.
In order to get clear of the town, they had to cross the marketplace. And in order to find the path over the hills, they had to pass by Bandon’s house. Light was streaming from the windows of the big room, and Eidi hesitated, uncertain what to do.
“Let’s take the coast road,” Tink suggested. “I know the way. There’s a town at the other end of it.”
From Bandon’s house, they could hear voices and a barking dog, and Eidi wasn’t certain that she could find the hill path in the dark, so she decided to follow Tink’s advice. They would have to turn inland farther up the coast.
They led the horse cautiously along the quay, and when they were well outside of town, they got on his back and rode into the dark.