He walked into the back room, which was mostly used for storing boards and tools and hardware, and closed the door behind him. He looked for a place that would be unlikely to have furniture moved into it during the intervening years, and settled on a spot just inside the locked outside door.
Then he jumped back to a time six hours after the moment he had come from. It had been first dark when he left; now it was the deepest of dark night, a few hours before dawn. He stood in silence, holding the silent baby in the dark, listening. An old man’s breathing from a room upstairs. The breath of sleep.
Umbo had assumed he would have to go out the front, but no. This was a simpler time, before General Citizen had imposed his authority as King Haddamander. There was no lock on the back door, only a simple latch, clearly visible in the ringlight coming through a high window, which had been left uncurtained and unshuttered.
He raised the latch. It was a fine carpenter’s latch, and a fine carpenter’s door. Everything moved silently and smoothly. Umbo closed the door behind him and then carried the baby behind the row of shops to where the alley debouched into the square. Umbo did not hurry and did not act furtive. He walked easily and naturally to the roadhouse door.
It was barred, of course—no reason to invite thieves or burglars. Ordinarily, Umbo would simply have jumped the fence around the kitchen garden, but that wasn’t likely to work out well with a baby in his arms. Umbo walked around the corner of the fence to a spot not visible to passersby on the square, nor from any windows in the nearby shops and houses. Then he shifted himself back to the afternoon, a few moments after he walked into that copse a mile or two out on the south road.
Now the roadhouse was open for business, people coming and going, and this early in the night it was safe for him to pull the rope that rang a bell in the kitchen, announcing a delivery.
He could hear Leaky start cursing in the kitchen. Then she bellowed out the back door. “Come back tomorrow! No more deliveries tonight!”
“
I’ll just leave it at the gate then!” he shouted back.
At once the kitchen door flew open and Leaky’s heavy footsteps strode along the path. “I can’t believe what I put up with!” she was shouting, but when she opened the gate she looked worried. She must have recognized his voice. Her eyes took in the bundle in his arms.
“You have not had time to get a girl this pregnant since you left this house,” she said softly.
“This would be pretty pregnant,” Umbo agreed.
“Come in, you daft boy,” said Leaky. “I assume that as a kidnapper you don’t wish to be observed?”
“Not a kidnapper,” said Umbo, “but yes, I’d like to get upstairs without anyone noticing this package.”
She led him into the kitchen, where she wrapped the baby loosely in a washed floursack and handed him back to Umbo. “Take that upstairs and leave it in my room, but mind you I know where everything is!” She spoke loudly enough that Umbo knew she was giving him a reason to hurry upstairs, and enough of an explanation for the bundle in his arms to satisfy the eaters and drinkers who might see him come out of the kitchen and hurry up the stairs.
Umbo unwrapped the baby. The flour sacking came in handy, because little Biscuit stank and all Umbo could think to do, lacking a fresh diaper, was to take off all the baby’s clothes, tear the sack in half, wipe him thoroughly with one half, and then using the other to wrap him more or less securely. Through it, Biscuit watched Umbo’s eyes, only occasionally glancing around the room. Umbo kept up a murmuring commentary.
It was a couple of hours, and the room downstairs was markedly quieter, when the door flew open and Leaky stalked in, half-dragging a frightened young woman behind her.
It was Dariah.
Umbo almost spoke her name, but recovered in time. This was Dariah before she ever heard of Biscuit.
“This is Dariah,” said Leaky. “She has a new baby of her own, and look at those teats. She could feed four babies this size.”
“I don’t think I—”
Leaky didn’t let Dariah finish. “You’re perfect for a wet nurse and you need the money,” said Leaky. “If you don’t like it, you can quit, but not tonight, and not till I find somebody else, understood?”
Dariah nodded and reached for the baby.
“Smells like poo,” said Leaky. “You already cleaned him up?”
Umbo wondered how she knew the baby’s sex. Or maybe she called all babies “he” till she knew better.
“As best I could, but he needs a clean diaper,” said Umbo. “I don’t think that flour sack is going to be absorbent enough.”
“It is, if you fold it properly,” said Leaky. “I thought you had younger brothers and sisters.”
“And a mother who did the diapering and a father who said that baby care was women’s work and no son of his would fertilize his hands with baby manure.”
“You haven’t missed much,” said Dariah.
“He misses almost everything,” said Leaky. “Not an observant boy. What’s the baby’s name?”