Cautiously, Toby looked around. She had backed against the wall, very small and vulnerable, arms crossed across her breasts and that inexplicable bottle. Her face was sickly with fright. She was scarcely more than a child.
Hamish rose and bowed. 'I am Diego Campbell Campbell. We are visitors from a faraway land. We will not harm you, I promise.'
'I am Gracia Arnalt Arias de Gomez.'
'Senora de Gomez, I am at your service. May I have the honor of presenting my friend Tobias Longdirk Campbell?'
Toby bowed also. 'Your servant, senora.' She did not look old enough to be married, and her black garments implied mourning — a widow? He did not know what to say next.
Hamish came to the rescue, more proficient with words in any language and especially words to women — not that he was much of a ladies' man, although he tried hard enough, but Toby was most certainly less of one. 'You also are a stranger here, I think?'
She nodded, staring at him with the huge dark eyes of a cornered rabbit. Why was she wearing a bottle? It was ornamental, not practical everyday ware, glazed in whorls of red and green, fitted with a handle through which the thong was strung. The mouth was corked, but the way it lay on her breast and the way it moved when she did suggested that it was empty.
'Then we may have interesting tales to exchange. Senora, my friend and I are very thirsty. May two weary travelers beg the mercy of a cup of water?'
She nodded, shooting a hasty glance at a dark doorway.
'We shall wait out here.' He strolled over to a flight of stone steps leading up to another house and sat down. By the time Toby had joined him Gracia had vanished indoors.
'She probably has fourteen brothers and three uncles in there,' Hamish growled, watching the door. 'Women don't travel alone.'
'Unless she's the last survivor.'
'She's from Castile.'
'She's been here for some time, though.' The little yard was the first clean place Toby had seen in the town, sunlight and shadows on ancient stonework, barred windows, two weathered doors broken off their hinges and one whole. It had been tidied and swept. 'I wonder why the wraiths haven't driven her away?'
'If she offers you roast pork, refuse politely.'
'Don't be obscene!' To compare that sweet child and the creature in the orange grove was utterly repugnant. 'She may have jumped out the back window and run away already.'
Hamish shrugged cynically. 'She's from somewhere near Toledo, I think. Not a great lady, more than a peasant.'
Toby could not have guessed that much, but Hamish had an ear for languages. He had known Latin as well as Scots and Gaelic before he left Scotland. Since then he had picked up a working fluency in Breton, langue d'oil, langue d'oc, and Castilian, although even he had been stumped by Euskara. Soon he would be jabbering away in Catalan like a native. They were all variants of either Gaelic or Latin, he would explain solemnly, as if that were obvious. He was Diego now because he enjoyed translating his name into the local tongue: Hamish, James, Seamus, Jakez, Jacques — Diego.
Gracia reappeared, struggling two-handed with a bucket. She set it down in front of the men and retreated quickly. She was no longer wearing the bottle. Without rising, Hamish slid to his knees and reached for the cup under the water. He drank, refilled it and passed it to Toby, both of them being elaborately courteous, making no sudden moves. The water was sweet and fresh.
'You are wounded, senor.' The girl was staring at Toby's swollen wrists, which had been bleeding again. Anyone could guess those wounds had been made by manacles.
'Just, um… How do you say 'scrapes,' Hamish? They are nothing, senora. But I should clean them if you will tell us how we may refill your, um, fetch more water for you.'
'There is a cistern. If the senor will permit me to tend his injuries?'
That hint that she was regaining her confidence was welcome and must be encouraged, however much Toby disliked being mothered. 'They are only scratches, senora. You are very kind.' He held out his hands.
Gracia approached as warily as a deer, producing a rag she must have brought for this purpose. She barely took her eyes off his face as she washed away the blood, and he felt her fingers shaking, but she was more deft than Hamish would have been.
He thanked her and insisted he did not need bandages.
'The senor was also limping?'
Hamish had not noticed that! It was true that Toby's ankles were in worse shape than his wrists now, but he could not reveal those without removing his hose.
'My buskins do not fit well,' he said. 'We have walked a long way.' His buskins were falling apart. What chance did he have of finding a pair to fit him in this ruin of a town?
Gracia seemed to accept the explanation, and she was gaining more confidence by the minute. 'I can find the senor a new pair!' she said eagerly.
'To fit me?'
'I believe so. If the senor will excuse me a moment?' She hurried off into the house again.
'You know,' Hamish said thoughtfully, 'if you can get hurt in these visions of yours, then one day you may come back dead!'
Oh, he had just realized that, had he?
'If they're the hob's doing, then it won't kill me.' It had never worried about hurting him, though.
Gracia returned with a black cape trailing from her shoulders. She carried an empty bucket, but she also had the bottle hung around her neck again. 'If the senor will be so kind as to follow me?'
Toby took the bucket and moved to her side, leaving Hamish to empty the first bucket and follow behind. She was ignoring Hamish completely, but she seemed to have lost her fear of Toby, for she shot a few hesitant smiles up at him, which he returned. He felt overwhelmed by her softness, her femininity. He admired the slight bulge in the front of her blouse and thought he could detect a scent of roses from her. A single dark curl had escaped from under the edge of her bonnet, but most of her hair was tied in a long braid, encased in a tube of black cloth that hung down her back. She was a reminder that there were still decent, honest people in this terrible world, vulnerable people.
Hamish, meanwhile, kept trying to flank the lady on the other side but was balked by the narrowness of the road. That did not stop him from talking. He explained dramatically how he and Toby were refugees from the war and had never been part of the Fiend's army. That was not quite true, but true enough. Gracia responded by telling her story. Toby missed much of it, but he gathered that she had lived in a little village called Madrid, two days' walk north of Toledo, where her husband, Hernan Gomez Ruiz, had been keeper of the shrine. The rebel army had sacked the village and stolen the spirit away. Her husband and brothers had died. She did not mention what had happened to her.
'My sons also died in the war,' she said. 'They died bravely.'
The men exchanged puzzled glances. Admittedly a woman could be a wife and mother at fourteen, but Gracia was not much more than that even now. Could babies die bravely?
She led her new friends directly to a shoemaker's dingy workshop, which was in predictable disarray, with heaps of old boots and buskins covering the floor. Obviously the invaders had helped themselves to whatever they could use and left their own footwear behind, and most of it was as disreputable as Toby's. Gracia, though, headed straight to a back corner and produced a brand new buskin of greater size than the rest, an adequate fit for his right foot. Its mate proved elusive. They had almost concluded that it had never existed and the cordwainer had died before completing a special order, when Hamish uttered a whoop of triumph and dragged the missing partner from under the ruins of the workbench. It was a little snug, but it would do.
'I feel guilty robbing the dead,' Toby complained, although he knew he was going to.
'Oh, you must not care about that!' the girl said excitedly. 'He does not grudge them to me, and I give them to you. So that is all right! Now we must find some better clothes for the senor. And the boy, also.' She headed out of the shop, apparently unaware of Hamish's outraged glare or Toby's smirk. She was enjoying herself now. 'This way! There are some garments that I believe will fit you. The senor is a very striking man!'
