She blushed at her own temerity and moved off quickly. Hamish made a snorting noise and rolled his eyes.
This time she had to investigate several houses before she found the one she wanted. It had been home to someone almost Toby-sized, and no one had bothered to loot the clothes he had left behind in his tiny attic room. Even Gracia could not stand erect under the roof.
'Obviously servants' quarters,' Hamish remarked acidly.
'A child's, a growing lad,' Toby retorted. He found green-and-brown hose that fit when he cut the toes off, although they were uncomfortably snug around his calves and thighs, baggy at his hips and waist. The anonymous donor must have been wearing his jerkin the last time he went out, but he had left two shirts and a shabby brown doublet that could just close around Toby with gaps at the lacings. Even with the cuffs dangling above his wrists they were a big improvement on his previous rags, and Gracia was as thrilled as a child when he appeared in his new splendor. She wanted him to accept a flat cap of black velvet with a red feather in it, but he perversely insisted on retaining his steel helmet.
'Now the boy,' she said as they emerged into the evening light. 'He will be harder to fit because he is so ordinary.'
Fortunately Hamish had his nose in a book by then and was so busy trying to walk and read at the same time that he did not hear.
'What is the name of this place, senora?' Toby inquired.
'Name?' She hesitated, looking up and down the street. 'I believe the house we need is this way, senor.'
So she did not know the town's name, and that probably meant she could not read, because a little later in the looting expedition Hamish located some letters and announced that it was Onda. Gracia was also very vague as to how long she had lived there, but she had obviously explored it from cellars to chimneys, and her memory for what she had discovered was astonishing. Most clothes that would fit Hamish had already been looted, but she had noted and remembered a few shirts, hose, doublets, and even cloaks, and was able to lead the men to them.
So they trailed around Onda after her, carrying the buckets, and she picked out the garments. None of them matched any other, some were bloodstained or impossibly soiled, but eventually Hamish was outfitted.
'I feel like a court jester in this motley,' he whispered as they followed their guide down a narrow staircase.
'You look more like a looter,' Toby responded glumly. Looters were hanged. Stealing made him feel guilty, even stealing from the dead.
Gracia puzzled him. She made him think of a songbird in an invisible cage. Her attitude had changed from abject terror to absurd airs, so that she was issuing orders as if she expected to be obeyed without question, yet next moment she would be laughing and chattering like an excited child. She ignored the bodies in the streets except to lift her skirts when she stepped over them. At times she made nonsensical remarks about how much easier the senor's journey would be if he would just obtain some horses, and a moment later she would comment perceptively on the difficulty of finding anything to eat in the hills.
When she had her new retainers outfitted to her satisfaction, she led them to little caches of food the looters had overlooked: beans, meal, onions, dried fruit, jars of oil, and a sack of hard wheat — most precious of all, because it would keep indefinitely. She had been dipping into it for her own use, but she expected Toby to carry off the whole bag, as well as all the other things she had loaded onto him. He was already feeling like a pack mule, but that did not stop her from detouring on the road home to top him up with bottles of wine and some firewood. Then she took her porters to the cistern so they could fill the buckets. Hamish was too laden with books to be much help.
'The senor is perhaps hungry?'
'The senora has not spoken a truer word since her naming day.'
'I am an excellent cook.'
'I hope you are also a speedy one, or I shall eat the firewood raw.'
Laughing at this brilliant wit, Senora de Gomez hitched up her hems and stepped over a dead child without seeming to notice it.
Her little kitchen was clean, tidy, and cosily cramped with three of them in it, a bizarre oasis of domesticity in a city of death. She set half a bushel of beans to boil and rapidly peeled about a hundred onions. She put Toby to grinding the grain in a hand mill and Hamish to opening a wine bottle. By the time they had passed that around several times and he had opened another, the party became jolly. Toby's mouth watered copiously as the scents of food wafted around him — he could not remember his last good meal. Gracia bustled merrily, clattering pans while the fire crackled in the grate and her guests sat on their stools, awkward in their mismatched, ill-fitting finery.
She put another stool between them, set a bowl on it, and began tipping food in. The men reached for it, burning their fingers and not caring. As soon as they emptied it, she would add more and they would start all over again. More wine bottles went around. She was as good a cook as she had said she was, considering the material she had to work with, and she had the sense to realize that her companions needed large portions. She helped herself to a few handfuls without ever sitting down.
'It grows late.' Hamish frowned at the little barred window. 'We must be gone from here before sunset.'
Gracia's spoon paused in its vigorous beating of batter. 'There is a room upstairs where the senores may sleep.' She did not look at them. 'There are no neighbors to gossip. Besides, it will be perfectly proper, because I shall be out.' The spoon walloped against the bowl again.
The senores exchanged glances.
'I am concerned about the wraiths,' Hamish said. 'There are many unburied dead here and no spirit to care for them.'
'You need not worry about wraiths, senor. They have been attended to.' She thundered her spoon in the batter.
'I do worry about the wraiths. Wraiths drive men insane.'
'I have lived here for several nights, and they have not harmed me.'
Hamish looked skeptical.
'What have you done for them, senora?' Toby asked quietly.
Gracia flipped a drop of oil onto the griddle to test its temperature. 'I have collected them.' She added more oil and spooned out some batter.
More glances. Women could be driven insane as easily as men, but Toby had been expecting something along these lines.
'In the bottle?' The bottle was never far from her.
Hesitation. 'Of course.'
'Is this gramarye, senora? It is not a custom familiar to us in our homeland.'
'Have you had so much war and death in your homeland? No, it is not gramarye! How dare you suggest that I would stoop to such evil?' But she still did not look at her guests.
'Will you tell us the way of it, then?'
She tipped more beans into the communal bowl. 'Eat!'
They ate in silence, while she plied them with tortillas and beans and onions, helping after helping. Toby felt as if he were filling an empty barrel. When at last they could eat no more, the light in the alley outside showed that the sun must be very close to setting.
'Tell us about the wraiths, senora,' said Hamish.
'It is of no importance.'
He opened his mouth to protest — probably to point out that he regarded his sanity as of considerable importance — and Toby silenced him with a shake of his head. She responded better to him.
'You are taking your sons' souls somewhere, senora? And these other souls also?'
She promptly filled her mouth so she could not answer, but then she nodded.
'This is a noble mercy, although I never heard of it being done before. Who taught you this skill?'
After a moment she said, 'My sons.'
