Demon Rider

praise?'

The withered lips curled in a sneer. 'It is not what you have done I value, it is the breadth of your shoulders. You are as strong as two ordinary men. Good porters are hard to find.'

'The senor is very kind!' Toby snapped. 'You can finish up here.'

He stalked away, seething. It wasn't just that people saw him as a chunk of brawn that annoyed him, it was the knowledge that porters' work was all he was good for. Or bullying destitute peasants, and he could not have managed that so easily if he were a normal size.

Heading to waken Hamish and tell him that he was now custodian of the bottle, he was intercepted by the don on his destrier. He saluted. The arrogant eyes surveyed his sweat-soaked condition.

'You show promise, Captain.'

That was an improvement! 'I only seek to do my duty, senor.'

'Of course. We shall move out in five minutes. Have the band start playing.' The don wheeled his horse and rode off.

Toby resisted a strong temptation to make an obscene gesture at his retreating back. But he did get them all moving in five minutes, with a rather bleary-eyed Hamish trotting out in front as scout and Toby himself at the rear to make sure the wrecked barrel and other debris were left where they belonged. He was pleased to see that the mule was now in a better mood, which was certainly not true of its owners. As they showed no signs of wanting to chat with him and help him improve his Catalan, he went by them and caught up with the women. The train was moving faster than before, although everyone was now rested, so the improvement might not last.

Gracia was still riding the little piebald, and thus Eulalia was walking, seeming somewhat footsore already. She turned her head so she need not look at the despicable foreigner. Another improvement!

Swaying in her horse-borne throne, Senora Collel appraised him as if she were considering buying him but found the asking price ridiculous. 'Come round this side,' she said sternly. 'Senora de Gomez, you ride on ahead. Go with her, Eulalia. I wish to speak with this man.'

Toby moved into position alongside her skirts and well-shod feet. Bent under his pack, he had trouble looking up at her face, but then it was not a face he wanted to spend much time on, all sagging flesh and ingrained paint. Tiny dewdrops of perspiration glistened in her mustache. She carried a red silk fan, which she wielded vigorously every few minutes, causing her palfrey to flicker its ears in alarm.

'You speak French, monsieur?'

Surprised, he said. 'A little, madame.'

'Your young friend told me of your travels. I, too, have visited Aquitaine.'

'You are a lady of culture, madame.'

'I am a very nosy one. I want to know why that Gomez woman was carrying that bottle and what she has done with it. She will not discuss it, and neither will the boy.'

'Jaume has it in his pack now. Her tale is a sad one, madame.'

Senora Collel evidenced satisfaction. 'Then you may tell it at length.'

Toby racked his brains. Hamish would be better at this than he would — why had he not invented some useful fiction?

'The lady was married very young.'

'Obviously. Come to the point.'

'Her husband was killed in the war, and her infant sons also.'

'That does not explain why she wears a bottle around her neck.'

Keep it simple. 'Ah, but it does. It was the last gift her husband gave her, on the night they bade farewell. She has sworn never to be parted from it, as a memorial of him.'

'That is all?'

'That is all, madame.'

'How ridiculous! Foolish child. She will find another man soon enough, or one will find her. She is charming is she not?'

Toby risked an upward glance at the formidable senora. He had known sergeants-at-arms who would have looked prettier in her fancy gown. 'Very.'

'You did not sleep during the siesta break, Monsieur Longdirk?'

'The don left me on guard, madame.'

'The don is a madman. We are safer now we have you. Eulalia slipped away, thinking I would not notice. She returned in a very brief time and in a very petulant mood.'

'May it be that the mademoiselle suffers from constipation?'

The reply was a bark of coarse laughter that almost spooked the horse and made Gracia look around in alarm. 'I don't think her problem was anything like that in the least. You and Madame Gomez are lovers?'

'No, madame.' He accompanied the words with a warning scowl, but scowls bounced off Senora Collel like sleet off a limestone gargoyle.

Her eyes gleamed. 'Why not? From the way she looks at you, she is yours for the taking.'

That deserved no answer. He peered behind him at the mule and its mulish guardians, then forward, all the way to the don at the front. The company was moving well and staying together. He could trust Hamish to do a good job of scouting.

'Now it is my turn to ask some questions, madame, yes? Tell me about Monsieur Brusi.'

She waved her fan dismissively. 'Very rich, very powerful in Barcelona, a member of the Council of One Hundred. A dangerous enemy, Tobias.'

'I seek no enemies, madame.'

'You may have made one already in that man. He sucks life from other people. His wife hanged herself seventeen years ago. If that son of his does not escape from his father's shadow soon, he will never blossom.'

Nothing surprising there. Toby had already reached the same opinion of Josep. 'Father Guillem?'

The senora glanced down at him warily. 'A preacher, an acolyte in the greatest sanctuary in Catalonia, indeed in all Aragon, and probably a senior one. So a pious man and probably a very learned one.'

Had the renowned gossip learned no more than that?

'I think I knew that, madame, and I think he does.'

She chuckled, an ominous sound. 'Very likely.'

'And Brother Bernat?'

Surprisingly, this time there was a longer pause, a glance even more guarded. She frowned. She glanced around, although there was no one within earshot and they were still speaking French.

'I have only suspicions, Tobias.'

He did not like her use of his given name; here it implied an intimacy he had no wish for. But he did want to hear her suspicions. 'Tell me those, Madame Collel, and I shall remember that they are only suspicions.'

Her smile of broken, yellow fangs would strike dread into the bravest. 'Why is an old man traveling with a tender child, hmm? Tell me that!'

'I cannot. There may be good reasons.'

'There may be very evil reasons, also!' she said triumphantly.

'He is a friar, madame, a pious teacher of ethics.'

She lowered her voice. 'That is what a friar is supposed to be, yes. But is he what he says he is? I think he is an—' she paused dramatically, ' — alumbrado!'

'I am not familiar with that term, madame.'

She pouted, curling her mustache. 'It is a foul heresy. There are ill-disposed people who travel the wild lands, Tobias, seeking out elemental spirits.'

'Hexers. They harvest the elementals and turn them into demons. I know of this evil, but—'

'Not only hexers! Worse! You have never heard of the alumbrados?'

He hitched his pack higher on his shoulders, wondering what could possibly be worse than the gramarye he had met in Lady Valda or foreseen in Baron Oreste. 'No.'

'Alumbradismo is the worst form of gramarye, Tobias! These abominable persons do not worship good spirits and tutelaries, as honest folk do, but the wild elementals themselves!'

'Why should that be worse than hexing? It sounds dangerous, for elementals are unpredictable, but they