"Francisco," the don declaimed, "the superlative Doña Gracia will be joining our train. See that she is properly furnished with attendants and suitable quarters. As for her retainers..." He eyed the retainers with distaste. "Question them straightly and establish whether they are honest men or no better than they appear. If they are mere vagabonds, then slit their ears, administer a sound beating, and let them go. However, if they do have some merit, you may enroll them in our retinue with whatever standings their experience and abilities may justify. Have them clad in our livery, outfitted with proper equipage and weapons, and issued the customary rations. I shall accept their oaths of fealty later."
Hamish whispered, "Steady!" and Toby unclenched his fists on his staff.
Turning his horse and spurring it to a lumbering walk, Don Ramon headed for the rest of his companions, who had continued on down the valley. The others watched him go until he was safely out of earshot.
"Did he by any chance," Toby inquired, "recently fall off that mountain of dog food and land on his head?"
The old squire chuckled and shook his head. "Not at all. Will you accompany me, senora, senores?" He set off on foot, leading his pony. Gracia moved close to Toby as the men took up their packs and followed. She seemed understandably bewildered, so he smiled at her and she brightened.
"You mean he has always been like that?" asked Hamish, wearing the owlish expression he displayed when faced with a knotty problem.
"I am Francisco. You have the advantage of me, senor."
"Sorry. I am Jaume Campbell i Campbell. My large friend is Tobias Longdirk i Campbell... and Senora de Gomez. Everything else was true." Jaume? Diego had translated himself again, this time into Catalan.
"I am honored to make your acquaintances. Let me put it this way, Senor Jaume. If you had a friend with a distressing disfigurement—a cast in one eye, for example would you draw attention to it by commenting?"
"Of course not."
The old man chuckled, high-pitched. "Then you would likewise be reluctant to mention any temporary misfortune he might be revealing—a lapse in the quality of his attire, for example?"
"I suppose so."
"Nor would you expect him to discuss it. So you understand! And surely I need not mention that a nobleman of impeccable ancestry, who can trace his line back to the later Caesars, will naturally be touchy on such matters. It would be extremely dangerous to emphasize any trifling discrepancies between what you may falsely perceive to be Don Ramon's current circumstances and the conditions to which he is entitled by his birthright."
Hamish walked on in silence, staring fixedly ahead, looking as if he had just met a dragon selling souvenirs.
"You are bound for Montserrat, though?" Toby asked.
The old man beamed up at him. "To Barcelona, which is very close. And if certain persons in our company are so deluded as to believe that they hired a strong young man with a sword to defend them on their journey, that may not be how everyone views the same arrangement."
Paid guard... mercenary soldier... wages?
"A nobleman could never stoop to a crass commercial arrangement of that sort!"
"Of course not. I see you are a man of discernment, Senior Tobias."
"The weapons and livery you are to issue to us?"
"They look very splendid on you, senor."
This was madness. Why, therefore, should Baron Oreste want Don Ramon's muddled aristocratic head chopped off? Unfortunately, that might become clear in due course.
CHAPTER FOUR
The valley was wider now, affording some glimpses of rocky, scrubby hills, and seeming a little less barren than before, but the war had reached it. A casa on the far side had been burned, as had its surrounding crops and vineyard. While Don Ramon had been interviewing his new retainers, his charges had spread out in a dangerously extended line. Even in this bare landscape, Toby could see innumerable stone walls, patches of shrubbery, and rocky knolls that could provide cover for any evil-intentioned persons who wanted to lie in ambush. Whether or not the deluded don recognized the problem, he was heading for the front of the group as fast as he could move his antediluvian knacker.
Francisco was moving no faster, hobbling along beside his pony and stabbing nosy little questions in his squeaky voice.
Hamish gave an abbreviated account of his wanderings with Toby. Gracia recovered her tongue and began asking about the real live don who had invited her to dinner—Toby would be much in favor of this new interest if it would stop her making calf eyes at him. But Francisco was a quick-witted old rascal and proved more expert at prying than she, displaying a dry cynicism in total contrast to his master's grandiose posturing. He soon learned the lady's true status and what she had been in her former home, but even his skill failed to elicit an explanation of the bottle hung around her neck.
After a while the old man apologized for the state of his feet and mounted his pony so they could all go faster. "May I inquire, Senor Jaume, how you knew my master's name? While he will understand that his fame should have reached as far afield as you said, I myself—being cursed with a deplorably skeptical disposition—have some trouble with the notion."
"Oh, he was pointed out to us in Toledo."
"When?"
"Um... about a month ago."
"I am quite positive that he was not there then."
Hamish frowned in exasperation, for his guess had been a reasonable one. "Then it was a man who looked very like him, wouldn't you say, Toby?"
"Astonishingly so, and he looks even more like the man. But who are all these pilgrims? I trust those friars are not servants of the Inquisition, for I confess, being a stranger, I consider the Inquisition an institution of doubtful merit."
This heretical sentiment made the squire roll his eyes in alarm. "Do remember the wise old saying, Senor Tobias: When in Rome, keep your mouth shut. And you must not confuse the Black Friars, who are Dominicans, with the Black Monks, who are Benedictines. We have preachers of many suborders of Galileans in Spain—possibly even too many for our own good," he conceded. "The Mosaic and Arabic philosophies have been suppressed of late, as you probably know. We do have a friar, Brother Bernat, but he is a Franciscan, and the other learned scholar is Father Guillem, a Benedictine monk. I shall introduce all these fine people to you as we go by. Now these first, or perhaps it would more accurate to call them these last, are natives of Catalonia who fled before the invaders and now seek to return."
The four to which he referred were trailing some distance behind the main body of the pilgrims, having trouble moving a well-laden mule. The two men were dragging it along on a rope, and the two women driving it, whacking its rump vigorously with sticks. All of them wore the dark, monotonous dress of peasants and looked bent, weathered, and hopeless, prematurely aged by toil. Francisco introduced Senora de Gomez and her two fine guards, who would henceforth put their strong arms at the disposal of the company. The men regarded the strangers with glowering suspicion.
"Miguel and Rafael," Francisco explained, without distinguishing which was which or mentioning their wives' names.
Toby and Hamish expressed their honor and happiness at the meeting. The women paid no attention at all, one keeping her eyes on the ground, and the other redoubling her efforts to wallop the mule into faster motion. The men grunted and scowled. Then the taller spat. "Foreigners!"
Toby spat also. "Idiot peasants! Your mule will go faster if you take some of its load on your own backs."
Whether they understood the words or not, the men reacted with incomprehensible patois and very comprehensible gestures. The newcomers walked on.