Sinclair reined in his team. “Right, then. Here we go. Here comes the popinjay who thinks himself a knight. Just be at ease, all of you, and let me do the talking.” He brought the wagon to a halt just short of where the guards stood waiting.
The knight arrived just as the Corporal of the Guard stepped forward to challenge Tam, and he stood watching, making no attempt to interfere as the guardsman questioned Tam.
“Your name?”
“Tam Sinclair,” Tam responded truculently. He pronounced it the Scots way, Singclir, rather than the French San-Clerr.
“What are you?” This with a ferocious frown in response to the alien name and its terse iteration.
Sinclair responded in fluent gutter French that was thick with Scots intonations. “What d’you mean, what am I? I am a Scot, from Scotland. And I am also a carter, as you can see.”
The frown grew deeper. “I meant, what are you doing here, fellow, in France?”
Sinclair scratched gently at his jaw with the end of one finger and stared down at the guard for long moments before he shrugged his shoulders and spoke slowly and patiently, with great clarity, as though to a backward child. “I don’t know where you’ve spent your life, Corporal, but where I live, everyone knows that when it comes to the nobility, there’s no difference between Scotland and France, or anywhere else. Money and power know no boundaries. There is an alliance in force between the two realms, and it is ancient.
“What am I doing here? I’m doing the same thing in France that hundreds of Frenchmen are doing in Scotland. I’m doing my master’s bidding, attending to his affairs. The St. Clair family holds lands and enterprises in both countries, and I am one of their factors. I go wherever I am sent. I do whatever I am told. Today I drive a cart.”
The answer seemed to mollify the man, but he cast a sideways glance at his superior standing by. “And what is in your cart?”
“Used iron, for the smelters within the walls. Old, rusty iron chains and broken swords to be melted down.”
“Show me.”
“Ewan, show the man.”
Ewan went to the back of the wagon, where he lowered the tail gate and threw back the old sailcloth sheet that covered their load. The corporal looked, shifted some of the cargo around with a series of heavy, metallic clanks, and then walked back to the front of the cart, wiping his rust-stained fingers on his surcoat. Ewan remained on the ground beside him as the guard pointed up at the woman.
“Who is she?”
“My wife, mother to my two sons here.”
“Your wife. How would I know that’s true?”
“Why would I lie? Does she look like a harlot? If you have eyes in your head you’ll see the eyes in hers, and the eyes in my son beside her.”
The guardsman looked as though he might take offense at the surliness of Sinclair’s tone, but then he eyed the massive shoulders of the man on the wagon and the set of his features and merely stepped closer so he could see the woman and the young man behind her. He looked carefully from one to the other, comparing their eyes.
“Hmm. And who is this other one?” He indicated Ewan, still standing close by him.
“My other son. Ask him. He speaks your language.”
“And if I ask your … wife?”
“Ask away. You’ll get nothing but a silly look. She can’t understand a word you say.”
The corporal looked directly at the woman. “Tell me your name.”
The woman turned, wide eyed, to look at Tam, who leaned back on the bench and said in Scots, “He wants to know your name, Wife.”
She bent forward to look down at the corporal and the watching knight, glancing back at Tam uncertainly.
“Tell him your name,” he repeated.
“Mary. Mary Sinclair.” Her voice was high and thin, with the sing-song intonation of the Scots peasantry.
“And where have you come from?” the corporal asked her.
Again the helpless look at Tam, who responded, “This is stupid. The fool wants to know where you’re from. I told him you can’t speak his language, but it hasn’t sunk through his thick skull yet. Just tell him where we’re from.”
Tam didn’t dare look at the watching knight, but he felt sure that the man was listening closely and understanding what they were saying. “Tell him, Mary. Where we’re from.”
She looked back at the corporal and blinked. “Inverness,” she intoned. “Inverness in Scotland.”
The guardsman stared at her for several more moments, then looked wordlessly at the white-and blue-coated knight, who finally stepped forward and gazed up at the woman and the young man standing beside her. He pursed his lips, his eyes narrowing as he looked from one to the other of them, and then he stepped back and flicked a hand in dismissal.
“Move on,” the corporal said. “On your way.”
NOT MANY MINUTES LATER, having passed through the city gates and out of direct sight from them in the rapidly gathering dusk, Tam stopped the wagon and turned to the woman in the back.
“Where do you go from here, Lady?”
“Not far. If your young man there will help me down, I can walk from here with ease. I have family here who will shelter me. What is your real name? I will send a reward, as token of my thanks, to the Templar commandery here, down by the harbor. You may claim it by presenting yourself there and giving them your name.”
Sinclair shook his head. “Nay, Lady, I’ll take no money from you. The sound of your Scots voice has been reward enough, for I am long away from home. My name is as you heard it, Tam Sinclair, and I have no need of your coin. Go you now in peace, and quickly, for William de Nogaret has spies everywhere. And give thanks to God for having blessed you with those eyes of yours, my lady, for beside young Hamish’s here they saved our lives this day. Ewan, go with her. Carry her bag and make sure she comes to no harm, then make your way to where we are going. We’ll meet you there.”
The woman stepped forward and laid a hand on Tam’s forearm. “God bless you then, Tam Sinclair, and keep you well. You have my gratitude and that of my entire family.”
It was on the tip of Sinclair’s tongue to ask who that family might be, but something warned him not to, and he contented himself with nodding. “God bless you, too, my lady,” he murmured.
She was a fine-looking woman, judging only by what he had seen of her face, and now as she made her way down from the cart with Ewan’s help, Tam watched her body move against the restrictions of what she was wearing and tried to visualize what she might look like without the bundled blanket that enfolded her. He stopped that, however, as soon as he realized what he was doing. Beauty apart, he told himself, the woman had courage and a quick mind and he was glad he had done what he had.
He watched her go with Ewan until they were out of sight, and then he turned his team laboriously from the main thoroughfare into a darkening, deserted side street. He traveled halfway along the narrow thoroughfare before hauling on his reins again as the stooped Dominican monk from Alsace stepped out from a doorway in front of him. Young Hamish jumped down to the ground, where he was joined by three other men who had witnessed the killings in front of the city gates and had since walked at various distances behind the wagon. They gathered at the tail gate and began to rummage among the cargo there, displacing metal objects with much grunting and puffing. Sinclair thrust his whip into the receptacle by his right foot as the monk spoke to him, keeping his voice low so that the others would not hear him.