The gaffers stared, taken aback, and watched with apprehension as the companions started for the church.
The chapel was the only stone structure in town, as was so often the case, and the rectory-cottage beside it was only wattle and daub with a thatched roof. But the yard before it was neat and clean, with flowers around the border and a whitewashed fence, and the priest was sitting on a bench beside the door, reading his breviary.
Matt felt a little strange walking right up to him, so he knocked at the gate. The priest looked up with a pleasant smile that vanished when he saw strangers, and ones in foreign clothing at that.
“Good morning, Father,” Matt said agreeably.
The priest frowned, cocking his head on one side, and asked a question in Gaelic.
Matt sighed and tried again. “Ave, pater!”
“Ah!” The priest’s expression cleared. “Ave, filius meant.”
It was a strange experience, hearing Latin with an Irish accent—but Matt had only had a year in high school and fifteen years of Mass prayers in childhood.
“Quern quaeiritus?” the priest asked. It meant, Who are you looking for?
“We wish to go to the bishop’s town,” Matt explained. “Can you tell us the way?”
“Do you come from Bretanglia?” the priest asked.
“We just have,” Matt told him, “but our journey began in Merovence.” After all, that was true for Rosamund, too—it was just that, in her case, the first leg of the trip had been done a long time before.
“What do you seek in the bishop’s town?”
Matt began to feel that the priest meant to protect the bishop from these vile Bretanglians. “We seek a merchant, any merchant, who can tell us how to find a certain monastery where a—” Matt groped for a word that could describe the (hopefully) sleeping Brion. “—a certain relic lies.”
“Ah! A pilgrimage!” The priest nodded, not only satisfied but delighted. He pointed along the main street of the town.
“Go three miles to the crossroads, and the signpost will point the way to Innisfree. It is the road to the right, and five miles later, the left branch of a fork.”
“Thank you, Father.” Matt tipped his hat and started to turn away.
But the priest held up a cautioning hand. “Be careful on the road, my son. A pouka haunts that way, and not by night alone.”
“A pouka?” Mart’s blood chilled, especially since the word wasn’t Latin. “I thank you even more deeply, Father. May I donate to your church?”
The priest’s face broke into a smile. “That would be pleasant.”
But he was staring at the small gold coin in stunned disbelief as the companions walked away.
“What advice was it that made you so generous?” Sir Orizhan asked.
“He told me there’s a pouka haunting the road,” Matt explained.
“A pouka!” Rosamund and Sergeant Brock stopped dead, staring.
“I take it you have them in Bretanglia, too,” Matt said.
“We have pooks, and the most mischievous of them is an elf by that name,” Brock said.
Matt supposed the distinction between “pook” and “Puck” was pretty minor—only a matter of a vowel shift. Nonetheless, the thought made him glad he was in Ireland; he’d had experience with Puck. “Here, a pouka means a shapeshifter. It usually appears as a horse, but it can be just about anything, including a human being.”
“How do we guard against it, then?” Rosamund asked.
“Well, if you see a horse by the roadside who looks as though he’s just begging to be ridden—don’t mount.”
They had been strolling along the main street, and Matt stopped in surprise in front of a larger-than-average hut that had piles of folded nets, jars of beeswax, cylinders of cork, and coils of rope stacked outside it. A man stood in the midst of them all, pumping away at a push drill on a sort of lozenge of stone, boring a hole through its center.
“If I didn’t know better,” Matt said, “I’d think this was a chandler’s store.”
“It is more common to find the shop that sells supplies for boats down by the dock,” Sergeant Brock said. “Nonetheless, in so small a town, this building’s not so far from the sea, and more likely to stand longer by being away from the waves.”
“Good point,” Matt agreed, “but I’m surprised to see any kind of a shop in a town so small.”
“Perhaps there is more trade here than there seems,” Sir Orizhan offered.
“You mean he ships fish in to Innisfree? Not a bad idea. Wish we had time to wait and hitch a ride on the inbound wagon. But since we don’t…” Matt stepped up to the shopkeeper and said, “Do you sell rope?”
The man looked at him as though he had come from the other side of the moon, and asked an incomprehensible question in incredulous tones.
“Let me translate,” Matt sighed, and took out a silver penny. While the shopkeeper was still staring at it, Matt said to Brock, “Pick up a few coils of rope, will you? The thinnest he has… yes, that will do. Another coil… yes, that should be enough … a ball of twine … and four of those stone weights … yes, that’s good Now hold them up for him to see.”
Sergeant Brock held up the goods. “What would you want these for, Lo—Master Matthew?”
“Just in case we find a stray horse by the road,” Matt explained, and turned to the shopkeeper. “Well?”
The shopkeeper looked up and got a crafty look in his eye. He held up two fingers.
Matt sighed and took out another penny. He held it up in front of the shopkeeper’s face. The man frowned slightly; the penny was copper. He shook his head.
Matt turned away, slipping the pennies back into his purse and telling Brock, “Put the stuff back where you found it.”
Brock laid one coil of rope down, and the shopkeeper called something in Gaelic.
“Hold on,” Matt said, and turned back. The shopkeeper had a resigned look on his face and an open hand sticking out.
“Pick it up again,” Matt said, and took out the two pennies.
He insisted on carrying a coil of rope and two weights himself, so of course Sir Orizhan had to, too, though he did look disapproving.
“Are you sure you have not cheated that good man?” Rosamund demanded.
“Cheated him?” Matt turned back to see the shopkeeper caressing the pennies with a grin so wide he was fairly cackling. He looked up at the companions, shaking his head with a look that said, They’re crazy, but that’s not my problem. In fact, it’s my good luck.
“No, I don’t think we cheated him.” Matt turned to the road again. “That’s more silver than he’s seen in a year or more. He thinks he made out like a bandit, and he’s right, too.”
“He is indeed,” Brock said. “If you’d had more time to bargain, you probably could have beaten him down to six coppers—and if you could not, I surely could.” He looked very unhappy at the lost chance to haggle.
Matt waited until they were half a mile outside the town, and presumably secure from prying eyes, before he called a halt, took out his knife, and began to go to work on the rope. Half an hour later he had a lariat and three bolas.
“Hold one end and whirl the other one around your head,” he told his companions. “The trick is the same as in any argument—knowing when to let go.” He demonstrated, and the bola wound itself around a tree trunk. Then he set them to practicing, one at a time so they could duck when the others got it wrong, while he practiced with the lariat. It had been a long time since his childhood days pretending he was a television cowboy, but the old skills came back fairly quickly, and he was surprised to see what an improvement adult coordination made. On the other hand, his motor skills had definitely been boosted by being knighted—that was the way the ceremony worked in this universe, and he’d had nothing but the best.