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."
Hamish rolled his eyes and looked around for his staff and bundle.
"Where are you taking them?" Toby asked gently.
She bit her lip, staring at him, and then seemed to decide to trust him. "To Montserrat, senor. There is a great tutelary there, just north of Barcelona. My sons asked me to deliver them to the spirit in the monastery at Montserrat."
"You are traveling alone?" he asked incredulously.
With a little more hesitation, she said that, yes, she was traveling alone.
"This is a most fortunate coincidence. We are going to Montserrat. Will the senora permit us to escort her?"
She gave him a smile as warming as a blazing fire on a winter night. "So that is why they told me to wait!"
"Who told you, senora?"
"My sons, of course!"
"Toby!" Hamish was glowering.
Toby shrugged apologetically. He could not possibly let this poor child go wandering off alone again! It was a miracle she had managed to come this far without being molested.
But Hamish's practical soul was much less impressed by this damsel in distress. "Tell us how you work this conjuration with the wraiths."
"It is not your concern!"
Toby said, "It should not be, senora, but if we are to be traveling together, then it might become so. The Inquisition, for example, might—"
She froze, staring at him. The color drained from her cheeks.
"We disapprove of the Inquisition," he added hastily and sensed Hamish shuddering at this indiscretion.
"I have no dealings with demons!" Gracia cried.
"Nor we, I assure you, but it takes only a whisper to start the Inquisition asking questions, and we all know how they ask questions."
She looked down at the floor and spoke very quietly. "After the soldiers left Madrid... I was the only one left, senor. They overlooked me at the end, when they slew the women. I hid under the bed where... it was not my bed. I was the only one left, the houses were burning. I went to the shrine, and the spirit did not answer, so I knew they had taken it. I hunted everywhere for my husband and my sons, to bury them. All day I searched and could not find them. But that night my sons came to me. Their wraiths stood beside me—not as I had known them but as the men they would have been, tall and strong and handsome. They wept because their lives had been so short and they would never grow to that manhood. They wept more because they must evermore remain wraiths with no spirit to cherish them. They told me to take a bottle and gather up the souls, theirs and all the others, and carry them to the tutelary at Montserrat, for it would take them in and care for them always as if they had been its own people. That is what I have done, senor. There and anywhere else I found death. Is this a wickedness?"
"No, indeed. It is a virtuous thing." He did not know if what she claimed was possible, but he certainly did not know that it was not. He dared not look at Hamish. No doubt Hamish could quote books on the subject.
Gracia was relieved to have his approval. She smiled wistfully, her eyelashes glistening. "They still speak to me sometimes. Here I found much death, and it was hard for me to make the wraiths understand, because of the language. My sons told me to keep trying, to stay here for a while. They must have known you were coming, senor, a strong man to escort me through the troubled lands. But I think I have gathered all the souls in this town now. I shall go out again tonight to make sure. There may still be a few of the very little ones, I fear, who find it difficult to understand. They will not trouble you." She looked at him like a wounded plover.
"I believe you. I shall sleep here tonight, then, with your permission." The hob would defend him, but it might not worry about Hamish. He stole a quick glance at his friend.
"And I," Hamish croaked loyally, although he looked as if he could see the room full of ghosts already.
CHAPTER SEVEN
He had a lot more to say later, when the two of them were alone in the poky bedroom Gracia had appropriated for her use during her stay in Onda. The bed was too short for Toby and would not be wide enough for both of them anyway. He spread his blanket on the floor.
"Toby, I thought you agreed we were not going to go to Barcelona?"
"We can't abandon that child!"
"Child? She's borne two children—or thinks she has. She's crazy!"
"All the more reason to be kind."
"Ha!" Hamish hurled the last of his clothes down and scrambled into the bed. "Kind? Child? She was dropping broad hints that she didn't really have to go out if the senor needed her and the boy could sleep in the dog kennel."
"You're imagining things!" Toby stretched out on the floor and rolled himself up.