Toby found him in a shaded corner behind a shed, sitting on the ground with his back turned, so that only his pink scalp with its downy fringe was visible—that and the gray cowl covering his narrow shoulders. In front of him lay a block of building stone like a low table, with Pepita on the far side of it, facing Toby but too engrossed to notice him. They were both very intent on something. It could only be some sort of child's game, yet their concentration was so intense that he hesitated to interrupt.
Then he saw that the girl rested her hand on the stone with a crumb held in her tiny fingers. The minute brown speck creeping toward it over the gray stone was a mouse. Or perhaps it was a vole or a dormouse or something exclusively Spanish. It looked like a mouse, but it was displaying unmouselike courage, inching forward, nose and tail twitching. Toby, too, held his breath.
The mouse came to a halt and stretched out like dough until its nose could inspect the crumb. Satisfied, it took a few more steps, and gently lifted the crumb from the child's fingertips, then sat up on its haunches to nibble at it. With agonizing slowness, she slid a finger around and stroked its back. Toby stared in disbelief.
The spell broke. Mouse and crumb flashed away and were gone. An immense grin split Pepita's little elfin face from side to side. Her tiny fists clenched with glee and drummed on the stone. It had certainly been a remarkable trick.
"I did it!" she whispered excitedly.
"You did indeed," answered the old friar. "Very well done!"
She looked up and gasped in dismay. Fear! Guilt!
"It is only Captain Tobias," Brother Bernat said without turning. "He can be trusted."
Toby stepped forward and sat down at the end of the big stone. He stared into those strangely clear eyes, dark agates in a face of ancient marble. "And how did you know it was me, Brother?"
"I knew you would be at the corner, and I could see the angle of her head. No one else is so tall."
An unlikely explanation. There was much secret amusement in the old man's smile, but Pepita was staring anxiously at the big stranger.
He said, "I should like to have a word with you if I may."
"Have as many as you wish, my son. Don't mind Pepita. She doesn't gossip either." His voice was as soft as gossamer.
"Some do." Toby cursed himself as soon as he said the words.
A twinge of sorrow flashed over Bernat's face. "Whatever the senora said about me, she does not understand the truth of the situation." He had been put on the defensive, though, and that was disturbing.
But Toby was feeling defensive, also. To hint at gossip was even worse than repeating it.
"I put no stock in her babbling. What brings me is something that Hamish... Jaume, that is... Jaume insists that Senora de Gomez was seriously hurt when she fell from her horse today. This is not surprising, considering how high those seats are. He says she was unconscious, her face was flushed, her eyes were open and the pupils dilated. Her breath was harsh and irregular, her pulse very slow. He says these symptoms exactly match some that he once read about, so he knew she was very likely to die and he could nothing for her. He went to assist Senora Collel and found that she had escaped with a twisted ankle. The next time he looked at Senora de Gomez, you were helping to her feet. She was a little shaken but not badly hurt."
Brother Bernat smiled again. How could anyone so old endure these long marches, these hardships, the alarms of today's battle, all without at least looking tired? But he never looked tired. He never ran around like a puppy either, but he was no fresher in the mornings than he was at night. And he rarely bore any expression other than a tolerant smile. He made Toby feel like an obstreperous, bad-mannered child.
"Sergeant Jaume must have made an error, you mean? This disturbs you. Is he prone to errors?" The smile widened, displaying very white teeth—apparently a complete set, too.
"He is not prone to errors. I am disinclined to believe he made one today."
The friar looked at Pepita, who returned his smile hesitantly. When he spoke, though, he was plainly addressing Toby.
"And you decided it was time for a serious chat with the old man?"
Suppressing a bad-mannered, obstreperous desire to growl, Toby said, "Yes I did, Brother."
Brother Bernat turned to him again, but this time he was not smiling. "I am sorry if my manners annoy you, my son. I have had them so long that they are hard to change, but I know that I tend to counter questions with other questions. I have wandered the world a long time, and it is a dangerous place. One learns discretion or one stops wandering."
"I have no wish to pry!" That was a lie.
"You have a right to pry, because the security of all of us rests on your judgment. I think I can help you with your problem, Tobias."
Toby flinched. "My problem?"
The smile crept back, but there was no mirth in it. An attempt at reassurance, perhaps. Sympathy, possibly. "I have no problem except my manners. But you do. You ask questions, I answer with other questions, and you don't answer at all, which is your right. But it gets us nowhere. I think I can help you, but only if you will tell me the whole story. Everything." There was Toledo steel inside that cobwebby exterior.
"I—"
"You are not ready to do that, so it will have to wait. But don't wait too long, please. The sands will run out quickly once they start to go." He lifted a pale and slender hand to indicate he had not finished. His eyes bore their disturbing stare again, as if he were looking inside Toby's head. "Just answer me one thing, my son. How long has it been?"
"I don't have the faintest idea what... Three years, Brother."
The friar winced as if that news was disastrous. "So you were what, sixteen? Seventeen?"
"Eighteen." They were talking about the hob, although Toby had no idea how that had come into the conversation. It was the last thing he ever discussed.
Brother Bernat shook his head in dismay. "You have done very well to last as long as you have, then. Don't wait much longer, Tobias, please!"
He was crazier than the don, that was all.
"Wait for what? What do you mean about doing well to last?"
The clear dark eyes told him his denials did not convince.
"You are going to go insane very shortly. I think you know that, and know what will follow. It is amazing that you have lasted so long. I am surprised it did not happen today in the turmoil of the fight. You must have nerves like granite, my son."
Toby made half a move to rise and then hesitated. "I don't know what you mean, Brother."
"Fear, Tobias. Or rage. Hatred." The dark eyes widened. "Any sort of strong passion. You must avoid them. Great remorse, also."
Mezquiriz? He could not know about Mezquiriz! He must not know about Mezquiriz!
Toby jumped up and strode away, and if that was not rage he was feeling, it was fear.
CHAPTER THREE
The room was dim, with walls and floor of dark stone and a heavy-beamed ceiling high enough to be lost in shadow. Its stifling heat came from a fireplace at one end, which provided almost as much light as the two small, high-set windows at the other. Three men garbed in the simple brown hose and doublets of common workers waited patiently at the cool end. They were all burly and muscular, but nothing else could be known about them, for their heads were concealed in black bags. Once in a while one of them would move so that a glitter of eyes showed behind the eye holes.
A table along one side bore two tall candlesticks and a green crucifix inlaid with colored jewels, too large to be anything but colored glass. Behind the table sat three elderly men in the white supplicars and black robes of Dominicans, the Black Friars, all with their hoods back to display their tonsures, all sweating profusely. The one on the left fumbled endlessly through a pile of papers and parchments. The one on the right kept scribbling in a large book, recording the proceedings with a quill pen that he dipped from time to time in a silver inkwell. Two shaven-head novices stood at the door opposite.