Toby thanked him sincerely, but he untied the purse and removed the letter. "This will be incriminating evidence if I fall into the Inquisition's clutches, senor."
"Then read it and destroy it, but memorize the names. I shall write and tell them to look out for you."
"You are very kind," Toby said awkwardly. Kindness was a phenomenon he had met so rarely that he hardly knew how to handle it.
Father Guillem, who normally wore a solid frown, was beaming cheerfully because he was almost home. That did not stop him from giving Toby several stern lectures on the importance of keeping the hob under firm control in the future.
"Had it not been for Brother Bernat's testimony," he concluded, "I should certainly have reported you to the Inquisition in Tortosa. By all the customary criteria, you are possessed by a demon. Your watchword from now on must be eternal vigilance!"
It must be Lochan na Bi. Toby assured the learned acolyte that he was aware of the dangers.
And Hamish.
Hamish looked like a three-day corpse, very different from his usual merry self. The bandage round his head failed to hide all of the bruise swelling like a slice of raw liver on his temple. Unless the spirit was willing to heal him, he would need a week in bed to recover from that injury. He spoke little, which was an ominous sign, and he was visibly weakening as the day dragged on.
Under the pall of cloud, darkness seemed to come hours earlier than it should. The road entered a dense pine forest and grew steeper and steeper until it was zigzagging up a precipitous hillside. The horses found it hard going, although wagons obviously used the trail, for the stony surface was deeply rutted, running rivulets of reddish-brown water.
"Are you all right?" Toby asked anxiously, several times.
Usually Hamish just nodded, although the answer was obviously, No. Once he asked, "How much farther now?"
"An hour or so, Father Guillem says. Maybe less. He isn't sure where the safe zone begins, but he expects there will be a checkpoint soon. Look, if you want to hear some good news, I'm not having any feelings of déjà vu. None at all! I've never come this way before, I'm certain."
Hamish squinted at him blearily, his face a white blur in the gloom. "But when we get to the checkpoint it's goodbye?"
"Father Guillem will show me the trail out to the north. Josep has promised to find you a ship, has he not?"
Hamish nodded, looking even more miserable.
"I wish you safe voyage," Toby said awkwardly. Life without him was a dismal prospect. "Don't bother giving my love to the glen. I'll miss you, friend. We've had good times in among the tough ones."
"And you don't want me around after what happened last night."
"That has nothing at all to do with it. I have made blunders of my own often enough, and you have pulled me through them."
"Not on that scale. I wish I could be strong like you. You don't let women bother you."
Could he really believe that? Sometimes the bookworm was as blind as an earthworm.
Toby tried repeatedly to cheer him up. "Look on the bright side—you're going home! It's just your sore head that's making you feel this way. Did Pepita help your headache? You want me to ask her to try again?"
"She did no good at all. Why don't you try instead?"
"Me?"
Hamish scowled. "This alumbradismo... When you called down the lightning on the landsknechte, that was gramarye, sort of. Like Brother Bernat's healing."
"I suppose there's a resemblance, but frying people is a strange way to cure what ails them."
"Very funny. He had an incarnate spirit, you have the hob. So why can't you learn to control it the way he could?"
"I don't think he could control it. He could ask, that's all—like praying to a tutelary. I wouldn't know how to start. He said I mustn't even try to control it, or it will end up controlling me. Maybe in thirty or forty years, he said, I will be able to risk asking favors of it, in small ways. I'm no saint, Hamish, and I'm sure I never will be. The hob isn't an elemental, and it isn't 'sitting right,' whatever that means. I was too old when I started. The best I can hope for is to keep it from interfering."
He suspected his chances of doing even that were slender as gossamer. He was bound for disaster, sooner or later. That was another reason to go on alone.
Hamish sighed. He liked the world to be more logical. "You're not planning anything foolish, are you? You're not going to go off with the don to try and kill Oreste? Or try to buy him off with the amethyst?"
"Never. Strangling that monster would be a very good idea, yes. I would dearly love to squeeze his throat until his eyes pop and his tongue sticks out and his face turns purple, but I know it's impossible. I just want to keep well away from him, and the Inquisition, and the Fiend. A quiet life for me and the hob, nothing exciting. A job as a woodcutter, perhaps, or a stonemason—something I can put my muscles to work on." Then he lied. "Perhaps someday a wife and children, if I can ever be quite sure that—"
"Demons, Toby! I don't want to go! Not yet. Please?"
Toby sighed. "Let's get you to Montserrat. If the spirit will cure your cracked head, then you'll be able to think straight again."
Hamish managed a smile. "Thanks! But I know what I'll—"
They peered into the murk.
"Toby? Isn't that the don shouting?"
Toby urged Smeòrach forward.
CHAPTER FOUR
There could be no better site for an ambush. Overhanging foliage made the trail into a tunnel, gloomy and foggy. The slopes on either hand were impassable for horses, overgrown and much too steep. Don Ramon, in the lead as always, had just gone round the next bend and now came cantering back into view, his warning shouts growing clearer. Only one word mattered: Barricade!
For an instant Toby wondered if the man had panicked at the sight of the expected checkpoint, then discarded the notion. Other men might make such an error, but not the don, and the odds must be overwhelmingly bad for him to have turned tail.
Roadblock ahead meant danger at the rear, of course. Cliff down on one side, cliff up on the other. A perfect trap, lobsters in the pot.
The only hope was to turn tail and hope to break out downhill. As Toby reined Smeòrach in, he saw the women start to turn their mounts, but then Josep knotted up the pack train like kelp on a beach and blocked the don's path completely. Worse!
He spun Smeòrach around, back toward the last bend, shouting warnings to Father Guillem and Hamish. He drew his sword and reined in with an oath as the brigands came around the corner. There were at least a score of them, a ragtag band of pirates, all on foot and clad in a motley collection of garments and armor, but spread out in good order, not all clustered in an easy target. Someone knew his job well. Pikes, swords, no arquebuses—the don had proved the previous night that firearms were useless in such weather—but also crossbows. In desperation Toby looked again at the flanking slopes and saw more men above the trail, even a couple in trees on the downhill side. Chattering to Hamish, he had missed those, but so had the don. A dozen bolts were pointed at his heart. They would have difficulty missing at that range.
It would be small comfort while dying to know that Baron Oreste was not going to get him, nor lay his fat hands on the amethyst.
Sick with despair he glanced back. Jacques had jumped from his donkey and was disentangling the pack train, apparently very expertly. The don would get by it in a moment. But even he could do nothing against this force.