"We're not fooling anybody, are we?" Rod said under his breath.

"Only humans, Rod-but I think the equine will at least accept me as not being a threat." Fess lowered his head, pretending to graze. After a moment, Magnus's horse followed suit.

Rod nodded, satisfied. "Hope we have as good a case of luck with the locals. Shall we go in, son?"

"Wherefore not?" Magnus stood aside and gestured for Rod to precede him. Rod did, still disquieted by his son's refusal to give a direct answer-but he had been through this several times during the last few years, and wasn't about to make an issue of it. He led the way in.

The interior was dim; light filtered through a few horn windows. There were half a dozen tables with stools about them, and a long trestle table with benches. Rod looked around at the deserted room, shrugged, and knocked on a table. A moment later, a tall man came out of the doorway at the back, wiping his hands on an apron and looking surprised. "Gentlemen! What would you?"

"We would dine," Rod answered. "We've been on the road several days now, and have had little enough of proper food."

"Only dried crusts with which to break our fast this morn," Magnus put in.

The innkeeper glanced from the one to the other, seeming rather wary, but he forced a smile and said, "There is only some porridge, left from our own breakfast, and black bread-and ale, of course, though the brewing's a month old."

"That will do quite well." Rod smiled. "Don't get many customers in the morning, eh?"

"Only the widowers and orphan bachelors, gentlemen, and the bishop sees to it there are few enough of those," the man said, almost proudly. "Nay, we are here for the folk to meet and chat with one another o' nights, so we have little custom before sunset, in truth."

Rod frowned. "Odd arrangement. Your customers are just your fellow villagers, then?"

"Aye, though there be travellers, like to yourselves, one to a month or so. Yet we are mostly for a meeting place, though the good folk are as like to tarry outside in summer."

"Yet they'll tarry by the door," Magnus put in, "for this is the only place in the village from which they may have ale?" The innkeeper bobbed his head, smiling. "Even so. 'Tis for me to do the brewing, and I manage it well, though I should not say it of myself. None others brew, of course. They bring me hops and barley, meat and grain, and I serve them ale and beer, and my wife serves them supper. They bring us flax and wool also, so that we need farm only half as much as they, that we may have time to brew and cook for them."

Rod had the feeling that he was hearing a public relations blurb, and braced himself for a recruiting speech.

But apparently it was too early for that; the innkeeper only said, "Wilt thou have ale with thy breakfast?"

Magnus maintained a stoic stone-face, and Rod managed a smile. "Why, yes, thank you." There wasn't much else to drink in a medieval village; no one trusted the water.

"Directly, then." The innkeeper forced another smile, bobbed his head, and withdrew.

"Well, this is as close to a view as we'll get." Rod sat down at a chair by one of the horn windows. "Light, at least. Seems like an odd way for a tavern to exist."

"Aye." Magnus sat down across from him. "From the look of the place, I'd have said that all farmed, and made all that they needed, from cloth to furniture and parchmenteven soap."

"Except for the priests, of course."

Magnus flashed him a glance of irritation. "Must thou needs ever be suspicious of the clergy, Dad?"

"I don't have to, I suppose-it just comes naturally."

"Their time is fully taken seeing to the spiritual needs of their flock, I doubt not."

"Two priests, for a couple of hundred people? I don't think there could be more, here. Not to mention the nuns."

"Nuns?" Magnus frowned.

"Female clergy, who don't marry," Rod explained. "But they can't hold worship services, so they're not priestesses."

"Ah." Magnus smiled. "Like to the Order of Cassettes, who did save thee when thou went left for dead."

"Very much like them, in that they decided to set themselves up as a convent, without anybody's sponsorship or approval-but unlike them, in that they're Catholic, and these people aren't."

"They are Christians, certainly."

"Oh, yes, certainly Christians-but they don't believe in the Trinity, from what I heard the priest say during that funeral sermon-if you can call it that. And Heaven only knows how many other differences there are."

"Heaven should know, indeed," Magnus murmured.

A young woman bustled out, bearing a tray, and set it down between them. "There, gentlemen! Thou wilt pardon my hurry, but I am like to be late for schooling if I haste not." She set a bowl in front of Rod, then another in front of Magnus-but her motions were more deliberate with him. Magnus followed the dainty hand as it drew back, and looked up along the arm to a round, pretty face with large blue eyes, framed in blonde curls that escaped from under the rim of a white bonnet. She wore a brown dress with a white apron, both cut very fully, almost as though she were trying to disguise her figure-which probably she was; Rod had noticed the same kind of dress on all the other women.

The sexual mores of the community apparently tended toward the puritanical. But the folds of the fabric were draped enough to hint at a voluptuous figure, and the apron cinched in about a very slender waist. Magnus gazed up at her face, and smiled slowly. Her eyes sparked with interest just before she modestly lowered them, blushing.

Calculation or innocence? Rod wondered. Too early to tell, either way. "You have a free school here?"

"Nay." The girl grimaced. " 'Tis not free; we must attend it, whether we would or no."

Rod smiled, amused. Didn't every young one say the same? "But you don't have to pay in order to go."

"Pay?" The girl smiled. "We've little use for money, gentlemen; the bishop keeps it for us all. Nay, we give him a tithe of all our crops, and timber, and cloth, even as our neighbors do in return for our ale. And we cook and serve the meat they bring, even as some wives sew the bishop's robes, and those of the curate and the nuns; others cook their meals, in turn. So there's little need for payment, at the least in coin."

"I expect you'll be glad of ours, anyway." Rod slid a few coppers across the table. The girl stared at them, wide-eyed, then picked one up for closer inspection. Her lips curved in a smile. "True money! So rarely have I seen it!"

"Then thou couldst mistake it," Magnus pointed out. "It could be lead, painted over. Bite, and if it shows not the mark of thy teeth, 'tis hard, and therefore like to be real."

The girl turned her smile upon him, her eyelids lowering. "And canst thou teach me what is real in the world, and what is not?"

Their gazes connected, and Magnus felt a thrill shoot through him, feeling her challenge and attraction both. Opportunity was calling-but opportunity for what? He smiled slowly, very much aware of the lush curves hidden by the rough, loose tunic, the full lips, the inviting eyes-but also marginally aware that his own defenses had risen, that he had become wary of demands in reserve, of the potential attempt to use him. He bore that in mind as he returned her smile, and found that he could think of things other than the girl herself. He tilted his head to the side, and answered, "I would think thou hast teachers enough. Didst thou not speak of school?"

"Aye," she said, "yet I have little wish to learn what the nuns teach. Thy matters, though, might entrance me."

Rod glanced from one to the other, very much aware of the girl's appeal for his son, and wondering already what her motive was. Somehow, he doubted that she was interested in the Gentle Giant for himself alone.