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nodded. “I’m Rose.”
    “Handsome bird,” Drogo remarked. Rose stifled an urge to snatch Wink to her breast, fearing the man might be sizing the falcon up for his cooking pot.
    A trio of young lads came forward, jostling each other with teasing elbows. The curly-headed one spoke first.
    “We were wonderin’, m’lady, is that a lanner or a merlin?”
    She opened her mouth to reply, but the lanky, dark-haired youth spoke. “Or maybe a kestrel? I think ‘tis a kestrel.”
    “‘Tisn’t a kestrel, Daniel,” said the tallest lad, rolling his eyes. “Kestrels have no such markin’s. I say ‘tis a lanner.”
    Daniel scowled.
    “Nae, ‘tis a merlin,” the first boy said. “See the streaks?”
    The tall lad towered even more authoritatively over his fellows. “And just what would ye know about falcons, Bryan? Your father keeps hounds.”
    Bryan sputtered in anger, and Daniel raised a condescending brow. “ My father has falcons,” he boasted, “mostly gyrfalcons and even a saker from the East.”
    “Please, my lady,” the tall youth said, “explain to my companions that your bird is a lanner.”
    “Thomas…” Bryan warned, punching his arm. Thomas punched him back, discreetly.
    Rose’s head was spinning. The three lads waited for her answer. “Actually,” she told them, “‘tis a peregrine.”
    The youths looked shocked, then crestfallen, then began battling amongst themselves again.
    “I told ye ‘twasn’t a merlin.”
    “Well, ‘twasn’t a lanner, was it?”
    “A peregrine. That would have been my second guess.”
    “Thank ye, my lady,” Thomas said with a nod before they ambled off in a flurry of whispered insults and friendly clouts.
    “Scholars from Glasgow,” Fulk explained when they’d gone. “They live to bicker.”
    “Fulk,” Drogo said, “let’s see if we can stomach a bit o’ the breakfast they serve here, eh?”
    Fulk nodded, and they set off after the innkeeper.
    So far the pilgrims seemed benign. Fulk was a kindly giant, despite being a butcher. Drogo, the cook, would keep them from starving. The three scholars, though youthfully rude, appeared harmless enough. Brigit was too embroiled in her own affairs to care much for those of Rose. And Father Peter was congenial toward everyone.
    Rose ran the back of her finger along Wink’s throat, soothing the falcon after so much attention, and studied the rest of her fellow travelers.
    The gaunt man in gray was a palmer. His cloak was studded with numerous pilgrim badges, among them the palm leaf of Jerusalem. His walking staff was darkened with wear. Men such as he made a comfortable living traveling on pilgrimage on behalf of wealthy nobles who didn’t wish to be inconvenienced by the journey. He conversed with an old apple-cheeked woman who eyed him rather like a knight sizing up a warhorse.
    A meek youth of surely no more than thirteen years, as thin as a claymore, huddled at a tiny table, nibbling on a crust of bread. ‘Twas difficult to discern his history, as ‘twas that of the solitary man swilling ale in the dark corner and the buxom woman with pouting scarlet lips and thick locks of chestnut hair.
    The loud pair of leather-skinned men whose beards were dotted with foam must be laborers of some sort, and by the look of the elderly gentleman whose waist, throat, and fingers gleamed with gilded treasure, he was either a successful merchant or a goldsmith.
    A pair of young nuns stood shyly in one corner, their fair faces glowing like candles in the darkness of the inn. By their matching wide eyes and frail features, they had to be sisters. Despite their timidity, ‘twasn’t long before the scholars began haranguing them for advice on finding pious wives.
    Rose let her gaze drift over the white wimples and gray habits of the nuns and pondered for the first time what life in a convent might be like. Now that she’d fled her betrothed, one of the options left her was joining a holy order. Most women her age shuddered