The yells ceased quickly-retrieving a musket was not a priority-and the men returned to their game.
A pump stood in the center of the square on a stone plinth reached by three broad, shallow steps. The soldier carried his prize to the steps, dearly intending to enjoy her there in the sunshine. As he set her down, Tamsyn leaped forward, swinging the butt of the musket at his head. It caught him a crack over the ear, and he bellowed, loosening his hold on his captive as he swung to face his attacker.
Tamsyn jumped back, the musket pointing steadily at his heart. “Bastard,” she said with soft ferocity. “Murdering son of a bitch. Raping that little girl is going to make you very proud, isn't it? And what were you going to do with her when you'd finished? Sell her to your friends here?”
The girl was on her knees on the step, hunched over, still keening. The soldier seemed bemused, his ear ringing from the blow of the musket, blood trickling down his neck where the skin had broken. He stared at the diminutive figure confronting him, hardly hearing her words.
“Run, nina,” Tamsyn said urgently. The girl scrambled to her feet, looking wildly around at the crowded square as if searching for safe passage. Then the soldier seemed to come to his senses, and with another bellow he lunged for the girl as she began to run. Tamsyn stuck out her foot, and he went down to the cobbles, but he was up in a second, shaking his head like an injured bull.
Colonel St. Simon and Captain Frobisher entered the square just as a group of men close to the pump became aware of the altercation on the steps. The young girl was running barefoot across the cobbles, tears of terror streaming from her eyes. She bumped into Julian, who caught her, steadying her against his body, his eyes riveted on the scene in the center of the square. The girl huddled against him, quivering like a hunted fawn, recognizing safety in the gold braid and epaulets of an officer's uniform.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Julian murmured as a ray of sun caught the unmistakable silvery head of La Violette a second before she disappeared, engulfed by the angry crowd of jeering soldiers. He unpeeled the girl from his side and thrust her at Frank, ordering curtly, “Get her to safety”; then he was running toward the pump, drawing his sword, his pistol in his other hand.
He charged into the middle of the fracas, wielding his sword to left and right, cursing the men in the vivid language of the barracks as he cut a path through them. The vigorous cursing was more potent than his weapons at that moment and seemed to pierce the men's drunken trance, reminding them on some level of the familiar discipline of everyday life. There was a hesitation, a slight swaying of the tight circle, and Julian lunged forward to the center.
Tamsyn was struggling in the grip of the man whom she'd deprived of his prize. The musket had been wrenched from her hands, and she was fighting now to pull her knife free from her belt. Julian fired his pistol into the air at the same moment as he grabbed Tamsyn's free arm. Briefly, she was the rope in a tug of war, then Julian brought his sword slashing down, and the man let go with a roar of pain, blood spurting from a great gash in his hand.
An ugly murmur ran around the circle of men, and others began to move toward the pump from the four corners of the square. Deliberately, Julian sheathed his sword, thrust his pistol into his belt, then turned and caught Tamsyn up under one arm as if she were a sack of potatoes.
“Goddamn your black souls,” he swore at them. “Let me pass. This one's mine.” He pushed his way down the steps with his violently wriggling burden. Someone laughed, a drunken cackle that was taken up by the others. Their mood changed and they fell back, offering ribald suggestions to the officer, who was good fellow enough to indulge in his own sport.
“Put me down, damn you!” Tamsyn snarled, the blood pounding in her lolling head. It was ludicrous that he should be able to carry her in such a fashion, with neither her feet nor her hands touching the ground. No man had ever before taken advantage of her diminutive stature, and the murderous rage already devouring her blazed to new heights.
“No, I will not, you little fool,” Julian declared, his own anger as hot as Tamsyn's. “What the devil do you think you're doing here… meddling in this inferno?
It's no business of yours. If I'd had a grain of sense, I should have left you to them.”
Tamsyn sunk her teeth into his calf
Julian's yell could be heard three streets away.
“Bloody savage!” He swung her upward,· changing hands on her body as if she were a caber he was going to toss at the Highland games, then swung her around his neck, grasping her wrists in one hand, her ankles in another, so that she dangled like a hunter's kill.
Tamsyn's language was enough to turn the air blue as he strode out of the square with her, but Julian ignored her. He was too filled with anger and disgust at what was going on in Badajos to give a thought to Tamsyn's outrage at this cavalier treatment. He couldn't imagine what could have brought her into the city except sheer stupidity… unless she was intending to take advantage of chaos and do her own looting.
“God's grace, Julian, what have you got there?”
Frank's startled voice arrested him as he passed a small courtyard, its metal gates hanging from their hinges.
Julian turned into the courtyard where a fountain bubbled incongruously in the midst of destruction. The girl Tamsyn had rescued was cowering behind Frank, her eyes stark with terror in her ashen face.
“This is Violette,” Julian stated grimly, bending his neck and lifting Tamsyn bodily of his shoulders, setting her on her feet. The girl ran forward with a cry, flinging her arms around Tamsyn, pouring forth a voluble stream of gratitude, her tongue at last loosened.
Julian followed the gist of the tumbling words and finally understood what Tamsyn had been doing in the square. He hadn't connected the fleeing girl to Violette's presence. Thankful that he hadn't expressed his sour supposition that she'd been after her own plunder, he was about to apologize for his roughness when she turned on him.
“You… you're no better than that scum… that filthy, murdering, raping rabble!” she declared, spitting the words at him as if they were snake's venom. “How dare you treat me like that? You're a blackguard, a piece of gutter-born-”
“Hold your tongue, you!” Julian roared, forgetting all inclination to make peace under this tirade. “If I hadn't come on the scene, mi muchacha, you'd be lying on the cobbles offered up for whoever chose to take a turn.”
“Filthy, loathsome swine,” she said, her voice suddenly low and trembling. To his astonishment Julian saw a glitter of tears in the violet eyes, her face twisted into a mask of grief
“Soldiers,” she said in the same voice. “Stinking gutter sweepings, every one of them. Barbarians, worse than animals.” Her hand swept around the courtyard in an all-encompassing gesture. “Animals don't behave like this. They don't treat their own kind like pieces of inn sensate trash to be…” She fell abruptly silent as tears clogged her voice. She turned away toward the broken gates, her hand pushing at the air as if she would hold off her stunned audience.
Frank stared in complete bewilderment; the girl shrank against him again. Julian, with a muttered execration, shook himself free of the mesmerizing trance of Tamsyn's violent, impassioned speech and ran after her.
“Tamsyn!”