The village folk crowded out of their cottages when the procession entered the pueblo, bisected by the mountain path as its single street. Ragged children ran onto the path, shouting and waving, black-clad women stood in doorways, shawls drawn over their mouths and noses, black eyes watchful above. Men appeared in the gateways to small malodorous farmyards where scrawny chickens scratched in the dirt fighting for scraps with grubby goats.
A stream trickled down the mountainside into the middle of the pueblo where a rough dam had been built, forming a deep pool to provide the village's water supply.
Tamsyn hailed a man rather more prosperous looking than the others, standing in the doorway of a relatively substantial cottage. “He's the village elder,” she explained. “It's his barn and byre we can use… for a consideration, of course.”
Gabriel dismounted and went over to him.
“He won't negotiate with me,” Tamsyn explained to the colonel, “because I'm dressed like a woman. If I'd been dressed as a partisan, he would have treated me as an equal.”
Julian merely raised an eyebrow and shrugged.
“At least a riding habit is easier to wear than a dress,” Tamsyn persevered, trying to elicit some conversational response. “I'm wearing britches underneath, so it feels almost normal. But it's still a disadvantage in situations like this.”
“Get used to it,” he advised as he'd done once before, choosing to respond to her light observations as if they were complaints. “Women don't act like men in English society… or not if they wish to be accepted.”
Tamsyn gave up trying to conciliate. “The baron considered Cecile to be his equal in everything,” she said fiercely.
Julian looked politely incredulous. “Then he was a very unusual man.” He swung to the ground and lifted Tamsyn down before she could leap with her usual agility from Cesar's great height. He closed his mind to the feel of her body in his hands, to the scent of her skin, which made his head spin with voluptuous memory.
“Women also allow men to assist them with certain actions, like mounting and dismounting, alighting from carriages, and taking their seats,” he informed her with the air of a conscientious tutor, setting her firmly on her feet.
“Oh, pah!” Tamsyn said disgustedly. “There's nothing the matter with my legs.”
“No, but you must learn to pretend that you go along with the myth of the gentler sex and show that you appreciate the little gentlemanly courtesies.”
Tamsyn's expression was one of acute distaste, and Julian began to enjoy himself “Unless, of course, you'd prefer to forget the whole thing,” he added nonchalantly.
Tamsyn stuck her tongue out at him in a childish gesture that somehow expressed exactly how she felt. The colonel laughed, infuriating her even more, and strolled over to where Gabriel and the farmer were concluding their negotiations. He stood slapping his gloves into the palm of one hand, looking around the village, assessing its strategic advantages.
“If we post pickets at either end of the street, we should be safe from marauders approaching conventionally.”
“Aye, but there's always the way down from above, Gabriel said, glancing up at the mountainside towering above the village. “We'll need to guard the byre itself I'll take the first watch with three of the men. You take the second… if it's all right with you,” he added, almost as an afterthought.
“Who's likely to know what we're carrying?”
“No one or everyone.” Gabriel frowned. “Word spreads like wildfire in these passes, colonel. And there are eyes everywhere. They may not know what we've got, but they'll know by now that it's worth defending, and presumably, therefore, worth stealing.”
“Well, let's make camp as we can.” Julian turned back to the mule train and saw that Josefa and Tamsyn were already carrying supplies into the barnyard, Tamsyn kicking aside the skirts of her riding habit with an irritable mutter. Suddenly she stopped, dumped her burden onto the ground, and swiftly unhooked the skirt of her habit, stepping out of it with visible relief, revealing her lower limbs clad in soft leather britches. She glanced across at him with a hint of defiance as she bundled the skirt under her arm.
He chose to pretend he hadn't noticed, strolling back to the mule train.
Tamsyn and Josefa occupied themselves lighting a fire in the barnyard and preparing food. Julian, busy with the men bestowing the treasure and organizing its defense, was surprised how willingly. Tamsyn assumed domestic responsibilities. He'd expected her to be working with the men, leaving the female side of the operations to Josefa. But the two women chatted cheerfully over the fire, and soon the heady aroma of coffee rose on the evening air.
He went over to them. “Something smells good.” “Polenta,” Tamsyn said, looking up from the pot she was stirring with a great wooden spoon. “There's a cask of wine to be broached. Would you do it? The men'll be thirsty… Oh, it's all right, Gabriel's doing it.”
Josefa muttered something as she shook a pan of mushrooms over the fire, and Tamsyn glanced quickly at her. “Oh, dear.”
“What is it?”
“Well, Josefa's afraid Gabriel's going to enjoy himself this evening. She says it's been at least a month since he let himself go with a cask of wine, and he's got good company for it.”
“He wouldn't drink himself stupid with that treasure to guard, surely?”
“Oh, he doesn't ever drink himself stupid,” Tamsyn said. ''Just aggressive. If you get on the wrong side of him. The treasure will be as safe with Gabriel drunk as sober, I assure you.”
“He wants to take the first watch.”
“Then he is intending to get soused,” Tamsyn said with conviction. “He plans it so that he'll be able to sleep it off and be good as new in the morning. Stir this, will you? It mustn't stick. I have to find the outhouse.”
Julian found the spoon thrust unceremoniously into his hand as Tamsyn skipped hastily over the cobbles in the direction of the pueblo's communal outhouse on the outskirts of the village.
Gabriel came over with two tankards of red wine.
“Drink, Colonel? Santa Maria, but I've a thirst on me tonight.”
“Thanks.” Julian took the tankard. “And I gather you intend to slake it.”
Gabriel looked over to where Josefa, still muttering, was slicing onions. “The old woman's been talking, eh? Well, it does a man good once in a while. I'd invite you to join me, Colonel, but you'll need your sleep in the first watch, and I'll need mine in the second.” He chuckled hugely and drained his tankard with one interminable swallow.
“It's not really my style,” Julian said. “If those villains of yours pass out, we'll be in poor shape to defend ourselves.”
“Oh, I'll not be drinking with them,” Gabriel said.
“They'll have a glass or two with supper, but they'll keep themselves sober or feel my whip at their backs, and they know it. No,” he said happily, “I've discovered some friends in the village. A little dice, a little card play… relaxes a man.”
Julian raised an eyebrow but offered no contradiction to this. The evening would bring what it would bring.
After supper a group of men drifted in from the village, rolling another cask of wine between them. They greeted Gabriel with much backslapping and shoulder punching before they settled down in a corner of the barnyard to play dice on an upturned rain barrel.
Tamsyn came back from the stream with Josefa, where they'd been cleaning the supper bowls and trenchers. “He's well away,” she commented, stowing the dishes in a saddlebag with a deft domestic efficiency that again surprised Julian. Josefa was still muttering, casting black looks at the men in the corner of the yard. Then she shook out a blanket and spread it on the cobbles, hauled a saddlebag onto the blanket as a pillow, and promptly lay down, drawing her various shawls, mantillas, and cloak around her.