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!”
“Leave me alone!” She turned her head aside, pushing him away as he came up to her.
A silver tear glistened on her cheek, making rills in the dirt as it trickled down to the corner of her mouth.
Her tongue darted, licked up the tear, but it was followed by another and another.
Julian forgot the accusations she'd hurled at his head.
He forgot how much he disliked the brigand in her. He forgot how angry she made him almost every time they came into contact. He was aware only of the power of her distress. He noticed for the first time the blood on her clothes.
“Come,” he said softly. “It's time we left this place. There's nothing anyone can do here until they're surfeited.” He laid a hand on her shoulder to direct her toward the walls of the city.
“Leave me alone!” she repeated, but with less conviction.
Julian shook his head. “I'll carry you if I must, Violette.”
“Espadachin,” she threw at him, but the tears were flowing fast now, and she brushed her arm across her eyes, smudging the grime on her cheeks so she looked like a chimney sweep. But she didn't resist him this time when he put his hand at her waist and ushered her down the street.
“You rescued the girl,” he said, trying to offer her some comfort.
“One among so many!” she shot back. “They're rapping nuns, desecrating the churches, spitting men on their bayonets. I've seen it before.” The last sentence was so low, he had to bend his head to hear it, but the intensity of her pain could be heard as clearly as a clarion call.
Outside the city, fatigue parties of Portuguese soldiers were digging pits for the dead, the bodies piled on carts, waiting to be consigned to the earth as soon as the pits were deep enough.
“You're all as bad as each other,” Tamsyn suddenly renewed her attack. “What possible justification can there be for this? Such slaughter… mindless slaughter.”
“Ask Napoleon,” Julian said dryly. “Ask Philippon. If he'd surrendered the city when it was clear defense was no longer viable, thousands of lives would have been saved. It isn't just us, Violette.”
“I didn't say it was,” she retorted. “It's soldiers. Brutal, bestial-”
“It's war. It makes beasts of men,” he interrupted.
“But what of your father? He made war for the sake of gold… no principle, no-”
“Don't you dare talk of my father, Englishman!” She spun round on him, and her knife was in her hand, her eyes, still brilliant with tears, now glittered with fury. “What would you know of a man like El Baron? You puny, weak-minded English soldier!” She spat the last word as if it was the ultimate insult.
“And don't you dare threaten me, Violette.” Julian grabbed her wrist, twisting until her fingers opened around the handle of the knife and it fell to the ground. “I'm sick to death of being savaged by you.” He pushed her away from him so abruptly that she stumbled to her knees. “I wash my hands of you. Go where you please, just get out of my sight.” He spun on his heel and marched, seething, toward the encampment. But after a few yards his pace slowed. Reluctantly, he glanced over his shoulder.
Tamsyn remained on her knees on the ground, her head bowed, tears falling into the mud where she knelt. She seemed unaware of his departure. For the first time since it had happened, she was reliving in every detail the massacre of Pueblo de St. Pedro. Always before, she'd allowed herself to remember only her father's death-defying fight, her mother lying peacefully in the shadows. But now she saw the rest of it. The murdered babies, the raped women, the tortured men as the flames of the burning village leaped into the sky. And she and Gabriel, two against several hundred, had watched it all from the hilltop, helpless to do anything. And afterward, three days later, when the savages had left the burned buildings and the massacred inhabitants, taking with them what plunder they could find, they had gone down to the village and buried Cecile and the baron and dug a pit for the others, just like the pits being dug here, because the two of them alone couldn't dig enough graves for every one of the dead.
“Come along, you can't stay here.” Julian's voice was gentle as he bent over her. He lifted her up, and she turned her head into his shoulder. He felt her body shaking with her sobs. He carried her to his own tent, told Dobbin brusquely to make himself scarce, and went inside, closing and tying the tent Bap behind them.
“Tell me about it,” he said quietly.
Chapter Nine
JULIAN WALKED THROUGH THE ENCAMPMENT TOWARD THE hospital tents. There were many of his own men to be found there, and a visit from their colonel would do something to raise their spirits, although little for his own. Those of his men not being shovelled into the grave pits or lying mutilated in the hospitals were indulging in the depths of depravity in Badajos. Restoring them to the keen, good-hearted, spirited fighting men that he knew them to be would take the gallows and the triangles-grim work, but Wellington would order it done with the same ruthless pragmatism as he'd permitted their excesses.