Jane Feather - [V Series]

by Violet

  It was half past eleven, an hour and a half after the murderous mayhem had begun, when an officer galloped ventre à terre through the group, his horse foam-flecked around the bit, his flanks lathered.

  Wellington turned as the horse came to a heaving, panting halt beside him. The exchange was short, but it was clear to the bystanders that something had changed.

  “Gentlemen, General Picton’s taken the castle.” Lord March turned from the duke’s side to make the announcement. “He’s withdrawn troops from the trenches to enable him to maintain his position. We should have the city secured shortly.”

  So they were in … or a toehold, at least. Tamsyn mounted her horse amid the murmured jubilation and rode slowly down toward the city walls. They were in, but at what horrendous cost. The bodies were piled high, the screams and groans as loud as ever. For the wounded and dying, Picton’s success came too late. She rode along the walls, heedless of the firing that still continued along the ramparts. The ladders, warm and slippery with blood, still stood against the breaches, littered with severed limbs and tangled corpses.

  Had Julian St. Simon survived? It seemed impossible to imagine anyone still living. But even as she thought this, a great cry of triumph went up from within the city walls, and a bugle sounded an exuberant note of victory. The city of Badajos had finally fallen to the besiegers.

  Cesar threw up his head and pawed the earth frantically at the smell of blood and this new sound. Tamsyn steadied him and he stood still, obedient to his Mameluke training, but he was quivering with fright, nostrils flared, lips drawn back from the bit.

  “All right,” she said softly. “Let’s get out of here.” She turned him away from the city, intending to leave him in Elvas and return on foot, but she hadn’t gone more than a few yards when a man in the green tunic of a rifleman hailed her.

  Tamsyn drew rein as the man, pouring blood from a shattered jaw, stumbled over to her. He was trying to hold his jaw together with one hand, while he gestured frantically into the darkness behind him.

  Tamsyn dismounted swiftly, tearing off the bandanna she wore around her neck. She was used to wounded men and didn’t flinch from offering what assistance she could. The fact that she swooned dead away at the sight of her own blood was a mortifying secret that only Gabriel knew.

  She bound up the man’s jaw with deft, sensitive fingers. “Mount my horse and I’ll take you to the rear.”

  The rifleman shook his head, gesturing again behind him, his eyes as eloquent as his mouth was dumb. She stepped into the darkness and almost tripped over a man groaning in the wet mud. Blood pumped from a gaping wound in his thigh, and he was using both hands to hold the severed flesh together as if it would stanch the flow.

  “Me mate,” he whispered. “Get ’im to the ’ospital. ’E’s got a chance. I’m done fer.”

  “He’s not going to leave you,” she said softly, bending over him. “I’ll use your belt as a tourniquet, and if you can get onto Cesar, we’ll have you with the surgeons in no time.”

  She worked fast, aware even as she did so that the man’s chances of survival were slim. His face was already assuming the ashen cast of a man who looked upon the grave. But his friend wouldn’t leave him, and she understood the power of such loyalties.

  With almost superhuman strength his friend lifted him into his arms and somehow onto Cesar’s back.

  “Mount behind him so you can hold him steady,” Tamsyn instructed, stroking Cesar’s damp neck.

  The rifleman hauled himself up into the high-backed, cushioned saddle. The expression in his eyes said clearly that he didn’t much relish his position atop this restless white steed, but he took a firm hold of his comrade as Tamsyn began to lead the horse toward the rear.

  The way was now thronged with limbers and drays bringing the wounded off the field now that the enfilading fire from the ramparts had ceased. People glanced curiously at the small figure, androgynous in the darkness, trudging along beside the magnificent beast and its wounded riders, but everyone was too occupied to do more than stare in passing.

  There was chaos at the hospital tents, where torches swung from poles casting flickering light on the bloody work below. Tamsyn grabbed the sleeve of a passing orderly.

  “I’ve two wounded men here. Can you take them?”

  He stared at her, distracted, for a minute, then said, “Put ’em down there. We’ll get to ’em when we can.”

  “One of them needs immediate attention,” Tamsyn insisted, her eyes flashing. “I didn’t bring him off the field for him to die in the mud within reach of a surgeon.”

  “What’s going on here?” A man in the blood-streaked apron of a surgeon paused beside them as he was hurrying along the stretchers, giving orders for the disposition of their occupants.

  “I’ve two men in need of immediate attention,” Tamsyn declared. “And this dolt told me to leave them to die in the mud.”

  The surgeon blinked and stared in astonishment. “And just who might you be?”

  “The commander in chief knows who I am,” she said smartly. “And I’m a friend—a close friend—of Colonel, Lord St. Simon of the Sixth. And while I’m bandying words with this village idiot, other men are dying out there because I’m not bringing them in!” She gestured to the hapless orderly with an expression of acute disgust and snapped, “Help them down.”

  The surgeon examined the two men as they came off Cesar. “One walking wounded,” he pronounced. “Take him to the second tent.”

  The rifleman with the bandaged jaw shook his head, pain flaring in his eyes and indicated his comrade with the same urgency he’d shown Tamsyn before.

  “All right, I’ll see to him,” the surgeon said with a hint of impatience. “I can’t promise much, but that leg will have to come off.… Hey, you there, bring that stretcher.” He hailed two orderlies, running past at the double.

  They stopped and came over, lifting the wounded man onto the stretcher. Only when he saw his friend carried inside to the faint hope to be found in the butchery of the tents did the other rifleman go off with the orderly, sticking his hand out to Tamsyn in mute gratitude before he did so.

  “Looks like we have work to do, Cesar,” Tamsyn said, swinging into the saddle. “I know you’ll hate it, but we can’t stand around twiddling our thumbs.”

  She rode back toward the city, looking for wounded who could manage this awkward but speedy form of transportation.

  Within the city walls Julian St. Simon, miraculously unscathed but blackened from head to toe from gunfire, stood in the central square and took stock. He’d been at the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo three months before and, horrendous though that had been, it had been nothing compared to this April night.

  “Julian! Thank God, man.” Frank Frobisher came running across the square. “I saw you go down at the San Jose bastion, but I couldn’t get back to you in the crush.” The captain had lost his hat, his tunic was ripped, and an oozing gash ran from one scorched eyebrow down to the corner of his mouth.

  “I lost my footing, nothing more dramatic than that,” Julian said, clapping his friend’s arm in a wordless gesture. “Tim’s gone to the rear. Piece of shrapnel in his eye.”

  “And Deerbourne’s fallen,” Frank said, his expression bleak. “And George Castleton and … oh, so many others.” He looked around the deserted square. The inhabitants of Badajos were behind locked doors, not showing their faces to the victors. Sporadic gunfire still sounded from the ramparts.

  “The men are in a savage mood,” he said somberly. “If the Peer allows them to fall out, there’ll be a sack worse than Ciudad Rodrigo.”

  “He will,” Julian asserted, clasping the back of his neck, arching it against his hand in a weary gesture. “They fought like tigers, they saw their comrades slaughtered, he’ll give them their revenge.”

  Both men looked up at the sky where the evening star was fading fast. “If Wellington had hanged the garrison of Ciudad Rodrigo, he’d have saved thousands of lives today,” J
ulian said in a deadened voice. “Philippon would never have held out here if he faced death at defeat.”

  Frank shrugged. “A trifle medieval, though, Julian, putting a defeated garrison to the sword.”

  “And you think what’s going to happen here will be civilized?” Julian demanded. “The men are going to go to the devil, and we’ll have the devil’s own work to whip them into shape again at the end of such an orgy.”

  Frank made no response to this truth.

  It was midmorning when the French garrison was sent under escort to Elvas and the English troops were fallen out. They poured into the city, forcing their way through the clogged breaches, exploding into the city streets, a night of bleeding informing a savage bloodlust that had been given license for unbridled satisfaction.

  Two hours after dawn Tamsyn had stabled Cesar, exhausted but docile after his hours of labor, and had fallen into her bed at Senhora Braganza’s cottage just as she was, muddy and bloodstained, refusing the widow’s pressing offers of food and hot water.

  She slept for five hours and awoke refreshed and alert, but with the unmistakable sense that something evil was afoot. She swung out of bed and went to the window. The street below was almost deserted, except for a couple of peasants standing in the shade of a wall. They weren’t talking, merely leaning against the wall puffing on their pipes.

  Tamsyn went downstairs. There was no sign of Senhora Braganza, and she went out into the street, still in her filthy clothes. The sounds from Badajos carried over the still morning air. It was a raucous cacophony. Shouts, crashes, screams, intermingling with odd bursts of music from pipe and drum.

  She crossed her arms and shivered. She’d heard such sounds before.

  Senhora Braganza came hurrying down the streets carrying a milk churn. In a voluble flood of Portuguese, she swept her lodger into the kitchen, sat her down, and prepared an omelette fragrant with crushed thyme and rosemary and a pot of strong, bitter coffee.

  Tamsyn ate mechanically; then she rose to her feet, thanked her hostess with an almost absent smile, and walked back out into the street, heedless of the renewed offers of hot water and clean raiment coming from the cottage kitchen.

  Her feet took her without any signals from her brain across the pontoon bridge toward Badajos.

  The encampment was almost deserted except for the hospital tents where the frantic activity continued unabated, but there were fewer drays and limbers bringing in the wounded now. Once the order to fall out had been given, the men had abandoned their injured comrades for the orgiastic pleasures to be found in the sack of Badajos.

  Tamsyn entered the city through one of the breaches. Someone in the ditch below was calling for water, a low, continuous supplication. She stopped, looking for the sufferer, but couldn’t tell among the tangle of bodies who might be alive. Part of her knew it was madness, but something impelled her onward into the city.

  A group of soldiers raced past her, their arms loaded with goods plundered from a store whose smashed door bore mute witness to the looting. The sounds of drunken singing came from an alley, where another group sat around a split casket of wine, scooping the wine into their mouths with hands or their shakos, their muskets lying disregarded at their feet. They looked up as Tamsyn came toward them, their mouths stained red, their eyes unfocused, but they were in a benign mood and only called out a few jocular gibes as she went past.

  She’d left her rifle and bandolier in Elvas and carried only a knife at her belt, but it occurred to her that if her male attire didn’t fool the men, her filthy, bloodstained appearance was probably sufficient protection. Her only jewelry was the locket at her neck, and that was hidden beneath her shirt.

  She walked on through the cobbled streets, hearing the crack of muskets above a confused babble of screams, and shouts of laughter and rage. Somewhere a drum was beating and a pipe trilled in accompaniment. A nun in a torn black habit ran out of a church, pursued by a laughing, shouting troop of soldiers, tunics and shirts unbuttoned. One of them flourished a gold embroidered altar cloth like a flag of triumph; another carried two massive silver candlesticks.

  The nun dodged sideways into a doorway, and Tamsyn glimpsed her terrified face beneath her cowl before the barred door behind her opened and she was dragged inside to relative safety. The men came charging after her, stopped when they couldn’t find her, and milled around in befuddlement, shaking their heads as if they could solve the mystery in that way. Then someone tossed a wineskin to his companion, and they turned in a body as if obeying some collective instinct, surging back toward the church.

  Tamsyn shuddered, anger and hideous memory intermingling now to burn with a fierce, consuming flame. Her hand was on her knife, and she wished she had her rifle, not because she felt threatened herself, but because her rage was murderous as she saw what soldiers were doing to the inhabitants of Badajos. There were officers here and there, trying to stop the worst of the excesses, but the men, in the grip of wine and victory, were beyond their control.

  Tamsyn saw two officers remonstrating with a ragtag group of infantrymen who were conducting an auction in the street. One of the items on the block was a young girl. A soldier fired his musket over the head of one of the officers, another leveled his weapon at the heart of the other. They were two against twenty drunken savages and were forced to retreat while Tamsyn watched from a doorway.

  They turned and left, and she couldn’t blame them, but she stayed herself, waiting until the girl was sold for a ruby the size of a hen’s egg and, amid gales of laughter, tossed into the audience, into the arms of a burly rifleman with an eye patch.

  The man carried off his prize, pushing through the crowd, making for a square at the end of the alley. Tamsyn followed, her deadly rage now focused on this one episode. She couldn’t stop the wholesale savagery, but she would stop this.

  The square was an aimless tumult as soldiers wandered in and out of the stores, where doors had been smashed, the iron bars ripped from ground-floor windows, goods spilling out onto the street.

  The girl was keening like a lost child, and Tamsyn increased her speed, dogging the soldier’s footsteps, her eyes sweeping the ground for a weapon more substantial than her knife. Two men were playing dice, sitting on a doorstep amid the ruins of a draper’s store. Their muskets were on the ground beside them. Tamsyn darted sideways, grabbed up one of the firearms, and was off and running down the street, ignoring the outraged yells behind her.

  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, clearly 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, niña,” 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 y
oung 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.