It looked as though the situation was going to turn nasty.
"Kristina," he said in a low voice, "I think I ought to get you away from here."
"You'd do much better," came the reply as tart as lemon-juice, "to make these civil guards go and help the poor girl before those men start to gang-rape her!"
Accustomed to more conventional language from well-bred young women, Don Miguel was taken aback and so distracted he failed to witness the next development. A sudden cry drew his attention back to the feathered girl, and he saw in amazement that one of the workmen was lying prostrate on the hard ground and she was in the process of hurling another of her assailants over her shoulder in a perfect wrestling throw.
"Oh, lovely!" Kristina clapped her hands, then caught Don Miguel by the arm. "Come on, let's go and cheer her!"
But the ferment of her earlier remark was working in his mind by now, and the premonition was coming clearer.
Never seen a costume anything like hers before . . .
What was he doing standing here like a petrified dummy? He started to shoulder his way towards the feathered girl as violently and rapidly as he dared, ignoring the complaints of those other bystanders he had to push aside. Somehow Kristina kept up with him.
By the time he made it to the clear patch of ground surrounding the girl, two more men had joined the first on the pavement, bruised and cursing, and the girl was spitting what were obviously insults at them. Her voice was almost as deep and strong as a man's despite the fact that she was shorter than Kristina. Listening, Don Miguel felt the hairs on his nape start to prickle.
The girl was small and thin, but wiry. Now he was close enough he could see that she had black hair dressed in stiff wings either side of her head. Her complexion was olive-sallow. And the words she was uttering sounded like -- like , not the same as -- the language of Cathay.
Don Miguel was as well-acquainted with the costumes, customs and languages of the major civilisations of history as any Licentiate of similar experience, and better than most. He could make himself understood in Attic Greek and Quechua, Phoenician and Latin, Persian and Aramaic. He could also recognise the characteristic vowel-consonant clusters of many other tongues which he did not speak fluently. And what the girl was hissing at her attackers did not fit any language he could call to mind.
The most obvious and most logical explanation for her presence was that she must be a legitimate visitor to Londres -- perhaps a member of the Cathayan ambassador's train. Under the influence of a brainstorm, or having taken some foreign drug or potent liquor, she might have lost her senses and run off . . .
But in that case you'd expect her to be a mere dancing-girl or geisha. You wouldn't expect her to be capable of throwing burly workmen aside as though they were straw-filled dummies.
It simply didn't figure!
In his worried concentration, he had taken another couple of paces in the girl's direction, and the second was one too many. Suddenly, without warning, she screamed and hurled herself at him.
He reacted barely in time. She was not merely a wrestler, he discovered to his dismay. She was a killing fighter, fantastic though that was in view of her sex. Her first move had been to launch a crippling kick at his crotch, and the best he could manage was to twist aside so that her toe struck his thigh instead. Even so, the force of the kick caused him to lose his footing. He had to go down on one knee, fending her off from below, and she seized his right arm at wrist and elbow and gave it such a violent wrench he thought she might dislocate the joint. Pivoting frantically on his pinioned arm and knee, he swept his other leg through a half-circle and knocked her feet from under her. She was unbelievably strong for her build, but she was light, and that was something she could do nothing about.
Losing her grip on his arm, she tumbled sideways, rolled free, and came back at him with a lightning-fast leap, head aimed for a butt in his belly. In his turn he rolled, hoping with a distant corner of his mind that street-dirt was not going to foul his cloak and breeches too badly for him to return to the palace, and with joined legs flung her slamming over his head to measure her length behind him. Recovering faster than he could, she wheeled around and tried to sink her teeth into his thigh as he scrambled to prevent her rising again. Clumsily he fell on her, and pinned her wrists and one leg to the ground in an improvised but serviceable hold which exploited his superior weight. Then, by main force, he started to bring her wrists together.
She said nothing, but set her jaw grimly and stared up at him, straining to dislodge his grip. During that long moment Don Miguel found time to hope prayerfully that there were no Licentiates or Probationers in the crowd around who might recognise him behind his half-mask. If there was anything more undignified that a member of the Society could do than wrestle with a woman in the middle of Empire Circle, he couldn't imagine it.
All right, there was no alternative, however much it went against his principles. Woman or no, he was going to have to hurt her. He shifted his fingers on her wrists and stabbed down at the ganglia.
The shock went all the way through her. She forgot about resistance for long enough to let him seize both wrists in one hand and cramp them together, still applying the agonising pressure. With the hand thus released he sought the carotid arteries in her neck and scientifically began to strangle her.
In fifteen seconds she was limp. He gave her a little longer to ensure that she would not recover too quickly, and then sat wearily on his heels, wiping sweat from his forehead. Mingled now with the encouraging cries of the crowd, of which he had barely been aware during the struggle, he now heard voices of complaint directed at his "ruthless" treatment of the feathered girl.
Ruthless! Those peopte should have had to tackle her!
But the situation must be regulated straight away. Where the blazes were those civil guards he'd seen standing near the bonfire? As the saying went, the only time you couldn't find a guard was when you wanted one --
Ah, here they were, officiously thrusting their way among the crowd to the accompaniment of good-humoured mockery. He got to his feet.
"Make these people stand back!" he ordered crisply. "Get a hackney-carriage and help me load thig girl into it!"
The civil guards bridled. One of them, bristling his mustachios, demanded, "Who do you think you are, then?" He dropped his hand to his sword-hilt.
Don Miguel drew a deep breath. "Do as I say! I'm Don Miguel Navarro of the Society of Time, and this is Society business. Jump to it, you fools!"
The scar across his face made him look savage and very much a man to be obeyed, but it was the talisman-like name of the Society which caused the guards to blanch and comply, and imposed a startled hush on the crowd followed by a ripple of comment.
Taking off his cloak, Don Miguel laid it over the girl on the ground. She was stirring a little already, though still a long way from regaining consciousness. It would be advisable to tie her hands and ankles, he decided. The kerchief he had in his pocket would serve for the former. When he looked around for something longer to go round her legs, something dangled before his eyes. Glancing up, he saw that Kristina had eluded the civil guards and was offering him the girdle of her gown. He took it with a word of thanks and knotted it fast.
"Who is she?" Kristina demanded. "Why did she attack you when you hadn't threatened her?"
"I don't know who she is," Don Miguel grunted. "But if she's what I think she might be, there's going to be the devil to pay tonight."
IV
In the dark padded interior of the hackney-carriage they sat mostly in silence, staring at the cloak-shrouded form of the girl laid along the opposite seat as successive scythe-sweeps of light from roadside lanterns moved over her.
Suddenly Kristina shivered and pressed up against Don Miguel. She said, "Miguel, what did you mean when you said there'd be the devil to pay tonight? You sounded so fierce, I was frightened."
Already Don Miguel regretted that he had spoken. More than that, he regretted having
acted with so little to go on -- yet what alternative had there been? If his vague, ill-formulated, horrifying suspicions were correct, and the girl had been taken into custody by the ordinary civil guards and some unimaginative local justice of the peace had stumbled on her origins . . .
Potentially it would be like opening a second Pandora's Box, and perhaps this time there might not even be hope left at the bottom.
Of course, far more likely was that the mystery would be satisfactorily explained in everyday terms tomorrow morning, and he'd earn himself a severe reprimand from the General Officers. Right now, he hardly dared guess at the outcome.
He said apologetically, "If you don't mind, Kristina, I'd rather not tell you any more until I've had a chance to investigate."
She glanced at him, lips a little parted as though about to ask another question, but decided not to and merely clung closer than ever at his side. He stroked her arm comfortingly and wished that the driver would hurry.
This feathered girl frightened him! Kristina had been right about her costume -- it was nothing remotely like any that he'd seen pictured from anywhere in the modern world. Worse still, it was like nothing he'd chanced across in his study of history. And as to the language she'd spoken . . .
He choked the thought off with an effort as the carriage wheeled with a grating of iron tyres on cobbles and drew up in the forecourt of the Society's Headquarters Office.
Like the Commander's palace, it was set in large and handsome grounds; like the palace, too, it was dominated by a tall tower housing time apparatus. There the resemblance ended. It was completely in darkness tonight, but for a single yellow square of a window on the ground floor near the main door and two flambeaux in sconces under the porch.
Jumping from the step of the carriage almost before it had halted, Don Miguel uttered an oath under his breath. Tonight, naturally, there might be only the duty Probationer in the entire building -- but also, just possibly, the man he needed to see more desperately than anyone in the world.
"Get the girl out!" he rapped to the driver. "I'll have the door opened."
The man nodded and clambered down from his high seat, while the horses shifted uneasily in the traces. Don Miguel started up the dark steps.
The door opened before he reached it, and there stood a young man blinking diffidently in the light of the flambeaux. He was twenty or less, snub-nosed, blue-eyed, below Don Miguel in height but well enough built.
"Are you alone?" Don Miguel flung at him.
"Ah -- yes, Licentiatel" the young man said. "I'm Probationer Jones, sir, on duty tonight of course. I believe your honour is Don Miguel Navarro. What service can I do you?"
"You're completely alone? No one else is here at all?"
" Absolutely no one, sir," Jones declared, eyes wide with surprise at the force of the question.
Don Miguel's heart sank. So the agony of apprehension must drag on longer yet. Still, there was no help for that. He passed a weary hand across his forehead.
"There's a girl in my carriage," he said. "She ought not to be here, or anywhere else, for that matter. I'm having her brought inside."
Jones gave a sigh. "Very well, sir. I presume you'll want a suite in the quarters upstairs, and privacy -- "
The look on Don Miguel's face made him break off, stuttering with confusion.
"Have members of the Society required such services of you?" Don Miguel demanded.
"Uh . . . " Jones's embarrassment was acute. "Not me personally, sir. But I believe other probationers. Uh . . ."
"If anyone ever tries it on you, report him to your Chief Instructor. It's no part of your duties to act as a pander. Understood?" Without waiting for an answer Don Miguel swung around and discovered that Jones's mistake was a very natural one, for Kristina was clearly in view standing by the door of the carriage, while the driver was still half-hidden in shadow as he wrestled to lift the cloak-enveloped form of the feathered girl.
"Help the driver with his burden," he snapped at Jones. "Show him to a room inside where there's a couch or something he can put her on."
"At once, sir," Jones said, and hurried down the steps with his cheeks as red as fire.
"Kristina," Don Miguel said in a low voice, moving close to her, "I'm sorry to have had to drag you here. But it looks as though I can't find anyone to help me unless I go back to the palace. So at least I can return you to your father now."
"You have to go back soon anyway, don't you?" she countered. "It's gone eleven -- nearly a quarter past!"
"Is it?" Don Miguel exclaimed in dismay. "Then I'm an idiot! I came here on a fool's errand. You see, I must have some advice from Father Ramón, and thought he might still be in his office here -- but of course, if it's so late, he'll already be on his way to the Commander's palace. My wits must be woolgathering. Lord! Lord! What a mess!"
He pulled himself together with an effort. "Get back in the carriage, then. I have one more thing to attend to before we leave."
He spun on his heel and dashed indoors.
When he came back, instead of rejoining Kristina inside the carriage, he scrambled up to the driver's box and seized the reins. The horses whinnied and leaned on the traces, and Kristina cried out in surprise.
"Sorry!" Don Miguel shouted down to her over the grind and clatter of the wheels. "But that feathered girl is far too dangerous to leave in the charge of one young man like Jones! So I paid the driver to stay and help stand guard. Don't worry -- I'm not a bad driver, though I say so myself!"
The forced jocularity of his tone concealed an ever-growing sense of alarm. He had told Kristina only one of the reasons why he had needed to go into the building. In addition, he had hastened up the tower in which the time-halls were located, and made sure that the great locks on their doors had not been tampered with. And they had not. Jones was indeed alone as he had claimed.
There had been the slim possibility that some drunken Probationers, or even corrupt Licentiates, might have taken the chance offered by the absence of everyone except Jones to secure unlawful access to the time apparatus. The consequences of that kind of prank would have been bad enough, but rectifiable.
Now it seemed virtually certain that something far worse must have happened.
A cold wind was blowing along the river now; their route followed the embankment. He shivered and damned the impatience which had prevented him from reclaiming the cloak he'd used to wrap around the feathered girl.
Driving like a fury, he brought the carriage swiftly to broad, straight Holy Cross Avenue -- the last portion of their route on the north side of the river. At the next bridge they would have to swing right and cross over. And there, at the approach to the bridge, there was some sort of commotion. At first he took it for the expected crowd of people coming across from the south to attend Mass at midnight in the cathedrals of the city; it was not until the carriage was already engulfed in a wave of pale-faced, terrified men, women and children that he heard the near-screams of civil guards trying to keep order and realised that this was nothing so commonplace. The whole roadway was flooded with fugitives in the grip of panic; the windows of nearby houses were being flung up as the occupants heard the racket outside, and the air was full of a confused moaning.
Kristina leaned from the carriage window as he slowed perforce to a crawl. "Miguel, what's happening?" she cried.
"I don't know!" he answered curtly. "Guard! Guard!"
A civil guard on horseback, breasting the crowd as though fording a river in spate, forged slowly in their direction, waving a gauntleted hand. When he came close enough, he called out, "You'll have to go around another way, your honour! It's impossible to get past here!"
Don Miguel stared, cursing the murky darkness which the lanterns barely relieved. Under the bridge, too, there was a disturbance; he heard the loud splashing of water.
"What's going on?" he bawled.
"No one seems to be sure, your honour! Some say it's an invasion, some say rioting -- but either way, across t
he river there it's total chaos!" The guard sounded frightened. "Men's bodies have been seen floating downstream, stuck full of arrows, they say! And there are fires!"
Shriller and more piercing than the general tumult, there was suddenly a scream from near the bridge, and people began incontinently trying to run. Ignoring the guard and Don Miguel, they surged past the carriage, making it rock.
The guard wheeled his horse and went off shouting, trying to restore some calm to the crowd with reassuring lies. There was no hope of forcing the carriage nearer to the bridge now, short of running down the people who were in its way, and the best Don Miguel could manage was by jerking the reins to sidle the horses on to the verge of the road. Even to cover those few paces took a heartbreakingly long time. He set the brake and leapt down from the box.