Ash: A Secret History

by Mary Gentle

  Ash curled herself tighter against the cold. Her breath left dampness on the wool of her hood, by her mouth. “No. Joscelyn van Mander came in this season, with a hundred and thirty men; he never made himself part of the company; it made sense to bounce him back out again.” She sought the boy’s face in the dim light, seeing his flaring brows, his unpremeditated scowl. “Most of the disaffected men around Geraint have been with me for two or three years now. I’ll try to give them something of what they want.”

  “They don’t want to be stuck in a town with a bloody big army on the outside!”

  The guy-ropes creaked. The tent wall flapped.

  “I’ll find a compromise for Geraint and his sympathisers.”

  “Why don’t you just order them?” Rickard demanded.

  She felt her lips move in a wry smile. “Because they may say ‘no’! There isn’t much difference between five hundred soldiers, and five hundred refugee peasants. You’ve never seen a company stop being a company. You don’t want to. I’ll find some way of satisfying their gripes – but we’re still going to Dijon.” She grinned at him. “Okay; read.”

  The young man held the book up to the taper.

  “It isn’t that bad a tactical situation,” she added, a moment later. “Dijon’s a big city, must have ten thousand people in it, even without what’s left of Charles’s army; the Faris can’t have her people cover every yard of the walls. She’ll be covering roads, gates. If the sergeants can get us moving and keep us moving, we’ll get inside, maybe without fighting at all.”

  Rickard rested his finger on one illuminated page, and closed the cover of the book. The tallow candle gave hardly enough light to show his expression.

  He said suddenly, “I don’t want to be Anselm’s squire. I want to be your squire. I’ve been your page. Make me your squire!”

  “‘Captain Anselm’,” Ash corrected automatically. She reached over her shoulder, hauling goatskins and sheepskins over her fully dressed body.

  “If I don’t get to be your squire, they’ll say it’s because I’m not good enough. I’ve been your page again since Bertrand ran off. Since we found you in Carthage! I fought at the field at Auxonne!”

  On that outraged protest, his voice slid up the scale to squeak, and down to croak. Ash flinched with embarrassment. She snuggled the sides of her hood back, ears bitten with cold, so that she could hear him more clearly. He rose and banged about in the dark tent for some minutes, in silence.

  “You’re good enough,” Ash said.

  “You’re not going to do it!” He sounded suspiciously close to tears.

  Ash’s voice, when it came, was tired. “You didn’t fight Auxonne. You’ve seen what it’s like in the line, Rickard, you just don’t know what it’s like.”

  The edges of swords and axes slice the air, in her mind:

  “It’s a storm of razors.”

  “I’m going to fight. I’ll go to Captain Anselm.”

  Ash heard no pique in his tone, only a sullen, excited determination. She shifted herself up on her elbow to look at Rickard.

  “He’ll take you,” she said. “I’ll tell you why. Out of every hundred men we get, ten or fifteen will know what to do in the field when the shit hits the fan, without being told, either by instinct or training. Seventy men or so will fight once someone else trains them, and then tells them how and where. And another ten or fifteen will run around like headless chickens no matter what you train into ‘em or tell ’em.”

  In the line of battle, she has grabbed men by their liveries and thrown them bodily back into the fight.

  “I’ve watched you train,” she finished, “you’re a natural swordsman, and you’re one of the ten or fifteen any commander picks out and goes, ‘you’re my sub-commander’. I want you alive the next two years, Rickard, so I can give you a lance to command when the time comes. Try not to get killed before that.”

  “Boss!”

  The warmth from the furs hit some level that allowed her body to stop shivering. A wave of tiredness rose up, drowning her; she barely had time to register Rickard’s pleased, inarticulate, aggressive surprise; then sleep took her down like a fall from a horse, no impact, only oblivion.

  She was aware that she rolled on the pallet, under the blankets.

  Something gave, under her body.

  She heard a hollow crack, a noise like a man putting his foot through a waxed leather bottle. Close to her. She stirred, heard guards and dogs beyond the canvas walls, shifted one arm sideways, and felt some obstruction give under her ribs.

  The solidness cracked, broke with a wet noise.

  Ash slapped her hand across the pallet, down by her side. Something slick and solid impaled itself on her thumb. She felt the nail resisted by obstruction, then whatever it was split, squelchy as a ripe plum. Her hand became suddenly slimy and wet.

  She smelled a familiar odour: a sweet richness, mixed with the excremental stink of battle, thought blood and opened her eyes.

  A baby lay half-under her body. She had rolled over and crushed it. Its tight swaddling-bands were sopping with something dark, seeping down from the head. Its fuzz-haired scalp ran red. White bone glinted, the child’s skull fractured from ear to ear, the back of it crushed where she had rolled over. Her hand rested over its face, her thumb deep in a ruined eye-socket.

  The other eye blinked at her. So light a brown as to be amber, gold.

  A baby, no more than a few weeks old.

  “Rickard!”

  The scream left her mouth before she knew she had given voice. Dizzy, blackness seething in front of her eyes, she dug her heels into the bedding and pushed herself bodily back, off the pallet, on to the mud, away.

  Boots sucked out of mud, outside the tent-flap; the tent-laces gave way to a dagger-slash.

  A dark figure ducked into the tent, and Ash saw that his hair was golden, although it was Rickard.

  “You killed our baby,” he said.

  “It isn’t mine.” Ash tried to reach out and pull the sleeping furs over the bundled body, but she didn’t have the strength to drag them to her. The baby’s skin was fine, soft; the tent smelled like a hard-fought field. “Fernando! I didn’t kill it! It isn’t mine!”

  The boy turned and left the tent. In another man’s voice, he said, “You were careless. Only a moment, and you could have saved it.”

  “They beat me—”

  Ash reached out, but the cold dead skin of the child felt hot under her fingers, as if her fingers burned. She scrabbled back across the floor of the pavilion, and abruptly sprang up and ran out of the door.

  White snow shone under a blue sky.

  No night sky. Noon: and a bright sun.

  There were no tents.

  Ash walked into an empty wood. The snow sucked at her bare feet, pulling her down. She kept slipping, landing heavily; struggling to her feet. Snow plastered every twig, every leafless winter bud, every crooked branch. She floundered, wet, bitten with the chill, her hands red and blue in the freezing whiteness.

  She heard grunting.

  She stopped moving. Carefully, she turned her head.

  A line of wild boar rooted through the snow. Their hard snouts ploughed up the whiteness, leaving troughs of black leaf-mould exposed. They softly grunted. Ash saw their teeth. No tusks. Sows. Razorback sows, moving between the trees, in the bright sunshine. Their winter coats were thick and white, they smelled of pig-dung, and their long lashes shaded their limpid eyes against the light.

  A dozen or more striped boarlets ran between their mothers’ legs.

  “They’re too young!” Ash cried, crawling on hands and knees through the snow. “You shouldn’t have littered them yet. It’s too early. Winter’s here; they’ll die; you had them at the wrong time! Take them back.”

  Snow fell from branches on to snow on briars, white hoops against the trunks of trees. The boars moved slowly, methodically, ignoring Ash. She sat back in the snow, on her knees. The stripy little ones, about the size of a fresh-b
aked loaf, trotted past her with their stringy tails whipping against the snow, their chisel-hooves kicking up whiteness.

  “They’ll die! They’ll die!”

  A red-breasted bird flew down, landing beside the biggest sow’s forefoot. She nosed towards the robin momentarily. Her head swung back to root under the snow. The robin’s beak dipped for worms.

  The boarlets strayed further from the herd, into the white forest.

  “They’ll die!” Ash felt her throat tighten. She began to sob, wretchedly; felt the muscles of her throat moving, felt her eyes dry and without tears; felt the hard stuffed canvas of the palliasse under her back.

  The tallow candle had burned down to a stump.

  Rickard made a huddled lump, sleeping across the door.

  “They’ll die,” Ash whispered, looking for orange-and-brown striped flanks, for trotting hooves, and for brown eyes shaded by delicate long, long lashes. She smelled the air for blood, or dung.

  “I didn’t kill it!”

  I miscarried. I was beaten, and I miscarried.

  Her eyes remained dry. If there was weeping, she could not do it. Aches and cold and bodily discomfort reasserted themselves.

  A voice said, – Making friends with the shy, fierce wild boar.

  Ash relaxed back against the skins and furs. “Shit. God sent me a nightmare, Godfrey. My hands…”

  She strained to see them, in the dimmest light. She could not see if her fingers were stained with anything. She lifted them cautiously to her nostrils: sniffed.

  “Why does He want me to see dead babies?”

  – I don’t know, child. You’re presumptuous, perhaps, to think He troubles Himself to trouble your sleep.

  “You sound troubled.” Ash frowned. She stared around, in the all-but-dark; could not see the priest.

  – I am troubled.

  “Godfrey?”

  – I am dead, child.

  “Are you dead, Godfrey?”

  – The boars are a dream, child. I am dead.

  “Then why are you talking to me?”

  In the part of her that listens, the part of her soul that she is used to sharing with a voice, she feels something: a kind of warmth. Amusement, perhaps. And then, again, the voice:

  – I thought that, since I could call boars, I could call you. When I was a boy, in the forest, using nothing but stillness, I made friends with those of God’s creatures whose tusks could rip my belly in a moment. You are one of God’s creatures with tusks, child. It took me so long to get you to trust in me.

  “And then you went and died on me. Are you in the Communion of Saints, Godfrey?”

  – I was not worthy. I am tormented by great Devils! Purgatory, perhaps, this is. Where I am now.

  “Close to God, then. Ask God, for me, why do the Wild Machines want Burgundy wiped out?”

  A chill pain sliced through her mind. At the same moment, Rickard said sleepily from the door, “Who are you talking to, boss?”

  He reached up from where he lay, in his blanket-roll, and pulled the tent-flap open. Moonlight slanted into the command tent. It shone on his face, his white breath, on Ash’s clean hands, on her furs, clothes, sword, pallet.

  “I—”

  No transition. No transition from dream to waking. Ash sat up, suddenly; none of the languor of sleep in her muscles. Her head was clear. I have been awake for more than a few minutes, she realised, and peered around: the tent remained dirty, familiar, corporeal. Rickard stared expectantly at her.

  I have been awake.

  “Oh shit.” Ash bent over, gagging. Memories momentarily overwhelmed her. The single moment of vision, Godfrey’s body flopping back, the smashed and missing top of his skull, this stays with her, details imprinted on her inner eye. “Christus!”

  Dimly, she was aware that Rickard put his head out of the tent and called to someone; that he left; that someone else came in, bustling – Ash could not have said how much time had passed – and then she lifted her head and found herself staring at Floria.

  “Godfrey,” Ash said. “I heard his voice. I heard Godfrey. I spoke to him.”

  Silver and black in the moonlight, there are people moving outside the tent.

  Floria’s voice said, “If he’s still alive, perhaps you dreamed of him where he is—”

  “He’s dead.” Tears welled up in Ash’s eyes. She let them fall, in the dark interior of the tent. “Christ, Florian, he had the top of his head smashed off. If you think I would have left him if he wasn’t dead—!”

  The long, slender fingers of the surgeon came out of the darkness, turning her face to the light. She felt no awkwardness, no fear of the woman’s touch. Floria crouched in front of her, sniffed at her mouth – for wine, Ash realised – touched her cool forehead; finally sat back, and shook her head.

  “Why should he haunt your sleep?”

  “I wasn’t asleep.”

  She made to get up, to call Rickard to arm her, since it was plain that moonrise was well advanced, silver light streaming down between trees. Without warning, a sharp pain stabbed through her nose, eyes and throat. She choked. Her mouth distorted; tears ran out of her eyes. She dragged in a breath, sobbed tightly.

  “Shit. He’s dead. I let them kill him.”

  “He died in the earthquake in Carthage,” Floria snapped.

  “He was there because of me, he was doing what I told him to do.”

  “Yeah, and so have half a hundred soldiers been, when you got them killed in some battle.” The woman’s voice changed. “Baby, no. You didn’t kill him.”

  “I heard him—”

  “How?”

  “‘How’?” Ash’s wet eyes burned. The question stopped the sobs in her throat.

  “When you say you hear voices,” Floria observed, sardonic in the cold moonlight, “then I want to know what you mean.”

  Ash stared at her for a long moment.

  “Rickard,” she said abruptly, and stood up so quick that she left the surgeon kneeling at her feet. “Find my arming doublet; let’s get moving. Now.”

  “Ash,” Floria began.

  “Later.” She put her hands on Floria’s shoulders as the woman stood up. “You’re right, but later. When we’re in Dijon.”

  “If you risk trying to get to the Faris, you might not get into Dijon!” More quietly, under the noise of Rickard rummaging in the baggage, Floria added, “Not a dream. A voice.”

  “After a dream. It was very like him.” Ash was surprised at how much her composure returned, with the words. She reached out, and after a second’s hesitation, Floria took her hands.

  “In Dijon,” Ash promised. “I’ll be there. I’ll come back.”

  Rickard blurted, from the dark corner of the pavilion, “Ash always comes back. That’s what they’ve been saying since Carthage. That you’ll always come back to the company. You will come back, boss?”

  “Though all the army of the Visigoths lie between,” Ash said lightly, mock-grandly; and was rewarded by a grin as the boy armed her: brigandine, sallet, and sword. She shrugged her cloak back over everything, stepping outside with Rickard and Floria, to be immediately overwhelmed in a moonlit wood by men with questions, sergeants coming for orders, and messengers shoving through the crowd.

  She took a roll of paper from Ludmilla Rostovnaya, bending her head to listen while Rickard read it out to her under a horn lantern; nodded decisively, and gave a string of orders.

  “I take it we’re expected?” Floria del Guiz said, in a momentary break.

  Without even time to realise her own searing relief, Ash confirmed: “Robert’s still alive and giving orders, if that’s what you mean. There’ll be a gate open. Now all we have to do is get there…” Ash spoke absently, peering through the crowds in the semi-darkness. “Thomas Rochester!”

  She strode forward, picking up Angelotti on the way, pulling the two men into a huddle with her, in the freezing moonlit muddy woodland.

  “I’ve told the lance-leaders and sergeants to come to
you,” she said, without preamble. “Angelotti, I want you with the guns and all the missile troops. Just get them inside the walls. Henri Brant and Blanche and Baldina will handle the train. Thomas, I want you leading the foot-troops.”

  His dark, unshaven face showed sudden confusion. “Aren’t you leading the foot, boss? Won’t you be back before we leave?”

  “I’ll be back before you’re inside Dijon. You’ll have Euen Huw and Pieter Tyrrell as your officers. Geraint will keep any stragglers under control – won’t you?” she added, as the big Welshman plodded up to them through the mud.

  She studied his unreadable features, thought for the hundredth time Perhaps nothing does go on behind that face, and watched him draw himself up; a large, dirty man in mail, cloak and archer’s sallet.

  “You know I don’t agree with this, boss.”

  “I know, Master Geraint. You can disagree all you like, once we’re in Dijon.” She let her expression soften. “We can debate what we do as a company, after that. What you’re doing now is going into the city. Right?”

  Tension left his stance. “Right. And you’ll be with the enemy commander, boss? Okay.”

  A glance from Angelotti’s calm, Byzantine features made her feel more disquiet than Geraint ab Morgan’s blunt acceptance.

  “With the Faris,” Ash confirmed. And then: “I’m the one that can walk into the Visigoth camp and no one will say a thing.”

  She reached up and touched her cheek, fingers taking scars entirely for granted.

  “It’s still her face. She’s still my twin.”

  Message: #147 (Pierce Ratcliff)

  Subject: Ash/Carthage

  Date: 04/12/00 at 09.57 a.m.

  From: Longman@

  Pierce –

  I want to know what’s going on! Are you still on the ship? What else have you found???

  Are you sure – no, of course you’re sure. _Visigoth_ Carthage!!! No wonder the existing site on land didn’t match the description in ‘Fraxinus’!

  I don’t expect you to answer lots of questions right now, but I’ve got to have _some_ information if I’m going to stop the book/ documentary project being suspended.

  Just ask Dr Isobel: _when_ can I pass on the news about her discovery to my Managing Director?