by Mary Gentle
“I don’t like not having answers!”
“Yeah, me neither.”
“At least you know how to run an army. I don’t know how to run a government.”
“I can’t help you there.”
Florian lowered her hand to her side.
“Don’t look for some dramatic decision.” Floria shivered. “I was brought up here. I know I ought to commit myself. I’m going to do everything I can – but you know what? I’m one of your fucking company too, remember! Don’t treat me like I’m not! The only people I care about is us. If there’s a safe way out of here for all of us, I’ll take it. I’m different now. I ought to stay. I know I don’t understand everything about the Wild Machines. That’s the best you’ll get.”
Ash reached for the ties of her cloak, slipped the knot, swung off the heavy wool, and swathed it around the older woman.
Florian looked into her face. “I can only do what I can do. I can’t be your lover. And – I can’t be your boss, either.”
Ash blinked, jolted. After a minute, she nodded acknowledgement. “Shit, you don’t give me any rope… Guess we’ll have to manage, won’t we?”
Ash put her hand out and gave Florian’s shoulder a little shove. The woman smiled, still wet-faced; mimed avoiding a blow. Ash squinted up at the invisible darkness of the night outside.
Bishop John of Cambrai cleared his throat. “Madame, the crown?”
The tall woman reached and took the horn circlet out of his grasp, dangling it carelessly in her long fingers.
“Sod waiting till dawn. And screw the witnesses,” Ash said, “Bishop John, you just tell them to keep their mouths shut, or show us whatever back way there is out of here. If you want me and Florian tonight, we’ll be in the tower with Roberto and Angeli and the guys.”
The message arrived four days later.
Black shadows leaped up on the flint-embedded walls of the garderobe,28 sank, then grew again as the candle-flame was all but extinguished by the draught from below. The wind rustled the hanging gowns either side of her. Ash, hitching the back of her demi-gown and shirt up around her with numbed fingers, swore.
Beyond the heavy curtain, Rickard’s voice asked, “Boss, you busy?”
“Christus Viridianus!”
The wax- and wine-stained demi-gown slid out of her frozen fingers, down her hips, on to the wooden plank. A chilling wind from the night below struck up Ash’s back. Her flesh felt red-hot by comparison. She yelled, “No, I’m not busy. Whatever gave you that idea? I’m just sitting here with my arse hanging out, taking a dump; why not invite the whole fucking Burgundian council in? Jesus Christ up a Tree, here I am wasting time – are you sure you can’t find something else for me to do while I’m in here?”
There was a noise which, had she bothered to decipher it, rather than attend to the necessities of her toilet, she might have deciphered as an adolescent male having alternately bass and soprano giggles.
“The doc— the Duchess— Florian wants you, boss.”
“Then you can tell her lady high-and-mightiness the Duchess she can come and wipe my—” Ash broke off, grabbing at the candlestick that her elbow had just knocked. A great black shadow jolted up the walls, and the wick flared and smoked. Hot wax spilled over the back of Ash’s hand.
“Bitch!” she muttered. “Got you, you little bastard!” and set the candle upright again. She peered at it. The heavy beeswax candle had melted past the next mark, before she spilled it: past Matins, an hour short of Lauds.29
“Rickard, do you know what fucking time it is?”
“The doc says a message came in. They want her up at the palace. She wants you, too.”
“I expect she bloody does,” Ash muttered under her breath. She reached out to the box of fresh linen scraps.
“It’s Messire de la Marche who has the message.”
“Son of a whore-fucking, cock-sucking, arse-buggering bitch!”
“You all right, boss?”
“I think I just lost my Lion livery badge. It fell off my demi-gown.” Ash, hauling her split hose up her legs, peered down below the hem of her shirt, through the hole in the plank, at a black and empty void. She stood up with the care that the knowledge of a two-hundred-foot drop below one brings. Two hundred feet of excrement-stained tower wall, invisible in the night outside, but nothing to want to bounce down on your way to the caltrop-strewn no-man’s-land at the foot of Dijon’s walls…
“Come and do these damn points up!” Ash said, and the swing of the curtain as the boy pushed it back made the candle-flame swing again; yellow light illuminating the boy still wearing his mail-shirt, for God’s sake, and an archer’s sallet with a rather sorry yellow plume in it.
“Going somewhere?” she enquired of the back of his head, where he bent over tying points with practised skill. The visible part of his neck grew red.
“I was just showing Margie some shooting techniques…”
In the dark? and I bet that’s not all you were showing her! became the two foremost remarks in Ash’s mind. With Anselm or Angelotti – except for the extreme unlikelihood of Angelotti showing anything to anyone called Margie – she would have said just that.
Given his embarrassment, she murmured, “‘Margie’?”
“Margaret Schmidt. Margaret the crossbow-woman. The one that was a soeur, up at the convent.”
His eyes shone, and his face was still visibly pink in the candlelight. Ash signalled him to buckle the sword-belt around her waist, as she held the candle up to give him the light. So she’s still in the company? I wonder if Florian knows?
“Can you write up the reports now, before morning council?”
“I’ve done most of it, boss.”
“Bet you’re sorry the monks taught you to read and write!” she observed absently, giving him the candle to hold, and settling the belt, purse and sword more comfortably about her waist and hips. “Okay, do the reports, bring them to me at the Tour Philippe le Bon. It’ll be quicker.”
She hesitated for a moment, hearing an unidentifiable noise, and realised that it was rain, beginning to beat on the walls below her. The ammoniac stench of the stone room grew stronger. That did not so much offend her as pass her by entirely. A gust of rain-laden wind spurted up, chilling the stone walls, and shifting the heavy garments hanging around her.
“Oh, great. Next time it’s a wet arse, as well.” Ash sighed. “Rickard, get one of the pages; I need my pattens,30 and a heavy cloak. I take it Florian’s in the infirmary? Right. So tell whoever’s on guard to get their asses in gear, I need six guys to go as escort to the palace with us.” She hesitated, hearing a scrabble and whine from the room beyond the curtain. “And get the mastiff-handler – I’ll take Brifault and Bonniau with me.”
“You’re expecting to be attacked in the streets?” Rickard, shielding the candle’s flame with his hand, looked wide-eyed for a second.
“No. The girls just haven’t had their walk yet.” Ash grinned at him. “Get scribbling, boy. And, just think – if Father Faversham’s right, after a life like this, you’ll hardly spend any time in Purgatory at all!”
“Thanks, boss…”
She all but trod on his heels, stepping out of the garderobe, so as not to lose the light of the candle. The main fireplace shed some light, still, into the company tower’s upper storey, by which she saw the curled blanket-strewn forms of pages asleep around the meagre warmth. Rickard took the candle to his pallet, to work with, kicking one of the pages as he went; and she stretched, in the dim light, feeling the bones of her shoulders crack and shift.
Viridianus! When did I last sleep through a night? Just one night without fucking Greek Fire missiles and army paperwork, that’s all I want…
Blanket-wrapped forms unrolled: two pages coming to dress her for the pitch-black, rain-blasted ride through the muddy streets to the ducal palace, the mastiffs Brifault and Bonniau padding silently up, sure-footed, to her side.
Ash found Florian down on the second floor,
in the aisle that ran around the hall in the thickness of the walls, seeing to a patient in smoky taper light. The man sat with his hose slung around his neck, naked from the waist down. A smell of old urine hung about the stonework and flesh.
“So, de la Marche wants you?” Ash peered over the surgeon’s shoulder.
“I’m just finishing up.” Florian’s long, dirty fingers pulled at a gash that started above the man-at-arms’s knee. He gasped. Blood, black in the light, and a glint of something shiny in the depths – bone?
“Hold him,” Florian said, over the man’s shoulder to a second mercenary, kneeling there. The second man wrapped his arms tightly around the injured man, pinning his arms down. Ash sat down on her heels as Florian washed out the gaping hole again with wine.
“De la Marche—” the surgeon peered into the wound; swilled it out again. “—will have to wait. I’ll be done soon.”
The man-at-arms’s face shone in the light of tapers, beads of sweat swelling up out of his skin. He swore continuously, muttering Bitch! Bitch! Bitch! on ale-heated breath, and then grinned, finally, at the surgeon.
“Thanks, doc.”
“Oh – any time!” Florian stood up and wiped her hands down her doublet. Glancing down at Baldina and two junior deacons, she added, “Leave the wound uncovered. Make sure nothing gets into it. Don’t suture it. I don’t give a shit about Galen’s ‘laudable pus’.31 The uncovered wounds I saw in Alexandria didn’t stink and go rotten like Frankish wounds. I’ll bandage it in four days’ time. Okay? Okay: let’s go.”
The leaded glass window of the Tour Philippe le Bon was proof against the rain, but freezing draughts found their way in around the frame and chilled Ash’s face as she peered through her reflection, out into blackness.
“Can’t see a fucking thing,” she reported. “No, wait – they’ve got Greek Fire lights all along the east bank of the Ouche. Activity. That’s odd.”
She stepped back, blinking against the apparent brilliance of two dozen candles, as the chamber door opened to admit Olivier de la Marche.
Florian demanded, “What is it?”
“News, your Grace.” The big man came to a halt, in a clatter of plate. His face was not clearly visible under his raised visor, but Ash thought his expression peculiarly rigid.
“More digging?”
“No, your Grace.” De la Marche clasped his hands over the pommel of his sword. “There’s news, from the north – from Antwerp.”
At the same moment that Ash exclaimed, “Reinforcements!”, Florian demanded, “How?”
“Yeah.” Ash flushed. “Not thinking. That’s a damn good question. How did news get in through that, messire? Spies?”
The Burgundian commander shook his head slightly. The torchlight glanced from his polished armour, dazzling Ash. Through black after-images, she heard de la Marche say, “No. Not a spy. This news has been allowed through. There was a Visigoth herald; he escorted our messenger in.”
Florian looked puzzled. Ash felt her stomach turn over.
“Better hear him, then, hadn’t we?” Ash said. As an afterthought, she glanced at Florian for acknowledgement. The surgeon-Duchess nodded.
“It isn’t going to be good news. Is it?” Florian said suddenly.
“Nah: they wouldn’t let good news through. The only question is, how bad is it?”
At de la Marche’s shout, two Burgundian men-at-arms brought in a third man, and backed out of the ducal chamber again. Ash could not read their expressions as they went. She found her hand clenching into a fist.
The man blinked at Floria del Guiz. He held his arms wrapped across his body, a cloak or some kind of bundle gripped close to himself.
De la Marche walked behind the messenger and rested a hand on his shoulder. No armour, Ash noted: a torn livery tabard and tunic, stained with blood and human vomit and let dry. Nothing recognisable in the heraldry except the St Andrew’s cross of Burgundy.
“Give your message,” Olivier de la Marche said.
The man stayed silent. He had fine sallow skin and dark hair. Exhaustion or hunger, or both, had made his features gaunt.
“The Visigoths brought you here?” Florian prompted. She waited a moment. In the night’s silence, she walked to the dais, and sat on the ducal throne. “What’s your name?”
Ash let Olivier de la Marche say, “Answer the Duchess, boy.”
Only a boy in comparison to de la Marche’s fifty or so, she realised; and the man lifted his head and looked first at the woman on the ducal throne, and then at the woman in armour; all without the slightest sign of interest.
Shit! Ash thought. Oh shit…
“Do I have to, messire? I don’t want this. No one should be asked to do this. They sent me back, I didn’t ask—” His voice sounded coarse: a Flemish townsman, by his accent.
“What did they tell you to say?” Florian leaned forward on the arm of the throne.
“I was at the battle?” His tone ended on a question. “Days ago, maybe two weeks?”
His anguished look at de la Marche was not, Ash saw, because he did not want to tell his news to women. He was beyond that.
“They’re all dead,” he said, flatly. “I don’t know what happened on the field. We lost. I saw Gaucelm and Arnaud die. All my lance died. We routed in the dark, but they didn’t kill us; they rounded us up as soon as it was dawn – there was a cordon…”
Seeing Florian about to speak, Ash held up a restraining hand.
The Burgundian man-at-arms hugged his bundled cloak closer to him – not even wool: hessian, Ash saw – and looked around at the clean walls of the Tour Philippe, and the mud that his boots had tracked across the clean oak boards. There was wine on the table, but although he swallowed, he did not appear otherwise to see it.
“It’s all fucked!” he said. “The army in the north. They rounded us all up – baggage train, soldiers, commanders. They marched us into Antwerp—”
Ash grimaced. “The Goths have got Antwerp? Shit!”
Florian waved her to silence. She leaned forward, looking at the man. “And?”
“—they put us all on ships.”
Silence, in the high tower room. Puzzled, Ash looked across at de la Marche.
In a high whine, the man said, “Nobody knew what was going to happen. They hauled me out of there – I was so fucking scared—” He hesitated. After a second, he went on: “I saw them herding everyone else up, pushing them with spears. They made everybody go on board the ships that were at the dock. I mean everybody – soldiers, whores, cooks, the fucking commanders – everybody. I didn’t know why it was happening; I didn’t know why they’d held me back.”
“To come here,” Ash said, almost to herself, but he gave her a look of complete disgust. It startled her for a moment. Evidently not seeing the Maid of Burgundy.
“What would you fucking know!” He shook his head. “Some fucking woman done up like a soldier.” He glanced back at de la Marche. “Is this other one really the Duchess?”
De la Marche nodded, without reproach.
The man said, “They cast the ships off. No crew, just let ’em drift out into Antwerp harbour. Then there was one almighty fucking whoosh!” He gestured. “And the nearest ship just burst into fire. It wouldn’t go out. They just kept shooting Greek Fire at the ships, and when our men started trying to swim, they used them for crossbow practice. There was all torches along the quay. Nobody got out. All the water was burning. That stuff just floated. Bodies, floating. Burning.”
De la Marche wiped his hand across his face.
“Most of us died outside Antwerp.” The man went on: “I don’t know how many of us there was left after the field. Enough of us to fill six or seven ships, packed in tight. And now there’s nobody. They sent me with this.”
He held out the cloth bundle. As dark and stiff as the rest of his clothes, it was nevertheless not, Ash saw, his cloak. Hessian sacks.
“Show me.” Florian spoke loudly.
The man squatted
down, cut and filthy fingers plucking at the tied necks of the sacks. De la Marche reached over him, dagger out, and cut the twine with his blade. The man took two corner edges of one sack and lifted. A large heavy object rolled out on to the oak boards.
“Fuck.” Florian stared.
Ash swallowed, at the stench. Damn, I should have recognised that. Decay. She looked questioningly at de la Marche.
The refugee man-at-arms reached out and lifted the matted, white-and-blue object, seating it down facing the surgeon.
His voice sounded completely calm. “This is Messire Anthony de la Roche’s head.”
The severed head’s eyes were filmed over and sunken, Ash saw, like the eyes of rotting fish; and the dark beard and hair might have been any colour before blood soaked them.
“Is it?” she asked de la Marche.
He nodded. “Yes. I know him. Know him very well. Demoiselle Florian, if you need to be spared the others—”
“I’m a surgeon. Get on with it.”
The man-at-arms removed a second, then a third, severed head from his sacks; handling these two with a kind of bewildered delicacy, as if they could still feel his touch. Both were women, both had been fair-haired. It was not clear whether the marks were bruises or decomposition. Long hair, matted with blood and mud and semen, fell lank on to the floorboards.
Ash stared at the waxy skin. Despite death, the head of the older of the women was recognisable. The last time I saw her was in court here, in August.
So much hanging on this: Ash can feel herself trying to see a different woman, a noblewoman, or a peasant, sent in to spread false fear. The features are too recognisable. For all the sunken, colourless eyes, this is the same woman that she saw shrewishly berating John de Vere, Earl of Oxford; this is Charles’s wife, the pious Queen of Bruges.
The man-at-arms said, “Mère-Duchesse Margaret. And her daughter Marie.”
Ash could recognise nothing about the second head, except that the woman had been younger. Looking up, she saw Olivier de la Marche’s face streaked with tears. Mary of Burgundy, then.
The man said, “I saw them killed on the quay at Antwerp. They raped them first. I could hear the Mère-Duchesse praying. She called on Christ, and the saints, but the saints had no pity. They let her survive long enough to see the girl die.”