Ash: A Secret History

by Mary Gentle

  Fernando del Guiz folded his arms, regarding the monastery room with bewildered confusion. He shook his head; laughed with an expression that plainly said What else can one do? “If I could see the King-Caliph’s face, now—!”

  Ash gave an order. Two of Jonvelle’s men came to escort him outside. He went with no protest.

  Ash turned back to face the Faris.

  “Why?” she said.

  The light from the refectory windows fell clearly on to the Faris’s face. With this second look, Ash saw at once how drawn she was: her skin a bad colour, her eyes red-rimmed. Her left hand kept feeling for something at her thigh. The mirror-image of Ash’s own gesture: hand resting down on her sword. When she finally spoke, it was quietly, to Ash, in the version of Carthaginian that one hears most often in the military camps:

  “Don’t forget that I permitted the hunt.”

  “What?” Floria moved to stand at Ash’s side, staring at the Visigoth woman. “I didn’t catch that.”

  “She’s reminding me that she let the hunt go ahead. And that, if not for her, there wouldn’t be a Duchess now.”

  Catching Florian’s eye, Ash had no need to speak to confirm that they were sharing a moment of grim amusement.

  “It’s true,” Ash said, “she did.”

  The Faris swallowed. Her voice came out taut. “Tell your Burgundian woman that. She owes this to me.”

  “‘This’?”

  The Visigoth woman switched to the language of southern Burgundy, speaking with a perceptible accent. “Refuge. Sanctuary. I gave the orders, I held my commanders back so that you could ride out into the wildwood.”

  The Faris stood awkwardly in the European dress she wore, plainly not used to hose, or the short skirts of the doublet that she unconsciously kept pulling down. In the five weeks since they had met across the table in the Visigoth camp, she seemed to have grown thinner; or perhaps, Ash surmised, it was that she wore no armour, had no soldiers with her, seemed a much younger woman altogether.

  “That was more than a month ago,” Ash said grimly. “In that time you could have travelled back to Carthage and destroyed the machina rei militaris. Now that would have been useful.”

  A flick of fear on the Visigoth woman’s face.

  “Would you go back to Carthage? Would you go so close to the Wild Machines again?” She met Ash’s eyes, her own red and puffy with long sleeplessness; and Ash had time to think Is this how I look? before the Faris added, “I would have gone. I could not. Not go so close, not when they’re here—” She touched her temple. “Not when they can … use me, without my consent. You are hearing them too.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t believe you!” Her voice cracked on a shout.

  Adelize began to whoop and roar.

  The Faris broke off, reaching down, and stroked the woman’s hair with tentative fingers. Violante gave her a look of contempt and knelt down and took the woman into her thin arms, straining to reach around her shoulders.

  “Not to be afraid,” Violante said in the slaves’ Carthaginian that Ash hardly understood. “Adelize; not to be afraid.”

  The woman Adelize gently pushed Violante back, stroking the front of the girl’s tunic – no, not the tunic; Ash saw. Stroking the bulge of a body, small and moving, that wriggled itself up to Violante’s neckline.

  Ash watched as the liver-and-white rat licked her mother’s fingers.

  Adelize stroked it. She spluttered, “Poor, poor! Not to mind. Easy, easy. Not to be afraid.”

  “I talked with my father Leofric.” The Faris’s hand did not stop stroking Adelize’s hair.

  “He can talk?” Ash asked sardonically.

  “He and I, we have tried to persuade the lord Caliph Gelimer that the Stone Golem must be destroyed. He will not do it. Gelimer believes nothing my father says. All this of the Wild Machines is, he says, a political trick of House Leofric’s; nothing that he will act upon.”

  “Fucking hell!” Ash said, overriding both Florian and John de Vere. “You’ve got two legions out there, what was stopping you killing Gelimer, going back to Carthage, and hammering the Stone Golem into gravel? What?”

  Her anger faded with the bewildered look on the woman’s face.

  She’s heard the Stone Golem for twenty years, had it as her advisor in combat for as long as she remembers, and everything she’s done in her life has been for the King-Caliph: no, going home at the head of an armed rebellion is something she wouldn’t contemplate—

  “I know that we have been betrayed,” the Faris said, “and my men are about to die, whether they win or not. I have been trying to save their lives. First, by leaving the siege to engines, not assault; second, by letting the Duchess of Burgundy live, to stand in the path of the southern demons. You would have done the same thing, sister.”

  “I’m not your bloody sister, for Christ’s sake! We hardly know each other.”

  “You are my sister. We are both warriors.” The Faris’s fingers ceased stroking Adelize’s head. “If nothing else, remember this is our mother.”

  Ash threw up her hands. She turned on Floria. “You talk to her!”

  Ash saw Robert Anselm’s gaze on her, realised that he and Angelotti were – quite unconsciously – staring from her to the Faris, and from the Faris back to her. John de Vere murmured something to Bajezet: the Turk also pointing to the Faris.

  The surgeon-Duchess asked, “Why are you here in Dijon?”

  “For sanctuary,” the Visigoth woman repeated.

  “Why now?”

  Olivier de la Marche strode forward, with Jonvelle behind him, to take up a place defending their Duchess. Jonvelle spoke, answering Floria’s question. “Your Grace, to infiltrate the city and assassinate you, one would suppose. I am with our Maid, Ash, on this. She will give you no useful information. Have her executed without further talk.”

  The Faris, with the first hint of an acerbic humour akin to Ash’s, said, “Amir-Duchess, since you ask it, I am here now because now is the hour at which the King-Caliph issued a warrant for my arrest and execution.”

  “Ah.” Ash nodded with satisfaction.

  “He has put Sancho Lebrija in my place as commander,” the Faris said.

  Ash remembered the humourless, brutal cousin of Asturio Lebrija; a man to do nothing else but take orders from his King-Caliph. “When did Lebrija take over?”

  “Now. An hour since.” The Faris shrugged. “Amir Gelimer made it plain at the parley that he considered me spoiled and lunatic. After that, said before his allies, how could he continue to use me as a commander? He has considered me part of what he sees as House Leofric’s plotting; this was a way to dispose of me.”

  “Of course.,” Ash said.

  “I knew then that I would be executed within the hour. I left the meeting a little ahead of the others, called my slaves, changed my clothes to these captured garments, and ordered the slaves to escort ‘Ash’ to the gate of Dijon. And they let me in.”

  The Faris’s hand went up to her newly cut hair.

  “Amir Gelimer has ordered my father to kill and dissect all the slaves of our bloodline – Adelize, Violante, these others here; myself. I believe my father Leofric will do it. If he thinks it will convince the King-Caliph of the truth of what he says about the Wild Machines, he will do it without hesitation. He will do it…”

  Ash could not hear it, but she knew the other men standing in this bright refectory of Dijon’s abbey heard the Visigoth woman speak in her voice, Ash’s voice, with only the accent to differentiate them. She stared at the face of her twin, everything else – hostages, the war, the Wild Machines – forgotten in that strange recognition.

  “You trusted me,” the Faris said. Her identical voice urged: “You trusted me enough to tell me that Duke Charles was dying – when you came to my camp for parley, before the hunt? There was that trust between us, when, by your reasoning, you should have killed me. I have little hope you won’t kill me now. But with Gelimer, there is no hop
e.”

  She sighed, shifting her head as if the river-fall of hair were still there; her hand going up to her loss. Her glance shifted to the surgeon-Duchess of Burgundy.

  “I am foolish,” the Faris said. “There is no hope here, either. For you to be safe, you need me to die.”

  Floria, frowning, bit at the skin at the edge of her fingernail. “Wild Machines or not, Gelimer needs to kill me for quite different reasons. This war isn’t going to stop now. He doesn’t know the consequence of his actions. That’s irrelevant. If you were dead—”

  “If I were dead,” the Faris said softly, “it would be the end of the Wild Machines’ influence for a generation and more. Before another could be bred like me. Longer, perhaps. It will take time and another King-Caliph before the Stone Golem is trusted again.”

  “But it will be,” Floria said.

  Olivier de la Marche said flatly, coming forward, “Demoiselle Duchess, that is for our sons and grandsons to finish. And for that reason, consider: Burgundy must survive now. We must! Or else, when that day comes, there will be no one to stand against the demons of the south. They may do their pleasure, with no Duke or Duchess to prevent them. If Burgundy is gone, they may make what black miracle they will, and then all is as if we had never lived and striven against them.”

  Ash stared at the weather-beaten face of the tournament champion and Captain of the Guard. The Burgundian soldier nodded, sharply.

  “I know the powers of Burgundy’s Duke, Demoiselle-Captain. What should these southern demons care, that we kill this miracle-worker of theirs now? They can breed another, whether it is twenty years or two hundred. If Burgundy has been destroyed, then in twenty years or two hundred, there is nothing to stand in their way. And winter will cover all the world.”

  A stir at the door made Floria turn her head. Ash saw the Abbot of St Stephen’s enter with a clutch of monks. Olivier de la Marche intercepted him, soothing his stifled imprecations. The refectory’s monks sidled out of sight.

  “How long?” Floria demanded.

  “A quarter-hour since I was on the wall.” Ash squinted at the sun’s light through the ogee windows. “Maybe more.”

  Floria put her hands together, linking her fingers and resting them against her lips. She stared at the Faris. Abruptly, she dropped her hands and stated, “If I keep you alive now, there are six hundred people standing in the mud outside the walls who are going to die. But if I hand you back to Gelimer, thousands more people are going to die in the war.”

  Ash saw John de Vere nodding; and Olivier de la Marche.

  Floria, remorseless, continued: “If I kill you, the Wild Machines can’t use you for their wonder-working – but that won’t stop the war. Or the deaths. The war’s going to go on whether you’re alive or dead. We’re losing. On the other hand, if I keep you alive, your knowledge as commander of their armies means that we can keep on fighting. And Burgundy has to survive, or there’s nothing to stop the Wild Machines the next time they succeed in breeding a child of Gundobad’s line. Ash, have I got this right?”

  The surgeon-Duchess’s voice was acerbic. Ash almost smiled, aching for the woman. “You didn’t miss anything that I can see.”

  “And these are my choices.”

  “And mine.”

  “No. No, not this time.” Floria’s gaze took in Anselm and Angelotti and the company men; moved to Olivier de la Marche and Jonvelle and the gathering of Burgundian nobles and commanders.

  “You said it yourself. I hunted the hart. It’s my decision.”

  “Not if I decide differently.”

  It was out before she could retract it. Ash shook her head, disgusted with herself. Yes, it’s true, but this wasn’t the time to remind her of it.

  Oh, shit.

  At a loss to avoid the crevasse opening up at her feet, Ash protested, into the silence, “You can talk about twenty or two hundred years all you like. You’re forgetting today. One stray arrow, one rock from a mangonel, one spy or assassin that Gelimer manages to get into this city – and then we’ve got the Wild Machines’ ‘miracle’ happening at that instant. I don’t care what my sister—” Ash spoke the words very deliberately “—what my sister knows about Visigoth troop dispositions and war plans.”

  Her gaze locked with Floria’s, ignoring the whole room: Anselm murmuring something concerned to Angelotti, the Turks impassive, the Burgundians in their war-worn armour still splendid beyond all other countries of Christendom.

  “Florian, for Christ’s sake, can’t you see it? I don’t want to cause a split. But handing her back to Gelimer is just ridiculous.” Ash grimaced. “And letting her live, here, is too great a risk to you.”

  “No risk from me,” the Faris interrupted quietly, again with a flash of the same humour that Ash recognised as her own. “The risk is not from me. You forget something, sister. When the Duchess of Burgundy dies, then I – lose myself, to the Wild Machines. When I become a … a channel, for their power…” The Visigoth woman visibly sought words: “I think I will be – swept away. Jund Ash, I want her to live even more than you do!”

  It carried weight with the Burgundians; Ash saw it in their expressions. She shivered, in the stone refectory, the memory of ancient voices in her mind: that sensation of being swept away, like a leaf in a river current; swept away and drowned.

  “I’m not saying you’re about to assassinate her,” Ash remarked dryly. “Sweet Green Christ up a Tree, you’d have been a damn sight less trouble if you’d stayed outside Dijon with your army!”

  She heard the plaintive note in her voice without being able to do anything about it. A ripple of laughter went around the room.

  “I hear the clock striking the half,” Robert Anselm said, his tone relieved even while he was looking over his shoulder at the door, as if anticipating one of Jonvelle’s men-at-arms arriving from the wall. “Need a decision.”

  Floria linked her dirty fingers again, knuckles strained. “I’ve made enough hard decisions in the infirmary, when I was with the company.”

  Now would be the time, while she still thinks she has time to decide.

  Ash kept her hand off her sword-grip. She read a flash of apprehension on Angelotti’s face; realised she had moved – body balanced, feet slightly apart – into what any mercenary would see as a combat stance. Any mercenary except Florian, she amended. The gold-haired woman stood frowning.

  Enough of de la Marche’s men-at-arms between me and the Faris that I won’t get through for certain. But I’m their commander now, so—

  Robert Anselm strolled across the flagstones to her side. Ash did not shift her attention: aware of all the room, of men talking, of the Burgundians glancing between their Duchess and her Captain-General.

  “Don’t fuck her over,” he rumbled. “If you push it, they’ll follow her, not you.”

  “If I take her out—” Names attract their owners’ attention; Ash did not say the Faris: “—it doesn’t matter, it’s done.”

  Robert Anselm managed to keep a level expression, watching the Duchess and the Burgundian men-at-arms, the Visigoth woman and the silver-haired slaves with her. He said, “You try and kill her and you’ll start a civil war here.”

  Ash glared at him: a broad-shouldered man still in someone else’s borrowed, over-large German breastplate. He watched her from unflinching brown eyes.

  “Then the Doc’s fucked,” he said. “Burgundy’s fucked too. Start a civil war inside Dijon and Burgundy finishes right here, girl. The rag-heads make catsmeat of us: thank you and good night. And those bloody things breed another monster in twenty years, and there’s nothing to stop them.”

  His words wrenched her mind away from the Faris: she saw what she had been refusing to see and thought simply, No, nothing left: no bloodline of Burgundy. There’ll be a massacre, like at Antwerp and Auxonne. Then the Wild Machines will automatically succeed, whenever they try, because there will be nothing capable of stopping them.

  “Oh, son of a bitch…” Ash breathed.


  She rubbed her eyes, aching in the white light from the windows. Her muscles flooded with what she recognised, startled, as a release of tension. She scowled. What am I so happy about?

  The answer was present in her mind immediately:

  I don’t have to take this decision.

  Self-disgust filled her. She shook her head, wryly. The disgust was not as powerful as the relief. Her mind yammered at her, finding no flaw in Robert Anselm’s reasoning, telling her, You can’t make this decision, it has to be Florian, and you can’t argue with her without losing everything—

  “Oh, shut up!” Ash said, under her breath. She looked at the startled face of Robert Anselm. “Not you. Yes. You’re right. I wish you weren’t.”

  And I wish I knew if I meant that.

  Ash gestured across to Florian. “It’s your call.”

  The woman’s dark gold brows came down, her expression so clearly reading Ash’s moral cowardice that Ash looked away.

  She found herself watching her twin. The Faris still stood by the refectory table. One finger ceaselessly traced the raised grain of the scrubbed wood. She made no other movement. She did not look at the surgeon-Duchess.

  Could I have come here, the way she has?

  Ash did not let herself look at Violante or Adelize.

  Floria wiped her face with her hand, in a gesture familiar to Ash from a hundred occasions in the hospital-tents. She sighed heavily. She did not look to anyone around her for assistance, confirmation, or support.

  “I’ve got patients at the infirmary here,” Floria said. “I’ll be with them.” She beckoned Olivier de la Marche forward. “You and Ash question the Faris. We’ll convene again at Nones, and discuss what you’ve learned.”

  A sigh of release. Ash could not judge which of the men – John de Vere, Bajezet, de la Marche, Anselm – it came from.

  The Faris sat down hard on the wooden bench beside Violante. Her skin paled to the point where she might have been taken for a woman with a terminal illness: her eyes large and dark in hollowed sockets.