by Mary Gentle
“Crop his ears this time, Roberto.”
Anselm looked a little grim.
Ash said, “You, me, Aston, the provosts – we can’t stop him thieving. So…”
She jerked a thumb back at the men riding and walking; hard men in dusty leather and linen, sweating in the early Italian morning, shouting comments to each other about anything they passed, loud voices careless of rebuke.
“We have to act. Or else they’ll do it for us. And probably bugger him into the bargain: he’s a pretty kid.”
Frustrated, she remembers Luke Saddler’s sullen, shifty expression when she had had him into the command tent, to see if the full weight of the commander’s displeasure might move him; he had smelled of Burgundian wine, that day, and giggled inanely.
Pricked by an inadequate feeling of having failed the boy, she snapped, “Why tell me, anyway? Luke Saddler’s not my problem. Not now. He’s my husband’s problem.”
“As if you cared two tits about that!”
Ash looked down rather pointedly at the front of her brigandine. It was not proving very much less hot to wear than plate. Robert Anselm grinned at her.
“As if you’re going to let del Guiz worry about this mob…” he added. “Girl, you’re going demented, running around picking up after him.”
Ash stared ahead through the morning sea-mist, thickening now on the road, just making out the figures of Joscelyn van Mander and Paul di Conti riding with Fernando. Unconsciously, she sighed. The morning smelled of sweet thyme, from where the cartwheels crushed it at the edges of the wide merchants’ road.
Her husband Fernando del Guiz rode laughing among the young men and servants of his entourage, ahead of the wagons. A trumpeter rode with him, and a rider carrying the banner with the del Guiz arms. The Lion Azure company standard rode a few hundred yards back, between the two wagon lines, whitening with the dust he kicked up.
“Sweet Christ, it’s going to be a long bloody trek back to Cologne!”
She shifted by unconscious habit with the movements of her mount, a riding horse she had long ago nicknamed The Sod. She smelled sea nearby; so did he, and moved skittishly. Genoa and the coast no more than four or five miles away now? We could arrive well before noon.
Sea-mist dampened down the dust kicked up by lines of plodding horses, and the twenty-five lances who rode in groups of six and seven between them.
Ash sat up in the saddle, pointing. “I don’t recognise that man. There. Look.”
Robert Anselm rode up beside her and looked where she looked, narrowing his eyes to bring the outer line of wagons into focus – wagons driven with shields still strapped to their sides, and hand-gunners and crossbowmen riding inside them on the stores.
“Yes, I do,” she contradicted herself, before he could answer. “It’s Agnes. Or one of his men, anyway. No, it’s the Lamb himself.”
“I’ll bring him through.” Anselm tapped his long spurs into his grey’s flanks, and cantered across the lines of moving carts.
Even with the droplets of mist, it was too hot to wear a bevor. Ash rode in sallet and a blue velvet-covered brigandine, the gilt rivet-heads glinting, with her brass-hilted bastard sword strapped to her side. She eased her weight back, slowing, as Robert Anselm brought the newcomer back inside the moving camp.
She watched Fernando del Guiz. He didn’t notice.
“Hello, She-male!”
“Hello, Agnes.” Ash acknowledged her fellow mercenary commander. “Hot enough for you?”
The straggle-haired man made a gesture that took in the full suit of Milanese plate that he rode in, the armet helm he currently carried on the pommel of his saddle, and the black iron warhammer at his belt. “They’ve got Guild riots down at Marseilles, along the coast. And you know Genoa – strong walls, bolshie citizens, and a dozen factions always fighting to be Doge. I took out the head of the Farinetti in a skirmish last week. Personally!”
He tilted his hand in his Milanese gauntlet, as far as the plates would allow, and made an imaginary illustrative thrust. His lean face was burned black from fighting in the Italian wars. Straggling black hair fell past his pauldrons. His white livery surcoat bore the device of a lamb, from whose head radiated golden beams, embroidered all over in black thread with ‘Agnus Dei’.3
“We’ve been up at Neuss. I led a cavalry charge against Duke Charles of Burgundy.” Ash shrugged, as if to say it was nothing, really. “But the Duke’s still alive. That’s war.”
Lamb grinned, showing yellow broken teeth through his beard. In broad northern Italian, he remarked, “So now you’re here. What is this – no scouts? No spies? Your guys didn’t spot me until I was on top of you! Where the hell are your aforeriders?”4
“I was told we don’t need any.” Ash made her tone ironic. “This is a peaceful countryside full of merchants and pilgrims, under the protection of the Emperor. Didn’t you know?”
Lamb (she had forgotten his real name) squinted through the mist to the head of the column. “Who’s the bimbo?”
“My current employer.” Ash didn’t look at Anselm as she spoke.
“Oh. Right. He’s one of those employers.” Agnus Dei shrugged, which is a fairly complicated process in armour. His black eyes flashed at her. “Bad luck. I’m shipping out, down to Naples. Bring your men with me.”
“Nah. I can’t break a contract. Besides, most of my guys are back at Cologne, under Angelotti and Geraint ab Morgan.”
A movement of the Lamb’s lips, regretful, flirtatious. “Ah well. How was the Brenner Pass? I waited three days for merchants going down to Genoa to get their wagons through.”
“We had it clear. Except that it snowed. It’s the middle of fucking July for Christ’s sake – sorry, Lamb. I mean, it’s the middle of July. I hate crossing the Alps. At least nothing fell on us this time. You remember that slide in seventy-two?”
Ash continued to talk civilly, riding beside him, aware of Anselm glowering on her other side, his grey plodding, horse and rider creamed white with chalk dust. From time to time her gaze flicked ahead, through the opalescent pearl of the mist, to the blurs of sunlight breaking through. Fernando’s bright silks and satins glowed where he rode helmetless in the morning. The creak of wheels and the loud voices of men and women calling conversation echoed flatly. Someone played a fife, off-key.
After some professional conversation, Lamb remarked, “Then I shall see you on the field, madonna. God send, on the same side!”
“God willing,” Ash chuckled.
The Lamb rode off south-east, in what she supposed must be the direction of his troop.
Robert Anselm remarked, “You didn’t tell him your ‘current employer’ is also your husband.”
“That’s right, I didn’t.”
A dark, short man with curly hair rode up beside Anselm, glancing to either side before he spoke. “Boss, we must be nearly in Genoa!”
Ash nodded to Euen Huw. “So I assume.”
“Let me take him out hunting.” The Welshman’s thumb slid down to caress the polished wooden hilt of his bollock dagger. “Lots of people have accidents when they’re hunting. Happens all the time.”
“We’re twenty wagons and two hundred men. Listen to us. We’ve scared the game off for miles around. He wouldn’t buy it. Sorry, Euen.”
“Let me saddle up for him tomorrow, then, on the way back. A bit of mail wire around the hoof, under the hock – aw, boss, go on!”
Her gaze could not help but be calculating when she looked through the mist at which of the lance-leaders rode with her, and who rode with Fernando del Guiz and his squires. It had been a frightening drift the first couple of days, then the Rhine river journey presented enough problems to keep every man occupied, and now it had stabilised.
You can’t blame them. Whatever they ask me, he makes me clear all orders through him now.
But a divided company can’t fight. We’ll get cut up like sheep.
A man with potato features and a few wisps of white hair protruding under the rim o
f his sallet nudged his roan gelding up level with Ash. Sir Edward Aston said, “Knock the bloody little bugger off his horse, lass. If he keeps us riding without scouts, we’re up to our necks in trouble. And he hasn’t had the lances drill any night we’ve made camp.”
“And if he keeps paying over the odds at every town we stop at for food and wine, we’re in trouble.” Ash’s steward, Henri Brant, a middle-aged stocky man with no front teeth, nudged his palfrey closer to her. “Doesn’t he know the value of money? I don’t dare show my face among the Guilds on the way back. He’s spent most of what I had put by to last us until autumn in these past fifteen days!”
“Ned, you’re right; Henri, I know.” She tapped spurs and shifted her weight left. Her grey gelding sneaked its head out and nipped Aston’s roan on the shoulder.
Ash belted The Sod between the ears, and spurred off, kicking up gouts of wet dust, the cool air welcome on her face.
She slowed momentarily beside the wagons that held the Visigoth ambassadors. Tall wheel rims jolted in the ruts of the high road, sending the cart one way and then the other. Daniel de Quesada and Asturio Lebrija lay bound hand and foot with hemp rope, rolling with every jolt.
“Did my husband order this?”
A mounted man riding with his crossbow across his saddle spat. He didn’t look at Ash. “Yeah.”
“Cut them loose.”
“Can’t,” the man said, even as Ash winced mentally and thought, What’s the first rule, girl? Never give an order you don’t know will be obeyed.
“Cut them loose when Lord Fernando sends word back to you,” Ash said, hitting The Sod with a gloved hand again as the gelding tried to sidle up to the crossbowman’s mount, a wicked light in its eye. “Which he will – you need a gallop to shake the temper out of you, you sod. Hai!”
The last remark Ash addressed to her horse. She spurred him from trot to canter to gallop, weaving a thunderous way between the lines of moving carts, ignoring the coughs and curses of those in her dust. The mist began to lift as she galloped. A dozen lance-pennants became clear above the wagons.
Fernando’s bright bay pushed ahead of the group, throwing its head up and fretting at the bit, the reins looping dangerously down. Ash noticed that he had given his helmet to his squire, Otto; and that Matthias – neither knight nor squire – carried his lance. The fur of the foxtail pennant shone dully, in wet mist, drooping from its shaft above his head.
Her heart stirred immediately she saw him. Golden boy, she thought. The absolute picture of a knight: glowing with strength. He rode easily, and bareheaded. His Gothic plate showed rich, fine workmanship: fluted pauldrons and cuisses, each hinge flanged with decorative pierced metal. Condensation gleamed on the curve of his breastplate, and his tangled gold hair, and the polished brass fleur-de-lis that rimmed the cuffs of his gauntlets.
I was never that careless, she thought, with pinched envy. He’s had this since birth. He doesn’t even have to think about it.
“My lord.” She rode up. Her husband’s head turned. His cheeks were rough with gold stubble. Ignoring her, he half-turned in his saddle to speak to Matthias, and the long riding sword that swung at his hip banged against the bay’s flank. The horse kicked out in aggravation, and the whole group of young men swirled into movement, shouting good-naturedly, and re-formed.
The group of squires riding around Fernando seemed reluctant to let her in. A loosening of her rein allowed The Sod’s head to snake out and nip the haunch of one.
“Fuck!” The young knight sawed at his reins as his horse reared. Mount and rider staggered away, curvetting in circles.
Ash slid in neatly beside Fernando del Guiz. “A messenger came in. There’s been trouble at Marseilles.”
“That’s leagues away from here.” Fernando rode using both hands to hold up a wineskin, and tip it with his arms at full extension. The first streams hit him in the mouth; he coughed; straw-coloured wine spilled down the front of his fluted breastplate.
“You win, Matthias!” Fernando dropped the half-full wineskin. It thudded to the ground and burst. He threw a handful of coins. Otto and another page rode in close to undo straps, cut points, take pauldrons and breast- and back-plate off him. Still wearing arm-defences, Fernando slit the arming doublet’s lacing, and the points at his waist, with his dagger, and ripped off the wet doublet. “Otto! It’s too hot for harness.5 Have them put my pavilion up. I’ll change.”
The spoilt garment went down into the dust as well. Fernando del Guiz was riding in his shirt now, the white silk bunching at his waist where it rode up out of his hose. His hose slid down to his cuisses, the material of the cod-flap stretched tight across his groin. When he dismounted, it would fall; he would strip it off and walk, unconcerned, in his shirt. Ash shifted in her saddle.
She wanted to reach out to his saddle and put her hand between his legs.
The trumpeter wheeled, sounding a long call.
Ash, jolted, said, “We’re stopping?”
Fernando’s smile took in those of her lance-leaders riding with him as well as his squires and pages and young noble friends. “I’m stopping. The wagons are stopping. You may do what you please, of course, lady wife.”
“You want the ambassadors fed and watered while we stop?”
“No.” Fernando reined in as the lead wagons stopped.
Ash sat astride The Sod, casting a glance around. The morning mist continued to lift. Broken ground, yellow rocks, scrub dried brown from the long summer’s drought. A few copses of bushes – they could hardly be called trees. Higher ground two hundred yards from the wide road. A paradise for scouts, spies and dismounted men. Maybe even mounted bandits could sneak up.
Godfrey Maximillian plodded up to her on his palfrey. “How close are we to Genoa?”
The priest’s beard was white, and the damp dust settled in the creases of his face gave her a premonition of how he would look if he reached sixty.
“Four miles? Ten? Two?” She fisted her hand, punched her thigh. “I’m blind! He forbids me to put scouts out, he forbids me to hire local guides; he’s got this damn printed itinerary for pilgrims going to ports for the Holy Land, and he thinks that’s all we need! He’s a noble knight, no one’s going to bushwhack him! What if it hadn’t been Lamb’s men out there? What if it had been some bandit?”
She stopped as Godfrey smiled, and shook her head. “Yeah, okay, I grant you, the difference between Lamb and a bandit is a bit hard to spot! But hey, that’s Italian mercenaries for you.”
“A baseless slander. Probably.” Godfrey coughed, drank from his jug, and handed it up to her. “We’re making camp two hours after we get started?”
“My lord wants to change his clothes.”
“Again. You should have tipped him over the edge of a barge into the Rhine before we ever got to the cantons, never mind crossed the Alps.”
“That isn’t very Christian of you, Godfrey.”
“Matthew ten, thirty-four!”6
“I don’t think that’s quite how Our Lord meant that one…” Ash lifted the pottery jug to her lips. The small beer stung her mouth. It was tepid, vaguely unpleasant, and (being wet) still extremely welcome for all that. “Godfrey, I can’t push it, not right now. This is no time to ask my people to start picking sides between me and him. It’d be chaotic. We’ve got to at least function until we get back from this idiot’s errand.”
The priest slowly nodded.
Ash said, “I’m going to ride up to the top of the next ridge while he’s busy. We’re wandering around in a mist in more ways than one. I’ll go take a look. Godfrey, go show your Christian charity to Asturio Lebrija and his mate. I don’t think my lord husband had them fed this morning.”
Godfrey’s palfrey plodded back down the column.
Jan-Jacob Clovet and Pieter Tyrrell caught Ash up as The Sod skittered unwillingly up the slope – two fair-haired, almost identical young Flemish men, with unshaven faces, and tallow candle droppings on the sleeves under their brigandines,
and crossbows at their saddles. They smelled of stale wine and semen; she guessed they had both been rousted out of a whore’s cart before daybreak; probably, if she knew them, from the same woman.
“Boss,” Jan-Jacob said, “do something about that son of a bitch.”
“It’ll happen when the time’s right. You move without my word, and I’ll nail your balls to a plank.”
Normally, they would have grinned. Now Jan-Jacob persisted, “When?”
Pieter added, “They’re saying you’re not going to kill him. They’re saying you’re cock-struck. They’re saying what can you expect from a woman?”
And if I asked who ‘they’ are, I’ll get evasive answers or no answers at all. Ash sighed.
“Look, guys … have we ever broken a contract?”
“No!” They spoke simultaneously.
“Well, you can’t say that for every mercenary company. We get paid because we don’t change sides once we’ve signed a contract. The law is the only thing we have. I signed a contract with Fernando when I married him. There’s one reason why this isn’t easy.”
She urged The Sod on up towards the lightening skyline.
“I was kind of hoping that God would do it for me,” she said wistfully. “Hard-drinking reckless young noblemen fall off their horses and break their necks every day, why couldn’t he be one of them?”
“Crossbows work.” Pieter patted the leather case of his.
“No!”
“Does he fuck good?”
“Jan-Jacob, get your mind out of your codpiece for once – fucking hell!”
The breeze took the mist as they came up to the top of the ridge, rolling it forward, away out to sea. Mediterranean sun blazed back from ochre hills. A blurred blue sky shone, and – no more than two or three miles ahead – the light fractured off creeping waves. The coast. The sea.
A fleet covered the bay, and all the sea beyond.
No merchant ships.
Warships.
White sails and black pennants. Ash thought in a split second that’s half a war fleet down there!, and Visigoth pennants!
The wind blew the taste of salt against her lips. She stared for a long, appalled, frozen second. The knife-sharp prows of black triremes cut the flat silver surface of the sea. More than ten in number, less than thirty. Among them, huge quinqueremes – fifty or sixty ships. And closer inshore, great shallow-draught troopships vanished from her sight behind the walls of Genoa, the wheels that drove them dripping rainbow sprays of sea-water. Dimly, across all the intervening distance, she heard the thunk-thunk of their progress.7
