by Mary Gentle
“Stay still!” the husky voice breathed above her. “Don’t move!”
Ash leaned her head to one side, vomiting, and then screamed, and froze: held herself as still as possible, pain flaying her skull. A strange new drowsiness possessed her. She watched Godfrey kneeling in the cart beside her, praying, but praying with his eyes open, watching her face.
Time is nothing but vomiting and pain, and the agony of the cart rocking and jolting in the ruts of the roads.
Time is moonlight: black day cloud-obscured moon: darkness: night again.
What roused her – hours later? days later? – into a dreaminess in which she could at least see the world, was a mutter, an exclamation from one man to another, from woman to man and child, all down the lines of her company. She heard shouting. Godfrey Maximillian grabbed the sides of the cart and leaned out of the front, past Rickard driving the beasts.
What they were shouting, she finally made out, was a name, a place. Burgundy. The most powerful of princedoms, she voiced in her mind; and at a level of voicelessness knew that she herself had intended this, had ordered it, had made Robert Anselm privy to this her intention before ever going inside the walls of Basle after the Visigoth commander.
Trumpets sounded.
A brilliance dazzled her eyes. This is the pass to purgatory, then. Ash prayed.
Light broke on her, over the canvas roof of the ox-wain, sifting down through the white coarse cloth. Light brought out the grain of the wood, the wagon’s thick oak-plank flooring. Light manifested from the darkness the drawn cheek of Floria del Guiz, crouching over her wicker pack of herbs, retractors, scalpels and saws.
Not the colour-leeching silver of the moon. A harsh yellow light.
Ash tried to move. She groaned with a mouth thick with saliva. A man’s broad-fingered hand pressed flat on her breast, holding her still on the low bed. Light brought out the dirt in the whorls of his fingertips. Godfrey’s face was not turned to her, he stared out of the back of the wagon.
A warmth gleamed on his pink flesh, under the road-dust, and on the acorn-colour of his shaggy beard; and she could see, reflected in his dark eyes, a growing of this mad brightness.
Suddenly, a sharp line divided the rush-cushioned floor of the wagon and the strapped bed. Darkness over her body – shadow. Brightness over her blanket-covered legs, a line of light moving with the rocking motion of the wagon – sunlight.
She struggled, but could not raise her head. She moved her eyes only. Through the open back of the wagon glowed colours: blue and green and white and pink.
Her eyes teared. Through flooding water her eyes focused on distance – on green hills, and a flowing river, and the white walls of an enclosed town. The smell rose up and hit her, like a blow under her ribs from a quarterstaff: the smell of roses and honey, and the pungent warmth of horse- and ox-dung with the sun on it.
Sunlight.
Nausea flooded up. Ash vomited weakly, the stinking liquid running down her chin. Pain fractured around the bones of her skull, brought more water to her eyes. Agonised, terrified of what the pain might mean, still she could only think, It’s day, it’s day, it’s the sun!
Men with ten years‘ service cutting flesh on battlefields climb down to kiss the dirt ruts, bury their faces in dew-wet grass. Women who sew men’s clothes and wounds alike, fall to their knees beside them. Riders pitch down from their horses’ saddles. All, all falling on the cold earth, in the light, the light, singing “Deo gratias, Deo adiuvante, Deo gratias!”26
Message: #47 (Anna Longman)
Subject: Ash, archaeological discoveries
Date: 09/11/00 at 12.03 p.m.
From: Ngrant@
Anna –
Anna, I apologise, for being out of contact for two days. It hardly seems like minutes, here! So much is going on – we’ve had television crews trying to get in. Dr Isobel has thrown what amounts to a security cordon around the area, with the local government’s permission. So you may or may not have seen anything about this on non-terrestrial television. If I were Isobel, I wouldn’t be so keen to have soldiers around an archaeological dig; when I think of what they could carelessly destroy, my blood does run cold, it is no mere figure of speech.
Before I do anything else, I *must* apologise for the things I wrote on Tuesday about Dr Napier-Grant. Isobel and I have been old friends, in a rather spiky way, for so many years. I’m afraid I let my complete enthusiasm over the discoveries here reduce me to a babbling idiot. I hope you will regard everything I wrote as being in confidence.
I don’t have Isobel’s technical archaeological expertise, but she wants me to stay and give her more of the cultural background – all these finds are late 15th century. This is not her period, she’s a Classicist. The ‘messenger’ golem we have here is being measured by the latest high-tech equipment, and *still* all that I can tell you, Anna, is that at some point in the past, this thing walked.
What I can’t tell you is *how*.
There appears to be nothing to power it, and no means for anything to be fitted. Isobel and her team are baffled. She *cannot* believe that the ‘golem’ descriptions in the ASH documents are a coincidence or mediaeval fable. Anna, she WILL NOT believe it is coincidence.
I am baffled, too. You see, in many senses, we shouldn’t be finding what we’re finding here. Certainly, I believe I have the, evidence for a late-Gothic settlement on the North African coast, but I have always known that the manuscripts‘ reference to ’Carthage‘ can be nothing but poetic licence. THERE IS NO CARTHAGE! After the Punic Wars, Rome destroyed Carthage completely. Carthage of the Carthaginians ceased to be an inhabited, powerful city in 146 BC. The great later Roman settlement, on this site, which they themselves called Carthage, was itself obliterated by Vandals, Byzantines, and the Arab conquest in the late 7th century AD – the ruins outside modern-day Tunis’ are a considerable tourist attraction.
‘Delenda est Carthago’, as Cato used to say in the Roman Senate, at every conceivable opportunity: ‘Carthage must be destroyed! ’ And so it finally was. Two generations after the Carthaginian army under Hannibal was wiped out by Scipio at Zama, Rome had the inhabitants of Carthage deported, the city demolished, and the area ploughed under and sown with salt, so that nothing could ever grow there again – a little excessive, possibly, but at this point in our history it was a toss-up whether we were going to have a Roman Empire or a Carthaginian Empire, and, having been victorious, the Romans methodically made sure they wouldn’t have any trouble from that area again.
History eradicates thoroughly. Until a decade ago, we did not know for certain which of the ruins on the ten-mile stretch of coast around Tunis was any of the Carthages! I am now having to speculate that the Visigoth expedition from Iberia itself resettled a site that they, like the Romans before them, also CALLED Carthage; and that it was within a reasonable distance of the same location. If this didn’t happen until quite late in the day – not until the High Middle Ages, perhaps – then that might account for the sparse documentary evidence of it. I intend to seek more in the way of Islamic sources to support this.
My theory, I THINK, remains intact. And now we have technological evidence to back it up!
– Pierce
* * *
Message: #48 (Anna Longman)
Subject: Ash mss, media projects
Date: 09/11/00 at 12.27 p.m.
From: Ngrant@
Anna –
I forgot to check my previous mail! Shi Sorry. *Sorry*.
Isobel just downloaded your e-mail herself and is extremely interested in the TV project you propose – if not entirely flattered by your description of herself. She said, ‘This woman makes me sound like Margaret Rutherford! ’ A remark which, I may add, despite her being only 41 and merely having a predilection for old black-and-white film comedies, *does* make her sound like Margaret Rutherford. (Fortunately for British television, Isobel is rather more chic.)
We are discussing what might best be done, given a certa
in tension between the dumbing-down effect of television upon scientific enquiry, and the undoubted attractions of gaining popular publicity for archaeology and literature. And, if I can be honest, discussing the attractions that publicity holds for me. I should not mind my fifteen minutes of fame, no, not at all! Especially since it seems that someone else would be paying me for the privilege. I assume we will receive a fee of some kind?
Isobel wishes to consider her options and consult with her team, and the university. I should be able to get back to you later today. Now that I am certain I understand the uses of the Internet, I am forwarding the next section of ‘Ash’. You will want to look it over while we hammer out some of the fine details here.
– Pierce
* * *
Message: #49 (Anna Longman)
Subject: Ash Project
Date: 09/11/00 at 12.44 p.m.
From: Ngrant@
Ms Longman –
I am reluctant to teleconference with your editorial committee. The phone lines here are not good, and moreover I doubt they are secure. I will fly back to talk in person as soon as I can take a break from the site. I would be obliged if you could put me in contact with an association of literary agents, or ‘media’ agents, assuming that there is such an association; my University will then be in a position to enter into negotiations.
I see no reason why we should not reach agreement. Footage from our videocam team is being sent digitally back to my department at █████████████████ University, and processed there. I suggest that you liaise with my departmental head, Stephen Abawi, about any use of research footage for publicising Dr Ratcliff’s edition of ‘Ash’.
At Dr Ratcliff’s suggestion, I am encouraging the team to film more of the actual ‘felt experience’ of this dig, in addition to our archaeological findings. This may need to be limited in scope, as the soldiers do not like to be filmed and small bribes are not always sufficient to placate them. However, it will, as Dr Ratcliff points out, be necessary to have this footage if a documentary is to be later constructed from our time here.
It is possible that Dr Ratcliff and I may collaborate on a documentary script. I am considering using quotations from the previous editors of the ‘Ash’ material. Are you familiar with Charles Mallory Maximillian’s 1890 edition? –
…the great mediaeval spoked Wheel of Fortune is always turning; the Goddess Fortuna always sweeping up each man in turn from beggarhood to crowned king, to falling fool, and back to the darkness below the wheel, which is death and forgetfulness. In 1477, upon the field of Nancy, Burgundy vanishes from history and memory, lies as cold and dead as the frost-bitten Corpse of Charles the Rash, who had been the shining Prince of Christendom, and whose own enemies thought, for two days, that they beheld the body of a mere peasant soldier, so wretched, filthy and torn it was. We recall a golden country. Yet, history has turned, and the past is lost…
Here on the coast of Tunisia, the Wheel is turning again.
– I. Napier-Grant
* * *
Message: #63 (Pierce Ratcliff)
Subject: Ash, documents
Date: 10/11/00 at 01.35 p.m.
From: Longman@
Pierce –
Thank Dr Napier-Grant for her mail.
Your news about the messenger-golem find is stunning. I don’t know what to make of it. I’ll tell you WHY I don’t know what to make of it.
You’ve found mobile golems.
I’ve lost the Angelotti manuscript.
– Anna
* * *
Message: #50 (Longman)
Subject: Ash mss.
Date: 10/11/00 at 02.38 p.m.
From: Ngrant@
Anna –
I don’t understand. How can you LOSE the Angelotti text? It’s in four major world collections! Explain!
– Pierce
* * *
Message: #66 (Pierce Ratcliff)
Subject: Ash mss.
Date: 10/11/00 at 02.51 p.m.
From: Longman@
Pierce –
No. It isn’t.
I wanted to check on this ‘forgotten invasion’ of yours for myself.
If you weren’t out in Tunis with Dr Grant – if this turns out NOT to be golems – I’m pulling the book. I mean it. THERE IS NO ANGELOTTI MANUSCRIPT!
The problem isn’t that a ‘Visigoth invasion’ seems to have been swept under the historical carpet.
The PROBLEM is that since I wanted to check the Angelotti text myself, I phoned the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Glasgow Museum.
The Glasgow Museum no longer hold a copy of the Latin text attributed to one ‘Antonio Angelotti’.
Both the British Library and the Metropolitan Museum now classify it as Mediaeval Romance Literature. As FICTION, Pierce!
WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?
* * *
Message: #54 (Longman)
Subject: Ash/Angelotti mss.
Date: 10/11/00 at 04.11 p.m.
From: Ngrant@
Anna –
I contacted Bernard at the Glasgow Museum. He tells me he doesn’t know where their Angelotti text is, they may no longer shelve it, or it ‘may’ be out on loan to some other institution. He asked me why I wanted to study something so patently useless to the historian, since it’s a presumed 17th century FAKE.
I don’t understand what is happening!
Both Charles Mallory Maximillian and Vaughan Davies had no doubts whatsoever about the veracity of this manuscript! In 1890 and 1939 it was catalogued as an ordinary 15th century document. When I consulted it, it was in the CATALOGUE under that designation! This is not like anything else that has ever happened to me in my academic career! They CAN’T have reclassified it in the past six months!
I can’t get anyone to talk to me on-line, and I CAN’T leave here. If I go off-site, I won’t be allowed back on again. You’re going to have to take this on for me. For our book.
– Pierce
* * *
Message: #69 (Pierce Ratcliff)
Subject: Ash, texts
Date: 10/11/00 at 04.22 p.m.
From: Longman@
Pierce –
Jesus Christ Pierce what next? If one of your manuscripts is a fake, but the golems are real?
I’ll do what I can on-line, and by phone. I really don’t understand this.
Give me a list of documents to check.
Okay, I can understand that maybe Victorian historians weren’t so rigorous as modern ones. There are such things as faked manuscripts. But there’ve been two editions besides yours: if Charles Mallory Maximillian was lax, surely Vaughan Davies should have spotted something?
– Anna
* * *
Message: #55 (Anna Longman)
Subject: Ash, texts
Date: 13/11/00 at 00.45 a.m.
From: Ngrant@
Anna –
Yes, Vaughan Davies should have discovered if any of the documents were invalid. You are kind enough not to say it, but, so should I.
This is a list of the principal authenticated documents that I have been working from:
The WINCHESTER CODEX, c.1495, Tudor English translation of mediaeval Latin original (1480s?). Ash’s childhood.
The del Guiz LIFE, c.1516, withdrawn, expurgated and reissued 1518. German original. Plus a version by Ortense Mancini, 17c playwright, in which she mentions that it is translated from a 16c Latin manuscript – we have no trace of this. Covers, Ash’s life 1472-1477.
The CARTULARY of the monastery of St. Herlaine, c.1480, translated from the French. Brief mentions of Ash as a novice c.1467-8.
‘PSEUDO-GODFREY’, 1478 (?), a German text of dubious value, found in Cologne in 1963; original paper and ink, but possibly a contemporary forgery, cashing in on the popularity of the ‘Ash’ cycle of legends. Ash’s life c. 1467-1477.
The ANGELOTTI manuscript, Milan, 1487; appended at the end of a treatise on armour owned by the Missaglia family. Ash du
ring the period 1473-1477.
‘FRAXINUS ME FECIT’, possibly autobiography of Ash, therefore written down no later than 1477; if a biography, between 1477 and 1481(?). Covers summer 1475 (6?)-autumn 1476.
The two previous editions of the ‘Ash’ material are: –
Charles Mallory Maximillian (ed.) ASH: THE LIFE OF A FEMALE MEDIAEVAL MERCENARY CAPTAIN, J Dent & Son, London, 1890, reprinted 1892, 1893, 1896, 1905.
This contains translations of all the above, excluding ‘Pseudo-Godfrey’ (and, of course, ‘Fraxinus’). CMM does include the 17th century poems by Lord Rochester supposedly based on episodes from the del Guiz LIFE; later research indicates this is unlikely. CMM was a widely read and reputable scholar of his period, holding the Mediaeval History Chair at Oxford.
Vaughan Davies (ed.) ASH: A FIFTEENTH CENTURY BIOGRAPHY, Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1939. Not reprinted. Plates lost.
Contents as CMM. There was also rumoured to be a pirated paperback edition, a facsimile reprint done by Starshine Press in San Francisco (1968), but I have not seen it.
This original 1939 edition itself exists only in incomplete form in the British Library. The publisher’s warehouse was bombed during the war, destroying stocks, and cutting short a popular vogue for Vaughan Davies’s book – after all, it is not every history book that is written by a man with his scientific, as well as historian’s, credentials.
That’s all I have on file, I think there may be one or two confirmatory mentions in contemporary letters, but I don’t have the data with me.
I’ve now completed the next translation of the del Guiz/ Angelotti ‘Ash’ material, and will send it to you after this.
Isobel, of course, is insisting that I IMMEDIATELY finish ‘Fraxinus me fecit’ for her, and she wants the translation done meticulously – so, I think, do I; but she knows that.
Please contact me. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND what is happening here. I have been an academic for twenty years; I do not believe I could make an error – or a series of errors – of this magnitude.
