by Mary Gentle
She shook his hand. His grip was solid.
Let’s delay the questions for a bit. Until I have time to think about my answers.
“What is it you want my men to do, your Grace?”
“In the first place, I’m here to make a request of Burgundian Charles. If he refuses, you will form part of my escort to the borders, and back to England. I shall pay you off in London.”
“How strongly are we liable to be refused?” Ash asked thoughtfully. “Does your Grace want me to put the Lion Azure up against the entire Burgundian military machine? I probably can get you to the Channel ports, in that case, but I don’t particularly want to die to the last man, which is realistically what it would mean.”
John de Vere turned his pale blue eyes to her. His bay had a mettlesome look, barrel-chested and something wicked about the eye. He rode easy in the saddle. To Ash, all the signs said, this man is a soldier.
Almost demurely, the exiled Earl said, “I’m here to find a Lancastrian claimant for the English throne, Henry late of glorious memory being murdered, and his son dead on Tewkesbury field.16 The Yorkists don’t sit so securely. A legitimate heir could de-throne them.”
Ash, knowing next to nothing about rosbif dynastic struggles after her own brief involvement five years before, remembered one fact. She shot John de Vere a confused glance.
Serene, he said, “Yes. I’m aware that Duke Charles is married to the sister of Edward of York.”
“Edward of York, who’s currently Edward, fourth of that name, King by the Lord’s Grace of England.”
De Vere corrected her with immense authority: “Usurping King.”
“So you’re here, in the court of a prince married to the Yorkist King’s sister, to find a Lancastrian claimant who’s willing to invade England and fight against the Yorkist King for his throne? Yeah. Right.”
Ash eased herself back in her saddle, controlling Godluc’s obvious desire to lie down and roll in the lush green grass they rode over. She couldn’t look at the Earl of Oxford for a minute, and when she did, she was no longer sure whether or not he had been smiling.
“Remind me to re-negotiate our contract if it comes to that, your Grace. I’m pretty sure Anselm wouldn’t sign me up for that.”
Actually, I’m pretty sure he’d like nothing better. Damn Robert! He never gave up on his bloody English wars – but he’s not dragging me into them!
Not that I wouldn’t like to be half of Christendom away from here, right now…
“Don’t think of it as an act of lunacy, Captain.” The Earl of Oxford’s weather-beaten face creased, amused. “Or don’t think of it as more lunatic than employing a female mercenary in addition to my household troops.”
Ash began to consider that under his English soldierly exterior, John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, might be as reckless as a fifteen-year-old knight on his first campaign. And as mad as a dog with its balls on fire, she thought dourly. Robert, Angelotti, you’re in deep, deep trouble.
The Earl said, “You came up from the south, Captain, and were employed by the Visigoth commander. What can you tell me? Within the terms of your condotta?”
Here it comes. And he’s only the first. There’s going to be some interesting questions, and not just from mad English Earls who happen to be employing me…
“Well?” de Vere said.
Ash looked over her shoulder and saw her own escort, led by Thomas Rochester with her personal banner. They were riding intermingled with the troops in murrey and white.
The rest of the company, archers and billmen and knights together all promiscuous, moved ahead with her officers, walking and riding back to the camp.
“Yes, your Grace.” Ash narrowed her eyes against the sun, watching the column – from this illusory perspective, behind them, they did not appear to be moving forward: just a forest of polearms bobbing gently up and down. A multitude of steel helmets and bill-heads glinted in the Burgundian sunlight.
Ash said, “If you wish to inspect my company, there’s wine in my tent. I’m considering what I can tell you, without betraying a previous employer.” She hesitated, then said, “Why do you want to know?”
He appeared to take no offence, and she had used enough lack of ceremony to provoke him if he was going to be provoked. She thought, Now we shall find out what he wants, and waited, the reins tucked up in her fingers, her body swaying with Godluc’s loose-boned walk.
“Why? Because I’ve changed my mind about my business since I came here.” John de Vere switched to Burgundian French. “With this southern crusade rolling up Christendom like a carpet, and my lord princes of Burgundy and France squabbling instead of uniting, then the Lancastrian cause is necessarily put into abeyance. What use would a Lancastrian king be on the throne of England if the next thing he sees is a fleet of black galleys sailing up the Thames?”
Ash dropped Godluc back very slightly, so that she could see the Englishman’s face. His eyes, narrowing against the sun, showed deep-bitten crow’s-feet. He did not look at her, nor the rich miles of Burgundian countryside.
Over the noise of jingling tack, and Godluc huffing a long breath, the Earl of Oxford said, “These Visigoth men are good. Either they’ll conquer us, disunited as we are, or we’ll unite – and we might still be beaten. It would be bad war. Then there’s the Turk waiting in the east, to come down and take the victor’s spoils away from him.” His thin, bony knuckles whitened on his reins; the bay’s head tossed. “Steady!”
“Your Grace hired me because I’ve been there.”
“Yes.” The Englishman brought his horse under control. The pale blue eyes lost their abstracted look, and fixed on Ash. “Madam, you are the only soldier I can find in Burgundy who has. I’ll talk to your officers, too; your master gunner in particular. First I’ll hear details of what arms they bear, and their manner of war. Then you can tell me what rumours they have following them. Like this nonsense of a sky without a sun over the Germanies.”
“That’s true.”
The Earl of Oxford stared at her.
“It’s true, my lord.” Ash found herself the more inclined to give him his title, since he was in exile. “I was there, my lord. I saw them put the sun out. It’s only since we came here…”
She waved an ungloved hand, indicating the green sweep of grass running down to the water meadows; the wagons and tents and flying pennons of the Lion Azure camp; the sparkling water of the Suzon river, and Dijon’s peaked roofs, blue tiles shining like mirrors under the summer sun.
“…only here that I’ve seen the sun again.”
De Vere reined in. “Upon your honour?”
“Upon my honour, as I honour a contract.” Ash surprised herself with plain honesty. She tucked her reins under her thigh, and pushed her linen shirtsleeves up. Her skin was already reddened from the morning blaze, but she welcomed it, could not get enough of it, sunburn or not.
“Does the sun still shine on France, and England?”
Something in the intensity of her question must have got through to the Earl. De Vere said simply, “Yes, madam. It does.”
Godluc dropped his head. White foam began to cream his flanks. Ash cast a practised eye to the horse lines (set up in that part of the camp that included trees and river) and considered their coolness and shade. The war-horses, separated out by long-suffering grooms from the riding mounts, looked fractious.
A figure came running out of the camp’s wagon-gate as she watched, sprinting across the river meadow towards them – towards Thomas Rochester’s Lion Azure banner, she guessed, and thus to herself.
His gaze on the running figure, the Earl of Oxford said, “And this war-machine of theirs? Did you also see that?”
“I saw no machine,” Ash said carefully. The distant figure was Rickard.
“I’ll tell you what I know,” she said decisively. Then, with humour, “You hired me for what I know, your Grace. As well as for these men. And as far as I can, I’ll tell you the truth.”
“On the u
nderstanding that you have no more loyalty to me than to the last man who hired you,” the Earl remarked.
“No less loyalty,” Ash corrected him, and nudged Godluc and rode forward to where Rickard, long legs labouring, pounded across the grass and kingcups towards her.
Rickard halted, leaned forward with his hands gripping his thighs, breathing hard, and then straightened. Red-faced, he thrust a parchment roll up at her.
Ash reached down. “What’s this?”
The black-haired boy licked parched lips and panted, “A summons from the Duke of Burgundy.”
V
Ash became conscious of her pulse speeding up, her mouth rapidly drying, and an urge to visit the latrines. She closed her hand tightly around the Duke of Burgundy’s scroll.
“When?” she demanded, not about to spell out some clerk’s script word-by-word in front of a new employer. Seeing Rickard’s bright red face, she loosed the water skin from her saddle and handed it down to the boy. “When does the Duke want us?”
Rickard drank, tipped a sparkling jet over his black curls, and shook his head, drops spraying. “The fifth hour past noon. Boss, it’s almost noon now!”
Ash smiled reassuringly. “Get me Anselm, Angelotti, Geraint Morgan and Father Godfrey: run!”
Her voice cracked.
Straightening up in her saddle, she saw Robert Anselm just leaving the camp again, the Italian master gunner with him. As the boy pounded back past them, the two men strode through the thick, green grass towards her and the Earl of Oxford’s retinue.
“Here they come – the lily-white boys,” she-remarked grimly, under her breath. Robert, what have you got me into! “My lord of Oxford, please you to accept my hospitality?”
The fair-haired Englishman eased his horse up alongside Godluc, gazing at the lion Azure camp; which began, as they watched, to resemble a beehive kicked over by a donkey. With a slight smile, he murmured, “The Earl of Oxenford17 would be better advised to go away for an hour and leave you to put your men in order.”
“No.” The grim edge didn’t leave Ash’s voice. Her gaze fixed on her approaching officers. “You’re my boss, my lord. It’s up to you now whether I obey this summons, and go and see the bold Duke. And, if I do go, how I go, and what I say to him. It’s your call, my lord.”
His faded brows lifted.
“Yes. Yes, madam. You may attend. I must decide what you say. Regrettably, it seems that I may have cheated you out of a contract richer than I can offer while Richard of Gloucester18 holds my lands.”
And just how much are you paying us? Not a hundredth as much as Charles Téméraire19 could, that’s for sure. Shit.
“Stay and eat with me, my lord. You need to give me your orders. I can guest your retinue, too.” Ash took a breath. “I intend to hold a muster now and take the roll, so that I can tell you our exact strength. Master Anselm may have told you that we left Basle in something of a hurry. You got a bargain. My lord.”
“Poverty is a worse master than I am, madam.”
Ash surveyed his frayed doublet and thought about being attainted and in exile. “I do hope so,” she murmured, under her breath. Then: “Excuse me, your Grace!”
As the men from his small retinue rode up to the Earl, Ash tapped Godluc’s flanks with her spurs and trotted forward. She was aware of Florian walking up beside her stirrup, and Godluc whickering at the surgeon. Her head began to ache. She halted before the panting figures of Robert Anselm, Angelotti, and now Geraint ab Morgan with them. She gazed over their heads from her saddle, at the camp, and sought with a critical eye to bring detail out of what was essentially a chaos.
“Jesus Christ on the Tree!”
Itemised, it was worse than it first looked. Men lay drinking around firepits grey with ash. Glaives and bills leaned in untidy heaps or rested unsteadily up against guy-ropes. Blackened cookpots were being prodded by half-dressed men-at-arms. Whores sitting up on the wagons ate apples and screamed with laughter. Euen Huw’s lance’s sorry attempt at guarding the gate made her cringe. Children ran and screeched far too close to the horse lines. And the wall of wagons trailed down, at the river, to a mass of small shelters, blankets over sticks mostly, and no effort made to make fire-safety or a defence possible…
“Geraint!”
“Yes, boss?”
Ash scowled at a distant crossbowman with unlaced hose, and a dirty white coif over stringy shoulder-length hair, who sat on a wagon playing a whistle in the key of C.
“What do you think this is, Michaelmas fucking Fair? Get that bloody lot kitted up, before Oxford fires us! And before the Visigoths get here and kick our asses! Move it!”
The Welsh Sergeant of Archers was used to being shouted at, but the genuine outrage in her tone made him swing round immediately and stomp off into camp, between the tents, lifting his big legs with remarkable alacrity over guy-ropes, and bellowing directions to each lance of men that he passed. Ash sat in her saddle, with her fists on her hips, and watched him go.
“As for you.” She spoke to Anselm without lowering her head. “Your ass is grass. Forget dining with your old lord. By the time we come out of my tent, this camp is going to look like something out of Vegetius, and these dozy buggers are going to look like soldiers. Or you’re not going to be here. Am I right?”
“Yes, boss—”
“That was a fucking rhetorical question, Robert. Get them mustered; take the roll; I want to know who we lost and what we kept. Once they’re out in the field, get them practising weapons drill; half of them are lying around getting rat-arsed, and that stops now. I need an escort fit to walk into Duke Charles’s palace with me!”
Anselm blenched.
She snarled, “You have one hour. Get to it!”
Florian, her hand resting on Godluc’s stirrup, gave a deep, breathy chuckle. “Boss goes bark! and everybody jumps.”
“They don’t call me the old battle-axe for nothing!”
“Oh, you know about that, do you? I’ve never been sure.”
Ash watched Anselm sprinting back to camp, conscious that, under her anguished concern that her men weren’t secure, and under the level of fear about stepping into the premier court of Europe, some tiny inner voice was exclaiming God, but I love this job!
“Antonio, stay here. I want you to show the English lord your guns – I never met a lord who wasn’t interested in cannon – and keep him out of my hair for one hour. Where’s Henri?”
Her steward appeared at Godluc’s bridle, limping, leaning on the arm of the woman Blanche.
“Henri, we’re entertaining this English Earl and his retinue in the command tent. Let’s have fresh rushes, silver plates, and respectable food, okay? Let’s see if we can set table for an Earl’s degree.”
“Boss! With Wat cooking?” Henri’s aghast, linen-coifed face slowly changed to an expression of complacency. “Ah. English. That means he knows nothing about food and cares less. Give me an hour.”
“You got it! Angelotti, go!”
She turned Godluc with a pressure of her knee, and rode slowly back to the murrey banner. The cloth drooped in the heat. The men-at-arms’ faces under their helms shone wet and red. She thought, Every damn peasant is sheltering from the sun from now until late afternoon. Every merchant in Dijon is between cool stone walls, listening to musicians. I bet even the Duke’s court are holding siesta. And what do we get?
Less than five hours to be ready.
“Madam Captain!” de Vere shouted.
She rode up to the Englishmen.
The Earl of Oxford, speaking (as he had been speaking) in the Burgundian dialect of the Duchy, indicated his young knights and said briefly, “These are my brothers, Thomas, George and Richard; and my good friend Viscount Beaumont.”
His brothers looked all more or less in their twenties; the remaining nobleman a few years older. All of them had shoulder-length, curling fair hair, and a certain kinship of shabby leg armour and brigandines, and sword grips with the leather worn thin.
Another brother, whose blue eyes squinted, said, “Look at that face! Who cares what she is!”
Ash sat her war-horse easily, and surveyed the four brothers with a relaxed expression. She turned her head towards the remaining noblemen, Beaumont. With the English she remembered from campaigning there, she remarked, “No wonder they say what they do about English manners. You have anything to add to that, my lord Viscount?”
The Viscount Beaumont held up a gauntleted hand in surrender, eyes twinkling appreciatively. When he spoke, a missing front tooth made his voice appealingly soft-edged. “Not me, madam!”
She turned back to the Earl of Oxford. “My lord, your brother there isn’t the first soldier to insult me for being female – not by about twenty years!”
“I am ashamed by Dickon’s20 lack of courtesy.” John de Vere bowed from his saddle. To all appearances confident of her, he said, “Madam Captain, you know how best to handle it.”
“But she’s a weak woman!” The youngest brother, Richard de Vere, turning amazed pale eyes to her, blurted, “What can you do?”
“Oh, I get it… You think my lord didn’t hire me for my fighting skills,” Ash said bluntly. “You think he just hired me because he wants to question me about the Visigoth general and the invasion that’s headed this way, and because you think Robert Anselm runs this company, and commands it in the field. Am I right?”
One of the middle de Veres, Tom or George, said, “Duke Charles must be of the same opinion. You’re a woman, what else can you do but talk?”
The Earl of Oxford politely said, “That is my brother George, madam.”
Ash wheeled Godluc away to face the youngest brother. “I’ll tell you what I can do, Master Dickon de Vere. I can reason, I can speak, and I can do my job. I can fight. But if a man doesn’t believe I can command, or thinks I’m weak, or won’t lie down after I beat him in a fair fight – which is the way I usually handle this with recruits – or thinks that any woman’s argument is best answered by rape … then I can kill him.”
