Ash: A Secret History

by Mary Gentle

  “Seduce me?” she repeated. “Fernando… That’s ridiculous!”

  “Okay. So it is. So what do you suggest I do, with half a dozen sword-happy maniacs watching every word I say to you?” He stood half a head taller than she did, looking down at her, a young man in foreign armour. “At the moment, thanks to you, I’m the Faris’s pimp. The least you can do is not laugh at me.”

  “Wh—” Ash ran out of breath and the impetus to speak. Something in his appalling honesty touched her, despite herself. “The Faris’s pimp?”

  “I don’t want to be here!” Fernando shouted. “All I want is to go back to Guizburg, stay there, stay in the castle, and not come out until this fucking lunatic war is over. But they married me to you, didn’t they? And you turn out to be some relative of the Faris. So who do they think knows all about the mercenary commander Ash? Me. Who do they think is an influence on you? Me.” He drew a gasping breath. “I don’t care about politics. I don’t want to be in the Faris’s affinity. I don’t want to be at the Visigoth court. I don’t want to be here. But because they think I’m a source of information on you, here I am! And all I want is to fucking go back to Bavaria!”

  He finished, panting; little white dots of spittle at the corners of his mouth. Ash realised he had spoken in German, that both Lebrija and Lamb were looking puzzled now at the rapid, slurred, foreign speech.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said. “I’m impressed.”

  “I’m only here because of you!”

  The contempt and fury in his tone made Euen Huw and Thomas Rochester both reach for their sword-hilts, and watch Ash out of the corners of their eyes, to see if she would let him get away with it. She noted Godfrey’s hands, almost hidden in his robes, whitening into fists.

  “I thought you wanted to be well in with the Faris,” she said mildly. “Making a place for yourself in the Visigoth court. I thought that was why you got me knocked on the head at Basle.”

  Ignoring that, he spluttered, “I don’t want a place at court!”

  Ash’s tone became acid-edged with sarcasm. “Yeah, that’s why you’re in Guizburg now, not standing in front of me! Like you’re not here with Lebrija for political advantage, or reward, or promotion.”

  Catching his breath, Fernando glared down at her. “I’ll tell you exactly why I’m here. The Faris would happily have stuck my head on a spear, as an encouragement to any other minor German nobles. She didn’t because I took one look at her, and told her that she had a double.”

  “You told her.”

  “I suppose having a bastard Visigoth wife is mildly better than having a French soldier-bitch.”

  “You told her?”

  “You think I’m some knight out of the chronicles. I’m not. I’ve had men pointing spears at me, and I know it: I’m just another man with legal title to a few acres of land, and a few men wearing eagles on their clothes, and that’s it. Nothing remarkable. Nothing valuable. No different from any other man they’ve butchered in Genoa or Marseilles or wherever.”

  She looked at him, seeing in his face some echo of that split-second of trauma. “Roberto said you were some damned stupid young knight with ideas of death-or-glory. He was wrong, though, wasn’t he? You took one look at glory and decided you’d save your own skin!”

  Fernando del Guiz stared. “Sweet Jesu. You’re ashamed of me.”

  It was a distinct glint of humour. His tone was self-mocking.

  “You wouldn’t say this to your friend Lamb. Or did you? Did you say to him, why didn’t you fight off the Visigoths at Genoa, there were two hundred of you and only thirty thousand of them?”

  Her mind squirrelled away the figure of thirty thousand men without conscious thought. Her face reddened. She said, “Lamb negotiated a condotta. That’s what he does. That’s what I do. You just shat yourself and threw yourself on their mercy—”

  He put his hand on the shoulder of her brigandine. Her hand clenched, to knock him away. She felt herself shake with the restraint of not doing it.

  “You sent me off. Right into them.”

  “You’re trying to blame me for this? Hey. I wanted my command back. I didn’t want you ordering my lances into a field they couldn’t win.” Ash snorted. “Bit ironic, really. I should have let you give them an order. It would have been ‘run like fuck!’”

  He flushed, the pale freckled skin going pink from his throat to his brow.

  Ash yelled, “And you could have! It wouldn’t even have been difficult. Up into the foothills, lose yourself in the mountains. They’d barely got a grip on the coast, they weren’t going to go off chasing twelve horsemen!”

  Anger is translatable into any language. As he startled back, a green-robed shoulder appeared in front of her, between her and Fernando – Ash grabbed Godfrey Maximillian and pushed him away. For all the priest was twice her bulk, she used balance and momentum to put him straight past her.

  “STOP!” she bellowed.

  Thomas and Euen Huw instantly appeared one either side of her, hands on hilts. She threw out her hands, palms open, as Lebrija’s men began to stride forward.

  “Okay! Enough! Back off.”

  One of the Burgundians – a captain? – thundered, “You are under truce! In God’s name, no weapons here!”

  The Visigoths halted, uncertain. A Burgundian knight near the door shifted to a combat stance. Ash jerked a thumb, saw out of peripheral vision Thomas, Euen, and (reluctantly) Godfrey backing off again. She kept her gaze on Fernando.

  His voice not quite controlled, Fernando del Guiz said, “Ash … when you’re cautious, it’s caution; when you change sides to the stronger force, it’s business. Don’t you understand fear?” He hesitated, then: “I thought you understood this – I did what I did because I was afraid of being killed.”

  He said it plainly, with quiet emphasis. Ash opened her mouth to say something, and shut it again. She looked at him. Both his hands, holding his upturned helmet now, were white-knuckled.

  He said, “I saw her face – the Faris. And now I’m alive. For telling some Carthaginian bitch she’s got a bastard cousin in the Frankish armies. I was too afraid not to tell her.”

  “You could have run,” Ash insisted. “Hell, you could at least have tried!”

  “No. I couldn’t.”

  The whiteness of his skin made her think, suddenly, he’s still in shock, he’s in combat-shock without having been in combat, and she said, automatically gently, as she would to one of her own: “Don’t feel too bad about it.”

  His gaze snapped to her face. “I don’t.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t feel bad about it.”

  “But—”

  “If I did,” Fernando said, “I’d have to believe that the people like you are right. I saw it all, in that second. You’re crazy. You’re all stark, staring mad. You go around killing other people, and getting killed, and you don’t see there’s anything wrong with it.”

  “Did you do anything when they killed Otto and Matthias and the rest of your guys? Did you even say anything?”

  “No.”

  She looked him in the eye.

  “No,” Fernando said. “I didn’t say a word.”

  To another man, she might have said that’s war, it’s shit but it happens, there wasn’t anything you could have said that would have made a difference.

  “What’s the matter?” she needled. “Pissing on twelve-year-old girls more your style?”

  “Perhaps I wouldn’t have done that, if I’d realised how dangerous you are.” His expression changed. “You’re a bad woman. A butcher, a psychopath.”

  “Don’t be bloody ridiculous. I’m a soldier.”

  “That,” he echoed her, “is what soldiers are.”

  “Maybe so.” Ash’s voice sounded hard. “That’s war.”

  “Well, I don’t want to make war any more.” Fernando del Guiz fixed her with a bright, rueful smile. “You want the honest truth? I want no part of this. If I had any choice, I’d go back
to Guizburg, pull up the drawbridge, and not come out until this war’s over and done with. Leave it to blood-thirsty bitches like you.”

  I have been to bed with this man, Ash thought, marvelling at the distance between them. And if he asked me, now—

  “Is that my cue to walk out?” Ash hooked her hands into her belt. The blue leather was decorated with brass rivets in the shape of lions’ heads; it was not, she thought, something that would ever be worn by a woman. “As seductions go, this is pretty crap.”

  “Yes. Well.” Fernando glanced over his shoulder at Sancho Lebrija, looking painfully embarrassed to be overheard failing to persuade an errant wife. “My track record isn’t brilliant, recently.”

  He looks tired, Ash thought. A pulse of sympathy for him ruined her carefully hoarded anger.

  No. No. I’m fine, hating him. That’s what I need to do.

  “Your track record’s fine. The last thing you did to me was betray me. Why didn’t you come to me at Basle?” she demanded. “When they’d locked me up, why didn’t you come?”

  Fernando del Guiz looked blank. “But why should I have?”

  Ash hit him.

  The movement was not under her control, all she could choose was not to draw her sword. Not wanting a guard’s blade struck through her midriff had something to do with it – but, more than that, the picture flashing in front of her eyes stopped her: Fernando del Guiz’s face spidered red with blood running from a cleft skull.

  That mental image brought a jolt of nausea. Not for the killing, that being her business, but the simple thought of harm to this body, a body caressed with her own hands—

  She hit him in the face with the fist clenched, and her gauntlets off; swore; wrung her hand and tucked her throbbing knuckles under her armpit, and stared at Fernando del Guiz who rocked back on his heels, eyes flown wide with shock. Not with anger, she saw, but with sheer shock that a woman had dared to hit him.

  Behind her: shifting feet, the ching of mail, polearm butts going down on the tiles, men about to plunge forward again—

  Fernando del Guiz did not move.

  A small red mark swelled below his lip. He breathed heavily, his face scarlet.

  Ash stood watching, flexing her throbbing fingers.

  Finally, someone – not one of her own men, one of the Visigoths – laughed coarsely.

  Fernando del Guiz stood in front of her, still not moving.

  She looked at his face. Something almost like pity – if pity can sear and burn, the way that hatred does; if it can bring an absolute inability to bear another person’s shame and pain – something went through her like edged steel.

  Ash winced, put her fingers to her hair again, feeling again the sun-warmed heat of it and the spiky gut stitches still jutting from her skin, and caught the smell of him on her skin.

  “Oh, Christ.” Her stomach jolted. Tears pushed under the lids of her eyes, and she blinked, ferociously, threw her head back and said, “Euen! Thomas! Godfrey! We’re leaving!”

  Her heels rang on the flagstones. The men-at-arms fell in, either side, matching her step; and she strode straight past the face of Sancho Lebrija, past his men, ignored Lamb; strode out through the iron-bound oaken doors, not looking back, not looking to see what expression Fernando del Guiz might have on his face now.

  Walking without direction took her out of the ducal palace, into Dijon. She passed and ignored men from the company, striding out blindly through the crowds. A voice called after her. She ignored it, turning away, climbing stone steps. They brought her up into the open, high above the alleys, on the massive stone walls of Dijon.

  She paused, breathless, above the man- and horse-crowded streets; surveying the city defences through absent-minded habit. The men-at-arms, outdistanced, clattered up the steps behind her.

  “Shit!”

  Ash sat herself down on the crenellations, in the late afternoon sunlight. She stared out between blocks of granite. A long way below, beyond the dusty white road leading into the city, diminutive figures worked in the fields. Men in shirts, their split-hose rolled down below their knees, binding up sheaves of the dusty white-gold wheat and lifting them on to ox-wains, working more quickly now that the deadly heat of afternoon was waning…

  “Child?” A panting Godfrey Maximillian came to stand beside her. “Are you all right?”

  “Christ on the Tree, that cowardly son of a bitch!” Her heart still shook her body, made her hands tingle. “Fucking Visigoths – and I’m going to be handed over to them? No way!”

  Thomas Rochester, scarlet in the heat, said, “Christ, boss, calm down!”

  “Too hot for running around like this,” Euen Huw added, unbuckling his helmet, and standing up on the crenellations to catch any breeze, and to survey the apparently endless tents of the Burgundian army outside the city walls. “More to worry about than that boy, haven’t we?”

  Ash flashed a look at them, at Godfrey; calming down. “So I have twenty-four hours to decide whether I should wait for the Duke’s verdict, or pack up my stuff in a spotted hanky and start walking…”

  The men laughed. Noise came up from the foot of the wall, outside the city. Sixty feet below, a number of her men were swimming in the moat, white limbs flashing as they ducked each other, the camp’s dogs yelping and barking at their bare heels. As she watched, a cocky-tailed white bitch bounded into the air and pushed Euen Huw’s second, Thomas Morgan, off-balance and off the narrow bridge that formed Dijon’s gateway. The sound of the distant splash came up through the hot air.

  “There goes Duke Charles.” Ash pointed at a cavalcade of riders moving out of the city gates, riding towards the woods; their brilliant clothes bright against the dust, hawks poised on wrists, musicians walking behind them and playing an air which came distantly up to the walls. Ash leaned her back against the cool stone. “You’d think he’s got nothing to worry about! Well, maybe he hasn’t. Compared to wondering whether he’s going to be handed over to the damn Visigoths in the morning!”

  Godfrey Maximillian said, “May I speak with you alone, Captain?”

  “Oh, sure, why not?” Ash looked over her shoulder at Euen Huw and Thomas Rochester. “Guys, take five. There was an inn at the bottom of these steps, I saw the bush. I’ll meet you in there.”

  Thomas Rochester frowned darkly. “With Visigoths in the city, boss?”

  “With half of Charles’s army in the streets.”

  The English knight shrugged, exchanged a look with Euen Huw, and strode lightly down the steps from the wall, the Welshman and the others following. Ash had a shrewd idea they would go no further than the foot of the stone steps.

  “Well?” She leaned her face up to the slightest of breezes, bringing a dust of chaff golden from the fields. She hooked one knee up, and leaned her elbow on it. Her fingers still faintly trembled, and she looked down at her sword hand in some puzzlement. “What’s bothering you, Godfrey?”

  “More news.” The big priest gazed out from the walls, not looking at her. “This ‘father’ of the Faris, Leofric. All I can hear is that this Lord-Amir Leofric is one of their least-known nobles, and supposedly resides in Carthage itself, in the Citadel. The rest is just rumours, from unreliable sources. I have no idea what this ‘Stone Golem’ even looks like. Do you?”

  Something in his tone bothered her. Ash glanced up. She patted the flat stone between the crenellations invitingly.

  Godfrey Maximillian remained standing on the inner wall walkway.

  “Sit down,” she said, aloud. “Godfrey, what’s bothering you?”

  “I can’t get you better information without a great deal of money. When does Lord Oxford intend to pay us?”

  “No, that isn’t it. What, Godfrey?”

  “Why is that man still alive!”

  His voice boomed, loud enough to momentarily stop the bathers below shouting. Ash startled. She swung around and dangled her legs over the inside of the wall, staring up at him. “Godfrey? Which? Who?”

  Godfre
y Maximillian repeated, in an intense whisper, “ Why is that man still alive? ”

  “Oh, sweet Christ.” Ash blinked. She rubbed the heel of her hand across one eye-socket. “You mean Fernando, don’t you?”

  The big, bearded man wiped his sweating face. There were rings of white skin under his eyes.

  “Godfrey, what is all this? It was a joke. Or something. I’m not going to murder a man in cold blood, am I?”

  He took no notice of this appeal. He began to stride up and down, in short agitated paces, not looking at her. “You are quite capable of having him killed!”

  “Yes. I am. But why should I? Once they leave, I’ll probably never see him again.” Ash put out a hand to stop Godfrey. He ignored it. The coarse linen of his robe flicked her fingers as he passed. She scented, still, Fernando del Guiz on her skin; and as she breathed in, suddenly looked up at the big bearded man. He’s not old, she thought. I never think of Godfrey as young, but he’s not an old man.

  Godfrey Maximillian stopped in front of her. The descending sun put gold light on his face, reddening his beard, showing her something like pain in his creased eyes, but she was not sure if it were merely the brightness.

  “One of these days there’ll be a battle,” Ash said, “and I’ll hear I’m a widow. Godfrey, what does it matter?”

  “It matters if the Duke hands you over to your husband tomorrow!”

  “Lebrija doesn’t have enough men with him to force me to leave here. As for Duke Charles…” Ash gripped her hands over the edge of the stone wall, and pushed herself down on to her feet on the walkway. “Scaring myself shitless tonight won’t tell me what the Duke’s going to decide to do tomorrow! So what does it matter?”

  “It matters!”

  Ash, studying him with the sunlight on his face, thought I haven’t looked at you properly since we ran from Basle, and made a grimace of apology. She noticed now that he had a gaunt look. Just to either side of his mouth, his beard had white hairs among the wiry brown.