Ash: A Secret History

by Mary Gentle

  Leofric repeated his question. “Who made the second golem, and why?”

  ‘The eldest son of Radonic, one Sarus, was killed in a battle with the Turks. Radonic then caused to be made a shah set in which the pieces were carved, complete to weapons and armour, resembling the troops of the Turks and the troops of his son Sarus. Then he recalled the Golem to his mind, and set about playing shah with it, and upon a day in that year, the Golem at last played out the game so that the troops of Sarus moved in a different array and would have defeated the Turks.

  ‘Upon this day, also, Amir Radonic discovered his slave Ildico bedding the Golem; and he took a wall-builder’s hammer, and he crushed the red mud and brass of the Golem to fragments, so small that no man could have told what it had been. Thereafter, he shut himself up in a tower. And Ildico bore a daughter.

  ‘Radonic, thinking upon Sarus his dead son, and upon his sons yet living, came and bade the Rabbi make a second Golem, to replace the one he had destroyed in his wrath. This the Rabbi would not do, although the Amir threatened the life of the Rabbi’s two sons. Not until Radonic made plain that he would impale and kill both Ildico and her newborn daughter would the Rabbi relent. Then he builded for Amir Radonic another Stone Golem, in a chamber within the house, but this human in seeming only in its upper body and head, thrice the size of a man: the rest being but a clay slab upon which models of men and beasts may be moved. And the brazen mouth of the Golem spoke.’

  Ash curled her body up, swathed in wool. Two or three sentences at a time is nothing, she thought, but this… The emotionless recounting of the voice made her tired, dizzy, detached.

  ‘Then Radonic killed the Rabbi and his family, in case the Rabbi should make such another shah-player for his enemies, or the enemies of his King-Caliph. And instantly the sun grew dark above him. And the sun darkened above the city of Carthage, and to all the lands ruled by the King-Caliph did the Rabbi’s Curse extend. And so no living eye hath beheld the sun break through the Eternal Twilight, in two hundred years.’

  Ash opened her eyes again, not aware until then that she had shut them, the better to hear her voice. “Jesu! I bet there was panic.”

  Leofric said softly, “The then King-Caliph, Eriulf, and his amirs held command over their troops, and their troops kept the people quiet.”

  “Oh, you can do most things if you can keep a bunch of soldiers taking orders.” Ash pushed herself up in the bed, until she came into contact with the white oak headboard, carved with fluted columns and pomegranates at the posts. She supported herself with an effort against the waxed wood. “This is all legends, I heard this stuff around camp when I was a kid. Legend number three hundred and seven about how the Eternal Twilight came to the south… Am I really telling you what you expect to hear?”

  “Prophet Gundobad lived, and his slave daughter Ildico,” Leofric said, “my family histories speak of it very clearly. And my ancestor Radonic certainly executed a Jewish Rabbi, about the year 1250.”

  “Then ask me things people won’t have read in your family histories!”

  The waxed wood of the bed smelled sweet to her. Her stomach growled. Strung out, watching Leofric’s expression for the minutest changes, she ignored her complaining body.

  “Who was Radegunde?”

  Ash obediently repeated, “Who was Radegunde?”

  ‘The first to speak at a distance to the Stone Golem.’

  She thought, It doesn’t say ‘to me’.

  ‘In these first years of crusade, when harvests failed and grain might not be got but by conquest of happier lands under the sun, then King-Caliph Eriulf began his conquests of the Iberian taifa states. While Amir Radonic fought for King-Caliph Eriulf, he learned from each defeat or victory as he played them out over again with his Stone Golem, after each campaign. The child of Ildico, the girl Radegunde, began in her third year to make statues of men from the red silt sand of Carthage.

  ‘The amir Radonic, seeing how she resembled the old Rabbi, smiled to think he had been so simple as to think a statue might beget a child upon a woman, and to regret his first Stone Golem’s destruction. So Radegunde might have remained only a slave in the House of Radonic, but that, upon a day, she overheard Radonic’s discussions with his captains, upon the practice field, and bade the Amir tell her what tactics he would employ, so that she might engage to speak to her friend the stone man about his plan.

  ‘Thinking to make merry, Radonic bid her ask the Stone Golem what it would have him do. Upon this, Radegunde spoke to the air. Then other slaves came running, to report that the Golem began to move the figures set out before it. When the amir Radonic arrived in its chamber, the answers to his question were set out plain, as if the Golem had received her childish speech from some demon of the air.

  ‘Then Radonic abandoned the way of honour and rightness, and did not slay the child. Radonic adopted Radegunde, taking her with him to Iberia, speaking to her, and through her to the Stone Golem, and the tide of war turned in Eriulf’s favour, so that southern Iberia became the grain-basket of Carthage under the twilight. And at five, she made her first mud statue that moved of its own volition, breaking much in the household, and greatly the child laughed to see this destruction.’

  Ash drew her ankles up to her haunches, under the covering wool gown, and studied Leofric’s expression. It was one of intense concentration.

  “Is that Radegunde?” She stumbled over the name.

  “Yes. Ask, how did she die?”

  “How did Radegunde die?” Ash parroted. The dizziness in her might have had a dozen causes. She suspected a concentration of her mind that felt, somehow, as if she were pulling – a load up a slope – or unravelling something.

  ‘In his seasons at home in Carthage, the amir Radonic gave orders that Radegunde should be aided to make her new golems, bringing her scholars, engineers, and strange materials all as she desired. In her fifteenth year, God took away her powers of speech, but her mother Ildico communicated for her by signs known to them both. In this year also, upon a day, Radegunde builded a stone man that rent her limb from limb and so she died.’

  Leofric’s voice said, “And what is the secret birth?”

  Ash kept her mouth shut, forming no words in her head, but letting an expectation form. An expectation of being answered. She let it somehow pull at other, implicit, answers. She said nothing out loud.

  The voice began to speak in her head.

  ‘Desiring another who should hear the Stone Golem though separated from it by many miles, so that he might continue his war, the amir Radonic bred Ildico, in her thirtieth year, to the third golem, which had killed her daughter. This is the secret breeding, and the secret birth her twins, a male child and a girl.’

  She mumbled out loud, too startled at hearing it to keep quiet; muttered a necessary question out loud, in the face of Leofric’s keen stare, over the answer already coming into her head. Then she stumbled over words, getting them out:

  ‘The amir Radonic desired another such slave, a grown adult, who should communicate with the Stone Golem as Radegunde had, a Janissary general after the manner of the Turks, an al-shayyid who should defeat all the petty taifa kings of Iberia. The twin children of Ildico could not be brought to do it, no matter the pain inflicted upon them and their mother. Nor could another golem be built. At last, Ildico confessed that she had given Radegunde her holy relic of the Prophet Gundobad, to place it within her last golem, and to make it speak and move as men do. But, at this knowledge, the third golem slew Ildico, and leaped from a high tower, and was dashed to fragments beneath. And this is their secret death: none remaining of the Prophet and Rabbi’s miracle but the second Stone Golem, and Ildico’s children.’

  Amir Leofric’s hands closed over hers, clasping them tightly. Ash met his eyes steadily. He was nodding, unstoppably, in agreement; his eyes were wet.

  “I never thought to have two such successes,” he explained, simply. “It does speak to you, doesn’t it? My dear girl.”

&
nbsp; “That was two hundred years ago,” Ash said. “What happened then?”

  She felt him unite with her in a moment of pure curiosity on her side, pure understanding of the desire for knowledge on his. The two of them sat companionably side by side on the bed.

  Leofric said, “Radonic bred the twins and their offspring together. He wasn’t a man to keep careful records. After he died his second wife Hildr and her daughter Hild took over; they kept minutely detailed notations of what they did. Hild was my great-great-grandmother. Her son Childeric, and her grandsons Fravitta and Barbas, continued the breeding programme, always tantalisingly close. As you know, as our conquests spread, many refugees and much scholastic knowledge came to Carthage. Fravitta built the ordinary golems, about the year 1390; Barbas presented them to King-Caliph Ammianus; they have since become popular through the Empire. The youngest son of Barbas, Stilicho, was my father; he raised me in the knowledge of the utmost necessity of our eventual success. My success was born four years after the fall of Constantinople. And so may you have been,” Leofric finished thoughtfully.

  He’s older than he looks. Ash realised the Visigoth lord must be in his fifties or sixties. That means he grew up under the threat of the Turks – and that begs another question.

  “Why isn’t your general attacking the Sultan and his Beys?” Ash asked.

  Absently, Leofric muttered, “The Stone Golem advised a crusade in Europe to be a better beginning; I must say I agree.”

  Ash blinked, frowned. “Attacking Europe is a better way to defeat the Turks? Ah, c’mon! That’s crazy!”

  Leofric ignored her mumble. “All has gone so well, and so speedily; if it were not for this cold—” He broke off. “Burgundy is the strategic key, of course. Then we may turn our attention to the Sultan’s lands, God willing it so. God willing that Theodoric lives. He has not always been such a bad friend to me,” the elderly man mused, as if to himself, “only in this last illness, and since Gelimer got his ear; still, he cannot very well stop a crusade once begun with so many victories…”

  Ash waited until he looked up at her, raising his bowed head. “The Eternal Twilight has spread north. I saw the sun go out.”

  “I know.”

  “ You don’t know a damn thing about it!” Ash’s tone rose. “You don’t know any more about what’s going on than I do!”

  Leofric shifted very carefully on the edge of the white oak bed. Something squicked in the depths of his gown. The pale blue doe put out an indignant nose, and scuttled hastily on to his striped sleeve.

  “Of course I do!” the Visigoth amir snapped. “It’s taken us generations to breed a slave who can hear the Stone Golem without going mad. Now I have a chance of there being two of you.”

  “I’ll tell you what I think, Amir Leofric.” Ash looked at him. “I don’t think you have any use for another slave-general. I don’t think you need another Faris, another warrior-daughter who can talk to your machine – no matter how long it took you to breed that one. That’s not what you want at all.” She spared a finger for the rat, but it was sitting up on its haunches, grooming velvet-blue fur, and ignored her.

  “Suppose I can hear your tactical machine. So what, Amir Leofric?” Ash spoke very carefully. The fog of misery was beginning to clear. Her body has ached from other wounds than this, if none so deep. “You can offer me a place with you, to fight for the King-Caliph, and I’ll agree, and turn my coat as soon as I get back to Europe; he and you both know that. That’s not important, it’s not what you need!”

  The exhilaration of unguarded honesty filled her. Looking around the room at the three slave-children, she briefly realised, I’ve taken to talking as if they’re not there, too. Her gaze returned to Leofric, to see him thrusting his fingers through his hair, spiking it up still further.

  Come on, girl, she thought. If he were a man you were hiring, what would you make of him? Intelligent, secretive, with none of the normal social restraints about causing physical harm to people: you’d pay him five marks and put him on the company books in a second!

  And he didn’t get to stay an amir without being devious. Not in this court.

  “What are you saying?” Leofric sounded bewildered.

  “Why is it cold, Leofric? Why is it cold here? ”

  The two of them looked at each other, for what must have been an actual minute of silence. Ash read the flinch of his expression clearly.

  “I don’t know,” Leofric said at last.

  “No, and nor does anyone else here, I can see it by the way you’re all running around scaring yourselves shitless.” Ash made herself grin. It was not very close to her usual gaiety of heart; she still ached too much. “Let me guess. It’s only been cold since your invasion started?”

  Leofric snapped his fingers. The smallest slave-child came and took a rat from him, cradling the blue doe with exquisite care in her thin arms. She walked unsteadily towards the door. One of the boys took the mismarked buck, twitching its whiskers, anxious to copulate with the doe; and at Leofric’s signal, the slave scribe followed them out.

  He said, “Child, if you did know of a reason for this intemperate weather, you would have told me of it, to save your life. I know this. Therefore, you know nothing.”

  “Maybe I do,” Ash said steadily. In the half-chill room, her sore body ran cold sweat, darkening the robe gathered up under her armpits. She went on desperately, “Something I may have seen – I was there when the sun went out! – it might tell you—”

  “No.” He rested his chin on the knuckle of his first finger, nestling it in his untidy white beard. He held her gaze. She felt something tighten under her solar plexus: fear slowly squeezing her breath. She thought, Not now! Not when I’ve just found out I can make it talk to me—

  Not now, under any circumstances.

  “You’re still at war, I saw that coming in,” she said, her voice still steady. “Whatever victory you had can’t have been final, can it? I’ll give you the disposition and array of Charles of Burgundy’s troops. You and the King-Caliph think I’m a Faris, a magical general, but you’re forgetting: I was one of Charles’s hired officers. I can tell you what he has.”

  She said it fast, before she could regret saying it:

  “It’s simple. I’ll turn coat, in exchange for my life. I’m not the first person to make that bargain.”

  “No,” the amir Leofric said absently. “No, of course. You shall dictate what you know to the Stone Golem; doubtless my daughter will find it useful, if somewhat overtaken by recent events.”

  Her eyes ran tears. “So I live?”

  He ignored her.

  “Lord-Amir!” She shrieked.

  He spoke absently, as if he had not heard her.

  “Whereas I had hoped to have another general, perhaps to lead our army in the east, I shall not have it under this King-Caliph, not with Gelimer to speak constantly against me. However,” Leofric mused, “this gives me an opportunity which I had not expected to have before the end of this crusade. You – not being needed, as she is – can be dissected, to discover the balance of the Humours12 within your body, and if there are differences in your brain and nerves which make it possible for you to speak with the machine.”

  He looked at her with an absence of feeling that was frightening in itself.

  “Now I shall find out if this is indeed the case. I have always had my failures to dissect. Since there is no further use for you, now I may vivisect one of my successes.”

  Ash stared at him. She thought, I must have mistaken the word. No, that was clear, pure, medical Latin. Vivisect. Meaning ‘dissect, while still alive’. “You can’t—”

  A sound of footsteps beyond the door brought her bolt upright, grabbing at Leofric’s arm as he rose to his feet. He evaded her grip.

  It was not a slave who entered but the ’arif Alderic, a frown buried somewhere in his neatly braided beard; clasping his hands behind his back and speaking rapidly and concisely. Ash, too shocked, didn’t understand w
hat he was saying.

  “No!” Leofric strode forward, his voice going up high. “And this is so?”

  “Abbot Muthari has announced it, and called for prayer, fasting and repentance, my Amir,” Alderic said, and with the air of a man repeating his initial message, slowly, as if the elderly lord-amir might not have understood: “The King-Caliph, may he live for ever, is dead of a seizure this half hour, in his rooms in the palace. No doctor could bring breath back to his body. Theodoric is dead, my lord. The King-Caliph is dead.”

  Stunned for different reasons, Ash heard the soldier speak his news with something approaching complete unconcern. What’s a King-Caliph, to me? She knelt up on the bed. The woollen gown fell away from her bloodstained body. One hand knotted into a fist.

  “Leofric!”

  He ignored her.

  “Leofric! What about me?”

  “You?” Leofric, frowning, looked over his shoulder. “Yes. You… Alderic, confine her to the guest quarters, under guard.”

  Her other hand made a fist. She ignored the Visigoth captain as he gripped her arm. “Tell me you’re not going to kill me!”

  The amir Leofric raised his voice to his slaves. “Get my court robes!”

  A bustle began.

  He said, over his shoulder, “Think of it as a reprieve, if that comforts you. We are about the business of electing a new King-Caliph – which will be a busy few days, to say the least.”

  He smiled, his teeth shining in his white beard.

  “This is merely a pause, before I can investigate you. As custom dictates, I can begin my work again immediately upon the inauguration of Theodoric’s successor. Child, don’t think of me as barbaric. It is not as if I’m torturing you to death as part of the celebrations. You will add so much to the sum of our knowledge.”

  Message: #164 (Anna Longman)

  Subject: Ash / texts / archaeological evidence