Ash: A Secret History

by Mary Gentle

  The elderly furry brown mare took both her front feet off the street and skittered back on her white hind legs. Iron shoes struck sparks from the flint cobblestones.

  “Motherfucker!”

  Ash reined in, shifting her weight forward, trying to bring the rearing mare down. The chains that were manacled to both her ankles and passed under the horse’s belly rubbed against tender skin. Her neck-chain, shackled to the stirrups, jingled. The mare threw her mouth up, creaming foam springing out on her neck.

  “Get down,” Ash ordered, trying to wheel the mare around, back away from the throng in the street. Two soldiers’ horses closed in on either flank, pressing close enough to threaten her knees; two more trained cavalry horses to her rear. “Get over!”

  An escort-rider in front leaned down and got the mare’s bridle with one hand. With her steadied, he struck a blow at the reveller’s masked face. The man staggered away, shouting, pissed, into the crowd.

  A second man rode in close.

  “We’ll ride outside the city,” Fernando del Guiz announced, tall in the saddle beside her, soothing the hooded bird that gripped his wrist: too small for a goshawk, too big for a peregrine falcon.

  Desire did not flood her, as it had when she had seen him before; only the utter, surprising familiarity of his face made her heart thump, once, with shock.

  Six of the escort troop immediately rode to the front, beating the revelling men of Carthage to one side. Ash, cold air stinging her face, kneed the mare forward; and when she could safely free her hands, drew her fur-lined hood up around her face, and wrapped her linen-lined wool cloak firmly about her body.

  “Son of a bitch,” she muttered. “How does anyone expect me to ride, like this?”

  The chains that passed from ankle to ankle, round and under the mare’s body, trapped her. Even an accidental slip out of the saddle would get her dragged, head-down, over cobbled streets; a death perhaps not much preferable to that planned by Leofric.

  “Come on, beautiful,” Ash soothed. The mare, happier by reason of being surrounded by nine or ten of her stable-mates, reverted to plodding between the companions of Fernando del Guiz. Armed German troops, mostly. Alert and unfriendly.

  And if at some point I can persuade you to bolt, with me on you, Ash thought grimly as she leaned forward to slap the mare’s neck, that will be a miracle. But it looks like it’s my only chance…

  Intense, blue-white Greek Fire blazed down into the rule-straight avenues, casting a high-definition light on men wearing heron’s-head masks, painted leather cat’s skulls, and knife-tusked boar’s heads. She thought she saw one woman: realised it was a bearded merchant in a woman’s gown. Harsh male voices sang: all around her, noise echoing back from the buildings, the crowd only beaten back by the escorts using the flats of their blades. Fernando del Guiz reined his roan gelding in, his squires with him.

  A man above the city gate shouted in quick, guttural Carthaginian Gothic, “Poncy German arse-fucker!”

  Gathering a shaky amount of self-possession, Ash spoke before it even occurred to her that this was not wise, under these circumstances:

  “Well, well. Someone who recognises your personal banner. How about that?”

  Fernando’s face was not particularly visible behind the acorn-shaped steel helmet’s nasal bar: she could not read his expression.

  Christ, the last thing I did in Dijon was hit him in the face, in front of his Visigoth mates; maybe I should just learn to keep my mouth shut?

  She noted that he sat his black-pointed roan gelding somewhat wearily, and that his eagle livery coat showed threadbare in places, ripped at one seam. Something in his posture spoke of bearing up under trouble, makes her think that – however necessary it might be for survival – the role of a renegade is not proving easy for him. Not the golden boy, now.

  He handed his hunting bird over to a squire and removed his helmet.

  “You can stop hitting me. They let me keep Guizburg.” His voice sounded rueful, with a hint of humour, and when she met his green eyes, they were dust-red and bloodshot: the eyes of a man who is not sleeping easily. “So, yes, it’s still my livery.”

  Damn! Your mouth is going to get you killed, girl…

  She could feel her face heating, although the chill wind disguised it; and she stared away into the darkness beyond the city gate. Am I really going to do this? Am I really going to ask him for help?

  What else can I do, now?

  A half-inch of steel, prosaic and unanswerable, is locked around her neck and her wrists and her ankles. Chains fasten her to her horse. An armed guard surrounds her, and she has no armed friends. With things as they are, she will ride out into the desert outside Carthage now, and she will ride back into Carthage again an hour or so in the future.

  Maybe she’ll risk spooking the mare, risk being kicked and trampled in the unlikely event the animal will bolt. Even so, she’s still trapped by steel links that Dickon Stour could sever in one blow at the anvil – but Dickon is half a world away, if he isn’t dead. If they aren’t all dead.

  I am going to do this.

  It is not the fact that she will ask Fernando for help that makes her ashamed. It’s the fact that fear forces me to do it. And he’s weak; what use will this be?

  She snorted an amused laugh that came out too high, and wiped her streaming eyes. “Fernando. What will you take, to let me go? Just to turn your back for five minutes, that’s all.”

  Just let me merge into the slave-class, or into the darkness, no matter that I’m still in North Africa, that I’m hundreds of miles from home.

  “Leofric would have me killed.” There was an educated certainty in his tone. “There isn’t anything you could offer. I’ve seen what he does to people.”

  Do I tell this man what, in two or three days’ time, Leofric will do to me?

  “You’re here in his House, you must be in his favour. You could get away with it—”

  “I don’t get a choice about whether I’m here or not.” The European knight in Visigoth armour snorted. “If I wasn’t your husband, I’d have been executed after Auxonne for desertion. They still think I’m a lever they can use with you. A source of information.”

  “Then help me get away.” She sounded unsteady, even to herself. “Because in two or three days, Leofric’s going to strap me down and cut me open, and then you’re redundant!”

  “What?” He gave her a shocked look that for a second gave her back Floria del Guiz, his sister’s expression on his face. Anguish. Then: “No! I can’t do anything!”

  The thought I might not ever see Floria again went through her mind. It brought a sharp pain, that she pushed away into numbness.

  “Well, fuck you.” She breathed shakily. “That’s about what I thought you’d say. You have to listen to me!”

  The noise of their horses passing under the city gate drowned out her voice.

  The look he gave her, she couldn’t read.

  Coming out into the open, outside the walls, the city lights left her half-blind in countryside darkness. She felt she was gripping the rein too tightly and eased off. The mare fretted and sidled towards Fernando’s gelding. Ash raised her head to the black sky, brilliant with stars shining clear through the frigid air.

  It is night… I wasn’t sure.

  Her eyes adjusting, she found the stars bright as strong moonlight. His face she could clearly see to be flushed.

  “Please,” she said.

  “I can’t.”

  A bitter wind whipped into her face. Stomach churning, on the verge of panic, she thought, What now?

  Capricornus hung high in the arch of the sky. They rode out on to a paved avenue. To either side, the great brick arches of twin aqueducts ran back into the city.6 A faint sound of running water could be heard over the clink of tack, and the rumbled conversation of Fernando’s men-at-arms and squires. The starlight gleamed on pomegranate-crowned pillars, robbing them of colour.

  She let the mare drop back.


  “Ash…” Fernando’s tone sounded warningly.

  “Walk on.” Ash clucked. The winter-coated mare shifted forward, taking two long strides to put herself in the centre of the group of riders again, by Fernando. Ash sat up in the saddle, looking between the armed guards.

  As they rode past an arch of the nearer aqueduct, Ash saw in the charcoal shadow a great carved beast, resting, couchant. The pale weathered stone gleamed, five or six times the height of a man. It was, she made out, the body of a lion, with the head of a woman: the stone face almond-eyed, the expression almost a smile.

  As the avenue came level with the next arch, she saw another statue within. This was brick, shaped and curved into the flank of a hind: the neck collared with a crown, the tiny antlers broken off. Ash turned her head, looking across to the other side of the avenue. The aqueduct there was in deeper shadow, but something shone within its black arches: a blunt, granite statue of a man with the head of a serpent.7

  She was startled into speaking aloud.

  “What’s that?” She corrected herself. “Those?”

  Fernando del Guiz said, “The King-Caliph’s stone bestiary.”

  Dry-mouthed with a new fear, she suddenly asked, “Where are we going, Fernando?”

  “Hunting.”

  “Yeah. Right.” And I’m the Queen of Carthage.,.

  Movement caught her eye. A group of waiting riders, in the aqueduct’s shadow. Another ten men? Mares, white surcoats – and the notched-wheel livery of House Leofric.

  “We’ll ride to the pyramids,” Fernando called out to the group of waiting Visigoths. “The hunting is better there!”

  Shit, Ash thought, looking at the Visigoth newcomers. This is going to be next to impossible. Come on, girl, think! Is there something I can use, here?

  The chill air bit at her face, and her ungloved fingers. Her cloak spread out, covering her legs in the thin wool gown, and the mare’s flanks. The mare plodded, even less lively now that she was out of the city. Ash strained her vision to look ahead, away from the city, southwards. The avenue and aqueducts ran away parallel into silver darkness. Into freedom.

  Even as she looked, the mass of guards wheeled, taking her with them, off into flat, barren earthy country; and she slowed her pace, partly for the uncertain footing, partly to see if she could drop back, unnoticed.

  A pitch-torch sputtered behind her. In its yellow light, she saw that the nearest riders were Fernando del Guiz and a dark Visigoth boy with a scanty, curled beard. The boy rode bare-headed, was dressed nobly, and there was something about his face that tugged at her memory.

  “Who is this, Uncle?” The boy used what Ash recognised as an honorific rather than kinship title. “Uncle, why’s this slave with us? She can’t hunt. She’s a woman.”

  “Oh, she hunts,” Fernando said gravely. His eyes met Ash’s, over the boy’s head. “Two-legged quarry.”

  “Uncle, I don’t understand you.”

  “She’s Ash,” Fernando said resignedly. “My wife.”

  “Gelimer’s son does not ride with a woman.” The boy shut his mouth with a snap, gave Ash a glare of utter disgust, and nudged his mount across to the squires and birds.

  “Gelimer’s son?” she gasped, into the cold wind, at Fernando.

  “Oh, that’s Witiza. He lives in House Leofric.” Fernando shrugged uncomfortably. “One of Amir Leofric’s nephews lives with Amir Gelimer.”

  “Yeah, it’s called ‘hostages’…”

  The new fear grew. She asked no questions – knowing there would be no answers – but rode on, every sense heightened by apprehension. Looking over at Witiza, with a pang, she thought, He’s neither man nor boy. He’ll be about Rickard’s age.

  She turned her head, missing the words the boy and squires were speaking – a discussion about hawking – and rode blindly, her eyes momentarily swimming. When she raised her gaze again, Witiza had ridden forward, and was laughing with the del Guiz men-at-arms. Fernando still rode at her right flank.

  “Just let me ride off!” she whispered.

  The young German knight’s head turned. She abruptly remembered his face with a red mark of a blow swelling under his lip. Apart from his first remark, it was not being mentioned: she felt it hanging between them.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, with an effort.

  Fernando shrugged. “So am I.”

  “No, I—” She shook her head. Other urgencies pressed in, brought by the image of him at Dijon. “What happened to my company at Auxonne? You can at least tell me that! You ought to know, you’re in House Leofric.”

  Then, not able to keep bitterness out of her tone:

  “Or didn’t you see – given that you left early?”

  “Would you believe me, if I told you?”

  It was not a taunt. She could not be aware of everything around her – stingingly alert to where each of the German men-at-arms was riding, who might be drinking from a wineskin and so not alert later, who was paying more attention to the squires carrying belled hunting birds than to their escort duties – impossible to be open to this, and not also know that Fernando had spoken without malice, only with a kind of tired curiosity.

  “Very little,” Ash said honestly. “I’d believe very little you told me.”

  “Because I’m a traitor, in your eyes?”

  “No,” she said. “Because you’re a traitor in your eyes.”

  Fernando grunted, startled.

  The mare’s uneven gait brought her attention back to the ground, silver-and-yellow under starlight and torch-light. The cold wind whipped smoke from the burning pitch into her face, and she coughed at the bitter smell.

  “I don’t know what happened to your company. I didn’t see, and I didn’t ask.” Fernando shot a glance at her. “Why do you want to know? They all end up dead with you anyway!”

  It took her breath for a moment.

  “Yeah… I lose some. War gets people killed. But then, it’s their decision to follow me.”

  Her mind’s eye holds the images of golems, wagons, fire-throwers. She will not think Roberto, Florian, Angelotti.

  “And my decision to say that I take responsibility for them, while our contract lasts. I want to know what happened!”

  She let herself look at him directly, and found herself looking into his tired, reddened eyes. His curling fair hair was longer, straggling around his face; he looked closer to thirty than to twenty, and it is only two months, she thought, since I stood with him in the cathedral at Cologne: sweet Christ!

  She did not know what expression was on her own face, could not know that she looked simultaneously much younger, much more open and vulnerable, and at the same time herself looked aged. Worn, not by a life in camp, but by nights spent awake in Dijon, thinking about this, imagining what words she could speak, her body aching to lay full-length against him, wrap her legs around his hips, thrust him deep inside her.

  And her mind despising her for that hunger for a weak man.

  “I don’t know,” he mumbled.

  “What have they got you doing now?” Ash said. “That’s Gelimer’s son. Lord-Amir Gelimer hates Lord-Amir Leofric. So, are you taking me to Gelimer? To be killed? Or what?”

  His beautiful, ravaged face was momentarily blank.

  “No!” Fernando’s voice rose to a shout. He silenced himself; waving reassuringly to Witiza and the squires. “No. You’re my wife, I wouldn’t take you to be murdered!”

  Ash slid the reins up between finger and thumb, her eyes on the riders around her. She said, bitterly, “I think you’d do anything. The minute somebody threatened you! You hated me anyway, Fernando. From the minute we met in Genoa.”

  He coloured up. “I was a boy then! Fifteen! You can’t blame me for some wild boy’s prank!”

  That touched a nerve, Ash realised, surprised.

  Something whirred and clattered, out in the desolate land. A bird flew up from under one of the horses’ hooves. Ash tensed, about to dig her heels in. The German troo
ps closed in two-deep around her: she imperceptibly relaxed.

  The sound of hooves on earth gave way to the clatter of iron shoes on stone: the mass of troops riding out of the desert and on to ancient flagstones. Her belly churned. She looked ahead, straining her eyes to see more cavalry: expecting now the amir Gelimer’s men in ambush, or men hired by him. Gelimer, who might want her killed, or questioned: either being vile. Caught up in someone else’s fight, she thought. Christ, I thought I had two days before Leofric did for me. I was safer inside Carthage!

  Dark shapes blotted the sky.

  Hills, she thought; before her eye took in their regularity. The noise of the horses’ hooves echoed back from flat surfaces that sloped up and away; so that her second apprehension was that she rode in a steep valley, but the sides even in starlight were too regular. Flat planes, sharp-edged.

  Pyramids.

  Anyone could be hiding out here!

  Stars fringed the edges of the stone. Their light leeched all colour from the sides of the pyramids: immense, shaped structures of carven stone, built up from a hundred thousand red silt bricks, faced with brilliantly painted plaster. Ash rode among armed men, among the pyramids of Carthage. She could say nothing; silenced; could only lift her head and look around her, regardless of the freezing wind that howled around the gargantuan stone burial monuments.

  She saw that all the great frescoes were faded, damaged by centuries of weather and darkness. Plaster flaked off the tombs and lay in shards on the paving stones. Her mare trod on a painted gold-eyed fragment: a lioness with the moon between her brows. It crunched like frost.

  Under their faded, flaking covering, the exact and mechanical regularity of the pyramids remained, stretching out as far in every direction as she could see – and she could see ten or a dozen of them, silhouetted against the stars. Her neck hurt from looking up, and her steel collar dug into her flesh.

  “Christus!” she whispered.

  An owl hooted.

  She jumped. The mare startled, not very wildly; and she leaned forward to put a calming hand on the beast’s neck.

  A pair of wings stretched out from a squire’s arm, ahead. Two flat yellow eyes gleamed at her through the starlit dark. The squire raised his arm. The great owl lifted, silently, and swooped into the night.