Ash: A Secret History

by Mary Gentle

  A familiar voice said something from the other side of the nazir’s cordon of soldiers. Ash didn’t catch what, but she went up on her toes to try and see who it was. To her surprise, the nazir Theudibert grunted, “Let him through! – Search him first. It’s only the peregrinatus Christi.”10

  The boy-soldier Gaiseric suddenly said, at her ear, “Old Theudo’s scared shitless, ma’am! He’s reckoning on you favouring him later, if he lets you have a priest now.”

  Godfrey Maximillian’s big hands gripped both of hers warmly. “Child! Praise God, you live.”

  Under cover of a sonorous Latin blessing, and the sleeves of his green robe, Ash felt Godfrey’s fingers move quickly around her wrists, loosening the knots of the cord. His bearded innocent face remained uninvolved, as if his hands were acting without his own consent. She shrugged her freed hands back into her enveloping cloak, as casually and as quickly as if it were something they had practised, like mummers in a play. The back of her neck prickled hot and wet with the effort of not looking to see if anyone had noticed.

  “Did you assist in the eight offices here, Godfrey?”

  “I am too heretic for them. I may preach, if this ceremony ever ends.” Godfrey Maximillian’s forehead shone. He spoke past her, to Annibale Valzacchi. “Is the man Caliph or not, yet?”

  The doctor moved his shoulders in a very Italian manner. “Since this morning. The rest has just been consecrations.”

  Ash looked across the corn-strewn floor. Something to do with priests was going on around the throne, iron-grey men in green robes processing, hieratically, about the lord-amir Gelimer. She strained her vision, trying to bring his face into focus, a childlike conviction in her mind that a man should look different after the anointing oils, after he was no longer man, but king.

  Have I done it? Have I wagered and won?

  Thousands of candles heated the air, making her cloak almost uncomfortably warm, and shining a soft gold light upon the walls. She looked up at the great Face of Christ depicted above the saints, and the sprouting viridian foliage of the Tree thrusting from His mouth.

  His lips encompassed the circular hole at the top of the rotunda, as if He opened His mouth upon star-ridden darkness.

  “Christus Imperator,” Ash breathed. Her neck hurt, staring up. Her guts twinged; fear and anticipation, rather than hunger.

  “The Mouth of God. Yes. Here in Carthage He is preferred as He was when He ruled over the Romans,” Godfrey Maximillian murmured, his arm pushing up against her shoulder, his body warm and comforting beside her. “Are the rumours true?”

  “What rumours?” Ash smiled.

  She thought she managed to hit the correct expression, somewhere between deference and complacency. Certainly Annibale Valzacchi gave her a look of contempt. Florian would see through this at once, she thought. A sideways glance assured her of Godfrey’s complicit silence.

  Leofric wouldn’t have brought me here if he wasn’t planning to do something with me. But what? Can it matter to him that he thinks of himself as a father – her father – mine?

  But I am not the Faris.

  And Gelimer is Caliph now.

  Ash shifted, slightly, causing two of Alderic’s nazirs to look at her. It became apparent to them that she was trying to see their lord-amir, through the massed ranks of his household. No hands went to sword-hilts.

  She got sight of Leofric at last, one elbow on the arm of his carved walnut chair, at the top of the rising pews on the left-hand side of the archway. He was speaking to someone, a young man in rich dress – a son? a brother? – but his gaze was fixed forward, on the throne of the King-Caliph, and on Gelimer. Ash stared, willing Leofric to look at her.

  Seated men around him leaned forward, speaking quietly. Male backs shut her off from Leofric. Men in robes, men in mail; household priests in their high-fronted headdresses.

  “Aren’t they splendid?” a guttural Gothic voice whispered in her ear. Gaiseric, again.

  Ash, startled, studied the boy’s face, and then the men clustered beneath the black notched-wheel banner. Noblemen in hastily stitched wool gowns and hukes, older men wearing nine-yard velvet houppelandes; knights in full mail hauberks. Swords, daggers, chased leather purses, riding boots; she knows what you will pay to have these made, and what they will fetch as loot.

  She knows what it is like to go barefoot, own one wool shift, and eat every other day.

  Gaiseric, as she glances at him, is plainly from a village of two huts, or a farmhouse with earthen floors, one room for the people and another for sow and cow – from rich freemen, his face does not have the early lines of malnutrition.

  “What about the King?” Ash whispered.

  The boy’s face shone with an adoration reserved for priests, at the altar, lifting bread and bringing down flesh. “This ain’t no old man. He won’t stop us fighting.”

  Nine-tenths of the cultivated world is forest, strip-fields, lath-and-plaster huts, and chilblains and hunger; death from early disease or accident, and no touch of any fabric softer than wool woven by the winter hearth. For this it is worth strapping metal to one’s body and facing the hard blades of axes, and the punching steel of bodkin arrow-heads. Or it is, for Gaiseric. Worth it to be standing in a city, now, of sixty thousand people, while his king is crowned in the sight of God.

  And for me? Ash thought. Worth it not to be knee-deep in mud, all my life? Even if it brings me, finally, to standing here, not knowing what will happen to me, only that the next few minutes will decide it? Oh yes. Yes.

  Godfrey Maximillian’s hand closed over her arm. A blast of clarions shattered the song of boys, ripping the vast dome of air above their heads. All the flames of the wax candles shook; sweet-smelling candles as thick as a man’s thigh. An explosion of tension went through her blood, both hands going to her belt. Her hands, purely of themselves, missed the feel of the hilts of sword and dagger; as her body missed feeling the weight of protective armour.

  From every quarter of the hall, men began to walk in.

  She had a brief glimpse, at the front of the crowd, of men’s faces. Pale, bearded faces; young and old, but all, all, male. From every arch they advanced, leaving the aisles in front of the pews bare, so that great spokes of empty floor ran from the high seats of the lord-amirs to the throne of the King-Caliph. Between, men who might be merchants, ship-owners, great importers of spice, grain and silk, packed the space elbow-to-elbow, in their fairest dress.

  Clarions ran on, each higher burst shattering at her ears. Ash felt tears start at her eyes and could not tell why. The distant figure of the King-Caliph, swathed in his cloth-of-gold robes, stood and raised his arms.

  Silence fell.

  A bearded Visigoth warrior called out, words she could not understand. At the furthest quarter of the dome, where another great household sat arrayed, there was a stir – men rising to their feet, banners raised, swords unsheathed, a great deep-voiced shout. And then they came forward, down the steps to the grain-covered mosaic tiles, striding forward to the throne, each falling down upon his knees as a lord-amir and his household swore, in unison, their fidelity to the ruler of the Visigoth Empire.

  A similar preparatory stir moved Alderic’s troop. Ash shot a glance around the lord-amir Leofric’s quarter of the rotunda. Banners raised up, trailing from their spiked and painted poles. Nazir Theudibert lifted a pennant. Alderic said something quickly professional to another of Leofric’s ’arifs, who grinned. A great rustling of cloth sounded as all the knights and men-at-arms shifted forward to their pre-planned places; and Ash hauled her hat off, uncovering her head like the rest of Leofric’s household. She unconsciously straightened her shoulders, her head coming up.

  “You are like my brother’s war-horses!” Annibale Valzacchi muttered, disgusted.

  Ash caught herself in a rare moment of comprehension. She shook her head. “He’s right. The dottore is right.”

  One of Godfrey Maximillian’s hands came up swiftly and brushed over her cut ha
ir. Godfrey said, painfully, “I am here. Whatever happens. You will not be alone.”

  Men around them began moving forward. Horns shattered the high air. Stumbling beside Godfrey, Ash said, without looking at him, “You’re no war-horse. How do you manage to stay on a field of battle, Godfrey? How can you bear with the killing?”

  “For you.” Godfrey’s words came hurriedly, and she could not see his face for the press of people. “For you.”

  What the hell am I going to do about Godfrey?

  There were more people shoulder-to-shoulder around her now. Ash saw, over the heads of some of them, that Leofric must have six or seven hundred men present.

  I know what’s missing!

  She searched around the hall, staring at banners, seeing no white pennants with red crescents.

  No Turks, here to see the crowning.

  But I thought, at Auxonne – I thought they must have allied – am I wrong?

  What she did see, in the crowd around ahead, was a familiar green and gold banner: the livery of Fernando del Guiz. And then, all around her, men began to sink to their knees, and she knelt with them, down in the sour smell of crushed corn, the air cold on the back of her neck, sleet falling down on her from the Mouth of God above.

  She craned her neck back once, to see stars in the blackness; and the great painted curls of foliage spiralling out from His mouth and down the curving dome, winding about the armour-clad saints and the tops of squat, papyrus-grooved pillars. A cold wind blew into her eyes. With a start, she realised that Leofric was speaking.

  “You are my liege, Gelimer.” His creaking, quiet voice became audible over the susurration of a thousand men breathing. “I hereby swear, as my fathers swore, honour and loyalty to the King-Caliph; this promise to bind me and my heirs until the day of the Coming of Christ, when all divisions shall be healed, and all ruling given over to His reign. Until that day, I and mine shall fight as you bid us, King Gelimer; make peace where you desire, and strive always for your good. Thus do I, Leofric, swear.”

  “Thus do I, Gelimer, accept your fealty and constancy.”

  The King-Caliph stood. Ash lifted her head very slightly, peering up from under her brows at Leofric moving cautiously forward and embracing Gelimer. Now she was close to the front, she could see the octagonal steps that rose up to the ancient black throne, with its carved wooden finials and bas-relief suns. And the men’s faces.

  Gelimer’s narrow-faced looks were not noticeably improved by dressing the man in a cloth-of-gold houppelande with ermine trim, Ash thought; and you might braid as much gold wire into his beard as you chose, without making him any more prepossessing. The thought gave her an odd, partial comfort. Gelimer, standing before her, with his arms formally around Leofric, kissing him on each cheek, might look like some hierophantic doll. But for the moment, not only the men of his own household, but Alderic and Theudibert and all the rest would take their swords and fight where he indicated.

  “For as long as it lasts…” Ash pressed her lips together. “What d’you think, Godfrey? A ‘riding accident’? Or ‘natural causes’?”

  In an equally faint whisper, Godfrey Maximillian said, “Any king is better than no king. Better than anarchy. You weren’t outside in the city these last few days. There has been murder done.”

  The sonorous formal exchanges allowed her a quick reply:

  “There may be murder done here in a minute – except, they’ll call it execution.”

  “Can you do nothing?”

  “If I’ve lost? I’ll try to run. I won’t go quietly.” She grabbed his hand, under her cloak, and gripped it, turning a bright-eyed gaze on him. “Throw a fit. Throw a prophecy! Distract them. Just be ready.”

  “I thought – but – he’ll hire you? He must!”

  Ash shrugged, the movement made jerky by tension. “Godfrey, maybe nothing at all will happen. Maybe we’ll all turn around and march out of here. These are the lords of the kingdom, who cares about one condottiere?”

  Leofric stepped back from the King-Caliph, his pace slow as he walked backwards down the shallow stairs of the throne. A gold fillet glinted in candlelight, binding back his white hair. The gilded pommel and hilt of his sword caught the light, too; and his gloved hands glittered with the dome-cut splendour of emeralds and sapphires.

  At the foot of the steps he stopped, made a shallow bow, and began to turn away.

  “Our lord Leofric.” The King-Caliph Gelimer leaned forward, seated on his throne. “I accept your fealty and your honour. Why, then, have you brought an abomination into the House of God? Why is there a woman with your household?”

  Oh, shit. Ash’s gut thumped. I know a put-up question when I hear one. There’s the formal excuse for an execution, if Leofric doesn’t speak for me. Now—

  Leofric, with every appearance of calm, said, “It is not a woman, my King. It is a slave, my gift to you. You have seen her before. She is Ash, another warrior-general who hears the voice of the Stone Golem, and so may fight for you, my King, upon your crusade now ending in the north.”

  Ash picked up now ending, so obsessed for a second, debating, Is the war in Burgundy over? Is this just flattery, for Gelimer? that she did not realise Gelimer had begun to speak again.

  “We will continue our crusade. Some few heretic towns – Bruges, Dijon – yet remain to be taken.” Gelimer’s pinched face moved into a smile. “Not enough, Leofric, that we need subject ourselves to the danger of another general who hears battle commands from a Stone Golem. Your first we will not recall,-since she proves useful, but to have another – no. We may come to rely on her, and she may fail.”

  “Her sister has not.” Leofric bowed his head. “This is that Captain Ash who took the Lancastrian standard at Tewkesbury, in the English wars, when she was not yet thirteen years of age. She led the spearmen from the wood, on to Bloody Meadow.11 She has been tested upon many fields, since. If I give her a company of my men, Lord King, she will prove helpful to the crusade.”

  Gelimer slowly shook his head. “If she is such a prodigy… Great generals grow dangerous to kings. Such generals weaken the realm, they make confusion in the minds of the people as to who is the rightful ruler. You have bred a dangerous beast here. For this reason, and for many others, we have decreed that your second general shall not live.”

  The sleet fell down more slowly, now, from the Mouth of God; white flecks floating upon the air.

  “I had thought you might use her as a condottiere, my King. We have used such before.”

  “You had thought also to make an investigation upon the flesh of this woman. Do it. She is your gift to me. Do it. You may thus ease our mind about your other ‘daughter’. Perhaps, then, she will be allowed to retire, alive, when this war is ended.”

  Ash registered the flick of deliberate malice in King-Caliph Gelimer’s voice. She thought, This isn’t personal. Not on the strength of one insult. Not on his coronation day. Too petty. This isn’t aimed at me, any of it.

  Leofric’s the target, and I think this is the end of a long campaign.

  She sensed Gaiseric and Theudibert shifting fractionally back, on their knees, leaving her isolated in the front row of Leofric’s household. Godfrey Maximillian’s bulk remained, solidly, at her shoulder; blocking any movement behind her.

  The lord-amir Leofric put his hands to his belt buckle, where its long leather tongue hung down, ornamented with golden studs in the shape of notched wheels. She could see only his profile, not enough to guess if his façade of calm had cracked.

  “My King, it has taken two centuries to breed two women who can do this.”

  “One was sufficient. Our Reconquista of Iberia is complete, and soon we shall have completed our crusade in the north: we do not,” the King-Caliph Gelimer said deliberately, “we do not need your generals, or this … gift.”

  I don’t believe this.

  Disbelief burned in her, false and familiar; the same disbelief that she sees in men’s eyes when they take a final wound
from her, staring at cut flesh, slashed gut, white bone: this cannot be happening to me!

  Ash started to rise. Theudibert and Gaiseric grabbed her shoulders. Apparently unconscious of the movement, the lord-amir Leofric gazed at the men of the King’s household, surrounding the throne, and back at Gelimer. Ash caught sight of Fernando, between two German men-at-arms, his chin scraped clean and his eyes reddened. Beside King-Caliph Gelimer, a fat robed man bending to speak into the royal ear.

  Leofric said mildly, as if nothing at all had been decided, “Our Prophet Gundobad wrote: the wise man does not eat his seed corn, he saves it so that he will have a harvest the following year. Abbot Muthari may have the Latin of it, but it is perfectly plain. You may need both my daughters in the years to come.”

  Gelimer snapped, “You need them, Leofric. What are you, without your stone machines, and your visionary daughters?”

  “My King—”

  “Yes. I am your King. Not Theodoric, Theodoric is dead, and your place of favour died with him!”

  A low, startled buzz of voices sounded. Someone blew the beginning of a clarion call. It cut off abruptly. This isn’t part of the ceremony, Ash realised. She shivered, where she knelt.

  Gelimer stood up, both his hands gripping the royal staff of ivory that he had been clasping across his lap. “I will have no over-mighty subjects in my court! Leofric, she will die! You will oversee it!”

  “I am no over-mighty subject.”

  “Then you will do my will!”

  “Always, my King.” Leofric inhaled deeply, his face impassive in the shivering lights of the candles. He looked gaunt. There was no reading his expression, not after sixty years spent in the courts of the King-Caliph.

  Ash let her field of vision expand, widening focus as one does in battle, to be aware of the soldiers beside her, the blocked aisles out of the building, Fernando’s aghast face, the packed crowds around the throne, the archway half a bow-shot behind her. No chance of reaching it, through the soldiers. No chance that – heart in her throat, sweating, fear beginning to push her to some stupid final act – no chance that she would not try for it.