by Mary Gentle
If I hadn’t, I might not have bothered with this damn stupid council!
She took a breath. “If I were the King-Caliph, I wouldn’t have started a crusade here without taking out the Turks first. And if I had done it, I’d be looking to make peace about now – the Visigoths have got most of Christendom to hold down. But the Goths aren’t stopping. You say they’re fighting in Ghent and Bruges in the north, they’re trashing Lorraine. They’re here at Dijon. My lord, you tell me – what’s so important? Why Burgundy?”
A woman’s voice spoke before the Duke’s deputy could, and spoke in the tone of one citing a proverb: “Upon Burgundy’s health depends the health of the world.”
“What?”
The voice tugged at Ash’s memory.
She leaned further forward across the table, and found herself looking into the pinched white face of Jeanne Châlon.
She was, for once, glad Floria del Guiz was not present.
Abruptly, she flinched from the memory of August in Dijon, and the death that had followed the disclosure of Floria del Guiz as a woman. But why? There have been deaths since that one. The man I killed might well have died in battle by now.
“Mademoiselle.” Ash stared at the surgeon’s aunt. “With respect – I don’t want superstitious twaddle: I want an answer!”
The Burgundian woman’s eyes widened, her face full of shock. She stumbled back from the table, pushing her way through the confused crowd and the servants and fled.
“You always have that effect on people?” Anselm rumbled.
“I think she just remembered, we’ve met.” An ironic smile twisted Ash’s lips, fading quickly. “‘Upon Burgundy’s health—’”
A knight in French livery completed: “—depends the health of the world.’ It is an old proverb, and a meretricious one; nothing more than self-justification by the Valois Dukes.”
Ash glanced around. No Burgundian appeared willing to speak.
The French knight added, “Demoiselle-Captain, let us have no more nonsense of demons. We do not doubt the Visigoth army has many engines and devices. We have only to look out from the walls here to see that! I do not doubt they have more engines in their cities in the south, perhaps greater ones than they have here. You say you have seen them. Yes. But what of this? We must fight the Visigoth crusade here!”
A buzz of approval sounded around the chamber. Ash noted it came mainly from the foreign knights. The Burgundians – de la Marche in particular – merely looked grim.
“We know better,” Antonio Angelotti murmured under his breath.
Ash waved him to silence.
“Suppose, messire—?” Ash waited until the French knight responded:
“Armand de Lannoy.”
“—Suppose, Messire de Lannoy, that the Visigoths are not fighting this war with their engines. Suppose it is the ‘engines’ which fight, using the Visigoths.”
Armand de Lannoy slammed his palms flat on the table. “This is nonsense, and an ugly girl’s nonsense at that!”
The breath went out of her. Ash sat down, amid a babble of French and German.
Shit, she thought bleakly. Had to happen. I don’t have how I look to count on any more. To use. Shit. Shit.
Beside her, there was a low, unconscious, ratcheting growl from Robert Anselm; almost entirely identical to the sound that the mastiffs Brifault or Bonniau might make.
She grabbed his arm. “Let – it – go.”
Olivier de la Marche’s voice rose, a bellow that ripped the air in the hall apart, brought adrenalin into Ash’s body even if it were not directed at her. He and the French knight, de Lannoy, both stood and shouted into each other’s faces across the table.
Ash winced. “This is worse than Frederick’s court! Christ. Burgundy was better than this, the first time we came.”
“The place wasn’t full of factious refugees, madonna,” Angelotti put in, “and the Duke, besides, was ruling then.”
“I’ve sent Florian to talk to the doctors. See what state he’s really in.” Aware of some disturbance among Thomas Rochester and her escort, behind her, Ash turned her head. The men-at-arms parted, letting through the elderly Burgundian chamberlain-counsellor.
“Messire…” Ash got hastily to her feet.
Philippe Ternant regarded her for a moment. He put his hand on the shoulder of a boy beside him, a page in puffed-sleeve white doublet, gold aiglettes pointing doublet to hose.
“You are summoned. Jean, here, will guide you,” he said quietly. “Demoiselle-Captain, I am ordered to bring you to attend on the Duke.”
V
“Duke Charles?” Ash said, startled. “I thought he was sick.”
“He is. You will be allowed in for a short time. It would weary the noble Duke to see many people, therefore you must bring no crowd. Perhaps one man-at-arms, if you will have a bodyguard with you.” Ternant’s lined mouth smiled. “As I know, to my cost, here, a knight must have his entourage, be it never so small.”
Ash, catching the chamberlain-counsellor’s eyes on de Lannoy and his single archer escort, nodded companionably. “Quite. Robert, Angeli; take over for me here. Thomas Rochester, you come with me.” She signalled to the page, before her officers could do more than nod obedience. “Lead on.”
At last!
Following the boy Jean, her hand automatically went to her scabbard, steadying Anselm’s sword. Any likelihood of assassination would be small; nonetheless she kept a keen eye out as they crossed the streets to the palace – flinching at the noise of bombardment, over towards the west side of the city – and entered, and traversed white-walled passages cut deep into stone; climbing stairs where stained-glass windows spilled pale light on the floor. She noticed fewer Burgundian men-at-arms in the palace than when she had first visited it, in the summer.
“Maybe he’s dead, boss,” Thomas Rochester suddenly ventured.
“What, the Duke?”
“No, the asshole – your husband.”
Just as Rochester said it, she recognised the vaulted chamber they were passing through. Banners still hung from the walls, although the muted light made less of the stained glass’s reflections on the flagstones.
The qa’id Sancho Lebrija is doubtless with the crusade, Agnes Dei’s banner is outside these walls, but Fernando? God and the Green Christ know where Fernando is now – or if he’s even alive.
This is where she last touched him – her warm fingers entwined with his. Where she struck him. In Carthage, later, he was as weak, as much of a pawn, as he was here. Until the last moments before the earth tremor – But he could afford to speak up for me: no one was going to care about a disgraced, turn-coat German knight!
“I choose to assume I’m a widow,” she said grimly, and followed the page Jean and the chamberlain-counsellor Philippe Ternant as they began to climb the stairs of a tower.
The chamberlain-counsellor passed them through great numbers of Burgundian guardsmen, into a high vaulted chamber packed with any number of people: squires, pages, men-at-arms, rich nobles in gowns and chaperon hats, women in nuns’ headdresses, an austringer with his hawk; a bitch and a litter of pups in the straw by the great hearth.
“It is the Duke’s sick room,” Philippe Ternant said to Ash, as he went on into the mass of people. “Wait here: he will call on your attendance when he desires it.”
Thomas Rochester said, low-voiced, for her ear, “Don’t reckon that ‘siege council’ is much more than a sop to keep the civilians quiet, boss.”
“You think the real power’s here?” Ash glanced around the crowded ducal chamber. “Possible.”
There were enough men in full armour present, wearing liveries, for her to identify the notable military nobles of Burgundy – all of them who had survived Auxonne, presumably – and all the major mercenary commanders with the exception of Cola de Monforte and his two sons.
“Monforte leaving could have been political, not strictly military,” she murmured.
The dark Englishman�
��s brow creased, under his visor; and then his face cleared. “Beginning to think we’d had it, boss, listening to that council. But if the captains are still here…”
“Then they might still stand a chance of kicking ass.” Ash completed the English knight’s train of thought. “Thomas, I know you’ll stick close to my back here.”
“Yes, boss.” Thomas Rochester sounded cheerful at her confidence in him.
“Not that I expect to get nailed in the middle of the Duke’s sick room…” Ash stepped back automatically as a Soeur-Viridianus came past with a basin. Bandages with old blood and filth filled the copper pan.
“If it isn’t my patient!” the big woman exclaimed.
The green robes and tight wimple of a soeur still made Ash’s hackles rise. At the gruff greeting, she found herself startled into looking up into the broad white face of the Soeur-Maîtresse of the convent of filles de pénitence – up, and further up than Ash had realised while being nursed; the woman was tall as well as solidly big.
“Soeur Simeon!” Ash sketched a genuflection scarcely worth the term, but with a brilliant smile that more than made up for that. “I saw they trashed the convent – glad you made it into the city.”
“How is your head?”
Moderately impressed at the woman’s memory, Ash made a bow of rather more respect. “I’ll live, Soeur. No thanks to the Visigoths, who tried to undo your good works. But I’ll live.”
“I am glad to hear it.” The Soeur-Maîtresse spoke without change of tone to someone beyond Ash: “More linen, and another priest: be quick.”
Another nun dipped a curtsey. “Yes, Soeur-Maîtresse!”
Ash, trying to see the little nun’s face, was startled when Simeon said thoughtfully, “I shall wish to visit your quarters, Captain. I am missing one of my girls this morning. Your – surgeon, ‘Florian’ – may, I feel, be able to help me.”
Little Margaret Schmidt, Ash thought. I’d put money on it. Godammit.
“How long has your soeur been missing, Maîtresse?”
“Since last night.”
That’s my Florian…
Her private smile faded. She was conscious of an uneasy relief. After what she said to me – it’s safer if she’s with someone else.
“I’ll make enquiries.” Ash met Thomas Rochester’s blue eyes briefly. “We’re contract soldiers, Soeur. If your soeur’s signed up with the baggage train … well. There’s an end of it. We look after our own.”
She watched the English knight more than the Soeur-Maîtresse, looking for the slightest flinch. If the idea of keeping the surgeon’s woman lover away from a nunnery was disturbing Thomas Rochester, he didn’t show it.
But if he knew Margaret Schmidt isn’t the only woman here that Florian’s attracted to?
“I’ll see you later,” Simeon cried, her tone too determined for Ash to make out whether that was threat or grim promise, before the big woman strode out through the crowd that parted in front of her.
“Can’t we sign up that one, boss?” Thomas Rochester said whimsically. “Better have her than some bimbo the surgeon fancies! Stick the Soeur-Maîtresse in the line-fight beside me – and I’ll hide right behind her! Scare the shit out of the rag-heads, she would.”
The page, Jean, appearing at her elbow, hauled off his hat and gabbled, “The Duke summons you!”
Ash followed the boy through the crush, overhearing the many guildsmen and merchants present discussing civilian matters, keeping only enough attention on them to estimate morale. A large number of confident men in armour came past her from the far end of the chamber, their aides carrying maps; and Ash moved through them, and found herself confronting the Duke of Burgundy.
The walls here were pale stone, saints’ icons set into niches with candles burning before them; and a great tester bed occupied this whole end of the chamber, between two windows blocked with clear leaded glass.
The Duke was not in the great bed.
He lay, on his left side, on a truckle-bed no more splendid than any she had seen in the field, apart from some carvings of saints on the wooden box-frame. Braziers surrounded the bed. Two priests stood back as Ash, the page, and her bodyguard approached; and Duke Charles waved them aside decisively.
“We will speak privately,” he ordered. “Captain Ash, it is good to see you returned at last from Carthage.”
“Yeah, I think so too, your Grace. I’ve been up and down Christendom like a dog at a fair.”
No smile touched his face. She had forgotten he was not to be moved by a sense of humour, or by charm. Since it had been a reflex remark, made entirely to hide her shock at seeing him, she did not waste time regretting it; only stood silent, and tried not to let her thoughts appear on her face.
Bolsters kept the Duke propped up on his left side on the hard bed. Books and papers surrounded him, and a clerk knelt by his side, hastily returning what Ash saw to be maps of the city defences to order. A rich blue velvet gown covered Charles of Burgundy and the bed together; under it she could see that he was wearing a fine linen shirt.
His black hair stuck, sweat-tangled, to his skull. This end of the ducal chamber stank of the sick room. As he looked up to meet her gaze, Ash took in his sallow skin and prominent feverish eyes, the ridges of cheekbones that stood up now in his face, his cheeks sunken in. His left hand, closing around the cross hanging from his neck, was frighteningly thin.
She thought, quite coldly, Burgundy’s fucked.
As if he were not in pain – but by the sweat that continually rolled down his face, he must be – Duke Charles ordered, “Master priests, you may leave me; you also, Soeur. Guard, clear this end of the chamber.”
The page Jean moved back with the rest. Ash glanced uncertainly towards Thomas Rochester. She noted that the Duke’s bodyguard, a big man with archer’s shoulders and a padded jack, did not move away from his station behind the Duke.
“Send your man away, Captain,” Charles said.
Ash’s question must have been apparent on her face. The Duke spared a brief glance for the archer, towering over him.
“I believe you to be honourable,” he said, “but, were a man to come before me with a stiletto up his sleeve, and if there were no other way to stop him, Paul here would put himself between me and such a weapon, and take the blow into his own body. I cannot honourably send aside a man prepared to do this.”
“Thomas, stand back.”
Ash stood, waiting.
“We have much to say to each other. First, go to that window,” the Duke said, indicating one of the chamber’s two glassed windows, “and tell me what you see.”
Ash crossed the two yards’ space in a stride or so. The tiny, thick panes of glass distorted the view below, but she made out that she was looking south, under a changeable sky, now greying; clouds racing on a rough wind that rattled the window in its frame. And that she was high enough that she must be, now, standing in the Tour Philippe le Bon, the palace’s notorious look-out post.
Doesn’t look any fucking better from up here…!
Wind yanked at the withy barriers surrounding rows of catapults. Squinting, she could make out men crowding around the jutting beams of trebuchets, long lines passing rocks up to the slings; and loaded oxen dragging carts full of quarried stone through the flooded Auxonne road.
“I can see as far as the joining of the Ouche and Suzon rivers, beyond the walls,” she said, loudly enough for the sick man to hear her, “and the enemy siege-machine camp in the west. River’s up: there’s even less of a chance to assault across it at those engines.”
“What can you see of their strength?”
She automatically put her hand up to shield her eyes, as if the rattling wind were not outside the glass. The sun – somewhere around the fourth hour of the morning22 – was a barely visible grey light now, low in the southern sky.
“Unusual lot of cannon, for Visigoths, your Grace. Sakers, serpentines, bombards and fowlers. I heard mortars when we were coming in. Maybe th
ey’re concentrating all their powder weapons with these legions? Above three hundred engines: arbalests, mangonels, trebuchets – shit.”
A great tower began to roll forward as she watched, towards the bastion where the southernmost bridge over the river had been thrown down. A fragment of escaping sunlight glanced back from its red sides.
A tower shaped like a dragon, bottle-mouthed – she glimpsed the muzzle of a saker projecting from between the teeth – but with no soaked hides coating it to protect it against fire-arrows.
A wheeled tower made of stone, twenty-five feet high.
“Christus Imperator…”
No slaves pushed the tower forward to the river’s edge.
Instead, it rolled forward of itself, upon brass-bound stone wheels twice the height of a man, that settled deep into the mud. As it came closer, she could just see a Visigoth gun-crew inside the tower’s carved head, furiously sponging and loading their cannon.
The window-glass distorted a commotion on the city walls. Feeling cut off, Ash watched men running, crossbows being winched, spanned; steel bolts shot into the chill wind, all in silence, up here in the Duke’s tower. A bang and crack from a Visigoth saker came muffled to her, and the whine of plaster fragments spraying from the bastion wall.
Arbalest and crossbow crews crowded the city’s battlements. Anxiety sharpened her eyesight. Any Lion liveries? No!
A thick bolt-storm rattled against the sides of the stone dragon-tower, sending its gun-crew scuttling deeper inside for shelter.
Stomach churning, she watched. The tower lurched. One wheel bit deeper into the mud, sinking to the axle. A throng of Carthaginian slaves, herded out of the legion camp with whips, began casting fence-posts and planks down under the great stone wheel for traction; falling man by man under a constant arrow-fire from the city walls. As Ash watched, they ran away from the siege-tower, leaving it and its crew desolate.
Evidently the Faris believes in keeping up the pressure.
“If I had to find a word for … for golem-towers,” Ash said, still staring, her tone somewhere between awe and black humour, “I think my voice would call them ‘self-propelled artillery’…”
