by Mary Gentle
“When my lord of Oxford travelled to Africa, I spared him all the fighting men I could. The rest I needed to man the walls of Dijon. I grant you, a raid in force, beforehand, might have been better. In retrospect, I misjudged it.”
Son of a bitch, Ash thought, looking at the man in the sick bed with a new respect.
Charles of Burgundy’s voice went on steadily: “Denying the use of the machina rei militaris to their Faris would both weaken her, since I believe she relies upon it; and by morale, weaken her men. I cannot see, however, that failing to bring that about is the worst mistake of my life. Who knows but that may be yet to come?”
She met his fever-bright eyes, detecting a slight – a very slight – glint of humour. Behind her, she heard movement. The Duke of Burgundy signalled past her, to pages, who shepherded back the armed nobles anxious to speak with him.
“I’ve had the Wild Machines in my head,” she said, watching him steadily. “You haven’t. They’re louder than God, your Grace. I’ve had them turn me around and walk me towards them—”
He interrupted: “Possession by demons? I have seen you brave in the field, but, yes, any man would fear that.”
Since he seemed entirely oblivious of that any man, Ash let it go. She leaned forward, speaking with intensity:
“They’re machines, stones that live; the ancient peoples made them first, I think, and then they grew of themselves.” She held the Duke’s gaze. “I do know, your Grace. I listened to them. I – think I made them tell me, all in a second. Maybe because they weren’t expecting it, weren’t expecting me. After that, I ran; I ran from Carthage, and the desert, and I kept on running. And I wish that was all—”
She reached for her sword’s pommel; remembered it to be in Rochester’s hands, further down the chamber; and clasped her fingers together again to stop them shaking. She could, for a moment, only try to quiet her rapid, shallow breathing.
“If it wasn’t for my company, I wouldn’t be in Dijon, I’d still be running!”
Confident, he reached to clasp her hands in his. “You are here, and will fight in whatever way you can. Even if it means talking to the machina rei militaris for me.”
She took her hands away, bleak. “When I said that not destroying it was the worst mistake of your life, I meant it. The Wild Machines could speak to Gundobad because he was a Wonder-Worker, a miraculous prophet. And then – your Grace, then they spent centuries in silence until Friar Roger Bacon built a Brazen Head in Carthage, and House Leofric built the Stone Golem.”
The Duke stared. Back down the chamber, a hooded hawk cried: brief, high, pained. As if it jolted him, he said, “They speak through the machina rei militaris.”
“Only through it.”
“You are certain of this?”
“It’s their knowledge, not mine.” Ash wiped a hand over her face, hot with sweat, but did not shift her stool away from the charcoal brazier. “I think they need a channel of some kind to speak to us, your Grace. Those like the Green Christ or the Prophet Gundobad aren’t born more than once or twice in a thousand years. The Wild Machines need Bacon’s devices, or Leofric’s; otherwise they’re dumb. They’ve been secretly manipulating the Stone Golem ever since it was made. If they could have manipulated the Visigoth Empire any other way, by now they would have!”
Looking at him, she surprised a look of pain on the Duke’s face that had nothing to do with any wound.
“What would they have had now,” she said bitterly, “if I could have destroyed the Stone Golem last summer? Nothing! They’re stone. They can’t move or speak. They might compel the earth to shake, but only in Carthage.”
Memories of falling masonry invade her mind: she pushes them away.
“If I’d managed to take it out, we’d have been safe! There’d be peace by now. The Visigoth Empire’s over-extended, they need to consolidate what they’ve taken. It’s only because the damn Stone Golem keeps telling them to take Burgundy that they’re keeping on with this campaign! And the Stone Golem’s only relaying the words of the Wild Machines.”
“Then we must see if we cannot mount another raid,” Charles of Burgundy said, “more successfully.”
In the over-heated ducal chamber, seated by a wounded man, Ash found herself suddenly and unwillingly invaded by hope.
“No shit? They’re probably manipulating to get a hell of a guard on House Leofric now…”
“It might be done.” Charles frowned, ignoring her coarseness; calculating. “I cannot weaken the defence here. If orders could be got north, to Flanders, and my wife’s army; she might send a major force out by the Narrow Sea, and south down the coast of Iberia. You will talk to my captains. Perhaps now, when the Goths are over-extended, and before Carthage has recovered its defences…”
Something unexpected moved her. She recognised it as the perception of possibility. Could we do it? Go back to Carthage, trash the place? If we could – oh, if we could! Damn, I knew there had to be some reason the Burgundians followed this man!
Taking instant decisions, as battles have taught her to, Ash said, “Count me in.”
“Good. All the more important, now, that you speak with the machina rei militaris, Captain Ash. And, when you hear these ‘Wild Machines’, that you tell me what they are planning.”
All her hope vanished in a rush of fear.
Can’t get away from it; can’t not tell him—
I can try not to.
“Your Grace, what happens when they hear me? I could be controlled—” She caught his expression. “You said yourself, anyone would be afraid! You pray, your Grace, but you wouldn’t want the voice of God in your head, I promise you.”
“These ‘Wild Machines’ are not God.” His voice was gentle. “God permits them to exist, for a time. We must deal with them as we can. With courage.”
By the way he looked at her, she thought Charles of Burgundy might have his own doubts about her piety.
“I know what they’re planning!” she protested. “Trust me, there isn’t any need to ask twice! All I heard from them in Carthage was Burgundy must be destroyed!”
“‘Burgundia delenda est’…”
“Yes. Why?” She sounded loud, brash, brutal. “Why, your Grace? Burgundy’s rich – or it was – and powerful, but that isn’t it. France and the Germanies were allowed to surrender. What’s so important about Burgundy that they want it razed to the ground, and then they want to piss on the ashes?”
The Duke drew himself together, having considerable presence despite his sick bed. He looked at her keenly.
“I may give you no reason why they should wish Burgundy destroyed.”
His ambiguity was plain.
Not sure if it were trust or resignation that she felt, Ash merely looked at him.
“Destroy this link,” Charles said, “and we have only the Visigoth Empire to meet in the field. That, I believe we can do. We have taken harder blows than this and come back with victory. So you must listen for me, master Captain, if we are to attempt Africa again. Call your voices to you.”
Carried on his words, she came to herself with a shock as cold as spring-water. She sat back on the stool.
“Your Grace, I don’t think I’ll be much good to you.”
Ash looked away from his face. She said steadily:
“The last time I – listened to where my voice is, I heard the voice of my priest, Father Maximillian. That was yesterday. Godfrey Maximillian died, in Carthage, two months ago.”
Charles watched her, neither judgement or condemnation in his face.
She protested, “If you think I’m hearing illusions, your Grace, you won’t think that any voice I hear can be trusted!”
“‘Illusions’.” Charles, Duke of Burgundy, reached out among the papers that surrounded him, uncovering one with an effort. As he read, he said, “You would call it that, Captain Ash. You say nothing of demons, or of temptation by the devil. Or even that this Father Maximillian may be with the saints, and this the answer to you
r sorrow at losing him.”
“If it is Godfrey—” Ash clenched her fist. “It is Godfrey. The Faris hears him, too. A ‘heretic priest’, she said. If both of us… I think when he died, there, as they shook the earth, his soul went into the machine – he’s trapped, his soul is trapped in the machina rei militaris. And whatever’s left of him – not a whole man – is there for the Wild Machines to pick apart…”
He reached out to grip her arm.
“You do not grieve easily, or well.”
Ash pressed her lips together. “You’ve lost men under your leadership, so you know how it is, your Grace. You carry on with the ones you’ve got.”
“War has made you hard, not strong.”
His tone was not condemnatory, but kind. His grip on her arm did not feel like that of a sick man. She flinched. Charles released her.
“Captain Ash, I have noted down on this paper, here, that I spoke to your Father Maximillian, some days before the field of Auxonne. He came to me for a letter of passage across these lands, and for a letter requesting the Abbot of Marseilles to find him a place on a ship to the south.”
“To you?”
“I gave him his letters. It was clear to me he is – was – no traitor, but a devout man seeking to help a friend, in charity and love. If anything of his soul does remain, fear for it, but do not fear it.”
Ash blinked rapidly. One hot drop of water broke from her eye before she blinked it clear; coursing down her cheek. She scrubbed her wrist across her face.
“Grief is part of the honour of a soldier,” Charles said, awkwardly, as if the tears of a woman moved him more than the tears of a man might have.
“Grief is a fucking pain in the ass,” Ash said, on a shaky, indrawn breath; and then with the brilliant smile that was all hers, said, “Sorry, your Grace.”
“Ask for what help you need,” the Duke said.
“Your Grace?”
The young black-haired man in the gold-embroidered gown finally smiled at her. There was nothing of malice in it, only plain kindness; and a weary joy, as if he were making things very clear, as if she might not otherwise hear his meaning.
“I will not use force.” His eyes shut, for a split second, and then he was looking at her again. “Nor shall I in any way compel you to speak to the machina rei militaris. I ask you to do it.”
“Shit,” Ash said miserably.
“I ask you to answer the question of why you hear a dead man’s voice. I ask you to discover what these machines beyond the machina rei militaris will do now. I want,” Charles said, looking at her keenly, “to know why you have been saying that the Visigoth Faris has been bred to work a great and evil miracle against Burgundy. And whether it is true that she has the power to do this.”
Ash looked at him dumbly. Nothing wrong with his intelligence at all.
“I offer any help you may need. Priests, doctors, armourers, astrologers: whosoever of my people can help you, you shall have them. Name help, and you shall have it.”
Ash opened her mouth to answer him, and had no answer to make.
Charles of Burgundy said, “Nor will I use underhand methods. If you and your men desire it, I will welcome you as one of my captains, whether you do this or not. You are a field commander I would wish to have serve me.”
Dumb, she could only stare at him. He means this. I wish I thought he didn’t. He means what he says.
“Do it,” he said, holding her gaze, completely confident; all his awkwardness for once gone. “For yourself, for your men, for Dijon, for Burgundy. For me.”
Ash said flatly, “I’ve been forced back here, I’m sitting smack in the centre of a target, and I don’t know why it’s a target. Your Grace, I’m going to need to know that. If not now, then very soon.”
She studied his sallow face, and the hollow gaps between socket and eye, where the flesh of his eyelids had sunk in. No weakness showed in his expression.
“I offered whatever help you need. Speak with your dead priest.” He watched her with authority and determination. “If it proves needful – come back to me. You shall know whatever I can tell you.”
At last, painfully, she said, “Give me time.”
“Yes. Since you need it, you shall have that, too.”
Ash, sweat running down her body under her armour, light-headed with fear, stood and looked down at the Duke of Burgundy.
“Not time to decide,” she said. “This was always going to happen; here or anywhere else. I’ve decided. Give me time to do it.”
Message: #258 (Anna Longman)
Subject: Carthage
Date: 04/12/00 at 05.19 p.m.
From: Ngrant@
Anna –
Is Isobel’s mail what you needed? Let me know later today. We’re so busy here, you wouldn’t believe it! Or perhaps you would!
Everybody is being very nice to me, and not pointing out that I have no particular authorisation to be here except for ‘Fraxinus’, and that I’m continually underfoot. I think we’re all too excited to care. A genuine, untouched, DOCUMENTED seabed site – even Isobel can’t bring herself to call it anything other than Carthage!
Anna, *that* is the final part of ‘Fraxinus me fecit’. My last piece of translation. The manuscript breaks off there, plainly incomplete.
I cannot answer any of the questions it raises!
Other historical documentation picks Ash up again, but only in the initial part of January 1476/77. We may never know why the ‘siege of Dijon’ section gives such an unconventional rendering of European history, and of Charles the Bold’s character – in some ways, it is much closer to a portrait of his father, Duke Philip the Good – but *he* died in 1467! We may never know what happened to Ash in the winter before her death at the battle of Nancy, or why this text places Charles in Dijon!
In the light of current events, does it *matter*?
I don’t believe, now, that I’m worried about what results the metallurgy team will come up with when they re-test the ‘messenger golem’.
Suppose carbon-dating *does* put it in this half of the twentieth century? It is not *completely* impossible that someone else saw the ‘Fraxinus’ document before I did. Nor is it *completely* impossible that a fake ‘golem’ might be made – Isobel tells me there is a substantial market in archaeological fakes to the more gullible private collectors.
Carthage is not a fake. Carthage is a fact.
Of course, archaeologically speaking, there is the question of what, as a fact, this implies. Has this inundated site any connection with the Liby-Phoenicians who settled the original ‘Carthage’ in 814 BC – did they perhaps land here, and only later move to the land-site that has been excavated outside Tunis? It seems unlikely: this is not the Carthage that the Romans sacked. But it is Visigothic Carthage.
You see, Anna, I have been positing a settlement made in the AD 1400s – and from the ROV images, this site already seems much older than that! Perhaps this is Vandal Carthage? Or perhaps this is a much *older* Visigothic site? After all, if a storm had not sunk their fleet in AD 416, the Spanish Visigoths would have taken over Roman Carthage thirteen years before the Vandals did just that!
So much – so _much_ to be discovered now.
My initial theory posited a late-mediaeval, short-lived settlement. Any continuously occupied site, from AD 416, gives us much *more* of a problem – I can believe that ‘my’ Visigoth settlement on the North African coast, lasting perhaps 70-80 years in total, could go unnoticed, or at least have such evidence as survives ‘swept under the carpet’ for any number of reasons. However, ten and a half centuries of continuous occupation would show up in Arabic chronicles, even if the ‘Franks’ managed to ignore it!! I grant you there are tens of thousands of surviving mediaeval Islamic manuscripts, and many libraries throughout North Africa and the Middle East that have yet to be fully catalogued – but, no mention of 1060 years of Carthage?! *Anywhere? *
I do need to talk to Isobel about this.
I’ve said
that we are all in a state of exaltation – that’s true, but, I would expect Isobel to be more joyful. She seems concerned.
I suppose that, if I were responsible for confidentiality on the site of the biggest archaeological discovery this century, *I* might look a little frazzled and haggard, too!
There are new images coming through from the ROVs every few minutes – will contact you again when I can – isn’t this *wonderful*?
– Pierce
* * *
Message: #158 (Pierce Ratcliff)
Subject: Ash, manuscript
Date: 05/12/00 at 07.19 p.m.
From: Longman@
Pierce –
There is a manuscript.
I wanted you to know that first. I’ve been to Sible Hedingham, I’ve spoken to Professor Davies’s brother, who’s been remarkably candid with me, but first – THERE IS A MANUSCRIPT.
It isn’t an unpublished work by Vaughan Davies.
It’s original.
Pierce, I’ve no idea if this is important or not. I don’t even know if it’s from the right era. Or if it’s a fake.
The brother, William Davies, says Vaughan referred to it as a ‘hunting treatise’. The cover bound on to it does have a woodcut of a deer being chased through the woods by riders. I hope you are not going to be disappointed. My (small) Latin’s Classical, not mediaeval, so I can’t pick out anything much except a few references to ‘Burgundia’. For all I know, the rest of it could be about hound breeding! I hope it isn’t; I really hope it isn’t, Pierce. I’m going to feel I’ve let you down if it is.
William has let me scan it. Given the condition the paper is in, I’m not sure I should have allowed him to – but I had to. He’s contacting Sotheby’s and Christie’s. I have talked him out of contacting the British Library at the moment. It won’t be long before he insists.
If this is genuine – important – even useful, I can use this discovery to support the combined book-and-documentary project, without having to involve what you and Dr Isobel are doing at the sea-site yet. I do realise she needs total security at the moment.
