by Mary Gentle
Rickard squinted, rubbing his watering eyes. “Can’t tell the livery, boss.”
“No – yes. Yes, I can.” Ash grabbed the arm of Robert Anselm, standing next to her; and the broad-shouldered man, bundled up against the bitter cold, grinned from under his visor. “Sweet Christ, Robert, is that what I think it is?”
Sounding light-hearted for the first time in weeks, her second-in-command said, “Getting old, girl? Getting short-sighted?”
“That’s a fucking red crescent!” Ash spoke loudly. The noise from the Burgundian knights cut off. She pointed. “That’s the Turks!”
“Motherfuckers!” Floria del Guiz exclaimed; fortunately in the broad patois of the mercenary camp. Jeanne Châlon pursed her lips, disapproving the vehemence; Olivier de la Marche choked.
A neat column of cavalry horses trotted out from between the Visigoth ranks. At this distance, in winter’s haze, all Ash could make out were white pennants with red crescents, and riders in fawn robes and white helms. No spear-points silhouetted against the sky: therefore not lancers. The column wound out of the Visigoth camp into the deserted land between it and the city walls: horses picking their way across churned mud vitrified by black frosts. A hundred, two hundred, five hundred men…
“What are they doing? I don’t believe it!” Ash swore again. She threw her arms around the shoulders of Ludmilla Rostovnaya and Willem Verhaecht, embracing them. “Well spotted! What the hell are they doing?”
“If they plan to attack us, it is foolish,” Olivier de la Marche said. He made an obvious effort and turned to Floria del Guiz. “You see we have guns on the walls, my lady.”
Floria wore her I do know one end of an arquebus from the other expression; Ash has seen a lot of it in the past month.
“Don’t fire,” Floria said.
It was unmistakably an order. After a moment, de la Marche said, “No, my lady.”
Ash grinned to herself. She murmured quietly, “And to think I thought you’d have trouble being a Duchess…”
“I’m a doctor. I’m used to telling people what to do.” Floria rested her hands on the battlements, staring out at the approaching armed horsemen. “Even when I don’t know what’s best.”
“Especially then.”
Ash put her helmet on, and when she glanced up from buckling the strap, the Turkish riders were close enough that she could see they carried round shields, and recurved bows; and their helmets were not white, but were covered by a white felt sleeve that hung down over the backs of their necks.
“They are indeed Turks,” Olivier de la Marche said, his voice loud in the icy silence. “I know them. They are the Sultan’s crack troops, his Janissaries.”
The mingled respect and awe on the faces of both her men and the Burgundians was enough to let Ash know they shared de la Marche’s opinion.
“Fine. So they’re shit-hot. What are they doing here? Why are they heading for this city?” Ash leaned out from one of the embrasures, frustrated. A great number of troops – Legio VI Leptis Parva, by the eagle – milled about on the edges of their earthworks; but otherwise made no move. Watching.
“If they’re intending to come inside the city…” De la Marche’s voice trailed off.
Ash found herself watching the Janissaries’ cavalry mounts and thinking not of military use, but only of food on the hoof. There were no Turkish packhorses visible. “If they’re intending to come inside the city, then why aren’t the Visigoths slaughtering them?”
“Yes, Demoiselle-Captain, exactly.”
“They’re never going to let five hundred Turks in here to reinforce the siege. What the fuck is going on!”
Robert Anselm snuffled.
Ash looked sharply at him. The big man wiped his wrist across his nose, stifling another snuffling laugh; caught her eye and broke out into a loud guffaw.
“That’s what’s going on. Take a look at that, girl! It’s fucking mad – so who’s behind it?”
Now the head of the column was within a hundred yards of Dijon’s northeast gate, it was possible to discern European riders among the Turkish cavalry. Not many of them, Ash saw: not above fifty men. She wiped her streaming eyes again, staring into the wind.
A great red-and-yellow standard flew above the few Europeans; and a personal banner. The wind blew the cloth towards them, among Turkish pennants; and it was a second before a gust unrolled the silk on the air so that all could see it. A ripple of exclamations went along the wall. Up and down the battlements, a great ragged cheer went up, on and on.
Ash blinked at the yellow banner. A tusked blue boar, flanked by white five-pointed stars.
“Holy shit!”
It was not necessary, the man’s name was being shouted from one end of the walls to the other, but Robert Anselm said it anyway.
“John de Vere,” he said, “thirteenth Earl of Oxford.”
II
A brief shouted confrontation between the Burgundians and Oxford; the gates of Dijon opened just long enough for five hundred men to ride through; Ash pelted down the stairs, off the wall.
Her men crowded her on the steps, scabbards tangling; she found herself barely ahead of Robert Anselm, Olivier de la Marche treading on her armoured heels.
“An Oxford!” Robert Anselm bellowed the de Vere battle-cry happily. “An Oxford!”
The crowd poured off the walls at the same time as the great city gates clashed shut. Iron bars slammed noisily back into place. A weight cannoned into Ash’s back: she skidded on cobblestones, and grabbed the person who had fallen into her – Floria, feet tangled in her jewelled skirts, cursing.
“Is it him? It is him! The man’s a lunatic!” Floria exclaimed.
“Tell me something I don’t know!”
A great orderly mass of Ottoman Turks – five hundred at least – formed their horses up into a square in the market space behind the gate. The icy wind whipped the mounts’ tails. Mares, mostly, she saw at a glance, tough fawn-coloured mares; and their armed riders sitting their dyed-leather saddles in complete stillness, no shouting, no calling out, no dismounting.
A raw-boned grey gelding galloped out of the mass of Turks, three or more horses with it. The yellow-and-blue banner streamed out, carried by the lead rider.
The armoured banner-bearer, riding without a helmet, curly fair hair flying and a great smile on his face, was Viscount Beaumont. De Vere’s three brothers rode at his heels; behind Dickon and Tom and George, on the grey, came John de Vere himself.
The Earl of Oxford flung himself out of the saddle, throwing the war-horse’s reins to any who might get them – Thomas Rochester, Ash saw. His battle-harsh voice bellowed, “Madam Captain Ash!”
“My lord Oxford— oof!”
The English Earl threw his arms around her in a crushing embrace. Ash had a split second to reflect that she was far better off wearing plate than she would have been mail. Her ribs stabbed pain into her side. She gasped. John de Vere, still holding her in a bear-hug, burst into tears. “Madam, God save you, do I find you well?”
“Wonderful,” she whispered. “Now – let – go—”
The Englishmen were all, she saw, either in tears or waving their hands around and talking excitedly; Beaumont wringing Olivier de la Marche by the hand; Dickon de Vere embracing Robert Anselm; Thomas and George loud among the throng of Burgundian nobles. The rows of mounted Janissaries gazed down from their horses at this spectacle, seeming mildly interested, if impassive.
John de Vere wiped his face unselfconsciously. His skin had become pale in the months since she had seen him last. Winter mud covered him to the knee. For the rest – she looked him up and down, fists on her hips – the English Earl stood in battle-worn harness, faded blue eyes watering in the wind, so little different that it made her heart lurch.
“My God,” she said, “am I glad to see you!”
“Madam, your expression alone is worth gold!”
The Earl clapped his hands together, partly in satisfaction, partly against the cold
. His eyes travelled across the crowd. Ash followed the direction of his gaze. She saw it take him noticeable seconds to realise who he stared at.
“God’s bollocks! It’s true, then? Your physician is Charles’s heir? Your Florian is Duchess of Burgundy now?”
“True as I’m standing here.” Ash’s face ached with the smile she couldn’t keep off it. She added, thoughtfully, “My lord.”
“Give me your hand,” he said, “and not your ‘my lord’.”
Ash stripped off her gauntlet and clasped his hand, moved almost to tears of her own. “If it comes to that, I guess you have the distinction of being the only Englishman ever to employ the reigning prince of Burgundy – since she’s still on my books, and I’m still on yours.”
“The more reason for you to have trusted me to return.”
Floria del Guiz appeared through the crowd that parted to let the Duchess of Burgundy pass. The Earl of Oxford sank gracefully down on one knee. His brothers joined him, and Viscount Beaumont; kneeling before her, and the Burgundian nobles.
“God be with you, madam doctor,” John de Vere said, not appearing at all incommoded to be kneeling. “You have been given a harder task than any man would wish.”
Ash opened her mouth to speak, hesitated, and shut it again. She put her hands behind her back, forcing herself to wait for Floria to speak first. Duchess Florian, she reminded herself uncomfortably.
Floria’s sudden smile dazzled. “We have to talk, my lord Oxford. Is this all your men? Are there more?”
“These are all,” de Vere said, getting to his feet. Ash saw him glance back automatically at the Turkish troops in their neat, disciplined rows.
“Regrettably, Mistress Florian, I speak little of their language.” The Earl of Oxford pointed to a moustached soldier in mail hauberk and peaked helm. “My sole interpreter. He’s from Wallachia; a Voynik auxiliary. Do you have anyone here who speaks Turkish?”
Ash, glancing at Floria before she answered, said, “Not me, my lord. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Robert,” she signalled Anselm over. “Do we have anyone who speaks Turkish?”
“I do.” Anselm made an awkward bow to the Earl; and pointed over at the Italian gunner, who had joined Ludmilla Rostovnaya and the missile troops. “Angelotti does. We fought in the Morea3 in sixty-seven and sixty-eight. Maybe as late as seventy. Some damn Florentine shot me in the leg; I hauled Angelotti out of the Adriatic. Never been to sea since.” He took a breath, still unsteadily gazing at the Earl of Oxford. “Yeah. I speak the language.”
“Good,” de Vere approved absently. “I do not wish to be dependent on one man who may be killed.”
His eyes stayed fixed on Floria del Guiz, in her female clothing. Ash saw him shake his head in wonderment.
Losing patience, Ash demanded, “Are you going to tell us what’s going on here, my lord?”
“It is Burgundy’s Duchess that I should tell.” De Vere’s face creased with humour. “I dare say she’ll let you listen, madam.”
Floria del Guiz, surrounded by maids, Burgundian nobles, and Thomas Rochester’s lance in their self-imposed duty as bodyguard, grinned broadly at Ash. “No chance!”
“Oh, she might. She might.” Ash beamed at John de Vere. She spread her hands a little. “Meet the Captain-General of Burgundy’s armies, my lord – the Maid of Dijon.”
The Earl of Oxford gazed at her beatifically for several seconds. His head went back in a great bark of laughter. Beaumont and the de Vere brothers joined in. What Ash saw in de Vere’s expression, as he registered the bristling disapproval of de la Marche and the Burgundian knights, was sheer delight.
He walloped her solidly on the arm. “So. This is how you hold to your condotta with me, madam?”
“I’m at your command now you’re back, my lord.”
“Of course you are.” His faded blue eyes glowed with humour. “Of course. As an Englishman, madam, I’m more than happy to leave Holy Virgins to foreigners. Much safer.” More soberly, he added, “What news have you had of late from outside the walls?”
Floria said grimly, “For about the last three weeks, nothing.”
Robert Anselm added, “The Visigoths aren’t taking the walls, but they’ve got this place shut up tighter than a duck’s arse, my lord.”
“You have had no intelligence at all?”
Ash blinked against the low brilliance of the winter noon. “They tied us up solid, about the same time they stopped pressing the assaults on the walls. We haven’t got any spies out or messengers of our own in, since.”
At the mention of assaults, she saw de Vere’s face change, but he said nothing.
Robert Anselm said cynically, “We stopped sending people out when they started coming back in by trebuchet, in two separate sacks. Last one was that French guy, Armand de Lannoy.” He shook his head. “He’s been feeding the crows for a week now. Don’t know why he thought it was so damn important to get out.”
“I can answer that question, Master Anselm,” the Earl of Oxford said. As the last of his exuberance died down, Ash noted the strain underneath. “Madam Duchess, better to say it to you and your advisors all at the same time.”
Ash overrode what the surgeon might have been about to say. “How the fuck my lord – did you get in here?” She found that she was waving her own hands, in much the same way as the English, and put them down by her side. “Did you sail from Carthage to Constantinople? Have you seen the Sultan? Is this all your troops? What’s happened?”
“All in time, madam. And in the lady Duchess’s hearing.” John de Vere glanced momentarily from the surgeon in her filthy jewelled gown to the white sun in the winter sky.
“Plainly,” he said, “you are Burgundy’s Duchess, as Charles was the late Duke. Tell me, madam, are you – you must be what Duke Charles was. Or we would not have a sun in the sky above us.”
Floria’s dirty, stained hands went to her breast. A white pectoral Briar Cross hung from a golden chain, itself not rich, but carved from the same horn of the hart as her ducal crown. Her knuckles whitened: she did not, for a second, meet the eyes of any of the Burgundian nobles surrounding her.
“She’s Charles’s successor,” Olivier de la Marche said in the tone of a man who hears a law of nature – the tide, perhaps, or the return of the moon – questioned.
“Oh, she’s the Duchess, all right.” Ash, conscious of her bruised ribs, and the weight of her armour, shifted from foot to foot in the cold wind. She is what the Wild Machines need to destroy, now. “I’ll tell you something I do know, my lord Oxford. The Faris knows that. She’s sitting out there in that camp – she’s been sitting out there for five weeks now – and she knows that Florian is the person she needs to kill. And she isn’t doing a damn thing about it.”
With raised fair eyebrows, John de Vere gazed around at the battered buildings and deserted streets of Dijon.
Ash shrugged. “Oh, she’s letting hunger and disease do her work for her, but she’s almost stopped the assaults. I’d give half the company war-chest to know what her officers are saying. And the other half to know what she’s thinking, right now.”
The Earl of Oxford said, “I believe that I can tell you that also. Captain Ash.”
The sound of distant siege-engine fire echoed through the air from the west of the city. Faint vibrations shook the earth under her feet.
“Get your Turks away from the walls. We’ll take council of war,” Floria said briefly, “Indoors.”
As the court entered the private chambers of the Duchess, the Earl of Oxford and his brothers were again swept up into a crush of more of the lords of Burgundy; greetings being exchanged, questions shouted. The Janissary captains followed in Oxford’s wake with expressions of polite bewilderment.
Each of the dismounted Turks wore the same thing, Ash noted in astonishment: a fawn-coloured robe with hanging sleeves, over a mail hauberk; a curved sword belted at the waist; bow and shield; and a helmet with a sleeve of white cloth hanging down behind. The un
iformity of their clothing and their bearded faces made her feel that she was in the chamber with one man twenty times over, and not with twenty men. The contrast with her own escort, Thomas Rochester’s lance – war-hats buckled down over their cowls, wearing a selection of mail, leather and stolen plate armour; each man in his own chosen colour of filthy hose gone through at the knee – was marked.
“We’ll never feed them,” Floria said flatly, walking in at Ash’s side. She caught Ash’s glance. “Henri Brant’s been advising me. As well as the castellan of Dijon. We can’t feed the people we’ve got.”
“Try thinking of it this way. Five hundred cavalry mounts is two hundred and fifty tons of meat.”
“Good God, girl! Will they wear it?”
“The Turks? Not for a second, I shouldn’t think. Let’s not borrow trouble,” Ash said thoughtfully. “Find out why he’s brought them here, first.”
The glassed windows in the ducal chamber kept out much of the freezing wind, but it whined in the chimneys; a hollow sound under the raucous voices. Here, silk hangings still decorated the bed, and there were chairs as well as chests, and a great fire burning in the hearth.
Floria fixed Jeanne Châlon with a challenging eye. “Spiced wine, Tante.”
“Yes, Niece-Duchess, of course. At once! If the kitchens have any left.”
“If that lot of thieving bastards don’t have a cask squirrelled away somewhere,” the Duchess of Burgundy remarked, “then we might as well surrender to the Visigoths right now…”
Ash snorted. Floria left her side, walking forward into the chamber, and the men drew aside for her without thinking about it. Ash bit her lip. She shook her head, amused at herself, and followed the surgeon towards the fire.
Floria called to her pages: “Pull the chairs around the hearth. No need to freeze while we talk.”
Breath whitened the air. Despite the fire, it was cold enough to make Ash’s teeth ache. She moved forward, among the general rearrangements, and stood with her back to one side of the carved stone hearth, below a Christ-figure with intricate foliage curling around Him.
