by Mary Gentle
Floria seated herself on the carved oak chair that it had taken two pages to shift closer to the warmth. The Burgundian knights and lords and bishops turned towards her, falling silent, watching their bedraggled, bright-eyed, and completely confident Duchess.
The Earl of Oxford said, “May I suggest, madam, that you clear the chamber somewhat? We shall do our business more speedily if we are not burdened with over-much debate.”
Floria rattled out a handful of names. Within minutes, all but a dozen of the court dispersed – in remarkable good temper, and anticipation, Ash realised – and the mulled wine came in; and the Duchess looked at the English Earl over the rim of her gold goblet.
“Talk,” she said.
“All of it, madam? It has been three months and more since we stood on the beach at Carthage.”
Floria rapped out, “God give me strength and, failing that, patience!”
John de Vere bellowed with laughter. He sank down, not asking ducal permission, on to a chair close to the burning logs. A scent of sweat and horse emanated from him, with the rising heat. Ash, watching him and his brothers and Beaumont, had a sharp flash of how it had been with the sun of August on Dijon’s fields, when they had dined together. Despite the presence of Olivier de la Marche and the Turkish commander, she felt a strong and welcome familiarity.
“Start with him, Master de Vere.” Floria del Guiz tilted the cup slightly towards the remaining Turkish Janissary officer.
“Start with why you’re in here, not out there, and not dead,” Ash clarified. “That’s a whole battalion you just brought in here!”
The Earl of Oxford stretched out his boots to the flames. “You would have me begin at the end. Very well. I am here and alive, because I have this man and his cavalry with me. Plainly, five hundred men are no match for six thousand encamped Visigoths. However – I informed the Faris, in all truth and honour, that if his men die here, the Osmanli4 Sultan Mehmet, second of that name, will consider himself to be instantly at war with the Visigoth Empire.”
A moment’s silence, in which nothing could be heard but the fire crackling, and the wind in the chimney.
John de Vere added, “She knew it to be true. Her spies must have informed her by now of the troop build-up on the western border of the Sultan’s empire.”
Ash softly whistled. “Yeah, well, he can afford to make threats like that.”5
“This is no threat.”
“Thank Christ and all His sweet saints for that.” Ash shifted, pain jabbing her ribs under the cuirass. “So, let me get this right, you just rode across from Dalmatia or wherever—”
“Five hundred men are a big enough troop not to be bothered,” the Earl of Oxford said mildly, “while being no threat to the King-Caliph’s army.”
“—and then you rode up to Dijon, and you said, ‘Let me inside the besieged city with fresh troops’, and they said, ‘Oh, okay’—”
Dickon de Vere flushed and said hotly, “We risk our lives, and what do you do but carp and jeer!”
“Be quiet, boy.” The Earl of Oxford spoke firmly. He smiled at Ash. “You have not stood siege for so long. Let Captain-General Ash ask her questions after her own fashion.”
Impetus gone and slightly deflated, Ash said, “They’re not fresh troops, these Turks. They’re hostages.”
The Ottoman commander said in halting German,6 “I do not know this word.”
Ash looked at him, startled. He was, under the felt cap and beard, fair in colouring; probably a Christian by birth.
“It means, if they attack us, if you die; then those men out there—” She indicated the window. “—the Visigoths, they die too. All the while you’re in Dijon, an attack on the city is an attack on the Sultan.”
His beard split to disclose a smile. “Woman Bey7 know! Yes. We are the New Troops.8 We are come to protect, in Mehmet and Gundobad his name. Our lives are your shield.”
“This is the Basi Bajezet,” Dickon de Vere blurted. “He commands their orta.”9
“Tell Colonel Bajezet he’s very welcome,” Ash murmured. The Voynik behind the Ottoman commander translated quietly into his ear. The bearded man smiled.
Floria said abruptly, “Will it work?”
“For now, yes, Mistress Florian. Duchess: your pardon.” John de Vere straightened up in his chair. A tang of singed leather came from the boots he withdrew from the hearth. He reached out for the wine goblet a page handed him, and drank. It was not apparent how many days he had been in the saddle or how many hundreds of leagues he might have ridden.
“Why?” Floria said.
“By your leave, madam.” The Earl of Oxford beckoned his Voynik interpreter, said something in his ear, and the Voynik auxiliary and his commander bowed and retreated from the chamber.
John de Vere said abruptly, “It is dark now as far as Hagia Sophia and the Golden Horn.”
“The sun?” Floria turned her head towards the window, the winter sun beyond the glass illuminating the lines around her eyes.
“No sun, madam. Constantinople is as dark as Cologne and Milan.” The Earl rubbed his face. “Luckily for me. After I left you, we sailed to Istanbul,10 then travelled overland to Edirne. I was admitted to the Sultan’s presence within weeks. I told him, through an interpreter, what I had seen and heard in Carthage. I told him that Burgundy is, sweet Christ knows why, all that stands between us and the dark; for proof of that, he should witness how the sun still shines on Burgundy.”
George de Vere said taciturnly, “His spies confirmed it.”
Oxford nodded. He leaned forward, towards the Duchess in her chair. “Sultan Mehmet has two whips driving him, Mistress Florian. He fears this darkness spreading from Africa, and he desires to conquer the Visigoth Empire and its subject nations of Christendom as he did Byzantium. I have told him Burgundy must stand. I do not know if he believes me, but he is willing to make this much effort. If the Visigoths do prove too strong to be challenged now, he has lost but a regiment of Janissaries proving it.”
Floria looked as though she had a sour taste in her mouth. “And if the Visigoths don’t take Dijon – I get a Turkish army on my doorstep, going hammer and tongs at them?”
A month ago she would have said we, not I. Ash sipped her wine: bottom-of-cask stuff not much improved by the scrapings of a palace kitchen spice-drawer.
“How long has he given you?” she asked John de Vere.
“Two months. Then he withdraws Colonel Bajezet.” The Earl looked consideringly into the fire. “If I were at a Lancastrian English King’s court, say, and a mad Osmanli Earl came and asked me for troops, I do not know that I should lend him so many or for so long!”
Ash drank, watching the light on the surface of the wine. The ducal chamber smelled of man’s sweat and of wood-ash. She did not know whether it would hurt her ribs more to sit, or to continue standing. A hand touched her shoulder. She winced, aware that the top of her breastplate had been driven into her flesh too; that she had bruises in those muscles.
Floria del Guiz said, “Ash, have we got two months?”
She raised her eyes, not even aware of the woman having moved. Floria’s face under the hart’s-horn crown was the same as ever; lined, now, from unwelcome responsibilities. Unknown capabilities. Herself and Floria: the irresistible force rattling off the immovable object. The Duchess’s grip loosened.
“If the siege isn’t pressed? I doubt it.” Ash walked away from her, across the room to one of the windows. Beyond the glass, the skies of Burgundy shone a hard pale blue. Too cold even to snow. Ash touched the freezing glass.
“But the siege isn’t the point, not now. Except for the fact that it keeps you here— I’ve prayed for snow,” she said. “Sleet, snow, fog; even rain. Anything to limit visibility! I’d have you and half a dozen of the lads over the wall and away. But it stays clear. Even the fucking moonlight… And anybody we send out is killed, or doesn’t come back.”
She turned to face them: de la Marche, severe; Oxford frowning; Flori
a anxious.
“It isn’t about that army out there! It isn’t about the Turks— sorry, my lord de Vere. It’s about the Duchess of Burgundy and the fact that we can’t get out of here, can’t get you away somewhere safe. Keeping you alive, Florian. You and what you do. That’s all it’s about now, and I’d open up Dijon right now for the Visigoths to plunder – happily! – if I thought I could get you away in the confusion. I can’t risk it. One stray arrow could finish everything.”
What the Earl of Oxford heard in that, she knew, was not what Floria del Guiz was hearing – or what Oxford would hear, once appraised of the hunting of the hart. Olivier de la Marche bit at his lip. The surgeon scowled.
“Have we got two months?” Floria repeated. “Not just food. Before the Faris—”
“I don’t know! I don’t know if we have two days, or two hours!”
The Earl of Oxford looked from one woman to the other: the mercenary in plate, cropped hair shining; and the surgeon-turned-Duchess awkward in her woman’s clothing. He reached up and scrubbed his hand through his sand-coloured hair.
“There is something I don’t understand here,” he confessed. “Before you explain yourself, madam, let me finish my tale. You in the city have had no word at all of what goes on in the Faris’s camp?”
“We’ll have to brief you.” Ash relaxed her clenched fists. She strode back towards the warmth of the hearth-fire. “As for intelligence – we’ve heard nothing. I can guess. She’ll have been getting frantic messages from Carthage saying why the fuck have you stopped the war, you can’t do this, get on with it. Am I right? And it’ll have to have been couriers. If I’m too scared, now—” Ash grinned mercilessly. “She won’t talk to the Stone Golem. She knows what else hears her when she does.” She snorted. “And I bet there’s been messages going back to Carthage from her officers, too! They must think she’s gone nuts.”
“Are you sure she hasn’t?”
“Frankly? No.” Ash turned to the Earl of Oxford. “This is speculation. What do you know?”
“I know,” the Earl said, “that my men and I are a week in front of two Visigoth legions travelling north to Dijon.”
“Shit!” Ash stared at him. “Fresh troops from Africa? He hasn’t got any! Has he pulled them out of Egypt – or Carthage itself?”
“Sultan Mehmet has an extensive spy network.” John de Vere placed his goblet carefully on the floor. “I trust his information. The Sinai fortresses are still manned. As for Carthage… Riding with these legions, on his way here to take personal command of his armies and send the Faris home to Carthage, is the King-Caliph Gelimer.”
Stunned, Ash said, “Gelimer’s coming here?”
“He has to make his example of Burgundy.”
“But, Gelimer?”
The Earl of Oxford leaned forward in his chair, stabbing a finger emphatically in the air between them. “And not alone, madam. According to the Sultan’s spies, he has representatives of two of his subject nations with him. One is Frederick of Hapsburg, lately Holy Roman Emperor. This I know for truth; we came across his lands, riding here. The other is said to be an envoy of Louis of France.”
The travel-stained English Earl paused. Olivier de la Marche, nodding furiously, bent to hear what Chamberlain-Counsellor Ternant whispered in his ear.
“King-Caliph Gelimer must take Dijon,” John de Vere announced flatly. “And – pardon me, madam Florian – he must kill the Duke or Duchess. You are the heart of resistance to him, and Burgundy is the last land that stands against him in conquered Europe. That’s why, if his female general won’t do it for him – the man must come here and do it himself.”
Olivier de la Marche glanced at Floria for permission, and spoke. “If he fails, lord Oxford?”
John de Vere’s gaze sharpened, the lines creasing in the corners of his eyes. It was, Ash saw, a smile that lacked all kindness: a pure wolfish expression.
“France has a peace treaty with the King-Caliph.” De Vere displayed an open hand to Ash. “Your French knight who was so anxious to escape Dijon? He would have been trying to reach Louis with news of the failing siege. France has been all but untouched by this war. I give you the dark, but, Maine, Anjou, Aquitaine, Normandy – all of them could mobilise, now, if they thought Gelimer weak.”
“And the north Germanies—!” Ash ignored de la Marche’s sharp look, lost in battle calculations of her own that momentarily ignored Burgundian troops and Duchess and Wild Machines. “Frederick surrendered so fast this summer, half his armies never got into battle! Sweet Christ, the Visigoths are out on a limb!”
John de Vere’s gaze stayed on Floria. “Madam, there are villagers and villeins from France and the Germanies flocking over the borders into Burgundy. Outside of your lands there is nothing but howling darkness, cold, and a winter such as men have never known. That is all Louis or Frederick would need as an excuse to come in now and attack the King-Caliph, that their own people have taken protection with you.”
“Refugees.” Floria winced, wrapping her fur-lined gown more tightly around her. “Out in that. Good God. What’s it like beyond the border, if this is better? But I don’t know about these refugees.”
“You don’t need to know, madam, for the Spider to make that his excuse.”
“And then there’s the Sultan.” Ash ignored her surgeon’s outrage; looked at de Vere with growing fierce exultation. “The waiting armies of the Turk… Gelimer has to take Burgundy. If he doesn’t win here, and quickly, France and the Germanies will carve up Europe between them and the Turks will be in Carthage in a month.”
“Sweet Christ, Ash!” Floria stood up. “Don’t sound so bloody pleased about it!”
“Maybe England will come in, too—” Ash broke off. She looked down at her hands, and then back up at Floria. “I enjoy the thought of that son of a bitch in trouble.”
“He’s in trouble? What about us!”
Ash guffawed, not able to stop herself even for the look of sheer outrage on Philippe Ternant’s face. Floria laughed out loud. She sat down again in the ducal chair with her legs apart under her skirts, as a man wearing hose sits; and her bright eyes and thick gold brows were still the same under the horn crown.
“No harvest,” Floria said. “No cattle. No shelter. Those bastards have made it a wasteland out there. If people are coming into these lands, it must be hell outside…”
Excitement died. And we don’t even know why we have the sun – by right, we shouldn’t have.
Floria’s expression was taut, ambiguous – also gnawing at that unspoken question?
Olivier de la Marche lifted his hand, catching de Vere’s attention. “It’s dark as far as Constantinople now, you say, my lord? The King-Caliph can’t have intended that. Not such a deliberate provocation to the Turk.”
Philippe Ternant added, “If it is the lands which they conquer that fall Under the Penance with them, then Constantinople would still be bright. Not Visigoths, then. My lord of Oxford, our Duchess’s knowledge of the Great Devils must be shared with you.”
“I know something of this matter already.” De Vere’s face was still; Ash thought him remembering a sea-strand outside Carthage, and a silver glow in the south. “Only, I am uncertain as to the lady’s place in this.”
“The Duchess will tell you later.” Ash caught Floria’s eye, and surprised herself by waiting for the surgeon’s nod before going on: “My lords, it seems to me that Gelimer’s caught in his own trap. I stood in Carthage three months ago, when he took the crown, and I heard him promise the Visigoth lords and everyone else that he’d smash Burgundy as an example – he has to do it now. He’s got his own amirs on his heels, Louis and Frederick closing in, and the Sultan waiting to see if now’s the time to come in from the east.” A brief smile moved her mouth. “When he started to get reports of the Faris soft-pedalling the siege here and his conquests grinding to a halt, I’ll bet money that he shat himself.”
Floria sat up in her chair. “Ash, what you mean is, he has t
o kill us. Me. As quickly as possible.”
Clear through the frost-bitten air, not muffled by the expensive glass, a lone bell tolled. Potter’s Field, Ash realised: more bodies stacked for a thaw that would enable burial. The impact of rocks and artillery boomed from the south of the city. The roofs and walls between this palace and the army outside the city did not seem much of a barrier.
Ash slowly nodded.
“Christ up a Tree!” Floria exclaimed, oblivious to the shock of her Burgundians. “And you act like this is good news!”
Her head whipped round at John de Vere’s burst of laughter. The English Earl met her questioning stare, shook his head, and held out an inviting hand to Ash:
“Madam, you have it, I think?”
“It is good news!” Ash walked across the bare boards to Floria, taking the woman’s hands between her own. Fiercely intense, joyous; she said, “It’s the best news we could have. Florian, the Duchess of Burgundy has to stay alive. You know that’s all that matters, whether you like it or not. I’ve spent five weeks trying to find a safe way out of Dijon, to get you away to somewhere else – France, maybe; England, who cares? Anywhere, as long as it’s not here, at risk from any damn Visigoth peasant with an arquebus. And every time I’ve got someone over the walls, they’ve come back dead.”
De Vere nodded approval; some of the Burgundians looked grim.
“I haven’t been able to break us out of here,” Ash said, still holding Floria’s gaze. “There’s been nothing we can do. That’s what’s demoralising. Doing nothing except wait for the Faris to make up her mind to attack or not. Well – now someone else is making it up for her.”
“Someone who’s not going to sit outside the walls waiting,” the surgeon-Duchess observed. The grip of her fingers tightened on Ash’s hands. “Christ, Ash! What happens when Gelimer gets here and they really start trying!”
“We hold out.”
