by Mary Gentle
There was a raw, black edge to the laughter in the room. Ash saw Floria’s face, appalled at the cruelty. She stopped laughing.
Florian looked down at the horn crown in her hands.
“It’s worth trying. We have to keep them talking. I don’t want to see another assault on the walls. We have to put some bait in this. We’ll tell them the Duchess will be there – no.” Floria, completely inflexible, repeated, “No. This is my decision. Tell Agnes Dei, yes, I’ll meet with Gelimer.”
Forty-eight hours later, on the very day of Christ’s Mass, the Duchess of Burgundy and the English Earl of Oxford, together with the Captain-General, the Janissaries of the Turk and the Duchess’s mercenary bodyguard, met in parley with King-Caliph Gelimer and his officers and allies of the Visigoth Empire.
The tunnel stank of old sweat, and blood, and dank earth and urine: so strong that the lanterns guttered and burned low.
Ash walked with her hand on the war-hammer shaft stuck through her belt. No room for bill-shafts, for spears; only close-quarter weapons here. She shot a glance at the sides of the sap – widened out in a desperate hurry in the last two days, fresh planks shoring up the walls and the roof a bare eighteen inches above her head.
Angelotti, standing with one of the Visigoth engineers and Jussey, nodded confirmation to her. “It’s a go, boss.”
“Anything drops on my head, it’s your ass’ll suffer for it…” Ash spoke absently; gesturing for Robert Anselm to hold up his lantern, hearing voices from the far end of this widened underground mine. Cold still air walked shivers up her spine, under her backplate.
I suppose at least, with Florian with us, we don’t have to worry about tiny miracles.
Shit. They don’t need their priests. All they need to do is send one of their golem-diggers in; this roof will come down with a thousand tons of earth—
She bit her lip, literally and deliberately. The words were in her mouth: Position of Visigoth troops, location of Visigoth command?
But it won’t know. Couriers from here to Carthage are out of date. If the Faris isn’t reporting to the Stone Golem, it can’t give tactical advice about their camp here. It won’t do me any good to speak to Godfrey.
I just want to.
“Is he there?” Robert Anselm said quietly.
The gravel that covered the floor of the sap crunched underfoot as she walked forward. She squinted in the poor light. The voices ahead of her died down.
A pale, cold blue light began to glow. Visigoth slaves uncovered globes of Greek Fire, no larger than Ash’s fist. She saw first their thistledown-white hair and familiar faces, where they knelt either side of the passageway. Then, between the two lines of them, she saw men in mail and rich robes; and one in the midst of them, in a great fur-lined cloak, his beard braided with golden beads, the King-Caliph, Gelimer. He looked strained, but alert.
“Confirm,” she said. “Move the rest up. He’s here.”
No banners – the low roof didn’t allow it – but all the armed men wore liveries, stark in the cold light. Gelimer’s portcullis. The Faris’s brazen head. A notched white wheel on a black ground. A two-headed black eagle upon a field of gold. The lilies of France quartered with blue and white bars.
Black double eagle. She searched the mass of faces in front, and found herself looking at Frederick of Hapsburg.
The Holy Roman Emperor had only one man with him that she could see: a large German knight in mail, carrying a mace. A small, dry smile crossed Frederick’s lips as he saw her. Conquest and surrender notwithstanding, he looked much the same as he had in the camp outside Neuss.
“In person? Son of a bitch…” She stepped to one side as men came up behind her, de Vere’s Turks. The Janissaries lined the walls and stood three ranks deep in front as Floria del Guiz walked forward, surrounded by twenty men of the Lion Azure, in mail hauberks and open-faced sallets. Burgundian troops flanked them to either side.
Elbow to elbow with Floria on one side, Colonel Bajezet and his interpreter on the other, and with John de Vere crowded close in behind her; Ash has a sudden visceral memory of Duke Charles, downed by a Visigoth flying wedge at Auxonne, his armour leaking blood between the exquisitely articulated plates. She felt herself start to sweat. Her palms tingled.
She did the familiar thing, alchemised it into excitement: let her vision go flat in the unnatural light and take in, without effort, which men were armed with swords (which they might have difficulty drawing in a scuffle), which with maces and picks and hammers; which of Gelimer’s lord-amirs were armoured and helmeted – all – and which were the obvious targets.
One of the Burgundian knights behind her said something foul under his breath. She looked questioningly at him as the group halted.
“That is Charles d’Amboise,”13 the Burgundian, Lacombe, said, indicating the French liveries, “Governor of Champagne, and that whoreson arselicker beside him is the man who betrayed the friendship of Duke Charles. Philippe de Commines.”
Much more, and the towering, fair-haired Burgundian would have spat on the earth. Ash, as she might with one of the company, nodded acknowledgement and said, “Watch him: if he moves, tell me.”
Ash stepped ahead of Floria, among the spotless silent Janissaries.
“We’re here for a parley with the King-Caliph.” Her voice fell flat in the enclosed space. “Not with half the lords of France and Germany! This isn’t what we agreed to. We’re pulling out.”
It’s too much to hope for that I might get away with this – spin out the negotiations about negotiations to another few days…
The French knight bowed, where he stood cramped in beside the little dark man that Ash recognised as de Commines from his previous visit to Charles’s court. He said smoothly, “I am d’Amboise. My master Louis sends me to serve the King-Caliph. I am here to acquaint her ladyship the Duchess with the benefits of the Pax Carthaginiensis. As is my lord of Hapsburg, the noble Frederick.”
Charles d’Amboise continued to look at Ash with a perfectly open and amiable expression. Ash grinned at him.
“You’re here as Louis’s spy,” she said. “And, like ‘my lord of Hapsburg’, you’re here to see Burgundy stand against the King-Caliph. In which case, if I were King-Caliph, I’d watch my back…”
Her grin did not waver at d’Amboise’s evident unease. Any dissent we can spread is good!
Six of the Turks had positions in front of Ash and Floria. There was not space enough in the mine for more than that. Ash looked past the mail and hanging sleeves of the Janissaries – men consenting to use their bodies as a human shield – and saw Gelimer’s bearded face, in the light of the Greek Fire globes.
He was showing no emotion. Certainly no anger, or uncertainty. He seemed both older and more military than when she had last seen him, in Carthage; lines drawn in the skin around his mouth, and a long mail hauberk and coat-of-plates under his cloak.
Harsh illumination, cold darkness beyond: the mine is not so different from the dark palace at Carthage, with the great Mouth of God above her and the tiles about to crack and shiver apart in an earthquake. Seeing the man again shocked her. No picture in her memory of Gelimer running from his throne – instead she had a sudden physical recall of the dead flesh of Godfrey Maximillian. A long shudder went down her spine under her armour.
“Where is the Duchess of Burgundy?” Gelimer’s light tenor also flattened, under the low boarded tunnel roof.
Over Ash’s shoulder, Floria said dryly, “You’re looking at her.”
The King-Caliph’s eyes remained on Ash for a long moment. He shifted his gaze to regard the cloaked woman wearing the bone crown. “The fortune of war means I must have you killed. I am not a cruel man. Surrender Burgundy to me, and I will spare your peasants and your townsmen. Only you will die, Duchess. For your people.”
Floria laughed. Ash saw Gelimer startle. It was not a demure laugh; it was one she had heard often in the surgeon’s tent, with Floria outside of two or three flagons of win
e; a loud, pleasant, raucous contralto.
“Surrender? After we’ve resisted? Get out of here,” Floria said cheerfully. “I’m a mercenary company’s surgeon. I’ve seen what happens to towns under siege when enemy troops sack the place. The people I’ve got in here are safer staying in here, unless we sign a peace.”
Gelimer shifted his gaze from Ash, again; past her to the Burgundian lords. “And this – woman – is what you would have lead you?”
There was no answer. Not, Ash saw as she quickly glanced back, from uncertainty or doubt. Obdurate faces regarded the King-Caliph with contempt.
“She is most wise and most valiant,” John de Vere said, with stinging courtesy. “Sirs, what is your business with the Duchess?”
Ash appointed herself discourteous mercenary Captain-General to his noble foreign Earl, and said loudly, “If that’s his best offer, they ain’t got any business with the Duchess! This ain’t serious. Let’s fuck off.”
De Vere let her see his brief amusement.
“Call your She-Lion off,” the Visigoth King-Caliph said contemptuously to de Vere. She saw his eyes flick from the English Earl to the noble Burgundians behind him; skimming over herself and the Turkish commander and Floria del Guiz.
He’s looking for the man in command, Ash realised.
He’s thinking: Not the Englishman, not in Burgundy. The Burgundian lords? Which one? Or Olivier de la Marche, back in the city?
And then she saw Gelimer’s small-eyed gaze flick to d’Amboise and Commines, and from the Frenchmen to Frederick of Hapsburg. Only a split second of loss of control.
God bless you, John de Vere! Everything you said is right. He’s here because he has to have Burgundy, and because he thinks he has to look as though he’s not afraid of us in front of them.
Ash smiled to herself, and glanced back to grin reassuringly at Florian. She whispered in the woman’s ear, her lips touching the soft hair under the hart’s-horn crown:
“Gelimer would have done better to just pile in, never mind a parley – and he hasn’t done it, and they’re watching him now, like a hawk, to see what he does next.”
“Can we keep him talking, Ash?”
Looking at Gelimer, and his closed expression under the gold-rimmed helmet he wore, brought memory vividly into her mind: the man riding in driving snow in the desert, with his son – his son – the boy’s name was gone from her. Is it still snowing in Carthage?
She formed a fast and brutal judgement. “He’d be all right if this was armies. Maybe all he did three months ago was talk himself into a job he can’t hold down – but if it was just a matter of telling his generals and his legions what to do, he could win this one. But it’s the dark, and the cold. I don’t know how much he knows. He’ll hesitate if we give him half a chance.”
“Keep talking,” Floria murmured. “Let’s spin this out as long as we can.”
The Visigoth King-Caliph turned to listen to a man speaking at his shoulder, appearing not to hear what Ash said. He nodded, once. The air, growing warm with the number of bodies crowding the mine, caught at the back of Ash’s throat. The kneeling slaves holding the Greek Fire globes in their padded iron cages appeared bleached by light: fair brows and lashes air-brushed from weather-beaten faces.
The mass of armed men parted, with difficulty letting others through from the back of the King-Caliph’s party. Ash could not at first make out faces among the blaze of heraldry, the glint of mail and sword-hilts and helmets.
Greek Fire reflected back from a river-fall of hair the colour of pale ashes, robbed of all silver in this light. Ash found herself looking again into the Faris’s face.
“Faris.” Ash nodded a greeting.
The woman made no reply. Her dark eyes, in her flawless bright face, regarded Ash as if she were not present. Her flat gaze brought a momentary frown to Ash’s face. About to comment, Ash realised that King-Caliph Gelimer was – while apparently listening to his advisor – watching her with a complete and total avidity.
Disturbed, she contented herself with another nod; which the Faris again ignored. The Visigoth woman, armoured and in black livery, had a dagger at her belt; Ash could not see a sword-hilt, in among the crush of bodies.
Why is Gelimer watching me? He should be watching the Duchess.
Is this some kind of diversion, so he can try to have Florian killed?
She inhaled, surreptitiously, trying to catch the scent of slow-match on the air, to discover if there were arquebuses hidden in the mass of Gelimer’s men. Movement caught her eye; brought her sword-hand across her body. She stopped.
Two Visigoth priests came pushing through the crowd in the Faris’s wake. They held the elbows of a tall, thin bareheaded amir, a man with unruly white hair and the expression of a startled owl. Behind the amir stumbled a pudgy Italian physician – she recognised Annibale Valzacchi. And the amir is Leofric.
“Green Christ…!” Ash became aware that she had closed her hand around Floria’s arm only when the woman winced.
“That’s the lord-amir that had you prisoner? The one who owns the Stone Golem?”
“Yeah: you never saw Leofric in Carthage, did you? That’s him.” Ash did not take her eyes from Leofric’s face, watching the elderly man across the space of perhaps five yards. “That’s him.”
Not just my sister, but this.
A pain came deep in the pit of her stomach. Stairways, cells, blood; the intrusive painful stab of examination: all sharp-edged in her mind. She rode the ache out, not letting it show on her face.
Leofric wore the rich furred gown of a Visigoth lord, over mail. He appeared unaware of the priests’ grip on his arms, and frowned at Ash with a puzzled expression.
“Greetings, my lord.” Her mouth sounded dry even to her.
John de Vere whispered encouragingly in her ear, “Madam, yes, talk. It is all time gained.”
Two slaves stood with the Lord-Amir Leofric behind the front row of Visigoth troops; one a child, and one a fat woman. Ash could see neither clearly. The child cradled something in the front of her stained linen robe, and shivered. The adult woman drooled.
In the fierce, flat white light, Leofric’s eyes focused on Ash. His face crumpled. Into the silence, he wailed, “Devils! Great Devils! Great Devils will kill us all!”
IV
The Janissaries in front of Ash did not move, their alert surveillance intense. Florian looked taken aback; de Vere, although he did not show it, no less so. Ash shifted her gaze from Leofric to the King-Caliph. No surprise showed on the Visigoth ruler’s face.
“The head of House Leofric is unwell,” Gelimer said. “If he were himself, he would apologise for such a discourtesy.”
“Ask her!” Leofric swung round imploringly towards Gelimer, the two priests gripping his arms even more firmly. “My lord Caliph, I am not mad! Ask her. Ash hears them too. She is another daughter of mine, Ash hears them as this one does—”
“No.” The Faris’s voice cut him off. “I cannot hear the machina rei militaris any longer. I am deaf to it.”
Ash stared.
The Visigoth woman avoided her gaze.
With complete certainty, Ash thought She’s lying!
“You said she wasn’t talking to the Stone Golem…” Floria whispered, her tone one of rueful admission.
“Not because she can’t.” Ash watched Gelimer wince and glance at the foreign envoys.
Frederick of Hapsburg was smiling a little, with the haughty and calculating smile she remembered from the summer at Neuss; and he caught her eye and lifted a brow slightly.
“To our business, lords.” Gelimer fixed his gaze on Floria. “Witch-woman of Burgundy—”
The Lord-Amir Leofric interrupted obliviously. “Where did I go wrong?”
Floria, who looked as if she had been about to make some dignified ducal response, stopped before she started. The surgeon-Duchess put her fists on her hips with difficulty in the crowded space, and stared at the Visigoth lord. “‘Go wrong’?”
Ash peered down the mine, between the shoulders of the Turkish Janissaries, the blue-white blaze of the Greek Fire making it paradoxically harder to focus on Leofric’s face. Something about the shape of his mouth made her shudder: adult men in their right minds do not have such an expression. She remembered Carthage, was overwhelmed suddenly between contradictory revulsion, hate and pity.
He’s not right. Something’s happened to him, since I was there. He’s not right at all…
She cut the emotions away from herself, concentrating only on the tunnel, the armed men, the sounds of voices, the shifting of feet and hands.
Leofric gazed down at the child-slave in front of him. He drew one arm from the priests’ grip, reached down, and plucked a white-and-liver-coloured patched rat out of the child’s arms. He held it up and stared into its ruby eyes. “I keep asking myself, where did I go wrong?”
The child – recognisably Violante; taller, thinner – lifted up her hands for the animal. Ash recognised the rat when it wriggled in mid-air, thrashed its tail from side to side, and dipped its furry head down to lick the girl’s fingers.
She felt eyes on her: switched her glance to see Gelimer watching her again with avid, analytical care.
“Oh, fuck…” Ash breathed.
Gelimer signalled. The two priests closed around Leofric again. Valzacchi pulled the amir’s hand down, shrinking from the animal.
The white-haired man looked vague, and relinquished the rat absent-mindedly to his slave-girl. “Lord Caliph, the danger—”
“You put on this madness as an excuse for treachery!” the King-Caliph said, in a rapid Carthaginian Latin that Ash thought only she and de Vere, apart from Gelimer’s Visigoth followers, understood. “If I have to kill you to silence you, I will.”
“I am not mad,” Leofric answered in the same language. Ash saw Frederick of Hapsburg look puzzled, and d’Amboise too; the other Frenchman, Commines, smiled quietly.
Ash glanced at de Vere. The English Earl nodded. She waited until she was sure he was watching the French and German delegations, and then reached up and unbuckled her helmet. Time to stir the pot. She took the sallet off and shook out her short hair, facing the Visigoths under the harsh light.
