by Mary Gentle
“My God, but they are twins!” Charles d’Amboise exclaimed. “A Burgundian mercenary and a Visigoth general? Their voices, their faces – what is this?”
“Sisters, I hear,” de Commines put in sharply, staring at the Visigoth King-Caliph. “Lord Gelimer, his Grace the King of France will ask, also, why you have your generals fighting both sides of this war! If it is a war, and not some conspiracy against France!”
“The woman Ash is a renegade,” Gelimer said dismissively.
“Is she?” Charles d’Amboise’s shout made the young slave-girl in front of him flinch, and huddle the piebald rat to her chest. He bellowed at the King-Caliph: “Is she? What shall I tell my master Louis? That you and Burgundy conspire together, and this sham of a war is fought on both sides by you! That Burgundy is France’s ancient enemy, and has you for an ally! And, worse than all this—” The French nobleman flung out his hand, pointing at John de Vere, Earl of Oxford: “—the English are involved!”
Ash whooped. It was drowned out in the guffaws, cat-calls, and congratulatory comments to de Vere that echoed from Thomas Rochester’s lance. Rochester himself wiped streaming eyes.
Gelimer’s hand stroked his beaded beard.
When the applause, boos, and cries of “God rot the French wanker!” died down, the King-Caliph said in a measured tone, “We do not bring our legions to raze the city of an ally, Master Amboise.”
Plainly alerted by the sound of Gelimer’s voice, the Lord-Amir Leofric suddenly bellowed out loud, his voice blaring in the low-roofed tunnel: “You must ask her! Ash! Ash!”
A dribble of earth fell down between planks, touching his face, and he winced and wrenched himself back with a cry. Panting, he fixed his gaze on Ash.
“Tell my lord the King-Caliph! Tell him. The stone of the desert has souls! Great voices speak, speak through my Stone Golem, and she has heard them, and you have heard them—” Leofric’s voice lost depth. His face saddened. “How can you let this petty war keep you from speaking of such danger?”
“I—” Ash stopped. Floria’s shoulder was pressing against hers, hard against her backplate; and de Vere had one thoughtful hand to his mace’s grip.
“Tell him!” Leofric yelled. “My daughter betrays me, I am asking you – begging you—” He wrenched both arms free of the priests, stood for one second, then raised his head and stared straight at Ash. “The Empire is betrayed, we’re all to die soon, every man of us, every woman, Visigoth or Burgundian – tell my lord Caliph what you hear.”
Ash became aware again of Gelimer’s intense stare. She looked away from Leofric; took in all the Visigoth group, the foreign envoys; stood for a moment in a complete state of indecision.
The faintest hiss came from the Greek Fire globes. Violante, cuddling her rat, looked up from under her chopped-off hair at Ash, her expression unreadable. The adult woman-slave began to pick at the girl’s tunic, dribbling without wiping her wide lips, and whining like a hound.
“Okay.” Ash rested her hands on her belt, a few inches from sword and dagger. With a sense of immense relief, she said, “He might be mad, but he isn’t crazy. Listen to him. He’s telling the truth.”
Gelimer frowned.
“There are—” Ash hesitated, choosing words with care. “There are great pyramid-golems in the desert, south of Carthage. You saw them when we rode there, Lord Caliph.”
Gelimer’s lips twitched, red in the nest of his beard, and he stroked his hand across his mouth. “They are monuments to our holy dead. God blesses them now with a cold Fire.”
“You saw them. They’re made of the river-silt and stone. Stone. Like the Stone Golem.”
He shook his head. “Nonsense.”
“No, not nonsense. Your amir Leofric’s right. I’ve heard them. It’s their voices that have spoken to you through the Stone Golem. It’s their advice that has brought you here. And believe me, they don’t care about your Empire!” With a curious sense of release, she nodded towards the white-haired Visigoth lord. “Amir Leofric isn’t crazy. There are devils out there – as far as we’re concerned, they’re devils. And they won’t rest until the whole world is as cold and dead as the lands beyond Burgundy.”
She had little hope of convincing him. She saw from his face that she probably had not. Nonetheless, she felt the release in herself: simply to be able to speak of it aloud. From behind the ranks of Janissaries, she watched Gelimer, and he could not look away from her.
“Which is the more likely?” he said. “That this talk of devils is true, when we so plainly have God’s visible mark of favour? Or that House Leofric has some factional plot against the throne? Which his slave-general joined, at his command. And now you. Captain Ash, you should have died in my court, dissected for the knowledge you would bring us. That is how you will die, when I have taken Dijon.”
“When,” Ash remarked dryly.
Florian, at Ash’s side, interjected, “Lord-Caliph, she’s telling you the truth. There are golems in the desert. And you’ve been fooled by them.”
“No. Not I. I have not been the fool.”
Gelimer signalled again. The larger of the two priests holding Leofric let go of him, and pushed his way through the press of men to the woman-slave standing beside Violante. The woman flinched away from him and began to cry in great unrestrained sobs and gawks and chokes. The priest hauled her forward by the iron collar around her wattle-skinned neck.
“My lords of France and the Holy Roman Empire,” the King-Caliph said. “You have seen that my lord Leofric is ill. You see his slave daughter, our General, is also not in health. And now you hear from this mercenary Captain-General of Burgundy the ramblings of a lunatic. This is why, gentlemen. This woman. I brought her for you to see, and judge. This is Adelize. She is the mother of both these young women.”
The priest punched the slave-woman. She stopped roaring. A complete silence fell. Ash heard only a hissing sound in her ears. Thomas Rochester, beside her, gripped her shoulder.
“If this is the dam,” Gelimer said, “what wonder if the pups are mad?”
Ash stared at the idiot woman. Under the rolls of fat, the outline of her face could be similar to that of the Faris, standing impassively beside her; it had a gut-wrenching familiarity that Ash did not let herself feel. An old woman, fifty or sixty. The woman’s pale hair was by now grey, no trace of colour left.
Ash opened her mouth to speak; and could say nothing, her voice lost.
“With such a dam, what can you expect of the cubs?” Gelimer repeated rhetorically. “Nonsense such as this talk of great devils.”
“Your Faris, your commander in the field, she also suffers this lunacy?” de Commines said sharply.
“The crusades of our Empire have never been dependent on one commander.” The King-Caliph sounded serene.
John de Vere stirred, fair brows dipping; obviously doubting that serenity. “Madam, he thinks it worth discrediting the commander who has won him Europe, to discredit Leofric and you.”
Ash said nothing. She stared at Adelize, at the woman who wept now without sound, wet tears blubbering her cheeks. Two hundred years of incest. Sweet Christ and all the Saints. Is this what I—
The Faris reached out and rested her hand on the woman’s hair. Her hand moved softly, stroking. Her face remained impassive.
“With that disposed of,” King-Caliph Gelimer said briskly, “we turn to our business with Burgundy.”
Ash missed what Floria said. She turned her head aside, choked up the searing hot vomit in her throat, spat it into her hand, and let it fall to the floor. Her eyes ran: she blinked back the water in case anyone should think she wept.
“—an envoy,” the King-Caliph was saying.
“Envoy?”
“He says he wants to send one in to us,” Floria whispered. Her face, intent, promised compassion and analysis later; in this second, she was all alertness, all Duchess. “I’m going to let him. The man’s probably a spy, but it’s all delay.” She spoke up., “If he’
s acceptable, we’ll take him.”
Gelimer’s hand stroked his beaded beard again, the gold flashing. He said mildly, “You will find him acceptable, Duchess of Burgundy. He is your brother.”
Ash did not take it in. There was a stir in the group of armed men in front of her, someone pushing their way through. Her gaze went past the man. She looked back, suddenly thinking I know that face!; wondering which of Gelimer’s Franks he might be – a mercenary she’d met in Italy, maybe; or some Iberian merchant? And in a split second, the light fell full on his face, and she saw that it was Fernando del Guiz with his hair cropped, and that he wore a priest’s high-collared robe.
A priest?
How can he be a priest: he’s my husband!
Last seen, he had been a young man with blond hair falling shaggy to his shoulders, dressed in the mail and furred robes of a Visigoth knight. Now, unarmed – not even a dagger! – he wore a dark priestly robe buttoned from chin to floor-length hem, and tightly belted at the waist. It only showed off the breadth of his shoulders and chest the more. Something about his scrubbed cleanliness and shining yellow hair made her long to walk over to him and bury her face in his neck; smell the male scent of him.
The shifting light of the Greek Fire globes cast shadows enough to hide her expression. Amazed, she felt her cheeks heating up.
“Fernando,” she said aloud.
Abruptly conscious of her hacked-off short hair and general siege-induced grubbiness, she shifted her gaze away as he looked at her. There was no pectoral cross on the chain around his neck, but a pendant of a man’s face carved with leaves tendrilling from his open mouth. Arian priest, then. Christus Viridianus! What on earth—?
Angry with herself, she raised her eyes again. Someone had expertly shaved his hair back above his ears in a novice’s tonsure. He looked faintly amused.
“Abbot Muthari must be hard up,” Ash remarked, in a voice with more gravel in it than she liked. “But I might have known you’d get into skirts as soon as you could.”
There was an appreciative rumble from the soldiers. Ash overheard Robert Anselm translating her remark for Bajezet’s men; their laughter came in a few seconds late.
There I go: motor-mouth, she thought, still staring at Fernando. Knowing that whatever she said, automatically, was nothing more than a time-filler while she stared up at him thinking, Has he really taken vows as a priest? and, Are the Arian priests celibate?
A warmth ran down her skin, loosening the muscles of her thighs, and she knew that the pupils of her eyes must be wide.
“This is my ambassador,” the King-Caliph said.
Fernando del Guiz bowed.
Ash stared.
“Shit,” she said. “Well. Shit. Merry fucking Christmas.”
Gelimer ignored Ash. He spoke to Floria, his gaze shifting between her and the other Burgundians. “You can see beyond your walls, you are not blind. I have three full legions outside Dijon. It is obvious you cannot hold out. Surrender Dijon. By the courtesies of war, I give you this chance, but nothing more. Send me your answer, by my envoy – tomorrow, on the feast of St Stephen.”
V
“Get that bloody sap blocked up again!” Ash ordered. “Barrels of rocks first, and then earth. I don’t want anyone assaulting in through there. Move it!”
“Yes, Captain!” One of the Burgundian commanders strode back to his men, where they sat or crouched under the remains of shattered houses; directing them with brief, efficient shouts.
Floria said, “One of you – Thomas Rochester – tell de la Marche I’ll be with Ash. Call the council.”
“I’ll go,” John de Vere forestalled her. “Madam, I am anxious to discuss the Caliph’s words with Master de la Marche; shall I bring him to you?”
At Floria’s nod, the English Earl gave an order to his interpreter and marched off rapidly at the head of the Janissaries.
The rumbling of rubble-filled barrels across the cobbles drowned out the noise of their passing. The streets smelled of burning. The freezing wind blew, not the wood-smoke of cooking fires, but Greek Fire’s metallic tang. Ash glanced from the men in jacks and war-hats, slinging meal-sacks full of dirt in a chain towards the entrance to the counter-mine, to Floria, the woman pulling off the horn crown and running her fingers through her man-short gold hair. Hair as short as her brother’s.
“Let’s go,” Ash said. “Shame if a long shot from a mangonel sprayed you all over the pavement, now.”
“You don’t think they’ll keep this truce?”
“Not if we present them with an opportunity!” Ash looked away from Floria to Fernando del Guiz. He stood in the middle of the Lion Azure mercenaries. Recognisable as a renegade to anyone who knew his face from Neuss, or Genoa, or Basle.
“Get him covered up.” Ash spoke to one of Rochester’s sergeants. “Give him your hood and cloak.”
She watched the sergeant put the cloak on Fernando del Guiz, knot the ties; tug the caped hood over his bare head, and pull the hood forward. A pang moved her: wanting, herself, to be the one to do it. He’s my husband. I’ve lain with this man. I could have had his child.
But I stopped wanting him before I left Carthage. He’s a weak man. There’s nothing to him but good looks!
“Bring him along with us,” Ash said. “Florian’s going to be in the hospice at the tower, anyway.”
There was an imperceptible relaxation in the mercenaries standing around Fernando del Guiz. It wouldn’t have been there if he had still been in knight’s armour, she thought. She could read on their faces the thought, It’s only a priest.
“For those of you who don’t know,” she said, raising her voice a little, “this man used to be a knight in Holy Roman Emperor Frederick’s court. Don’t assume you can let him anywhere near a sword. Okay: let’s move out.”
With undertones of self-satisfaction in his voice, Fernando protested, “I’m an envoy, and a Christian priest. You don’t have to be afraid of me, Ash.”
“Afraid of you?”
She stared at him for a moment, snorted, and turned away.
Floria murmured, “Gelimer doesn’t know me very well. Does he? Blood’s much thinner than water in this respect.”
Ash made an effort and achieved cynicism. “Fernando probably told Gelimer you were his loving sister and he could persuade you to turn cartwheels naked through Dijon’s north gate while signing a surrender…”
“Or that he was your loving husband. Let’s go,” the surgeon-Duchess invited.
Stepping out into the wrecked territory behind the city gates, Ash couldn’t prevent the automatic upward glance. Of the party, only Fernando looked bewilderedly at the soldiers, up at the sky, and back down at Ash again.
“Oh, I trust Gelimer to keep the truce…” Ash remarked, with a raucous sarcasm.
Ash moved off in the familiar position: surrounded by a group of armed men. Between banner and escort, and keeping her footing on the paths raked clear of masonry, there was little of her attention she could spare for the German ex-knight. Little of her mind that she could give over to the thought That’s my husband! She felt glad of it. Cold bit deep. The sap below the earth had felt warmer than these chill, exposed streets of Dijon, and the empty winter sky. Ash beat her hands together as she walked, the plates of the gauntlets chinking. Shadows streamed north from the roofs, and the abbey bell rang for Terce. A quick glance up assured her of the Burgundian and the Lion presence on the city walls, keeping the besiegers under surveillance.
As they reached the streets in the south of the city, Florian gave her a curious look and signalled the guards to move up as she quickened her pace. It left Ash and Fernando side by side, he overtopping her by a head, a slight degree of privacy ensured by respect for commander-in-chief and Duchess.
Let ’em listen, Ash thought.
“Well,” she said. “At least you’re still the Duchess’s brother. I suppose you’ve divorced me.”
It came out entirely as sardonic as she had intended it.
There was no shake in her voice.
Fernando del Guiz looked down at her with stone-green eyes. Close up, she was very conscious of the power of his body, striding beside her; knew equally that most of the attraction stemmed from him not knowing it, from his unconsciousness – still! – that it was anything special to be well-fed and clean and strong.
I thought I got over this! In Carthage! Oh shit…
“It wasn’t a divorce, in the end.” He sounded faintly apologetic, dropping his voice and looking around at the escorting mercenaries. “Abbot Muthari’s learned doctors decreed it wasn’t a valid marriage, not between a free man of the nobility and a bondswoman. They annulled it.”
“Ah. Isn’t that convenient. Doesn’t keep you out of the priesthood.” She couldn’t stop some of the astounded curiosity she felt leaking into her tone. What she felt about an annulment was not available to her yet. I’ll think about that later, when I’ve got time to spare.
Fernando del Guiz said nothing, only glancing down at her and away again.
“Jesus, Fernando, what is this!”
“This?”
She reached across and prodded his chest, just below the oak pendant of Christ on the Tree; thought, That was a mistake, I still want to touch him, how damn obvious can I get!, and grunted, “‘This’. This priest’s get-up you’re in. You’re not seriously telling me you’ve taken vows!”
“I am.” Fernando looked down at her. “I took my first vows in Carthage. Abbot Muthari let me take the second vows when he reconsecrated the cathedral in Marseilles. God accepted me, Ash.”
“The Arian God.”
Fernando shrugged. “All the same thing, isn’t it? Doesn’t matter which name you call it.”
“Sheesh!” Impressed by the careless dismissal of eleven centuries of schism, Ash couldn’t help smiling. “Why, Fernando? Don’t tell me God called you, either. He’s really scraping the bottom of the barrel if He did!”
When she looked up to meet Fernando’s gaze, he looked both embarrassed and determined.
