by Mary Gentle
“Oh, Christ. I’ll look forward to telling de la Marche that one.” Reminded, Ash glanced towards the doors again. Nothing there but the guards – and they had turned their heads, watching the surgeon-Duchess and St George.
Floria’s voice rang out:
“By my right and my command,
Dead Saint George now up shall stand.
By my wit and for your gain,
I will make him live again.
Now in front of all men’s eyes
Lift your head: arise, arise!”
Robert Anselm sprang to his feet and bowed, with a flourish. One of his pauldrons fell off and clattered to the flagstones. Euen Huw, Henri Brant and Adriaen Campin ran forward; the Saracen Knight, the King and the Hobby Horse holding hands.
Floria del Guiz seized Anselm’s hand, and Euen’s, and called Rickard forward. Ash saw her whisper in the squire’s ear. Rickard nodded, took a deep breath, and shouted:
“Prince George lives again,
This Christmas Twelfth Night.
Now pay us our fee
And we’ll bid you goodnight!”
Amid raucous applause, a shower of small coins and old boots bounced off the hall’s flagstones around the mummers. They bowed.
The company’s men-at-arms crowded in close to clap Floria and the others on the back. Someone hauled some of the ivy-creepers down, and the spiralling greenery got wound around the company’s doctor, steward, second captain, lance-leader and squire. Ash, her eyes on Floria’s face, felt suddenly bereft. Even if we can make it through this, everything’s different now.
Someone cheered; Florian’s shining fair hair appeared over the heads of the crowd, hoisted up between Euen Huw and Robert Anselm. She waited, not going forward yet to give her own congratulations. She looked up at Fernando del Guiz. He seemed to be more nervous than a few minutes before.
“A priest…” She shook her head, smiling less caustically than she might have expected. “Done any good miracles yet?”
“No. I’m only in first vows, celibacy vows; I won’t know if I can do that sort of thing until it shows up if I have grace.” After an infinitesimal pause, he added, “Ash… It’s a different priesthood. If you don’t need to be celibate for grace, you don’t have to be. When you reach high rank you can marry. Muthari has. I’ve seen her: she’s Nubian.”
“Nice for him,” Ash said ironically. She noted, with a distanced surprise, that her mouth had gone dry. A curdle of apprehension made her stomach cold. What’s he trying to tell me?
“What are you trying to tell me, Fernando?”
A smile moved the corner of his mouth. It was apparent to her that he had been holding it back; that something was taking his mind away from being in a besieged city as a none-too-trusted envoy, and not allowing him to worry about bombardment or truce-breaking or any of the other things that had been weighing her down for three months now.
“There is something I ought to tell you,” he said.
“Yeah?”
He said nothing for several seconds. Ash studied his face. She wanted, again, to touch his lips and his jaw and the ridge of his heavy, fair brows; not just for the flush it was bringing to her body to think about it, but from a feeling almost of tenderness.
“Go on,” she prompted.
“Okay. I just never expected…” He looked away, into the crowded, raucous hall, and then back at her. There was a suppressed energy, a brightness, about him.
“I didn’t expect to fall in love,” he said gravely, his voice almost cracking like a much younger man’s. “Or if I did, I expected it to be with some nobleman’s daughter with a dowry, that my mother had picked out for me; or an Earl’s wife, maybe… I didn’t expect it to be with someone who’s a soldier, Ash – someone who has silver hair and brown eyes and doesn’t wear gowns, just armour…”
The breath stopped in her throat. Aware that her chest hurt, she stared up into his eyes. His face was transfigured; no mistaking the genuineness of it.
“I…” Her own voice croaked.
“I won’t get my estates back now. I’ll just be a priest dependent on alms. Even if I could marry, later… She’ll never look at me, will she? A woman like that?”
“She might.” Ash met his gaze. Her fingers were prickling; her hands sweating. She felt a weakness in her muscles; a soaring surprise; could think only, Why didn’t I realise I wanted this?
“She might,” Ash repeated. She dared not reach out and take his hand. “I don’t know what to say to you, Fernando. You didn’t want to marry me, you were forced to. I wanted to have you, but I didn’t want you. But, I don’t know, you’ve come back doing this—” she waved her hand at the priest’s robe “—and I can respect it, even if I don’t think you stand a chance in hell of convincing anybody.”
I can respect it, she repeated silently to herself. A feeling of lightness went through her body.
“Fernando, the minute I looked at you, back there, I thought you were different. I don’t know. Even if Arian priests can marry, I’m still not legally able to. But … if you want to try again … yes. I will.”
The surge of excitement at committing herself made her dizzy. It was several seconds before she realised that Fernando was staring at her with an expression of shock.
“What? What?”
“Oh shit!” he said miserably. “I’ve done this all wrong, haven’t I?”
“What do you mean?”
Staring at him, utterly lost, she could only watch him shift his feet, stare up at the rafters, let out an explosive breath.
“Oh God, I’ve explained this all wrong! I didn’t mean you.”
“What do you mean, you didn’t mean me?”
“I said ‘silver hair’, I said ‘brown eyes’…” His hand fisted; he smacked it into his other palm. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry.”
Totally calm, Ash said, “You don’t mean me. You mean her.”
He nodded, mutely.
A wave of heat went through her. She flattened her hands against the stone wall behind her, keeping her balance. Her cheeks flushed bright red. Searing embarrassment wiped out everything, even the stabbing pain under her breastbone. Her muscles tensed to take her stamping off, out of the hall, up the stairs – to where? To throw myself off the roof?
“Oh, Jesus!” Fernando del Guiz said, his voice agonised. “I wasn’t thinking. I mean her – the Faris. I wanted to tell you about it. Ash, I never meant you to think—”
“No.”
“Ash—”
“Take no notice,” she said savagely. “Take no fucking notice. Shit!” Unconsciously, her hand had become a fist, that pressed up against her solar plexus. “Oh, shit, Fernando! What is it about her? She’s not one of your proper women, she’s a soldier too! We’re mirror images!”
She broke off, remembering hacked-off hair, and the old, pale scars on her face. She couldn’t look at Fernando. One snatched glance told her he was as red as she must be.
“We’re the same!”
“No, you’re not. I don’t know what the difference is,” he muttered, doggedly. “There’s a difference.”
“Oh, you don’t know?” Her voice rose. “Don’t you. Really. Oh, I’ll tell you what the difference is, Fernando. She never had her face cut up. She’s never been poor. She’s been adopted by a lord-amir. She was never a whore who had to fuck men when she was ten years old! That’s the difference. She isn’t spoiled, is she!”
She stared into his eyes for a long minute.
“I could have loved you,” she said quietly. “I don’t think I knew that until now. And I wish I’d never let you know it.”
“Ash, I’m so sorry.”
Recovering herself into arrogance, keeping the tears out of her voice, Ash said, “So: have you fucked her yet?”
A deeper red rose up his white neck, where the high collar of his cassock and his hood did not hide it.
“No?”
“She rode out to escort the King-Caliph to Dijon. She called on me to act as her confessor
on the way back.” He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing. “She wanted to know why I was a priest now, instead of a knight—”
“But did you fuck her?”
“No.” He looked momentarily angry, then besotted, then apologetic; and ran his gloved hand through his hair, mussing it. “How can I? If I get to a rank in the church where I can marry—”
“You’re in a fucking dream-world!”
“I love her!”
“You just love a dream,” Ash spat out. “What do you think she is? Some woman on a white horse, who leads men into battle and doesn’t kill? Do you think she’s as good as she is beautiful?”
“Ash—”
“She’s one of us, Fernando. She’s one of the people who organises killing people. That’s what I am, that’s what you’ve been, that’s what she is. Christus! can’t you think with anything else but your cock!”
“I’m sorry.” In an extreme of embarrassment, he spread his hands. “I did it all wrong. I didn’t know you’d think I meant you. I thought you knew I—”
Ash let the silence between them grow.
“Thought I knew you wouldn’t touch me again if your life depended on it?” she said.
“No! I mean…” Fernando looked down helplessly at the floor. “I can’t explain it. I’ve seen you. I’d seen her before. This time it was … different.”
“Ahh – fuck off.”
Hot and cold with humiliation, she stared away, not seeing the celebrating men in front of her, not seeing the chipped edges of the window embrasures or the dark, cold sky beyond.
Now I know what people mean when they say they wish the ground would open and swallow them up.
Fernando’s voice sounded beside her, quiet, but with authority.
“It’s nothing to do with you. There’s nothing wrong with you. I hated you – but then I listened to you – Ash, I wouldn’t be a priest if it wasn’t for you! I didn’t know it until just now, when I found out I am sorry I hurt you. I love her. I feel like you’re my, I don’t know, my sister, maybe. Or my friend.”
Sardonic, tears in her voice, Ash said, “Stick to ‘friend’ – leave sisters out of it. Your sister wants to touch me a whole lot more than you do!”
He blinked.
“Never mind,” Ash said. “Forget it. Forget this whole thing. I don’t want to hear about it again.”
“Okay.”
After a second, Ash said, “Does she know?”
“No.”
“So you’re worshipping from afar, just like the troubadours say.”
He coloured again, at her sarcasm. “Might be just as well. I’m bad at this. I just wanted to apologise to you, and then tell you how I feel about her. Ash, I never meant to hurt you.”
“You’ve done it better than when you did mean to.”
“I know. What can I say?”
“What can anybody say?” She sighed. “Just one of those things, isn’t that what they call it? If you want to do something, Fernando, just don’t say anything to me. Okay?”
“Okay.”
She turned away from him, watching her men. A welcome numbness pushed her hurt and anger and pride away, leaving only relief in its place; it hurts too much to think about being superseded by it’s not worth getting worked up about.
After a few moments, her jaw tightened with the effort of pushing away the urge to weep.
“It isn’t as easy as it used to be,” she said.
“What?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Before she could do anything to get her voice under control, there was a disturbance at the main door.
Ash looked across into bright daylight as the doors opened. A blast of cold air sliced through the hall’s sweaty warmth. She heard boots and weapons clash; put up her hand to shadow her eyes.
De Vere, his brother Dickon, twenty Turks, Olivier de la Marche, and some of the Burgundian army commanders walked in. Jonvelle stopped dead and stared at her, his face whitening.
“I told you!” John de Vere roared.
Ash found them all staring at her: Oxford’s brother with wide eyes. Even the Janissaries appeared mildly interested. She put one fist on her hip, scrabbling for composure, for raw humour.
“What’s the matter, did I forget to dress?”
The Burgundian centenier, Jonvelle, swallowed. “Hé Dieux!15 It is her. It is the Captain-General.”
Ash fixed him and the English Earl with an authoritative eye. “Someone is going to tell me what’s going on here…”
The Burgundian stared, as if he were taking in every detail – a woman at home in plate leg harness and arm-defences, in a polished Milanese cuirass; with dirty-white hair cut short to her ears, and wood-fire smuts on her scarred cheeks. Still flushing a dull red.
“You’re here,” Jonvelle spoke again.
Ash turned her back on Fernando del Guiz, and folded her arms. “That’s what I’ve been sending bloody messages to tell you! Okay… Where ought I to be?”
“You may well ask,” John de Vere said. “You should excuse Master Jonvelle. He sees Captain-General Ash here – and so do we all. But, it seems, one hour ago, Captain-General Ash was given a slave escort back from the Visigoth camp and admitted to Dijon through the north-east gate. She is there now.”
Ash stared at the English Earl. “She damn well isn’t!”
“We left her at the gatehouse not ten minutes since,” John de Vere said. “Madam – it is your sister. The Faris. She says she is surrendering herself to you.”
Message: #318 (Anna Longman)
Subject: Ash
Date: 16/12/00 at 07.47 a.m.
From: Ngrant@
Anna –
Such a change, to be writing in English! I’ll attach a file with the next section of the Sible Hedingham text that I’ve translated.
I’m taking a break from the translation tomorrow. Correction: this morning.
I’ve finally been comparing the two metallurgy reports on the ‘messenger-golem’ found at the land-site. One of Isobel’s graduates has been giving me a hand over breakfast. Now, it’s just possible that these are reports on two *different* archaeological remains that got confused in the lab. If they’re two reports on the same specimens of cast bronze, then they contradict each other in almost every reading, from plant-material content to implied background radiation.
Either the department got one or other of the analyses wrong – which, I grant you, is the conclusion of any sane, rational person – or, these reports are tracing *a process in the artefact itself* which could have been going on between the first report in November and the second one two weeks later.
How can an artefact appear ‘new’ (post 1945) in November, and in December, ‘old’ (4-500 years)?
Anna, if there is a process at work here, of any kind, no matter that I may have details or premises wrong – then *what else are we going to see?*
I have persuaded Isobel to contact her Colonel ██████ and beg the use of a military helicopter. She has just told me he’s given his authorisation. An ex-Russian Mil-8 will be waiting for me at Tunis airfield, just before dawn, in two hours’ time. And Isobel is lending me one of her graduate students.
The helicopter pilot is prepared to overfly the area to the south of Tunis, as far as the Atlas Mountains. We have video equipment.
In archaeology, aerial surveys can be crucial. With low-angle light, the smallest disturbances in the ground cast shadows, and the shapes, the ‘floor-plans’, of long-disused settlements can appear plainly evident.
Although a previous, brief geophysical survey of the areas I am interested in shows nothing definite, I think that it may be different for us. If only because Isobel and I, using the ‘Fraxinus’ manuscript, have some idea of where we should be looking.
If there is any remnant left – if there is any remnant that is *now* there – that is part of the pyramid-structures that ‘Fraxinus’ calls ‘Wild Machines’; then I want the evidence catalogued.
Either
by accident or design, we have become what we are. But since history has no Visigoth ‘empire’, in the sense that these texts describe it, either in the mediaeval period or at any other time, then I am left to conclude that – well, to conclude what? That *both* sides in that conflict were changed; eradicated? And that this post-fracture history of ours contains a few remnants, a palimpsest version, of what was before?
And yet, and yet. The Sible Hedingham ms could have lain undiscovered, in Hedingham Castle as your William Davies suggested. The messenger-golem could be an undiscovered artefact, excavated. But *what* am I to make of the site on the seabed, where even the present depth-readings and geological features contradict Admiralty and satellite surveys?
If we have found Carthage, what else might we find, in the barren land to the south?
I will contact you again immediately after the helicopter flight.
– Pierce
* * *
Message: #211 (Pierce Ratcliff)
Subject: Ash
Date: 16/12/00 at 08.58 a.m.
From: Longman@
Pierce –
You people are taking this seriously.
Let me talk to Dr Isobel.
– Anna
* * *
Message: #216 (Pierce Ratcliff)
Subject: Ash
Date: 16/12/00 at 09.50 a.m.
From: Longman@
Pierce –
Sorry, impatient – what’s happened on the flight?? Are you back?
Just heard from Jonathan: although they are unaware of the full extent of your discoveries, the independent film company want to start shooting with you, on site, as soon as they can – before the Christmas break, if possible. What will Dr Isobel say to this?
HAVE YOU FOUND ANYTHING IN THE DESERT?
– Anna
* * *
Message: #383 (Anna Longman)
Subject: Ash
Date: 16/12/00 at 10.20 a.m.
From: Ngrant@
Ms Longman –
I hope you will not mind if I add something at this juncture.
I think it inadvisable for outside filming to begin here yet. Perhaps after Christmas and the New Year? I am keeping the expedition’s own video records up to date, however.
