by Mary Gentle
White showed in his priest-cropped hair, as well as his beard. He reached for his Briar Cross with his free hand: large, capable and scarred. A workman’s hand. His eyes were dark as the sow’s, and each detail of his face was clear to her, as if she had not seen him for months and now he was suddenly before her.
“You think you’ll always remember the face,” Ash whispered, “but it’s the first thing to go.”
– You think there will always be time.
“You try to fix it in your mind…” Ash stirred, on the mattress. Like water sinking through sand, the clear dream of Godfrey Maximillian in the snow sank away. She tried to hold it; felt it sliding from her mind.
– Ash?
“Godfrey?”
– I cannot tell how long it is since last we spoke.
“A few days.” Ash shifted over on to her back, her forearm across her eyes. She heard Rickard’s voice, breaking in mid-sentence for the first time in weeks, telling someone that the Captain-General could not see them at this hour: wait but an hour more.
“It’s the evening of Christ’s Mass,” she said, “or the early hours of St Stephen’s day; I haven’t heard the bells ring for Matins. I’ve been afraid to speak with you in case the Wild Machines—” she broke off. “Godfrey, do you still hear them? Where are they?”
In the part of herself that is shared with the machina rei militaris, she feels the comforting warmth that she associates with Godfrey. She hears no other voice but his; not even distant muttering in the language of Gundobad’s era.
“Where are they!”
– Hell is silent.
“Hell be damned! I want to know what the Wild Machines are doing. Godfrey, talk to me!”
– Your pardon, child.
His voice comes to her filled with a mild amusement.
– For however long a time you say it is – a month and more – no human soul has spoken with the Stone Golem. At first the great Devils lamented this greatly. Then, they became angry. They deafened me, child, with their anger; forcing it through me. I had thought you heard, but perhaps it was the Faris at whom they directed their rage. And then, they fell silent.
“Did they, by God?”
She stretched, still fully clothed in case of night alarms; and opened her eyes briefly to see the rafters lost in the gloom, outside the light of the meagre hearth-fire.
“They won’t have given up on the Faris. They’re waiting for their moment. Godfrey, has no one used the Stone Golem? Not even the King-Caliph?”
Godfrey’s voice, in her soul, is full of what would be laughter if it were a sound.
– The slaves of Caliph Gelimer speak to it – as men speak, not as the Faris speaks. They ask questions of tactics. If you ask me what, he will deduce what you fear. He is much afraid of this crusade, child, it is running away with him; a war-horse which he. cannot control. I wish I could find God’s charity in my heart for him, rather than rejoicing that he is troubled. I am unsure that he even understands the answers the Stone Golem speaks.
“I hope you’re right. Godfrey, what are you so damned cheerful about?”
– I have missed you, Ash.
Her throat began to ache.
His voice filled with confidence; excited expectation:
– You swore that you would bring me home. Rescue me, out of this. Child, I know you would not be talking to me now unless you had thought of some way to bring this about. You’ve come to rescue me from this hell, now, haven’t you?
Ash struggled up into a sitting position on the mattress. She waved Rickard away; back to the door lost in the gloom. She huddled furs and blankets around her shoulders, wriggling forward until her feet were almost in the ashes of the hearth-fire.
“I swore a lot of things,” Ash said harshly. “I swore I’d get the Wild Machines for killing you, when you died in the earthquake. And you swore in the coronation hall that you’d always be with me, but it didn’t stop you dying there. We all make promises we can’t keep.”
– Ash?
“At least I never swore to bring your body back for burial. At least I knew that was impossible.”
– When I tried to help you escape from the cells of Leofric’s house, before I found Fernando del Guiz for you to ride out with, I swore that you would never be alone. Do you remember? That promise I have kept. And I will keep it, child. You hear me, and you will always hear me; I will never leave you. Be certain of it.
The ache in her throat spread. She rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes. She made the mental effort, cut herself off from the ache and the hurt.
Hot tears rolled out of her eyes, blurring the image of the red coals in the hearth. Astonished, her chest feeling scoured hollow and breathless, she clenched her fists and dug her nails hard into her palms. The tears fell faster; her breathing jerked.
– Ash?
“I can’t rescue you. I don’t know how!” There is silence, in her mind.
– I can forgive you one broken promise, in a lifetime.
In her head, Godfrey Maximillian’s voice is resonant.
– Do you remember, I told you that to leave the Church and travel with you was worth every hurt I have ever paid? Then, I loved you as a man loves. Now I am soul, not body; and I love you still. Ash, you are worth this.
“I never deserved that!”
– It does not come for that – although you have been true, good, and warm-hearted to me, I do not love you for that reason. Only because you are who you are. I loved your soul before I ever loved you as a woman.
“For Christ’s sake, shut up!”
– I have told you. I regret nothing, except that I still do not have all your trust.
“Oh, but you do.” Ash covered her face with her hands, resting her head on her knees in the wet, warm darkness. “I trust you. If I ask you to do something, I trust you to do it. That makes it hard – it makes it impossible, to ask.”
– What could you ask of me that I would not do?
A rueful, amused vulnerability is in the sound of his voice:
– Not that I can do much, now, child. Not as I am. But ask, and if I can, I will do it.
Hard as she tries to stop it, her breath comes in great sobs. She presses her hands to her mouth to stifle the noise.
“You – don’t – understand yet—”
“Boss?”
She opened her eyes to see Rickard squatting beside her, his expression unguarded and appalled. Tears have run down her face. Her eyes are hot. When she makes to answer him, there is no sound; a constriction in her throat will not let words pass.
“You want something?” Rickard asked. He looked around helplessly. “What?”
“Stay at the door. No one’s—” She spoke thickly. “No one’s to enter until I say. I don’t care who it is.”
“Trust me, boss.” The black-haired young man straightened up.
He is wearing armour that does not belong to him – a wounded man’s fustian brigandine – and a wheel-pommel sword clatters at his side. It is not that, so much as the eyes, that are the difference; he looks wary, and much older than he did at Neuss.
“Thanks, Rickard.”
“You call me,” he said fiercely. “If you need something, you call me. Boss, can’t I—”
“No!” She fumbled for her purse, pulling out a dirty kerchief and wiping her face. “No. It’s my decision. I’ll call you when I want you.”
“Are you talking to Saint Godfrey?”
Tears spilled out of her eyes, an uprush that she could not check. Why? she thought, bewildered; why can’t I stop this? This isn’t me; I don’t weep.
“Rickard, go away.”
She balled the wet cloth of her kerchief between her two hands, and rested it against her eyes.
– I swear, child, you can ask nothing of me that I will not grant.
Godfrey Maximillian’s voice, in her mind, is urgently, openly sincere. Too open: Ash presses the cloth harder against her eyes. After a second she can sit up, back st
raight, and stare into the greying coals.
“Yeah, and you asked me for help. Remember? I can’t give it. Godfrey, I am going to ask you for something. If you prefer to think of it this way, I’m going to order you.”
– Are you crying? Ash, little one, what is it?
“Just listen, Godfrey. Just listen.”
She dragged in a breath. It caught, threatening to become a sob; and she knotted the kerchief in her hands, white-knuckled, and got control of her voice.
“You’re the machina rei militaris now. Or part of it.”
– Like the warp and weft of cloth, I think – and I have had long to consider the matter. Ash, why this grief?
“Do you remember what I said to you, when we were riding out to the desert, outside Carthage?”
– Not a particular thing—
Her breath came with a deep shudder. She interrupted sharply. “We were joking. I asked you for a miracle, a tiny miracle – ‘pray that the Stone Golem will break down’ – something else, I don’t remember what. And since then I’ve thought of nothing else but the Faris, killing the Faris to stop the Wild Machines.”
– She does not speak to the Wild Machines, although I believe she hears them as they speak to her.
“The Faris isn’t important.” Ash opened her eyes again, not knowing until then that she had sought refuge in the dark. She reached out and picked up a rough-barked piece of wood, and leaned forward to bed it deep in the red ashes. “She should be killed, for safety, but I can’t do it. They’ll probably execute her here. That isn’t important. The Wild Machines can talk Leofric’s family into breeding another Faris, if they haven’t already started. What’s important is the Stone Golem.”
There is no sound of Godfrey Maximillian’s voice in her mind, but she can feel him waiting; feel his acceptance of her words into his self.
“We have to destroy the Wild Machines. We can’t do it militarily in much under a year. We haven’t got a year. We can kill my sister,” Ash said, and felt her voice shake again. “But that doesn’t buy us much time, and Burgundy may be a wasteland before then.”
– Tell me nothing! If the great Devils are listening—
“You listen, Godfrey. The Stone Golem is the key. It’s how they speak to Leofric, and his family. It’s how they speak to my sister. It’s the channel they’ll use, when they draw on the sun’s power for their miracle.”
– Yes.
He sounded cautiously puzzled, but not defensive. Ash’s hands shook. She wiped wood-ash off her fingers, on to her stained green hose. She heard her own voice continuing to speak, the tone calm and authoritative.
“One reason why I didn’t give more consideration to the Stone Golem is that it’s in Carthage, behind Gelimer’s armies. We failed, on the raid, and I believed we couldn’t reach it to try again. I wasn’t thinking.”
A knot in the burning wood flared. The fire spat. Ash jolted, every muscle from spine to toe clenching. She rubbed her face with wood-ash-stained hands.
“Godfrey, the Stone Golem can be attacked. I don’t have to reach it. None of us have to. You’re already there. You’re part of it.”
– Ash…
I will think of him as a disembodied fragment. An unquiet spirit. Not a man I’ve loved as brother and father for as long as I can remember.
“Do a last tiny miracle,” Ash said. “Destroy the Stone Golem. Break the link between it and my sister. Call down the weather to you. Call down the lightning – and fuse everything into useless sand and glass!”
The place in her soul that is shared stays silent. Not long, a few heartbeats – she can feel her pulse shaking her body.
– Oh, Ash…
Pain sounded in his voice. Her chest ached. She rubbed it with a clenched fist. The anguish did not go away. Very steadily, she said aloud, “You’re a priest. You can pray the lightning down.”
– Suicide is a sin.
“That’s why I’m telling you to do it, not asking you.” She caught her breath on a sob again, that was almost a laugh. “I knew you’d say that. I think about these things. I don’t want you damned. The minute it came to me, I knew it had to be at someone else’s command. And it’s mine; the responsibility is mine.”
Chill air moved past her, flowing over the flagstones towards the chimney. She huddled deeper into her furs. A scrape of metal sounded from the door: the chape of Rickard’s sword on masonry. Distant, down the spiral stairs, she heard voices.
In her head, there is silence.
“The other reason why it didn’t come to me, I suppose,” Ash said quietly, “is that as soon as it did, I would know what it meant. I know you. You got yourself killed in Carthage going back for Annibale Valzacchi, for God’s sake, and this is more important than one man’s life!”
– Yes. More important than one man’s life.
“I didn’t mean your—” Ash broke off. “I— yes. I do mean that. This will cut the Wild Machines off completely. They can’t use the Faris, they won’t even be able to talk to the Visigoths. They’ll be dumb, powerless, until someone else can build a machine. That could take centuries. So yes, it’s more important than one life, but when it’s you—”
Wind rattled the shutters. Starlight penetrated faintly through cracks in the wood. That and the orange glow of the fire illuminated the familiar furniture of the command tent: armour-stand, war-chest, spare kit. The solitude of it bit into her, sharp as the freezing night.
“I’ve had to order people into places where I’ve known they were going to die,” Ash said steadily. “I never knew how much I hated it until now. Losing you once was bad enough.”
– I don’t know if this can be done. But I will pray for God’s grace, and attempt it.
“Godfrey—”
In the space that she shares with him, she feels a flood of bewilderment, fear, and courage; a terror that he cannot hide from her, and an equally strong determination.
– You will not leave me.
“No.”
– God bless you. If He loves you as much as I do, He will give you a life, hereafter, with no more such grief in it. Now—
“Godfrey, not yet!”
– Will you make it my sin? If I wait, I will lose my courage. I must do it now, while I can.
What she wants to say is, To hell with it! I don’t care what happens. I’ll find some way to rescue you, make you human again; what do I care about the world? You’re Godfrey.
The fire blurred in her vision. Tears ran down her cheeks.
What can I give you, out of what I am? Only this: that I can do this. I can take this responsibility.
“Call down the lightning,” she said. “Do it now.”
Her voice sounded flat, in the still, bitter air. She had a second to smear her eyes clear, to think, Bloody idiots he and I are going to look if this is all for nothing—
In the centre of her soul, Godfrey Maximillian spoke.
– By the Grace of God, and by the love I have had for Your creations, I implore You to hear me, and grant my prayer.
It is the same voice that she has heard hundreds of times, at Lauds and Vespers and Matins; heard in camp and on the field, where men fighting have gone to their deaths listening to it. And it is the same voice that talked her asleep as a child, in the months after St Herlaine, when any darkness had the power to keep her awake and shivering until sunrise.
“I’m here,” she said. “Godfrey, I’m here.”
His voice in her mind is unsteady; she feels the flood of fear in him. He prays on:
– Though I die, I shall not die; I shall be with You, Lord God, and Your Saints. This is my faith, and I here proclaim it. Lord God, before Whom no armour can stand, Thou who art stronger than any sword – send down the fire!
“Godfrey! Godfrey!”
What she remembers from Molinella, a child watching a battle from a church tower, is how the appalling explosion of cannon-fire knocks the moment of impact out of memory. It must be reconstructed later. She tastes bric
k-dust in her mouth again, smells poppies. A fang of pain bites at her hand. She snatches it back – from fire; from the burning wood in the hearth in the company’s tower. Not Italy and summer, but Burgundy and the bitter solstice of winter.
She put one hand down to push herself up, realised that she was lying on her face, that she had soiled herself, that blood ran stickily down from her bitten lip.
“Godfrey…”
Blood dripped down on to the mattress, staining the straw’s linen cover. Her arms began to shake. The muscles would not take her weight. She fell down on her face, shaking; the rub of cloth against cloth gratingly loud in the tower room where no explosion has taken place. Her ears sting: her whole body shakes with an impact that has not happened here.
“Godfrey!”
“Boss!” Rickard’s boots clattered on the flagstones. She felt his hands on her shoulders, rolling her over on her back.
“I’m all right.” She sat up, fingers trembling, body shaking. The boy has seen what happens in battle; she is not ashamed that he sees her now. Stunned, she gazed around at the stone hall. “Godfrey…”
“What’s happened?” Rickard demanded. “Boss?”
“I felt him die.” Her voice shook. “It’s done, it’s done now. I made him do it. Oh, Jesu. I made him.”
A great pain went through her chest. Her hands would not stop shaking, though she clenched them into fists. She felt her face screw up. A sob forced its way past her rigid jaw.
She was not aware of Rickard running, panic-stricken, for the door of the hall, or of anyone else coming in; the first she knew of it was when a man grabbed her, hard. Weeping, stinking, incoherent; she could say nothing, only sob harder. The man put his arms tightly around her, gripping her close to him. She put her arms around his bulk and clung to him.
“Come on, girl! Answer me! What’s happened?”
“Not—”
“Now,” the voice insisted. A voice accustomed to orders. Robert Anselm.
“I’m okay.” Hollow, every breath still shaking her, she pushed him far enough back that she could grab his hands in her own. “There’s nothing you can do.”
