Ash: The Lost History Part 133

The man squatted down, cut and filthy fingers plucking at the tied necks of the sacks. De la Marche reached over him, dagger out, and cut the twine with his blade. The man took two corner edges of one sack and lifted. A large heavy object rolled out on to the oak boards.

"f.u.c.k." Florian stared.

Ash swallowed, at the stench. d.a.m.n, I should have recognised that. Decay. She looked questioningly at de la Marche.

The refugee man-at-arms reached out and lifted the matted, white-and-blue object, seating it down facing the surgeon.

His voice sounded completely calm. "This is Messire Anthony de la Roche's head."

The severed head's eyes were filmed over and sunken, Ash saw, like the eyes of rotting fish; and the dark beard and hair might have been any colour before blood soaked them.

"Is it?" she asked de la Marche.

He nodded. "Yes. I know him. Know him very well. Demoiselle Florian, if you need to be spared the others-"

"I'm a surgeon. Get on with it."

The man-at-arms removed a second, then a third, severed head from his sacks; handling these two with a kind of bewildered delicacy, as if they could still feel his touch. Both were women, both had been fair-haired. It was not clear whether the marks were bruises or decomposition. Long hair, matted with blood and mud and s.e.m.e.n, fell lank on to the floorboards.

Ash stared at the waxy skin. Despite death, the head of the older of the women was recognisable. The last time I saw her was in court here, in August.

So much hanging on this: Ash can feel herself trying to see a different woman, a n.o.blewoman, or a peasant, sent in to spread false fear. The features are too recognisable. For all the sunken, colourless eyes, this is the same woman that she saw shrewishly berating John de Vere, Earl of Oxford; this is Charles's wife, the pious Queen of Bruges.

The man-at-arms said, "Mere-d.u.c.h.esse Margaret. And her daughter Marie."

Ash could recognise nothing about the second head, except that the woman had been younger. Looking up, she saw Olivier de la Marche's face streaked with tears. Mary of Burgundy, then.

The man said, "I saw them killed on the quay at Antwerp. They raped them first. I could hear the Mere-d.u.c.h.esse praying. She called on Christ, and the saints, but the saints had no pity. They let her survive long enough to see the girl die."

A silence, in the cold room. The sweet smell of decay permeated the air. A whisper of rain beat against the closed shutters.

"They've been dead less than a week," Ash said, straightening up, surprised to find that her voice cracked when she spoke. "That'll put the field when, about the time that Duke Charles died? A day or so before?"

Florian merely sat shaking her head, not in negation. She abruptly sat straight. "You don't want people talking to this man," she said to Olivier de la Marche. "He's coming to my hospice in the company tower. He needs cleaning up, and rest. G.o.d knows what else."

Ash said dryly, "I shouldn't worry about rumour. The Lion will know anything you don't want known, anyway. You can't hide this for long."

"We can't," de la Marche agreed. "Your Grace, I don't know if you realise-"

"I can hear!" Florian said. "I'm not stupid. There's no army in the north now. There's no one alive to raise another force outside Dijon. Isn't that right?"

Ash turned her back on the crouching man, the Burgundian commander, the surgeon-d.u.c.h.ess. She let her gaze go to the shutters, visualising the night air, and the rejoicing Visigoth camp beyond the walls.

She said, "That's right. We got no army of the north coming here. We're on our own now."

Message: #377 (Anna Longman) Subject: Ash Date: 16/12/00 at 06.11 a.m.

From: [email protected] Anna - So many seismographic ears listening, so many satellites overhead - post-Cold War technology - and the political instability in the Middle East - I doubt a sparrow falls without it being logged by the appropriate authorities !

Certainly nothing that affects the Mediterranean seabed would go unnoticed; therefore, if there are no records sorry, wait, Isobel needs this. Too deep in the translation to say more, I MUST get it FINISHED.

- Pierce * * *

Message: #378 (Anna Longman) Subject: Ash Date: 16/12/00 at 06.28 a.m.

From: Anna - No, you're right. After a while, I have to take a break. My mind seizes up; all I translate becomes gibberish.

I am still haunted by the knowledge that when I come to do a second draft, there will exist a completely possible potential second version of the translation - a story different in all its particulars, but equally valid as a transcription of the Latin.

I suppose I am saying that I have to make decisions of interpretation here, and I am not always happy they are the correct decisions. I wish we had more time before publication.

I will send you the next section of ma.n.u.script as soon as I have a rough draft. I must *complete* this, in sequence - there are whole sections at the end that could easily bear any one of several interpretations! Which one I decide upon will be determined by what goes before.

For that, and other, reasons, I won't show the translation to anybody here except Isobel. However, I have been talking in general terms to James Howlett. Really, I don't know what to make of him. He talks blithely about 'reality disjunctures' and 'quantum bubbles' - he *seized* on my mention of the sunlight in Burgundy, but if he has an explanation, I don't understand it! I had no idea that, as a historian, I should need to be a mathematician, or that a grounding in quantum mechanics would be necessary!

Think about it, Anna - I'm coming to realise that we will publish first, but that is only the *beginning* of the work that other specialists will do with this material.

- Pierce.

PART FOURTEEN.

15 December-25 December ad 1476.

'Tesmoign mon sang manuel cy mis'1.

Chapter One.

The constant howling of wolves echoes across the river valley.

"Bold enough to come down in daytime, now," the big Welshman Geraint ab Morgan remarked, his breath huffing white as he strode through the cold, dry street beside Ash. "Little furry b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

"Rickard's got three wolf pelts now." Ash's smile faded. And he's killed more than wolves with that sling.

Three weeks, and the huge open-air fires in the Visigoth camp burn constantly, day and night; the Burgundians can look down from their walls and watch the warmth - watch the legionaries visibly thriving. Three weeks after the news from Antwerp: the fifteenth of December, now, and the f.u.c.king Visigoths can afford to let wolves scavenge in their camp.

And I made myself commander-in-chief of this. Captain-General; Maid of Burgundy; Sword of the d.u.c.h.ess.

d.u.c.h.ess Florian. G.o.d help her.

"I must be a f.u.c.king lunatic!" Ash said under her breath. Geraint glanced down at her. She said, "They still bringing supply trains up the river, out there?"

The edge to the wind made both of them sniffle back mucus. It's cold enough that snot freezes.

"Oh yeah, boss. Rag-'ead sledges, on the ice. The Lion gunners have taken out a few with those mangonels, though."

Barred doors faced her, under the overhanging upper storeys of the houses. No one yelled warnings and emptied bed-chamber pots; no children played in the mud. Yesterday and today, there have been reports of wells freezing.

Some part of her has been frozen, too, since she held Margaret of Burgundy's severed head. They are not coming, no one's coming, there are no men in Burgundy under arms now except here!

And I'm supposed to be in charge of them.

That knowledge makes even the palace, which still has hearth-fires, an unbearable succession of meetings, briefings and muster-rolls. A stolen hour off-duty with Lion Azure company business has a welcome familiarity, even if there is little else pleasant about this particular incident.

"Your punishment list's getting far too long," Ash said, her voice falling flat in the freezing air.

"They were carrying off doors for firewood. Stupid b.u.g.g.e.rs," Geraint remarked, without anger. "I told them to take it from abandoned buildings, but they can't be a.r.s.ed to go up to the north-east gate. Took it from here."

Behind them both, Rickard's sling whipped out; and the young man swore. "Missed it!"

"Rat?" Ash queried.

"Cat." Rickard coiled the leather strip up, his bare fingers purple with cold. "There's good eating on a cat."

The rhythmic hammer of a Visigoth siege-machine began to pound again from the direction of Dijon's north-west gate.

"That won't do 'em no good." Showers of rock will hara.s.s, rather than harm; make people stay within doors. Which they do in any case, lacking candles, now, and lacking food: the remaining rations going to the soldiers.

The diet everywhere is horseflesh and water.

A black object flashed in the corner of her vision. Both she and Geraint simultaneously and automatically flinched. The distant boom of siege-guns alerts you; Greek Fire roars as it arcs through the air; trebuchet-shot drops, silently, with no warning before the street explodes in front of you.

Rickard ran forward from the provost's escort and stooped over something small on the cobbles. He stood, cupping it in his hands.

"Sparrow," he called.

Better than another d.a.m.n spy or herald coming back in pieces.

Rickard rejoined them. Ash touched the small, feathered body - cold as the stones of Dijon palace - and glanced up. There was no mark on the bird. It had evidently fallen, frozen dead, out of the air.

"Won't make lunch, even for you," she said; and he grinned. She signalled the escort, moving forward. Her boots skidded on the icy cobbles with every step - far too dangerous to ride, here - and she wiped tears out of her eyes every time a street-corner brought them face to face with the wind again.

The desultory Visigoth bombardment continued. Sound carries in this weather: she could be up the north-west quarter of the city, instead of here, close by the south bridge.

"They're not a.s.saulting the gates," Geraint said.

"They don't need to." They can just let us watch their camp - always warm, always with enough to eat. If it isn't a bluff. They're flourishing.

Icicles clung to eaves, dropping old, gla.s.sy fangs towards the street. There is frost here that hasn't melted in all fifteen days of this freezing weather. And the ice snaps the ropes of mangonels, and trebuchets.

They're not attacking. But they're not falling apart, either. Or mutinying. I suppose - Ash quickened her step, careful to keep all expression off her face. -I suppose that means the Faris has got her nerve back. So . . .

So what will she do? What will anyone else do? What can I do?

Masonry walls radiate cold. Her eyes scanned, automatically, as she walked, ready to send ab Morgan's men to investigate bodies: every night, now, brought two or three people found frozen to death in the streets. On the walls, men-at-arms freeze to their watch-points. One man was found frozen to his horse. The earth is like marble, these dead can't be buried.

"Boss," Geraint ab Morgan said.

"Is this the place?" Ash was already stepping forward, between the ripped lath and plaster walls that had held a door a short time ago. The seasoned oak posts and lintel had been removed, along with the door and part of one support-beam. The front of the house was taking on a sag.

On the floor inside, on filthy rushes, six women and five children sat huddled together. Four adult men stood up, shivering, and approached the gaping hole, facing Ash. The tallest one, speechless, stared at her livery; his scowl fading to incomprehension rather than recognition.

"The men who did this have been punished," Ash said, and stopped. The light from the door let her see the long-cold hearth. It was no warmer here than in the winter street. "I'll send you firewood."

"Food." One of the women cuddling a child looked up. The light from the door shone on eyes big in their sockets, hard cheekbones, and cold-whitened skin. "Send us food, you posh cow!"

Another woman grabbed frantically at her arm. The first woman shook the hand off, glaring at Ash over her child's head.

"You f.u.c.king soldiers get all the food. I've got my cousin Ranulf here from Auxonne, and the girls, and the baby - how can I feed them?" She lost all her violence in a second, shrinking away from the provost men-at-arms as they came to stand around Ash. She put her arm over the child. "I didn't mean anything! What can I do? They're starving here, after I offered them a home. How can I look him in the face? My husband's dead, he died fighting for you!"

For you, Ash thought. But this isn't the time to say so.

If I was still boss of mercenaries, I'd be looking to sell this place out about now. h.e.l.l: about three weeks ago ...

"I'll send food." Ash turned abruptly enough to collide with Geraint ab Morgan, pushed her way past him back into the open air, and strode back up the street, heels ringing on the frozen mud.

"Where from, boss? Men won't like it." Geraint scratched under the gown bundled over his armour. "We're on half-rations now, and down to the horses. We can't feed every refugee family here." And, plainly frustrated at her silence: "Why d'you think the rag-head b.i.t.c.h won't let civilians leave this city, boss? They know how much pressure it puts on us!"

"Henri Brant tells me the horse-meat is nearly finished." Ash did not look back at Geraint or Rickard as she spoke. "So, now we can't afford to feed the guard dogs, either. When my mastiffs are slaughtered, send one to that house back there."

"But, Brifault, Bonniau-!" Rickard protested.

Ash overrode him: "There's good eating on a dog."

It's come on her, over the last few weeks: she has wept for the men being injured and killed on the walls of Dijon, in the bombardment. To her surprise, de la Marche and Anselm, and even Geraint ab Morgan, have understood it; thought it no damage to her authority. Now, walking in the cold street, she feels the icy track of one tear sliding down her cheek; and shakes her head, snorting with a bitter amus.e.m.e.nt at herself. Who weeps for an animal?

Under her breath, as always, she murmured, "G.o.dfrey, have you heard her?"

- Nothing. Still nothing. Not even to ask if you speak to me - to the machina rei militaris.

Anything he knows, they know. I can't even ask G.o.dfrey how I can cope with being Captain-General.

"Put double guard on the stores," she said as Geraint lumbered up beside her. "Any man you catch taking bribes, take the skin off his back."

There are things she knows, as Captain-General of Burgundy, that she would rather not know. We've got food now for what, three weeks? Two? Somehow - somehow we have to take an initiative!

But I don't know how.

"Maybe," she said, too quietly for Geraint, or Rickard, or her voices; "maybe I shouldn't be doing this job."