Ash: The Lost History Part 18

"Christ knows. If he's here, where's Fernando? What's Fernando been playing at? Daniel de Quesada . . . There's a man whose head is going home from here in a basket." Automatically, she checked the position of her men: Anselm, van Mander and Angelotti armed and in armour; Rickard with the banner; Floria and G.o.dfrey unarmed. "He's in s.h.i.t shape . . . what the h.e.l.l's happened to him?"

Daniel de Quesada's shaven scalp shone, b.l.o.o.d.y. Old brown blood clotted his cheeks. His beard had been ripped out by the roots. He knelt, barefoot, his head up, facing Frederick of Hapsburg and the German princes. His gaze skated across Ash as if he didn't recognise the silver-haired woman in armour.

Some disquiet tugged at her. Not ordinary war, not even bad war- What? she thought, frustrated. Why am I worried now? I've got out of this political chicanery. We're mauled, but the Company's been hurt before; we'll get over it. I've won. It's business as usual; what's the problem} Ash stood outside the shade of the tourney stand, in the blazing summer sun. The clash of breaking lances and cheers echoed across from the green gra.s.s. A fresh wind brought her a scent of coming rain.

The Visigoth turned his head, surveying the court. Ash saw sweat bead on his forehead. He spoke with a febrile excitement she had seen before, in men who expected to die within the next few minutes.

"Kill me!" de Quesada invited the Hapsburg Emperor. "Why not? I've done what I came to do."

He spoke in fluent German.

"We were a lie, to keep you occupied. My lord the King-Caliph Theodoric sent other amba.s.sadors also, to the courts of Savoy and Genoa, Florence, Venice, Basle and Paris, with similar instructions."

Ash, in her workaday Carthaginian, asked, "What's happened to my husband? Where did you part company with Fernando del Guiz?"

Exactly how much of an unpardonable, irrelevant interruption it was as far as Frederick of Hapsburg was concerned, Ash could see in his face. She held herself in an alert tension, waiting either for his anger, or Daniel de Quesada to reply.

Offhandedly, de Quesada said, "Master del Guiz freed me when he decided to swear loyalty to our King-Caliph Theodoric."

"Fernando? Swear loyalty to-?" Ash stared. "To the Visigoth Caliph?"

Behind Ash, Robert Anselm gave a great barking laugh. Ash was unsure whether she wanted to laugh or cry.

De Quesada spoke with a gaze fixed on the face of the Emperor, driving home each word with malice, and visible instability. "We - the young man you sent as my escort - met with another division of our army south of the Gotthard Pa.s.s. He was twelve men against twelve hundred. Del Guiz was allowed, on condition of his swearing fealty, to live, and keep his estate."

"He wouldn't do that!" Ash protested. She stuttered, "I mean, he wouldn't -he just wouldn't. He's a knight. This is just misinformation. Rumour. Some enemy's lies."

Neither the amba.s.sador nor the Emperor heeded her.

"His estate is not yours to give, Visigoth! It's mine!" Frederick of Hapsburg twisted around in the ornamented chair, snarling at his chancellor and legal staff. "Put the young gentleman and his family and estates under an act of attainder. For treason."

One of the fathers from the St Bernard hospice cleared his throat. "We found this man Quesada wandering lost in the snow, Your Imperial Highness. He knew no name but yours. We thought it charity to bring him here. Forgive us if we have done wrong."

Ash muttered to G.o.dfrey, "If they'd met up with Visigoth forces, what was he doing wandering around in the snow?"

G.o.dfrey spread his broad-fingered hands and just shrugged. "My child, only G.o.d knows that at the moment!"

"Well, when He tells you, you tell me!"

The little man on the Hapsburg throne wrinkled his lip at Daniel de Quesada, in a quite unconscious disgust. "He is mad, obviously. What can he know of del Guiz? We were hasty - cancel the attainder. What he says is nonsense; convenient lies. Fathers, have him confined in your house in the city. Beat the demon out of him. Let us see how this war goes; he shall be our prisoner, not their amba.s.sador."

"It is no war!" Daniel de Quesada shouted. "If you knew, you would surrender now, before you take more than a skirmish's casualties! The Italian cities are learning that lesson now-"

One of the Imperial men-at-arms moved to stand behind Quesada where the amba.s.sador knelt, and p.r.i.c.ked his throat with a dagger, the thick steel blade old and nicked but perfectly serviceable.

The Visigoth gabbled, "Do you know what you're facing? Twenty years! Twenty years of ship-building, and making weapons, and training men!"

The Emperor Frederick chuckled. "Well, well, we have no quarrel with you. Your battles with mercenaries are no longer my concern." A dry little smile at Ash, all her earlier malice repaid with interest.

"You call yourself a 'Holy Roman Empire'," de Quesada said. "You are not even the shadow of the Empty Chair.9 As for the Italian cities - we find them worth it for their gold, but for nothing else. As for a rabble of fanners on horseback from Basle and Cologne and Paris and Granada - why should we want them? If we wanted to take fools for slaves, the Turkish fleet would be burning now at Cyprus."

Frederick of Hapsburg waved his n.o.bles down. "You are among strangers, if not enemies. Are you a madman, to behave like this?"

"We don't want your Holy Empire." De Quesada, still on his knees, shrugged. "But we'll take it. We'll take everything that lies between us and the richest of all."

His brown eyes went to the Burgundian guests in the court. Ash guessed them there still celebrating the peace of Neuss. Quesada fixed his gaze on a face she recognised from other campaigning seasons - Duke Charles of Burgundy's Captain of the Guard, Olivier de la Marche.

Quesada whispered, "Everything that's between us and the kingdoms and duchies of Burgundy, we will take. Then we will have Burgundy."

Of all princedoms of Europe, the richest, Ash remembered someone once saying. She looked from the bloodstained, middle-aged Visigoth man up to the Duke's representative in the tourney stand, whose lugubrious face she also recognised from the tournament circuit. The big soldier in red and blue livery laughed. Olivier de la Marche had a loud, practised voice from shouting on battlefields; he did not modulate it now. Snickers came from the court hangers-on pressed close around him. Bright surcoats, brilliant armour, the gilded pommels of rich blades, confident clean-shaven faces; all the visible power of knightly chivalry. Ash felt a momentary sympathy for Daniel de Quesada.

"My Duke has recently conquered Lorraine,"10 [0 In 1475.] Olivier de la Marche said amiably. "Not to mention his defeats of my lord King of France." Tactfully, he avoided looking at Frederick of Hapsburg, or mentioning Neuss. "We have an army that is the envy of Christendom. Try us, sir. Try us. I promise you a warm welcome."

"And I promise you a cold greeting." Daniel de Quesada's eyes gleamed. Ash's hand went to her sword-hilt, without conscious intention. The man's body movements shouted wrongness, all human caution abandoned. Fanatics fight that way, and a.s.sa.s.sins. Ash came alive, a snapshot vision took in the men around her, the corner of the tourney stand, the Emperor's pennant, the guards, her own command group- Daniel de Quesada shrieked.

Mouth a wide rictus, he moved nothing else, but the cords of his throat jutted out, his scream lifting above the noise of the cheering crowd, until a silence began to spread out from where they stood. Ash felt G.o.dfrey Maximillian beside her grab at his pectoral cross. The hairs at the back of her neck lifted as if cold air blew over them. Quesada knelt and screamed a pure, uncaring rage.

Silence.

The Visigoth amba.s.sador lowered his head, glaring at them all from bloodshot eyes. The torn skin of his cheeks bled freshly.

"We take Christendom," he whispered, raggedly. "We take your cities. All your cities. And you, Burgundy, you . . . Now we have begun, I am permitted to show you a sign."

Something made Ash look up.

She realised a second later that she was following the direction of Daniel de Quesada's bloodshot, ecstatic gaze. Straight up into the blue sky.

Straight into the white-hot blaze of the noon sun.

"s.h.i.t!" Tears flooded her eyes. She rubbed her gloved hand across her face. It came away wet.

She saw nothing. She was blind.

"Christ!" She shrieked. Voices howled with her. Close, in the silk-canopied stand; further off, on the tourney field. Screams. She rubbed her hands frantically across her eyes. She could see nothing - nothing- Ash stood for one second, both linen-covered palms across her eyes. Blackness. Nothing. She pressed hard. She felt, through the thin linen, the b.a.l.l.s of her eyes shifting as she looked. She took her hands away. Darkness. Nothing.

Wetness: tears or blood? No pain- Someone cannoned into her. She grabbed, caught an arm: someone screamed, a whole host of voices screaming, and she couldn't make out what the words were, then: "The sun! The sun!"

She was crouching without knowing how, her gauntlets stripped off, her bare hands flat on the dry earth. A body pressed into her side. She gripped at its sweaty warmth.

A thin voice that she almost did not recognise as Robert Anselm's whispered, "The sun's . . . gone."

Ash raised her head.

p.r.i.c.kles of light in her vision resolved into patterns. Faint dots. Not close -far, far away, above the horizons of the world.

She looked down, in faint unnatural light, and made out the shape of her hands. She looked up and saw nothing but a scatter of unfamiliar stars on the horizon.

In the arch of the sky above her was nothing, nothing at all, except darkness.

Ash whispered, "He put the sun out."

Message: #19 (Pierce Ratcliff) Subject: Ash Date: 06/11/00 at 10 .10 a.m.

From: [email protected] Pierce - THE *SUN* GOES OUT????? And you're WHERE?

- Anna * * *

Message: #19 (Anna Longman) Subject: Ash Date: 06/11/00 at 06.30 p.m.

From: [email protected] Anna - I am stuck in a hotel room in Tunis. One of Isobel Napier-Grant's young a.s.sistants is instructing me on how to download and send e-mails through the telephone system here - not as easy a task as you might imagine. The truck doesn't go out to the site until tonight, under cover of darkness. Archaeological teams can be fanatical about security. I don't blame Isobel one bit, if she's got what she says she has.

I'd hoped, when she said she was coming out here, that she might find confirming evidence - so unlikely anyway, even for a potsherd, with the hundreds of square miles of territory to be searched - but THIS!

'The sun goes out' . Yes, of course. As far as I can discover, there was no actual eclipse visible in Europe in 1475 or 147 6 - the very best I can manage is one on 25 February 1476, in Pskov, but that's in Russia! - however, later chroniclers obviously found it an irresistible piece of dramatic licence. I must say that I do, too.

- Pierce * * *

Message: #20 (Pierce Ratcliff) Subject: Ash, historical background Date: 06/11/00 at 06 . 44 p .in.

From: [email protected] Pierce - BUT! ! ! I've been looking this up, Pierce. All the wars I can find, for the whole of 1476-1477, are Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy's attempts to conquer Lorraine, and link up his 'Middle Kingdom' across Europe. Then there's his defeat by the Swiss at Nancy; and the indecent haste with which his enemies divided up Burgundy between them on his death. There are the usual wars between the Italian city states, but that's it; there's *nothing* about North Africa!

Don't tell me this is Euro-centric historicism! Isn't an invasion of Italy and Switzerland a bit BIG to miss?

*I repeat, Pierce, WHAT VISIGOTH INVASION???! ! !*

- Anna * * *

Message: #23 (Anna Longman) Subject: Ash Date: 06/11/00 at 07.07 p.m.

From: [email protected] Anna - I told you that FRAXINUS would cause you to rea.s.sess history.

Very well: It is my intention to prove that the North African Visigoth settlement, at one point between approximately AD 1475 and AD1477, DID mount a military invasion of southern Europe.

I will be stating that contemporary interest in this raid was lost in the flurry of panic when Charles the Bold was killed in battle in 1477. That was perhaps only to be expected.

That later historians continue to ignore the episode is due - dare I say - to the preponderance of white, male middle-cla.s.s academics unwilling to believe that Western Europe might be challenged from Africa? And that a mixed-race culture might prove militarily superior to Caucasian Western Christendom?

- Pierce * * *

Message: #21 (Pierce Ratcliff) Subject: Ash, historical background Date: 06/11/00 at 07.36 p.m.

From: [email protected] Pierce - The problem with this is still that the text gives us an invasion of Western Europe in 1476 and even the Turks NEVER ACTUALLY SUCCEEDED IN INVADING! ! ! I know you will say that, according to your present theory, Ash is fighting your North African mediaeval 'Visigoths' . Then WHY IS THERE NO MENTION OF THIS IN MY HISTORY BOOKS?

- Anna * * *

Message: #24 (Anna Longman) Subject: Visigoths Date: 07/11/00 at 05.23 p.m.

From: [email protected] Anna - I 'm at the site!

Dr Napier-Grant is kindly allowing me to use her satellite notebook PC. There's so much to say that I couldn't wait to try and get a phone call through, the lines here are terrible. Isobel (sorry, that's Dr N-G, in case you forget ) Isobel says I can tell you a bit but she doesn't want it leaking out, because if someone else reads the message then she'll have every archaeologist between here and the North Pole arriving on our doorstep. Those that aren't here already.

I know I'm not supposed to say this, but it's hot and smelly and the only time it's bearable is when we're actually out at the digs - which I'm *not* going to mention the location of, obviously!!! Suffice it to say that we are very near the northern coast of this region of Tunisia. (There are mountains on the southern skyline, they make me think of ice and coldness and somewhere you don't have to stay under shelter between one and five in the afternoon! ) Look, you don't want to hear all this, but I can't tell you what I'd like to, and I'm just bursting to.

Isobel says that since you're on the verge of ditching the book, I *can* tell you some things. Isobel's a wonderful woman. I've known her since Oxford. She's the last person I can think of who'd get excited unnecessarily. You only have to look at her short hair and sensible shoes. (No, we never did. I wanted to. Isobel isn't keen that way.) And this last twenty-four hours since I got here, she's been skipping about like a schoolgirl! This *could* still turn out to be another Hitler Diaries, but I don't think so.

What have we found? (Not 'we', of course. Isobel and her wonderful team.) We've found golems.

Exactly as the text describes them. 'Messenger-golems'. One complete, and some pieces of another. You remember me telling you that Arabic mediaeval engineering was quite up to building singing fountains, and mechanical birds that flap their wings, and all that sort of post-Roman trivia? Very well: The ASH ma.n.u.scripts always refer to the 'clay walkers' or 'robots' or 'golems' as *moving* mechanical models of men. This is complete nonsense of course. Imagine building a robot in the fifteenth century! Ornamental devices of some kind, possibly. *Just* possibly. I mean, if you can build metal singing birds - they worked pneumatically or hydraulically, as all the Roman treatises indicate; don't ask me the details, I'm not an engineer! - Then, I suppose, you could build metal models of men, too, like Roger Bacon's Brazen Head, but complete. I don't see why anyone would want to.

That's what I thought, up to twenty-four hours ago. Then there was all the rush of getting a plane out to Tunis, and being driven in some G.o.d-awful jeep out to the archaeologists' camp, and then Isobel taking me all the way out here on foot. There are soldiers guarding the camp, all Jeeps and Kalashnikovs, but they don't seem very alert - just a gift from the local government to keep petty pilfering down, I think. Isobel would like to keep it that way. The last thing we want is the military sent into this site. You could destroy the survivals that are five hundred odd years old - Yes. Isobel's dated them, she's pretty sure they've been in the silt for upwards of four hundred years, and five hundred seems likely; they're not the Victorian curiosities I was afraid I was going to find. These are the messenger-golems of the ASH texts - man-shaped, life-sized carved stone bodies (the complete one is Italian marble), with articulated metal joints at the knees, hips, shoulders, elbows and hands. The stonework on the second one has shattered, but the bronze and bra.s.s gears and cogs are complete. *They are golems*!

I confess I don't understand all the professional arguments that are going on between Isobel's team, or rather, I don't understand the technological details. There is a *huge* row breaking out about whether these finds belong to a mediaeval Arab or mediaeval European culture - the Italian marble, you see, although of course Carrara marble was exported across the whole of Christendom at the time, as I've tried to point out. I've given Isobel my copy of the existing ASH translations, indicating that (as I was going to e-mail you to point out) the 'Visigoth' culture of the texts is *not* purely Iberian Gothic, but rather a mixture of Visigothic, Spanish and Arab culture.

I've got this far and I haven't told you the most important discovery so far. You're sitting there in London reading this, and you're thinking, so? So they had mechanical men, as well as mechanical birds, what does this matter?

Isobel has let me examine the surviving golem extremely carefully. This is something that must not get out before she is ready to publish her findings. There are patterns of wear in the metal joints. That isn't all.

There are patterns of wear on the marble surfaces *under* the feet!

The stone is worn away on the carved soles of the feet and under the heels exactly as though this golem has been walking. And I mean walking. Like a man, like you and me, a stone and bra.s.s mechanical man, *walking* .

What I have touched - touched, Anna! - is exactly what the ASH texts describe as the Visigoth clay walkers.

They are *real*.

I have to get off this machine, lsobel urgently needs to use it. I'll contact you again as soon as I can. The translations of the doc.u.ments in section three are in the file I'm sending with this. Don't ditch my book! ! ! We might have something here that's bigger than anyone ever thought.

*What* Visigoths? HA!

- Pierce * * *

Message: #28 (Pierce Ratcliff) Subject: Ash, media-related projects Date: 07/11/00 at 06 .17 p.m.

From: Pierce - I want you to talk to Dr Napier-Grant, and persuade her that you two should work together, starting NOW. My MD Jonathan Stanley is *very* much in favour of the idea of doing some kind of a tie-in between yourself and Doctor Napier-Grant. She sounds like one of those great British eccentrics who come across brilliantly on the small screen. I can see a possible, tv series for her, and there's your original translation of 'Ash'; and then there is what you could do together - a book-of-the-expedition? Do you think you could write a script for a doc.u.mentary on the expedition? This has *terrific* possibilities!

I'm certain a deal could be arranged. I don't usually say this to my academic authors, but *get yourself an agent*! You need one who handles film and tv rights, as well as non-fiction book translation rights.

It's true we've still got a text that's half mediaeval legend, half historical fact (eclipses!) - and I'm gobsmacked that something like an invasion could be left out of the history books - and how DID these golems MOVE? - but I don't see any of this as a barrier to successful publication. Talk to Dr Napier-Grant about the idea for a joint project and get back to me as soon as you can!

Love, Anna.

PART THREE.