Ash: The Lost History Part 27

"Let me out of here, you motherf.u.c.kers!"

With the thickness of the wood, it was not even possible to tell if there was a guard posted outside; or if he could hear her if there was. She used the same voice she would have used to call orders across a battle-line.

"c.o.c.ksuckers! Sweet Christ, I can pay a ransom! Just let me send a message out!"

Silence.

Ash stretched her arms above her head, and then rubbed at the sore spots where her harness had chafed. She missed both her sword and her steel protection so keenly that she could all but feel the shape of the metal between her hands. She backed across the room, slid down the wall, and sat beside the sole light: pale wax and primrose-yellow flame.

Her hands p.r.i.c.kled, as if the blood in them was cold as the water in alpine streams. She rubbed her palms together. A part of her mind insisted, no, it's not true, this is all some weird story, this isn't real life. You're a soldier's brat, that's all. It's coincidence. Your father was probably some Visigoth n.a.z.ir who fought with the Griffin-in-Gold, and your mother was a wh.o.r.e. That's all: nothing out of the ordinary. You just look like the Faris.

And the other, stunned, part of her mind kept repeating: She hears my voice.

"f.u.c.king h.e.l.l." Ash spoke aloud. "She can't take me prisoner. I've got a f.u.c.king contract with the woman. Green Christ! I'm not going to Carthage. They might-"

Her mind refused to consider it. This was a new sensation: she tried to force her thoughts to consider being taken overseas to North Africa, and they slid away. Again and again. Like trying to herd eels, Ash thought, with a quick grin, and her teeth rattled together.

Maybe the Lion never came at all. No. No - our clerk made the miracle: the Lion did come.

But maybe nothing happened to me, there.

Maybe I just told the story of the chapel that way so often, I remember it like it did happen.

Ash's body shuddered, hands and feet cold, until she huddled up, tucking her hands into her armpits.

The Faris. She was bred to hear her tactical machine.

It is the same voice.

I'm - what? Sister. Cousin. Something. Twin.

Just something they discarded, on the way to breeding her.

And all I do is ... overhear.

Is that all I've ever done? A b.a.s.t.a.r.d brat, outside the door, listening in to someone else's tactical war-machine, sneaking out answers for brutal little wars that the Visigoth Empire doesn't even notice . . .

The Faris is what they wanted. And even she's a slave.

After that she sat alone without food or drink and watched the candle-flame pouring a line of blackness up to where it suddenly broke and squiggled, playing sepia smoke over the low plaster ceiling, merging with the shadows. Her heart ticked off minutes, hours.

Ash rested her arms across her knees, and buried her face in her arms. There was a hot wetness against her face. Shock comes after wounds in the field, sometimes a long while after; and here in this narrow room she feels it now: Fernando del Guiz is not coming.

She wiped her nose on her sleeve. What opportunities there might be, to talk herself out of the prison for a ransom, or pity, or by violence, would not present themselves now.

This was the Emperor's marriage, and he's got out of it at the first opportunity that came along. No, that's not it- Ash's chest aches. The hollow breathlessness wants to become tears, but she won't let it; raises her face and blinks in the candlelight.

-He's not here now because it was no coincidence he was in the town hall before I got captured. He was there to confirm where I was. For them. For her.

Well, you had him; you f.u.c.ked him; you got what you wanted; now you know he's a weaseling little s.h.i.t. What's the problem?

I wanted more than f.u.c.king him.

Forget him.

The wax candle melted down to a stump.

I'm prisoner here.

This is no Romance of Arthur or Peredur. I'm not about to scale the walls, fight off armoured men with my bare hands, ride off into the sunshine. What happens to valueless prisoners taken in war is pain first, broken bodies second, and an unmarked, unchristian burial afterwards. I am in their city. They own it now.

A hot thread of disquiet rumbled her bowels. She rested her arms on her knees, and her forehead on her arms.

They might expect a rescue by my company. Soon. An attack, men-at-arms, not on war-horses in these streets, so probably on foot.

I'd better have got this right.

The sharpest and loudest noise she had ever heard shattered the house.

Her body froze in the instant of the sound. Her bowels moved. She found in the same second both that she lay on shattered oak floorboards, and that she knew what the noise was. Cannon fire.

That's ours!

Her heart leapt up as she heard. Tears ran down her stunned face. She could have kissed their feet for grat.i.tude. Another roar went up. The crack and thud of the second explosion echoed off the bare rafters of the roof.

For long heartbeats she was back in the alpine crags, where water falls down so loud that a man cannot hear himself speak, until out of the darkness and dust, torches flamed and men walked - men walking in over the remnants of lath and plaster and b.l.o.o.d.y rags of soldiers.

Black air swirled, dust clearing. Her room ended in broken beams and blackened limewash.

The back of the house gaped, blown away.

A great beam creaked and fell, like trees falling in the wildwood. Plaster sprayed her face.

Outside the breach, in the torchlight in the open, stood two carts and two light cannon dismounted, smoking from their touch-holes still; and she squinted her eyes and made out the bright blaze of Angelotti's curls, the man himself striding up to where she lay, hatless, grinning, and speaking - shouting - until she heard: "We've blown the wall! Come on!"

With the back of the house, the city wall was down too; these houses, all fortified at the backs, themselves forming the wall around this part of the city.

Beyond them lay black fields, and the shrouds of forests on moonlit hills, and men moving in armour, calling "Ash! Ash! " both as a battle call, and to be known by their fellows. She stumbled out of the rubble, ears ringing, her balance gone.

Rickard tugged the sleeve of her arming doublet, G.o.dluc's reins in his other hand. She made a grab for the big grey gelding's bridle, face momentarily pushed against his warm dappled flank. A crossbow bolt buried itself in old Roman brick and sprayed the wreckage of the house with fragments, men shouted, a rush of newcomers in mail and white tunics scrambling over the fallen oaken beams.

Ash got one foot into G.o.dluc's stirrup, swung herself up, loose points and mail flapping from her arming doublet, too light without her armour; and a little lithe man flew at her and caught her by the waist and bore her bodily onwards right over her war-horse's back.

She fell, felt no impact- Something happened.

I have bitten my tongue, I am falling, where is the Lion?

The picture behind her eyes was not of the Blue Lion banner, but of something flat and gold and meat-breathed, and a chill struck her fingers, her hands, her feet; dug deep into her sprawling body.

Feet stood to either side of her. Calves encased in shaped steel plate. European greaves, not Visigoth armour. Something flicked a glint of light past her face, into the air. Liquid spattered her cheek. An appalled shriek deafened her: the shriek of a man ruined in a second by the swipe of a sword, all life to come wrecked and spilled out on rubble; and a man close by her screamed, "My G.o.d, my G.o.d, no, no-" and then, "Christ, oh Christ, what have I done, what have I done, oh Christ, it hurts," and screams, on and on and on.

Floria's voice said "Christ!" very precisely and distantly. Ash felt the tall woman handling her head, warm fingers on her hair. Half her skull was numb. "No helmet, no armour-"

And another voice, male, saying above her, "-ridden over in the melee-"

Ash felt conscious through everything that was happening, although somehow she could not bring it to mind a moment later. Armoured horses galloped; hand-gunners banged off their charges, and then ran in the moonlight. She was tied with ropes to a truckle bed - how much later? - while she screamed, and others screamed; and the bed tied to a wagon; the wagon one among many, moving down frozen, muddy, deep-rutted roads.

A flapping cloth across her eyes blacked out the moon. All around her, wagons moved, oxen lowed; and the screeches of pack mules mixed with the shouting of orders, and a trickle of warm oil ran into her eyes, dripping down her forehead: G.o.dfrey Maximillian, in his green stole, p.r.o.nouncing the Last Rites.

It was too much to hold. She let it slip from her: the armed company men riding outrider, the whole camp packed up and moving, the clashes of steel from behind, far too close.

Floria knelt above her, holding Ash's head wedged still between dirty-fingered hands. Ash had a moment's sight of the grease of unwashed skin blackening the woman's linen cuff.

"Stay still!" the husky voice breathed above her. "Don't move!"

Ash leaned her head to one side, vomiting, and then screamed, and froze: held herself as still as possible, pain flaying her skull. A strange new drowsiness possessed her. She watched G.o.dfrey kneeling in the cart beside her, praying, but praying with his eyes open, watching her face.

Time is nothing but vomiting and pain, and the agony of the cart rocking and jolting in the ruts of the roads.

Time is moonlight: black day cloud-obscured moon: darkness: night again.

What roused her - hours later? days later? - into a dreaminess in which she could at least see the world, was a mutter, an exclamation from one man to another, from woman to man and child, all down the lines of her company. She heard shouting. G.o.dfrey Maximillian grabbed the sides of the cart and leaned out of the front, past Rickard driving the beasts.

What they were shouting, she finally made out, was a name, a place. Burgundy. The most powerful of princedoms, she voiced in her mind; and at a level of voicelessness knew that she herself had intended this, had ordered it, had made Robert Anselm privy to this her intention before ever going inside the walls of Basle after the Visigoth commander.

Trumpets sounded.

A brilliance dazzled her eyes. This is the pa.s.s to purgatory, then. Ash prayed.

Light broke on her, over the canvas roof of the ox-wain, sifting down through the white coa.r.s.e cloth. Light brought out the grain of the wood, the wagon's thick oak-plank flooring. Light manifested from the darkness the drawn cheek of Floria del Guiz, crouching over her wicker pack of herbs, retractors, scalpels and saws.

Not the colour-leeching silver of the moon. A harsh yellow light.

Ash tried to move. She groaned with a mouth thick with saliva. A man's broad-fingered hand pressed flat on her breast, holding her still on the low bed. Light brought out the dirt in the whorls of his fingertips. G.o.dfrey's face was not turned to her, he stared out of the back of the wagon.

A warmth gleamed on his pink flesh, under the road-dust, and on the acorn-colour of his s.h.a.ggy beard; and she could see, reflected in his dark eyes, a growing of this mad brightness.

Suddenly, a sharp line divided the rush-cushioned floor of the wagon and the strapped bed. Darkness over her body - shadow. Brightness over her blanket-covered legs, a line of light moving with the rocking motion of the wagon -sunlight.

She struggled, but could not raise her head. She moved her eyes only. Through the open back of the wagon glowed colours: blue and green and white and pink.

Her eyes teared. Through flooding water her eyes focused on distance - on green hills, and a flowing river, and the white walls of an enclosed town. The smell rose up and hit her, like a blow under her ribs from a quarterstaff: the smell of roses and honey, and the pungent warmth of horse- and ox-dung with the sun on it.

Sunlight.

Nausea flooded up. Ash vomited weakly, the stinking liquid running down her chin. Pain fractured around the bones of her skull, brought more water to her eyes. Agonised, terrified of what the pain might mean, still she could only think, It's day, it's day, it's the sun!

Men with ten years' service cutting flesh on battlefields climb down to kiss the dirt ruts, bury their faces in dew-wet gra.s.s. Women who sew men's clothes and wounds alike, fall to their knees beside them. Riders pitch down from their horses' saddles. All, all falling on the cold earth, in the light, the light, singing "Deo gratias, Deo adiuvante, Deo gratias!"26 * * *

Message: #47 (Anna Longman) Subject: Ash, archaeological discoveries Date: 09/11/00 at 12.03 p.m.

From: [email protected] Anna- Anna, I apologise, for being out of contact for two days. It hardly seems like minutes, here! So much is going on - we've had television crews trying to get in. Dr Isobel has thrown what amounts to a security cordon around the area, with the local government's permission. So you may or may not have seen anything about this on non-terrestrial television. If I were Isobel, I wouldn't be so keen to have soldiers around an archaeological dig; when I think of what they could carelessly destroy, my blood does run cold, it is no mere figure of speech.

Before I do anything else, I *must* apologise for the things I wrote on Tuesday about Dr Napier-Grant. Isobel and I have been old friends, in a rather spiky way, for so many years. I'm afraid I let my complete enthusiasm over the discoveries here reduce me to a babbling idiot. I hope you will regard everything I wrote as being in confidence.

I don't have Isobel's technical archaeological expertise, but she wants me to stay and give her more of the cultural background - all these finds are late 15th century. This is not her period, she's a Cla.s.sicist. The 'messenger' golem we have here is being measured by the latest high-tech equipment, and *still* all that I can tell you, Anna, is that at some point in the past, this thing walked.

What I can't tell you is *how* .

There appears to be nothing to power it, and no means for anything to be fitted. Isobel and her team are baffled. She *cannot* believe that the 'golem' descriptions in the ASH doc.u.ments are a coincidence or mediaeval fable. Anna, she WILL NOT believe it is coincidence.

I am baffled, too. You see, in many senses, we shouldn't be finding what we're finding here. Certainly, I believe I have the, evidence for a late-Gothic settlement on the North African coast, but I have always known that the ma.n.u.scripts' reference to 'Carthage' can be nothing but poetic licence. THERE IS NO CARTHAGE! After the Punic Wars, Rome destroyed Carthage completely. Carthage of the Carthaginians ceased to be an inhabited, powerful city in 146 BC. The great later Roman settlement, on this site, which they themselves called Carthage, was itself obliterated by Vandals, Byzantines, and the Arab conquest in the late 7th century AD - the ruins outside modern-day Tunis' are a considerable tourist attraction.

'Delenda est Carthago', as Cato used to say in the Roman Senate, at every conceivable opportunity: 'Carthage must be destroyed! ' And so it finally was. Two generations after the Carthaginian army under Hannibal was wiped out by Scipio at Zama, Rome had the inhabitants of Carthage deported, the city demolished, and the area ploughed under and sown with salt, so that nothing could ever grow there again - a little excessive, possibly, but at this point in our history it was a toss-up whether we were going to have a Roman Empire or a Carthaginian Empire, and, having been victorious, the Romans methodically made sure they wouldn't have any trouble from that area again.

History eradicates thoroughly. Until a decade ago, we did not know for certain which of the ruins on the ten-mile stretch of coast around Tunis was any of the Carthages! I am now having to speculate that the Visigoth expedition from Iberia itself resettled a site that they, like the Romans before them, also CALLED Carthage; and that it was within a reasonable distance of the same location. If this didn't happen until quite late in the day - not until the High Middle Ages, perhaps - then that might account for the spa.r.s.e doc.u.mentary evidence of it. I intend to seek more in the way of Islamic sources to support this.

My theory, I THINK, remains intact. And now we have technological evidence to back it up!

- Pierce * * *

Message: #48 (Anna Longman) Subject: Ash mss, media projects Date: 09/11/00 at 12 .27 p.m.

From: [email protected] Anna - I forgot to check my previous mail! Shi Sorry. *Sorry*.

Isobel just downloaded your e-mail herself and is extremely interested in the TV project you propose - if not entirely flattered by your description of herself. She said, 'This woman makes me sound like Margaret Rutherford! ' A remark which, I may add, despite her being only 41 and merely having a predilection for old black-and-white film comedies, *does* make her sound like Margaret Rutherford. (Fortunately for British television, Isobel is rather more chic.) We are discussing what might best be done, given a certain tension between the dumbing-down effect of television upon scientific enquiry, and the undoubted attractions of gaining popular publicity for archaeology and literature. And, if I can be honest, discussing the attractions that publicity holds for me. I should not mind my fifteen minutes of fame, no, not at all! Especially since it seems that someone else would be paying me for the privilege. I a.s.sume we will receive a fee of some kind?

Isobel wishes to consider her options and consult with her team, and the university. I should be able to get back to you later today. Now that I am certain I understand the uses of the Internet, I am forwarding the next section of 'Ash' . You will want to look it over while we hammer out some of the fine details here.

- Pierce * * *

Message: #49 (Anna Longman) Subject: Ash Project Date: 09/11/00 at 12 . 44 p.m.

From: [email protected] Ms Longman - I am reluctant to teleconference with your editorial committee. The phone lines here are not good, and moreover I doubt they are secure. I will fly back to talk in person as soon as I can take a break from the site. I would be obliged if you could put me in contact with an a.s.sociation of literary agents, or 'media' agents, a.s.suming that there is such an a.s.sociation; my University will then be in a position to enter into negotiations.

I see no reason why we should not reach agreement. Footage from our videocam team is being sent digitally back to my department at IIIIIIIIIIIIIII University, and processed there. I suggest that you liaise with my departmental head, Stephen Abawi, about any use of research footage for publicising Dr Ratcliff's edition of 'Ash' .

At Dr Ratcliff's suggestion, I am encouraging the team to film more of the actual 'felt experience' of this dig, in addition to our archaeological findings. This may need to be limited in scope, as the soldiers do not like to be filmed and small bribes are not always sufficient to placate them. However, it will, as Dr Ratcliff points out, be necessary to have this footage if a doc.u.mentary is to be later constructed from our time here.

It is possible that Dr Ratcliff and I may collaborate on a doc.u.mentary script. I am considering using quotations from the previous editors of the 'Ash' material. Are you familiar with Charles Mallory Maximillian's 1890 edition? - . . . the great mediaeval spoked Wheel of Fortune is always turning; the G.o.ddess Fortuna always sweeping up each man in turn from beggarhood to crowned king, to falling fool, and back to the darkness below the wheel, which is death and forgetfulness. In 1477, upon the field of Nancy, Burgundy vanishes- from history and memory, lies as cold and dead as the frost-bitten Corpse of Charles the Rash, who had been the shining Prince of Christendom, and whose own enemies thought, for two days, that they beheld the body of a mere peasant soldier, so wretched, filthy and torn it was. We recall a golden country. Yet, history has turned, and the past is lost . . .

Here on the coast of Tunisia, the Wheel is turning again.

- I. Napier-Grant * * *

Message: #63 (Pierce Ratcliff) Subject: Ash, doc.u.ments Date: 10/11/00 at 01. 35 p.m.

From: Pierce - Thank Dr Napier-Grant for her mail.