Ash: The Lost History Part 28

Your news about the messenger-golem find is stunning. I don't know what to make of it. I'll tell you WHY I don't know what to make of it.

You've found mobile golems.

I've lost the Angelotti ma.n.u.script.

- Anna * * *

Message: #50 (Longman) Subject: Ash mss.

Date: 10/11/00 at 02 . 38 p.m.

From: [email protected] I don't understand. How can you LOSE the Angelotti text? It's in four major world collections! Explain!

- Pierce * * *

Message: #66 (Pierce Ratcliff) Subject: Ash mss.

Date: 10/11/00 at 02 . 51 p.m.

From: [email protected] Pierce - No. It isn't.

I wanted to check on this 'forgotten invasion' of yours for myself.

If you weren't out in Tunis with Dr Grant - if this turns out NOT to be golems - I'm pulling the book. I mean it. THERE IS NO ANGELOTTI Ma.n.u.sCRIPT!

The problem isn't that a 'Visigoth invasion' seems to have been swept under the historical carpet.

The PROBLEM is that since I wanted to check the Angelotti text myself, I phoned the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Glasgow Museum.

The Glasgow Museum no longer hold a copy of the Latin text attributed to one 'Antonio Angelotti' .

Both the British Library and the Metropolitan Museum now cla.s.sify it as Mediaeval Romance Literature. As FICTION, Pierce!

WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?.

Message: #54 (Longman) Subject: Ash/Angelotti mss.

Date: 10/11/00 at 04.11 p.m.

From: [email protected] Anna - I contacted Bernard at the Glasgow Museum. He tells me he doesn't know where their Angelotti text is, they may no longer shelve it, or it 'may' be out on loan to some other inst.i.tution. He asked me why I wanted to study something so patently useless to the historian, since it's a presumed 17th century FAKE.

I don't understand what is happening!

Both Charles Mallory Maximillian and Vaughan Davies had no doubts whatsoever about the veracity of this ma.n.u.script! In 1890 and 1939 it was catalogued as an ordinary 15th century doc.u.ment. When I consulted it, it was in the CATALOGUE under that designation! This is not like anything else that has ever happened to me in my academic career! They CAN'T have recla.s.sified it in the past six months!

I can't get anyone to talk to me on-line, and I CAN'T leave here. If I go off-site, I won't be allowed back on again. You're going to have to take this on for me. For our book.

- Pierce * * *

Message: #69 (Pierce Ratcliff) Subject: Ash, texts Date: 10/11/00 at 04.22 p.m.

From: [email protected] Pierce - Jesus Christ Pierce what next? If one of your ma.n.u.scripts is a fake, but the golems are real?

I'll do what I can on-line, and by phone. I really don't understand this.

Give me a list of doc.u.ments to check.

Okay, I can understand that maybe Victorian historians weren't so rigorous as modern ones. There are such things as faked ma.n.u.scripts. But there've been two editions besides yours: if Charles Mallory Maximillian was lax, surely Vaughan Davies should have spotted something?

- Anna * * *

Message: #55 (Anna Longman) Subject: Ash, texts Date: 13/11/00 at 00.45 a.m.

From: [email protected] Anna - Yes, Vaughan Davies should have discovered if any of the doc.u.ments were invalid. You are kind enough not to say it, but, so should I.

This is a list of the princ.i.p.al authenticated doc.u.ments that I have been working from: The WINCHESTER CODEX, c.1495, Tudor English translation of mediaeval Latin original (1480s?). Ash's childhood.

The del Guiz LIFE, c.1516, withdrawn, expurgated and reissued 1518. German original. Plus a version by Ortense Mancini, 17c playwright, in which she mentions that it is translated from a 16c Latin ma.n.u.script - we have no trace of this. Covers, Ash's life 1472-1477.

The CARTULARY of the monastery of ,St. Herlaine, c.1480, translated from the French. Brief mentions of Ash as a novice c.1467-8.

'PSEUDO-G.o.dFREY', 1478 (?), a German text of dubious value, found in Cologne in 1963; original paper and ink, but possibly a contemporary forgery, cashing in on the popularity of the 'Ash' cycle of legends. Ash's life c. 1467-1477.

The ANGELOTTI ma.n.u.script, Milan, 1487; appended at the end of a treatise on armour owned by the Missaglia family. Ash during the period 1473-1477.

'FRAXINUS ME FECIT', possibly autobiography of Ash, therefore written down no later than 1477; if a biography, between 1477 and 1481(?) . Covers summer 1475 (6?)-autumn 1476.

The two previous editions of the 'Ash' material are:- Charles Mallory Maximillian (ed.) ASH: THE LIFE OF A FEMALE MEDIAEVAL MERCENARY CAPTAIN, J Dent & Son, London, 1890, reprinted 1892, 1893, 1896, 1905.

This contains translations of all the above, excluding 'Pseudo-G.o.dfrey' (and, of course, 'Fraxinus'). CMM does include the 17th century poems by Lord Rochester supposedly based on episodes from the del Guiz LIFE; later research indicates this is unlikely. CMM was a widely read and reputable scholar of his period, holding the Mediaeval History Chair at Oxford.

Vaughan Davies (ed.) ASH: A FIFTEENTH CENTURY BIOGRAPHY, Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1939. Not reprinted. Plates lost.

Contents as CMM. There was also rumoured to be a pirated paperback edition, a facsimile reprint done by Starshine Press in San Francisco (1968) , but I have not seen it.

This original 1939 edition itself exists only in incomplete form in the British Library. The publisher's warehouse was bombed during the war, destroying stocks, and cutting short a popular vogue for Vaughan Davies's book - after all, it is not every history book that is written by a man with his scientific, as well as historian's, credentials.

That's all I have on file, I think there may be one or two confirmatory mentions in contemporary letters, but I don't have the data with me.

I've now completed the next translation of the del Guiz/ Angelotti 'Ash' material, and will send it to you after this.'

Isobel, of course, is insisting that I IMMEDIATELY finish 'Fraxinus me fecit' for her, and she wants the translation done meticulously - so, I think, do I; but she knows that.

Please contact me. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND what is happening here. I have been an academic for twenty years; I do not believe I could make an error - or a series of errors - of this magnitude.

- Pierce * * *

Message: #73 (Pierce Ratcliff) Subject: Ash, doc.u.mentation Date: 13/11/00 at 10 . 03 p.m.

From: [email protected] Pierce - I took a day's leave and spent it in the British Library. I didn't particularly want to explain at the office that there may be problems with your book - not when we've put it in the Spring catalogue.

I have grave problems with what I've found.

Some of the doc.u.ments you mention, I just can't find - the Pseudo G.o.dfrey, and the Cartulary (log-book, I suppose) of this St Herlaine monastery. I can't find any record of the monastery either.

I've managed to trace the German del Guiz 'Life' , but you won't like it, Pierce.

In 1890, it was cla.s.sified under 'Late Mediaeval History' . Charles Mallory Maximillian was obviously being completely above-board when he did his translation of it. By 1939, it was re-cla.s.sified, this time as 'Romance Literature' , along with the Nibelungenlied! I found a reference to your 1968 American printing of Vaughan Davies, which has the del Guiz ma.n.u.script in it, and the whole thing is cla.s.sified under 'General Fiction' ! And as far as the British Library's concerned now, they don't have any record of having a copy.

They don't have a record of any mediaeval ma.n.u.script by an 'Angelotti', either.

As far as I can see, this material was thought to be genuine in the 1890s, was discovered to be fake in the late 1930s - and Vaughan Davies just ignored this. What I can't understand, Pierce, is why YOU'VE ignored this.

Unless you can give me a convincing explanation, I am going to have to discuss this with my Managing Director.

- Anna Longman * * *

Message: #60 (Anna Longman) Subject: Ash, archaeological discoveries Date: 14/11/00 at 11.11 a.m.

From: Anna - I didn't ignore anything.

When I last consulted these doc.u.ments, in the British Library, less than two months ago, they were cla.s.sified under 'Mediaeval History' . There was NO suggestion that they might be anything else.

Please do nothing rash.

If these doc.u.ments are so unreliable - why is the ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE backing them up? !

- Pierce.

PART FOUR.

13 August-17 August ad 1476.

The Garden of War.

Chapter One.

A young woman's body lay on a mattress stuffed with goose-down. Whether this was too soft, she too unaccustomed, it was not possible to tell. She stayed unconscious. She nonetheless rolled a little, from side to side, and as her head turned it could be seen that she had a shaved patch over her left ear, hair sheared away from the swollen skull. A fine silver stubble grew back.

To stop her moving, they tied her with linen bands to the wooden frame of the bed. She seemed hot, with a fever, and restless. Someone washed and combed out and plaited the rest of her hair into two loose-woven braids, so it should not turn into impenetrable sweat-glued tangles.

Sometimes there were angry voices over her. A swearing-out of devils, or a fierce quarrel between soft-voiced women. Someone trailed oil over her forehead, and it rolled down the bridge of her nose and over her slashed cheek. When the linen sheet was taken back, half her body was spotted with black bruises, and a poultice of comfrey and Self-Heal was strapped to her right ankle, and another to her right wrist.

Someone washed her body with water from a silver basin.

Bees wove around the room, in the bright air between white walls, and back over the sill where climbing flowers nodded. A soft, rhythmic murmur of doves sounded beyond the window. Being washed and turned, she saw out of the window to the birds, blazing white in the sun, one of them with golden beams shining from its head and beak and golden eye: the Holy Spirit nesting in the dove-cote, along with the other doves. Then there was fire and pain and shouting, and she was bound back on the bed with new linen, and the world went away to the sound of an angry voice that rose up the registers from contralto to alto to shout.

All the time, there was the light.

It came first always with a cold pink and yellow glow, through the night-shuttered windows. It grew, slanting, into bars of brightness: as bright as light down the edge of a sharpened blade. And light shook from the surface of the water in the jug, that stood on an oaken chest beside the bed; dancing in blotched reflections on the white curving plaster of the ceiling.

Once a wing brushed her, white and stiff as a swan's feathers, but with all quills edged with gold like the leaves of a ma.n.u.script. Two voices spoke over the bed, debating about angels and those wandering spirits of the air that are devils, or perhaps old pagan G.o.ds worn weak with lack of worship.

She saw beyond the ceiling of the white cell a stacked rise of circles, circle within circle, each rimmed with faces and wings, and behind the saints' faces thin gold rings, a knife-scratch thin, haloes hot as the metal poured in a goldsmith's furnace. She sought, but could not find, a Lion.

The light, slanting the other way, drenched the room in gold. Chill shivered her, and hands brought up the linen sheets. A sharp clear-skinned face bent over her, short hair turned to rose-gold.

Too soft a croak: and water from a wooden cup was spilling down her mouth and chin, soaking the sheets; leaking into her mouth, p.r.i.c.king a way between surfaces of dehydrated flesh. She felt in one instant the roar of pain through her flesh. Hurt leg, hurt arm, battered body; and her unbandaged hand jerking in its linen bands.

Fingers freed her. She felt for as much of her body as she could reach. Body, whole; no more damage to leg and arm than she has had before. A spurt of pain in her head. She touched her cheek, which flared with pain, and probed with her tongue to find the shattered roots of two back teeth in the upper left of her mouth.

"Did Thomas-"

"Thomas Rochester is alive! He's alive. And the others. Baby-"

More water at her lips, this with a stench of some herb in it. She drank, would she, would she not; but lay, fighting sleep, for as long as it took for the light to begin again, dew-wet and chill, at the shutters of the window.

Memories of darkness pushed at her, of a black sky, and an endless night, and lands growing winter-cold in the middle of harvest time.

"They'll be following-"

"Hush ..."

Sleep took her down so fast that what she said was slurred, incomprehensible to anyone present: "I will not be taken away to Carthage!"

Chapter Two.She woke sweaty and warm. A dream of terror slid away from her, like water vanishing through sand. Ash opened her eyes as delirium became sudden clarity: s.h.i.t! How many days have I been sick? How long will it be before the Faris comes after me, or sends a s.n.a.t.c.h-squad-?

The voice of Floria del Guiz, above her, said, "You got stepped on by a horse."

"So much for the glory of battle . . ." Ash strained to focus her open eyes. "Sod this for a game of soldiers."1 "b.l.o.o.d.y idiot."

The wooden-framed bed creaked as weight came down on it. Ash felt her body hoisted up by warm, strong arms. Time blipped: she thought she felt another body in the bed beside hers; then realised that the warm torso and b.r.e.a.s.t.s under the linen shirt pressed against her cheek were Florian's; that the woman surgeon was cradling her, and that her own body was weak as water.

Florian's quiet voice buzzed in Ash's ear, transmitted more by vibration through the flesh and bone of the surgeon's body than by sound. "I suppose you want an honest answer to how badly you're injured? Seeing as you're the boss?"