Ash: The Lost History Part 66

"Faris," a man's voice said, over the noise of steel bolts sliding protestingly back into the wall sockets.

"Leovigild?"

The beardless slave stepped into her cell, leaving two armed guards outside. He carried a bundle in his arms.

"Here!"

A roll of cloth dumped and spilled on the pallet. Ash knelt up, hands rapidly sorting through the pile.

A fine-textured linen shirt. Hose, still laced to a pourpoint; the colour invisible in this light. A great thick wool demi-gown with the sleeves sewn in, and silver b.u.t.tons down the front. A belt, a purse - empty, her furiously scrabbling fingers determined - and no shoes, just a pair of soles with long leather cords affixed. Ash looked up, puzzled.

"I show, wear." Leovigild shook his head in frustration. The reflected light allowed her to see the relaxation of lines in his face. "Violante speak, not come." The lithe man made a quick gesture, cradling his arms as if cuddling something against his cheek. "Wear, Faris."

Ash, kneeling on the pallet, looked up at him. What she held between her hands was the padded roll and hanging tail of a chaperon hat.

The hydraulically powered horn sounded the hour across the city six times before her cell door opened again.

Hunger gnawed in her gut, and finally quietened. It would return later, sharper, she knew. A small smile curled up one corner of her mouth, that she was unaware of; it was a smile of pure, delighted recognition. Hunger and isolation are tools she is familiar with.

They mean she is still worth being persuaded.

From the harbour below, sounds racketed up the stone walls and battlements: loud singing, shrill music of flutes, continuous shouting, and once a swift crash of blades. She could not wriggle up the window embrasure far enough to see downwards, but pressed up against the iron bars, staring into the dark, she witnessed bonfires on top of the next harbour headland, to the east, and tiny figures silhouetted against the flames, dancing in wild celebration. The smell of the sea came tinged with wood-smoke.

The hose were tight, the doublet a shade big, but the feel of a fine linen shirt against her skin again made up for it all. She was whistling under her breath without knowing it as she laced Leovigild's odd footwear up her shins, over her hose, with fingers blue with cold.

"All I need is a sword."

She knotted the ties of the cloak around her neck, put on her hood, and tugged the shoulder-cape of the woollen hood down and under the steel collar around her neck, not caring if it was a visible mark of slavery so long as she had something to cushion it from the sores on her skin. She wore the hood pushed back and the hat pulled down on her head; gradually growing warm now, despite the howling chill and sleet at the granite window's edge.

She had used the p.i.s.spot an hour since, when she finally heard footsteps in the guardroom outside and was ready.

"'n.a.z.ir" she greeted Theudibert, standing.

His expression, between disapproval and fear of a reprimand if he questioned the reason for her new appearance with his superiors, might have made her smile, but his attack was not yet distant enough in her mind.

"Move!" He jerked his thumb at the door.

Ash nodded, not so much in acknowledgement of what he said, as to herself.

I need to know who sent me these clothes. If it was Leofric, as a gift, it means one thing. If Violante or Leovigild stole them, it means another. If I ask, and it was theft, they'll be killed. So I can't ask.

So, I don't ask. It's only one more thing that I don't know. And I can handle that.

One of the men said something to Theudibert, gesturing at her ankles. A suggestion to replace the manacles, Ash guessed. My hands, too?

The n.a.z.ir snarled something and struck the man.

Orders not to? Or just, no orders?

Tension tightened her gut, like the morning before battle. Ash hitched the heavy woollen cloak forward around her shoulders, tucking her bare hands into the cloth, and smiled at Gaiseric and Barbas as she strode out of the cell.

The spiral stairs of House Leofric were packed with freeborn men in their finest dress. Theudibert's squad moved her through with the minimum of fuss; up and out into the great courtyard, scarred with sleet, where bareheaded slaves slipped as they ran, bringing drink, banners, lutes, roasted fish, firecrackers, and bandoleers of folly-bells. She bit her lip, her sandalled heels skidding on the sleet-covered chequer-paved court; found herself huddled between armed men and hurried out through a long archway, out into a lightless street or alley.

This is the way I was brought in to House Leofric. Four days ago? Is it only four days?

Gaiseric stopped dead in front of her.

She cannoned into his back, and grunted. His mail hauberk was covered with a long surcoat, the notched-wheel livery of House Leofric, bright black on white. His sword-hilt was almost reachable. In the same second of realisation she heard a command from the n.a.z.ir, and she felt her hands gripped, and a short length of cord tied around her wrists.

Gaiseric moved forward a step.

The torches, held high, showed nothing in front of them but the backs of other men.

They began to inch slowly forward, with the crowd, on through the narrow blank streets of the Citadel.

Ash found herself stumbling over discarded rubbish underfoot: burned-out torches, someone's shoe, ribbons, a discarded wooden plate. Having her hands bound kept her off-balance, and her eyes down, trying to see in the wavering yellow light what she was about to trip over. The distant city clock hooted again twice while she sometimes walked, and more often stood still, crammed up against the bodies of Theudibert's squad.

None of the young men put their hands on her.

Her gaze down, she could not see where they were heading until they were almost there. A fine cold wetness - not quite sleet - fell out of the black sky on to upturned faces. Here, there were enough torches, held by bareheaded slaves standing on a low wall, surrounding an open square, that she could see for about a bow-shot.

Yellow light fell on the heads of the packed crowd, and on the walls of a building that stood, isolated, in what must be the Citadel's centre. Its gilded, curved walls rose up into a great dome, high over Ash's head. An even tighter cordon of armed men in the Caliph's personal colours surrounded the front of the building: she could actually see bare pavement behind them.

A disturbance eddied the heads of the crowd to her right. The n.a.z.ir muttered something unenthusiastic.

"Not here, n.a.z.ir!" a sharp, deep voice said. Ash got sight of the 'arif Alderic shoving his way through the civilian crowd. "Round the back."

"Sir."

The squad fell in around Alderic. Ash took in the fact that the bearded Visigoth soldier sweated, despite the cold. She could not have eaten, now, her stomach knotted up like a horse with colic.

"I hear you might be joining us as a captain," 'Arif Alderic murmured, his eyes fixed forward.

No hope of keeping anything secret in a household full of slaves. Or soldiers, Ash reflected. Is this truth, or only a rumour? Please, let it be true!

"It's what I do. Fight for who pays me."

"And you'll be betraying your previous employer."

"I prefer to think of it as re-aligning my loyalties."

Alderic's squad shoved their way through a crowd that did not perceptibly thin as they circ.u.mnavigated the wall of the ma.s.sive building. Closer to the walls, Ash could see that arches punctuated it at intervals around; and through these, light spilled out, and the sound of boy-choirs singing; the inaugural festivities obviously still not completed, eight hours on in the day. The dome above her gleamed. The tiles that scaled its curves looked, very much, as if they were gilded; and Ash blinked, dazzled, both at the reflected torchlight from gold leaf and the realisation of wealth.

The squad wheeled left. 'Arif Alderic went forward, speaking to a sergeant in a black surcoat. Ash craned her neck back, apparently gawping at the dome, and let her peripheral vision bring her an a.s.sessment of the chamberlains, musicians, squires and pages crowded around this entrance. All of them wore what she thought must be their winter clothes, for such winter as ever came to this warm twilight coast, shivering in thin woollen robes; the ones who had money distinguishable now by northern garments: Venetian gowns, or English wool doublets, or dagged hoods and linen coifs.

A man's fist thumped her hard between the shoulder-blades. She stumbled forward, out of the sleet, into the building and the shelter of the archway; almost losing her balance since she was not able to put out her tied hands to recover it. If she had been wearing skirts, she would have gone sprawling.

"In, b.i.t.c.h," Theudibert growled.

"That's 'Captain b.i.t.c.h' to you."

Someone snickered. The n.a.z.ir was not fast enough to see who. Ash pressed her lips together and kept a straight face. She walked between armed men, out from under the arch and into the hall. Hundreds of courtiers and warriors crowded the rim of the circular hall, under its archways.

The central floor was bare, except for a cl.u.s.ter of people around a throne.

Green vegetation strewed the tiles. Much trodden down, it was nonetheless still recognisable: green blades of corn.

No, Ash corrected herself, dismissing the gilded stone above her head. This is wealth.

She surveyed the green stems, laid so thick that the floor was hardly visible. Smears of green marked the mosaic tiles, where boots had skidded on the leaf-sheathed stalks and p.r.i.c.kly green heads of corn. A sharp, sour fragrance pervaded the air. Unripe corn, brought in from Iberia, she guessed; and wasted, purely for ceremony, laid down as one lays down rushes, to keep the floor neat.

"Madonna Ash," a familiar voice said as she was hustled to one side. She found herself standing, bound, with Alderic's troop of forty; and with them a straggle-haired young man.

"Messire Valzacchi!"

The Italian doctor removed his velvet bonnet and bowed, as well as he could in the close crowd. "How is your knee?"

Ash flexed it absently. "Hurts with this cold."

"You should attempt to keep it warm. The head?"

"Better, dottore." Like, I'm going to say I still get dizzy, in front of men I might - sweet Christ, please - might be commanding, before long.

"You could always untie me, 'Arif" she added to Alderic. "After all, where am I going to go?"

The Visigoth commander gave her a short, amused glare, and turned back to his subordinates.

"Worth a try . . ." Ash murmured.

An oval white patch lay on the floor ahead of her, off-centre. Ash looked up. The great inner curve of the dome rose up over her head, ivory and gold mosaics picturing the saints in their splendour: Michael and Gawaine and Peredur and Constantine. The dark intricacy of the icons defeated her, she could not tell, in torchlight, whether it was bulls or boars depicted between the saints. But what she at first thought was a black circle seventy feet above her head was, in fact, an opening. At the apex of the dome, a stone-rimmed gap opened to the sky.

Through the hole, as if it were night, Capricornus shone. A faint peppering of snow drifted down into the rotunda, diagonal on the air, sifting to the corn-strewn pavement beneath.

The boy-choir began again. Ash deduced that the children must be somewhere on the far side. She could not see past the heads of the men around her. Tiered oak benches set between the arches held n.o.bles and their households, their soldiers lining the aisles - a n.o.ble for each gap between arches, she guessed, running her eye across foreign heraldry.

To her right, someone bore Leofric's banner. Where polished and carved oaken pews rose up, she recognised some of the household, Leofric himself not visible.

Before her, on a great octagonal plinth in the centre of the rotunda, stood the throne of the Visigoth Empire. A man sat there. At this distance she could not make out his face, but it must be the King-Caliph. Must be Gelimer.

Annibale Valzacchi remarked, "You are privileged, madonna."

"I am?"

"There are no other women present. I doubt there is a woman out of doors in all Carthage." The young man snickered. "Since I am a doctor, I can at least vouch for your being female, if not a woman."

Despite choir and royal occasion, people were talking between themselves. Valzacchi's voice came quiet under the buzz of three or four thousand voices, but with unmistakable malice. Ash gave him a swift glance, which took in his black wool gown, the cloth much faded, and the squirrel-fur trim at his hanging-sleeve slits matted and dirty.

"No one pay your fees, dottore?"

"I am not a hired killer," Valzacchi emphasised bitterly. "Theodoric died, and so I go without my fee. You kill, therefore they are prepared to pay you. Tell me, madonna, where is Christian justice in that?"

Prepared to pay you. Oh sweet Christ, Christ Viridia.n.u.s, let it be true, not just a rumour - if I've convinced Leofric- "Let me even the balance of Justice's scales. If I'm here to be bought, I'll buy a doctor, too. You said you'd worked in a condottiere camp." A tremor went through her body, so that she had to grip her hands together under her cloak, the cords chafing her wrists. Fortune is to be wooed, not commanded. "Of course, if I'm here to be executed, I'll keep my mouth shut about you."

The doctor stuttered a laugh at this skinny, wide-shouldered woman in man's dress; her shining silver hair cut too short even for a man, as short as a slave's crop.

"No," he said. "I prefer to earn my gold healing, even if lately that gold has been copper. I will ask you a question, madonna, that I asked my brother Gianpaulo once in Milano. From the rise to the set of the sun, you put all your mind and all your body and all your soul into ways in which you can burn down houses, foul wells, slaughter cattle, rip unborn children out of their mother's bellies, and slice off the legs and arms and heads of your fellow men, on the field. How is it that you sleep, at night?"

"How is it that your brother sleeps?"

"He used to drink himself senseless. Lately, he turned to the Lord G.o.d, and now says he sleeps in that mercy. But he has not changed his trade. He kills people for a living, madonna."

Something about the man's face triggered, finally, recognition. "s.h.i.t! You're Lamb's brother! Agnes Dei. Aren't you? I never knew his name was Valzacchi."

"You know him?"

"I've known Lamb for years." Oddly cheered, Ash smiled and shook her head.

Annibale Valzacchi repeated, "How is it that you can sleep at night, after what you do? Do you drink?"

"Most of the people I employ drink." Ash met his gaze with her clear, cold dark eyes. "I don't. I don't need to, dottore. Doing this doesn't bother me. It never has."

A familiar voice said something from the other side of the n.a.z.ir's cordon of soldiers. Ash didn't catch what, but she went up on her toes to try and see who it was. To her surprise, the n.a.z.ir Theudibert grunted, "Let him through! -Search him first. It's only the peregrinatus Christi."10 The boy-soldier Gaiseric suddenly said, at her ear, "Old Theudo's scared s.h.i.tless, ma'am! He's reckoning on you favouring him later, if he lets you have a priest now."

G.o.dfrey Maximillian's big hands gripped both of hers warmly. "Child! Praise G.o.d, you live."

Under cover of a sonorous Latin blessing, and the sleeves of his green robe, Ash felt G.o.dfrey's fingers move quickly around her wrists, loosening the knots of the cord. His bearded innocent face remained uninvolved, as if his hands were acting without his own consent. She shrugged her freed hands back into her enveloping cloak, as casually and as quickly as if it were something they had practised, like mummers in a play. The back of her neck p.r.i.c.kled hot and wet with the effort of not looking to see if anyone had noticed.

"Did you a.s.sist in the eight offices here, G.o.dfrey?"

"I am too heretic for them. I may preach, if this ceremony ever ends." G.o.dfrey Maximillian's forehead shone. He spoke past her, to Annibale Valzacchi. "Is the man Caliph or not, yet?"

The doctor moved his shoulders in a very Italian manner. "Since this morning. The rest has just been consecrations."

Ash looked across the corn-strewn floor. Something to do with priests was going on around the throne, iron-grey men in green robes processing, hieratically, about the lord-amir Gelimer. She strained her vision, trying to bring his face into focus, a childlike conviction in her mind that a man should look different after the anointing oils, after he was no longer man, but king.

Have I done it? Have I wagered and won?

Thousands of candles heated the air, making her cloak almost uncomfortably warm, and shining a soft gold light upon the walls. She looked up at the great Face of Christ depicted above the saints, and the sprouting viridian foliage of the Tree thrusting from His mouth.

His lips encompa.s.sed the circular hole at the top of the rotunda, as if He opened His mouth upon star-ridden darkness.

"Christus Imperator," Ash breathed. Her neck hurt, staring up. Her guts twinged; fear and antic.i.p.ation, rather than hunger.

"The Mouth of G.o.d. Yes. Here in Carthage He is preferred as He was when He ruled over the Romans," G.o.dfrey Maximillian murmured, his arm pushing up against her shoulder, his body warm and comforting beside her. "Are the rumours true?"

"What rumours?" Ash smiled.

She thought she managed to hit the correct expression, somewhere between deference and complacency. Certainly Annibale Valzacchi gave her a look of contempt. Florian would see through this at once, she thought. A sideways glance a.s.sured her of G.o.dfrey's complicit silence.