Ash: The Lost History Part 7

"Ask yourself why it is," Ash said, absently grim, "that I know a hundred and thirty-seven different words for diseases of horses? High time we had something more reliable. Get up, there!"

G.o.dfrey reined in his palfrey, waiting. "What did you think of life in the women's rooms in the castle?"

"A day and a half is enough for a lifetime." The roan gelding slowed again as her attention wandered. Ash felt a shift in the air and looked north at breaking cloud. "I've got used to people looking at me as soon as I walk into a room. Well, no - they looked at me in Constanza's solar, but not for the same reasons!" Her eyes slitted with amus.e.m.e.nt. "I've got used to people expecting me to be in charge, G.o.dfrey. In camp it's Ash, what do we do now? And in Cologne, it's who's this unnatural monster?"

"You always were a bossy brat," G.o.dfrey remarked. "And, come to think of it, you always were fairly unnatural."

"That's why you rescued me from the nuns, I suppose?"

He ran a hand over his bearded chin and twinkled at her. "I like my women strange."

"That's good, coming from a chaste priest!"

"You want more miracles and grace for the company, you better pray I stay chaste."

"I need a miracle, all right. Until I got to Cologne, I thought maybe Emperor Frederick wasn't serious." Ash shifted her heels, bringing the roan from immobility to amble. The rain began to ease.

"Ash - are you going through with this?"

"I most certainly am. Constanza was wearing more money than I've seen in the last two campaigns."

"And if the company objects?"

"They'll b.i.t.c.h because I didn't let them take prisoners for ransom on the skirmish, that's for sure. I'll bet I'm not flavour of the month. But they'll cheer up when they hear it's a rich marriage. We'll own land now. You're the one who objects, G.o.dfrey, and you won't tell me why."

They confronted each other from the saddle: the surprising authority of the young woman, and the reserved concern of the priest. He repeated, "If it becomes necessary."

"G.o.dfrey, sometimes you're a real G.o.dly pain in the a.s.s." Ash pushed her wet wool hood back. "Now, let's see if we can get all the command lance in one place at the same time, shall we?"

They were in sight of the south-east side of the Imperial wagon-fort now. The small foreign contingent of great-wheeled wagons here, chained together for defence, streamed with the last of the rain. Water ran down the forged iron plates that faced the sides of the war-carts, metal already streaking with orange rust.13 Over the sides of the iron war-wagons, inside the immense laager, Ash saw a rainbow of heraldic banners and standards dripping. The canvas cones of the striped tents hung limp from their centre poles, ropes stretched and wet. A spatter of rain dashed into Ash's face as they approached the gate. It was a good five minutes before a hail went up from the huddled guards.

Euen Huw, sidling into the gateway past them, with a chicken under his arm, stopped and looked extremely startled. "Boss? Hey, boss - nice dress!"

Ash looked resignedly straight ahead as their horses trudged in down the long wagon- and tent-lined lanes. Antonio Angelotti ran up seconds later, his pale and beautiful hands yellow with sulphur.

"Never saw you in a dress before, boss. Looks good. You missed all the excitement!" His perfect face beamed, like a down-market angel. "Heralds coming up from the Burgundian camp. Imperial heralds going down to the Burgundian camp. Terms put forward."

"Terms?"

"Sure. His Majesty Frederick says to Duke Charles, pull back twenty miles. Lift the siege. Then in three days, we'll pull back twenty miles."

"And Duke Charles is still laughing, right?"

Angelotti's yellow curls flew as he shook his head. "The word is, he'll agree. j That it's peace between the Emperor and Burgundy."

"Oh, s.h.i.t," Ash remarked, in the tone of one who - two minutes before - had known exactly what eight hundred-odd men, women and dependent children were doing for the next three months. And now doesn't, and will have to work something out. "Sweet Christ. Peace. There goes our cushy summer siege."

Angelotti fell in to walk beside her gelding. "What's happening about this marriage of yours, madonna? The Emperor can't be serious?"

"Yes he f.u.c.king can!"

Ten minutes riding across camp brought them to the A-frame shelters and horse lines at the north-west corner. The voluminous folds of the velvet gown clung wetly to her legs, rain darkening the cloth to royal blue. She still wore G.o.dfrey's cloak. It was pulled back by its own weight of soaked wool, disclosing her kirtle and the wet linen of her chemise.

The company had separated off a corner of the Imperial camp with wattle fencing and a makeshift gate, something which had not pleased the Imperial quartermaster until Ash truthfully told him it was because her troops would steal anything not nailed down. A Lion Azure standard now drooped there in the wet.

A redheaded man from Ned Aston's lance, guarding the gate, looked up and executed a perfect double-take.

"Hey - nice dress, boss!"

"b.o.l.l.o.c.ks!"

A few minutes saw her in the command tent, Anselm, Angelotti, and G.o.dfrey present; Florian de Lacey missing, and the company's other main sub-captains missing.

"They're off muttering in corners. I'd leave them to it until you've got something you can tell them." Robert wrung out his woollen hood. "Tell us how badly we're screwed."

"We're not screwed, this is one h.e.l.l of an opportunity!"

Ash was interrupted by Geraint ab Morgan ducking into the tent. "Yo, boss."

Geraint, new this season, currently overall Sergeant of Archers, was a broad-shouldered man with cropped hair the colour of fallen leaves, that stood straight up on his skull. The whites of his eyes were perpetually bloodshot. As he came in, Ash noted that the points which joined the back of his hose to the back of his doublet were undone, and his shirt had ridden up out of the gap, disclosing a ragged pair of braies and the cleft of his b.u.t.tocks.

Aware she had come back unheralded, Ash kept tactfully quiet, except for a glare that had Geraint avoiding her eye and staring up into the conical roof of the tent, where weapons and kit were hung up on the wooden struts out of the wet.

"Day report," Ash said crisply.

Geraint scratched at his b.u.t.tocks under white and blue wool hose. "The lads have been inside for two days, out of the rain, cleaning kit. Jacobo Rossano tried to poach two of our Flemish lances and they told him to sod off- he's not impressed. And Henri de Treville is with the provosts, arrested for being drunk and trying to set the cook on fire."

"You don't mean the cook's wagon, do you?" Ash asked wistfully, "you mean the cook."

"There was some comment about the besieged eating better in Neuss," Florian de Lacey said, as the surgeon entered, muddy to his booted knees. "And words to the effect that rat was a delicacy compared to Wat Rodway's stewed beef..."

Angelotti showed white teeth. "'G.o.d sends us meat, and the Devil sends us English cooks.'"

"Enough with the Milanese proverbs, already!" Ash swatted at his head; he dodged. "Good. No one's successfully poaching our lances. Yet. Camp news?"

Robert Anselm volunteered briskly, "Sigismund of the Tyrol's pulling out, he says Frederick isn't going to fight Burgundy at all. Sigismund's been p.i.s.sed off with Duke Charles since he lost Hericourt in '74. His men have been brawling with Gottfried of Innsbruck's archers. Oratio Farinetti and Henri Jacques have quarrelled, the surgeons took up two dead from their men fighting."

"I don't suppose we've actually fought the enemy?" Ash somewhat theatrically whacked her palm against her forehead. "No, no; silly me - we don't need an enemy. No feudal army does. Christ preserve me from factious n.o.bility!"

A lance of sunlight slanted in through the open tent-flap. Everything Ash could see through the gap was dripping, and jewel-bright. She watched the red brigandines and blue and yellow livery jackets of men coming out to coax fires back into life, and tap the beer barrels that stood taller than a man, and fall to playing with greasy cards on the upturned tops of drums. Rising voices echoed.

"Right. Robert, Geraint, get the lads out, tell the lance-leaders to split 'em into red and blue scarves, and give them a game of football outside the wagon-fort."

"Football? b.l.o.o.d.y English game!" Florian glared at her. "You realise I'll have more injuries to deal with than from the skirmish?"

Ash nodded. "Come to think of it ... Rickard! Rickard! Where is that boy?"

Her squire hurtled into the tent. He was fourteen, with glossy black hair and thick winged eyebrows; already conscious of how good-looking he was, and with a growing disinclination to keep it in his codpiece.

"You'll have to run up to the provosts and warn them the noise down here isn't a skirmish, it's a game."

"Yes, my lady!"

Robert Anselm scratched at his shaven head. "They won't wait much longer, Ash. I've had lance-leaders up to the tent every hour on the hour, these past two days."

"I know. When they've worked their energy off," Ash continued, "get them all together. I'm going to talk to everybody, not just the lance-leaders. Go!"

"I hope you've got something convincing to tell them!"

"Trust me."

Anselm went out behind Geraint. The tent emptied of all but Ash, her surgeon, priest and page.

"Rickard, on your way out, send Philibert in to dress me." Ash watched her eldest page stomp out.

"Rickard's getting too old," she said absently to de Lacey. "I'll have to pa.s.s him on as a squire, and find another ten-year-old page." Her eyes gleamed. "That's a problem you don't have, Florian - I have to have body servants under the age of p.u.b.erty, or all the wh.o.r.e-rumours start up again. 'She's not a real captain, she just s.h.a.gs the company officers and they let her prance around in armour.' h.e.l.l-fire!" She laughed. "In any case, young Rickard's far too good-looking for me to have around. Never f.u.c.k your employees!"

Florian de Lacey leaned back in the wooden chair, both palms flat on his thighs. He gave her a sardonic look. "The bold mercenary captain ogles the innocent young boy - except I don't remember the last time you got laid, and Rickard's been through half the Imperial camp wh.o.r.es and come to me because he caught crab-lice."

"Yeah?" Ash shrugged. "Well ... I can't f.u.c.k anyone in the company because it's favouritism. And anyone who isn't a soldier goes, you're a woman and you're a what?"

Florian stood and walked to look out of the tent, cradling a wine cup. Not, after all, a particularly tall man; he had the left-over stoop of a boy who grew tall earlier than his contemporaries, and learned not to like standing out in a crowd. "And now you're getting married."

"Yippee!" Ash said. "It won't change anything, except we'll have revenues from land. Fernando del Guiz can stay in his castle, and I'll stay in the army.

He can find himself some bimbo in a stuffed headdress, and I'll be entirely happy to look the other way. Marriage? No problem."

Florian raised a sardonic eyebrow. "If that's what you think, you haven't been paying attention!"

"I know your marriage was difficult."

"Oh." He shrugged. "Esther preferred Joseph to me - women often prefer their babies to their husbands. At least it wasn't a man she ignored me for . . ."

Ash gave up her attempt to unlace her bodice herself, and presented her back to G.o.dfrey. As the priest's solid fingers tugged at the cords, she said, "Before I go out there and talk to the guys - I've been paying attention to one thing, Florian. How come you keep vanishing lately? I turn round and you're not there. What's Fernando del Guiz to you?"

"Ah." Florian wandered in an irritating manner around the kit-cluttered tent. He stopped. He looked coolly at Ash. "He's my brother."

"Your what?" Ash goggled.

At her back, G.o.dfrey's fingers were momentarily still on the bodice lacing. "Brother?"

"Half-brother, actually. We share a father."

Ash became aware that the top of her gown had loosened. She shook her shoulders in the cloth, feeling it slide away. G.o.dfrey Maximillian's fingers began to untie the fastenings of her underrobe.

"You've got a brother who's n.o.ble?"

"We all know Florian's an aristocrat." G.o.dfrey hesitated. "Don't we?" He went around to the trestle table and poured a goblet of wine. "Here. I thought you knew, Ash. Florian, I always thought your family came from one of the Burgundies, not the Empire."

"It does. Dijon, in Burgundy. When my mother in Dijon died, my father remarried, a n.o.blewoman from Cologne." The blond man slid a shoulder up in an insouciant gesture. "Fernando's a good few years younger than me, but he is my half-brother."

"Green Christ up a Tree!" Ash said. "By the Bull's Horns!"

"Florian's hardly the only man we've got in the company under a false name. Criminals, debtors and runaways, to a man." Seeing that she would not take the wine, G.o.dfrey gulped it himself. He made a face of disgust. "That sutler's selling us rubbish again. Ash, I a.s.sume Florian stays away from his family because no aristocratic family would ever tolerate their son as a barber-surgeon - is that right, Florian?"

Florian grinned. He sat again, sprawling back on Ash's wooden chair, and put his boots on her table. "Your face! It's true. All of the del Guiz family, German and Burgundian, would have a fit if they knew I was a doctor. They'd prefer me dead in a ditch somewhere. And the rest of the medical profession don't like my research methods."

"One corpse too many gone missing in Padua,14 I suppose." Ash recovered some composure. "Blood! How long have I known you-"

"Five years?" Florian said.

"And now you tell me?"

"I thought you knew." Florian stopped meeting her gaze. He scratched at the shin of his torn hose with a hand deeply dirt-ingrained. "I thought you knew everything I had to hide."

Ash pushed her underrobe and kirtle off her shoulders and stepped out of the vast heap of crumpled silk and brocade, leaving it laying on the rushes. Her linen chemise was fine enough to show her skin as a pink glow under it, and disclose the round swell of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the darkness of her nipples.

Florian grinned at her, momentarily distracted. "That's what I call a pair of t.i.ts. Good Lord, woman! Beats me how you ever get those under an arming doublet. One day you really must let me have a closer look ..."

Ash stripped her chemise off over her head. She stood naked and confident, one fist on her hip, and grinned back at her surgeon. "Yeah, sure - your interest in women's bodies is purely professional. That's what all the camp girls tell me!"

Florian leered. "Trust me. I'm a doctor."

G.o.dfrey did not laugh. He looked out of the tent. "Here's young Philibert. Florian, isn't this ridiculous? You could - mediate with your brother. Isn't this the ideal occasion for a family reunion?"

All humour gone, Florian said flatly, "No."

"You could be reconciled to your family - bless them which persecute you; bless, and curse not.15And then you could strongly suggest to your brother that he doesn't marry Ash."

"No. I could not. I recognised who it must be out there by his livery. I haven't met him face to face since he was a child, and I intend to keep it that way."

An edge was apparent in the air, a tension in their voices. Ash glanced from one man to the other, entirely unconscious of being naked. "Don't object to this marriage, guys. It can open up a whole new world for the company. We can be permanent. We'll have land we can go back to, in the winter. And revenues."

Florian's gaze locked on the priest's face. "Listen to her, Father G.o.dfrey. She's right."

"But she mustn't marry Fernando del Guiz!" The priest's desperate voice went up an octave; he sounded like the young ordinand that Ash remembered meeting in the St Herlaine convent, eight years ago. "She must not!"

"Why not?"

"Yes, why not?" Ash echoed her surgeon. "Phili, come and sort me out shirt and doublet and hose. The green with the silver points will be suitably impressive. G.o.dfrey, why not?"

"I've been waiting, but you don't- Didn't you recognise his name? Don't you remember his face?" G.o.dfrey was a big man, rather than being fat, and he had all the charisma of a large, powerful body, priest or not. Now there was helplessness in his gestures. He swung round on Florian, jabbing a finger at the willowy man sprawled in the chair. "Ash can't marry your brother because she's met him before!"

"I'm sure our ruthless mercenary leader has met many n.o.ble idiots." Florian picked at his dirty nails. "Fernando won't be the first, or the worst."

G.o.dfrey stepped out of the page Philibert's way. Ash hauled a shirt over her head, sat on the wooden chest, and pulled on her doublet and hose together -two mismatched shades of green wool; still tied together at the waist with twelve pairs of cords tipped with silver aiglettes. She held her arms out, and the small boy eased her sleeves over them, tying them into the doublet's arm-holes at the shoulders with more pairs of points.

"Go watch the football, Phili; come and tell me when they're finishing." She ruffled his hair. As he left, and she began lacing up the front of her best puff-sleeved doublet, she said, "Come on, G.o.dfrey, what is it? Yeah, I know I know the face from somewhere. Where do you know him from?"