Ash: A Secret History (132 page)

“To
you?
”

“I gave him his letters. It was clear to me he is – was – no traitor, but a devout man seeking to help a friend, in charity and love. If anything of his soul does remain, fear for it, but do not fear it.”

Ash blinked rapidly. One hot drop of water broke from her eye before she blinked it clear; coursing down her cheek. She scrubbed her wrist across her face.

“Grief is part of the honour of a soldier,” Charles said, awkwardly, as if the tears of a woman moved him more than the tears of a man might have.

“Grief is a fucking pain in the ass,” Ash said, on a shaky, indrawn breath; and then with the brilliant smile that was all hers, said, “Sorry, your Grace.”

“Ask for what help you need,” the Duke said.

“Your Grace?”

The young black-haired man in the gold-embroidered gown finally smiled at her. There was nothing of malice in it, only plain kindness; and a weary joy, as if he were making things very clear, as if she might not otherwise hear his meaning.

“I will not use force.” His eyes shut, for a split second, and then he was looking at her again. “Nor shall I in any way compel you to speak to the
machina rei militaris.
I
ask
you to do it.”

“Shit,” Ash said miserably.

“I ask you to answer the question of why you hear a dead man’s voice. I ask you to discover what these machines beyond the
machina rei militaris
will do now. I want,” Charles said, looking at her keenly, “to know why you have been saying that the Visigoth Faris has been bred to work a great and evil miracle against Burgundy. And whether it is true that she has the power to do this.”

Ash looked at him dumbly.
Nothing wrong with his intelligence at all.

“I offer any help you may need. Priests, doctors, armourers, astrologers: whosoever of my people can help you, you shall have them. Name help, and you shall have it.”

Ash opened her mouth to answer him, and had no answer to make.

Charles of Burgundy said, “Nor will I use underhand methods. If you and your men desire it, I will welcome you as one of my captains, whether you do this or not. You are a field commander I would wish to have serve me.”

Dumb, she could only stare at him.
He means this. I wish I thought he didn’t. He means what he says.

“Do it,” he said, holding her gaze, completely confident; all his awkwardness for once gone. “For yourself, for your men, for Dijon, for Burgundy. For me.”

Ash said flatly, “I’ve been forced back here, I’m sitting smack in the centre of a target, and
I don’t know why it’s a target.
Your Grace, I’m going to need to know that. If not now, then very soon.”

She studied his sallow face, and the hollow gaps between socket and eye, where the flesh of his eyelids had sunk in. No weakness showed in his expression.

“I offered whatever help you need. Speak with your dead priest.” He watched her with authority and determination. “If it proves needful – come back to me. You shall know whatever I can tell you.”

At last, painfully, she said, “Give me time.”

“Yes. Since you need it, you shall have that, too.”

Ash, sweat running down her body under her armour, light-headed with fear, stood and looked down at the Duke of Burgundy.

“Not time to decide,” she said. “This was always going to happen; here or anywhere else. I’ve decided. Give me time to do it.”

  Message: #258 (Anna Longman)

Subject: Carthage

Date:    04/12/00 at 05.19 p.m.

From:    Ngrant@

Anna –

Is Isobel’s mail what you needed? Let me know later today. We’re so busy here, you wouldn’t believe it! Or perhaps you would!

Everybody is being very nice to me, and not pointing out that I have no particular authorisation to be here except for ‘Fraxinus’, and that I’m continually underfoot. I think we’re all too excited to care. A genuine, untouched, DOCUMENTED seabed site – even Isobel can’t bring herself to call it anything other than Carthage!

Anna, *that* is the final part of ‘Fraxinus me fecit’. My last piece of translation. The manuscript breaks off there, plainly incomplete.

I cannot answer any of the questions it raises!

Other historical documentation picks Ash up again, but only in the initial part of January 1476/77. We may never know why the ‘siege of Dijon’ section gives such an unconventional rendering of European history, and of Charles the Bold’s character – in some ways, it is much closer to a portrait of his father, Duke Philip the Good – but *he* died in 1467! We may never know what happened to Ash in the winter before her death at the battle of Nancy, or why this text places Charles in Dijon!

In the light of current events, does it *matter*?

I don’t believe, now, that I’m worried about what results the metallurgy team will come up with when they re-test the ‘messenger golem’.

Suppose carbon-dating *does* put it in this half of the twentieth century? It is not *completely* impossible that someone else saw the ‘Fraxinus’ document before I did. Nor is it *completely* impossible that a fake ‘golem’ might be made – Isobel tells me there is a substantial market in archaeological fakes to the more gullible private collectors.

Carthage is not a fake. Carthage is a fact.

Of course, archaeologically speaking, there is the question of what, as a fact, this implies. Has this inundated site any connection with the Liby-Phoenicians who settled the original ‘Carthage’ in 814 BC – did they perhaps land here, and only later move to the land-site that has been excavated outside Tunis? It seems unlikely: this is not the Carthage that the Romans sacked. But it is Visigothic Carthage.

You see, Anna, I have been positing a settlement made in the AD 1400s – and from the ROV images, this site already seems much older than that! Perhaps this is Vandal Carthage? Or perhaps this is a much *older* Visigothic site? After all, if a storm had not sunk their fleet in AD 416, the Spanish Visigoths would have taken over Roman Carthage thirteen years before the Vandals did just that!

So much – so _much_ to be discovered now.

My initial theory posited a late-mediaeval, short-lived settlement. Any continuously occupied site, from AD 416, gives us much *more* of a problem – I can believe that ‘my’ Visigoth settlement on the North African coast, lasting perhaps 70-80 years in total, could go unnoticed, or at least have such evidence as survives ‘swept under the carpet’ for any number of reasons. However, ten and a half centuries of continuous occupation would show up in Arabic chronicles, even if the ‘Franks’ managed to ignore it!! I grant you there are tens of thousands of surviving mediaeval Islamic manuscripts, and many libraries throughout North Africa and the Middle East that have yet to be fully catalogued – but, no mention of 1060 years of Carthage?! *Anywhere? *

I do need to talk to Isobel about this.

I’ve said that we are all in a state of exaltation – that’s true, but, I would expect Isobel to be more joyful. She seems concerned.

I suppose that, if I were responsible for confidentiality on the site of the biggest archaeological discovery this century, *I* might look a little frazzled and haggard, too!

There are new images coming through from the ROVs every few minutes – will contact you again when I can – isn’t this *wonderful*?

– Pierce

  Message: #158 (Pierce Ratcliff)

Subject: Ash, manuscript

Date:    05/12/00 at 07.19 p.m.

From:    Longman@

Pierce –

There is a manuscript.

I wanted you to know that first. I’ve been to Sible Hedingham, I’ve spoken to Professor Davies’s brother, who’s been remarkably candid with me, but first – THERE IS A MANUSCRIPT.

It isn’t an unpublished work by Vaughan Davies.

It’s original.

Pierce, I’ve no idea if this is important or not. I don’t even know if it’s from the right era. Or if it’s a fake.

The brother, William Davies, says Vaughan referred to it as a ‘hunting treatise’. The cover bound on to it does have a woodcut of a deer being chased through the woods by riders. I hope you are not going to be disappointed. My (small) Latin’s Classical, not mediaeval, so I can’t pick out anything much except a few references to ‘Burgundia’. For all I know, the rest of it could be about hound breeding! I hope it isn’t; I really hope it isn’t, Pierce. I’m going to feel I’ve let you down if it is.

William has let me scan it. Given the condition the paper is in, I’m not sure I should have allowed him to – but I had to. He’s contacting Sotheby’s and Christie’s. I have talked him out of contacting the British Library at the moment. It won’t be long before he insists.

If this is genuine – important – even useful, I can use this discovery to support the combined book-and-documentary project, without having to involve what you and Dr Isobel are doing at the sea-site yet. I do realise she needs total security at the moment.

I’ll start sending some scanned text after this. I know what sort of chaos there’ll be where you are – you’re still on the ship, right? – but how soon can you translate these first pages?!

Here’s its provenance –

I went up to East Anglia with Nadia, on the pretence that she might want to buy some of the remaining bric-a-brac. (Not a pretence, as it turned out: she did negotiate for some pieces.) William Davies turned out to be a nice old man, a retired surgeon and an ex-Spitfire pilot; so I came clean and told him I was your publisher, you were in Africa, but you were doing a re-edition of his brother’s work on ASH. (Thought this was most tactful.)

As far as I could find out by talking to him, William Davies never had much to do with his brother before Vaughan came to Sible Hedingham. They were brought up in an upper-middle-class family somewhere in Wiltshire. Vaughan went to Oxford and stayed there, William went to London, studied medicine, married, and came into the Sible Hedingham property on his wife’s early death. (She was only 21.) After that, he only saw Vaughan while on leave from the RAF, and they didn’t talk much.

What relevant family history I’ve picked up from him is as follows: Vaughan Davies moved from Oxford to Sible Hedingham in the late 1930s. William remembers it as 1937 or 1938. William owned the house, but was in the process of joining the RAF, and was prepared to let it to Vaughan. I get the feeling they wouldn’t have moved in together – listening between the lines, Vaughan sounds bloody impossible to live with. Vaughan was on a sabbatical from Oxford, finishing the ASH manuscript for publication.

According to William, Vaughan then lived the life of a hermit; but no one in the village much minded. I think he must have been very abrasive. In any case, as a newcomer, he wasn’t made welcome. He ‘bothered’ (William’s word) the family who owns Hedingham Castle for access to it, and made himself a real pain; so much so that they told him to go away.