Ash: A Secret History (194 page)

“Since sunset.”

Since the hostage massacre.

“Well, she won’t do this again.” Ash’s lips quirked. “We haven’t got the drink. Okay. If she wakes, send for me. If she doesn’t – don’t disturb her.”

She was thoughtful on the way out of the palace, conscious of Ludmilla Rostovnaya’s escort chatting among themselves, and conscious that her legs ached, and that her burned thigh-muscle was throbbing. A haze of weariness floated her along. Not until she stepped out into the bitter, freezing night did she wake to full alertness.

The Plough had sunk around the pole of the sky. A few hours now and the day of Christ’s Mass would be over; the feast-day of Stephen dawning.

A fierce blue light illuminated the night sky, travelling at high speed.

“
Incoming!
”

A bolt of Greek Fire hissed in an arc and fell to earth in the square, splashing an inferno across the stone cobbles. A man ran out in the spirit-blue light and raked thatch down from a corner of an outbuilding.

Shit! Is this it? Gelimer’s lost his general, and he’s tired of holding to the truce
—
?

Another bolt shot high; vanished outside the walls of Dijon on its downward arc.

“Take cover!” Ash ordered, stepping smartly back into the palace’s gatehouse. Another shot – stone, not fire; an impact that jarred up from the flagstones through her feet.

“Motherfuckers!” Rostovnaya murmured something caustic about Visigothic marksmanship: her men growled agreement. “At Christ’s Mass, too! Boss, I thought we had a truce until Lord Fernando goes back to them tomorrow?”

Straining her hearing, praying for sounds to carry in the frozen night air, Ash hears nothing now – no shot dropping on other quarters of the city.

Visigoth siege-engines, placement and ammunition-loads, orders of infantry assault
troops!
Ash formulated the thought in her mind, not speaking it out loud, and shook her head.

Even if I could speak to the Stone Golem, it wouldn’t be any use my asking. Its reports from here are dependent on courier; it must be two or three weeks out of date.

At least that means Gelimer can’t use it for tactical advice against us. Even if the Wild Machines can use it, he can’t. And Godfrey would hear him. Small mercies—

She stopped, stunned.

“Captain?” Ludmilla Rostovnaya said, in the tone of someone who has said the words before.

“What?”

Ash registered dimly that she heard no more bombardment: that these desultory shots are not the opening barrage before an assault – only some bored gun-crew, probably Gelimer’s Frankish mercenaries. Her realisation blocked out any thankfulness that the truce remains unbroken.

“Do we go back to the tower?” The Rus woman peered through the night and the gatehouse’s gloom, illuminated by guttering Greek Fire. No other impact shook the ground. “Captain? What is it?”

Ash spoke numbly.

“I’ve … just realised something. I can’t think why I didn’t see it before.”

III

The striped boarlet nosed at the snow, whip-thin tail wagging furiously. Ash watched its nose strip up the ice-crust from the soft white beneath. A flurry of black leaf-mould went up. The animal grunted, in deep content, trowelling up acorns.

A man with an acorn-coloured beard put back his hood and turned to look at her.

–
Ash.

“Godfrey.”

Exhaustion carried her along the edge of sleep. It was no great difficulty to be simultaneously aware that she lay on her straw palliasse beside the tower’s hearth, the noise of squires‘ and pages’ voices fading in and out as sleep claimed her; and to know that she spoke aloud to the voice in her head.

The dream brought her his image, clear and precise: a big man, broad in the chest, his gnarled feet bare under the hem of his green robes. Some of the grizzled hairs of his beard were white; and there were lines deeply cut at the side of his mouth, and around his eyes. A face beaten by weather; eyes that have squinted against the outdoor light in winter and summer.

“When I met you first, you were no older than I am now,” Ash said quietly. “Christ Jesu. I feel a hundred.”

–
And you look it, too, I’ll lay money on it.

Ash snuffled a laugh. “Godfrey, you ain’t got no respect.”

–
For a mangy mongrel mercenary? Of course not.

The dream-Godfrey squatted in the snow, seeming to ignore the ice caking his robe’s hem, and put one hand wrist-deep into snow to support himself. His breath whitened the air. She watched Godfrey tilt his head over – shoulders down, bottom up, until he seemed about to fall – to peer between the legs of the rootling three-week-old boar.

“Godfrey, what the
fuck
are you doing?”

The dream-figure said, “Attempting to see if this is a boar or a sow. The sows have a better temper.”

“Godfrey, I can’t believe you spent your childhood in the Black Forest trying to look up a boar’s arse!”

“She is a sow.” The snow shifted, and the boar’s head came up, as he shuffled closer.

Ash saw her gold-brown eyes surveying the world suspiciously from under straw-pale lashes of incredible length. The dream-Godfrey talked quietly to her, for a lost amount of time; Ash drifted. She saw him finally reach out a cautious, steady hand.

The sow turned back to rootling. The man’s hand began to scratch her in the place behind her ear where the thick, coarse winter coat is absent, and only soft hairs cover the grey skin. Her nose came up. She snorted: an amazing small, high squeak. He exerted more pressure, digging into the hot skin.

With a soft thump, the female piglet fell over on her side in the snow. She grunted in contentment as the man continued to scratch, her tail wagging.

“Godfrey, you’ll have me believing you were suckled like Our Lord, by a boar!”

Without taking his hand away from the boarlet, Godfrey Maximillian looked back towards her. “Bless you, child, I have been rescuing God’s wild beasts all my life.”

White showed in his priest-cropped hair, as well as his beard. He reached for his Briar Cross with his free hand: large, capable and scarred. A workman’s hand. His eyes were dark as the sow’s, and each detail of his face was clear to her, as if she had not seen him for months and now he was suddenly before her.

“You think you’ll always remember the face,” Ash whispered, “but it’s the first thing to go.”

–
You think there will always be time.

“You try to fix it in your mind…” Ash stirred, on the mattress. Like water sinking through sand, the clear dream of Godfrey Maximillian in the snow sank away. She tried to hold it; felt it sliding from her mind.

–
Ash?

“Godfrey?”

–
I cannot tell how long it is since last we spoke.

“A few days.” Ash shifted over on to her back, her forearm across her eyes. She heard Rickard’s voice, breaking in mid-sentence for the first time in weeks, telling someone that the Captain-General could not see them at this hour: wait but an hour more.

“It’s the evening of Christ’s Mass,” she said, “or the early hours of St Stephen’s day; I haven’t heard the bells ring for Matins. I’ve been afraid to speak with you in case the Wild Machines—” she broke off. “Godfrey, do you still hear them? Where are they?”

In the part of herself that is shared with the
machina rei militaris,
she feels the comforting warmth that she associates with Godfrey. She hears no other voice but his; not even distant muttering in the language of Gundobad’s era.

“Where are they!”

–
Hell is silent.

“Hell be damned! I want to know what the Wild Machines are doing. Godfrey, talk to me!”

–
Your pardon, child.

His voice comes to her filled with a mild amusement.

–
For however long a time you say it is – a month and more – no human soul has spoken with the Stone Golem. At first the great Devils lamented this greatly. Then, they became angry. They deafened me, child, with their anger; forcing it through me. I had thought you heard, but perhaps it was the Faris at whom they directed their rage. And then, they fell silent.

“Did they, by God?”

She stretched, still fully clothed in case of night alarms; and opened her eyes briefly to see the rafters lost in the gloom, outside the light of the meagre hearth-fire.

“They won’t have given up on the Faris. They’re waiting for their moment. Godfrey, has no one used the Stone Golem? Not even the King-Caliph?”

Godfrey’s voice, in her soul, is full of what would be laughter if it were a sound.

–
The slaves of Caliph Gelimer speak to it – as men speak, not as the
Faris
speaks. They ask questions of tactics. If you ask me what, he will deduce what you fear. He is much afraid of this crusade, child, it is running away with him; a war-horse which he
.
cannot control. I wish I could find God’s charity in my heart for him, rather than rejoicing that he is troubled. I am unsure that he even understands the answers the Stone Golem speaks.

“I hope you’re right. Godfrey, what are you so damned cheerful about?”

–
I have missed you, Ash.

Her throat began to ache.

His voice filled with confidence; excited expectation:

–
You swore that you would bring me home. Rescue me, out of this. Child, I know you would not be talking to me now unless you had thought of some way to bring this about. You’ve come to rescue me from this hell, now, haven’t you?

Ash struggled up into a sitting position on the mattress. She waved Rickard away; back to the door lost in the gloom. She huddled furs and blankets around her shoulders, wriggling forward until her feet were almost in the ashes of the hearth-fire.

“I swore a lot of things,” Ash said harshly. “I swore I’d get the Wild Machines for killing you, when you died in the earthquake. And you swore in the coronation hall that you’d always be with me, but it didn’t stop you dying there. We all make promises we can’t keep.”

–
Ash?

“At least I never swore to bring your body back for burial. At least I
knew
that was impossible.”

–
When I tried to help you escape from the cells of Leofric’s house, before I found Fernando del Guiz for you to ride out with, I swore that you would never be alone. Do you remember? That promise I have kept. And I will keep it, child. You hear me, and you will always hear me; I will never leave you. Be certain of it.

The ache in her throat spread. She rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes. She made the mental effort, cut herself off from the ache and the hurt.

Hot tears rolled out of her eyes, blurring the image of the red coals in the hearth. Astonished, her chest feeling scoured hollow and breathless, she clenched her fists and dug her nails hard into her palms. The tears fell faster; her breathing jerked.

–
Ash?

“I can’t rescue you. I don’t know how!” There is silence, in her mind.

–
I can forgive you one broken promise, in a lifetime.

In her head, Godfrey Maximillian’s voice is resonant.

–
Do you remember, I told you that to leave the Church and travel with you was worth every hurt I have ever paid? Then, I loved you as a man loves. Now I am soul, not body; and I love you still. Ash, you are worth this.

“I never deserved that!”

–
It does not come for that – although you have been true, good, and warm-hearted to me, I do not love you for that reason. Only because you are who you are. I loved your soul before I ever loved you as a woman.

“For Christ’s sake, shut up!”

–
I have told you. I regret nothing, except that I still do not have all your trust.

“Oh, but you do.” Ash covered her face with her hands, resting her head on her knees in the wet, warm darkness. “I trust you. If I ask you to do something, I trust you to do it. That makes it hard – it makes it impossible, to ask.”

–
What could you ask of me that I would not do?

A rueful, amused vulnerability is in the sound of his voice:

–
Not that I can do much, now, child. Not as I am. But ask, and if I can, I will do it.

Hard as she tries to stop it, her breath comes in great sobs. She presses her hands to her mouth to stifle the noise.

“You – don’t – understand yet—”

“Boss?”

She opened her eyes to see Rickard squatting beside her, his expression unguarded and appalled. Tears have run down her face. Her eyes are hot. When she makes to answer him, there is no sound; a constriction in her throat will not let words pass.

“You want something?” Rickard asked. He looked around helplessly. “What?”

“Stay at the door. No one’s—” She spoke thickly. “
No one’s
to enter until I say. I don’t care who it is.”

“Trust me, boss.” The black-haired young man straightened up.

He is wearing armour that does not belong to him – a wounded man’s fustian brigandine – and a wheel-pommel sword clatters at his side. It is not that, so much as the eyes, that are the difference; he looks wary, and much older than he did at Neuss.

“Thanks, Rickard.”

“You call me,” he said fiercely. “If you need something, you call me. Boss, can’t I—”

“No!” She fumbled for her purse, pulling out a dirty kerchief and wiping her face. “No. It’s my decision. I’ll call you when I want you.”

“Are you talking to Saint Godfrey?”

Tears spilled out of her eyes, an uprush that she could not check.
Why?
she thought, bewildered;
why can’t I stop this? This isn’t me; I don’t weep.

“Rickard, go away.”

She balled the wet cloth of her kerchief between her two hands, and rested it against her eyes.

–
I swear, child, you can ask nothing of me that I will not grant.

Godfrey Maximillian’s voice, in her mind, is urgently, openly sincere. Too open: Ash presses the cloth harder against her eyes. After a second she can sit up, back straight, and stare into the greying coals.