Ash: A Secret History (56 page)

“Christ on the Tree, that cowardly son of a bitch!” Her heart still shook her body, made her hands tingle. “Fucking Visigoths – and I’m going to be handed over to
them?
No way!”

Thomas Rochester, scarlet in the heat, said, “Christ, boss, calm down!”

“Too hot for running around like this,” Euen Huw added, unbuckling his helmet, and standing up on the crenellations to catch any breeze, and to survey the apparently endless tents of the Burgundian army outside the city walls. “More to worry about than that boy, haven’t we?”

Ash flashed a look at them, at Godfrey; calming down. “So I have twenty-four hours to decide whether I should wait for the Duke’s verdict, or pack up my stuff in a spotted hanky and start walking…”

The men laughed. Noise came up from the foot of the wall, outside the city. Sixty feet below, a number of her men were swimming in the moat, white limbs flashing as they ducked each other, the camp’s dogs yelping and barking at their bare heels. As she watched, a cocky-tailed white bitch bounded into the air and pushed Euen Huw’s second, Thomas Morgan, off-balance and off the narrow bridge that formed Dijon’s gateway. The sound of the distant splash came up through the hot air.

“There goes Duke Charles.” Ash pointed at a cavalcade of riders moving out of the city gates, riding towards the woods; their brilliant clothes bright against the dust, hawks poised on wrists, musicians walking behind them and playing an air which came distantly up to the walls. Ash leaned her back against the cool stone. “You’d think he’s got nothing to worry about! Well, maybe he hasn’t. Compared to wondering whether he’s going to be handed over to the damn Visigoths in the morning!”

Godfrey Maximillian said, “May I speak with you alone, Captain?”

“Oh, sure, why not?” Ash looked over her shoulder at Euen Huw and Thomas Rochester. “Guys, take five. There was an inn at the bottom of these steps, I saw the bush. I’ll meet you in there.”

Thomas Rochester frowned darkly. “With Visigoths in the city, boss?”

“With half of Charles’s army in the streets.”

The English knight shrugged, exchanged a look with Euen Huw, and strode lightly down the steps from the wall, the Welshman and the others following. Ash had a shrewd idea they would go no further than the foot of the stone steps.

“Well?” She leaned her face up to the slightest of breezes, bringing a dust of chaff golden from the fields. She hooked one knee up, and leaned her elbow on it. Her fingers still faintly trembled, and she looked down at her sword hand in some puzzlement. “What’s bothering you, Godfrey?”

“More news.” The big priest gazed out from the walls, not looking at her. “This ‘father’ of the Faris, Leofric. All I can hear is that this Lord-
Amir
Leofric is one of their least-known nobles, and supposedly resides in Carthage itself, in the Citadel. The rest is just rumours, from unreliable sources. I have no idea what this ‘Stone Golem’ even looks like. Do you?”

Something in his tone bothered her. Ash glanced up. She patted the flat stone between the crenellations invitingly.

Godfrey Maximillian remained standing on the inner wall walkway.

“Sit down,” she said, aloud. “Godfrey, what’s bothering you?”

“I can’t get you better information without a great deal of money. When does Lord Oxford intend to pay us?”

“No, that isn’t it. What, Godfrey?”

“Why is that man still alive!”

His voice boomed, loud enough to momentarily stop the bathers below shouting. Ash startled. She swung around and dangled her legs over the inside of the wall, staring up at him. “Godfrey? Which? Who?”

Godfrey Maximillian repeated, in an intense whisper, “
Why is that man still
alive?
”

“Oh, sweet Christ.” Ash blinked. She rubbed the heel of her hand across one eye-socket. “You mean
Fernando,
don’t you?”

The big, bearded man wiped his sweating face. There were rings of white skin under his eyes.

“Godfrey, what is all this? It was a joke. Or something. I’m not going to murder a man in cold blood, am I?”

He took no notice of this appeal. He began to stride up and down, in short agitated paces, not looking at her. “You are
quite
capable of having him killed!”

“Yes. I am. But why should I? Once they leave, I’ll probably never see him again.” Ash put out a hand to stop Godfrey. He ignored it. The coarse linen of his robe flicked her fingers as he passed. She scented, still, Fernando del Guiz on her skin; and as she breathed in, suddenly looked up at the big bearded man. He’s not old, she thought. I never think of Godfrey as young, but he’s not an old man.

Godfrey Maximillian stopped in front of her. The descending sun put gold light on his face, reddening his beard, showing her something like pain in his creased eyes, but she was not sure if it were merely the brightness.

“One of these days there’ll be a battle,” Ash said, “and I’ll hear I’m a widow. Godfrey, what does it matter?”

“It matters if the Duke hands you over to your husband tomorrow!”

“Lebrija doesn’t have enough men with him to force me to leave here. As for Duke Charles…” Ash gripped her hands over the edge of the stone wall, and pushed herself down on to her feet on the walkway. “Scaring myself shitless tonight won’t tell me what the Duke’s going to decide to do tomorrow! So what does it matter?”

“It matters!”

Ash, studying him with the sunlight on his face, thought
I haven’t looked at you properly since we ran from Basle,
and made a grimace of apology. She noticed now that he had a gaunt look. Just to either side of his mouth, his beard had white hairs among the wiry brown.

“Hey,” she said quietly. “This is me, remember? Tell me about it. Godfrey, what is it?”

“Little one…”

She closed her hand over his. “You’re too good a friend to worry about telling me something bad.” Her eyes flicked up to his face, and her grip froze. “Okay, I wasn’t born of freemen. Technically, I guess somebody in Carthage owns me.”

That made her grin, wryly, but there was no answering smile from Godfrey Maximillian. He stood and stared at her, as if her face was new to him.

“I see.” Ash’s heart thumped, once, and then beat hard and rapid. “It makes a difference to you. Fucking hell, Godfrey! I thought we were all equal in the eyes of God?”

“What would you know about it?” Godfrey sprayed spit across her, suddenly shouting, his eyes wide and bright. “Ash, what would
you
know? You don’t believe in our Lord! You believe in your sword, and your horse, and your men that you pay money to, and your husband that you can get to shove his cock into you! You don’t believe in God or grace and you never have!”

“Wh—” Breath taken away, Ash could only stare.

“I watched you with him! He touched you – you touched him, you
let
him touch you – you
wanted
to—”

“What does it matter to you?” Ash sprang to her feet. “In fact, what business is it of yours? You’re a damn
priest,
what would you know about fucking?”

Godfrey bellowed, “Whore!”

“
Virgin!
”

“Yes!” he snapped. “
Yes.
What other choice have I got?”

Breathing hard, silenced, Ash stood on the flagstone walkway facing Godfrey Maximillian. The big man’s face twisted. He made a noise. Appalled, she watched the tears well out of his eyes; Godfrey crying hard, as a man cries, wrenched deep out of him, deep from the inside. She reached up to touch his wet cheek.

Almost in a whisper, he said monotonously, “I left everything for you. I followed you halfway across Christendom. I’ve loved you since I first saw you. In my soul’s eye I still see you, that first time – in a novice’s robe, with your head shaved, and that Soeur beating your back bloody. A little white-haired scarred brat.”

“Oh, shit, I love you, Godfrey. You know I do.” Ash grabbed both his hands and held them. “You’re my oldest friend. You’re with me every day. I rely on you. You know I love you.”

She held him as if she held a drowning man, gripping him painfully hard, as if the tighter the grip, the more chance she stood of rescuing him from his anguish. Her hands whitened. She shook him, gently, trying to catch his eye.

Godfrey Maximillian reversed the grip and closed his hands around hers.

“I can’t stand to watch you with him.” His voice broke. “I can’t stand having to see you, know that you’re married, you’re one flesh – flesh—”

Ash tugged her hands. They did not come free, trapped in Godfrey’s broad fingers.

“I can bear your casual fornications,” he said. “You confess to me, you’re absolved, it means nothing. And there have been few of them. But the marriage bed – and the way you look at him—”

Ash winced at his grip. “But Fernando—”

“
Fuck
Fernando del Guiz!” Godfrey roared.

Silenced, Ash stared at him.

“I don’t love you as a priest ought.” Godfrey’s bright wet eyes met hers. “I made my vows before I met you. If I could wipe out my ordination, I would. If I could be anything other than celibate, I would.”

Fear thumped in her gut. Ash wrenched her hands free. “I’ve been stupid.”

“I love you as a man does. Oh, Ash.”

“Godfrey—” She stopped, not sure what she would have protested, only that the walls of the world were falling down around her. “Christ, this isn’t a decision I want to take! It’s not like you’re just another priest, I can kick you out, hire another one. You’ve been with me from the beginning – before Roberto, even. Sweet saints. What a time to tell me.”

“I’m not in a state of grace! I say mass every day, when I know that I wish him dead!” Godfrey began to twist his rope belt between his fingers, in agitation.

“You’re my friend, my brother, my father. Godfrey… You know I don’t—” Ash sought for a word.

Godfrey’s face went crooked. “Don’t want me.”

“No! I mean – I don’t want to – I don’t
desire
– oh, shit, Godfrey!” She reached out as he spun around and strode towards the steps. She barked out, “Godfrey!
Godfrey!
”

He was too quick, outpacing her, a big man moving with reckless speed, almost running down the stone steps that clung to the inside of Dijon’s city walls. Ash stopped, staring down at him, a broad-shouldered man in a priest’s robe, pushing his way into the cobbled street, between women with baskets, men-at-arms, dogs running underfoot, children playing at ball.

“Godfrey…”

She noted that Rochester and Huw were indeed not far from the foot of the steps. The small Welshman had a mug of something, and as she watched, Thomas Rochester gave a tavern boy a small coin in exchange for beer and bread.

“Oh,
shit.
Oh, Godfrey…”

Still in two minds whether to go after him, try and find him in the crowd, Ash saw a golden head at the foot of the wall below her.

Her heart stopped. Rochester lifted his head, said something, and waved the man through – a man who, as he began to climb the steps, was not a man at all: was Floria del Guiz, and not her brother.

III

Ash muttered an obscenity under her breath, and stalked back to the crenellations, pulse thumping.

A white ghost of a crescent moon had begun to show against the blue daytime sky, low down towards the west. A wain creaked over the bridge, into Dijon, below Ash: she leaned out to watch it. Golden heads of grain drooped, heavy in their sheaves, and she thought of the watermills on the far side of the city, and the harvest, and the winter conditions of the land not forty miles away.

Floria loped up the last steps to where Ash stood. “Damn fool priest nearly knocked me off the steps! Where’s Godfrey going?”

“I don’t know!”

Seeing the woman’s surprise, Ash bit back the anguish in her tone, and repeated, more calmly, “I don’t know.”

“He’s missed Vespers.”

“Do you want something?” Without stopping to think, Ash added, “Now that you’ve bothered to appear again. What bloody relative are you avoiding
this
time? I had enough of that in Cologne! What the fuck use is a surgeon if she – if
he’s
never here!”

Floria’s elegant brows went up. “I suppose I did think I might approach my Aunt Jeanne cautiously. Since she hasn’t seen me in five years, it might come as something of a shock, even though she knows I dress as a man for travelling.”

The tall, dirty woman shook her head, putting precise sardonic verbal quotation marks around the last words.

“I don’t believe in rubbing people’s noses in things they find difficult.”

Ash glanced deliberately down at herself, and her brigandine, and man’s hose. “And I do rub people’s noses in it, is that what you’re saying?”

“Whoa!” Floria held up her hands. “Okay, I give in, start weapons practice again. For God’s sake go and hit something, it’ll make you feel better!”

Ash laughed shakily. A tension in her relaxed. A breeze ruffled against her face, welcome after the stifling streets. She hitched her sword-belt around, the scabbard having begun to rub against the sides of her leg armour. “You’re happy to be back here, aren’t you? In Burgundy.”

Floria smiled crookedly, and Ash could not make out what lay behind her expression.

“Not exactly,” the surgeon said. “I think your Faris-general is mad as a rabid dog. Being behind one of the world’s best armies seems a good idea to me, if it keeps me away from her. I’m happy enough here.”

“Hey, you’ve got family here.” Ash looked out, away from the walls, at the moon in the western sky; gold now beginning to shade pink on the clouds. She fisted her hands and stretched her arms, the brigandine’s enclosing weight hot and familiar and reassuring on her body. “Not that family are an unmixed blessing… Christ, Florian! So far I’ve had Fernando telling me he wants my beautiful body, Godfrey throwing ructions, and Duke Charles not able to make up his mind if he’s going to hand me back to the Visigoths!”

“If he’s going to
what?
”

“You didn’t hear?” Ash shrugged, turning towards the woman; who leaned, slender in stained doublet and hose, against the grey masonry, her insouciant face alive with questions. “The Faris has sent a delegation here. And, among the minor matters like declaring war and invading us or France, she wants to know if she can please have her bondswoman mercenary commander back.”