Ash: A Secret History (58 page)

Ash, under her breath and without realising it, said, “Oh fuck.”

“God be my witness,” Mademoiselle Châlon shouted, “she is my niece, and my shame.”

Floria del Guiz smiled, tautly. In an absent-minded voice, she said, “I remember that, after Lizette, you threatened to lock me up in a nunnery. I always thought that had a certain lack of logic about it. Thank you, Aunt. Where would I be without you?”

There was already a rumble of comment from the men-at-arms. Ash swore, violently, under her breath, spitting out the obscenity. “Okay, form up, we’re out of here. Come
on.
”

The men clustered in a group around Florian and Jeanne Châlon, who stood face to face, as if no one else in the world existed. The shadows of doves from a nearby cot flickered over them. The rumble of mills was the only sound in the quiet.

“Where
would
I be?” Florian repeated. She still held the flask of wine that Simon had brought, and she lifted it and drank, absently, gulping the liquid down and wiping her sleeve across her mouth. “You drove me out. It’s hard trying to pass as a man, train with men. I would have come home from Salerno in the first week, if I’d had a home to come back to. But I didn’t, and so I’m a surgeon. You made me what I am,
Tante.
”

“The Devil made you.” Very coldly, into the silence, Jeanne Châlon said, “You lay with that girl Lizette as if you were a man.”

Ash saw identical expressions of shock on the faces of the men-at-arms; and on Thomas Rochester’s face, an awed, superstitious disgust.

“I could have had you burned,” the old woman said. “I held you in my arms when you were a baby. I prayed I would never see you again. Why have you come back? Why couldn’t you stay away!”

“Something—” Florian’s voice thinned, losing its husky depth. “—something I have always needed to ask you, Aunt. You paid to have me freed by the Abbot of Rome, when he would have burned me because I had a Jewish lover. Tante, could you have bought her, too? Could you have paid him for Esther’s life?”

The men’s faces turned to Jeanne Châlon.

“I could have, but I would not! She was a Jewess!” The fat woman sweltered, dragging her kirtle and shift around her, treading her purse unnoticed under her feet. She shifted her gaze away from Florian del Guiz, as if for the first time aware that she had an audience.

“She was a Jewess!” Jeanne Châlon repeated, in high-voiced protest.

“Well… I’ve been to Paris, and Constantinople, and Bokhara, and Iberia, and Alexandria.” Florian’s voice held a hopeless, vitiated contempt: Ash suddenly realised, seeing the surgeon’s face, that she had held long hopes of this occasion, and of it being different to this. “I’ve met nobody I despise as I despise you,
Aunt.
”

The Burgundian woman shrieked, “And
she
dressed as a man, too!”

“So does boss,” Thomas Rochester growled, “and nobody’s fucking burning her.”

Ash felt the balance in the air, the moment which can be crystallised. They don’t know
what
to think: Florian’s a woman – but this Châlon bitch isn’t one of us—

She caught Ricau signalling. A number of Dijonnais turned into the narrow street: millworkers, on their way home.

The woman shrieked, “Philippe should never have fathered you! My brother suffers in Purgatory for that sin!”

Floria del Guiz pivoted on her foot, brought her fist through, and punched Jeanne Châlon in the face.

Rochester, Euen Huw, Katherine, and young Simon spontaneously cheered.

Mademoiselle Châlon fell down, shrieking, “
Au secours!
”

“Okay,” Ash called deliberately, her eyes on the approaching citizens of Dijon, “time to go: let’s get our surgeon out of here.”

There was no hesitation: all the men-at-arms closed in around Florian, hands on sword-hilts or gripping bill-shafts, and began a fast walk towards the end of the street and the city gate that had the citizens of Dijon leaping back out of their way.

“If anybody asks,” Ash bent down to Jeanne Châlon, “my surgeon’s under arrest, by my provosts, and I’m dealing with her discipline myself.”

Oblivious, the old woman sobbed, bloody hands over her mouth.

Running in the wake of her men-at-arms, Ash glanced up at the evening sun over the roofs of Dijon, and had time to think
Why did we ever come to Burgundy?

And what is the Duke going to say to me now?

IV

“Why is it,” Ash said under her breath, “that when the brown and sticky hits the fan, I’m always standing real close by?”
⁷

Thomas Rochester shrugged. “Just lucky, boss, I guess…”

Among subdued laughter, Ash strode on across the common ground beside the silent Florian del Guiz. Above, in the airy emptiness, colour drained slowly from the atmosphere. Behind them, the gable roofs of Dijon lay limned with gold, the white dots of Orion and Cassiopeia beginning to pattern the milk-blue sky.

Crows and rooks squabbled on the camp middens as they approached the wagon-perimeter; the carrion-eaters flapping up, black pinions outspread.

“Don’t leave the camp, master surgeon,” Ash ordered calmly, “under any circumstances.”

The lowering sun coloured Florian’s blue doublet and hose with warmth, turned her hair red-gold. The woman raised her dirty face as she walked, staring up, her arms folded around her body. Her eyes reflected the empty sky.

“Don’t sweat.” Ash slapped the surgeon’s shoulder. “If the town militia turn up,
I’ll
deal with it. Stay in the surgeon’s tent tonight.”

The woman’s head lowered. Now she watched her bare feet, treading down the sharp-edged dry grass. She didn’t look at the men-at-arms.

The men and women of the escort walked, talking quietly among themselves, weapons slung over shoulders, left hands going down to steady scabbards. Ash heard comments about the vast encampment that was the Burgundian army, arrangements for off-duty drinking with acquaintances from other campaigns now with the Burgundian mercenaries – nothing at all about their surgeon.

She made her decision.

No. I’m not going to say anything. Give it a few hours – tomorrow – and depending on what Charles of Burgundy says, we may have bigger problems than our surgeon being a woman…

The city walls lay in shadow now, only the topmost roofs gilded with sharp-edged red light. Dew dampened that masonry, and dampened the straw here, underfoot, spread outside the camp. An ox still out in the fields lowed, and a pack of dogs ran yelping and barking. Welcome coolness came into the air with sunset.

At the gates, where the straw was trodden down flat by hundreds of passing feet, a hubbub of voices and a crowd of men in Lion livery drew her attention. They stood red-faced and grinning, and parted to let her through with a suppressed excitement: a scowl for the provosts, and several grins for her.

With a resigned sigh, she said, “What is it this time?”

Two young men of about fifteen, all legs, and baby-fat burning down to muscle and youthful energy, were shuffled to the front of the crowd. Both were fair-haired, brothers by their faces; and she recognised them as men of Euen Huw’s lance.

“Tydder,” she said, bringing the name to mind.

One of the boys muttered, “Boss—”

His brother slammed an elbow into the other’s bare ribs. “Shut up, you!”

Both of them had their shirts and pourpoints rolled down to the waist, chests bare and burning red, and everything more or less held up with their dagger-belts. Ash was about to snarl something when she noticed that the bundle of cloth around one of the waists was thicker. She pointed silently.

The young soldier unwrapped the cloth and shook it out. A quartered rectangular flag of blue and red, about two yards across, flopped down from his big hands. Ash found herself looking at two ravens and two crosses.

There was a rise in the noise around her, someone laughed; the anticipation all but tangible.

“That,” Ash said, with no intention of disappointing them, “wouldn’t happen to be a personal banner, would it?”

The brother holding the flag nodded rapidly. The other brother grinned, ferociously.

“Cola de Monforte’s personal banner?” she queried.

“You got it, boss!” a third brother squeaked, flushing at his voice.

Ash began to grin.

Behind her, Floria suddenly broke her silence. “Christ on a stick! How are you going to explain this one?”

Her appalled expression made Ash burst out laughing.

“Oh, I’m not going to explain it,” she said cheerfully. “I don’t have to. In fact … you two – Mark and Thomas, isn’t it? And young Simon. Now: Euen Huw… Carracci, Thomas Rochester … and Huw’s lance—” Ash pointed at a dozen or more men. “I suggest you wrap this banner up very neatly, and you take it over to the gate of the Monforte camp, and you present it to Master Cola – in person – with our compliments.”

“They do
what?
” Floria exclaimed.

“It can be really embarrassing to lose your personal banner. If we just
happened
to find it lying around,” Ash emphasised, “and took it back to them, in case they were worried about it—”

Laughter drowned her out.

Under cover of the lances sorting themselves out, finding armour to wear up to the Monforte mercenary camp, and girding on their most impressive weapons, Floria del Guiz asked, “And just how did we come by that banner?”

“No point me asking.” Ash shook her head, still grinning. “Remind me to tell Geraint to double the perimeter guard. And double the guard on the Lion standard. I feel there’s going to be a lot of this—”

“—this crap!” Floria snarled. “Complete waste of time! Boys’ games!”

Ash watched Ludmilla Rostovnaya and her lance-mate Katherine shouldering arquebuses to form part of the impromptu honour guard, some two dozen strong, moving off across the river meadows in the direction of the Burgundian mercenary camps.

“If they want to play at flag-stealing, I’m going to let them. Either Duke Charles will fund the raid, or he’ll call for war. Either way, in a few days’ time, they could be in your surgeon’s tent. Or buried. And they know it.” She twinkled at Florian. “Hell, you think this is bad, you’ve seen what they’re like
after
they’ve won a fight…!”

The woman looked as though she might have said something, but a hail from the surgeon’s tent – one of her assistants, a deacon – took her attention, and she nodded abruptly at Ash and walked off.

Ash let her go.

“If the town militia turn up here,” she said to the captain on the gate, “you send for me at once. And you don’t let them in, got that?”

“Sure, boss. We in trouble again?”

“You’ll hear about it. In this camp, everybody hears everything…”

The captain of the gate-guard, a big Breton man with ploughman’s shoulders, said, “Yeah, we might as well live in a fucking village.”

I wonder which you’ll find most scandalous – that the Duke’s lawyers think the Visigoths own me, or that your pox-doctor is a woman?

“’Night, Jean.”

“’Night, boss.”

Ash strode off towards the command tent, her bodyguard-escort dispersing now they were inside the camp, half a dozen mastiffs jumping and yelping around her. Geraint ab Morgan came for passwords for the night guards, Angelotti notifying repairs ongoing with guns (the organ-gun
Barbara’s Revenge
having cracked her shaft), Henri Brant needing money from the war-chest; all this within a few yards, so that it was a full half-hour before she got to the tent, took one look at the busy confusion inside her pavilion – Bertrand sulkily rolling her leg armour in a barrel of sand to clean it, under Rickard’s impatient direction – and sniffed at her armpits as they removed her brigandine, turned command over to Anselm, whistled up the dogs, and went down to the river to swim in the last of the light, Rickard accompanying her.

“It’s not like I have to
worry
about Florian.” She buried both hands in the scruffs of mastiff-necks, feeling their warmth, smelling the dog-smell. “Anyone who objects to serving with women – doesn’t sign up with me. Do they?”

Rickard looked confused. The powerful dog Bonniau snuffled.

Reaching the river bank, she stripped off hose and doublet as one (still pointed together at the waist) and her yellowing linen shirt, wringing wet with sweat. The mastiffs settled on the banks, heavy heads resting on their paws, one brindled bitch – Brifault – curling up on Ash’s discarded, sweat-soaked shirt, doublet and hose, and shoes.

“Got my sling,” Rickard offered.

Neither fox, polecat nor rat was safe near company refuse, Ash was well aware; her own lance’s fox-tail came from one of Rickard’s kills.

“I want you here with the dogs. Even if we are inside the camp.”

Ash waded out, and threw herself in. The cold water grabbed her, shocked her skin, pulled her downstream. Gasping, grinning, she stood up and plodded back to the shallow eddy, thick with flag-irises, where the river cut a bow in the bank.

“Boss?” Rickard’s voice said, among the mastiffs.

“Yeah?” She ducked her head under the surface. The weight of her wet hair swirled with the current. Standing up, the wet mass of it clung to her from head to knees, glinting palely in the sunset light. She scratched at sunburn and skin-rash. “You know, if I didn’t take the time out to eat, wash, or sleep, this camp would function perfectly … what is it?”

His features could not be seen in the fading light. His boy’s voice was abrupt. “I can hear a noise.”

Ash frowned. “Leash the dogs.”

She walked up to the bank, legs lead-heavy, and put her wet hair back from her ears. The usual noise from the campfires, and the sound of men drinking, echoed across the river valley.

“What did you hear?” She reached out for her shirt and began to scrub her skin dry.

“That!”

“Shit!” Ash swore, as a shout went up, from in the camp. Not men getting drunk, and fighting: too raw for that. She struggled into her clothes without drying herself off, the cloth sticking to her skin, and grabbed her sword and buckled it round her waist while she walked, and took the mastiffs’ leashes from Rickard as he sprinted after her.