Ash: A Secret History (68 page)

  Message: #155 (Anna Longman)

Subject: Ash, archaeological discoveries

Date:    18/11/00 at 10.00 a.m.

From:    Ngrant@

Anna –

I think that you may just have tried to mail me and failed.

To answer points I anticipate you may be asking about the last section: no, I can find no other historical mention of a battle at Auxonne on or around 21 August 1476 – although Ash’s narrative does bear some resemblance to what we know of a battle fought
on
22 August 1485. That date, of course, refers to Bosworth field, which put an end to the Plantagenet Kings in England. And something very like the remarkable occurrence with the arrows is documented earlier, on 29 March 1461, at Towton in England, with the Lancastrians ‘not perfectly viewing the distance between them and their enemies’ by reason of driving snow and wind; therefore losing that ‘Palmsunday field’ (and England) to the Yorkists.

Again, Charles Mallory Maximillian footnotes this, in his 1890s edition, as being one more case where the ‘Ash’ documents have been fleshed out by her contemporaries (especially Del Guiz, writing in the early 1500s) with details of their own famous battles.

I feel that this no longer answers the case.

I cannot reconcile what we have here – two opposing sets of evidence. Manuscripts which are apparently (now) fictional; archaeological relics which are evidently, physically, real. I am advising Isobel on fifteenth-century Europe, I am working on my translation, but all I can do, really, is think. How do I explain this? What theory would account for this?

I don’t have one. Perhaps when Ash referred to the sun going out as a ‘black miracle’, I should have listened to her! I am starting to think that only a miracle is going to give me the explanation we need.

– Pierce

  Message: #95 (Pierce Ratcliff)

Subject: Ash

Date:    18/11/00 at 11.09 a.m.

From:    Longman@

Pierce –

I have no idea why we’ve got a conflict of evidence, either; and I have to talk to my MD about it. It isn’t just my job and your career. We can’t publish a book that we know to be academically fraudulent – no, wait, don’t panic! – and we can’t NOT publish one with something as mind-boggling as a fifteenth-century Carthaginian golem backing it up.

Reading your last mailing, I start wondering what your Vaughan Davies would say – maybe not that the resemblance of Auxonne to Bosworth Field is a case of historical Chinese whispers, but that it’s an echo of his idealised alternate-history ‘Lost Burgundy’. That’s poetic, and it got me thinking, because he was a scientist as well as a writer. Maybe it’s NOT a poetic thought, maybe it’s a scientific one.

A friend of mine, Nadia, said something very interesting to me. I’ve been reading up on this: we were talking about the theory you mentioned – that there are an infinite number of parallel universes created every second, in which every possible different choice or decision at any given moment gives rise to another different ‘branch’, etc. (I really only know it from novels, and popular-science books.)

What Nadia says is, it isn’t the lost chances she regrets – whether you drove down a different road and avoided an accident, and so on – but the fact that, if this infinite-number-of-universes theory is true, she can never lead a moral existence.

She says, if she chooses not to knock down and rob an old lady in the street, then the very act of refusing to do this gives rise to a parallel universe in which she DOES do it. It is not possible NOT to do things.

I’m not suggesting you’ve accessed a parallel universe or alternate history – I’m not THAT desperate – but it does make Davies sound less of a mental case if his theory was based in scientific speculation. I was thinking, if we COULD find the rest of his Introduction, maybe it has a perfectly sensible SCIENTIFIC explanation, which would help us now? Even science circa 1939 would be SOMETHING.

– Anna

  Message: #156 (Anna Longman)

Subject: Ash

Date:    18/11/00 at 11.20 a.m.

From:    Ngrant@

Anna –

Your Nadia’s point is philosophically interesting, but not the case, according to what I understand of our physicists. (Which is purely a layman’s understanding, I assure you.)

If what the current evidence seems to point to is correct, then we are not faced with an infinite number of possible universes, but only an infinite number of possible FUTURES, which collapse into one concrete and real present moment: the NOW. Which then becomes one concrete and single PAST.

So your friend chooses not to knock down her old lady, and that state of NOT having done it is what becomes the unchangeable past. It is only in the moment of transition from potential to actual that a choice is made. So it is possible not to do things.

Sorry: raise a philosophical hare with an academic and he will always chase it! To change animals and mix metaphors: let us return to our sheep –

I would take help from ANYONE at the moment, including a scientific theory of the Thirties about parallel universes! I’ve tried extensively to find Vaughan Davies’s book, though, and failed; and I don’t think I can do much about that sitting in a tent outside Tunis.

I want to try these last few weeks out on my colleagues, in detail, and on Isobel’s scientist friends, and see if they can come up with any theories. I don’t dare do it now. It would bring unwanted attention to the site, here; it would cause Isobel a great deal of distress – and, to be honest, it would finish my chances of being the first man to translate FRAXINUS. I know this is venal, but chances of spectacular success come only rarely; something you will discover as you get older.

Maybe we could do it in a month or so? Start asking around, among experts, getting some REAL answers? That would still be before publication date.

– Pierce

  Message: #96 (Pierce Ratcliff)

Subject: Ash

Date:    18/11/00 at 11.37 a.m.

From:    Longman@

Pierce –

But not before copy-editing, and printing! Pierce, what are you trying to do to me!

Suppose we say Christmas? If this problem hasn’t resolved itself, or we haven’t at least found out what it is, by then – then I’ll have to go to Jonathan.

First week of January at the LATEST.

– Anna

  Message: #157 (Anna Longman)

Subject: Ash, texts

Date:    18/11/00 at 04 18 p.m.

From:    Ngrant@

Anna –

Very well. I agree. We raise no alarm before the first week in January. Although, if we haven’t arrived at an answer before then – it’s all of seven weeks away! – I will most probably have gone mad. But then I’ll hardly have to worry about anything if I’m mad, will I!

John Monkham just came by. The photos of the golem-are splendid, beyond belief. I’m sorry you won’t be able to copy or keep them; Isobel becomes more security conscious with every hour that passes. I think if John wasn’t her son, she wouldn’t be letting HIM take them off-site.

I’ve had a morning to polish my translation. Here it is at last, Anna. ‘Fraxinus’, as promised. Or at least, the first section of it. Sorry I have only had time to do the bare minimum of footnotes.

– Pierce

  Message: #163 (Anna Longman)

Subject: Ash

Date:    19/11/00 at 09.51 a.m.

From:    Ngrant@

Anna –

I’ve GOT it.

I’ve got the ANSWER.

I was right, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. We’ve been being too complicated, that’s all; complicating things unnecessarily! It’s so simple. No need to concern ourselves with Davies’s theory, whatever it may have been; no need to worry about what the British Library catalogue says!