Ash: A Secret History (69 page)

What I’ve only this minute realised is, just because a document is CLASSIFIED as fiction or myth or legend, THAT DOESN’T MEAN IT’S NOT TRUE.

That simple!

It was something Isobel just said to me – I HAD to tell her I was having problems, I was talking about Vaughan Davies’s theory: she just said, ‘Pierce, what’s all this RUBBISH?’ And then she reminded me –

The archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann (although his methods left much to be desired) found the site of the city of Troy in 1871, by digging EXACTLY WHERE HOMER SAID IT WAS in the ILIAD.

And the ILIAD isn’t a ‘historical document’, it’s a POEM! With gods and goddesses and all the artistic licence of fiction!

It was a thunderstroke! – I still don’t know how I came to miss the re-classification of the Ash documents, but in a very real sense, it doesn’t matter. What matters is, we have physical evidence here at the site that means – WHATEVER some expert has thought about it – the chronicles of Ash’s fifteenth-century actually contain truth. When they mention post-Roman technological ‘golems’, we FIND them. You can’t argue with the evidence.

Truth can be carried down to us through STORY.

It’s all right, Anna. What’s going to happen is, the libraries and the universities will just have to classify the Ash documents BACK to being Non-Fiction.

And Isobel’s expedition and my book will give the incontrovertible evidence of why they must do this.

– Pierce

PART SIX

6 September–7 September AD 1476

‘
Fraxinus me fecit
’

I

She missed the weight of her hair.

Never having cut it, she had not been aware before that it
had
a weight: all the hundreds of fine, silver, yard-long strands.

The winds grew colder as they sailed south.

This isn’t right. This isn’t what Angelotti used to tell me about, when he was under the Eternal Twilight; not this
cold.
It should be getting hotter—

Momentarily, she doesn’t see this ship: sees instead Angelotti, sitting with his back up against the carriage of an organ-gun outside Pisa; hears him say
Women in thin, transparent silk robes – not that
I
care! – and roof-gardens where the heat is reflected in by mirrors; the rich grow vines; one long endless night of wine; and always fireflies. Hotter than this!
And she had breathed the sultry, sweating Italian air, watched the blue-green dots of fireflies swell and die, and dreamed of the hot south.

Freezing spray hit her face.

She had not realised, before, how the weight of her hair was with her every day, in every movement, or how it had kept her warm. Now she felt lightheaded, cold about the neck, and bereft. The soldiers of the King-Caliph had left her no more hair than would cover her ears. The whole silver carpet of it had strewn the dock at – where? Genoa? Marseilles? – cut, and trodden into the mud as she was carried aboard, semi-conscious.

Ash flexed her left knee, secretly. A stab of pain went through the joint. She nipped her lip between her teeth, not crying out, and continued the exercise.

The prow of the boat dipped, thudding into the cold waves of the Mediterranean Sea. Salt crusted her lips, stiffened her cropped hair. Ash gripped the stern-rail, rocking with the motion, and stared back, north, away from the lands of the Caliph. A diminishing wake of silver marked their passage on the sea: the reflection of a crescent moon, cleft by their passing.

Two sailors pushed past her, going to the heads. Ash shifted her body. Her left leg would almost support her full weight now.

What happened?

Her nails dug into the wood of the ship’s rail.

What’s
happened
– to Robert, and Geraint, and Angelotti? What’s happened to Florian, and Godfrey in Dijon? Is Dijon even standing? Fuck, fuck,
fuck!

Frustrated, she slammed her hand down on the grained wood. Wind whucked the sails above her head. Nausea threatened to overcome her again.
I am tired of feeling sick every damn day!

Stomach empty, light-headed since the wound to her head had been freshly broken open, she still knew from experience that – despite in the past breaking her ribs, her shinbone, and almost all the fingers on her left hand at one time or another – the most dangerous injury she ever had received had been the
nazir
’s tap with a mace to her knee. The most dangerous because the most likely to disable. Knee joints don’t move that way.

Better, now, than it had been some days ago?

Yes,
she concluded tentatively.
Yes…

Ash turned her head, gazing down the well of the ship, past the rowers. The
nazir
who had given the blow, one Theudibert, grinned back at her. A sharp word from the commander of the prisoners‘ escort squad, ’
Arif
Alderic, recalled him to his duties; which as far as she could see only involved Theudibert in seeing that she did not throw herself overboard, or get herself raped and killed by the ship’s crew – ‘raped’ is probably permissible, she thought, ‘killed’ will get Theudibert into trouble – and otherwise entertain himself until the ship made landfall.

As well, the Visigoth soldier kept her away from the other prisoners aboard. Ash had barely got a word with one or two of them – four women and sixteen men, most of whom were Auxonne merchants by their dress, except for a man who was obviously a soldier, and two old women who looked like swine-herds or chaff-gatherers; no one who could be worth the cost of bringing across the Mediterranean, even as slave labour.

Carthage. It
has
to be Carthage.
¹

I never heard any voice. I don’t know what you mean.
I never heard any voice!

She glimpsed something ahead, between the lateen sail and the prow, but could not make out enough in the darkness to know if it were land or clouds again. Above, constellations still indicated they sailed south-east.

Ten days? No, fourteen, fifteen, maybe more. Christ, Green Christ,
de profundis,
what’s
happened
since they took me?
Who won the field?

A tread on the deck alerted her. She looked up. ’
Arif
-commander Alderic and one of his men approached, the man carrying a bowl of something viscous, white and gruel-like.

“Eat,” the bearded dark Visigoth ’
arif
ordered. He appeared to be forty or so: a large man.

It had been five days after the battle before her raw, ragged voice came back, and she was able to whisper. Now she could speak normally, apart from her chattering teeth in the cold.

“Not until you tell me where we’re bound. And what’s happened to my troops.”

It was no great effort to decide on a hunger strike, Ash thought, when it was impossible to keep food down.
But I shall have to eat, or I’ll be too weak to escape.

Alderic frowned, more in puzzlement than anger. “I was particularly instructed on that point, not to tell you. Come: eat.”

She visualised herself through his eyes – a thin lanky woman with the broad shoulders of a swimmer.
²
Cropped silver-fair hair: scalp still clotted bloody where her head had bled ten or fifteen days ago. A woman, but a woman in nothing more than a linen shirt and braies; shivering, dirty, and stinking; and red with lice- and flea-bites. Bandaged at the knee and shoulder. Easy to underestimate?

“Did you serve with the Faris?” Ash asked.

The ’
arif
took the bowl that his foot-soldier held, motioning the man away with a jerk of one hand. He remained silent. He held it out, with an expression of determination.

Ash took the wooden bowl and scooped up crushed-barley gruel in her filthy fingers. She took a mouthful, swallowed, and waited. Her stomach lurched, but kept it. She licked her fingers, revolted by the bland lack of taste. “Well?”

“Yes, I served with our Faris.” ’
Arif
Alderic watched her eat. An expression of amusement crossed his face at the speed of it, now she was able to eat without throwing up. “In your lands, and in Iberia, these past six years, where she fought in the
Reconquista
– taking Iberia back from the Bretons and Navarrese.”
³

“She good?”

“Yes.” Alderic’s amusement deepened. “Praise God, and praise her Stone Golem, she is very good indeed.”

“She win, at Auxonne?”

Alderic began to speak.
Got him!
she thought. But within a fraction of a second the commander recalled himself and shook his head.

“My instructions are strict. You are to be told nothing. It was no inconvenience, while you were ill. Now you have recovered, somewhat, I feel it…” ’
Arif
Alderic appeared to be searching for a word. “Discourteous.”

“They want me softened up, before they talk to me. I’d do exactly the same thing.”

Ash watched him carefully not ask her who
they
might be.

“Okay.” She sighed. “I give up. You’re not going to tell me anything. I can wait. How long before we dock at Carthage?”

The man’s brows rose up, with perfect timing. The ’
arif
Alderic inclined his head, politely, and said nothing.

Her stomach churned. Ash, with deliberation, leaned out over the leeward rail, and threw up what she had just eaten. It was not policy. Dread and pity mixed in her gut, fearful that she might hear of Dijon fallen, Charles dead – but who cares about a bloody Duke of Burgundy? – and worse, the Lion Azure in the front line, rolled up, broken, burned, crushed; all the faces she knows cold and white and dead on the earth in some southern corner of the Duchy. She gagged, threw up nothing but bile, and leaned back, holding on to the rail to keep herself upright.

“Is your general dead?” she asked suddenly.

Alderic started. “The Faris? No.”

“Then the Burgundians lost the field.
Didn’t
they?” Ash fixed her gaze on him, stating speculation as certainty: “She wouldn’t be alive if we’d won. It’s two weeks, what can it
matter
if you tell me?
What happened to my people?
”

“I’m sorry.” Alderic gripped her arm and lowered her down on to the deck, out of the way of sailors’ running feet. The deck heaved up under her: she swallowed. Alderic gazed back at the steersman and the stern, where the ship’s captain stood. Ash heard something called, but could not distinguish what.

“I am sorry,” Alderic repeated. “I’ve commanded loyal men, I know how badly you need to hear news of yours. I am forbidden from telling you, on pain of my own death—”

“Well,
fuck
King-Caliph Theodoric!” Ash muttered to herself.

“—and in any case, I do not know.” The ’
arif
Alderic looked down at her. She saw him note, by a glance, where the
nazir
Theudibert was, and if he was in earshot or not. Not. “I don’t know your liveries, nor what part of the field you fought, and in any case I was with my own men, keeping the road to the north clear of the reinforcements from Bruges.”

“Reinforcements!”

“A force of some four thousand. My
amir
’s cousin, Lord Sisnandus, defeated them; I think in the early hours before you joined battle at Auxonne. Now: enough. Sit there, be silent.
Nazir
!” Alderic straightened. As Corporal Theudibert ran up, Alderic ordered, “Keep your men with you, and guard this woman. Never mind the other prisoners. Don’t let
her
escape while we dock.”

“No, ’
Arif!
” Theudibert touched his hand to his heart.

Ash, hardly listening, found herself sitting on the deck that throbbed to the rowers’ change of beat, surrounded by the legs of armed men in mail shirts and white robes.

Reinforcements! What
else
didn’t Charles tell us? Hell, we’re not mercenaries, we’re mushrooms – kept in the dark and fed on horse-shit…

It was the kind of remark she could have made to Robert Anselm. Tears pricked at her eyes.

Above, the night sky darkened, familiar stars fading with moon-set. She prayed, by habit and almost without realising it:
By the Lion – let me see dawn, let the sun come up!

A settled blackness lay across the world.

The wind bit cold, sieving through her old linen shirt as if she wore nothing. Her teeth began to chatter.
But Angeli told me how
hot
it is, under the Eternal Twilight!
Voices shouted, lanterns were lit – a hundred iron lanterns, strung from every rail and all up the mast. Decked out with yellow flames, the ship sailed on; sailed until Ash heard muttering among the soldiers and scrambled to her feet, knee paining sharply, and stood, soldiers’ hands gripping her arms, and saw, for the first time that she remembered, the coast of North Africa.

The last moonlight marked out the lifting swell. A black blob, darker than the sea and sky, must be land. Low. Headlands? The deck jerked under her as they tacked and came around on a different course. Hours? Minutes? She grew cold as ice in their imprisoning hands, and the indistinct land drew closer. She smelled the liminal odour of dying weed, scavenged corpses of fish and bird excrement that is the smell of coasts. The lift and fall of the deck lessened: wood rang and rattled as the sails came down, and more oars dug into the water. Spray hit her numb skin.

A congerie of lanterns shone across the waves – the sea calmer now: she thought
Are we sheltered? Is there an isthmus?
– and became an approaching ship. No – ships.

Something in the first vessel’s movement took her eye: a snaking, irregular motion. She clenched her arms across her breasts, against the cold, and stared tear-eyed into the wind. The foreign ship beat up towards them, indistinct; was suddenly twenty yards away, clear in its lanterns and their own – a sharp-prowed, long, thin,
curving
vessel; sides slabbed with wood and some bright substance.