Ash: A Secret History (76 page)

“How do
you
speak to it?” she challenged.

“As I speak to you, with my voice,” Leofric said dryly. “But I am in the same room with it, when I do it!”

Ash couldn’t stop herself smiling.

“How does it answer you?”

“With a mechanical voice, heard by the ear. Again: I am in the same room when I hear it. My daughter does not have to be in the same room, the same household, the same continent – this crusade confirms me in my belief that she will never go a distance great enough for her not to hear it.”

“Does it know anything except military answers?”

“It does not
know
anything. It is a golem. It speaks only what I, and others, have taught it. It solves problems, in the field, that is all.”

She swayed on her feet as a wave of lassitude went through her. The Visigoth
amir
gripped her arm above the elbow, through the bloodstained wool. “Come and lie down on the bed. Let us try what you suggest.”

She let him guide her footsteps, all but falling back on to the palliasse. The room swayed around her. She closed her eyes, seeing nothing but darkness for long minutes until the dizziness faded; opening them to the stark white light of the wall lamps, and the soft scritching of the boy-slave on his wax tablet.

Leofric made a gesture, and the child stopped writing.

His voice, beside her, asked quietly, “Who was it first built the Golem?”

Question and answer. She spoke it aloud: had to ask twice, the answering name was unfamiliar to her. She said uncertainly, “The… ‘Rabbi’? Of Prague.”

“And he built it for whom?”

Another question, another response. Ash shut her eyes against the harsh light, straining to hear the inner voice. “‘Radonic’, I think. Yes, Radonic.”

“Who first built the Stone Golem, and why?”

‘
The Rabbi of Prague, under direction of your ancestor Radonic, two hundred years ago, built the first Stone Golem to play him at
shah.’ “—At chess,” Ash corrected herself.

“Who first built machines in Carthage, and why?”

‘
Friar Roger Bacon.
’

“One of ours,” Ash said. She let her voice repeat the sound of the voice in her head: ‘
It is said that Friar Bacon made, in his lodgings at the port Carthage, a Brazen Head, from such metal as might be found in the vicinity. Howbeit, when he had heard what it had to say to him, he burned his devices, his plans, and his lodgings, and fled north to Europe, never to return. Afterwards the new presence of many demons in Carthage were blamed upon this scholar. Geraldus writ this.
’

Leofric’s voice said soothingly, “Many have read much into the Stone Golem’s ears in two hundred years. Try again, dear daughter. Who made the first Stone Golem, and why?”

‘
The
amir
Radonic, beaten in
shah
by this speechless device, grew weary of it, and was much displeased with the Rabbi.
’ “That’s lords for you,” Ash added. She became aware that she was on the edge of hysteria. Dehydration made her head ache, blood-loss made her weak; all of this was enough to account for it. The voice in her head continued: ‘
Radonic, growing weary, caused the stone man to be set aside. Like a good Christian, he doubted the small powers of the Jews to be from the Green Christ, and began to think he may have countenanced demonic works in his household.
’

“More.”

‘
The Rabbi had made this Golem a man in every part, using his semen, and the red mud of Carthage, and shaping it very handsomely. A slave in the household, one Ildico, grew greatly in love with the Golem, for that with its stone limbs and metal jointures it looked most like a man, and bore it a child. This she said was caused by the Wonder-Worker’s intercession, the great Prophet Gundobad appearing to her in a dream and bidding her carry about her person his sacred relic, which was passed down in this slave’s family since Gundobad lived.
’

Ash felt a soft touch. She opened her eyes. Leofric’s fingers stroked her brow, the tips touching skin, dried blood and dirt with complete indifference. She flinched away.

“Gundobad’s your prophet, isn’t he? He cursed the Pope and caused the Empty Chair.”

“Your Pope should not have executed him,” Leofric said gravely, removing his hand, “but I won’t dispute with you, child. Six centuries of history have passed over us, and who can tell what the Wonder-Worker was, now? Ildico believed in him, certainly.”

“A woman who had a baby by a stone statue.” Ash couldn’t keep contempt out of her tone. “Master Leofric, if I were going to read history for a machine to listen to, I wouldn’t tell it this rubbish!”

“And the Green Christ born of a Virgin, and suckled by a Boar; this is ‘rubbish’?”

“For all I know, it is!” She shrugged, as well as was possible lying down on the bed. Her feet were cold. She became aware as Leofric frowned that she had slid into a French-Swiss dialect of her youth, and tried it again in Carthaginian Latin: “Look, I’ve seen as many tiny miracles as the next woman, but all of them could be chance,
fortuna imperatrix,
that’s all…”

With slight emphasis, the Visigoth man said, “What made the
second
Stone Golem and why?”

Ash repeated his words. The voice that moved in the secret places of her mind was no different from the voice that answered when she gave it terrain, troop type, weather conditions, and asked for an ideal solution: the same voice.

‘
Some have written that Ildico, slave, not only preserved a powerful relic of the Prophet Gundobad, but was in direct line of descent from his body, through the generations from the eight hundred and sixteenth year after Our Lord was given to the Tree, to that year of twelve hundred and fifty-three.
’

Leofric repeated his question. “Who made the second golem, and why?”

‘
The eldest son of Radonic, one Sarus, was killed in a battle with the Turks. Radonic then caused to be made a
shah
set in which the pieces were carved, complete to weapons and armour, resembling the troops of the Turks and the troops of his son Sarus. Then he recalled the Golem to his mind, and set about playing
shah
with it, and upon a day in that year, the Golem at last played out the game so that the troops of Sarus moved in a different array and would have defeated the Turks.

‘
Upon this day, also,
Amir
Radonic discovered his slave Ildico bedding the Golem; and he took a wall-builder’s hammer, and he crushed the red mud and brass of the Golem to fragments, so small that no man could have told what it had been. Thereafter, he shut himself up in a tower. And Ildico bore a daughter.

‘
Radonic, thinking upon Sarus his dead son, and upon his sons yet living, came and bade the Rabbi make a second Golem, to replace the one he had destroyed in his wrath. This the Rabbi would not do, although the
Amir
threatened the life of the Rabbi’s two sons. Not until Radonic made plain that he would impale and kill both Ildico and her newborn daughter would the Rabbi relent. Then he builded for
Amir
Radonic another Stone Golem, in a chamber within the house, but this human in seeming only in its upper body and head, thrice the size of a man: the rest being but a clay slab upon which models of men and beasts may be moved. And the brazen mouth of the Golem spoke.
’

Ash curled her body up, swathed in wool. Two or three sentences at a time is nothing, she thought, but
this…
The emotionless recounting of the voice made her tired, dizzy, detached.

‘
Then Radonic killed the Rabbi and his family, in case the Rabbi should make such another shah-player for his enemies, or the enemies of his King-Caliph. And instantly the sun grew dark above him. And the sun darkened above the city of Carthage, and to all the lands ruled by the King-Caliph did the Rabbi’s Curse extend. And so no living eye hath beheld the sun break through the Eternal Twilight, in two hundred years.
’

Ash opened her eyes again, not aware until then that she had shut them, the better to hear her voice. “Jesu! I bet there was panic.”

Leofric said softly, “The then King-Caliph, Eriulf, and his
amirs
held command over their troops, and their troops kept the people quiet.”

“Oh, you can do most things if you can keep a bunch of soldiers taking orders.” Ash pushed herself up in the bed, until she came into contact with the white oak headboard, carved with fluted columns and pomegranates at the posts. She supported herself with an effort against the waxed wood. “This is all legends, I heard this stuff around camp when I was a kid. Legend number three hundred and seven about how the Eternal Twilight came to the south… Am I really telling you what you expect to hear?”

“Prophet Gundobad lived, and his slave daughter Ildico,” Leofric said, “my family histories speak of it very clearly. And my ancestor Radonic certainly executed a Jewish Rabbi, about the year 1250.”

“Then ask me things people won’t have read in your family histories!”

The waxed wood of the bed smelled sweet to her. Her stomach growled. Strung out, watching Leofric’s expression for the minutest changes, she ignored her complaining body.

“Who was Radegunde?”

Ash obediently repeated, “Who was Radegunde?”

‘
The first to speak at a distance to the Stone Golem.
’

She thought, It doesn’t say ‘to me’.

‘
In these first years of crusade, when harvests failed and grain might not be got but by conquest of happier lands under the sun, then King-Caliph Eriulf began his conquests of the Iberian
taifa
states. While
Amir
Radonic fought for King-Caliph Eriulf, he learned from each defeat or victory as he played them out over again with his Stone Golem, after each campaign. The child of Ildico, the girl Radegunde, began in her third year to make statues of men from the red silt sand of Carthage.

‘
The
amir
Radonic, seeing how she resembled the old Rabbi, smiled to think he had been so simple as to think a statue might beget a child upon a woman, and to regret his first Stone Golem’s destruction. So Radegunde might have remained only a slave in the House of Radonic, but that, upon a day, she overheard Radonic’s discussions with his captains, upon the practice field, and bade the
Amir
tell her what tactics he would employ, so that she might engage to speak to her friend the stone man about his plan.

‘
Thinking to make merry, Radonic bid her ask the Stone Golem what it would have him do. Upon this, Radegunde spoke to the air. Then other slaves came running, to report that the Golem began to move the figures set out before it. When the
amir
Radonic arrived in its chamber, the answers to his question were set out plain, as if the Golem had received her childish speech from some demon of the air.

‘
Then Radonic abandoned the way of honour and rightness, and did not slay the child. Radonic adopted Radegunde, taking her with him to Iberia, speaking to her, and through her to the Stone Golem, and the tide of war turned in Eriulf’s favour, so that southern Iberia became the grain-basket of Carthage under the twilight. And at five, she made her first mud statue that moved of its own volition, breaking much in the household, and greatly the child laughed to see this destruction.
’

Ash drew her ankles up to her haunches, under the covering wool gown, and studied Leofric’s expression. It was one of intense concentration.

“Is that Radegunde?” She stumbled over the name.

“Yes. Ask, how did she die?”

“How did Radegunde die?” Ash parroted. The dizziness in her might have had a dozen causes. She suspected a concentration of her mind that felt, somehow, as if she were pulling – a load up a slope – or unravelling something.

‘
In his seasons at home in Carthage, the
amir
Radonic gave orders that Radegunde should be aided to make her new golems, bringing her scholars, engineers, and strange materials all as she desired. In her fifteenth year, God took away her powers of speech, but her mother Ildico communicated for her by signs known to them both. In this year also, upon a day, Radegunde builded a stone man that rent her limb from limb and so she died.
’

Leofric’s voice said, “And what is the secret birth?”

Ash kept her mouth shut, forming no words in her head, but letting an expectation form. An expectation of
being
answered. She let it somehow pull at other, implicit, answers. She said nothing out loud.

The voice began to speak in her head.

‘
Desiring another who should hear the Stone Golem though separated from it by many miles, so that he might continue his war, the
amir
Radonic bred Ildico, in her thirtieth year, to the third golem, which had killed her daughter. This is the secret breeding, and the secret birth her twins, a male child and a girl.
’

She mumbled out loud, too startled at hearing it to keep quiet; muttered a necessary question out loud, in the face of Leofric’s keen stare, over the answer already coming into her head. Then she stumbled over words, getting them out:

‘
The
amir
Radonic desired another such slave, a grown adult, who should communicate with the Stone Golem as Radegunde had, a Janissary general after the manner of the Turks, an
al-shayyid
who should defeat all the petty
taifa
kings of Iberia. The twin children of Ildico could not be brought to do it, no matter the pain inflicted upon them and their mother. Nor could another golem be built. At last, Ildico confessed that she had given Radegunde her holy relic of the Prophet Gundobad, to place it within her last golem, and to make it speak and move as men do. But, at this knowledge, the third golem slew Ildico, and leaped from a high tower, and was dashed to fragments beneath. And this is their secret death: none remaining of the Prophet and Rabbi’s miracle but the second Stone Golem, and Ildico’s children.
’