Ash: A Secret History (91 page)

At the foot of the steps he stopped, made a shallow bow, and began to turn away.

“Our lord Leofric.” The King-Caliph Gelimer leaned forward, seated on his throne. “I accept your fealty and your honour. Why, then, have you brought an abomination into the House of God? Why is there a woman with your household?”

Oh, shit.
Ash’s gut thumped. I know a put-up question when I hear one. There’s the formal excuse for an execution, if Leofric doesn’t speak for me. Now—

Leofric, with every appearance of calm, said, “It is not a woman, my King. It is a slave, my gift to you. You have seen her before. She is Ash, another warrior-general who hears the voice of the Stone Golem, and so may fight for you, my King, upon your crusade now ending in the north.”

Ash picked up
now ending,
so obsessed for a second, debating,
Is the war in
Burgundy over? Is this just flattery, for Gelimer?
that she did not realise Gelimer had begun to speak again.

“We will continue our crusade. Some few heretic towns – Bruges, Dijon – yet remain to be taken.” Gelimer’s pinched face moved into a smile. “Not enough, Leofric, that we need subject ourselves to the danger of another general who hears battle commands from a Stone Golem. Your first we will not recall,-since she proves useful, but to have another – no. We may come to rely on her, and she may fail.”

“Her sister has not.” Leofric bowed his head. “This is that Captain Ash who took the Lancastrian standard at Tewkesbury, in the English wars, when she was not yet thirteen years of age. She led the spearmen from the wood, on to Bloody Meadow.
¹¹
She has been tested upon many fields, since. If I give her a company of my men, Lord King, she will prove helpful to the crusade.”

Gelimer slowly shook his head. “If she is such a prodigy… Great generals grow dangerous to kings. Such generals weaken the realm, they make confusion in the minds of the people as to who is the rightful ruler. You have bred a dangerous beast here. For this reason, and for many others, we have decreed that your second general shall not live.”

The sleet fell down more slowly, now, from the Mouth of God; white flecks floating upon the air.

“I had thought you might use her as a condottiere, my King. We have used such before.”

“You had thought also to make an investigation upon the flesh of this woman. Do it. She is your gift to me. Do it. You may thus ease our mind about your other ‘daughter’. Perhaps, then,
she
will be allowed to retire, alive, when this war is ended.”

Ash registered the flick of deliberate malice in King-Caliph Gelimer’s voice. She thought, This isn’t personal. Not on the strength of one insult. Not on his coronation day. Too petty. This isn’t aimed at
me,
any of it.

Leofric’s the target, and I think this is the end of a long campaign.

She sensed Gaiseric and Theudibert shifting fractionally back, on their knees, leaving her isolated in the front row of Leofric’s household. Godfrey Maximillian’s bulk remained, solidly, at her shoulder; blocking any movement behind her.

The lord-
amir
Leofric put his hands to his belt buckle, where its long leather tongue hung down, ornamented with golden studs in the shape of notched wheels. She could see only his profile, not enough to guess if his façade of calm had cracked.

“My King, it has taken two centuries to breed two women who can do this.”

“One was sufficient. Our
Reconquista
of Iberia is complete, and soon we shall have completed our crusade in the north: we do
not,
” the King-Caliph Gelimer said deliberately, “we do not need your generals, or this … gift.”

I don’t believe this.

Disbelief burned in her, false and familiar; the same disbelief that she sees in men’s eyes when they take a final wound from her, staring at cut flesh, slashed gut, white bone:
this cannot be happening to me!

Ash started to rise. Theudibert and Gaiseric grabbed her shoulders. Apparently unconscious of the movement, the lord-
amir
Leofric gazed at the men of the King’s household, surrounding the throne, and back at Gelimer. Ash caught sight of Fernando, between two German men-at-arms, his chin scraped clean and his eyes reddened. Beside King-Caliph Gelimer, a fat robed man bending to speak into the royal ear.

Leofric said mildly, as if nothing at all had been decided, “Our Prophet Gundobad wrote: the wise man does not eat his seed corn, he saves it so that he will have a harvest the following year. Abbot Muthari may have the Latin of it, but it is perfectly plain. You may need both my daughters in the years to come.”

Gelimer snapped, “
You
need them, Leofric. What are
you,
without your stone machines, and your visionary daughters?”

“My King—”

“Yes.
I
am your King. Not Theodoric, Theodoric is dead, and your place of favour died with him!”

A low, startled buzz of voices sounded. Someone blew the beginning of a clarion call. It cut off abruptly. This isn’t part of the ceremony, Ash realised. She shivered, where she knelt.

Gelimer stood up, both his hands gripping the royal staff of ivory that he had been clasping across his lap. “I will have no over-mighty subjects in my court! Leofric, she
will
die! You will oversee it!”

“I am no over-mighty subject.”

“Then you will do my will!”

“Always, my King.” Leofric inhaled deeply, his face impassive in the shivering lights of the candles. He looked gaunt. There was no reading his expression, not after sixty years spent in the courts of the King-Caliph.

Ash let her field of vision expand, widening focus as one does in battle, to be aware of the soldiers beside her, the blocked aisles out of the building, Fernando’s aghast face, the packed crowds around the throne, the archway half a bow-shot behind her. No chance of reaching it, through the soldiers. No chance that – heart in her throat, sweating, fear beginning to push her to some stupid final act – no chance that she would not try for it.

The voice of a very young man, very nervous, sounded in the silence. “My lord King-Caliph, she isn’t a slave, she isn’t Lord-
Amir
Leofric’s property. She’s freeborn. By virtue of marrying me.”

Godfrey Maximillian, behind her, said, “God on the Tree!”

Ash stared across at Fernando del Guiz. He returned her gaze hesitantly, a young German knight in a foreign court, bright in steel and gilded spurs; whispers going on all around him – the whole matter of the treatment of Visigoth-conquered territory brought up into public domain again by his ingenuous words.

Ash, her knees hurting her, climbed to her feet.

For one moment, she made eye-contact with Fernando. His clean, shaven, fair-haired appearance was altered now; dark colour under his eyes, and new lines around his mouth. He gave her a look that was rueful; half-apologetic, the other half sheer terror.

“It’s true.” Ash hugged her cloak around her shoulders, her eyes wet, her smile ironic. “That’s my husband, Fernando.”

Gelimer snorted. “Leofric, is this turn-coat German yours, or ours? We forget.”

“He is nothing, Lord King.”

A gloved, thin hand closed on Ash’s arm. She startled. The lord-
amir
Leofric’s grip tightened, the gold of his rings biting into her even through cloak and doublet.

Still formal, Leofric persisted, “My King, you will have heard, as I have heard, how this young woman has won much fame as a military commander in Italy and Burgundy and England. How much better, then, that she should fight for you. What could better prove your right to rule over the north, than that their own commanders fight for the King-Caliph?”

Close enough to him now. Ash saw Gelimer nip his lower lip between his teeth; a momentary gesture that made the man look no older than Fernando del Guiz.
How in Christ’s name did he get to be elected Caliph? Of course. Some men are better at gaining power than holding on to it…

Leofric’s inoffensive, soft, penetrating voice continued. “There is the wife of Duke Charles, Margaret of Burgundy, who yet defies us behind the walls of Bruges. It is not certain the Duke himself will die. Dijon may hold out until the winter. My daughter the Faris cannot be everywhere in Christendom. Use this child of my breeding, my King, I beg you, while she is yet of use to you. When she is no longer useful, then carry out your just sentence upon her.”

“Oh no you don’t!” Ash shook her arm free of the Visigoth noble. She stepped forward, into the space before the throne, not giving the King-Caliph time to speak.

“Lord King,
I am a
woman, and a woman of business. Charles of Burgundy himself thought I was worth my hire. Give me a company, make it of whoever’s household troops you choose – yours, if you want it that way – and give me a month, and I’ll take any city you want taken, Bruges or Dijon.”

She manages to have an air about her, something to do with being the only woman present among four thousand men, something to do with her hacked-off silver-blonde hair and her face, identical to their Faris who has won cities for them in Iberia. She has a presence. It is more to do with how she stands: a body trained for war does not move in the same way as a woman kept behind stone-tracery bars. And the light in her eyes, and her crooked grin.

“I can do this, Lord King. Quarrels and factions in your court aren’t as important as that. I can do it. And don’t kill me at the end of it, pay me.” A glitter in her eyes, thinking of red crescent banners. “War is a never-ending presence on the earth, Lord King, and while it is, you must live with such evils as captains of war. Use us. My priest, here, is ready to swear me to your service.”

Gelimer seated himself, a movement which Ash thought gave him a moment to consider.

“As to that, no.” His voice gained a sharper edge of malice. “If nothing else, you are a mercenary who will desert at the earliest opportunity.”

Ash, bewildered, said, “Sire?”

“I have heard of your fame. I have read the reports which Leofric says come from his general, in the north. Therefore, one thing is obvious to me. You will do what you did before, last month, at Basle, when you ran away to join the Burgundian army. You call yourself ‘condottiere’ – you broke your
condotta
with us at Basle!”

“I broke no contract!”

It was the name of the city of Basle that did it. Voices drowned her out. Ash’s stomach swooped, sickeningly. A noise broke out, each man telling their neighbour some distorted story. Beside her, Leofric’s complexion greyed.

“But that isn’t what happened!” Godfrey Maximillian lumbered up off his knees, protesting to the King-Caliph. “She was torturing Ash!
She
broke contract! We had no intention of joining the Burgundians. Ash! Tell him!”

“My Lord King, if you will listen—”

“Oath-breaker!” the King-Caliph announced, with some satisfaction. “You see whom you trust, Leofric? She and her husband both! All these Franks are treacherous, unreliable bastards!”

Godfrey Maximillian straight-armed two soldiers out of the way; Ash grabbed him as the troop closed in, manhandling the priest back. Unknown to her, her face twisted into a bitter smile.
I always wanted to be known across
Christendom – so much for fame.

“Godfrey! It doesn’t matter what
did
happen!” She shook him vehemently. “It doesn’t matter that my story’s true. Can you see me trying to
explain
it? What’s true is what they
believe.
Sweet Christ, what the hell did the truth ever matter!”

“But, child—!”

“We’ll have to handle it another way. I’ll get us out of here.”

“
How?
”

A shrieking horn drowned out his voice. The King-Caliph, Gelimer, sat with his arm upraised. Silence fell, across the whole rotunda. Slowly, Gelimer lowered his arm.

“We are not this day anointed King so that we may
debate
with our lords. Leofric, she is an approved traitor. She will be executed. She is a monster, of course,” Gelimer leaned back on his throne, “hearing voices; as your other child is, but your other child is at least loyal. Perhaps, when you put this one under the knife, you will be able to tell us, my lord, where in the heart treachery lies.”

A burr of sycophantic laughter went around the court.

Ash gazed at the faces of nobles and knights, bishops and abbots, merchants and soldiers; and found nothing but curious, avid, amused expressions. Men. No women, no slaves, no clay golems.

King-Caliph Gelimer sat resting both arms on the arms of the throne, his slender hands cupping the carved foliage, his back straight, his braided beard jutting as he stared around at the thousands of men gathered under the roof of the palace and the great Mouth of God above his head.

“
Amirs
of Carthage.” Gelimer’s tenor voice echoed under the dome. “You have heard one of your number here, the
amir
of House Leofric, doubt our victory in the north.”

Ash became conscious of Leofric stirring, in irritated surprise, at her side, and thought,
He didn’t see this coming. Shit!

The new King-Caliph’s voice rang out again:

“
Amirs
of Carthage, commanders of the empire of the Visigoth people, you have not elected me to this throne to lead you to defeat – or even to a weak peace. Peace is for the weak. We are strong.”

Gelimer’s bright black gaze flickered across Ash.

“No peace!” he repeated. “And not the war that weaklings fight, my
amirs
. The war of the strong. In the heretic lands of the north, we are fighting a war against Burgundy, most powerful of all the heretic nations of Christendom. Most rich in her wealth, most rich in her armies, most powerful in her Duke. And this Burgundy
we shall conquer.
”

Under the painted foliage of the Mouth of God, under the stone rim opening upon the black day skies of Carthage, every man is silent.