Ash: A Secret History (109 page)

It is at this point that the Angelotti ms cuts off (a few final pages are missing from the Missaglia treatise). ‘Fraxinus me fecit’ adds only a few bald sentences: that the country was, by this time, in a state of emergency, with famine, cold and hysteria emptying the towns and devastating the countryside.

Evidently, from the little we can glean from Angelotti, the company disembarked at Marseilles in conditions that we would now think of as resembling a nuclear winter. With Ash leading them, they proceeded on a forced march up the valley of the Rhone river, from Marseilles north to Avignon, and further north towards Lyons. It says something for Ash as a commander that she could have groups of armed men travel several hundred miles under very loose control, during unprecedentedly terrible weather conditions – a force with less effective leadership would surely have been far more likely to hole up in a local hamlet or village outside Marseilles, and hope to wait out the ‘sunless’ winter.

Given their lack of horses, and the fact that a starving peasantry had eaten the countryside bare of crops and draught animals, stealing river ships was probably their easiest option. Moreover, in a countryside that is pitch-dark twenty-four hours a day, without reliable maps or guides, following the Rhone valley at least ensured that the company would not get hopelessly lost. A fragmentary reference indicates that they gave up river-travel itself just south of Lyons when the Rhone froze over completely, and marched towards the Burgundian border, following the Saone north.

It is not recorded that any of the French ducs reacted to this incursion on their territory. They may have had too much to cope with themselves, with famine, insurrection, and war likely. More probably, in the winter and night conditions, they simply didn’t notice.

Given the logistics of getting two hundred and fifty men across Europe in darkness, together with all the baggage they could carry on their backs, and the number of starving survivors who began to attach themselves to the company (either to give sexual favours for food, or to attempt to rob them) – given the sheer work involved in keeping her men on the road, keeping them fed, keeping them from mutiny or plain desertion, it is perhaps not surprising that ‘Fraxinus’ details almost no interaction on a personal level between Ash and anyone else in the company until the hiatus immediately following their arrival outside Dijon.

We do know, from the beginning of the ‘Fraxinus’ manuscript, that the company gained a position very close to Dijon itself without being seen by Visigoth scouts. The company moved along the cultivated edges of the true wildwood – the virgin forested areas that still, at this point, covered a great deal of Europe. Travel would be slow, especially if weapons and baggage were to be transported, but it would be sure. It would be almost the only certain way of reaching Dijon without being wiped out by a detachment of one of the Visigoth armies.

‘Fraxinus’ states that the journey occupied almost seven weeks (the period from 4 October to 14 November). By 14 November 1476, then, Ash and between two and three hundred of her armed men, with mules and baggage train, but without horses or guns, are five miles west of Dijon, just south-west of the main road to Auxonne.

Anna, I *did* think the ‘Fraxinus’ manuscript was either written or dictated by Ash herself; I was certain it was a reliable primary source. Now – with Carthage 1000 metres below me! – I’m even MORE certain!

BUT – there was always going to be *a* problem. You see, I had always hoped that the discovery of the Fraxinus document would allow me my niche in academic history as the person who solved the ‘missing summer’ problem. Although, in fact, given the problem with dates – some of Ash’s exploits fit far better into what we know of the events of 1475; others can only have taken place in 1476; and the texts treat them all as one continuous series of events – it may be a ‘missing year and a half’ problem!

Records appear to document Ash fighting against Charles the Hold’s forces in June 1475/6. She is unaccounted for over what appears to be the summer of 1476; turns up again in winter; and dies fighting at Nancy (5 January 1476/7). There are some missing weeks between the end of ‘Fraxinus’ (mid-November 1476), and the point where conventional history picks Ash up again. (Some mysteries must be left for other scholars, after all!) ‘Fraxinus’ breaks off abruptly, evidently incomplete.

If ‘Fraxinus’ does not mesh seamlessly with recorded history, that is not a problem.

The *problem* is, that in the autumn of 1476, Charles the Bold is involved in his campaign against Lorraine, besieging Nancy on 22 October. He stays at that siege all though November and December; and dies there in January, fighting against Duke Rene’s reinforcements (an army of Lorrainers and volunteer Swiss).

I had initially expected this latter part of ‘Fraxinus’ to indicate that Ash returns to a Europe in which the Visigoth raid has failed and is in retreat.

It does not. ‘Fraxinus’ has the Visigoths _still_ *present* in Europe in force as late as the November of 1476.

It has France and the Duchy of Savoy at peace, by treaty, with the Carthaginian Empire; it has the ex-Emperor Frederick III of the Holy Roman Empire – now controlled from Carthage – making inroads into ruling the Swiss cantons as a Visigoth satrap, hand in hand with Daniel de Quesada. It has, in fact, everything you would expect to see if the Visigoth invasion had _succeeded_.

If this is 1476, where is Charles’s war against Lorraine? Conversely, if this is 1475, then my theory that the incursion of the Visigoths was forgotten in the collapse of Burgundy falls apart, since that won’t occur for another twelve months!

I can only assume that something in the dates within this text is deeply misleading, and that I have not yet understood it completely.

Whatever we have not yet understood, I do understand this much: ‘Fraxinus’ has given us Carthage. Isobel says being able to identify a site this early is amazing!

I will send you my final version of the last section as soon as I can – but how – can I stay away from the ROV cameras!!!

I am looking at *Carthage*.

I keep thinking about FRAXINUS’s ‘wild machines’.

– Pierce

PART NINE

14 November–15 November AD 1476

Knight of the Wasteland

I

Rain streamed off the raised visor of her helmet, streamed off the sodden demi-gown and brigandine that she wore, and soaked her hose inside her high boots. Ash could feel it, but not see it – the sound of falling water and the unobstructed blisteringly cold air told her she must be close to the tree-line, but she could see nothing in the pitch-darkness of the forest.

Someone – Rickard? – blundered into her shoulder, throwing her forward into the slick, hard bark of a tree trunk. It grazed her mittened hand. An unseen spray of soaked autumn leaves slapped her across the face, dashing cold water into her eyes and mouth.

“Shit!”

“Sorry, boss.”

Ash waved the boy Rickard to silence, realised he couldn’t see her, and groped until she caught his sodden wool shoulder, and pulled his ear down level with her mouth:

“There are umpteen thousand Visigoths out there: would you mind keeping
quiet!
”

Cold rain soaked through her belted demi-gown, and through the velvet and steel plates of the brigandine, making her arming doublet against her warm flesh uncomfortably cold and damp. The constant rattle of rain in the darkness, and the whispering creak of trees swaying in the night wind, prevented her hearing anything more than a few paces away. She took another cautious step, arms outstretched, and simultaneously hooked her scabbard into a low-hanging branch, and skidded her heel into a mud-rut six inches deep.

“Shit on a fucking
stick!
Where’s John Price? Where are the fucking scouts?”

She heard something suspiciously like a chuckle, under the noise of the falling rain. Rickard’s shoulder, against hers, juddered.

“Madonna,” a quiet voice said, to her left and below her, “light the lamp. There’s a great deal of forest between here and Dijon; how much of it would you like us to cover?”

“Ah, shit – okay. Rickard…”

Several minutes passed. Occasionally the boy’s arm or elbow jogged her, as he wrestled with a pierced iron lantern, a candle, and presumably the lit slow-match he had brought with him. Ash smelled smouldering powder. The velvet blackness pressed against her face. Cold drops of rain spattered her head as she turned her face up, letting her night vision attempt to distinguish between the crowns of trees and the invisible sky.

Nothing.

She flinched, repeatedly, as rain struck her on the cheeks and eyes and mouth. Sheltering her face with one soaked sheepskin mitten, she thought she distinguished a faint alteration of darkness and blackness.

“Angelotti? You think this rain’s stopping?”

“No!”

Rickard’s dark lantern finally glimmered, a weak yellow light in the surrounding pitch-darkness. Ash caught a glimpse of another figure shrouded in heavy woollen hood and cloak, seemingly kneeling down at her side – a sucking sound made her startle. The kneeling figure stood up.

“Fucking
mud,
” Master Gunner Angelotti said.

The light from the lantern failed, serving only to illuminate the silver streaks of falling water droplets. Before that, Ash had one glimpse of Angelotti, his cloak torn and his boots clotted with mud to his upper thighs. She grinned briefly to herself.

“Look on the bright side,” she said. “This is a whole lot better than the conditions we’ve just come through to get here – it’s
warmer!
And, any rag-head patrols are going to stay really close to home in this murk.”

“But we won’t see anything!” Rickard’s face above the lantern, in his hood, was a chiaroscuro demon-mask. “Boss, maybe we should go back to the camp.”

“John Price said he saw broken cloud. I’m betting the rain’s going to ease up before long. Green Christ! does anybody know where we
are?
”

“In a dark wood,” her Italian master gunner said, with sardonic satisfaction. “Madonna, the guide from Price’s lance is lost, I think.”

“Don’t go yelling for him…”

Ash faced away from the lantern’s tiny glow. She let the dark into her eyes again, gazing blindly into blackness and rain. The sleeting drops found the gap between sleeve and mitten at her wrist; eased cold rivulets of water down between sallet-tail and gown collar. The cold water made her hot flesh shudder and begin to chill.

“This way,” she decided.

Reaching out a hand, she grasped Rickard’s arm, and Angelotti’s gloved hand. Stumbling and lurching through the mud and thick leaf-mould underfoot, she banged against branches, shook down water from trees, unwilling to take her eyes from the faintest of silhouettes in front of her: the waving twigs of hornbeam trees against the open night sky beyond the wood.

“Maybe around—
whuff.
” Her numbed, cold hand slid off Rickard’s arm. Angelotti’s strong fingers gripped, tightly; she slid down on to one knee and hung from his grasp, momentarily unable to get her feet under her. Boot soles skidded in the mud. Her leg went out from under her, and she sat down heavily and unguardedly in a mass of wet leaves, sharp twigs, and cold mud.

“Son of a
bitch!
” She hauled her twisted sword-belt back round, feeling sightlessly down the hilt to the scabbard – trapped under her leg – for breaks in the thin wood. “
Shit!
”

“Keep that fucking noise down!” a voice whispered. “Put that fucking lantern out! Do you want an entire fucking Visigoth legion up here? The old battle-axe will have your fucking arse!”

Ash, in English, said, “Too damn right she will, Master Price.”

“Boss?”

“Yeah.” She grinned, invisible in the black night. Grabbing for arms and hands at random, she found herself pulled back on to her feet. The cold was bitter enough now to make her body shake, and she beat her hands against her arms – seeing neither, in the darkness. A flurry of rain made her duck her head, and then turn her wet face in the direction of the unobstructed wind.

“We’re on the wood’s edge?” she said. “Lucky you found us, Sergeant.”

Price muttered something in a northern dialect, in which ‘making enough noise for six pair of yoked oxen’ was the only phrase Ash clearly overheard.

“We’re further along here, on top of the bluff,” the man added. “Rain’s been easing this last hour. Reckon you’ll get sight of the city from here, soon, boss.”

“Where’s the rag-heads now?”

A movement in the black night, which might have been a waving arm. “Down there, some place.”

Green Christ! If I could just ask the
machina rei militaris: Dijon, southern border of the Duchy of Burgundy: strength and disposition of siege camp.
Ask the Stone Golem:
name of battle commander, tactical plans for the next week
—

A shudder went through her skin that was nothing to do with the bone-chilling rain. For a moment, the darkness was not the mulch-odoured, bitter-cold, open night blackness of a Frankish forest, but the shit-smelling, stomach-turning darkness under the Citadel of Carthage, kneeling with a dead man’s body in the sewers, and hearing voices louder than God blast through her head, in that solitude where she is used to hearing only the
machina rei militaris.

And for a heart-stopping moment she whipped her head around, glaring into the darkness, afraid of seeing the same celestial light that burned in the desert outside Carthage, nine weeks before. The aurora mat glimmers above the red silt-brick pyramids…

Nothing but wet night.

Don’t be stupid, girl. The Wild Machines want you dead – but they can’t know where you are.