Ash: A Secret History (122 page)

“Okay, guys! Listen up! Better find out what the fuss is…”

The aches of the night’s exertions, and the lack of sleep, blurred her mind. It was a minute before she realised she and her escort were stomping up stone steps – up to the walls, in the wake of armed men; deafened still by the bells.

Is this…?

She automatically glanced back down the flight of stone steps, looking for a house with a bush hanging from it, to signify an inn.
Is this where Godfrey came to me, on the walls of Dijon, and told me he wanted me?

There were no undamaged buildings below: everything at the foot of the wall was a mess of beams, broken plaster, scrambled roof tiles, and abandoned furniture; and masonry scorched black.

No: we must have been further down the west wall, I remember looking down at the southern bridge…

Wry humour made her smile; there was nothing other than cynicism and adrenalin to keep her going now:

…The same day I saw Fernando in the Duke’s palace, was it? Or the day we beat up Florian’s aunt? Christus!

She crowded between a priest and a tanner and a nun, pushing her way towards the crenellations, where the soldiers were leaning out under the wooden brattices
³
and shouting down off the city’s north wall.

At her elbow, a monk in green robes bellowed, “It’s a miracle! We have prayed, and it has been granted to us!
Deo gratias!
”

To Rochester and Floria del Guiz, impartially, Ash bawled, “What the fuck
is
this?”

Nearly Prime
⁴
, on the morning of the fifteenth of November, 1476: Ash tastes the chill of winter in her mouth, on the wind that blows from the northeast. She has time to notice the streaming lines of people running up to the walls – used to estimating numbers on the field, she thought:
the better part of two thousand men, woman and children.
Leaning into an embrasure, she touched her hand to the walls above Dijon’s north-west gate, feeling their protection.

She cupped her gauntlet, shielding her eyes from the sun that rose on her right hand, listening for what was being so rhythmically shouted. The sight in front of her put it clear out of her mind.

A greater ‘town’ surrounds the walls of Dijon now – the town that is the Visigoth siege-camp. Clear in the daylight, it has its own streets and muster-grounds; its own turf-roofed barracks and Arian chapels and army markets. Two months is long enough to make them seem frighteningly established and permanent. Rank upon rank of weather-worn, bleached tents stretch out, too, into the white-misted distance. They cover all the acres between Dijon and the forests to the north.

Cold air making her eyes water, Ash let her gaze travel across the sweep of the Visigoth camp: pavises, shelters; fenced siege-engine parks; saps and trenches snaking towards the walls of the town … and thousands upon thousands of armed men.

Jesus! Now we’re
in
here – what have I done?

Leaning out, looking west, she picked out the burned ruins of great wooden pavises, that had sheltered at least four massive bombards. The cannon seemed apparently untouched – their distant crews beginning to crawl out of their bashas and poke campfires into more life.

Frost limned every blade of grass. Amid the dozens of intact mangonels, ballistae, trebuchets and cannon, she saw a few blackened areas of grass and collapsed canvas. White-haired slaves desultorily cleared up the mess, cold-fingered and slow; she heard
nazirs
bellowing at them. Their voices came clear across the cold air.

Glancing east, she saw no sign whatsoever of any attack there, not even burned canvas.

Two attacks didn’t even dent them.

She leaned forward, feeling her men crowding in beside her; moving her gaze to the north.

Men are small, three or four hundred yards away, beyond the trenches and outside bow- and arquebus-shot; but livery is still visible. She could not make out the Faris’s Brazen Head livery on any of them. Wind-tears blurred the edges of pavilions and the colours of pennants. She lifted her head, looking further out from the walls.

“Jesus fucking Christ, there’s thousands of them!”

Down on the Visigoth horse lines, men fetching feed stopped, listening to the sudden noise from Dijon. The low morning sun shone on Carthaginian spear-points, and men’s helmets, on the camp perimeter. The sound of barked orders came clear across the open air. Down towards the western bridge, half-hidden by pavises, men sprinted to serve guns – a puff of white smoke came from the muzzle of one mortar, and perceptible seconds later, the
thump!
of its firing.

Fat crows flew up from camp middens.

“And a good morning to you rag-heads, too!” Rochester growled, beside her, in profile against the yellow eastern sky.

Ash squinted, head whipping round, not able to see where the mortar shot hit – lobbed somewhere inside the burned streets of Dijon, back of her.

Another flat
thwack!
brought her head back around. Ten yards down the parapet, the crowd of men folded in on itself; a swirl of figures in belted gowns and chaperon hats; one voice raised in high, shocked agony. The constant shout of the crowd lining the walls drowned him out.

Shit. There
is
a whole legion out there. Oh,
shit…

No wonder the Faris thinks that all a ‘betrayal’ would save her is time.

A man-at-arms in Lion livery leaned precariously out from under the hoardings, yelling down at the frost-glittering tents of the Visigoths, four hundred yards out from the walls, spit spraying out from his mouth:

“
Your city’s fucked! Your Caliph’s dead! How about that, motherfuckers!
”

A great cheer went up along the walls of Dijon. With Rochester and the banner at her shoulder, Ash pushed in close. The man-at-arms, a redhead she remembered as one of Ned Mowlett’s men, all but lost his grip on the brattice-strut he held. A mate hauled him back.

“Pearson!” Ash thumped him on armoured shoulders, hauling him around to look at the first one of the men who had stayed in Dijon – filthy with mud, straggle-haired, and with a healing scar across one eyebrow.

“
Boss!
” Pearson bellowed; sweating, surprised, happy, transcendent. “Those fuckers are
done
for, aren’t they, boss?”

His gold-and-blue livery was unaltered, her own device of the Lion Passant Guardant
⁵
; nothing added or subtracted by Robert Anselm. She contented herself with another slap on his shoulder.

A second priest called, “
Deo gratias,
the Visigoths and their stone demons are thrown down!”

Two yards away, a Burgundian man-at-arms yelled down, “We didn’t even have to
be
there! You’re outside our city, and our walls stand! We didn’t even have to
go
to Carthage and it’s fucking
flattened!
”

Someone further down the north city wall blew a herald’s horn, wildly. More men-at-arms entered the crowd, unshaven men in Lion livery pushing through the press towards the frost-stiff blue-and-gold of the Lion Affronté on her personal banner. Behind them, men in rich gowns with their faces full of sleep – sergeants with staffs, constables, burghers – made vain attempts to clear the parapet. The deep flat crack of mortar fire sounded again: two shots, five, and then a slow, erratic succession of explosions.

The soldiers, starting with the Lion company men clustered around her, leaned out off the brattices and started to chant:

“Carthage fell
down!
Carthage fell
down!
Carthage fell
down!
”

“But it—”
wasn’t quite like that!
Ash mentally protested.

A company archer, one of Euen Huw’s men, shouted, “Yer Caliph’s
dead
and yer city fell
down!
”

“But it was a quake—”

Floria del Guiz’s voice, at her ear, bellowed, “They know that!”

Despite the precariousness of being an exposed target, Ash could only grin helplessly as the sound grew, a chant that was deep, male voices bellowing, loud enough to reach the enemy lines and then some; and she put her face up to the dawn breeze, grinning out at more Visigoth, men who began to collect along the front line, muttering and gathering in groups.

“’Ware trebuchets!” Thomas Rochester touched her arm and pointed west across the Suzon river to the big counterweight siege weapons, their crews visible now, tiny figures staring at the city walls. Eighty or ninety per cent of the engines undamaged, she thought.

“Jesus, this lot aren’t bright! You couldn’t shift ‘em with bombards!” Ash shrieked back. “Let ’em have their shout, Tom, then start moving them back down off the walls! I want us across the broken ground and
out
of here!”

“THE CALIPH IS
DEAD!
CARTHAGE FELL
DOWN!
”

The wind shifted, coming from the east as the sun rose up. She focused into the distance – up on the northern slopes, above the water meadows, an empty shell stood: nothing now but fire-blackened stone.
I wonder what happened to Soeur Simeon and the nuns?

Ash’s throat tightened. She wiped at her watering eyes.

Half the population of Dijon up on the defences now: despite the rapid tremble of the stone parapet underfoot, where mangonel boulders struck home against the outside wall.

“They’re getting the range!” she yelled to Floria, her mouth at the woman’s ear to be heard over bells, men shouting, women shouting, children shrieking.

“THE CALIPH IS
DEAD!
CARTHAGE FELL
DOWN!
”

“But Caliph Theodoric died before the earthquake!” Floria yelled back, her mouth now to Ash’s ear, warm damp breath feathering her skin. “And they elected another one!”

“And Gelimer’s still with us. These people don’t care about
that.
Oh, the hell with it! The Caliph is dead!” Ash raised her voice: “Carthage fell
down!
”

Several men in armour and Burgundian livery jackets came pushing through the crowd, towards her banner. Ash let herself down off the masonry. She inclined her head, bowing a speechless greeting.

Behind the men, squads of foot soldiers began clearing the walls, heaving people back from the brattices. She blinked, hearing the faintest diminution in the sound-volume. Two of the men she recognised from the summer: an elderly chamberlain-counsellor of the Duke’s court, and a nobleman she knew to be one of Olivier de la Marche’s aides.

“It’s her!” the chamberlain-counsellor exclaimed.

“Messire—” Ash managed to remember his name: “—Ternant. What can I do for you? Tom,
get these bloody idiots down from here!
Green Christ on a crutch, I didn’t get them back here to have them shot off the walls! Sorry, Messire Ternant, what is it?”

“We expected Captain Anselm!” de la Marche’s aide bellowed, his face a picture of sheer incredulity.

“Well, you’ve got Captain Ash!” She shifted as the first of her men filed back off the brattices, boots booming on the hollow wooden floors.

“In that case – it is your presence that the siege council requests, Captain!” Ternant bawled, his voice cracking with age and effort.

“‘Siege council’—? Never mind!” Ash nodded her head emphatically. “I’ll come! I’m settling my men here in their quarters first! When? What time?”

“The hour before Terce.
⁶
Demoiselle, we are hearing such rumours—”

She waved him to silence, in the face of the wall of sound. “Later! I’ll be there, Messire!”

“CARTHAGE FELL
DOWN!
CARTHAGE FELL
DOWN!
”

“I give up.” Floria stood up on her toes, grabbing at Thomas Rochester’s mail-shirted shoulder for support. She bellowed towards the open air, “Down with the Caliph! Carthage fell down!”

Thomas Rochester gave a snort. Abruptly, the dark Englishman caught Ash’s eye, and pointed. At the standards set up at different points in the enemy camp, she realised. Standing aside to let the last of her men past, she looked out from the walls at the tents Rochester indicated.

Frankish pavilions, not Visigoth barracks.

“What?
Oh.
Uh-huh … oh,
right
…”

Five hundred yards away, men were gathering in a businesslike way under a great white standard, bearing a lamb surrounded by rays of gold. It flapped in the frosty air on the eastern side of the camp.

Under the sound of bells, impacting rocks, and the chant that had got up a rhythm now – the men and women of Dijon struggling not to be herded off the walls – Thomas Rochester yelled, “We can kick
his
ass, boss!”

Besides Agnus Dei’s standard, in what was obviously the mercenaries’ part of the Visigoth camp, Ash picked out the banner of Jacobo Rossano –
wondered who was paying him after Emperor Frederick.!
– and half a dozen other small mercenary companies. One standard, a naked sword, teased her memory.

“Shit, that’s Onorata Rodiani.”

“What?” Floria screamed.

“I
said,
that’s
Onorata
—” Ash broke off. The rising wind unwrapped the standard next to Rodiani’s. It was the ripped, scarred and triumphant banner carried on to a hundred fields by Cola de Monforte and his sons.

The surgeon’s voice, at her ear, breathed, “The bastards! Those are
Burgundian
mercenaries!”

“Not any more! He must have gone over, after Auxonne! That’s a lot of men out there. Cola doesn’t have a company. He has a small army.” Ash narrowed her eyes against the slanting brilliance from the east. “Looks like nobody gives a shit for this city’s chances—”

Floria’s hand tightened on her arm. Ash glanced where the surgeon stared, into the now-sunlit Visigoth camp. When she saw it, she did not know how she had missed it before. In the Frankish tents back of Monforte’s pavilions, a silver and blue banner: the Ship and Crescent Moon.