Ash: A Secret History (16 page)

There were none of the bawdy remarks and cheerful grins you would have had with one of her men-at-arms being wedded. Quite apart from endangering their future, she saw how it made them look at her and see a woman, in a city, at peace, where before they had seen a mercenary, in the field, at war, and could therefore avoid considering her sex.

Ash snarled in a whisper, “Christus, I wish I’d been born a man! It would have given me an extra six inches’ reach, the ability to pee standing up – and I wouldn’t have to put up with any of this crap!”

Robert Anselm’s adult, concerned frown vanished in a spluttering burst of laughter.

Ash looked automatically for Florian’s cheering scepticism, but the surgeon was not there; the disguised woman had vanished into the mass of the company striking camp at Neuss four days ago, and had not been seen since (certainly not during the set-up outside Cologne where, as a number of uninformed mercenaries remarked, there was heavy lifting to be done).

Ash added, “And I
could
take Frederick setting this wedding on St Simeon’s feast-day personally…
²²
Maybe we could come up with a prior betrothal? Someone to step up to the altar stone and swear we had a pre-nuptial contract as children.”

Anselm, at her left, said, “Who’s going to stand up and take the shit for that one? Not me.”

“I wouldn’t ask it.” Ash stopped talking as the Bishop of Cologne came up to the bridal party. “Your Grace.”

“Our meek, gentle bride.” Tall thin Bishop Stephen reached out to finger the folds of her banner, whose staff Robert Anselm held. He bent to inspect the scarlet lettering embroidered under the Lion. “What is this?”

“Jeremiah, chapter fifty-one, verse twenty,” Godfrey quoted.

Robert Anselm growled a translation: “‘Thou art my battle axe and weapons of war; for with thee I will break in pieces the nations, and with thee will I destroy kingdoms.’ It’s sort of a mission statement, Your Grace.”

“How – appropriate. How – pious.”

A new voice whispered drily, “Who is being pious?”

The bishop inclined his thin body in its green alb and chasuble. “Your Imperial Majesty.”

Frederick of Hapsburg limped through the crowds of men, who all got out of his way. He was leaning on a staff now, Ash noted. The little man looked at Ash’s company priest as if it were the first time he had noticed the man. “You, was it? A man of peace in a company of war? Surely not. ‘Rebuke the company of spearmen – scatter thou the people that delight in war.’”
²³

Godfrey Maximillian removed the hood from his robe, and stood respectfully bareheaded (if ruffled) before the Emperor. “But, Your Majesty, Proverbs one hundred and forty-four, one?”

The Emperor rasped a small, dry chuckle. “‘Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight.’ So. An educated priest.”

“As an educated priest,” Ash said, “perhaps you would tell His Majesty how long we have to wait for a non-existent bridegroom, before we can all go home?”

“You wait,” Frederick said quietly. There was a sudden lack of conversation.

Ash would have paced, but the folds of her dress and the stares of the assembly stopped her. Over the altar, the Nine Orders of Angels shone in stone: Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, who are closest to God; then Dominions, Powers and Virtues; then Principalities, Archangels and Angels. The Principality of Cologne was sculpted with arched wings and ambiguous gender, smiling, clutching a representation of Frederick’s Imperial crown.

What’s Fernando del Guiz playing at?

He won’t dare offend the Emperor. Will he?
Will he?

He is a knight, after all. Maybe he just
won’t
marry a peasant-woman soldier. Christ, I hope that’s it—

On the altar’s left, by some humour of the stonemasons, the Prince of This World was carved offering a rose to the naked figure of Luxury. Toads and serpents clung to the back of his robe’s rich stone folds.
²⁴
Ash contemplated the figure of Luxury. There were many women present in stone. In flesh only five, herself and her attendants. The customary maids of the bride’s honour stood behind her, Ludmilla (in one of the seamstress’s better robes) and the other three: Blanche, Isobel, and Eleanor. Women she’d known since they whored together as children in the Griffin-in-Gold. Ash took a certain private satisfaction in how many of the noblemen of Cologne already nervously recognised Blanche and Isobel and Eleanor.

If I have to go through with this damn ceremony, I’m doing it
my
way!

Ash watched the Emperor drift off in conversation with Cologne’s Bishop Stephen. Both of them walked as if in a royal hall, not a sacred building.

“Fernando’s late. He’s not coming!” Joy and relief flooded through her. “Well, hey,
he’s
not our enemy… Archduke Sigismund did this. Sigismund’s making me compete in politics, where I don’t know what I’m doing, instead of on the field of battle, where I do.”

“Woman, you sweated your guts out to get Frederick to give you land.” Godfrey, sounding sceptical enough to be Florian. “He merely took advantage of that sin of greed.”

“Not sin. Stupidity.” Ash restrained herself from looking around again. “But it’s going to be okay.”

“Yes – no. There are people outside.”

“
Shit!
” Her sibilant whisper had the front two ranks of men glancing uncertainly at the bride.

Ash wore her silver hair unbound, as maidens do. Because she usually wore it in braids, it took a curl from that, flowing in ripples down over her shoulders, down her back, down, not just to her thighs, but to the backs of her knees. The finest, most transparent linen veil covered her head, and the silver metal headdress that held it in place was wound with a garland of field daisies. The veil was made from flax so fine that the scars on her cheekbones could be seen through it.

She stood stocky and sweaty in the flowing, voluminous blue and gold robes.

Drums sounded, and hurried horns. Her guts jolted. Fernando del Guiz and his supporters hurried up towards the rood-screen – all young noblemen of the Germanies, all wearing more money than she sees in six years of putting her body in the front line of battles for axe and sword and arrow to hit it.

The Emperor Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor, walked with his entourage to take his regal place at the front. Ash picked out the face of Duke Sigismund of the Tyrol. He did not give her the satisfaction of smiling.

The light slanted down from immense perpendicular lancet windows, dappling green light on to the figure of a woman carved in black marble, riding on the back of the Bull on the altar.
²⁵
Ash looked up with despair at her enigmatic stone smile, and the gold-thread-embroidered cloths that hooded her, as the boys in white tunicles came into the choir with their green wax candles burning. She was aware of someone coming to stand beside her.

She glanced to her right. The young knight Fernando del Guiz stood there, staring equally deliberately up at the altar, not looking at her. He looked more than a little ruffled, and he was bareheaded. For the first time she got a clear look at his face.

I thought he was older than me. He can’t be. Not by more than a year or two.

Now I remember
…

It was not his face, older now, clear-skinned and with bold brows, freckles across his straight nose. Nor his thick gold hair, trimmed short now to touch his shoulders. Ash watched the embarrassed hunch of his wide shoulders, and his rangy body – grown from boy almost to man, now – shifting from foot to foot.

That’s
it.
That’s it…

She found her hand aching to reach up and ruffle his hair out of its combed order. She caught his male scent, under the sweet perfume of civet.
I was a child then. Now…
Of themselves, her fingertips told her what it would feel like to unlace his velvet pleated doublet, that needed no padding at his broad shoulders, unfasten it down to his narrow waist, and untie the points of his hose… She let her gaze slide down the triangular line of his male body, to his strong rider’s thighs in finest knitted hose.

Sweet Christ who died to save us. I am as much in lust with him as I was at twelve.

“Mistress Ash!”

Somebody, plainly, had asked her a question.

“Yes?” Ash agreed absently.

Light broke in on her. Fernando del Guiz: lifting up her fine linen veil. His eyes were green, stone-green, dark as the sea.

“You are wed,” the Bishop of Cologne pronounced.

Fernando del Guiz spoke. Ash smelled wine warm on his breath. He said, in a perfectly clear voice, into the silence, “I would sooner have married my horse.”

Robert Anselm,
sotto voce,
muttered, “The horse wouldn’t have you.”

Someone gasped, someone laughed; there was one delighted, dirty guffaw from the back of the cathedral. Ash thought she recognised Joscelyn van Mander.

Not knowing whether to laugh or cry or hit something, Ash stared at the face of the young man she had just married. Looking for a hint – only a hint – of the complicit, humorous grin he had given her at Neuss.

Nothing.

She was unaware that her shoulders straightened, and her face took on something of the look she wore around the company’s camp. “You don’t talk to me like that.”

“You’re my wife now. I talk to you any way I please. If you don’t like it, I’ll beat you. You’re my wife, and you’ll be docile!”

Ash couldn’t help a loud blurt of laughter. “I will?”

Fernando del Guiz ran his finger, in its fine leather glove, from her chin down to the linen neck of her chemise. He made a show of sniffing at his glove. “I smell
piss.
Yes I do. I smell piss…”

“Del Guiz,” the Emperor warned.

Fernando turned his back and walked away, across the flagstone floor to Frederick of Hapsburg, and a tearful Constanza del Guiz (the court’s ladies now entering the nave, the ceremony over). None of whom did more than glance sideways at the bride left standing alone.

“No.” Ash put her hand on Robert Anselm’s arm. She gave a quick look that included Godfrey. “
No.
It’s all right.”

“‘All right’? You ain’t going to let him do that!” Anselm had his shoulders hunched almost up to his protuberant ears, all his body yearning towards crossing the nave and knocking Fernando del Guiz over.

“I know what I’m doing, now. I’ve just seen it.” Ash increased the pressure of her fingers on his arm. There were mutters from her company, at the back.

“I would be an unhappy bride,” Ash said quietly. “But I could be a really cheerful widow.”

Both of the men startled. It was almost comical. Ash continued to look at them. Robert Anselm jerked his head once, briefly, satisfied. It was Godfrey Maximillian who coldly smiled.

“Widows inherit their husband’s businesses,” Ash said.

“Yeah…” Robert Anselm nodded. “Better not mention it to Florian, though. The man
is
his brother.”

“So don’t tell h-him.” Ash did not meet Godfrey’s eyes. “It won’t be the first ‘riding accident’ among the German nobility.”

Ash paused under the vast vaults of the cathedral, momentarily unaware of her companions, of what she had said; seeking out Fernando where he stood, his back to her, weight on one hip, towering over his mother. Her body roused at the sight of him, at just the way the tall young man posed.

This will not be easy. Either way, this will not be easy.

“Ladies. Gentlemen.” Ash glanced back to check that Ludmilla and Blanche and Isobel and Eleanor were holding up her train so that she could walk, and rested her ringed fingers on Godfrey’s arm. “We’re not going to skulk in corners. We’re going to go and thank people for coming to my wedding.”

Her guts clenched. She knew the picture she made: young bride, veil back, silver-blonde hair a glorious cloud. She did not know her scars stood out silver-red against her pale cheeks. She went first to her lance-leaders, where she would feel at ease: the men spoke a word here, a small joke there, exchanged a hand-clasp.

Some of them looked at her with pity.

She couldn’t help it, she continued to stare anxiously through the crowd for Fernando del Guiz. Now she saw him angel-bright in a lancet window’s beams, talking to Joscelyn van Mander.

Van Mander kept his back to her.

“
That
didn’t take very long.”

Anselm shrugged. “Van Mander’s contract belongs to del Guiz now.”

She heard a whisper from behind her. The heavy material of her train, suddenly unattended, pulled back on her neck. She glared back at Big Isobel and Blanche. The two women mercenaries did not look at her; they had their heads together and whispered, their eyes fixed on a man some distance away, with expressions Ash put somewhere between awe and fear. She recognised him as the southerner who had been present at Neuss.

Little Eleanor whispered explanatorily to Blanche, “He’s from the lands Under the Penitence!”

The reason for the dark muslin cloth knotted ready for use about his neck belatedly dawned on Ash. She said tightly, “Oh, Green Christ, they’re hardly
demons
down in Africa – let’s get moving, okay?”

Ash moved on through the nave, greeting the minor nobles of free cities in their best robes, and their wives in towering horned, veiled head-dresses. This is not where I belong, she thought, talking politely, aimlessly; speaking to the ambassadors from Savoy and Milan, watching how shocked they were that a
hic mulier
²⁶
could wear robes, could speak their languages, and did not in fact have a demon’s horns and a tail.

What do I do? What do I
do?

A new voice spoke behind her, with an accent. “Madam.”

Ash smiled a farewell to the Milanese ambassador – a boring man, and afraid, too, of a woman who has killed in battle – and turned.

The man who had spoken was the southerner – pale-haired, with a face burned brown by harsh sun. He wore a short white robe, over white trousers with greaves bound around them, and a mail hauberk over all. The fact that he was dressed for war, although without weapons, put her at her ease.