Ash: A Secret History (162 page)

“I get more pussy than you do, you English poof! Always have.”

“He’s not a poof, madonna.” Angelotti slid his hand under Anselm’s tassets. “Worse luck!”

Robert Anselm clenched his fist, made as if to slam his armoured elbow into the gunner, and then sat back on his chair. “Go on, you little wop cocksucker. Only time you’re going to feel a
real
prick!”

Florian, bright-eyed, and putting her elbows on the table, remarked, “I don’t know – he
is
a real prick, why shouldn’t he feel like one?”

Ash gaped, cringed, and stared frozen-faced down the table at the Burgundian nobility, her palms wet with sweat.

They stared back, faces bewildered.

Ash managed to show her teeth in a desperate smile.

Olivier de la Marche inclined his head in bemused courtesy.

Hang on.
Her smile remained fixed. She replayed the quick-fire exchange in her head.
Roberto started that one in English – Kentish English at that
–
and she followed him – thank Christ!

Without change of expression, she remarked through her teeth, “I can’t take you bastards anywhere!”

“Of course you can.” Florian, her shoulder-muscles relaxed, reached out and touched her bare fist to Anselm’s arm, Angelotti’s breastplate. “Twice. The second time to apologise.”

Ash saw their relaxation, the unspoken bond between them. Surgeon, gunner, and commander: all as it might have been in the company’s tents, any time these five years. But now, seen for the first time after Florian’s forty-eight hours of separation.

Fuck, we needed that. But everything’s still changing.

She grabbed for the goblet and held it up to be filled. Wine’s steadying warmth burned down her gullet. “Okay! Okay, we need to plan what we’re doing. Florian, you get any of the messages I sent up to the palace yesterday?”

“Eventually.” Florian spoke with a kind of contained amusement that could hide any embarrassment or panic that a surgeon-turned-Duchess might be feeling. “When they’d come through a dozen secretaries.”

“Shit, what a way to run a duchy!”

“Think yourself lucky. De la Marche says most of the lawyers went north with Margaret. Before Auxonne.”

Ash leaned on the table. “You haven’t left the Lion Azure. Not yet. Not until you tell me you have.”

Florian’s expression was momentarily unreadable.

“We need to know your status. What ‘Duchess’ really means – what sort of Duchess does Olivier de la Marche think you are? If there’s one person in this city who holds command of the Burgundian military forces right now, it’s him, not you.”

Florian glanced towards Olivier de la Marche. Ash saw him interpret that as a summons; abandon his place. He walked up towards the head of the table. She thought she saw a slight unsureness as he looked at Floria, but de la Marche’s lined face broke into a beam, seeing Ash.

“Jeez, he ought to like his Duchess, but I didn’t know
I
was that popular…”

Florian’s face, under the sheerness of the veil, clearly showed exasperation. “Boss! You know what we’ve – what the company’s been doing, these last two days. And you. Up on the walls. Backwards and forwards across the no-man’s-land behind the north-west gate. Out there getting shot at.”

“Oh, yeah, I was forgetting,” Ash said dryly. “Not that we have a choice! Hell, even Jussey and Jonville have been giving us good back-up…”

Olivier de la Marche, coming up to the Duchess, bowed stiffly to her. He kept his gaze on Ash. “How could they not?”

It took her a moment to realise that it was a rhetorical question spoken with transparent honesty. She looked questioningly at him.

“You bear the sword that shed the Hart’s Blood,” Olivier de la Marche said. “Every man in Dijon knows that.”

“‘Bear the sword’—” Ash broke off.

“I did use your sword.” Florian’s closed lips moved; she might have been trying to smother a wild grin.

“You nicked it off me because you didn’t have one, and it was the only one to hand!” Ash swung her gaze back to de la Marche. “Green Christ! So she used my sword. So what? She might as well have used a sharp stick, for all the difference it would have made!”

De la Marche’s face crinkled, lines around his eyes that weather and laughter have put there. Something more sophisticated overlay the honesty in his expression; perhaps pleasure at her refusal to capitalise on an apparent advantage.

“And
anyway
” Ash added, “it’s been cleaned since. Or if it hasn’t, my pages are going to have sore arses!”

Her hand went out. From his place at the wall, Rickard jumped forward, presenting her sword hilt-first. She seized the leather, thumbing the blade an inch out of the scabbard’s friction-grip. The grey of the metal was uncoloured by anything except the silver abrasions of a new sharpening, ordered after the hunt. Nothing marred the razor sharpness of the edges.

“
Was
it this one? Or was I still borrowing yours, Robert?”

“Oh, it was your wheel-pommel sword, madonna,” Angelotti put in. “The Faris had just sent it back. I swear we thought you were going to sleep with it.”

“
Thank
you; that’ll do!” She slotted it home. Rickard stepped back, grinning.

De la Marche, ignoring both the presence and the familiarity of her sub-captains, said, “This fact remains, Demoiselle-Captain: your sword spilled the Hart’s Blood. Do you imagine any man in the city thinks less of it because it is a tool, and you keep it clean and sharp for its proper use? Go out into the street. To ‘Hero of Carthage’, you will hear added ‘Hart’s-Blood’ and ‘Sword of the Duchy’. You are no longer a mere mercenary captain to the people of Burgundy.”

Ash smothered a snort, aware of Robert Anselm’s profane exclamation beside her.

“These titles are all marks of God’s grace,” de la Marche said. “A standard is only silk cloth, Demoiselle-Captain, but men are maimed holding it and die to defend it. The Duchess is our standard. I think, despite yourself, you are becoming one of our banners.”

All humour left her expression. She was aware of Anselm’s stillness, Angelotti’s gaze; and the attention from further down the table, and from the men and women clearing the remains of the meal.

“No,” she said. “I’m not.
We’re
not.”

The big Burgundian turned, and bowed very formally to Floria del Guiz. “With your permission, your Grace?”

Equally formally – equally uncomfortably – Florian nodded.

A sudden realisation hit Ash. With difficulty, she kept her expression unchanged.

Shit! He can cope with
me
– I might be a woman in man’s clothing, but I’m a soldier. He can pretend I’m a man. Florian … he’s seen Floria as Florian. And she’s a civilian. And he doesn’t know how to treat her. How to see her as Duchess.

And, currently, he’s the most powerful man in Dijon.

“Demoiselle-Captain, your
condotta
died with my lord the Duke.” De la Marche paused. “You have four hundred men. You have seen what lies outside the city now – the new trenches. In the normal way of things, I would ask you to sign a new
condotta
with Burgundy, and I would expect you to refuse.”

Robert Anselm said rhetorically, “Nice when they ’ave confidence in their town, ain’t it!”

De la Marche glanced once at Floria del Guiz, and continued. “The ‘hero of Carthage’ will get no contract with the Carthaginians. Your
men
might, under one or other of your
centeniers
.
¹³
However, they choose otherwise. I am commander of the late Duke’s household knights: I know what it is to have men believe in their commander. Demoiselle Ash, it is a responsibility.”

“Too fucking right it is!”

She was not aware, until his lined face creased in a smile, that sleeplessness had betrayed her into speaking the thought out loud.

“Demoiselle-Captain, we have a successor to my lord Charles. Her Grace the Duchess Floria. Your surgeon. In view of this—”

Robert Anselm interrupted harshly. “Let’s cut the crap, shall we?”

Ash shot him a glance.
Shit. Next time we’re going to play ‘hard-man thug’ and ‘noble commander’, you might warn me!

Anselm said, “We’re stuck in here because the rag-’eads hate Ash, the guys won’t dump her as captain, and now our doc is Duchess – but this town
is
going to fall, Messire de la Marche. It’s just a matter of time. If you think you’re getting our services for free, just because we’re stuck in here at the moment, you got another fucking think coming!”

His discourtesy echoed off the whitewashed ceiling. Olivier de la Marche’s expression did not change. Mildly, he said, “Your remaining
condotta
is with the English Earl of Oxford, who may well be dead, by now. I have a proposal to put to Demoiselle-Captain Ash.”

A swift glance at Florian’s face showed only bewilderment.

Either this isn’t something he discussed with her, or forty-eight hours of chaos have knocked it put of her head. Shit, I wish I was prepared for this!

Ash rested her hands on the oak table, flexing her cramped fingers. Every line of the roping on her gauntlet cuff was picked out in brown rust, now, and she let herself follow the lines of dinted steel for a moment, where it lay, before looking up at the man across the table.

“And your proposal is?”

Olivier de la Marche spoke. “Demoiselle Ash, I want you to take my place as commander-in-chief of the Burgundian army.”

V

The silence stretched out.

Neither Anselm, Angelotti nor Florian spoke. The old chamberlain-counsellor, Ternant, leaned across the foot of the table to whisper something to the bishop, but too quietly to be heard over the crackling of the hearth-fire. The Burgundian servants froze in place.

Her wooden chair screeched back as Ash surged to her feet. The noise, and her raised voice, made the servants and guards stare.

“You’re
crazy!
”

The big Burgundian nobleman laughed. It had a note of delight in it. Perfectly seriously, he jabbed one blunt-fingered hand at her chest.

“Demoiselle, ask yourself! Who came back triumphant out of the very bowels of the enemy’s capital, Carthage? Who fought their way undefeated across half Europe, bringing our new Duchess to us? Who arrived, miraculously,
just in time:
before the very day that Duke Charles of the Valois died!”

“
What!
” Ash slammed a bare hand down on the table’s surface. The noise whip-cracked around the ducal chamber. “You’re
shitting
me!”

“And who guarded our Duchess when the hunt rode, saw her safe to her fate, and gave into her hand the very blade with which she made the hart?”

“Fucking
hell!
”

Stepping back from the table, Ash took two quick strides, swung around, faced the Burgundian:

“We didn’t ‘come triumphant’ out of Carthage! We retreated out of there as fast as we could
run!
We
barely
made it north to you from Marseilles, one step in front of the Visigoths – I think we’ve been routing back across Europe since Basle! And as for
when
we got here—” She shook her head, cropped silver hair flying. “Haven’t you guys ever heard of coincidence! And I’d like to have seen you try to
stop
Florian hunting! Green Christ up a fucking Oak Tree!”

Olivier de la Marche made a brisk sign of the Briar Cross on his surcoat. Morning light glimmered off the reds, blues and golds of his heraldry; cloth spotless across the breadth of his armour and powerful body.

“God doesn’t always bother to let the instruments of His purpose know what they are, Demoiselle-Captain. Why should He? You’ve done everything He desires.”

Ash, at a loss, gaped at him.

Angelotti, from where he sat, murmured, “Mother of God…!”

“And,” the Burgundian commander added, “doubtless you will continue to bring, about His desires.”

“You’re the army’s commander, de la Marche; you’ve been that for years, they’ve seen you in tourney and war – even if I agreed to this idiocy, nobody’s going to follow
my
orders as Captain-General of Burgundy’s army!”

“But they will!”

Now de la Marche turned away, walked a few steps with his hands clasped behind his back, and then came back to stand before the table at which Florian sat. His gaze flicked over the Duchess; ranked Ash’s sub-commanders as not pertinent to the discussion; settled again on Ash.

“They
will,
” de la Marche repeated. “Demoiselle-Captain, I’ve told you why. You’ve been up on the walls. Go down into the streets, if you don’t believe me, and listen to the legend you have become! We believe that God sent you to bring our Duchess to us, when otherwise all would have perished when Duke Charles died. The men of Dijon believe that you will fight for us, against Visigoths you have already beaten once, and that while you fight, this city will not fall.”

Philippe Ternant got up and walked towards them, supporting himself with one veined hand on the table, the bishop at his other elbow. “It’s true. I’ve heard them.”

“You have a glamour, now,” de la Marche persisted. “As Joan the Virgin had for France. It is for you, now, to be a Joan of Arc for Burgundy. You cannot deny that this has come to you.”

Oh yes I bloody can
—

Looking away from Olivier de la Marche, she intercepted the glance first of one of the servers in white doublets, and then of the guard he stood next to. Both men’s faces wore a naked, painful hope; no protection of cynicism.

“Uh-uh.” Ash raised her hands in front of her, palms out, as if she could block the Burgundian Captain-General’s words. “Not me. I’ve seen this parcel and it’s ticking…”
¹⁴

“You have a duty—”

“I
don’t
have a duty! I’m a fucking
mercenary!
”

Panting, frustrated, Ash glared at the man.