Ash: A Secret History (17 page)

In the light from the lancet windows, the pupils of his light-coloured eyes were contracted to pinpoints.

“New here from Tunis?” she guessed, speaking her accurate but uneducated mercenary’s version of his language.

“From Carthage,” he agreed, giving the city its Gothic
²⁷
appellation. “But I am adjusted, I think, to the light, now.”

“I’m – oh
shit
” Ash interrupted herself rapidly.

A solid, man-shaped figure stood behind the Carthaginian. It overtopped him by a head or more: Ash judged it seven or eight feet tall. At first glance she would have thought it a statue, made out of red granite: the statue of a man, with a featureless ovoid for a head.

Statues do not move.

She felt herself colouring; felt Robert Anselm and Godfrey Maximillian crowding in close to her shoulders, staring behind the newcomer. She found her voice again. “I’ve never seen one of those up close before!”

“Our golem?
²⁸
But yes.”

With an amused look in his pale eyes, as if he were used to this, the man beckoned with a snap of his fingers. At the Carthaginian’s signal, the figure took a step forward into the shaft of window-light.

Stained glass colours slid over the carved red granite body and limbs. Each joint, at neck, shoulders, elbows, knees, ankles, gleamed brass; the metal jointed neatly into the stone. Its stone fingers were articulated as carefully as the lames of German gauntlets. It smelled faintly of something sour – river-mud? – and its tread on the tiny tiles of the cathedral floor echoed, heavily, with an impression of enormous weight.

“May I touch it?”

“If you wish to, madam.”

Ash reached out and put the pads of her fingers against the red granite chest. The stone felt cold. She slid her hand across, feeling sculpted pectoral muscles. The head tilted downwards, facing her.

In the featureless ovoid, two almond-shaped holes opened where eyes might have been on a man. Her body shocked, anticipating white of eye, pupil, focus.

The eyes behind the stone lids were full of red sand. She watched the granules swirl.

“Drink,” the man from Carthage ordered.

The arms swivelled up noiselessly. The moving statue held out a chased golden goblet to the man whom it attended. The Carthaginian drank, and gave it back.

“Oh yes, madam, we are allowed our golem-servants with us! Although there was some debate about whether they would be allowed within your ‘church’.” He surrounded the word delicately with nuances of sarcasm.

“It looks like a demon.” Ash stared up at the golem. She imagined the weight of the stone articulated arm if it should rise and fall, if it should strike. Her eyes gleamed.

“It is nothing. But you are the bride!” The man picked up her free hand and kissed it. His lips were dry. His eyes twinkled. In his own language, he said, “Asturio, madam; Asturio Lebrija, Ambassador from the Citadel to the court of the Emperor, however briefly. These Germans! How long can I bear it? You are a woman of your hands, madam. A warrior. Why are you marrying that boy?”

Waspishly, Ash said, “Why are you here as an ambassador?”

“One who had power sent me. Ah, I see.” Asturio Lebrija’s sunburned hand scratched his hair which, she noted, was cropped short in the North African fashion for one who customarily wears a helmet. “Well, you are as welcome here as I, I think.”

“As a fart in a communal bathtub.”

Lebrija whooped.

“Ambassador, I think they’re afraid that one day your people will stop fighting the Turks and turn into a problem.” Ash registered Godfrey moving aside to talk to Lebrija’s aides. Robert Anselm remained, looming, at her shoulder, his gaze fixed on the golem. “Or it’s because they envy you Carthage’s hydraulic gates and under-floor hot water and everything else from the Golden Age.”

“Sewers, batteries, triremes, abacus-engines…” Asturio’s eyes danced as he assured her of it. “Oh, we are Rome come again. Behold our mighty legions!”

“Your heavy cavalry aren’t
bad
…” Ash stroked her hand over her mouth and chin but couldn’t smother her smile. “Oops. It’s a good job you’re the ambassador. That was hardly diplomatic.”

“I have met women of war before. I would sooner meet you in the court than on the battlefield.”

Ash grinned. “So. This northern light too bright for you, Ambassador Asturio?”

“It’s hardly the Eternal Twilight, madam, I grant you—”

An older male voice behind Lebrija bluntly interrupted. “Get the fuck over here, Asturio. Help me out with this damned conniving German!”

Ash blinked, realising almost immediately that the new man spoke in the Visigoth language, that his tone was sweetly pleasant, and that her own mercenaries were the only people present who had understood him. She glared at Isobel, Blanche, Euen Huw and Paul di Conti. They subsided. As she turned back to him, Asturio Lebrija bowed a flamboyant farewell, and moved to join what must have been the senior ambassador in the Visigoth delegation at the Emperor Frederick’s side. The golem followed, with heavy soft tread.

“Their heavy cataphracts
²⁹
aren’t
bad,” Robert Anselm said in her ear. “Never mind all their fucking ships! And they’ve had a military build-up going on there these last ten years.”

“I know. It’s all going to turn into another Visigoths-fighting-Turks war for control of the Mediterranean, with undisciplined serfs and light cavalry knocking hell out of each other for no result. Mind you,” – a sudden hope – “there might be some business down there for us.”

“Not ‘us’.” Anselm’s features twisted with disgust. “Fernando del Guiz.”

“
Not for long.
”

On the heels of that, another voice echoed through the huge spaces of the cathedral, echoing from crypt to barrel-vaults. “
Out!
”

Frederick of Hapsburg – shouting.

Conversation drained swiftly into silence. Ash went forward through the crowd. A foot trod on her trailing train, bringing her up short. Ludmilla muttered something as she picked the cloth up off the flagstones and flung the whole weight of it over her arm. Ash grinned back at Big Isobel, and caught up with Anselm, edging her way between him and Godfrey to the front of the crowd.

Two men had Asturio Lebrija with his arms twisted up behind his back, forcing the man in the mail shirt to kneel. Also down on the stone floor, the older Visigoth ambassador had a bill-shaft held across his throat and Sigismund of the Tyrol’s knee in his back. The golem stood as still as the carved saints in their niches.

Frederick’s sibilant voice echoed among the soaring pillars, still shaking with the re-imposition of a control Ash had not heard him lose before. “Daniel de Quesada, I may hear you say your people have given mine medicine, masonry and mathematics; I will not stand here in this most ancient cathedral and hear my people maligned as barbarians—”

“Lebrija did not say—”

Frederick of Hapsburg overrode the older ambassador: “—my fellow sovereign Louis of France called ‘a spider’, or be told to my face I am ‘old and covetous’!”

Ash glanced from Frederick and his bristling nobles to the Visigoth ambassadors. Far more likely that Asturio Lebrija had momentarily and catastrophically forgotten which language he was speaking, than that the older man – bearded, with the look of a battle veteran – would deliberately allow him to insult the Holy Roman Emperor.

She murmured to Godfrey, “Someone’s picking a fight here. Deliberately. Who?”

The bearded priest frowned. “I think, Frederick. He doesn’t want to be asked to lend military aid in Visigothic North Africa.
³⁰
But he won’t want to be heard refusing the ambassadors’ request, in case it’s supposed he’s refusing because he hasn’t got the troops to send, and is therefore weak. Easier to buy himself time like this, given this excuse, with false anger over an ‘insult’.”

Ash wanted to say something on behalf of Asturio Lebrija, whose face reddened as he strained to get out of the grip of two German knights; nothing immediately useful came to mind.

The Emperor snapped peevishly, “I will leave you both your heads! You are returned home. Tell the Citadel to send me civil ambassadors in future!”

Ash flicked a glance sideways, not realising that her whole stance changed: alert, balanced, and not usual for someone in bridal robes. The golem stood silent and motionless behind the two ambassadors. If
that
should move— Her fingers closed automatically, seeking a sword-hilt.

Fernando del Guiz straightened up from leaning on a cathedral pillar. Caught by the movement, Ash watched him helplessly.
No different from a hundred other young German knights here,
she protested to herself; and then,
But he’s golden!

Gold light from the windows catches his face as he turns, laughing at something one of the squires clustered around him has said. She sees a snapshot image of light limning the edge of sun-browned masculine brow, nose, lip; warm in the cold cathedral dimness. And his eyes, which are merry. She sees him young, strong, wearing fluted armour with complete naturalness; thinks of how he knows the outdoor months of campaigning as well as she does, the sunny ease of camp-life and the blood-teasing exultation of battle.

Why despise me, when we’re the same? You could understand me better than any other woman you could have married—

Fernando del Guiz’s voice said, “Let me be the escort for the ambassadors, Your Imperial Majesty. I have some new troops I need to knock into shape. Entrust me with this favour.”

It was ten heartbeats at least before Ash replayed “new troops” in her mind.

He means my company!
She exchanged glances with Robert Anselm and Godfrey Maximillian; both men frowning.

“It shall be your bridal gift, del Guiz,” Frederick of Hapsburg agreed; something sardonic in his expression. “And a honeymoon for you and your bride.” He gathered his nine-yard velvet gown about himself, with the aid of two small boy pages, and without looking over his shoulder, said, “Bishop Stephen.”

“Your Imperial Majesty?”

“Exorcise
that.
” A twig-thin finger flicked towards the Visigoth golem. “And when you have done it, command stonemasons with hammers, and have it broken into gravel!”

“Yes, Your Imperial Majesty!”

“Barbarian!” The older Visigoth ambassador, Daniel de Quesada, spluttered incredulously. “
Barbarian!
”

Asturio Lebrija looked up with difficulty from where he was pinned, on his knees. “I spoke no lie, Daniel: these damned Franks
³¹
are children playing in ruins, destroying whatever comes to their hands! Hapsburg, you have no
idea
of the value of—”

Frederick’s knights slammed Lebrija face-down on the tiles. The sound of blows echoed through the vaulting heights of the cathedral. Ash took a half-step forward, only to be nearer, and caught her foot in the brocade hem and stumbled, grabbing Godfrey’s arm.

“My lord del Guiz,” the Emperor Frederick said mildly, “you will escort these men to our nearest port, in chains, and ensure they are deported by ship to Carthage. I wish them to live to carry their disgrace home with them.”

“Your Majesty.” Fernando bowed, still something coltish about him for all the breadth of his shoulders.

“You will need to take command of your new troops. Not all, not all. These men—” Frederick of Hapsburg lifted his fingers very slightly, in the direction of Ash’s lance-leaders and men-at-arms, crowding in at the rear of the cathedral. “—are now by feudal right yours, my lord. And as your liege lord, they are also ours. You shall take some of them upon this duty, and we shall retain the remainder: we have tasks that they can do, order not yet being secure in Neuss.”

Ash opened her mouth.

Robert Anselm, without moving his rigid eyes-front gaze, rammed his elbow into her ribs.

“He can’t do this!” Ash hissed.

“Yes. He can. Now shut
up,
girl.”

Ash stood between Godfrey and Anselm, her heavy brocade gown stifling her. Sweat dampened her armpits. The knights, lords, merchants, bishops and priests of the Imperial court began to move off in Frederick’s wake, talking between themselves; a great throng of richly dressed men, their voices travelling up into the silence of the fan-vaulting and the saints in their niches.

“They can’t just split us up like this!”

Godfrey’s hand closed painfully tightly around her elbow. “If you can’t do anything,
don’t
do anything. Child, listen to me! If you protest now, everyone will see that you lack the power to alter this. Wait.
Wait.
Until you can do something.”

The departing Imperial court took as little notice of one woman and a cluster of soldiers as they did of the stone saints above.

“I can’t leave it!” Ash spoke so that only the priest and Anselm could hear. “I built this company up from nothing. If I wait, now, either they’re going to start deserting, or they’re going to get used to del Guiz in command!”

“You could let them go. It is their right,” Godfrey said mildly. “Perhaps, if they no longer wish to be men of war—”

Both Ash and Robert Anselm shook their heads.

“These are men I know.” Ash wiped her hand across her scarred cheek. “These are men hundreds of leagues from whatever poxy farm or town they were born in, and fighting’s the only trade they’ve got. Godfrey, they’re my people.”

“Now they are del Guiz men-at-arms. Have you considered, child, that this may be better for them?”

This time it was Robert Anselm who snorted.

“I know young knights with their arses on their first war-horse! That young streak of piss and wind couldn’t restrain
himself
in battle, never mind his men! He’s a heroic disaster looking for a place to happen. Captain, we’ve got time. If we’re leaving Cologne, that’s good.” Anselm stared after Fernando del Guiz, walking down the nave with Joscelyn van Mander; never a glance back for his bride. “See how you like it out on the road, city boy.”