Ash: A Secret History (195 page)

“Yeah, and you asked me for help. Remember? I can’t give it. Godfrey, I
am
going to ask you for something. If you prefer to think of it this way, I’m going to order you.”

–
Are you
crying?
Ash, little one, what is it?

“Just listen, Godfrey. Just listen.”

She dragged in a breath. It caught, threatening to become a sob; and she knotted the kerchief in her hands, white-knuckled, and got control of her voice.

“You’re the
machina rei militaris
now. Or part of it.”

–
Like the warp and weft of cloth, I think – and I have had long to consider the matter. Ash, why this grief?

“Do you remember what I said to you, when we were riding out to the desert, outside Carthage?”

–
Not a particular thing
—

Her breath came with a deep shudder. She interrupted sharply. “We were joking. I asked you for a miracle, a tiny miracle – ‘pray that the Stone Golem will break down’ – something else, I don’t remember what. And since then I’ve thought of nothing else but the Faris, killing the Faris to stop the Wild Machines.”

–
She does not speak to the Wild Machines, although I believe she hears them as they speak to her.

“The Faris isn’t important.” Ash opened her eyes again, not knowing until then that she had sought refuge in the dark. She reached out and picked up a rough-barked piece of wood, and leaned forward to bed it deep in the red ashes. “She
should
be killed, for safety, but I can’t do it. They’ll probably execute her here. That isn’t important. The Wild Machines can talk Leofric’s family into breeding another Faris, if they haven’t already started. What’s important is the Stone Golem.”

There is no sound of Godfrey Maximillian’s voice in her mind, but she can feel him waiting; feel his acceptance of her words into his self.

“We have to destroy the Wild Machines. We can’t do it militarily in much under a year. We haven’t got a year. We can kill my sister,” Ash said, and felt her voice shake again. “But that doesn’t buy us much time, and Burgundy may be a wasteland before then.”

–
Tell me nothing! If the great Devils are listening
—

“You listen, Godfrey. The Stone Golem is the key. It’s how they speak to Leofric, and his family. It’s how they speak to my sister. It’s the channel they’ll use, when they draw on the sun’s power for their miracle.”

–
Yes.

He sounded cautiously puzzled, but not defensive. Ash’s hands shook. She wiped wood-ash off her fingers, on to her stained green hose. She heard her own voice continuing to speak, the tone calm and authoritative.

“One reason why I didn’t give more consideration to the Stone Golem is that it’s in Carthage, behind Gelimer’s armies. We failed, on the raid, and I believed we couldn’t reach it to try again. I wasn’t thinking.”

A knot in the burning wood flared. The fire spat. Ash jolted, every muscle from spine to toe clenching. She rubbed her face with wood-ash-stained hands.

“Godfrey, the Stone Golem can be attacked. I don’t have to reach it. None of us have to. You’re already there. You’re
part
of it.”

–
Ash…

I will think of him as a disembodied fragment. An unquiet spirit. Not a man I’ve loved as brother and father for as long as I can remember.

“Do a last tiny miracle,” Ash said. “Destroy the Stone Golem. Break the link between it and my sister. Call down the weather to you. Call down the
lightning
– and fuse everything into useless sand and glass!”

The place in her soul that is shared stays silent. Not long, a few heartbeats – she can feel her pulse shaking her body.

–
Oh, Ash…

Pain sounded in his voice. Her chest ached. She rubbed it with a clenched fist. The anguish did not go away. Very steadily, she said aloud, “You’re a priest. You
can
pray the lightning down.”

–
Suicide is a sin.

“That’s why I’m telling you to do it, not asking you.” She caught her breath on a sob again, that was almost a laugh. “I knew you’d say that. I think about these things. I don’t want you damned. The minute it came to me, I knew it had to be at someone else’s command. And it’s mine; the responsibility is mine.”

Chill air moved past her, flowing over the flagstones towards the chimney. She huddled deeper into her furs. A scrape of metal sounded from the door: the chape of Rickard’s sword on masonry. Distant, down the spiral stairs, she heard voices.

In her head, there is silence.

“The other reason why it didn’t come to me, I suppose,” Ash said quietly, “is that as soon as it did, I would know what it meant. I know you. You got yourself killed in Carthage going back for Annibale Valzacchi, for God’s sake, and this is more important than one man’s life!”

–
Yes. More important than one man’s life.

“I didn’t mean
your
—” Ash broke off. “I— yes. I do mean that. This will cut the Wild Machines off completely. They can’t use the Faris, they won’t even be able to talk to the Visigoths. They’ll be dumb, powerless, until someone else can build a machine. That could take centuries. So yes, it’s more important than one life, but when it’s
you
—”

Wind rattled the shutters. Starlight penetrated faintly through cracks in the wood. That and the orange glow of the fire illuminated the familiar furniture of the command tent: armour-stand, war-chest, spare kit. The solitude of it bit into her, sharp as the freezing night.

“I’ve had to order people into places where I’ve known they were going to die,” Ash said steadily. “I never knew how much I hated it until now. Losing you once was bad enough.”

–
I don’t know if this can be done. But I will pray for God’s grace, and attempt it.

“Godfrey—”

In the space that she shares with him, she feels a flood of bewilderment, fear, and courage; a terror that he cannot hide from her, and an equally strong determination.

–
You will not leave me.

“No.”

–
God bless you. If He loves you as much as I do, He will give you a life, hereafter, with no more such grief in it. Now—

“Godfrey, not yet!”

–
Will you make it my sin? If I wait, I will lose my courage. I
must
do it now, while I can.

What she wants to say is, To hell with it! I don’t care what happens. I’ll find some way to rescue you, make you human again; what do I care about the world? You’re
Godfrey.

The fire blurred in her vision. Tears ran down her cheeks.

What can I give you, out of what I am? Only this: that I
can
do this. I can take this responsibility.

“Call down the lightning,” she said. “Do it now.”

Her voice sounded flat, in the still, bitter air. She had a second to smear her eyes clear
,
to think
,
Bloody idiots he and I are going to look if this is all for nothing
—

In the centre of her soul, Godfrey Maximillian spoke.

–
By the Grace of God, and by the love I have had for Your creations, I implore You to hear me, and grant my prayer.

It is the same voice that she has heard hundreds of times, at Lauds and Vespers and Matins; heard in camp and on the field, where men fighting have gone to their deaths listening to it. And it is the same voice that talked her asleep as a child, in the months after St Herlaine, when any darkness had the power to keep her awake and shivering until sunrise.

“I’m here,” she said. “Godfrey, I’m here.”

His voice in her mind is unsteady; she feels the flood of fear in him. He prays on:

–
Though I die, I shall
not
die; I shall be with You, Lord God, and Your Saints. This is my faith, and I here proclaim it. Lord God, before Whom no armour can stand, Thou who art stronger than any sword – send down the fire!

“Godfrey!
Godfrey!
”

What she remembers from Molinella, a child watching a battle from a church tower, is how the appalling explosion of cannon-fire knocks the moment of impact out of memory. It must be reconstructed later. She tastes brick-dust in her mouth again, smells poppies. A fang of pain bites at her hand. She snatches it back – from fire; from the burning wood in the hearth in the company’s tower. Not Italy and summer, but Burgundy and the bitter solstice of winter.

She put one hand down to push herself up, realised that she was lying on her face, that she had soiled herself, that blood ran stickily down from her bitten lip.

“Godfrey…”

Blood dripped down on to the mattress, staining the straw’s linen cover. Her arms began to shake. The muscles would not take her weight. She fell down on her face, shaking; the rub of cloth against cloth gratingly loud in the tower room where no explosion has taken place. Her ears sting: her whole body shakes with an impact that has not happened here.

“Godfrey!”

“Boss!” Rickard’s boots clattered on the flagstones. She felt his hands on her shoulders, rolling her over on her back.

“I’m all right.” She sat up, fingers trembling, body shaking. The boy has seen what happens in battle; she is not ashamed that he sees her now. Stunned, she gazed around at the stone hall. “Godfrey…”

“What’s happened?” Rickard demanded. “Boss?”

“I felt him
die.
” Her voice shook. “It’s done, it’s done now. I made him do it. Oh, Jesu. I made him.”

A great pain went through her chest. Her hands would not stop shaking, though she clenched them into fists. She felt her face screw up. A sob forced its way past her rigid jaw.

She was not aware of Rickard running, panic-stricken, for the door of the hall, or of anyone else coming in; the first she knew of it was when a man grabbed her, hard. Weeping, stinking, incoherent; she could say nothing, only sob harder. The man put his arms tightly around her, gripping her close to him. She put her arms around his bulk and clung to him.

“Come on, girl!
Answer
me! What’s happened?”

“Not—”

“
Now,
” the voice insisted. A voice accustomed to orders. Robert Anselm.

“I’m okay.” Hollow, every breath still shaking her, she pushed him far enough back that she could grab his hands in her own. “There’s nothing you can do.”

As her breathing steadied, Robert Anselm looked at her keenly. He was without armour, a stained demi-gown belted around his beer-belly; had obviously been snatching what hours asleep he could. The light from the fire illuminated, grotesquely, his shaven head and ears; and put deep shadows in his eye-sockets.

“What’s this ‘Godfrey’? What’s happened to Godfrey?” he rumbled.

“He’s dead,” Ash said. Her eyes glimmered. She gripped Anselm’s hands hard. “Christ. Losing him twice. Jesu.”

What Anselm said then, she ignored. There were other men crowding in at the far door: Rickard, her officers. She ignored all of it; clamped her eyes shut.

She feels cautiously in the part of herself that has been shared, since Molinella, with her voice.

“Godfrey?”

Nothing.

Quiet tears welled up and spilled over her lids. She felt them streaming down her face, hot in the freezing air. The ache in her throat tightened.

“Two thousand troops, in defence positions in a siege; three legions attacking: options?”

Nothing.

“Come on, you bastards. I know you’re there. Talk to me!”

There is no sensation of pressure. No voices that mutter in the language of the Prophet Gundobad’s time; or rage, deafeningly, to bring down walls and palaces. There are no Wild Machines. Only a sensation of blank, numb, empty silence.

For the first time in her adult life, Ash is without voices.

An egoistic part of her mind remarked,
I’ve lost what made me unique;
and she gave a shaky smile, part self-disgust and part acceptance.

She opened her eyes, bent down, and hauled on her long gown to conceal her soiled clothing. She straightened up, facing the officers that crowded into the hall: Angelotti, Geraint, Euen, Thomas Rochester, Ludmilla; a dozen more. Facing them now only as a young woman with a skilled trade, war; remarkable only for that, and for nothing else.

She said, “The Stone Golem is destroyed. Melted down to slag.”

Silence fell; the men looking from one to other, too stunned yet by the announcement to feel relief, joy, belief, victory.

“Godfrey did it,” Ash said. “He prayed down lightning on House Leofric. I felt it hit. I— he died in the attack. But the Stone Golem’s gone. The Wild Machines are cut off utterly. We’re safe.”

IV

“Of course,” Robert Anselm said sardonically, “that’s ‘safe’ from the Wild Machines’ miracle. Not safe from the three Visigoth legions sitting outside Dijon!”

The better part of an hour had gone by in the top floor of the company’s tower, more lance-leaders coming in by the minute, Burgundian knights and
centeniers
joining them; and Henri Brant and Wat Rodway between them breaking out a spirituous liquor that tasted like nothing on earth, but bit the tongue and throat and belly with heat. The frenetic celebrations spread down to the men on the lower two floors: Ash could hear the roaring racket below.

“The truce is still holding. I’ve told you. We’re starting the fight back now, and we won’t stop until we get to Carthage.”

It was said largely for public consumption: for Jussey, Lacombe, Loyecte, de la Marche. Cleaned up and wearing borrowed hose, Ash stood and drank with her men, and felt nothing but numbness.

Celebration got into gear. The volume of noise rose. Faces flushed, Euen Huw and Geraint ab Morgan shouted joyously at each other in triumphant Welsh. Angelotti and half his gun-crew masters crowded closer to the fire, leather mugs full; someone called for Carracci and his recorder; Baldina and Ludmilla Rostovnaya began a drinking contest.

For them, Godfrey died three months ago.