Ash: A Secret History (6 page)
“I’m too young!” Ash protested.
“No.”
“Demon!” the boy shrieked. “Demons told
you
we’d lose!
You
hear demons!
You’ll
burn!”
“Richard!”
He ran away. He ran down the earth-track that soldiers‘ feet had beaten into existence over the peasants’ crops, away from the baggage wagons.
“Man-bait! He’s too pretty,” the washerwoman said, suddenly vicious, throwing her wet rag down. “I wouldn’t be him. Or you. Your face! They’ll burn you. If you hear
voices!
” She made the sign of the Horns.
Ash leaned her head back, staring up into the endless blue. The air swam with gold. Every muscle ached, one wrenched knee hurt, her little toenail had been torn off bloody. None of the normal euphoria of hard exertion over and done with. Her guts churned.
“Not voices.
A
voice.” She pushed with her bare foot at the clay pot of witch hazel ointment. “Maybe it was sweet Christ. Or a saint.”
“
You,
hear a saint?” the woman snarled incredulously. “Little whore!”
Ash wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “Maybe it was a vision. Guillaume had a vision once. He saw the Blessed Dead fighting with us at Dinant.”
The washerwoman turned to walk away. “I hope the Most Serene look at your ugly face and make you fuck their nightsoil men!”
Ash scooped up and hefted the pot of witch hazel in one hand, preparing to throw. “Poxy bitch!”
A hand came out of nowhere and clouted her. It stunned her. She burst into a humiliatingly loud squall, dropping the clay pot.
The man, now visible as wearing the Bride of the Sea’s livery, snarled, “You, woman, get up to the centre of camp. We’re doing shares of spoil. Go! You too, you little scarred freak!”
The washerwoman ran off, laughing too shrilly. The soldier followed.
Another woman, suddenly beside the wagon, asked, “
Do
you hear voices, child?”
This woman had a moon-round, moon-pale face, with no hair showing under her tight headdress. Over her big body a grey robe hung loosely, with a Briar Cross on a chain at her belt.
Ash snivelled. She wiped her dripping nose again. A line of thin, clear snot hung from her nostrils to the shirt’s linen sleeve. “I don’t know! What’s ‘hearing voices’?”
The pale moon-face looked avidly down at her. “There’s talk among the men of the Most Serene. I think they’re looking for you.”
“Me?” A tightness took hold of Ash’s ribs. “Looking for
me?
”
A clammily hot white hand reached down, seizing Ash’s jaw and turning her face up to the evening light. She strained against the imprint of sharp fingertips, without success. The woman studied her intently.
“If it was a true sending from the Green Christ, they hope you will prophesy for them. If it’s a demon, they’ll drive it out of you. That could take until morning. Most of them are well gone in drink now.”
Ash ignored the grip on her face, her sick fear and her bowels churning. “Are you a nun?”
“I am one of the Sisters of St Herlaine, yes. We have a convent near here, at Milano.”
5
The woman let go. Her voice sounded harsh under the liquid speech. Ash guessed it not to be her first language. Like all mercenaries, Ash had the basics of most languages she had heard. Ash understood the big woman as she said, “You need feeding up, girl. How old are you?”
“Nine. Ten. Eleven.” Ash dragged her sleeve across her chin. “I don’t know. I can remember the big storm. Ten. Maybe nine.”
The woman’s eyes were light, all light. “You’re a
child.
Small, too. No one has ever cared for you, have they? Probably that’s why the demon got in. This camp is no place for a child.”
Tears stabbed her eyes. “It’s my home! I
don’t
have a demon!”
The nun put her hands up, each palm to one of Ash’s cheeks, surveying her without her scars. Her hands felt both warm and cold on Ash’s wet skin.
“I am Sister Ygraine. Tell me the truth. What speaks to you?”
Doubt bit cold in Ash’s belly. “Nothing, nobody, Soeur! Nobody was there but me and Richard!”
Chills stiffened her neck, braced her shoulders. Rote words of a prayer to the Green Christ died in her dry mouth. She began to listen. The nun’s harsh breathing. Fire crackling. A horse whinnying. Drunken songs and shouting further off.
No sensation of a voice speaking quietly, to her, out of a companionable silence.
A burst of sound roared from the centre of the camp. Ash flinched. Soldiers ran past, ignoring them, running towards the growing crowd in the centre. Somewhere in a wagon close by, a hurt man called out for his
maman.
Gold light faded towards dusk. The tall sky began to fill with sparks showering up from the campfires, fires let burn too high, far too high; they might burn all the mercenary tents by morning, and think nothing of it but a brief regret for plunder ruined.
The nun said, “They’re despoiling your camp.”
Not speaking to Soeur Ygraine, not speaking to anyone, Ash deliberately breathed words aloud: “We’re prisoners. What will happen to me now?”
‘
Licence, liberty, and drunkenness
—’
Ash clamped her hands over her ears. The soundless voice continued:
‘—
the night when commanders cannot control their men who have come living off the battlefield. The night in which people are killed for sport.
’
Soeur Ygraine shifted her big hand to Ash’s shoulder, the grip firm through Ash’s filthy-dirty shirt. Ash lowered her hands. A growl in her belly told her she was hungry for the first time in twelve hours.
The nun continued to gaze down at her as if no voice had spoken.
“I—” Ash hesitated.
In her mind now she felt neither silence, nor a voice, but a
potential
for speech. Like a tooth which does not quite ache, but soon will.
She began to hurt for what she had never before given two thoughts to: the solitariness of her soul in her body. Fear flooded her from scalp to tingling fingertips to feet.
She abruptly stuttered, “I
didn’t
hear any voice, I didn’t, I
didn’t!
I lied to Richard because I thought it would make me famous. I just wanted somebody to notice me!”
And then, as the big woman disinterestedly turned her back and began to stride away, into the chaos of firelight and drunken condottieri, Ash shrieked out hard enough to hurt her throat:
“Take me somewhere safe, take me to sanctuary,
don’t let them hurt me, please!
”
DR PlERCE RATCLIFF Ph.D.
(War Studies)
Flat 1, Rowan Court, 112 Olvera Street, London W14 OAB, United Kingdom
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Tel: ██████████
Anna Longman
Editor
█████ University Press
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9 October 2000
Dear Anna,
It was good to meet with you in person, at last. Yes, I think doing the editing section by section with you is by far the wisest way to go about this, particularly considering the volume of the material and the proposed publication date in 2001, and the fact that I am still fine-tuning the translations.
As soon as my net connection is properly set up I can send work to you direct. I’m glad you’re reasonably happy with what you have so far. I can, of course, cut down on the footnotes.
It’s kind of you to admire the ‘literary distancing technique’ of referring to fifteenth century Catholicism in such terms as ‘Green Christ’ and ‘Briar Cross’. In fact, this is
not
my technique for making sure the readers can’t impose their own preconceptions about mediaeval life on the text! It’s a direct translation of the mediaeval dog-Latin, as are the earlier Mithraic references. We shouldn’t be too concerned, this is just some of the obviously false legendary material – supernatural lions and similar – attributed to Ash’s childhood. Heroes always gather myths to themselves, still more so when they are not remarkable men but remarkable women.
Perhaps the Winchester Codex purports to reflect Ash’s limited knowledge as a child: Ash at eight or ten years old knows only fields, woods, campaign tents, armour, washerwomen, dogs, soldiers, swords, saints, Lions. The company of mercenaries. Hills, rivers, towns – places have no names. How should she know what year it is? Dates don’t matter yet.
All this changes, of course, in the next section: the del Guiz
Life.
Like the editor of the 1939 edition of the ‘Ash’ papers, Vaughan Davies, I am using the
original
German version of the del Guiz
Life
of Ash, published in 1516. (Because of the inflammatory nature of the text it was immediately withdrawn, and republished in an expurgated form in 1518.) Apart from a few minor printing errors, this copy agrees with the four other surviving editions of the 1516
Life
(in the British Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and the Glasgow Museum).
Here, I have a considerable advantage over Vaughan Davies, who was editing in 1939 – I can be explicit. I have therefore translated this text into modern colloquial English, especially the dialogue, where I use the educated and slang versions of our language to represent some of the social differences of that period. In addition, mediaeval soldiers were notoriously foul-mouthed. When Davies accurately translates Ash’s bad language as, “By Christ’s bones”, however, the modern reader feels none of the contemporary shock. Therefore, I have again used modern-day equivalents. I’m afraid she does say “Fuck” rather a lot.
Regarding your question about using different documentary sources, my intention is
not
to follow Charles Mallory Maximillian’s method. While I have a great admiration for his 1890 edition of the ‘Ash’ documents, in which he translates the various Latin codices, each
Life,
etc., in turn, and lets their various authors speak for themselves, I feel this demands more than modern readers are willing to give. I intend to follow Vaughan Davies’s biographical method, and weave the various authors into a coherent narrative of her life. Where texts disagree this will, of course, be given the appropriate scholarly discussion.
I realise that you will find some of my new material surprising, but remember that what it narrates is what these people genuinely
thought
to be happening to them. And, if you bear in mind the major alteration to our view of history that will take place when
Ash: The Lost History of Burgundy
is published, perhaps we would be wise not to dismiss anything too casually.
Sincerely,
DR PlERCE RATCLIFF Ph.D.
(War Studies)
Flat 1, Rowan Court, 112 Olvera Street, London W14 OAB, United Kingdom
Fax: ██████████
E-mail: ██████████
Tel: ██████████
Anna Longman