Ash: The Lost History
Chapter 136 : Ash stripped off her gauntlet and clasped his hand, moved almost to tears of her own.

Ash stripped off her gauntlet and clasped his hand, moved almost to tears of her own. "If it comes to that, I guess you have the distinction of being the only Englishman ever to employ the reigning prince of Burgundy - since she's still on my books, and I'm still on yours."

"The more reason for you to have trusted me to return."

Floria del Guiz appeared through the crowd that parted to let the d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy pa.s.s. The Earl of Oxford sank gracefully down on one knee. His brothers joined him, and Viscount Beaumont; kneeling before her, and the Burgundian n.o.bles.

"G.o.d be with you, madam doctor," John de Vere said, not appearing at all incommoded to be kneeling. "You have been given a harder task than any man would wish."

Ash opened her mouth to speak, hesitated, and shut it again. She put her hands behind her back, forcing herself to wait for Floria to speak first. d.u.c.h.ess Florian, she reminded herself uncomfortably.

Floria's sudden smile dazzled. "We have to talk, my lord Oxford. Is this all your men? Are there more?"

"These are all," de Vere said, getting to his feet. Ash saw him glance back automatically at the Turkish troops in their neat, disciplined rows.

"Regrettably, Mistress Florian, I speak little of their language." The Earl of Oxford pointed to a moustached soldier in mail hauberk and peaked helm. "My sole interpreter. He's from Wallachia; a Voynik auxiliary. Do you have anyone here who speaks Turkish?"

Ash, glancing at Floria before she answered, said, "Not me, my lord. But I wouldn't be at all surprised. Robert," she signalled Anselm over. "Do we have anyone who speaks Turkish?"

"I do." Anselm made an awkward bow to the Earl; and pointed over at the Italian gunner, who had joined Ludmilla Rostovnaya and the missile troops. "Angelotti does. We fought in the Morea3 in sixty-seven and sixty-eight. Maybe as late as seventy. Some d.a.m.n Florentine shot me in the leg; I hauled Angelotti out of the Adriatic. Never been to sea since." He took a breath, still unsteadily gazing at the Earl of Oxford. "Yeah. I speak the language."

"Good," de Vere approved absently. "I do not wish to be dependent on one man who may be killed."

His eyes stayed fixed on Floria del Guiz, in her female clothing. Ash saw him shake his head in wonderment.

Losing patience, Ash demanded, "Are you going to tell us what's going on here, my lord?"

"It is Burgundy's d.u.c.h.ess that I should tell." De Vere's face creased with humour. "I dare say she'll let you listen, madam."

Floria del Guiz, surrounded by maids, Burgundian n.o.bles, and Thomas Rochester's lance in their self-imposed duty as bodyguard, grinned broadly at Ash. "No chance!"

"Oh, she might. She might." Ash beamed at John de Vere. She spread her hands a little. "Meet the Captain-General of Burgundy's armies, my lord - the Maid of Dijon."

The Earl of Oxford gazed at her beatifically for several seconds. His head went back in a great bark of laughter. Beaumont and the de Vere brothers joined in. What Ash saw in de Vere's expression, as he registered the bristling disapproval of de la Marche and the Burgundian knights, was sheer delight.

He walloped her solidly on the arm. "So. This is how you hold to your condotta with me, madam?"

"I'm at your command now you're back, my lord."

"Of course you are." His faded blue eyes glowed with humour. "Of course. As an Englishman, madam, I'm more than happy to leave Holy Virgins to foreigners. Much safer." More soberly, he added, "What news have you had of late from outside the walls?"

Floria said grimly, "For about the last three weeks, nothing."

Robert Anselm added, "The Visigoths aren't taking the walls, but they've got this place shut up tighter than a duck's a.r.s.e, my lord."

"You have had no intelligence at all?"

Ash blinked against the low brilliance of the winter noon. "They tied us up solid, about the same time they stopped pressing the a.s.saults on the walls. We haven't got any spies out or messengers of our own in, since."

At the mention of a.s.saults, she saw de Vere's face change, but he said nothing.

Robert Anselm said cynically, "We stopped sending people out when they started coming back in by trebuchet, in two separate sacks. Last one was that French guy, Armand de Lannoy." He shook his head. "He's been feeding the crows for a week now. Don't know why he thought it was so d.a.m.n important to get out."

"I can answer that question, Master Anselm," the Earl of Oxford said. As the last of his exuberance died down, Ash noted the strain underneath. "Madam d.u.c.h.ess, better to say it to you and your advisors all at the same time."

Ash overrode what the surgeon might have been about to say. "How the f.u.c.k my lord - did you get in here?" She found that she was waving her own hands, in much the same way as the English, and put them down by her side. "Did you sail from Carthage to Constantinople? Have you seen the Sultan? Is this all your troops? What's happened?"

"All in time, madam. And in the lady d.u.c.h.ess's hearing." John de Vere glanced momentarily from the surgeon in her filthy jewelled gown to the white sun in the winter sky.

"Plainly," he said, "you are Burgundy's d.u.c.h.ess, as Charles was the late Duke. Tell me, madam, are you - you must be what Duke Charles was. Or we would not have a sun in the sky above us."

Floria's dirty, stained hands went to her breast. A white pectoral Briar Cross hung from a golden chain, itself not rich, but carved from the same horn of the hart as her ducal crown. Her knuckles whitened: she did not, for a second, meet the eyes of any of the Burgundian n.o.bles surrounding her.

"She's Charles's successor," Olivier de la Marche said in the tone of a man who hears a law of nature - the tide, perhaps, or the return of the moon -questioned.

"Oh, she's the d.u.c.h.ess, all right." Ash, conscious of her bruised ribs, and the weight of her armour, s.h.i.+fted from foot to foot in the cold wind. She is what the Wild Machines need to destroy, now. "I'll tell you something I do know, my lord Oxford. The Faris knows that. She's sitting out there in that camp - she's been sitting out there for five weeks now - and she knows that Florian is the person she needs to kill. And she isn't doing a d.a.m.n thing about it."

With raised fair eyebrows, John de Vere gazed around at the battered buildings and deserted streets of Dijon.

Ash shrugged. "Oh, she's letting hunger and disease do her work for her, but she's almost stopped the a.s.saults. I'd give half the company war-chest to know what her officers are saying. And the other half to know what she's thinking, right now."

The Earl of Oxford said, "I believe that I can tell you that also. Captain Ash."

The sound of distant siege-engine fire echoed through the air from the west of the city. Faint vibrations shook the earth under her feet.

"Get your Turks away from the walls. We'll take council of war," Floria said briefly, "Indoors."

As the court entered the private chambers of the d.u.c.h.ess, the Earl of Oxford and his brothers were again swept up into a crush of more of the lords of Burgundy; greetings being exchanged, questions shouted. The Janissary captains followed in Oxford's wake with expressions of polite bewilderment. Each of the dismounted Turks wore the same thing, Ash noted in astonishment: a fawn-coloured robe with hanging sleeves, over a mail hauberk; a curved sword belted at the waist; bow and s.h.i.+eld; and a helmet with a sleeve of white cloth hanging down behind. The uniformity of their clothing and their bearded faces made her feel that she was in the chamber with one man twenty times over, and not with twenty men. The contrast with her own escort, Thomas Rochester's lance - war-hats buckled down over their cowls, wearing a selection of mail, leather and stolen plate armour; each man in his own chosen colour of filthy hose gone through at the knee - was marked.

"We'll never feed them," Floria said flatly, walking in at Ash's side. She caught Ash's glance. "Henri Brant's been advising me. As well as the castellan of Dijon. We can't feed the people we've got."

"Try thinking of it this way. Five hundred cavalry mounts is two hundred and fifty tons of meat."

"Good G.o.d, girl! Will they wear it?"

"The Turks? Not for a second, I shouldn't think. Let's not borrow trouble," Ash said thoughtfully. "Find out why he's brought them here, first."

The gla.s.sed windows in the ducal chamber kept out much of the freezing wind, but it whined in the chimneys; a hollow sound under the raucous voices. Here, silk hangings still decorated the bed, and there were chairs as well as chests, and a great fire burning in the hearth.

Floria fixed Jeanne Chalon with a challenging eye. "Spiced wine, Tante."

"Yes, Niece-d.u.c.h.ess, of course. At once! If the kitchens have any left."

"If that lot of thieving b.a.s.t.a.r.ds don't have a cask squirrelled away somewhere," the d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy remarked, "then we might as well surrender to the Visigoths right now ..."

Ash snorted. Floria left her side, walking forward into the chamber, and the men drew aside for her without thinking about it. Ash bit her lip. She shook her head, amused at herself, and followed the surgeon towards the fire.

Floria called to her pages: "Pull the chairs around the hearth. No need to freeze while we talk."

Breath whitened the air. Despite the fire, it was cold enough to make Ash's teeth ache. She moved forward, among the general rearrangements, and stood with her back to one side of the carved stone hearth, below a Christ-figure with intricate foliage curling around Him.

Floria seated herself on the carved oak chair that it had taken two pages to s.h.i.+ft closer to the warmth. The Burgundian knights and lords and bishops turned towards her, falling silent, watching their bedraggled, bright-eyed, and completely confident d.u.c.h.ess.

The Earl of Oxford said, "May I suggest, madam, that you clear the chamber somewhat? We shall do our business more speedily if we are not burdened with over-much debate."

Floria rattled out a handful of names. Within minutes, all but a dozen of the court dispersed - in remarkable good temper, and antic.i.p.ation, Ash realised -and the mulled wine came in; and the d.u.c.h.ess looked at the English Earl over the rim of her gold goblet.

"Talk," she said.

"All of it, madam? It has been three months and more since we stood on the beach at Carthage."

Floria rapped out, "G.o.d give me strength and, failing that, patience!"

John de Vere bellowed with laughter. He sank down, not asking ducal permission, on to a chair close to the burning logs. A scent of sweat and horse emanated from him, with the rising heat. Ash, watching him and his brothers and Beaumont, had a sharp flash of how it had been with the sun of August on Dijon's fields, when they had dined together. Despite the presence of Olivier de la Marche and the Turkish commander, she felt a strong and welcome familiarity.

"Start with him, Master de Vere." Floria del Guiz tilted the cup slightly towards the remaining Turkish Janissary officer.

"Start with why you're in here, not out there, and not dead," Ash clarified. "That's a whole battalion you just brought in here!"

The Earl of Oxford stretched out his boots to the flames. "You would have me begin at the end. Very well. I am here and alive, because I have this man and his cavalry with me. Plainly, five hundred men are no match for six thousand encamped Visigoths. However - I informed the Faris, in all truth and honour, that if his men die here, the Osmanli4 Sultan Mehmet, second of that name, will consider himself to be instantly at war with the Visigoth Empire."

A moment's silence, in which nothing could be heard but the fire crackling, and the wind in the chimney.

John de Vere added, "She knew it to be true. Her spies must have informed her by now of the troop build-up on the western border of the Sultan's empire."

Ash softly whistled. "Yeah, well, he can afford to make threats like that."5 "This is no threat."

"Thank Christ and all His sweet saints for that." Ash s.h.i.+fted, pain jabbing her ribs under the cuira.s.s. "So, let me get this right, you just rode across from Dalmatia or wherever-"

"Five hundred men are a big enough troop not to be bothered," the Earl of Oxford said mildly, "while being no threat to the King-Caliph's army."

"-and then you rode up to Dijon, and you said, 'Let me inside the besieged city with fresh troops', and they said, 'Oh, okay'-"

d.i.c.kon de Vere flushed and said hotly, "We risk our lives, and what do you do but carp and jeer!"

"Be quiet, boy." The Earl of Oxford spoke firmly. He smiled at Ash. "You have not stood siege for so long. Let Captain-General Ash ask her questions after her own fas.h.i.+on."

Impetus gone and slightly deflated, Ash said, "They're not fresh troops, these Turks. They're hostages."

The Ottoman commander said in halting German,6 "I do not know this word."

Ash looked at him, startled. He was, under the felt cap and beard, fair in colouring; probably a Christian by birth.

"It means, if they attack us, if you die; then those men out there-" She indicated the window. "-the Visigoths, they die too. All the while you're in Dijon, an attack on the city is an attack on the Sultan."

His beard split to disclose a smile. "Woman Bey7 know! Yes. We are the New Troops.8 We are come to protect, in Mehmet and Gundobad his name. Our lives are your s.h.i.+eld."

"This is the Basi Bajezet," d.i.c.kon de Vere blurted. "He commands their orta."9 "Tell Colonel Bajezet he's very welcome," Ash murmured. The Voynik behind the Ottoman commander translated quietly into his ear. The bearded man smiled.

Floria said abruptly, "Will it work?"

"For now, yes, Mistress Florian. d.u.c.h.ess: your pardon." John de Vere straightened up in his chair. A tang of singed leather came from the boots he withdrew from the hearth. He reached out for the wine goblet a page handed him, and drank. It was not apparent how many days he had been in the saddle or how many hundreds of leagues he might have ridden.

"Why?" Floria said.

"By your leave, madam." The Earl of Oxford beckoned his Voynik interpreter, said something in his ear, and the Voynik auxiliary and his commander bowed and retreated from the chamber.

John de Vere said abruptly, "It is dark now as far as Hagia Sophia and the Golden Horn."

"The sun?" Floria turned her head towards the window, the winter sun beyond the gla.s.s illuminating the lines around her eyes.

"No sun, madam. Constantinople is as dark as Cologne and Milan." The Earl rubbed his face. "Luckily for me. After I left you, we sailed to Istanbul,10 then travelled overland to Edirne. I was admitted to the Sultan's presence within weeks. I told him, through an interpreter, what I had seen and heard in Carthage. I told him that Burgundy is, sweet Christ knows why, all that stands between us and the dark; for proof of that, he should witness how the sun still s.h.i.+nes on Burgundy."

George de Vere said taciturnly, "His spies confirmed it."

Oxford nodded. He leaned forward, towards the d.u.c.h.ess in her chair. "Sultan Mehmet has two whips driving him, Mistress Florian. He fears this darkness spreading from Africa, and he desires to conquer the Visigoth Empire and its subject nations of Christendom as he did Byzantium. I have told him Burgundy must stand. I do not know if he believes me, but he is willing to make this much effort. If the Visigoths do prove too strong to be challenged now, he has lost but a regiment of Janissaries proving it."

Floria looked as though she had a sour taste in her mouth. "And if the Visigoths don't take Dijon - I get a Turkish army on my doorstep, going hammer and tongs at them?"

A month ago she would have said we, not I. Ash sipped her wine: bottom-of-cask stuff not much improved by the sc.r.a.pings of a palace kitchen spice-drawer.

"How long has he given you?" she asked John de Vere.

"Two months. Then he withdraws Colonel Bajezet." The Earl looked consideringly into the fire. "If I were at a Lancastrian English King's court, say, and a mad Osmanli Earl came and asked me for troops, I do not know that I should lend him so many or for so long!"

Ash drank, watching the light on the surface of the wine. The ducal chamber smelled of man's sweat and of wood-ash. She did not know whether it would hurt her ribs more to sit, or to continue standing. A hand touched her shoulder. She winced, aware that the top of her breastplate had been driven into her flesh too; that she had bruises in those muscles.

Floria del Guiz said, "Ash, have we got two months?"

She raised her eyes, not even aware of the woman having moved. Floria's face under the hart's-horn crown was the same as ever; lined, now, from unwelcome responsibilities. Unknown capabilities. Herself and Floria: the irresistible force rattling off the immovable object. The d.u.c.h.ess's grip loosened.

"If the siege isn't pressed? I doubt it." Ash walked away from her, across the room to one of the windows. Beyond the gla.s.s, the skies of Burgundy shone a hard pale blue. Too cold even to snow. Ash touched the freezing gla.s.s.

"But the siege isn't the point, not now. Except for the fact that it keeps you here- I've prayed for snow," she said. "Sleet, snow, fog; even rain. Anything to limit visibility! I'd have you and half a dozen of the lads over the wall and away. But it stays clear. Even the f.u.c.king moonlight. . . And anybody we send out is killed, or doesn't come back."

She turned to face them: de la Marche, severe; Oxford frowning; Floria anxious.

"It isn't about that army out there! It isn't about the Turks- sorry, my lord de Vere. It's about the d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy and the fact that we can't get out of here, can't get you away somewhere safe. Keeping you alive, Florian. You and what you do. That's all it's about now, and I'd open up Dijon right now for the Visigoths to plunder - happily! - if I thought I could get you away in the confusion. I can't risk it. One stray arrow could finish everything."

What the Earl of Oxford heard in that, she knew, was not what Floria del Guiz was hearing - or what Oxford would hear, once appraised of the hunting of the hart. Olivier de la Marche bit at his lip. The surgeon scowled.

"Have we got two months?" Floria repeated. "Not just food. Before the Faris-"

"I don't know! I don't know if we have two days, or two hours!"

The Earl of Oxford looked from one woman to the other: the mercenary in plate, cropped hair s.h.i.+ning; and the surgeon-turned-d.u.c.h.ess awkward in her woman's clothing. He reached up and scrubbed his hand through his sand-coloured hair.

"There is something I don't understand here," he confessed. "Before you explain yourself, madam, let me finish my tale. You in the city have had no word at all of what goes on in the Faris's camp?"

"We'll have to brief you." Ash relaxed her clenched fists. She strode back towards the warmth of the hearth-fire. "As for intelligence - we've heard nothing. I can guess. She'll have been getting frantic messages from Carthage saying why the f.u.c.k have you stopped the war, you can't do this, get on with it. Am I right? And it'll have to have been couriers. If I'm too scared, now-" Ash grinned mercilessly. "She won't talk to the Stone Golem. She knows what else hears her when she does." She snorted. "And I bet there's been messages going back to Carthage from her officers, too! They must think she's gone nuts."