Ash: The Lost History
Chapter 24 : "Look." Floria pointed up.Ash tilted her head to gaze up at the high gable ro

"Look." Floria pointed up.

Ash tilted her head to gaze up at the high gable roofs.

She was not used to noticing the fullness of the summer skies. Now, every gable line and window ledge was thick with roosting birds - with pigeons, rooks, crows and thrushes, fluffing out feathers against the chill. Blackbirds, sparrows, ravens; all, in an uncanny peace, sharing their perches undisturbed with merlin hawks and peregrines and kestrels. A low, discontented mumbling went up from the flocks. White guano streaked the beams and plaster.

Above them, the overcast clouds of the day's sky stayed invisible, and black.

Despite the Visigoth ordinance restricting any n.o.ble's escort to six or less, Basle's civic hall was packed with men. It stank of tallow candles and the remnants of a huge banquet, and of two or three hundred sweating men crowded into the s.p.a.ce between the tables, waiting to pet.i.tion the Visigoth Viceroy at the high dais.

The Visigoth general was not visibly present.

"f.u.c.king h.e.l.l," Ash swore. "Where is the woman?"

A fug smudged the heights of the barrel-vaulted roof, with the Empire's and cantons' banners hanging down over tapestried stone walls. Ash let her gaze sweep across rushes and candles and men in European dress, doublet and hose, and brimless felt hats with tall crowns. Far more men were wearing southern robes and mail: soldiers and 'arifs and qa'ids. But no Faris.

Ash tilted the visor of her sallet low, leaving only mouth and nose to be seen; her silver hair hidden under her steel helmet. Fully armoured, she is not immediately recognisable as a woman, never mind as a woman who bears a resemblance to the Visigoth general.

Around the walls, as servers, stood clay-coloured Visigoth golems, eyeless and metal-jointed, their baked skins cracking in the great fireplaces' heat. Lifting herself on armoured toes, Ash could see one golem standing behind the white-robed Visigoth Viceroy - who was, she noted with a little surprise, Daniel de Quesada - and holding a brazen head, which de Quesada consulted for a currency exchange as she watched.

Floria took wine from one of the pantlers rus.h.i.+ng past, not apparently minding that it came from well below the salt. "How on earth can you tell this lot apart? Bear and swan and bull and marten and unicorn . . . It's a bestiary!"

A fast scrutiny of heraldry on liveries showed Ash that men were present from Berne, Zurich, Neuchatel and Solothurn, and from Fribourg and Aargau . . . most of the Swiss Confederation lords, or whatever one called the lords among the League of Constance, all with an equally shut-faced look to them. Conversations were going on in Schweizerdeutsch and Italian and German; but the main talk - the shouted talk up at the head table - in Carthaginian. Or in North African Latin when the Visigoth amirs and qa'ids recalled their manners, which nothing forced them to do.

So where do I look for her now?

Thomas Rochester rejoined Ash, moving through the civilian crowd. The lawyers and officials of Basle moved back automatically, as one does from a man in steel plate, but otherwise ignored the mercenary man-at-arms. He lowered his voice to speak to Ash.

"She's been out at the camp, looking for you."

"What?"

"Captain Anselm sent a rider. The Faris is on her way back here now."

Ash kept her hand from her sword-grip with an effort of mind, such gestures being p.r.o.ne to misinterpretation in a crowded hall. "Did Anselm's message say what her business was?"

"To talk to one of her mercenary junds." Thomas grinned. "We're important enough for her to come to us."

"And I'm Saint Agatha's t.i.ts!" Suddenly queasy, Ash watched the throng around Daniel de Quesada, which did not grow any the less for being watched. Quesada's face was hardly marred by scars, now. His eyes moved very quickly around the hall, and when one of the c.o.c.ky-tailed white dogs nosing in the rushes yipped, his body startled uncontrollably.

"I wonder who's pulling his strings?" Ash thought aloud. "And did she come out just to take a look at me, back at Guizburg? Maybe. Now she's gone out to the camp. That's a lot of trouble to go to, just to look at a b.a.s.t.a.r.d one of your family fathered on a mercenary camp-follower twenty years ago."

Antonio Angelotti appeared at her elbow, tall and sweating and swaying. "Boss. 'M going back to camp. It's true. Their armies defeated the Swiss ten days ago."

Knowing it must have happened, and hearing it, were two different things. Ash said, "Sweet Christ. Have you found anyone who was there, who saw it?"

"Not yet. They were outmanoeuvred. The Swiss."

"Oh, that's why everyone's creeping up the a.r.s.e of the King-Caliph. That's why everybody's throwing banquets. Son of a b.i.t.c.h. I wonder if Quesada meant it when he said they intended to war on Burgundy?" She shook Angelotti's shoulder, roughly. "Okay, go back to camp, you're p.i.s.sed."

The master gunner, leaving, drew her eye to the great doors. G.o.dfrey Maximillian strode in, glanced around, and made for the blue Lion liveries.

The priest bowed to Ash, and glanced at Floria del Guiz before he opened his mouth to speak.

"That's the look I hate," the disguised woman said, not particularly quietly. "Every time before you speak to me, now. I don't bite, G.o.dfrey. How long have you known me! For Christ's sake!"

Her cheeks flushed, her eyes brilliant. Her bowl-shaped haircut was spiked with damp drizzle. A server and a pantler glanced as they hurried past, their white ap.r.o.ns stained. Seeing what, when they see her? Ash wondered. A man, definitely. With no sword, therefore a civilian. A professional man, because of the well-cut woollen demi-gown lined with fur, and the fine hose and boots and velvet hat. A livery badge pinned to the upturned velvet hat-brim: therefore a man who belongs to a lord. And - given the prominent Lion - belonged to Ash.

"Quieten down. I've got enough problems here."

"And I don't? I'm a woman, for f.u.c.k's sake!"

Too loud. Ash beckoned Thomas Rochester and Michael, one of the crossbowmen, forward from the rear wall of the hall.

"Take him outside, he's drunk."

"Yes, boss."

"Why does everything have to change?" Floria demanded, wrenching her arms away. Thomas Rochester efficiently punched the surgeon in the small of the back, his armoured fist hardly moving any distance; and while her face was screwed up in pain, lifted her between himself and Michael, and half-carried her out.

"s.h.i.+t." Ash frowned. "I didn't mean them to manhandle h-"

"You wouldn't object if you still thought she was a man." G.o.dfrey's hand gripped his cross, on his substantial chest. The hood of his robe was far enough forward to give her only a glimpse of beard and lips, nothing of his expression.

"We'll wait till the Faris gets here," Ash said decisively. "What have you heard?"

"That's the head of the goldsmiths' guild." G.o.dfrey indicated with a slight inclination of his hood. "Over there, talking to the Medici."

Ash's gaze searched along the table, identifying a man in a black wool coif, with strands of silver hair wisping out under his ear. He sat within easy whisper of a man in an Italianate gown and a dagged green hood. The Medici sat grey-faced and drawn.

"They trashed Florence, too, to make a point." Ash shook her head. "Like Venice. To say, we don't need this. Don't need the money or the armour or the guns. We can just keep pouring it in from Africa ... I think they can."

"Does it matter?" A man in a scholar's gown first bowed to Ash and then straightened, startled, frowning at the unexpected woman's voice.

G.o.dfrey interposed himself. "Sir, you are?"

"I am - I was - astrologer to the court of the Emperor Frederick."

Ash could not help a snort of cynicism, her eyes travelling to the hall door, and the darkness beyond. "Bit redundant, aren't you?"

"G.o.d has taken the sun away," the astrologer said. "Dame Venus, the daystar, may still be seen at certain hours, thus we know when morning would break, but for our wickedness. The heavens remain dark, and empty."

The man wilted a little. "This is the second coining of the Christ, and his judgement. I have not lived as I should. Will you hear my confession, Father?"

G.o.dfrey bowed, at Ash's acknowledgement; and she watched the two men find a relatively quiet corner of the hall. The astrologer knelt. After a time, the priest rested his hand on the man's forehead in token of forgiveness. He came back to Ash.

"It seems the Turks have paid spies here," G.o.dfrey added. "Which my astrologer knows. He says the Turks are much relieved."

"Relieved?"

"The Visigoths having taken the Italian cities, and the cantons, and south Germany, they must either turn east and strike at the Turk Empire, or west at Europe."

"If they turn west, then the Turks might face a Visigoth rather than a Christian Europe, but otherwise no change; well," Ash said, "since Sultan Mehmet16 must have thought all this was intended for him, he will be relieved!"

There were present, Ash saw, a few nervous men of Savoy and France, as yet untouched, desperate to know which way the Visigoth invasion was aimed next.

"I hate cities," she said absently. "They're a fire hazard. You can't buy oil or tapers here for gold. I give it two days before this city burns itself from wall to wall."

She expected some comment on her grumpiness, given with ease based on their long knowledge of each other. What G.o.dfrey said, in a thoughtful tone, was, "We talk as if the sun will never s.h.i.+ne again."

Ash stood silent.

"It's still getting colder. I rode through fields on my way in. The wheat is being blighted, and the vines. Such a famine is coming . . ." G.o.dfrey's voice rumbled in his resonant chest. "Perhaps I was wrong. Famine is coming, and pestilence with it, and death and war are already here. These are the final days. We should be looking to the state of our souls, not picking among the ruins."

"I want the general of the Visigoths," Ash said speculatively, ignoring him. "And the general of the Visigoths is looking for me."

"Yes." G.o.dfrey hesitated, watching her survey the town hall. "Child, you are not about to send us away from here."

"I am, too." The flicker of a grin. "You and Florian. Take her. Ride with Michael and Josse, out to Roberto at the camp, and stay there unless you hear from me. Can't you feel your hackles rising here? Go."

One thing about the habit of giving orders is that others fall into the habit of obeying them. She could see, under his hood, G.o.dfrey Maximillian smooth his face to a pious unconcern. He made his way deceptively fast through the crowd, to the doors.

That leaves me and an escort of four men, Ash concluded. Yippee. Now we'll see who's a mistrusting b.i.t.c.h.

One could stay standing around at the back of the hall, not being offered basin and cloth to wash one's hands, never mind any meat or the strange foreign dishes spilling on the yellowing linen tablecloths. One could keep waiting, Ash thought, until the sycophancy attendant on Daniel de Quesada's installation lost its first fervour. That might be days. Weeks.

She watched the men from France and Savoy gathering in tiny groups, nittering anxiously.

"I wish I had the French king's intelligence service. Or the Flemish bankers'." She turned to Thomas Rochester. "Guido and Simon, to the b.u.t.tery, see what you can hear; Francis and you, Thomas, as and when the s.h.i.+t hits the fan here, we ride like h.e.l.l for Anselm, got that?"

Rochester looked doubtful. "Boss, this is dodgy."

"I know. We ought to leave now. But . . . There might be some privilege in being a b.a.s.t.a.r.d from the Faris's family. We might get more money." Ash shook her head. The white scars on her face stood out dark, by virtue of her pale skin. "I just want to know."

She worked the hall for a time. She cornered a merchant, and argued a price for goods to make up losses of mules and baggage outside Genoa. The cost of replacement wagons shook her, until the man quoted her his price for broken and schooled horses. Stealing may be better than buying, she reflected, not for the first time.

A flurry of servants went past her, replacing burned-down candles and exhausted lanterns, and she stepped back against the wall out of their way, catching her scabbard across someone's knees.

"Pardon-" She turned, stopped; staring up at Fernando del Guiz. "Son of a b.i.t.c.h!"

"How is mother?" he inquired, mildly.

She snorted, thought: He meant to make me laugh.

That realisation shocked her into silence. She stood out of the crowd, staring up at his face: Fernando del Guiz in Visigoth military mail and surcoat, the cropped hair making him look oddly younger.

"Christus f.u.c.king Imperator! What do you want?" Ash saw Thomas Rochester, still finalising delivery with the merchant, look over at her inquiringly; she shook her head. "Fernando- no: what? What? What can you possibly have to say to me?"

"You're very angry," he remarked. His voice came from above her, where he stared out across the heads of the crowd; and then he suddenly dropped his gaze, impaling her. "I don't have anything to say to you, peasant."

"That's f.u.c.king good. Being n.o.ble didn't stop you going over to the Visigoths, did it? You are a traitor. I thought it was a lie." Anger, fuelling her, ran out; drained away with the flinch of his eyes. She was silent for a second.

He began to turn away.

"Why?" Ash demanded.

"'Why'?"

"You- I still don't understand. You're a lord. Even if they were going to take you prisoner, they've have ransomed you back. Or kept you safe in a castle somewhere. h.e.l.l, you had armed and armoured men with you, you could have broken out, run-"

"From an army?" Humour in his expression, now.

Ash put a steel-covered arm in front of his body, so that Fernando del Guiz would have to push past her to get out into the body of the hall. "You didn't run into an army. That's just rumour. G.o.dfrey bought me the truth of it. You ran into a squad of eight men - eight men. You didn't even try to fight. You just surrendered."

"My skin's worth more to me than your good opinion." Fernando sounded sardonic. "I didn't know you cared, madam wife."

"I don't! I- Well, it got you a place at this court. With the winners." She nodded at the hall. "Devious. And you were taking a real chance. But then, the Emperor's n.o.bles are all politicians - I should have remembered that."

"It wasn't-!" Fernando glared down into her face. The candlelight showed his upper lip beaded with damp.

"Wasn't what?" Ash asked, more quietly.

"Wasn't political treason!" Some odd expression crossed his face, in the deceptive light of the candles. He held her gaze. "They killed Matthias! They stuck a spear into his stomach and he fell off his horse, screaming! They shot Otto with a crossbow bolt, and three of the horses-"

Ash forced her voice down to a hoa.r.s.e, outraged, whisper: "Jesus Christ, Fernando, you're not like f.u.c.king Matthias. They'd have given you quarter. And what about all your fancy kit - you were fully armoured, for Christ's sake; up against Visigoth peasants in tunics! You can't tell me you couldn't have fought your way out! You didn't even try to bang out of there!"

"I couldn't do it!"

She stared at him: at the sudden, stark honesty on his face.

"I couldn't do it," Fernando repeated, more quietly, and with a smile that made his face seem older, distressed. "I filled my hose, and I fell off my horse, and I lay in front of the peasant sergeant and I begged him not to kill me. I gave him the amba.s.sador in exchange for my life."

"You-"

"I gave in," Fernando said, "because I was afraid."

Ash continued to stare. "Jesus Christ."

"And I don't regret it." Fernando wiped his face with his bare hand, bringing it away wet. "What's it to you?"

"I-" Ash hesitated. She let her arm drop, not blocking his way now. "I don't know. Nothing. I suppose. I'm a mercenary, I'm not one of your retainers or your king, I'm not the one you've betrayed."

"You don't get it, do you?" Fernando del Guiz did not move away from where they stood. "There were men with crossbows. Steel arrow-heads as thick as my thumb - I saw a bolt go through Otto's face, straight through his eye, bang! His head exploded. Matthias was holding his entrails in his hands. Men with spears, like spears I've hunted with, gutting open animals, and they were going to gut me. I was surrounded by madmen."

"Soldiers," Ash corrected automatically. She shook her head, puzzled. "Everybody c.r.a.ps themselves when there's going to be a fight. I do. Thomas Rochester over there has; so have most of my men. That's the bit they don't put in the chronicles. But f.u.c.king h.e.l.l, you don't have to surrender when there's still a fighting chance!"

"You don't."

His intense expression aged him: a young man grown suddenly old. I've been to your bed, Ash thought suddenly, and it seems I don't know you at all.