Ash: The Lost History Part 10

She lay on her back on the hard pallet, one arm under her head, staring up into the roof of the tent. Shadows moved with the s.h.i.+fting evening air. The rope-tied bed frame creaked. Something smelled sweet above the warm body-scent of her own sweat - bunches of camomile, and Lady's Mantle and Self-Heal for wounds, she realised, where they hung tied to the ma.s.sive struts jutting out from the tent pole. Up among the weapons. It is always easier to lay poleaxes and swords up across the struts rather than lose them in the damp rushes. Camp life means everything goes up out of the mud.

If I marry him, I get a boy who may or may not remember that he's treated me worse than a dockside wh.o.r.e.

The stuffed cloth pallet was hard under her shoulders. She s.h.i.+fted onto fleeces. No better. The air felt damp, but warm. She lay and picked at the metal-tipped points that tied her sleeves into her doublet, until she got them undone and pulled the sleeves off, and lay back again, cooler.

Christ's pity! - I'm in it, and it just keeps on getting deeper-!

Her Milanese harness glinted on its body stand, all rounded silver curves. She ma.s.saged flesh where straps had bit in. There might be rust starting up on the ta.s.sets, it wasn't clear in the clay oil lamp's light. Phili would have to scour them with sand again before it bit in, and needed taking to the armourer's to be reground. The armourer would b.i.t.c.h at her if she let it get into that condition.

Ash reached down and rubbed her inner thigh muscles, still aching from the ride back from Cologne.

Striped canvas walls moved in and out with the night air, as if the tent breathed like an animal. She heard occasional voices beyond the walls' illusory security. Enough to let her know there still were guards outside: half a dozen men with crossbows, and a leash of mastiffs apiece, in case someone from the Burgundian camp decided to sneak over and take out a mercenary commander.

She dragged each ankle-high boot off by the heel. They thudded on rushes. She flexed bare feet on the cotton pallet, then loosened the drawstring neck of her s.h.i.+rt. Sometimes she is just extremely conscious of her body, of muscles knotting with tiredness, of bones, of the weight and solidity of torso, arms and legs, in their linen and wool garments. She eased her wooden-handled knife out of its sheath and turned the blade to catch the light, feeling with the edge of a fingernail for nicks. Some knives sit in the hand as if they are born to it.

Cynically, she murmured aloud, "I'm being robbed. Legally. What do I do about that}"

The voice that shared her soul sounded dispa.s.sionate: 'Not an appropriate tactical problem.'

"No s.h.i.+t?" She slid the knife back into its sheath and unbuckled knife, purse and belt all in one heap, shoving up her hips to pull the leather strap out from underneath her. "Tell me about it!"

The clay oil lamp's flame dipped.

She s.h.i.+fted up on one elbow, knowing someone had entered the main part of the tent, beyond the tapestry that curtained off the sleeping area.

In wet summers she put handspan-high raised planking down to floor the tent. The planks s.h.i.+ft and creak under footsteps - if the boys were asleep or elsewhere, and the tent's guards gone, she would still be woken up, not taken in her sleep. Rushes are quieter.

"It's me," a voice warned pragmatically, before it approached the tapestry. She lay back down on the pallet. Robert Anselm pushed the hangings aside and stepped in.

She rolled over on to one elbow and looked up. "They send you because you're the most likely to persuade me?"

"They sent me because you're least likely to take my head off." He seated himself with a thump on one of the two ma.s.sive wooden chests beside her pallet; heavy German chests with locks that take up all the inside of their lids, that she kept chained around the eight-inch tent pole for security.

"Who is this 'they', exactly?"

"G.o.dfrey, Florian, Antonio. We played cards, and I lost."

"You didn't!" She fell back on to her back. "You didn't. Motherf.u.c.ker!"

Robert Anselm laughed. His bald head gave him a face all eyes and ears. His stained s.h.i.+rt hung out of the front of his hose and doublet. He had the beginnings of a belly on him now, and he smelled sweetly warm, of sweat, and open air, and wood smoke. There was stubble on his face. One never noticed, looking no further than his cropped scalp and broad shoulders, how his lashes were long and fine as a girl's.

He dropped a hand down and began to ma.s.sage her shoulder, under the linen and fine wool. His fingers were firm. She arched up into them, shutting her eyes for a second. When his hand slid around to the front of her s.h.i.+rt, she opened her eyes.

"You don't like that, do you?" A rhetorical question. "But you like this." He moved his hand back to her shoulders.

She moved over so that he could dig down into the rock-hard muscles. "I learned the reasons for not sleeping with my sub-commanders from you. Made a mess of that whole summer."

"Why don't you have it written up somewhere: I don't know everything, I can make mistakes."

"I can't make mistakes. There's always someone waiting to take advantage."

"I know that."

His thumbs pressed hard into the k.n.o.bs of her vertebrae. A sharp click cracked through the tent, ligament sliding over bone. His hands stopped moving. "You okay?"

"What the h.e.l.l do you think?"

"In the last two hours I've had a hundred and fifty people come and ask to speak with you. Baldina, from the wagons. Harry, Euen, Tobias, Thomas, Pieter. Matilda's people; Anna, Ludmilla ..."

"Joscelyn van Mander."

"No." He sounded reluctant. "None of the van Manders."

"Uh huh. Right!" She sat up.

Robert Anselm's hands moved away.

"Joscelyn thinks because he raised thirteen lances for me this season, he has more say in what we do than I have! I knew we were going to have trouble there. I may just pay off his contract and send him over to Jacobo Rossano, make it his problem. Okay, okay." She held up both hands, palms out, realising his reluctance to tell her had been entirely feigned. "Yeah, okay. All right! Yes!"

She is conscious of the whole vast engine that is the company, ticking over outside. Rush and hurry around the cook's wagons, the eternal oat-porridge stewing in iron cauldrons. Men on fire-watch. Men taking their horses out to graze on what gra.s.s has been left on the banks of the Erft. Men drilling with swords, with bills, with spiked axes. Men f.u.c.king the wh.o.r.es that they hold in common. Men with their clothes being sewn by their wives (sometimes the same women, at a later date in those women's lives). Lantern light and camp fire light, and the scream of some animal baited for sport. And the sky coursing with stars, over it all.

"I'm good on the battlefield. I don't know politics. I should have known I didn't know politics." She met his eyes. "I thought I was beating them at their own game. I don't know how I could have been this stupid."

Anselm clumsily ruffled her silver hair. "f.u.c.k it."

"Yeah. f.u.c.k it all."

Two sentries exchange the day's word outside the tent, giving way to two others. She hears them talking. Without knowing their names, she knows they have unwillingly scoured-clean bodies, full stomachs, swords with nicks carefully sharpened out, s.h.i.+rts on their backs, some kind of body protection (however cheap the armour); the Lion Azure sewn to their tabards. There are men like this all over Frederick III's great military camp tonight, but in this area there would not be, not these particular men - if not for her. However temporary it is, however mercenary they are, she is what holds them together.

Ash got to her feet. "Look, I'll tell you about. . . the del Guiz family, Robert. Then you tell me what I can do. Because I don't know."

Four days after both Charles the Bold of Burgundy's troops and the men of the Emperor Frederick III pulled back from Neuss, effectively ending the siege,20 Ash stood in the great Green Cathedral at Cologne.

Too many people crowded into the body of the cathedral for the human eye to take in. All shoulder to shoulder, men in pleated gowns of blue velvet and scarlet wool, silver-linked chains around their necks, purses and daggers at their belts, and flamboyant rolled chaperon hats with tails hanging down past their shoulders. The court of the Emperor.

A thousand faces dappled with the light slanting from red and blue gla.s.s, falling from lancet windows a bowel-twisting height above the tiled floor. Thin stone columns pierced a frightening amount of air, too fragile to support their vaulted roof above. And around the bases of those pillars, men with gold-leaf on their dagger pommels, and plenty of flesh on their jowls, stood talking in voices that rose in volume now.

"He's going to be late. He is late." Ash swallowed. The pit of her bowels s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably. "I don't believe it. He's standing me up!"

"Can't be. You should be so lucky," Anselm hissed, "Ash, you have to do something!"

"Tell me what! If we haven't come up with it in four days, I'm not going to think of it now!"

How many minutes before the power to contract the company pa.s.ses from wife to husband? All other means exhausted, the only remaining way out of this wedding is for her to walk out of the building. Now.

In front of the Emperor's court.

And they're right, Ash thought. Half the royal families of Christendom are married to the other half; we wouldn't get another contract from anyone until they'd calmed down. Not until next year, maybe. I don't have enough money put by to feed us if we don't have an employer for that long. Nothing like enough.

Robert Anselm looked past her, behind her head, at Father G.o.dfrey Maximillian. "We could do with a prayer for grace, Father."

The bearded man nodded.

"Not that it matters now, but have you found out who set me up for this?" Ash demanded, quietly enough to be heard only by her supporters.

G.o.dfrey, standing on her right, replied equally quietly. "Sigismund of the Tyrol."

"G.o.dd.a.m.n. Sigismund? What have we- That man's got a long memory. This is because we fought on the other side at Hericourt?"

G.o.dfrey inclined his head. "Sigismund of the Tyrol is far too rich for Frederick to offend him by refusing a useful suggestion. I'm told Sigismund doesn't like 'mercenaries with more than fifty lances'. Apparently he finds them a threat. To the purity of n.o.ble warfare."

"'Purity' of war? In his f.u.c.king dreams."

The bearded priest smiled crookedly. "You mauled his household troops, as I recall."

"I was paid to. Christ. It's petty, to give us this much trouble for it!"

Ash looked over her shoulder. The back of the cathedral was also packed with standing men, merchant from Cologne in rich gear, her own lance-leaders who outshone them, and a gaggle of mercenaries who had been made to leave their weapons outside the cathedral, and consequently didn't outs.h.i.+ne anyone.

There were none of the bawdy remarks and cheerful grins you would have had with one of her men-at-arms being wedded. Quite apart from endangering their future, she saw how it made them look at her and see a woman, in a city, at peace, where before they had seen a mercenary, in the field, at war, and could therefore avoid considering her s.e.x.

Ash snarled in a whisper, "Christus, I wish I'd been born a man! It would have given me an extra six inches' reach, the ability to pee standing up - and I wouldn't have to put up with any of this c.r.a.p!"

Robert Anselm's adult, concerned frown vanished in a spluttering burst of laughter.

Ash looked automatically for Florian's cheering scepticism, but the surgeon was not there; the disguised woman had vanished into the ma.s.s of the company striking camp at Neuss four days ago, and had not been seen since (certainly not during the set-up outside Cologne where, as a number of uninformed mercenaries remarked, there was heavy lifting to be done).

Ash added, "And I could take Frederick setting this wedding on St Simeon's feast-day personally . . .21 Maybe we could come up with a prior betrothal? Someone to step up to the altar stone and swear we had a pre-nuptial contract as children."

Anselm, at her left, said, "Who's going to stand up and take the s.h.i.+t for that one? Not me."

"I wouldn't ask it." Ash stopped talking as the Bishop of Cologne came up to the bridal party. "Your Grace."

"Our meek, gentle bride." Tall thin Bishop Stephen reached out to finger the folds of her banner, whose staff Robert Anselm held. He bent to inspect the scarlet lettering embroidered under the Lion. "What is this?"

"Jeremiah, chapter fifty-one, verse twenty," G.o.dfrey quoted.

Robert Anselm growled a translation: "'Thou art my battle axe and weapons of war; for with thee I will break in pieces the nations, and with thee will I destroy kingdoms.' It's sort of a mission statement, Your Grace."

"How - appropriate. How - pious."

A new voice whispered drily, "Who is being pious?"

The bishop inclined his thin body in its green alb and chasuble. "Your Imperial Majesty."

Frederick of Hapsburg limped through the crowds of men, who all got out of his way. He was leaning on a staff now, Ash noted. The little man looked at Ash's company priest as if it were the first time he had noticed the man. "You, was it? A man of peace in a company of war? Surely not. 'Rebuke the company of spearmen - scatter thou the people that delight in war.'22"

G.o.dfrey Maximillian removed the hood from his robe, and stood respectfully bareheaded (if ruffled) before the Emperor. "But, Your Majesty, Proverbs one hundred and forty-four, one?"

The Emperor rasped a small, dry chuckle. "'Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight.' So. An educated priest."

"As an educated priest," Ash said, "perhaps you would tell His Majesty how long we have to wait for a non-existent bridegroom, before we can all go home?"

"You wait," Frederick said quietly. There was a sudden lack of conversation.

Ash would have paced, but the folds of her dress and the stares of the a.s.sembly stopped her. Over the altar, the Nine Orders of Angels shone in stone: Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, who are closest to G.o.d; then Dominions, Powers and Virtues; then Princ.i.p.alities, Archangels and Angels. The Princ.i.p.ality of Cologne was sculpted with arched wings and ambiguous gender, smiling, clutching a representation of Frederick's Imperial crown.

What's Fernando del Guiz playing at?

He won't dare offend the Emperor. Will he? Will he?

He is a knight, after all. Maybe he just won't marry a peasant-woman soldier. Christ, I hope that's it- On the altar's left, by some humour of the stonemasons, the Prince of This World was carved offering a rose to the naked figure of Luxury. Toads and serpents clung to the back of his robe's rich stone folds.23 Ash contemplated the figure of Luxury. There were many women present in stone. In flesh only five, herself and her attendants. The customary maids of the bride's honour stood behind her, Ludmilla (in one of the seamstress's better robes) and the other three: Blanche, Isobel, and Eleanor. Women she'd known since they wh.o.r.ed together as children in the Griffin-in-Gold. Ash took a certain private satisfaction in how many of the n.o.blemen of Cologne already nervously recognised Blanche and Isobel and Eleanor.

If I have to go through with this d.a.m.n ceremony, I'm doing it my way!

Ash watched the Emperor drift off in conversation with Cologne's Bishop Stephen. Both of them walked as if in a royal hall, not a sacred building.

"Fernando's late. He's not coming!" Joy and relief flooded through her. "Well, hey, he's not our enemy . . . Archduke Sigismund did this. Sigismund's making me compete in politics, where I don't know what I'm doing, instead of on the field of battle, where I do."

"Woman, you sweated your guts out to get Frederick to give you land." G.o.dfrey, sounding sceptical enough to be Florian. "He merely took advantage of that sin of greed."

"Not sin. Stupidity." Ash restrained herself from looking around again. "But it's going to be okay."

"Yes - no. There are people outside."

"s.h.i.+t!" Her sibilant whisper had the front two ranks of men glancing uncertainly at the bride.

Ash wore her silver hair unbound, as maidens do. Because she usually wore it in braids, it took a curl from that, flowing in ripples down over her shoulders, down her back, down, not just to her thighs, but to the backs of her knees. The finest, most transparent linen veil covered her head, and the silver metal headdress that held it in place was wound with a garland of field daisies. The veil was made from flax so fine that the scars on her cheekbones could be seen through it.

She stood stocky and sweaty in the flowing, voluminous blue and gold robes.

Drums sounded, and hurried horns. Her guts jolted. Fernando del Guiz and his supporters hurried up towards the rood-screen - all young n.o.blemen of the Germanies, all wearing more money than she sees in six years of putting her body in the front line of battles for axe and sword and arrow to hit it.

The Emperor Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor, walked with his entourage to take his regal place at the front. Ash picked out the face of Duke Sigismund of the Tyrol. He did not give her the satisfaction of smiling.

The light slanted down from immense perpendicular lancet windows, dappling green light on to the figure of a woman carved in black marble, riding on the back of the Bull on the altar.24 Ash looked up with despair at her enigmatic stone smile, and the gold-thread-embroidered cloths that hooded her, as the boys in white tunicles came into the choir with their green wax candles burning. She was aware of someone coming to stand beside her.

She glanced to her right. The young knight Fernando del Guiz stood there, staring equally deliberately up at the altar, not looking at her. He looked more than a little ruffled, and he was bareheaded. For the first time she got a clear look at his face.

I thought he was older than me. He can't be. Not by more than a year or two.

Now I remember...

It was not his face, older now, clear-skinned and with bold brows, freckles across his straight nose. Nor his thick gold hair, trimmed short now to touch his shoulders. Ash watched the embarra.s.sed hunch of his wide shoulders, and his rangy body - grown from boy almost to man, now - s.h.i.+fting from foot to foot.

That's it. That's it...

She found her hand aching to reach up and ruffle his hair out of its combed order. She caught his male scent, under the sweet perfume of civet. I was a child then. Now . . . Of themselves, her fingertips told her what it would feel like to unlace his velvet pleated doublet, that needed no padding at his broad shoulders, unfasten it down to his narrow waist, and untie the points of his hose . . . She let her gaze slide down the triangular line of his male body, to his strong rider's thighs in finest knitted hose.