Ash: The Lost History Part 101

Being wartime, the police investigations were a bit scanty.- Now it's sixty years later, the trail's cold.

William says he always a.s.sumed his brother was caught in the Blitz, killed in the bombing, his body blown up or burned so as to be facially unidentifiable. He had no hesitation in saying this to me in just those words. Gruesome. Maybe it's being a surgeon.

William Davies is selling the Sible Hedingham house because he's going into sheltered accommodation. He must be in his eighties, now. He's very sharp. When he says there's no mystery over his brother's death, I want to believe him.

No - what I _want_ is to go back to the office and pretend that none of this is happening. I've always loved academic publis.h.i.+ng, but what I want now is for there to be more distance between me and history. All this is uncomfortably close, somehow.

What you're finding on the Mediterranean seabed - Pierce if this ma.n.u.script _is_ something we need, I don't know what I'll do. Take my annual holiday, fly to the Florida Keys, and pretend that none of it is happening! It's too much.

No.

As your editor - as a friend - I'll be here. I know you can't do the translation instantly, I know you're busy examining the new site, but can you at least give me some idea of whether this is a valuable doc.u.ment or not, before the end of the day?

- Anna * * *

Message: #270 (Anna Longman) Subject: Ash/Visigoths Date: 05/12/00 at 10.59 p.m.

Anna - Good G.o.d, even as separate files, they're taking *for ever* to download! I'm using Isobel's other notebook while they're coming in; and I'm looking at the first page at this moment - One thing I can tell you immediately. If these images have scanned in correctly, this doc.u.ment is by the same hand that wrote 'Fraxinus'.

Anna, I KNOW this handwriting - I can read it as fast as I can read my own! I know all the tricks of phraseology and contractions and spelling. I should do, I've been studying and translating this hand for the last eight years!

And if that's the case - This *has* to be a continuation of 'Fraxinus' .

'Fraxinus me fecit' is quite definitely Ash's autobiography. Either written or (more likely, given her illiteracy) dictated by her.

If Vaughan Davies had access to *this* doc.u.ment, why doesn't he mention it in his second edition of the Ash chronicles?! All right, he didn't have 'Fraxinus' , but even this - the little I've read so far - it's plainly and evidently Ash; why didn't he *publish* !

Encrypt the rest and send it; I don't care _how_ long it takes to scan or download!

- Pierce * * *

Message: #277 (Anna Longman) Subject: Sible Hedingham ms Date: 10/12/00 at 11.20 p.m.

From: Anna - It *carries on* from 'Fraxinus' - is a missing part of the doc.u.ment - a *continuation* - covers autumn of 1476! ! ! But I don't know how MUCH it covers! ! !

Evidently one or more pages are missing at the start - perhaps torn away over the intervening five hundred years - BUT, I don't think we're missing more than a few hours of 15/11/1476! !

From the internal textual evidence, these events MUST belong in the same 24-hour period as Ash's first entry into Dijon! Or at least no later than the following day. Given the correspondence between details of dress and weather in the 'Fraxinus' ms, this HAS to be a bare few hours after Ash's interview with Charles of Burgundy, and is therefore 15 November 1476.

I don't think there can be anything missing except some initial call to arms!

Was there anything written on the binding and could that be scanned?

Later: Here is 1st part, quick & dirty, tidy up later. Been at this for five days straight. Can't *believe* what we have here!

- Pierce.

PART ELEVEN.

15 November-16 November ad 1476.

Under the Penitence1.

Chapter One.

[. . .] command group on Dijon's walls.2 "What the f.u.c.k is she doing?" Robert Anselm shrieked above the noise. "I thought you said she was waiting for us to sell her a gate!"

"Maybe she's trying to concentrate our minds!"

Ash is conscious, in the back of her thoughts, of the heavy protection of steel on head and hands; of the thin layers of mail and wool and linen that are all that cover her limbs. The desire for Milanese harness is strong enough for her to taste.

"f.u.c.king h.e.l.l! All that talk, and we can lose this city right now-"

She forced herself to stand upright on the parapet, and stare out between the merlons3 at the empty ground - covered suddenly, now, in running figures.

A horde of men running forward towards Dijon's north-west walls, planting screens, kneeling to shoot - Carthaginian archers, behind mantlets,4 with wicked black recurve bows. The thwick! of arrow-heads against stone tightened her belly. A crackle of arquebus fire sounded all along the parapet, Angelotti's and Ludmilla's voices raised in shrill orders; and the rapid, repet.i.tive thrum of longbows went up into the air: sweating archers bellowing foul-mouthed congratulations at each other.

A black wave of men rose up from the earthworks in front of the Visigoth camp. At the same second, a whistling shrillness sounded. Ash glanced to her left: could not see past the tower to the north-west gate - but a sound of impacts and screaming rose over the clamour. She looked back - only a split second - and the ground below was covered with running men holding siege ladders and s.h.i.+elds above their heads, some already falling under the steady fire from the battlements.

"Auxiliaries!" Robert Anselm bellowed in her ear. She heard him through the helmet's m.u.f.fling lining.

"What about them?" She leaned into the gap in the stonework, staring out and down. Along with the black tunic-wearing men with spears and hatchets, forty or fifty Europeans were running.

"Prisoners!" Anselm bellowed.

A glance told her he was right - captured townsfolk, Dijonnais taken some time this autumn and pressed into service, due now to die either on the walls, or by the hand of the Visigoth n.a.z.irs behind them. Abruptly she broke off from hearing messengers and giving orders, tapped Anselm's breastplate, and pointed.

Anselm shoved his visor up, squinting, then bellowed a coa.r.s.e laugh. "Tough f.u.c.king s.h.i.+t, Jos!"

In the wake of the auxiliary troops and condemned prisoners, men in blue livery with the s.h.i.+p and Crescent Moon on it jogged forward, soaked hides over their shoulders, carrying ladders of their own. Ash found herself squinting, trying to see if she could spot Joscelyn van Mander's personal banner, but in the confusion of flying rock-splinters, dirt, arquebus-smoke and distance, she couldn't make it out.

"Here they come," Ash began, steadily, trying to stop her voice shaking.

As the first of the men hit the edge of the moat below, throwing down more wood-f.a.ggots on the piles that almost filled it, she turned back to the parapet.

"Anselm! Get the billmen up on the walls, now! Ludmilla: move the archers back to give 'em room! Angelotti-"

Over the noise of men in mail and plate jogging up the steps to the parapet, and the archers determined to get off every last shaft, a great crack and boom! sounded to her left. Main gate, she realised. s.h.i.+t!

She turned away to look for Angelotti, failed to see him, and took a step towards the nearest mangonel. Two of the winch-crew squatted down behind the arrow-studded wooden screens, and, as Ash looked, d.i.c.kon Stour gave the wooden frame a solid whack with a hammer, straightened up, stepped back, and slapped the cup-shaft with an expression of satisfaction. "Okay? Try it now?"

"Where's Captain Angelotti gone?" Ash bawled.

The lanky armourer, straw-coloured hair jutting out under the rim of his war-hat, shouted over his shoulder at her. "Down by-"

A stupendous explosion deafened her.

The parapet jumped under her feet; the air filled with screaming fragments of rock. Two merlons gaped, whitely; half the masonry to each side blown away; a crater gaping in the surface of the battlements.

Something vast glanced past her and on into the town below. Body s.h.i.+vering with shock, she realised first I'm not hurt! and then Direct hit on the mangonel!

The wooden protective screens hung in flinders. A shattered tangle of wood and rope looked nothing like the frame and cup. One man rolled, screeching. In among the white splinters of wood in front of Ash, ragged joints of meat leaked wetly; and a leg hung, still inside a perfectly whole boot. Another man lay dead on the parapet. There was no sign of d.i.c.kon Stour. Only a red-splashed, jagged scar, dug six inches deep in the cracked flagstones.

Ash put her hand up and wiped hair out of her mouth. It was not her hair.

She spat, at the taste, ridding her mouth of a fragment of bone.

Within a fractured moment, a second trebuchet-missile hit, further down the wall: a lump of limestone half the size of a cart. She saw a mess of ropes and wood and men on their knees, on their backs, blown halfway down the steps. A boulder shattered into fragments, hurtling down into the no-man's-land behind the walls.

The shrill whistling of clay pots trailing flames sounded overhead.

Ash winced, ducking down. Clay vessels. .h.i.t, one after another, all down the length of the walls from her; spraying Greek Fire bright into the h.o.a.rding and lines of men. The whoof! of igniting flame made her shudder.

"ANSELM-!"

A shoulder barged her to one side. Overhead, her banner dipped, fell to a diagonal, and slowly moved away from her in the press of a crowd of men -archers and billmen all shoving past her, back away from the walls, pressing towards the steps.

"HOLD!" she bellowed, lung-crackingly loud.

A gaggle of Rochester's billmen shoved her hard up between themselves and one damaged merlon: she has a momentary glimpse of yards of empty air, and men and ladders beneath. The nearness of the fall jolts her stomach.

Off towards the gate, she hears hook-guns firing, and their fortified ballistae shooting hard and fast, but the Carthaginians are in under their minimum range now- "f.u.c.king stand!" she screamed, and grabbed one man's shoulder, another by the belt. Both pulled free. Over the helmets of the routing men, she saw her banner gradually come back upright, and towards her - and then fall.

Without hesitation, Ash ducked into the melee of running men, scooped up the pole, and raised the banner over her head. Awkward and unwieldy, it wavered. She heard Anselm's voice, louder, at the steps, grabbing the bearer of the Lion standard and bellowing: "-right where you f.u.c.king are!" She saw his arm and sword blade go up.

"ON ME!" she yelled. Rickard's face appeared in front of her, in the press of people. She shoved the Lion Affronte into his hands; grabbing at the short axe he carried for her. Shouldering her way against the crowd, shouting into men's faces, she sensed the slowest possible hesitation.

"Follow me!"

Further down towards the White Tower, the brattice was alight; and the stone surface of the parapet alive with unquenchable flames of spilled Greek Fire. The nearest brattice was untouched. Faintly above the shrieking and yelling, she heard noise from below; switched to a two-handed grip on the axe, and put all her weight into shoving two archers and a gunner's mate back out of her way.

"Bring that f.u.c.king flag!" she snarled at Rickard, not stopping to see what the white-faced boy did; slammed her gauntlet into the back of one man's helmet, and cleared herself a way up into the embrasure.

"On me, you f.u.c.king sons of b.i.t.c.hes!"

She felt her own voice come out m.u.f.fled, the sound reflected back by the wood and hide roof of the brattice; had a second to think, Jesu Christus! I wish I could have worn a bevor, or even a sallet with a visor!, and flipped the shaft of the poleaxe over in her hand. It slapped home into the linen palms of her gauntlets.

A face appeared up through the hole in the wooden h.o.a.rding in front of her.

In a conscious irony entirely separate from the combat-awareness of her mind, she thought, What I'd give to be able to talk to the machina rei militaris right now.

The wooden shaft of the axe fitted smoothly and familiarly into her grip: left hand forward, right hand in support. She let the axe-head go back, then thrust forward with the shaft, and slammed the b.u.t.t-spike into the Visigoth auxiliary's face.

The point skidded off his helmet's nasal bar.

The man's bearded mouth opened: shock or anger. He roared. He thrust himself up on the top of a scaling ladder, invisible beneath the planks of the brattice, hauling his sword through the gap.

She let the weapon's momentum carry her body forward a step. Breath coming hard in her throat, whole body tensed in antic.i.p.ation of his blow, she mentally screamed at herself I'm not moving fast enough! and let the axe swing round and back and over her head, sliding her right hand down to the bottom of the axe-shaft to join her left, accelerating the cutting edge of the weapon over and down. Four pounds of metal, but moving in a tight four-foot arc. She slammed the blade into his face as he looked up.

A spray of wet speckled her arms. She felt the edge bite: couldn't hear his screaming for the shouts behind her, the clash of edged steel, the cracks of arquebuses, and the sound of other men shrieking. Not a mortal wound, not enough to put a man down- A spear-point jabbed up between her feet. It caught in the roughly sawn planks: jammed.

She leaped back. One of her heels caught on the edge of the embrasure behind her. The poleaxe flew up in her grasp, ripped the soaked hides that roofed the brattice as she fell backwards, and sat down hard in one of the crenellations. The impact jolted her whole spine.

Quietly, without fuss, and from a sitting position, she lifted up the axe and slammed the b.u.t.t-spike forward again, punching a hole just below the brow of the steel helmet of the first man.

His eyes stayed open, fixed on the planks, as he fell forward, half-in, half-out of the gap. Thick, dark-red blood and brain-matter came out with the spike as she twisted it free.

No footsteps behind her, no banner, no shout from Rickard. A shrieking, bellowing clamour from below- For all I know, I'm alone up here now- "On me, for f.u.c.k's sake!"

The spear-point levered itself out of the planking from below. The dead body jerked, the Visigoth soldier being pulled down by others on the ladder beneath; she heard them shrieking orders, swearing. Unaware that she was very grimly smiling, she got back up on to her feet.

"Boss!" Euen Huw leaped over the battlements and slammed into her side. He staggered. Blood soaked his hose from thigh to knee.

"Oh, thank f.u.c.k! Where's Rickard? Where's my banner? Ludmilla, get your archers up here! It's a f.u.c.king bird-shoot!" Ash slapped the shoulders of Huw's infantry and Rostovnaya's archers, ten or fifteen men piling on to the brattice now, feeding them on past her. She swung herself over the dead man by gripping a beam above her, and ran down to the next gap. Her boots echoed on the planking.

As she loped, feet s.h.i.+fting sideways, she kept her back to the safety of the wall, head switching rapidly from side to side, trying to watch for an attack from any quarter. The tingling vulnerability of exposed, unarmoured thighs, s.h.i.+ns, forearms, elbows; all of this fires her to extreme perceptiveness, extreme efficiency.

"Here! Get the ones below, on the ladder!"

An archer, whose greasy ringlets and unshaven face shone with sweat, loped up and ducked his head down through the gap in front of her. Within seconds, he bawled at his pavise-mate for more shafts; stood astride the gap, drawing his bow with difficulty in the confined s.p.a.ce, shot down at the foot of the siege ladder, fifty feet below.

Two crossbowmen rapidly elbowed him out of the way: more room for their weapons in the gap.

Ash bent her head for a quick squint out through an archery port in the planks. If they can storm-If they come over the wall, it's all irrelevant: voices, everything!

A constant thunk! of bolts and shafts echoed along the brattice now; points. .h.i.tting wood and stone. Her body tensed against the searing rush of Greek Fire. No, not while their own men are scaling the walls- The hook of a scaling ladder thumped into another brattice, further along the wall; she had a bare second to see that the men with swords and axes beginning to swarm up it were not Visigoth auxiliary troops, but men with Crescent Moons on blue livery jackets.

She's seen my banner on this section of the wall - this is deliberate - sending men we've fought beside - a psychological attack: getting Frankish mercenaries to kill each other- "Look who it ain't!" Euen Huw bellowed, slamming his wiry body between the wall and her. Over his shoulder as he ran on, he bawled, "Been having it easy, 'aven't they? See about that!"

A glance back along the h.o.a.rding showed her Angelotti's brilliant curls under the edge of a sallet, his heavy-bladed falchion rising and falling in an appalling, close-combat press of bodies jammed together. His left arm hung, bleeding, buckler gone somewhere. His men crowded that side: warding him.

Christ, half the Visigoth army's on its way!

"Boss!" Robert Anselm, Rickard, and the banner appeared at the embrasure behind her; the older man limping, his face twisted in a bellowed warning.

Ash swung around, saw in a second that the dead auxiliary's' body was dislodged now, two soldiers wearing the Crescent Moon scrambling up scaling ladders and through the openings in the plank floor.

Euen Huw parried the first man's sword down with his own in a shower of sparks and kicked the man's leg under the edge of his mail hauberk. Two or three pounds pressure will pop a kneecap. The man - no time to guess at the face; if this is someone known, or someone Joscelyn van Mander has picked up in the months since he left the Lion Azure - the man fell forward dead-weight, like a sack of grain.