Ash: The Lost History Part 128

"Ah, b.u.g.g.e.r off, rosbif!"

He gave a happy, rumbling chuckle.

"Christ, you do need sleep!" Ash elbowed him. "Florian-"

"Don't go anywhere yet," the surgeon said bluntly, over the noise of men rising, bowing, and withdrawing themselves from the ducal chamber.

The verdant-robed Bishop of Cambrai rose from his chair, as the rest did. Instead of moving towards the chamber door, Bishop John walked back down the table towards the surgeon-d.u.c.h.ess Floria.

"Bishop John." Florian stabbed a long, white finger towards Ash. "About tomorrow night - this is the witness I want at my invest.i.ture."

He beamed. "Madame cher d.u.c.h.esse, of course."

Aware that Anselm and Angelotti were waiting for her, talking urgently to the readmitted escort, Ash protested, "I haven't got time to spare to go through another d.a.m.n hours-long public ceremony, Florian!"

The Bishop startled. "Public? The people don't need to see this. They know who the d.u.c.h.esse is. They recognise her in the streets. Taking the ducal coronet is between her and G.o.d."

"Another good reason why you don't need me," Ash said dryly.

"The d.u.c.h.esse wishes you to stand private vigil with her, and myself, and the other two witnesses, through the night. The following morning's ma.s.s gives her the crown, but nothing men can do can make her less, or more, than she already is."

"I'm busy! I've got a fu- a company to run! No, an army! I've got to look through all the duty-rolls of the Burgundian companies-"

Florian's hand closed over her arm, with all the strength of surgeon's fingers. "Ash. I want a friend there. You don't have to tell me you think it's a load of c.o.c.k."

Startled, Ash rapped out, "You don't have to tell me you think exactly the same thing!"

Floria smiled painfully, ignoring the churchman's expression. "That isn't the point. Remember when you talked to Charles? You want to know 'why Burgundy'. So do I. I'm d.u.c.h.ess, Ash. I want to know, why Burgundy - and, why me?"

Ash blinked. Sleeplessness shuddered through her. She put the weakness to the dark back of her mind where she loses such things. "Will this 'vigil' of yours tell us why Burgundy?"

Florian switched her gaze from Ash to the Burgundian bishop. "It better had."

Chapter Seven.

She slept an hour in one company's guardhouse, down by the south gate; another hour in the armoury, while clerks sorted out inventories. The rest of the night and the following morning saw her among hackb.u.t.ters, archers, squires to knightly men-at-arms; judging their morale, hearing their officers' reports, but most of all, letting them see her.

"A Pucelle?" one noseless veteran of Duke Philip's campaigns remarked. "Quite right too - G.o.d sent one to the French, the least He could do was send one to us!"

His spoiled speech gave her the option of appearing not to understand. She merely grinned at the billman. "Granddad, you're just surprised to find there's still a virgin in Dijon."

That was being repeated, with embellishments, before she left that barracks, and it followed her all the way to the Viscount-Mayor's hall, where it was received with less delight and more shock. By that stage - talking all the time to two, three, four men simultaneously - she was past caring what civilians thought.

At noon, back at the tower, stripped to her s.h.i.+rt by her pages, she sat down suddenly on her pallet, dizzy enough that she tipped over slowly and sprawled face forwards; asleep before she was conscious of touching the straw-filled linen.

She slept through the short light hours of the afternoon, waking once at the noise of her pages, three nine-year-old boys huddled around the great hearth, polis.h.i.+ng the rust-spotted plates of her armour: cuira.s.s, cannons, vambrace, pauldrons . . . The smell of neat's-foot oil being worked into the leather straps roused her enough to lift her head off the bed, blinking.

Across from her, on the other side of the hearth's heat, Robert Anselm lay slumped asleep on a truckle-bed; one huge, immobile, silent lump. She hitched one elbow in, to get her arm under her and push herself up.

"Boss." Rickard squatted down beside her pallia.s.se. "Message from Captain Angelotti: 'You're not indispensable, the company is managing perfectly well without you: go back to sleep!'"

Ash grunted an indistinguishable protest; was flat face-down and asleep again before she could properly voice it. When she woke for the second time, one of the pages was cutting bread by the hearth-fire and nibbling crusts, and Angelotti was sprawled on the truckle-bed - asleep on his back, with a face like an angel, and snoring like a hog in a wallow.

Rickard looked up at her from where he knelt, scouring her sallet-visor with the finest white sand.

"Boss, message from Captain Anselm and Messire de la Marche: 'You're not indispensable; the army's managing perfectly well-'"

"Ah, b.o.l.l.o.c.ks!" she said thickly.

She did not dream: there was no hint of the scent of boar, or the chill taste of snow; nothing but deep unconsciousness. G.o.dfrey, if he is a presence, is at too deep a level to touch her conscious soul.

When sleep finally let her go, she rolled over in a tangle of warm linen s.h.i.+rt, blankets, and furs; and the slanting light from one slit-window put sunset's red gold across her face.

"The doc - the d.u.c.h.ess sent word," Rickard said, as soon as he saw she was awake. "She wants you at the chapel."

She arrived in the bathhouse of the palace's Mithraic chapel as Floria del Guiz stepped up out of the wooden tub, and servants swathed her in pure white linen. Water dampened the cloth. The steam that filled the air began to dissipate quickly in the chill.

"This is what you call immediate, is it?" Florian called.

Ash handed her cloak and hat to her page, and turned back to find the surgeon-d.u.c.h.ess temporarily wrapped in a vast fur-trimmed blue velvet robe. Ash walked across the flagstones towards her.

"I had stuff to do. I needed to talk with Jonvelle and Jussey and the rest of Olivier's centeniers." Ash yawned, stifling it with her fist. She looked at Florian, eyes bright, as the woman waved her attendants away. "And the refugee French and German knights, and their men. Very nice, everyone's being. We'll see what happens when it comes to me giving them orders ..."

"Next time, get here when I ask."

Floria spoke harshly. Ash opened her mouth to snap back. The woman added, "I'm supposed to be a d.u.c.h.ess. You're showing me up in front of these people. If I do have any authority - I don't need it undermined."

"Uh." Ash stared at her. Finally she shrugged, put her hand through her cropped silver hair, and said, "Yeah. Okay. Fair enough."

They stared at each other for a few seconds.

"I understand," Ash protested.

"Boss's vanity is hurt."

"You're-" Ash stopped: rephrased you're not really a d.u.c.h.ess! "You know, whatever it is you do with the Wild Machines - you're not a d.u.c.h.ess to me or the company."

A little wistful, the older woman said, "I'm glad to hear it."

"But I still don't have time to waste on this. If it is a waste. Have you spoken to that bishop yet?"

"He won't say anything until I go through this vigil."

"Ah, f.u.c.k it. Let's do it, then. Who needs sleep anyway!"

The d.u.c.h.ess's attendants emerged again from behind the long hessian curtains that separated each of the great baths; one with wine, and two others with towels and fresh clothing. Ash stood absent-mindedly watching as they unwrapped and dried the gold-haired woman, her mind running through roster-lists.

Floria turned her head, opened her mouth as if to say something, flushed, and turned away. Pinkness flooded the skin of her throat and bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Ash - expecting a caustic remark, rather than embarra.s.sment - abruptly felt herself colour, and turned her back on the group of women.

Does she feel like I used to feel when Fernando watched me?

It is five months since she touched him, in bed; her fingers still remember the smooth silk heat of his c.o.c.k, the velvet electricity of his skin; the flex and thrust of his bare b.u.t.tocks under her hands as he pushes inside her. Fernando: who may be dead, now, in the Carthage earthquake - or, if he isn't, has likely divorced her by now. Too dangerous for a renegade German now in a Visigoth household to have a Frankish wife . . .

And to be the brother of a Burgundian d.u.c.h.ess? Ash suddenly thought. Hmm. I wonder if he's in even more trouble, if he's still alive?

"Let's get going." Florian appeared at her shoulder. She eyed Ash's start with curiosity, but did not say anything. A faint pinkness remained to her skin, but it might have come from the rough towelling, and nothing more.

"How long is this going to take?"

"Until Prime tomorrow."

"All night? f.u.c.k ..."

They had dressed Florian in a plain white linen over-gown, and under it a gown of white lambswool, also with no decoration. A linen coif covered her short gold hair. As the women withdrew, she looked over her shoulder, snapped her fingers, and beckoned; and the youngest girl came back with the fur-lined blue velvet robe.

Ash watched Florian struggling into the voluminous garment. Turning to signal her own page to bring back her hat and campaigning cloak - the stone walls' chill soaking the air already, even so soon after nightfall - she smiled, mildly. "Who needs a vigil? You ain't having any trouble taking to behaving like a d.u.c.h.ess ..."

Florian stopped pus.h.i.+ng her arm through the slit of a hanging sleeve, and stared back over her shoulder at the departing attendants. "That's not fair!"

Ash reached out, twitched the sleeve down over Florian's shoulder, and turned towards the curtain that masked the tunnel leading to the chapel. Leaving her page and escort behind, she stepped forward and held back the coa.r.s.e cloth.

"d.u.c.h.ess takes precedence, I believe ..."

Florian did not laugh.

Torches in cressets lit the low pa.s.sage, their smoke making the air acrid. Ash found her fingers automatically going to her belt and her dagger. The relief of being in civilian clothes and out of armour for an hour made her body blissful, but chill; and she swung her cloak around her shoulders as she walked into the tunnel after Florian.

Florian came to a dead halt in front of her. Without turning, she said, "I had someone ordered out of the council room this afternoon."

Ash let the hessian curtain fall behind her. It cut off sound: left them isolated under the low granite roof. She stepped around the motionless woman.

"And they went." Florian raised her head. "If I'd wanted to, I could have had men throw them out."

"If you wanted, you could have more than that."

Ash glanced up ahead: the further curtain did not stir. No priests yet.

"That's the problem." Floria's voice fell flat and m.u.f.fled, deadened by the ancient stone.

"Ah, you wait," Ash said reflectively, linking her arm through the surgeon's; beginning to pace towards the far end of the corridor. "You wait till you want someone thrown out real bad. Then, you start cutting corners . . ."

"You mean, I make some illegitimate use of this power I've been stuck with?" Under the demand, Florian's voice had a tone of panic.

"Everybody does it at least once. Every lance-leader, every centenier. Every n.o.bleman."

"And yours was?" Floria snapped.

"Mine?" Ash shrugged, letting her arm drop out of the crook of the woman's elbow, maintaining her easy pace towards the far curtains. "Oh, that's got to be . . . the first time I got six of my men to cripple the living s.h.i.+te out of somebody. Back in - I don't remember - some northern French town."

She was conscious of Florian's face in profile as they walked, the glowing torches casting red light on her cheekbones. A tightly controlled s.h.i.+ver went through the older woman.

"What happened?"

"Some civilian said, 'Hey, girlie, you can wear hose, and you can wave a sword around, but you're still a c.u.n.t who has to squat down to p.i.s.s' - he thought that was very funny. I thought, okay, I have six hefty guys here, wearing mail that I paid for, and my livery . . . They kicked the c.r.a.p out of him; smashed his face and both knees."

The face Florian turned was desperate. As if she searched for an excuse, she asked, "And how long would your authority have lasted, if you'd allowed him to say that without reprisal?"

"Oh, about five minutes." Ash raised a brow. "But then, I didn't have to have them cripple him. And I didn't have to go into town that afternoon looking for trouble."

She was unaware of her own expression: part hooligan-enjoyment, part shame and regret. "I was pretty young. Fourteen, maybe. Florian, you're going to get this. The first time five hundred guys stand there and cheer you to the echo, and then go piling into combat because you say so ... you start feeling you can do anything. And sometimes you will."

"I don't want to find out if I will."

Ash put out her hand to draw aside the second curtain.

"Tell me that if we're still here in six months. Once you taste it, you can't go back. But it isn't worth chucking your weight about." She tugged at the heavy cloth. "After a while, if you do too much of it, people stop listening to you. You're not in charge. You're just out in front..."

Florian huddled her gown more tightly over her white robes. "Don't you find it terrifying? You're in charge of an army!?"

Ash flashed her a quick grin. "Don't for f.u.c.k's sake ask Baldina about my laundry."

Florian, her expression fixed, glanced away without responding.

She needs a serious answer, and I'm too scared to give it.

Ash raised her voice. "Hey, come on! Aren't there any f.u.c.king priests in this chapel? Where's your b.l.o.o.d.y bishop?"

A disapproving older female voice said, "He's consecrating the chapel, young demoiselle. Do you want to tell him to hurry up?"

Ash stepped into the antechamber expecting, for a second, to see Jeanne Chalon; but the woman facing her looked nothing like the surgeon's n.o.ble aunt. Only the voices were similar. Torches smoked in the cold air, and Ash squinted at the fat, round-faced woman in wimple and looped-up kirtles, and at the man behind her, whose face seemed naggingly familiar.

"Demoiselle," the elderly man pulled off his coif. His scalp shone pink in the torchlight. "You won't remember me, I daresay. You might remember Jombert here. He's a fine dog. This is my wife, Margaret. I'm Culariac; Duke's huntsman." He turned watery eyes to Floria del Guiz. "d.u.c.h.ess's huntsman, I should say; pardon me, your Grace."

A cold nose pressed against Ash's fingers. She reached down, and scratched behind the ears of a white lymer sniffing at the fur-trimmed skirts of her demi-gown under her cloak.

"'Jombert'!" she said. "I remember. It was you that came out to the Visigoth camp at the truce, to ask if the hunt could ride."

The man's face broke into a smile at her recognition. His wife continued to scowl. After a few seconds, Ash recognised the look. Well, I'm not learning to fight in skirts to please her.

"We're here as your witnesses, your Grace," the old man added, with another bow. What self-importance there might have been in his expression vanished as the lymer abandoned Ash, gave a quick sniff to the surgeon-d.u.c.h.ess, and padded back to nose at his master's thigh. Culariac gazed down in pure affection.

Which is he more proud of, Ash wondered; his hound, or his position here? He'll be drinking on the strength of both, tomorrow night.

If the town isn't taken by then.

"'Witnesses'?" she belatedly queried.