Ash: The Lost History Part 56

The amir said dismissively, "This much you might have heard from slave gossip."

"I might have. But I didn't."

He was watching her keenly now. "I cannot know that."

"But you can!" Ash sat up on the oak bed. "If you won't tell me what to do to stay alive - I'll tell you. Ask me questions, Master Leofric. You'll know what the truth is. You'll know whether I'm lying about my voice!"

"Some answers are dangerous to know."

"It's never wise to know too much about the affairs of the powerful." Ash got off the bed and walked, slowly and with pain, towards the window shutter. Leofric did not stop her as she unbolted it and looked out. A centre iron bar bedded deep in the stone cas.e.m.e.nt was thick enough to stop a woman throwing herself out.

Bitter air froze the skin on her cheeks, reddening her nose. She had a brief sympathy for those under canvas, in the wet cold north; a fellow-feeling for their misery and discomfort that was, at the same time, an utter desire to be there with them.

Below the stone sill, the great courtyard hissed and spluttered, Greek Fire lamps being hastily sheltered by an inappropriately gay striped awning. Ash looked down at mostly fair heads. The men and women who were slaves tugged the waxed linen into place with much swearing, complaints; thin arms holding up cloth or cord with impatient shouts. No one freeborn was in the courtyard except guards, and she could pick up their mutual enmity from here.

The lights, once shrouded, let her see beyond, to the squat square surrounding buildings - a household of at least couple of thousand, she judged.

It was impossible to see further in the dark, to see if this interior Carthage city contained other amirs' establishments equally rich and well-fortified. And no way at all to see - she leaned up on her toes on the cold tiled floor - whether this building faced harbour or something else; how much of Carthage lay between her and the dock; where the great and famous market might be; where the desert lay.

A hollow, moaning sound startled her. She lifted her head, alert, discerning that it echoed across rooftops and courtyard from a great distance.

"Sunset," Leofric's voice came from beside her. When she looked at him, her eyes were on a level with his white-bearded chin.

The metallic sound echoed again across the city. Ash strained to see the first stars, the moon, anything that would give her a compa.s.s bearing.

The wooden shutter was gently closed in her face.

She turned back into the room. The glowing warmth from the iron plates of coals made her feel how chill her face had grown, in those few minutes.

"How do you speak to it?" she challenged.

"As I speak to you, with my voice," Leofric said dryly. "But I am in the same room with it, when I do it!"

Ash couldn't stop herself smiling.

"How does it answer you?"

"With a mechanical voice, heard by the ear. Again: I am in the same room when I hear it. My daughter does not have to be in the same room, the same household, the same continent - this crusade confirms me in my belief that she will never go a distance great enough for her not to hear it."

"Does it know anything except military answers?"

"It does not know anything. It is a golem. It speaks only what I, and others, have taught it. It solves problems, in the field, that is all."

She swayed on her feet as a wave of la.s.situde went through her. The Visigoth amir gripped her arm above the elbow, through the bloodstained wool. "Come and lie down on the bed. Let us try what you suggest."

She let him guide her footsteps, all but falling back on to the pallia.s.se. The room swayed around her. She closed her eyes, seeing nothing but darkness for long minutes until the dizziness faded; opening them to the stark white light of the wall lamps, and the soft scritching of the boy-slave on his wax tablet.

Leofric made a gesture, and the child stopped writing.

His voice, beside her, asked quietly, "Who was it first built the Golem?"

Question and answer. She spoke it aloud: had to ask twice, the answering name was unfamiliar to her. She said uncertainly, "The . . . 'Rabbi'? Of Prague."

"And he built it for whom?"

Another question, another response. Ash shut her eyes against the harsh light, straining to hear the inner voice. " 'Radonic', I think. Yes, Radonic."

"Who first built the Stone Golem, and why?"

'The Rabbi of Prague, under direction of your ancestor Radonic, two hundred years ago, built the first Stone Golem to play him at shah.' "-At chess," Ash corrected herself.

"Who first built machines in Carthage, and why?"

'Friar Roger Bacon.'

"One of ours," Ash said. She let her voice repeat the sound of the voice in her head: 'It is said that Friar Bacon made, in his lodgings at the port Carthage, a Brazen Head, from such metal as might be found in the vicinity. Howbeit, when he had heard what it had to say to him, he burned his devices, his plans, and his lodgings, and fled north to Europe, never to return. Afterwards the new presence of many demons in Carthage were blamed upon this scholar. Geraldus writ this.'

Leofric's voice said soothingly, "Many have read much into the Stone Golem's ears in two hundred years. Try again, dear daughter. Who made the first Stone Golem, and why?"

'The amir Radonic, beaten in shah by this speechless device, grew weary of it, and was much displeased with the Rabbi.' "That's lords for you," Ash added. She became aware that she was on the edge of hysteria. Dehydration made her head ache, blood-loss made her weak; all of this was enough to account for it. The voice in her head continued: 'Radonic, growing weary, caused the stone man to be set aside. Like a good Christian, he doubted the small powers of the Jews to be from the Green Christ, and began to think he may have countenanced demonic works in his household.'

"More."

'The Rabbi had made this Golem a man in every part, using his s.e.m.e.n, and the red mud of Carthage, and shaping it very handsomely. A slave in the household, one Ildico, grew greatly in love with the Golem, for that with its stone limbs and metal jointures it looked most like a man, and bore it a child. This she said was caused by the Wonder-Worker's intercession, the great Prophet Gundobad appearing to her in a dream and bidding her carry about her person his sacred relic, which was pa.s.sed down in this slave's family since Gundobad lived.'

Ash felt a soft touch. She opened her eyes. Leofric's fingers stroked her brow, the tips touching skin, dried blood and dirt with complete indifference. She flinched away.

"Gundobad's your prophet, isn't he? He cursed the Pope and caused the Empty Chair."

"Your Pope should not have executed him," Leofric said gravely, removing his hand, "but I won't dispute with you, child. Six centuries of history have pa.s.sed over us, and who can tell what the Wonder-Worker was, now? Ildico believed in him, certainly."

"A woman who had a baby by a stone statue." Ash couldn't keep contempt out of her tone. "Master Leofric, if I were going to read history for a machine to listen to, I wouldn't tell it this rubbis.h.!.+"

"And the Green Christ born of a Virgin, and suckled by a Boar; this is 'rubbish'?"

"For all I know, it is!" She shrugged, as well as was possible lying down on the bed. Her feet were cold. She became aware as Leofric frowned that she had slid into a French-Swiss dialect of her youth, and tried it again in Carthaginian Latin: "Look, I've seen as many tiny miracles as the next woman, but all of them could be chance, fortuna imperatrix, that's all . . ."

With slight emphasis, the Visigoth man said, "What made the second Stone Golem and why?"

Ash repeated his words. The voice that moved in the secret places of her mind was no different from the voice that answered when she gave it terrain, troop type, weather conditions, and asked for an ideal solution: the same voice.

'Some have written that Ildico, slave, not only preserved a powerful relic of the Prophet Gundobad, but was in direct line of descent from his body, through the generations from the eight hundred and sixteenth year after Our Lord was given to the Tree, to that year of twelve hundred and fifty-three.'

Leofric repeated his question. "Who made the second golem, and why?"

'The eldest son of Radonic, one Sarus, was killed in a battle with the Turks. Radonic then caused to be made a shah set in which the pieces were carved, complete to weapons and armour, resembling the troops of the Turks and the troops of his son Sarus. Then he recalled the Golem to his mind, and set about playing shah with it, and upon a day in that year, the Golem at last played out the game so that the troops of Sarus moved in a different array and would have defeated the Turks.

'Upon this day, also, Amir Radonic discovered his slave Ildico bedding the Golem; and he took a wall-builder's hammer, and he crushed the red mud and bra.s.s of the Golem to fragments, so small that no man could have told what it had been. Thereafter, he shut himself up in a tower. And Ildico bore a daughter.

'Radonic, thinking upon Sarus his dead son, and upon his sons yet living, came and bade the Rabbi make a second Golem, to replace the one he had destroyed in his wrath. This the Rabbi would not do, although the Amir threatened the life of the Rabbi's two sons. Not until Radonic made plain that he would impale and kill both Ildico and her newborn daughter would the Rabbi relent. Then he builded for Amir Radonic another Stone Golem, in a chamber within the house, but this human in seeming only in its upper body and head, thrice the size of a man: the rest being but a clay slab upon which models of men and beasts may be moved. And the brazen mouth of the Golem spoke.'

Ash curled her body up, swathed in wool. Two or three sentences at a time is nothing, she thought, but this . . . The emotionless recounting of the voice made her tired, dizzy, detached.

'Then Radonic killed the Rabbi and his family, in case the Rabbi should make such another shah-player for his enemies, or the enemies of his King-Caliph. And instantly the sun grew dark above him. And the sun darkened above the city of Carthage, and to all the lands ruled by the King-Caliph did the Rabbi's Curse extend. And so no living eye hath beheld the sun break through the Eternal Twilight, in two hundred years.'

Ash opened her eyes again, not aware until then that she had shut them, the better to hear her voice. "Jesu! I bet there was panic."

Leofric said softly, "The then King-Caliph, Eriulf, and his amirs held command over their troops, and their troops kept the people quiet."

"Oh, you can do most things if you can keep a bunch of soldiers taking orders." Ash pushed herself up in the bed, until she came into contact with the white oak headboard, carved with fluted columns and pomegranates at the posts. She supported herself with an effort against the waxed wood. "This is all legends, I heard this stuff around camp when I was a kid. Legend number three hundred and seven about how the Eternal Twilight came to the south . . . Am I really telling you what you expect to hear?"

"Prophet Gundobad lived, and his slave daughter Ildico," Leofric said, "my family histories speak of it very clearly. And my ancestor Radonic certainly executed a Jewish Rabbi, about the year 1250."

"Then ask me things people won't have read in your family histories!"

The waxed wood of the bed smelled sweet to her. Her stomach growled. Strung out, watching Leofric's expression for the minutest changes, she ignored her complaining body.

"Who was Radegunde?"

Ash obediently repeated, "Who was Radegunde?"

'The first to speak at a distance to the Stone Golem.'

She thought, It doesn't say 'to me'.

'In these first years of crusade, when harvests failed and grain might not be got but by conquest of happier lands under the sun, then King-Caliph Eriulf began his conquests of the Iberian taifa states. While Amir Radonic fought for King-Caliph Eriulf, he learned from each defeat or victory as he played them out over again with his Stone Golem, after each campaign. The child of Ildico, the girl Radegunde, began in her third year to make statues of men from the red silt sand of Carthage.

'The amir Radonic, seeing how she resembled the old Rabbi, smiled to think he had been so simple as to think a statue might beget a child upon a woman, and to regret his first Stone Golem's destruction. So Radegunde might have remained only a slave in the House of Radonic, but that, upon a day, she overheard Radonic's discussions with his captains, upon the practice field, and bade the Amir tell her what tactics he would employ, so that she might engage to speak to her friend the stone man about his plan.

'Thinking to make merry, Radonic bid her ask the Stone Golem what it would have him do. Upon this, Radegunde spoke to the air. Then other slaves came running, to report that the Golem began to move the figures set out before it. When the amir Radonic arrived in its chamber, the answers to his question were set out plain, as if the Golem had received her childish speech from some demon of the air.

'Then Radonic abandoned the way of honour and rightness, and did not slay the child. Radonic adopted Radegunde, taking her with him to Iberia, speaking to her, and through her to the Stone Golem, and the tide of war turned in Eriulf's favour, so that southern Iberia became the grain-basket of Carthage under the twilight. And at five, she made her first mud statue that moved of its own volition, breaking much in the household, and greatly the child laughed to see this destruction.'

Ash drew her ankles up to her haunches, under the covering wool gown, and studied Leofric's expression. It was one of intense concentration.

"Is that Radegunde?" She stumbled over the name.

"Yes. Ask, how did she die?"

"How did Radegunde die?" Ash parroted. The dizziness in her might have had a dozen causes. She suspected a concentration of her mind that felt, somehow, as if she were pulling - a load up a slope - or unravelling something.

'In his seasons at home in Carthage, the amir Radonic gave orders that Radegunde should be aided to make her new golems, bringing her scholars, engineers, and strange materials all as she desired. In her fifteenth year, G.o.d took away her powers of speech, but her mother Ildico communicated for her by signs known to them both. In this year also, upon a day, Radegunde builded a stone man that rent her limb from limb and so she died.'

Leofric's voice said, "And what is the secret birth?"

Ash kept her mouth shut, forming no words in her head, but letting an expectation form. An expectation of being answered. She let it somehow pull at other, implicit, answers. She said nothing out loud.

The voice began to speak in her head.

'Desiring another who should hear the Stone Golem though separated from it by many miles, so that he might continue his war, the amir Radonic bred Ildico, in her thirtieth year, to the third golem, which had killed her daughter. This is the secret breeding, and the secret birth her twins, a male child and a girl.'

She mumbled out loud, too startled at hearing it to keep quiet; muttered a necessary question out loud, in the face of Leofric's keen stare, over the answer already coming into her head. Then she stumbled over words, getting them out: 'The amir Radonic desired another such slave, a grown adult, who should communicate with the Stone Golem as Radegunde had, a Janissary general after the manner of the Turks, an al-shayyid who should defeat all the petty taifa kings of Iberia. The twin children of Ildico could not be brought to do it, no matter the pain inflicted upon them and their mother. Nor could another golem be built. At last, Ildico confessed that she had given Radegunde her holy relic of the Prophet Gundobad, to place it within her last golem, and to make it speak and move as men do. But, at this knowledge, the third golem slew Ildico, and leaped from a high tower, and was dashed to fragments beneath. And this is their secret death: none remaining of the Prophet and Rabbi's miracle but the second Stone Golem, and Ildico's children.'

Amir Leofric's hands closed over hers, clasping them tightly. Ash met his eyes steadily. He was nodding, unstoppably, in agreement; his eyes were wet.

"I never thought to have two such successes," he explained, simply. "It does speak to you, doesn't it? My dear girl."

"That was two hundred years ago," Ash said. "What happened then?"

She felt him unite with her in a moment of pure curiosity on her side, pure understanding of the desire for knowledge on his. The two of them sat companionably side by side on the bed.

Leofric said, "Radonic bred the twins and their offspring together. He wasn't a man to keep careful records. After he died his second wife Hildr and her daughter Hild took over; they kept minutely detailed notations of what they did. Hild was my great-great-grandmother. Her son Childeric, and her grandsons Fravitta and Barbas, continued the breeding programme, always tantalisingly close. As you know, as our conquests spread, many refugees and much scholastic knowledge came to Carthage. Fravitta built the ordinary golems, about the year 1390; Barbas presented them to King-Caliph Ammia.n.u.s; they have since become popular through the Empire. The youngest son of Barbas, Stilicho, was my father; he raised me in the knowledge of the utmost necessity of our eventual success. My success was born four years after the fall of Constantinople. And so may you have been," Leofric finished thoughtfully.

He's older than he looks. Ash realised the Visigoth lord must be in his fifties or sixties. That means he grew up under the threat of the Turks - and that begs another question.

"Why isn't your general attacking the Sultan and his Beys?" Ash asked.

Absently, Leofric muttered, "The Stone Golem advised a crusade in Europe to be a better beginning; I must say I agree."

Ash blinked, frowned. "Attacking Europe is a better way to defeat the Turks? Ah, c'mon! That's crazy!"

Leofric ignored her mumble. "All has gone so well, and so speedily; if it were not for this cold-" He broke off. "Burgundy is the strategic key, of course. Then we may turn our attention to the Sultan's lands, G.o.d willing it so. G.o.d willing that Theodoric lives. He has not always been such a bad friend to me," the elderly man mused, as if to himself, "only in this last illness, and since Gelimer got his ear; still, he cannot very well stop a crusade once begun with so many victories ..."

Ash waited until he looked up at her, raising his bowed head. "The Eternal Twilight has spread north. I saw the sun go out."

"I know."

" You don't know a d.a.m.n thing about it!" Ash's tone rose. "You don't know any more about what's going on than I do!"

Leofric s.h.i.+fted very carefully on the edge of the white oak bed. Something squicked in the depths of his gown. The pale blue doe put out an indignant nose, and scuttled hastily on to his striped sleeve.

"Of course I do!" the Visigoth amir snapped. "It's taken us generations to breed a slave who can hear the Stone Golem without going mad. Now I have a chance of there being two of you."

"I'll tell you what I think, Amir Leofric." Ash looked at him. "I don't think you have any use for another slave-general. I don't think you need another Faris, another warrior-daughter who can talk to your machine - no matter how long it took you to breed that one. That's not what you want at all." She spared a finger for the rat, but it was sitting up on its haunches, grooming velvet-blue fur, and ignored her.

"Suppose I can hear your tactical machine. So what, Amir Leofric?" Ash spoke very carefully. The fog of misery was beginning to clear. Her body has ached from other wounds than this, if none so deep. "You can offer me a place with you, to fight for the King-Caliph, and I'll agree, and turn my coat as soon as I get back to Europe; he and you both know that. That's not important, it's not what you need!"

The exhilaration of unguarded honesty filled her. Looking around the room at the three slave-children, she briefly realised, I've taken to talking as if they're not there, too. Her gaze returned to Leofric, to see him thrusting his fingers through his hair, spiking it up still further.

Come on, girl, she thought. If he were a man you were hiring, what would you make of him? Intelligent, secretive, with none of the normal social restraints about causing physical harm to people: you'd pay him five marks and put him on the company books in a second!

And he didn't get to stay an amir without being devious. Not in this court.

"What are you saying?" Leofric sounded bewildered.

"Why is it cold, Leofric? Why is it cold here? "

The two of them looked at each other, for what must have been an actual minute of silence. Ash read the flinch of his expression clearly.