Ash: The Lost History Part 57

"I don't know," Leofric said at last.

"No, and nor does anyone else here, I can see it by the way you're all running around scaring yourselves s.h.i.+tless." Ash made herself grin. It was not very close to her usual gaiety of heart; she still ached too much. "Let me guess. It's only been cold since your invasion started?"

Leofric snapped his fingers. The smallest slave-child came and took a rat from him, cradling the blue doe with exquisite care in her thin arms. She walked unsteadily towards the door. One of the boys took the mismarked buck, twitching its whiskers, anxious to copulate with the doe; and at Leofric's signal, the slave scribe followed them out.

He said, "Child, if you did know of a reason for this intemperate weather, you would have told me of it, to save your life. I know this. Therefore, you know nothing."

"Maybe I do," Ash said steadily. In the half-chill room, her sore body ran cold sweat, darkening the robe gathered up under her armpits. She went on desperately, "Something I may have seen - I was there when the sun went out! - it might tell you-"

"No." He rested his chin on the knuckle of his first finger, nestling it in his untidy white beard. He held her gaze. She felt something tighten under her solar plexus: fear slowly squeezing her breath. She thought, Not now! Not when I've just found out I can make it talk to me- Not now, under any circ.u.mstances.

"You're still at war, I saw that coming in," she said, her voice still steady. "Whatever victory you had can't have been final, can it? I'll give you the disposition and array of Charles of Burgundy's troops. You and the King-Caliph think I'm a Faris, a magical general, but you're forgetting: I was one of Charles's hired officers. I can tell you what he has."

She said it fast, before she could regret saying it: "It's simple. I'll turn coat, in exchange for my life. I'm not the first person to make that bargain."

"No," the amir Leofric said absently. "No, of course. You shall dictate what you know to the Stone Golem; doubtless my daughter will find it useful, if somewhat overtaken by recent events."

Her eyes ran tears. "So I live?"

He ignored her.

"Lord-Amir!" She shrieked.

He spoke absently, as if he had not heard her.

"Whereas I had hoped to have another general, perhaps to lead our army in the east, I shall not have it under this King-Caliph, not with Gelimer to speak constantly against me. However," Leofric mused, "this gives me an opportunity which I had not expected to have before the end of this crusade. You - not being needed, as she is - can be dissected, to discover the balance of the Humours12 within your body, and if there are differences in your brain and nerves which make it possible for you to speak with the machine."

He looked at her with an absence of feeling that was frightening in itself.

"Now I shall find out if this is indeed the case. I have always had my failures to dissect. Since there is no further use for you, now I may vivisect one of my successes."

Ash stared at him. She thought, I must have mistaken the word. No, that was clear, pure, medical Latin. Vivisect. Meaning 'dissect, while still alive'. "You can't-"

A sound of footsteps beyond the door brought her bolt upright, grabbing at Leofric's arm as he rose to his feet. He evaded her grip.

It was not a slave who entered but the 'arif Alderic, a frown buried somewhere in his neatly braided beard; clasping his hands behind his back and speaking rapidly and concisely. Ash, too shocked, didn't understand what he was saying.

"No!" Leofric strode forward, his voice going up high. "And this is so?"

"Abbot m.u.t.h.ari has announced it, and called for prayer, fasting and repentance, my Amir," Alderic said, and with the air of a man repeating his initial message, slowly, as if the elderly lord-amir might not have understood: "The King-Caliph, may he live for ever, is dead of a seizure this half hour, in his rooms in the palace. No doctor could bring breath back to his body. Theodoric is dead, my lord. The King-Caliph is dead."

Stunned for different reasons, Ash heard the soldier speak his news with something approaching complete unconcern. What's a King-Caliph, to me? She knelt up on the bed. The woollen gown fell away from her bloodstained body. One hand knotted into a fist.

"Leofric!"

He ignored her.

"Leofric! What about me?"

"You?" Leofric, frowning, looked over his shoulder. "Yes. You . . . Alderic, confine her to the guest quarters, under guard."

Her other hand made a fist. She ignored the Visigoth captain as he gripped her arm. "Tell me you're not going to kill me!"

The amir Leofric raised his voice to his slaves. "Get my court robes!"

A bustle began.

He said, over his shoulder, "Think of it as a reprieve, if that comforts you. We are about the business of electing a new King-Caliph - which will be a busy few days, to say the least."

He smiled, his teeth s.h.i.+ning in his white beard.

"This is merely a pause, before I can investigate you. As custom dictates, I can begin my work again immediately upon the inauguration of Theodoric's successor. Child, don't think of me as barbaric. It is not as if I'm torturing you to death as part of the celebrations. You will add so much to the sum of our knowledge."

Message: #164 (Anna Longman) Subject: Ash / texts / archaeological evidence Date: 20/11/00 at 10. 57 p.m.

From: [email protected] Anna - Everything's STOPPED.

Some trouble with the local authorities - we're being forbidden to carry on with the digging on-site. I don't UNDERSTAND how this can be happening! It is extremely frustrating that I, myself, can do nothing about this.

I thought it was solved this morning: Isobel came back, optimistic. I think-she had gone through 'unofficial channels' and greased a few palms with money. She drove back with Colonel HHHH HHHH, who seemed very jovial, promising the use of his men for heavy work here where required. But this afternoon, STILL nothing is happening, there are obscure 'difficulties' .

I am concerned; it seems to be more than the usual patronage and nepotism; but Isobel has been too busy for me to ask her.

One minor good thing, I suppose, is that it gives me an enforced opportunity to work on 'Fraxinus'. Mediaeval Latin is notoriously ambiguous, and 'Fraxinus' more idiosyncratic than most. I am finalising the translation furiously! In fact, I am putting the finis.h.i.+ng touches to the next section.

Since we're encrypted, I can now tell you something about the site. What we have here is a beautiful midden. That's a refuse-heap.

Archaeology, as Isobel informs me, mainly consists of digging in other people's dung. She, however, did not say 'dung' .

You would not think - everything covered by suburbs: two-storey white buildings festooned with television aerials - that any of this was the site of Carthaginian and Roman settlements. Even the Roman aqueduct is pretty much gone. But when I walked down to the beach this morning, and stood there under a lurid dawn sky, with the cold wind blowing off the sea into my face, I suddenly realised that most of the worn and rounded 'pebbles' under my feet were actually bits of Roman brick and Carthaginian marble. Some of them might even have been pieces of golem, shapeless after five centuries of being rolled around by the sea.

Nameless rocks. We know almost nothing. It wasn't even until a decade ago that the site of Carthage was identified; prior to that there was this ten-mile stretch of coast, with nothing - two thousand years later - to indicate just where it might have been.

Even what seems certain, we don't know. Bosworth field has its own tourist centre, but the field on which the battle was fought may not be that field at all (there is a theory it was closer to Dadlington than Market Bosworth) . But I digress.

No, not really. I walked back through the site, in the chill fresh air - everything was under blue polyurethane covers . The grey boxes with notebook PCs plugged in had been removed back to the caravans. There were no men and woman in anoraks, flicking away earth with tiny paintbrushes, with their rear ends in the air. And what I thought was, Isobel is the one with the temperament for this. She wants to DISCOVER things. I want to EXPLAIN them. I need to have a rational explanation for the universe.

I even need a rational explanation for the 'miraculous' construction of these golems. The cold marble is uninformative. Andrew, our archaeometallurgist, is studying the metal joints; he has no answers yet. How did it get those marks of wear that prove it walked? HOW DID IT MOVE?

And what can I give these people, from the 'Fraxinus' text? A story of a wonder-working Rabbi and the s.e.xual congress of a woman and a statue!

I know I said truth can be conveyed down through history in a story. Well, sometimes it proves impenetrably obscure!

There were men with guns on the site perimeter as I walked in. I was thinking, as I pa.s.sed them, that the military mind itself has a rational explanation for the way the universe works - it's just an explanation at 90 degrees to the real one Isobel's just told me there is 'stuff' going on behind the scenes, in local politics; we must be 'patient' .

So far we have various household implements, a dagger-hilt, and a piece of metal that might be a hair-fillet. I sit in on the discussions - arguments would, one supposes, be a better term - and put the case for a Germanic rather than an Arab culture here. The team agrees with me .

I need these diggings to start again.

I need more back-up for ' Fraxinus' .

If they don't let the team on-site soon, the army can move in and clear out archaeological tents full of dead bodies: I myself will be found battered to death with my own laptop computer! We are going stir-crazy out here. And it's HOT.

- Pierce * * *

Message: #169 (Anna Longman) Subject: Ash mss. breeding of Rattus Norvegicus Date: 21/11/00 at 10.47 a.m.

From: [email protected] Ms Longman - While we wait, I am mailing you at the suggestion of my colleague, Dr Ratcliff, who has been kind enough to show me the Latin ma.n.u.scripts he is at present translating for you. He suggests I do this since I have some amateur (if specialised) knowledge of rat genetics and breeding.

Although Pierce and I spent some time discussing this yesterday, and he is now as well-informed as myself, he suggested that I e-mail you personally since I have the time now.

You may be aware that in the last forty-eight hours we have had problems on-site, and at the moment there is little I can do except watch the military representatives of the local government treading on five hundred years of history. Fortunately most of the findings at this site are under silt, which prevents too great an amount of damage being done. The sole advantage I can see to this delay is that the government are forbidding access to the airs.p.a.ce above the coast, and this avoids saturation media coverage. Apart from a few blurred satellite photos, the recording of the expedition will be in the hands of my own capable videocam team.

a.s.suming that matters return to normal in the next twenty-four hours, as Minister HHHH promises, I shall then be too busy to be of any a.s.sistance to Pierce or yourself.

I really have very little to contribute; perhaps a footnote's worth of knowledge - some years ago, being in search of a relaxing hobby, I took up breeding specialist varieties of Rattus Norvegicus, the Brown Rat. Such varieties are known as Fancy rats; and I have been a member of both British and American Rat Fancy societies.

In point of fact, my then-husband Peter Monkham was a biologist; we never did quite see eye to eye on this matter, although his reasons for having a vivisectionist' s licence were no doubt good and sufficient to him. Peter's jeremiads on the state of animals in unrestrained nature (their lives being nasty, brutish, and shortly terminated by something one step further up the food chain) only served to convince me that my captive animals were in fact rather better off than they would have otherwise been.

I was therefore intrigued to discover, while reading Pierce' s. translation from the 'Fraxinus' ma.n.u.script for clues to our technological findings, that several of our current genetic mutations of Rattus Norvegicus seem to have been known in fifteenth-century Africa. In fact, I had no knowledge of anything other than Rattus Rattus, the Black Rat, being present in mediaeval times anywhere outside Asia. (Rattus Rattus is, of course, the rodent popularly a.s.sociated with spreading the Black Death. ) I had believed that Rattus Norvegicus only spread here from Asia in or about the eighteenth century. What 'Fraxinus' describes, however, is undoubtedly the Brown Rat. If Pierce allows, I may use his findings for a brief paper on the subject of rat migration.

It seems possible, from 'Fraxinus' , that these varieties were imported by North African traders. The Latin is sufficiently explicit that I actually RECOGNISE several varieties! I should explain that the brown or 'agouti' coat of the wild rat is in fact coloured in bands, each brown hair being striped blue-grey at the base; the coat scattered with additional guard-hairs, which are black. Selective breeding of initially spontaneous mutations can give different coloured coats which will then (with great effort) breed true. Patterned coats can also be bred true, although to give you some idea of the difficulty, the H locus which controls pattern can be modified to give at least six patterns: the Hooded rat; the Berks.h.i.+re, the Irish, etc. And then there are polygenes to consider!

The difficulty is not in breeding a rat with a patterned coat, but in getting one that then breeds true to the same pattern. Two rats may be physically identical in their appearance while carrying completely different genetic histories in their alleles. Rat-breeding consists of trying to isolate certain genetic characteristics - without losing the proper bodily conformation of bold eye, well-set ears, good head, high rump, etc. - and creating a specific line of rats who will pa.s.s on that desired characteristic. Without keeping minutely detailed records of what bucks I bred to which does, it would have been impossible for me to select which of their offspring to use to continue the line.

Taking, for example, what 'Fraxinus' describes as a 'blue' rat - this is a rat bred to have the base blue colouring continued evenly through the fur coat. These are pretty, exotic little creatures, although (as this text in fact mentions! ) early attempts proved difficult to get right, as the blue does suffered birthing problems. Whatever allele carried the gene for 'bleaching out' the agouti coat also stood a substantial chance of carrying a gene for deformed birth-ca.n.a.ls, and bad temper. Blue rats used to bite, whereas the normal temperament of Rattus Norvegicus is inquisitive and friendly. The blue rat proper is then produced by breeding only from those examples which do not suffer from breeding difficulties, or difficulties of temperament.

'Fraxinus' also mentions the yellow/brown rat. This is known as a 'Siamese' , and is the same gene that gives us Siamese cats (and, in' fact, Siamese-coloured rabbits and mice) ; the coat is pale yellow except for the rump, nose, and paws, where the 'points' are dark brown. The description in 'Fraxinus' is excellent.

I can also account for the rat with different coloured eyes: the black eye being natural, the red eye a consequence of albinism. (The grey and white is referred to as 'lynx -marked' in the American Fancy. ) The specimen referred to in this text appears to me to be a mosaic - genetically speaking, the opposite of a twin. Whereas with a twin an egg divides in the uterus, with a mosaic two different eggs fuse. This can produce a rat with the two halves of its body having different colour fur, or different colour eyes, or in some cases, being of different s.e.xes. Since they are produced by random fusion, it is impossible for them to breed true, and they are of no use in fancy rat breeding.

Judging by the further description, the coat of the mosaic rat was either rexed - this is when the stiffer guard-hairs are bred out, giving a soft curly coat - or velvet (short and plush) .

I once bred a line of rexes myself - being a rex, naturally each one was named after one of the Plantagenets (my favourite kings); although a particularly fluffy rat of mine called 'John' gave me an excellent ill.u.s.tration, by his temperament, of why we have only ever had one king of that name.

Fraxinus's rat is particularly interesting if it is *not* a rex, since no one in the Fancy has yet successfully bred a velvet coat on a rat, although the Mouse Fancy had achieved both velvet and satin pelts. In this respect, fifteenth-century North Africa seems to have out-done us!

This is conceivably because our Rat Fancy is primarily a twentieth-century phenomenon (although young Victorian ladies were known to keep pet rats in birdcages) . Perhaps because of the rat' s undeserved bad reputation far fewer years this century have been spent on its specialist breeding than, say, has been the case with the Mouse Fancy, or with different breeds of dog or cat. However, there are, even now, dedicated amateur geneticists at work on the Brown Rat, and it seems encouraging to me - if wonderfully strange - to learn that we are REdiscovering the many possible varieties of this delightful, playful, intelligent little animal.

I have gone into this in some detail simply because it shows the sheer SOPHISTICATION of the mediaeval mind. Pierce's ma.n.u.scripts are proving fascinating now that we have these technological survivals to study, but I am almost MORE interested in what this says about the living minds of those people, who could note, conceive of genetic heritage, and EXPERIMENT in that respect, long before the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. Of course, one sees the beginning of it in horse- and hound-breeding of the same period, as one sees a similar mediaeval 'industrial revolution' in mills and military technology; but to produce, for example, the Siamese-marked rat, shows a mind-beggaring attention to scientific detail in what it is easy to see as a superst.i.tion-ridden, theologically constrained and inhumanely brutal society.

If I can be of any further a.s.sistance to you, please mail me at the above address. I look forward to your publication of Pierce's work. It may interest you to know that, in view of the help he is giving me on site, I am more than willing for him to publish any details of our discoveries here in so far as they relate to the 'Ash' histories, provided I and the university are credited.

- Sincerely I. Napier-Grant * * *

Message: #99 (Pierce Ratcliff) Subject: Ash, media-related prqjects Date: 21/11/00 at 11. 59 a.m.

From: [email protected] Pierce - I just had mail from your Doctor Isobel. Most of it's *way* over my head. And *rats*, eurrggh!

John showed me the golem-photos. They are WONDERFUL! My MD Jonathan Stanley came over and saw them. He is equally impressed. He's contacting an independent television producer that he knows - well, who's the G.o.dfather of his son, actually.

Now I'm going to have media people to talk to. And explain that this Schliemann found Troy by following up a poem. I can do it, I suppose, but it would carry more weight coming from you or Dr Napier-Grant.

I know you haven't the time, right now. I don't like the sound of this problem with the authorities that you're having.

I'm getting edgy here.

- Anna * * *

Message: #173 (Anna Longman) Subject: Ash mss.

Date: 22/11/00 at 02.01 p.m.

From: [email protected] Anna - Something to amuse you, then, and stop you being edgy, while we wait. Isobel has been re-reading my 'Fraxinus' translation and, as we have nothing better to do at this moment, has been devising with me a completely spurious scientific rationale for the abilities of Ash and the Faris as regards the Stone Golem. We decided to see if we could out-do Vaughan Davies! It goes like this- Since human beings cannot, as far as we know, converse with stone statues, this must, by definition, happen by the power of a miracle.

Of course, stone-and-bra.s.s tactical computers do not function in the world as we know it, either! So this theory will also have to account for the construction of the various 'stone golems' by the Rabbi of Prague and the descendants of Radonic. Therefore, such construction is also deemed to be miraculous!

Isobel and I have been playing about with a hypothetical *if*. Our theory is: suppose this ability to perform miracles was GENETIC - *if * there existed such a thing as a gene for performing miracles, *if* this 'wonder-working' had a scientific rather than a superst.i.tious basis, how would it function?

It would have to be a recessive gene, obviously. If it were dominant, everybody would be constantly performing miracles . It probably also has to be a recessive with something dangerous linked to the same allele or the same focus - Isobel points out that because blue rats have difficulty in successfully birthing litters, a spontaneous mutation of a blue rat will probably not perpetuate its line. You don't see many blue rats in the wild, and indeed there may not have been any in existence at all until breeders took an interest in Rattus Norvegicus.

Imagine, then, that this proposed 'wonder-working' gene would arise through spontaneous mutation very infrequently, and therefore those born to successfully perform miracles would be history's memorable prophets and religious leaders - Christ; the Visigoths' unidentified 'Prophet Gundobad'; the major Saints; other cultures' great visionaries and seers. They would not necessarily pa.s.s their genetic heritage on successfully, but it would remain as a recessive gene.

In 'Fraxinus's' history of Leofric's family, Isobel makes the suggestion - which I had not thought of - that both the Rabbi of Prague *and* the slave woman Ildico were wonder-workers, both of them using that capacity and carrying the gene.

The Rabbi, as wonder-worker, could build a miraculous stone chess-playing computer. Ildico, as the descendant of Gundobad, would carry enough of the ability to conceive a child from the. stone man, but not to work miracles herself. Her daughter, Radegunde, could work the miracle of long-distance communication with the computer, and construct her own golem (but, given the circ.u.mstances of her conception, would be p.r.o.ne to physical and mental instability) .

The descendants of Radegunde and Ildico would all carry the potential for miracle-working, but it would take a long programme of selective breeding to bring about another Radegunde, given that there is no miracle-worker there to aid Leofric's family in this project, it has to be done purely by two centuries of stock-breeding. (The morality of this is another question, and certainly does not seem to have occurred to Leofric or his ancestors.) Both Faris and Ash carry the wonder-working gene, and in them the ability to successfully use it is dominant. It seems not to have been active in Ash herself at birth, instead being triggered at the onset of p.u.b.erty, at which point she begins to 'download' from the Stone Golem.

And there you have it! It's a shame there's no such thing as miracles. Well, this is what academics do for fun, on long cold afternoons ...

Of course, miracles are -pace centuries of stories from various faiths -merely superst.i.tion. A miracle is a non-scientific alteration in the fabric of reality, if I may define it that way, and by that definition it is impossible. When one is sitting in a surprisingly cold army surplus tent (there is a sea-fog) with absolutely nothing else to do but wait to continue the dig, these are intriguing speculations.

If this delay goes on much longer, I confidently expect that Isobel and I shall next devise a theory about how such a "non-scientific alteration in the fabric of reality' or 'miracle' might be caused. We are no longer nineteenth-century Materialists, after all; the higher reaches of theoretical physics have taught us that all our Laws of Nature and apparently solid world are probability, fuzzy logic, uncertainty. Yes, about another two hours should do it! We shall produce the Ratcliff-Napier-Grant Theory of Scientific Miracles. And begin to pray, doubtless, for a change of heart among the local politicos, so that we have something real to do!

I hope you are duly amused.

- Pierce * * *

Message: #102 (Pierce Ratcliff) Subject: Ash ma.n.u.scripts Date: 23/11/00 at 03 . 09 a.m.

From: Pierce - Pierce, I have GOT something for you!

I had to go to a book-launch tonight. While I was swanning around the party, networking like mad, I met up again with a dear friend of mine, Nadia - I told you about her - a bookseller from Twickenham - she has one of those independent bookshops which are fast dying out now in favour of chains, in which everything is welcome except customers. (When I asked her what she was doing there, she replied, 'The shop's full of people; I've come AWAY! ' ) However - there was a house clearance at some place in East Anglia, and she bid at an auction for several cases of books. One of them is Vaughan Davies' ASH: A FIFTEENTH-CENTURY BIOGRAPHY, and it's *complete*!

Nadia suspects that the house clearance was either from Davies's own house, or a relative's house containing Vaughan Davies's belongings. I've asked her to find out more, tomorrow morning.