G.o.dfrey Maximillian turned away, avoiding her eyes. "He . . . won the big tournament, in Cologne, last summer. You remember, child? He unhorsed fifteen; didn"t fight in the foot combat. The Emperor presented him with a bay stallion. I - recognised the livery and name."
Ash took his shoulder and turned him to face her again. She said flatly, "Yeah. And the rest. What"s so special, G.o.dfrey? Where did I meet Fernando?"
"Seven years ago." G.o.dfrey took a breath. "In Genoa."
Her belly jolted. She forgot the waiting company. So that"s what all the adrenalin-powered cheerfulness has been about, these past two days. I"m like that when I"m hiding something from myself. I just don"t always know that"s what I"m doing.
And it"s probably why I"ve been running the company like a half-a.r.s.ed excuse for a captain; letting myself be taken off to Cologne- The memory, chewed dry, comes back to her as it always does, in the same fragments. Sea-water slopping against the stone steps of a dock. Lantern light on wet cobbles. Male shoulders against the light. Running back to camp afterwards - the camp of her old company, under the Griffin-in-Gold banner -choking, far too ashamed to show rage openly.
"Oh. Yeah. So?" Ash"s voice sounded, even to herself, too hurried to be casual. She looked away from G.o.dfrey, out of the tent. "Was that del Guiz? That was a long time ago."
"I made it my business afterwards to find out his name."
"Did you?" The back of her throat tightened with malice. "That"s the kind of thing you like to do, isn"t it, G.o.dfrey? Even then."
In her peripheral vision, Florian de Lacey - now Florian del Guiz, a potential brother-in-law; how strange - stood up. He put his flopping, dirty blond hair out of his eyes, in the so-familiar gesture. "What is it, girl?"
"Didn"t I ever tell you? It was before you joined us. I thought I might have got drunk some night and told you." A questioning glance, at which Florian shook his head.
Ash got up from the chest and walked to the tent"s entrance. The wet canvas was beginning to dry now, under the afternoon sun. She reached out to test the growing tautness of a guy-rope. A cow moaned, over in the quartermaster Henri Brant"s stock pens. The wind brought wet scents of dung. The tents and other shelters - A-frame structures made of canvas pegged down over halberd shafts - were unusually empty. She c.o.c.ked an ear for the sound of voices shouting at football, and heard nothing.
"Well," she said. "Well."
She turned back to face the two men. G.o.dfrey"s fingers kneaded obsessively at the cord around the waist of his brown robe. You could still see, in his weather-hardened features, the pallid, plump young man that he had been then. Her rage, hanging fire, snapped.
"And you can take that sheep-face off! I"ve never seen you so happy. You loved me being punished. You could comfort me! You never like me quite so much when I"m not falling apart, do you? b.l.o.o.d.y virgin!"
"Ash!"
Ebbing, the anger leaves her dry, free of the conviction that the world is full of faces hiding harm, viciousness, persecution.
"Jesus, G.o.dfrey, I"m sorry!"
The priest"s face lost a little of its distress.
Florian said, "What did my brother do?"
Ash felt the dry rushes beneath her bare feet as she walked back across the tent. The shadows of clouds move across the canvas; the world bright, then dim, then bright again. She sat on the wooden chest and pulled her boots on, without looking up at the surgeon. "Wine."
"Here." A dirty hand entered her field of vision: Florian holding a goblet.
Ash took it, and watched the red and silver ripples on the surface of the liquid.
"You can"t hear it without laughing. No one could. That"s the problem." She lifted her head as Florian squatted down on his haunches in front of her; she and the man now level, face to face. "You know, you don"t look anything like him. I"d never have taken you on the company books if you had."
"Yes you would." Florian put one hand down to support himself, careless of the mud tracked in on the rushes. He smiled. It showed the dirt in the creases of the skin around his eyes, but made his whole face glow with affection. "How else could you afford a Salerno-qualified doctor, except by finding one with a predilection for cutting up battlefield casualties to see how bodies work? Every mercenary company should have one! And where else are you going to find someone sensible enough to tell you when you"re being an idiot? You"re an idiot. I don"t know my half-brother, but what could he have done-?"
Florian suddenly straightened up and rubbed at his cramped legs. Mud smeared. He picked one or two of the larger clods off his blue hose, and watched her out of the corner of his eye. "Did he rape you?"
"No. I wish he had."
Ash reached up and unfastened the tight braids that Constanza"s women had done up for her. Her silver hair uncoiled.
This is now. This is now: if I hear birds, they are crows yawping, not gulls. This is now, and this is summer, hot even when it rains. But my hands are cold with humiliation.
"I was twelve, G.o.dfrey had taken me out of St Herlaine the year before; it was after I"d been apprentice to a Milanese armourer and then found the Company of the Griffin-in-Gold again." She heard the sea in her mind. "This was when I still wore women"s dress if I wasn"t in the camp."
Still sitting, she reached over and picked up her sword, with the sword-belt wound tidily around its scabbard. The round wheel pommel comforted her hand as she rested her palm on it. The leather on the grip was cut and needed re-doing.
"There was an inn in Genoa. This boy was there with friends, and he asked me to sit down at their table. I suppose it must have been summer. It was light until late. He had green eyes and fair hair and no particular kind of face, but it was the first time I"d ever looked at a man and got hot and wet. I thought he liked me."
When she has to remember, when something reminds her of it, it is as if she watches what happens from a distance. But it only takes a slight effort to bring back the sweat and the fear, and her whining voice pleading Let me go! Please! She pulled away from their hands, and they pinched her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, leaving black bruises that she never showed to any physician.
"I thought I was it, Florian. I was doing sword-training, and the captain was even allowing me to act as his page. I thought I was so hot."
She couldn"t look up.
"He was a few years older, obviously the son of a knight. I did everything to make him like me. There was wine but I never drank it, I just got too high when I thought that he wanted me. I couldn"t wait to touch him. When we left, I thought we were going back to his rooms. He took me round the back of the inn, near the dock, and said, "Lie down." I didn"t care, it could have been there or anywhere."
Cobblestones: cushioned only by the crumpled cloth of her robe and kirtle and shift. She felt them hard under her b.u.t.tocks as she lay down and moved her heels apart.
"He stood over me and unlaced his flap. I didn"t know what he was doing, I expected him to lie down on top of me. He took it out and he p.i.s.sed-"
She rubbed her hands over her face.
"He said I was a little girl who acted like a man and he p.i.s.sed on me. His friends came up and watched. Laughing."
She sprang up. The sword thudded down on to the rushes. Rapidly, she walked to the tent"s entrance, looked out, spun around and faced the two men.
"You can"t help but laugh. I wanted to die. He held me down while all his friends did it. On my robe. In my face. The taste - I thought it would be poison, that I"d die from that."
G.o.dfrey reached out his hand. She stepped back from comfort without realising that she did so.
"What I don"t understand to this day is why I let it happen.""
Anguish thinned her voice.
"I knew how to fight. Even if they were stronger, and there were more of them, I knew how to run." She rubbed her hand hard across her scarred cheek. "I did scream out to one man walking past, but he just ignored me. He could see what they were doing. He didn"t do anything to help. He laughed. I can"t be angry about it. They didn"t even hurt me."
Sick fear in her stomach kept her from looking at either of them, G.o.dfrey now reminded of a wet, stinking, weeping young woman; and Florian with whom things would not now be the same, not ever, not with him knowing this.
"Christ," Ash said painfully, "if that was Fernando del Guiz - he can"t remember now or he"d have said something. Looked at me different. Do you think he still has the same friends? Do you think any of them will remember?"
Powerful hands closed over her shoulders from behind. G.o.dfrey said nothing, but his grip tightened until she could have cried out. She could feel his mute appeal to Florian. Ash rubbed her flaming cheeks. "f.u.c.k."
I"ve spent five years killing men on the field of battle, and here I am thinking like a green novice, not a soldier- G.o.dfrey"s voice over her shoulder whispered, intensely: "Florian, find out if he remembers. Talk to him. He"s your brother. Buy him off if you have to!"
Florian walked towards Ash. He stopped when he stood directly in front of her. In the light inside the tent, his face looked grey. "I can"t do it. I can"t try to persuade him out of it. They"d burn me."
Ash could only incredulously say, "What?", still shaking from the rush of memory. The man in front of her reached out. She felt her hand taken. G.o.dfrey"s grip from behind tightened again.
Florian"s long, surgeon"s fingers uncurled her hand. He pulled open the lacing of his doublet and plunged Ash"s hand under the gathered neck of his fine linen shirt.
She was touching warm flesh before she said, "What?"
Under his shirt, Ash"s fingers and palm cupped the full, rounded, firm breast of a woman.
Ash stared at his face. The dirty, unshakeable, pragmatic surgeon gripped her hand hard, and was plainly woman; plain as day, a tall woman in man"s dress.
G.o.dfrey"s puzzled voice rumbled, "What-?"
"You"re a woman?" Ash stared at Florian.
G.o.dfrey gaped at both of them.
"Why couldn"t you tell me?" Ash shouted. "Christ, I needed to know! You might have put the whole company in danger!"
The page Philibert put his head back through the tent-flap. Ash s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand away.
The boy looked from one to the other: surgeon, field priest, captain. "Ash!"
He feels the tension, Ash thought, and then: No, I"m wrong. He"s too wrapped up in what he"s got to say to notice anything else.
The boy squealed, "They"re not playing football. The men. Everybody. They won"t! They"re all together, and they say they"re not doing anything until you come and speak to them!"
"Here we go," Ash muttered. She glanced back at Florian, at G.o.dfrey. "Go and tell them I"m on my way. Now." And, as the boy Philibert ran out, "It won"t wait. They won"t wait. Not now. Florian - no - what is your name?"
"Floria."
""Floria" ..."
"I don"t understand," G.o.dfrey said frankly.
The tall woman retied the neck-string of her shirt. "My name is Floria del Guiz. I"m not Fernanda"s half-brother, he has no brothers. I"m his half-sister. This is the only way I can ever practise as a surgeon, and no, my family is not about to welcome me back, not in Burgundy, and certainly not into the Imperial German branch of the del Guizes."
The priest stared. "You"re a woman!"
Ash muttered, "That"s why I keep you on the company books, G.o.dfrey. Your ac.u.men. Your intelligence. The rapidity with which you penetrate to the heart of the matter." She shot a look at the lantern and its marked hour-candle, burning steadily where it sat on the trestle table. "It"s nearly Nones.16 G.o.dfrey, go and give that unruly mob out there a field-ma.s.s. Do it! I need time."
She caught the brown sleeve of his robe as he moved towards the tent-flap. "Don"t mention Florian. I mean Floria. You heard it Under the Tree. And get me enough time to arm up."
G.o.dfrey looked at her for a long minute before he nodded.
Ash stared after his departing back as G.o.dfrey stepped out across the rain-wet earth that steamed, now, in the afternoon sun. "s.h.i.t on a stick ..."
"When do I leave?" Floria del Guiz said, behind her.
Ash pressed both index fingers down hard on the bridge of her nose. She shut her eyes. The darkness behind her eyelids speckled with light.
"I"ll be lucky if I don"t lose half the company, never mind you." She opened her eyes again; dropped her hands to her sides. "You"ve slept in my tent. I"ve seen you rat-a.r.s.ed and throwing up. I"ve seen you p.i.s.s!"
"No. You"re merely under the impression that you have. I"ve been doing this since I was thirteen." Floria appeared in Ash"s peripheral vision, wine cup trailing from her long fingers. "Salerno now trains no Jews, no black Libyans, and no women. I"ve pa.s.sed as a man since then. Padua, Constantinople, Iberia. Army doctoring, because n.o.body cares who you are. You and these men . . . This past five years is the longest I"ve been able to stay anywhere."
Ash leaned out of the tent and bawled, "Philibert! Rickard! Get in here! - I can"t make a hasty decision, Florian. Floria."
"Stick with Florian. It"s safer. It"s safer for me."
That rueful tone penetrated Ash"s daze. She looked straight at the woman. "I"m female. The world puts up with me. Why shouldn"t it put up with you?"
Florian ticked off on her fingers: "You"re a mercenary. You"re a peasant. You"re human cattle. You don"t have an influential rich family. I am a del Guiz. I matter. I"m a threat. If nothing else, I"m the elder: I could inherit at least the estate in Burgundy . . . All this outrage comes down to property in the end."
"They wouldn"t burn you." Ash did not sound certain. "Maybe they"d only lock you up and beat you."
"I don"t have your facility for being hit without minding it." Florian"s fair eyebrows quirked up. "Ash, are you so sure they tolerate you? This idea of a marriage didn"t come out of nowhere. Somebody"s put Frederick up to it."
"s.h.i.t. Marriage." Ash moved back across the tent and lifted her sword up out of the rushes. Apparently absently, she said, "I heard, in Cologne, that the Emperor"s knighted Gustav Schongauer. Remember him and his guys two years ago at Hericourt?"17 "Schongauer? Knighted?" Florian, briefly distracted by outrage, glared at her. "They were bandits! He spent most of that autumn destroying Tyrolese farms and villages! How could Frederick enn.o.ble him?"
"Because there"s no such thing as legitimate authority or illegitimate authority. There is only authority." Ash faced the man who was a woman, still holding her scabbarded sword between two hands. "If you can control a lot of fighting men - you will. And you"ll be recognised and ratified by other controllers. Like I need to be. Except that no king or n.o.bleman is going to knight me."
"Knighthood? Boy"s games! But if a murdering rapist can end up as a Graf-!"
Ash waved Florian"s shock away. "Yeah, you are n.o.ble . . . How do you think we get new n.o.bles in the first place? The other Grafs are scared of him. The Emperor too, for that matter. So they make him one of them. If he gets too scary, they"ll band together and have him killed. That"s the balancing act."
She took the wine cup out of Florian"s fingers and drained it. The buzz was enough to loosen her up, not enough to make her light-headed.
"It"s the law by which chivalry operates," Ash looked down into the empty cup. "It doesn"t matter how generous and virtuous you are. Or how brutal. If you have no powerbase, you"ll be treated with disrespect; and if you do have a powerbase, everyone will come to you in preference to anyone else. And power comes from the ability to make armed men fight for you. To reward them with money, yes, but more - with t.i.tles and marriages and land. I can"t do that. I need to. This marriage-"
Ash abruptly reddened. She scrutinised Floria"s face, weighing up secrets known, and past confidences not betrayed. Floria, so like the Florian who had shared her tent on many nights, talking into the small hours.
"You don"t go, Florian. Unless you want to." She met Floria"s gaze, smiled wryly. "You"re too good a surgeon, if nothing else. And . . . we"ve known each other too long. If I trust you to horse-doctor me, I can"t stop trusting you now!"
A little shaken, the tall woman said, "I"ll stay. How will you manage it?"
"Don"t ask me. I"ll work something out . . . Sweet Christ, I can"t marry that man.!"
A distant babble of voices became plainly audible outside.
"What are you going to tell them, Ash?"
"I don"t know. But they won"t wait. Let"s move it!"
Ash waited only long enough for Philibert and Rickard to get her undressed and into her arming doublet and hose, and armour, and belt her sword around her waist, gilded sword-pommel catching the canvas-filtered light. The boys did it with never a fumble, rapid fingers tying points, buckling straps, pushing her body and limbs to where would best help them fasten her into her steel sh.e.l.l, all with the ease of practice. Full Milanese harness.
"I have to talk to them," Ash added, her tone somewhere between cynicism and self-mockery. "After all - they"re the reason why the Holy Roman Emperor calls me "Captain". And the reason why I can walk through a camp full of armed men without being bush-whacked."
Florian del Guiz prompted: "And?"
""And" what?" Ash left her helmet off, carrying it reversed under her arm, with her gauntlets slung into it.