Ash: A Secret History (60 page)

The clarions rang and the choirs began to sing a morning hymn. Ash took off her chaperon hat and bowed her knee to the white marble floor.

“I have no idea what the Duke will do,” John de Vere said, as the hymn finished. “I’m an outsider here, too, madam.”

“I could have had a contract with that man,” she whispered, voice barely a breath.

“Yes,” the Earl of Oxford said.

“Yes.”

They mutually looked at each other, and as mutually shrugged, each with a quiet smile on their faces as they got to their feet, Duke Charles of Burgundy seating himself on his throne.

Her satisfaction vanished with the automatic glance she gave to find Godfrey, and listen to Godfrey’s prompting voice at her ear. The place beside her was taken by Robert Anselm, Godfrey Maximillian not being present.

Robert might believe Godfrey would stay overnight in Dijon, last night, but he’s wondering where our clerk is right now. I can see it on his face. And I don’t have anything I can tell him. Godfrey, where the fuck have you gone?

Are you coming back?

“Hell!” she added, under her breath, and realised at de Vere’s curious glance that she had spoken aloud.

Under the cover of the Duke’s chamberlain and chancellor speaking, the Earl of Oxford said, “Don’t worry, madam. If it comes to it, I’ll think of something to keep you here, out of Visigoth hands.”

“Like what?”

The Englishman smiled confidently, seemingly amused by her caustic tone. “I’ll think of something. I often do.”

“Too much thinking’s bad for you … my lord.” Ash tagged his title on to the end. She raised her head, trying to look across the heads of the crowd.

Complicated heraldries of Burgundy and France blazed silver and blue, red and gold, scarlet and white. Her eye travelled over the various groups, some standing in corners, others seated by the great open fireplaces full of sweet rushes. Nobles and their affinities, merchants in silk, because of the growing heat; dozens of pages in Charles’s white puff-sleeved livery jackets, priests in their sombre browns and greens; and servants moving rapidly from one group of people to another. The freshness of the early morning made voices lively – but with a particular tone, she noted: solemn, grave and reverent.

Where’s Godfrey when I need him?

Listening for intelligence, she overheard a tall man discuss the virtues of bratchet bitches for hunting; two knights speaking of a tournament combat over barriers; and a large woman in an Italian silk robe talking about honey glazes for pork.

The only political conversation Ash could hear was between the French ambassador and Philippe de Commines:
⁸
it mostly involved the names of French Dukes with which she was not overly familiar.

So where’s this court’s factionalism and politics? Maybe I don’t need Godfrey to feed me details, not here.

But I need Godfrey.

An automatic check behind assured her that Joscelyn van Mander was not only present, but sober and with his ego reasonably subdued, that her men-at-arms wore clean livery jackets over polished armour – or as polished as it was reasonable to expect, a week after fleeing a hundred miles across winter country – and that Antonio Angelotti as well as Robert Anselm stood at her elbow. Robert, in respectful conversation with one of the de Vere brothers, didn’t notice her glance. Angelotti grinned out at her from between a mass of tangled, golden curls. She beckoned him to the front of the group, reflecting, We might as well
look
good.

A stir at the far end of the presence hall drew attention.

Ash straightened, resisting an urge to stand on tiptoe. She saw a pennant at the great oak doors, and heard the liquid accents of Carthaginian Latin. Her hand dropped to her sword-hilt for reassurance. She rested it there, standing with her weight casually back on one heel, as the chamberlain and his servants announced and brought in Sancho Lebrija, Agnus Dei and Fernando del Guiz.

The solemn grandeur of the Duke’s court looked as though it were having some effect on Fernando del Guiz. He shifted uncomfortably in the open space before the dais, his eyes flicking around from face to face. Ash clasped her shaking hands behind her back. That his physical presence dried up her mouth and confused her thoughts was something she had almost grown used to. What confused her still further was her immediate pang at seeing him now, beleaguered, turn-coat, isolated from his own.

Beside her, the Earl of Oxford stood more erect. Ash came out of her reverie. It took her several seconds to pay attention to the Duke’s voice. The early fog, still drifting in the high stone hall, cast a cool haziness over the gathered noblemen and rich merchants. The slanting eastern gold of the light fell in now through the rose windows of the palace, as the sun rose higher: warming Oxford’s face, where he stood next to her, his head bowed to catch some comment of Robert Anselm’s; bringing fire from Angelotti’s Italian beauty; colouring the armour of Jan-Jacob Clovet and Paul di Conti with an antique sheen, so that to her eyes they seemed briefly all of a piece with Mynheer van Eyck’s angels, dreaming through eternity in the presence of God.

Something tore at her heart. That feeling of their permanence, over and above earthly affairs, vanished. A feeling of fragility overtook her, as if her companions might be utterly valuable and at the same time utterly endangered.

The sun, rising higher, altered the angle of light in from the windows, and with that change the feeling was gone. Almost bereft, Ash turned her head to hear Duke Charles of Burgundy saying, “Master Lebrija, I have considered your request with my advisors. You ask us for a truce.”

Sancho Lebrija made a stiff, formal bow. “Yes, lord Prince of Burgundy, we do.”

The lugubrious face of the Duke was all but lost in the finery of rolled hat, dagged tail, puffed doublet sleeves, and golden neck-chains: a hierophantic image of courtliness. Abruptly he leaned forward on his throne, and Ash glimpsed the rich and powerful man with a keen affection for guns, who spent as many months of the year in the field as he could spare.

“Your ‘truce’ is a lie,” Duke Charles said clearly.

A burst of noise: Ash’s men around her speaking loudly enough that she signalled them to silence, and leaned forward to hear the Duke.

“Your halt at Auxonne is not for a truce, it is to spy out my lands, and receive your reinforcements. You stand at our borders in darkness, armed for war, the atrocities of this summer behind you, and you ask us to sue for peace – to surrender, in all but name. No,” Charles of Burgundy said. “If there were but one man of my people left to defend us, he would say, as I say, that right is with us, and where right is, there God must be also. For He will stand at our side in battle, and cast you down.”

Ash bit back what would have been an automatically cynical mutter to Robert Anselm. The shaven-headed man had dragged his hat off, and stood gazing open-eyed at the richness of the Duke, surrounded by bishops, cardinals and priests.

The Duke’s voice echoed back from the vaulted roof. “Right may sleep, but it does not rot in the earth as men’s bodies do, or rust as the treasures of this world, but remains unchangeable. Your war is unjust. Rather than sue for peace, I will die here on the land that my father ruled, and his fathers before him. There is not a man of Burgundy, be he never so poor a peasant, nor a man who has asked sanctuary of Burgundy, who shall not be defended with all might, all main, and all the prayers that we may raise to God.”

The hush was broken by the French ambassador stepping forward into the open space on the black-and-white tiled floor. Ash saw his left palm close around his sword-grip.

“My lord Duke,” he glanced back at Philippe de Commines in the mass of people, and went on, “Cousin of our Valois King, this is sophistry and treachery.”

No one spoke. Ash’s mouth felt dry. Her stomach twisted.

The French noble’s face went taut. “You hope, by this one threat, to make Burgundy seem a dangerous land to attack, and thus turn these invaders into my lands, and into the lands of King Louis! That is all your strategy! You wish this bitch Faris and her armies to weary themselves for the next few months fighting
us.
And then you’ll defeat them, and pick up what lands you can from us – Charles of Burgundy, where is your liege loyalty to your King?”

Where, indeed? Ash thought ironically.

“Your King,” Charles of Burgundy said, “will remember that I myself have bombarded Paris.
⁹
If I desired his kingdom, I would come and take it. You will be silent now.”

Ash was aware of chamberlains and other court officials closing in around the ambassador as the Duke turned his attention back to Sancho Lebrija.

“I will not accede to your request,” Charles added, with finality.

The Visigoth
qa’id
observed, “This is a declaration for war, then.”

Ash, aware of her own escort’s low-voiced comments, caught sight of the face of Olivier de la Marche. The big Burgundian captain began to smile with a whole-hearted, infectious joy.

“
Said
we needed a fight,” Anselm growled, at her ear.

“Yeah, well, you might get one sooner than you expect.” Ash looked at Sancho Lebrija; kept her gaze from Fernando del Guiz. “I’m not going to be handed over.”

Anselm’s quick look said, plainer than words,
Be real, girl! You don’t have any
choice.

“No,” Ash said gently, “you don’t understand. I don’t care if I have to take on the whole of this court, and Charles’s army, and Oxford into the bargain: I am not going with them. The only way we’re going across the middle sea is fully armed and eight hundred strong.”

Anselm shifted his stance, with the air of a man settling himself into some decision. Abruptly, he muttered, “We’ll get you out. If it comes to it.”

Aware of shifting feet behind her, Ash thought
You might but I’m not sure about van Mander
and moved to one side as the Earl of Oxford, summoned by the Duke’s chamberlain, moved to the front of their group.

“Sire?” he said mildly.

“I am not your liege lord,” Charles of Burgundy said, leaning back on his throne and ignoring the Visigoths, “but I pray that it will please you, my lord Oxford, to bring your company of men to the field, under my banner, when we ride to Auxonne?”

Shit. So much for the raid.

“Do it ourselves?” she murmured to Anselm.

“If you can fucking pay for it!”

“We can’t
pay
for anything. We’re only getting credit with our suppliers in Dijon because of Oxford’s name.”

Angelotti said something blunt in Italian, on the other side of Robert Anselm, that made Agnus Dei raise his black brows where he stood with the Visigoths.

“Honoured,” the Earl of Oxford agreed curtly. “Sire.”

Sancho Lebrija moved forward, mail hauberk chinging. “Lord Prince of Burgundy, before there is war, there is the law. Our general has asked that you return to her her property, the bondswoman there.” His gloved finger flicked out, indicating Ash. “The legal title of the House Leofric to this woman is clear. She is born of a slave mother, and a slave father.” He repeated, “She is the property of House Leofric.”

In the silence, Ash breathed deeply of the meadowsweet smell of the flowers and rushes strewing the floor of the presence chamber. A tingle of apprehension dizzied her. She put it away from herself. Clear-headed, she lifted her scarred face and stared at the Burgundian Duke.

“He’ll do it,” she murmured to Anselm and Angelotti.

For only the second time since she had met him, Ash saw a wintry small smile on Charles of Burgundy’s face.

“Ash,” he said.

She stepped forward, beside Oxford, surprised to find that her legs were weak.

Gravely, the Duke said, “It has always pleased me to hire mercenaries. For whatever reason, I would decline to let any experienced mercenary commander leave my forces. In this case, however, I do not hold your contract. That is held by an English lord. Over him, the laws of Burgundy have no jurisdiction.”

Rapidly, solemnly, the Earl of Oxford rapped out, “I couldn’t go against the wishes of the premier prince of Europe, sire, and you
have
requested our presence on the field of battle…”

“I hear the sound of bucks being passed,” Ash murmured. She kept a smile off her face with difficulty.

“You claimed
right.
” Sancho Lebrija’s harsh, battlefield voice cut through the courtliness. “You claimed right, lord Prince of Burgundy. ‘Right may sleep, but it does not rot’.”

Oxford’s stance warned Ash, changing from benevolent courtesy to alertness. She made herself look confident, aware that her men-at-arms were looking from her, to the Duke, to the Visigoths, and back to her.

“What is your point?” the Burgundian Duke asked.

“Right does not sleep. We have the right, the law, with us.” Sancho Lebrija’s pale eyes slitted, as the morning sun found the place where he and his white-robed men stood in the chamber. Light struck fire from mail, from belt-buckles, from the hilts of worn swords.

“Will you stand convicted of mere expediency, lord Prince of Burgundy? This is defying the law, for no more reason than you wish a few more hundred men for your forces. It is greed, not right. It is despotism, not the law.”

He hesitated, breathless; then nodded curtly, as Fernando del Guiz said something at his ear.

“No one could fault you, lord Prince, for saying you fight a just war against us. But where is your justice, if you set the law aside as it pleases you? She belongs to the House Leofric. You know – it is known to all, by now – she has my general’s face. She is her living image. Lord Fernando here will stand witness to it. You cannot deny her to be born of the same parentage. You cannot deny that she is a slave.”

Lebrija halted, his eyes on the Duke, who did not speak. The Visigoth finished:

“As a slave, she has no legal right to sign a
condotta,
so it does not matter who she has signed one with.”