Part 112 (1/2)

- Anna * * *

Message: #192 (Pierce Ratcliff) Subject: Ash Date: 14/12/00 at 10.31 p.m.

From: [email protected] Pierce - Where the h.e.l.l are you?

Well, I did it. I drove out to the old people's home this evening, and I saw William Davies and his brother Vaughan. Two very elderly gentlemen, with nothing much to say to each other. That's sad, don't you think?

Vaughan Davies isn't frightening. Just elderly. And senile. He's lost his memory - as the result of a wartime trauma, bombed in the Blitz. He's not a distinguished academic any more.

It seems the amnesia is genuine. William is a surgeon, and of course he has all his old medical contacts, even though he is retired, so Vaughan has been checked up in the best hospital in England, by the best neurosurgeons. Amnesia after traumatic shock. Basically, he got blown up, got picked out of the rubble, didn't know who he was, was put in a home after the Second World War, forgotten, and then chucked out on the streets a few years back for 'care in the community' .

The police eventually picked him up when he appeared in Sible Hedingham and tried to get into his old house. He's pretty gaga, and no one would have known who he was, except one of the family who own Hedingham Castle was there the third or fourth time he tried this, and finally recognised him.

This is a dead end, Pierce. He doesn't remember editing the second edition of ASH. He doesn't remember being an academic. When he talks to William, he thinks they are still fifteen and living with their parents in Wilts.h.i.+re. He doesn't understand why William is 'old' . His own face in a mirror distresses him. William just pats his brother's hand, and tells him he'll be all right now. It made me cry to listen to him.

Sometimes I don't like myself much. I don't like myself because he's a real person, who has suffered appallingly; and his brother is a sweet old man who I'm fond of.

FFS, Pierce, why aren' t you checking your mail!

- Anna * * *

Message: #322 (Anna Longman) Subject: Ash Date: 14/12/00 at 10 . 51 p.m.

From: [email protected] Anna - I can't leave here now. I can't take the time away from this translation! You will see why. Am sending the next section.

Talk to Vaughan Davies again, for me. _Please._ If he is *at all* coherent, ask him: what was his theory about a 'connection' between the ASH doc.u.ments and the history - our history - that superseded it? Ask him what it was that he was going to publish after his second edition!

- Pierce * * *

Message: #196 (Pierce Ratcliff) Subject: Ash Date: 14/12/00 at 11. 03 p.m.

From: [email protected] Pierce - ARE YOU MAD?.

- Anna * * *

Message: #333(Anna Longman) Subject: Ash Date: 14/12/00 at 11.32 p.m.

From: Anna - No, I 'm not mad.

It's late, here. Too late to do any more translation tonight, and besides, I am too tired to think in English, never mind in dog-Latin.

I'm sending you what I have complete. Dawn tomorrow I'll carry on, but for now, I owe you an explanation of why I'm not flying back to Gatwick, and here it is.

I have at last been shown the Admiralty charts of this area of the Mediterranean. As you might expect, given the sheer amount of submarine activity during the last war, their charts of the seabed are extensively detailed, and accurate.

None of them show any kind of a 'trench' on the sea-floor in this location.

- Pierce.

PART TWELVE.

16 November AD 1476.

The Hunting of the Hart1.

Chapter One.

”There's a f.u.c.king army outside the walls,” Ash yelled, ”and you think you're just going to go out and hunt some animal?”

Olivier de la Marche brought his big chestnut stallion around, avoiding rubble, and answered her question between orders to the throng of huntsmen. ”Demoiselle-Captain, we ride now. We must have a Duke.”

Ash, looking at his weather-beaten features under his visor, recognised a capable man with much to organise, and also something else; some quality of abstraction that she realised to be present now everywhere in these ravaged streets.

The blitzed great square behind Dijon's north wall must have three thousand people in it now, to her quick calculation: and more coming in every minute. Knights mounted on horseback, archers running with messages, huntsmen and their varlets, and couple upon couple of running-hounds. But most - she squinted her eyes against the morning sun falling between the burnt-out timbers of buildings - wet, and blackened from fire - mostly women and men in drab clothes. Shopkeepers. Apprentices. Farming families: peasants taking refuge from the devastated countryside. Wine-makers and cheese-sellers, shepherds and small girl-children. All of them bundled up in their layers of neatly mended, muddy woollen tunics, gowns, and cloaks; faces bitten red and white by the wind. Most of them solemn, or abstracted. For the first time in months, not flinching in antic.i.p.ation of falling stone or iron.

And quiet. The noise of her own men walking and riding back in was the loudest noise, audible over the whining of the hounds. Her rough voice, and the single pa.s.sing-bell, were all else that broke the almost complete silence.

”If there are Burgundians among your mercenaries,” Olivier de la Marche concluded, ”they may hunt with us.”

Ash shook her head. The pale bay gelding, abruptly alert to her movement, skittered a step sideways in the mud and broken cobbles. She brought him under control. ”But who inherits the Dukedom?”

”One of the royal ducal bloodline.”

”Which one?”

”We will not know, until they are chosen by means of the hunting of the Hart. Demoiselle-Captain, come if you will; if not, keep the walls and watch the truce!”

Ash exchanged glances with Antonio Angelotti as the Duke's deputy rode off towards the houndsmen. ”'The hunting of the hart' . . . Am I crazy, or are they?”

Before Angelotti could answer, a tall scarecrow figure approached, pus.h.i.+ng its hood back. Floria del Guiz beat her sheepskin mittens together against the bitter wind.

”As.h.!.+” she called cheerfully. ”Robert has a dozen men who need to speak to you about the hunt. Should he bring them from the tower, or will you go to him?”

”Here.” Ash dismounted, the steel and leather war saddle creaking. The tension of the Faris's camp released itself, momentarily, in aching muscles, under her armour.

Down at ground-level, she became more aware of the men and women packing into the square. They walked quietly, most not speaking; a few with expressions of grief. Where they were forced by the devastation of the narrow winding streets to crowd together, she saw how they courteously stepped aside, or gave a nod of apology. The Burgundian men-at-arms, that she expected to see using their bills to hold the crowd back under control, were standing in small cl.u.s.ters watching the flood of humanity go past them. Some of them exchanged brief comments with the peasants.

Many of the women held lit tapers carefully between their cupped hands.

”This silence . . . I've never heard anything like it.”

There were two women behind Floria, Ash now saw; one in the green robes of a soeur, and one in a stained, grubby white hennin. As the press lessened around her and the bay gelding, she could see their faces. Soeur-Maitresse Simeon, and Jeanne Chalon.

”Florian ...” Bewildered, she turned back to her surgeon.

Floria looked up from sending a baggage-train child back with a message. ”Robert says the dozen or so Flemings who stayed with us after the split, they want permission to ride in the hunt. I'm riding too.”