Ash: A Secret History Read online

  ‘Mary Gentle’s skill is such that she makes the miraculous seem totally plausible. A master of atmosphere and texture, her bravura portrayal of a Europe under pseudo-nuclear winter remains vivid long afterwards.’ Starburst

  ‘There are other writers who deal in people in our world coming into contact with other worlds, but I’ve yet to read any novel where the collision is handled as intelligently and subtly as it is here.’ SFX

  ‘Gentle is a fine writer … her characterisation of Ash is superb.’ Waterstones

  ‘Mary Gentle’s earlier work, including Golden Witchbreed and Rats and Gargoyles and their sequels, was much applauded. Ash puts them in the shade… In its subversion of what we understand by history, and reality based on history, this huge work truly is a masterpiece.’ Freelance Informer

  ‘Very simply, Ash works. There is much more to talk about: the brilliance of the conversations and debates; the astonishing clamour of combat; the roundedness of almost every character in the vast tale.’ John Clute

  ‘When Mary Gentle is good, she’s very good indeed – and this may well be her best book to date.’ Science Fiction World

  ‘There is a real sense in which Ash is the culmination of Gentle’s work so far; it has the elegiac tone of the Witchbreed books, the urban complexity of the White Crow books and their intellectual prickliness; it has the thuggery of Grunts, but this time played for real and not for laughs. It also has some of the most complex and attractive characters of modern fantasy.’ Roz Kaveney, Dreamwatch

  ‘The book is an elegantly written tour de force by someone who knows their history and isn’t afraid to mess with it.’ Guardian

  ‘I won’t insult the author by trying to bullet-point a masterpiece, because masterpiece it is. A wealth of emotion, all written in tough, vigorous language … this is a book that will keep the author’s name alive indefinitely.’ www.infinityplus.co.uk

  ‘Quite apart from Gentle’s sly games with the stodginess of accepted scholarship, Ash: A Secret History is also a wickedly good adventure story. Gentle understands both the movement of politics across nations, and the motivations of seemingly insignificant people, and she makes her reader feel both. Her battles are as simultaneously glorious and horribly sordid as real battles must have been… It’s almost literally a stunning book.’ www.sfsite.com

  ‘There have been many books about mediaeval battles, many more about how physical and emotional love are so compelling and interdependent, many feminist warrior fantasies, and much hard science fiction that culminates in transcendence, but only here are all these facets combined so precisely and satisfyingly. It would be a shame for anyone to miss this book.’ Interzone

  Also by Mary Gentle in Gollancz

  Cartomancy

  Orthe: Chronicles of Carrick V

  1610: A Sundial in a Grave

  White Crow

  Copyright © Mary Gentle 1999

  All rights reserved

  The right of Mary Gentle to be identified as the author

  of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This edition published in Great Britain in 2001 by

  Gollancz

  An imprint of the Orion Publishing Group

  Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane, London WC2H 9EA

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

  from the British Library

  ISBN 1 85798 744 6

  Printed in Great Britain by

  Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

  For Richard

  Contents

  Ash: A Secret History

  Introduction

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Part Two

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Part Three

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Part Four

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Part Five

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Part Six

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Part Seven

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Part Eight

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Part Nine

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Part Ten

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Part Eleven

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Part Twelve

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Part Thirteen

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Part Fourteen

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Part Fifteen

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Part Sixteen

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Afterword

  NOTE: This excerpt from Antiquarian Media Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 7, July 2006, is original, glued on to the blank frontispiece page of this copy.

  Contents

  Introduction

  7

  PROLOGUE: c. AD 1465–1467[?]

  11

  PART ONE: 16 June AD 1476?–1 July AD 1476

  39

  PART TWO: 1 July–22 July AD 1476

  105

  PART THREE: 22 July–10 August AD 1476

  147

  PART FOUR: 13 August–17 August AD 1476

  215

  PART FIVE: 17 August–21 August AD 1476

  267

  PART SIX: 6 September–7 September AD 1476

  353

  PART SEVEN: 7 September–10 September AD 1476

  405

  PART EIGHT: 10 September–11 September AD 1476

  489

  PART NINE: 14 November–15 November AD 1476

  553

  PART TEN: 15 November AD 1476

  599

  PART ELEVEN: 15 November–16 November AD 1476

  675

  PART TWELVE: 16 November AD 1476

  745

  PART THIRTEEN: 16 November–23 November AD 1476

  787

  PART FOURTEEN: 15 Dece
mber–25 December AD 1476

  881

  PART FIFTEEN: 25 December–26 December AD 1476

  957

  PART SIXTEEN: 26 December AD 1476–5 January AD 1477

  1013

  AFTERWORD

  1101

  Introduction

  I make no apology for presenting a new translation of these documents which are our only contact with the life of that extraordinary woman, Ash (b.1457[?]–d.1477). One has long been needed.

  Charles Mallory Maximillian’s 1890 edition, Ash: The Life of a Female Mediaeval Mercenary Captain, begins with a translation from the mediaeval Latin into serviceable Victorian prose, but he admits that he leaves out some of the more explicit episodes; as does Vaughan Davies in his 1939 collection, Ash: A Fifteenth Century Biography. The ‘Ash’ documents badly need a colloquial and complete translation for the new millennium, and one which does not shrink from the brutality of the mediaeval period, as well as its joyfulness. I hope that I have provided one here.

  Women have always accompanied armies. Examples of their taking part in actual combat are far too numerous to quote. In AD 1476, it is only two generations since Joan of Arc led the Dauphin’s forces in France: one can imagine the grandparents of Ash’s soldiers telling war stories about this. To find a mediaeval peasant woman in command, however, without the backing of church or state – and in command of mercenary troops – is almost unique.1

  The high glory of mediaeval life and the explosive revolution of the Renaissance meet in this Europe of the second half of the fifteenth century. Wars are endemic – in the Italian city states, in France, Burgundy, Spain and The Germanies, and in England between warring royal houses. Europe itself is in a state of terror over the eastern threat of the Turkish Empire. It is an age of armies, which will grow, and of mercenary companies, which will pass away with the coming of the Early Modern period.

  Much is uncertain about Ash, including the year and place of her birth. Several fifteenth and sixteenth century documents claim to be Lives of Ash, and I shall be referring to them later, together with those new discoveries which I have made in the course of my research.

  This earliest Latin fragment of the Winchester Codex, a monastic document written around AD 1495, deals with her early experiences as a child, and it is here presented in my own translation, as are subsequent texts.

  Any historical personage inevitably acquires a baggage train of tales, anecdotes and romantic stories over and above their actual historical career. These are an entertaining part of the Ash material, but not to be taken seriously as history. I have therefore foot-noted such episodes in the Ash cycle as they occur: the serious reader is free to disregard them.

  At the beginning of our millennium, with sophisticated methods of research, it is far easier for me to strip away the false ‘legends’ around Ash than it would have been for either Charles Maximillian or Vaughan Davies. I have here uncovered the historical woman behind the stories – her real self as, if not more, amazing than her myth.

  Pierce Ratcliff, Ph.D. (War Studies), 2001

  NOTE: Addendum to copy found in British Library: pencilled note on loose papers:

  DR PlERCE RATCLIFF Ph.D. (War Studies)

  Flat I, Rowan Court, 112 Olvera Street, London WI4 OAB, United Kingdom

  Fax: ██████████

  E-mail: ██████████

  Tel: ██████████

  Anna Longman

  Editor

  █████ University Press

  █████████

  █████

  ███████

  29 September 2000

  Dear Ms Longman,

  I am returning, with pleasure, the contract for our book. I have signed it as requested.

  I enclose a rough draft of the translation of Ash’s early life: the Winchester Codex. As you will see, as further documents are translated, the seed of everything that happens to her is here.

  This is a remarkable occasion for me! Every historian, I suppose, believes that one day he or she will make the discovery, the one that makes their names. And I believe that I have made it here, uncovering the details of the career of this remarkable woman, Ash, and thus uncovering a little-known – no, a forgotten – deeply significant episode in European history.

  My theory is one that I first began to piece together as I studied the existing ‘Ash’ documents for my doctoral thesis. I was able to confirm it with the discovery of the ‘Fraxinus’ document – originally from the collection at Snowshill Manor, in Gloucestershire. A cousin of the late owner, Charles Wade, had been given a sixteenth century German chest before his death and the take-over of Snowshill Manor by the National Trust in 1952. When it was finally opened, the manuscript was inside. I think it must have sat in there (there is a steel locking mechanism that takes up the entire inside of the chest’s lid!), all but unread since the fifteenth century. Charles Wade may not even have known it existed.

  Being in mediaeval French and Latin, it had never been translated by Wade, even if he was aware of it – he was one of those ‘collectors’ who, born in the Victorian age, had far more interest in acquiring than deciphering. The Manor is a wonderful heap of clocks, Japanese armour, mediaeval German swords, porcelain, etc.! But that at least one other eye besides mine has seen it, I am certain: some hand has scribbled a rough Latin pun on the outer sheet – fraxinus me fecit: ‘Ash made me’. (You may or may not know that the Latin name for the ash tree is fraxinus.) I would guess that this annotation is eighteenth century.

  As I first read it, it became clear to me that this was, indeed, an entirely new, previously undiscovered document. A memoir written, or more likely dictated, by the woman Ash herself, at some point before her death in AD 1477(?). It did not take me long to realise that it fits, as it were, in the gaps between recorded history – and there are many, many such gaps. (And, one supposes, it is my discovery of ‘Fraxinus’ which encouraged your firm to wish to publish this new edition of the Ash Life.)

  What ‘Fraxinus’ describes is florid, perhaps, but one must remember that exaggeration, legend, myth, and the chronicler’s own prejudices and patriotism, all form a normal part of the average mediaeval manuscript. Under the dross, there is gold. As you will see.

  History is a large net, with a wide mesh, and many things slip through it into oblivion. With the new material I have uncovered, I hope to bring to light, once again, those facts which do not accord with our idea of the past, but which, nonetheless, are factual.

  That this will then involve considerable reassessment of our views of Northern European history is inevitable, and the historians will just have to get used to it!

  I look forward to hearing from you,

  Pierce Ratcliff

  PROLOGUE

  c. AD 1465-1467[?]

  ‘My soul is among lions’1

  I

  It was her scars that made her beautiful.

  No one bothered to give her a name until she was two years old. Up until then, as she toddled between the mercenaries‘ campfires scrounging food, suckling bitch-hounds’ teats, and sitting in the dirt, she had been called Mucky-pup, Grubby-face, and Ashy-arse. When her hair fined up from a nondescript light brown to a white blonde it was ‘Ashy’ that stuck. As soon as she could talk, she called herself Ash.

  When Ash was eight years old, two of the mercenaries raped her.

  She was not a virgin. All the stray children played snuggling games under the smelly sheepskin sleeping rugs, and she had her particular friends. These two mercenaries were not other eight-year-olds, they were grown men. One of them had the grace to be drunk.

  Because she cried afterwards, the one who was not drunk heated his dagger in the campfire and drew the knife-tip from below her eye, up her cheekbone in a slant, up to her ear almost.

  Because she still cried, he made another petulant slash that opened her cheek parallel under the first cut.

  Squal
ling, she pulled free. Blood ran down the side of her face in sheets. She was not physically big enough to use a sword or an axe, although she had already begun training. She was big enough to pick up his cocked crossbow (carelessly left ready on the wagon for perimeter defence) and shoot a bolt through the first man at close quarters.

  The third scar neatly opened her other cheekbone, but it came honestly, no sadism involved. The second man’s dagger was genuinely trying to kill her.

  She could not cock the crossbow again on her own. She would not run. She groped among the burst ruins of the first mercenary’s body and buried his eating-knife in the upper thigh of the second man, piercing his femoral artery. He bled to death in minutes. Remember that she had already begun to train as a fighter.

  Death is nothing strange in mercenary soldier camps. Even so, for an eight-year-old to kill two of their own was something to give them pause.

  Ash’s first really clear memory came with the day of her trial. It had rained in the night. The sun brought steam rising from field and distant forest, and slanted gold light across tents, rough bashas, cauldrons, carts, goats, washerwomen, whores, captains, stallions and flags. It made the company’s colours glow. She gazed up at the big swallow-tailed flag with the cross and beast on it, smelling the cool air on her face.

  A bearded man squatted down in front of her to talk to her. She was small, for eight. He wore a breastplate. She saw her face reflected in the curving mirror-shiny metal.

  Her face, with her big eyes and ragged long silver hair, and three unhealed scars; two up her cheek under her left eye and one under her right eye. Like the tribal marks of the horse-barbarians of the East.

  She smelled grass-fires and horse dung, and the sweat of the armed man. The cool wind raised the hairs on her arms. She saw herself suddenly as if she were outside of it all – the big kneeling man in armour, and in front of him this small child with spilling white curls, in patched hose and bundled into a ragged doublet far too big for her. Barefoot, wide-eyed, scarred; carrying a broken hunting knife re-ground as a dagger.