Free Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle Page A

Florian wiped his hands down the front of his doublet, smearing the red wool, red lacing, and white linen undershirt with dirt. “That’s it, except an arm fracture, which I fixed up before you got here.” The tall master surgeon scowled. “Why don’t you bring me back any interesting injuries? And I don’t suppose you bothered to recover any dead bodies for anatomising?”
    “They didn’t belong to me,” Ash said gravely, managing not to laugh at Florian’s expression.
    The surgeon shrugged. “How am I ever going to study fatal combat injuries if you don’t bring me any?”
    Ned Aston muttered something under his breath that might have, been ‘fucking ghoul!’
    “We were lucky,” Ash stressed. “Florian, who’s the arm fracture?”
    “Bartolomey St John. From van Mander’s Flemish lance. He’ll mend.”
    “No permanent cripples? No one dead? No plague outbreak? Green Christ loves me!” Ash whooped. “Ned, I’ll send your sergeant up here for you.”
    “I’ll manage. I’m not dead yet.” The big English knight glowered at Florian de Lacey in disgust as he left the surgeon’s tent, something of which the anatomist-surgeon remained apparently oblivious; and had done as long as Ash had known him.
    Ash spoke to Florian, watching Ned Aston’s retreating back. “I haven’t heard you use that charm for a battle injury before.”
    “No… I forgot the charm for bloodless injuries. That one was for farcioun. ”
    “‘Farcioun’?”
    “It’s a disease of horses.” 8
    “A disease of—!” Ash swallowed a very un-leaderlike snuffle of laughter. “Never mind. Florian, I want to get out of this kit and I want to talk to you. Now. ”
    Outside, the sun hit like a dazzling hammer. Heat stifled her, in her armour. Ash squinted towards her pavilion tent and the Lion Azure standard limp in the airless noon.
    Florian de Lacey offered his leather water bottle. “What’s happened?”
    Unusually for Florian, the costrel did indeed contain wine thoroughly drowned by water. 9 Ash doused her head, careless of spillage over steel plate. She gasped as the warm water hit. Then, swallowing greedily, she said between gulps, “Emperor. I’ve committed him. No more sitting around here – hinting to the Burgundians that Neuss is a free city – and Herman of Hesse is our friend – so would they please go home? War. ”
    “Committed? You can’t tell with Frederick.” Florian’s features, pale and fine-boned under the dirt, made a movement of disgust. “They’re saying you nearly got the Burgundian Duke. That right?”
    “ Damn near!”
    “Frederick might approve of that.”
    “And he might not. Politics, not war. Aw, shit, who knows? ” Ash drank the last of the water. As she lowered the bottle, she saw her other page Rickard running towards her from the command tent.
    “Boss!” The fourteen-year-old boy skidded to a halt on dry earth. “Message. The Emperor. He wants you at his tent. Now!”
    “He say why?”
    “That’s all the guy told me, boss!”
    Ash stuffed her gauntlets into her inverted helmet and tucked the helmet under her arm. “Okay. Rickard, get my command lance together. Fast. Master surgeon, let’s go. No.” She halted, boot-heels skidding on glassy summer grass. “Florian. You go and change out of those clothes!”
    The surgeon looked amused. “And I suppose I’m the only one?”
    Ash surveyed her armour. The shining metal was brown now with drying blood. “I can’t get out of harness in time. Rickard, get me a bucket!”
    A few minutes saw her armour sluiced down, head to foot; the warm water, even the dampness of her soaked arming doublet, welcome in the noonday heat. Ash wrung out her thick, yard-long mane of hair between her hands, flung it dripping over her shoulder, and set off at a fast stride for the centre of the camp, her squire running back to the Lion Azure camp with her messages.
    “You’re either up for a knighting,” Robert Anselm growled, as she arrived,