Ash: A Secret History (18 page)

Ash thought,
Shit.

They’re splitting up my company. My company isn’t mine any more. I’m married to someone who
owns
me – and there’s no way I can play court politics to change the Emperor’s mind, because I’m not going to be here! I’m going to be dragged off with disgraced Visigoth ambassadors to Christ alone knows where—

Ash glanced out of the cathedral’s open doors, under the unfinished west front,
³²
out at the sunlight. “Which
is
the nearest southern port from here, on Empire territory?”

Godfrey Maximillian said, “Genoa.”

  Message: #5 (Pierce Ratcliff)

Subject: Ash, historical documents

Date:    02/11/00 at 08.55 p.m.

From:    Longman@

Pierce –

Sorry to contact you out of office hours, but I *must* talk to you about the translation of these documents.

I have very fond memories of ‘doing’ Ash at school. One of the things I like about her, which comes through strongly in your translations of these texts, is that she’s a jock. Basically. She doesn’t read, she can’t write, but boy can she hit things. And she has a complex character despite that. I love this woman! I still think that a modern translation of ASH, with your new document discovery, is one of the best and most commercial ideas that’s come my way in a long time. You know I’m supporting you here, in the editorial discussions, despite not being fully briefed yet.

However. These sources –

I can cope with the odd mistake in dating, and with mediaeval legends. This is, after all, how those people *perceived* their experiences. And what we have here, with your prospective new theory of European history, is brilliant stuff! – But it’s for this very reason that each deviation from history must be carefully documented. Provided the legends are clearly noted as such, we have a cracking good history book for the marketing department to sell.

*But* –

*GOLEMS*???!!!

In mediaeval Europe?!

What next – zombies and the undead?!! This is fantasy!

HELP!

– Anna

  Message: #1 (Anna Longman)

Subject: Ash, historical documents

Date:    03/11/00 at 06.30 p.m.

From:    Ratcliffe@

Anna –

This is what comes of getting connected to e-mail, one then forgets to check it! I am *so* sorry not to have answered you yesterday.

About ‘golems’. I am following Charles Mallory Maximillian’s translation here (with a little FRAXINUS). He refers to them in 1890 as ‘clay walkers’, very much the legendary Cabalistic magical servant as featured in the legend of the Rabbi of Prague. (We should remember that when Maximillian did his translation, the Victorian era was gripped by the fin-de-siècle occult revival craze.)

Vaughan Davies, in his later translation, rather unfortunately calls them ‘robots’, a reference which in the late 1930s was not as hackneyed as it now appears.

I intend to use the term ‘golem’, in this third edition, unless you think it too unscholarly. I am aware that you would like this book to have a wide readership.

As regards what these ‘golems’ or ‘walkers’ may, historically, have actually been, I think they are a mediaeval confabulation of something undoubtedly real with something legendary. The historical reality is mediaeval Arabic engineering.

You will no doubt be aware that, as well as their civil engineering, the Arabic civilisations practised a kind of fine engineering, making fountains, clocks, automata, and many other devices. It is quite certain that, by the time of al-Jazari, complex gear trains existed, also segmental and epicycle gears, weight drives, escapements and pumps. The Arabs’ celestial and biological models were largely water-powered, and invariably – obviously – stationary. However, the European mediaeval traveller often reported the models to be *mobile* figures of men, horses, singing birds, etc.

My research indicates that the del Guiz LIFE has conflated these travellers’ tales with mediaeval Jewish stories of the golem, the man of clay. This was a magical being with, of course, no basis in fact.

If there *had* been a ‘walker’ or ‘servant’ of some sort, I imagine it could conceivably have been a *vehicle*, wind-powered like the sophisticated pole-mills of the period – but then, it would require wheels, sophisticated road-surfaces, and a human driver, to function as any kind of message-carrying device, and could perform no indoor tasks at all. And you may say, rightly, that this is stretching historical speculation unjustifiably far. No such device has ever been discovered. It is chroniclers’ licence.

As a legendary part of the Ash cycle, I like my golems, and I hope you will let me keep them. However, if too much emphasis on the ‘legendary’ aspect of the texts is going to weaken the historical *evidence* which I am drawing from the del Guiz text, then let’s by all means cut the golems out of the finished version!

– Pierce Ratcliff

  Message: #6 (Pierce Ratcliff)

Subject: Ash, historical documents

Date:    03/11/00 at 11.55 p.m.

From:    Longman@

Pierce –

I wouldn’t know a segmental gear if it bit me! But I’m prepared to credit that these ‘golems’ are a mediaeval legend based on some kind of reality. Any study of women’s history, black history, or working class history soon makes you see how much gets dropped from conventional histories, so why should engineering history be any different?

But I guess it’s safer to leave them out. Let’s not confuse mediaeval legend with mediaeval fact.

One of my assistants has raised a further query about the ‘Visigoths’ today. She’s concerned that, since they were a Germanic tribe who died out after the Roman Empire, how can they still be around in 1476?

Another query, from me – I’m not a Classicist, it’s not my period, but don’t I remember Carthage being *wiped out* in Roman times? Your manuscript speaks as if it still exists. But it makes no mention of the ARAB cultures of North Africa.

Is all this going to be made clear? Soon? PLEASE?!

– Anna

  Message: #3 (Anna Longman)

Subject: Ash, historical documents

Date:    04/11/00 at 09.02 a.m.

From:    Ratcliff@

Anna –

I didn’t realise that publisher’s editors worked such unnatural hours. I hope you aren’t working too hard. : )

You ask me for a statement of my theory – very well. We probably can’t proceed in our working relationship without one. Bear with me for a moment, and I’ll give you some necessary background:

The arrival of what the LIFE calls the ‘Gothic’ ambassadors DOES present an apparent problem. I believe that I have solved this problem, however; and, as you imply, it is a key factor in my reassessment of European history.

While the ambassadors’ presence at Frederick’s court is verified by references in both the CHRONIQUE DE BOURGOGNE and the correspondence between Philip de Commines and Louis XI of France, I at first found it difficult to see where these ‘Goths’ (or, as I prefer Charles Mallory Maximillian’s more precise translation, ‘Visigoths’: the ‘noble Goths’) might originate.

The Germanic Gothic barbarian tribes did not so much ‘die out’, as your assistant suggests, as become absorbed into the ethnic mix of the lands they moved into after Rome fell. The Ostrogoths in Italy, for example; the Burgundians in the Rhone Valley, and the Visigoths in Iberia (Spain). They continued to rule these territories, in some cases for centuries.

Maximillian thus suggests these ‘Visigoth’ ambassadors are Spanish. I was not completely happy with that. CMM’s rationale is that, from the eighth century on, Spain is divided between a Christian Visigoth knightly aristocracy, and the Arabic dynasties that follow their own invasion in AD 711. Both the numerically inferior Muslim and Visigoth aristocratic classes ruled over a great mass of Iberian and Moorish peasantry. Therefore, Maximillian says, since there were ‘Visigoths’ of this kind left until well into the late fifteenth century, there might also have been mediaeval rumours that either these Christian Visigoths or the ‘heathen Saracen’ (Muslims) retained some ‘engines and devices’ of Roman technology.

It is actually not until fifteen years after Ash’s death that the last Arab Muslims are finally driven out of the Iberian peninsula in the ‘Reconquista’ (1488-1492). The Visigoth ambassadors to the court of the Emperor Frederick *could* therefore be supposed to come from Iberia.

However, I personally then found it very puzzling that the ASH texts directly state that they come from a settlement which must have been on the coast of North Africa. (Even more puzzling since they are plainly not Arab!)