Ash: A Secret History (79 page)

I know you haven’t the time, right now. I don’t like the sound of this problem with the authorities that you’re having.

I’m getting edgy here.

– Anna

  Message: #173 (Anna Longman)

Subject: Ash mss.

Date:    22/11/00 at 02.01 p.m.

From:    Ngrant@

Anna –

Something to amuse you, then, and stop you being edgy, while we wait. Isobel has been re-reading my ‘Fraxinus’ translation and, as we have nothing better to do at this moment, has been devising with me a completely spurious scientific rationale for the abilities of Ash and the Faris as regards the Stone Golem. We decided to see if we could out-do Vaughan Davies! It goes like this –

Since human beings cannot, as far as we know, converse with stone statues, this must, by definition, happen by the power of a miracle.

Of course, stone-and-brass tactical computers do not function in the world as we know it, either! So this theory will also have to account for the construction of the various ‘stone golems’ by the Rabbi of Prague and the descendants of Radonic. Therefore, such construction is also deemed to be miraculous!

Isobel and I have been playing about with a hypothetical *if*. Our theory is: suppose this ability to perform miracles was GENETIC – *if * there existed such a thing as a gene for performing miracles, *if* this ‘wonder-working’ had a scientific rather than a superstitious basis, how would it function?

It would have to be a recessive gene, obviously. If it were dominant, everybody would be constantly performing miracles. It probably also has to be a recessive with something dangerous linked to the same allele or the same focus – Isobel points out that because blue rats have difficulty in successfully birthing litters, a spontaneous mutation of a blue rat will probably not perpetuate its line. You don’t see many blue rats in the wild, and indeed there may not have been any in existence at all until breeders took an interest in Rattus Norvegicus.

Imagine, then, that this proposed ‘wonder-working’ gene would arise through spontaneous mutation very infrequently, and therefore those born to successfully perform miracles would be history’s memorable prophets and religious leaders – Christ; the Visigoths‘ unidentified ’Prophet Gundobad‘; the major Saints; other cultures’ great visionaries and seers. They would not necessarily pass their genetic heritage on successfully, but it would remain as a recessive gene.

In ‘Fraxinus’s’ history of Leofric’s family, Isobel makes the suggestion – which I had not thought of – that both the Rabbi of Prague *and* the slave woman Ildico were wonder-workers, both of them using that capacity and carrying the gene.

The Rabbi, as wonder-worker, could build a miraculous stone chess-playing computer. Ildico, as the descendant of Gundobad, would carry enough of the ability to conceive a child from the. stone man, but not to work miracles herself. Her daughter, Radegunde, could work the miracle of long-distance communication with the computer, and construct her own golem (but, given the circumstances of her conception, would be prone to physical and mental instability).

The descendants of Radegunde and Ildico would all carry the potential for miracle-working, but it would take a long programme of selective breeding to bring about another Radegunde, given that there is no miracle-worker there to aid Leofric’s family in this project, it has to be done purely by two centuries of stock-breeding. (The morality of this is another question, and certainly does not seem to have occurred to Leofric or his ancestors.)

Both Faris and Ash carry the wonder-working gene, and in them the ability to successfully use it is dominant. It seems not to have been active in Ash herself at birth, instead being triggered at the onset of puberty, at which point she begins to ‘download’ from the Stone Golem.

And there you have it! It’s a shame there’s no such thing as miracles. Well, this is what academics do for fun, on long cold afternoons…

Of course, miracles are – pace centuries of stories from various faiths – merely superstition. A miracle is a non-scientific alteration in the fabric of reality, if I may define it that way, and by that definition it is impossible. When one is sitting in a surprisingly cold army surplus tent (there is a sea-fog) with absolutely nothing else to do but wait to continue the dig, these are intriguing speculations.

If this delay goes on much longer, I confidently expect that Isobel and I shall next devise a theory about how such a ‘non-scientific alteration in the fabric of reality’ or ‘miracle’ might be caused. We are no longer nineteenth-century Materialists, after all; the higher reaches of theoretical physics have taught us that all our Laws of Nature and apparently solid world are probability, fuzzy logic, uncertainty. Yes, about another two hours should do it! We shall produce the Ratcliff-Napier-Grant Theory of Scientific Miracles. And begin to pray, doubtless, for a change of heart among the local politicos, so that we have something real to do!

I hope you are duly amused.

– Pierce

  Message: #102 (Pierce Ratcliff)

Subject: Ash manuscripts

Date:    23/11/00 at 03.09 a.m.

From:    Longman@

Pierce –

Pierce, I have GOT something for you!

I had to go to a book-launch tonight. While I was swanning around the party, networking like mad, I met up again with a dear friend of mine, Nadia – I told you about her – a bookseller from Twickenham – she has one of those independent bookshops which are fast dying out now in favour of chains, in which everything is welcome except customers. (When I asked her what she was doing there, she replied, ‘The shop’s full of people; I’ve come AWAY!’)

However – there was a house clearance at some place in East Anglia, and she bid at an auction for several cases of books. One of them is Vaughan Davies’ ASH: A FIFTEENTH-CENTURY BIOGRAPHY, and it’s *complete*!

Nadia suspects that the house clearance was either from Davies’s own house, or a relative’s house containing Vaughan Davies’s belongings. I’ve asked her to find out more, tomorrow morning.

I haven’t had time to read the thing yet (we had to go back to her shop, and I’ve only just come in!) but I’ll do that while I’m scanning it in for you. Shall I send it through now?

– Love, Anna

  Message: #174 (Anna Longman)

Subject: Ash, archaeological discoveries

Date:    23/11/00 at 07.32 a.m.

From:    Ngrant@

Anna –

Yes. YES. Scan it and send it to me NOW!

Good grief. A copy of Vaughan Davies, after all this time.

Anna, do you realise what this means? Please get your friend to contact the house-clearance people immediately. There may be UNPUBLISHED papers.

I know that my work is superseding Davies, but still – after all this time – even for pure interest’s sake, I want to know what the missing half of the Introduction is. I want to know his theory.

– Pierce

  Message: #175 (Anna Longman)

Subject: Ash, archaeological discoveries

Date:    23/11/00 at 09.24 a.m.

From:    Ngrant@

Anna –

HOLD THE PRESSES!

(I always wanted to say that.)

Still nothing going on here, on site, but we’re MOVING, tomorrow, Friday! Isobel received a radio communication from the expedition’s ship. It’s been examining the seabed north of Tunis, between Cap Zebib and Rass Engelah, around Bizerte (and the Lac de Bizerte, an enclosed sea-inlet south of the city). We’re going to move to the sea-site while Isobel’s manager handles the ongoing problem here.

Apparently it’s unsafe to dive up there, but the cameras on the ROVs (remote operated vehicles) have been sending back pictures.

As soon as she allows me to, I’ll be in contact with you.

– Pierce

PART SEVEN

7 September–10 September AD 1476

Engines and Devices

I

The Visigoth captain all but dragged Ash out and along narrow corridors, his squad forcing a way between crowds of running freemen and slaves; the whole house in an uproar.

Ash stumbled, aware of almost nothing, able to think only
I betrayed them, all of them, I didn’t even think about it! Anything to stay alive
—

She became aware of being manhandled; lifted bodily. The sides of a wooden tub burned hot against her skin. Ash flinched back as slaves lowered her into water. They leaned her against sponges.

“I advise, as hot as you can bear it,” a fat, cheerful young man observed, in Italian, unwinding the bindings from her left knee.

His voice echoed in the long hall, muffled only slightly by the sheets that hung, perfumed with flowers and herbs, from the ceiling of the lord-
amir
’s household bath-house. The hall has steel grills at the windows and bars on the doors.

“ ’
Arif
Alderic, what have you been doing to this one?”

Alderic shook his head. “Don’t waste too much skill,
dottore.
She’s one of the
amir
’s. She only has to live a few days.”

Ash looked dizzily up. Two women with iron collars around their necks, chained together with a span of links about six foot long, bent over the tub and began to sponge and soap her body. If she could have stopped the handling, she would have. She could only stare through the steamy air, hot for the first time in weeks. Tears began to leak from under her eyelids.

I thought I would have more courage.

Other bathers’ voices echoed outside, in the vast tubs that stood in cubicles all down the hall; and a woman’s high laughter sounded, and the clink of glasses.