Ash: A Secret History (96 page)

Subject: Vaughan Davies

Date:    27/11/00 at 03.52 p.m.

From:    Longman@

Pierce –

Okay, okay. I’ll go to Sible Hedingham. Nadia says she’s going down again anyway.

I’m getting moderate media interest. I think it will depend on whether it’s decided that the political-military problems you’re having on-site make you too hot to handle, or whether it’s those same problems that make you interesting and a probable media ‘cause’.

Jonathan Stanley’s handling that. I’m trying to keep him on general grounds. Even though your archaeologist found Troy where a poem said it was, I don’t really want to have to explain that the manuscripts you’ve translated are in any way questionable. I’ll handle that when I HAVE to.

The Vaughan Davies stuff is fascinating, isn’t it? Is this guy crazy or WHAT? I thought it was only the present moment that could be made into reality, and so become history? How could there be *two* histories of the world? I don’t get it. But then, I’m no scientist, am I?

It’s okay for you, Pierce, you can play around with theories, but I have to work for a living! One history is more than enough. It’s going to take some neat handling by me to get this all to go right. When you finally meet him, for God’s sake don’t go telling Jon Stanley about all this! I can do without him telling me one of my authors is a mad professor.

– Love, Anna

  Message: #202 (Anna Longman)

Subject: Ash

Date:    01/12/00 at 01.11 p.m.

From:    Ngrant@

Anna –

I don’t know how to tell you what has happened.

I’m handing you over to Isobel.

  Message: #203 (Anna Longman)

Subject: Ash

Date:    01/12/00 at 02.10 p.m.

From:    Ngrant@

Ms Longman –

At Pierce’s request, I am conveying to you some very unfortunate news. I regret that it will have an effect on the publication of his book, as well as on our expedition here.

As you know, the great ‘find’ of this dig has been the Visigothic ‘messenger-golems’ – one intact and complete, one in remnants. Because the fragmentary golem was already in pieces, I chose that one to be sent off to be tested.

Among the tests we do is C14 radio carbon-dating. When it comes to marble and other forms of stone, dating an object by this method is impossible – one merely gets the age of the rock before it was carved into an object. However, the ‘messenger-golems’ also include several metallic parts. The broken one had sections of a ball-joint for one arm.

I have now had the radio-carbon dating report back on this bronze joint. I have also doubled-checked with our archaeometallurgist here.

Bronze is an alloy of copper, tin and lead. These metals are smelted together and then cast. During the casting process, when the metal is poured, organic impurities can become mixed in; and a study of the crystalline structure of this joint, when shaved down, showed that just this sort of impurity *had* become incorporated into the structure.

When subjected to radio-carbon dating, these organic fragments gave an extremely odd reading. The tests were repeated, and repeated again.

The lab report, which arrived today, states that in their opinion, the readings show that the organic fragments in the metal contain the same levels of background radiation and pollution as one would expect to find in something which has been growing today.

It seems that the metal for the joints and hinges of the ‘messenger-golems’ must have been cast during a period of much higher radiation and atmospheric pollution than existed in the fifteenth-century – indeed, a high enough level to make me certain the metal was cast during the last forty years (post-Hiroshima and atomic testing).

I am left with only one possible conclusion. These ‘messenger-golems’ were not made in the 1400s. They were made recently, possibly very recently. Certainly after the date that, as Pierce tells me, Charles Wade brought the ‘Fraxinus’ document back to Snowshill Manor.

Frankly; these ‘golems’ are modern fakes.

I have had little enough time myself to take in this news. Pierce is shattered. You realise that one of the reasons for the extreme security of the dig is that such things do happen in archaeology – fakes are a constant problem – and I never make any announcements until I am sure.

I realise that this leaves Pierce with documents that have been re-classified as fiction, rather than history, that now have no significant archaeological evidence to support them.

I expect that you will want to consider this news before you make any decisions about publication of Pierce’s translations.

Colonel ██████ has authorised offshore diving to resume at first light tomorrow. Despite our problems, I am reluctant to lose any opportunity, given the political instability of the region. I am no longer sure if the images from the ROV cameras are relevant, but of course we shall be following up this area of investigation.

We shall therefore be leaving for the ship at daybreak. I think, if you could contact Pierce, he would appreciate a kind word.

I am so sorry. I wish I could have brought you better news.

– Isobel Napier-Grant

  Message: #137 (Pierce Ratcliff)

Subject: Ash / archaeology

Date:    01/12/00 at 02.31 p.m.

From:    Longman@

Pierce, Isobel–

ARE YOU SURE?

– Anna

PART EIGHT

10 September–11 September AD 1476

‘
Ferae Natura Machinae
’

I

The darkness went on for what seemed hours.

Ash had no way of judging the time. The world was anything she could feel with her fingertips, at arm’s length, in cold blackness. Brick, mostly; and damp nitre. Mud or shit underfoot. She found the darkness reassuring. No light must mean no breaks in the sewer-covering: therefore these particular brick passages could be safe to traverse.

If there are no pits. No shafts.

If I were with Roberto, now, we’d get drunk. Talk about Godfrey. I’d get so drunk I couldn’t stand up. I’d tell him Godfrey was always a damn peasant at heart. One time I saw him
call boar.
Wild boar, out of the forest! And they came. And I forget how many times he’s listened to me when I needed to talk to someone who wasn’t one of my officers—

Not a father. Who needs fathers? Leofric calls himself a father. A friend. Brother. No, more than a brother; what would it have cost me to love you, just once? Just
once?

Falling-down drunk. And then we’d go off and get into a fight somewhere.

Jesus, what’s Roberto going to say when I tell him this?

If Robert’s alive.

The sound of water running deep and smooth ahead of her made her slow her steps. The wall under her fingertips turned a corner. She paced slowly forward around it, putting her feet down toes-first, testing for broken ground.

The sewers went on.

I shouldn’t leave him.

I can’t do anything else.

I could ask my voice for the way out of here— no, it doesn’t know places, it only solves problems—

Can I even talk to the Stone Golem, now?

Other – voices?

What are they?

Does Leofric know? Did the Caliph know? Does anybody know? Christ, I want to talk to Leofric!
Did anybody know anything about this before today?

I shouldn’t have left him.

Pale light made geometric shapes on her retinas.

Ash stopped, her bleeding hand still touching brickwork. The light was strong enough to show her what planes and surfaces it illuminated. A junction of tunnels. Flat walls, curving walls, sweeping up to a cracked roof that let in faint light. Running water. Walkways. Rubble.

This could go on for miles. And it could all come down on my head any second. The earthquake must have shaken a lot of stonework loose.

A noise.

‘Valzacchi?’ she called, softly.

Nothing.

Ash raised her head. Above, four or five stones had fallen from the tunnel roof. Enough to let through a faint glow of Greek Fire. She thought she heard a confused noise, this time outside, but it faded as she strained to listen.

How long before the rest of this part of the sewer collapses?

Time to be somewhere else.

Unexpected grief bit at her. Her eyes flooded over with tears. She wiped them on her sleeve. She had a moment of knowing, beyond doubt, her responsibility.
And I can never say to you that I’m sorry you came here because of me.

Ash pressed her filthy hands over her face, once. She raised her head. Grief will come, she knows, in seconds and minutes when she does not expect it; will bite harder when this shock fades and she accepts into herself the knowledge that – when the reasons are found, the responsibilities accepted, her confession made – it does not matter. It does not change the fact that she will never speak to Godfrey again; he will never answer her.

She whispered, “Goodnight, priest.”

Something white and moving caught her eye.

Her hand flashed to her belt and met only the empty scabbard. She flattened her back against the tunnel wall, staring ahead.

Something small and white scuttled across the walkway and off into the darkness.

Ash stepped cautiously forward. Her sandals grated on brick. Two more white things darted off out of her way in a low-slung scuttling run.

“Rats,” Ash whispered. “
White
rats?”

If the earthquake breached the sewers built under the Citadel’s streets, could it have breached the walls of the houses cut down
into
the rock? Am I near House Leofric?

Maybe.

Maybe not. If they are his freak rats, that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m close. Rats can move a long way; it’s got to have been an hour since the quake, maybe more.

“Hey, ratsies…” Ash chirruped softly. Nothing moved in the dim light.

A thought came into her mind, of what rats might feed on, down here. She glanced back, into darkness.

“Godfrey…”

She began to edge around the corner of the junction, treading silently, unwilling to disturb the air and the cracked brickwork shell above her head. She stopped. She looked back.

“You won’t approve, Godfrey… You always said I was a heathen. I am. I don’t believe in mercy and forgiveness. I believe in revenge – I’m going to make somebody
hurt
because you’re dead.”

A distant chittering echoed from further down the sewer.

The sweet stench of shit grew worse. Ash started to walk on, with her wet sleeve clamped over her nose. She had nothing left to vomit up. Water flowed sluggish and silent below the brick walkway.