Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle Page B

Ash. I’ve had lance-leaders up to the tent every hour on the hour, these past two days.”
    “I know. When they’ve worked their energy off,” Ash continued, “get them all together. I’m going to talk to everybody, not just the lance-leaders. Go!”
    “I hope you’ve got something convincing to tell them!”
    “Trust me.”
    Anselm went out behind Geraint. The tent emptied of all but Ash, her surgeon, priest and page.
    “Rickard, on your way out, send Philibert in to dress me.” Ash watched her eldest page stomp out.
    “Rickard’s getting too old,” she said absently to de Lacey. “I’ll have to pass him on as a squire, and find another ten-year-old page.” Her eyes gleamed. “That’s a problem you don’t have, Florian – I have to have body servants under the age of puberty, or all the whore-rumours start up again. ‘She’s not a real captain, she just shags the company officers and they let her prance around in armour.’ Hell-fire!” She laughed. “In any case, young Rickard’s far too good-looking for me to have around. Never fuck your employees!”
    Florian de Lacey leaned back in the wooden chair, both palms flat on his thighs. He gave her a sardonic look. “The bold mercenary captain ogles the innocent young boy – except I don’t remember the last time you got laid, and Rickard’s been through half the Imperial camp whores and come to me because he caught crab-lice.”
    “Yeah?” Ash shrugged. “Well… I can’t fuck anyone in the company because it’s favouritism. And anyone who isn’t a soldier goes, you’re a woman and you’re a what? ”
    Florian stood and walked to look out of the tent, cradling a wine cup. Not, after all, a particularly tall man; he had the left-over stoop of a boy who grew tall earlier than his contemporaries, and learned not to like standing out in a crowd. “And now you’re getting married.”
    “Yippee!” Ash said. “It won’t change anything, except we’ll have revenues from land. Fernando del Guiz can stay in his castle, and I’ll stay in the army. He can find himself some bimbo in a stuffed headdress, and I’ll be entirely happy to look the other way. Marriage? No problem.”
    Florian raised a sardonic eyebrow. “If that’s what you think, you haven’t been paying attention!”
    “I know your marriage was difficult.”
    “Oh.” He shrugged. “Esther preferred Joseph to me – women often prefer their babies to their husbands. At least it wasn’t a man she ignored me for…”
    Ash gave up her attempt to unlace her bodice herself, and presented her back to Godfrey. As the priest’s solid fingers tugged at the cords, she said, “Before I go out there and talk to the guys – I’ve been paying attention to one thing, Florian. How come you keep vanishing lately? I turn round and you’re not there. What’s Fernando del Guiz to you?”
    “Ah.” Florian wandered in an irritating manner around the kit-cluttered tent. He stopped. He looked coolly at Ash. “He’s my brother.”
    “Your what? ” Ash goggled.
    At her back, Godfrey’s fingers were momentarily still on the bodice lacing. “ Brother? ”
    “Half-brother, actually. We share a father.”
    Ash became aware that the top of her gown had loosened. She shook her shoulders in the cloth, feeling it slide away. Godfrey Maximillian’s fingers began to untie the fastenings of her underrobe.
    “You’ve got a brother who’s noble?”
    “We all know Florian’s an aristocrat.” Godfrey hesitated. “Don’t we?” He went around to the trestle table and poured a goblet of wine. “Here. I thought you knew, Ash. Florian, I always thought your family came from one of the Burgundies, not the Empire.”
    “It does. Dijon, in Burgundy. When my mother in Dijon died, my father remarried, a noblewoman from Cologne.” The blond man slid a shoulder up in an insouciant gesture. “Fernando’s a good few years younger than me, but he is my half-brother.”
    “Green Christ up a