Ash: A Secret History Read Free Page B

no further away than that.
    Ash shot in rabbit-jinks across the rubble. She hit the snow by the wall and wormed her way in under the lowest holly branches.
    Inside, the bush was hollow and dry. Brown leaves crackled under her dirty hands. Black branches supported the canopy of shiny green leaves above her head. Ash lay flat on her belly and eased forward. Barbed leaves stuck into her woollen doublet.
    She peered from between the leaves. Snow fell now.
    The thin clerk lifted a tenor voice and sang. It was a language Ash did not know. The company’s two lieutenants stumbled across the broken ground, singing, and it would have sounded better, Ash thought, if they had taken their helmets off instead of just putting up their visors.
    The Captain emerged from the wood’s edge.
    He put his gauntlets up to his chin and fumbled with buckle and strap. Then Ash saw him fiddle with the hook and pin. He opened his helm and took it off, and stood uncovered in the glade. Fat flakes of snow drifted down. They nestled in his hair and beard and ears.
    The Captain sang,
“God rest ye merry, Gentlemen, let nothing you dismay;
This darkest hour, the Sun returns; so we salute the Day.”
    His voice was very loud, very cracked, not very much in tune. The silence of the wood shattered. Ash cried sudden hot tears. He had wrecked his voice bellowing above the noise of men and horses; it was a powerful ruin.
    The company clerk came close to the holly bush in which Ash hid. She made herself still. Tears dried on her scarred cheeks. Half of being hidden is to remain utterly, completely still. The other half is to think yourself into the background. I am a rabbit, a rat, a briar, a tree. She lowered her mouth into the neck of her doublet so that her white breath would not betray her.
    “Give thanks,” the clerk said. He put something up on to the old altar. Ash was below and could not see, but it smelled like raw meat. Snow tangled in the man’s hair. His eyes were bright. Despite the cold, sweat ran in drops down his forehead, under the brim of his metal hat. The rest of what he said was in the other language.
    The taller lieutenant screeched “ Look! ” so loudly that Ash started and jumped. A disturbed twig dumped snow down her face. She blinked it out of her eyelashes. Now I’m discovered, she thought calmly, and put her head out into the glade and found no one even looking in her direction. Their eyes were on the altar.
    All three knights went down on their knees in the ivy-covered rubble. Armour scraped and clattered. The Captain’s arms fell to his sides, and the helm from his hand: Ash winced as she heard it hit rocky earth and bounce.
    The company clerk took off his dish-shaped war-hat and moved to one knee with a singular grace.
    Snow whirled faster from the invisible whiteness of the sky into the glade. Snow covered the green ivy, the red berries of the holly. Snow froze on the spindly brown arcs of briar. A great huffing animal breath came down from the altar of the ruined green chapel. Ash watched its whiteness on the air. Animal-breath hit her in the face, warm and wet.
    A great paw trod down from the stone altar.
    The paw’s pelt was yellow. Ash stared at it, two inches from her face. Yellow fur. Coarse yellow fur, paler and softer at the roots. The beast’s claws were curved, and longer than her hand, and white with clear tips. Needle tips.
    The haunch of a Lion passed Ash’s face. Its flank obscured the clearing, the wood, the men. The beast stepped down fluidly from the altar. It threw up its maned head, bolting down whatever the offering had been. She saw its throat move, swallowing.
    A coughing roar broke the air a foot away from her.
    She pissed the crotch of her woollen hose. Hot urine steamed in the cold, chilled clammily down her thighs, instantly cold in the snowy air. Eyes wide, she could only stare, could not even wonder why none of the kneeling knights sprang up or drew their swords. The Lion’s head began to swing