The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(10)
But that distance did not apply to Isabeau. They’d held each other through the night their mother died, through the endless nights of the siege of Nantes, when the great stone balls from the French bombards came smashing against the battlements and once, memorably, through their window. They’d held hands while their father lay dying.
And now, when Anne’s hair was replaited, her body sponged, her chemise changed, her orders given to be wakened at Lauds, she went to crawl into the great bed and found Isabeau there but still awake, ready with another question. “Are we going unicorn-hunting?”
Anne sighed. “The court is going unicorn-hunting.”
Isabeau made a muffled sound of delight into her pillow.
“Quiet,” said Anne. “You’ll get a scolding from Hawiz. You know you cannot come with us.”
“But I have to.” Isabeau would have shot upright except that Anne, who knew her sister well, had put out a restraining hand. “You need a virtuous virgin.”
“Hardly virtuous, what with filching sweets and refusing to go to sleep. Dearest, you are not going to be unicorn-bait.” She rolled onto an elbow, deadly serious.
“Why not? I suppose you are.”
Anne didn’t answer. Instead, she said, “Isabeau, you have not yet been stag-hunting. Your pony could never course a unicorn. People would wonder why you were there.”
“I want to help,” said Isabeau urgently. “I have to—I want to make everything different.”
Anne reached for her sister’s hand under the quilts. Isabeau’s cold fingers closed around hers.
“I wish I could make it so you stay,” said Isabeau, small now. “Will you love him, at least?”
“My husband?” Anne was taken aback. She’d dreamed of love, of course. Sometimes, idly, she imagined a quick-tongued, fair-haired troubadour, or a knight with green eyes stealing with her in secret to some solitary bower. Years ago, in the last spring of their peace, Louis, Duke of Orléans, had come to Nantes in full rebellion against the crown of France: a famous knight and as beautiful as lightning over a distant sea. For a while, he’d turned all Anne’s dreams from blond and devoted heroes to dark ones with sunburnt faces. But then came the war, hard on Orléans’s heels. All Anne’s dreaming crumbled in the face of it. Besides, Orléans had hardly noticed her, and then he was captured at Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier and carried off a prisoner to France.
Anne shook away memory. “I will—respect my husband.” Respect was better than love.
Isabeau said nothing, obviously dissatisfied, anxious, afraid of the looming future. Anne could hardly reassure her, so fast were the fears, plans, memories coursing through her own mind. She said, “Shall I tell you a story?”
Her sister gave a pleased wriggle and rolled to face her. “Oh, yes!”
“You must lie down properly. And close your eyes.”
Isabeau rested her head on Anne’s shoulder. Anne stroked her hair. Let us go far from here, at least for a moment. Her voice took on something of Hawiz’s measured cadence; she changed from courtly French to the soft Breton of their earliest childhoods. “I shall tell the story of Keris, the city of cedar and gold, the city in the bay of Douarnenez that conducted its commerce from the backs of sea-dragons, and entertained delegations of the korriganed, the fair-folk, in halls of white marble.”
Isabeau resettled herself so that Anne had to push her off her ribcage. “I will tell it only if you promise to be still,” she said.
“Very well,” said Isabeau, penitently.
“Once,” said Anne. “Long ago, there was a beautiful king called Gralon Meur who ruled the whole land of Cornouaille from his seat in Quimper, within sight of the sea. This king had no wife. But rather than wed a mortal princess, he rode alone into Brocéliande, and thence by ancient ways into the Lost Lands. There he sought the korrigan-queen’s daughter and asked for her hand in marriage.”
Isabeau shifted her weight. “A queen’s daughter? Was there not a king?”
“Do you want me to tell the story or not?”
Isabeau stilled and Anne went on: “The chronicles do not tell how he won her. They only say that when Gralon Meur was next seen in Cornouaille, he had a korrigan wife, whose name was Malgven, and that the two were greatly in love. But Malgven missed the Lost Lands, missed her mother and her people, and her mother missed her child also. So when Malgven conceived her firstborn, the queen of the korriganed put forth all her strength and made the couple a present for the child’s christening.”
Isabeau was still far from asleep.
Anne said, “Are your eyes closed?”
“Yes,” said Isabeau, lying stoutly.
“The korrigan-queen’s gift was a city entire. Such a city as had never been seen in the world of men. It split the water of the bay of Douarnenez like a spike of pearl, like a heap of jewels. A city raised by sorcery, by arts that the world has since lost. A city that lay upon the twilit border between the mortal lands and the Lost Lands.”
“But how?” said Isabeau. “If the Lost Lands are in Brocéliande, which is far from the sea?”
“I do not know. That is just the story. Perhaps it is a chronicler’s mistake, or else some lore whose nature we have forgotten. Now listen. This city was called Ys, which is a word whose meaning we have forgotten. But the chronicles call the city Ker-Ys, or Keris, for ker was their ancient word for ‘city.’ And now the city is remembered as Keris, the city of cedar and gold.”