The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(15)
Anne hesitated. She was angry, but she also recognized this ferocity. She possessed it too. The fierceness of a woman protecting something precious. Was the abbess so afraid for her flock? “Will you swear on the Cross?”
The lady laughed. “I will swear on the shadows and the world’s memory. I swear to keep your secrets.”
That was a strange oath. But Bretons prayed to peculiar saints; their rituals contained half-forgotten words. Anne hesitated. Finally, she found herself saying, somewhat to her own surprise, “I am to be married in your chapel tonight.”
“Ah,” said the lady. “Why?”
Anne told her, brief and precise. When she had finished, the lady replied, “A desperate scheme, then. And why did you rescue that verminous brat?”
“I swore to protect this realm of Brittany. I could not ride by while a hungry child hid. She would have died in that farmyard.”
“What would you do for this land if you were called to it?” asked the old lady, her voice harder still.
“Anything,” said Anne. “Die. If I am called to it.” She was fast losing patience. “Did you ever mean to give me supper?”
The abbess ignored the question. “But would you fight for it?” She leaned on her stick.
“That too,” said Anne.
The lady’s face broke into an alarming smile. She had a dreadful number of teeth. A triumph at her age. “Perhaps you will have the opportunity.”
“Perhaps I will,” said Anne in exasperation. “At court, in Vienna, where I will be able to direct my husband’s resources to my own lands.”
“We’ll see about that,” said the lady vaguely. “Did you know that long ago, men did not hunt unicorns to kill them?” She went to a moonlit corner; Anne blinked and saw a jar and some cups. The abbess poured them both wine, dark as melancholy.
Anne did not drink it. “Why not?”
“Because the unicorn must graze on mortal flowers and also on the leaves of the Lost Lands—take the wine, it isn’t poisoned—for this reason: A unicorn, of all the beasts of the world, can make its way between the two. Some say the unicorn guards the Lost Lands and is the warden of the ways between. And so men hunted unicorns to have their grace, not to make a trophy of their horns.” The old lady put her head to one side. “Do you not wish to go into the Lost Lands?”
Anne sipped her wine. “Why would I want that? The way is long forgotten, and I am no adventurer.”
“No? But there was power there once, for those with hearts to find it.”
Her fingers tightened on her cup. “What power?”
The smile glimmered in the moonlight. “That depends on the seeker. Now come and eat and forgive my churlishness. We do not often have royal guests.”
Anne blinked a second time, wondering how she could have missed the small table in the corner, laden with dishes. She sat, still a little wary, let the abbess serve her with her own hands, and had a hearty supper, with moonlight bright in her eyes. The abbess, smiling genially, talked now of herb-lore, and Anne, who did not care for nostrums but who was fascinated by the dyeing of thread, answered readily, so that the time passed with strange ease.
When she had finished, the door flew clattering open. Anne rose and Madeleine, as though unaware that her sovereign had ever been absent, said, “Highness, Polhaim is come.”
Anne hurried to the door, could hear the shouts and whinnying from the yard. Also the rain falling. The night was stormy, pitch-black.
But in the abbess’s stillroom, there had been such moonlight and no storm at all…
Anne stopped, realizing, and turned back at once to where the moonlight—the impossible moonlight—had spilled so lavishly onto the floor. But the door was already closed behind her and the abbess was nowhere to be seen.
Chapter
5
If there had been a diviner who could look without madness into Brocéliande—and particularly into the chapel at Paimpont—he might have remarked its evil air. As though evil men had been here, and done evil deeds. Anne’s skin prickled as she crossed the echoing flagstones. The inner walls of the nave were painted scarlet. Old graves lined the floor, with names carved in odd characters, mostly worn away. Anne’s modish black skirts whispered over the stones, and a chill prickled up her back. She walked on Henri’s arm, and he gave the chapel a look of disfavor. “You ought to be married in daylight in a cathedral with flowers. If you told me this place was a robber-den I’d believe you.”
Anne could not disagree. But she said consolingly, “My first child will be baptized in a cathedral in daylight with flowers, and when that happens there will be peace in Brittany. The rest doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t it? That yellow-haired creature Polhaim is half in love with you,” murmured Henri as they paced together up the aisle. “Didn’t you see his face?”
Anne felt her color rise. “It is easy to be in love with someone you do not know, whom you must rescue from her enemies.” She had encouraged Polhaim, of course; he was Maximilien’s confidant and his courage and dispatch could make or break this scheme. She let her sideways stare convey some of that to Henri, who looked affronted. “Just as you like, go on and break hearts; when I have to kill the fellow who’s finally broken yours, I shall congratulate him before I run him through.”